The power of free text
“We want a holiday idea to go out in August!”, “We’d like to be considered as ownership contenders of Valentine’s Day!” “We want to send a home improvements idea out this Bank Holiday!” Sound familiar? News tends to be on a loop. There are always new angles to take but there isn’t always the opportunity to explore them. This is something that every PR professional will know.
Clients can sometimes be hell-bent on a specific angle and timings but it’s your job to make it new and interesting.
This is where the power of ‘free text’ comes in and steals the show for you and your client. A free text question, in case you're reading this feeling somewhat perplexed, is simply a question that doesn’t have any options. It’s a blank box that gives respondents the chance to tell their own story or give their own opinion rather than choose one we have given to them.
In the past we’ve asked respondents to tell us about the strangest interview questions they’ve faced – the result was a page lead in the Daily Mail and a whole host of further media coverage.
Asking the panel to give you their own personal experiences can be a daunting thought to those who haven’t tried it. When we suggest it to clients we often get asked if “the story will stand up if there isn’t a percentage?” The answer is ‘absolutely’.
While we base our stories on the results of research it’s not always essential to include the stats. You’re telling a story not writing a report.
We love stats. We'd be lost without them, so we’re not saying the free text questions are the best and only option – but they are there to make sure you’ve got something personal to add to your version of the tale. Something that nobody else will have.
Free text works for both serious and light stories. They can bring humour or they can add a more humbling point of view. You can really add a little extra ‘something’ with a free text answer. It could take up the majority of the copy or it can just give you an edge that backs up one of the stats you’ve already mentioned.
The truth is, if you’re willing to sift through hundreds of stories from respondents, you’re certain to be paid off with a few gems. You only really need three or four to really give you a good start.
Of course you’ll get several ‘don’t know’ answers and the odd questionable response but you just need to persist and look out for that one story that will give you your top line.
We’ve asked for embarrassing stories, disastrous car journeys, dangerous experiences and everything in between. Our panel never disappoints. And If worst comes to the worst and you don’t get anything you can use, at least you get to sit at your desk chuckling away at the situations people get themselves in.
Reinventing the Wire
In 1978, a small news and pictures agency was founded in Bristol providing news and pictures to local and national press.
Almost 40 years on, SWNS is the biggest independent news wire in the UK supplying some of the world’s most hard-hitting content to major newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and websites employing more than 100 editorial staff across offices in London, Plymouth, Cambridge, Birmingham, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Yorkshire.
The commercial success built on the back of SWNS’s growth is evidenced by the wealth of coverage secured for our clients on a day-to-day basis. Using the first campaign as a case in point, Harris Brushes were able to secure coverage in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Mirror, among others, because national and regional press trust our content and trust that we can supply them with material that works across all their platforms.
But the digital generation has shaken up the media industry. Our research revealed 76 per cent of people now consume media ‘digitally’ and almost one in ten consume more than 16 stories a day, with the average Brit consuming 5.9 media stories a day.
Our thirst for media and our ability to digest various forms of media - 95 per cent of respondents said they consume media on multiple platforms 48 per cent take a multi-channel approach to media - has given birth to a wealth of new digital platforms that aren’t easily serviced by the traditional news wire.
Which is why we reinvented it.
Bloggers, vloggers, digital editors and influencers can now source content on our new digital news wire that caters exclusively for online publications. The emphasis is on rich, visual content and news releases that encourage social sharing, with news copy, images, audio and video bundled into one downloadable file.
The wire has been launched as a one-stop-shop for editors on the hourly hunt for news, with a simple, four-click solution to capturing the story and publishing it. This ensures that we appeal to time-poor bloggers, editors and influencers by delivering content in a timely manner.
Since its launch, hundreds of users have registered with the Digital Hub for survey news, lifestyle content and releases from across the web and social media. With a target to get that number into the thousands in the near future, the hub is steadily becoming the go-to place for digital media outlets.
For 72Point clients, that means that not only do they have a pick of the national press, but also of the increasingly influential online publications that have surfaced in its wake. With the lion’s share of media consumers taking a ‘multi’ approach to media, having all the bases covered is a surefire means of receiving unparalleled coverage.
