Public Relations

New Pros Summer Book Club – Social Pollination

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Welcome to the first installation of PRSA’s New Pros Summer Book Club. Over the next three months we’ll be discussing and reviewing books that will help you succeed as a pr new professional.

The New Pros recently had an opportunity to interview Monica O’Brien, the author of “Social Pollination” about digital media and how her book can help you. Read our interview with O’Brien, and check back next week for our review of her book.

New Pros (NP):Tell us a little about yourself. Where did your passion for digital media come from?

Monica O’Brien (MO): I spent about 5 years, starting my senior year of college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. In search of “the answer,” I learned an extremely valuable lesson: Every single person has a skill set that is valuable. I don’t mean this in the Kumbaya way, like we should appreciate all of God’s children. I mean that everyone has a skill set of things they enjoy doing­—a skill set that people are willing to pay for.

So why isn’t everyone doing a job they love then? One word: Marketing! People don’t know how to package and distribute their skill set into a product or service that people are willing to pay for. Even when they get past that step, they then don’t know how to find their target customers effectively and affordably. My book helps people and companies do this using digital media.

NP: Your book helps businesses leverage their social media presence, how can your advice be translated to personal social media use?

MO: Every person is selling something. You may be trading your time and skill set to a company for monetary value as an employee, but you are still selling. Consider yourself a small business of one to take advantage of the information in the book.

NP: You write about the psychology of online sharing. More specifically you talk about whether information is important enough to share. Gen Y’ers often over share. What advice would you give to Gen Y’ers so this doesn’t happen?

MO: Two things:

  • Despite privacy settings solutions online, you should always be careful with what you say. Very obvious, but for some reason people don’t get it! So do a quick check: write a list of topics you wouldn’t want your boss or your grandma to hear you talk about. Do you share this information online anyway, even behind privacy settings?
  • Look around you and see what pointless stuff other people are sharing. Do you care if someone is at the airport three states over, heading to another airport 12 states over? Probably not. Do you care what people ate for lunch? Only if they provide a yummy picture and a recipe. Watch others to know when you annoy people. And accept that no matter what you do, you will annoy someone anyway.

NP: Do you have any advice for new professionals who are looking to break into digital media?

MP: Sure! Before getting on Twitter or even starting a blog, you should learn the logistics of how to inspire people in your every day life. You should also learn how a movement is started, because that’s what you are trying to do online. I have links to two TED videos to watch: Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspire and Derek Sivers on How to Start a Movement. Once you are done watching these, you can learn the technical logistics of breaking into digital media from my book.

Special thank you goes to O’Brien for taking the time to chat with PRSA. You can purchase “Social Pollination” on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. Check back next week for our review of her book, but in the mean time here are a few discussion questions to get you thinking.  Feel free to post your responses in the comment section.

1)   What social tools are you currently using to promote yourself online?

2)   In your opinion, what do you consider to be too much sharing online?

3) O’Brien says before you get started online, you should learn the logistics of how to inspire. How do you inspire people in your life?

social media… Dear Facebook, Please Grant Me (and other Page admins) These 5 Functions by Janet Krenn

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To celebrate PRSA New Pros’ new Facebook URL (www.facebook.com/PRSANewPros), I thought I’d revisit the popular topic of managing a Facebook Page for public relations and business.

Previously, I wrote a post called Facebook Group v. Facebook Fan Page–Never build a group page. I got emails from all over the world (no kidding) from folks trying to launch their own Facebook Fan Page for their businesses. Most of these folks were wondering, Have I experienced other problems they were finding? If not, how did I solve them?

Although I’ve been pretty good at answering readers’ emails, I thought, I might as well hammer out a new post (1) to let you know you’re not not alone; these functions really do not exist, and you don’t have to waste your time hunting down an answer–I’ve already wasted enough time for the both of us–(2) in hopes that some Facebook functionality genie will see this article and grant us these five functions.

1. Page admins should have the option to comment as an individual.

I think everyone who has emailed me has asked if I figured out how to comment as Janet on the Fan Pages for which I’m also an admin. Sadly, when admins comment on their wall, they can only do so as a representative of the group. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to comment as Janet on the New Pros Facebook Fan Page, but didn’t because I didn’t want my sometimes snarky attitude to be under the New Pros veil. Facebook, if your listening, make some option so that Admins can comment on the wall as individuals or as the group.

