On November 20, 2009, more than 100 PR and marketing professionals participated at the New York debut of PR Camp New York at the 92 Street Y in Tribeca. The goal of the one-day event was to share experiences, address problems and identify strategies to tackle social media issues that are facing PR and marketing professionals.

Here is the fifth and final key takeaway from the day’s discussions:

5. What Generational Divide?

Generation Y differs in how it uses social media. They are more nimble, quicker, cheaper and gaining a larger share of the social media jobs.  But attendees at PR Camp thought that Gen Y’s orientation and experience don’t give them a competitive advantage. Despite their age and orientation, they still need strategic direction that Boomers and Xers can provide.

Attendees at PR Camp remained divided over the importance of these tensions that exist across generations. Perceived or otherwise, these tensions need not be disruptive. In an open corporate culture, Gen Yers can serve as valuable instructors to foster greater social media adoption. Reverse mentoring programs can help reduce the cost of outside consultants, create a more collaborative culture and boost morale.

Let me get back to you.

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On November 20, 2009, more than 100 PR and marketing professionals participated at the New York debut of PR Camp New York at the 92 Street Y in Tribeca. The goal of the one-day event was to share experiences, address problems and identify strategies to tackle social media issues that are facing PR and marketing professionals.

Here is the fourth of five key takeaways from the day’s discussions:

4. What Interactive Marketing Can Teach PR

PR professionals usually focus on showing the clips, but the CMO and CEO of a company are not thinking about clips; they are thinking about the next step.  What are the results after the clip?

When it comes to measurement, PR can learn a great deal from interactive marketing; they are obsessed with measurement.  They are transactional based and therefore do a great job in measuring direct impact.  PR must embrace numbers and become metric obsessed. At PR Camp, less than 20 percent of the audience admitted that measurement was a top priority.

During my introduction I said social media is what plastics was to Benjamin Braddock’s generation in the movie The Graduate: hot, the future and for the young.  But perhaps one of the moderators, Howard Greenstein, president, The Harbrooke Group is right. Perhaps statistics are the new plastic.  Those who control the numbers control the power.

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On November 20, 2009, more than 100 PR and marketing professionals participated at the New York debut of PR Camp New York at the 92 Street Y in Tribeca. The goal of the one-day event was to share experiences, address problems and identify strategies to tackle social media issues that are facing PR and marketing professionals.

Here is the third of five key takeaways from the day’s discussions:

3. New Metric – “Congagement”

PR Camp New York revealed we have not reached consensus on what engagement is and how to measure it.  But one thing is certain: how we measure success is changing.

Clients and bosses still want placement in the Wall Street Journal, but increasingly we need to look beyond hits and impressions.  Social media requires us to facilitate and track how people use the content we distribute. Links, retweets, downloads, comments and ultimately clickthoughs are critical performance factors because they measure engagement.  Fostering conversations is still a cornerstone for PR, but we need to think more transactionally.  In short, focus more on the actions that your efforts generate.

How do engagement and conversion relate to each other? Perhaps we should adopt a word suggested by Janine Gianfredi, marketing manager, Google and her breakout group: “congagement.”

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On November 20, 2009, more than 100 PR and marketing professionals participated at the New York debut of PR Camp New York at the 92 Street Y in Tribeca. The goal of the one-day event was to share experiences, address problems and identify strategies to tackle social media issues that are facing PR and marketing professionals.

Here is the second of five key takeaways from the day’s discussions:

2. Social Media is Storytelling

It’s true that social media is blurring traditional boundaries and responsibilities. But put PR and marketing professionals in the same room, and it is clear that legitimate differences in expertise and perspective persist.

At its heart, PR is still about storytelling and relationship building.  But where once there was a single messenger with a controlled message, we are now confronted with new ways to tell our story. Traditional press releases with a beginning, middle and end are just one tool in a communications arsenal. They are not going away, but we now must contend with blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. And there are plenty of other smaller or more narrow focus Social Networks or sub-nets (Twitter Lists) to consider for targeting the message.

The most successful practioners understand social media storytelling is not linear, is independent of news cycles, has multiple authors and resides on a variety of platforms.  What we lose in control, we gain in distribution and engagement.

