I presented to the members of PRSA this week on building a social media policy and best practices of policy development.  Part of the discussion focused on the language and tone that you find in social media policies and guidelines.  My video discusses the different ways that organizations are approaching content and tone to guide internal and public social communications. Let me know what content and tone bests suits your company.

Here are a few of the statistics that stood out:

eMarketer published a study by Digital Brand Expressions (May 2010) where:

• Approximately 71% of US companies use the marketing department as the area responsible for the creation and maintenance of the social media communications plan.
• Approximately 21% of US companies use their corporate communications department as the area responsible for the creation and maintenance of the social media communications plan.
• Approximately 78% of US companies are using social media sites, however, about 52% are working without a game plan.
• According to US companies, approximately 45% prepare and distribute protocols and policies for ongoing communications, in their social media plans (including how to respond to negative comments).
• According to US companies, approximately 39% distribute guidelines for all employees regarding their general use of social media, for both professional and personal use.
• According to US companies, approximately 29% prepare and distribute social media policies/guidelines for the use of social media by different departments within the organization.

One of the most important messages conveyed from these numbers is that social media planning includes policy development and distributing guidelines to an organization’s employees (in some cases by department). Did you develop your social media policy as a part of your communications planning in 2010? If so, is your marketing or communications department spearheading the development?

Between my moving back home, I unfortunately missed the pre-chat leading up to the conference, but made sure that I did my research on what to expect. Thanks to Valerie Simon on her post about what to expect when attending such a conference. After reading it, I knew that I’d be all set.

One aspect that really got me was the keynote speaker Sarah Evans (Sevens Strategy), who gave an amazing presentation on “What’s Next for Public Relations, Strategy, and Technology.” I’ve been talking to Sarah for months and to not only meet her but also listen to her was completely unreal. Three main things about campaigns that I took away from Sarah’s presentation were:

• Portable–Can I take it with me
• Personalized–Can I customize
• Participatory–Can I join in

There were some other presentations that definitely grabbed my attention from the moment the speakers began talking. Ed Schipul (Schipul), who included some amazing photography within his presentation, provided some comical relief. His presentation focused on the personal brands that we create, which was a great refresher on the topic after attending #PRAdvanced. Ed gave six important elements to really focus in on in the “Personal Brand Era”

1. Story
2. Creation
3. Curation
4. Distribution
5. Monitoring
6. Terms of Service

During the luncheon, Nick Bilton (New York Times) was our speaker and I’m sure that everyone ignored the food. Nick’s discussion was indescribable. I was so intrigued with everything he said about how technology is changing and how we are directly affected by it. Definitely going to check out his book I Live in the Future: & Here’s How it Works this fall.

In the afternoon, two more presentations grabbed my attention and I made it a purpose to introduce myself to both ladies. The first was by Sandra Fathi (Affect Strategies), who talked about Tools & Technology for High Tech. From hearing all of Sandra’s suggestions for tools and how to utilize them, I will be doing a bit of my own research on how to implement them into my work. Also, I was able to help out one of the places where I interned on a new tactic to present to a client.

And finally, Christine Perkett (Perkett PR), who I have talked to on Twitter and had no idea she would be attending the event. Christine’s presentation about being an influencer in PR was extremely insightful and hey, there was even a Kelly Cutrone (People’s Revolution) shout out in there. Some key takeaways from Christine’s presentation include:

• Build your personal brand
• Do what you do…and do it well
• SHARE
• Write a book
• Make your own rules
• It’s all about YOU

Overall the day was a complete success and I gained so much information that I plan on researching throughout the summer. Being able to meet a majority of the speakers was great and I want to really thank Deirdre for inviting me to attend the conference.

Brittany James is a recent graduate of Quinnipiac University with a degree in public relations with a minor in marketing. Over the past year, she has held internships at Goodman Media International in New York City and at Cashman + Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury, CT.

Last week was the PRSA T3PR Conference in New York City.  Attendees gathered from around the country to hear several well-known authorities in PR and social media speak on a variety of topics.  The topics were diverse from Sarah Evans (Sevans Strategy) educating us on what’s next in technology and Justin Levy (New Marketing Labs) updating participants on the very latest Facebook tips to Christine Perkett (PerkettPR) giving new insights on what it takes to become a PR influencer and Ed Schipul (Schipul the Web Marketing Company) educating us on building an online brand.  The conference was captured via the hashtag #techprsa.

Other speakers included Jacob Morgan (Chess Media Group) discussing how PR fits into social CRM, Harjiv Singh (Gutenberg Communications) on crisis communications and Sandra Fathi (Affect Strategies) on effective PR and social media measurement. The audience certainly received a full day of best practices and advice.

