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How Much Time Have You Got?

I have spent 10 years in public relations, but even so there are many aspects of PR I’ve never experienced, because I’ve spent all that time working in the unique field of internet based PR, what we these days call social media. My history in this trade has always been characterized by reconciliation of the emergent to the traditional – something I have never minded in the least, as I’m not one of those “bury the old ways” kind of professionals, nor do I think it is the nature of my agency. But I recently got a chance to begin another chapter in that narrative. I got to work my first trade show.

It was one of the biggest shows of the year to my client, and I was there to meet the digital media I had been talking to on a regular basis, a collection of bloggers, writers and other content producers that I’d pitched to, tweeted with, Facebooked and otherwise reached out to. I was also there for an event we were having later with many of these people. But there was no reason I should be sitting on my hands in between those opportunities, so willingly I was taught by my colleagues the practice of accepting media appointments or being on hand to talk with any media that showed up without an appointment, and take them around the booth. Talk. You know, with your face, not from behind a keyboard?

I repeat here what may be obvious to some of the readers of this publication, some of the lessons I learned, that first of all in this situation you have to know your client’s story and sub-plots and your client’s products. You have to understand the geography of the booth and the trajectory of its narrative. But I also learned, both from my colleagues and some of the writers and editors I talked to, that you have to be cognizant of your guest’s time, that you have to identify, quickly, what’s of most interest to them and get them the info they want or connect them with the subject matter expert that will be of most relevance to their writing. Often this means asking visiting media, “How much time have you got” and working around to, “What kind of angle you working on? What’s of most interest to your readers? What would you most like to see?”

Writers hammered this home to me, as I listened to them tell me and the people I worked with how refreshing it is to have someone ask you these things, to understand that they are familiar with your company and your product and don’t need a complete history lesson. Many of them repeated the phrase, “the newest of the new.” “I know who you are. Don’t show me your whole catalogue. I just want to see the newest of the new.”

My colleagues, and my client, assured me this practice of manning a trade show booth was an easy one to pick up, but just the same it was evident how good they were at it, how much better than I the neophyte. Often in my career, because so much of what I do is new or because I am the only person in a room with the depth of experience in my subject matter, I’m the one educating. It was terrific for me to be educated, and I admired watching the veterans work. My client had lost track of the number of times she’d attended this particular show. My agency colleague confessed it was his fifteenth appearance.

I was sitting with this same colleague over a beverage later that evening talking shop, aptly listening to tales of the old days. I asked him what he thought of what I did, this whole social media thing. He said he loved it and felt it was, for him, a much more direct way to reach some of the people he wanted to reach than some of the traditional practices of PR. I have to confess though that I am feeling equally jazzed about our old friend The Trade Show. It’s a lot like what I do – try to reveal my client to its customers or the influencers that affect customer decisions – only it’s done in real space instead of via an electronic conduit. As with so many things in PR it fits what I’ve always preached: social media-based PR isn’t a replacement for traditional PR, it’s a complement. I’d be guilty of gross negligence if I didn’t continue the practice of asking PR to teach me even as I’ve tried to teach it. It’s good to remain a student.

• Date: 04.27.2010
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Is Apple Making Google Search Irrelevant?

A provocatively titled post from 24/7 Wall Street predicts that Google’s search dominance will be toppled by none other than Apple, due to the latter’s burgeoning apps selection.

According to 24/7: “The app experience is what Google wants to deliver… Effectively, the app is a personalized version of the search experience. In the next few years, the App Store will disintermediate Google from search results, threatening the search engine’s primacy on the Web.”
Moreover, projected sales of 100 million iPhones through 2011 and 10 million iPads through the end of this year will naturally extend the App Store’s reach. While Google gets points for Android, the blog dismissed Google’s ability to snag high-end developers to create software for the platform – because they are already developing for Apple.

Visit 24/7’s review of apps corresponding with Google’s most popular search categories for more discussion, “How Apple Killed the Future of Search.”

• Date: 04.14.2010
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Girl Scout Cookies Aren’t Just “Tagging Along” This Year

Nichole Mrasek
Account Supervisor

Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils, Do-si-Dos, are names that are synonymous with America’s favorite cookie pastime. Girl Scout Cookies have been around for decades and, each season, people wait for their local green-clad scout to come around so that they can place an order for their annual treat. This season, we’re in for a new treat, because our favorite little girls in green are on a mission. The Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) are undergoing a rebranding effort in order to breathe new life into the dwindling cookie sales and scout membership.

