Managing employees role in the organization's voice

As far as managing an organization's social media voice is concerned, there are a number of best practices that would be better learned than by making public communication mistakes.

As mentioned in previous posts, behind every organizational voice across social media channels there are people (or a person) who represents the organization.

 These people have a critical responsibility because they must not only provide content across social media channels that will be valuable to readers, they often are called on to drive revenue, as well. Around both of these goals is the need to use a vocabulary and style that represent the tone and feel the organization wants to provide to its
readers.

If the people who manage the organization's social media voice get it right, they create a positive impact for the
organization.  At the same time, an employee can make a single comment and injure the organization’s relationship with everyone. Oft times, people seem to forget the volume and reach social media channels represent. If an organization has 100,000 followers, the actual reach is much greater because if something posted is really good or really bad, many followers will forward the information or comments to their contacts.

So potentially the number of people who could “hear” about it could be one million or more. Because the responsibility is so great on those who post on behalf of the organization, it makes sense to have rules and reviews in place so costly mistakes are avoided.

The first step is to make sure you’re aware of anyone who reports to you who creates content for one of the organizational voice channels. You should provide specific assistance for these folks. It makes
sense to review these concepts and provide training for all your people so that no one finds out the hard way the dangers of a misstep.

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What should your organization do during a crisis?

A subspecialty of Public Relations, crisis communication management is designed to protect the image and reputation of an individual or organization facing a crucial challenge in public domain.

 Such challenges may emanate from a public scrutiny into activities of an organization conducted by government agencies. It may also be in form of an investigation from government agencies, criminal allegations, media inquiries, violation of employees rights, shareholders lawsuits, a violation of environmental regulations, or other scenarios involving the legal, ethical, or financial standing of the entity.

Crisis communication management means
may include creating statements, known as “messages,” often tested by research and polling. Other measures may comprise proactive media outreach inspired with a view to get such messages and context to the media. It further includes coopting the right opinion leaders or influencers  who can issue a favorable narrative of the organization's  side of the unfolding story.

Crisis communication is also regarded as a sub-speciality of business continuity. The ultimate objective of crisis communication management in such contexts is to enable organizations retain continuity of crucial business processes and dissemination of  information under such circumstances.

An effective crisis communication strategic plan should inculcate the following objectives:

• Maintain connectivity

• Be readily accessible to the news media

• Show empathy for the people involved

• Allow distributed access

• Streamline communication processes

• Maintain information security

• Ensure uninterrupted audit trails

• Deliver high volume communications

• Support multi-channel communications

• Remove dependencies on paper based processes

Media Accent Nuggets: Flame wars

A flame war is a  lengthy exchange of angry or abusive messages between users of an online forum or other discussion area.

Social media management: Managing authority to speak

In the course of managing  social media accounts for an organization, the first thing a social media team needs to understand about using social tools to communicate with the public on the organization’s behalf is what authority they have and don’t have. This is a basic concept, yet people will often feel they are “allowed” to respond to a negative comment they see online about the organization or one of your products.

The danger here is saying something like this: “I work for X and take exception to your comment about our product. The
truth is our product works exactly as specified in the instructions and if you’re having that problem, it might be user error.”

To your employee this might sound like a reasonable response. One problem with that is if the customer learns the product was actually defective, he or she may
document the story and your response, then use it as an example of how arrogant and uncaring your company is.

When television, radio, magazines, and newspapers were the main way an organization talked to the world, it was easy to restrict who could comment on your behalf. The lines of authority were clear. It’s now more complicated because every employee has the ability to see a
comment made about the organization and to respond in an instant to millions of people.

You must make it clear to your staff which employees are allowed to speak on behalf of the organization, and the rest are not. You must also make it clear to people how to represent themselves if they enter a conversation.

The options include telling people they work for the organization and what their title is, or they can state that this is a personal opinion and not provide the organization they work for. Both of these may be more appropriate than speaking as
if they’re speaking for the company. You must make sure that your people understand there’s a concept of authority around what they say publicly on behalf of the organization.

