Beating the Algorithms on Twitter

How Our Twitter Page Went Viral

Unlike the other social media channels, Twitter is a fast-moving platform with users being recommended to post up to 10 times per day to keep up with the fast-paced newsfeeds of over 335 million monthly active users. More than 48% of users log in to Twitter every day to share short snippets (280 characters) from their life or their business.

Journalists, politicians and celebrities all frequently use it too. This means that Twitter is often the place to find trending news and it has a strong emphasis on real-time information — things that are happening right now.

Twitter was the first network to introduce #hashtags and @handles for users to find certain people and information to connect with each other. It’s thought of as the most conversational of platforms.

Beating the Algorithms

There are three ways your tweets are promoted on the newsfeed: the ranked and most relevant tweets, the ‘in case you missed it’ tweets and the remaining tweets in reverse chronological order of the most recent. The difference with Twitter compared to other channels is that you can choose whether you view the ‘best’ tweets or tweets as they happen. Therefore, to get the best out of the Twitter algorithm, timing is crucial; if your tweet gets engagement quickly then it will be pushed up the rankings and is likely to be seen by more people.

It is also important to find out when the best time to post on Twitter is through researching for your particular industry. Once you’ve established the best times to post, you can use scheduling tools such as TweetDeck to ensure you don’t miss a moment.

What you may not realise is that your tweets will be served to a small group of users first before being delivered to all your followers in order to measure engagement (almost like a mini test group). Your engagements are your likes, replies, retweets and profile clicks etc. This became most apparent when we created a post asking bloggers to get in touch, and once the engagement started increasing and gained more traction the tweet was pushed higher up people’s newsfeeds and it pretty much went viral!

Also, dependant on your number of followers your tweets will be prioritised accordingly, such as celebrities, journalists and news sites.

Starting a Conversation

Starting a conversation and engaging with users will increase your overall engagement. Of course, it takes time to reply to messages and ask questions but it is a great way to find new business opportunities and engage with your current clients or customers. Research also showed that people don’t want to be sold to on Twitter and that you should ask questions and run polls rather than just throwing out salesy tweets.

We focused on asking our audience questions and starting conversations which resulted in our total replies for the month of January being over 1,300 compared to December where we only had 28 total replies over the month! For example, the tweet below asked users to choose which front cover of our new book they preferred which started a conversation and had a total of 489 engagements:

The Correct Hashtags

Tweets with hashtags get over 12% more engagements than their hashtag-less counterparts according to recent data which is a great way to get your content seen by new eyes.

To find the right hashtags for your business you need to do some research. Look at what your competitors are using, your industry’s hashtags and if you have influencers in your industry, see what hashtags they’re using too.

For one of our tweets, which we shared across all platforms, we put out a request for bloggers to get in touch with the team for upcoming projects. By using hashtags we knew bloggers use such as #bloggerrequest the tweet gained 6,536 engagements! This is the highest number of engagements we have ever received on our twitter platform. By asking ‘are you a blogger or know a great one’ it opened up conversation for users to tag in their friends. The more people were being tagged, the higher the tweet got pushed up in people’s newsfeeds and the more responses we were getting. Even days later the tweet was still receiving replies and likes! The tweet had 246,520 impressions (impressions are the number of times a tweet has been delivered to an account's newsfeed) which considering we have just over 3,000 followers was incredible. What is surprising is that this post did not perform anywhere near as well on the other SBPR channels.  

You can also see what hashtags are trending on your newsfeed and if you have something to contribute to the conversation, get involved!

Tapping in to trending hashtags is also beneficial for getting your tweets in front of a large audience quickly. Throughout January we used hashtags such as #Veganuary and #DryJanuary as we saw they were trending, and businesses and brands were talking about them. We tied this in with some of our clients such as Jimmy’s Iced Coffee for their vegan-friendly Oat Latte and Conker Gin for an alternative cocktail if you have fallen off the Dry January wagon. By combining trending hashtags and tagging in our clients, these posts became some of our best performing of the month.

Twitter Chats

From looking at ways to increase engagement we found that ‘Twitter Chats’ can be a good way to engage with other users. A Twitter Chat is a live discussion focused around a general topic. They are scheduled at a certain time and a hashtag is used for people to take part in the discussion. Although these may work for other businesses it was difficult to find a relevant chat for our industry. We took part in #DorsetHour which is every Monday at 7:30 – 8:30pm where local Dorset businesses can talk about their business in a friendly conversation! We used #DorsetHour to get in touch with other businesses and shared news about our upcoming PR courses. One account was looking for Instagram followers, so we supported them and followed their Instagram account which also resulted in a follow back. A small step in relationship building a great conversation starter.

Worth a try if you’re local!

Competitions

Everybody loves to win! We created competitions across all our channels for our PR courses to see if this would increase engagement. By asking people to respond and tell us why they deserve a place it encouraged people to interact and resulted in 61 engagements, an engagement rate of 2.4%, which is great compared to the average Twitter engagement rate which is 0.7%.