2. Admins should be allowed to edit a wall post for a period of time after its submitted.

The same is true for personal pages, but I’ll tell ya, there’s nothing worse than setting up the link, choosing the thumbnail, typing some copy and then finding you wrote “ther” instead of “the”. LinkedIN has a good model. That platform allows the poster to edit for 15 minutes after hitting submit. Facebook, I know you’re for kids and not for brands, but brands love you! Show the brands a little love and make it a little easier for us to correct typos or bad links without trashing the whole post.

3. Don’t make me choose! Let admins post more than one html bit (photos, links, videos) at the same time.

Facebook, why not? Most of the time, it really doesn’t matter, but consider this: Sometimes you want to link to a page, and the page doesn’t have any good image. So instead of a visually interesting wall post with my Page’s avatar and an interesting little image, my links don’t emit no interesting visual cue. Why can’t I upload a photo from my own computer AND include a link in one wall post?

4. Simplify the event forms.

If you’ve ever tried to schedule an event on your Facebook Fan Page, you know that you have to click through 3 times before you can publish. And each time you click, you have to put in more information. Okay, so this isn’t a functionality issue. It’s just an ease issue. Facebook, please streamline your event forms! Start by eliminating those pesky drop-down menus that do not correctly categorize my event, but you insist that I use.

5. Have updates to the discussion tab appear on the Fan Page wall.

I have no idea why you haven’t included this function. Discussions are like forums, and everyone expects that the front page of a forum will alert with the newest threads and the newest comments. I would love to use the discussions tab, but I’m not going to bother members with an email every time a discussion gets updated. And let’s be honest, without those updates appearing on the wall, I’ll forget about it anyway.

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JANET KRENN administers two Facebook Fan Pages and wonders whether Facebook will ever update some of its functions to make life as a PR and marketer a littler easier. (She is also your 2010 New Pros of PRSA Chair, and the past, 2009, Communication Chair. Follow her on Twitter @JanetKrenn or contact her janetqs(a)gmail.com)

your pr career… 10 Steps to Starting a Local New Pros PR Group by Crystal Olig

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Our first years in public relations can vary from enlightening and fun to intimidating and tough. Our peers in PR quickly become our best resources, providing a relationship-based connection to the industry.

By starting a New Pros group for your local PRSA Chapter, you’ll be able to share your passion for PR, be a leader in the chapter, and grow your personal network of connected, smart, and helpful peers—who won’t mind if you occasionally geek out about AP style, social media, or the coolest new blogger in the city.

Starting a local New Pros group takes some work, but it is not as hard as it sounds. This 10-step roadmap spells out exactly how you can get there.

Find New Professionals in Your Area

1. Build a base of new PR professionals.

Associate members, recent graduates, and current internship programs are rife with new PR pros eager to build professional skills and connections. Get email addresses, Twitter handles, phone numbers, and LinkedIn or Facebook info and connect with new pros in multiple ways.

2. Expand your base of new PR professionals through referrals.

Build an active referral program. At every live event, ask new pros for connections to their peers. Challenge each attendee to bring a friend or industry peer. Engage new pros on Twitter; then use your network to create a “re-tweet” trail for event postings and resource links. Use Facebook to actively invite others to events, engaging them pre- and post-event. Use word-of-mouth to help bring in new people.

Reach Out

3. Create a consistent outreach plan.

Choose a primary New Pros communication tool, such as a list-serv or Facebook page. Train new pros where to go first for group information, and stay in front of busy professionals by using secondary resources like an online chapter calendar, weekly e-blasts, and oral announcements before other PRSA events. Reminders are key. Follow this schedule and contact members one month, then one week, and then one day out.

4.  Don’t assume—Ask what new professionals in your area need.

You can discover what your members are interested in using a short and sweet questionnaire. A quick Survey Monkey quiz can do the trick also. For example, you can ask new pros to rank interests, such as these:
•    Career building advice
•    Connection to a mentor figure
•    Gen Y workplace issues/generational differences
•    Hard skill development, i.e. pitching practice, social media strategy
•    Informal socializing
•    Meeting the media
•    Networking with more seasoned pros
•    Sharing experiences in comfortable peer-to-peer environment
•    Soft skill development, i.e. time or information management

Plan and Engage

5. Plan hybrid new professionals events.

Many young pros want to socialize, but need an academic incentive to compete against a crowded social calendar. In Phoenix, we created the “Happy Hour+” program, hosting informal education opportunities for the first 15-20 minutes of the event, followed by networking. Examples include a “Top 10” tips presentation on focused topics, roundtables on hot button issues, or quick Q&A sessions with PRSA board members or notable leaders.

