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The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
Weve all heard about it by now. Its been plastered all over the news and could reportedly affect up to one-third of the U.S. population. Target announced on January 10 the theft of personal information of as many as 70 million additional customers as part of the companys payment card data breach in December 2013. When added to previously disclosed numbers, that brings the grand total to 110 million impacted consumers.
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The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
The tech team here at MSLGROUP in Boston wanted to go beyond the media attention swarming the Target breach. We focused in on how this incident made significant social media chatter, and what it can teach us about the relationship between social and traditional media. To do this, we turned to NUVI, the new Business Wire social media monitoring tool. After setting up a search with specific terms and keywords , NUVI churned out real-time data: who was tweeting what, who has the most influence, which links were shared the most, the sentiment of the tweets and much, much more. We monitored the aftermath of the Target breach from December 17, 2013 to January 9, 2014more than 77,500 tweets; Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Google+ posts; and mentions on blogsand came to three general conclusions.
The peak of conversation happened on December 19th at 12pm, During this spike, there were 5,649 mentions. The most frequently used keywords during that time were Data breach, 40 million customers, Christmas, Hackers Stole Your Data and Massive Target Breach.
(+) Positive conversations included the words safe, want, resolved, secure and free credit monitoring. (-) Negative conversations included the words stolen, affected, frustration, apologizes and scams.
The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
DeFinitions
Influencers: The Influencers List and score are determined by NUVIs own algorithm laid on top of Klouts algorithm. NUVIs algorithm culls information together from the topic of the individuals tweets, info in the individuals bio, what industry they tweet about most often, etc. Reshares: When one person retweets anothers tweet. Reach: The direct number of people who can see a tweet.
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The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
Target also released a slew of subsequent content including press releases, blog posts and videos. We tried to determine if the videos increased the social traction of those pieces of content. Because Target distributed the videos within blog posts, it was hard to gauge with the NUVI tool how they impacted engagement. However, no subsequent post was shared nearly as much as the original press release.
ber 20, 2013 A Message fr om CEO Greg 3 1 g Steinhafel 0 2 , te 0 about Target a 2 d r p be s Payment C U m a e i c ard Issues d e De M S y I t L i PO Stores . ecur S . NEA U S n i N a I a t t M ard Da C t t Da n e 3 e 1 0 m 2 y g , 9 a 1 r r oP cembe Ta POLIS De ed Access t MINNEAPOLIS Decem
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Overall, Twitter users shared the @Target handle 944 times, making it the second most shared handle for the period covered. The moral of the story? Target did its best to control messaging and to show its presence in both traditional and social media, and did it pretty well. Rather than shying away and hiding in the wake of the breach, Target got out front and center to address the story and make sure its message was heard.
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The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
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Target Investigating Data Breach
-Brian Krebs, Krebs on Security December 18, 2013
While Krebs piece was not as highly reshared as other media stories, and his Twitter account was not ranked as one of the top ten influencers for the period covered, he was mentioned in 86 articles about the breach. Plus, his Twitter followers grew by nearly 3,000. This tells us that while Krebs influenced the media, the media influenced Twitter. And, in this case, the most important influencerthe person who broke the storylargely flew under the radar of social media monitoring.
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The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
USA Today 96
WSJ 99
The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
A mix of media outlet-, journalist- and analyst-owned social media properties socialized content with the widest spread. The handles whose tweets spread the farthest with retweets and reshares were:
@BenDiPietro1 @foxnewsvideo @ABC @germanotes @KimBhasin @GMA @ABCNewsRadio @NewsMatt @ForbesTech @PierreTABC
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7,687,962 7,199,282 4,649,309 3,871,333 3,709,412 2,973,971 2,957,108 2,798,444 2,684,125 2,212,030
The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
In the first 48 hours, when looking at the data hour by hour, non-media Twitter handles would occasionally appear on NUVIs index of Top 10 Influencers, but would quickly drop back off the list in the next hour. This all comes down to timing. When a non-media Twitter handle created chatter by issuing tweets, that handle had a chance to pop on the radar for a short period of time before competing with a tweet from a media contact. These non-media handleswhile boasting very high influencer scoreswere not able to stay on the list for any significant amount of time. The non-media influencers who cracked the top ten list, at least for short periods of time during that initial two-day period, were:
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80 80 80 79 78 73 71 71 69 68
@KamalFaridi
The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
Lessons Learned
Taking a step back, what does this mean for those of us involved with social media management?
1. Social media monitoring is a marathon, not a sprint: Flipping on social media monitoring only after a major event or piece of news will distort the reality of your social influence world. Media-owned social media properties will drown out the influencers that matter as part of an ongoing campaign. To find the non-media influencers impacting your market, monitor the social media universe for the long haul. When news hits, look within the resulting media coverage to find influencers that are included in the articles. Track those influencers over a quiet period without news to gauge their impact. Only with long-term monitoring and analysis can a company understand the key social media influencers that will impact online engagement and community development. 2. Traditional crisis rules apply to new media: Follow Targets lead on this. Be proactive, honest and communicate. This is key to earn trust and try to control the message. As Target issued press releases or posted to the blog, it also issued a tweet with the content to create consistent and open communication across all channels. 3. For breaking news, nothing beats traditional media: No doubt about itthe social media universe responded to the Target breach. However, the top ten influencers were all Twitter handles owned by media outlets. Seven of the top ten most shared URLs were links to articles from the likes of NBC News, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and CNN Money. While it is imperative to engage in social media, nothing beats mentions in top-tier publications. That is what, more often than not, moves the visibility needle for any brand.
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The Target Data Breach: What it Teaches PR Pros About Social Media
MSLGROUPs technology practice works with innovators of all sizes, from venturebacked disrupters to some of the largest brands in the world. Our clients leverage innovation to transform business, power the connected consumer, and even save lives and the planet. As a global technology agency, weve taken hundreds of companies from garages to greatness, and re-ignited many established brands to expand leadership and forge new markets. Our content-centric strategies are rooted in a deep understanding of clients business and technology. We can draw the architecture on the white board, but more importantly we translate those technical advantages and innovations into fascinating content, connecting market and consumer benefits to strategic audiences to boost engagement, sales and market brand and leadership. Follow us on our blog at blog.mslgroup.com.