Pop music star Sting held a news conference at a New York Apple store on Nov. 15 to announce his Sting 25 “appumentary,” an iPad app with historical interviews, music videos and concert footage promoting a career-spanning CD box set of the same name.

Similarly, Clear Channel Broadcasting, Inc.’s iHeartRadio app repurposes audio and commercial messages from 750 U.S. radio stations, extending its traditional content to a more interactive format.

The app era is in full swing, from mainstream to niche. Online searches show an abundance of apps spanning business, entertainment, news, productivity and lifestyle categories. Apps are even getting age-based ratings this year, like those used to rate video game content.

Half of all U.S. adult mobile phone owners have apps on their phones, according to a study by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The study reveals that 74 percent of adult app users download news-oriented apps, including those updating weather, sports and investments, followed by 67 percent who download apps to communicate with family and friends.

Another Pew study (in collaboration with The Economist Group) regarding tablet news consumption says that 11 percent of Americans have purchased tablets in the less than two years the iPad has existed. Fifty-three percent of them read news on tablets daily, with 33 percent read from sources that they did not previously consider and 41 percent read articles that they tagged for later.

Fanfare for the common man

Much of this app-tivity, so to speak, lends itself to public relations.  You don’t have to be a music mogul or global brand to use apps as a communications medium. Development cost estimates range from a few thousand dollars for simple apps to tens of thousands for elaborate apps. Communicators typically have strong relationships with creatives and design experts, so tap your networks for possible cost advantages.

Communication strategist David Meerman Scott developed his own iPhone and iPad apps with Newstex, a real-time content technology company, which include his blog posts, Twitter updates, videos and links to his Amazon bookstore profile. A perfect content marketing activity for someone who makes a living teaching such tactics.

Apps can support many messages and purposes. Hunter Public Relations of New York created its “Faceboo” app, allowing users to simulate Halloween-themed press releases while generating agency awareness.

The Roberts Group, a health care communications agency in Waukesha, Wisc., helps client Saint Francis Medical Center of Missouri populate its Saint Francis Medical Partners app. Created by Dr. Edward Bender, the app helps patients locate offices and learn about their physicians’ specialties, medical school affiliations and residencies.

“Technology is helping people take better control of their health care,” says Katie Stensberg, emerging media specialist for The Roberts Group. “Apps that successfully create awareness and communicate with an audience benefit from a focus on basic human needs.”

This post also appears as the January “Digital Dialogue” column of the PR Tactics Journal published by the Public Relations Society of America.

When Steve Jobs died Oct. 5th, digital media outlets published instant tributes to the man who changed how people consume media and software.

Every major news source covered his death; tech gurus like The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg wrote essays, the President issued a statement and millions of social media users posted their respects.

Wired magazine took one of the more interesting approaches, publishing an eBook about Jobs two days after his passing and weeks before Simon and Schuster’s Jobs biography arrived in print.

The magazine, having reported on Jobs and Apple through the years, assembled a greatest-hits package of their articles. The magazine’s editors added a new essay and quickly published it in iBook, Kindle and Nook formats.

Meanwhile, National Geographic used a similar approach anticipating the world’s seven-billionth citizen, publishing its “7 Billion” global demographics iPad app.

The free app is an excellent example of content marketing, showcasing the publication’s editorial while promoting magazine subscriptions and fee-based apps.

These are the new realities of digital publishing. Of course, quality is important, but being the first can be the difference between profit and loss.

Purpose-built publishing generates real-time attachment to topics that organizations can associate with their value proposition. Blogs and other social media naturally support it and more tools continue to reach the market.

Broadcast appeal

Purpose-built publishing isn’t limited to the written word. It includes audio and video broadcasts as well. Creativity, regardless of format, best distinguishes success.

Salesforce.com secured a keynote speaking opportunity for CEO Mark Benioff at this year’s OracleWorld conference this past October. But when competitive sparring between him and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison prompted Oracle to cancel the engagement, Salesforce found accommodations across the street and offered a livecast of Benioff’s speech on Facebook that they later posted on YouTube.

