Hear those Birdies?

NO?  Then you must not be on Twitter, one of the most interesting social media sites.  Twitter can be a useful tool in the PR practitioners kit bag, but it's also good to get an overview on what it can do for you first.  Here at Running with Scissors, where I have my art studio, they recently had someone come in to give a low-cost class in it. Unfortunately it didn't work out with my schedule so I wasn't able to attend.  I'm always interested in seeing what other folks have to say about the intersection of Twitter and PR. 

But the big issues with any kind of marketing (more than PR) is how to measure results.  In PR, it's rather loosey-goosey as it can take years of solid work to create an image in the public's eye, especially when you're just using that and not spending money on advertising.  So I thought it was interesting when this arrived in my email.  I'll save you the spam that you'll get if you sign up for it with your own email address.

Then I stumbled across this article on Forbes.  Best takeaways for me were:

• Join a Directory: There are dozens of directories of Twitter users online, including Twiends, WeFollow, and Twellow. Add yourself to as many directories as you can find under the proper categories, and you will begin to see some users following you from these sites.
• Guest blogging or blogging about your twitter account.  “This strategy works very well if you can give readers an incentive to follow you.”

Follow me @anntracy..... and now for the unrelated photo of the day

 Shot during a performance by Collective Motion, a new modern dance company here in Southern Maine.  Shooting by the seat of one's pants is always exciting and even more so when the photos turn out!  If you'd like to follow my photography blog, here it is.

What's New is Old Again

Back in the days before social media, most PR types tried to coordinate their efforts with the marketing folks because PR campaigns will have better traction if they are tied to when ads in a variety of media are airing.  It's the bombardment theory: direct mail advertising, ads in print and radio and TV happening all at the same time will have a greater impact.  Makes sense doesn't it?  Especially when you know that it takes at least seven ads before people actually "see" the ad.  To me this is an indicator that if you can't spend a wad of money on ads, you can at least try to hit as many PR places as possible. 

In this age of social media, the folks over at PR Newswire have come out with a "White Paper" which shows what is old is new again.  I guess one can say that certain human behaviors haven't changed - even when it comes to social media.  I'll bet that other keen observer of human behavior - Shakespeare - would agree.

Social Media - Marketing or PR?

Marketing and Public Relations seem to mingle more on social media.  Sometimes campaigns that companies devise will have elements of both in efforts to expand their customer base.  Here are five
 smart ways that social media helped to boost brand awareness using social media and interactive techniques.  Perhaps they will give you some ideas to more actively use social media in your PR planing.

I'm off on hiatus for the next week and a half.  When I get back, I'm going to be doing some consulting work for the brand new Portland Performing Arts Festival!

Google Plus ?

Do you get it?  I'm not sure I do.  But I'm there, having been thrown in certain circles by my good meaning gmail friends.  Guess I'm what you could call an early adopter.  I even got a new Android phone last week that I'm still trying to figure out.  But I will persevere and conquer it as I did the Blackberry before it.

But back to Google+, right now I only have 6 people in circles, but 14 have me in their circles.  The one thing was bothers me a bit about it is that I have my "real" email address attached to it.  On the FB side, I use a different email address so my inbox isn't clogged with stuff and to to that FB email every few days to clear things out of it.

But thanks to           I've have access to some information on Google+ that might be of use to you PR types out here.  But I couldn't have done it wthout the help of the good folks over at A Photo Editor.  Thanks for that link t his morning.  I knew that I needed to post here and was a trifle at sea about what to post.

Rewards

We all like to get rewards don't we?  Whether it's a coupon for something we buy on a regular basis or a discount or even sometimes just plain recognition as a human being!  Rewards can also be a big part of a PR campaign, especially to build awareness for new products and services.
I think this is especailly true on social media platforms like Facebook, and so do the folks over at American Express, as you can tell by reading this LINK.

While the first two tips are probably more appropriate for larger businesses, the other two seem like they would work for smaller organizations.  As a matter of fact, I'm going to test this out on the Ann Tracy Fine Art & Photography page on Facebook.  I'll report back in a few weeks.

