PerkettPR’s Heather Mosley on MyRaganTV.com

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PerkettPR’s own Executive Vice President, Heather Mosley, makes her second appearance on MyRaganTV.com speaking about the adoption of Twitter for business use. Heather originally contributed her views to MyRaganTV on how PR professionals utilize social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs and Twitter as part of their recipe for success, after a speaking engagement at the 2008 Ragan Conference in Chicago. Account Director, Lisa Dilg was also quoted in the article that accompanies the video release. (You can follow Heather on Twitter via @mosleyppr, Lisa via @pprlisa and our agency via @PerkettPR)



Starry Eyed Over Social Media

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The Internet has been ablaze the last few months about social media and business. Everyone is trying to figure out the value of the different sites – from the “oldies” like Facebook and LinkedIn to newbies like Twitter, Seesmic, Plurk, Brightkite, etc. The value of such communities is especially abuzz in the realms of marketing and communications. People are catching on that marketing and PR are now – more than ever – about building relationships (as opposed to spinning news). PR executives who are not engaging with constituents – media, customers, partners, colleagues, competitors – in these new communities are missing a huge competitive advantage and opportunity. But who are the right constituents?

Just like anything – it’s how you yield the sword, not the sword itself, in my humble opinion. While building a fan base, securing thousands of followers or becoming a “top friend” can be fun, when it comes to business, how do these numbers translate? Where does the value lie? Does having thousands of Twitter followers suddenly make you a “social media expert?”

The ability to use – or experience with – communities like Facebook and Twitter do not make anyone a communications expert. Sheer follower numbers do not necessarily mean value – at least not to everyone. I may have 1000+ followers but that doesn’t mean anything to my clients unless I’m gleaming value specific to their goals. And even if one of their goals is to increase their user base, not all – or even the majority – of those followers are going to be appropriate users for my client’s products.

What if the content I’m sharing on these communities is irrelevant or my approach is more personal than professional? For example, some Twitter users don’t actually converse – they just spew updates about their day. That doesn’t actually build relationships. Some don’t recognize Twitter as a business opportunity but just have fun with their followers. (The smart ones do both – personal and professional communications – for reasons discussed in previous posts). Others build corporate entities only to “spam” followers and quickly lose them. So, while having a great following on these communities is important, so is understanding how to participate appropriately and glean the right value from them – and how to combine that with other communications strategies.

A lot of folks in the industry are also abuzz about “social media experts.” We’ve had plenty of six figure-seeking applicants tell us they know everything there is to know about social media. Personally, I think there are very few who can truly call themselves experts in this arena – yet – and I’m not impressed when an applicant just runs down a list of “Twitterati” that they have on their follower list or “web celeb” Facebook friends list.

Don’t spew names. Give me an example of how these relationships have helped add business value to your organization or your client’s business. How did your relationships increase a company’s users? What strategy did you have in place for using social media to build a brand and what metrics have you used to measure that brand awareness? Just using social media does not mean you know how to tie it to the bigger picture. I find this to especially be true with the younger generation of workers. Yes, they know how to use social media and are fully immersed in it. But do they understand business strategy, marketing goals and how to leverage these communities for such? Some do, but the majority may not yet understand the intricacies of business relationships and communication.

When thinking about new media and marketing, don’t get too starry eyed just because social media is a hot topic right now. Just as anyone can put a press release across the wire, anyone can build a massive following in these communities. But if the tools aren’t used properly – and combined with other elements of the business to execute a larger strategy – they become useless from a business perspective. Sometimes they can even become harmful.

What do you think? Have you found value in hiring a social media expert? How do you define “expert?”

Drop the Excuses and Start Participating

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As you may know through my various Tweets, I spoke yesterday at the Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference in Chicago with our EVP, Heather Mosley. We substituted at the last minute for another speaker who dropped out unexpectedly. I’m not going to lie, I was nervous coming in as the backup substitute – none of the conference materials had indicated any change in the session until about one hour beforehand, when it was announced at the opening session. It was definitely on our minds that the audience had been expecting some heavy lifters (a much larger, global agency) to discuss digital marketing. I’m not a “digital marketer” and we had only a few days to pull together our presentation. Would we disappoint them? Could we teach them anything new? Would they walk away feeling the session was valuable? What if they already know everything we were talking about?

