Jon's PR 1.5

Why we love Amber...

If you look down the left side of this page you will see blog rolls from other writers including the new VCU Brandcenter Managing Director Kelly O'Keefe.  The other blogs are from folks who I follow and have learned a great deal from on Twitter.

One of those smart people is Amber Naslund, the Director of Community for Radian6.  Folks at THP can't wait to meet Amber and lots of other smart people at Blog Potomac in a couple of months.

In her latest post, Amber "thanks" all the people touting themselves as social marketing experts. 

I wholeheartedly agree with Amber. See why and if you have an opinion please comment on both our blogs.

The ROI question on SM?

So now we have a number of clients for whom we are doing various different levels of social marketing work.  We're listening, evaluating, posting content, getting it to migrate, counseling on blogging and tweeting.  YEA!

But there's a nagging question that they are asking and I'm frankly asking myself. 

How do to truly measure a return on the social marketing investment?

Admitting you don't know the easy answer to a question on a blog read by your clients is a risk, I know.  But I want to be able to help them understand and adopt.  In the end it always comes down to money, how it is spent and what they get in return.

It is a similar question that is frequently asked of us in our traditional public relations practice.  We are not advertisers.  We can't guarantee media placements.  We can't guarantee the media placements we get will say exactly what we want them to say.  But we do know the value of the "third-party endorsement" and how that can drive credibility and traffic, so we develop some goals based on number of placements and even the dreaded number of impressions and the ultra-dreaded "ad-value equivalent" and do our best and keep mostly all of our PR clients pretty happy.

My sense is in social marketing the ROI question is even squishier to answer.  Here's how I have seen others try to confront it:

1. At the very least it will help you manage your reputation as you can see what is being said about you or your company and engage in the conversation.
2. Your competition is doing it so if you are not then you are just surrendering this valuable new space to them.

3. By creating confusing charts with metrics that most folks can't understand with cost per acquisition blah, blah, blah, etc.

At the end of the day, I'm left with creating goals similar to a traditional media relations campaign and try to track the number of people coming to and interacting with the various social media platforms AND what you do on an ongoing basis to engage them.  Sprinkle in some of the magic that happens when people start talking about what they saw or read to other people and there I can begin to explain to clients and set some goals.

That being said, if someone put a gun to my head and said I had to explain what kind of ROI they will get if they spent $10,000 on a social marketing campaign, my first instinct likely would be to say, "pull."

I would love some comments, insights, feedback on the question, "How can you truly measure and set some easy to explain and track benchmarks for social marketing campaigns.  Thanks and HELP!!!

Social marketing....not optional?

So here is where I tread into some dangerous territory since I know that some of THP's clients and new business prospects are readers of this blog.

After engaging full force for the last several months into the that squishy place where traditional public relations and social marketing converge, I am more convinced than ever that the use of these platforms to communicate directly to friends and the broader public is here to stay at least for the foreseeable future.

As we have introduced these new platforms and tools to clients and new business prospects we have presented these opportunities as additions to what we normally do, priced somewhat separately from our regular services.   This gives the clients options, one of them of course is to say no.

While social marketing is not for every company or client, I'm coming around to the line of thinking that we should be presenting it as less of an option and more of regular offering just like media relations, community relations, message development.  This is not because we want to make more money, but because we'd be doing the client a disservice not to include it as a regular offering.

Our experience so far is that it is getting harder to separate social marketing out of the mix.  The traditional tools need to feed the new platforms and vice versa.  It is hard to build a Facebook Fan base without using the more traditional tools and you can't reach the 180 million people on Facebook without having a Fan Page.  Twitter is slightly different but it helps to let people know you're there.

The Bottom Line is social marketing is becoming less optional.

The question is do we make it less of an option for the lion's share of our clients and include it (and its associated costs) in all of our proposals?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

FB Fan Pages vs. online newsrooms: The rebuttal

Record breaking response to my blog post earlier this week about Facebook Fan Pages and how they compare to online newsrooms.

The were also a number of comments including from some in the online newsroom business who are friends of THP.  In the spirit of providing equal time, here are two of the comments from experts in the online newsroom field.

The first is from Eric Schwartzman who created iPressroom.  We actually had Eric come to Richmond about a year ago for a social media bootcamp from THPers.  In his blog post, Eric talks about the place for both fan pages and online newsrooms in the online communications mix.