How publicity stunt made French painter famous

Historical publicity stunts: How
Harry Reichenbach made French Artist, Paul Chabas' painting famous

Another early PR practitioner was Harry Reichenbach (1882–1931) a New York-based
American press agent and publicist who promoted movies.
He claims to have made famous the Paul
Chabas painting, September Morn, through a publicity stunt he stage managed. Supposedly, he saw a print in a Chicago art store window. He made a deal with the store owner who had not sold any of his 2,000 prints.

Reichenbach had hired some boys to “ogle” the picture when he showed it to the moralist crusader Anthony Comstock.
Comstock was suitably outraged when he saw it. Comstock’s Anti-Vice Society took the case to the court and lost. However, the publicity stunt  aroused interest to the painting, which ultimately sold millions of copies.

Media Accent Nigeria Nuggets

Don't gamble with your reputation, leave it to the #professionals #Media Accent #Nigeria 

How often should you post on social media ?

If you’re in the situation where you’re managing some form of a social organizational voice across social media platforms be careful about how often you send or post content. The good side of “talking” to your followers daily via posts across your organizations social media platforms, is they think of you often.

 The downside can be that you annoy them because you don’t have interesting things to say each time. Don’t wear out your connections by inundating them with information they won’t value.

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How to write for SEO using keywords

By Dominic Nwelih

Learn basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  writing tips to enable your web posts stay ahead of competition and be found on search engines - be it Google or Bing.

1: Keywords selection
 Select appropriate keywords or phrases. This is that particular word or phrase people type into search engines. It's also imperative to ensure selected keywords are used often in your content.

2: Headline:
Ensure selected keywords and phrases are cast into the headline of your content. Remember headlines should be kept short and simple.

3: Early usage: Ensure you selected keywords are used at the early stages of your post. This should be woven into the first or second sentence.

4: URL: Ensure selected keywords appear on the URL of your published content. This makes it easier for search engines to know what your content is about.

5: Sharing: Ensure your content generates web traffic and is visible to as many as possible. This could be achieved by sharing same on social media platforms.

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Content marketing and the right to sell

We’ve mentioned this concept a couple of times. Almost every organization is trying to sell something through its content marketing initiatives. In the zeal to accomplish this, many pollute their content and conversation streams with too many attempts to coerce someone into taking action. Focus on providing a valuable stream of information to your constituents, and once that is accomplished, they won’t mind if you sell to them every once in a while.
It’s akin to a television show running commercials. We don’t like them all the time but we understand they fund the making of the shows.

Posted by Dominic Nwelih 

Media Accent Nigeria

How Bernays pioneered PR publicity stunts

The earliest publicity stunt in PR (Public Relations) history occurred in the 1920s. At that period  it was a taboo for women to  smoke outdoors. At that time, a cigarette brand  Lucky Strike cigarettes, was seeking  to aggressively grow its  customer base - and this included women.

 Consequently, the cigarette maker engaged the services of a seminal figure in Public Relarions history, Edward Bernays.
As part of his strategy to break the taboo, Bernay's orchestrated a now-legendary publicity stunt by convincing women
to smoke at the Easter parade in Manhattan as a statement of rebellion against the norms of a male-dominated society.

The demonstrators were not aware that a tobacco company was behind the publicity
stunt. Bernays dubbed his PR campaign the: “Torches of Liberty Contingent”
Publicity photos of these beautiful fashion models smoking “Torches of Liberty” were sent to various media outlets and appeared worldwide. As a result, the taboo was dissolved and many women were led to associate the act of smoking with female liberation. Some women went so far as to demand membership in all-male smoking clubs, a highly controversial act at the time.

For his work, Bernays was paid a tidy sum by George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco
Company.

Bernays was the profession’s first theorist. He drew many of his ideas from Sigmund
Freud’s theories about the irrational, unconscious motives that shape human behaviour.

Bernays authored several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The
Engineering of Consent (1947).

He saw public relations as an “applied social science” that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the
thinking and behavior of an irrational and “herdlike” public.