We changed the subject matter to something more our in line with our expertise, of course. At PerkettPR, we’re enthusiastic about social media and the opportunities – and challenges – that it presents to the PR profession. Our session was titled, “Join the Conversation: More Effective PR Through Social Media.”

For some, this may seem to be an oxy moron. Many constituents are shouting from the rooftops that PR is dead – due to social media. I completely disagree. I think it’s forcing us to evolve – but that’s a good thing. Social media presents amazing opportunities for communications professionals to engage with their publics in ways never before possible. For me, it’s thrilling. I am so enthusiastic about social media that I liken it to wanting to jump on the couch like Tom Cruise to emphatically express my love for it.

Yesterday, as we started speaking on this topic, the majority of faces in the room looked at us like we were crazy. Facebook for business? Linkedin Answers? Link love on blogs? Twitter-what??? Although, their eyes did light up when Heather explained Twitter like this: It’s like entering a noisy, crowded stadium and saying, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’… The entire stadium quiets to silence and everyone sits down except for four people that raise their hand and say ‘I can help!’…It’s that powerful and can provide a whole new lifeline of resources to draw from.

We had expected that the majority of the room would not yet be embracing social media (luckily, we were right or we could have been really boring). We knew we weren’t going to be in a room full of technology PR professionals. However, I’m also surprised at how many communicators haven’t embraced what is arguably the biggest evolution of our industry in decades…and their reasoning has nothing to do with technology.

Here are some of the questions and objections to social media participation that really stood out for me:

1) How do you find the time
2) What do you do if someone says something negative about you in the blogosphere?
3) How do you get corporate management to let you participate in social media?

I could go on and on about these topics but I’ll try to keep my recommendations simple.

1) If you don’t find the time I believe you will be out of a job. This is the way communications is going. Participate or be left behind. It’s that simple. Seriously.

Okay, okay, I did provide real tips such as: start slowly; join Twitter and observe for a while. Try to go on a few times a day to begin – post a question in the morning. Come back at noon and check for responses in DMs or aggregators like Tweet Scan. Post thank yous/follow up and another question. Come back before the end of your day and repeat. This can take ½ hour total.

2) It depends. Was it a customer? Was it a competitor? Was there any truth to the complaint or comment? There is no one right answer but there are guidelines to keep in mind – transparency and common sense being two of them.

We provided a few examples from experiences with our own clients. Two different crisis and two different recommendations: one, a posted apology and two, a personal phone call to the blogger. Different situations that called for different actions. In the end, both were turned around by … participating.

3) My answer for this today is simple – hand them a copy of the new book Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. (Really, it should be required reading for all marketers, communicators and C-level executives.)

Better yet, read it first, highlight the parts that apply to you and the company (and trust me, no matter what industry you are in, there are examples that will apply to you) and put it on every corporate executive’s desk. Include a sticky note with this great quote – one of many – from the book:

“…While you can’t stop it, you can understand it.”

And just for good measure – maybe include another of my favorite quotes from Charlene Li: “While you cannot control word of mouth, you can influence it.” Then explain to them that you cannot do either of these things if you are not allowed to participate.

I hope we helped some communicators at the conference to begin to understand “it.” Forrester calls it the groundswell. Others call it Web 2.0 and still others the new social landscape. Whatever you call it, it’s here to stay…so jump in!

I’d love to hear comments from you, Dear Community, as well. Can you chime in with your ideas and help these professionals learn? After all, isn’t that the spirit of what this new social movement is all about? (Thank you, in advance!)

The Corporate Twitter Discussion Continues at BusinessWeek

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On April 3 I wrote a post asking the community for opinions on corporations establishing a Twitter presence. We have been pleasantly surprised at the continued reactions and comments to this post and we have learned about some really cool trials taking place within the community. A good deal of folks – including some from Zappos, Stanford University and Mzinga (client) – have all chimed in with opinions and examples.

The conversation continues today at BusinessWeek as Heather Green wrote a post asking for examples of creative business use on Twitter – for a pending cover story. If you know of some examples, please pass them along to Heather by posting a comment on their blog. We are very interested in reading the article when it comes out, as well as continuing to learn – along with the community – about the best way corporations can successfully get involved in the social media landscape.

