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.

The panelists included:

• Dan Horowitz, executive vice president and senior partner for Fleishman-Hillard Digital
• Daria Steigman, founder of Steigman Communications and the author of the Independent Thinking Blog
• Steve Radick, lead associate, digital strategy and social media practice, Booz Allen Hamilton
• 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.

1. 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.
2.  Internal Communications: Radick also thinks there will be more enterprise 2.0 or social media behind the firewall to internal audiences.
3. Integrated Efforts: Both Radick and Horowitz confirmed they see more integration into all lines of communications.
4. 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.
5. 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.  
6. 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.  

On Wednesday, May 4^th, I had the opportunity to attend the PR Week Measurement Roundtable, along with some of my BurrellesLuce colleagues.

The roundtable focused on the constantly evolving role of measurement in the PR industry. Bernadette Casey, senior editor at PR Week, and Johna Burke, SVP of marketing here at BurrellesLuce, hosted the event. The breakfast provided attendees the opportunity to network with more than 25 senior leaders in measurement and featured a Q&A with Jason Forget, corporate reputation manager for GE Energy, among BurrellesLuce clients and friends.

In a quest to become a “gold standard communicator,” measurement is a key component of PR and marketing activity. In fact, 70 percent of the day at GE Energy is spent doing media monitoring and analysis.

Here are a few takeaways I tweeted:

• The Barcelona Principles are gaining traction. The concepts are straight forward and it is now incumbent on PR professionals to begin applying these principles.
• Use measurement to propel the organization forward. Move from proactive to reactive.
• Move beyond using numbers as an effort to validate efforts and consider the insight those numbers provide.
• Keep in mind that while preferences change, human behavior\psychology stays the same. Study and learn from trends.
• Insight is not always about dollars and cents.  Don’t be so focused on the bottom line that you overlook opportunities to gain valuable insights regarding long term stakeholder behavior.

Some of my BurrellesLuce colleagues, who were also in attendance, provided a few additional takeaways from the measurement roundtable:

Crystal deGoede, marketing specialist -

• Measurement has to be integrated across all functions of an organization.
• Measurement must focus on the conversation and communities not just the coverage an organization receives.

Denise Giacin, senior account manager, client services -

• Measurement is about the people. Identifying influencers and understanding the outcomes of interactions, not about output of the number of messages.
• Better technologies are needed to help identify the “influencer.”

Tom Kowalski, senior account manager, client services –

• To be successful, an organization’s measurement program needs to provide value.
• Measurement is about people understanding the outcome of activities and their impact on business not about them understanding the numbers.

All three cited the incorporation of social media into the measurement mix as another important takeaway:

• Social media is becoming increasingly important, even to companies who don’t use mainstream social media channels (e.g., Facebook and Twitter).  For example, GE has a 50/50 split between mainstream and social media in order to gain market share and has discovered their audiences use vertical social media outlets, such as electrical engineering forums and discussion boards online.

For a closer examination of metrics strategies, check out this PR Week article discussing other important measurement questions and topics from the roundtable.

How is your organization measuring your public relations efforts? What metrics do you believe are most important to the leadership of your organization?

Flickr Image: Sebastian Fritzon

Valerie Simon

Listening, as I define it, is not a passive exercise. Listening is not a matter of simply hearing words. Listening requires a concentrated method of digesting the information, and using that information to take action. So like any exercise program, I’ll recommend you do a quick check up before starting to strengthen your listening efforts.

Check Up
Take a quick pulse: Review your business objectives and marketing plan. Keep in mind that social media participation should be integrated with your overall communications plan.

Set Goals:  What business objectives will your social media participation help you to achieve?

• Sales
• Donations
• Event attendance
• Customer Service (response/retention/loyalty)
• Brand Awareness
• Crowd sourcing/ product development
• Membership/Admissions
• Communications amongst different stakeholders
• Recruitment
• Thought leadership

Warm Ups
Who are you trying to reach? Consider what social media channels will be most beneficial for your organization. Stretch. Extend beyond Facebook and Twitter. Consider Flickr, YouYube, Tumblr, LinkedIn and seek out forums and blogs with strong communities.  BurrellesLuce offers several tools to help get you warmed up quickly, including ContactsPlus™, which helps you to identify new blogs by matching up a current release with those bloggers who are writing on similar topics, and Social Media Monitoring and Engagement solution, Engage121, which enables you to explore what is being said across social media channels and effectively build and manage your online communities.

Speed
Are you planning/prepared to provide immediate responses? The W Hotels “Whatever/Whenever” promise may well be on its way to becoming the standard, rather than the exception, in customer service. Social media allows stories to break and quickly spread at any time of day. I encourage those using BurrellesLuce’s Social Media Monitoring and Engagement solution, to experiment with setting up alerts using filters such as Klout rank or sentiment to sift through the noise and make sure that they are advised of critical information whenever it breaks. Of course a quick, well thought out and efficient response across all channels is critical.

