3 years ago I despaired of ENO‘s facility to submit reviews for a performance of Candide.

So last week, after being invited to see a performance of film-turned-musical Legally Blonde, I checked out their website to see if the West End was doing anything different.

To my surprise, the News & Reviews section of the site has a Your Reviews section powered by the brilliant plug-in Disqus. I’m a bigger fan of Disqus than most musicals and think this is a great way to easily integrate some audience reviews into a show website.

With over 400 comments/reviews on the site this is also a relatively well used feature. In fact the comments left there seemed bordering on fanatical with many repeat visitors and what seemed to be people posting multiple reviews.

Anyway, if I had any further thoughts around nurturing the fan community around this popular show it would be why doesn’t the Disqus plug-in also use the Twitter and Facebook etc features of Disqus to enable people to publicise their ‘Likes’ and reviews across their social profiles? The Facebook fan page for London has over 50k members alone (which was also muddled with multiple other Legally Blonde pages both official in other countries and unofficially set up by fans. Urgh, I hate multiple Facebook presences like these) – but I couldn’t see what was happening on that page as I couldn’t get it to load for some reason.

Anyways, all in all, gave me some simple ideas for when I’m next asked by anyone in the event/entertainment space how to quickly bring a bit of interactivity to their web presence.

Just a reminder, and I’m not saying this is the case here as the LB reviews seem to be 100% fanatical fan written, but it is ‘unfair commercial practice’ and regulated by the Office of Fair Trading if you moderate and remove negative feedback without a clear disclaimer letting readers know you’ve removed the bad stuff and will only feature the positive stuff.

But in the words of Elle Woods, snaps for Legally Blonde!

Last week I picked up on Daniel Stein‘s original article on DigiDay to write  a response on Tempero to the question ‘Are PR Agencies ruining Facebook‘.

My thoughts? Stein was bang on the money that advertising agencies create content and then try to work out  how to socialise it afterwards, while many PRs are boring fans to death with branded small talk.

Why? My belief is that most PRs are so used to talking to 3rd party media (newspapers, magazines, TV producers) who are in charge of creating the final content read by the audience, that PR has forgotten how to talk to directly to consumers*.

Paul Armstrong amplified the debate over on PR Week by re-posting both articles and conversation kicked off.

“To me, this is a rather dim and short-sighted view of what public relations has been doing for decades. The fact remains that at the heart of our jobs, we are storytellers. And good storytellers are able to speak with, empathize and understand a variety of audiences, whether that’s customers, stakeholders, clients or the media.” Keith Trivitt

“This question is a bit like asking if technology-inept parents are ruining Facebook. Think about it: they’re perpetually confused, they clog up our News Feeds with pictures of cats, and are not quite sure why they’re on Facebook besides the fact that someone told them they should be. In short, it’s not that they are particularly bad at communicating, but they’re not using the platform the right way.” Faith Chihil

“I’m going to say no. Some PR agencies have got a bad rap for attempting to jump on the social media bandwagon without understanding the platforms or establishing objectives and a strategy. But some are also doing a spectacular job, having dedicated specific resources to recruiting expertise and leading best practice.”  Beth Carroll

“I wonder if:
Agencies are having to do far more with less. Less visibility to big plans, less money, less time, less resources. Less gusto and passion for their work after one too many knock backs. Or are they doing less because they run an agency more like a factory than a consultancy“. Shannon Boudjema

“Can’t we all just get along? People speak of the media like it’s this great machine that you need to know how to communicate with. The person reading the news is a person, the editor is a person, the journalist is a person. And they are all consumers.” Samson Adepoju **

So, a mix of opinion then. Despite the fact that I think PR does a lot of good work and is too easily attacked for failing it still surprises me when a debate like this crops up how many people are prepared to say the majority of agencies are doing it well when evidence (or lack of) suggests the contrary.

For example I hear PR agencies talk a lot about how they are ‘masters of storytelling’ but the reality is that in many cases that supposed storytelling is just putting the audience to sleep.