To find out more about the Digital Hub, click here.
To download our Generation Editor report, click here.
The 2015 Media Consumption Report: Prepare for MPC
If the minefield that is contemporary media has taught us anything it is that a ‘multi’ approach is the next big evolution for the PR industry with arguably more sticking power than any media shift in the past.
Not only do media consumption habits transcend channels (print, broadcast, online), they also transcend platform (smartphone, tablet, desktop) and the way in which we interact with media has changed irreversibly as a result.
To understand how the digital landscape has impacted media consumption 72Point has commissioned a survey of 7,500 people in the UK exploring what types of content the modern media consumer is likely to read, watch, share and like on which platform(s). The report, due for release in March, looks in detail at how to prepare for the challenges and opportunities presented by multi-platform content (MPC).
Media Platforms and Channels
Generation ‘Multi’ is about capturing large audiences with campaigns that transcend platform and channel, but this offers opportunities and challenges in equal measure. We look at what channels and platforms people are consuming media on and how this impacts the way in which they consume media.
Mainstream media confronts digital
The migration of mainstream media from print and broadcast formats to online platforms has revolutionised the media landscape, but pertinently, it has reformed the way in which mainstream publishers convey news. We look at how.
The rise of Specialist Publications
In the digital age everybody carries a digital news stand in their pocket. Their interests dictate what they read from a seemingly endless bank of media titles which eschew ‘mainstream’ objectives of catering to a wide audience in favour of specialisation. We look at what sort of specialist publications are popular.
Social Media: Traffic and Consumption
Not only has social media altered the way in which media conveys news, it has also altered the way in which people find news, creating a more consumer-led news industry that harks back to the rise of specialist publications discussed in the previous chapter. Some of our results have been published in an article on PRWeek.
In the report, we also discuss the rise of ‘lists, gifs, pictures and posts’ in media and how mainstream media has adopted a social media-led approach and new sites have been born from it.
Organic and Sponsored Posts
Finally we discuss our attitudes towards sponsored posts vs organic posts.
The full report will be published and available to download from this site.
Posts and Pictures, Lists and Gifs
How Social Media has Shaped Digital News
The rise and increasing influence of social media has created a tricky quandary for digital publications; how do you cater for people who are visually wired, with patience at a premium and an aversion to information overload?
When the first wave of media publications started to establish an online presence there were clear warning signs that a simple ‘copy and paste’ strategy wouldn’t work. Media consumers weren’t migrating online because they found the Telegraph’s broadsheet pages too tough to handle, nor were the inky fingers or recycling headaches motives behind a ‘digital shift’. Online consumers of media had a thirst for a new type of publication, and thus a period of adjustment began.
Social media has shaped the way we interact with the online world. It gives us a role to play which is why we talk of a digital ‘world’ in which people are participants rather than just observers, cogs in the system and so forth. In that way it is by their rules that we comply; 140 character limit on Twitter, the list-like nature of a Facebook timeline and the multimedia-led structures of Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Observe the elements of social media and you will begin to understand the underlying composition of digital media.
The use of visualized information has increased by 400 per cent in online literature since 1990, by 9,900 per cent on the internet since 2007 and by 142 per cent in newspapers. In short that’s because we suffer from information overload in the digital age and thus crave information that can digested quickly, like social media, and media outlets have both been born from this trend and responded to it.
BuzzFeed, for example, dubs itself as a “social news and entertainment company” that “provides shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment, and video across the social web” to a global audience of more than 200 million people.The site has become a world-wide phenomenon as a media outlet based on social media concepts and isn’t alone in capitalising on social-led media. And mainstream titles have started to catch up.
Lists, pictures, infographics, videos and Gifs have become a pre-requisite of most posts on sites such as the Mail Online, which is now the world’s biggest newspaper website.
One of our recent surveys commissioned on behalf of Interparcel found Brits are becoming increasingly impatient in general, with the average respondent waiting only ten seconds for a web page or link to load and only 16 seconds for a video to buffer. But as interesting as the results were, the real clever bit is what we did with them when it came to selling the story into the media. Not only did we provide solid news copy that was picked up by The Mail, The Telegraph and Metro but we added infographics, video and list material into the mix that meant it was picked up by countless online sites including The Star, MTV, BT.com, AOL and, of course, Mail Online.
