Posts Tagged ‘jason breed’

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Your Company’s Social Network: How Do You Know If It’s Worth It

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Much like the corporate land grab for a website in the mid 1990’s, the late 2000’s saw a similar land grab around setting up online social networks.  Both were created initially “because everyone else has one” with little regard to what it could do (or should do for that matter).  The first iterations of the website were no more than online versions of a company’s marketing material.  Over time, as forward thinking marketers began to test the limits of being online and the sites began to morph into something useful.  Today, corporate social networks or communities (as they are sometimes referred) are just now beginning to test the limits of how they can add value back to the company beyond branding and product marketing.

Initial metrics included things like page views, time on site, # of likes, # of comments, # of shares all of which are valid for marketers when comparing investments in marketing mediums.  Smart companies however, are starting to look beyond impressions and explore other ways to leverage the investments in community including IT, headcount to manage the site and the opportunity cost of not doing something else with those resources.

If there is one consistent thing that companies get wrong initially, it’s trying to copy the wrong competitor’s community.  The truth is that there is no one “right” way to build, manage and measure a community because every company’s needs, skills and platforms are different.  Companies have to identify a business objective or issue that can be improved by interacting differently, then go execute better than anyone else.  Setting up a community is the easy part.  Having the fortitude to measure/test/learn/rinse/repeat over the long term is the hard part.

The opportunity is one like never before.  If a company can re-imagine their business with these new ways to communicate and interact, they will have a distinct advantage over their competitors who take a long time to figure this out.  To better understand how to build and measure a community successfully, we went to the front lines with Lauren Vargas, the community manager at Aetna.  Lauren’s expertise is shining through in this emerging field and we are happy to have her experience to lead this week’s discussion.  The topic and questions for #sm129 will be:

Topic: Your Company’s Social Network: How Do You Know If It’s Worth It

Q1:  How do you measure impact within your community?

Q2:  How do you differentiate and/or blend quantitative and qualitative metrics?

Q3:  How do you measure community efforts if management is outsourced?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, September 27 at noon ET.  Follow #sm129 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Journalism & Good Content are Finally Converging

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Remember the London Bombings in 2005? For me, that was the point that distinguished the value in citizens and journalists collaborating to bring stories public.  At the time the best content available was a victim running through the tunnel with a mobile device capturing video.  Every news organization used that video as a lead for the story.  Since then news organizations went full gear into developing areas for citizens to upload rich media they were able to capture.  This started a new era for many reasons.

With the focus on citizen journalists and the ability to create acceptable content on a device that you always carried in your pocket, many began to pontificate on the demise of professional journalism.  Fast forward 6 years and the “art” of journalism is still alive and well however the industry certainly has changed.  While many digital content areas have developed successful business models (iTunes for music; Amazon for books; Netflix for movies), news has struggled to create a true business model online beyond advertising.  As a result, news rooms have had to cut staff and alter the way that news is collected and delivered. 

These circumstances have forced journalists (some very old school) to adapt to the new ways of capturing content, gathering story ideas and reporting news.  Social media has played a large role in redefining the industry and will continue to be a big catalyst in how journalists transform their trade.  Three big areas of transformation happening with social journalism involve Reach, Effectiveness and Innovation. 

  • Reach: Social Operating Systems like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, WordPress, LinkedIn are enabling journalists to reach audiences that were never possible before.  Instead of jockeying for key spots in the printed newspaper, Journalists are learning how to build expansive networks of followers, experts and interest groups.
  • Effectiveness:  Even though journalists no longer have camera crews to follow them around, technology has empowered individuals to capture rich media content with merely a phone/video/audio/image recorder (read iPhone).  Building networks also provides journalists to be more effective in reaching story depths and finding additional resources.
  • Innovation:  The models of effective news reporting and story-telling have been re-invented.  Collaboration plays a big role now and journalist teams are emerging that involve amateurs and professionals alike.