The workaround drew media and analysts away from Oracle’s event during prime time, and an online audience of thousands watched Benioff de-position Ellison’s views, hours before his own keynote.

Format variety

Audio alone can be effective when applied in a timely manner. Hal Bringman, president of the Los Angeles-based NVPR, used Spreaker, a free online app that the agency represents, to broadcast commentary from the TechCruch Disrupt conference in Beijing on Oct. 31-Nov. 1.

According to Bringman, Spreaker does for audio what Twitter does for text and  what  YouTube does for video, making it easy to broadcast live radio from your mobile device to Facebook and other platforms.

Regardless of which format that you choose, you must have content that can be shared in more meaningful ways with digital communications.

To start, consider what you can repurpose from seasonal or trending perspectives. I write a “12 days of  Tactics” blog post in December summarizing and linking to my Digital Dialogue columns from the year.

What content do you recast? I’d love to hear (or see) them.

This post also appears as the December Digital Dialogue column in the PR Tactics Journal, published by the Public Relations Society of America.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” Ferris Bueller said in the 1986 film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Bueller’s comment is still true in today’s consumer technology market, where users of ubiquitous services like Netflix and Facebook endure rapid changes to features, user agreements and privacy settings with little choice in the matter.  The way that companies announce such changes has also become faster in the digital era.

In September, Facebook further obscured users’ ability to maintain profile privacy with the introduction of the Timeline and Open Graph functions, which post notifications about everything users read, view and listen to.

Meanwhile, Netflix fueled an already-controversial price increase by renaming its DVD-by-mail service Qwikster, dismantling the convenience of managing  DVD and streaming movie queues seamlessly and distancing itself from mail customers altogether. Both companies’ moves ignited massive criticism on social networks. (Neflix abandoned its Qwikster spinoff in October.)

“Many tech companies don’t do a good job building relationships with customers and influencers in advance of significant changes,” explains  Judith Hurwitz, president of Hurwitz and Associates and author of  “Smart or Lucky: How Technology Leaders Turn Chance into Success.”

However, fostering these relationships vets market reaction and creates more enthusiastic constituents.

How, where and when

Industry events and conferences gather constituents in a format successfully used by companies like Amazon and Apple to make big announcements. Some annual events become known entities where attendees and media expect news.

Facebook used the familiarity of its annual f8 conference to announce its latest changes. Positive reasons for doing so include surrounding your news with supporters to influence favorable reaction and the magnetism that these events create, even encouraging others to tune in and live stream or blog the event.

In addition to logistic and cost realities, cons include the pressure to impress. Consider Apple’s “failure to launch” last month, when event attendees expected an iPhone 5 unveiling but saw an improved iPhone 4S instead.

Netflix chose passive approaches for its announcements.  A customer email broke the price-hike news, setting off  customer threats to leave the service. CEO Reed Hastings later posted a YouTube apology for how he handled that communication.

Positive reasons for these approaches include controlling succinct messages while targeting both specific and broad recipients. Cons include perceptions of greed, considering the success of Netflix’s business.  The Qwikster announcement looked hastily delivered — it did not have a Facebook page or the @Qwikster Twitter handle at launch.

Netflix displayed panic according to Hurwitz, who encourages communicators to position themselves to write the story during transitions. She suggests testing strategies with experienced outsiders under NDA.

“Even if you say ‘I’m going to do it my way,’ you are at least informed how the market may react and can develop messaging in advance,” she says.

Above all, define your objective, outcomes that you seek and how you want the headlines to read.  “Netflix didn’t want ‘prices raised, customers fleeing’ but that’s what they got,” Hurwitz said.  “There is no substitute for well-crafted announcements.”

This post also appears as the November “Digital Dialogue” column in the PR Tactics Journal, published by the Public Relations Society of America.

They’re everywhere! Fancy graphics fused with interesting and even humorous facts, collectively known as infographics, are taking over the Web in a similar manner as viral videos, retweets and e-books have before them.

But aren’t these just visual aids? And haven’t newscasts and publications like USA Today used them for decades to help tell stories?

Yes and yes, but the social sharing aspect of infographics is what sets them apart.

