Valley PR Blog

PRSA Phoenix presentation highlights

By Dan Wool on February 27th, 2008 In Professional Development

Thanks again to PRSA Phoenix for inviting me speak at their monthly luncheon.

As those of you who attended saw, I don’t speak to PowerPoint bullets so to post the presentation would be very confusing. However, below are some highlights I covered and links to sites I mentioned as I spoke:

Social media definition

The Social Media Myth - The biggest myth in social media is that everyone knows social media.

Why Web 2.0 is for real - Generation Y description and statistics

Why Social Media — We’re now learning things these days less from the news media and more through two other sources - (1) via online search (Google) and (2) through “friends of friends”

News and brand recommendations should come from trusted sources - this is why PR people need to be in the mix - to continue to establish that trust (a/k/a the Elvis Costello slide)

The filter is changing - Used to be limited outlets - just PR person to journalist (PR2J), now add PR person to Consumer (PR2C) via Internet and social media. How do we tackle it?

Strategies are the same, number and methods of tactics are expanding (a/k/a the “arrows in quiver” slide); example of our pals at Forty Media who provide outstanding web and social media advice couched in part — and not inaccurately these days — as puiblic relations.

For PR pros, social media is about creating and/or leveraging “AGGREGATED PASSION”

None of this is new - The Bible is the original blog. Matthew, Mark, Luke & John are the original bloggers. Jesus is the O.G. social media advocate - “where one or two are gathered in my name…”

Credible Blog = (passion + focus) X (experience + longevity)

Sample blogs with passion, focus, experience, longevity - The Daily Fungo, Kristen’s Raw, Arizona Coffee; Mike McClary’s “Fungo” podcast is The Detroit Tigers Podcast.

Blog search - Technorati, Google Blog Search - you can use these to monitor and learn how to create and where to participate in conversations about your clients.

RSS (really simple syndication) - think “internet magazine subscription” - you can subscribe to just about anything if it has an RSS feed. Great PR/IR example: Sun Microsystems (via Web Ink Now/David Meerman Scott)

Blog readers - Bloglines, Google Reader help you easily stay on top of multiple RSS feeds.

Twitter - danwool, latimesfires, scobleizer, ijustine; here’s a recent Valley PR Blog article on Twitter best practices.

MySpace/Facebook - Dan’s Facebook page, Room-a-Day-Giveaway dancing packages widget, Dunkin Donuts group, Starbucks groups

You Tube / Viral Video - Will it Blend (Blendtec); Off Madison Ave recruitment video news release/links.

Social bookmarking - Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon - monitor what’s being said about clients and competitors. Research to see what and why things get popular and navigate accordingly for your article. You can probably top a weaker though client-relevant category if you do your homework. Invite your ”aggregated passion group” (via blog post, Facebook group, etc.) to Digg/bookmark a story. Create an account to create a list of third party articles that support your client’s points.

Social media press release - I referenced CNN and the way they display their online news stories. Social media press releases fit this new mode. You can seek out/search on Brian Solis’ PR 2.0 blog and Todd Defren’s PR Squared blog for details. While not social media press releases, I noted that Business Wire and PR Newswire offer “smart releases” with useful ways to bring together content in digestible form for online newsrooms, blogs, etc.

I also mentioned the Off Madison Ave blog and HMA Time from HMA Public Relations as examples from local firms.

Hopefully the presentation was interesting and helpful. Just to prove my own myth, I’ll be attending PRSA/Ragan’s Social Media for Communicators conference next week to learn more. Tweet me or drop me an email if you’ll be attending as well.

Comments

Lots of great info was shared! Your “dry” humor was a kick too. I didn’t realize what Bloglines was…now I can check out all the blogs I want to read on one page. Looking forward to seeing any other comments here on the audience member’s thoughts about the luncheon.

Looks like you nailed it Dan. Wish I could have been there. Thanks for mentioning my stuff.

Take care, David

Dan — your presentation was great. The right mix of good information, helpful hints and humor. Thanks for taking the time to share your insights with PRSA and for the plug for http://www.hmatime.com.

First off… You are hilarious!

Now that that’s out of the way, the presentation was so informative and I appreciated your examples of all the cool websites I never knew about. Great job.

Killer recap, Dan! I’d like to chime in one part:
“While not social media press releases, I noted that Business Wire and PR Newswire offer “smart releases” with useful ways to bring together content in digestible form for online newsrooms, blogs, etc.”
While there are several Social Media press release templates floating around out there I would argue that any ol’ press release can incorporate social media elements.
Business Wire allows you to embed hyperlinks in your text, use bold, bullet points, italics, etc. along with adding multimedia. You can use this text formatting to highlight key thoughts and ideas while using the hyperlinks to spoon feed your RSS feed, blog, relevant social bookmarking site links, multimedia on Flickr, YouTube, etc., podcasts, and more to the reader.
Every release can become a resource page and every release can be laid out differently to serve the needs of the target audience.
Thank you!

[...] if you are interested, check out my colleague Dan Wool’s spoke about the same topic on Wednesday at the PRSA luncheon. He upstaged me! Dan has a wonderful perspective of social media. [...]

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