While the world of journalism has been completely over-hauled in the past 5-6 years, the need for quality content still exists.  The same tools that have empowered everyone to create content and re-post it everywhere have overwhlemed most with sheer volume.  This dilution of quality is exactly where professional journalists step back in.  By incorporating network theory, technology and some creative new thinking many journalists have emerged as leaders in a space that did not exist 10 years ago.  For an industry that had not changed much over the past 150 years, that is saying a lot.  To run the conversation around this topic, we have Jeff Cutler.  As a true pioneer himself, Jeff’s insights will provide for a great discussion this week.  The topic and questions are:

Topic: Journalism & Good Content are Finally Converging

 Q1:  What outlets do you use to get your news today?

Q2:  Who creates the best content: Journalists or Citizens? Why?

Q3:  What are the attributes of a good journalist today?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, September 13 at noon ET.  Follow #sm127 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Content, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Fear and Loathing in Content Creation

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Content is moving through a maturity of sorts within the enterprise.  Talking with a few colleagues some noticed that companies were putting out more content, some noticed that some companies placed less of a focus on content and I have yet to notice any sizable advances in companies developing relevant content (content specific to me when I need it and on the device I where I want it).

 On the surface there seems to be a dichotomy in how companies are utilizing content.  It doesn’t seem possible that companies are actually producing less content today than before.  What we found was that companies were blogging less which made it seem like they were de-emphasizing content.  Not the case at all.  Let’s look at what is different today than when companies started to blog.

 Blogging is simply a tool that enables you to self publish content on the web.  A few years ago, blogging was the only way that marketers could actually publish on the web unless they went through IT to have it published using the corporate content management systems.

 Fast forward to today.  Now content takes form in long form through blogging and short form through updates on walls, tweets, Posterous.  Content also takes the shape of video, audio, powerpoints, documents (Scribd), etc.  Content is not only produced by the public relations team or marketing team, content is being distributed by any employee who posts an answer on Quora or LinkedIn or who tweets or updates pictures from the company picnic on their own Facebook page.  Content simply takes so many shapes today that it is impossible for companies to actually control all of it. 

Controls of information within companies have been in step decline for 2-3 years and it’s having profound affects throughout the enterprise.  IT’s perimeter is no longer the walls of the building, the perimeter has become every employee who carries a mobile device or logs into the network in an airport.  Marketers must train employees on tactics once only used on the few people who spoke to the press.  Today everyone can have that voice.  Employees communicate differently today internally.  So what does all this mean?  The only way to find out is to employ the services of Toby Bloomberg for an hour during this week’s chat.  Toby returns to host another chat this time focused on the maturing nature of content within companies and what it means.  The topic this week and questions will be:

Topic: Fear and Loathing in Content Creation

Q1:  Where is the sweet spot these days, in content creation or distribution?

Q2:  How is blogging/content development changing or maturing for companies?

Q3:  How do companies need to adapt around content?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 30 at noon ET.  Follow #sm125 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Content | 1 Comment »

Can a Personal Brand Coexist Within a Corporate Ecosystem

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Photo Credit: Barry Libert/John Spector - WeAreSmarter.org

Companies are in an interesting position.  Customers are demanding new forms of interactions through social tools, mobile, online and service.  Organizational designs are set up to manage external engagement in a couple of ways, Public Relations or Customer Service.  Both of which are highly trained and highly scripted.  Interacting with customers on their terms means lifting the corporate veil to reveal new corporate “voices”.  The new voices are typically experts in their respective fields or simply young enough to not be scared to interact via social media (think Interns).

Within industry though, there is something larger happening.  Something that is beyond havign to deal with new talking heads.  A new model is beginning to emerge that  places importance in knowledge process management.  In the 80′s we placed importance on Cost Arbitrage through IT management, in the 90′s focus shifted to Labor Arbitrage through Business Process Management.  Now we appear to be shifting into a stage of Intellectual Arbitrage placing importance around Knowledge Process Management (KPM).  This shift brings new challenges. 

