The Role of PR in Social Media - a podcast with Doug Haslam and Shel Holtz

Whether you work in the mailroom or sit in the C-suite in a big company, you most certainly have heard about the media revolution now underway. Social media is here to stay, and knowing what’s happening in the vanguard is important for everyone in the media business today.

How does the social media revolution affect the spokesperson role in your company? Should social media voices be controlled? How should they be trained and in what messages?

These are the kinds of issues keeping PR professionals up at night. To address them, Ann Handley at Marketing Profs helped me bring in a couple of experts - Doug Haslam and Shel Holtz. They offer some sage advice on social media, along with a “state of the union” view of PR today. We hope you enjoy the discussion and will join in.



Link to Original Audio Source

Signup for this Podcast Series


About Doug

Doug is a media and public relations professional with a career dating back to 1989. Starting as a jazz DJ, then cutting tape and pointing fingers (in a non-accusatory, rather more of a “cue-speak now!” manner) at public radio’s best, he embarked on a technology public relations career just in time to ride the Internet bubble. Now engaged wholeheartedly in social media, he has been plying the PR trade, as well as blogging and podcasting, with Topaz Partners since 2005. While also engaged in local blogging and Second Life, he is trying to maintain Gischeleman’s blog to catch all the other thoughts he feels like throwing out there.

About Shel

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. His clients have included Intel, Sears, PepsiCo, Petrobras, Aetna, John Deere, Manulife Financial, Hewitt Associates, General Mills, USAA, Applied Materials, Symantec, Raytheon, The World Bank, Amdocs, Disney, FedEx, Freescale Semiconductor, The International Monetary Fund, National Geographic, The American Red Cross, and Monsanto.

Before forming Holtz Communication + Technology in February 1996, Shel was senior communications consultant and the communications practice leader for Alexander & Alexander Consulting Group in San Francisco, California. (A&ACG has since been acquired by Aon Consulting.)

Shel has more than 30 years of organizational communications experience in both corporate and consulting environments. He is experienced in employee communications, compensation and benefits communications, corporate public relations, media relations, financial communications, investor relations, and marketing communications. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, communicating business initiatives, and communications research.

Please visit Shel at his blog, http://blog.holtz.com, and his podcast feed, “For Immediate Release,” at http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz.

 

Reputation Management for New Media

A strong brand helps to communicate that a company and its offerings are relevant and uniquely able to meet customer needs. Most companies today pour millions into brand-building campaigns to generate that external awareness, which in theory can speed up the sales cycle. This has become the accepted norm, taught to us by the very advertising agencies we hire.

But all this great awareness can come crashing down on you with one reputation disaster online.

Good and bad reputations are opposite sides of the brand coin. And the ability of consumers today to share their opinions of your brand with just a click of a mouse levels the playing field for all and puts your brand in constant peril.

A solid reputation reflects the partners you do business with, the strength of your management team, your company’s financial performance to date and, ultimately, the types of employees you hire and will hire in the future. But literally millions of customers and prospects engage in social communities on the Web today. Facebook alone has 50 million community members, with over half of them logging in daily! Couple that with the ease and ability to create a quick video or podcast, or post a negative comment on a blog, and you have a recipe for reputation disaster.

Unfortunately, when a reputation disaster occurs, it is becoming more difficult for your PR team to execute using the usual crisis management playbook, because the type of media, placement of media and approach to each medium differs. This fragmentation means it will become increasingly difficult to neutralize criticism and restore reputations when something happens.

Additionally, the Internet already has built-in, automatic reputation ranking systems. Currently examples are Google for companies and eBay for vendors. These ranking engines are quickly becoming extremely effective ways for people to determine how reputable your company is before deciding whether to do business with you.

The bottom line: As media continue to fragment with the explosion of yet more social networks, aggregators like Google will become increasingly important in helping users decide whether or not to do business with you.

So what is a company to do?

I recommend a three-step approach to reputation management called “MRO”:

1. Monitor – Companies should designate an employee or hire an external service to monitor, moderate and drive positive discussions.
2. Respond – Technical staff should be designated to respond to any product or support issues that arise from communities and take the lead in responding with action plans to any negative sentiments that develop.
3. Optimize – Companies need to proactively optimize their reputation online over time by exploiting the positive aspects of their brand (an example here is GE, whose Ecomagination is demonstrating the company’s commitment to keeping the environment clean).