Overall I don’t really care if people agree with my opinion or not. The fact so many people are happy to debate the ins and outs of this only serves to drive the industry forward – or keep it in it’s top spot, based on how well you think PR is performing in Social Media

*PS Just because I think it’s broken doesn’t mean I think it can’t be fixed. Often with only the smallest amount of education.

** This was the most confusing response to me. Samson – you’re a PR Manager. If there’s no skill in communications is there no such thing as a communications professional then? i.e. Anyone can hold the PR role?

[Image credit: markhillary]

Marie Claire UK Jan 2011

I know slagging off Twitter has pretty much been low-hanging fruit in 2010 and Twitter *can* seem a little weird at first but Marie Claire’s recent article ‘Should I be sucking up to my boss on Twitter?’ was the worst angle I’ve seen yet.

In it, the article declared a lesser know rule of Twitter is…

…if your boss is a user, you must be too.

They’ve even managed to dredge up an occupational psychologist to claim that employees are under extreme amounts of pressure to engage on social networking sites (I did PR, I know how these quotes from experts work). They then trot out some case-studies of hard done by employees including:

• A 30yr old marketing executive in publishing who’s boss uses it (seemingly successfully) for networking with industry big wigs
• A 31 yr old TV producer who says that “anyone who tries to pretend [Twitter is] this lovely, free and easy conversation is lying“
• And a 32 yr old lawyer who forgot all her colleagues were following her on Twitter before tweeting about drunkeness, recreational drug use and a fling during a holiday

To the employees in marketing and TV production I would suggest their problems at getting ahead at work are greater than their inability to ‘suck up to their boss on Twitter’. What about their complete lack of interest or capability in the current media landscape?

I felt a bit of sympathy for the lawyer who had to go through a formal disciplinary procedure back at work but surely the article isn’t implying the technology was to blame?

The article didn’t even remotely deliver on the headline I think they were trying to go for. They threw in some dross about celebrities on Twitter (yawn) and people who’d gotten into trouble for using Twitter at work (lame).

With articles like this why even bother to follow http://twitter.com/MARIECLAIREUK

[Image: Senor Zorro]

Founded in 2000, online greeting card company moonpig has 90% of the online greeting card market, and has expanded into both Australia and the US.

They are also responsible for THAT Moonpig TV advert which, when the jingle gets stuck in your head, is pretty hard to shake.

Could a business which grew brand awareness so successfully via television ever really recommend the digital marketing route? Managing Director Iain Martin answers my questions.

1. Moonpig is famous for growing brand awareness with that catchy TV jingle. Is TV still the best marketing medium?

We had a brand new product that nobody had offered before.  Awareness was therefore almost zero and TV has been good for us because it has allowed us to explain the product, the ordering process and the fact that a moonpig card is a real card and not an e-card.   TV is also great for showing how people react to the cards when they receive them.

However, the best marketing medium we have is the cards themselves.  People that join moonpig.com after having been sent a card makes up a large % of the overall number of new customers.  The product is truly viral  and we’re now sending out in excess of 10 million cards each year.

2. How important is digital marketing to Moonpig?

Digital marketing is important to us but the trick is to identify the things that make a genuine contribution and provide a decent return on investment.   We recently stopped one of our affiliate programs and now just work with a select few affiliates.  We found that running a big program was taking up a huge amount of resource for relatively little return.  In our case we ended up chasing the long tail rather than actually benefiting from it!

Our emails play an important role in maintaining contact with our customers.  We work very hard to get the balance right and are always told by third parties we should be sending more emails.  But then, who really wants 4 emails a month from a personalised greeting card supplier? We really don’t want to be intrusive.   We do all the usual splits when we send emails and we try to ensure that our newsletters are interesting, enjoyable and relevant.   We are constantly adding card ranges to the site so the emails are the best way for us to keep the customers informed about all of the latest products.

3.  One reason the name Moonpig was selected was due to the potential to dominate in Search Engines as the name is so unique. Is this something more new businesses should consider?