Polls

Polls are amazing as they require little effort from users, and the voters feel like they are inputting something useful or sharing their point of view. Voters also have to place a vote before seeing the result, which encourages them even more to get involved. Here is an example which had 18 votes, 6 likes, 1,044 impressions and an engagement rate of 3.1% which is great in comparison to the number of impressions it gained.

Followers

When looking at how to increase followers, most of us know that by following and unfollowing other users you will gain more followers. Following and engaging with other tweets and profiles also attracts followers. We made sure to follow and unfollow 50 users a day which resulted in 593 new followers over January which was a 735% increase from December.

An Inviting Profile

Having an inviting profile is important for Twitter users when they land on your profile. For this reason, we updated our header image to an eye catching bold and bright image with our logo, our faces and lots of smiling! This is how we want businesses to see us. We also put up a poll asking our followers what they thought about our new header, again engaging in conversations with them.

Retweeting Yourself

As the Twitter newsfeed moves fast it’s easy for your tweets to get lost. For this reason, you can retweet your own tweets to make them appear on people’s newsfeed again for a chance for it to be seen by more users. You can also boost engagement by retweeting your older posts that have already performed well or by re-purposing tweets that had high engagement the first-time round.

GIFs

GIFs are great for showing your personality. People like to see real tweets and humorous ones which are shareable and likeable! People responded to our fun Friday GIFs with other humorous GIFs. If your business is okay with posting light-hearten fun content, then GIFs could be a great addition for your feed and showing your personality!

Summary

Overall it’s clear to see that Twitter is the platform for starting conversations, sharing your opinion and talking to people and businesses. It requires a lot of time and effort to use it correctly but there are tools to help you such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite which can make your life easier

Our engagement rate increased from 0.9% in December to 1.5% in January, link clicks from 93 to 212, retweets from 43 to 341, likes from 161 to 1.9k and replies from just 28 to 1.3k. We had 358,000 impressions (728% increase) and 8,782 profile visits (276% increase).

It’s simple to extend your reach by using the correct hashtags and mentions and tapping in to current trending hashtags to get involved and start a conversation. Many brands and influencers aren’t using Twitter to its full potential and they can underestimate the value of a simple tweet.

Even if you are using Twitter religiously, sharing valuable content and engaging with your favourite brands and influencers, of course there is no guarantee of success in social network and it requires a lot of trial and error to see what works for you and your business.

The bottom line is that you will need to play around with your Twitter account and watch your analytics (analytics.twitter.com), in order to figure out how often you should post and at what time of day. Use this information, such as engagement rates on tweets, to find out which ones worked well so you can plan your next week or months posts.

We hope these tips can help you to improve your Twitter profile, if you would like to find out how the team can help you grow your Twitter channel organically by 100% get in touch on 01202 293095 or email hello@sunnybirdpr.com and remember, Twitter is a conversation, Be sure to make your mark and start talking.    

Beating the Algorithms on Facebook

With one billion people using Facebook daily, it’s more important than ever to have an active Facebook channel for your business which is why we set ourselves a challenge to increase our engagement rate by 100% (that’s the number of people interacting with your posts). Although we spend every day on our social media channels as a team, we doubled our hours in January with staggering results.

Since 2012, Facebook’s organic reach has declined dramatically (that’s the number of people seeing your posts). This is for two reasons - there is too much content in the news feed for everyone to see your posts and Facebook is prioritising the posts that are most relevant/interesting for each user. Working in communications, we were aware of Facebook algorithms changing on a daily basis, so with that in mind, we set off on our challenging journey…  

Before we started

Before planning your Facebook content, it’s important to understand your audience. There’s no point creating hundreds of detailed posts if they’re not going to be relatable. Work out your business objectives before beginning and compare them to your audience. You can find out your business audience by clicking on ‘insights’ at the top of your business page and going to ‘people.’ For Sunny Bird PR, we found our audience consisted of 70% women between the ages of 18-65, with nearly a third between the ages of 35-44. Going forward, we knew it was important to tailor our content to suit women in this age bracket.

It’s also important to find out the best times to post on your Facebook page by clicking ‘when your fans are online.’ For Sunny Bird PR, the majority of our fans were online between 5-8pm so we knew it would be best to post/schedule most of our posts then in order to gain the most traction.

Engagement

Facebook engagement is the number of people interacting with your posts, whether that’s liking, sharing or commenting. For Sunny Bird PR, it was important for us to increase our engagement by 100% in order to meet our business objectives and grow a following on social media. We researched some of the best ways to increase our engagement in 2019 and found that video was the most successful format. Videos on Facebook have dominated the channel in the past year so we knew that we had to implement the format in our strategy. Statistically, video posts get 59% more engagement than normal posts. In terms of the type of video, Facebook prioritises live videos in the news feed. In fact, live videos are likely to get three times as much engagement than regular videos according to our research so they should be created daily.

Over the course of the month, there were many posts which we thought would increase engagement based on our research but it’s important to note that different things work for different channels. For example, we thought that a post asking people for the best UK festivals would increase engagement, but the results were poor (with only 11 engagements!) and we realised this was because our fans couldn’t take anything away from the post. There was no knowledge to gain and no genuine reason for our fans to interact (and it wasn’t a video!). 

