Vice President Kim Ratcliff was recently interviewed by ONN’s Mike Kallmeyer on the topic of social media. She set the “View from the Top,” highlighting Werth’s counsel to clients to guide their social media marketing investment.
See the clip here, by clicking on “Paul Werth” in the video viewer.
This month the National Safe Boating Council kicked off a unique campaign to promote life jacket awareness. The ‘80’s hit song “Safety Dance” was used in a video featuring a young man and woman who appear to be dancing. This “dance” is a metaphor for what they would look like if they were under water without a life jacket struggling to survive. In the end our subjects don a safety jacket and float safely to the surface and off the screen.
The campaign was just recognized by the United States Coast Guard and the United States Department of Homeland Security for outstanding work in the area of Marine Safety.
The promotion, conceived by the Werth Creative team, uses the popular Facebook Connect application. Once you log in and allow access to your Facebook photos, they will fade up behind our subjects as a reminder of the friends you’d leave behind if you choose not to wear a safety jacket this boating season.
In the end, you are encouraged to forward “The Life Jacket Safety Dance” link to friends for a chance to win a Flip MinoHD™ camcorder, with the ultimate goal of spreading the word to as many people as possible about the benefits of wearing a life jacket.
The contest caps off Werth’s second successful year of managing the National Safe Boating Week, Inflatable Life Jacket World Record Day and “Wear It!”campaigns for the National Safe Boating Council.
Werth began national media outreach in February, targeting local media that reach active boaters. To date, the campaign has placed 455 articles and online media hits, reaching a potential audience of more than 106 million. Highlights include:
News or noise? That’s the question facing journalists and those who need accurate reporting …which would be all of us … today. The greatest shifts in standard reporting practices since yellow journalism are accelerating, several recent surveys show.
A great surge among reporters using social media tools … blogs, videos, podcasts and Twitter … has taken place. The latest Survey of Media in the Wired World found that almost 70 percent of journalists use social media, up by 28 percentage points since 2008. Nearly 80 percent of journalists said bloggers are important opinion-shapers, and 91 percent thought social media actually enhanced journalism.
Is that just Putting on a Happy Face? Maybe. Other surveys show journalists are deeply concerned about their profession. The disappearance of gatekeepers (i.e., editors) who monitor objectivity and check facts is not such a good thing. Neither are layoffs, which are frequent among working journalists. Those who are left have much larger workloads, smaller traditional news spaces and many demands to produce content for multiple platforms. Of course, social media have opened up many new sources and given journalists a chance to actually have two-way discussions with their readers and viewers.
It’s no surprise that a recent survey showed most journalists find that public relations firms are more important than ever to their work. Public relations professionals, often former reporters themselves, can help working journalists find good ideas for stories, provide accurate relevant information, and locate experts and others who are good, solid sources. Working together, we can make sure legitimate reporting will be heard over all the noise online and in traditional media. And that’s good news.
What are your thoughts about this shift? Contact me by commenting here, or e-mail me at ktwinem@paulwerth.com.
Hello, my name is Kim, and I’m a word geek. Fair warning: I consider Scrabble to be a competitive sport. And I’m not a supporter of counting proper names as per the “new rules” of the game. Sounds like cheating to me.
In college, I willingly decided to write a thesis on Cajun French’s metamorphosis into English through gradual adoption of English words. What people do with language is fascinating to me. This natural curiosity is what led me to a career in communications, and eventually I came face to face with another kind of linguistics — the keywords leveraged in search and digital marketing.
A recent AdAge post about the future of social media got me thinking about the semantic Web — #10 on this list of 2012 trends. Instead of rankings based upon everyone’s search frequency, search results will be ranked based upon each individual’s affinity for search terms. This will be derived from social media conversations with keyword mentions.
This change is taking search to a new level. Filtering search results based upon previously expressed interests is nothing new in the retail world. Most retail clothing sites already give me handy “You may also like…” suggestions. Now, generic search will serve up the same filtering, across the Web.
What does the semantic Web mean for marketers?
Transparency will persist in importance. The relatively new FCC guidelines for blogger disclosure of sponsorship are just the beginning. Accuracy of information will become more objectively vetted, driving digital accountability.
Privacy protection will continue to be a sensitive issue. What are the implications of tracking each person’s search interests and using the information for marketing? This concern overlaps with neuromarketing fears.
