The 2012 Counselors Academy kicked off on Sunday, May 6, 2012. The evening’s keynote session featured Jay Baer, president of Convince and Convert, and Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich. The duo asserted that “it’s difficult to tell a client they need to be using the Web if an agency principal doesn’t believe it themselves.”
How to Build Your Personal Brand into Your Professional Brand During the session, Baer and Dietrich discussed “how revenue follows capabilities and capabilities follow beliefs” and presented agency leaders with best practices to “finally ‘get off their duffs and start becoming social’ in order to build their businesses.”
Here are some key takeaways from the presentation:
If an agency has several employees, why not tweet under the agency name?
Videos create a human being behind the brand. We remember personal stories and want to do business with the people we know.
Network – social media connects you with people you cannot connect with in 3D and helps with national recognition.
Agencies need to spend time on leadership campaigns (e.g., blog posts). Tech has made us all self-servers of information and we want to find the answers ourselves when it’s time.
Can a junior staffer handle social media? Social media is not something you should delegate and you can’t outsource your voice.
People will remember your “branding.” So, give away what you know. Remember, “giving away a list of ingredients doesn’t make you a chef.”
Figure out your circles. Listen and find opportunities to be helpful. The best way to be helpful is to setup searches. People buy from people they like and trust. Your client wants to work with you!
Commit to social media regularly – say, 20 minutes a day – and fill in the “tiny gaps in your day.”
How do you measure social media success? Understand how it pays off in terms of leads, new business, and client retention. Listen. Assess the conversation. Engage. Measure and then improve.
The audience also had the opportunity to ask a few questions. One question focused on “what PR firms should stop doing and start implementing instead.” The answer? Stop chasing the hot new thing and start having policies in place for brand ambassadors.
How are you “groovin’ to your own beat” and “merging your personal and professionals selves to build your business?”
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*Bio: Colleen Flood has been a sales consultant with BurrellesLuce for over 12 years and is eager to become a more integrated part of the social-public relations community. She primarily handles agency relations in the New York and New Jersey metro-area. She is not only passionate about work, but also about family, friends, and the Jersey Shore. Twitter: @cgflood LinkedIn: Colleen Flood Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Even though we know digital and online media continues to change, IABC/DC Metro started 2012 with a chapter meeting tackling the latest Social Media Trends.
Rick Dunham, Washington bureau chief of the Houston Chronicle and Hearst newspapers, and chief author of the Texas on the Potomac blog.
Emerging Social Media Trends
Each panelist brought different industry point-of-view to the discussion. Radick took government. Horowitz gave the agency perspective, Steigman reviewed the small business view and Dunham brought insight from publishing and the media.
Government Use: Radick dispelled the myth that the government is behind the curve, but he did see them stalling in advances for 2012 because it is an election year.
Internal Communications: Radick also thinks there will be more enterprise 2.0 or social media behind the firewall to internal audiences.
Integrated Efforts: Both Radick and Horowitz confirmed they see more integration into all lines of communications.
Influencers: They felt the days of the “social media guru” are dying fast. Horowitz said it’s time to look for persuaders or influencers who can help persuade others to your thinking or agenda.
Small Business: Steigman sees social media platforms as a reliable ecosystem and wonders how they can be used to make it easier to reach customers. She suggested reading Phil Simon’s The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business. She also feels it will be key for business to understand search and the data around it.
Digital Skills: Dunham is amazed by the use of tablets for tweeting, video, etc. Because many of his colleagues are not digitally inclined, he relies on interns to provide new ideas for using social media to drive more readers to their media properties.
Social Media Best Practices for 2012 As with all social media discussions, some great best practices come out. Radick reminded us, “Don’t concentrate on social media tools, but concentrate on the principles behind them.
“When asked how to best measure social media, Horwoitz said, “You need to measure based on business goals, don’t measure on tactics.”
For more helpful social media best practices, you can read Steigman’s highlights of the session on her blog.
What social media trends do you see for 2012? Please share them with the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers.
Broadcast media traditionally refers to television. It may seem people are spending less time in front of the TV these days. But with the media everywhere mentality, broadcast television still remains a viable part of media relations outreach.
In fact, broadcast is becoming even more important today because of its availability online – increasing shelf life and exposure of key content segments. “Today, broadcast is about much more than just television and radio. There is mobile TV, podcasting, web streaming, branded content, and ad funded programming,” confirms Weber Shandwick, a full service public relations agency who specializes in Broadcast PR. “In short, it is all about convergence between traditional broadcast outlets and the new digital kids on the block. A well thought out convergent campaign using the best of the old in conjunction with the best of the new will amplify your messages and give you an important voice […]”
With that spirit in mind, BurrellesLuce put together 5 tips to help you get the most out of working with television journalists and enhance your broadcast efforts.
“I don’t know what Facebook is going to look like a week from now because, you know, we move pretty fast,“ said Andrew Noyes, public policy communications, Facebook, at the National Capital Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA-NCC) event on the Changing Landscape of Social Media. The tools we use now are ever changing and new tools and platforms are always emerging.
Panelist Ricky Choi, social media strategist for LivingSocial, reminded the audience, “Social media should be visual, personal and conversational.” He noted that social media will be a better marketing tool than email in three to five years and that social media engagement is the sum of interaction and content. Communicators should try to include context without being salesy.
The evolution of the media is happening, but questions remain regarding the best way to translate personal use to the big picture, Noyes reiterated. Choi suggested more education as one possible solution. Facebook is trying to educate younger users on how to be good digital citizens and understand that reputation is important. The social media giant is working with outside thought leaders to encourage people to use their privacy settings effectively. (more…)
Recently I wrote a post, here on BurrellesLuceFresh Ideas, outlining key tips for integrating online video into your PR campaign from a recent PRSA-NY panel. For this post, I thought I would re-cap some of what I thought were the most compelling best practices for creating, marketing, and measuring online video content – as discussed at the event.
It was followed by a roundtable Q&A moderated by Jason Winocour, social and digital media practice leader at Hunter Public Relations.
How to Create Online Video Content Nearly 89 percent of journalist report that they regularly include online video content in their stories. But how can marketing and communications professionals create compelling video content?
Jim Sulley, president of Newscast U.S., had these best practices to offer:
Understand who you are trying to reach. Who are your target demographics?
Get the attention of the people watching. You only have 10 seconds to hook their interest.
Shoot to script, don’t script to shoot. In other words, take the time to plan your videos and write a script.
Create biscuits, little surprises along the way, and don’t give away the ending upfront.
Be truthful. And remember, production values count.
Entertain or DIE.
Too much text is annoying for online video.
When creating video content, you will also want to get your online community, stakeholders, and agencies involved, as this with provide you with feedback and help you market your initiatives. (more…)
The 2012 Counselors Academy kicked off on Sunday, May 6, 2012. The evening’s keynote session featured Jay Baer, president of Convince and Convert, and Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich. The duo asserted that “it’s difficult to tell a client they need to be using the Web if an agency principal doesn’t believe it themselves.”
and presented agency leaders with best practices to “finally ‘get off their duffs and start becoming social’ in order to build their businesses.”
Even though we know digital and online media continues to change, 
