When used well, LinkedInis a powerful business networking community and tool. I personally am more apt to accept a LinkedIn invitation to connect than Facebook. However, there are some pet peeves I have about LinkedIn. Here are my top 5 don’ts, in no particular order:

Sending generic invitations to connect: I’ve received dozens of invitations to connect via LinkedIn. In the past, I would automatically accept invitations, even from complete strangers. However, as LinkedIn members have become more aggressive with emails and connections, I evaluate each request carefully. One mistake is not customizing the canned invitation. Take 2 minutes to explain why you want to connect – prospective partnership, mentorship, job hunting, etc. Otherwise, I will click on reject versus accept.

Incomplete and boring profiles: Yes, I have to admit that my profile is slightly out of date for my current position With that said, my profile is more than just a listing of positions I’ve held over the past 15 years. It needs to read more than just a timeline. Rather, I’ve taken time to consider who may be viewing my profile – recruiters, current colleagues, prospective employees and more. And for those seeking employment, write your profile to capture someone’s attention within the first 10-15 seconds. Be bold. Be eye-catching.

Keeping profiles private: This one totally confuses me. While Facebook is for family and friends; hence why I maintain a private profile, to me LinkedIn, it’s about business networking. Keeping a profile private communicates you’re seeking to hide something. Not a good start for any relationship.

Spamming groups: I see more and more spam in my LinkedIn Groups. This reminds me of spam comments on blogs. While there is a way to limit this on blogs, it’s up to group managers or community managers to monitor groups. Take a step back and reconsider how your participate on LinkedIn Groups – it should always be educational and helpful. Otherwise this reflects poorly on you and your company/employer.

Mass LinkedIn messages: As LinkedIn has opened up premium services, I’m seeing more spam in my LinkedIn in box. I am receptive to receiving emails from individuals who have clearly reviewed and pre-qualified me based on my profile. Otherwise, sending LinkedIn messages is worthless spam.

What are your don’ts for LinkedIn?

Over the past few years, I’ve counseled and assisted companies establish their social media programs. As I think back to these program, I believe there are four key stages intrinsic to the evolution of a successful social media program: broadcast, inquisitive, participatory, and conversation. While I don’t want to oversimplify this process – some organizations may skip or combine these stages – I do think this is helpful for framing the general growth of a social media program:

Broadcast stage:While we recognize that social media is about conversations and engagement, I’ve found that the first stage is getting comfortable with publishing on this medium. As such, the first phase will mainly be broadcasting – upcoming events, new blog postings, product announcements, etc.

Inquisitive stage: Once an organization becomes comfortable publishing on social media, the next stage is being inquisitive – asking others for their comments, feedback, including polls and other similar activities. From my perspective, this is the first step from broadcast toward engagement.

Participatory stage: It is at this stage that an organization moves from broadcast to a participatory level. In addition to promoting it’s own content, an organization begins recognizing the contribution of others. This includes retweeting, commenting, and sharing links to blog postings, articles and other content of interest to your followers/target audiences.

Conversation stage: This is the most intensive aspect of a social media program and most desired stage that all aspire to. At this stage, an organization is engaging in an active conversation with their audiences – responding in real-time to constituents while adding value.

Are there other stages to consider when starting a social media program?

I originally started my career in public relations before moving into the marketing function. Throughout the years, there are several skills that  I’lve picked up that have been essential to my role. Here are the five key skills that I believe are a must for today’s marketing professional, in no particular order:

1. Search Engine Optimization: I believe it was Jeramiah Owyang who said that search is your new website. If your website is not optimized to place highly on key search terms related to your business, then you are missing opportunities with your business. It’s important to understand what factors help or hinder your website and the key search terms for your company, products or services.

2. Content Marketing: Placing highly on search engines relies on strong content marketing strategy. This includes not only understanding your keywords, but also understanding your buyer personas and the questions they will ask during the purchasing process. If you’re able to create content that addresses their questions, then not only will your pages ranks highly, but also when they click through, it will be highly relevant.

3. Public Relations: Previously, PR was seen mainly as a way to increase brand awareness for a company, with minimal connections to how it truly impacted a business. With better tracking tools and the importance of online marketing, public relations is an integral element in driving SEO through quality links which promotes traffic to your website – both direct and indirect. It’s integral that marketers understand how to leverage PR and properly measure it as part of a larger marketing strategy and event marketing campaigns related to product launches, tradeshows, and more.

