It has been months since we have put a post on our blog. Not because we didn’t have anything to SHARE or celebrate as there is plenty of that, but rather because the demands of prioritizing as we continue to grow as a company – became our main focus.

As mentioned over the last year, I joined the millions of adults who faced the “unplanned” reality of a parent facing significant illness and the change to their lives and mine was monumental.

I think we all believe we can do it all and when reality hits you – sometimes we need to rethink “what doing it all means“. For me it has meant being the best daughter I could be first. Second it meant helping our clients understand, create and implement social/digital strategy and tactics to meet their business objectives and establish meaningful relationships with their customers.

Some may perceive this absence – to be a lack of savvy or klout for us as a business or a company. Others may have thought we dropped out of the game. Neither could be further from the truth! Marketing guru Scott Stratten often tweets on Twitter as @unmarketing -  the idea that one is better to post nothing on a blog, then to post something that is not of value.

What is amazing about substance – is that we began this blog in November 2008. That was almost 4 years ago and right out of the gate I began writing about social media and digital strategy. At that time, all the clients I visited were curious to listen to what I had to say – but none of them were ready to take the chance and test it out. The information over that span of time shared on our blog and website is now relevant and used by many companies and businesses to meet their objectives and establish honest and true relationships with their customers. Funny, that it is now a mandate for all businesses to be engaging social media as a marketing strategy – for success!

From that perspective, the content, opinions, ideas and many examples from the many posts over an almost four year period are well worth the read! We encourage you to look back and see what we had to say then and see how that information matches up to your goals and needs now.

As the summer comes to a close – we look forward to once again becoming engaged and active by continuing to lead the way with ideas, opinions and new styles of engaging and encouraging you – to leverage social media and digital channels to meet your business objectives.

Thanks always for all your support!

Best Nicole

I was thinking about our small boutique agency. As we continue to grow and create successful campaigns for our clients, we work to carve out a space for those companies who greatly desire our skill, expertise, creative tech skills & bandwidth -while meeting and exceeding their objectives. Yes and keeping the money in their pockets with low cost innovation and implementation and high returns. Some believe the more “likers” and followers you have the better success you will be – yet they forget that it is quality not quantity you want via information and engagement. There is today no accident that your neighbor, former high school teacher, doctor, dentist and boss former & current are all on Facebook. (Yes we may all want to take an extra minute to review our privacy settings) It means that all the brands you can think of, businesses, products and services know we are all there too and they are looking for new marcom partners and business advisers to help them reach all of us. Both online and offline. It will be those such as ourselves with a wealth of award winning traditional talent and  savvy experiential technical talent – who clearly understand and can translate that user experience – on an array of platforms, that will help you knock it out of the park- in reaching that customer in the place you desire to have them go.

In the past – the key to audience targeting was focused on assigning people to demographics such as age, gender and location. While this info. is still vital – with so much data available to us now and the idea that understanding that data first- before going forward with that “knock it out of the park campaign” means much success in the campaigns you create.

“Targeting can be and is much more dynamic and can gauge your interests and preferences.” Ever notice that the ads on Facebook and Twitter, the suggested people to follow and things that relate to what you like and care about are truly on par just for you? It is this behavioral targeting that is now the future of where the internet and your marketing and communications is going both offline and online.

Mashable.com has a great article from a week ago that speaks to this very topic. Lauren Drell writes about 4 Ways That Behavioral Targeting is Changing the Web. It is a brilliant article that I encourage all of you who are looking to better understand and target your customers to read.

Drell gives a great explanation of how this works for those that are not yet familiar -“Here’s how behavioral targeting works: Targeting companies establish an agreement with a publisher, who puts a piece of code on his website. (That publisher must have a clearly stated policy for the consumer to opt out from having data collected.) Then, when you’re browsing the web, the site will put a cookie on your browser, which populates as you surf. (Though one interviewee, ContextWeb, targets based on content and not cookies.) Now that your browser has a cookie, the targeting begins. Data points amass as you click your way from site to site, taking note of what you buy, what you read and what you search for. The more time goes on, the more data is collected.”

Companies that are paying attention to this understanding and moving towards  behavioral targeting with their data – through their advertising- can’t help but to expect more success and engagement by people who have indicated on the web what their preferences are and that they would be interested in YOUR product and or service. Of course this detailed data collection can be more costly, but the sales conversion rate of targeting to the correct buyer is sure to offset this cost. The viral advantage grows as well – as those accurately targeted customers- then SHARE those products , your products – with prequalified friends, family and colleagues.

Viva the future.

Best Nicole

Search in the world of technology is the main driver and source of revenue for all of us looking to build our visibility online. “As a marketing strategy, SEO is used to increase a site’s relevance. The SEO recognizes how search organics work and what people are searching for. It also initiates efforts to include unique content to a site to ensure that its content is easily indexed by search engine robots, making it more appealing to users.”