The name is a bit of a hot topic at the moment!  It was very useful in the early days when you typed in moonpig to a search engine and just got the moonpig website returned.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case as Google now allows anybody to bid on our trade name and recent European court cases have failed to protect brand owners from this type of paid search bidding.  The result is that lots of people try and piggyback on our traffic using paid for search on the term Moonpig.  This isn’t in itself a problem, we can see that all of the people searching for “moonpig” do come through to us despite other advertisers so we don’t actually lose the traffic.  What is more of an issue is that because more people are bidding on it the cost of bidding on your own trade name increases considerably.  The result is that everyone in our sector now pays considerably more for search to advertise their own brand names.   It seems to me that the only real beneficiary from this is Google who must be seeing increases in revenues at the expense of brand owners who are now forced to pay extra to advertise their own brand names.

So, answering the question, unique names are great but the way that search engines now operate means there is considerably less benefit in terms of search.

4. Moonpig is a successful example of a lean, profitable, e-tail business. Should every traditional retailer be considering an e-tail part to their business?

Yes , I think it is hard to see how any retailer could ignore the online opportunity and not miss out in the longer term.

Our experience has been that some traditional retailers find it difficult to make the transition.  We are lucky, on-line is all we do.  Our entire team is 100% focused on providing personalised greeting cards from a website.   I think that traditional retailers with an online presence face far more complex operational and marketing issues.     Of course some have done a brilliant job of e-tailing,  notably the businesses who had some involvement with mail order previously.   I think these businesses have lived with a multi-channel culture and so were faster to solve the issues.

Why?

The simple answer is that there are times when the customers want to be able to shop on-line.   A simple example, on-line shopping goes up when it rains!  However, I think it’s more than that.  How many times have you thought about going to a store and checked out the product online before you make the trip?  I know I have.   For bricks and mortar retailers I think the on-line store is much more than just a retail outlet.  I think its also a part of marketing the brand and the hook to get you to visit the store.

5. All the buzz/hype that businesses need to sort out their social media strategy – how important is it?

The Social Media phenomena has amazed everyone and left marketers drooling at the mouth and wondering how they can get a piece of the action.  Without a doubt the sheer number of people engaged and the hours of engagement present a big opportunity.  The problem is that it is a semi-private space and if companies take the wrong approach it can feel like someone’s just walked up to you and your mates in a pub wearing a sandwich board, interrupted your conversation and tried to sell you something!  I think the clue is in the name “Social Media”……………marketers beware!

So yes, we do need strategies to interact with social media but at moonpig we are treading carefully and respecting how the space is used.

Learnings from moonpig:

• TV still works but having a product people love receiving really creates word-of-mouth
• Email marketing is important to maintain customer contact
• Unique names are a good Search Engine consideration but the current way Google allows competitors to bid on trademarks is a hot topic
• Every retailer should examine their options online
• Online could be a complement to getting customers to your bricks and mortar store

Big thank you to Iain for taking the time to share his thoughts.

Related articles

• UK’s largest online greetings card company Moonpig launches its iPhone app (intomobile.com)
• Choose the right name for your business – Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins (businesslink.gov.uk)
• What’s it like to work at Moonpig (retail-week.com)

Back in your box Darika

The Background

I don’t normally blog and talk about “feelings”, this has always been a blog that’s professional and not personal in nature, but damn it, this week it got personal.

As you know I was involved with the Social Collective Conference. First off, I want to say that I don’t generally support paid-for Social Media conferences, but having already agreed to join Shannon at the event I threw my heart and soul into trying to give value at the event.

I’m not just saying that. I really did. I felt a huge personal responsibility to show value to each and every attendee. I turned up at 9am and stayed until the very end to ensure the event and speakers got my full support. I didn’t just swan in, grand stand, then swan out.

The Investment

We keep saying this has been 6 months in the making and that’s the god’s honest truth

• We did not come up with our concept the week before (note how different the brochure blurb was from the final online blurb, this is how much we kept at changing/improving the presentation). In fact this is combination of our collective thinking from years working in the industry
• We did not pull out an old powerpoint the night before and shuffle some slides
• We were willing to invest time & money into giving everyone something they could take away and actually use after the conference (so did Hold)

To be dismissed as “braindead gurus” and for persons not even present in the room to whine “social doesn’t fit into 6 boxes, there’s loads of crossover etc” (forehead slap no sh*t sherlock, that’s exactly our point) has got me rattled.