We also heard from Steve Momorella of TEKgroup, his comments are included below.  While there was no intention on my part to minimize the service that Eric and Steve's companies offer, I do think a dialog on social marketing content and tools - especially since they are changing daily - is healthy.  These offerings should be reviewed on a regular basis to make sure they fit into your and your client's or company's marketing mix.  Here's Steve...

Jon,

Thanks for your post. I agree with the rest that Facebook, and its 175,000,000 people, are a great distribution outlet for your PR and marketing activities at Hodges.

In today's economic environment, everyone can appreciate the need to reduce costs and use your PR and marketing dollars wisely; however, below are some reasons that you may want to consider sticking with your Online Newsroom and leveraging it to help expand your social media initiatives.

Branding
With Facebook you really have no control over the look and feel and corporate imaging of your site. It is all very templatized (by design) and mixed together so that you are really unable to group and categorize your content into clear and easy to find sections – such as PR Contacts, Executive Bios, Featured Stories. You have very little control over the design of your site, the layout and placement of certain items, and the overall color. This is important and while Facebook has certainly come a long way over the years, the lack of control over your image is a big reason to still recommend a web presence.

Access
As mentioned in some of the above responses, with Facebook, people have to be members to fully engage with your Fan Page. Not everyone is on Facebook, and some reporters on deadline might not want to wait for the confirmation to gain full access to your site. Likewise, you are unable to password-protect any areas within your Facebook Fan Page. You are unable to embargo releases or photos, or create special areas for your “A list” journalists to have access prior to releasing to mainstream. Further, there are no publishing controls, such as providing the ability for one administrator to publish only to certain areas of the site, or to lock down certain areas from other administrators. These are all important aspects of your Online Newsroom, allowing you to provide all of your content to as many people as possible in an open way.

In going to your Facebook Fan Page, I noticed some photos. I saw one with “Caroline and Governor Kaine” but I only had access to the thumbnail image. If a journalist on deadline wanted to get a high-resolution version of that photo to place in their magazine, or wanted a larger image to use as the lead story in their blog, they would be unable to do so using the Facebook Fan Page photo gallery as it currently stands.

Distribution
This is one of the most critical aspects of your Online Newsroom. You are able to send emails to your media contact database directly from your Online Newsroom. You can not easily just email your video or audio or image or press release to a built-in list of journalists or influencers on Facebook. There is very limited distribution out to Google Search, Yahoo Search, Google News, Yahoo News, and several of the top social media outlets such as Digg and Delicious. There is very little Search Engine Optimization for your content since you are in a closed network with little control over the URL, Title pages, and META keyword tags. You are also unable to maintain distribution lists from within Facebook of targeted key influencers – analysts, editors, government relations, bloggers, consumers, employees – whereas with your Online Newsroom you have the full ability to maintain your media contact database.

Monitoring and Tracking
Probably the single most important reason to maintain an Online Newsroom is the ability to report on your activity. How many press releases are being downloaded and by whom? How many press kits were downloaded last month? How many times were videos downloaded? There are no site metrics showing Time Spent on Site, User Sessions, Page Views, and there is also no tracking of how many email distributions were sent out. Facebook really offers little, if any, tracking and site metrics reporting which is critical in determining the success (or failure) of your campaigns.

Related Assets
With Facebook’s publishing facility you are not really able to incorporate all aspects of a social media press release. Each asset in Facebook is part of its own area – photos, videos, notes, etc. – and can not easily be combined to create an actual press kit or informational page that would contain text, links, photos, and video all in one place, all related to a particular event or show. With Facebook, you can create a photo gallery and a video gallery, but you can not easily integrate and embed photos and videos into a press release. This is important as journalists and the general public want to see everything about a particular topic all in one place.

These are just some quick examples that I thought of off the top of my head. There are certainly others that center around credibility, stability, and security that are also important, but I don’t want to take up too much of everyone’s time.

In closing, while I think that Facebook (and LinkedIn and Twitter) are extremely important and help you meet some of your objectives, utilizing your Online Newsroom as a communications portal to manage all of your press materials, media contacts, and social media outlets gives you the flexibility, branding control, and security that you need.

Posted by: Steve Momorella | March 17, 2009 at 10:38 PM

The whole PR kitchen sink...

On Saturday I once again found myself with a group of students (this time of the graduate variety) at VCU's School of Mass Communications. 