Of special note was the luncheon keynote, Nick Bilton, The New York Times tech reporter and lead writer for the NYT bits blog. His discussion was incredibly interesting touching on new technology (even showing visuals of how the brain is affected, as the web savvy individual participates in web surfing) to information on his new book, I Live in the Future: & Here’s How it Works.

A session of tremendous importance to PR professionals was the panel discussion, “The New Era of Blogging.”  Because of the diversity of the bloggers and their news sites, the panel offered PR pros a variety of advice on how to interact with bloggers.

The panel was comprised of four new era bloggers: Joe Ciarallo, editor, PRNewser manager, PR Initiatives at Mediabistro.com (moderator); Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief, Mashable.com; Sara Polsky, editor, Curbed.com; and Frederick Mwangaguhunga, founder, MediaTakeOut.com

Here are a few of the highlights from the session.  I tried to capture the dialog as closely to the responses as possible.  If I missed anything, please feel free to add additional information in the comments:

Joe: What are you looking for in a story and where do you find leads?

Adam:  Mashable is looking for the story that has a broader reach…we’re looking for connections to current events.

Sara: Curbed gets a lot of reader tips from online discussion boards, for example, Street Easy is great for finding interesting story opportunities.

Fred:  MediaTakeOut finds Twitter to be really helpful.  The majority of our production of the news cycle is during the night and we break stories at 9:30 a.m.  When we have a tip and then we see a tweet about the same thing, it increases the likelihood that it happened.  Twitter gives us the ability to have access to a world of information.

Joe: Does being “new media” allow you to be more racy and does that give an advantage over competitors?

Fred:  MediaTakeOut does have an advantage.  This is the first time I’m in a media company. What would I like to see out there?  Our competitor advantage is that we live, breathe and enjoy a particular culture.  Our culture is exaggerated and somewhat over the top.

Adam:  We have our partnership with CNN.  Mashable syndicates articles to CNN’s new tech section.  It rounds out their tech section very nicely.  There is a big trend toward aggregation and it gives reader a nice mix.

Sara: Curbed competes with New York Magazine, Crains, etc.  We do different types of stories.  Most of our stories include coverage of a specific development or issue.  We give a slightly different slant to the coverage and we are definitely more “snarky.”  Traditional has to speed up its work as a result.  I’m noticing that traditional publications are trying to put things up right away.

Joe: What type of content do you find the most usable?

Adam: Publishing data – we like to receive interesting data from blogs. Getting infographics works too.  They are a great way to get your name out there.  Videos are always appreciated too.

Sara: I prefer multimedia content and images are great too. People call Curbed “real estate porn.”  It’s great when a developer offers photos for a story.

Fred: We get a ton of press releases a day.

Joe: What do you think when story comes out and PR people want to know why their client isn’t in the story [perhaps they are only mentioned in the comments].

Adam: I find new stories in the comments.  At Mashable, we have community managers as well as the writers who go through the comments for potential stories.

[Sara and Fred were in agreement.]

Joe: How has the news story changed?

Fred: With social media, we’ll start the discussion. Then, users on Twitter could break it.

Adam: With the iPhone announcement, you get into more in-depth features.

Sara: We’ll go back a couple of years.  We want to be updated at every stage of the process for multiple stories.

Joe: How much time do you spend on social media platforms?

Adam: Mashable was early to the platforms.  A Twitter audience turned to a Facebook audience.

Sara: Curbed uses Twitter and Facebook. We notice that using the platforms brings in a different set of people to the site.

Fred: Mediatakeout is a news site.  The question is do get our readers to our site or do we want them to be on Twitter and Facebook.  We’re trying to make the content more assessable.  We actually noticed our traffic grew in one month by 30% as a result of Facebook and Twitter.

Joe: Do you think it’s a link economy – do you look to drum up links?

Adam:  Mashable should do more of this.  It really falls on the writer’s responsibility.

Sara: Curbed is small. We tweet our own stories.

Fred: I feel the same way.  We were on the outside of the group.  We grow traffic organically.

Joe: Where do you see your blogs moving to in the future?

Fred: Mediatakeout is always going to be a site that breaks gossip.  Also try to extend the brand into other mediums.  We’re trying to keep it authentic, which is the difficulty.  Our readers want funny, interesting and authentic urban culture.  Sometimes other mediums are not as receptive to authenticity.  We want to do it the right way.

Adam:  Mashable is always going to write about new social platforms that emerge i.e. foursquare.  We’ll expand into more verticals.  Similarly, new forms of content, for example, Internet TV.  We’re ramping up video content…it’s a big opportunity for us to be the next “networks.”  We’re going to see a huge shift in television over the next few years.