The Beef

Don’t get me wrong, the feedback about our idea and infographic from the event was mostly pretty positive and many people got what we were trying to do …however, some people totally missed the point.

The point was

• We don’t know everything
• We don’t present ourselves as self-styled gurus
• Here’s a V1.0 we are throwing open for debate before trying to lock this down into something even MORE useful & workable.

It’s OK to miss the point, that’s fine, but to then come after us aggressively, whine, or even take the p*ss out of our presentation style (yeah, you did) is disappointing.

Did anyone notice that we got straight to the point and then handed over the control to the audience in about 20 minutes? People sit there b*tching & complaining at conferences – we know we do – but why is the default to criticise or sulk silently when the floor is opened?

That’s right. We ASKED for feedback. Why can’t you give feedback? Why do some people fall in to petty griping with no solution offered.

I went and saw a production of Educating Rita last night. In the play the tutor explains to Rita that “to critique” something is different than “to critcise“. To critique is objective, references other valued opinions, and weighs up the relative values of the peice. That’s what I signed up for.

Why bother?

I work freelance, meaning that when I’m not working on a paid project, I’m not earning anything. Most of this past week and a good chunk of the last couple of months has been dedicated into trying to create something useful for the industry, instead of looking out for Numero Uno and making a pretty [so-called] racket helping clients get to grips with Social Media/Social Technologies [or selling snake oil as we're so frequently accused of].

I value this industry (social/media that is) and my peers. Well, I thought I did. But as of today I’m not sure I want to be a part of something which trashes new ideas, open conversation, and each other so readily. This isn’t just SoTech, this KEEPS ON HAPPENING.

The feeling

You know, there’s a possibility we were just rubbish, our presentation sucked, our infographic was pathetic, we don’t understand what we’re talking about.

Hmm, maybe, but I don’t think so.

Maybe, just maybe, some of you need to take a good hard look  in the mirror and ask yourselves:

• When was the last time you invited your peers to contribute/give feedback instead of hogging the mic?
• When was the last time you put hours of time into something people could pro-actively use in their business to problem solve Social Media. For free
• Why are you making comments behind your hands instead of the platform offered to collate feedback

I may also be guilty of doing exactly that which I’m frustrated about – focusing on the negative and not the positive. But in my defence, I’m tired. I’m very tired.

we can haz comms profeshionils? kthx

Since I started #fixPR back in January I’ve had a lot of feedback on some of the tips I provided but I’ve also been hearing a similar theme in response

“We know we should but…”

I hate to get all Tony Robbins but… knowing and doing are completely different things. How do you help your agency get to grips with social media? Make it compulsory.

I used to be all soft & fluffy on this issue (honest) but it’s 2010 and I’m still seeing PRs uncomfortable with the word RSS. The only thing for it is a shift in agency culture.

Switch the daily ritual of reading the papers to reading online feeds and social bookmarking, create a simple social media policy and insist people use services like Twitter. Make it happen.

You might run into some resistance so I’ve scripted some handy responses:

Excuse 1:  “We don’t have time on top of everything else”

Internal Response: FFS. You’ll have all the time in the world in 2 years time when we’ve lost all our clients and are sat round here twiddling our thumbs. Would that be a more convenient time for you?

Actual Response: “Sure, but there’s actually some real time-saving benefits to getting social. For instance pulling in all our mainstream media into RSS readers cuts down on reading time, the team can collaborate more effectively on finding & sharing stories, we can even reduce our heaving Inboxes by using social bookmarking instead of sending links round the company on email.”

Excuse 2: “My client doesn’t want social media.”

Internal Response: Are you freakin’ kidding me? Aren’t you a media consultant? You should be helping them understand where it’s relevant to them and what’s worth doing and why.

Actual Response: “Maybe not today but we need to be educating them and moving them towards it in the future before some groovy digital agency swoops in and pitches them leaving them thinking ‘Why didn’t my PR agency tell me this?’”

Excuse 3: “I’ve read Twitter, I get it, I just don’t want to be using it personally.”

Internal Response: Yeah, that’s what my gran said, unfortunately I wouldn’t trust my gran to consult with clients after having ‘read a few of the twitters’ and I don’t trust you either.