I could only spend about an hour with them because of family commitments, but I was about to sit in and listen to final presentations on digital or social marketing projects the group had been asked to collaborate on. 

The interesting thing is that just a month earlier most of these students were just using Facebook to talk amongst themselves and not as a PR tool.  At the direction of their professors, the students had spent the last month diving full force into the world of social marketing.  The results were impressive.  The traditional PR world better watch out.

As a result I find myself reflecting on the first four months of this blog as it chronicles our journey from "old" to "new" public relations/social marketing.  I, and some of the folks at work with at THP, were just like these students.  And while we have not for one second abandoned the traditional public relations that we know and love and pays our bills, we have embraced this new ingredient as well.

And we are about to put it to good use for a great cause - education.  It is rare that I use this space for client work, at least directly, but this time I will make an exception.  This week, THP and our friends at Siddall, Inc. are helping Virgnia's Community College's launch "Virgnia's Education Wizard," a great online tool that will help Virginia's high school students and those who are without a job and need retraining, get a handle on their next career and education moves.

At www.vawizard.org someone can take two assessment tests to figure out what careers they are interested in, what jobs are available in those fields, what kind of education it will take to get those jobs, how much the education will cost and how to parlay two years at a community college into a cost-effective college education.

The story is laid out in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch by Virginia's Community Colleges Chancellor Glenn Dubois.

For us, it is a project that allows us to throw the entire PR kitchen sink, including the latest social  marketing tools, out there and see how successful we can be.  From launching a six-city tour with Virginia's Governor Tim Kaine on Wednesday to the creation of Facebook fan pages and a Twitter persona based on the portal's tour guide, Ginny (please follow @ginnywiz and join us as we live tweet on Wednesday starting at around 11:30am), we are using all the old and new tools to reach students, parents, guidance counselors, business people and politicians.

We ask you to join in and follow us along the way.  If you want, please spread the word, become a fan, send a link, watch the media coverage and most importantly tell us how you think we are doing.  We will be sending updates from theworld famous THP Fan page as well (don't you just love the new format, btw?)

At the end of the day, just like the students at VCU, the only way we can truly learn how and if all this stuff works is by doing it and having fun. 

New Facebook pages....is Facebook becoming more like Twitter?

Late today a ripple was sent though the social marketing universe as Facebook announced long-awaited changes to both people's home page design and the design of Fan pages.  My initial gut reaction is that more than ever CONTENT is king.

On the people side, the Wall will be replaced by a Stream that updates posts from your friends in real time and seems to allow you to interact with them as well.  Your status bar now becomes a "publisher" where you can update status and post photos, notes, links and videos into the stream.  Those posts also immediately show up on your friends home pages as well.  The sharing of content thus becomes more immediate and dynamic for all to see.  As Facebook says, it encourages an "on-going flowing conversation between you and your friends."

This comes to life even more on Fan pages, which for the first time will have their own status that can be updated and --- most importantly to companies and organization that have Fan pages --- will immediately be seen in the streams of all of their fans as well. 

This business-friendly dynamic will allow for even more viral potential for a company or organizations message as now all of their fans will be promotion those messages to their friends...and so on and so on. 

There will be some clunkiness in the transition.  I have already received updates from Fan pages saying their are trying to re-design their pages to go along with Facebook's new layout.  Fan pages now have a wall as its main landing pages and other features like videos, blogs, info and photos will no reside behind tabs for Fans to access on their own as opposed to being on the front page for all the see.

This means that the more often a Fan page is updated, the more current it's Wall seems and the more interaction it will have with its fans in real time.  All the more reason to have a Fan page and update the content on a regular basis.

Followers are then able to get their information, interact with it, and pass it on if they want to. 

Followers, hmmm....sounds like another social marketing platform.  Wonder if Facebook sees Twitter in the rear view mirror and decided if you can't buy them, try to beat them?

We'll be watching.

Why we moved from a Facebook Group to a Fan Page

Thin crust or thick, Coke or Pepsi, Michael or LeBron, Tiger vs.  (okay, no debate there)...these are some of the great debates of our time.  In recent days as social marketing has exploded another one is emerging, is it better to start and nurture a Facebook Group or a Facebook Fan page.

((BTW, here's the THP fan page, please become a Fan.  No back to the blog.)

When I first dove into Facebook for our business not that long ago, I did it like many things I do in live, with a lot of gusto and not a lot of research.  I immediately started a group page for THP and reveled in the number of folks that joined and started trying to interact with them.  Most of the time the "gusto approach" works for me.  Sorry to say this time it did not.

