Deirdre Breakenridge

I had the honor and the pleasure of participating on a panel at the Inbound Marketing Summit (#IMS09) in Boston on October 7, 2009. I joined several colleagues including Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine (@jasonkintzler), Melanie Stachowiak of MarketWire (@melaniestack), Paul Roetzer, PR 20/20 (@paulroetzer), and David Weiner, PR Newswire (@davidweiner) to discuss the state of the PR industry and PR 2.0, with a strong focus on the value of the news release vs. the Social Media Release in a changing Web 2.0 world. Well suited for this discussion were panelists from two PR agencies, two wire services and the founder of a Social Media Release platform and social network that enable PR to effectively package stories with social content.

There’s always a tremendous amount of discussion around the Social Media Release (SMR). I still have executives asking me about its value, whether is it necessary to use, if it the SMR should replace a traditional release and the list goes on. I remember in 2007 when I first interviewed Phil Gomes, SVP of Edelman Digital, in my book PR 2.0, New Media, New Tools, New Audiences, he knew that the SMR was a useful tool for all companies, not just technology firms. I agree with Phil and have been using the SMR with great results.

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.

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 was introduced to Mike Lewis (@bostonmike) of Awareness Inc., through Justin Levy (@justinlevy) of New Marketing Labs. What a great connection! I participated in a Webinar with Mike on May 27th and it was not only on an interesting topic (Building Community Through PR: From Virtual to Physical) but the Q&A with Mike was dynamic and even at one point stumped us both for an answer.

Yesterday was the official launch of my 4th book published by Pearson, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, co-authored by Brian Solis. This is the first time that I worked on a year-long writing project with Brian, who is not only a pleasure to work with but he enriched the process and made this a wonderful and thought-provoking experience for me (Thank you, Brian). Every page of this book illustrates our passion for public relations, social media and technology, and how PR 2.0 is reshaping a well established, century-old industry.

My first post on New PR 2.0 Measurement was well received. Measurement is one of the hottest topics right now. I’m noticing that most of my professional associations and well known publications are having monthly seminars/webinars on this topic. There are so many tools and techniques that it can almost be overwhelming for the PR professional. How do you measure the conversations that take the form of tweets, comments and blog posts? What about negative comments in social networks? Are free measurement tools such as Google Analytics and TweetBeep enough?

When I returned from the PRSA Conference in Detroit, the first thing I said to my PR account managers was, “There are so many incredible PR 2.0 tools and we don’t know half of them.  Let’s get out there to see what we can use for our own company and what would work for [...]