Name: Debbie Friez
Email:
Bio: Here at BurrellesLuce I manage the company’s relationships with many of its largest clients. I currently co-chair the professional development committee for the National Capital Chapter of PRSA and vice president for Washington Women in Public Relations. I am also a member of the International Association of Business Communicators and the Washington, DC, chapter of The Association for Women in Communication. If there is one thing that most people should know about me, it is that I am a diehard hockey fan and enjoy the show, Lost. Twitter: @dfriez; Facebook: BurrellesLuce; LinkedIn: dfriez
Posts by Debbie Friez:
- Make a hashtag and promote it early.
- Make a Twitter list of attendees and follow it.
- Don’t hire a videographer; use Flipcams and digital cameras.
- Allow attendees to take pictures and share them.
- Integrate social media into your event. It is a great way to get information to your attendees and allows for more contact points than any one person can manage.
- Review budgets for the rest of 2010 and start on the 2011 budget.
- Look at your PR/marketing plan, and decide if you need to make some mid-year changes.
- Take time to read industry blogs and articles. What new tactics can you learn and put to use?
- If you find you don’t have time for good refection, you might need to review your staffing needs. Do you need to hire someone to help with new projects/campaigns?
- Set some new personal goals for the rest of the year. A life coach once suggested posting your main personal goals where you see them often, like on a Post-it note on your desk.
- Five Reasons to Unplug Your Vacation by Annie Scott
- How to Manage Social Media (And Still Have a Life) by Caitie Hawley
- Tips for Unplugging While on Vacation by Michael Giuffrida
- Use your #blog to showcase expertise in particular areas so you can win business. (@bgindra)
- Lesson learned-get the video on 1 take, even if you have to record it several times. It’s easier than editing on computer. (@jaybaer)
- Google wants to provide multi-media search results, so post some video. (@jaybaer)
- Digital is not about knowing the answer; it’s finding the answer. (@jaybaer)
- 4 degrees is the new 6 degrees of separation thanks to #SM. (@Brianna)
- Give people something to talk about to help elevate the brand. (@kalbritton) Example is @lenovo photography contest.
- Every company has a 1% Group of core active customers…you need to engage them. (@jaybaer)
- The grammar of green: Clear, Credible, Consistent & Compliance.
- Praise companies for doing what is right with being #green instead of looking at all the bad things they have done.
- The new KISS: Keep it simple & share. (@briansolis)
- QR (Quick Response) codes are great for sharing information, like at a trade show or games.
- The new CEO = Chief Editorial Officer. (@briansolis)
- Don’t give community management to an intern.
- Every company should have a social media crisis plan. (@jaybaer)
- Set goals and objectives before you start social media monitoring.
- Interesting way of looking at the #SM conversations – what are people saying about my company & is it in the right context & with the right influencers?
- PRSA offers advice on preparing their Silver Anvil Awards on their website.
- IABC has a webinar on entering the Gold Quill Awards.
Using Social Media to Enhance Attendee Experience at PR Industry Events
September 1st, 2010
It’s that time of year again. Yes, it’s public relations and marketing conference season. Peter Shankman’s latest blog post gives some great tips for surviving it. Although social media is not a new thing to conferences (Twitter debuted at SXSW a few years ago), it is really now just becoming “mainstream.” In my June 20, 2009 blog post, I first talked about how I use Twitter as my note-taking platform and as a way to encourage engagement. A year later, and it is amazing to see how much more of a role social media plays in event participation.
I recently spoke at the YNPNdc (Young Nonprofit Professionals Network) second annual social media conference. Rosetta Thurman gave a great presentation on basic social media tools you should be using to enhance participation in your conference. Some of my favorite tips include:
“Building social media strategies into your event allows other people to speak and respond on your behalf. Sometimes the best answer to a question comes from a fellow attendee,” says John Chen, publications/project manager, International Society for Performance Improvement.
What tips do you have for BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers looking to increase engagement at conferences? What has worked best for your organization?
Dog-Days of Summer: Perfect Time for PR Reviewing and Planning
August 4th, 2010August in Washington, D.C., where I work, exemplifies the “dog-days” of summer. Congress recesses and it seems everyone else does, too. The slightly slower pace allows us time to reflect on the first half of the year, and make plans for the last two quarters.
“Third and Fourth Quarters Will Define PR Recovery” headlined a recent PR Week article. 
To summarize: Just because there was an upswing in the first two quarters of the year, does not mean the industry has truly emerged from the downturn.
So how can you help your organization emerge successfully?
1. Efficiency is a term thrown-around a lot, but it is still an important concept to PR that few have mastered. One friend, who works at a Fortune 500 company, said she wrote down everything she did for a few days. She was shocked to see she was not as good at multi-tasking as she thought. Her advice was to try to focus on completing a project before you look at the next email or tweet. This mirrors a similar idea expressed in a recent BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas post by my colleague Colleen Flood, who attended the PRSA Counselors Academy back in May and learned that people can only do one thing at a time, as our brains haven’t yet involved to truly multi-task.
2. Mary Fletcher-Jones, Fletcher Prince, said via LinkedIn, that she plans to review clients who came on, clients who left, and what they purchased. I plan to do some of this same reflection and I think it is good for public relations, sales, and client service professionals to incorporate this practice on a regular basis.
