I felt my head nodding a lot as I read David Meerman Scott’s updated ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR” which has been on my reading list for a long time.

Updating a book of this nature can be tricky, especially in world of shifting sands and on occasion the updating feels like new case studies rather than a fundamental rethink.  In 2007 I can imagine it would have had a much bigger impact on my thinking.

The book is well laid out with stand alone chapters although I went through it from front to back.  In scanning a book of this nature you can easily miss one of the main attributes, which is his first hand experience of actually doing much of what he writes about.  I did pick up some handy tips and in some cases a nice way of branding something that most PR companies have been doing for a long time without a term for it – newsjacking.  This practice of jumping on to an emerging news topic with your own value add content is not new (although twitter does add an extra element) but I can see it popping up on lots more PR plans.

For the last few PR companies who are purely focused on publicity and the traditional media this book is an absolute must.  For those who are awash in social media and the evolving trends it’s a good reminder and a handy reference tool.

I agree with the author on the demise of interruption marketing but the impact of key influentials versus smaller groups as in Paul Adams book Grouped is up for debate.

David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Although I see an almost daily demise in the newspaper industry there is still plenty of value in traditional media relations and the skill of gaining earned media.  The PR skills of negotiation, content creating, selling stories, influencing content creators are timeless and will continue to be in demand.  The key is understanding the trends and riding the wave.

The book is available on Amazon in printed form or audio.

You can also see Mr Meerman Scott in action being interviewed on YouTube.

I have been a bit neglectful of the blog in recent times but I promise I have been busy elsewhere online. At the end of last year year I had the pleasure of organising a social media ‘unconference’ called Congregation.ie. #cong13

It was a fascinating journey from the initial meetings with MKC Communications, who sponsored the event, through building the website, finding the experts and watching a really interesting content marketing approach unfold (including 57 posts by Irish experts).  I found the advance sharing, online socialising and the use of Audioboo by participants particularly fascinating.

The day itself tried out an experimental approach in networking and information sharing and I have compiled the insights from the experience and the 57 papers from the participants in a free eBook.

The eBook is available by clicking the image below or visiting this link.  You have a choice of formats:  a downloadable pdf or an ePub – the latter thanks to Bernie Goldbach (if you prefer to view on your mobile device).

Click to download the Congregation eBook

The only ask is that if you are sharing online that you use #cong13 in any tweets or posts.

If you like what you see and are interested in #cong14 drop me a line on eoin@congregation.ie.

Eoin

I had the pleasure of presenting to around 200 people at a Fingal Business Network event in the Clarion this week.  Very interesting mix of people.  The main part of the presentation was about how to use social media to generate addition PR opportunities for companies along the lines of ‘you have issued the release to the media now what can you do’.

I uploaded the presentation to slideshare so you can see the main points below

Overall it was mainly hints and tips to stimulate a conversation for people networking later on.  The slides were designed to look like tweets and thanks to Paul Murgatroyd who tweeted them as I was presenting.

The second part of the presentation was around using social media to enhance your business networking at events.  My experience of business networking is that most people drift into old habits of finding people they know when they arrive and hope they bump into people who will matter from a business perspective.  Social media allows you to get great insight into people, start a conversation with them and make arrangements to meet.  This makes a big difference in that the meeting at the event can be much more focused on deal making or other rapport where face to face is important.

I found it hard enough to find anything online about this so here are the few bits that came out of the session.

Before the Session

• Get hold of the attendee list and find people you wish to connect to.
• Search Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and if they have a blog.
• The website will probably short circuit this for you.
• Follow the person if on twitter
• If appropriate retweet, favorite posts they have put up – they will see this.
• Respond to their posts and start a conversation.
• If they have followed you back and you have established a relationship then direct message them to meet up on the night.
• LinkedIn will give you even more in-depth information on them which you can check for common areas and possible conversation points.
• You can also utilise LinkedIn to get an introduction from a trusted source.
• If they have a blog be up to speed on the topic areas and share your insight with a post or perhaps a link from an article on your own blog or blogroll.
• Similarly with Facebook

Paul Murgatroyd, Oisin Geoghegan (CEO), Fingal CEB and Eoin Kennedy, Knudger.com

The IIA Social Media Working Group (disclosure – I am a member of this group) produced a white paper on blogging and launched it at a well attended breakfast last week.   Brendan Hughes, eCommerce manager with FBD, Michelle Daly, Paddy Power Trader and Aedan Ryan, Director of Puddleducks.ie all gave some practical insights into running a blog, what they experienced in terms of feedback/community and increased findability.  Aedans personal findings reflected the findings of the white paper from why blog, to the benefits of it while Michelle presented a more complex arrangement of running multiple blogs.  Both integrated their blogs with other online properties from Twitter to Facebook.  All three companies have well presented blogs and take it seriously.

Emmet Ryan of Villa81 gives a snap short of the launch in a short video of the launch.