Strength
Do some heavy lifting, err, searching. Investigate the current conversations being said about you, your competitors and the industry. Identify recurring themes and study trends. Review sentiment and compare how the conversations vary across different platforms. Identify key influencers and pay attention to the language and tone. What topics evoke passionate responses?

Flexibility
Don’t get stuck monitoring the same keywords you have always deemed important. As you study industry trends and influencers, adjust your searches accordingly. Begin listening to your communities even when they are not actively speaking about “relevant” topics. What do they care about? Consider what new topics or audiences may be interested in your organization.

Endurance
Set yourself up to succeed over the long term. Put in place a structure to collect the data that will allow you to learn from both your communities and your own social behaviors. There are a myriad of ways to measure social media buzz, sentiment, link tracking, share of voice, fans and followers, geo-location check-ins… slow down and take another pulse check. Review business objectives and consider what metrics can best indicate whether your activity is supporting those business objectives. As you embark upon this listening exercise, look at the data in a number of different ways.

Cool Down
Evaluate all of the data you have collected and all your new knowledge regarding trends and influencers. Go back to your business goals and consider how you will align your social media activity to meet those goals. What channels are best suited for your organization? Where should your voice be heard? Where can you build a strong community that will offer business results? Participating in social media will require an investment of time, so consider the time and resources you can devote. 

Prepare to Play
Listening exercise complete, you are ready for the big game… engagement. But that, my friends, is another post!

What would you add to your listening exercise? What activities are included in your daily listening routine? Share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

April 2011

Media relations has always been a vital part of a successful communications strategy. What has changed, however, is the way communications professionals must interact with The Media — and, by extension, the bloggers, journalists, freelancers, and syndicated writers who generate coverage.

It is no longer enough to merely send out a mass press release — also known as the “spray and pray method” — and hope that someone working at a relevant media outlet or online site not only reads it, but then acts to convert the release into a story. No, in working with The Media, the expectation is that media relations professionals are educated and informed about proper targeting and evolving trends. This includes building one-on-one relationships with bloggers and journalists, regardless of their title, assigned beat, or outlet/website affiliation.

Click here to discover six myths and facts about media relations and how savvy PR practitioners can get a handle on them.

Valerie Simon

My husband woke me this morning with the terrifying news… While watching the morning news on television, as he ate breakfast this morning, he learned that an 8.9 magnitude earthquake had hit Japan, and tsunami warnings had been issued for a lengthy list of countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica. Here in the U.S., Hawaii and the pacific coast were also in danger.

 I immediately asked if our cousin Sara, who is currently studying in Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan was okay. Quickly, we logged on to Facebook to check on Sara and her mom, who was scheduled to arrive in Japan today for a visit. I looked up friends who are in Hawaii to make sure they were safe and contacted relatives, via phone, who were not on Facebook. As we waited to hear from loved one, I read the support and good wishes from mutual friends.

Trending topics on Twitter included, #prayforjapan, #tsunami, #Japan, Indonesia and “Watching CNN.” I followed them cautiously, well aware of how quickly news travels on Twitter and how easy it can be for erroneous information to spread.  I turned to my trusted news sources, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS to make sure I didn’t spread fiction. In the PR industry, we understand the dangers of sharing inaccurate information, and social media makes it all too easy for any of us to innocently perpetuate false stories.

The changes in media have had a tremendous impact on how we communicate in times of crisis. How did you find out about the events that transpired overnight? How will you continue to follow the story?

All of us at BurrellesLuce send our thoughts and best wishes to those impacted by these disasters, as we all continue to wait to hear the fate of our friends and family.

Mitchell spoke to a group of roughly 250 communicators about the new news consumer and media trends for 2011.  It was an intensive presentation complete with plenty of charts, graphs and statistics. I won’t attempt to recap everything that was addressed but, here are some of my key takeaways:

• No surprise that there is more news consumed now than a decade ago with 33 percent of Americans getting news via mobile devices, and 92 percent reporting the use of multiple platforms to get their news.
• Internet is closing in but 74 percent still go to television for national and international news.
• More of us “graze” for news with two minutes and 30 seconds being the average session per site, down from three minutes and six seconds last year – compared to about a half an hour with a daily newsprint product.
• Sixty-two percent of internet users are on social media, and 77 percent of social network users get their news there.
• Facebook is the third most popular referral site for news articles – following only Google and the original news site.

Contrary to those naysayers that keep saying print media is dead, this “old” media still provides most of our news!  In one American city (Baltimore), a whopping 92 percent of new content came from “old” media, proving that the published story is just the beginning of its life cycle.