Our most engaged post was a live video which discussed some recent networking events we had been to. We asked our audience to interact with the video and shared our top tips on networking. The post reached 1,400 people, provoking 50 reactions, comments and shares.

It’s important to post inspiring content that will encourage people to interact. Ask your fans leading questions and encourage them to comment on the posts without making it too obvious that you are asking for engagement. The result? If you have a high engagement on your post, more people will see it because Facebook prioritises what it thinks people want to see on the news feed.

It’s worth nothing that Facebook engagement also goes hand in hand with the number of posts on your channel. If you’re posting ten times a day, the content will get lost in the news feed, so we recommend posting two times per day maximum. Just to reiterate, every Facebook page channel works differently so try experimenting on post numbers to work out the best structure for your channel.

By the end of January, we had increased our engagement rate on Facebook by 117% with the final week’s engagement tripling (hint*Facebook Lives!).

Reach

Facebook reach is the number of people that will see your posts on their news feed, whether that’s paid for (advertising) or organically (without advertising). It differs from engagement because people might see your posts without actually interacting with them. For this challenge, we wanted to increase our Facebook reach organically without spending any money on advertising.

Although it presents more of a challenge in 2019, an increase in Facebook reach is important because with over one billion Facebook users, you want your company to be seen as much as possible. Organic reach is absolutely free and every user that sees your post is just as important as the other. Increasing organic reach is an uphill battle, but it’s certainly a climb worth taking part in.

The good news? Facebook engagement can affect reach tremendously. If you’re posting content that’s encouraging interactions, Facebook will automatically move it up the news feed, thus increasing the number of people who will see your posts.

In order to increase our reach, we focused on increasing our engagement by planning posts that would prompt reactions.

Immediately, we thought putting a post out looking for bloggers would increase our reach by prompting our audience to share the post, but the results were surprisingly low with a reach of only 459 people (head over to the Twitter blog to see how differently these posts can do on other channels!). If you do have more than one social media platform, try experimenting with the same posts to see how differently the posts might work on each platform.

By the end of January, we had increased our reach on Facebook with the final week’s reach doubling. (Hint* Increase engagement not reach, reach will happen if you increase engagement!)

Page Likes

Interestingly (and annoyingly!) people can see your content without having to like your page, but page likes are so important for a brand. Essentially, the more page likes you have, the more credible your business seems.

To increase our page likes, we invited all of our friends and family to like our page, as well as targeting local businesses to like our page. When it comes to your business page, make your employees admins of the page (in page roles) and get them to invite their friends and family too.

From our research we also found that good content and engagement will also increase page likes organically. See it as a reward; if your Facebook post is doing really well you might find that your page likes start to stream in. It’s a win win for everyone.

By the end of January, we managed to increase our page likes by 197%. In just one week, we gained 141 page likes which double our page likes for the whole of December! This was a combination of posting tailored content and inviting people to like our page.

Summary

Just remember, what worked on our Facebook page channel might work differently on yours so it’s important to do your research before you set off, and that’s a combination of industry research and analysing your own page. Don’t forget to experiment! We wouldn’t have achieved a 117% engagement increase without overcoming some hurdles at the beginning. And use Facebook live!

Beating the Algorithms on LinkedIn

The Challenge

The challenge was to improve all areas of engagement and reach on the SBPR social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn) by 100% from the December figures by the end of January. Although we work on these channels every day and do our best to stay abreast of the latest algorithms, we doubled our hours and spent 60 hours on SBPR social media in January to ensure that we hit those 100% growth targets. This social media challenge has not only got us up to speed with what’s new on each channel but has also demonstrated the amount of hours that a company needs to invest in order to achieve real (and organic) growth on social media.

LinkedIn Overview

LinkedIn is famous for connecting professionals all over the world and is often seen as the Facebook for business people. It’s associated with finding a new job or as a Rolodex for sales people, but LinkedIn can also be used as a valuable tool for business growth.

As a business page you don’t have a strong presence on the professionals’ platform but as a person it’s much easier to engage with other people to build a community and following. As an agency we run the Sunny Bird PR LinkedIn through Sunny’s personal account rather than on a business page for this reason. For our clients we run a mix of company pages and personal pages depending on their needs, flexibility and restrictions. In addition to considering the type of account you use, there are a number of things you can do to maximise your LinkedIn presence that we have tried and tested for you.

LinkedIn Challenges

People barely use LinkedIn (in terms of time spent on the platform) when compared to other social media channels. The majority of people use it for less than two hours a week and only 40% of users log on to the platform on a daily basis. This mean that when people do visit, they tend to browse fast and efficiently.

Unlike Facebook, you won’t get penalised for posting too much so our approach with Sunny’s LinkedIn has been to share posts that we think will be of interest to the business community, analysing these on a weekly basis to see which types of posts perform best. The only problem with using a person’s account over a company is that there are no analytic tools (an oversight we think on LinkedIn’s part as it’s such a powerful tool). As a result we can only see which posts have received the most views, likes and comments so on this platform, views is how we’re measuring reach – how many people have seen that post. And the number of likes and comments is how we’re measuring engagement – how many people are engaging with our posts.