“We can thank Twitter and other social sites for their rise in popularity, but also their decay in quality,” explains Joe Chernov, vice president of content marketing for Eloqua, a marketing automation company. “Infographics awaken opportunities for publications to write about your issues and possibly include context about your organization, but they must be authoritative and creative to be effective.”

Well-designed infographics can help your audience understand your message.

“If you can make large amounts of data easier for people with short attention spans to digest, then you’re golden,” adds Sally Falkow, president of online newsroom provider PRESSfeed. “Some infographics translated to text alone would total several pages. Nobody would read that. Anyone who does presentations knows information is retained better when accompanied by visuals.”

PRESSfeed researches how corporations use online newsrooms. The company learned that infographics work better than spreadsheets and long tables for sharing its findings, and noticed it garnered much more traffic after re-releasing data as infographics. Now, every time Falkow researches a new industry, she issues an infographic.

Eloqua gets up to 10 times the coverage from infographics than do new product announcements or other content types. Its Content Grid v2 infographic spawned 60 articles and blog posts, hundreds of retweets and inquiry calls from Fortune 500 prospects.

Chernov cites three reasons why infographics spread so broadly and rapidly:

• They convince people of your subject matter expertise.
• They generate clicks in the same way great headlines do for press releases and blog posts.
• They offer gestures of goodwill and helpfulness.

SEO and PR potential

Infographics also improve search engine results via inbound links. Google likes it when websites link to your unique content, so infographics provide a visibility boost that keeps working for you 24/7.

But Chernov warns that first, you need an SEO strategy, including optimized webpages to host your infographics.

Chernov also advises forgetting about products or services when creating infographics. Instead, pretend that your company hired you to visualize a difficult message. This content-marketing mindset prevents blatant sales collateral or unfocused infographics and helps you produce compelling ones. When you score a hit, consider updating it several months later with fresh data.

Today, personal brands and thought leaders are on the rise, while credentialed media representatives grow scarce. Chernov suggests doubling down on visual communications like infographics, as engaging content appeals to new information-consumption preferences.

As journalism changes, communicators need to deliver messages in ways that help editors do their jobs efficiently. One thing Falkow knows is that the company wants multimedia content to feed its websites.

“Practitioners are still learning to do digital PR,” she says, “and since infographics are finding favor, adding them to your arsenal can only increase your coverage.”

This post also appears as as the October Digital Dialogue column in the PR Tactics Journal published by the Public Relations Society of America.

Google+ debuted in June and amassed its first 25 million users faster than any other social network, according to PC Magazine. This finally established Google’s social media presence, after its previous Wave and Buzz experiments received little fanfare. Google+ functions similarly to Facebook, including requiring users to register their real names.

Google experienced crisis-level backlash in July when the company enforced this policy deleting thousands of pseudonym accounts and those of some celebrities, tech gurus and people with uncommon names.

As a result, Google updated its policy and offered concessions such as notifying users with naming violations before deleting their accounts and creating an “other names” field.  While Google+ continues to grow, this name-transparency episode illustrates trust issues with digital citizens, social platforms and, by extension, brands.

Augie Ray, executive director of community and collaboration for United Services Automobile Association, an association dedicated to military personnel’s financial well-being, agrees that there are instances when anonymity can protect people online, though he generally prefers transparency.

“More business can be transacted when people are open,” he explains. “Trying to identify ‘@princess5827’ on Twitter is difficult, whereas if members post concerns on our Facebook wall, we can easily contact and assist them.”

Ray, a former Forrester social media analyst, thinks that Google is wise to follow Facebook’s lead regarding name transparency because it encourages authenticity.

Yet, we live in an era of asynchronous transparency where consumers leverage social networks to demand brand honesty but offer less details about themselves in return. Consider consumer “distress” messages on Twitter:  Some are legitimate pleas for help, while others are shortcut attempts for support or freebies.

This transparency imbalance did not always favor consumers. Brands more or less controlled their messages since advertising’s inception until the social-networking revolution.

Ray argues that this divide between brands and consumers impedes social networking’s vision for transparency. For instance, brands could post service-issue specifics that are customarily kept private when consumers post aggressive complaints online.

