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Incomplete and boring profiles: Yes, I have to admit that my profile is slightly out of date for my current position With that said, my profile is more than just a listing of positions I’ve held over the past 15 years.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?

Media databases, such as Vocus and Cision, are great resources for finding reporters and bloggers who cover specific industries and topics. These databases helped augment the day-to-day research that practitioners did to identify, research and verify the best reporter for that particular news story or company.

While these databases have tremendous amount of information, not all of it is accurate or up-to-date. And this is where the problem begins. For companies and practitioners who rely solely on these resources, they cease to be “pr practitioners” and risk becoming “email spammers” as the pitches will be irrelevant and unwanted. Or much worse, being blacklisted by the very reporters they are seeking to reach.

Now consider this from the reporter or blogger’s point of view. Her information has been gleaned from her website, without her permission or knowledge, added to a database, and sold to hundreds and thousands of people. While she may be open to receiving relevant information, she now gets multiple emails with seemingly unrelated content and solicitations. She may or may not fault the media databases, but most likely, she’ll fault you – the PR person who didn’t do his homework.

Don’t get me wrong. I personally use Cision to help me 1. research new contacts at existing outlets, 2. build a media list or 3. to learn more about a particular media outlet. My point is leverage this as one resource for learning more about a reporter. Here are three more tips for knowing your reporter better:

Research Previous Coverage

The best place to begin is reading the person’s previous blog postings or articles. I typically go back at least 6-9 months to determine the type of stories he likes to write, how often he writes, and when he last wrote about my client/particular industry. For example, if he wrote about a trend story about mobile apps for events last month, it’s likely he won’t cover this topic for a few weeks or months.

Review Their LinkedIn Profiles

One disadvantage of the media databases is the lack of background information on reporters. Either to find information or to augment what is available, look up the person’s profile on LinkedIn. As a professional network, LinkedIn is a wealth information – previous positions, personal websites (if available), and location.

While you can upgrade to a pro account to send emails from within LinkedIn, weigh the pros and cons of this carefully. For me, unless we were member of the same group, I would be less receptive to a cold pitch on LinkedIn than via my blog.

Engage on Social Media

More and more reporters are participating on social media (personally, Twitter seems to be a popular choice), partially due to personal interest and partially as part of their job. When possible, I recommend following a reporter. This provides insight on stories he’s writing, types of topics he’s interested in and possible personal information. And when appropriate, you can respond to the reporter; thereby engaging and building a relationship with the reporter before an “official” pitch. In some cases, having a reporter tweet out your story may result in more traffic and word of mouth than an article itself.

These are just three simple tips for getting to know your reporter before the pitch. What other tips do you have? Bonus points for those who can list things about me in your comments =)

Related Articles:

* Three Tips on How to Pitch Bloggers

* A Hidden Rule of PR: If You Don’t Ask, How Do You Know You Won’t Get It?

by heraldpost via flickr

I recently met with a young woman who was seeking advice on how to break into the public relations field. Like many people graduating college over the past couple of years, she returned home and took the first job presented to her. So what would be the best way for her to get started in the PR field? Here are the five tips I gave her:

1. Get a LinkedIn Account: While she was very active on Facebook, she was unfamiliar with LinkedIn. I think this is common with many graduates who engage in social medis for personal reasons versus professional. Many human resource professionals I know use LinkedIn to research and find prospective candidates. Creating a file on LinkedIn is a must alongside a traditional resume.

2. Clean Up Your Online Profiles: Since she was active on Facebook, I advised her to review her profile and privacy settings. Many people don’t realize that their profiles can be reviewed if the permissions are not set to “private.” Unfortunately, the wrong photo or wall post can stop the interview process in its tracks.

3. Join the PRSA LinkedIn Group: Since many of her friends are not in the PR industry, I recommended joining the PRSA LinkedIn Group. The group has useful advice for those starting in the industry and she could connect to other local professionals. There are also subgroups that may be of interest (I’m a member of the technology subgroup).This will help provide her with different views on the profession, as well as different practice areas.

4. Research Local PR Agencies: There are several large PR firms in the Los Angeles/Santa Monica area. I recommended that she do her research to learn more about each company, their culture, and areas of focus. This way, she can narrow down which firms may be of most interest to her. Furthermore, these are skills you need for researching bloggers, reporters and other influencers.

5. Request Introductory Meetings: Many firms and PR professionals are happy to meet with those interested in the industry. From my perspective, an introductory meeting can act an informal “interview”.” If you impress the person with your knowledge and interest, he/she may recommend you to the hiring manager for internal positions. Before requesting any meetings though, make sure to refer to point 4.

These were just five of the tips I provided. Hiring managers – what would you recommend someone do interested in joining your firm or company? PR folks, what did you do to get your foot in the door? Got other questions for getting into PR? Leave them in the comments.

Me? I actually got into PR when I lived in Taiwan as a Chinese-to-English translator for Ogilve & Mather PR.

via Flickr by Karen Eliot

There has been an interesting discussion on Focus regarding the role of social integration within the virtual platforms. As social media and networking is an integral part of an overal virtual events strategy, including marketing, audience engagement, and event promotion, I wanted to higlight some of the key points mentioned that should be part of your checklist.