As social communications proliferate, there is a stronger focus on content.  Content is an asset and should be able to be re-purposed or re-used across other parts of the enterprise to be most effective.  If we expect our employees to become advocates as knowledge managers of our Brand, then where does the corporate brand and the personal brand come together.  If an employee builds a following as a likeable, intelligent ambassador then who owns the intellectual property (IP) around the information?  Better yet, how do you transform the IP into reusable assets across the rest of the organization. 

With this shift into Knowledge Management, companies need to look at hiring practices, employee policies and begin to update.  Should companies look to hire people with strong personal brands or build them after hiring?  There’s not a consistent answer as it will depend company by company.  The real trick is to develop your organizational models on purpose rather than by accident.  So IP issues, strong personal brands, how does a company begin to tackle these new challenges?  This is certainly a conversation worth having and to help moderate, we brought in Daria Steigman to manage the discussion.  Daria has done a masterful job at developing her own personal brand that has become her company’s.  for the discussion, we will use the following topic and questions:

Topic: Can a Personal Brand Coexist Within a Corporate Ecosystem

Q1. Personal branding — good idea or bad idea?

Q2. Can a personal brand coexist within a corporate ecosystem? Can your stars be stars and keep your brand intact?

Q3. Is it okay for companies to ban their employees from blogging?

Q4. Should companies have a succession plan around star employees?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 9 at noon ET.  Follow #sm122 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »

Trolls or Contrarians? The Food Chain of Social Media

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

 We all have people who love us and what we do and we all have people who have different opinions of what we are and what we do.  Companies and Brands are no different.  If you have customers, you likely have people who disagree with other competing Brands.  They purchase your products for a reason and not someone elses’.  The same for contrarians to your Brand.  Those contrarians buy other things for a reason and complain about the way you run your business or make your products.  Before, those contrarians simply did not come to your store and said un-appealling things just in a way that you could not hear them.  And here is where I question the mindset of many companies and brands.

On the social web, you get to listen to what is being said about you (right, wrong or indifferent).  You have an opportunity to connect with that person in a way that was not possible before.  Companies who chose to ignore what is happening in the social sphere are missing an opportunity to promote their side, correct anything that is not factual and simply engage.  Not engaging is quietly agreeing with whom ever is posting negative information.  To be fair, this is not an enviable position at many companies however it is much needed. 

So what to do and how to get started?  This is a vexing question and certainly a conversation worth having.  Let’s suffice to say this is one of those instances where experience matters.  On this topic you definately want to avoid making rookie mistakes so getting someone who has “walked in those shoes” before is important.  This week, we are doing just that.  Peggy Fitzpatrick is a very experienced social media manager and has moderated many communities.  She brings a great perspective to this conversation around the following topic and questions:

 Topic: Trolls or Contrarians? The Food Chain of Social Media

Q1)  How should we address a troll like or contrarian type action within the walls of social media? Acknowledge it? or Let it go?

Q2)  From a marketers standpoint, is there any value to a troll or a contrarian?

Q3)  Have you ever experienced any negative or aggressive behaviors within Social Media? What did you do about it?

Q4)  Has previous negative behavior stopped you from attending chats or any other online activities?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 2 at noon ET.  Follow #sm121 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

 

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Posted in Branding, corporate, Customer Service | 4 Comments »

Welcome to the Big Data Era, How do Marketers Cope?

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

You may have heard a term being thrown around referring to the significant amount of data that is being produced most often called “Big Data”.  Here is a loose excerpt from the recent Future of Digital conference that explains the concept of big data pretty well:

“The explosion of data or ‘Big Data’ will give marketers the potential to mine data, discover new trends and learn more about the behaviour in their target market. If you took all the data in the world, cut them onto DVDs and stacked them on top of each other, you could reach the moon and back. This storage capacity equates to 14 Exabytes, where if you captured all the words ever spoken and digitized them into text, this would only occupy 1 Exabyte!

Labels on products will soon be talking over the internet as more sophisticated labels are attached or embedded into products. This could give business more insight into how and where their products are consumed. Big Data is about to get even bigger.”