Each MRO element is designed to give you a point person for this reputation-protection trifecta:

Monitor gives you a way to see and engage in conversations before they get out of control. People will be a lot more polite online when they know you are listening. The challenge is learning about conversations that arise quickly. This is where you need reputation bulldogs, who can be out there watching all the time.

Respond gives you a dedicated point person internally who can talk about your product or service with authority and provide clarity on how you might resolve an issue. As I said above, this should be a technical person rather than a communications person. This will convey the company’s commitment to address the issue.

And finally, Optimize. Optimizing your reputation in the marketplace means you go beyond just keeping it on track. You invest in the online aspects of your reputation just as you invest in other dimensions of your brand.

Having a strong brand doesn’t mean you have a strong reputation. Ignoring this critical factor is a risk that companies can’t afford to take today.

 

Create “Experiential” Communities

A recent issue of Wired magazine highlighted a company creating “alternative reality games,” or ARGs. If you missed the article, go back and read it – it is a must read!

I feel this way because the piece gave me a glimpse at the edge of innovation where communities are using unique combinations of online and offline tools. It changed the way I will think about combining them forever!

ARG is a new kind of interactive story-telling-meets-treasure-hunt:

“These narratives unfold in fragments, in all sorts of media, from Web sites to phone calls to live events, and the audience pieces together the story from shards of information. The task is too complicated for any one person, but the Web enables a collective intelligence to emerge to assemble the pieces, solve the mysteries, and in the process, tell and retell the story online. The narrative is shaped — and ultimately owned — by the audience in ways that other forms of storytelling cannot match. No longer passive consumers, the players live out the story.”

These types of games can be very effective because they offer a way to engage people in our over-communicated society, with a hint of mystery propelled totally by the viral nature of the game. There is no marketing here, just pure engagement!

So what should you do and how can you benefit?

1. Stop thinking about Web 2.0 tools in isolation. Don’t do podcasting just to do podcasting. Yes, you need to understand the tactics, but they are a means to a much bigger end.
2. You can try to use all Web 2.0 tools on one site – but that doesn’t create a community! I know. I tried, and it’s not pretty! Seriously, a community won’t exist without user-generated content. And mastering all the Web 2.0 tools out there won’t get you that content unless you find a way to build a community.
3. Building a community for community’s sake isn’t a good idea. I believe it is arrogant of marketers to think we need another community. Instead, find an existing community and give it the tools to deliver a rich online experience.
4. Finally, once you have the community built, explore how to truly engage your community, perhaps with an ARG. That may seem very B2C, but some sort of treasure hunt or other contest can get people inputting content and engage them beyond the typical community.

 

Forget Metrics and Start Behavioral Targeting!

Cost per click, cost per acquisition, pay per click, hits, time spent, unique users, unique visitors… the list goes on and on. With a bevy of systems and channels for marketing, how does a marketer make sense of it all?

Well, fuggedabout metrics and start building your behavioral targeting systems – ASAP!

Let me explain. I don’t care about impression counts or numbers of unique users – those metrics are meaningless when you’re talking to your lines of business. There is only one metric that counts, and that is SALES. At the end of the day, if you don’t make the cash register ring, you won’t be worried about impression counts.

OK, great you say, but how do you do that?

You have to start profiling behavior on your site in a way that you can collect data from organic traffic coming in, as well as any referral traffic arriving via Google and other sources. With a simple cookie, you can ID returning visitors. You also can add to their online profile if they engage in activities on your site such as downloading a white paper, listening to a podcast, reading a blog post.

With this type of information, paired with their profile, you can continue to communicate with them via email about interests they are expressing on your site.

I feel this is critical for marketers to be working on. The number of channels is exploding before our eyes – YouTube, blogs, wikis, etc. How are you going to track all that??

You have to have a baseline behavioral tracking system in place. Otherwise, you won’t get to second base by adding tracking from sister sites like blogs or wikis, which you launched for some marketing campaign but are not part of your domain.

Behavioral targeting is the only way to get real data about what a client, prospect, account or group of like buyers might want. It’s how you can help move the targeting needle for the sales team by continuing to nurture them until they reach the elusive moment of need for your product or service.

 

Build your customer research network before you need it!

Do you do traditional customer research?

