What a great event!
Good morning,
Last night was one of the most informative, dynamic and passionate PRSA Bost0n events I have been to in a long time.
The panel discussion on social media, moderated by John Cass, with panelists Paul Gillin, Todd Defren, and Todd vanHoosear touched on everything from tips for blogging success to five things to never, ever do when engaging social media.
The panel discussion ran for almost a full two hours in front of a packed audience. I believe the final tally was 90 people. Shift, Racepoint and Schwartz Communications (the agency for which I were) had a strong showing, but the session was a good mix of corporate communications professionals, small agencies, principals and independent practitioners and large agencies.
All agreed that if you try the "command & control" system of PR in the social media, you are doomed to failure. (I personally believe that if you try it in traditional PR you will not be as successful as you could be. Two way, symmetrical communication will provide the greatest impact).
A few recommendations they made that I wanted to share with members:
1) When starting to engage in conversations in the blogosphere follow the tried and true PR practice of listening and learning about the people with whom you will be interacting. Then a good opening to to simply let people know you are present, listening, ask them what they want to know and ask how you can help.
2) Avoid drive by commenting. (You need to return to your posts)
3) If you haven't started tagging, you should. There are some great resources that explain this in greater detail, and I invite yo to share them in comments.
4) PR is still essential.
5) The vast majority of markets are still not represented in the blogosphere. Now is the time to act! (If you are tech, entertainment, politics or financial services and not active, you are late to the game).
6) Don't visit http://www.willitblend.com/ unless you have time to kill. 30 second videos, one of which received more than 3 million views.
7) One of the Todd's (sorry my notes were lazy at that point), pointed out there are four levels of participation.
a) Monitoring (all should be doing)
b) Joining conversations
c) Starting conversations
d) Optimizing visibility online.
I believe that serves as a good guide for our members who are still looking for guidance on what to do.
There is a lot that I did not include in the wrap up, but I invite others to comment and share their thoughts. (And I will follow up with any interesting posts I find on this program).
These are the types of high quality programs PRSA Boston wants to bring our members. Chime in if there are topics of interest to you.
Last night was one of the most informative, dynamic and passionate PRSA Bost0n events I have been to in a long time.
The panel discussion on social media, moderated by John Cass, with panelists Paul Gillin, Todd Defren, and Todd vanHoosear touched on everything from tips for blogging success to five things to never, ever do when engaging social media.
The panel discussion ran for almost a full two hours in front of a packed audience. I believe the final tally was 90 people. Shift, Racepoint and Schwartz Communications (the agency for which I were) had a strong showing, but the session was a good mix of corporate communications professionals, small agencies, principals and independent practitioners and large agencies.
All agreed that if you try the "command & control" system of PR in the social media, you are doomed to failure. (I personally believe that if you try it in traditional PR you will not be as successful as you could be. Two way, symmetrical communication will provide the greatest impact).
A few recommendations they made that I wanted to share with members:
1) When starting to engage in conversations in the blogosphere follow the tried and true PR practice of listening and learning about the people with whom you will be interacting. Then a good opening to to simply let people know you are present, listening, ask them what they want to know and ask how you can help.
2) Avoid drive by commenting. (You need to return to your posts)
3) If you haven't started tagging, you should. There are some great resources that explain this in greater detail, and I invite yo to share them in comments.
4) PR is still essential.
5) The vast majority of markets are still not represented in the blogosphere. Now is the time to act! (If you are tech, entertainment, politics or financial services and not active, you are late to the game).
6) Don't visit http://www.willitblend.com/ unless you have time to kill. 30 second videos, one of which received more than 3 million views.
7) One of the Todd's (sorry my notes were lazy at that point), pointed out there are four levels of participation.
a) Monitoring (all should be doing)
b) Joining conversations
c) Starting conversations
d) Optimizing visibility online.
I believe that serves as a good guide for our members who are still looking for guidance on what to do.
There is a lot that I did not include in the wrap up, but I invite others to comment and share their thoughts. (And I will follow up with any interesting posts I find on this program).
These are the types of high quality programs PRSA Boston wants to bring our members. Chime in if there are topics of interest to you.
posted by Mark W. McClennan, APR @ 7:36 AM
1 Comments:
At 11:30 AM,
Anonymous said…
Mark, thanks for a great event. The discussion was truly compelling, and I was struck by the terrific turnout. Goes to show how important these new tools are becoming to the industry. See you at the next event!
Post a Comment
<< Home