Posted By Dominic Nwelih
Media Accent

10 rules social media management teams must observe

• Social media management teams should learn to  write like humans would speak. Corporate speak will bore people and they’ll dismiss your conversation stream as a waste of time.

• Deliver a recipe of information that’s valuable to the reader. If you spend too much time trying to sell people products, you’ll be regarded as spam.

• In the course of managing your organization's social media accounts be ready to interact with people who comment or reply to you. The worst thing you can do is connect with people and then not answer their comments or questions.

• Don’t be a lurker. Engage in conversations when people are talking about you and your products. But only if you have something meaningful to add.

• Have a sense of humor. Nothing makes information more interesting or seem more
human than having a little fun with things.

• Don’t whine or complain. Someone is going to say something negative about your
organization at some point. If you choose to engage them, do so professionally. Admit
you’re wrong if you are, then apologize. Or correct them if they’re mistaken.

• Don’t spin the truth, tell lies of omission, or flat out lie. This seems obvious, but do this in front of several million people, and someone will find out and tell the rest of the world.

• Stay consistent with the tone and style of the organizational voice. It confuses and
annoys people if it changes every week.

• Never engage in flame wars with competitors or angry constituents. This makes everyone look immature.

• If you don’t have anything valuable to say, don’t say anything at all. It’s better to be
silent than obviously filling space because you feel you should. By the way, go find
something valuable to say!

Four ways Google ranks content in search results for SEO

By Dominic Nwelih

1: Bounce Rate: A major factor that works against Search Engine Optimization SEO efforts is the bounce rate. This refers to the percentage of website  visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
According to Google: "A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session."
Google further describes Bounce rate as "single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server."

2: Time spent on page: The more average time visitors spend on your page coupled with low bounce rates serves as an indication to Google algorithms that you boast compelling content, which viewers find satisfying and spend more time reading.

3: Traffic: Wikipedia defines  Web traffic as " the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. This necessarily does not include the traffic generated by bots.
It further defines traffic as "the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country." Google algorithms also take cognizance of the amount of traffic your published web content is generating and uses same to rank search results.

4 Links: The more people share links to your content also serves as an indication that  its content is endorsed. Consequently, Google's algorithm is more likely to rank content with more shares higher than a competing one with less shared links.

How effective content boosts marketing and sales

By Dominic Nwelih

 The advent of the internet and  sheer volume of information posted daily has severely influenced consumer behavior patterns as it, relates to marketing. Content marketing strategies are now obligatory and form a critical component in the tool box of discerning marketers. 

This is underscored by its use as the preferred  medium through which consumers seek and evaluate information about goods and services, before making purchase decisions.

From reading up information about offerings on products and services
on blogs to reviews and articles published via online journals, news outlets,  industry trade publications and a plethora of  sources which abound on the internet - today's "smart consumers" in Lagos, Nigeria and across the globe are able to make informed choices.

Third party endorsement of goods and services using content creation and other apt  Public Relations (PR) methods - offered by Media Accent Nigeria and other PR consultancies operating in Nigeria,  prove more effective than in-your-face advertising.

Simply put, advertising is directly saying to consumers your products and services are good. Public Relations on the other hand, is getting a third party to do same on your behalf. As a consumer which narrative would u trust?

As the case may be, that third party or neutral medium could be a journalist from a credible news source, influencer, blogger, opinion or thought leader who disseminates and gives a seal of approval to your written or produced content obtained independently via press release,  interview or other forms of media events.

Herein,  underpins the need for effective content generation targeted at the right audiences, as a marketing strategy tailored to boost leads and drive up sales.

Currently, content serves as the main thrust that propels the internet.

Important statistics related to content on the internet:

- On average around three million blog posts are published daily .

- Over 65% of consumers  learn about products and services before making buying decisions from publications on the internet - as opposed to in-your-face advertising.

- Marketing teams who  post  content regularly online enjoy improved sales, as opposed to those who do not post content online. Surveys show marketers who post content steadily enjoy about 12 times more return on investment, when compared with teams that don't.