As this year winds down it is important to reflect and see what the past year’s successes, failures, tragedy’s and challenges were- in order to help plan and build enthusiasm, goals and growth for the year ahead. I came across this video via Google Zeitgeist 2010 that provides you with a great overview of the top searches in 2010 around the globe. Great way to get the juices flowing as we all plan to search on in 2011.

2010 in Review

Re-live top events and moments from 2010 from around the globe through search, images, and video.

Enjoy!

Best Nicole

The idea behind using social sharing in email campaigns is to encourage and let members of your database do the sharing of the emails they are receiving. In addition to an extended brand awareness this is a superb way to augment email lists – which appears to be the mandate of many marketers these days – in particular retailers who are looking to drive customers to both their e-commerce sites and bricks and mortar locations. While the email campaigns are being socialized – it makes pretty good sense that you stand to enhance SEO results (search engine marketing) without spending alot of additional effort.

For those that are just starting out to build an email campaign – social media is a great way to begin building a relationship and build the list. “A homebuilder in Indianapolis ran a “12 Days” promotion during the holidays on Facebook, with prizes including free furniture for an entire home.  Twitter also was used to create interest in the promotion.  As news of the promotion spread and people signed up for the contest, the company was gathering names and email addresses for a future email list.  While marketers are used to driving prospects to their Web site and building campaign lists this way, social media is unique because it disarms prospects by building a connection with them in advance.” (example quoted from Media post)

Posting questions and or polls can help with research that can be leveraged on social media sites such as Linkedin and then linked back to your website or syndicated to your Facebook and Twitter pages. Asking people to share their ideas and give their opinions is a good way to start to engage your customers and let them know that you are interested in what they think. This can prove as invaluable research, while helping a retailer decide on the right frequency and timing of emails as well as information on how their target market best wants to connect.

With the addition of mobile and text messaging being the largest and most frequently used feature on a variety of mobile devices in North America- combining all of these tools together with creative campaigns that include offline, in-store and online initiatives – will provide the continuity – to tap into the social computing behaviors of many rather than just some.

How are you building your email lists while engaging your customers and keeping that relationship ongoing?

Best Nicole

Our guest for this week is Blair Currie.  Blair is a global agency leader – who has run creative, media and digital agencies. He has just returned to Canada – after being in Asia for 20 years and is  working with us at BCAD Group on a number of projects. Blair’s topic echo’s many posts we have written in the past and a philosophy we stand behind – which is total communications marketing and communication plans that include digital tools – using all forms of media to build a story and message that supports a brand and it’s community!

We thank Blair for being our first guest blogger and look forward to having him post again for us in the months to come!

Best Nicole

Video didn’t kill the radio star

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m growing tired of marketing soothsayers talking about the death of this or that medium. Part of it is that I’m more of an “inclusive” versus “exclusive” guy – using the word “and” much more than “or”. But a larger part is that I think we’re being fed too much hype about new media.  For me, it’s not “digital or TV” but “digital and TV”.  And sometimes it will be “digital TV”.

Digital and television play different roles in creating value to exchange for peoples’ hard-to-get attention.  Consider the last time you remembered a banner ad?  (They are difficult to remember.) Or consider when a television commercial caused you to immediately jump in the car to buy the product? (Some infomercials can do this.) These two media have relative strengths and weaknesses, and we really should be talking about how synergy can be created by using both, versus turning them against each other to compete for scarce marketing resources.

To better understand and deal with the current “Media battleground” we can turn to history – which tends to repeat itself when it comes to warfare and technology.

Once a disruptive product or media innovation is introduced, it is quickly adopted by pioneers and “early adopters”, crosses a proverbial chasm to the mass audience, and moves on to nearly 100% penetration. The interesting fact is that this progression doesn’t generally eliminate the existing rivals – as video killing the radio star; rather, new technology and media tend to shake up the landscape, and force existing media players to reposition themselves into more defined and defendable spaces.

Source: The New York Times.

Looking at the “1960’s” in the chart above, TV took over the role of “the family’s gathering place”, from radio. Radio did not die but found new roles to play – as a source of background or ambient music, or the most popular in-car medium.  Now television, magazines and newspapers are all facing similar issues with the rise of the internet and the accelerated growth of social media.  It’s a familiar pattern that can teach us how to deal with changes and allocate resources in today’s changing media landscape.

Like most disruptive technologies, a new medium can create great advantages for those who adopt it early in the game.  But more often than not, new media comes with a disproportionate share of hype.  The true and lasting value of the innovation follows later – sometimes many years later, in the shape of Gartner’s “Hype cycle” below – great expectations at the beginning yielding to sustainable growth and maturity only in time:

Source: Gartner

Media advisors need to strike the balance of seeing the potential that the new media will bring in terms of immediate returns, while keeping an eye on the future.  It’s quite comforting to draw upon historical comparisons to help strike this balance – keeping in mind that innovations spread more quickly today.