Relevance of search results will theoretically be enhanced. The semantic Web will provide information in the context of each individual’s innate interests. But, what if people don’t want filtered information? Fine-tuning search based upon each person’s desired settings for filters will be critical.
Limiting the World Wide Web to individual interests could defeat its very purpose. The Web puts us in a position of having the world at our very fingertips. If overly restrictive, semantic Web executions could have us all wearing blinders. And keep in mind that those blinders will be crafted based upon an interpretation of our interests — not truly our own determination. This New York Times article does a good job of explaining the problem of digital fragmentation, where we self-select the content with which we are most comfortable — instead of reviewing 360-degree viewpoints. This is a significant problem for objective and factual news reporting and assessing opinions from all sides.
Where do you see this trend going during the next three years? Are you already planning for the implications on your target audience promotions? Plan ahead now, while you have the luxury. Contact me by commenting here, or e-mail me at kratcliff@paulwerth.com.
Today’s news media are a far cry from what my mother experienced in the Walter Cronkite-era of my youth. Social media invigorate our communications, broaden our networks and make content-sharing much more immediate.
How will our communications possibilities be transformed by the mainstreaming of social media this year? Here are my thoughts:
People will continue to gravitate toward news that is shareable. We are social beings, and there’s power in using our social networks to share news in real time. On Sunday mornings, I curl up with my newsreader and share content with friends separated by time and space. Big news organizations realize this and have made the ShareIt icon ubiquitous, because news shared in context takes on greater meaning. There are more news stories out there and more in-depth discussion as a result of sharing content.
News publishing that encourages us to be the correspondent isn’t just more engaging – it has more impact for the news audience.This interactive map from The New York Times’ site is a good example. The before-after impacts of the Haiti earthquake are palpable. It’s clear that we like to share the news with our friends, and we like it even more when it’s combined with visuals that “take us to the news.”
Action-oriented news can make a difference. Recent fundraising for Haiti relief efforts and geo-targeting police abuses in Iran give us practical ways to use Twitter for human benefit. When news becomes meaningful information that people care enough to do something about, it makes a measurable difference.
Simply reading a two-dimensional paper at the kitchen table in the morning like my mother used to do is no longer enough. We must be able to experience the news through our senses, in multiple dimensions – along with friends on the other side of the world.
The kitchen table “newspaper” experience just got personal, global and substantive. And, because new media are breaking down communications barriers, even my mother is tapping into the possibilities. She recently joined Facebook.
If you are marveling at the new media mix and relishing the possibilities, drop me a line at kratcliff@paulwerth.com, or comment here. I look forward to reading your thoughts – and starting the dialogue.
What’s that sound? It’s the sands of time, the ticking clock and and my unfinished to-do list — all being eaten whole by Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Prioritizing social media time is a challenge in today’s communications world. How do people draw the line between true engagement and online time-wasting?
I was recently asked a question about this on a panel. The question was:
How do you find hours in the day to “do” social media for yourself and clients? Doesn’t it take up all of your time?
The answer? It can — if you let it. The best way to carve out the time is to set limits on how much time to devote to each social media footprint. The worst thing for me is to leave my time wide open. Like most of us, I can’t usually afford to let my time evaporate. I’ve got a family to get home to, client deadlines to meet and other normal life commitments.
I try to spend 30 minutes on each Twitter account per day — 15 each in the morning and the afternoon or evening. I keep myself focused on content within my industry areas of interest and don’t get sidetracked. With the blog, it’s a couple of hours a week. Just one post a week, usually. And then I’m reading others’ blogs through my reader, usually an hour a day.
Then there’s Facebook. How much sharing is enough, really? I try to limit myself to sharing just a few items per day of others’ content, with a couple of status updates and/or content of my own.
It does add up, all told. At least 10 hours a week is a standard commitment for just one social media account.
What are others’ experiences? Amber Naslund, director of community at Radian6, recently put up a good series of posts about time management in the midst of social media. Bottom line, it’s about knowing one’s goals and setting priorities aligned with them. She shares helpful information to guide social media priorities.
For me, it’s all about the balance. Easy to write about, not easy to strike! DM me on Twitter with questions, or leave a comment here on the blog if you have ideas that work for your own social media time management.