There are lots of new players in the news game: citizens, non-profits, patch (local), commercial entities, corporate communications, newsmakers, privately funded sites, lobby and special interest groups. However, those producing news today have less control than ever in history. 

Mitchell said, “While news in the 21^st century offers greater freedom today than ever to take part in the news conversations, it brings with it greater effort and responsibility.” 

So what does all this mean to you?  Obviously social networks are a very important distribution channel, but PR professionals must adapt to the “new” journalism – as a service, not a product that is platform specific. Communicators must be transparent with corporate messaging. What is your organization doing to adapt to the changing media landscape?

The End of ‘Social Media’
Paul Gillin, a long-time tech-journalist, asks that we stop talking about “social media” in 2011. He explains, “It’s not that social media is no longer important. On the contrary, there’s almost no media today that isn’t social.”

4 Netsquared Social Good Trends for 2010
Geoff Livingston compiles some of the reflections presented to TechSoup/NetSquared regarding the trends for 2010. Among them: “mobile as a legitimate grassroots platform” and emerging tools for “visualizing data.”

2010 Trends on Twitter
Twitter recently released its year in review, announcing the top trending topics across of a variety of categories. “Gulf Oil Spill,” “FIFA World Cup,” and the movie Inception were the three overall top trends.

Facebook Reveals Top Status Trends of 2010
Adding to the list of status trends, Facebook also announced its most popular terms for 2010. The most popular status trend for 2010 was HMU (“hit me up,” as in to call or text me), followed by “World Cup” and “Movies”

2011: The Year Social Media Comes of Age
Social Media Today, contributor Chris Symes offers three takeaways from a recent presentation by Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter, on “the career path of the social media strategist.” One of the key tips for 2011: “Know your ROI.”

2011 Trends in Social Media
Don’t Drink the Kool-aid blog gives some perspective on what 2011 will hold for PR and social media. Two trends to consider are that “companies will opt for agencies that specialize in social media” and “companies will turn to agencies for help with blogs as part of social media management.”

2011 Digital Trends – Shifts in US Online Population Demographics
Alina Popescu, Everything PR, highlights some online population trends as forecasted by eMarketer. She notes that, “Recent research from the Association of National Advertisers shows marketers are already capitalizing on the digital trends, with more than half of US marketers stating they will increase multicultural spending on both traditional and newer media.”

The Illusion of Predicting the Future, and How to Manipulate the Public Perception in 2011
While some of these predictions and year-end reviews can help public relations and communications practitioners plan for the year ahead, Mihaela Lica Butler, also a contributor on Everything PR, cautions the industry about “piling crap and calling it research” and reveals “how to manipulate the public perception in 2011.”

What did you think were the top trends of 2010? Can you share your ideas and predictions for 2011 with the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers?

We all live on planet earth and most of us own or use some sort of tech-gadget(s) that allows us to communicate and interact with each other and the world. It’s hard to believe we survived all those centuries without computers, cell phones, Internet, and social media. I can’t remember what I used to do “back in the day” when something comical happened and I wanted to share it with my friends…maybe we paged each other! 

Most of us are very familiar with the advertising and marketing campaigns used by HTC (Android), iPhone, Mac, PC, iPad, and BlackBerry. They are designed to connect with “you” on a personal level:

• HTC’s “You” campaign – “You don’t need to get a phone, you need a phone that gets you.”
• iPhone Facetime – woman tells her husband she is pregnant.
• Microsoft – “Get to everything you love faster.”
• BlackBerry – “Don’t just like, love what you do with Blackberry.” 

Do these campaigns actually affect our perception of what’s best when it comes to purchasing a gadget(s) or do we subconsciously choose based on other factors (e.g., trends, capabilities, ease of use, etc.)?

Retrevo, a consumer electronics review and shopping site, conducted an online survey of 7,500 Retrevo users across all genders, age demographics, and locations between March and July of this year. The Gadget Census Report shows that owners of iPhones, Androids, and BlackBerry’s exhibit different behaviors and characteristics based on which gadget(s) they use.  So I know what I am, but what are you?

If you’re like me, you probably own a Droid. You probably also do not have a landline in your home.  According to Retrevo, 31 percent of Droid owners do not have landlines, compared to iPhone (23 percent) and BlackBerry (23 percent) users. Retrevo did note that one reason for this is because Android owners tend to have more reliable coverage.

Is it true that once you go Mac you never go back? I would say so! If you have a Mac in your household, you are three times more likely to purchase an iPhone and six times more likely to purchase an iPad, according to the survey. 

iPhone Characteristics.
According to the census results, iPhone users act and think differently than Droid and BlackBerry users. They are also usually younger (especially when it comes to BlackBerry users) and have a tendency to adopt technology earlier, like watching TV online. On a surprising twist, iPhone users are not as “Genius Bar” as they might think they are. They are 23 percent more likely to rent a movie from Blockbuster (are they still around?) than their Droid peers, and 22 percent more likely than Droid owners to not know what brand of television they own.

