Who Should Be Driving Social Media?

Much has been written about the similarities between the Hippie counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s and the current Social Media culture or subculture. I tend to ignore the love-fest similarities, and focus on one important shared trait: both movements take away the power of mediating institutions.

The most powerful and influential voices of that generation didn’t just work around the system, but also worked with and through the system. The same can be said about Public Relations professionals who should be the thought leaders for Social Media marketing for brands.

Unfortunately at most organizations, consumer engagement via Social Media is not the responsibility of PR or Communications. And those folks may be the most qualified. Here’s why:

Public Relations = Relate to the Public!

PR has for too long been a misnomer for media relations. PR should be involved in Social Media, directly engaging consumers without media involvement, as well as working with (and coordinating information for) that particular intermediary.

Are consumers’ questions, reviews, and opinions so different than those of journalists? Not anymore. The same people charged with messaging for the media should be the ones delivering messages to consumers in order to preserve consistency.

PR Pros have the chops

Old-school PR – or even publicity – agents spent much of their time pitching the same handful of journalists year after year. However, the fragmentation of traditional media and the erosion of journalists’ jobs forced PR pros to sharpen their skills when communicating to thousands of individuals of all types.

Social Media is not advertising

Engagement means earning, not buying, attention. Big sales and special deals become more noise for consumers to ignore. What’s needed is great story-telling, the specialty of a PR pro!

To Friend or not to Friend? What Small Business Owners Should Consider

Welcome Guest Blogger Jillian Gile from Pounding the Pavement with some Facebook advice for small business owners.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few years, you know that Facebook is the hottest social media tool for small businesses. Facebook can be the tool you need to make that personal connection with customers that is so critical. There are many reasons to use Facebook in your marketing campaigns, but there are also a few pitfalls you should be aware of.

Pros:

It’s the ultimate word-of-mouth

Facebook is where people go to post what they’re having for dinner, what they think about their favorite TV show, and yes – even where they shop. Having a Facebook presence means you can be personally involved with getting your name out there. If one customer “friends” you, all their friends will see your name, even if they don’t actively post about your store.

Big returns on a small investment

Maintaining and updating a Facebook page does not take up large chunks of time, and Facebook is free, so any return is a huge profit. You can even sign up to advertise your business on Facebook, and ad packages are affordable for even the tiniest budget – think $5/day or less.

Facebook – it’s everywhere you want to be

Smart phones are almost ubiquitous – and with these mobile internet connections, Facebook is mobile, too. Customers running errands may see your well-timed status update and be influenced to stop by your store while they’re out and about. This has happened to me on more than one occasion, when my favorite consignment store posts a photo of a dress or jacket I just have to have, right now.

Become a part of the community

So much time and energy is spent making a business an integral part of a community (think yearbook ads). Facebook has been accused of replacing face-to-face social interaction, but you can use this substitution to your advantage. As part of Facebook, your business can gain a prominence that makes people support your business.

Obviously, Facebook isn’t all sunshine and roses. We didn’t need the movie The Social Network to show us that Facebook has some disadvantages, too.

Cons:

There is such a thing as too much exposure

Multiple daily postings about your latest deal, favorite brand, and current giveaway can annoy your Facebook friends and even make them unfriend you. Try to stick to one post a day (or every other day) and make these announcements count – coupons, funny anecdotes, community announcements.

Facebook isn’t business friendly

Facebook encourages businesses to create pages and advertise on their site, but they are very strict about protecting their users from fake accounts created solely for a business, and will crack down on anyone who has created multiple accounts for this reason. Stick to the Facebook page option, and play by the rules.

You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies

OK, we’re not suggesting you create an advertising war to get to 500 million friends, but creating a vibrant community of fans on your page will definitely take some time and effort. Do not stalk your customers or force them to provide you with e-mail addresses so you can boost appearances. Be patient.

Facebook isn’t for everyone

I worked at a small town real estate office that tried to use its Facebook fan page to draw in customers with photos of homes and announcing mortgage rates. The problem is, their fans were all clients who had already purchased homes and weren’t in the market anymore. They had to revamp their Facebook goals, and become more of a source for community news, which made them a resource for clients and clients’ friends. When you start your own Facebook page, give some serious thoughts to what your customers need, and what will draw them to your page.

The point is – is Facebook worth the effort for a small business owner? My answer is a cautious yes. Think about what your customers need: Do they need coupons? A friendly reminder you’re still around? A place to find out what’s going on in their town? Establish what your business needs are, and don’t hesitate to poll likeminded business owners to see what’s worked for them.

Jillian Gile is a guest blogger for Pounding the Pavement and a writer on online career training for the Guide to Career Education.

Does PR Own Social Media?

The Chicago Chapter of PRSA once again wrapped up a year of programs with the city’s agency leaders discussing this year’s trends and next year’s industry forecast.

Northwestern professor Clarke Caywood moderated panelists Bill Zucker, Midwest Director at Ketchum, Maxine Winer, Senior Partner and General Manager at Fleishman-Hillard, Maril MacDonald, CEO of Gagen MacDonald, and Gary Rudnick, EVP and Managing Director at GolinHarris.

What are agency leaders asked about first? That’s right…Social Media. The discussion quickly turned to the looming question of WHO owns Social Media: PR? Marketing? Advertising?