Sara:  We’ll expand our content.  Tone and voice are key for us, as we move forward.  Will do a Curbed Inside with photos.  It’s hard to maintain the same approach with video.  We’ll be moving into different types of coverage.

Joe:  Another trend is to compete with wire service (syndicated).  Digital focused companies will look to be the news feed for traditional companies.  This is a trend for AOL, Yahoo!, etc.

That’s a wrap for the panel session.  Leave your comments, additional details and/or questions and let’s continue the conversation!

For the past couple of years my presentations have focused on the PR professional moving from handler/facilitator of communication (who often found success in great media coverage) to the PR 2.0 Champion, who climbed the rungs of the Forrester’s Technographics Ladder, from the “Inactive” all the way up to the “Creator.”

Here’s the graphic that I used in my presentation, which takes the PR person’s professional development from traditional strategic communicator to the hybrid professional.  The diagram not only illustrates the communicator who applies a blend of traditional and social media, but who also works more closely with other members of marketing and Web as well as other areas of the company (including sales, HR, IT, Legal, Customer Service, etc).  As a result, the Hybrid is the strategic communicator who guides all communication and has secured a seat at the boardroom/strategy table.

The Making of the Hybrid

Click to Enlarge

Source

What do you think of these levels of development from traditional to hybrid?  Are there any other levels that you would add into the diagram?

Q1: T3PR’s focus is helping PR pros standout in the SM space. What are some effective tactics 2 cut through the clutter?

Q2: A big question is “What’s Next 4 PR, Strategy &Tech?” What recent tech innovations have captured your interest?

Q3: When you use platforms and tools f/ community building, what’s the best way 2 connect your diff SM tools?

Q4: W/ respect to personal brands, how can PR pros protect their rep online?

Q5: When you want to manage & maximize PR, how can PR pros demonstrate ROI w/ SM?

Q6: With so many experts as influencers, what’s the best way 2 start an online conversation w/ media?

Q7: How are online-only outlets evolving to compete w/ traditional media’s continued expansion into the space?

However, we encourage all of the T3PR participants to submit additional questions, during the session, to our moderator, Nicole Zerillo from PRSA (to @nzerillo w/out the hashtag). Just to remind you, the hashtag for the T3 Twitter chat is #techprsa. So get your tweetchat or tweetgrid ready for a dynamic discussion. Nicole will be asking the questions and I’ll be there as your host.  We look forward to chatting with you later today!

I’ve been to many conferences with large numbers of people.  You shuffle from room to room and barely have a moment to interact. Maybe you see a few faces that you recognize here and there but most are unfamiliar. The information is great, but it’s always better if you feel you have a personal connection to the people speaking and to the people around you.  Wouldn’t it be great to walk up to a group of people and jump into the discussion because this was the very topic you were talking about with them on Twitter?  Or, approaching the presenter after a session and rather than introducing yourself for the first time, you’re actually adding a few more comments to an ongoing dynamic discussion that was started a few weeks ago.

For this very reason, the T3PR Conference is holding a pre- event chat on May 24^th at 3:00 p.m. EDT (using the #techprsa hashtag).  Our speakers have graciously agreed to participate to get to know attendees better, for them to interact with one another and to offer an inside look at what’s to come.  Thanks to @prsarahevans, @missusP, @jacobm and @eschipul, the conference participants and/or anyone interested in Strategic Views on Technology will dive into conference topics and be able to interact with the speakers one-on-one.

We’ll spend an hour answering questions geared toward the various speakers’ presentations and allow our speakers to provide their insights.  We’re hoping to get a very dynamic discussion started. Then, we’ll take these conversations to New York City and continue them beyond 140 characters, in a more personal conference setting. Strategic Views on Technology and the Changing PR Landscape is you and your PR technology challenges.  So, bring your questions to the chat session and then talk to us more when we meet you in person.

Hope you join in the chat session on the 24^th.  I’ll “see” you then!

There is so much that I could talk about, but I am basically focusing my discussion around challenges to planning, the Roadmap that you need to build for your brand and a breakdown of strategies based on a tool that I developed, which has helped me tremendously in my planning.

Here’s a glimpse of the tools we’ll be discussing:

The Mango! Roadmap

The Strategy Wheel

Click to enlarge

Having the right visuals will guide my discussion and help me to streamline my presentation.  I’ll also be using one of my client’s as an example a social media program that used the Roadmap and the Wheel in their communications program.

I’m looking forward to the PRSA Digital Impact Conference and, if you are joining me on Thursday, May 6th, get ready to move quickly and steadily.  Before you know it, you’ll be navigating your own Roadmap and using the Strategy Wheel for your own brand.

Hope to see you at Digital Impact!