Deirdre Breakenridge

I’ve been diligently testing new products and services to get my communications department up to speed for PR 2.0 and social media campaigns.  I know that in several of my posts I’ve discussed how important it is to make sure that the PR team is equipped with great resources to build relationships with influencers, manage campaign efforts, and track program progress and measure results.

There are some fantastic tools out there and I’ve named and commented on many from HARO and PitchEngine to Vocus and Radian6.  But, the other day I had a huge ‘AHAAAA’ moment when I saw a demonstration of Blog Outreach Pro.  Now, I had already been to the company’s website to learn about the platform and I read the one pager on all of the benefits the product provides. But, when you see the platform in action (I saw how it dealt with numerous campaigns simultaneously), watch how you can manage bloggers and digital influencers, get them involved in the platform and how they can connect with your clients, it becomes a must have product.

Blog Outreach Pro is exactly as it sounds, it’s a “Blog Outreach and Social Media Marketing toolkit for public relations firms and social media agencies – allowing them to consolidate resources, manage campaigns and provide real-time client reporting.  Blog Outreach Pro has been specifically designed to address the challenges and streamline the process of your social media marketing efforts.”

I especially liked how the platform provided three different views: The agency, client and blogger views.  Focusing on the agency view, some strong features and benefits include how you can:

• Customize the platform for any product, service or industry (I saw a demo on PR for musicians)
• Provides the outreach to your existing blogger contacts and tracks the communication
• Organizes your contacts which allows you to search and match them to client efforts
• Create a central location (a newsroom) with media assets, product information, and links to sharable social media
• Observe the behavior, likes and dislikes of bloggers as they interact on the platform with your client
• Allow your clients to view the activity: they can log into the platform and see which bloggers and digital media are being contacted and pinpoint who has shown interest, requested an interview or who has left an endorsement.
• See the PR team’s daily activities and see how progress is made each and every day on a campaign

These are only a few of the highlights.  There is also the ability to track and view over time the number of bloggers contacted, how many viewed assets in the newsroom or downloaded media and/or client information, watch the blogger’s behavior within the platform and the result of the interactions (in the form of an interview, comments, rating or an endorsement).

I will be beta testing Blog Outreach Pro over the next 60 days and I will continue to keep you posted on the features and capabilities of this platform.

Here are a few screen shots to help you visualize the product.  But remember, it’s the demo and the ability to see the platform in action that brings the product to life.

Newsroom can be customized with media assets:

Upload and search contacts:

Ratings and comments left by bloggers and digital media

Product profiles that are easy for bloggers to find:

My daily ritual involves as much media snacking, blogging and social networking as I possibly can for my clients and to build own my personal brand.  Even though my professional and personal life is wrapped up in the social media landscape, cruising along at an extremely fast pace, I still need my time to read and enjoy the written word.

Media consumption and enjoyment comes in many different forms.  For me, when I slow down to smell the roses, which isn’t that often lately, it means I can take the time to really read and take pleasure in a long blog post.  I like to reflect on what the blogger is trying to get across with his/her perspective.  I can’t read Brian Solis’ blog posts quickly, nor do I want to just glance at them.  For the amount of time that Brian puts into these insightful posts, I’d like to take the same amount of time to get something out of them!

Chris Brogan and Steve Rubel were discussing whether or not media snacking is taking over and if blogging is considered antiquated.  I was so happy when Chris Brogan responded in his blog post by saying:

I think there are many ways to come to the media making world. Colleague Steve Rubel recently posted about how he thinks of blogging as antiquated, and how he’s working more and more in the real-time web, or the “statusphere,” as he also called it.

I get this. I understand the interest in immediacy. The thing is, I think both are required. While I think there are several occasions where the instantaneous experience of the real-time web is compelling, I still think there are plenty of times when a well-considered blog post has some value.

There’s a difference between making a meal and grabbing a snack. Eating only snacks can lead to us getting flabby. It means we spend less time in deliberate contemplation. It means there aren’t as many places to exercise our larger thoughts.