I quickly discovered how limited Groups were in helping me accomplish my goals.  I wanted to post video, audio, share things like news clips, provide non-intrusive updates, as people to provide feedback, etc.  While Groups allow you to do some of those things, they do not provide flexibility and even worse, they do not allow you to add apps to help.

Then I discovered Fan pages.  They are less intrusive, allow you most of the same control that Group pages do and allow you to add many cool applications and add ones of your own that you can learn to do or hire someone to create.

If you remember the old George Carlin "Football vs. Baseball" routine, I find the similar differences between Group and Fan pages.  Groups are more formal and bulky, Fans are more informal, fun and flexible.

As if this wasn't enough to convince me, I recently learned from my new favorite blog, Inside Facebook, that Fan pages are about to go through a radical re-design that will mimic personal profile pages.  In this re-design, Fan pages will even be able to have their status updated like personal pages and updates will be posted on Wall, etc.  Read about the coming changes here.

This clincher makes the Fan Page the potential smarter choice for those looking to promote a business, etc.

We will keep an eye on these developments and I hope it answers the question for all the folks who have asked, "Why did you switch from a Group Page to a Fan Page."

Would love to get some feedback on your Facebook experiences.

Social marketing....where content is king.

I've has so many conversations recentlyabout the intersection of public relations and social marketing, ranging from official presentations to casual chats over lunch, I've begun losing count.  They have been as helpful for me in helping me crystallize a point of view as I hope they have been for friends and clients who we are either working with, working for, or hopefully will be working with and for in the near future.

The ultimate bottom line for me in all of this is that to make this work in the long run, CONTENT will be king.

In the late 90's the great race was to develop a website.  Everyone had to have one.  So when you finally got one it was like the Grizwolds in the original "Vacation" movie when they finally made it to the Grand Canyon.  The stood there, put their arms around each other, took a deep breath, looked at it natural beauty....and then quickly got back in the car and moved onto the next thing.  In the case of the website, it was having that same scene in front of the monitor and then beginning to design the second website.

I'm sensing the same "flavor of the month" fervor that we need to try to avoid.

Social marketing is for the long haul.  It is about building meaningful relationships.  Just building your Facebook fan page, creating a Twitter persona, firing up Flickr and YouTube channels are great but they are not the end as is the case with the average website, they are just the beginning.

So content and the planning, writing, editing and executing of it in a planned, measured but at the same time adjustable and dynamic way will be the long haul play and where the ultimate opportunity lies.  I've been experimenting with this approach on the THP Facebook fan page (please become a fan) and it is still a work in progress.

I'm sensing partnerships between clients and their social marketing counselors instead of the "we can do it all for you approach." 

Can we write blog posts for clients, yes.  Should we do that, I'm thinking no because of a lack of authenticity.  Can we "tweet" for them, yes...but we need a mixture of the interesting facts that Peter Shankman talked about in his Richmond talk and the authority that only someone close to the information can provide.

On Facebook, can we plan out well thought out information campaigns like media relations campaigns with information including pictures and video that changes on a regular basis, yes.  But only if we are disciplined enough to commit to changing that content regularly, making it informative and valuable to the audience and then encourage that audience to share in the content and conversation.

This will take a partnership and consulting approach from the social marketing counselors who will work as content managers and collectors but also an understanding from the client that they to have to make this commitment as well.  They will need to identify folks to will help provide the content and meet their counselors in the middle.

This will help both sides.  The investment of time and money on the client side while important will not be overwhelming and overly expensive, and for the counselor it will mean while they might not be able to buy the new condo at the beach, they will be able to have a sustainable business model.

The final challenge for both sides will be to find the cost-effective way to produce that content.  High-end audio and video costs a lot of money and in some cases Flip cameras won't cut it.  The middle ground may be the best place to play and ability to produce at least some of that content in house is something I know we're seriously considering.

It's a bit of a gamble and the ultimate question about social marketing and ROI is still to be answered.  But if content is king then it may be a gamble worth taking.

I welcome your thoughts on this matter as it helps us more than you will ever know.  Thanks.

Ask first. It can help frame the social marketing conversation

Over the last month or so I have been having many conversations about social marketing ranging from friendly one on ones to more elaborate presentations.  Some of those were philosophical in nature, others designed to present a base understanding, and other to clients and potential clients to offer our current thoughts as marketing pros so they could decide whether to use social marketing in their marketing mix.

