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Nourishing your Social Media Campaigns

Written by Alyssa Slovin on . Posted in Increasing Awareness, Positioning Issues and Brands.

Your organization has worked hard and just finished preparing new resources, and you are excited for your audience to begin using them. You’ve posted all the new material on your website, but when you check your traffic, you don’t see the spike in page visits that you were expecting. It turns out that most of your audience is unaware of the new content because you didn’t effectively promote it on social media.

At TRG, we work hard with all our clients to perfect their messaging, and one of our goals as a health care public relations firm is to increase awareness of those messages — whether publicizing a scientific study, new client resources, or registration for an upcoming event.

Social media campaigns are a great way for our clients to reach their audiences since so much of the public is on social media — patients, doctors, educators, students and consumers — and it is a valuable source of owned media for any organization.

However, telling your organization’s story on social channels is not as easy as it may seem. Here are some key elements that we consider when implementing our social media campaigns.

Develop content around your organization’s goals. Remember, social media is not just a place where young people share pictures with their friends. Your organization’s social media posts should be strategically planned around your goals so your audience understands your mission and trusts you as a source of information.

For example, we recently worked with a client about the types of content they want to be posting. Their focus is on professional education, and they were debating posting about various national observances that were not necessarily relevant to their mission. We collaborated to work out a system to spotlight only select observances that felt authentically related to their current work and future goals.

Use paid social campaigns carefully. After putting in countless hours of work on a project, it’s tempting to just click the “boost” button on your Facebook newsfeed to increase impressions for a few dollars. If impressions were your only goal, that would be a fine plan. But putting real money behind a post only for the algorithm to show it to unrelated audiences will not increase the account engagement and bring more users to your site. Instead, when we create social media ad campaigns, we prefer using targeted audiences and conducting A/B testing to gauge reactions and make changes based on the results.

Track the sources of your website traffic. There are countless ways for your audience to find your website, a factor you should always be aware of and use to your advantage. A great way to do this is by UTM tagging, a method of tagging the links you share to quantify the traffic based on source, content type and content topic. UTM tags are not directly related to social media, but UTM-tagged links can be shared on social media to get a better idea of your organization’s analytics and make informed decisions for the future.

For example, we might learn that the blogs we post on your organization’s LinkedIn page with messages from leaders are the most-clicked links. With this insight, we could increase the focus on creating and sharing this content.

Carefully crafted social media campaigns allow organizations to introduce themselves to both new and familiar audiences in ways that would not be possible otherwise. Having a specific strategy is key to putting your best foot forward.

 

Good Project Management is an Art – Not a Science

Written by Kathleen Petty on . Posted in Firm Culture.

Deadlines, discipline, and organization – these are the tenets of good project management that most can agree on. But as a vice president at a health care PR firm in Washington DC, I’ve learned that good project management goes beyond these principles. It’s more than keeping diligent timelines. There is also an art to it. Project management is essentially about people; and I’ve found there are six key principles to doing it successfully: getting your team started as soon as possible, setting your team up for success, looking for barriers and roadblocks before they happen, maintaining open communication with your team, leaning into your team’s strengths, and always keeping the budget in mind along the way. Doing these six things helps us produce efficient, high-quality work that keeps our clients happy.

1. Time is Your Greatest Asset
As anyone who works in health care communications knows, time is not always on your side. We work in a fast-paced environment that doesn’t often allow for careful planning, so it’s vital to use whatever time we do have to our advantage. Don’t get caught thinking that if something is due in a few months, you can “get to it later.” The time you have right now is your greatest asset so the more lead time you give your team, the better. Even if you feel like you can’t fully start the project, set up a timeline for deliverables; think through background research that your team could be doing to help set up a solid foundation for the hard work ahead. Whatever time you do have is a gift, so don’t wait!

2. Set Up Your Team for Success
This may be the most crucial part of good project management. First, ensure everyone has the background information they need to understand the overarching goal of the project. This will help guide people and ensure the end-goal is met. It’s also important to provide people with clear instructions and the materials they need right from the start. It helps instill confidence, allowing people to do their best work. It also cuts down on wasted time that would have been spent correcting mistakes and fiddling with nagging minor issues. Get ahead of all of that by giving your team everything they need upfront to be successful.

