A Guest Post by Valerie Simon

There’s a little song I learned back in Girl Scouts (yes, I was a girl scout… rocked the cookie sales, horrid when it came to crafts!). Make new friends, but keep the old. One is sliver and the other gold.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that little song lately. Participating in social media has allowed me to build new relationships at an accelerated pace. And the convenience of communicating wherever and whenever helped maintain relationships that might have otherwise fallen by the wayside.

But what are the limits to the number of people with whom one can maintain a stable social relationship? Social media has thrown a new wrench in the work of anthropologists such as Robin Dunbar and Peter Killworth who have developed formulas to address this question.  I hold the term relationship in high regard, and while there is certainly a wide gamut of feasible relationships, those relationships of value require an investment of limited resources- time and money.

So what can we do to assure that we receive the greatest return on our investment? What steps can we take to assure that the relationships we build remain strong connections? One of the most valuable lessons I have learned, is the amazing power of community in developing relationships. Whether you are a part of a Twitter chat, an active member of a LinkedIn group or Ning network, blog or subscribe and comment on a favorite blog, participation in a community is an opportunity to engage with a larger group. While one on one conversation is limited, by listening and sharing within a community you can create regular and consistent communication with greater numbers.

You have no doubt made many new relationships as a result of your own participation in social media. Which relationships stick? Where will those relationships be in 5 years? And perhaps most importantly, what steps are you taking to make sure that the relationships you build today continue to have meaning tomorrow?

Valerie Merahn Simon serves as a Senior Vice President at BurrellesLuce media monitoring and measurement, and writes a national public relations column for examiner.com. She is also co-founder and host of #PRStudChat, the monthly twitter chat between PR professionals and students moderated by Deirdre Breakenridge. Valerie can be found on Twitter or LinkedIn

Here’s a special video announcement on #Chatmixer that will take place on Tuesday, March 9th at 8:00 p.m. EST.  Looking forward to chatting with all of the different Twitter chat communities!

Years ago, before I started my own agency, I worked for a pharmaceutical consultant conducting business research and then later developing marketing and PR programs for his customers. At the time, one of my main responsibilities was a report that provided monitoring and surveillance for pharmaceutical brands.  It was, and still is, a tough competitive landscape.  We kept our clients abreast with a monthly snapshot of their industry, with respect to the drug product pipeline, stock market expectations, industry trends, market issues/concerns, and insight into latest information delivered at pharmaceutical industry conferences.

Each report took almost a month to compile. I would finish one report and have to move quickly to the next’s month’s findings.  Among the many parts of this report, I used to analyze the market, travel to conferences, scour publications and interview numerous people.  I really can’t say that the information was at my fingertips and it took some leg work to uncover the most relevant industry information for the report.

Today, it’s a different story. Brian and I discuss in our book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, that you need to listen to engage properly with your customers and other stakeholders.  The same holds true with competitive information; you need to listen with your ear to the social media landscape to see what’s going on with competitors in the marketplace.  Information is being shared on trends and shifting landscapes and company performance.  This is in real time and on a daily basis.

We just walked a client through an exercise to illustrate how their competitors are participating on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (which are among the five top social networking sites).  We had previously provided them with a snapshot of where they should engage, using the Conversation Prism and Conversation Workflow Approach.  However, it was when we illustrated how their direct competitors were engaged in communications in some of the largest social networks that they were ready to listen closely. They knew that they could no longer sit back as a spectator in the social economy.

It’s fairly simple to uncover information in a social network.  You can search to see if there are conversations around competitive brands and to evaluate what those brands are doing with respect to engagement.  We did our searches using keywords, whether it was a competitor’s brand name or product/service.  We also looked to see if any relevant trends were being discussed by the competitor.

As you go through this exercise, there are a few questions that you need to answer for your client, as you evaluate the information you uncover on competitors:

• How is the competitor engaged in social networking activities?
• What social media and PR 2.0 tools and resources are they using?
• Is the competitor communicating as a thought leader, customer service representative, news or informational source, or as a helpful resource to a community?  What is their overall strategic approach?
• Who is communicating on behalf of the competitor? An executive, communications professional, community manager, a customer service rep or a member of another department? Is the competitor being transparent?
• What type of conversations are taking place? Positive? Neutral? Or negative? You can map this out in a matrix.
• Do you see a strategic thread of communications across all of the social networks or is communication not concentrated in any one area?
• Is the community embracing the competitor and has the competitor’s influence grown, for example on Twitter, with respect to their influence, generosity, clout, signal and velocity.  You can use Twitalyzer to research this information.

There are only a few of the many questions that need to be answered so that you can help your client to identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Challenges (SWOC) in the marketplace.  It’s imperative to understand this information before you launch your marketing and PR programs.

I hope that you are all thinking about your brand’s competitors and how this information will help you with a better approach to your campaigns and also creates a stronger position for your brand.  The information is there in the competitive social landscape….you just need to listen!

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 had the pleasure of visiting Tallahassee this week and speaking to the members of the Florida Public Relations Association (FPRA).   This was my first trip there and it was a memorable one.  From the beautiful buildings (especially the old Capital building and Florida State University) to the hospitality of the people and the friendly welcome, I have a new appreciation for Tallahassee.  Another unforgettable part of the trip was the professionalism, energy and forward thinking of the FPRA.

The range of social media and PR 2.0 knowledge varied in the group, from the pros who knew that they had to learn a lot more about social media to the experienced members who were already figuring out the best way to use social networks to connect their brands to customers.  Regardless of the level of knowledge or SM skill set, as I presented and looked around the room, I could feel the energy, see the smiles, the nodding of the heads and the overall sentiment that “YES, we can use social media to reinvent our PR industry!”  It was a good feeling.

