A year ago, new clients did not mention or even ask about social media. Today, it’s invariably the second question I get asked. I tell clients not to get overwhelmed by this hugely influential, but unwieldy new medium. Social media from a PR perspective doesn’t really change how we approach the business of telling a company story. What has changed, has been the acceleration of time. None of us want to wait for quarterly or monthly recaps, demographic reports, analysis and trend studies or for the 3-5 month lead time required by most consumer lifestyle magazines. We want feedback and results on a daily basis. Luckily, this just makes my job more exciting and certainly interesting!
Social media platforms provide more opportunities to not only reach out direct to consumers and influencers, they allow us to target our information so that it’s more closely aligned by consumer’s specific interests. Sounds simple, but there are now hundreds and thousands of potential consumers and influencers out there. Where do we start?
As a PR professional, I look at these new audiences in terms of market segments. My clients are lifestyle – food, fashion and home. So for instance, my home clients, the market is centered on interior design. Great, now we know we want to target interior design bloggers. We can’t track them all, so let’s approach this in segments – let’s only monitor and engage the top bloggers in this space. How do we do this? What qualifications are we looking for? Traditional media relies on demographic info, circulation and in the premium consumer lifestyle space, overall wow factor – how well a magazine stands out for visual artistry and influence.
In the social media world the metrics have changed. For interior design space, we’ve found Technorati to have the best search for this particular industry. For our food clients we are using other SM search tools, but that’s for another post.
My amazing intern, Jen pulled together the following information on Technorati. Check it out and let us know if it works for you.
What is Technorati?: Technorati was founded as the first ever blog search engine. It generates comprehensive information on the blogosphere by indexing millions of blog posts and sorting them by tags, keywords and topic. Technorati also releases a “State of the Blogosphere Report” every year to analyze the trends and themes of blogging.
The new age of media: This is an important step for PR because people now look to bloggers for their expertise on trends, products and ideas. As the blogosphere continues to grow, the lines between blogs and mainstream media sites are becoming less clear.
How to do searches: Most people use Technorati for its blog search capability. You can search blogs or blog posts by keyword, tag or URL. You can also search the blog directory for blogs in certain categories (e.g. fashion/lifestyle blogs, business and finance blogs etc.). Technorati also lets you browse top videos, photos and news articles to see what people are blogging about at that moment. Additionally, if you set up a profile, you can monitor your favorite blogs and specific topics.
What is Authority?: One way Technorati tracks the influence of a blog is through its Authority. Authority simply counts the number of blogs linking to a website within the last six months. The higher the number, the more people are linked to your blog and the higher the authority-It’s the who and what is most popular in the blogosphere. This approach also eliminates spammers looking to profit off traffic from keyword searches.
What’s new?: You can now claim your Twitter profile on Technorati. By doing this, you can use Technorati services to help make your Twitter more visible.
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