The new age of data-driven PR

Right at the cusp of the "noughties," before the advent of bloggers being given front row seats along with fashion editors of print magazines at New York Fashion Week and citizen journalism; even before the era of the tablet, IBM embarked on a journey of transformation, evolving "Public Relations" into “Communications”.

Communications professionals became known as "External Relations" or "Advocacy" experts. More changes were made through the years and now, for example, we don't have "Internal Communications", but "IBMer Engagement". And "External Relations” has evolved and broadened into "Audience Engagement".

[More from Jojo Cheung of IBM and other senior marketers at PR Asia next week. Join us on 26-27 November for two-days of great presentations, case studies and sharing on the future of PR.] 

What's in a name change? Quite a bit, actually. More than semantics, these changes reflect a recognition that to be effective, we must have a deep understanding of our audiences. The insights generated then enable us to engage with them in a series of planned interventions that are relevant to them and their everyday lives instead of the typical top-down, one-way “company to media to reader” approach. This conscious effort on our part keeps the engagement authentic thereby improving and strengthening our bonds to transcend all news media channels.

Besides, "news" isn't the solely the domain of "publications" anymore. The Egyptian uprising, the English royal wedding announcement and the Hudson River plane crash are just some of the recent news to break on social media before it hit mainstream news outlets.

The role of communicator -- whilst still anchored in the good old-fashioned basics of telling the best story to suit the different audiences at the right time -- has evolved. From creating credible content, we now produce engaging and sharable content; from arranging events such as media conferences, we now do that plus convene conversations and build communities; from building relationships with media and analysts, we now extend our reach to engage influencers and audiences.

What has prompted the shift? Two big trends are changing the very way the world works, the way businesses operate, and how people interact: data and social.

When we consider that there are over 1 trillion connected objects and devices on our planet that have created an estimated 667 exabytes of data traffic over the internet in 2014 alone, we are faced with the staggering reality of data overload. Then, there is the whole social media phenomenon. In a single minute, Facebook users share close to 2.5 million pieces of content. In this same minute, Instagram users upload and share 216,000 photos, Twitter users tweet 277,000 times and YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video content.

As communicators, how do we find valuable content in this minefield of information to use in our communication process and conversations? In an age where reputations are made and broken in a Twitterverse of opinion, how do we engage with our audiences?

Welcome to the age of #data driven, socially savvy marketing and communications.

As a leader in business and technology innovation, IBM has a bit of an advantage - we have access to technology such as big data and analytics, as well as cognitive systems such as Watson, which can be fed enormous amounts of structured (Eg, reports) and unstructured information (Eg, Facebook comments) or track real-time data and derive insights that are then used to create authentic and relevant content.

For example, we have piloted a new system to track the "health" of our brand in a number of markets across unstructured data like belief, action and advocacy. This is work done in collaboration with IBM's Market Development and Insights team. The system holistically tracks country-specific content and conversations across all our media platforms, identifying patterns, highlighting hot topics as well as best practices that can be applied elsewhere.

These insights are a good way of getting feedback on the effectiveness of our marketing and communications efforts, allowing us to make adjustments for the duration of a campaign, for example. It also tells us about IBM sentiment amongst influencers so that we can adjust the level of engagement or further refine messages or provide more access to subject-matter experts.

This is all very useful when you consider that we are shifting away from "putting our message out there" communications to building advocacy at scale. Advocacy at scale means engaging with target stakeholders purposefully and regularly, taking them on a journey which starts from belief and then moves through to action and confidence.

Building advocacy at scale also means taking advantage of arguably some of the best resources any company has on hand - its people. What we have done at IBM is to mobilise the socially savvy amongst our workforce through the IBM “Get Social Hub”. This online dashboard gives IBM’s influencers access to a smorgasbord of IBM-defined social media friendly content, as well as connects them to other influencers, beginning the process of conversation creation.

The communications profession has evolved rapidly. There is a new world order. And we, as communicators, are at the heart of it all, in the captain’s seat at the helm of the command center. Enabled by technology, we craft sharable content that is relevant to our audiences. We engage them across multiple platforms and turn them into our advocates. We direct the conversations, injecting content and intervening in turn. And from the captain’s seat, we have a bird’s eye view of the information highway that we’ve created and manage, drawing data-driven insights that we then take to the boardroom as quantifiable impact of our communications process.

The writer is Jojo Cheung, director of marketing & communications, IBM ASEAN.

Hear more from Cheung at PR Asia 2014. 

To book your seats for the conference contact Joven Barcenas at jovenb@marketing-interactive.comor +65 6423 0329, +65 9820 5195.

For sponsorship opportunities, contact Che Winstrom at chew@marketing-interactive.com or +65 6423 0329.

To discuss the agenda, enquire about presenting or to suggest topics, contact Preeti Varadarajan at preetiv@marketing-interactive.com or +65 6423 0329