LinkedIn Audience

What we’ve found really interesting working on Sunny’s LinkedIn is that the posts we thought would work haven’t and the best performing posts have really surprised us. We assumed (we have been warned against assuming but it’s all to easy to do) that as LinkedIn is a business platform then followers and connections would be interested in business news, industry news, PR tips, results we’d achieved etc. This has very much not been the case.

A great example comes from our second-best performing post ever – or since we started analysing posts in September 2017 – which was a video of the team presenting Raluca, one of our interns, with a leaving present. The video was viewed by over 5,300 people and we can only summon up the following explanations:

1.       It’s a video – videos often perform better on LinkedIn (although saying that, we post several videos a week so why is this one so much better?)

2.       It’s light-hearted – as what can be quite a dry platform, it may be this post has done well due to its frivolous nature

3.       It’s feel-good – demonstrating SBPR as a caring company that cares about its staff

The point is to never assume, don’t think you know who your audience are before you have actually met them and tested them.

LinkedIn Followers

In December 2018, Sunny had 4,046 followers which was an increase by 75 from November. This meant the challenge was to gain more than 150 followers by the end of January. We connected with people who had attended our Reaching Millions PR & Publicity courses, with people who had similar interests and those that were suitable from LinkedIn’s suggested connections. By making a concerted effort to grow followers and investing that extra time we increased Sunny’s followers by 178 in January to a grand total of 4,224.

LinkedIn Tips

After extensive research on the recent algorithms as well as lots of experimentation, here is an overview of what we learnt including some tips and tricks for getting the most out of LinkedIn:

You Are the Expert

This is something we talk about a lot on our Reaching Millions courses, you are the expert, you know more about your industry then most other people. Sharing that knowledge with the business community on LinkedIn is a great way of attracting followers. We often share features that we secure for clients on social media and these used to be a very showy affair ‘We achieved this aren’t we great look at us’ style but with the knowledge sharing ethos in mind we’ve changed that to ‘this feature was secured by….’

Videos

For LinkedIn 30-second long videos are recommended to work best with the algorithms. We have always posted a number of videos each week knowing this but paid special attention in January to which type of videos (content/length/style/format etc) were performing best.

Although it’s important to understand the value of videos and ensure you post them regularly, LinkedIn does not feel as strongly about them as Facebook does. In December, not one of our three best performing posts included a video. Our best performing post from December was a post thanking our new and existing clients for a fabulous year, this is a no-brainer, it performed so well because of all the companies we tagged, as well as it being a feel-good success post.

From our best performing posts in January, only one of those was a video and it was our third best performing post of the month in terms of views. This was another ‘funny dance’ video of the team celebrating the successes of Becca, our current intern, we did also tag in the BBC as she had secured a radio interview for one of our clients which would have helped improve its reach.

By looking at both these posts, it actually demonstrates the importance of tagging in brands in an authentic way to improve the reach of your LinkedIn posts.

Text Only

For years now it’s been drummed into us that we need fancy photos or videos to make social work, well it seems that we may have visually peaked. An overuse of images on social media can actually lead to what is known as ‘banner blindness’ which may account for the latest studies showing social engagement is down by 50 percent in just the last few years. You know people are trying to get your attention with a video or picture – try just text – it can come across as more authentic and ‘real’. Some of our research cited basic text posts as generating more likes, comments, and views than any other form of content on LinkedIn. Judging by our own analytics, I wouldn’t suddenly ditch photos and videos altogether as these still perform very well on Sunny’s page but we did have a text only post appear in the top three best performing posts for January.

This post is a great example of using the business community to your advantage, people love to help (think about how well asking for recommendations posts do on Facebook) so if you need something or someone, try asking the community on LinkedIn.

 Actually Engage!

This is probably one of the most important tips and the one that makes the most difference. We really can’t just rely on pushing out posts and hoping people will engage, we actually need to make the effort to engage with them. People talk about engagement a lot, but what does it look like? Here are some specific tips to help you engage authentically with your audience:

• Comment on your own post – reply to other people’s comments in a meaningful way

• Spark discussions on an article – these are great for in-depth discussions which lead to more authentic connections with your followers

• Ask for feedback – we’ve found the LinkedIn community to be very helpful when we’re looking for advice or opinions on design ideas for example

• Actually respond to comments – this sounds obvious but it’s not uncommon to see a post by someone with several comments underneath, none of which have been engaged with by the author

• Genuinely ask people to give their opinion on subjects that you want to learn more about – this goes back to people loving to help, we’ve found lots of willing connections on LinkedIn happy to some and share their invaluable knowledge with the team in return for a free place on one of our courses for example

Articles

It seems that LinkedIn are pushing their article feature; everywhere we went looking for news on LinkedIn algorithms we were told to “write an article”. The feature encourages users to post short blurbs that focus on storytelling and promises that with just a few hundred words you can produce content that grabs attention.