Consider Facebook. The average Facebook user has about 130 friends. Multiply those friends by the number of fans on your brand page, and you have dramatically increased the potential reach and power of your story. These friends are your network of potential storytellers.  Their comments, videos and pictures are part of your story.  The goal is to use these story elements in concert to advance your message and understand that your story will go in directions that you never intended.

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On November 20, 2009, more than 100 PR and marketing professionals participated at the New York debut of PR Camp New York (www.prcampnewyork.com) at the 92 Street Y in Tribeca. The goal of the one-day event was to share experiences, address problems and identify strategies to tackle social media issues that are facing PR and marketing professionals.

Here is the first of five key takeaways from the day’s discussions:

1. Social Media Cuts Across The Enterprise

Social media has gained wider acceptance, but internal debate on how to structure our account teams delays progress. In the words of Jonathan Kopp, a session moderator and global director of Ketchum Digital, the digital space is still “a swamp of budget and authority confusion and competition between marketing and PR functions on the client side and between interactive, advertising and PR firms on the service side.”

PR has a ways to go. Internally, PR has yet to resolve issues surrounding its own positioning and integration. Should firms market themselves as PR agencies that do social media or social media agencies that do PR? Should we create separate social media plans or PR plans that include social media?

But selling social media internally can’t just be about generating coverage, comments and downloads. It has to have broader value across the enterprise.

David Berkowitz another moderator and senior director at 360i has it right. The most successful social media strategists are those best equipped to communicate with their customers and key constituents, handle customer service issues, tap it for research and development, mine it for its HR/recruiting potential, and use it in other ways that can fundamentally impact their organizations.

Take Frank Eliason at Comcast. He and his team have generated a great deal of positive PR by successfully using Twitter (@comcastcares or http://www.twitter.com/comcastcares) to elevate Comcast’s commitment to customer service.  Similarly, Ernst & Young has used its Careers Facebook fan page to get the message to recent graduates that the accounting firm is forward-looking place to work.

Social media presents an opportunity for PR practioners to extend their mandate and identify new revenue opportunities that don’t merely replace traditional media with new media.

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I am still recovering from Friday’s PR Camp New York.  Check out attendee response on Twitter (#PRCamp). Good feedback only makes me want to do more camps next year. (Any recommendations for cities?)

I am putting together the notes from the discussions. Much was said about Gen Y, client buy in and alignment, but two topics stood out for me: storytelling and measurement.

Let the Numbers Tell the Story

It seemed clear from many  in the room that storytelling (and message development) remain a key point of differentiation for PR professionals. We do it well, even as blogs, Twitter and Facebook transform the way we tell our clients’ stories.

Take the press release.  It’s a time tested storytelling tool. But during the camp discussion, Chris Andrew (@chrisa270), vice-president-group director media at Digitas declared it dead.  And Jonathan Kopp (@jonathankopp), global director at Ketchum Digital stressed the importance of the social press release. But a well written press release with a lead, body and conclusion is not going away.  It still serves as a statement of record and required when the subject is material.

But no matter how well we tell our story, it is still hard to measure its value.  PR continues to struggle with measurement.  What are the best metrics for engagement? Are they any more meaningful and accurate than the old measurements? And what are the best tools to help us measure success?  Many in the room seemed to need help in finding answers.

In many respects, interactive marketing does a better job in measurement.  They have to.  They are more accountable for click throughs and signups.  Numbers rule their world.  Messages rule ours.  But I am not sure we want to cede this ground.

I think social media presents us with an opportunity to play a leadership role in a company’s overall marketing and communications strategy — if only we could demonstrate our effectiveness and deliver meaningful ROI.

It’s time  that PR lets the numbers tell our story.

Peter Shankman leading a break out session on measuring success

Future PR Camps may take these topics head on. What does storytelling look in the age of social media?  What is the best way to sell this new form of storytelling to clients?  And how do we measure success?  We started the process informally on Friday. It may be necessary to formalize the discussion.

It would be interesting to explore social media sites and ancillary data extracting tools.  By testing these tools and developing standards to evaluate them, we will be better positioned to analyze:

- time spent on free vs. premium services

- risk associated with doing no social media

- what to do with the information

- the best distribution path for communication and reports

- geography and behaviors of your audience

- the value to your organization

- the ability to meet your goals

I believe this analysis is critical to better sell our social media programs.