Do you find that the loudest person in the room tends to skew the results?

What if you had a research network you could tap into at any point in time to get feedback? Well, you can, and communities that are built online can help you do it.

I spoke with Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights and an advocate of customer-driven market research. I got a chance to ask him how customer-driven research works and how the best companies are taking themselves out of the center of research efforts and putting their best customers there. He also gives us some sage advice for this year.



Link to Original Audio Source

About Dan

Dan Neely serves as Networked Insights’ Chief Executive Officer. Dan brings to Networked Insights more than 10 years of management, operational and entrepreneurial experience with technology, manufacturing and services companies. He is an expert in customer intelligence and has hands on experience with the challenges companies face in gathering relevant, real-time insights about their customers.

Prior to starting Networked Insights, Dan co-founded Market Performance Partners, which guided companies in market ownership through customer intelligence. Previously, he served as Director of Strategy for Scient. Scient was the fastest growing services company in history, had a successful IPO, grew to more than 2,000 colleagues and launched more than 40 ebusinesses. Before Scient, Dan worked at Deloitte and was part of a team that launched esurance, the first online insurance company.

Dan holds a BBA from the University of Georgia.

 

Buzz Marketing highlights from this week ...

The New World of Immersive Games
The new edge of how to use the web and all web 2.0 tactics for marketing. Simply the best article I have ever read on where things are headed, period. A MUST READ!
(tags: Alternative Reality Games)

Social Media - This Has Got to Stop
Amen Lena - I think we are all getting burnt out on more social networks and twittering. Shouldn't we be out there talking to clients?
(tags: Social Media)

Email Blows Away All Other Social Networks
OMG! Max is totally right - Social Networks would be no where without email - and you never could network over to someone else (say using LinkedIn) without it. Good call Max!
(tags: email)

Imeem: A Distributed Music Powerhouse?
This is an interesting service and cool model for other services. "I think other UGC sites should take note of this model. Use a central hub to provide community tools, monetize, and aggregate content. Use widgets and apps to push that content out in syndicated manner.
(tag: widget)

 

Reputation Gaming with the Sybil Attack

Online reputation management, be it a personal reputation or a corporate reputation, has become a growing issue for marketers over the past few years. Groups are popping up devoted to helping you manage, and in some cases clean up, your digital reputation.

On the flip side of that, there is another group also emerging – reputation gamers. Reputation gamers are abusing the very reputation management systems responsible for our digital lifestyle such as Google, Del.icio.us, eBay and Digg, etc.

Here is an example of such activity:

Digg is a site where its members can submit articles, along with a short description and a link, in the Digg system. Other members look through these articles and choose either to “digg” or “bury” stories. Articles with the most “diggs” make it onto the site’s widely read front page.

One reputation gamer’s method of choice was the so-called Sybil attack. Named after the famous case of a woman with 16 personalities, a Sybil attack occurs when an individual opens multiple accounts and has them all recommend the same article. If it gets enough votes, the story could make it to the front page of Digg, with a huge payoff. Getting on the Digg front page is equivalent to a front page story in a major publication, drawing millions of readers who have the potential to catapult a story to the top of a Google search. If the Digg site has advertisers, it could be a financial windfall. If the site sells something — say a widget or a T-shirt — the rewards can be even greater!

Where’s the Buzz? First of all, let me be clear - I do not recommend this type of activity. The Web 2.0 world is meant to operate in a self-policing way, much like Wikipedia. Marketers who go down the Sybil attack or a similar path should beware their reputation as a marketer is at stake. As for the sites themselves, I guess we need to think, perhaps worry, about the reputation of the reputation management systems themselves!

 

Mobile Marketing: What you need to be doing in 2008

You can't hop into a cab, step into an elevator or walk down the street without passing someone using a Blackberry, iPhone or other type of mobile device. Business professionals, students, police and even your kids are connected every second of the day. As a result, more and more carriers are recognizing the inherent value of mobile technologies as a productivity tool and have embraced them.

But what does this mean for the marketer?

I decided to dig a bit deeper with two experts in the field, Jeff Sass, VP of Business Development at Myxer, and Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Officer at crayon. I asked them to help us understand the state of mobile marketing and what we should be experimenting with in 2008.

Enjoy ...