In closing, technology and media do not play in a “zero sum game” because attention spans are not fixed. Multitasking can increase a 24 hour day, just as filtering out a message can decrease it.  And digital will no more kill the 30 second television spot in the years to come, than video killed the radio star in days gone by.  But digital will help redefine the role of television – which is actually a good subject for another blog.

Interestingly this topic came up last week in a coffee I had with one of Canada’s top home decor editors.  She and her husband have built a fully sustainable home using, solar energy to heat the home and appliances, a compost toilet, etc. She talked about how it had transformed her life and the way she thinks about EVERYTHING. This of course is really diving in and for many such as myself and there are many ways that I can begin by making my mark and taking baby steps.

Cause marketing has grown with the leveraging of social media – especially Facebook where the audience capture is so great. I posted on Twitter today in a tweet that 1/4  of consumers want brand info. on Facebook. With this kind of opportunity – companies are using the idea of cause marketing to show that they good corporate citizens – to jaded consumers who are now tired of just being sold to and want to support products and services that fit with who the are as people and align with living their best lives. This leads to the second part of the title of this post the Effect. Does this cause marketing that might play out in a campaign such as “like us on Facebook and we will donate $1 to our supported charity” -  hope that this outward commitment will help build brand passion and evangelism?  Or as suggested in an article from Media Post that I read the other day – in their Marketing Green RSS – by Matthew Martin – take an approach that can truly effect a change.

His point is that in most cases, people do not truly know where all the money goes when it is donated. The second brilliant point is that it really does not change peoples behavior by writing a check. Instead he suggests in this article that “If you had to choose between giving a small donation to an environmental organization to fight global warming, or switching to LED lights (and then getting all your friends and neighbors to switch their lights, too … and so on), choose the physical change every time. This approach is the core difference between effect marketing (long-term behavioral changes that impact issues) and cause marketing (transactional promotions that link a business to a cause)”.

In the world of social media – where the power is has now shifted to the consumer – the company is going to be held accountable, not just for the actions that the company takes – but also the for the actions that their customers take and on down the line.

Food for thought and an article worth the read!

Happy October!

Best Nicole

Matthew Ammirati said it right: “Is it Enough to be Green? What About Being Good?” For now, greener is an advantage in the sustainability game. Soon enough, green will be a cost of entry. The reasons are becoming the 2000’s mantra: Consumers are jaded; information zips through social networks faster than ever; and there are tracking systems for everything (including corporate social responsibility actions).

Many green marketing programs evolved along the cause-marketing model. Cause marketing is attaching your brand to a cause with consumer appeal and piling on media/promotion. The program typically supports change through donations to non-profits, puts a halo around the brand, and hopefully generates business results. Principally, though, it’s philanthropy. It is an image game; putting on a “being good” veneer. There may be corporate concern for the adopted cause, but cause marketing generally does not directly affect the root issue.

Our world’s most pressing issues — from global warming to AIDS — require people changing behavior more than simply writing a check. Just giving money to these causes is important but does not address the fundamental education and behavior change needed to meaningfully impact the issues.

If you had to choose between giving a small donation to an environmental organization to fight global warming, or switching to LED lights (and then getting all your friends and neighbors to switch their lights, too … and so on), choose the physical change every time. This approach is the core difference between effect marketing (long-term behavioral changes that impact issues) and cause marketing (transactional promotions that link a business to a cause).

Sustainability demands a shift to creating an effect rather than simply marketing a cause. Before marketers can make any of the essential moves, they need to shift orientation and distinguish effect programs.

Here are some tangible examples:

• Cause marketing is donating 10 cents for every mailed-in wrapper; effect marketing is facilitating park clean-up days.

• Cause marketing is giving money to breast cancer research; effect marketing is teaching early diagnosis through self-exams.

• Cause marketing is buying a certain color product to spur a donation; effect marketing is a brand providing vaccinations in Africa.

Sustainability pioneers have created business models that make social change inherent to their products. What’s more, they measure their impact on both levels: social impact and profit.

Sustainability pioneers such as Ben & Jerry’s and Stonyfield have created business models that make social change inherent to their products. What’s more, they measure their impact on both levels: social impact and profit.

Stonyfield started selling yogurt to support its organic farming school and now it gives 10% of its profits to efforts that help protect and restore the earth such as a corporate climate rating non-profit, Climate Counts. Ben & Jerry’s has three different mission statements (social, economic and product) to help it focus on all three.

Overall, today’s leaders in corporate social responsibility are taking an effect-marketing approach to sustainability. They’re not calling it that — yet — but their actions are establishing a new standard.