The days of marketing via web, mobile and social by “gut feel” is over.   It’s not a matter of what you think your customer might like, it has to be what your customer is telling you they want, individually.  To stay competitive, Marketers need to begin adapting their marketing systems and their departments to include marketing analytics across every aspect.  Consider this: in order to make an offer (web, mobile or social could be display, search or even your very own web page) to a prospect, a marketer would take into account previous web visits to my site, recent posts made socially, checkins via mobile social and recent web surfing patterns before they visited you site.  From all that activity plus appending demographic and geographic information based on the IP address that is attached to the digital prospect, the new digital marketer will determine within milli-seconds what you should see when you come to my website.  For instance: A web prospect visited the product pages of my site last week.  After leaving my site, they went to two other competitive sites to their product pages.  On Twitter, they ask they network which is the best stereo system (you sell stereo systems) and then they come back to your website again.  This time you recognize their IP address from last week, append their geographic information (Manhattan) and adjust your homepage on the fly that compares your stereo favorably to the industry and has a big buy button on right on the first page.  Conversion goes up 120% and you start to gain significant ground on the web compared to your comeptitors.

This scenario is not fictional.  It is happening everyday, in real-time.  It’s not happening a lot right now but it is happening and will happen much more in the near future.  How does your marketing stack up?  To learn more about this topic we brought in the VP, Group Director at Digitas, Ken Burbary to work through this conversation.  Ken is a long time industry expert  and thought leader in the emergence of marketing analytics.  The conversation this week will follow the following topic and related questions.

Topic: Welcome to the Big Data Era, How do Marketers Cope?

Q1:  What types of data (digital, social, mobile) do marketers need to capture, track and analyze to effectively understand consumers in this era?

Q2:  Who (which group/function) should be responsible for the planning, collection and analysis of consumer data?

Q3:  How long will companies and organizations have to wait for the “big data” phenomenon to kick in and realize the benefits?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, July 26 at noon ET.  Follow #sm120 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in corporate, Measurement, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Develop Your Social Business

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

As the practice of social media continues to grow, companies are striving to evolve their operations and incorporate social media on their journey toward becoming a social business.  Just what is a social business you ask?  Not the business practices around societal needs, but the business designs that incorporate new models of intreractive communications using social tools, social media and social networks.  As employees and customers drive the need for open, transparent, realtime interactions, companies struggle to keep up with the demand.

While companies are still trying to understand the new phenomenon of social media, practitioners of social media are trying to understand business.  Many social media practitioners got into the field as it emerged from public relations and corporate communications.  While practictioners understand how social tools work and how to become a conversation evangalist, most do not have the ability to connect social media throughout business in a way that executives understand.

Executives make their mark by executing plans against managed risk better than most.  Sure there is leadership and specialties in finance, managment, marketing, etc but when you boil it down it is still about getting the job done more efficiently with less risk on the behalf of the shareholder.  Then comes social media with the promise to be more connected to customers, be more transparent and have better relationships.  Traditional executives cannot even begin to understand how to put their arms around this.

Everyone gets that people’s expectations are changing in the ways they want to communicate, purchase and relate to companies.  Businesses understand that it’s here and not going away.  There is still a missing translation layer of what companies need to do to meet the changing expectations of customers and employees in a way that is executable and that manages risk.  Thus the desire to design the organizational framework to match the changing needs of individuals, or, designing a social business.

Companies today are simply not set up to be a social business.  They are still designed the same way they were set up in the 1950′s and 60′s where experts hold-on to specialized information and company messages are funnelled through the marketing communications or executive ranks.  Lifting that veil involves a risk tolerance that is simply too high when compared to the benefits.  This post is designed to address the risk side of the equation not the benefit side just yet.

In managing risk across the enterprise, you need to have some staples in place like governance (where the accountabilities lie), escalation procedures, training for employees and purpose that maps back to objectives.  Your systems need to be proven to scale, you need to provide some consistencies in approach across departments and geographies.  Designing a social business is more than simply being conversation evangalists.  To help flesh this out further is our host this week Maria Ogneva (aka @theMaria).  Maria spends her time evangalising the business benefits of integration and social execution for the leading micro-collaboration platform, Yammer.  The discussion this week will cover the following topic and 3 questions:

Topic:  Develop Your Social Business

Q1:  What does it mean to have a social business?