We have tried publishing articles a number of times on LinkedIn and have been rewarded each time with what can at best be described as tumbleweed. ‘They’ say that by using the native article feature on LinkedIn, every time you publish a piece, your connections get a notification, giving you that extra chance to get more engagement than organically posting on your feed. From our experience however this is not an easy win, we have not found that it engages people at all and our lowest performing posts of the month outperform the articles.

The Grand Finale

By working our way diligently through the online research available and by taking some time to try out the various tips and tricks we fine-tuned our LinkedIn processes and by the end of January we had managed to grow in followers, views, likes and comments. Here we have our best performing posts from the month. This post outstripped all others for the following reasons:

·         It’s a post featuring Sunny and people connect and engage much more easily with a person rather than a brand, article, stat or graphic

·         It’s exciting news (about Sunny’s new dress company) that people are interested in

·         It’s feel-good news – people love finding out good news about people they know

·         They’re beautiful photos including a very cute one of Sophia (Sunny’s daughter) and we don’t care what ‘they’ say - images still rule the internet!

·         It tells the story about how Sunny has set up the Perfect Dress Company – delivering the ‘how to’ rather than just showing off

·         Sunny has engaged with the comments demonstrating authentic engagement

This post neatly encapsulates all our learnings from the month and it is then no surprise that nearly 5,000 people have seen it making it our third best performing post of all time. What we think this post most definitely demonstrates is the need to never ‘do’ social media but to truly ‘be social’.

If you would like to find out how the team can help you grow your LinkedIn channel organically by 100% get in touch on 01202 293095 or email hello@sunnybirdpr.com.

Journalist of the month!

Lucy Gornall

This month we asked award-winning journalist and fitness guru Lucy Gornall the notorious Sunny Bird PR questions. Lucy is the Health and Fitness Editor across TI Media’s weekly women’s magazines along with the monthly titles Fit & Well and Woman & Home. When she’s not commissioning features and writing copy Lucy can be found at a 6am HITT session or planning her next exotic adventure. Here’s what Lucy had to say…

1. What are the 5 words that best describe you?

Organised, impatient, stubborn, happy, determined.

2. What magazine do you love reading and why?

Aside from the ones I work on…Men’s Health. I love the workouts. 

3. What is your favourite book?

Any atlas.

4. Which song makes you dance?

Avicii – Levels.

5. What has been your best career moment?

The day I went from an intern to a writer and was given my first job.

6. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

DO NOT worry about what other people think. Don’t follow crowds if you don’t agree with them and always do your best in everything. Don’t ever settle.

7. Where are you happiest?

On a beach, somewhere hot, with no cares, a cocktail and good friends. 

8. Who would be your number one dinner guest be and why?

Victoria Beckham. I worship the ground she walks on!

9. If you could have any superpower, what power would it be and why?

To know what goes on in men’s heads.

10. If you had to ask us one question what would it be?

 What’s the most annoying thing about journalists?

“We rely on journalists to achieve great things for our clients so it’s essential for us to have good relationships with them. With cuts in publishing houses and newsrooms nationwide, we know journalists are more pushed for time than ever before and that’s why, as a PR agency, we try to make their lives as easy as possible and never get annoyed as we appreciate how much pressure they are all under!”

The Good, The Bad and The Viral

The team have started 2019 with a creative bang (who said January blues?!) and scoured the world of PR for some inspiring and insightful PR campaigns. From a hard-hitting domestic violence campaign to gravy scented candles and gender-revealing pasta dishes, this month has it all.

So grab a cup of something warm and enjoy the team’s top picks for this month’s Good, Bad and Viral PR campaigns.

Domestic Violence Reversable Poems

Domestic violence charity Refuge launched a hard-hitting Christmas campaign aimed at turning attitudes of domestic violence on their head. Working in partnership with McCann Bristol, the charity ran a series of reversible poems, which, if read normally conjured images of a traditional family Christmas. But when read in from bottom to top the lines revealed the horrors of a household living with domestic violence.

The poetry campaign was promoted across Twitter and on the charity’s website, as part of a global initiative called 16 days of action (25 November – 10 December) to raise awareness of violence against women and girls.  It is part of Refuge’s ongoing mission to help victims of abuse, as research shows two women a week are killed at the hands of a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales, and another three women commit suicide each week as a way of escape.

Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, said: "Domestic abuse is the biggest issue affecting women and children in this country today – it really is a life and death issue. Yet still too few women know how to spot the signs of domestic violence, realise that domestic abuse is a crime or know that Refuge is here to support them.

"We want women to know that, no matter what time of year, no one should suffer in silence and they should ‘turn’ to us for support."

The hard-hitting poems were featured in multiple publications including The Sun, Refinery 29, The Pool, Cosmopolitan and The Independent.

KFC Sold Gravy-scented Candles

What could cheer you up more on Blue Monday than a KFC gravy scented candle?

KFC cleverly launched a limited-edition gravy-scented candle to bring happiness to KFC fanatics on Blue Monday!