The key: Social change is central to every business decision of the product or service life cycle, including what constitutes effective marketing. Their marketing campaigns rally all stakeholders — customers, employees and affiliates — into direct action. And it’s not just the biggest brands; smaller companies are making a difference, too.

While most companies can’t replace business models overnight, they can take meaningful steps in the right direction. Effect marketers consider how their companies can be engines of social change by continually asking three essential questions:

1. What specific actions are we taking — and, by design, encouraging consumers to take — on the social issues we’re committed to influencing?

2. How can we re-envision our business culture to drive social change?

3. What are we doing to measure and report the impact our business has on society, both positive and negative?

Just staring Question One in the face is enough to shift a company toward a more sustainable business model. Ultimately, though, consumers will demand that we follow through on all three questions and, likely, many more. So, are you ready to answer?

I have not abandoned our blog and thought that I should send out another note to let people know that we are still here. As I mentioned earlier in the summer, I have been one of the main care givers for an aging father – who has encountered a time in his life where unforeseen medical issues have popped up one after another. As like many of you, one never expects the amount of time or effort that this support can demand and I am happily yet juggling all of the additional planning needed to fulfill both my personal and growing business commitments.

The amazing thing is that there are so many of us just entering into this transition of supporting our families and maturing parents – as we all continue to move on in years. Since I posted my last note – letting you know why we had lapsed on our regular posts after all these years – many of you have come forth to share your stories of the support you too – are also giving to your families and how you have worked to make room in your lives for these added adjustments and responsibilities. I thank you for those that have come forward and encourage others to share their stories with us.

I have been able to keep up posting on Twitter and Facebook as I can post from my iphone easily via Tweet Deck and hope you will continue to engage with us there as well.

Work is ways there but your health is a precious gift to which nothing is more important.

Looking forward to connecting again with you all in October!

Best Nicole

Now the internet has changed the face of PR and how these professionals are operating. Twitter can disperse news in real -time and the companies who used PR to promote positive relationships or  images for a brand – now have the opportunity to engage directly with their customer and can create relationships that allow those customers to promote those relationships with their friends and family with the speed, breadth and transparency that traditional PR methods just cannot reach.

Interestingly I have had some great meetings with some very skilled PR people in the last few weeks as we here at SHARE – look at our various projects – and the mix of offline and online marcomm tools needed to make a marketing campaign powerful and profitable. There are still many viable uses for PR as well as the integration of social media as a PR tool. Mashable.com has posted an article today by Erica Swallow – who in this post spoke to several PR professionals who provided their take – on the future of long standing PR tools, such as the press release, the evolution of social platforms, building relationships and current limitations with solutions for the challenges that arise leveraging social media.

With the advent of Twitter and sites like HARO  for which I subscribe – where you can help a reporter out by answering to a post, as a source for an article of interest. “Rather than having PR reps make the first moves all the time, now members of the media can put out requests for pitches from particular types of experts.” For me the most powerful statement to that – is that the author Erica Swallow used HARO to write this article and received 200 quality responses. I personally get several HARO feeds daily and am always looking for someone who might be interested in my expertise as part of an article they may be writing.

At the end of the day PR and social media is about the human factor of building and engaging in relationships. Social media has changed that relationship – as it is no longer a one way dialog – but rather one that can be shared “a bonus for both the company and the customer”. Melding the two together can be a powerful duo!

Best Nicole

Public relations specialists were some of the first people to embrace the power of social media, and as a result they are often the ones leading the way in the social space, whether they are consulting with clients from an agency point of view or strategizing on an in-house PR team.

In the past decade, the Internet has had a huge impact on how PR professionals function. As of late, social media is changing the face of PR, as well. We interviewed 14 PR pros on the future of public relations and how they see social media changing the industry. We collected their thoughts on how social media will affect the future of the press release, the evolution of social platforms, current limitations and solutions for those impediments, connecting with other PR pros, cost savings, and building relationships.

The Future of the Press Release

During the past few years, we’ve witnessed a shift towards what some are calling the “social media release.” Services like PitchEngine, PressLift, PRX Builder, and MindTouch are bringing the press release into the new millennium with embedded multimedia and easy distribution through various channels, including social media and e-mail. We asked our PR experts about the future of the traditional long form press release, and we received quite a bit of feedback that showed that while it is here to stay, it will continue to be influenced by the brevity and accessibility of social media.

Amanda Miller Littlejohn, founder of Mopwater Social Public Relations, commented on the importance of the social media release and how it enables readers to share and interact with it:

“While I don’t believe the press release is dead, it has been transformed, to become this living, breathing thing. If a release doesn’t have a social element — that is, a way for viewers to comment or share to their social networks — it doesn’t have legs.”