This is a fun journey!

Corporate Twitter Entities – Yay or Nay?

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There have been some interesting discussions lately – both online and off – around the business value of Twitter. As part of those discussions, we’ve noticed some varying opinions on whether or not corporations should establish their own entity on this rapidly-growing micro-blogging community.

When we first established @PerkettPR, we were immediately called out (coincidentally by PR/marketing competitors) for a few incorrect (on their part) assumptions:

1) That we had just joined Twitter without research, or a “lurking” phase

2) That we were only joining Twitter to promote our involvement in bringing TechCrunch MeetUp to Boston

3) That we would spam people (which in and of itself is an inaccurate label to use, considering the way Twitter works)

4) That we would not use our corporate entity wisely and that a “corporation” was not a “person” and therefore couldn’t participate in conversation

A few months later in March, some of these same naysayers have not only set up their own corporate entities (although most have yet to actually update/use them) but they have encouraged others to do so. That leads us to today and our questions to you:

1) Can a corporation participate in conversations on Twitter?

2) Are there certain types of businesses that should not establish a Twitter presence?

3) Do you follow any corporations on Twitter?

4) Why or why not?

Most, if not all, of our staff has individual entities on Twitter (mine’s @missusP if you’d like to engage). We spent months on Twitter watching, conversing (about business and personal issues) and getting to know the landscape before we established our corporate entity. We use @PerkettPR to share interesting developments that our constituents – those who choose to follow us – may find of interest. This can range from client news to agency news to events, interesting articles, blog posts and more. In doing so, we’ve developed new and stronger relationships with reporters, bloggers, clients – even new business prospects and competitors – as well as insightful feedback and new awareness opportunities for clients.

We believe our participation at an individual level helps us to truly understand the community and that we can engage both as indiviudals and as a team – just as in real life. This quote from Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang also reaffirmed this belief for us:

“I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media….agencies must demonstrate they can participate before they can ever help clients with it.”

We have several clients who have Twitter identities. @mzinga and @Q1labs are the two most recent to join. It remains to be seen if all types of corporations can participate in – and benefit from – Twitter as much as individuals do, but obviously we believe great potential exists. What do you think?

Examples of businesses on Twitter:

@JetBlue

@CNN

@ssldl (This is a local library in one of our staff’s Midwestern towns. How cool is that?!)

@mahalotravel

@hawaiianshirts

@suddenlyslimmer

@hockeygiant

@speedypin

Tools of choice: Twitter vs. Facebook

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Social Media consultant Tom Raftery recently wrote a blog post about the power of Twitter versus Facebook as communications tools. Tom had recently used both tools to aid his search for a new job. Ultimately, he found the Twitter community responded to his to his messages much more frequently than his attempt on Facebook and he sites that the power of Twitter is in the network.

I couldn’t agree with Tom any more. From my own personal experiences, I have found Twitter to be a much more valuable networking tool than Facebook. For the most part, I think it comes down to the nature of the two beasts.

Facebook is Passive

When it comes to reaching our to your social graph for help or answers to questions, Facebook leans towards a very “traditional marketing” approach in the way that it lets you communicate. You can either directly contact someone with your message or post something in your status or profile. When you go down that path, your only hope is that someone is paying attention and sees it in between games Scrabulous games and warding off Vampire bites.

As echoed many times throughout the course of 2007, business professionals are adopting the use of Facebook at a rapid pace. That still doesn’t change the mostly passive way it operates as a communications tool. For the business professional, Facebook is a fun, great less formal alternative to LinkedIn. It allows you to build an online calling card of sorts and it provides the ability to keep your contacts up to date on the latest happenings in your life through photos and video. True conversation can be found through discussion threads within Facebook groups. Finding groups that both match your interests – and that are consistently active – can be a hit or miss situation.