Like it or not

Questionable online activities manifest in ways beyond anonymity and deception. Some real-life behaviors create confusion when exhibited online. Facebook Likes are one example. People often Like brands to get deals, not as an endorsement.

When Netflix announced subscription increases in July, thousands of angry customers posted negative comments on the company’s Facebook page, and many Liked the page in order to do so.  Some visitors may assume that those Likes are from adoring fans. The value of a Like depends on context and interpretation, which skew impact.

Communicators must be clear about their intentions online. Ray says FTC guidelines can aid Facebook transparency. The guidelines require that companies promoting customer endorsements disclose the material exchanges, or perks, offered.

“Transparency leads to authenticity then listening, which should lead to honest communication,” he says.  “This is what social media is all about.”

This post also appears as the September “Digital Dialogue” column in the PR Tactics Journal published by the Public Relations Society of America.

The President completed a social networking trifecta in July, hosting a Twitter town hall meeting that generated 119,000 #AskObama tweets containing 40,000 unique questions, according to TwitSprout.

The President’s digital communications strategy may focus on balancing activity across several channels, but in the private sector, Facebook, Google and others are waging the battle for social media supremacy.

Migrating, defecting and reflecting
Facebook, Twitter and other networks on the otherwise openly social Web covet a “walled garden” model. Generating the most traffic can likely wield the most influence and yield the most revenue. It’s a successful approach for Facebook with more than 700 million users, most of whom will never feel restricted in a community of such size.

Competition for users is fierce as social media mania settles into normalcy and users can only manage so many profiles. New networks continue to emerge and compete for attention and lucrative market share, defined by impending IPOs and the aforementioned monetization.

Google’s previous attempts to enter the social space with Google Buzz and Google Wave were short lived, but initial hype for its more robust Google+ with Facebook-influenced features like “circles” (groups) and “stream” (newsfeed) has prompted defensive tactics from competitors.

Facebook blocked an exporting tool that allowed users to export contact information to Gmail as well as Google+ related advertisements on its network while Google suspended real-time search that had included Facebook fan page updates and tweets. Facebook also integrated with Skype in what came off as an over-hyped response to the previous week’s Google+ launch mirroring a video chat capability that Google already offered.

Tumblr, the short-form blogging platform, has drawn competitive comparisons with Twitter. In June, former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez declared Tumblr “the next great tool for reports and news organizations.” Likewise, Edelman communications guru Steve Rubel adopted Tumblr after previously using the competing Posterous service. Rubel and Sanchez both admire the blog and social media hybrid that  Tumblr provides, expanding content sharing and curation capabilities beyond Twitter’s 140-character limit.

Of course, these are not the first instances of social media migration. MySpace users defected in droves when Facebook became the social heir apparent.

What do such movements mean for digital communications professionals? Most are not worrisome. Technologies evolve. Communicators must focus on positioning clients where their audience is already, which often means managing presence on several communities.

Keeping abreast of each network’s maneuvers is helpful for counseling clients appropriately, and clear thinking can guide you the rest of the way.

Navigating your way
Committing to social media means managing a network of networks. It’s a heavy workload for big brands and niche players alike. In this column, we’ve evaluated strategies and tools that can help.

• Popularity trumps allegiance. Critical mass is not difficult to identify even when it shifts. Standing out is the real challenge, so focus on message and differentiation matter regardless of location.
• Social networks are evolving and new ones emerge constantly. Evaluating your options is healthy, but when one social network is working for you resist the urge to change it.
• Technology and complacency don’t mix. Embrace change.

This post also appears as the August “Digital Dialogue” column in the PR Tactics Journal published by the Public Relations Society of America.

LinkedIn Corp. closed its first day of public trading on May 19 at $94.25 per share, tallying a net worth of nearly $9 billion.

This development triggered optimism for other social media companies anticipating Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), including Facebook — with a projected $100 billion valuation, according to CNBC — and eventually Twitter. Regional deal-of-the-day site Groupon filed with the SEC for what could lead to an IPO valued at $20 billion.

These activities, however, are also drawing skepticism for similarities to the Internet boom and bust of 1995-2000, when tech companies launched pricey IPOs on lofty visions and little, if any, profits.

