My October Digital Dialogue column for PR Tactics, a publication of the Public Relations Society of America, is a Q&A piece titled “Grow into your social media strategy” that also appears on the newly redesigned www.prsa.org site (tip of the hat to PRSA’s editorial and design teams). I interviewed Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic’s manager of syndication and social media about his efforts getting Mayo involved with podcasting, blogging, and YouTube. He described his approach to social media as developing a balanced communications diet, and I rather like the analogy because it emphasizes the benefits of educating and pacing yourself along the way.
The Tactics article gives a quick snapshot of Lee and his team’s journey since that’s what space limitations of the print journal permit (and the online version mirrors; though with the site redesign I’m told we’ll have more opportunity to “explore the space”). The press page of Aase’s personal SMUG site highlights additional Mayo social media achievements and contains more detailed examples of the tools in use.
SMUG, or Social Media University Global, is Aase’s personal contribution to the social media community. He started his “Lines From Lee” blog in July 2006 and in January 2008 morphed it into SMUG. Lee says SMUG allows him to unleash some creativity. “I’m the chancellor,” he notes for example, and his “Old Main” campus facility is actually a photo of his house.
Lee initially used his blogging as a way to get hands-on experience with social media and, over time, was asked by colleagues to give a Facebook 101 course. Eventually he received more complex questions so he designed a 201 course and subsequent curriculum. ”This set me about using the college course format to organize all the material,” he explained.
SMUG is a helpful site for communicators or anyone wanting to learn more about popular social networking formats, and it seems to be building community too with activities like voting on logo designs for the “University,” and of course blog comments and insights from students. Definitely worth a look when you’re able.
How about you? Are there some go-to sources you consider essential for keeping your social media mindset sharp?
The article discusses keeping measurement in mind when initially designing your social media strategy, so you can better map your efforts to desired outcomes. It also touches on developing social objects for sharing on the social Web.
Earlier this month Shamrock Foods and a variety of participating Arizona restaurants introduced Dine4AZ, a three month campaign to encourage residents and visitors to eat out more often.
One in 10 working Americans are restaurant employees according to the National Restaurant Association, and Arizona has more than a quarter million food service employees per the Arizona Restaurant Association. All told, there are nearly 9,000 eating and drinking establishments in Arizona. While some may consider this a timely feel-good campaign, the economic stimulus capacity seems promising. Supporting stats from Shamrock Foods’ Dine4AZ press release indicate: each dollar spent at an Arizona restaurant generates an additional dollar in sales for other Arizona industries, and each additional $1 million spent in restaurants and bars generates an additional 26 jobs for the state.
Welcome to My Restaurant: Alice Cooper and Shamrock Foods CEO Norm McClelland at Dine4AZ campaign kickoff
The campaign of course offers diners coupons and specials at participating restaurants, and the Dine4AZ.com Web site helps visitors locate participating eateries by city and cuisine. But it’s the communication aspects and news of the launch event at Alice Cooperstown that initially captured my interest. (Yes, Cooperstown is the namesake eatery of classic rocker Alice Cooper. I’ve found few other establishment that can match those ribs — possibly Famous Dave’s with my conspiracy theory being they may have the same supplier…hmm).
I was also drawn in by the dash of social networking that the campaign and knoodle, its Phoenix-based advertising and public relations agency of record, have integrated with activities via Twitter and Facebook pages.
The Cooperstown campaign kickoff (I did not attend) paired Cooper with Governor Jan Brewer as they took turns delivering the pitch. Local ABC and Fox television coverage capture some sound bytes.
knoodle’s Dine4AZ efforts have produced a nice mix of radio, television, print and blog coverage, as well as ongoing awareness and conversations generated through social networking. The campaign represents an interesting blend of corporate, celebrity, agency, media, industry association and even government efforts toward a mutual set of benefits; and it helps confirm that some basic social media use can help amplify the key messages of just about any initiative with most any kind of audience. Hats off to Christina Salgado, Rosario Glasco-Cain and the knoodle team for their job revving up the campaign’s communications.
One more time around for this August PRSA Tactics article about thought leadership and the common characteristics of people who successfully portray it on the social Web, and elsewhere. I received some nice comments and additional ideas from readers on this article which is located here on the Public Relations Society of America Web site. My thanks to everyone who contributed. Have a look and share your thoughts as well.