How should corporate speak sound ?

For those authorized to speak on behalf of the organization, the skill of “talking” to
people in the correct voice becomes important. We’ve now moved into a time when people are tired of and jaded by corporate speak. They want even large institutions to have a soul, and they judge that by their actions and the vernacular used when they talk to their constituents.

There are a few difficulties in creating a consistent voice that accurately represents a brand and the organizational culture. When people are asked to write in a style that’s not cor-porate speak, they often resort to their own personal style, and this may conflict with the specific organizational style.
.
To get everyone on the same page, you must be able to define how the voice should
sound. Do this by showing people examples of communications that hit the mark, and
combining that with descriptions of the unique elements of the voice. For example, if you look at the voice that Google uses to speak to the world, they clearly want the company to have a feel, that includes a sense of humor, cleverness, openness, and a willingness to get along with other organizations and standards in the world. If you can’t define how the voice should sound, people will create their own versions and that will be a branding nightmare. Most entities have a good idea of how their voice should sound.

There is a culture and history that dictates the boundaries of the voice. In some cases the voice represents the founder or current leader. If your company doesn’t have a clear voice because the concept hasn’t been
discussed and agreed on, then stop here and direct a collective agreement on what the voice should sound and feel like for readers.

Posted by: Dominic Nwelih
Media Accent Nigeria

How to write an effective newsletter for email marketing...5 rules

By Dominic Nwelih

1: Avoid too many words when writing a newsletter. Make your news letter as concise as possible. The average reader has a short attention span.

2: Avoid typographic errors. Ensure it's proof read by someone with proof reading skills and an eye for detail to spot such errors.

3: Avoid grammatical errors. Before publishing, ensure it's read by someone who boasts good editing skills and experience. Readers won't take you serious if your newsletter is filled with grammatical errors.

4: Ensure you have a creative subject line capable of drawing attention and interest. Many subscribers are wont to dismiss a newsletter with a banal subject line.

5: Quit trying to sell your organization, products and services to readers. Instead give useful information and valuable content that would keep readers hooked. That way trust is built with readers and they are bound to contact you when the need arises.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): 4 primary methods Google uses in ranking web content

By Dominic Nwelih

1: Bounce Rate: This refers to the percentage of website  visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
According to Google: "A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session."
Google further describes Bounce rate as "single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server."

2: Time spent on page: The more average time visitors spend on your page coupled with low bounce rates serves as an indication to Google algorithms that you boast compelling content, which viewers find satisfying and spend more time reading.

3: Traffic: Wikipedia defines  Web traffic as " the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. This necessarily does not include the traffic generated by bots.
It further defines traffic as "the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country." Google algorithms also take cognizance of the amount of traffic your published web content is generating and uses same to rank search results.

4 Links: The more people share links to your content also serves as an indication that  its content is endorsed. Consequently, Google's algorithm is more likely to rank content with more shares higher than a competing one with less shared links.

Media Accent Nigeria Nuggets

Marketing: How effective content drives up sales

By Dominic Nwelih

 The advent of the internet and  sheer volume of information posted daily has severely influenced consumer behavior patterns as it, relates to marketing.

This is underscored by its use as the preferred  medium through which consumers seek and evaluate information about goods and services, before making purchase decisions.

From reading up information about offerings on products and services
on blogs to reviews and articles published via online journals, news outlets,  industry trade publications and a plethora of  sources which abound on the internet - today's "smart consumers" in Lagos, Nigeria and across the globe are able to make informed choices.

Third party endorsement of goods and services using content creation and other apt  Public Relations (PR) methods - offered by Media Accent Nigeria and other PR consultancies operating in Nigeria,  prove more effective than in-your-face advertising.

Simply put, advertising is directly saying to consumers your products and services are good. Public Relations on the other hand, is getting a third party to do same on your behalf. As a consumer which narrative would u trust?

As the case may be, that third party or neutral medium could be a journalist from a credible news source, influencer, blogger, opinion or thought leader who disseminates and gives a seal of approval to your written or produced content obtained independently via press release,  interview or other forms of media events.

