intelInsidez

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Presidential campaign season is back and with it, a consistent stream of election-related content.

If your brand has decided to jump into the election news cycle, having something that's relevant and useful to add to the conversation is only half the battle. Fail to maximize your press release distribution channels, and your message will miss key audiences.

During each election season, voting blocs – groups of people with similar voting patterns and characteristics – rise up as a reflection of demographic shifts in the electorate. And just as each bloc has distinguishing qualities like age, gender, race, ethnicity, and language, they also have distinct preferences for receiving news and interacting with content.

Because of these differences, one single method of distribution will not be sufficient to reach the widest audience during the 2016 campaigns.

PR and marketing pros need a coordinated, multi-channel approach to distribute election content everywhere that matters, an approach that should include government and political trades, political talk shows, print and broadcast media, online reach and without a doubt, social media.

The following primer outlines how to connect your content with three of the presidential election's top voting blocs.

Millennials (born 1981-2000)

The term “millennial” may be overused, but it's hard to discount the largest generation alive today – especially when almost all of them can vote.

Millennials essentially decided the 2008 and 2012 elections, and as they continue to gather voting power, it's important to ensure content reaches them through the channels they prefer.

Social Media: This should come as no surprise, given that Facebook, the juggernaut of social media, started as a primarily Millennial-driven phenomenon. In the Media Insight Project's Personal News Cycle study, 70% of Millennials said they learned about news through social media in the previous week, and 13% said social media was their preferred method of receiving news, compared to 3% for other generations.

Search Engines: In that same study, more than half of Millennials said when they want to explore a news topic, they use a search engine to dig deeper.

Blogs and Web Magazines: Many Millennials trust news sources traditionally staffed by content creators of their own generation, such as Vice, Gawker, and BuzzFeed, as well as more traditional publications, such as The New York Times.

Hispanic Americans

The United States’ Hispanic population is growing at a rate that outpaces almost every other ethnic group. Half of Hispanic Americans speak Spanish at home and more than half consume media in both English and Spanish, so content provided in only one language significantly decreases the reach to this important bloc.

But there's more to reaching this population than focusing on language.

Mobile: When it comes to mobile devices, Hispanic Americans are super users. Nielsen recently revealed they use phones for app, audio, video and web purposes more than 14 hours per week. Additionally, bilingual Hispanics spend more than 762 minutes per month talking on their mobile devices, substantially more than the overall average of 510 minutes per month.

Social Media: According to a Pew Research Center survey, Hispanic Americans also tend to use Facebook (73%), Twitter (25%), and Instagram (34%) more than average rates, which coincides with the increased use of mobile phones. Combining the language preferences (both English and Spanish) and the use of social media would create a powerful tool for content distribution to this audience.

Seniors (born 1960 or earlier)

It would be an oversight to not consider the second-largest generation, especially because this group is the most consistent in getting out to vote (not Millennials).

Although it seems like the focus for reaching Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation and Generation GI should be on traditional print media, the Pew Research Center has a few surprises in terms of how seniors prefer to receive content.

Television: Sixty percent of audiences 55 and older cited their local television station as the most important method for receiving political news.

Social Media: Didn't think this would be a top contender? Think again. Thirty-nine percent of seniors get news through Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Each voting bloc, including others that are not listed here, has its own preferences for content consumption that are varied and wide-ranging.

Because of this, a partial distribution effort will only reach a partial audience.

While there are many options to choose from, asking the right questions about your audience's needs and organization's objectives will help you find the right fit.

Download Buyer's Guide: Press Release and Content Distribution Services for more tips on picking the best press release distribution for your brand’s PR and marketing.

Alexa Hoffman is PR Newswire's senior product manager for US distribution, which reaches the broadest group of US-based journalists, consumers, bloggers and investors in the industry. Follow her at @PRNlgbt, where she co-curates PR Newswire's Twitter channel dedicated to LGBT news and culture.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, click on the following link: Unsubscribe

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

[New Post] How to Avoid Infomania By Making the Most of Email Monitoring Alerts

How to Avoid Infomania By Making the Most of Email Monitoring Alerts

Sonal Moraes

Tips to Overcome Email Monitoring Overload

Have you ever heard of the term infomania? Alongside several other newly recognized words, infomania is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via mobile phone or computer."