Twitter is Active

On the other hand, Twitter does one thing and it does it well. It’s all about the conversation and there is always someone there to who will see your message. From the outside looking in, it’s often hard for people to understand the value that Twitter brings to the table. Its value is directly related to the quality of the people that you choose to follow. My Twitter network has grown substantially faster than my friends on Facebook. In fact, a good portion of my friends on Facebook are folks who I originally connected with on Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter are also fairly different when it comes to demographics. In October of 2007, Forrester’s Charlene Li presented that 34% of Facebook’s user base is comprised of business professionals. Twitter didn’t start as a student targeted platform and, from personal observation, I would bet that professional use dominates the platform by 90% or more. Younger generations are already deeply engrained in SMS messaging and standard instant messaging. This difference keeps the conversation on a generally more “mature” and honest level. Experienced Twitter users are always ready and willing to lend a helping hand, no matter if it’s with raising money for a friend in need, or voting on the best commercials during the Superbowl.

Who wins the battle?

In the end, I don’t think either Facebook or Twitter can be deemed better than the other. They both server different purposes and provide different mechanisms for communicating with your peers or target audiences. Facebook is feature-rich and offers passive and indirect communication tools. Twitter focuses specifically on the conversation and enables more immediate and direct communication with your all of your “Followers.”

Based on these reasons, it definitely pays off to put some thought into the tools you use when communicating with your social graph. Choosing the correct tool based on the your specific needs will give you the most “bang for your buck” – even when the tools are free!

What do you think? If you have a Twitter or Facebook success story, we’d love to hear about it!

Jump-start your Twitter experience with the Twitter Pack

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Following along our post last week about why to use Twitter, today we provide a bit more information on how not only to start, but how to maximize, your presence on Twitter.

Twitter Pack Screenshot

For many people, the experience of using Twitter for the first time can conjure anxiety similar to the first day of high school after moving to a new town. Everyone you see is a stranger and breaking the ice with someone seems next to impossible. If you’re like me, most of your real-life friends don’t fall into the “techie” category which makes getting started even harder.

By shear coincidence, the same week I joined Twitter, I also became a member of Chris Brogan’s Grasshoppers social network on Ning. At that point in time, Twitter was still very new and very few tools were available for searching to see who already had an account. After a quick post to the forums about my Twitter woes I experienced an influx of followings and my micro-blogging network began to expand.

Almost a year later, there are now a growing number of ways to find people to follow on Twitter. However, most involve finding matches to your existing social graph or searching for discussions involving select keywords. Keyword searching may work in some cases, but say you would like to meet fellow Twitter users in your local geographic area or maybe others who enjoy similar hobbies, such as running. Chris Brogan enters the picture again with a new experiment called Twitter Packs.

The basic idea of Twitter Packs is to allow the creation of editable lists of Twitter users grouped into categories like geography, company, events and identity. The lists are maintained by the Twitter community since the site was launched as a wiki. Definitely a smart choice of tools on Chris’ part. As a new Twitter user, being able to quickly find other people of similar interests to follow is fantastic and can get the conversations rolling in no time.

While the initial reaction from the Twitter community has been favorable towards the idea of this type of listing, it is not without potential flaws. The idea of being on a publically accessible list and grouped in a specific category seems like a great way to meet and connect with people of similar interests. I’m sure most would agree that it is. However, some folks fear that this will cause Twitter to become more clique-driven and work against the open nature that the platform originated with.

Regardless of any flaws that people may find with Twitter Packs, it’s certainly off to a strong start and it should be interesting to see how it evolves. If you are new to Twitter or have been thinking about giving it a try, this is definitely a great resource to help you get started. Feel free to follow PerkettPR on Twitter or any of our employees who are currently active Twitter users!

How Twitter Can Expand Your World – Frenemies and All

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We admit, Twitter is difficult to understand from an outsider’s perspective. You really need to participate in the community to understand its value. But once you do engage, the power of this eclectic community comes shining through.

Several of us at PerkettPR have personal Twitter accounts and we also have a corporate entity where we share news, poll the community, post blog entries, track events and more. Twitter has become a fantastic resource for our firm professionally and for many of us, personally. So what have we gleamed from Twitter? Everything from tips on restaurants, travel services, books, technology and more, to new relationships across the globe – including many with like-minded PR professionals – who we’ll call “Frenemies.”