The core areas of focus in my presentation, what I wanted each and every member to remember when they walked away that day: attitude/commitment, continued education and then paying it forward, and a willingness to explore and use social media (first individually and then on behalf of their brands).  We discussed what was wrong with PR and how social media will fix the issues by using conversations and relationship building to truly put the public back in PR. We’ve been saying it all along, but until now, we haven’t really been forced to practice it.

Some highlights of the meeting and the areas I thought the FPRA found the most interesting:

The Evolution of the Pitch: Together we looked at how the pitch has evolved.  It’s no longer that old process of get the messages from the top, draft the news release (don’t forget those canned quotes) and send it out over the wire.  Then, you hold your breath and hope it sticks!  When I showed my diagram on the Evolution of the Pitch (developed by @briansolis of PR 2.0), I think the group may have found it overwhelming in the beginning.  But, a detailed explanation of the different influencers and the importance of how to humanize the story really showed a much better approach to getting your news to market.

The Conversation Prism: (by @briansolis and Jess Thomas):  They loved the Conversation Prism.  I used version 2.0 and we talked about the great opportunities in the Social Media universe and how there’s a tremendous world with different types of social networks far beyond Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  We also discussed how to take the Conversation Prism and narrow the universe to a Conversation Grid (once you identify frequency of conversations) and subsequently identify points of engagement on an Engagement Grid (both of these tools developed by my agency PFS Marketwyse).

The Conversation Prism Workflow Process: The discussion walked through the process of listening and observing all the way through to participation and sharing insight and feedback.  There were many people taking notes and a very high level of interest.  I don’t believe anyone had heard of the Conversation Prism or had seen it before.  I mentioned that it’s in mine and Brian’s book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations (in a table format rather than the colorful diagram in my presentation).

Some excellent questions surfaced (and you know how much I love to review the questions) relating to some of the individual member challenges.  These questions led to discussion around geo-targeting, legal issues with respect to comments on blog posts, learning to filter the noise in social networks, what to do if you have a troll, measuring blogger authority and the best use of the SMR.

I was excited by the interest, the questions and also the feedback I received on Twitter!  FPRA is on board with Social Media and PR 2.0 and its members are seeing the true value of engaging in dialog and building relationships the proper way in Web communities.

It is my goal to work with other PR and communications professionals to navigate the social media landscape. We are all in it together and still learning together.  If I can help you with anything, let me know.  At the same time, feel free to add to the discussion about your meetings and seminars.  What type of progress you’ve seen in the PR 2.0 arena?

Thank you FPRA for a fabulous trip to Tallahassee!

I recently posted a blog regarding my participation at the New Jersey AdClub’s Career Day at Montclair State University on April 7, 2009.  I discussed how overall I thought the day was educational, fun, friendly and provided students with useful information to take with them after college.  However, I did notice that many of the questions that they asked as well as some of the questions posed by my fellow panel members were indicative of traditional PR, media relations and publicity.

Because there was almost no mention of PR 2.0 or social media communication, except when I was offering my opinion on the new media practices of PR professionals I decided to dig a little deeper into the blogosphere to listen to conversations and to see just how many colleges and universities were making the transition from PR 1.0 to PR 2.0.

I conducted a simple search and through my own outreach program, here are a handful of colleges and universities participating in PR 2.0.

Immaculata University: Last week lectured Beth Harte‘s undergraduate class at Immaculata University in Immaculata, PA.  Professor Harte devoted the first portion of the class to traditional Public Relations and then changed focus to PR 2.0 and social media for the 2^nd half of the semester.  The students had a good grasp of 2.0 and were even familiar with the Conversation Prism.

St. Edwards University: I was recently tagged by St. Edward University’s PRSpot It’s a course blog for upper-level communications students at St. Edwards University. The blog discusses and provides opinions on topics introduced in the course on Social Media Technologies and how they have impacted public relations.  I saw some excellent posts on PR 2.0 video, what the new press release should look like and social networking.  PRSpot is a very useful site with topics that are impacting the PR profession.

New York University PR Forum:  NYU’s PR Forum is a posting forum for the PR graduate program.  Although it’s not updated frequently (only one post in April and three in March) the blog covers some really good topics and shows that PR graduates have a good understanding on Social Media.  A few of the posts that are helpful to students include:  10 Essential Social Media Sites for PR students, Principles of Surviving Social Media Revolution and the Social Media Effect on PR.

Ning in Education: Groups are getting together to use Ning in Education to further their knowledge about social networking.  There are a number of resources including forums, groups and blogs.  Many members participate in the community and discuss PR 2.0 and Social Media topics including Integrating Technology and Teacher Collaboration, Educational Reform Seminar, How to Use Blogs Effectively.

Lastly, my quick Twitter poll revealed some interesting answers and opinions when I asked PR students to let me know if PR 2.0 was a part of their curriculum.  Here are some of the responses I received:

• “It isn’t in the curriculum yet … mostly guest speakers that talk about it.. Algonquin College PR program”
• “The curriculum is changing, they do a twitter party where they show students how to use twitter & have a blog post bursary”
• “Not as much as I would like them to. They give a brief overview of what social media is and how it has changed things.”
• “We get to go to the PRSA International Conference to learn about Social Media, but it’s not currently taught in our program.”
• “I got lucky with a professor who had us do outside reading and incorporated PR 2.0 into my communications class.”

I’m sure there are many other universities that are making the change to incorporate PR 2.0 and Social Media into their programs.  I would love to hear from either students or professors.  I’m very interested in the education we provide to the PR professionals of the future!