Here are some other ideas for your August refection time:
Do you have other suggestions for a mid-year review? Please share some of your insights. How are you working to help your organization emerge from the recession?
Do You Need To Unplug From Social Media?
July 6th, 2010
I just returned from vacation. Before I left, several people told me to turn off my BlackBerry. Maj. David Faggard, U.S. Air Force, who was on a PRSA-NCC Twitter panel I recently moderated, said his time in Afghanistan allowed him to “turn-off” the social media noise. He recommended we all do it from time to time. Can you do it?
This CNN article suggests it is “anxiety” that keeps most of us from unplugging completely on vacation. I’ll admit I, just like “tech-loving kids and parents,” could not do it. I knew there would be emails sent only to me which I would then need to forward to others. I’m also a news junkie, and Twitter is one of my best news feeds.
But, I did try to limit my time on the “crackberry” and computer to a few minutes a day. Peter Bregman’s post The Mostly Unplugged Vacation for the Harvard Business Review shares many of my same feelings and strategies. His suggestion for those who can’t unplug completely: “Choose a specified time — and timeframe — each evening… Scheduling time sets clear expectations — for you, for the other people on your vacation, and for the people reaching you.”
Social media doesn’t have to be for work, so I decided to use Foursquare and Facebook to share my vacation with my friends. Since I was headed to see family and friends in North Dakota, I knew the locations would be quite different from the usual tourist spots others would be visiting. I really enjoyed the comments I received, especially after visiting the world’s largest Holstein Cow in New Salem, ND. (However, I was surprised no one responded, when I became the “mayor” of Wood Lake, ND.) And, many people shared my pain as I was delayed, re-routed, and delayed again in my attempt to fly home.
The key to enjoying your vacation seems to be setting limits on your online interaction. Here are a few good posts on ways to manage your time:
Are you unplugging on your vacation? What tips do you have for the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers?
How to Become an Influencer: Lessons from the 2010 PRSA Counselors Academy Spring Conference
June 7th, 2010
“We should all become influencers, and move away from pitching,” said Brian Solis at the PRSA Counselors Academy Spring Conference in Asheville, NC. He suggested that you can start by writing your press release in 120 characters, so there is room for others to re-tweet it. This was just one of the great insights I picked-up at the conference.
Keeping with this theme, I am offering some of the other best tips (under 120 characters or at least 140) I learned.
Blogging and Social Media
Engagement
Green Initiatives
Messaging
Strategy
For more great information from this conference, checkout, my BurrellesLuce colleague, Colleen Flood’s latest Fresh Ideas post, “Are You Shifting Marketing and PR Plans Based on Hispanic Demographic Trends?,” as well as the PRSay blog, Jay Baer’s blog and others.
Have you learned some new ideas you can share from a recent industry event? What do you think makes an influencer?
It’s Public Relations Award Season!
May 17th, 2010
Flickr Image: Mags_cat
My email inbox, probably not unlike yours, is full of calls to enter local PR awards. For instance, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) DC Metro’s Silver Inkwell entries are due June 10. Entries for the National Capital Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA-NCC) Thoth Awards are due June 18. To top it off, Washington Women in Public Relations’ (WWPR) next professional development lunch is on writing successful PR award entries. And that is just the regional events. Nationally, PRSA, IABC, the Association for Women in Communications (AWC), PR News, PRWeek, and others have awards programs too.
Although entering takes time and cash, winning one of these awards helps prove the value of your hard work throughout the year. “Whether you’re an internal communicator, media relations specialist, work in interactive communications, or any other communication discipline, there is nothing like being acknowledged by your peers, so I urge my communication colleagues to enter. It’s a terrific way to showcase your work, as well as advance the profession,” says Shonali Burke, ABC, president, IABC-DC Metro.
Recently I asked Lindsey Rose, senior counselor, Carmichael Lynch Spong (a client of BurrellesLuce) why she thought it was important for industry professionals to submit to these types of awards. She explains how PR industry awards offer several perks for your clients, your agency and you, as a practitioner:
Your clients: Awards give them recognition for their accomplishments and help raise visibility and drive excitement for their programs. Awards solidify clients’ achievements in their industry and help bring their stories to life. Award summaries also often help clients merchandise their communications efforts/case studies within their internal organization.
Your agency: Awards showcase your leadership through best practices outlined in your submissions. Awards celebrate your relationship with your client and reinforce the client/agency partnership (and oftentimes further reinforce clients’ ongoing investment in your work). Winning awards can also open doors and help bring your agency to the table for new business opportunities.
You: As a practitioner, awards showcase your strategic capabilities from research and planning to execution and generating results. Compiling awards is great practice for any PR practitioner – no matter what your level. Winning awards is even more rewarding.
You can get hints and tips for preparing your awards entries on many of your local and national professional organization’s websites. Some great resources include:
Personally, from having judged several awards programs and chaired a judging committee, I know the key to winning is evaluation and measurement from beginning to end of the project or campaign. The best well-written press release will not win an award without showing how the release had impact. The key is to start early, ideally from the beginning of your project or campaign, and continue to document and save information throughout the program.
So now that PR awards season is well underway, how are you preparing? Are there any suggestions you can add for making the most out of your submission?