Q2:  List some steps you need to integrate social into existing processes.

Q3:  How do you know when you have a Social Business (as defined before)?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, July 19 at noon ET.  Follow #sm119 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in B2B, corporate, social media | Comments Off

Building Relationships: Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Today’s world is fast-paced, uncertain and becoming even more demanding.  This goes for businesses certainly but also for individuals.  Consumers’ lives are packed with real-world complexities and more online and offline distractions than ever before.  Some believe this is why we have had such a strong uptake on social networks as studies show that 1 in 4 people have no one they can turn to in a time of need.  Overall, a recent Pew study reveals that, on average, people have only two people they are comfortable confiding in.  While people may have very few confidants and sometimes may not have anyone to turn to in the physical world, many take solace online with social networks. 

According to the study:

“Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.”

Along with companionship and emotional support the study makes a case for an increase in trust as a result of online social networking activities citing that heavier Facebook users are more than 3 times likely to feel that most people can be trusted.  If you combine these factors, you can start to get a much deeper sense of why people go online.  Whereas many like to dismiss social networks as a place to waste time and play senseless games, there is growing evidence that online social networks are as important within a person’s social graph as any other activities.  Understanding this consumer psyche as a Brand can bring a much different perspective to how to engage and approach building relationships through social networks.  If consumers are going to be more trusting online, one might also conclude they will be less forgiving if that trust is broken.

Are all social networks created equal?  According to the Pew study, Facebook users seem to be more supportive and trusting.  Other social networks that were mentioned included Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.  What was not included were networks related to health, fitness or other hobbies.  It seems these networks might even carry higher levels of focused companionship and trust.  Does this information affect how Brands should approach building online relationships?  Brands have different reasons for participating in social as some are looking to promote a new product, better manage customer service and even develop better relationships with their customers.  Are some social networks better for developing relationships than others? It probably depends on the type of Brand you represent and what you are trying to accomplish.  To help us work through the topic of building trust online through social networks, we got the most trustworthy person we know (at least online).  Chuck Hemann is currently VP of Digital Analytics for Edelman Digital. For the past six years, he has provided strategic counsel to clients on a variety of topics including online reputation, social media, digital analytics, investor relations and crisis communications.  For today’s chat, Chuck will cover the following topic and questions:

Topic:  Building Relationships: Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Q1:  A new study from Pew says Facebook users are more trusting than other people, Agree? Why/Why not? 

Q2:  Which social networks are best for brands to develop relationships on?

Q3:  Developing online relationships, do Brands have to message 1-to-1, Brand-to-1, Brand-to-many?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, June 21 at noon ET.  Follow #sm116 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Branding, Listening | Comments Off

Love All Your Children The Same: Managing Multiple Social Brands

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

Managing one of anything is difficult enough especially in social media.  Now though, you have to manage many social presences, monitor off-board media conversations and map it all back to meeting business objectives – and that is just for one single brand.  Companies today are global and have many brands to contend with.  Whether you are B2B or B2C the challenges are still there with differing levels of complexity.

Consider each brand.  It may be that all of your brand’s managers are completely aligned, have the same goals and working from the same strategy.  Not likely.  What’s more likely is that each brand has their own set of objectives, they have unique needs and they are at varying levels of maturity from a social media perspective.  The uniqueness is important to point out since some brands may need ties to CMS, CRM, active directory (or other single sign-on) and other legacy systems.  Their search strategies are going to be unique and if you want social to help drive your search agends, then care needs to be taken here.  This does not mention mobile needs and other marketing campaigns that need to string together.  Also, this assumes that each department within the Brand are aligned which is, again, a big assumption.