Android Characteristics.
Retrevo reports that Droid users are more tech-savvy, usually owning techier gadgets than their iPhone and BlackBerry friends. They are less likely to own a GPS though. (But if your phone was running Google map software, there would be no need for a Garmin lying around taking up space.) The downfall to being so techy and brilliant, 25 percent of Android owners are more likely to not read books and 20 percent more likely to not care about recycling old gadgets.

BlackBerry Characteristics.
2002 called and they want their BlackBerry back… According to the Gadget census, BlackBerry owners/users are old fashion. In fact, a recent article in Trader Daily discussed BlackBerry losing its “stimulant addiction” for Wall Street, who is considered the early adopters of BlackBerry’s: “FierceFinance pointed out this week that some of the major banks, whose employees traditionally dared to touch no cell-phone bearing anything other than a BlackBerry emblem, are beginning to move towards the fancy new options.” When it comes to keeping up with other forms of tech-gadgets, Retrevo found that BlackBerry users are more likely to have a CRT (tube) as their primary television and listen and get their music from terrestrial radio. However, they are 15 percent more likely to recycle old gadgets than Android users.

So based on the results from Retrevo, do you have the characteristics of the gadget(s) you own?  If you own an iPhone are you upset to find out you are not as unique as you might think? Androiders, is it true that you do not read books? And last but not least, BlackBerry users, are you really old school?  What factors played into you choosing your gadget(s)? Do the “you” campaigns play a factor into your decisions? I look forward to reading your thoughts along with the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers.

***

*Bio: After graduating from East Carolina University with a Marketing degree in 2005, Crystal DeGoede moved to New Jersey. In her four years as a member of the BurrellesLuce marketing team and through her interaction with peers and clients she has learned what is important or what it takes to develop a career when you are just starting out. She is passionate about continuing to learn about the industry in which we serve and about her career path. By engaging readers on Fresh Ideas Crystal hopes to further develop her social media skills and inspire other “millennials” who are just out of college and/or working in the field of marketing and public relations. Twitter: @cldegoede LinkedIn: Crystal DeGoede Facebook: BurrellesLuce

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Counselors Academy with Abbie.

Abbie, will you please introduce yourself?

ABBIE FINK: Sure. My name is Abbie Fink. I’m vice president and general manager of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona.

BURKE: And, Abbie, you’re also the co-chair of Counselors Academy. Can you please talk a little bit about the programming and how you as an agent see–drive some of that content to make this a valuable attendee event for some of the participants?

FINK: Sure. Counselors Academy is a special interest group of the Public Relations Society of America, and it’s attended by owners and managers of public relations firms. And so we are all here–it’s our professional development opportunity for agency owners and managers to really learn about our businesses. We are talking about growth strategies, what are the trends that we’re seeing in the marketplace as it relates to social media, green initiatives, Hispanic communications; really, the types of things that we can look at as new revenue-generating sources, new business opportunities that we can then take back into our own markets and implement new programs and things that we’ve learned as a result of the conversations that we’ve had here.

BURKE: Great. Thanks, Abbie. And where can people find you on the web and in social media?

FINK: Well, thanks for that opportunity as well. We are on the web at hmapr.com. We also host a blog at hmatime.com. And then you can find me on Twitter @abbief, that’s A-B-B-I-E-F, and of course on HMA Public Relations page on Facebook. And I look very much forward to connecting with you there.

BURKE: Thanks, Abbie.

FINK: Thank you.

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE:  Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Travel and Tourism Conference in Beautiful Aspen, Colorado.  I’m here with Angela.

Angela, will you please introduce yourself?

ANGELA BERARDINO:  Hi, I’m Angela Berardino.  I’m the senior director for travel and emerging media at Turner Public Relations.

BURKE:  And what are some of the trends that you’re seeing specifically as they relate to travel and tourism in the industry right now?

BERARDINO:  I think one of the larger trends is the continuing evolution of geolocation technology, so the idea that content someone creates can have a GPS tag on it and can be sorted based on where it was created.  We’re seeing that with services like Goala and Foursquare, that, you know, let users check in to a social network. But also in how photography and video and even just website content, it can actually be filtered based on where the user’s at, especially if they’re using their phone. So I think how travel industry creates content and how it’s sorted is going to continue to evolve.  It’s no longer just about the words that are used, it’s–can also be about the physical location that it was taken in.

BURKE:  Great.  And, Angela, where can people find you in the web and in social media?

BERARDINO:  Sure.  I tweet under @CoTravelGirl.  And I also blog at digitaljuju.com.

BURKE:  Great.  Thank you so much.

BERARDINO:  Yes.