Herein,  underpins the need for effective content generation targeted at the right audiences, as a marketing strategy tailored to boost leads and drive up sales.

Currently, content serves as the main thrust that propels the internet.

Important statistics related to content on the internet:

- On average around three million blog posts are published daily .

- Over 65% of consumers  learn about products and services before making buying decisions from publications on the internet - as opposed to in-your-face advertising.

- Marketing teams who  post  content regularly online enjoy improved sales, as opposed to those who do not post content online. Surveys show marketers who post content steadily enjoy about 12 times more return on investment, when compared with teams that don't.

Did you know?

I bet u didn't...

Social Media Management: 10 Rules for managing the organization's voice

• Write like a human would speak. Corporate speak will bore people and they’ll dismiss your conversation stream as a waste of time.

• Deliver a recipe of information that’s valuable to the reader. If you spend too much time trying to sell people products, you’ll be regarded as spam.

• Be ready to interact with people who comment or reply to you. The worst thing you can do is connect with people and then not answer their comments or questions.

• Don’t be a lurker. Engage in conversations when people are talking about you and your products. But only if you have something meaningful to add.

• Have a sense of humor. Nothing makes information more interesting or seem more
human than having a little fun with things.

• Don’t whine or complain. Someone is going to say something negative about your
organization at some point. If you choose to engage them, do so professionally. Admit
you’re wrong if you are, then apologize. Or correct them if they’re mistaken.

• Don’t spin the truth, tell lies of omission, or flat out lie. This seems obvious, but do this in front of several million people, and someone will find out and tell the rest of the world.

• Stay consistent with the tone and style of the organizational voice. It confuses and
annoys people if it changes every week.

• Never engage in flame wars with competitors or angry constituents. This makes everyone look immature.

• If you don’t have anything valuable to say, don’t say anything at all. It’s better to be
silent than obviously filling space because you feel you should. By the way, go find

something valuable to say!

The differences between Content Writing and Copy Writing

Content Writing vs. Copy Writing

By Dominic Nwelih

Does your marketing team require a content writer or copy writer? Media Accent Nigeria could help you.

Know the difference between a copywriters and content writers

.Content writers answer questions about  products  goods or services through their writings. They raise awareness and interest about your offerings and build trust among your publics.  Copywriters seek to sell products, goods and services through their writing.

.Content writers in Lagos, Nigeria and across the globe produce the materials you read on blogs, web content, newspapers, articles and journals. Copywriters on the other hand produce the materials you see on adverts, product packaging, branded items, social media posts, videos and some other forms of marketing or promotional materials.

.Content writers produce writings that are thorough and well researched using keywords that resonate well with  search engines. This is with a view  to answer  questions about brands, products and services. Copywriters in Lagos, Nigeria and across the globe, keep their writings short and simple. Brevity is the golden rule for copywriters. Their aim is to draw Attention, rouse Interest, cause Desire and get you to take Action on the particular good or service they are promoting.


Media Accent Nigeria

Why image is important

The business world can be extremely competitive. Companies typically want to have something that makes them stand out from the crowd, something that makes them more appealing and interesting
to both members of the public and the media. A favorable image can help increase a company’s sales, and negative publicity can damage a company’s reputation and decrease sales.

Public relations can give consumers and the media a better understanding of how a company works. Within a company, a PR department might also be called a public information department or a customer relations department. These departments assist customers if they have any problems with the company.
They usually try to show the company at its best. PR departments also might conduct research to learn how satisfied customers are with the company and its products.

CORPORATE SPEAK: THE TONE, STYLE, AND FEEL

For those authorized to speak on behalf of the organization, the skill of “talking” to
people in the correct voice becomes important. We’ve now moved into a time when people are tired of and jaded by corporate speak. They want even large institutions to have a soul, and they judge that by their actions and the vernacular used when they talk to their constituents.