Although we continue to compete for business with many of our Frenemies, we have also united with them in a way we never would have before Twitter. It has provided us the opportunity to see each other beyond the walls of the firms we work for – to appreciate our industry colleagues’ writing, strategies and accomplishments, and even to commiserate over similar struggles.

Through Twitter, we’ve had the opportunity to build relationships like never before – not only with other PR and social media professionals, but reporters, bloggers, analysts and others in relevant – and sometimes not-at-all-relevant – industries. Without Twitter, Jeremiah Owyang and Guy Kawasaki might never have chatted with us about various topics – professional and personal – much less visited and mentioned our blog and our website.

Participating in debates about the debates, rallying around a community member fighting breast cancer, supporting the case of a missing child, and even an unexpected death in the community have all been part of our various experiences on Twitter in the last few months alone. We share lively business-related discussions within the community that often extend to each other’s blogs – sharing ideas, “joining together” on issues such as “the death of PR,” the value of social media or something more personal such as parenting woes.

Twitter has not only helped us to extend our network and knowledge significantly, but provided us with a new avenue to prove that PR executives do have substance and can participate in industry conversations. We have also learned that we have more in common with our competitors than we ever thought possible. They are human, they are smart and we can learn from them. We embrace them as our “frenemies” because we still need to compete – which makes for another interesting future blog post …

The relationships may begin on Twitter – but they don’t end there. We have followed up and met face-to-face with “Followers” from “Twitterverse” at various industry events. Twitter is a great opportunity to expand not only your contacts database but your view of the world. Log on, join the community – we bet you’ll learn something new immediately.

Sermo Named Media Brand of the Year

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Congratulations to our client, Sermo, who was named Media Brand of the Year by Medical Marketing & Media. We are particularly excited about this accomplishment because Sermo took a chance in 2006 with PerkettPR – one of the only firms they interviewed that did not have a dedicated healthcare division – and it continues to be a fruitful relationship for both companies. We worked closely with their marketing team all year to spread the word about this one-of-a-kind community for physicians – and helped it to grow to 40,000 doctors and counting.

Sermo continues to revolutionize healthcare. The discussions held, and decisions made, within the community positively impact not only physicians, but the patients they care for and the pharmaceutical companies that want to forge a safer and more productive future through a more efficient exchange of knowledge and resources. Sermo is a Web-based community where physicians share observations from daily practice, discuss emerging trends and provide new insights into medications, devices and treatments.

“And since physicians have never before been able to talk with a unified
voice in such impressive numbers, sharing observations and insight
about treatments, drugs, devices and biologics, we expect Sermo to
continue to rock the pharma marketing world for some time to come.”

We couldn’t agree more! We are extremely proud of this award, thankful for such an interesting and savvy client, and excited to share even more interesting developments about Sermo in the year to come. Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Palestrant, Founder & CEO; Gina Ashe, CMO; Greg Shenk, Director of Communications and the entire team at Sermo! What a year!

UPDATE: Facebook Beacon – Maybe Not SO Transparent

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12/7/2007: UPDATE – this week Facebook issued an apology and users can now opt out.

The advent of social media has had everyone throwing words around such as transparency, interaction and sharing. But the hoopla this week over Facebook’s Beacon suggests that the world is not as transparent and willing to share personal information as many business executives had hoped. Apparently the extent of how “social” consumers are willing to be is still a mystery to the business world.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Facebook announced Social Ads earlier this month, as well as the launch of Beacon, “a new way to socially distribute information on Facebook.” Beacon is “a core element of the Facebook Ads system for connecting businesses with users and targeting advertising to the audiences they want.”

With public outcry and petitions galore from Facebook users, the company has backed down a little and is now offering users the option to publish or not publish the information in the “stories” feed. It seems that all the social media fans are not willing to be quite so transparent as having their online shopping behavior become news to their “friends.” (Shocker!)

A universal opt-out has been unclear to-date, although Charlene Li of Forrester Research just published official word from Facebook that “Adding Beacon-generated stories will require an explicit opt-in by the member. Before, if the member did nothing, the story would appear.”

There’s always a catch to free services, friends – Facebook has just taken the online advertising model a bit too far. Duncan Riley of TechCrunch does a good job here of dissecting exactly what this means to users. We haven’t canceled our Facebook accounts – yet – have you?