There were just 230 limited edition candles up for grabs, they were available on a first-come, first-served basis. They were also free! To accompany the delicious gravy scent, KFC unveiled a new KFChill experience which allows users to listen to sounds of their KFC Gravy Mega Box. Choosing between the sounds of frying chicken, falling fries or simmering gravy.

KFC have released a chicken scented candle and bath bomb in the USA before but this is the first time a KFC scented product has been released in the UK.

This campaign achieved coverage in national newspapers such as The Sun, The Evening Standard and The Mirror, and The Metro!

The Gender-Reveal Lasagna

Is it gross or pure genius? The launch of the gender-reveal lasagna (yes, we know this is not how you spell lasagne – but it is how they’ve spelled it so we kind of have to too!) pretty much broke the internet this month!

US restaurant and catering service, Villa Italian Kitchen, announced that they were introducing a new dish that would reveal the sex of your unborn child – the perfect addiction for your next baby shower?

The Italian creation consists of a secret pink or blue interior, made from layers of cheese, Alfredo sauces and Italian pasta. It doesn’t come cheap though, the dish is priced at $140 and serves 12 people.

Journalists from around the world took to Twitter to discuss the bizarre PR pitch that had just landed in their inbox, with one announcing: “Possibly the best subject line in an email ever: "Gender Reveal Lasagna?! – Villa Italian Kitchen Invites Guests to Celebrate their Bundles of Joy with Boatloads of Cheese!". The noise of tweets resulted in the #LasagnaReveal trending on Twitter.

Despite many negative responses to the latest way to reveal the gender of your little bundle of joy, the stunt did exactly what it set out to do and had everybody talking about it. A cheap photoshoot and some food colouring, and your brand is being talked about across the world! Plus, we’re sure they have been inundated with requests for the sought-after dish, boosting sales.

The news was featured in many publications across the UK and US including Daily Mail, The Independent, The Mirror, Grazia Daily, BuzzFeed, MSN, Metro, I Heart radio.

Clear Channel Homeless Billboard

A company called Clear Channel Sweden has teamed up with the government to protect homeless people when the weather drops to freezing conditions in Stockholm.

The company helped homeless people find their nearest shelter through innovative technology; they swapped the boring ads on billboards with directions to the nearest homeless shelter which we love. Across Stockholm, 53 billboards were activated for the program and they focused on areas that were most commonly used for homeless people. We think this is a brilliant use of technology and makes us happy that it is helping homelessness in one country, even if it is just a little.

Clear Channel International said “thanks to technology, we can develop solutions that can help people and cities”. This campaign had a positive response and featured in multiple publications including The Drum.

Uber links up with Calm to offer wellbeing exercises whilst travelling

Mindfulness and meditation is definitely a buzzword at the moment and it’s something that we’ve got involved with in the Sunny Bird PR office, with many of the team trying out the Calm app for guided meditations, which is why we love this collaboration between Calm and Uber.

The two companies have teamed together to help bring some relaxation to our hectic lives with their meditation exercises for Uber passengers. The apps have released four exercises of varying durations designed to fill a taxi journey lasting 3 minutes, 5.5 minutes, 12 minutes and 30 minutes. The campaign is accompanied by a survey that shows that 54% of Uber riders use their time in a cab to scroll through emails, social media and the news on their smartphones. Uber are aiming to turn taxi rides on their head – turning them into opportunities to relax and unwind.

This great campaign achieved articles in The Independent, Gizmodo, Metro and London Evening Standard.

Journalist of the month!

Our first journalist of the month for 2019 is Sally Beck! Sally writes health and real-life features for all the big hitters including the Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun, Woman, Woman’s Own, Glamour, Bella and Best plus many more. Sally has kindly taken time out of her busy week to answer the notorious Sunny Bird PR questions below…

1.  What are the 5 words that best describe you?

Tenacious definitely, funny, generous, kind and absent-minded.  

2.  What magazine do you love reading and why?

There are so many! It has to be Vanity Fair. Although I love the women’s weeklies like Grazia and Woman’s Own, Vanity Fair has it all, celebrity, fashion, in-depth political features… what’s not to love?

3. What is your favourite book?

I recently read Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It was flagged up by Zadie Smith as one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, and it is. Written in 1937, it’s about a voiceless teenage girl’s journey into womanhood. It’s honest, compelling, and frankly, just a great story. 

4.  Which song makes you dance?

So many but the first that pops into my head is old skool - One Nation Under a Groove by Parliament Funkadelic.

5. What has been your best career moment?

Lordy, I’ve been blessed with a few but the first time I wrote a feature that made a difference was in the 1990s. I was working for a features agency who told me not to report on a young pressure group called Surfers Against Sewage (not a very romantic sounding name), but I did in my own time. SAS were campaigning for clean beaches at a time when Britain’s coastline with awash with waste. My feature made a spread in the Daily Mirror and it launched their campaign. It was picked up by every newspaper, including the broadsheets, and TV news channel and Channel 4 made a documentary about them. I learned to listen and trust my gut instinct.

6. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

Your twenties are for learning about yourself and your capabilities, be kind to yourself along the way. By the time you reach 30, you’ll have it sussed.