A common thread among the comments is the notion that true thought leaders are not chest-thumping know-it-alls who lift themselves up while being condescending to others. We’ve all experienced some of these. The point is that creating community and content that others value while potentially aiding your own purposes (such as attracting attention to your brand, product or service) requires simple etiquette and some personality. Thought leadership – or whatever you might like to call it – is hard to achieve if your head is in the clouds.
A variation of thought leadership I didn’t include in the article regards “positive controversy,” or offering a contrarian view of a popular topic or issue. Sometimes assuming a little risk to voice an unexpected or less supported opinion can draw more attention to you or your cause and help key messages spread. Going this route incessantly would get old and turn many people away, but used tactfully it has merit.
An article I wrote regarding the best mobile phone applications for PR professionals appears this month in the online and print editions of PRSA Tactics. Check out “App, app and away: The best smartphone tools for PR professionals” here.
Thanks as always to the PRSA Tactics editorial staff for the opportunity to contribute. I received some Twitter replies to an inquiry I posted while writing the article, so thanks also to Phil Legault, Kristen Turley, Steve Shannon and Soon Mee Kim for their insights and examples that were included.
It’s good to see mobile devices, purpose-built applications and business professionals converging on the topic of productivity, although it definitely depends on who you ask. When I checked the “All Time Top iPhone Apps” list provided by www.148apps.com (updated daily per the site) it took a good deal of scrolling to find anything other than games listed. The iPhone App Store, however, categorizes apps by free and paid as well as subcategories including “Getting Things Done” or “Productivity.” It also includes Top 10 lists in these subcategories, so consulting the App Store itself gets you more quickly to business apps for consideration.
My article, “Brand aid: Creating opportunities in your customer community,” appears in the June print and online editions of PRSA Tactics. It looks at how public relations practitioners can identify interesting stories and conversation material by monitoring various aspects of their organization’s online communities, or really any Web communities where their customers and prospects congregate. I’m interested in any additional suggestions you may have regarding PR’s use of, or involvement in, customer communities.
There are several folks who I would like to thank for their assistance.
Next up for me: I’d like to write an article about measuring the impact of social media use. I’m looking for suggestions regarding the types of metrics to establish and the best tools to track them.
I had the privilege of delivering the keynote presentation for about 100 Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) chapter presidents this past weekend, to help kickoff their annual Leadership Rally in Scottsdale, Arizona.
I’ve put the slide deck on SlideShare and embedded it below.
The presentation encourages audiences to adapt the concept of Buyer Personas (a topic evangelized by David Meerman Scott and Adele Revella among others) and apply it towards identifying admirable leadership traits that we can emulate or adapt, and incorporate into our own Leadership Personas.
In addition to an engaging session (and a great lunch) I was able to meet many student attendees individually and hear what’s on their minds as they prepare to lead PRSSA activities on their campuses and soon enter the workforce.
Pitching the media and merging traditional PR tactics with evolving 2.0 concepts and social media tools were topics discussed, as well as some thoughts on reverse mentoring instances that young PR professionals may encounter with veterans as they enter the workforce, given their natural understanding and hands-on use of social media.
It also seems that I mentioned the social networking efforts of Michigan State University more than once in my presentation. This wasn’t intentional, yet on my Google searches for examples their good work popped up regularly. There are, in fact, many great examples of social media use by PRSSA chapters across the country. Also, I had a chance to meet Stephanie Dockery, PRSSA president of my alma mater, Illinois State University. Go Redbirds!
Some additional thoughts:
My thanks to all the PRSSA members who shared responses via Twitter before and after the presentation, and thanks also to Immediate Past President Brandi Boatner for inviting me, and current PRSSA National President Rebecca Timms for live tweeting much of my presentation (and everyone who joined in).
Those responses can be found via #prssalr and #prssa hashtags.
I’m hoping to include some of these and other students’ observations in a future PRSA Tactics article or blog post about Thought Leadership on the Social Web.
Also, when we were discussing media pitching, Alexander Monney of San Jose State University pointed us to this post by Robert Scoble with some additional helpful advice. Thanks Alexander.
In the article I reference PitchEngine, which is shaping up to be a nice tool for creating SMRs, and a quality E-Book by Todd Defren that touches on SMRs and other social media topics. I also received an email from Rex Riepe after the article published, who notes his IvyLees site provides free online newsrooms and SMRs with no expiration.
Upcoming
I briefly mention social media options from traditional wire services in the article, and I’m planning to catch up with Malcolm Atherton of Business Wire to go a bit deeper on this portion of the SMR topic. Malcolm knows the score when it comes to press release optimization.