Moderators present their recommendations

Word of Thanks

No event would be complete without the participation of moderators, attendees ,volunteers and of course a sponsors and partners. I would like to thank everyone who participated.  But I would also like to call out Lloyd Trufelman, Bill Sobel, Dean Landsman, Howard Greenstein, Danielle Culmone and Mark Miranda for their help, insight and hard work.

Clients and Partners:

PR Newswire

Advertising Club of New York

Bernardo’s List

Gorkana

Landsman Communications Group

Mashable

New York AMA

NextWeb

PRSA New York

O’Dwyers

SobelMedia

Social Media Club New York

Trylon SMR

212 New York’s Interactive Advertising Club

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I wanted to share the outline of the discussions from PR Camp Atlanta. It reflects the comments that attendees made during the three sessions.

As a follow-up to PR Camp Atlanta, one of the sponsors – Definition 6 – is allowing me this week to host its TwitterINGO game as a way to make the outline more interactive. I’ll be selecting a mix of keywords pulled from out sessions at PR Camp.

TwitterINGO is a free, downloadable widget that allows you to view real-time tweets while playing the game.

I hope many of you will tune-in for this PR Camp edition of TwitterINGO. The game starts sharply at 3pm today, and you’ll need to download the widget (and follow @definition6) before 3pm. For more information, and to download your game board widget, please visit: www.twitteringo.com.

PR Camp Atlanta Discussion Outline – August 21, 2009

Session I: Get clients and bosses to extend their interest in new media

Why bosses resist:

1. Emotional reactions:

- Fear of change, unknown and unforeseen consequences

- Senior professionals don’t use social media for personal use: lack understanding of layout and function of different features (RT, groups v. pages, connections, referrals, etc)

- Lack of understanding how mass audience uses the tool and which demographics are using and for what purpose

- Rapidly changing technology (are we investing in the right social media tool?)

- Abandoning other methods

- Afraid of negative feedback, executive exposure to negative content

- Lack of understanding of relationship development through social media

- Customers in control

2. Liability:

- Privacy
- Legal issues (what needs to be approved? Who owns it? Intellectual property?)
- Network security

3. Questions concerning strategy:

- Aren’t willing to participate with risk of failure

- Is it consistent with brand strategy (what language is being used to represent the brand?)

- No rules of engagement: what role does the staff play in interacting with the page?

- What is the right social media strategy (mix?)

- B2C, B2constituent, B2B, B2Employee

Where bosses most often won’t allocate:

1. Additional headcount funding, budget, time, commitment, resources

What are they willing to consider:

- Competition (what others are doing)

- Saving money

- Willing to track activity (results/insights)

- Doing it in phases

- Taking small steps

- Info gathering/focus groups

- Test via tactics, try it out

Session II: Help senior professionals tap the social media experience of junior colleagues

Start small (Baby steps are a great way to present an unstable and ever-changing technology and misunderstood social media in a non-threatening way):

- Get your boss involved in a way that’s personal (Get signed up for his/her favorite Meetup group to see how cool social media can be)

- Print it out! Have hard copies, graphs, pie charts, or even make a PowerPoint presentation

- Show them what it is. Immersion (Describe one tool at a time), competitors (audit), encourage personal use, learn how to speak social media (included in brand strategy)

- Engage your boss one tool at a time – blog (with comments), Facebook/Youtube

- Listen, watch and analyze what is going on in social media without interacting.

Reverse mentoring (benefits of):

- Both senior and junior professionals need tools at their level to understand impact of social media

-One-on-one dialogue

- Young people learn business tactics; mix old and new strategies

- Share mistakes

- Meet in the middle. Create a situation where a senior professional creates a solution and junior professional does the same

Which young professionals do we use?

Watch internal activity on intranet and use key influencers to join the social media team as experts.