Actual: “Hmm, yeah, I’d argue that as media professionals unfortunately we have to go above and beyond consumer understanding of media and really get to grips with features, etiquette, community etc. You don’t have to share your personal life, you could develop your professional profile online, our social media policy has some guidelines.”

Excuse 4: “We have a specialist digital team working on social media briefs.”

Internal response: Yeah, I saw that digital account exec sizing up your corner office the other day. Good luck with that.

External response: “Sure, and your skills and knowledge are still relevant but with online channels playing a bigger and bigger role in media consumption it would be good if we all had a decent base level of knowledge.”

Excuse 5: “I’m just not techie.”

Internal response: No sh*t. I saw you getting flustered with your Nokia 3310 but I’m sure even you use Google on a daily basis right?

External Response: “That’s OK, you don’t have to understand the techie bit behind how everything works, you just have to know how the average person uses it.”

Ok, so what I’ve written is a bit harsh and bit scary. Don’t get me wrong, no one knows how hard PRs work than me. I think what most PRs do is great and I’m not saying throw the baby out with the bathwater and everything you know is useless. What I am saying is that I want to see you getting to grips with new media, socia media, digital, interactive marketing, whatever it is this thing is called.  No ifs no buts, you’re better than that.

[Image credit: captainsubtle]

Where did it go wrong and how can we fix it….?

Measurement

PR agrees to be measured by some really dumb things sometimes

Before I even continue I have to reference Measurement Camp as probably the best group looking at this issue and pro actively solving it with industry-wide collaboration. They have an excellent wiki and hold regular meetups. This will probably be more useful to you than anything you’ll read here.

So listen, PR is not a Google Adwords campaign. Yet time and again PRs agree to, and dare I say even suggest, that a campaign’s success hangs on whether it drove traffic to a website or microsite. While I’m not saying that social media measurement shouldn’t look to drive traffic, it doesn’t have to be the be all and end all for a few reasons:

• PR activity will never drive comparable volume traffic like Search and Advertising campaigns
• A link resulting from PR activity is online ‘forever’ so, unlike a Search campaign you shouldn’t be evaluated within a set time
• PR links don’t have conversion rates like online advertising does, that’s because they’re supposed to do very different things, so why apply the same measurement?
• Sometimes a website or microsite isn’t the core offering, so consumers ultimately aren’t very interested to go there

You'll never win comparing apples and oranges

I know it’s not uncommon for a Marketing Director to say “Well I’ll get more bang for my buck by putting money I would’ve given towards PR into online advertising and SEO.”

Come on PR! You don’t need to compete in that way. You are well versed in how to debate the old PR vs Advertising issue. You just need to update the script to a social media version. [In fact, one advantage to online PR activity is for the first time the traditional PR metric of  word-of-mouth can actually be measured by a host of “buzz monitoring” tools.]

Ok, so what *should* you measure? Well you *should* set some objectives first. We know it’s bad practice but it’s amazing how many social media drives are initiated and then everyone gets to the end and isn’t sure (or even worse, disagrees) whether it was successful.

In addition setting an objective means that you may not know exactly what to measure but you’ll know what you want to achieve and can check a range of data to see if you’re doing that.

Let’s use an analogy that three different businesses wanting to start something in social media are like three people who decide to take up running.
Person 1 – wants to run a marathon
Person 2 – wants to be fitter for their 5-a-side team
Person 3 – has just moved to the city and wants to join a club to meet people

All three will approach learning to run in different ways because they have very different objectives (i.e. you wouldn’t all jump on Twitter and try and grow to as many followers as possible)

Imagine if we said at the end of a couple of months “Ok, who can run the longest and furthest. That person’s the winner”. Obviously  Person 1 would’ve been trained for endurance and perhaps completed a marathon by now, it wouldn’t be fair to hold the other runners to the same measurement when they wanted to achieve different things.

Let’s say Person 2’s five-a-side team had won every game and they’d managed to play each game the whole way through without alternating with other players. W00T, they’re a winner!

Person 3 may not be a great runner at all, but have made lots of friends in the process, which was their key aim in running in the first place. Yay, they’re a winner too!