The format of the press release isn’t the only factor in its evolution. In an e-mail interview, Vice President of BLASTmedia, Lindsay Groepper, discussed how distribution of the press release will continue to be key to its future:

“When I first began my career in PR more than decade ago, we would e-mail or fax (gasp!) the full press release text to the press. What we see now is new methods of distributing the info, driven by social media. Rather than e-mailing a press release, PR people are sending journalists to custom landing pages created just for that specific announcement, contacting them via Twitter with a BUDurl link to the release, or even directing them to a YouTube video with a message from the CEO making the announcement.”

PR professionals are now experimenting with these new distribution channels. Likewise, many are finding that the form of the press release isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for every channel. Vistaprint’s Public Relations Manager Jeff Esposito believes that the press release will continue to evolve into multiple iterations for various audiences, channels, and situations:

“Over the next five years, I think we’ll see three types of press releases that will assist different audiences. The first is in a video format where there will be a short description followed by a link to a video giving information on the news from a company source, hitting on the five W’s and also offering sound-bites that can be used for stories or added to a news story. The second iteration will be a further evolution of the social press release that is being used today, except more brief and more focused. The final is similar to what we see now with company boiler plates, stock quotes and additional information.”

In the end, the press release’s future may simply depend on media consumption trends, according to David McCulloch, director of public relations at Cisco Systems:

“In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a marked shift in [the press release's] format to reflect the accelerating societal shift from mass consumption of media (“push” media) to personalized consumption or “pull” media. That’s a shift that has led Cisco to spend less time telling reporters and bloggers what it is we expect them to write, and more time helping them understand how what Cisco is doing might fit with their interests.

“…[I]t’s pretty clear where the press release will go next: It’s going to get shorter; link to more sources; be focused on simplification and explanation; and it’ll come in many more flavors. Practically speaking (assuming the SEC keeps pace with media evolutions), that means the press release of the future will deliver its content in text, video, SMS, microblog and podcast form, to any choice of device, whenever the reader decides, and preferably it will be pre-corroborated and openly rated by multiple trusted sources.”

Kelly McAlearney, an account supervisor at Edelman Digital, agrees that based on natural progression, the press release will continue to get shorter, for concision’s sake:

“Engagement with journalists and consumers has evolved considerably over the past five years, to shorter formats. Often, we find that our most effective pitches are our most succinct. And interactions have naturally become more concise as many brands are in constant, direct contact with consumer audiences and media via online channels.”

Lou Hoffman, CEO of The Hoffman Agency, brought an interesting perspective to this conversation. He said that the backlinks generated by press releases are reason enough to continue syndicating them, even if the contained information is of little use to the audience. He speculates that if search engines were able to point out and devalue republished news releases and their included backlinks, companies would find better ways of dispersing news:

“I don’t think the news release will die in the foreseeable future, say the next five years. Even if the syndication of this content has little impact on the target stakeholders, they’ll still be generating backlinks, which by themselves deliver a decent ROI.

“Looking beyond five years, I could see the algorithms of search engines becoming smart enough to discern whether a backlink comes from syndicated content, which in turn causes it to greatly reduce the value of the backlink. In other words, even if a news release is syndicated on the Wall Street Journal, with all the “authority” that comes with the site, the search engine figures out that it’s nothing more than a republished news release, so scores the backlink super low. If this happened, we would see the volume of news releases significantly decline.”

The Evolution of Social Platforms

The social media platforms with the most value must be used by a client’s target audience and be a meaningful place for brands to connect with consumers and journalists. Our PR experts said that mass social platforms, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, will continue to be important on some level, but niche, industry-specific networks will be of greater value in the future.

“The most important platforms for PR pros in the future will be the ones most targeted for their clients,” said Cara Stewart, founder and principal at Remarx Media. “Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are ‘fun;’ getting nitty-gritty into community sites that are industry-specific is less ‘fun,’ because PR pros have to really understand clients’ technologies, business models, services and more. Really, it’s more about PR pros becoming better PR pros and understanding their clients’ businesses, as well as what their clients do … Social media is not a one-size-fits-all solution.”

Social media platforms will continue to evolve, but “A PR person’s job remains the same,” said Heather Whaling, founder and president of Geben Communication. “It’s critical that we’re innovative and staying on top of the latest and greatest; however, we also need to avoid ’shiny object syndrome’ and instead make recommendations based on the client’s business needs.”

Once the industry settles in to a standard for finding the right platforms for each of its clients, the next step is measuring success. Miller Littlejohn pointed out that the PR industry is moving from placing importance on broadcasting to highly valuing monitoring and measurement:

“Right now, the most important tools are the broadcasting tools … But in five years, the most important tools will be the monitoring and measurement tools — the tools that can tell you what happened to your message once it got out there. [T]he tools that can demonstrate (and quickly demonstrate) return on engagement will be winners.