For those in PR or communications, you likely experience infomania on a regular basis not only by choice, but because it's your job.

It makes perfect sense to use Google Alerts or paid monitoring services to receive tailored articles right at your fingertips, but media monitoring can lead to ingesting an overload of information.

Take a step back to consider whether you're really using news clippings to the best of your abilities.

Do you ever dread opening up your inbox because you know there are dozens of scheduled email alerts waiting for you? Are you in a routine where checking your daily alerts almost feels mechanical? Perhaps you've gotten into the habit of skimming through the articles and not reading them as closely as you know you should.

It's still the beginning of the year, so use this time to evaluate if your email alerts are really setting you up for success. Here are some tips that can help ensure you're not soaking information in and spitting it out as part of a routine, but instead are effectively managing your news clips and positively impacting your work.

1. Get a leg up on spring cleaning by starting with your inbox.

This is kind of a no-brainer, but sometimes hearing the advice helps us take action.

Just as having monitoring alerts is imperative to your job function, you may also have other alerts set up in your inbox like marketing information from your favorite clothing store, job openings, etc.

This clutter certainly won't help on mornings when you open up your inbox and can't find the important news alerts that you need to read buried under things that you simply want to delete.

Make time to organize your inbox via folders, automatic filtering, etc. and then review if you really need to receive all of the automated alerts you set up so you can better focus on the alerts that matter.

2. Revamp your keywords.

Sometimes things change, and so should your keywords.

If you haven't touched your keywords since setting up your alerts or if you can't remember the last time you made any adjustments to your alerts, now is the time!

The only way you can be satisfied with your morning alerts (or whatever time you receive them) is when they're specific to what you're interested in that given moment.

If you're working on a campaign geared towards a niche that's different than the normal search, temporarily change your keywords to match that need. Alerts are rarely set in stone, so make the most of the flexibility.

3. Think about your cadence.

Are daily alerts really what's best for you? It all depends on your end goal. Alerts don't have to be daily, although that's what tends to be most common.

If your job is heavily focused on crisis situations or depends on catching a clip before an end client/upper management does, then instant or daily alerts are the way to go.

If you collect alerts to create a report at the end of the week and your news volume isn't overwhelming, maybe weekly emails would be best.

Your alerts' frequency really comes down to how you choose to organize yourself and understanding how you perform best. Not everyone will have the same cadence, so don't be afraid to break the mold.

4. Track industry trends.

There are a couple major reasons why you'd want to track industry trends. First, if you'd like to be the individual that upper management notices for having current events locked down on your niche industry, having a news feed delivered to your inbox can help make that happen and push you ahead.

Secondly, tracking industry trends can help you uncover new competitors that may not have been on your radar, or can allow you to piggy back off of tactics working for others in your industry.

Just be cautious when you set up these alerts. If your keywords are too broad, you may find yourself back to a place where you see the alert hit your inbox and immediately delete it. Make sure you set up terms that will provide value and give you a purpose in making time to thoroughly read the clips.

These tips may seem like common sense, and that's because they are. Infomania can easily take over the time you spend in and out of work, so try carving out one mere hour each day to apply these tips and see the positive impact they can bring.

Coupling the simplest of actions with a tool that helps you save and export your monitoring results can relieve you of complexity down the road.

Download At What Cost? Justifying a Media Monitoring Service to learn how to select a solution that will provide you actionable intel. And here's to more relevant email alerts and less cluttered inboxes in your future!

Author Sonal Moraes is PR Newswire's Director of Customer Engagement, sharing expertise and practical use cases around media monitoring and targeting platforms. Follow her at @PRNLeisure where so co-curates PR Newswire's Twitter and Pinterest channels dedicated to leisure topics like food, travel, fashion and more.