Link to Original Audio Source

About Jeff

Jeff Sass is Vice President of Business Development at Myxer, the leader in mobile content downloads. Jeff has more than 25 years' experience in the technology and entertainment industries, with a major focus in the last 10 years in the Internet and mobile space. Jeff has also been the successful president/CEO of two Internet startups in South Florida and was a co-founder and CEO of mobile commerce pioneer BarPoint.com. He has also written and produced for film and television and has a deep understanding of the content business that is unique for a technology executive. He is a graduate of Cornell University.

You can text "Jeff" to "69937" (MYXER) for more info. Jeff has two personal blogs, his Sassholes blog at and the parody blog.

About Greg

Greg Verdino is Chief Strategy Officer at crayon, a marketing consultancy that helps marketers join the conversation by leveraging the power of community, dialogue and partnership with consumers. Greg writes a widely read marketing blog, was a contributing author of The Age of Conversation (one of Advertising Age's 'Books You Should Have Read' for 2007), speaks frequently at industry conferences and has been quoted in many publications including BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, AdWeek, Ad Age and more. Prior to joining crayon, he led the emerging channels practice at Digitas and toiled for more than 15 years in advertising, direct marketing, technology and media.

 

Top 10 CMO New Years Resolutions

CMO tenures remain depressingly low, marketing effectiveness has been disappointing, and CEOs are all too quick to notice poor results. To help brighten your 2008, I have compiled a list of the top 10 New Year’s resolutions for CMOs – things you can do to dramatically help yourself, your brands and your company.

1. Experiment with nontraditional media

Media isn't about to stop proliferating or fragmenting. In 2008, marketers need to put a plan in place to determine the nature, extent and return on an investment of something nontraditional.

2. Stop hating the sales people

Start treating the sales folks as marketing's clients. Start mining your marketing database and giving information back to them. Show them how the information will help make them more money.

3. Lose your fear of numbers

Decide what you want to measure before you launch a campaign. It's infinitely easier to explain your value to the CEO and CFO with hardcore data, rather then offering nothing but your good name to back up major marketing decisions.

4. Go for better integration in your campaigns

This year try going with fewer, higher quality and more tightly integrated campaigns. This will help you focus on getting value from all the other services in your marketing toolkit.

5. Stop promoting your brands to death and start building them

Spend money on real marketing communications – rather than just promotions – to tell folks what your brand stands for. Give them good reasons to buy your products or services that have nothing to do with a special offer or freebie.

6. Don’t specialize in only Partial Customer Satisfaction (PCS)

The University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that the average cross-industry customer satisfaction score has fallen below 75% -- basically a C grade. It goes without saying there is tremendous room for improvement here.

7. Walk a mile in your customers' shoes

Get to know what makes your customers tick and what problems they have, and let insights about them drive your decisions.

8. Account-based marketing is always a sure thing

If you can't get to anything else in 2008, make the time to hug your best customers. The fastest way to increase revenue is through customers who already know and love your brand.

9. Stop ignoring social media

It’s not going away soon, and there are some tangible, measurable results to be gained by using new marketing channels such as blogs, podcasts, RSS and video.

10. Monitor your online reputation

Today companies must closely watch their online reputation. Think about how you can put a system in place to monitor and react in case of a reputation crisis in the blogosphere.

 

My Biggest Influencers

I was tagged by Paul Gillin to continue this meme on his blog. And since he’s the author of the book The New Influencers (Amazon link), I was delighted to give it a shot. So here it goes ...

My top 3 influencers are:

1) My mom and dad – I learned a lot from both my parents, but in very different ways. My mom taught me business principles and to respect others in the way you deal with them. My dad taught me how to build a brand in the hearts and minds of the consumer.

2) Stephen Schnoll – Stephen is my best friend from high school. We have known each other since we were both 13 years old. Steve taught me so many things it is hard to count them here. But if I had to credit him from a particular angle, it would be technology and technology marketing. He has been extremely successful at technology sales. If a campaign wouldn’t work for Steve, I wouldn’t want to run it!

3) Ira Entis – Whether he knows it or not, Ira taught me so much about how to get things done in an organization and ensure that your team is successful. It is clearly more art than science, and I appreciate the time I had working for Ira, learning from the master.

Who are your biggest influencers? Tagging Mukund Mohan, Cece Solomon-Lee and Tom Pick.