[New Post] Content We Love: How Delta Air Lines Created 80,000 Brand Advocates

 

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Content We Love: How Delta Air Lines Created 80,000 Brand Advocates Ryan Hansen Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tool for any brand. Just think: How many times have you asked someone for their opinion on a certain product, whether they tried that new restaurant, or how they felt about their new car? The list goes on and on. Because no one wants to be left unsatisfied after spending their hard earned money, your brand’s customers and prospects are looking for honest insight from people who have experience with your product. From industry influencers to customer advocates, today’s brands have a number of ways to tap into word-of-mouth marketing. In fact, one incredibly knowledgeable, but under-utilized resource sits right around you: your colleagues. Highlighting your brand’s employees not only connects your customers with people who know your products inside and out, it also provides a behind-the-scenes look into how your company operates.  And both of these things offer immense value. When a company shows that it values its employees and the communities it serves, customers tend to take notice. A study by Nielsen reported that 55 percent of global online consumers were willing to pay more for products and services when a company was committed to making a social and environmental impact. Additionally, employees who are appreciated and empowered are more likely to perform better. Happier employees means happier customers. An excellent example of positive company culture leading to major revenue — and headlines — was Delta Air Lines’ recent announcement about its $1.5 billion profit sharing payout. This was the largest-ever payout of its kind in U.S. history. With good reason, it’s an accomplishment Delta has taken significant pride in, and they know exactly who deserves credit for the historic profits and industry-leading operational excellence they earned in 2015: Delta employees. On the day that employees received their payout, Delta’s Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson and President Ed Bastian sent a company memo which they then shared with the public. “We are often asked what makes Delta different,” they wrote. “The difference is you. Our unique people-focused culture, built on the Rules of the Road and working together, is the advantage that none of our competitors can match.” After learning that their profit sharing plan had made history, Delta created a 5 part communications plan to honor their team: Thank You Celebrations: Delta started with the construction of a 50-foot-tall greeting card at the Delta General Offices. It included the names of every Delta employee – all 80,000 of them — and set a Guinness World Record. Multimedia Message: They also created a thank you video detailing their record breaking year, which was then distributed through their social media platforms. Paid Advertising: The airline followed up by thanking employees with ad placements in U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among others. Social Media Engagement: To inspire employees to share pride in their accomplishment, the air line provided them with the #DeltaProud hashtag. Press Release: Finally, the press release they issued detailed their profit sharing success and included a call-to-action to check out their online newsroom where additional information was published. These tools empowered employees to feel connected, and connected employees are good brand ambassadors. According to this follow-up article on the Delta News Hub, the air line’s profit sharing announcement not only resulted in excellent social media engagement, it also led to coverage in numerous newspapers, tv news stations, blogs and websites, which highlighted the payout and Delta’s impact on its communities. Even if your company doesn’t have the number of employees or budget Delta does, it’s possible to connect with your employees and promote unconventional story ideas in similar ways. Consider showcasing employees’ hard work through social channels or featuring their voices on your company website, blog and other owned channels. Similarly, encourage and make it easy for them to share the love via their own networks. Another relatively easy and inexpensive way to earn positive attention for your brand is by creating and sharing content that highlights authentic community contributions. Reassess your brand’s stories and map out a multichannel distribution plan to ensure the messaging you develop is seen. Get started now by downloading our free guide, Redefining Newsworthiness: New Opportunities to Earn Media, which offers more tips on finding brand stories that journalists, influencers and your customers will love. Author Ryan Hansen (@RPH2004) manages social media at PR Newswire, sharing the latest PR, marketing and social media trends across our networks. See what he's up to around the PR Newswire offices by following @PRNewswire on Instagram.

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4 Questions to Ask Before Investing in a Media Monitoring and Targeting Tool

Blogs

4 Questions to Ask Before Investing in a Media Monitoring and Targeting Tool Lucie Curtis Reaching your audience at the right moment, with the right content, on the right channel is a goal every communicator dreams of. And achieving this goal is possible if you have the right data … Data that gives you insight into what your sector is talking about, who's talking about it, where they're talking about it, and whether or not the content you've already created and distributed is aligned with these conversations. However, there's so much data and so many places to collect it from that there's not nearly enough time to sort through all of it by hand. Having to combine brand and industry monitoring from multiple sources is a time-consuming process. To then analyze and act on this research is even more resource intensive. Cutting corners on any step in the process can result in inaccurate intel and ill-informed decisions. One way to ease the pain is to look for a tool that packages your monitoring, targeting, distribution, and reporting into one central location. You need to ask the right questions, though, to make sure you're selecting a tool that's truly multifunctional. Ask these four questions of the monitoring and targeting tools you're considering to determine which one will work best for you. 1. Can you monitor multiple topics across multiple mediums? Having to jump between multiple tools to examine what's happening on social, online, broadcast, print and other media is not just inefficient, it can cause you to miss overlapping trends. At minimum, a multifunctional monitoring tool should enable you to observe different mediums and see how brand and/or topic mentions compare and contrast on each one. Moreover – whether you're an agency representing different clients or a brand targeting different audience personas – you need to be able to monitor conversations around more than one topic. Competitor intel, emerging trends, and customer behaviors are a few of the things you should monitor beyond brand mentions. After identifying what type of information is important to you, look for a tool that makes it easy to save all of your searches in one location, customize notifications for each, and update searches as new needs arise. 2. Can you maintain media and influencer lists based on your monitoring? Monitoring what's being said about your brand and your industry will not just help you understand what your audience cares about, it will also connect you with the journalists and influencers shaping those perspectives. Using your monitoring intel to inform your media research can result in targeted outreach lists that include journalists, bloggers and influencers who specifically cover your niche and are more likely to be interested in your content. Of course, journalists and influencers come and go, which adds another wrinkle to your search for a multifunctional monitoring and targeting tool. Your time is valuable. Spending it managing the freshness of your media database is not its best use. Instead, opt for a tool that automatically updates your saved lists.  As demonstrated in the case study Feintuch Communications Provides Customized PR Programs to Diverse Client Base, doing so will help you drive better results. 3. Can you efficiently distribute your message across multiple channels? While targeted outreach lists can be an effective way to reach a portion of your audience, you don't want to limit yourself to only one promotion channel. Your audience is engaging with content across social media, websites, apps, and other platforms. For your message to successfully reach everyone that matters, you must tap into a variety of distribution methods. Planning and executing a multichannel campaign isn't easy, though. You have to define which channels you want to target, what those channels' requirements are, how you plan to stagger your promotions' timing across them, and much more. A multifunctional monitoring and targeting tool can help you streamline the distribution of your communications not only to saved targeted lists, but also newsrooms, websites, social media and other channels. 4. Does the platform allow you to create, customize and share reporting? Distributing content over multiple channels means there are multiple types of metrics you need to stay on top of. Media clippings, email outreach success, and website visibility are just three of many things you should be tracking. The reporting you gather is crucial not just for informing your future efforts, but also delivering tangible results to your company's leadership. Choose a monitoring and targeting tool that makes it easy to compile, save, share and access comprehensive reporting at any time. In today's communication landscape, it’s worth investing in a multifunctional tool that helps you listen for topics generating buzz, target key journalists and influencers, share messages through multiple channels, and report on the effectiveness of your campaigns – all within a single interface. Request a demo of PR Newswire's Agility workflow platform to see our media database, targeting, and monitoring tools in action and learn how they can increase your communications’ effectiveness and efficiency.