There are a few difficulties in creating a consistent voice that accurately represents a brand and the organizational culture. When people are asked to write in a style that’s not cor-porate speak, they often resort to their own personal style, and this may conflict with the specific organizational style.
.
To get everyone on the same page, you must be able to define how the voice should
sound. Do this by showing people examples of communications that hit the mark, and
combining that with descriptions of the unique elements of the voice. For example, if you look at the voice that Google uses to speak to the world, they clearly want the company to have a feel, that includes a sense of humor, cleverness, openness, and a willingness to get along with other organizations and standards in the world. If you can’t define how the voice should sound, people will create their own versions and that will be a branding nightmare. Most entities have a good idea of how their voice should sound.

There is a culture and history that dictates the boundaries of the voice. In some cases the voice represents the founder or current leader. If your company doesn’t have a clear voice because the concept hasn’t been
discussed and agreed on, then stop here and direct a collective agreement on what the voice should sound and feel like for readers.

Posted
Media Accent Nigeria

Corporate Speak

Refers to a style of communicating that is devoid of humanness. It lacks sense of humor, edge, or style. It’s bland copy that would never offend anyone, and has been stripped of anything that would give you a sense that a human wrote it.

Corporate speak often uses an overkill of industry buzzwords so that anyone reading it from outside the industry would need a dictionary to decipher the text.

Media Accent Nigeria
Posted by Dominic Nwelih

BUILDING RIVERS OF INFORMATION: STEP THREE

 DEVELOP A PROCESS FOR WORKING YOUR RIVER EACH DAY

Once you have great sources of information and the tools to collect them, you need to
actively discover, digest, and pass on the important pieces of information you find each day.
Note that we said “each" day. With the volume of information you have going through your river, it’s not wise to miss working it for a few days. The result of this is that you’ll have to do such a cursory review of everything you have siphoned off of the big river that you're likely to miss important pieces.

The No. 1 comment people give when exposed to this concept is, “I don’t have time to fit this in my day. I’m already swamped.” There’s no sense debating whether people really have time in their day or not, because most people feel like they’re already full up. Everyone must choose what they find most valuable to invest their time in and learning to leverage a powerful river of information is clearly something that can help your employees and the organization in many ways.

There’s no perfect way to integrate the river of information process into your day. Each
of us operates differently and ingests information uniquely. Some people need to sit down and review their entire river all in one setting. Others can do it five minutes at a time throughout the day. Generally, it should take no more than 30 to 45 minutes to scan through a normal volume
each day. You should look for the information that will be most germane to what you do. It doesn’t make sense to try and read every word that you receive. You have to think of it like doing triage.

You want to scan through the documents and headlines and look for things that
really intrigue you and focus on those.

Here’s a list of possible options to consider when creating your specific method of
reviewing your river:

• Reviewing the river once a day, preferably in the morning, helps get through it so it
doesn’t become a distraction during the day. Triage videos or Web sites you might want
to view later by saving them in browser tabs and review them when you have free time in between things.
• Split up content as to where it’s directed. Send text-based content to your laptop and
videos to your mobile device, for instance. This way you have content on multiple
devices so you have things to review regardless of your travel or location situation.
• Rank the importance of content in your river and send the critical items to your e-mail so you’re sure to review them each day as you do e-mail. Send the less important streams to other applications to be reviewed when you have the time to devote to it.
• Be sure to mix media and delivery types so you’re getting information in newsletters, blogs, tweets, video, audio, etc. This helps keep your interest, and assures a dynamic spread of content and ideas.
• Always be on the lookout for new aggregation and filtering tools to help you better handle the flow of information. Don’t get stuck on one way of handling your river to the exclusion of new ones. Tools come out every week, so look out for new ways of handling things.

There’s one important thing you must do while reviewing content, and that is constantly evaluate the importance of a specific feed. Don’t start off with 30 good sources, then look up a year from now and you’re still reviewing the same list. Always be on the lookout for new sources, and be willing to terminate information from a source that’s become weak over time.
Your river is a living source of information and must be pruned and added to each time you see something better.