Bravo Chris!  I just feel a strong affinity toward a time and a place for media snacking and then knowing when to take a longer moment for the thoughtful blog post.  I also have another passion for media….I look forward to having printed material in my hands.  No, I’m not a Boomer, I’m a Gen X that likes to read different types of media.  Do you know what vacation reminds me of?  Vacation is a time to read magazines and books on the beach.  Sure, I may get a Kindle, but I’m just not ready to give up my subscription to the print versions of Wired, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Inc. magazines

I can also get lost in a book and it’s a wonderful form of relaxation for me. Now that’s enjoyment and I will be ordering hard copy books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble for as long as publishers continue to print them.  And, one last media consumption preference, which if you follow me on Twitter, then you will know I still watch cable and network news (mostly because of my favorite news personalities) and I read the Asbury Park Press every Saturday and Sunday morning.  It’s a part of my morning relaxation therapy, which sets the tone for the weekend.  That’s also the time that I review the longer blog posts that I’ve saved during the week.

So, there you have it…I’m a social media lover and PR 2.0 professional who enjoys many forms of media.  What’s your media consumption preference?

The “Going Forward” section of Entrepreneur magazine recently highlighted 10 must-click websites.  I have to admit there were some very good sites mentioned on the list.  From BizStats and Entrepreneurship.com to LadiesWhoLaunch and Nielsen, these sites were all jam-packed with great information, statistics and ideas.

I thought it would be a good idea to put together my top five must-click websites (this does not include my favorite blogs, which I’ll save for another post) for Public Relations professionals.  These are the sites that I rely on almost daily. Now, this is not as easy as you may think; on the contrary it’s a challenge because I know that there are many valuable sites, rich with information and resources for PR professionals.

A note to PR service providers: If you don’t make the list the first time around, feel free to contact me.  I’m sure I’ll be doing follow up posts in the future so that I can continue to share the “Best of the Best” with communications professionals.

Here’s my list (in no particular order):

1.       www.myragan.com

2.       www.pitchengine.com

3.       www.technorati.com

4.       http://search.twitter.com

5.       www.google.com

MyRagan.com is an excellent social networking community for PR professionals to share information, resources, tools and general knowledge about the Public Relations agency.  Mark Ragan, CEO has done a fantastic job building a community that is not only engaging with helpful blogs and useful articles, but he’s also built myragan.tv, which is a video sharing community.  MyRagan is a must click site because it educates me and draws me closer to my industry every day.

PitchEngine is not only a great community for PR professionals and journalists, but it allows you to develop and share Social Media Releases (SMRs) for free.  Another great feature on PitchEngine includes its PitchFeed, which is a user-generated searchable news stream.  You are also able to share your SMRs through Google News and apps like Facebook and Twitter. My agency uses PitchEngine for our SMRs.  The result for us has been a huge increase in traffic to the PFS Marketwyse website (as much as 600%).

Technorati is a blog search engine and PR professionals should be using Technorati to evaluate the authority and ranking of blogs and bloggers for their brands. The search engine collects and highlights global conversations. By searching in Technorati, you can find the blogs and bloggers who are related to your target world and those that also may have conversations related to your brand.   When you’re using Technorati correctly, then as a marketer you are using a tool that helps you to listen first and then join the conversation.

I don’t think I go a day without using search.twitter.com.  Aside from Google, it’s my second favorite way to search and find relevant conversations for industry trends, client related information, and threads of conversations based on key words.  Twitter search allows you to search, filter and interact with volumes of news and information being transmitted in real-time. One of the first things that I learned as a PR professional was to be up on the news in a variety of industries.  When I was first beginning my career, there was no Twitter Search so I read The New York Times every morning.  Now, I get my favorite media delivered to my inbox and I use Twitter Search to give me real time news as it occurs around the world.

At almost every meeting, I’m asked a familiar question: Why aren’t companies participating the right way in the social media landscape or why do they take an approach that leads to confusion, miscommunication and sometimes too much loss of control.  Here’s my simple answer.  For the first part one of the question, companies are not listening, so they really don’t know what’s being said about their brands or where there is opportunity for them to become a valuable resource in a social networking community.  The second part of the question is answered the same way.   Brands tend to jump in too quickly and don’t put strategy behind their social networking outreach because they are not listening.  In turn, some of their strategies turn into damage control for a campaign (i.e., when Skittles changed their homepage to be a wiki and gave their customers too much brand control).

A surefire way to prove to a brand that it needs to participate in the social media landscape is a lesson in listening and the Conversation Prism.  For those who are not familiar with the Conversation Prism, it was created by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas in 2008.  It’s an incredible, colorful visual that provides brands with endless choices of where there may be opportunity to engage.  A Conversation Workflow process walks the brand through a process: observe, listen, identify, internalize, route, process, participate, provide feedback and repeat.