“Free measurement dashboards will also be winners. Right now, there are a few ways to measure mentions of your brands for free, but they are extremely limited in how much and what you can measure at one time. You can pay thousands of dollars per month for a nice platform to measure your brand on the social web, but most smaller brands and small businesses can’t afford that. I think if someone develops a more sophisticated social media and PR measurement and monitoring dashboard and offers it for free, that will be a rock star tool.”

There is also a growing demand for social platforms that make it easier for journalists and PR reps to contact one another. Help a Reporter Out (HARO), PRNewswire’s ProfNet, NewsBasis, and Media Kitty are all enabling the communication lines to run in both directions. Rather than having PR reps make the first moves all the time, now members of the media can put out requests for pitches from particular types of experts. In fact, I used HARO to write this article and received nearly 200 quality responses.

Current Limitations & Solutions

While PR pros are experiencing lots of successes with social media as is it today, our experts pointed out quite a few limitations with the current offering of social platforms that will need to be worked out for continued adoption, understanding and success across the industry.

• Broadcasting vs. Listening: Our experts pointed out that a vast majority of the PR people out there are using social media as a broadcasting tool for sending out press releases and recent client news. The next gen PR pros will use social media as a listening and communicating tool. Scott Bauman, vice president of Greenough Communications, elaborates:
  

  “In the future, I think we’ll see more … real-time interaction that demonstrates the brand is actually listening. This begins to build trust, which is highly valuable and highly perishable. This means continued growth in listening platforms (such as Radian6), but less for reporting (just showing share of voice, for example) … In the end, the real change is a more fluid, immediate, and nimble PR/communications practitioner, instead of one who simply follows a PR plan and rigidly adheres to it.”

• Finding the Right Audience: Many of our experts agreed that while the mass social platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, are useful, the niche, industry-specific communities provide just as much, and sometimes more, value for clients. The current issue, though, is that finding these communities is quite tough and involves a lot of scattered research across the web. In the future, directories with the ability to search for target demographics across a broad range of social networks would make the process of finding the best platforms with the right audiences much easier.
• Imperfect Data: With measurement becoming one of the most important features of social networks for marketers and PR pros, data is the key to enlightenment. “Social media provides a lot of information, but it’s also imperfect data,” said Chuck Tanowitz, founder and principal at PR and social media firm Fresh Ground. “So the trick is knowing what to accept and what to dismiss.”Tanowitz gave the example of the mayor of his home city of Newton, Massachusetts. Mayor Setti Warren has just over 700 followers on Twitter, which wouldn’t put him into the “influencer” category on most social measurement tools. However, in real life, he’s quite influential. Tanowitz notes, “It doesn’t tell you much. Yet, when he got elected [as mayor], he received a call from President Obama, so he obviously has the ear of some influential people. You can’t learn that from Twitter.” For now at least, social measurement data should be taken with a grain of salt.
• Social Stream Aggregation: Nicole VanScoten, a public relations specialist at Pyxl, believes that the future of PR is all about a one-stop social dashboard for easy social media management. She says, “Right now, we’re forced to pay attention to a whole host of different networks. I think we’ll continue to see more aggregation here … People will continue to develop programs that save us time.”Tools like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, CoTweet, Postling, Vitrue, SocialTALK and more, aim to make it easier for businesses posting and monitoring across platforms. While there isn’t one perfect management tool quite yet, over the next five years, it’s probable that one or two clear leaders will emerge.
• Client Buy-In: Lastly, PR pros are still finding it difficult to obtain client buy-in for investment in social media. Currently, a large part of a PR pro’s job involving social media is educating clients of its use and benefits. The solution here is data. As success measurements continue to improve, the case for social media will become much clearer.
  

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  Connecting with Other PR Pros

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  As more and more independent PR professionals launch their own consultancies, the independent PR community at large is becoming an important place for individuals to get advice. Social media is driving those relationships.

  LuAnn Glowacz, an independent PR strategist and founder of PR firm WordCove PR notes, “My most valuable business connections are other independent PR and related professionals in Austin, who I connect with daily on Twitter and Facebook. We refer each other, give advice to each other, co-work and socialize together. It’s like having co-workers and employees while keeping the paycheck all to myself.”

  Glowacs also connects with other PR pros every Wednesday at the #SoloPR Twitter chat, moderated by her colleague and PR/social media consultant, Kellye Crane. Crane also runs a blog and LinkedIn group for Solo PR. Glowacs commented on Solo PR: “In my opinion, it’s the top social media resource for indie PR pros. [It consists of] very high-caliber PR pros from around the country helping and learning from each other.”