IPOs and acquisitions represent the next era of social media awareness. Communicators should welcome this new boost in enthusiasm. We’ve implemented the tools for years — and while concern over another tech bubble is a drama all its own, there are also positives for PR practitioners to leverage during investment and consolidation activities.

Consider the following:

Big-ticket IPOs and acquisitions validate digital communication strategies. If your organization is engaged in networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as a way to connect with audiences and develop customers, then you can tout these activities as signals of strong demand and longevity for social media tools. This is a good time to justify the use of your chosen platforms with internal stakeholders and propose additional investments within your organizations.

Likewise, if leadership is still skeptical of social media, then you can now speak in terms executives appreciate: IPO and acquisition activity is proof that social technologies should be taken seriously.

Publicly traded and acquired social channels have more funding and more stakeholders. LinkedIn now has additional cash to further develop functionality. Imagine what is possible for cash-infused companies and the increased frequency at which they can introduce new features.

As social sites go public or companies acquire them (such as Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion in May), currently free features may become subscription-based as companies look for return on their investments by monetizing some services. Such changes could alter or limit the composition of certain digital communications campaigns.

Mainstay social channels are building on their ideal-use cases. As technology markets mature and consolidate, remaining players position themselves based on core competencies. Brands and the communicators supporting them can better prioritize which tools to use and how much effort they should place on each. Twitter, for example, is impressive at 75 million users, though it’s dwarfed by Facebook’s 600 million users. Twitter is ideal for peer discussions, generating buzz and business-to-business or nonprofit campaigns. And Facebook is better positioned to create communities that consistently influence sales.

Recent behavior demonstrates that each platform is building on these roles. Twitter acquired TweetDeck for $40 million to help users manage high volumes of real-time conversations, while Facebook has introduced services that could supplant competing standalone tools: Facebook Places (location-based sharing; foursquare), Facebook Deals(opt-in sales deals; Groupon) and Facebook Email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail etc).

PR professionals can follow suit. It’s a great time to use this latest technology buzz as a catalyst to reinvest in and advance your digital communications programs. Even Wall Street says so.

This post also appears as the “Digital Dialogue” column in the July issue of PR Tactics, published by the Public Relations Society of America.

Image betadaily.com

Aflac fired “spokesduck” Gilbert Gottfried over his comments about the Japanese tsunami. GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons documented an elephant hunt that angered PETA.  An Applebee’s restaurant in Michigan accidentally served alcohol to a toddler.

These headlines illustrate how crisis topics vary. However, there is a common mindset that PR practitioners can apply to help manage and minimize the online footprint of such incidents.

“People often go off the cuff in a crisis and that’s their No. 1 flaw,” says Jocelyn Broder, vice president at Robin Tracy Public Relations in Atlanta, describing how a client who was upset about a negative blog post opted against her counsel and contacted the blogger personally.

That exchange resulted in another post by the same blogger casting more negative light on the spokesperson’s  “claims” and five other bloggers picked up the story.

“The original post, while unflattering, was accurate and directed at maybe a couple hundred readers,” explains Broder.  “In relatively contained situations like these it is good to have a statement prepared in case you are contacted, but proactively offering it may cause more damage than would’ve likely occurred.”

Dorothy Crenshaw, CEO of Crenshaw Communications in New York, says the first rule in the crisis response playbook is being timely and authentic — often to issue an apology — but the realities of the accelerated news cycle can require deft interpretation and application of this rule.

“Parsons’ GoDaddy hunting video was posted for some time before going viral and since he didn’t believe he was doing anything wrong, the company needed a different response,” adds Crenshaw. “Knowing he’s a hunter and ex-Marine who makes no bones about his lifestyle suggests GoDaddy’s team is prepared to some degree for negative news.”

Parsons’ explanations about helping poor African villagers control the elephant population and preserve crops, however, came across as defensive to many viewers, including Crenshaw.  She thought that he did an admirable job of making himself available for response but could have communicated a more sincere desire to help the region reduce poverty.