The concluding remark is that if social media is shaping digital news then it must in turn shape how we do PR. At 72Point we have a growing digital team that is keeping ahead of the curve in that regard with exciting new infrastructure and a wealth of expertise, creating social campaigns for a social generation.
A Picture Paints a Thousand Words
It might not come as a surprise to you that more and more stuff is going digital. This is to some degree spurned on by the sheer speed and quality of technical advancements. It wasn’t that long ago that I had to plug my laptop into the phone line to surf the interweb. Now I can check my emails whilst on the train; 10 years ago that would have blown people’s minds, either that or I’d have been burned for being a witch.
The move to digital is also fuelled by a desire to make people’s lives more convenient. Whether it’s an app that tells you how long to cook your steak for or the e-reader which lets you have all your favourite books in one place. People are reaching out for things that make their life easier.
This trend is becoming more and more dominant in the world of press. As with books, people want all their news in one handy place and in condensed formats. In June of this year (2014), The National Readership Survey estimated a decline of 13% in the readership of national newspapers, yet an article in the Guardian reported an increase in their online readership. Digital news seems to be where it’s at.
I for one am an advocate of traditional methods; I like printed books, newspapers and magazines, but when it comes to finding out about what’s happening in the world my first port of call is to check twitter. I think it’s safe to say I’m not alone. As people get busier and busier, they want things at their fingertips, in small, easily digestible nuggets. People haven’t got time to read massive news articles anymore. You probably can’t even be bothered to read this blog, but as you’re here, you might as well persevere.
Infographics are a good example of how news and press is adapting to modern life. If people can visualise a story and take in the key points instantly, why bother reading a 3 page article on it? To put it another, more simplistic way, how many of you would rather read the Very Hungry Caterpillar over, say, Crime and Punishment?
The move to digital is also fuelled by a desire to make people’s lives more convenient.
A good example of this is the BBC. Earlier this year they announced that they would be launching daily infographics on their social media channels. In an interview with Jounalism.co.uk, the BBC’s editor of Visual Journalism, Amanda Farnsworth, stated that what they were ‘trying to deliver is a really salient, interesting nugget on a big story’. She claimed that the world of infographics was an answer to the question of covering the same story across all media platforms. Farnsworth added that “Visual journalism meets three audience challenges: distinctiveness; a modern and lively way to treat news stories; and an aid to understanding” with infographics ticking ‘all the boxes’.
It’s not just the BBC. More and more news sites are utilizing infographics to tell a story. Since the 6th October we found 8 infographics featured on the travel section of the MailOnline online, most of which were PR stories.
PR stories are one area of news that have always done well when in infographic form. As PR survey gurus… *cough* …we have first-hand experience of this. The British Airways infographic that we curated alongside our own design team, Drench, was featured on the MailOnline. Likewise the one we created for Monarch Airlines featured on Yahoo, as did our infographics for OnePoll and Tecmark. Both the Monarch and British Airways were also featured on infographic site Visual.ly, with the Monarch example making the homepage.
It is indisputable that infographics are becoming more and more popular, which is why we recommend using them in your campaigns. Visual media can transform a simple survey story into an online hit due to their readability and easily digestible content. Not only that but they can be split up into bite size chunks to either break up text or for use on social media.
We’re so enthusiastic about infographics that we have News-By-Design, our own site dedicated to showcasing both our own infographics and other excellent examples from around the web. The site is a true statement about just how popular infographics are and that is not just us showing off. The site has a huge following on both Twitter and Pinterest, including journalists and PRs within its diverse fan base.
Whether it’s a story about cats or a hard hitting piece about Ebola, News-By-Design really has covered it all. That is for one reason, and one reason only….because infographics work for every sort of story. There’s even one about why visual data works so well which is pleasingly topical. The infographics we have produced for clients have covered everything from yoghurt to back up relationships, from smartphone obsessions to vegetables. There really is no limit. All you need is an idea, some stats, and a design team……now if only there was a company that could do all that….