3. Look for Barriers Ahead of Time
Before assigning work to your team members, put yourself in their shoes as if you were going to do the work yourself. What questions will they have that you can be ready to answer? What can you address up front in the materials and information you give them? Additionally, think through the issues the team could run into as they begin the work. What advice can you give them right now to head off any roadblocks? For instance, if you’re asking the team to conduct a media audit of a client’s issue, spend a few minutes thinking through the process. Could the search terms you’re giving them produce too many articles to count? Or no coverage at all? If that’s the case, what will they need to know to adapt their process?

Once you identify a few of these potential problems, address them during your initial meeting so the team can develop the tools they need to solve them.

4. Communicate Often
Don’t wait until deadlines are looming to check in on your team’s progress. Having consistent, clear, and open communication can make sure everyone’s on the right track from the start. If you remove yourself from the process, your timeline may be derailed. This could lead to you and the team scrambling to deal with trouble as your deadline is fast approaching. Plan to check in one or two days after the team has begun work. It’s best to have in-person (or video) check-ins as opposed to relying on email. This builds team identity and encourages more personal communication and problem-solving together.

5. Lean into the Team’s Strengths
We all have qualities that set us apart from others as well as a variety of “strengths” that help us to excel in certain capacities. At The Reis Group, we identified each team member’s individual strengths during our recent team retreat through Clifton StrengthsFinder. It’s an assessment to help you discover what you do best and to learn how to develop your talents and maximize your potential. According to this assessment, my top five strengths are: empathy, individualization, connectedness, restorative, and positivity. The odds of someone getting the same list of strengths in that order is 1 in 33 million. Everyone will have varying strengths that complement each other. It’s important to learn what people excel at, and what they enjoy doing so that you can tap into those strengths and maximize each person’s opportunity for success. Doing so will help keep the team motivated and ensure they feel valued.

6. Don’t Forget About the Budget
In public relations (or any client-service industry), we have a tendency to want to say “yes” to anything our clients want. However, having a budget is crucial for ensuring staff’s time is valued. From the start, set expectations by telling each team member how many hours they should spend on the work. As you’re managing projects, check on their work hours to make sure no one is getting carried away. Not only is it a sign that the budget may be in trouble, it’s also a signal to you as a manager that your team is running into issues that need to be addressed; or that they might not have the correct direction from you to get the job done in a timely manner. Checking in and having open communication with your team will help identify any issues before the project and budget spiral out of control.

Managing tight timelines and client expectations are crucial aspects of project management, but we often lose sight of the nuances of “team management” as well. They go hand-in-hand. So, while it’s important to hone your skills in meeting deadlines and allocating work, it’s just as important to learn how to foster a supportive environment for the entire team. When we all have the tools to do good work, we all win.

I’ve got too much on my plate! Lessons on Effective Time Management

Written by Emma Barker on . Posted in Firm Culture.

At some point, we all find ourselves pulled in what feels like a million different directions at work. For me, working at a fast-paced, award-winning health care communications agency means a variety of clients to serve, supervisors to please, and constant deadlines to meet.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, and often, just when you think you can breathe, you get tapped for another assignment. How can you manage your time, when it feels like you don’t even have the time to figure it out?

Since starting here at The Reis Group a year ago, I’ve learned a lot from my colleagues. Not only have I absorbed media skills, but I’ve bolstered my time-management abilities as well. I would argue that this skill may be the most vital to our success. We all have competing priorities from a demanding set of clients, and without effective time management, we would not be the top-notch PR agency that we are.

Each of my colleagues has a unique way to manage their time. Who better to learn from than them? Here are the best lessons I’ve learned so far:

Ask for deadlines and prioritize your time. My teammates know that I like to ask for deadlines on all my tasks. Firm due dates help me to develop personal timelines for all my assignments. My various supervisors don’t know that I have X assignment due on Wednesday, so I have to compare due dates and determine how to prioritize my week.

Be flexible and realistic. Deadlines are important, but I must acknowledge when a timeframe may prevent me from delivering my best work. I have certainly been guilty of letting my drive to finish a task affect the quality of my work. Luckily, I have a supportive team who can catch my mistakes, but I need to be sure that I am checking my own work and providing high-quality deliverables that fit our high standards—even if that means taking an extra day.

