The Byline: PR and Marketing Insights from Eiler Communications

It seems every day there is a new installation in social media- whether it be a technological advancement, a policy change, or a different way the platforms are being used. In recent years social media has been used frequently as a communication tool during crises. What if, eventually, social media completely takes over traditional news mediums in crisis communication?

In a survey done by American Red Cross, which asked over 1,000 American Adults aged 18 and older questions about crisis communication and social media, 18 percent reported they would use digital media (e-mail, Web sites or social media) to give information out in an emergency if 9-1-1 was busy.
People aren’t just using social media as a fallback during a crisis. They’re using social media to give and receive information about loved ones. In the Red Cross’ survey, nearly half of responders said they would use social media to let loved ones know they were safe.

This doesn’t surprise me, though. I did a research paper last semester about crisis communication and social media. My findings? Currently, people are using social media as a supplement to traditional news sources during crises. The usage of different news mediums during disasters has evolved over time. On the days following 9/11 in 2001, the Internet stopped working for a period of time because Web sites got so many hits. People turned to the television to get news.

During the Virginia Tech Crisis in 2007, students texted and emailed each other to find out if their peers were okay. In a forum online, students put together a list of names of those who were killed before authorities did. Social media allows people to gather information and collaborate quicker than if they weren’t using it.

During earthquakes around the world in the past five years, people have twittered about the effects of the shocks. There are Web sites devoted to these conversations. At the time of China’s 2008 Sichuan earthquake, people were twittering about the earthquake a good three minutes before the US Geological Survey reported it. Is social media simply the easiest way to get information about crises? On a personal level, it might be.

The American Red Cross survey found that 55 percent of responders would mention emergencies or events on their social media channels. The bottom line is that social media is simply one of the fastest way give out information. Of all of the social media channels, the survey reports that 75 percent of responders would use Facebook to post information in the event of an emergency. This is no surprise either.

Using social media during a crisis isn’t just a fast way to get facts, but it is also perceived as effective. Three out of four responders to the survey said they would expect help to arrive within an hour if they posted a request on a social media website. Granted, social media usage during crisis has negative aspects. The Internet can be used as a Petri dish for false information. For the most part, though, it can be a great way to communicate to with other people. As for whether it will overtake traditional news sources during disasters, stay tuned.

Rachel Krasnow

The Millennial Generation, aged 18 to 29, is a group that has grown up with technology instilled into their everyday routines. They are Internet junkies, multi-taskers, and demand personalized technology. They want to genuinely connect with others online.

Millennials are significantly different from their parents in the Baby Boomer generation in numerous ways. At cause of these lifestyle and fundamental distinctions, marketers are struggling to accommodate to millennial needs. However, Brand Amplitude, LLC, a market research firm, has launched Millennial Marketing, an online concept that provides a series of tools to understand Millennials and research to explain where the future of marketing lies.

Millennial Marketing pinpoints the generation. They are more diverse than the baby boomer generation and have a variety of needs in technology and communication areas. Due to multitasking, Millennials are consuming more media than ever, and they are more dependent on technology. Ninety three percent of American teens ages 12 to 17 go online; a Pew Research Study found that while using the Internet, 40 percent of US Youth ages 18 to 24 watch TV, 34 percent text, and 29 percent talk on the phone.

More Millennials than baby boomers have enrolled in higher education. Approximately one third of male and 40 percent of female Millennials have had some college education, compared with 25 percent and 23 percent of Baby Boomers, respectively. Yet a college education puts students in debt largely due to student loans.

The average millennial debt is $21,500, and 32 percent of Millennials feel they are “barely making ends meet.” Furthermore, there’s pressure to do well financially, but the recession has made it difficult to so. In fact, the recession has played a role in the millennial spending. Almost half of Millennials say they have changed their shopping habits somewhat, and others are questioning the need for an expensive college education.

It’s pretty clear: Millennials have different values than the Baby Boomers. They have been shaped by the recession and demand a higher degree of engagement pertaining to technology. As a result, marketers need to tailor their marketing campaigns to their different mindsets.

Millennials are price and value conscious, and they hold the products they spend their money on to high standards. They are highly skeptical of advertisements having been exposed to them their entire lives, and they use a discerning eye when it comes to purchases. Doing a quick internet search before making a selection is second nature to Millennials.

Without a doubt, the most significant shaper of the Millennials has been the internet. Something that can be both a blessing and curse for marketers is that the Millennial generation is always connected. Not only do they utilize the internet for product or service information, but as a broad communication platform as well. When a baby boomer has a bad experience with a business, they casually complain about it the next time they see their friends. On the other hand, when a Millennials has a bad experience, they share it with 800 of their closest Facebook friends. So how can brand managers channel insight into Millennial’s different lifestyle and values into a successful marketing campaign?