My agency, PFS Marketwyse starts with the Conversation Prism, but then we take it a step further to show our clients how over a period of time, these conversations increase, which we then plot for them on a Conversation Grid (this represents an increase in the dialog in a particular network between a group of interested influencers).  Here’s what a Conversation Grid may look like (this is a generic example).

The Conversation Grid

Click image to enlarge

Then, when the conversations become more in-depth and increase in scope and breadth, we pinpoint exactly where the brand should engage in a social network and who they should engage with in order to build a relationship and to become a resource in a community.  We call this the Engagement Grid.  Through monitoring, we can precisely map a brand’s social chart and the point of engagement around a specific topic of interest, brand related dialog or an industry trend.

The Engagement Grid

Click image to enlarge

The Conversation Grid and Engagement Grid can also be used as a tool to map how a brand’s competitors are using the social media landscape.  I’m working with an oil additive company right now and our social media competitive research project is revealing how several of their competitors are actively participating in community building and even recruiting strategies in social networks, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Ning and LinkedIn.

In 9 out of 10 times, if you show where the competitors are, then the brand feels compelled to listen more closely to identify where they should participate and engage in dialogue with customers, media, bloggers and other company stakeholders.

For most, seeing is believing.  And, the effort to show a brand their Conversation Grid/Engagement Grid is minimal compared to the return.  Whether it’s conversations about the brand or what their competitors are saying, it’s extremely important to know.  Many companies are surprised by the outcome of listening, which results in a tremendous amount of information that can be obtained and then used properly to approach social media outreach.

In the end, taking the right approach and listening first is the key to connecting and building relationships.  It will also save you the time, money and effort spent on damage control for not approaching a social network the right way.

What steps are your brands taking to engage and is seeing believing for them?

I read an excellent article in PRSA’s Public Relations Strategist Magazine (spring 2009 issue) called, “You Are Now Entering Web 3.0.”  I was happy to see that the author of the article discussed Web 3.0 as the next advancements in Web, which is the Semantic Web.  He talked about the language of search and how 3.0 would be incredibly intuitive, so that machines would be able to make connections to provide a much greater depth of information.

I thought it was interesting that he pointed out that PR people would use the Semantic Web to, “Zero in on targeted audiences in a more accurate and efficient manner.”  However, I’m not sure that the “average” PR person has figured out their role in Web 1.0 or even Web 2.0.  There are many professionals who are making clear advances, but we need to make sure that we’re all on the same page.

I think that PR professionals need to be savvy at Web search and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Richard Edelman just wrote a fantastic piece on PR called “In a World of Expression.”  He pointed out the importance of search.  Here’s a brief excerpt from his blog post:

Integrate Search into the PR: Our work must be crafted for optimized search but also for reputational search and social search (since Google increasingly ranks social content from Flickr, blogs, Twitter etc.). We can prioritize media and blogger outreach on the basis of which reporter/person/outlets helps most in search. We can create “embassies” for clients within social networks like Facebook and Twitter so that there is an outlet for suggestions and complaints. Here is our white paper on search and PR.

In Web 2.0, I believe public relations professionals are still questioning their role.  When it comes to helping brands build community in social networks and using social media communications, we go beyond our liaison role with influencers (whether media or bloggers) to take on the following responsibilities:

• Technology/programming: PR people learn to be proficient in SharePoint, Wordpress, and backend content management programs. We no longer have to rely on IT to update and communicate.
• Editorial schedules: Professionals are working to find appropriate blog topics and provide ideas for the sharing of meaningful resources in communities (both external and internal employee social networks).
• Content review: Communications professionals are tasked with a brief review of blog content and articles, however, this is not a legal process just a quick observance of content for adherence to guidelines.
• Comment strategy and counseling: PR people are involved in creating guidelines and policies for the brand community and sharing procedures in the network; counseling on comments often requires how to address certain types of communication outside of the blog or social network.
• Web analytics: The communications department is tasked with analyzing behavior and the interaction that takes place in the social network. Reports are generated and shared with management.
• Listening/conversationalist: As Research Librarians, PR professionals learn to listen and identify opportunities for new ways to engage with stakeholders in social networks.