The message on GirlScoutCookies.org is clear and consistent: “Every Cookie Has a Mission: To Help Girls Do Great Things.” This little cookie has come a long way, including the addition of a growing social media presence on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. In fact, GSUSA utilized its cookie Web site and YouTube channel to showcase the new campaign. The “What Can a Cookie Do?” video brings to life the purchasing power of the cookie, showing how each dollar of cookie sales goes to a bigger purpose, from supporting local community efforts to helping shape girls’ futures.

According to MediaPost, the video served as a launching pad for a rebranding effort GSUSA undertook this spring. “Girl Scouts of the USA is an iconic American brand with huge awareness, but we want to create greater understanding that being a Girl Scout isn’t just about camping, or selling cookies — it’s about how opportunities like this build leadership in girls,” says GSUSA brand manager Ashlene Nand. “Essentially, we’re trying to brand ‘leadership.’ ”

It’s apparent that GSUSA understands the importance of speaking to its traditional audience, while expanding its reach and presence online. To withstand the test of social media time, the Girl Scouts will have to be tough cookies. However it appears the national rebranding efforts are helping the organization earn its branding badge. Read more from MediaPost’s Marketing Daily, “Girl Scouts Organization Is Going ‘Viral.’”

• Date: 03.24.2010
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Facebook, Twitter Now Offer Location-Sharing Features

Social sites that ask, “What’s on your mind?” and “What’s happening?” are now asking, “Where are you?”

Location-based social networking site Foursquare celebrated its first birthday last week. With over 500,000 users and more than 15.5 million check-ins to date, the service has proven consumer demand for location-based networking tools. Hot on the heels of this trend – which has also boosted use of location services Gowalla and Loopt – Twitter and Facebook both announced they would offer similar services to users.

Twitter launched a feature that lets users tweet their locations on Foursquare’s first anniversary. PC Magazine reports, “Once enabled, the site will attempt to discover your location using Google Gears. Then a small pin icon appears on the information line of your latest tweet. Hover over it, and a Google Map pops up with your location in the middle.” This feature is currently live, and users can choose to activate it with a few clicks at Twitter.com.

Also last week, news broke of Facebook’s intent to add location-based features beginning in April. All Facebook users will soon be able to share physical locations as part of status updates. Additionally, a new set of APIs will allow App developers to use this technology in a wide variety of new Apps.

And what that means for social media community managers, marketers and strategists is a multitude of opportunities to bridge “real life” happenings with Web-based conversations. Brand-sponsored meet-ups can now be even more heavily publicized through Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other services as they happen. And local businesses can connect with customers in more relevant ways, boosting hyper-local social media conversations that sites like Yelp have made popular.

Concerns about privacy and security implications of disclosing one’s physical location on the Web remain, but for now all these tools require opt-in, allowing users to choose for themselves,

For more on these new innovations and other trends in location-based social networking, check out:

• Mediapost: “Report: Facebook to Add Location Sharing”
• Inside Facebook: “Facebook’s Coming Location Service: Feature For Users, Platform for Apps”
• Mashable: “Twitter’s Website Now Attaches Location to Tweets”

• Date: 03.17.2010
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More Small Businesses Using Social Media to Level the Playing Field

According to Shel Holz, while some small companies may feel more hesitant about engaging consumers through social media, doing so can potentially benefit them more than their larger competitors – while using a smaller marketing budget.
A new survey by the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business shows that not only are more small businesses turning to social media venues for increased ROI and heightened visibility, but 75 percent of respondents discovered ways of improving efficiency and almost half identified new products and services that utilize social media. Incredibly, one CEO actually slashed his marketing budget by 80 percent by successfully using social media channels. Mashable reported that Facebook and LinkedIn lead the pack for small-business social media engagement and was intrigued to see how much Twitter adoption rates will fluctuate.

• Date: 03.09.2010
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Kondek Speaks

I was absolutely thrilled to be profiled at Bulldog Reporter. I got to sound off on a lot of things dear to me, not just our business but the future of our industry. For example:

Q: What do you make of the whole “who owns digital” debate?

