Deirdre Breakenridge

Last night #PRStudChat had a very dynamic discussion with community members about the PR Influencer and how to build trust online. We heard some excellent insight from our students, educators and pros. Now it’s time to see what our special guest, @chrisbrogan said about being a PR influencer. Here are Chris’ responses to our questions last night:

We are less than a week away from our February 23rd #PRStudChat with our very special guest @ChrisBrogan, co-author of Trust Agents. Chris joins us that night at 9:00 p.m. ET (please note the time change as we usually begin at 8:30 p.m. ET) for our Twitter discussion on the PR influencer and how to [...]

Last week I created a video blog about my reading regimen. As I went over my favorite reading resources, two articles stuck in my mind. It was the title of an Entrepreneur Magazine column called “THE WAY I WORK.” The first column highlighted Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, who described his work style as, “My style is to bust the door down and clean the mess up later.” I couldn’t get his work regimen out of my head. Then when Iooked at the same column, a couple of months earlier. Except this time, it was Gary Vaynerchuck letting everyone know that his style was, “Everyday, between every phone call – during every spare second – I’m on Twitter.” These article had an impact on me.

On January 19th, we announced a very special guest for our #PRStudChat February session. @ChrisBrogan, co-author of Trust Agents, joins our Twitter discussion to enlighten our community on the PR influencer and how to build trust online. Today it’s very important for PR and communications professionals to realize that they are moving from a liaison role to an influencer role, as they become bloggers and educate through democratized media.

The holiday season reminds me of the song from the Sound of Music, “My Favorite Things.” Although there are many items on that list, I wanted to share a few of my favorite (PR 2.0) things that I’ve either read in 2009, or relied upon to get me through the year. Of course, I would love to mention everyone and everything that I find valuable online and read all year long, but then this wouldn’t be a blog post…it would be a BIG blog book .

Trust lies in the heart of a strong relationship. It can be very hard to achieve and once you have earned it, you would never want to do anything to break that bond. The book, Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan) and Julien Smith (@julien) teaches you how to gain trust or influence on the web, which definitely has its challenges.

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 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).