MEDIA ACCENT NIGERIA
POSTED BY DOMINIC NWELIH

BUILDING RIVERS OF INFORMATION: STEP TWO, CHOOSE YOUR TOOLS

Once you’ve tapped into a strong flow of information, you’ll need tools to help you
aggregate, filter, store, and pass on this information. The good news about this is many entrepreneurs have identified these needs as well, so we have new tools being provided constantly to help us do each of these tasks. Let’s take each area individually and look at how to
do it, and what tools can be helpful.

• Aggregating the information flow means using applications to consolidate many sources of information onto one screen. This is important because it takes too much time to scan your river for the important things if you have to go to 50 places to even find the information. It’s possible to actually have most of your information literally come to one screen using tools like Google Reader and NetVibes. There are also tools like Tweetdeck and HootSuite that we described earlier.

• Filtering information is the process of routing or highlighting bits of information that have a much higher chance of being important than others. This is where tools like the alert systems come in. Add to alerts tools like competitious.com, mentioned earlier, and you have the ability to highlight pieces of information that are the most important.
• Even within tools like Google Reader, you can do searches of your information streams to pull out keywords so you can more quickly see specific pieces of meaningful information. You can even set it up so content from your more useful sources is sent to your e-mail so you never miss seeing it.
• Storing information means having a way to archive information you run across that
might be needed later. Generally, the flow of information is so large, even when you take your small percentage, trying to go back and find something you saw two months ago is a challenge. For this reason, it’s helpful to have storage processes for anything you believe might be needed in the future.
• Do this by creating documents, presentations, and spreadsheets where you add pieces of information as you go along so that you’ve indexed documents by subject, which makes it easy to find something later. There are also tools like Evernote and Onenote that help
users quickly archive pieces rmation.

• Having ways to forward information is critical because as you see bits of information that you know would be helpful to others, you need “one click’’ abilities to route information to a person or a group. This helps you give back to the river by being a type of filter yourself. The people around you will place a high value on being connected with you because they’ll see you have a good eye for useful information.

Some people will want to use e-mail as a delivery source to redistribute interesting things they find. Others will want to create personal blogs, or use tools like Tweetdeck and TBUZZ to forward information to groups. Expose your people to the possibilities in this area, but don’t force them to use a specific tool they won’t be comfortable with.

BUILDING RIVERS OF INFORMATION: STEP ONE

First you must select your personal river from the overall ocean. For most people, we’re only interested in a tiny fraction of the overall categories of information that are streaming around the world. To the extent that we can define what information is beneficial to us and then find the best sources, we’ve discovered a powerful flow of information we can act on.

Most people have little idea how much information is available in their field. Truth be told, many people would tell you they have 80 percent visibility into the information they need, when the reality is they have 5 percent at their fingertips.

To locate valuable sources of information for your river, you have a couple of options.

The first is to interview lots of people around you and find out what they’re using to gain information. This provides a great start.

The second step is to search online for sources you haven’t found to this point. This can be done by using tools like blogged.com to search through their index of bloggers to find ones in your field, or twellow.com, which provides the same service for Twitter users.

 Industry associations put out many sources of digital information these
days. Industry analysts provide reports, some free, and others for a fee. Depending on the field you’re in, the government provides information that could be helpful.

Running alerts on keywords can yield new sources of information, as you can discover
people commenting on your field that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

You only need to invest a few hours asking people around you what electronic sources of information they’re using and another few hours of intelligent searching, to build a strong initial source of information. Once you tap into a new list of information sources, you’ll see immediate results. This step is critical because the steps that follow won’t matter much if you don’t have a powerful and relevant wellspring of information coming in.

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Posted by Dominic Nwelih



KEYWORD ALERTS

Using alerts on specific keywords from your industry is a simple task. There are numer-
ous free services such as Google Alerts, Yotify, Socialmention alerts, and Alerts.com that will let you track any mention of a keyword from your industry, and send you an e-mail with the link where you can find the information. Run a sophisticated set of alerts for three months and you’ll discover hidden streams of information that others may never find.