So the big question – how much time and resource does it take.  Aedan, who would be reflective of many Irish SMEs, spends 4-6 hours a week on his blog.  Michelle was a bit more coy in terms of actual resources invested but did discuss the outsource model that they utilise.  At the Blogger Collision course many people reported spending up to 3-4 hours per post, with some posting every day.  Assuming that the blog is unlikely to stand by itelf then you also needs to factor the other social media into the mix:

• Twitter (30 min to 1 hr a day if not posting regularly and mainly monitoring),
• Facebook (10-30 mins a day checking, 1-2 hr for multiple updates),
• Bebo (similar to Facebook),
• Flickr 30 mins per photo upload session (captioning etc),
• Pix.ie 30 mins per photo upload,
• YouTube (30 mins upload but 4 hr editing, 1-2 hrs of production is simple),
• Podcasting (20 min upload, 1-2 hr of editing if short, 1-2 hr of production and planning)
• Monitoring (30 mins per day).

This is all very much on the back of an envelope (and does not take account of the creation time) but it can grow into double digits per week very fast and I would imagine that digital is taking a disproportionate amount of the percentage time that people have to spend on marketing – especially at this early stage.  There is no doubt that Social Media engagement does deliver but has great capacity to soak up every hour in the day.  My experience has been that without some structures you can get extremely distracted and follow ‘interesting’ trails that lead to other ‘interesting trails’.  As new tools, blogs and interesting pointers from twitter emerge being disciplined is now even more important.

So if you are looking to invest in social media here are some pointer on managing the time element a bit better.

• Use outlook or some online calendar to dedicate time in the day when you catch upon socia media rather than when you feel lilke it.
• Decide in advance how much time you are going to dedicate to it.
• Be methodical in the list of social media you run through to ensure you dont forget some.
• Allocate time to research and monitoring.
• Use RSS feed to keep up to date on blogs you follow rather than random surfing.
• Use tools such as Tweetdeck to Monitter to help give a snap shot of activity.
• Build an editorial calendar and stick to the frequency that suits your business.

All this before you even start to think about what you want to say.  The good news is that once you get into a rhythm you get much faster and efficient

Net Imperative ran an interesting story about the blocks to and attitudes towards social media.  The basis of the story was research was called out by Sapient Interactive.  Lack of understanding was predictably one of the main blockers to implementing campaigns but the good news is

“50% of the respondents feel that 2009 will be the year of social networking for marketers.” 

Only a small number (9%) felt that social networking is over rated.  Interestingly Twitter ranks equal with blogs on areas the marketers reported as areas they are looking at.  I imagine Twitter would not have ranked so highly last year.

“Outside of social networking campaigns, the most leveraged social media by marketers is media sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr (62%), followed closely by micro-blogs such as Twitter (59.8%) and corporate/campaign blogs (59%).” 

The Marketing Institute of Ireland was similar in terms of more budget going online in a survey done with AMAS.  Not surprisingly 64% reported using email campaigns with social media coming in fairly low at 20%.  Of most interest is the 28% who reported using Online PR but that could be due to the definition. 

I am certainly seeing more interest on the ground in terms of marketing departments becoming more interested in social media and online campaigns.  There appears to be a greater acceptance of testing these platforms and integrating them with other campaigns.

Its clear there is still a distance to go in terms of greater appreciation but hopefully the good case studies coming from Facebook and Twitter will encourage more to embrace and integrate social media. 

 Whether 2009 is the year for social media or not….we will just have to wait and see.

Joe Rospars from Blue State Digital presented a quick overview in the Camden Court Hotel on Wednesday 25th on how online media helped win the US presidential election.  The alert for the bloggers orientated session was hastily sent out and got good traction on Twitter and the blogosphere which meant approximately 200 people attended, something that would have been difficult to do in the past with such short notice.  It was clear from the Drivetime interview before the session, that he was in town to promote his work for the revamped Fianna Fail online assualt, something that upset some bloggers (it was not clear before then).

Overall the session was a little light (it was free after all) and you left with a feeling that it could not have been that easy.  However there were some good points made.

Email

As we rush to bright shiny new onine tools we sometime forget about the power of email and capturing email address of those who would like to hear updates etc.  In the Obama campaign ‘value added content’, giving email recipients a first look and ensuring that the mails were personal, timely and worth reading was key.  Some were planned updates on the campaign and some were in response to the McCain efforts.

Video

The campaign produced in excess of 2,000 videos and they acted as the ‘glue’ to bring a lot of content together.  ‘Transparency’ was a key theme here and the video showed a lot of the behind the scenes operations and was combined with ‘Authenticity’ where many featured interviews and interactions with supporters.  These pillars meant that the videos were not all Obama speaking to the masses and generated lots of local/regional type content.  They generated a strong sense of people working together in a common cause.

Blog

Held together with the ‘Voices for change’ the blogs used a lot of volunteer effort spreading the message with multiple voices.  People in 28 different states were utilised and field organisers were training to the use the online tools.

Listserv

This enabled people to work from home and provided them with the tools to set up their own groups.  Over 1,000 list serv groups were established giving a very grass root feel.