What about if Person 2 also found that they’d lost a stone and reduced their cholesterol? That would be a happy side benefit, no? You’d be mad to say “sorry, that’s not of interest”.

My point is…are you still with me… you have to measure what’s important to the business and you also have to include positive and unexpected benefits as part of learning what works in social media for a particular brand.

If you’re realistic about what’s possible from the outset (remember you wouldn’t measure offline PR directly by sales, don’t make the same mistake online) then you can define your own benchmarks and success metrics from a range of options.

Being facetious I propose the following social media measurement scale. I call it the “Ahrens Scale”a.k.a “The Good Thing, Bad Thing scale”

Here’s how you would apply it.
Drove traffic = Good Thing
Resulted a in a lot of negative commentary and formation of a hate group on Facebook = Bad Thing
Got a link from a blog or website = Good Thing
No increase in online conversation in any way = Bad Thing
Your online content re-purposed and re-used by online fans = Good Thing
Data capture = Good Thing
Rich media content like images or video was submitted by users = Good Thing
You created a Microsite = Bad Thing (Just kidding, I have a love/hate relationship with microsites)

Who could fix this?

1. Monitoring providers: Need to sell their products based on measurement benefits “you can track and measure X, Y, Z”
2. Agencies: Update your social media knowledge, study good practice, so you can lead on metrics

Solution? Become expert in what can be measured, then apply relevant metrics to pre-defined objectives. Shout about unexpected side benefits which result from activity.
Crib notes:

• It’s a no brainer: Set objectives before activity starts
• Don’t measure by non-PR measurables
• Look for side benefits and then perhaps use as benchmark or KPI for next time
• Don’t build microsites (Kidding again!)

Image: Dano

PR doesn’t understand the internet

PRs, I love you, but you still don’t understand the internet. I don’t mean in the way that my mum doesn’t understand the internet, but basic stuff like Google.

A few years ago we worked with a national newspaper to get a write up on a client, this included that all important link from the publication’s website to the client’s website. Links are good right? Between patting ourselves on the back I called the client

Me: “We got [national newspaper] to write about you and they linked to your site!”

Client: “Meh. Yeah we only got about two traffic referrals from the article so big whoop. BTW I just spoke to our SEO agency, could you instead get us coverage from [other major news site] and [another niche site]?”

After smashing the phone in frustration while dying a little inside hanging up I decided to call my client’s Search agency. SEO is considered as evil, if not more so, than PR. I didn’t know what to expect but here’s how it went…

Me: “We do PR for CLIENT and I need to know what you need us to know”

SEO: “Wow! Thanks for calling! It’s so great to hear from a client’s PR agency. You guys do great work which is very valuable to us.”

The internet: Revolutionary but not evolutionary

I’m sorry -  Great work? Valuable? The SEO agency went further than stroking our egos. They sent over a list of the top sites, ranked in order of importance, where it was important for our client to be mentioned or linked from. They also sent us a list of keywords we should be including in all campaign activity and offered to check over press releases and make sure they were optimised.

Basically they’d handed me an online media target list, tweaked our messaging, and profiled our target audience in some detail. And they weren’t just being nice [Incidentally they were nice but were mainly giving me the info to support their work].

That’s when I realised that for all my lofty ideals about social media and communities, influencers and engagement; I didn’t really know how the internet really worked, yet I was trying to harness it for clients.

At the heart of this point is Search, but also the ways people use the web to collate and share information once they’ve found it, and online purchasing processes where E-Commerce is in place.

Nothing illustrated more to me recently that PRs still don’t get important concepts like Search more than a recent PR week debate around SMNRs [SMRs. Worth they paper they're printed on?]

Some PRs were talking about SMNRs as if they were just a paper press release on the internet. Many looked at it with an old PR mentality without considering how they might be part of a wider online marketing mix. Of the six opinions captured, and a host of comments, only a few showed an understanding of how an optimized and online release might fit with new PR methodology (Adam Zand, Ian McKee, Mark O’Toole, Ann Krauss – you stood out to me).

