News happens fast, seemingly more so when you work in PR. You not only have to monitor the news but also respond to it with relevant, timely stories. You have to practice your PR in real-time.
It’s a daunting task, but these five essentials can help turn it from impossible to possible.
1. Data
Any real-time initiative is steeped in data. Data, such as the figures obtained with social monitoring tools, show you what’s happening in the here and now. You can assess what’s popular. You can tell when audience perception shifts for good or ill and respond accordingly. In addition, you can follow your PR campaign’s trajectory and make changes according to how it’s performing.
2. Process
Process makes things flow smoothly. Without it, you’ll wait for an approval that never comes or comes too late. Real-time PR, unlike traditional PR campaigns that can take months to build, requires the ability to respond quickly to ongoing trends, events and conversations. It’s much like working in the newsroom. If you hear of a breaking story, you tell your editor and go.
3. Preparation
Real-time PR is not a case of a one-hit wonder. Consider Oreo. Why did it succeed during the 2013 Super Bowl? The brand did insert itself into the right event at just the right time, but the insertion was no fluke. Its PR and marketing teams had been practicing and testing real-time efforts throughout the year. Their momentous “Oreo moment” was the result of months of preparation work.
Want even more real-time tips? Check out Alissa Blate’s on-demand webinar on real-time PR now!
4. Team
Your ability to practice real-time PR is only as good as your team, regardless of how large or small it is. To be successful with real-time PR, your team has to hone its ability to spot real-time opportunities and responses to them. Both are necessary; real-time is so fast-paced that if you or your team can’t come up with a response soon enough, you’ll lose the opportunity.
Your team also has to be empowered to respond in real-time. You may have the best PR team in the world, but if you can’t get buy-in from stakeholders or people pertinent to the real-time opportunity, you’re stuck. Your team includes everyone involved with your brand’s PR, from the intern you use as a lookout for real-time opportunities to the photographer taking photos for your Instagram campaign and the CMO signing off on marketing and PR tactics.
5. Technology
The ability to respond in real-time is in no small part due to advances in technology. Because of technology, you can share experiences and news as they happen. You don’t have to wait until you get to a computer. You don’t have to recite a story over the wire and wait for a transcriptionist to tap out your words on a QWERTY keyboard. Technology gives you capabilities Ogilvy could only have dreamed of a few decades ago.
All of that to say – use the technology. Data is so immense that you’ll never make any sense of it without using software to filter it into something coherent and insightful. You can’t possibly track audience perception across multiple channels and platforms without a sentiment analysis tool. You can’t even respond in real-time without automating some of your standard messages.
To be successful with real-time, you have to use technology that automates repetitive tasks and helps your team become more efficient, productive and responsive.
What tips do you have for working in a real-time news environment?