The role of the PR professionals has certainly expanded.  So, for all of you PR pros nervous about the fate of your career, you can take a large sigh of relief.  There’s so much more to do and the good news is that you are seen in many different capacities.  You are seen as even more valuable to your organization as you focus on being the best that you can be; whether it’s Web 1.0, Web 2.0 or as we enter Web 3.0, the Semantic Web.

On Tuesday, January 9^th I presented to the members of PRSA at their T3 Conference in New York City.  With the flurry of brands rushing to the blogosphere to begin their Social Media programs, I thought it was appropriate to provide an internal view and approach to social networking by first, focusing on the employee and the challenge of culture.

Brian and I discuss culture quite a bit in our book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.  When you think you are ready to dive into social networking, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc. and participate in conversations, we always say, “Slow down, wait….have you listened first and have you observed the culture of the community?”  Understanding the boundaries and sometimes limitations of the culture is critical to an effort.  So much so that it can make or break what you are trying to do.  Why would the lessons of culture outside of the company be any different than what should be applied in your own organization?

I guess my biggest concern here is two-fold.  First, companies are rushing to launch programs (both internally and externally) and don’t really know why or how their employees/brand ambassadors should be involved.  Second, companies don’t take the time to educate and let employees know:

• Why it is important to engage in Social Media communications?
• What does Social Networking mean to the brand?
• How does Social Media change the business (process and technology) and align with business goals?
• What are the right steps and approach for employees to take based on Social Media guidelines?

All of these questions can be answered and achieved internally first, prior to moving forward with an external social media focus.

However, because in a lot of cases we are talking about a cultural shift, it is often difficult to get everyone on the same page all at once.  Many organizations fall on the bottom two rungs of Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder (inactives or spectators). If you can alter the perception of Social Media and change the behavior of your organizational culture to focus on internal community building, then you will find far more success when building external communities with stakeholders in social networks through the help of your own company brand evangelists.

However, changing culture takes time and requires change management.  This can be a tough challenge as Social Media is not seen as a critical matter or a crisis situation to prompt immediate attention.  I think that when companies decide to start internally to introduce their employees to Social Media and social networking, the effort has to be blended with an 8-step change management program to truly anchor social media behavior within the organization.

Here’s what I discussed at PRSA T3 Conference to better explain how to drive the 8 steps, as you build your internal blogs or SharePoint sites:

• Be a change agent by creating a sense of urgency to learn and embrace Social Media; point out management considerations including culture, productivity, and what the competition is doing to raise the complacency level.
• Organize your Social Media participants or guiding coalition to direct your effort; these are trustworthy, credible experts from various departments of the company (including the communications department) who will be the evangelists and work on building the internal Social Media program to gain loyal followers.
• Use the coalition to develop a strategy for the Social Media program. Whether the program is meant to educate, increase productivity, share information, or provide resources, you need to drive attraction, attention, affinity and action through a strategic vision. The strategic vision will keep everyone moving in the same direction, align all of the players and move employees toward a desired behavior.
• Over-communicate the company Social Media program through employee communication channels. You will certainly use new media to get employees excited about social networking internally, but also use familiar channels including: town hall meetings, posters in common areas, HTML and video email, newsletters, web announcements, etc.
• Empower employee action through continuous incentives for participation; incentives may include contests, peer to peer recognition, promotions, highlighted guest blogger appearances on management blogs, awards including SM person of the month, etc.
• Monitor progress and record short term wins; these wins include increased participation including comments, use of wikis, sharing of videos, downloads of video and podcasts, web analytics, great feedback from short surveys or questionnaires.
• Measure value that can be converted to virtual revenue; value includes cross functional teams, increased employee productivity, a decrease in email communication , shared leads/sales, cost effective ways to plan events, and other company functions, etc.
• Anchor new values into the culture; Social Media becomes a part of the daily corporate behavior. It’s no longer a chore or seen as someone else’s responsibility. From the top down, Social Media is embraced and new members of the company are introduced to Social Media policies and company activities during the on boarding HR process. Social Media is rooted in the culture.

Culture is the key to making Social Media stick.  When you get your employees on board, you are taking the time to make them feel as if they are a part of the company.  You’re able to listen and build better relationships with them.  As a result, the culture will bind and your brand ambassadors will serve you well both on the interior of your organization and in external communities as well.  Your employees are the first face of your company.  It’s always best that they have the right information and they know what you are trying to achieve, especially with Social Media, as companies realize it’s a game changer both in the market and for their business.