Preparing your response

The digital communications landscape requires more frequent vulnerability assessment so that practitioners can better help companies and clients manage potential and real crises scenarios. Successful communicators apply the following:

• Study the past — Companies generally find themselves in situations that they (or someone like them) have been in before. Studying how peers handled past mistakes aids crisis readiness.
• Anticipate the future — Crenshaw suggests vulnerability assessments that generate responses for your top five most likely crisis scenarios. Broder advises identifying team members who are automatically contacted no matter where or when a crisis occurs.  The sooner they are engaged, the sooner they can determine how to respond.
• Mend while you trend — Broder also recommends measuring the actual reach of a crisis by evaluating everywhere it occurs online.  This helps determine who else may become aware of it, which messages should be prepared — if any — and what message frequency is best for quelling rather than exacerbating the news.

Apply a rational rather than an emotional examination to whether news requires a response.  It is also wise to identify one spokesperson whose position is commensurate with the situation to respond when necessary.

“If you don’t have a thoughtful and strategic response within the first four hours, then you generally lose round one,” says Crenshaw.  “And sometimes, it’s only a one-round battle.

This post also appears in PR Tactics Journal, a publication of the Public Relations Society of America.

Published by Jossey-Bass

I’m fortunate on occasion to receive books for review. Such is the case with When the Headline Is You: An Insider’s Guide to Handling the Media, authored by media and crisis communications trainer Jeff Ansell, with Jeffrey Leeson. My thanks to both for sharing a copy.

Ansell’s 16 years of journalism and 22 years of media consulting experience pay off for readers. His book addresses balancing the art and science of media relations, instructing readers how to apply responsive and proactive approaches to a diverse set of crisis communications scenarios.

I began reading When the Headline Is You with the expectation of learning how to better identify, examine and manage the myriad of negative media exchanges that organizations and business professionals can encounter. And the book delivered. What I did not expect at go, but now makes perfect sense, was such depth of writing and speech tutorials dispensed within the crisis management lessons. These skills, of course, go hand in hand; essential for effectively managing crisis situations, and for any measure of communications success. My point, or additional discovery, is that the writing and speaking skills Ansell covers can help strengthen your communications for situations beyond crisis. I plan to keep this book handy to assist with persuasion and accuracy.

Ansell handles crisis examples in an enlightening manner throughout the book using both real-world and hypothetical scenarios. My one criticism of the book is that I would have enjoyed a few more references to “classic” online examples (classic from a social media traffic perspective) that brands like Domino’s Pizza, Kenneth Cole, Gap or Motrin have experienced in recent years. Learning what Jeff would have prescribed in these situations would be interesting, although perhaps is too much of a “me t00″ format since he has years’ worth of consulting examples to offer. The Internet sensations, after all, are just a Google search away.

When the Headline Is You gets right to work noting how anyone can ask questions, but the real skill is in answering them. Ansell cautions that truth and perspective are the casualties of reporting, especially given the sensationalism and trivial distractions common in our present news culture. Conflict, of nearly any sort it seems, is how reporters earn a living he says.

You’ll be able to use this book both as cover-to-cover instruction as well as for situational reference. For the former, Ansell offers three key tools – his Value Compass, Problem Solution Formula, and Compelling Message Creator – used to illustrate how a pharmaceutical client navigates the highs and lows of crisis management, building upon this example client’s story from chapter to chapter as each tool is applied.

Along the way Ansell covers critical support topics including: what questions to ask reporters so responses are mutually beneficial, coupling stakeholders’ concerns with your commitments to action, skills like constructing standalone sentences to ensure your messages can withstand the most ruthless media edits, how PR professionals can get lawyers on their side, and assessing your messages against an honesty continuum.

The material is dense across barely two-hundred pages. It’s a page turner (yes, I marked up the hardcover) not only for its compelling advice but also for the drama evoked by its examples; the stories will have you anxious to see what happens next. And if that’s not enough, there’s even a fun Stones reference on page five.

So my thanks again to Jeff for sharing a review copy. I hope to meet and discuss more of it with you someday — ideally under the most pleasant circumstances!

You can find out more about Jeff Ansell and his book at www.whentheheadlineisyou.com and hear him discuss the book here on a Jossey-Bass podcast.