I’ve been invited to keynote the PRSSA National Leadership Rally in June for PRSA’s community of college student chapters. I’m honored and plan to write more on this topic at that time. (If you’re a chapter president planning to attend, I’m interested in hearing about what’s on your mind and your expectations for this event.)
On May 27th I have the privilege of moderating a social media panel of local PR pros at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Downtown Phoenix. I plan to blog some highlights of this discussion too. Please consider joining us if you’re in the area. For more panel details see this post on the HMA Time blog.
Some points of interest, among many offered in the report include:
PEW’s survey of Online News Association members indicates that 54% of members surveyed believe journalism is headed in the wrong direction, with only 39% very confident and 43% somewhat confident that a profitable online business model can be identified.
The number of people either relying on the Web for news or considering it as a major source for news – as one might expect – increased over the past year. This, coupled with the recession, has further diminished already fading ad revenues based on legacy business models.
The ubiquitous Web vision is playing out. Mainstream onlines have enhanced their content, and more subject-specific news sites have emerged to make online news even more appealing to the masses. (See PEW’s “New Ventures” section for subject-specific examples.)
With a nod to digital evolution, the Radio section of the report is now referred to as “Audio,” and goes on to call Audio’s future one of “intriguing fragmentation.”
Micro-blogs, namely Twitter, get special focus within the Online section of the report, with the November 2008 Mumbai hotel raids cited as an example of Twitter’s immediacy and ability to break and share news.
It’s citizen journalism – via micro-blogs, blogs, and otherwise – that I currently find most fascinating. Citizen journalism is forcing redefinition and/or tightened focus of roles within professional communications. Anyone who is willing can now have a voice via the Web, so professionals need to more clearly add value to the communications process while also harnessing the best of what audience-generated content has to offer.
Some mediums are ignoring or sidestepping this, while others choose to embrace and leverage it. CNN’s iReport is a nice example of the latter. I like that iReport delineates between which audience-generated stories are used by CNN entities, which you’ll find here, and which are not. iReport also encourages reporting aptitude by offering story, photo, video and audio tips to users. Of course there are integrated Facebook and Twitter feeds, and also a weekly news program on CNN highlighting the most interesting iReports.
CNN’s approach is a subtle way of formalizing and activating what is otherwise informal word-of-mouth and community discussion; citizen journalists generally cite just one or no sources, per PEW’s data. And I’m not saying blogs, online communities, an individual’s Tweets, or geographic iReports are less valuable than mainstream news. They’re increasingly what makes the world of information turn ’round, so helping these individual news accounts find their proper fit aids everyone and expands the variety of our knowledgebase.
What’s your opinion of online news growth in relation to the ‘accelerated reduction’ of print publications? Has citizen journalism piqued your interest in Web news, or soured it? Any examples you can share?
My latest Digital Dialogue column for PRSA’sPR Tactics journal appears online and in the April print edition. “Using social bookmarks: Share knowledge, create awareness” discusses the value of social bookmarking sites such as Delicious or Diigo to collect and organize Web information and share it with others. I think the power of bookmarking is often overshadowed by social networking mainstays like Facebook and Twitter.
What’s great about bookmarking is that it can thread through and support many online communications that a business or brand may use. The inter “linking” work that bookmarking sites do can naturally position them in the background of Facebook, Twitter and the larger online communities. Although, they too are communities in their own right with capabilities for one bookmark user to link with or friend hundreds or even thousands of others. The concept when embraced and maintained by companies can generate big time awareness and goodwill, as well as a network or channel available to broadcast future messages.
The article expands on the topic and intends to help along conversations about how communicators can take better advantage of bookmarking.
My thanks this month to the Public Relations Society of America’s editorial staff, and also to Paul Greenberg for introducing me to Diigo. As an author and highly sought out CRM and social networking speaker, Paul knows a thing or two about prescribing the right tools.
I’ve bookmarked a few “101″ style videos at www.diigo.com/list/ryanzuk and have included a classic on the subject here.
My October Digital Dialogue column for PR Tactics, a publication of the Public Relations Society of America, is a Q&A piece titled “Grow into your social media strategy” that also appears on the newly redesigned www.prsa.org site (tip of the hat to PRSA’s editorial and design teams). I interviewed Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic’s manager of syndication and social media about his efforts getting Mayo involved with podcasting, blogging, and YouTube. He described his approach to social media as developing a balanced communications diet, and I rather like the analogy because it emphasizes the benefits of educating and pacing yourself along the way.
One more time around for this 