  Twitter chats seem to be popular among contemporary PR pros. Stewart and her team at Remarx attend the #B2Bchat on Twitter every Thursday to keep up with social media trends and share their own knowledge of the space. And Whaling co-moderates the popular #pr20chat, a weekly exploration of social media’s influence on public relations.

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  Saving Money and Putting It to Good Use

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  Social media has the ability to save companies lots of money through enhancing traditional and online campaigns. INgage Networks‘ Corporate Communications Manager Kathy Saenz explained how her company saved $270K in expenses via social media. They had previously paid $250K annually for an external PR agency, and $20K in events budgeting for venue, traveling and promotions expenses. They saved all of that money by bringing their PR in-house and focusing on social media. Instead of running large events at expensive venues, they now run webinars. Of their latest webinar, Saenz said, “It was a targeted B2B audience we wanted to reach; [we] broke record attendance numbers. We didn’t have to pay for anything as a result. Great exposure and big money saved.”

  For PR professionals, social media also saves time and money by yielding higher response rates to pitches. VanScoten explained:

  “It’s amazing to me that I get a MUCH higher response rate when pitching reporters via Twitter than e-mail. I would actually go as far as to say that every time I’ve pitched a reporter via Twitter, I have gotten some sort of response (often resulting in a story for my client). Via e-mail, I have maybe a 50% response rate. The phone call response rate would be my lowest.”

  As these success stories become more publicized and the PR industry begins to see the cost savings behind social media, it’s inevitable that the stragglers will jump on the bandwagon.

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  The Human Factor

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  No matter which tools PR pros use to connect with media members, the most important factor is the human factor. Public relations and social media are both about creating and fostering relationships. Our PR experts agreed and emphasized the fact that personal relationships will continue to propel the bond between social media and PR.

  Dave Delaney, social media coordinator at Griffin Technology explained, “Today, not only can we send a press release to a valuable group of media contacts, but we can now take that message wider using social media. Whether our communication is a press release, blog post, or a tweet, the important thing is remaining relevant and engaging our friends, fans and followers.”

  Emphasizing relationships, Hoffman also discussed his agency’s use of social media:

  “We’re definitely using social media to connect with journalists and customers, but this outreach involves a news release maybe 20% of the time tops. The other 80% of the time we’re talking with journalists, bloggers and other influencers about issues and macro topics. In short, we devote most of our outreach to helping our clients serve as industry and business sources, as opposed to promoting their products.”

  McAlearney reiterated the importance of building relationships with influencers. “Regardless of how an announcement is shared -– via wire, blog post, tweet, or otherwise –- the critical step has historically been, and will remain, the human element. By directly reaching out to key media and influencers with whom we maintain relationships, we’re able to ensure their timely awareness of the news.”

  Groepper backed up that point in saying that “Despite the changing landscape of press release distribution, the most effective communication for a PR person still remains unchanged: Building relationships with the most influential press in your space. Having key relationships is what helps drive the type of media the client is seeking, and no press release can accomplish that in its place.”

  “In truth we’re talking about the same positive PR practices that good PR people have been doing for decades,” Tanowitz concluded, “They read and understand their target audience, then help craft stories that speak to and with that audience.”

Complaining and unhappy customers from our perspective our gifts for you and your business. They allow you to look closely as those aspects of your business or brand that have come into question, review how you are managing your customer service responses, allow you to engage with your customers one on one and build a relationship and make the great things you currently do better! Ironically  feedback and criticism promotes fear for many businesses – especially in today’s world of social media- where word of mouth spreads like a wild virus, yet what they forget is that by hiding or not responding this unhappiness spreads anyway. Why not take the initiative to face that unhappy person or group and use the good will and caring you demonstrate – as another way to promote the many great reasons – why they should continue to do business with you and SHARE their good relationship and experiences with others. Now that sounds like good publicity…taking lemons and making some delicious lemonade!

On Mashable.com I came across an article that speaks directly about this very issue today. Susan Payton posted an article that provides some good examples, expanding upon my thoughts in this post – to leverage that unhappy or unsatisfied customer – not only to help solve their discontent, but to take advantage of the ways you can learn more about how to make your business better and promote the way you face head on – the negative things you do or have done.

The outcome is that your customers win and at the same time so does your business and your brand. You learn about the way you can make your business better and in turn can promote the great way you engage with your customers. Think Zappos – they focused on customer service and it became their best skill because they realized when they began it was something they lacked. We always promote the positive things – but isn’t it a positive thing to know – that if I have a problem with your products or business you will be there immediately – to make sure that it gets fixed immediately?

How are you embracing complaining customers in your business? We would love to hear how you have managed some of your customer service challenges.

Best Nicole

Companies love positive feedback. They share it on Twitter (), post it on their website and use it as marketing fodder. But what about when feedback is, well, less than pleasant? What can you do with a handful (or more) of irate customers? Do you ignore them? Bury them out back? Not in today’s social atmosphere.