“Owning digital” is probably the wrong way to put it. I’d say in general PR should own social media and advertising should own online advertising and content creation. But, of course, these distinctions are blurring. Honestly, while the lines between PR and advertising are fuzzy, operationally there are still some very big distinctions between the disciplines that make the separations reasonable and determine that PR, in fact, should own digital. PR is the discipline of participation in media, and that’s exactly what digital or social media is—participation-based. Advertising is the discipline of disruptive media—and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all; the best advertising is a welcome disruption. But in general, these demarcations are pretty fair; advertising builds the cool site, PR extends it into social media.

Those hard, fast lines are really malleable, though. Some ad agencies do great “outreach” into social media and some PR firms (like my own) build great content. Expect this to be a constant adjustment in the years to come. In the short term, it’s clear the best brands get their agencies working together for the best possible mix.

• Date: 02.03.2010
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Facebook Metrics Businesses Have Been Longing For

Last week, Facebook released a new feature for fan page administrators that will greatly benefit our clients. Authenticated pages with at least 10,000 fans will now feature two new metrics under status updates: Raw Impressions and Feedback Rate.

But what do they mean?

• Raw Impressions indicate the number of times a post has “rendered.” In other words, every time the post is displayed on the page’s wall, in a fan’s live or news feed, or in a Facebook widget, it counts as an impression.
• Feedback Rate calculates the number of comments and likes received on a post per impression. The formula equates to (Comments + Likes)/Impressions.

In addition to gathering more numbers on fans, these metrics will allow admins to better gauge their fans’ interactions with posts. This will allow us to better target content and timing of posts. While there are many more metrics we’re still dying to know, Facebook is taking baby steps in becoming more hospitable to the business world.

• Date: 01.27.2010
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Changes to HelpAReporter.com Reflect E-mail Harvesting

If you’re like me and my team of social media relations specialist, you subscribe to Peter Shankman’s newsletter, Help A Reporter Out. Three times a business day, without fail, you get list of several queries from writers, freelancers, journalists and bloggers working on stories to which you and your clients may be able to contribute. But if you’ve perused your Shankmans lately you’ll have noticed a change. No longer does the query, which gives subject, need and deadline, list the writer’s e-mail address. Rather, it’s a coded e-mail that goes into a new hub and relays the message to the writer. So for example, queries that used to appear with the e-mail “foodblogger@suchandsuch.com” will now appear as “queryxxy@helpareporter.com.”

Why the change? You guessed it: too many writers were getting irrelevant e-mails from PR and marketing people like us. I had a chance to ask Shankman about it, and he said in an e-mail, “Too many people harvesting e-mails, too many people adding to lists, too many people spamming and not playing nice. We didn’t have a choice.” Shankman has always been explicit about how to use Help a Reporter Out, so this is no surprise. But it is a shame it had to come to this; I have made numerous valuable friendlies from the newsletter and will continue to endeavor to do so within the new rules. As Shankman might say, play nice!

What does this mean for PR people like me? You have to be quicker in responding to these queries, you can’t let them pile up and then go through them all at once. The coded e-mails used in the newsletter are only live until the deadline set by the writer. In other words, if a writer tells you he is working on a story and his deadline is 5:00 P.M. EST, at 5:01 the e-mail queryxxy@helpareporter.com will go dead.

• Date: 01.21.2010
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It’s OK to Be Anti-Social

By Nichole Mrasek
Account Supervisor

Feeling socially overwhelmed online? From Facebook to LinkedIn, there is a social network ready to connect you to friends, old schoolmates, boyfriends/girlfriends and family. A new social networking site, By/Association, unclutters the news feed noise and caters to people with specific networking needs.

The site touts itself as exclusive and inherently important. From the company’s Web site: “By/Association is a community of remarkable individuals, hand-selected to seed inspiring and unexpected introductions.”

The site offers exclusivity by requiring that members join through an application process. And don’t worry about finding a good profile picture. The New York Times reports that the network doesn’t allow searching for people or pictures. This is because the site has one main purpose: networking. Its mission is to offer a place where people can connect and share ideas, philosophies and enrich projects they are working on, and, ultimately, their lives,

“The site covers London, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, with plans to expand to Toronto and Chicago by the end of the year,” according to the Times.

The site is definitely off to a clean start. But will it eventually evolve, as other online platforms have, and open its policies to meet the demands that its network will eventually create?

Read the full feature for more details and an interview with the site’s founder, The Anti-Social-Network Social Network.

• Date: 01.08.2010
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