BrandAmplitude, LLC offers advice on how to connect with Millennials and their unique mindsets. First of all, a brand must be authentic. Millennials see right through false claims. Also, a brand must position itself as a necessity in order to appeal to Millennials. Due to the recession, this generation believes that they are strapped for cash and will be far more likely to purchase things they deem to be valuable necessities.

BrandAmplitude, LLC also recommends using social responsibility to appeal to Millennials. On average, Millennials are more socially conscious than previous generations, and they have been prone to use the presence or absence of corporate social responsibility as a tiebreaker during purchase decisions among similar brands. Millenials care that no animals were harmed in the production of a product or that a percentage of a company’s sales are donated to charity.

A brand that the Millennials can connect with needs to be shareable via social media. Due to the fact that Millennials spend a large portion of time on these sites, a relevant brand to them has what BrandAmplitude, LLC calls ‘Social Currency’. This means that a brand is social media compatible and can be exchanged on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Lastly, BrandAmplitude, LLC recommends portraying a brand as an experience. Millennials are more apt to spend their money on doing interesting things instead of having interesting things. They perceive experiences as a form of personal investment.

Even though the Millennials have strikingly different values and lifestyles than baby boomers, it is not difficult for marketers to reach this target market due to their dependency on technology. Marketers simply have to take the time to understand the Millennials and ensure that they are delivering a message that they will respond to.

Rachel Krasnow & Emily Rozanski

As oil spills into the Gulf of Mexico, destroying land, ecosystems and livelihoods, social media is in the forefront. Whether it is the general public demanding a resolution, government officials seeking containment and public support or BP trying to restore its image, social media has spread the latest oil spill news faster than ever before.

Within hours of the British Petroleum and Transocean rig explosion, media personnel and the general public used Facebook and Twitter accounts to pass word of the explosion with friends and followers. Many of these social media users wondered who was to blame, what would happen to the fish and sea creatures calling the ocean their home and what affect the spill would have on those who fished for a living. Outrage and concern has continued to resonate throughout these social media sites following the explosion on April 20, 2010.

Thousands of BP critics have launched social media attacks for BP’s failure to prevent the disaster and its inability to stop the flow of oil. Hundreds of Facebook pages exist asking the public to boycott BP, while a fake BP Twitter account making fun of the company has reached a popularity well beyond that of the company’s actual Twitter account.

At the same time, the public has been posting and tweeting ways for others to help relief efforts in the Gulf. Posts telling people where and how to make donations have circulated the Internet.

The crisis communication carried out by the company is something that should be carefully observed. BP’s president, Tony Hayward, made several statements that have caused public outrage. Hayward belittled the scope of the situation in May and suggested that the environmental impact of the spill would be minimal. The company has yet to admit to doing something wrong but claims they are taking responsibility for clean-up efforts. In public relations, the best thing a company can do is to be completely honest about screwing up. BP was not.

The lack of interest and concern BP has shown is evident. The oil spill was a fantastic opportunity for BP to use social media as a communication tool right from the beginning. The company has made some effort to be active through social media- it has a Facebook page, Twitter feed and a channel on YouTube, which cost $250,000 to brand, according to Taylor Buley of Forbes.com . However, the problem is not what outlets of social media BP is using, but exactly how they are utilizing them.

BP should be using their Twitter feed and Facebook page as a forum for discussion as well as a way to answer questions and concerns from the general public. Instead of providing customer service and giving feedback, BP merely gives updates to what’s new in the Gulf. Courtesy of BP, there are plenty of informational videos about cleanup efforts and claims made against the company, but there is no channel of communication in which the public is asked for suggestions about the oil spill.

The company’s social media outlets have become a place for bashing the corporation instead of a forum for people to voice their opinions about a possible solution.

BP’s lack of care for the public’s input is apparent in their social media campaign, and it is a taking a toll on their reputation. If social media is going to be used during a crisis, in order to be successful, it needs to be facilitated so it is clear that the company is listening to its customers.

Jaclyn Klein and Rachel Krasnow

Eiler Communications has been providing pro-bono PR services to Operation Never Forgotten (ONF) since 2008. ONF is a national non-profit, non-partisan awareness campaign to commemorate fallen heroes, wounded warriors, deployed troops and the families that love them. The organization helps bridge the gap between our military and civilian world through public service announcements (PSAs) which can be seen and heard in the Mall of America and International airports across the country, on highway billboards, through television commercials and on the radio.

ONF has had to recently turn down troops and their families’ requests for PSAs due to an overwhelming workload and shortage of funds. Realizing that they were only scratching the surface to ONF’s mission and what our heroes deserve, the organization solicited Eiler’s expertise in social media marketing. Eiler is hoping to capitalize on a donation opportunity for ONF presented by Chase Community Giving. Through a Facebook voting application, Chase is giving away $5 million among 200 deserving charities. We need your help to ensure that ONF secures a spot in the top 200. Anyone can vote by simply clicking the link- Vote Now. Polls close July 12. Please help this worthy cause!