Yeah, yeah, I’m no expert but I have tried to broaden my knowledge of the web and internet marketing over the years.

What I know now can still only fill the back of  a napkin but here it is:

1. When PR and SEO aligns they maximise each other’s value
2. PR actually creates content (great for Organic vs. Paid Search) which is beneficial online over time -  not just the duration of an Adwords campaign
3. The internet is tracking lots of useful stuff, go find and use that data
4. Social media activity can work with online sales [Just don't use it as the only yard-stick. More to come on measurement]
5. Most social features aren’t just ‘nice to have’ web add-ons but powerful tools which serve important functions
6. Knowing how to do even a basic Boolean Search has to be learnt I’m afraid
7. There’s usually a tool, service, or application that can make your job easier. Example: Nobody has to read 50 blog posts a day, use an RSS reader people! (I’m not joking it still kills me how many PRs don’t know about this) Paid or free,  9 times out of 10 there is a tool you could be using – and where there isn’t, well, you might have identified a potential revenue stream by creating it and reselling to others

Who could fix this?

1. Agencies: Invest in extensive internal education. Don’t stop there, create partnerships with specialist service providers who complement your expertise
2. In-house: Internally, make sure you’re working with your web team. Externally, connect relevant agencies to work together

SOLUTION? Gone are the days of keeping everyone in their boxes. If we’re going to benefit from everything the internet has to offer, we have to use everything the internet has to offer.

Crib notes:

• At a minimum PR and SEO should be working together
• The data’s out there somewhere. Find it and use it
• The web’s  a wonderful place, your PR team’s knowledge should reflect that
• You can’t do it all on your own: use good tools and work with good people

Image: ChrisL_AK

This frustrates me immensely as not only is it often true but I’ve always thought the PR industry has the most potential to rock social media strategy. PR is all about word-of-mouth right? [Reference great ad explaining the differences between PR, Advertising and co.]  So, why the bad rap?

I’m dedicating this week to a series of posts on where it went wrong and how to fix it. Starting with…

Campaign strategy vs. Brand strategy

Social media has tended to be funded on a campaign by campaign basis – short term activity.  Social media work by nature relies on building community and generating conversation – longer term commitment.

Traditional PRs cultivated their community, a.k.a. journalists, year round. A skilled PR could have a useful conversation any day of the week with a handful of key influencers they’d established a trusted relationship with.

Social media comes along and boom, the list of potential influencers suddenly grew by hundreds.  The tools needed to identify, sort, and categorise them are slow to appear

Slow and steady wins the race

On top of that,  categories fragmented further. Instead of being able to talk to people who broadly cover ‘Consumer Tech’, ‘B2B tech’, ‘Mobile tech’,  or ‘all of the above’, you need to be able to recall contacts with an interest in location-based service applications specifically for Symbian devices with a love of LOLCats and such like.  Sometimes there’s entire communities you’ve never heard of and it’s hard to define who, if anyone, would even be interested in a new Symbian LOLCat app.

It’s not possible to build trusted relations and have brand conversations in the short-term. Three months, the traditional quarterly budget or common campaign cycle, is not long enough.

If PR does succeed then what happens after the campaign has gone? Who looks after the abandoned profile or answers requests from a new blogger ‘friend’ who has suddenly moved down the list of importance?

The effort it takes to conceive and execute a social media campaign vs. investing in a longer-term brand strategy strikes me as a false economy.

I personally turn down a lot of short-term project work these days because I think it’s not possible to achieve much beyond securing a few blog posts. I also don’t like hearing from bloggers and community contacts that they weren’t looked after beyond the life-cycle of a specific campaign – I’m not in this industry for the short-term.

PR agencies with numerous mouths to feed don’t necessarily have that luxury but for their own sanity I hope they’re moving clients away from achieving short-term online objectives now. For in-house PR … what are you waiting for?!

Who could fix this?

1. Clients: Stop giving piecemeal social media projects to agencies
2. Agencies: Don’t let being competitive hold the industry back. Be brave and say ‘No’ sometimes

SOLUTION? Banish the term “can we get it out to some blogs?” from your vocabulary. Identify your most relevant communities [and not just blogs] from the start of your social media strategy and make that strategy brand-wide. Later you can build out to support campaign tactics.