7.  Where are you happiest?

On my way to the airport. I love an adventure and I love reporting foreign stories. If it’s a travel story, even better.

8. Who would be your number one dinner guest and why?

Mick Jagger. So many questions I’d like to ask him, starting with ‘how the Stones have managed to stay together for so long?’ It isn't just the money. I’d also love to know what it is about him that beautiful women of all ages find attractive. And it isn’t just his considerable fortune either.

9. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

To eat what I liked and never put on weight. I’m a real gourmet and there’s so much good food and so little time.

10.  If you had to ask us one question what would it be?

What do you love about journalists?

 Our answers…

Jess: Their creativity and passion to write about a wide range of topics.

Georgie: I love journalists that use their position to campaign for things they believe in.

Lizzie: I love reading articles and features by journalists that really enjoy writing; I love seeing their own use of language, style and sentence structure.

Laura: Their power to write articles that millions of people will read and be influenced by.

Alex: That they always have their finger on the pulse and are always one step ahead with the latest news, trends and stories.

Rachael: Their ability to find the best news angle and make an interesting read for different audiences.

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad & The Viral - Christmas Special

As 2018 draws to a close and we head into the holiday season we’ve been taking a look at some of our favourite Christmas campaigns from 2018. From scripts painted on train platforms, to stepping into Christmas with Elton John and slightly-more-exciting-than-usual socks we’ve narrowed down a plethora of Christmas PR campaigns to our favourite four… 

It’s A Wonderful Line

Recently, the issue of mental health at Christmas has come to the forefront of the media, with many charities raising awareness that for some, it is not ‘the most wonderful time of the year’. In order to raise awareness of the issue and help people struggling over the holiday period, Virgin Trains has teamed up with their long-term charity partner Rethink Mental Illness for an uplifting festive campaign.

The script of the classic Christmas film, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is appearing on train platforms over advent to show how powerful simple acts of kindness can be. The 1946 film is famed for being an uplifting Christmas staple, but it also deals with the difficult story of one man’s struggle with a life that hasn’t gone to plan.

The bright yellow text covers 7.5km of platforms on the Virgin Trains route from London to Glasgow at stations including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Carlisle and Glasgow. The platform text also includes online links offering simple ways to intervene when someone is struggling with mental health.

Throughout December, travellers will also be able to watch It’s A Wonderful Life on-board Virgin Trains while volunteers from Rethink Mental Illness will be fundraising at stations throughout the campaign period.

This thoughtful Christmas PR campaign has received widespread coverage in the likes of the Daily Mail, Stylist, Huff Post, The I, Lonely Planet and Heart FM.

Follow the journey on social media with #itsawonderfulline.

Merry Greggs-Mas!

We’ve all fallen victim to the Christmas shopping mania - rushing into town to pick-up last-minute gifts only to be met with crowds of people and a rather miserable drizzle that seems perfectly designed to make your hair frizzy. Luckily, Greggs are on hand to help this year with its free gift-wrapping service.

To help alleviate some of the stress that the build up to Christmas brings, Greggs hired their own Christmas elves to treat customers to free gift wrapping whilst they enjoy a complimentary glass of mulled wine. The campaign was inspired by a survey of over 2,000 people that revealed 69% of the nation find Christmas stressful.

The stores also brought out their own range of Christmas stocking fillers such as branded Christmas jumpers and a sausage roll phone case (we’re adding that straight to our Christmas list)!

The campaign achieved coverage in regional papers such as Birmingham Mail and Time Out magazine. We think it was a great way to attract new customers and get the loyal ones in the Christmas spirit!

The Nation’s Least Favourite Christmas Present…

We’ve all been there… attempting to buy Christmas gifts, only to resort to Marks & Sparks socks again. But, this year, Gigs in Scotland have cleverly taken on the nation’s favourite plan B Christmas gift with a twist…

Gigs in Scotland have turned the gift into a must-have for every music fan with their range of ‘Sock n Roll’ socks, which are actually a ticket into some of the country’s best music events for 2019!

Each pair of socks comes loaded with a unique gift card code, redeemable online at Ticketmaster and include tickets for TRANSMT festival and Summer Sessions. They’re the perfect gift for music-lovers!

We love the way this campaign combines the classic (and often deemed ‘boring’) gift of socks and gift cards to create a funny, relatable and most importantly, desirable gift that solves the woes of many Christmas shoppers. And with coverage on the Scottish Sun, Glasgow Live and Edinburgh Live it can definitely be considered a PR success too.

Step into Christmas with Elton

Every year we eagerly wait to see what heart-warming, tear-jerking advert John Lewis has created, but this year it’s caused mixed reviews. The short films featured in the run up to Christmas have previously featured Monty the penguin, trampolining dogs, monsters under the bed and the man on the moon, but for 2018 the brand has resorted to old-fashioned star power to sell Christmas with Sir Elton John singing his Your Song anthem.

The advert highlights the importance of gift-giving and how Elton’s gift of a piano from his grandmother helped make him the global icon he is today.