Expect the unexpected and build in catch-up time. At the beginning of each week, I assess all the assignments I need to complete and take a look at the meetings I have. I build in time to complete and review my deliverables and block off time for assignments I’ve left on the back burner. This blocked time allows me to get ahead where I can and provides useful openings in my schedule to work on any unexpected tasks that arise.

Let others know when an urgent client need arises—and be empathetic when the same happens with your colleagues. Agency work is unpredictable, and it is inevitable that we will receive urgent requests from clients. It’s vital that we communicate with our team members when time-sensitive demands arise. We’re working with a variety of clients who each deserve our full attention, so we must be willing to pitch in to help our colleagues when they suddenly face an unexpected deadline.

If you ever feel you have too much on your plate, try some of these tips to make your work more manageable. Successful time management is an essential piece of The Reis Group’s ability to deliver high-quality service to leading foundations, medical societies, associations, health systems, federal agencies, coalitions and universities . The lessons I’ve learned from my colleagues have helped me grow as a communications professional and as a productive team member.

Message Testing: The Foundation of a Successful Communications Strategy

Written by Kathleen Petty on . Posted in Positioning Issues and Brands.

This article also appeared in PR News.

When our clients ask our team to help them grow their membership or reach a new audience, we usually begin with message testing. It’s a critical part of the process for a solid communications strategy. Unfortunately, it is often skipped due to tight deadlines or limited budgets. But message testing can be as simple as reviewing a core message platform with a small sample of people, or as involved as hosting multiple focus groups with your target audience. However it’s done, it should help you understand how to effectively communicate with your core audience, identify any crucial flashpoints or key issues that your campaign may stumble upon, and help you get buy-in from leadership on the current or new messages that you plan to use.

Our team at The Reis Group ensures that every campaign begins with sound messaging. Here are three reasons why you should consider doing message testing before launching your next campaign.

Communicate Effectively

Whether we like it or not, we all fall prey to our own biases. Our experiences will inevitably color the kinds of messages we write and the means by which we communicate them. But messages shouldn’t be developed by an isolated group of people who don’t have direct insight into the experiences of the target audience. Those real-life experiences are critical in determining the true perspective and needs of your campaign targets. For instance, as a healthcare communications agency in Washington, D.C., we work on many campaigns to reach physicians. We are a team of communications professionals, but none of us have been to medical school. In creating campaign materials that will resonate with physicians, it’s important that we get input on the messaging that will speak most authentically to them and address the key issues that they really care about. And when writing for the general public, there are specific best practices around testing materials that can help ensure your resources are accessible and understandable for a more general audience.

Identify Issues Ahead of Time

Message testing will also help you determine which points will resonate most strongly and which will fall flat. It opens the door for conversations to identify issues you may not have even considered. Maybe the message platform you thought was solid, is missing a critical issue that your target audience is focused on at the moment?

Perhaps there are certain words or phrases that have a variety of meanings for various groups you want to reach. As shown in this recent poll conducted by the nonpartisan de Beaumont Foundation around the COVID-19 pandemic – words matter. Whatever language you use, it needs to quickly engage the broadest audience possible. And you won’t know what those words, phrases, and meanings are to various people until you speak to them. We are often surprised at the nuanced language or unintentional omissions that are very important to people and can make or break an effective message platform. More importantly, this part of the process can help you identify flaws with your current messages that may require you to take a step back, analyze the areas where you are hearing consistent feedback, and decide where to make changes before continuing with your testing. Taking this iterative approach ensures you are improving on your key points and that you are getting to a place of consensus before your testing phase ends.

Get Buy-in from Leadership

Testing gives you the support you need to defend changes to an organization’s long-standing messages. It can also help in convincing leadership to adopt the new messages in any public-facing speaking opportunities. But leaders must be brought along in the process – from start to finish. As many public relations practitioners know, it can be challenging to get leaders to avoid reverting back to the old points when you’ve given them new ones. But when they are brought along in the process, understand the methodology of how the messages are tested, see the feedback from their target audience, and understand the importance of the changes to the messaging, they will be more likely to accept it and even enthusiastically put it into practice.

