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Greetings!
Greetings!  The early summer flowers are in full bloom, particularly the
beautiful lupines. I visited a friend yesterday whose perennial garden is
in full bloom. It made me appreciate the beauty of a June day in Maine. In the last edition of The NMC Report, we talked about the
presentation that Ross Lasley and I gave to the Maine Public Relations Council. This edition includes the second half of the review of that presentation. As always, I welcome your feedback, thoughts, comments, and
brainstorms!  Until
the next time, take a moment to enjoy the June flowers. Best,  www.marshallpr.com |
 Social
Media: How to apply the latest and greatest social networks
to your PR program
and how to measure the impact! (Part 2)
How to go social?
Ross talked in our session about the style of a person who is interacting in an
online community. You need to give and take, not just talk about yourself all
the time. He talked about the "obnoxious insurance salesman" (excuse
us if you are engaged in selling insurance, but if you are reading this
article, we are sure you are not obnoxious!) who monopolizes the conversation
at a cocktail party by talking only about him or herself and his or her
insurance products. In online communities people want you to comment on what
they're doing, on the photos and videos they're sharing, and on what they are
thinking about various topics and events.
There is also the issue of how much time you spend on social media. You could
conceivably spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we are assuming you
have other responsibilities on the job and in your life so you need to set
aside a reasonable amount of time each day or week. This is going to vary from
person to person. If you have the luxury of having social media as your sole
responsibility then time isn't much of an issue but many of the PR people in
our group last week also have to organize events, distribute press releases,
attend meetings and perform many other marketing functions.
Another important function of "how" to go social is to measure your
effectiveness.
There are many ways to measure. You need to measure the things that are
important to your overall program. If driving traffic to your website is really
important, then you need to measure how many visits are being driven by your
social media. Other metrics include the number of followers or friends in
various networks, the number of posts, the number of comments, and any other
number you can derive from online activities...but all the measures should
originate from your overall strategic goals and objectives. Google Analytics is
a free program that helps you measure and analyze but sometimes the sheer
amount of data that it provides is overwhelming. Sometimes it is best to pick a
few simple metrics so that you can consistently measure and analyze the
effectiveness of your efforts over time.
Finally, you need to determine which networks you will participate in. My
advice is to figure out where your audience is. Are your targets or
stakeholders on Twitter? Are they on MySpace or Facebook? Or are they
professionals who participate mostly in LinkedIn? I always like to think of
"fishing where the fish are," meaning you figure out where your targets
are spending their time and engage with them there. Another approach is to
create your own branded online community with a program called "Ning"
and start from scratch, but for this approach to be effective you will have to
make sure you gather all your contacts in that community to get a significant
concentration of your people.
Damage Control
With the pervasiveness of mobile devices that have cameras and recorders,
damage control has changed dramatically. In the early days of my career, when
there was a crisis of some kind, we had the luxury of creating a 'war room,'
gathering all the key players around the table and thinking through exactly how
we were going to tell the world about what had happened. Today, people are
recording and broadcasting events, sometimes even before the PR people know
things have happened. Oftentimes people in your online communities will be the
ones to alert you to a crisis situation that is brewing in your company or
organization.
Obviously you can communicate much better with the public if you already have
online communities of people who already trust and believe you. In this case,
if something bad happens, you already have a positive balance in your bank
account of 'goodwill.' If something bad happens and you have to then create an
online community from scratch, you are starting from a position of significant
weakness.
We talked about what happened with Domino's Pizza and how a couple of employees
posted some very disgusting video on YouTube of them tampering with the food
products in one of the Domino's stores. Domino's President, Patrick Doyle,
created a response and posted it on YouTube where the original video had been
posted. This was smart. He created a thoughtful and heartfelt response and
posted it where the original offensive video had been distributed. As a result,
the Domino's official corporate Twitter page was flooded with well wishes and
goodwill. This bad situation ended up generating a deposit in the Domino's bank
account of goodwill.
Go to YouTube for the CEO's reaction if you'd
like to learn more about Domino's handled this unfortunate situation.
Final Thoughts
Stay focused on your goals, measure what's important and report to those who
should know...these are the most important activities involved with making
social media a valuable part of your overall marketing program.
Ross Lasley and I plan to present more seminars
and workshops on this subject so please watch for future issues of "The NMC Report" for more information
on dates and locations.
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