Using Social Media for PR

 There are probably many different ways to use social media for public relations depending upon the type of business you are promoting.  Mashable.com recently ran an article showing what they considered some smart ways that different companies are doing this.  Since it's always instructive to see how others are doing it, let's take a closer look at these examples.

For the Rayovac snowball fight, yes it's a cute idea but perhaps too cute?  Would you have participated?  I know I wouldn't  have.  But it was effective!

In these days of tight budgets and rising food costs, the Healthy Choice campaign seems like a good one, but only if you are a coupon person.  I have tried to be in the past but the coupons never made it to the store until they were expired.  But this effort did have a demonstrable effect in gaining new fans for the FB page.


 The Breeders Cup campaign also successful but it looks as if they needed a whole army of people to pull it off.  The Balsams Resort campaign takes a page from my buddy Chad Sorg and his Artist Fishbowl project where he would live a week at a time in different storefront windows in Reno and LA.  You were ahead of your time Sorg!  The KFC scholarship campaign got turned on it's head with substituting a single tweet for a long essay.

In looking at these, you'll notice that they are all corporations using agencies.  How can the smaller business or nonprofit benefit from these examples?  I think the answer is by thinking out of the box.   If your nonprofit is planning a benefit, maybe taking a cue from some of these examples to use either FB or Twitter to not only publicize the event, but perhaps give away free tickets to the event.

Media vs. Bloggers

A big shout out to my friend Chad Sorg of Artist Fishbowl fame who inspired this week's post on PR Insights.  In my other life as a visual artist, we both belong to an artist's group in Reno that holds an annual art festival - Nada Dada Motel - where artist rent rooms in low end motels to show their work.  I became involved with the group about three years ago and helped with the PR which ended up with the NY Times covering the event two years ago.

OK, enough back story, here's the meat of the message - that approaching bloggers is very different than sending out news releases to media.  Since much of PR is luck and timing, I'd have to say that I agree with PressKing.com with most of its advice. 

But from personal experience working with a client who had developed a new toy for toddlers and was taking it to a showcase, I'd have to say that I did the regular "hack" job for her - that is sending out a regular release to bloggers and did get plenty of response and offers to do stories on her and her product. 

However this is just one incidence.  Actually the hardest part of the aforementioned project was to research and develop a list of bloggers who would have an interest in the story.  Although I do agree totally about not being a nag when following up after sending out a pitch!

Social Media and Communications

Thanks to the folks over at Mashable, we have our new post here!  Although the article is geared towards people managing their social lives, it does have resonance for folks doing PR.  I must admit that I've not yet tried one of Facebook's newest additions - Groups.

But I am going to try it today to see if I get any more traffic for my December 5th Holiday Open House at my studio.  My plan is to NOT set up an event page on FB, but instead set up a group for all my local contacts here in Sacramento.    I set up an event page on FB for the Capitol Artists Studio Tour this past Sept and I didn't get much action from it.  I'll also set up an Evite list and see if that helps build the crowds for me.

The reason some of this works is that the biggest part of PR is merely communication.  Although PR can also take in marketing for some folks, it's really trying to find a way to get information to the individual.  We used to do it with newspapers but due to their dwindling editorial space and the fact that most folks under the age of 30 don't even subscribe anymore, social media is the other place we can post information, without even having to sell a reporter on a story idea!

Is it more effective?  Only time will tell or have you had great success in using social media to promote your clients and causes?

Guest Post

Welcome to the Social Media pool 

where the water is quite warm

By Jane Gassner of MidLifeBloggers

Here are my social media bonafides:  first used the Internet in 1994; started blogging in 2004; signed up with Twitter in 2006; went on Facebook in 2007.  Those dates tell you one thing, that I’m an Early Adopter.  And that I’ve had to listen to a lot of people--friends and relatives--question, nay sneer, at my use of social media.  She who laughs last, etc etc and many of the sneerers are now friending me on Facebook or following me on Twitter.  They’ve gotten the word from the 21^st century that the ways we communicate on both a personal and a professional level has changed.  