The panel made a good case that PR pros should lead Social Media efforts due to a history of (and skills sets that include) relationship-building, content creation, and garnering attention

Bill Zucker cautioned that no one really “owns” social media, but all disciplines should participate. Gary Rudnick added that owning SM is like the outdated thinking that advertising owns TV and PR owns newspapers.

Maxine Winer sees PR beginning to make a difference when it intersects with customer service. The integration of CRM tools with SM platforms enables companies to engage with their customers faster and more directly.

It was refreshing to hear Maril MacDonald advise the crowd to align SM engagements to your clients’ or company’s most important business metrics (sales, traffic, etc.) instead of communications metrics.

I agree! Too often, PR conferences are infiltrated by “Social Media measurement mavens” (the most horrible term in the industry) and their silly equations that make CEOs’ eyes glaze over. In order for PR to participate in bottom-line business discussions, we need to speak the language.

While these PR industry leaders make a good case for PR to lead Social Media, I question if that is really happening currently. Many companies with whom I speak daily have Social Media engagement sitting squarely with Marketing with no contribution from the PR team or outside PR agency.

Please share your thoughts via comment section –

Should SM engagement be led by PR, Marketing, Advertising, or Customer Service? And…WHY?

Mashable: 5 Superior Social Media Management Tools

Our team is excited about the article on Mashable yesterday naming Engage121 as a superior Social Media Management tool.

Read Full Mashable Post Here

I was at the Detroit airport coming home from the #140 Conference when I received a text about this new Mashable post. Our team has worked long hours over the past year to make Engage121 “best in its class” as Meghan Peters writes. So, more important than the actual post were the comments, tweets, and notes about the post from friends and clients over the following few hours!

PRSA International Conference 2010

I’m gearing up for the 2010 PRSA International Conference in Washington, DC October 16-19 and I’m quite impressed with PRSA and Verizon for putting together a mobile app for the conference featuring alerts, schedules, hotel info, maps, and sponsor info. Download yours here:

Click here to download free PRSA App

And also – here are the top 3 things to bring to this or any conference:

1. Hand sanitizer. Seriously. It should be a universal conference and trade show rule that everyone has to carry a bottle. The only thing I want to bring home is some new ideas.

2. Business cards. Whatever number you were planning to bring, double it.

3. You don’t have your @twitter handle printed on your cards yet? Take 20 minutes this week and write it on the back of a couple of dozen. Because at the show, no, I don’t have a pen!

Christmas Is Not Too Commercial

It’s the first week of October and I’m writing a Christmas blog post. Too early? Maybe. But I want to draw out an over-used complaint that Christmas comes too early and is too commercial.

At the same time, I admit to doing a bit of sensational headline-writing to emphasize a point about the need for Christmas to come sooner. Yep! I wanted to use Christmas to draw in some more clicks to this blog. I can’t blame traditional media outlets, TV commercials, and retailers for doing the same thing. This year more than ever, they need a little early holiday spirit from consumers to attract some attention and drive traffic early and often.

On a WGN radio call-in show last week, I heard callers complaining that Christmas shopping season is already creeping into their daily lives and how horrible it is to see Christmas items on store shelves already. One woman complained about seeing Christmas items in a retail hobby and craft chain so early. Hmmm…I think the Christmas Sweater-making crowd needs to get rolling on making their projects soon. So if you don’t want to see holiday goods yet, avoid craft stores.

Maybe that’s the solution for you if you regularly argue that “Christmas is too commercial”: avoid all commercial outlets. This includes all television, radio, movies, movie trailers, retail stores, restaurants, Facebook, Twitter, all other social media networks, and in fact, the internet altogether. Stay home, stay offline, and read a book set in the summertime, and you won’t have to worry about seeing or hearing about the holidays yet.

But do yourself a favor and accept that Christmas is coming. Fire up some Bing Crosby, get some shopping done early, support your local merchants, and help get this economy rolling. Merry Christmas!

Bing Crosby David Bowie — Too early for Bing and Bowie? Nah!

Social Media Marketing: Chicago, 1893.

White City — The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

Frederick Olmstead was a brilliant landscape architect responsible for such masterpieces as Central Park in NYC and the grounds at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (aka The Chicago World’s Fair). Here are his thoughts on drawing more attendees to the Word’s Fair in June of 1893:

“This is the advertising now most important to be developed; that of high-strung, contagious enthusiasm, growing from actual excellence: the question being not whether people shall be satisfied, but how much they shall be carried away with admiration, and infect others by their unexpected enjoyment of what they found.”

-Frederick Law Olmstead, 1893

What Olmstead had done first was LISTEN. According to Erik Larson’s The Devil In The White City, after completing his contributions the fair’s grounds and landscaping, Olmstead was busy working on other projects in New York, North Carolina, and Texas. Across the land, people told him of their apprehension about traveling to Chicago due to the recent downturn in the economy, high cost of travel, and the even higher cost of restaurant meals in Chicago (sound familiar?).

This lead Olmstead to tell his colleagues that the way to turn these attitudes around was via the sharing of fair experiences in Chicago by attendees’ with the folks back home. They focused on improvements “most likely to increase the gleam” in the stories people took home.

Did it work? Yes! After the first few months of disappointing attendance, the second half of the fair season saw record-breaking crowds. Word of mouth had indeed spread from awestruck attendees about the must-see wonders introduced in Chicago such as Tesla’s electricity, moving pictures, neon lights, the massive Ferris Wheel, hamburgers, and Scott Joplin’s music.

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