Deirdre Breakenridge

There are a couple of Twitter books on my reading list including Twitterville by Shel Israel (@shelisrael) and Twitter Power by Joel Comm (@joelcomm). However, what I’m finding is that through experimentation with Twitter chats, I’m learning by doing and there are some excellent practices that I want to share.

I recently accepted an invitation to present a workshop at the Social Media for Executives event which takes place in Las Vegas on October 14th. When I first corresponded with @DoyleAlbee, I knew that this was the type of program that I would really enjoy because it’s an intimate, best known as mastermind workshops / retreats with senior level executives. This conference seemed a little different and offered the opportunity to feel connected to a group that would be able to dig into the heart of my topic. And, even though I found out that I was traveling to Houston the day of the event, I still wanted to participate. My workshop will be Skype presentation on Community Building: Turning Your Employees into Brand Champions.

I spoke to the members of the New Jersey Professional Services Marketing Group (NJPSMG) on Friday, September 18th. It was a packed room with B2B marketing professionals mostly in the accounting, legal and financial industries. My presentation focused on PR 2.0 and helping brands and their marketing and PR professionals learn the proper approach to connecting with clients and other important stakeholders in the social media landscape.

I thought the September 16th #PRStudChat was a dynamic, passionate and valuable discussion between PR pros, educators and students. I want to thank @valeriesimon for organizing and hosting the session and @briansolis for his insightful comments and his recent post Using Twitter to Connect PR Students, Educators and Professionals. I just reviewed the transcript and the amount of information shared was unbelievable. The opportunity to collaborate and share experiences is priceless. I hope that with each session we grow and learn together.

I’m so excited for our #PRStudChat on Wednesday, September 16th at noon. @valeriesimon and I have a few exciting announcements for this session. First, there’s a Putting the Public Back in Public Relations book giveaway for the participant who is the chat MVP (the person whose comment is retweeted the most). And, we also have a special guest appearance by my co-author, Brian Solis (@briansolis).

I was contacted by dna13 with a news release about their recent white paper on the best strategies for managing corporate reputations in today’s social media environment. The white paper was based on research that dna13 presented to the Reputation Institute’s Annual Conference earlier this year and information that was also compiled from the advice of experts in the public relations industry. Due to the tremendous response to the white paper, dna13 wanted to hear more insight from public relations professionals directly. So they are reaching out again to the PR community to get our feedback.

I first learned about Tamar Weinberg’s (@tamar) book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, from Chris Brogan’s blog Community and Social Media (@chrisbrogan). I’m very happy that Chris introduced me to this book and he was right when he said that this is a really well done book and Tamar “knocked it out of the park.” So far, I’ve never been disappointed with Chris’ recommendations! I’ve read many books on social media from Now Is Gone and The New Influencers to The New Rules of Marketing and PR and Marketing to the Social Web (all really good books by the way). But for me, Tamar’s book stands out as a very thorough step by step easy guide to the thinking and planning that goes behind social media marketing all the way through to the best practices of implementation (and, of course, where it make sense for you to engage in communities and how to do it the right way).

I have to admit I got caught up in the conversations on Twitter regarding Kim Kardashian and her new reality show about the world of public relations. The comments on Twitter ranged from “This is tragic for PR” to “Publicity does not equal public relations.” My immediate concern was that public relations would be portrayed the wrong way. Kim even stated in the People Magazine article, “It’s going to be really fun. It’ll show how there’s lots of drama and crisis in the PR world.” Crisis…yes, but we’d prefer to minimize the drama.