HOW TO BUILD A POWERFUL RIVER OF INFORMATION

There are a few challenges you might run into when designing and monitoring your river of information. Although the concept may sound simple, the volume, speed, and never-ceasing flow of what comes across the Internet can make building an efficient river of information tough.

Over the coming decade this will become an important career skill that will get refined as people learn and share best practices. We’re being handed free online tools to help in constructing and using
your river. This is making the job simpler all the time.

We have some early tools to work with, and the process for building a river has already
been defined by some early pioneers.

These people have reduced this to an art form where a person can gain access to the most important pieces of information critical to their lives with the least amount of time invested. From them we’ve developed a simple set of steps that you can follow to build yours.

 Pay attention and be sure to invest enough time and energy in each to implement them. The price for being sloppy in any step is missed information that could be
critical to your success!

The great thing about adding this capability to your inventory of skills is that the construction process can be done in a day. From that point forward, the investment is
monitoring, saving, and passing on the bits of information that can be helpful to you or the organization.

The other task is to constantly improve your sources of information and the tools
you use to aggregate and filter them. As with many skills that require up-front training then demand ongoing improvement, building a river of information is easy to start, then takes the rest of your life to refine.

INVEST THE TIME UPFRONT

The simple three-step process we would share in the next post can easily be taught to others. Be warned, however, that if a person doesn’t invest the time to fully implement any one of the steps, it will negatively impact the results.

This is especially true of the early steps in settseng thewhatss. For example, if you fail to identify the most useful sources of information, much of
the daily work to monitor it will go to waste.
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Posted by Dominic Nwelih

CREATING SOCIAL MEDIA STARS

As with any skill, some people will excel at being a content provider and surrogate voice for the organization. These social stars will develop an innate sense for the recipe of information your constituents want to hear and the tone of voice that's perfect for representing your
organization.

This is a new and valuable skill that must be nurtured. It's a good idea to keep your
eyes open for the people who might have the right combination of skills to become social stars.
Typically, you’ll find that this person must have a combination of industry knowledge,
the ability to write well, empathy for your constituents, and a good sense of what content will be interesting and valuable. This person will combine all of this with a clear understanding of how
social tools work.

 This can result in a growing network of people connected to your information
channels.
Once you’ve found a social star, it’s important to leverage his or her talents quickly and deeply because every constituent he or she helps connect to the organization is a potential new
customer. The thing that excites social stars the most is being able to nurture online relationships with many people. What they want and what the organization needs are usually the same thing—a large audience participating in the conversation.

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Posted by Dominic Nwelih

Early Publicity stunts in PR history : Edward Bernays’ Torches of Freedom Campaign in Newyork

In the 1920s,  it was a taboo for women to  smoke outdoors. At that time, a cigarette brand  Lucky Strike cigarettes, was seeking  to aggressively grow its  customer base - and this included women.

 Consequently, the cigarette maker engaged the services of a seminal figure in Public Relarions history, Edward Bernays.
As part of his strategy to break the taboo, Bernay's orchestrated a now-legendary publicity stunt by convincing women
to smoke at the Easter parade in Manhattan as a statement of rebellion against the norms of a male-dominated society.

The demonstrators were not aware that a tobacco company was behind the publicity
stunt. Bernays dubbed his PR campaign the: “Torches of Liberty Contingent”
Publicity photos of these beautiful fashion models smoking “Torches of Liberty” were sent to various media outlets and appeared worldwide. As a result, the taboo was dissolved and many women were led to associate the act of smoking with female liberation. Some women went so far as to demand membership in all-male smoking clubs, a highly controversial act at the time.

For his work, Bernays was paid a tidy sum by George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco
Company.

Bernays was the profession’s first theorist. He drew many of his ideas from Sigmund
Freud’s theories about the irrational, unconscious motives that shape human behaviour.

Bernays authored several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The
Engineering of Consent (1947).

He saw public relations as an “applied social science” that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the
thinking and behavior of an irrational and “herdlike” public.

Posted By Dominic Nwelih