Social Media Club – Glimpse of how PR can use Social Media?

Last night, I went to my first Social Media Club organized by the San Francisco/Silicon Valley chapter. Larrissa of Livingston Communications mentioned it to me – while she wasn’t able to attend, I’m glad she told me about it. Yes – I know what you’re thinking – you ONLY just heard about the SMC? Well, I AM getting old =)

The event was held in San Mateo and was surprisingly well attended – about 40-50 people. There were 6 social media case studies being presented, highlighting not only program strategies but also how these campaigns contributed to increased awareness in the marketplace.

Last night’s event was Ustreamed and my understanding is that presentations will be available. I’ll update when I find out more. Briefly, they included:

• My Starbuck’s Ideas – Execution and results to date

• Sutter Health Castro Valley – Using a blog to reach your community and how to counsel your client on the steps

• Nero Product Launch – Blogger outreach program and how this increased conversations about Nero

• Dwell Conference – How to use social media to drive attendance to a physical event and create a self-sustaining community until the next event

• Network Solutions‘ Social Media Efforts – Discussed how the program began, getting executive buy-in and results

• Get Out the Vote Video – Driving views and comments for a YouTube video

Key Takeaways

Time – Doh! It takes time and these case studies demonstrated this once again. Set proper expectations with your client or executives.

Comment – Take time to respond to people’s comments. It signals that you’re listening and helps to continue the conversation. And it seems to be an underutilized strategy for YouTube videos.

Measure – Each of these case studies had key objectives and success was measured against these objectives, such as achieving 3 million views on YouTube, selling a number of registrations to an event, or reach of postings to key audience.

Update – Be Visual – David Peck was frustrated by PowerPoint for his preso, which lead to a quick chat before he left for the evening. I concur with him – Shashi presented a photo of Geoff Livingston with boxes of Motrin in his hands. No words but everyone in the room instantly knew what that meant. While I couldn’t provide this feedback to David, I would have recommended doing a flickr stream intead – upload his images to a dedicated folder and set to a slide presentation or just manually forward. I don’t know – that was an initial thought but getting out of PowerPoint or not using it at all was the key takeaway.  

Conclusion: Social Media IS an Opportunity for PR

Per my last post about Will Social Media Kill PR panel summary, this meeting demonstrates the opportunity for PR to leverage social media for higher value to clients, while providing demonstrable results. It’s about more than blogger relations (though Mike McGrath did present on this), it’s about how to reach your client’s core audience and achieving key marketing objectives. Social media is just one of the ways to achieve this.

What do you think?

Other Social Media Posts

 Will Social Media Kill PR Panel

Additional Twitter Tricks – Twhirl

Brave New World of Media Pitching: Facebook