6. Initiate a matching program.

Many times both seasoned and new professionals are unwilling or unable to commit to a formal mentoring program, though it’s a frequently-mentioned need. A matching mechanism during the RSVP process for chapter-wide events allows new and seasoned professionals to be paired up for a one-time-only mentorship opportunity. If individuals make a great personal connection, it can develop into a more consistent mentorship relationship.

7. Deliver variety in programming.

Deliver events and topics that are varied. Don’t be afraid to crowd-source the next topic. Shifting physical locations for events, from local agencies to downtown pubs to suburban restaurants, helps spread the burden of drive time obstacles.

Keep this Advice in Mind

8. New professionals leaders must be visible and accessible.

Send at least two New Pros members to the regular PRSA events and host a New Pros table. Invite new professionals to join the table. This way the new pros will will have someone to sit with, ask questions of, and network with. As an added bonus, New Pros committee chairs get valuable visibility within the larger PRSA chapter.

9. Be time- and cost-conscious.

New pros encounter common barriers to developing a consistent tie with professional associations: Time and money. As an entry-level or junior employee, it’s hard for a new pro to request time off to attend daytime PRSA events. Plan events outside of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Events such as weekend brunches, happy hours, or coffee meet-ups might work better than lunch meetings. Many organizations are unable to assist with membership fees for junior pros, and entry level salaries don’t cover many extras. Be open to non-member attendance, and try to keep events free or under $5 (unless the fee covers the cost of food or drink).

10. Create a super committee.

To launch a New Pros group, you need a solid, diverse, and enthusiastic committee to share the workload. Start with four to five new pros from different areas of PR, including corporate, non-profit, and agency. The New Pros committee leader should have a strong tie to chapter leadership, whether through a designated board member contact, within a professional development cluster, or via the membership committee. Meet monthly in person or via conference call. Maintain a strong committee by respecting each person’s time, requiring accountability and responsiveness and consistently incorporating committee members’ input or ideas.

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CRYSTAL OLIG is the former Phoenix PRSA New Pros Committee Chair and is a current Central Ohio PRSA University Liaison committee member. She can be reached at crystal.a.olig[at]gmail.com or through @sparklegem on Twitter, linkedin.com/in/crystalaolig, or the whY genY blog.

pr strategy… The Dangers of Social Media Marketing by Travis K. Kircher

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I spent four years working as an assignment editor for a local TV station. We covered a host of fatal accidents, homicides, house fires, etc. One of the first things we did when we got word of a fatality, whether the death was a tragic accident or the result of foul play, was hit Facebook and MySpace up to see if they had an account. If they were young, chances were they did. And chances were, it was an open account. That is, any member of the public could access it.

I can remember one instance in particular when we were covering a fatal accident involving a young person. As soon as we got the identification from the coroner I ran his name, and, sure enough, there was his profile page, his smiling face beaming eerily from the computer screen. Already his friends had gotten word of the tragedy and were posting memorial messages on his wall. It became standard practice for the media to show those photos and read these messages on the air.

When people stop to think that they might wake up one day to see the contents of their MySpace or Facebook pages as a topic for discussion on the morning news, many of them bristle. Isn’t that a little below the belt? After all, what business does the media have delving into people’s private lives?

This is the lesson all of us must learn: As long as your profile page is open to the public, IT IS NOT YOUR PRIVATE LIFE. When an agitated husband writes, “I hate my wife!” on his evening status update, it’s no different than purchasing ad space on a 250’ x 500’ digital sign in Times Square and announcing it to the world.

The media will investigate anything in the public record, and an open Facebook account IS public record. And it may not just be the media thumbing through your MySpace photos. Prospective employers, loan officers, ex-girlfriends, sexual predators, your boss, and Osama bin Laden could all be checking you out.