Session III: With PR and Marketing blurring, determine the best ways to measure success

Get PR and Marketing to align:

1. Have PR, marketing and social media talk before start of project

2. Long-term goals to create a profitable alignment between PR and Marketing departments:

- Communicate
- Admit interdependency
- Compare goals
- Be transparent
- Discuss who owns what
- Discuss success metrics
- Try to avoid technology snobbery

Metrics:

1. Engagement: is the audience interacting? Is it a 2-way conversation?

2. Sales: is social media being used to drive sales

3. What is the market size?

4. Does personal interaction with the brand add to overall customer value?

5. Interim metrics: followers, tweets, fans, positive mentions, click-throughs, link-backs, length of digital trail, site visits

Tools of measurement:

1. Google Analytics,

2. Facebook Insights,

3. Number of followers

4. Retweets (quantity v. quality; how many of them are retweetable?)

Types of Measurement:

1. Surveys

2. FB insights (stats)

3. Comments

4. Reach

5. CTR (click through rate)

6. Benchmarking (e.g. in 6 months we want 50% more fans)

PR + Marketing + Customer Service:

B2B v B2C metrics

Use social media to increase brand awareness or drive sales

What Constitutes Success:

1. Trust (how do you measure trust?)
2. Become beloved brand
3. Find common ground through communication

—-

I hope this was useful.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

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Finally recovered from last Friday.  Thanks to everyone who participated in the first ever PR Camp Atlanta. Together, we showed that Atlanta’s PR and marketing community is embracing social media.  The energy and ideas were incredible.  I am still writing up the notes from the conference which I will share with you shortly.

I am interested in your feedback and am hoping you to take a quick survey. Click here to take the survey. It will help me plan for next year’s event.  Here are some pictures from the event.  I have more on Flickr.  I will also shortly post some from Mike Schinkel.

Thanks again to you, the sponsors, moderators and volunteers for making PR Camp Atlanta a success.  Plans are now underway for next year as well as PR Camps in other cities.  Stay tuned.

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Managing generational differences in social media will be one of three featured topics at PR Camp Atlanta this Friday, August 21. In what may be one of the more lively discussions of the morning, representatives of Generation Y will pair off with their Generation X and Baby Boomer counterparts to understand how professionals at different levels are approaching their jobs.

It’s all part of the PR Camp Atlanta’s goal to immerse Atlanta’s PR and marketing community in all things social media.  We will avoid discussions on how to use the latest tools. There will be no formal presentations.  Instead the focus will be on helping professionals identify business opportunities, tap resources, and measure success.

In many ways, planned discussions at PR Camp Atlanta parallel the changing roles and responsibilities that are taking place in the workplace.  Increasingly social media is allowing Generation Y to assume leadership roles.  It’s also allowing PR and interactive marketing professionals to work more closely to manage reputations, build relationships and extend brands.

PR Camp Atlanta is a forum to examine social media’s impact on our profession. Changes in our industry are also the reason why I reached out to Definition 6, an independent interactive marketing and eCommerce agency, to be a sponsor.  I want to break down barriers and encourage the PR profession to look at what we do differently.

As Michael Kogon at Definition 6 said, “As we work to help clients adapt to the new challenges and opportunities, created through social media, hands-on experience using these communication platforms is mandatory at all levels. Events like PR Camp Atlanta are a great way for professionals to get started with social media; it also provides them with a great opportunity to meet other professionals in the physical world.”

Final Agenda

Session I: 9:00 AM – 9:55 AM

Get clients and bosses to extend their interest in new media.

• Melanie Babcock, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy & Services, Manning Selvage & Lee
• Bert Dumars, Vice President E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid
• Jenny Schmitt, President and Director of Client Strategy, CloudSpark
• Katie Mingo, Senior Marketing Associate, Delta Airlines

Session II:  10:00 AM – 10:55 AM

Help senior professionals tap the social media experience of junior colleagues.

• Nick Ayres, Interactive Marketing Manager, New Media + Content, The Home Depot/Corvida Raven, Author of SheGeeks.net
• Marilynn Mobley, Senior Vice President, Strategic Counsel, Edelman PR/Matt Epstein, Account Coordinator, Definition 6
• Shirley Powell, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Turner Broadcasting System/Tolu Ogbechie, Social Media & Development Associate, Prevent Blindness Georgia
• Carol Flammer, Managing Partner, mRELEVANCE, LLC/ Lauren Culbertson, Communications Assistant for U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson

Session III:  11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

With the blurring of PR and marketing, determine the best ways to measure success.