On October 20, Paul Werth Associates is pleased to partner with the Columbus office of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey on a presentation discussing how social media impacts brand reputation and how important it is for the communications and legal teams to coordinate efforts. This pre-registration only event will take place 3-7 pm close to the OSU campus.
The presenters, including myself; Susan DiMickele, a partner at Squire Sanders; Traci Martinez, an associate at Squire Sanders; and Kim Ratcliff, a vice president at Werth, recently sat down to provide a sneak peak of the insights to be shared during this complimentary workshop.
If you’re interested in registering, click here or please contact Adla Blackwell at (614) 365.2319.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Paul Werth Associates senior account supervisor Caroline Cofer Golon has been featured – along with her cat Romeo – in Columbus Dispatch feature writer Joe Blundo’s Aug. 18 column. This is the latest coverage of Golon’s endeavor to raise money for animal rescues leveraging social media platforms.
The Dispatch column chronicles the Werth origins of Golon’s free-time pastime, which arose from a friendly debate among colleagues whether Twitter users would follow updates posted in the guise of her Persian rescue cat Romeo.
More than 6,000 Twitter followers later, having raised more than $20,000 for animal rescues and more than $250,000 in earned media coverage, Romeo’s popularity continues unabated, Golon said.
“Romeo has become something of a star,” Golon said. “While this is a fun personal project for me, it also allows me to make a difference for worthy animal rescue causes across the country. I have also been invited to speak about my experience at professional conferences and by pet-focused businesses. Who knew that Twittering could make such a difference?”
“It’s a testimony to the power of Twitter – or, perhaps, cats,” Blundo wrote in his column’s introduction. “Of course, the cat has a good ghost-Tweeter: Caroline Cofer Golon, who works for Paul Werth Associates, a public-relations company in Columbus.”
About Paul Werth Associates
Founded in 1963, Paul Werth Associates is a full-service public relations, marketing and public affairs firm counseling clients throughout the United States. The firm has offices in Columbus, Ohio and Washington, D.C.
Inexperienced “experts” in the social media world don’t understand that it needs to serve a clear purpose and be measured. The social media frenzy is now at the stage where companies aren’t taking so-called experts at their word. Companies are seeking substance—and experience. But are they getting it?
Werth has noticed that rising above the frenzy are some well-positioned strategic thoughts, like Peter Shankman’s recent blog post. But some are focused more on the purely social aspects of social media and represent themselves from an overly casual point-of-view, possible juvenile and often not aligned with corporate culture that seeks results (translation: not all fun and games) for the investment.
Here’s the rub:
Companies that put inexperienced professionals (admittedly power users of social media, but not communications or marketing experts) in the driver’s seat with their social media run the risk of damaging their reputations.
People are panicked to get a social media presence because it’s seen as the next silver bullet. As professional marketers and communicators, we all need to recognize one important and timeless fact:
Social media is—with deference to Tony the Tiger—simply “an important part of a balanced marketing breakfast.” I’m probably dating myself, but readers out there who get the reference are the fastest adopters of social media. According to Nielsen, FaceBook alone has more than 200 million active users with the fastest growing age group adults 35 and over.
Thinking like Tony, social media should be used as an important part of a total program to help achieve marketing goals. On its own, social media can be just like breakfast cereal–an addictive snack easily gobbled down by the handful throughout the day, or something served once daily or weekly with milk, OJ and some banana slices on top.
How can you tell if you are really getting expertise or just meaningless chatter behind your social media effort? Nothing beats a plan that is executed within corporate norms with respect for social media authenticity—while demonstrating results. As you are looking for experts, ask about experience, the strategy behind the program and most importantly, what business results it will generate.
Join us for an informed and results-oriented conversation on social media. Over the next few weeks my colleagues and I will be posting on successes we’re seeing with social media and sharing some amazing results, starting with a Werth client that reached more than 50 percent of its campaign goal in one day with a social media campaign.
If I were asking Tony the Tiger, I’m sure he’d say it’s “Grrrrrrrreat!”
Future posting: Using social media to rise above industry reputation challenges.
Hello, my name is Kim, and I’m a word geek. Fair warning: I consider Scrabble to be a competitive sport. And I’m not a supporter of counting proper names as per the 
