MEDIA Archives - Visual-PR.com

Review: Lisa Buyer’s ‘Social PR Secrets’

December 7, 2016 by Catie Baxter

By: Alyssa Klingler

Lisa Buyer’s book Social PR Secrets is a short read packed with tips and practices for navigating the ever-changing world of public relations. Buyer’s book offers readers a unique insight on the ever-evolving world of public relations and guides her readers to ultimately optimize, socialize and publicize their brand’s news.

While reading Buyer’s book, I really enjoyed the way she organized her thoughts. Buyer wrote her book in the form of a blog post where she structured her writing with subheadings and bullet points. She consistently used the same format throughout the entire book and this made it very easy to read and stay connected. Buyer wrote about her own personal experiences and also incorporated illustrations throughout each chapter of her book which brought her personality to life. I felt like I was able to get an idea of who Buyer was not only as a writer but as a person, too.

After reading the book, I felt as if I had a better understanding of the field of Social PR and how to incorporate it in my daily work. Buyer gave me a whole new insight on using social media to enhance your brand and reach your target audience.

I really enjoyed learning about the 50/30/20 rule when using Facebook to enhance your newsfeed coverage. Buyer references Marty Weintraub and Lauren Donovan’s book The Complete Social Media Community Manager’s Guide. Buyer explains that when you are posting on your Facebook newsfeed you want to make sure that your page consists of 50 percent news, 30 percent personality and 20 percent business. This technique is one of many that Buyers talks about throughout her book.

My overall opinion of the book is that readers are able to learn from Buyer’s experiences and look to her as a creditable source. I highly recommend anyone currently working in the field of public relations to purchase this book as it is a great resource to use in the field.

Infographics Explained in 60 Seconds

October 25, 2016 by Don Dunnington

There has to be an Infographic out there that explains Infographics, but like so much of today’s content the best definition is more likely a video. That’s what you get in a clever animated video from CopyBlogger, “Infographics Defined in 60 Seconds.”

For those who prefer to read, you’ll find that CopyBlogger provided a transcript on their website. Here are some highlights:

The infographic is the darling of the content marketing world
Publishers who use infographics grow traffic 12 percent more
An infographic will get a lot more attention than a typical text blog post

Almost Everything You Need to Know about Content Marketing in 12 Minutes

If you go to YouTube to watch the Infographics video from CopyBlogger, you may notice they’ve posted a total of 12 “white board” animations on YouTube, each one defining an online marketing concept.

If you watch them all, you will learn a good bit more about a lot of the things that go into content marketing. It may not be “everything you need to know,” but it’s a good start. Media, tools, strategy… there’s a little bit of everything in just a few minutes.

Here’s a complete list and a link to the video page on you tube, starting with their Content Marketing video:

A/B Testing
Content Marketing
Cornerstone Content
Digital Commerce
Email Marketing
Infographics
Landing Page
Marketing Automation
Marketing Site
Podcast
SEO
USP

Facebook Mounts Ad Campaign in US and U.K. to promote its ‘Live’ Video Feature

October 25, 2016 by Don Dunnington

Facebook has put some advertising muscle behind its continuing effort to make their social platform more video oriented–just like their upstart rival, Snapchat.

According to Ad Age, Facebook has just launched an advertising campaign in the United States and United Kingdom to get more users using its new live video service, which is simply named “Live.” The campaign takes a two-step approach with the first part focused on seeking wider awareness among its users.

These awareness ads are taken (with compensation) from actual user’s live feeds and are all tied together with a beeping “3… 2… 1” countdown theme that starts each video. The Ad Age article by Anne-Christine Diaz includes a couple examples, both in the once-derided but now fashionable vertical video format of a handheld smartphone.

The second phase, which according to Ad Age starts November 7, seeks to show Facebook users how to use the video service. It includes outdoor advertising in places where people will likely be standing around waiting for something, which means they’ve probably already reached for their smartphones. Ads will appear at places like bus stops and airport baggage pickups and suggest ways to go “Live” in that very spot.

Ad Age provided the above photo from a baggage claim area. The cleaver headline is both motivational and educational, offering to show, “how to go LIVE while waiting for the first suitcase to drop.” I can think of some hours-long waits at the Philadelphia airport where those instructions might have been both useful to passengers and embarrassing to certain airlines.

Can Pinterest Compete with Facebook and Twitter?

October 19, 2016 by Tim Louie

The Wall Street Journal recently provided some good insights on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter including latest user data. In the article, Pinterest is positioned as a “visual search service” boasting 150 million users world-wide who log on at least monthly. That means the San Francisco startup has increased its users by half since September 2015, when it crossed the 100-million mark.

The six-year-old company, which last year was valued by investors at $11 billion, expects to triple last year’s revenue to $300 million in 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter. People go to Pinterest to discover new ideas, browsing through billions of images on topics such as kitchen remodels and tattoos. Most ads on Pinterest are from retailers and consumer-product companies geared to women, its main audience.

Inevitably, it will also be compared with social network giant Facebook and messaging service Twitter, two companies that went in opposite directions since their IPOs.

Facebook dwarfs Pinterest with 1.7 billion users, after adding more than 167 million since September of last year. But Pinterest is growing at a faster clip than Twitter, which has 313 million users but added only six million users in the past year.

Pinterest likely is now bigger in the U.S. than Twitter, with 70 million monthly users versus Twitter’s 66 million as of June 30. Twitter’s $13 billion market value, which has dropped sharply of late, is now closer to that of Pinterest.

Pinterest says 40 percent of global sign-ups are by men, though they don’t stick around as long as women, who account for about 70 percent of Pinterest’s U.S. users, according to digital analytics firm comScore.

According to Kristi Argyilan, Target’s senior vice president of marketing, “The consumer’s intent to buy is much more intense on Pinterest than other platforms.”