• Peter Fasano, Principal/Lead Catalyst, mass+logic
• Christopher Jones, Digital Strategist, Ketchum PR 
• Irfan Kamal, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Ogilvy Public Relations
• Debbie Curtis-Magley, Public Relations Manager, UPS

Sponsors

• Definition 6 
• Neighborhood America 
• Georgia Tech Research Institute 
• PR Newswire 
• Atlanta Day Book 
• CBS Atlanta 
• I Send Your Email 
• Social Media Club Atlanta 
• CloudSpark 
• Peachpod Studios 

Registration is now closed.

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The next generation of social media experts:  Should we be afraid? 

In the countdown to next Friday, Stephen King’s Children of the Corn seems a fitting ghost story for PR Camp Atlanta’s second session devoted to managing the social media skills of young PR and marketing professionals.

In King’s “adult nightmare,” a town of teenagers terrorizes an unsuspecting adult couple who later fall victim to  a mysterious massive force in the cornfield. Young professionals are not of course demons, but they do seem to be taking over and they’re using the massive power of social media to do it.   

They are a force we can’t ignore.  70 million strong, Generation Y by 2010 will outnumber Baby Boomers, and 96 percent of them have joined a social network.  And the first wave is bringing social media to the workplace.

Threat or opportunity for those over 30?  It depends on your perspective and your willingness to embrace change.  One thing is clear,  Gen Y approaches social media very differently than Boomers and many Gen Xers.  They have skills and a comfort level we don’t have.  And management is left asking: How do we tap their expertise?  How do we teach them to think more strategically?  How much expertise do we need to have ourselves? How much can we rely on them?

Relinquish Authority or Embrace Change?

Increasingly, managers are turning to Generation Y for their social media expertise.  Suzanne Barrett senior brand marketing manager from the World of Coca-Cola tapped a University of Georgia intern this summer to develop and implement their presence on YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. Suzanne recognized that her intern was exceptional, but it’s a far cry from answering phones and getting coffee that I did as an intern.

Or consider last year, when Jack Leslie, chairman, Weber Shadwick Worldwide stirred a little controversy on a PRSA Georgia panel with the confession that he leans toward people half his age when considering employees with social media skills since .. young people have this built into their DNA.  Mostly said in jest it does go to heart of  the matter.

As Lauren Culberston, a Generation Yer and communications assistant for United States Senator Johnny Isakson told me, “A  lot of senior professionals tell me, ‘I don’t have the time to mess with that stuff. I’m busy, I have a life.’ What they don’t realize is that social media is a tool you can use to make your life easier and save time.”

Thinking Strategically

Launching a Twitter page is one thing; thinking strategically is another. Using Facebook to communicate with friends is very different from speaking as the representative of a company.  Technical prowess no matter how impressive can’t replace a knowledge of how to navigate organizations and mine customer insight. That takes time.  There is a place for all generations in the adoption of social media.

“Simple truth, all use it, but they don’t use it for PR purposes. They are all not equally prepared.” said Karen Russell, associate professor, Grady College of Mass Communications at University of Georgia.

Or as Donna Fleishman president of Cohn & Wolfe’s Altanta office wrote me, “While Generation Y certainly understands how speedily they can get information out, they are learning from Generation X that the rules of accuracy and honesty and news value must still apply.”

Clearly marketing and PR Gen Yer’s understanding of social media is incredibly valuable.  More entrepreneurial and less willing to listen to traditional media, they are perfect conduit to understand how their generation thinks and what tools are needed to reach them.  As Ebuni Tolu Ogbechie, social media & development associate at Prevent Blindness Georgia wrote me, “We can essentially be ‘beta testers’ for new forms of social media.” 

 Restoring a Balance of Power

It’s time to take the mystery and fear out social media and restore a balance of power.  Generation Y brings a great deal to the table, but it is up to more senior managers to integrate technology into the workplace and channel their younger counterpart’s energy and expertise into effective communications strategies. There clearly is a cultural challenge, but we need not be afraid.

Let me get back to you.

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