Crib notes:

• Develop ongoing and long-term brand relationships
• Suspend traditional expectations like coverage
• Add value: Ask not what can my community do for me but what can I do for my community?

If your business needs to change direction and target varying communities manically throughout the year then your problems are probably bigger than social media.

Image: Rennett Stowe

You may have caught my previous thoughts on women being under-represented at industry events. So while it’s fantastic to see Social Glue initiate a Female Social Media Guru UK Award it caused a few rumblings and raised some questions for me…

Couldn’t we just recognise these women amongst their peers [male & female]. I think this is the heart of the problem the award is attempting to address.

Jamie has justified thus:

This is a debate we have had over the last few weeks. You are right there should be no division on gender but if you look at speaker panels there clearly is. Hopefully this combats the problem.

The “you missed off so-and-so” outcry was almost certainly due to lack of criteria [it seems to be just something to do with the internet and having a vagina being female] and probably a misconception there’s only a small number of fantastic women in Social Media.

I also found the later ranking of all nominees, with number of votes displayed, in poor taste.

I don’t want to get too down on Jamie. It was intended to address a very real issue and was well intentioned but comparing these women across their diverse areas is bit like like apples and oranges.

Here’s some of my faves and the areas where I think they are Social Media gurus. I’m pleased some of them made the list.

Contribution to the Social Media Industry: KATIE LEE

Aside from being “gadget girl” before anyone else was doing it, Katie Lee co-founded Shiny Media, the UK’s first commercial blog publisher. Over the years she’s been responsible for finding and nurturing a range of online writers and establishing credibility for bloggers in mainstream media.

http://shinykatie.blogspot.com/

Fashion & Social Media: GEMMA CARTWRIGHT

You don’t hear enough about Gemma as she’s been head down managing Shiny Media’s  fashion network for the past few years.

You never hear about her work within fashion to promote the benefits of Social Media to the industry and build relationships, particularly in PR, that just didn’t exist before. Graduate Fashion Week, touring agencies to educate, and dealing with the uncomfortable first fumblings of Fashion PRs has been Gemma’s lot. Again she’s made blogger/PR relations seem so normal these days.

http://gemmacartwright.com/

Technology & Social Media: SUSI WEASER

Picking up the mantle from Katie Lee is  this talented person who left PR to follow the Social Media dream via Shiny Shiny and become a UK trailblazer for online video.

What’s cool is that she’s just launched a business doing this type of thing.

http://susiweaser.com/

Promoting the cause of women in the industry / Mobile: HELEN KEEGAN

She’s  a mover and shaker in mobile regardless of  having a vagina being female. What I love is that she’s been so vocal about the lack of women speakers at events that’s got us all questioning this state of affairs.

http://technokitten.blogspot.com/

PR & Social Media: MICHELLE GOODALL

Michelle has been doing this long before most, irrespective of being a woman. If you’d ever read her posts & reports over on econsultancy you’d get that she knows her industry inside and out and is a bit of a hero to PRs like myself. She also just creates great campaigns.

http://econsultancy.com/blog/authors/michelle-goodall-2

Social Media Marketing: SANDRINE PLASSERAUD

If you haven’t heard about Sandrine, despite her tireless blogging (how does she find the time?), it’s because she’s always working to design & deliver awesome campaigns for her clients. She does that by being one of the most authentic users of Social Media working in an agency that I know.

http://sandrineplasseraud.typepad.com/

Social Media & Start-ups / MSM: JEMIMA KISS

Jemima landed on the scene at the Guardian’s Media section and all of sudden Social Media became mainstream. Her enthusiasm gives many new start-ups a much needed helping hand in the beginning. She’s inundated with 1000s of calls and emails daily but still manages to personally respond to tenfold more than she should have to as part of her job.

She constantly gets overlooked, most annoyingly in last year’s Evening Standard 1000 most influential Londoners. (No doubt because of who she writes for).

http://jemimakiss.com/

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Of course I know many other wonderful people, both male and female, working in this industry. But with this “girls of social media” theme currently percolating I wanted to take time to give them special mention.