Still, I must admit I went through a period of disenchantment with both Twitter and Facebook.  For the latter, it was an overwhelming and seemingly endless stream of messages from people I had once considered quite bright--educated, serious, smart--calling out their need for a pig or a cattle trough or some such thing on a Facebook app called Farmville.  With Twitter, it was the onslaught of Tweets selling something, someone, somewhere crowding out the Twitter conversations I was used to having with people I knew. I was mad at both sites for a while, sulked some, but then I pulled up my Big Girl Panties and figured out a way to wrangle social media to serve my ends, rather than those of the nameless hordes.

One of those ends is marketing.  Social media has become the go-to place when you want to hit as wide an audience as possible.  Yes, hard-core marketers have already figured this out, but they’re not the only ones. Writers, artists, actors, filmmakers--those of us formerly confined to our garretts--are tapping in the spotlight of social media.

Several weeks ago, the Sacramento Social Media Club held a panel discussion featuring the ways in which artists of different genres are using social media to communicate with the public and enhance their sales. You can read the article I wrote about it on Sacramento Press here.  Suffice to say, the general message from all the artists was that social media is the way they connect with and broaden their audience

Last week, I was at a SITS blogging conference at which actress Jessica Bern talked about how she uses video blogging (vlogging) to enhance her career.   Voted one of the top ten humor bloggers of 2009, her series bernthis is a popular feature on Youtube.  Here’s some of what Jessica suggests when you’re planning a video of your work to post on Youtube:

• Pick a detail of your work and build a story around it
• Three minutes max is ideal--figure out a way to go as short as you can and still get your message across
• You need movement, so find a prop that is appropriate
• You can do multiple takes and then edit them together in one of the video-editing programs
• Create your own Youtube channel that is set it so only your friends can see your videos and ask them to critique.
• Last but not least:  Set a goal for your vlog and work toward it

Bottom line:  don’t be afraid of social media.  It really is your friend.  In fact some of the research being done now shows that contrary to the idea  that the web kills human interaction, using social media can create positive social bonding.  Paul J. Zak, director of the Center for Neruoeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, is quoted in a recent NY Times article as saying:  “The Web is bringing businesses back down to the individual as the average company becomes smaller, more niche and specialized.  Paradoxically, the Web is moving us back to a human-centric business model.”

For those of us selling the fruits of our imaginations, that can only be a good thing.

New PR Tools?

I just found out about a new resource for PR folks and for reporters - HARO, which stands for Help A Reporter Out.  It was created by Peter Shankman, who is not only a PR guy, but also a social media expert and a very respected dude who isn't bothered by having a photo taken of him with an elephant's trunk around his neck!  Looks like he could be fun to sit down and chat with over cocktails.  This free PR site originated as a FaceBook group.  It's devilishly simple:  reporters log on with queries on subjects they write about, then that info is put into an email which the folks that are members of HARO receive.  If anyone can offer information, they go to the HARO site and make their pitch to the reporters. 

Shankman will be the featured speaker for the Sacramento Public Relations Association or SPRA on February 25th at Sofia restaurant downtown.  I just hope the quality of the food has improved there.  Last time we went there a few years ago, it was dreadful.  But can anyone screw up Chicken Parmesean?  Details after the lunch, on both Shankman and the food quality.

The other breaking news is that Google is entering the social media field.  Now I could re-write the report from Mashable.com, just like the old days of re-writing AP wire copy, but have too much on my plate presently, so read all about it HERE.

Now time for you to chime in my friends.  Do you think that Google will surpass Facebook with this new Buzz?

More on Social Media

I have a friend who is becoming a social media maven.  He sees it as a way to promote his own work as an artist as well as helping other folks promote their products and services via social media.  His name is Chad Sorg, if you google him, you will find that he's on Facebook, Twitter, you name it.

Meanwhile in the corporate world, news of social media could be the engine for job creation!  One of my Linked In groups posted a link to a very interesting (and charmingly named) blog.