Conversation and Engagement

The tools – email in particular – were the basis for stimulating conversation.

Interestingly Joe Rospars pointed out that the McCain camp has similar tools and the essential difference in success were attributed to:

– online not viewed as central part of the McCain campaign 

– no real value was placed on community/volunteerism and leveraging the supporter base

– conservative approach to engaging people at meaningful level

One final point that was made that poses interesting challenges for the PR community was the level of control.  Early on it was agreed that the usual approval and screening process would have made it impossible to get the level of content through and indeed would possibly sanitise the message too much to the point that would not appear authentic.  Joe Rospur had final say on material and huge trust would appear to have been placed on the people twittering and blogging.  There are lots of inherent risks here but this delegated responsibility with a trusted team was balanced against the need to have rapid and updated content.  I imagine there were tighter controls that indicated at the session but message was clear that in the world of new media new ways of ensuring content is on message and delivered quickly need to be devised.   

Obama himself would appear to have been reasonably distant from the technology.

In summary using the social media online tools was the minor element while how they were used, authenticity/transparency of the messages and how large groups of people were mobilised and empowered using these tools were the key success factors.

I have since received a Finna Fail email message from Brian Cowen that seems to try capture some of these elements.  Time will tell if its enough…. 

Other posts on the topic include:

Bitsniff

Interactive Return

Green Ink

Northern Notes

Cian in Irish Election

Karlin Lillington

and many others!

Conferences, Business After Hours and networking events usually result in the collection of a large selection of business cards.  In the not so distant past they were collated alphabetically and neatly arranged into rollerdecks before gathered dust.  The proactive ones followed up with a DM piece and letter before email made that process easier.  The result rate from these was generally poor as you rarely created any particular link with the person.

Now I notice that after I attend these events that I receive a large number of online requests from LinkedIn, Facebook and an increase in people following me on Twitter.  Aside from the ease these open up real opportunities to connect with people.  Rather than an uninformed cold callesque DM piece you have the real potential to uncover much more about their interest, business model before engaging in real value add conversations.  It also increases traffic to the blog (which is modest at the best of times) but gives people something more concrete to view and help them form a more informed opinion of you and your offerings.

Tip for the day: dont let business card lie on your desk.  Give them more life by

• Immediately loading onto you contacts database
• Search using Spock, Wink or search engines
• Find and read their blogs if any
• Link with them through LinkedIn, Facebook and follow them on Twitter
• Have a look at their networks and areas of interest
• Create a conversation using these tools before blindly pitching your wares

  I have only received a few business cards with the full set of contact details outside of the normal phone, address etc.  There is lots of debate on the merits of too much detail on cards but Hoax Slayer has one peril I never thought of.

Last nights PR and Blogger meet up in Edelmans offices passed off with any physical harm to any of the attendees.  Billed as collision course the atmosphere was pretty friendly and more curious than frictional.  Overall some interesting points:

– most bloggers post on their own time and approaching them in a insolicited fashion is akin to stopping a random punter on the street and sticking a press release in their face.

– most bloggers are open to approaches that show you undertand their blog, what you are offering is relevant, is fairly informal and covering anything from attending events, angles on stories, reviews of new stuff, interesting videos.  The approach by BTs to the Young Scientist and giving free tickets was pointed out as positive.

– Bloggers are constantly in touch with each other and will frequently IM each other when they get approaches from PR companies especially if offering exclusives.

– No bloggers reported making money from their blogs and are fuel/energised by passion for the topic.

– Blogger relations takes more time and the PR industry has a struggle to convince clients to allocate resources so it does not end up being a bloggers email address getting added to a media distribution list.

– Journalists who are also bloggers view mails and  to their media email account very differently to their blogger email account.

– Twitter offers great potential for monitoring (ORM), possible relevant story seeding and early heads up on industry developments. 

– Bloggers like to have previews of up and coming stuff so they can debate it before it hits main stream media.

– Bloggers spend vast amounts of time in preparing their posts and take personal pride in them.  Poor blogs will just not get read.

– There is a general nervousness in approaching blogger as mistakes can become highly personal and visible.

– Links to stories/press releases/photos plus personal commentary are more welcome than cut and paste press releases.

– PR community doing a poor job with clients in convincing them of the merits of PR and blogger relations in general.

– PR people should blog more so that they can understand the medium and utilise the Irish press release service.

Overall is was a positive event and these type face to face encounters help to over the suspicion and mistrust between the two groups.

Interesting to see how the next one goes which is planned for February.

One of the Irish Internet Association Working Groups is currently undertaking a blogging survey to gain insight into how much time companies spend blogging, why they blog and how they measure success.  Blogging is still at relatively early stages in Ireland and there is still a wide gulf between active bloggers and main stream Irish business.  The results of the survey will be published to coincide with a white paper that the Social Networking Working Group is producing.  The paper is being produce collaboratively both face to face as not all experts are equal.  The survey can be found here and all filled out entries appreciated.