As a corporation with many Brands, what are the options to begin managing your social brand in the most effective, cost efficient and meaningful way?  Is there a separate team for each brand, then you have to manage training across teams and most importantly staying connected as a group.  If one team manages all the brands then you might have a highly skilled team in social but a lack of true Brand knowledge and skills.  The answer is not one way or the other.  It really depends on each company, how they are managed across the enterprise, the social maturity of each Brand, the objectives and how segmented the systems are that need connected into the social environment.  There is no right answer, but certainly some directional attributes that would help dictate a path for companies to follow.

The challenge comes when certain brands jump out ahead of the corporate zone and start socially enabling their own brand.  At that point you have Brand teams with very different skills and approaches that make it almost impossible to consildate even if it did make sense, which essentially limits choices going forward.  So what is the right approach, how do you create a blueprint when you are not sure what the product is supposed to look like? For this week’s discussion we have brought in the talents of Tamsen McMahon.  Tamsen is moving into a new role as VP Digital Strategy at Allen & Gerritsen out of Boston.  Tamsen is an accomplished digital marketer and adept at managing multiple brands for companies.  For this week’s chat, we will use the following topic and questions:

Topic: Love All Your Children The Same: Managing Multiple Social Brands

1.      What’s your biggest challenge/opportunity when managing multiple brands?

2.      Can you use the same team to manage multiple brands?

3.       How do you connect the team(s) to business objectives for different brands?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, June 14 at noon ET.  Follow #sm115 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Does Public Relations Get The “Message” in Social Media

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Public Relations gets a bone as many PR professionals were the first in their companies to adopt social media.  Much like email, PR pros saw this as a great way to distribute messages to a larger audience at a cost that was next to nothing.  Social media became an instant hit in the PR circles for this reason.  For a long time and even still, PR managed much of what happened in companies that was centered in social media.  Now that social media is beginning to grow in importance within the enterprise many feel that social media should be controlled by marketing, CIO or controlled a bit by every department.  However, at a lot of companies, the PR professional is the only one with social media experience.

Here’s the rub, social media practictioners do not believe that social channels are best used for “pushing” messages.  Many marketers are trying to evolve to better “pull” messages from their audience and listen better.  These same practictioners argue that Public Relations does not have a strong history of evolving if you look at how little the Press Release of today has evolved since it appeared over a hundred years ago.  PR pros will argue they have started to evolve much of their work (and the forward thinking ones actually have IMO).  Examples like the new press release, HARO and #soloPR and #PRChat (weekly twitter chats) are helping to advance the ball, but is it fast enough?

Social media is evolving quickly within companies right now.  There are new advances almost daily and practitioners are trying to derive value across the board.  A bit of the issue is the notion of value.  Social media is too new to have a playbook or even a “right” way to do it and everyone has their own version of what value is.  For marketers it’s brand messaging and conversion, for PR pros, its creating and distributing corporate messages.  Therein lies the contention.  From my experience working within Fortune class companies, I’m not sure that social belongs housed in PR for many reasons.  I do, however believe there is value in PR having a social presence and I believe that value will continue to evolve for the better and could re-shape the entire industry as we know it today.

While marketing types whine for control, there is another issue.  Many top marketers do not have any experience in social media.  Some come out of the branding world, some the direct marketing side, others creative.  None of that experience qualifies you for understanding and evolving in social media.  What happens is you get marketers proclaming the best way to use social….who have never used social.  If you don’t understand the medium then it is hard to be as innovative and creative as your customers are being with social.  At that point, you lose relevance.

I think it’s well understood that relevance is key today. With customers, employees, partners and prospects you have to stay relevant.  The question is who is most qualified to run your company’s social strategy?  That is what we posed to Kellye Crane, an award winning, long admired PR professional.  Kellye brings a wealth of experience and is one of those PR innovators who agreed to moderate this discussion for us.  her perspective will be enlightening for sure.  The topic this week and questions will be:

Title: Does Public Relations Get The “Message” in Social Media

Q1:  Has PR become a dirty word in social media?

Q2:  Is there a place for “messaging” on social networks?

Q3:  Can a marketing exec have authority on social media topics without directly participating?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, May 24 at noon ET.  Follow #sm112 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Branding, Public Relations | Comments Off

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