PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations

Welcome

I don't like Mondays because I've got Friday on my mind

Do you like Mondays or are you with the Boomtown Rats? We're trying something different this time and sending you PR Futurist on a Monday. It's largely because too many people have got Friday on their mind and are thinking about Friday night, Saturday morning. This means on Fridays the number of out of office replies is going up every week.

It's also come to our attention that not everyone realises that clicking on the headline takes you to the article or report that we're sharing. If you want to share one particular story, then copy the link at the end of the story at it takes people to that specific story in the newsletter.

In this issue we find out if Mastodon really is an alternative to Twitter, the 2022 ICCO World PR Report, a new global reputation rank using AI (from Signal AI) and a thoroughly depressing story on the metrics that are most used by PR professionals.

And finally, did you know that AI is now better at Diplomacy than humans?

News

Mastodon returns - what does it mean for PR and communications?

The turmoil at Twitter means many people are looking around for alternatives. Stuart looked at what this might mean for public relations and communications professionals. It got a lot of attention from people in the industry, with most supporting his assessment of sticking with Twitter for now but learning and experimenting with Mastodon and other platforms.

You can find Stuart on Mastodon at @stuartbruce@mastodon.online and Tim at @timbailey@mastodon.social. If you're already on Mastodon then please follow us and we can explore it together.

Tim Bailey

Masterclass in Dubai on the future of public relations and communications

Stuart has just returned from Dubai where he ran a two-day masterclass on the future of public relations and communications. It looked at everything from the metaverse and blockchain to artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Let us know if you're interested in doing something similar. It can run as either an in-house course or talk for your team, or as an open class with people from several different organisations or companies.

Tim Bailey

Corporate affairs

Misinformation Risk Index for brands

Pulsar has teamed up with NewsGuard to create a monthly index of how exposed some of the world's biggest brands are to misinformation. The index tracks the weekly frequency and reach of mentions on unreliable news and information sites.

For the November index the brand most at risk is Tesla, which probably comes as little surprise to most of us.

Stuart Bruce

A global reputation rank using big data and AI?

We love a bit of big data and AI. This 500 Global Reputation Ranking from Signal AI uses "big data and artificial intelligence" to create the reputation ranks rather than "old-school surveys".

It tracks nine key themes and provides a score for each, which can be compared with the average. The themes are collaborations, products and services, technology, governance, growth, operations, CSR, culture and sustainability.

Stuart Bruce

Data, measurement, analytics

Shock, horror. Quelle Suprise. Earned media monitoring platforms all provide dodgy data

In reality we shouldn't be surprised that media monitoring platforms all provide different results when theoretically monitoring the same things. The difference for crude mentions between two of the five platforms is a staggering 300%, or for unique outlets its 165%.

There are lots of reasons for the discrepancies including the data sources they are using, different technologies, false positives and licensing or publishing restrictions of sources.

It's one reason why when we create communication measurement and evaluation frameworks for clients that we're seeking to provide meaningful information, which isn't necessarily about precision. Indeed, precision might be less meaningful.

Stuart Bruce

Which tool best estimates traffic to third-party websites?

Estimating traffic to third-party websites is notoriously difficult. SparkToro enlisted some volunteer websites to share their Google Analytics data, so those numbers could be compared with the estimates from various tools.

The result, not surprisingly, is that there isn't a clear winner and estimates are always estimates, which is one reason we need to be wary of 'precision' in communications measurement.

Research and reports

PR agency leaders optimistic for growth in 2023

The annual World PR Report from ICCO is always an essential read. Stuart has written his usual in-depth analysis of it.

The TL;DR (too long; didn't read) from Francis Ingham, CEO of ICCO is that upskilling, embracing the latest tech and analytics, and measuring are what PR and communications professionals needs to focus on. This is amazing news for us is we provide professional development and training, expert consultancy on using CommTech and the biggest area of our business is creating bespoke measurement and evaluation frameworks and playbooks for our clients.

It's also well worth reading this report by PRovoke's Maja Pawinska Sims.

Tim Bailey

PR pros make more use of metrics

Despite the optimistic headline, this is incredibly depressing research. Do you know what the top metric was, cited by 96 percent of the respondents? It was the number of stories placed! Seriously, in 2022 that's what people said. The next metric was just as bad - audience reach. Doubtless this means citing a reach of multiple millions, even though that will be an incredibly innaccurate figure and is more likely to be monthly visitors to the media website than actual views of the coverage.

Still the silver lining for us is it means more potential clients for us as clearly 96% of respondents desperately need help with creating communication measurement and evaluation frameworks.

Stuart Bruce

B2B creates great content, but rarely gets round to using it effectively

This is a point I make constantly to clients and on training courses. We do brilliant work and come up with creative ideas for great content and then publish it.... once, in one format. Why not repurpose it into different formats? The person who never reads articles might listen to the audio version. The person who doesn't have time for podcasts, might read the article as it's far faster. And then let people know and remind them the great content exists. Most people don't see your first tweet or LinkedIn post, or even your second or third. Make your content work harder.

This research reveals it's an industry wide problem.

Stuart Bruce

Digital and social

Influencer marketing - it's not just for consumer communications

Usually when we hear about 'influencers' it's in the context of consumer influencers and it means people with lots (often millions) of followers on the Insta or TikTok. But when I first started working with social media influencers most of the activity was in the B2B space. B2B and corporate influencers are having a resurgence.

This article reminds us that 84% of business and marketing creators (influencers) have under 10,000 followers or subscribers and 39% have under 1,000. Yet these niche creators have impact as what is more important than the number of followers, is a creator's credibility and trustworthiness. Influence is an ability get someone to think or behave differently, not just to create awareness by promoting it.

Stuart Bruce

Getting the most from the LinkedIn algorithm

The fourth annual LinkedIn Algorithm Research report reveals some fascinating insights about how to get the best out of your LinkedIn posts. LinkedIn is all about reaching people and receiving a comment on your post is twelve times more effective than receiving a Like when it comes to extending your reach. Better still, getting a prospect to visit your profile guarantees your next post appears in their feed.

Getting people to respond to your posts is essential increasing your reach, but when engaging with content, only the first type of engagement generates a boost. Which means if you Like a post and then comment, the boost is only going to come from the Like, not the comment. But if you comment first and then Like, you get twelve times increase in boost because the comment is used and not the Like.

There are many actionable insights in the report.

AI is better at Diplomacy than humans

You need to note the capital letter as the article is actually about the game Diplomacy, and not world leaders talking to each other. The AI agent, Cicero (named after the classical statesman and scholar who witnessed the fall of the Roman Republic) was able to effectively communicate and strategize with other human players, plan best methods for victory, and in some cases, even pass as a human.

It's yet another example of just how much AI can now accomplish.

BTW if you're intrigued by Cicero - the real one, not the AI agent - then I'd highly recommend reading the Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris. I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and these are great books.

Stuart Bruce

Get in touch

Need help combatting fake news, using LinkedIn or measuring your reputation and comms?

Get in touch if you want to talk about how we might be able to help you with improving the performance of your public relations and communications team. We're happy to work all over the world - as this picture of Stuart in the newsroom of Al Bayan in Dubai shows. He was lucky enough to be in the newsroom when Saudi Arabia scored its historic victory over Argentina. You can imagine the reaction.

Tim Bailey