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

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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

My Top 5 Blogging Outreach Mistakes

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The posts that I learn the most from are by those who are willing to show their mistakes and what they’ve learned. This not only humanizes them but also makes us feel just a little bit less stupid!

While there are a lot of posts about how to pitch a blogger, I thought it would be an interesting twist to list the top five mistakes I’ve made a la Letterman style:

My Top 5 Pitching Blogger Mistakes

Number 5: Oops – I thought that was MISS Blogger, not MISTER Blogger

Number 4: Spellcheck is a wonderful technology…when you USE it

Number 3: I’m not stalking you honestly. Could you just puhleeze respond to me?

Number 2: Sorry – didn’t realize you just wrote about this… yesterday!

And the number 1 mistake that I’ve made pitching a blogger:

Who cares about YOUR interests, it’s all about ME

What mistakes have you made? Bonus points for your Letterman style list!

But if you’re interested in more information about how to pitch, check out my page about pitching bloggers and 8 Practical Tips for PR and Blogging Outreach.

technorati tags: blogging  social media  pr  marketing  public relations  pitching bloggers  media relations
del.icio.us tags: blogging  social media  pr  marketing  public relations  pitching bloggers  media relations
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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

That Isn’t an Elevator Pitch!

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The other day, I met someone the ferry, and we started chatting about our jobs. Inevitably, the question was asked, “What does your company do?” My initial reaction was to respond with the two sentence description that was developed via a messaging session. “My company is a webcasting and …”

She immediately stopped me, saying “No, what’s your 30 second elevator pitch?”

I suddenly realized, while a company boilerplate may be great for positioning your company, it isn’t great for explaining what your company does to others.

In public relations, I constantly have to remember this as I speak to new reporters unfamiliar with my company, the products and services. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about HOW to create a pitch to secure interest from a reporter. It’s about clearly stating what your company is in just one sentence.

Here are my tips for crafting that “elevator pitch”:

Explain it to me like a 6 year old

If you’ve ever seen Philadelphia, you’ll remember that Denzel Washington’s character always repeated this phrase when he wanted to break down something to the basics. It’s the same thing with an elevator pitch.

Break down what your company does step by step and try not to use multi-syllabic words. I know – it’s hard, but try it.

Once you’ve done that, delete EVERYTHING that is irrelevant to your company. Delete the adjectives that don’t add anything. Delete phrases that describe secondary aspects of your company.

With what’s left, you can create 1 sentence that explains what your company does.

So how did I respond?

My company helps you with all your online events – online seminars, trade shows, conferences, summits.

So what do you think?

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

Recent Guest Posts on Virtual Events

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I was honored to guest post on a few blogs regarding virtual events and trade shows. If you’re interested in learning more about virtual events, check out these posts:

• Bonjour Events:Planning a Successful “Virtual” Event
• Julius Solaris’ Event Manager Blog: Virtual Trade Shows are Around the Corner
• Lewis Green’s BizSolutions Plus blog: What is a Virtual Event?
• Also check out my previous post “Are Your Ready for Virtual Trade Shows?”

technorati tags: Virtual Trade Show  Virtual Event  Public Relations  Marketing
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icerocket tags: Virtual Trade Show  Virtual Event  Public Relations  Marketing

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

Brave New World of Media Pitching: Facebook

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I have only been on a Facebook for a year or so. I mainly use it to keep in touch with personal connections, and rarely use it for professional reasons. I believe that the “casual” aspect of Facebook does make it more difficult for business-to-business companies to leverage the full potential, with early success for consumer related companies.

 With that said, I do see the potential of Facebook from a PR perspective:

Fan Club or Group?: Before setting up a group, you have the option of designating it as a group or fan club. Groups have membership limits while fans clubs don’t. It’s a small distinction but quite important depending on the size of the community you’re seeking to tap into.

Before setting up a fan club/group, consider these two points first:

1) Research what groups/clubs already exist in your area. Does it make sense to set up another page if there are hundreds of similar ones out there?

2) Participate in existing groups/clubs to network with people in your target audience. By “friending” these folks, you’re able to pull in your existing network if you do decide to launch your own group or fan club. 

Share and Share Alike: With Facebook’s “share” function, you can provide a steady stream of company updates and information to your friend network. For example, my company recently received media coverage in Forbes and San Jose Mercury News. I shared this news to my connections.

I recommend sharing information that is relevant to your industry. Since you can add a comment, this helps to position your company as an expert on a specific topic. And is much quicker than drafting a blog post from scratch =)

In the end, you never know what information will catch a reporter/blogger’s eye for a possible article or posting.

Friending Reporters and Bloggers: If a reporter or blogger has agreed to be friends with you, the implication is that you’ve created or have an existing personal relationship. Depending on your level of “friendship,” you can send pitches via Facebook’s internal email system, which may break through the noise of emails. Just confirm that the person prefers to receive pitches this way. He or she may want to keep Facebook on a personal level while want “business” correspondence to be received in another format.

While I have not personally done this yet, I would just recommend being very careful of how and when you do this. As I wrote recently about HARO spam, the purpose of these tools is to create connections, not harvest emails and contact information. By doing so breaks the trust you’ve created.

Promote Events: Facebook enables people to send out event invitations to your friends. Great way to promote attendance for live events or webinars. Be sure not to over promote an event with multiple reminders.

Applications: As an open platform, Facebook offers different types of applications. These applications range from the silly – sending a beer – to useful – free VoIP phone calls or Twitter updates. For me, I’ve added the Twitter app to tie all my external personalities into Facebook. Determine which apps to incorporate based on the types of information your generating and which are appropriate for your company.