Message testing is a valuable and essential part of any communications strategy. Ensuring this step is a part of the planning process can make the difference between an effective communications campaign and one that doesn’t deliver.

Measurement Tactics: Improving Messaging & Engagement

Written by Stephanie Wight on . Posted in Increasing Awareness.

In a crowded online space, social media posts require targeted messaging and visuals to reach and engage your desired audience.  In order to gain traction with consumers, brands must understand what motivates and influences them, and produce content that is helpful and relatable. By utilizing measurement tools, brands can get a better sense of what drives engagement and action in their community, and help reach their organization’s goals.

This article will demonstrate how to incorporate social media measurement tactics to test and improve your content, leading to a more successful social media strategy. 

Set your goals: In order to be successful on social media, it is important to set specific goals to lead your efforts. First, determine who your target audience is—whether that is women 45+ who experience chronic pain, or adults over 30 who have experienced Alzheimer’s in their family. Next, figure out what social media networks this audience is active on—you want to create a channel of communication where your audience is already engaged.

At the start of 2016, Facebook had 1.59 billion monthly active users—which is more than 20 percent of the global population. Facebook has become a major content discovery platform. According to recent data published by traffic analytics firm Parse.ly, more traffic to news and media sites is driven by Facebook than Google. This means that people are often finding content in their Facebook feed and clicking through to articles directly from their feeds.

Google versus Facebook | Improving Social Media Messaging and Engagement through Measurement Tactics
Parse.ly network traffic from Google versus Facebook

After discovering where your audience spends their time on social, figure out what actions you want your audience to take. Is your ultimate goal to drive people to sign up for research studies or to your website to learn more information about your cause? Reversely, what can you provide your audience to better reach their goals? How will following your page benefit them?

Implement your content strategy: Figuring out the best content to share on your social channels starts as an experiment. You won’t be able to determine what works best with your audience until you test out different messages and apply measurement to the results. As you brainstorm content to share, figure out several different categories of content that may be relevant to your audience.

Erin Hildreth, Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications at The Vision Council, shares how social media plays a role in her organization: “Social media has personified all of our campaigns, and the sheer reach of one interaction has the power to grow your message exponentially. It is something that we think about constantly when preparing our campaigns because it is a way to truly touch people as they go about their days and live their lives.”

Test your content and optimize: Facebook and Twitter offer very in-depth insights for organic and paid posts. It is important to review your page analytics often to note trends and see which categories of content are performing best. Here are a couple things to look for:

  • What day of the week and what time of day is your content getting the most engagement (likes, comments, shares, retweets, favorites, replies)?
  • What types of content are eliciting the most comments? Are these all positive comments?
  • When promoting your organization, what messaging works best with your audience?
  • What types of links are receiving the most clicks?
  • What types of images or graphics seem most eye-catching/appealing to your audience (based on the engagement)

Another measurement tool that often comes in handy is Google Analytics. Aside from seeing how much traffic is coming to your site from social each week, you can set specific goals on Google Analytics that will allow you to see when consumers from social complete a certain action on your website. By pulling weekly analytics reports, you can see what aspects of your content strategy are contributing to your bottom line.

Measuring success: In order to show your results and improvement on social media to others within your organization, it is important to do monthly or quarterly dashboards that highlight your growth. I’ve found that showing the percent change in followers, engagement and/or impressions is a strong way show success—for example, “Since January 2016, we’ve increased engagement on the page by 123%.” Another important metric to share will be goals completed through social media on Google Analytics.

Stacy Mowery, Director of Brand Development at Banner Health shares, “Measuring our social media analytics helps us understand our message reach: Who are we reaching? Who is most interested in our content? The metrics can also help us understand which topics or types of posts are most engaging to our audiences. A few years ago we began studying the differences in engagement between heavy visual posts vs. posts with just written content. The data showed visual posts are clearly more engaging, so we now have shifted to a heavy visual social strategy.”

Thinking strategically about your online goals and always staying up to speed on the latest social trends, changing algorithms and measurement tools is key to having a successful approach across your social platforms.

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in the PR News Writer’s Guidebook.