4. Social Media: When you look at the first three things above, then social media becomes an important avenue for distributing your content, driving SEO and increasing brand awareness. I think it’s also important to engage on the channels where influencers, customers, partners, and employees are engaging. This requires understanding where the conversations are happening. For example, new prospects may be asking questions on LinkedIn groups, influencers are on Twitter and customers are in dedicated online communities.

5. Pay-per-click programs: PPC programs are a science. While you may not implement them directly, it’s important to understand the concepts and how they can be leveraged for your overall programs. The goal is to find ways to be present when someone is searching on your company or products/services related to your company. It’s about filtering through all the noise that a person encounters online. An article, a tweet, a search result, a ppc ad. It all adds up and increases the success of your marketing efforts.

I’m curious to hear what other skills are must haves for today’s marketing.

In the PR Group on LinkedIn (must be a member to view the discussion), some asked, “How do you justify fees to clients in an era of social media?” I believe many PR and marketing consultants have faced this as potential clients believe that social media is “free.”

I think there are two parts to this equation that we need to consider before answering the question, assuming that we’ve done the background work of evaluating target audience, prospect personas, and the channels where these individuals congregate.

First, Defining Social Media Monitoring: This entails helping the client to listen, monitor and respond to what is happening on key channels of import to the client. For example, I rarely recommend B2B clients monitor Facebook while Twitter and LinkedIn are channels to consider. This can be done either through a service or establishing the right searches to encompass 75-80% of their universe.

Second, Positioning Social Media Marketing: This encompasses more than point 1 but looks at how social media fits into the larger marketing funnel for the company. It involves closely collaborating with your client and its marketing team to understand how social media fits into the sales cycle for the organization. Maybe a Twitter inquiry is at the beginning of the funnel while a LinkedIn discussion is at the purchase phase. This intelligence can be drawn from the organization’s existing lead generation programs – yet, you may discover an opportunity to help an organization refine or establish this process because of the focus to start a “social media” program.

I find that many prosepctive clients confuse social media monitoring with marketing. Yes, while the first point is “free” and can be done exclusively by the client, the second part provides the larger context of how social media fits into the marketing strategy. This is the value that consultants  - PR, marketing and/or social media – can provide to organizations. And I believe this is what will sell clients on social media programs.

What do you think? How have you sold social media within your organization?

by jasleen_kaur via flickr

Social media has become increasingly popular for business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing. I recently did some research on social media by healthcare professionals and wanted to share some of the articles and stats I found in the form of Storify. There are interesting implications in how, as PR and marketing professionals, one would reach and engage with this audience. What are your experiences?

When I first started in public relations, one of the main issues we faced was the rise of corporate websites – if our clients should do it, how and why. And yes – that was many moons ago. Cable television was just emerging so news cycles were more predictable with three broadcast channels and a handful of national newspapers. Dictated by days(sometimes weeks) – not the hours, even minutes of today’s always-on world – PR professionals could more easily craft, confirm and implement crisis management plans on behalf of clients.

Fast forward several years – the rise of CNN, Internet and social media has systematically shrunk the response times for managing crisis. What used to take weeks and days, now requires real-time responses in hours, if not minutes. Otherwise, brands risk seemingly minor issues quickly running out of their control. Here are three tips for managing a crisis in an always-on, social media world.

Real-Time Monitoring and Listening

The first step is ensuring that you’re monitoring your brand online and listening to the conversations taking place. There are several services and tools available from comprehensive service providers like Radian 6 and Trackur or set up keyword searches on free tools like CoTweet, Tweetdeck or Google News alerts (Note: I use CoTweet and Tweetdeck).

In the case of Motrin (now a classic case study), the company launched a new ad campaign in 2009 over a weekend. The response by mothers was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. However, no team members were monitoring the online conversations around the campaign. By the following Monday, traditional print and broadcast media had picked up the story, forcing the company to retract the ads and issue an apology. Crisis Communications did a great write up at Motrin Mom- A Case Study

Real-time Responses

If you’re monitoring and listening to conversations online in real-time, then the next key is proactively responding to issues as they begin to bubble up. If the response is sincere and demonstrates sensitivity to the issue, then a brand can quickly win over initial naysayers and impact overall sentiment.

A great example is JetBlue’s response to customer issues back in February 2007. While this may be “dated,” it demonstrated the first time that a CEO of a major corporation used social media , in this case YouTube, to respond to a building crisis. The response was timely and from a credible executive. Moreover, by using an informal medium such as YouTube, JetBlue’s CEO seemed more sincere than if he had assembled a press conference and broadcasted a written response.