Like individuals, businesses can often be careless about their social media accounts. When setting up a MySpace or Facebook page, it is critical for marketers and public relations professionals to keep the following tips in mind:

  • Keep business and pleasure separate on social media. A business owner who already has a personal account under his name should not use that same account for business purposes. Clients don’t want to hear you “shoot the breeze.” They want to see professionalism and expertise. Keep one account for fun, and the other for business.
  • Double-check the privacy settings on your social media accounts. Facebook and MySpace give you the option of making your accounts public or private. It’s a no brainer that any high level executives with personal accounts should have them set to “private.” Business pages will likely be public.
  • Be aware of potential exposure to litigation. Don’t post any content to your Facebook page without first determining whether you have the legal right to do so. Posting images of minors may pose a problem if you don’t have parent’s permission.
  • Monitor your social media networks. One of the most dangerous things a business can do is open a social media account and then forget it is there. Entire conversations may have taken place and accusations may have been leveled against your company without your knowledge. Take an active, aggressive, and vigilant approach to the way you handle your account, and be quick to nip any problems in the bud before they explode into a PR nightmare.
  • Don’t post anything to social media you wouldn’t say to Larry King. You have no idea who is accessing your account. Even if it’s closed to the public, one of your friends could save images from your page and e-mail them to others. Anything posted on a social media account should be run through the PR office first. You should also be aware that once it’s up, it’s permanent. You may take it down, but that doesn’t mean someone hasn’t already seen it, saved it,and distributed it to others.

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TRAVIS K. KIRCHER is an independent copywriter and founder of WriteNow Creative Services, which does indeed have a Facebook account (feel free to join.) He can be reached at tkircher@writenowcs.com.

social media case study… Using Facebook to Execute the Quick PR Campaign by Janet Krenn

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When California Tortilla won Best Burrito in Washington, DC by Washingtonian Magazine, the California Tortilla marketing team wanted to develop a promotion to get the word out by the beginning of July–and by the way, they only had a couple of weeks to develop, launch, and close said promotion.

To meet their time crunched goal, they turned to social media.

California Tortilla, a Maryland based Mexican food franchise, already had a solid footing in social media. Their Facebook page has more than 3,000 fans, and their Twitter page (caltort) has about 1,800 followers. California Tortilla also has a strong email list, called TacoTalk.

“[Social media] was a good fit for this campaign,” said Stacey Kane, Marketing Director at California Burrito, who notes that the franchise frequently uses social media to run promotions such as coupon give-aways and others. “Our customers are very vocal, and so social media is a good extension, a good way to interact.”

To spread the word about their new “Best Burrito in DC” victory, the company decided on a radio script writing contest. On the California Tortilla Facebook Fan Page (July22), the wall read:

“You know how California Tortilla won Best Burrito in Washingtonian Magazine?? Well we did…and we want to run some radio but we have no budget to pay anyone to write the copy. So we decided we wanted our fans to do it for us. Write a thirty or fifteen second spot saying why we deserved the award and the winner gets $1000 and free burritos for a year…”

In fact, California Tortilla relied nearly exclusively on social media to promote the campaign. But it’s not as if they snubbed traditional media. “We put out traditional PR, but it seemed to only get picked up by the trades, not local media,” said Kane.

Once the contest opened, fans had only 5 days to submit their radio scripts. California Tortilla received nearly 100 entires.

“The entries weren’t just written scripts. Several people actually submitted produced radio pieces,” said Kane.

Kane said she was shocked at the “shear amount of time and passion that people put into [their entries]. The contest closed on July 7th, and by July 8th, people we’re emailing to ask whether we picked a winner.”

They hadn’t. Instead, the company sent all the participants a goody bag of coupons and other swag to tide them over while waiting for the winner to be announced. California Tortilla plans to announce the winner within the next week, when the company launches its new website.

Although Kane said her group did not pick a metric by which to measure the campaigns success, she felt it was a hit. Not only did they get a large response quickly, “The campaign did generate a lot of buzz, and this was reflected in increased sales,” Kane said.

What does Kane recommend for other companies considering launching a similar contest via social media?

  1. “In regard to social media campaigns, stay true to your brand.”
  2. “Make stuff clear and easy for fans to execute.”
  3. “Do what you promise to do; make clear cut rules, and stick to them.”

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JANET A. KRENN is Communication Co-Chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA. If you’re a member of the New Professionals Section, and you’d like to contribute to the New Pros’ blog, email her at janetqs(at)gmail dot com