As I have spoken or presenting I have been reminded of something I learned during my days at The Martin Agency, the ad agency that created the Geico Gecko and "What can Brown do for you" for UPS.  Even though I worked on the PR side of the house, on many occasions we were involved in a new business pitch or client presentation with the ad folks.  We would spend days, sometimes weeks, getting ready for that presentation to get it right.  We'd do research, have brainstormings, come up with creative both on the ad side and for the PR portion.  We'd practice and even semi-orchestrate the final pitch. 

However, the most important time would come at the beginning of the presentation.  Instead of just launching into "the deck" the leader of the presentation would greet the client and then ask the client some questions.  Maybe it would be something like "we put a wonderful presentation together but before we start, we want to make sure nothing has changed since the last time we talked," or "we're assuming that the most important thing you want is national media attention but before we start we'd like to verify with you and see what else is important."

In my last post you may recall that we asked the VCU students about their use of social marketing platforms before our brief discussion with them of social marketing.  Just a few basic questions framed that conversation.  It also shows the audience how much you value THEIR experiences.

Magical things would happen sometimes in the client's answer to those questions.  Whole presentations would be adjusted on the fly.  Not because we didn't do our homework but because sometimes you just don't know what's most important, or for that matter the level of understanding of something before you get in the room and actually just start talking to people.

I find the same thing happening as we talk about social marketing.  You can't just come into the room with a deck and "tell" people what it is.  You have to first take the time to ask them some questions to know where they are starting from.

This will help you tailor the subsequent conversation based on their level of knowledge, interest and even willingness to learn.

You can't launch into Twitter without explaining to someone who has never seen it before what it is at a very basic level.  By the same token, you can explain how Facebook can apply to businesses to someone who currently uses it for personal use.  These questions will also help you know whether your client or perspective client is even ready for some of the challenges presented by social marketing.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

I've seen too many presentations become DOA quickly when the presenter makes some basic assumptions about the people in the room and their level of knowledge and interest.

Have a basic presentation ready.  Be prepared to show social media platforms in action (I find it best when you can show "live-action" examples on a computer).  But be ready to be flexible based on the questions you ask folks at the beginning of the presentation.  This will help you meet their expectations and in the end it will also help you reach your goals whether they are basic education or trying to convince them that you are the best person to guide them through the still murky waters of social marketing.

Living the social marketing life

This is about to sound like an AA meeting, but I began serious blogging, facebooking and Twittering about two months ago.  I am now approaching my first thousand followers on Twitter (nowhere need the social marketing God that is http://www.madisonmain.blogspot.com/tter) and I'm pretty happy about that.

Recently some of the social marketing folks that I follow blogged about what their "Day in the life of social marketing" is about and while I don't think my experience is worth emulating, I have noticed significant changes in my online habits and experiences.  So what the hell, I thought I'd share.

First and foremost, I not only have Outlook open on my computer at all times for email and calendar purposes but my Facebook page is now open all the time as is my Twitter app of choice "Tweet Deck."  I find myself checking on all of those on a regular basis for not only personal reasons but for business as well.  As I'm writing this as a matter of fact, I just got two Twitter DM's and a Facebook email in addition to my normal email traffic.

I am starting to use all of these platforms on an interchangable basis and am finding myself more productive while sometimes a bit overloaded.

As with most, I tend to use LinkedIn less, more as a rolodex and a way to connect.  I am using the new status function but more to promote this blog than anything else.

The blog experience has also been eye-opening.  More than a few folks have asked how I have time for the blog as well.  I guess the answer is, I'm just making time.  As with most, an idea germinates and I'm the type of person who once they have an idea, has to get it out of my brain quickly or else my head will hurt.

I'm still in the process of self-teaching things like blog promoition, tags, feed platforms, etc.  I have been blown away by local folks in Richmond like John Sarvay, Kelly O'Keefe and Adam Gainer and Twitter friends like John Sternal, Shonali Burke and Julie Bonn Heath who have linked back and mentioned me in their blogs.

Bottom line, I find that if you are talking to clients or potential clients about this stuff it helps if you can speak from experience.  I hope to keep listening and learning and offer that real world experience to clients, friends and co-workers as best I can.

Please comment below on your social marketing habits and experiences as well.  Thanks.