Emily Rozanski

Ann Arbor, MI, June 17, 2010 — In a day and age where people are leading parallel lives via the Internet, it’s not shocking that researchers are frequently finding new trends pertaining to social media. It’s also no surprise that with so much new information available to the public, controversy surrounding Internet privacy has surfaced. Eiler Communications finds that with the social media being such an important tactic for marketing, it is imperative that company employees manage their online content. Failing to do so not only puts your personal reputation at stake, but your company’s as well.

“As new media is evolving as another public relations tool it is imperative that clients are educated on proper usage,” explained Larry Eiler, Chairman of Eiler Communications.

With that said, the younger half of the millennial generation has been accused of putting too much information about themselves on the Internet. However, new research from the Pew Research Internet and American Life Project suggests that part of this age group (18-29) is savvier with regulating their online content than their elders.

Not just bosses and friends are interested in checking out your photos, lifestyle approach and posts online. Given that the younger millenials are putting a ton of information on display, they are limiting what other people can see. They are more likely than any other age group to remove names from photos with beer cups and delete embarrassing rants with friends.

The study done by Pew found that 44 percent of young adult Internet users limit their personal information online, while only 33 percent of users ages 30-39 claimed they did the same. The numbers lessen as the ages of users increase. In the same study, 71 percent of 18-29 year-old social networking users surveyed said to have changed their privacy settings, almost 20 percent more than those surveyed aged 50-64. The youngest age group also beat out the other age brackets in other categories such as deleting unwanted comments and removing names from photos.

At Eiler, we endorse monitoring your online content. Although privacy settings differ with each social networking sites, and some privacy policies can be complicated (Facebook). It’s an area worth looking into. Just because young Internet users have grown up using social networking sites doesn’t mean that older users aren’t capable of limiting their personal information too.

It seems Internet users ages 18-29 are motivated to manage online content because they are likely trying to find a job, internship or other work-related gig. This means that these users are consistently aware of what content their potential employers could find. In fact, 26 percent of working Internet users have employers that instill policies about online content.

If you’re not changing your privacy settings out of caution, do it for love. The Internet makes it
simple for everyone to do scouting reports. People are checking up on their love interests. According to a study done by McKinsey, 1 in 8 of couples married in the U.S. in 2006 met online. Pew’s study shows that 16 percent of all Internet users search online for additional information about somebody they are dating or in a relationship with, and about one-third of those using dating Web sites check out their dates online as well. If you wouldn’t want your potential mate to see it, it probably shouldn’t be online.

Hats off to the young millenials; they’re keeping their content controlled- and it’s for their own benefit. Let’s commend them and copy them. It won’t hurt.

Rachel Krasnow

Using Facebook used to be so simple. I would log in, check my news feed, write on my friends’ walls and post photos without worrying about everyone knowing where I lived, what my interests were and how I felt at that very moment.

Facebook’s new privacy policy is unnervingly complicated. What’s different? A multitude of your interests and basic information is now public by default- including where you live and causes you support. In fact, anything that you like is linked to a public profile page. Do you like McDonald’s? The world knows you do. Do you like long walks on the beach? Hamsters? Jelly beans? Everybody knows, including your boss.

Another issue: your status updates and wall post aren’t just for your friends’ eyes. If you post something that says, “I hate the police!” your post will show up on a specific Facebook page for police. We’ve got to be more careful than ever. The problem is that we’re so used to be able to share our information; it’s hard to start putting it on lockdown.

The new Facebook privacy policy has lead to outrage. Users even created a May 31 Web event that investigated the problems with Facebook called “Quit Facebook Day.” The event only drew in only 35,000 of Facebook’s 450 million users and provides an example to how truly difficult it is to quit Facebook.

Yet, we don’t pay for Facebook (but rumor has it we may have to start paying soon). We don’t own Facebook, either- so we have the right to complain? Has Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made it too hard for us to privately create content or are we making it too easy for our content and profiles to be taken advantage of?

Rachel Krasnow

The use of social media has revolutionized the public relations and marketing world. According to Facebook, its users spend 500 billion minutes per month on the site sharing more than 25 billion pieces of content. Other social media sites, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, have reported similar results. Re:NEW Michigan, a trademark of Eiler Communications, conducted a survey in April to further investigate the growing prevalence of social media sites among Michigan businesses.

The survey compared to a similar survey from December 2008. Not surprisingly, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn all saw dramatic increases in usage in the time period between surveys. The biggest leaps came from Facebook and Twitter. Facebook saw a 28.5% increase in usage, and Twitter saw a 30.3% jump.