In terms of a recent example, Airbnb is currently dealing with a crisis after a customer took to her blog to complain about Airbnb’s lack of response to renters trashing the host’s apartment. While the company is now offering insurance to hosts as part of its response to ameliorate the issue, the damage has been done with more stories starting to trickle out about similar experiences and slow response rates by the company.

Empowered Social Media Representatives

Which leads me to my next point – JetBlue was successful because the top executive supported the need to use social media to address the crisis directly. But this may not be the case for each organization and situation. In today’s world, front-line employees, such as sales, service representatives, and customer service, directly reflect your brand and have an opportunity to identify and address bubbling crisis.

By empowering front-line employees as “social media representatives,” organizations have an opportunity to address issues in real-time while ensuring that responses and actions are consistent with your brand messages. Otherwise, you might have a parody song written about your brand as in the case of “United Breaks My Guitar”:

Conclusion: Active Participation and Engagement

While the above tips will help brands to react to prospective issues, brands should actively participate in and engage with its online community. This not only demonstrates your commitment to your customers, but also builds trust with your community through transparency and openness; which in turn creates a community of brand evangelists who will defend your brand in times of need.

And in a 24/7, always-on world, you never know when a crisis will arise. But by listening, monitoring, empowering, participating, and engaging, you’ll have more allies to defend your brand than ever.

Over the past week, I’ve seen the stories develop over Sarah Palin’s interesting take on history, Anthony Weiner’s unfortunate pictures on Twitter, and the indictment of John Edwards. In each of these cases, I’m seeing classic PR mistakes that these two seasoned politicians (and yes, Sarah is a politician at heart) make. Here is my top five list of where these folks went wrong:

5. Improperly Built Bridges: While we train our clients on how to take a question and smoothly transition it to the topic you want to discuss, (Clinton was very good at this), Sarah went off the reservation with her response (see video above for further elaboration) to a softball question. The question: “What have you seen so far today and what are you going to take away from this?” The Response: I’m not really sure.

4. Blaming The Pesky Hackers: Oh no, another politician did it again. While Anthony Weiner didn’t get caught with his pants down, so to speak, he did caught with something else in his, hmmmm…. shorts? Weiner immediately blamed the snafu on the most likely criminals – hackers.

3. I Shall Never Tell a Lie, unless it’s in front of a national audience… John Edwards was indicted for using campaign funds to keep his affair a secret. It wouldn’t have been such an issue if Edwards had admitted the affair instead of proclaiming his innocence on national TV. Rather, it tarnished his image and cut his political career short.

2. Mixing Public with Private: In a hyper-aggressive news cycle and always-on social media access, many people have made the mistake of sending out sensitive messages or pictures on Facebook and Twitter. In the end, Weiner is learning this firsthand. Not only did he send this photo publicly to a young female, but also has done this several times in the past. As a public official, this one should have been a no brainer – keep what you want private behind closed doors and not on the Internet for all to see.

1. Not Backing Down: It’s human to make a mistake or for something you say to be misconstrued. When given the opportunity, humbly admit your mistake and the media moves on to the next story. Unfortunately both Palin and Weiner prolonged the media cycle by not admitting to, in Palin’s case, a mistaken take on Paul Revere’s ride, and for Weiner, not taking responsibility for sending racy pictures over the Internet.

What other mistakes did these folks make and what lessons can be taught?

Related Articles:

Sarah Palin: Media Training 101

Sarah Palin: Media Training 201

by opensourceway via flickr

Over the past few years, it’s struck me how often people ask me the best way to participate on social media. While we are becoming more mature in how we leverage social media for public relations and marketing, there are still some common mistakes I see peopel make. Here are the top five mistakes that I think you or a company should avoid when you begin any social media activity:

1. Self-serving comments: It’s a fine line between being helpful and being self-promotional. I think this is the most common mistake you’ll see. Companies or individuals will research blogs and post comments only as way to promote their content. As a rule of thumb, it’s better to leave out any promotional stuff and add comments that contribute to the overall discussion.

2. All About Me: Many marketers and people still subscribe to the notion of broadcast media, just sending out updates about themselves. Social Media is about conversations and engagement. Listen to the conversations and participate when appropriate (see point 1).

3. Follow You, Follow Me: I call these folks the “pied pipers of social media.” You know who I mean. They’re the folks with hundreds and thousands of friends and followers on Twitter or Facebook with no discrimination. Unless you’re a top personality, be selective on who you follow.