Some have even created complimentary applications within Facebook which have become wildly popular. As long as it’s relevant to your Facebook audience, is easy to use and understand and is relevant to your business, apps can be one way to get your business to your target audience.

Face Book Case Study:

I was seeking B2B examples of using Facebook and couldn’t find any Mike Nierengarten of (company?) did forward me this description of how they leveraged Facebook to drive students to an online animation school (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Animation-Mentor-Online-Animation-School/14719464771):

Animation Mentor, an online animation school, is perfect for Facebook because it has tons of great content (video, events, pictures), a strong (current) student presence on the site, and our target customers (potential students) use the site regularly.

For Animation Mentor, we set up a profile to connect with current students. From there, we added a Facebook page and rolled those students into fans. We then created a Prospective Animation Mentor Student group for individuals who were interested in the school to connect and share thoughts. Finally, we promoted the page off of Facebook using an Animation blog.  

Results: Facebook page ranks for targeted keywords on Google (e.g. #23 for “animation school”, #9 for “character animation”), we have over 700 fans with a mix of currents students and interested students interacting online, and we have an area for prospective students to address their concerns and interact directly with someone from the school in their space. We have also seen a near 3% conversion rate (i.e. complete an application) from the Facebook page.

Summary: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

I posted my question on Twitter and LinkedIn. I decided not to ask my Facebook network as my previous questions have received no answers. I overwhelmingly received more responses via LinkedIn. Why?

Twitter seems to elicit a lot of responses depending on the interest of your audience to that question and what other conversations are happening at the time. With the cacophony of voices, it’s very difficult, at least for me, to pose a question that elicits response. I did when I discussed the role of PR agencies but not for this question.

For LinkedIn, people are leveraging it as a business networking tool. The Q&A section is a great way to demonstrate your expertise in a specific topic, as I outlined in my previous post.

I think Lewis Green of BizSolutionsPlus said it best in his response: “I think LinkedIn and Plaxo Pulse are better social networking sites for non-invasive marketing and PR, which is the only way we should be promoting our brands within the social networking and social media worlds. We should be giving, not making an effort to get. That’s why providing free information, such as this Q&A offers us a chance to do so.”

Initial Conclusions

1) LinkedIn great for professional networking and developing expertise with LinkedIn Answers

2) Twitter great for quick updates and breaking information to your company

3) Facebook is like a mini-site that has a social networking component. You need a wealth of relevant information to feed into the pages, while actively working to develop and maintain a community.

Other posts in the “Brave New World of Media Pitching” series:

– Brave New World of Media Pitching: LinkedIn
– Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter
– Read LinkedIn responses to “How do you use Facebook for PR?”

UPDATE: Forgot to thank everyone who responded: Mike Nierengarten, Lewis Green, G. Niki Foust, Andrew Miller, Thomas Ahonen, Joyce Schwarz, Jocelyn Brandeis, Alysha Cryer, Dylan Conroy

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

Brave New World of Media Pitching: LinkedIn

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In late April, I wanted to start exploring different ways that we can now pitch media. Besides my page about how to pitch bloggers, I looked into the new way of pitching via Twitter in my post titled,”Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter.”  

Social networking is a new avenue for public relations professionals. From my perspective, LinkedIn has some interesting opportunities. Here’s my look at LinkedIn in the brave new world of media pitching:

Make Connections: LinkedIn’s core purpose is to make connections – either with people you know or people you want to know. If you’re seeking to connect with a journalist, you can request a “linkedin” connection to make an introduction. Rather than send a blind pitch to a reporter, what’s better than a friend making the pitch on your behalf?

Research Media: I was recently searching for a reporter to create a briefing sheet and found the reporter’s LinkedIn page. Doh! I can’t believe I didn’t consider this in the past. LinkedIn is rich with information about a person’s background. Leverage LinkedIn to research reporters – where did they work in the past, titles, and other pertinent information. This provides incredible insight before you pitch the reporter as well as to prep your spokespeople.

LinkedIn Answers: LinkedIn Answers provides an opportunty for PR to participate in or start a conversation on relevant topics. Certain topics can also show up high on a Google search, which helps if a reporter is searching on a specific topic. In the end, you never know how a reporter gets her inspiration for a story and if she needs sources.

What other ways are you using LinkedIn for media outreach?

UPDATE: Just saw this post by Lewis Green of BizSolutionsPlus regarding value of LinkedIn.

Other posts in the “Brave New World of Media Pitching” series:

Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter

technorati tags: LinkedIn  Media Pitching  PR  Public Relations  marketing  media relations
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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

Are You Ready for Virtual Trade Shows?

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Disclosure: My company  just introduced a new solution today that is in the virtual trade show market. I decided to take this occasion to write a larger post about the virtual events/tradeshows market. Please note, the opinions expressed in this post are my own and not a reflection of my company’s.

With that disclosure out of the way =) , virtual trade show/event is something that is just starting to be used by organizations. Just think about it, you don’t have to travel across the country to attend a show, set up the booth at the show, and stand for hours waiting for people to come by your booth. And hopefully, at the end of the show, you have quality sales leads, connected with possible business partners, or even run into key media in your industry.

With an online version, the thought is that organizations will minimize tangible (i.e. travel, hotel, food, materials) and intangible costs (i.e. environmental and productivity), while providing all the benefits – if not more. You can still connect with people through online chats or emails, get the materials you want, and attend keynotes and presentations. From a marketer’s perspective, hopefully you spend less money with better results. And you don’t have to break down the booth either! 

I recently read some stats in a report by FactPoint Group that stated that virtual events/shows can attract an average of of 1500+ people, who spend about 2+ hours in the show. When you look at this  information, this provides a compelling reason for organizations to consider online conferences.

What do you think? Would a virtual event appeal to you as a marketer or participant? Why or why not?

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.