Rather than try to sweep these unhappy customers under the rug, look at them as a challenge and an opportunity to improve your brand and leverage them for some publicity.

Why You Want Angry Customers

There are several ways to connect with unhappy customers in a meaningful way:

• Hold a panel or forum in person; give them a tour of your facility and hold a venting session
• Work virtually; host an online panel to get feedback from them
• Work one-on-one to understand their concerns and address them individually

In-Person Events

Dell recently held its first Customer Advisory Panel event at their headquarters in Round Rock, TX. They invited two groups of 15 bloggers and social media gurus. One group was full of people who had negative experiences with the company and who were vocal about their displeasure. The second group was made up of people that Dell considered brand evangelists; people who loved Dell and told others.

The attendees started the morning with their gripes; customer service issues came up again and again. The heads of customer service and marketing were present and actively engaged. As they listened, they took notes, then asked questions and they promised they would make changes.

That type of customer empowerment is important. Now, whether they’ll go through with the promised changes is another story, but it was clear that Dell understood it was time to start paying attention to the public’s perception of its brand, and make some changes to keep their customers.

Nestlé is another company that has been successful at holding an event to let people engage with its brand directly. After a resurgence in interest in the Nestle Boycott a few years ago, Nestlé decided to invite a group of bloggers to what it called its “Happy, Healthy Gathering” in 2009. Mommy bloggers, who’d been tweeting up a storm about the company’s stance on breastfeeding in third world countries, were invited to tour the facilities and give their input on the company.

Whether the event truly changed perceptions remains to be seen, but it did a great deal to show that Nestlé was putting in the effort to reach its audience.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers invited to participate Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel.

Virtual Panels

Virtual panels are decidedly less effective than in-person ones. But they can be good replacements for focus groups. Pssst is General Mills’ online testing ground for new products. The company sends participants coupons and free products to try, and in return they are asked to fill out surveys. The program is so successful that bloggers who write about saving money are gladly turning others onto joining Pssst.

Similarly, the Starbucks Passion Panel was designed to get customer feedback — for better or worse. The community of Starbucks drinkers gives their input via surveys and forums.

Passion Panel member Jennifer Boyd said, “Being on the Passion Panel means that I have access to direct input and discussion with other members. It enables me to give my opinion on Starbucks’ current and future products through surveys. The panel is a great way to engage with their loyal customers and solidifies a relationship with a consumer to a brand.”

Wal-Mart’s Elevenmoms platform is another example of how a mix of online community, shopper experience and in-person visits can work together to help the company gather new insights. John Andrews, former Senior Manager of Emerging Media for Wal-Mart and founder of the Elevenmoms, said the community succeeded in getting Wal-Mart’s attention in a few areas where it was lacking.

When the iPhone was launched in Wal-Mart stores, the Elevenmoms were invited to go through the purchase process. Some had no problems, but others did. It took one blogger two hours to buy a phone. Each blogger published her experience, and Wal-Mart took the feedback to its operations staff, who took notes and improved the purchase process.

“The Elevenmoms used direct social media interaction to improve the shopping process,” said Andrews.

Other feedback caused Wal-Mart to reconsider its layaway strategy. Having canceled the layaway plan due to costs, Wal-Mart got some flack from the Elevenmoms, who felt it made it easier to make big purchases. As a result, Wal-Mart developed its Site to Store platform, which provided the benefit of layaway online, so that local stores didn’t incur extra costs.

Disclosure: John Andrews now works with Collective Bias, a company with which I have collaborated on projects.

One-on-One

Solving a customer’s problems and changing their perception individually is the least cost-effective method, but a little work goes a long way. And it starts with customer service personnel being properly trained to solve problems, and not to simply stick to “the script” at all costs. Look at Zappos or Disney for great examples of how service reps are empowered to solve problems.

Disney empowers each of its “cast members” (staff) to solve a guest’s problem. From the street sweeper to the reservation specialist, everyone has the ability to turn a negative situation into a good one. That might mean replacing a fallen ice cream cone, upgrading a guest’s hotel room, or simply answering politely the most commonly asked question on Disney property: what time is the three o’clock parade?

Disney is so good at customer service, they’ve opened the Disney Institute, a customer service training program helps other corporations use the same techniques that has made Disney such a success.

Likewise, Zappos is also famous for its customer service tactics. The reps don’t use scripts, and seem to genuinely care about solving problems. Many customers are pleasantly surprised when their shipping gets upgraded and they get their shoes even faster – at no additional charge.

By providing instant happiness to the customer, these brands can prevent a lot of the bad karma that comes down the road when an unhappy customer becomes an enraged customer who tells everyone he knows about how bad the company is (no one wants their own version of DellHell).

Conclusion