4. Hit & Run: I’ve been noticing this trend recently. It’s very similar to point 1 but in a different way. These are individuals who join communities, liked LinkedIn Groups, and only post discussions or responses that are only related to their company. I call these folks hit & runners as they run in, post, and run out again.

5. Hot to Trot to Not: When individuals or companies begin participating on social media, they tend to be very excited. They join different networks, jump in on tweetchats and comments everywhere. But after the luster wears off, their participation begins to wane, until eventually they disappear. For corporate brands, it’s important to have a calendar of content and several individuals contributing to your social media channels.

And believe me, I’ve committed a few of the mistakes above, though I won’t tell you which ones =) What other mistakes do you see?

Though I just received my invite to Storify, I am very impressed with the power that this content curation tool can provide for marketing and public relations. It’s simple and easy to use, a must for today’s busy professional. And a single story can have multiple contributors.

Still in beta with invites given out occasionally, Storify has great potential for marketing and public relations. Here are five ways Storify can help your efforts:

1. Event Marketing: Capture the experience and excitement of an event by aggregating key comments from Twitter, video uploads on YouTube, or photos posted to Flickr. Furthermore, this creates an engaging archive of your event beyond the program guide. Check out my first Storify overview (below) of the MTO Summit that recently took place in Chicago. And I was a virtual attendee to boot.

2. Press Room: Leverage Storify to organize industry surveys, stats, research and infographics into one location. Organized chronologically, you can leverage this as a resource for analysts, reporters and bloggers in your space. From a sales and marketing perspective, your sales team can leverage the information for existing customers or prospects.

3. Thought Leadership: Curate thought leadership content to highlight your company and/or executives. This includes slideshare presentations, video interviews, tweets on Twitter or interviews in the media. Going a step further, create different stories for each executive for speaker proposals.

4. Product Launch:  Create an archive around a product launch, such as product reviews, online comments, analyst briefs, product photos, and other materials. This becomes a valuable resource for customer support, sales training, or new sales prospects.

5. Real-Time News Collaboration: Highlighted on the Storify blog, Bo Hee Kim summarizes how a reporter is using Storify to ”curate resources and liveblog the situation.” While an extreme example, consider how you or your company can provide similar collaboration around a news story or trend in your industry.

Conclusion: Powerful Content Curation, More Integration Required

We’ve heard the role of Twitter and Facebook for breaking news or organizing events around the world. Yet the information generated from these movements can be overwhelming. Storify is a powerful tool that allows marketers and public relations professionals to manage the information into bite-sized portions for people to consume.

Right now, all of this is done within the Storify site. The next step is for the company to integrate with the plethora of social media networking sites – Twitter, YouTube, Slideshare, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, so that “storify” will be synonymous with “liking” no matter where you are on online.

Then the potential to tell stories can be done with just a click of a mouse.

What other ways have you used Storify for your marketing or PR efforts? Please sjhare your story below (sorry, via old fashioned text =)

]]> http://www.prmeetsmarketing.com/2011/03/24/5-ways-to-storify-your-marketing-pr-efforts/feed/ 10 http://www.prmeetsmarketing.com/2011/03/18/five-tips-mobile-even/ http://www.prmeetsmarketing.com/2011/03/18/five-tips-mobile-even/#comments Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:11:25 +0000 Cece Salomon-Lee http://www.prmeetsmarketing.com/?p=2103

by csaila via flickr

In lieu of a PRMM Interview this week, I’m sharing these top five ways to make your events more mobile.

MEETINGS:review: Forget about Facebook: Social-mobile convergence will have a wide-ranging impact on the meetings marketplace – An overview of a recent PhoCusWright report regarding the convergence of social media and mobile technologies and their impact on meetings.

Virtual Events Hubs, Moving Mobile to the Center of the Virtual Event Experience – Ike Singh takes a look at the mobile phenomenon and how this will change the virtual and hybrid event experience. This includes access from any device, not just browsers; enhanced hybrid experiences; and local customization.

Midcourse Corrections, A Step by Step Process to Use Text To Screen During Events – Jeff Hurt discusses his experience using text messages during a live presentation.

Influential Marketing Blog, A Guide to Geolocation & Geosocial Marketing in 2011 –  This post highlights key uses for geolocation and geosocial applications. There is a point about using this for live events.

TSNN, RFID Means “Revenue From Innovative Device” for Conference Industry – TSNN  looks at how RFID (radio frequency identification) technology can be used to track people or objects at an event.