A more unexpected and enlightening trend was revealed by the results. Michigan businesses reported heavily using social media websites in seeking news and information.

This is most likely due to news sites directly posting on social media sites or links exist between these social sites and news sites.

Whatever the reason, survey respondents admitted to using Facebook, Twitter and blogs just as often as they use more traditional news sites such as CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times when they seek news and information. Many even reported using social media websites as their primary source of information.

This information poses the question of what the future holds for this evolving issue, both social media and news information websites. No answers yet, but here are some observations.

The benefits of using social media websites for seeking news and information are obvious. They provide the instantaneous results demanded by people’s quest for instant gratification of information. The large amount of time spent on these sites and the great amount of traffic to these sites is favorable for spreading a story.

But are social media websites sufficient in providing a business with all the information it needs, or are they simply being used to find leads that require further investigation? Do social media websites have the potential to make news information sites obsolete? Re:NEW Michigan plans to address these questions and others involving social media websites in our next survey in October.

Here is a breakdown of where respondents get their information according to a “Re:NEW Michigan®” survey April 15 -28.

Question: Where do you get news and information?

Comment: Are social media opinions and commentaries really capturing what these results show? Or do we remain in the “fad” stage where people are not discerning real news from opinions?

Looking at the substantial jump in the social media category, we would like to clarify this result a little better in our next poll in September. We think we uncovered something about how people’s information-gathering habits evolve. We believe that linking to news sites via Facebook & Twitter has become a “source” for many people online. The spread of news (case in point: Michael Jackson’s death or the recent oil rig disaster in the Gulf) became a trending topic over social media, where links to source material were shared.

“Re:NEW Michigan®” is a trademark of Eiler Communications (www.eilerpr.com), which periodically surveys a sample of businesses, healthcare and educational institutions, governmental and non-profit leaders on various topics of broad interest especially related to marketing.

Many Still “Trying and Learning” SMM

Our new survey of social media clearly demonstrates expansion of two significant trends:

1. A decided upturn in continuing growth in use of social media for business marketing, even though a high percent of people say they are “trying and learning” social media marketing (SMM) techniques.

2. New and social media are being used by people all across the spectrum to get information from Internet sites rather than traditional information sites.

The Re:NEW Michigan® survey taken between April 15 and 28 compares to the older survey taken in December 2008. The next Re:NEW:Michigan survey of social media will take place in October.

74.6 percent of respondents to the April survey say that social media is either “very important” or that they are “trying and learning” about these forms of marketing for their businesses.

• Five specific social media have separated from the pack in terms of their use by companies. They are Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Four of them grew in usage in the period between surveys. Blogs dropped to 49 from 59.3% in the 2008 study.

Sixty-six percent of respondents noted Facebook, up from 37.5% in the December 2008 study.

58.4 Twitter vs. 28.1 in ’08.

49 blog, down from 59.3 in ’08.

43.3 YouTube vs. 37.5 in ’08.

LinkedIn rose from 34.1% in 2008 to 38.4% in April.

• Social media has replaced or augmented other forms of marketing in more businesses (50.5 %) than the number that have continued traditional marketing without any social media (47.4%). Of those businesses that have not employed social media, more than 80 percent recognize social media is important and they are “trying and learning.”

• In increasing growth rates, people get their information electronically through Internet news sources such as CNN, The New York Times Online and MSNBC.

“Re:NEW Michigan®” is a trademark of Eiler Communications (www.eilerpr.com), which periodically surveys a sample of businesses, healthcare and educational institutions, governmental and non-profit leaders on various topics of broad interest especially related to marketing.

A study from Harvard Medical School suggests that happiness could be contagious. And so could obesity, smoking, depression and grumpiness.

The article “Social Networks and Health” from the Annual Review of Sociology suggests that if your good friend is happy, you are much more likely to become happy. And if your good friend is overweight, you are more likely to become overweight. Scientists think these occurrences are due to humans mimicking those around them, eating the same foods, performing the same acts or just maintaining the same outlook on life.

This all seems logical with friends you see face-to-face, but what about through social networking online? Could a tweet on Twitter about getting a new job make your friends a little happier, or could a Facebook photo of you sulking just bring your friends down?

Currently there isn’t much in research on whether your cyber-friends affect your happiness, but it seems possible to some degree. Online social media allow friends to connect with you, share photos and video, even offer support. Though not as personal as, well, in-person connections, social media is allowing more people to share and be happy together.

Concerning if your Internet friends could contribute to your weight, smoking habits or mood swings, that may need a bit of research but happiness seems a sure thing. So tell your followers, connections, buddies and friends on the web that you’re happy. I’m sure they’ll pass it on.

Alyssa Eckles