For the first time, John Lewis introduced an experiential element to its Christmas campaign this year using 83,000 stores to screen the film at 6am before it was officially shared on social media at 8am (also a breakaway from tradition as customers usually wait for it to appear on their TVs first).

Customers also had the chance to step in to the set of the advert and interact with props in 2,000 sq. ft experiential space. John Lewis even hosted a musical light show featuring Elton’s ‘Step into Christmas’ from the shop window every 30 minutes on the day it launched.

As much as we all love Elton, this campaign received mixed reviews with some viewers slamming it as an ‘awful’ advert for not being about Christmas. Some have also complained that the advert is a plug for Elton’s biopic ‘Rocketman’ set to launch next year and his last world tour. Another issue raised is that John Lewis don’t actually sell pianos, but since the complaints started rolling in, they have started selling them - the first time in decades.

Whilst this campaign received mixed reviews, we liked it for it’s truly integrated nature. No longer relying on just an advert to get Christmas sales up, John Lewis and Partners utilised creative, experiential PR stunts and social media to boost their presence.

As usual for any John Lewis Christmas advert, it has been shared endlessly with articles on Vogue, Independent, Guardian, Evening Standard, Daily Mail, The Sun, I News and Sky and many more.

Best Bits of 2018!

As we move rapidly through the festive season and ever closer to the new year, the team have been busy reflecting on one hell of a year! As this year draws to a close we thought we'd share with you our best bits from 2018!

The Team

The team celebrated a host of promotions and new starters this year including Lizzie who was promoted to PR Account Director and Alex who was promoted to Junior Account Manager. Lu, Georgie, Laura, Jess, and Kelly all joined the team in 2018 on a permanent basis and we also welcomed Raluca and Rachael as interns. A busy year indeed! #dreamteam 

The Clients

Our growing team in 2018 was thanks to our growing client base this year with an amazing 20 new clients joining us! 

The Courses

2018 was the year that also saw the SBPR team deliver our 'Reaching Millions' PR & Publicity Courses which were so well received that they've turned from a one-time event to a regular occurrence. Held in London and at our offices in Bournemouth, we've now had over 100 attendees not including our social media courses, strategy workshops or press release workshops! 

The Work

In between courses, workshops and strategy clinics we achieved some amazing results for our clients this year. Highlights include 60 features for new client Jimmy's Iced Coffee as well getting Jim's face on the front of The Grocer, Dr William Bird from Intelligent Health being featured on BBC's Spotlight, securing 90 VIP guests at the launch of luxury Chinese restaurant 1805 in just five days, getting 4 million listeners for Ramsay Health Care UK in just one day of radio interviews, securing 200 VIP guests at the Bluewater Spa Launch in the Connaught Hotel, securing brand-new client Carbon Retreat a feature in the Daily Mail just days after signing with SBPR, increasing the reach of Miss Dorset 2018 by 11 million people, securing over 120 features for The Green House Hotel including the Carbon Cost of Weddings and the UK's first Vegan Wedding Package, securing 170 VIP guests as well as BBC coverage for the opening of Revolución de Cuba bar in Southampton, and getting our client Tara Howard from the Venus Awards on ITV's This Morning!

The Social

This year the SBPR team have achieved some incredible results on the SBPR social media channels with our Facebook reach increasing 533% from 3,000 to over 20,000 this year, a 140% increase in followers on Instagram, our Linked In followers increasing by 87% to over 4,000, and our engagement on Twitter increasing 67% from 0.9% to 1.5%!

The Awards

This year, Sunny Bird PR proudly sponsored the PR Excellence Award at both the Dorset and London Venus Awards. The whole journey was fun, inspirational and rewarding, we met so many incredible women who were all achieving so much in their fields, it was truly very difficult to choose only one winner for each area! We were also fortunate enough to celebrate three of our own clients being finalists in the Dorset Venus Awards (in different categories!) and got to celebrate with the lovely Kelly as she won the Sustainability Award! And at the London Venus Awards we had two of our clients in the finals, Marisa Peer and Alice Morrison, and we also had our resident journalist, Steph Clarkson in the finals for Journalist of the Year!

We would also like to thank Tara and the Venus team for choosing me for the front cover of their programme, it was such an honour to be chosen and so much fun doing the photo shoot - thanks as well to Tailor Made Estate Agents for letting us use their fabulous properties in Sandbanks for the location of the shoot.

As well as sponsoring an award we were also shortlisted for an award by Team Jobs at the Dorset Business Awards. SBPR were up for Team of the Year award and we were all super excited at even being nominated. We were up against some stiff competition and didn't win this year...but watch out 2019...we're coming to get you!

2018 was the year of the awards as we attended the OK! Beauty Awards with our longest-standing client, Good Night. The SBPR had curated a social media campaign for Good Night's latest product, Sleeping Beauty, thanks to a great product and our hard work....we won (and we got to meet lovely Peter Andre which was easily the highlight of the year for some of us!)!

Needless to say we’ve all had a truly fabulous year both as a business and as a team. A massive thank you to all our clients as we wouldn’t be here without you! And we massively look forward to enjoying next year with you all too.