Note: Unless indicated, comments are based on my experience going into various platforms and are not indicative of any one platform’s pros/cons:

1. Registration: To date, most of the platforms require a separate registration form and then ask for your Linkedin, Facebook, and/or Twitter login information after you’ve registered. Oftentimes, this is a multi-step process. Points to consider:

Axel Shultze, CEO of Social Media Academy (@AxelS): “We use http://xeesm.com as a bridge between the virtual event platform – in our case On24 – and the social web.”

- Does your platform directly allow people to register using Facebook connect or other social network login?

- If not, do you have a third-party application that can bridge this?

Joerg Rathenberg, VP of Marketing, Unsifair (@jrathenberg): “On the microsite or landing page you have the ability for registrants to forwad the link to their communities using the integrated social media icons as well as email. You can also use twitter and FB icons to increase your followership from here.”

- After registering, can registrants share this with their friends and followers via social media or email?

- If so, can I append a conference/event hashtag to the message?

2. Friends & Family: If you allow the virtual event platform to connect to your social networks, the benefit of this is to evaluate your social graph to determine which of your connections are registered for the event, attend the event in real-time, and/or who might be interested in that event. Taking this a step further, based on your profile, and eventually the types of individuals you connect with online, the platform should then provide you with matches of prospective individuals with whom you should connect. This increases your networking opportunities accordingly.

- Do you have the ability to provide recommended matches based on my profile?

- Can you see which of my connections are registered/attending the event?

- Can you identify which of my contacts may be most interested in this event and send them a personal invitation from me to attend this event?

3. Consistent Social Presence: From my perspective, the social media integration seems to be inconsistent throughout the event. For example, the Twitter stream may be available in the lounge area but doesn’t appear in the exhibit hall or when you’re viewing a presentation. Furthermore, most of the platforms have two different areas for a general chat within the event, usually the Lounge, and for Twitter conversations – separate widget. There must be a way to integrate the two so two separate conversations aren’t happening around the same show.

Dennis Shiao, Director of Product Marketing, INXPO (@dshiao): “This level of integration is the deepest and involves the virtual event platform making calls to the social network’s API. The benefits are twofold: it creates a more seamless user experience for attendees (as they remain within the virtual environnment) and, it allows the platform to capture and track per-attendee activity with social networks.”

Francis Bacon, Director, More Conference: “The focus for us is creating an online space in which delegates can interact with each other, but sometimes delegates want to use Twitter to keep their followers (who are usualyl non-delegates) informed about the event they are attending.”

- Can the Twitter stream be viewed throughout the whole environment, such as during presentations?

- Can people have their comments in a group discussion automatically post to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook?

- Will a hashtag automatically be appended to the status updates?

- What type of insight can I get from the social conversations?

4. Social Media Analytics: I highlighted some key points in my previous post regarding measurements and analytics, so I will highlight some key points related to social conversations. 

Joerg Rathenberg: “Dedicated Social media reports summarize social media activity by attendee and let you drill down to the content of the individual messages.”

- Can you provide overview reporting regarding the social activity by attendees on various social networks?

- Can you provide insight into the key conversations and trends from the conference?

- Can you pinpoint individuals or influencers I should follow up with based on their social activity?

5. Level of Social Media Integration: While all platforms state they have social media integration, the ”integration” may just be a link to an outside page or full integration. As Dennis highlighted in his response on Focus, there are three types of integration:

“A) Barebones, “non integrated”: Users click on hyperlinks and are then taken outside of the virtual event platform to a URL hosted by the social network…

“B) Social media widgets, “somewhat integrated”: Widgets are lightweight pieces of code that can be inserted into a virtual event platform to invoke social features – the code references operations hosted by the social network service…

“C) Full integration via Application Programming Interfaces (API): see above. ”

- Ask the platform provider what level of integration they are providing?

- How easily is it to “turn” on the features – click a check box or custom development required?

- Are these base features (included in the platform) or an additional cost?

Other Posts in the Series

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

2. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 2: Planning Tools

3. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 3: Engagement & Experience

4. Virtual Event vendor Checklist Part 4: Metrics and Analysis

Courtesy of Virtual Edge Summit

From January 12-13, 2011, hundreds of people will gather in Las Vegas and online to attend the Virtual Edge Summit 2011. I have had the pleasure of assisting the Summit in their public relations and marketing efforts. While I have done PR and marketing activities as a vendor exhibiting or speaking at an event, this was an interesting opportunity to help drive awareness, conversation and ultimately registrations for a conference of this sidze (not including corporate webinars and virtual events).

With the conference a week away, we will not have a full sense of the results until after it has concluded. With that said, I wanted to highlight three strategies and tactics we used (are using). While this doesn’t encompass everything we did/are doing for the Summit, it does provide a look under the covers:

Key Objectives

1. Drive Brand Awareness: This year, the Virtual Edge Summit expanded its program beyond virtual events, meetings and conferences to incorporate virtual learning and training. This opened up the Summit a potential new pool of attendees within the elearning and training spaces. Our goal was to continue driving awareness within the meeting and events industry, while introducing the Summit to this new space.

2. Increase Engagement: We wanted to build on the 2010 efforts to further involve our audience – both virtual and physical – with the Summit. This would help generate word of mouth amongst our key audiences and hopefully reach new target audiences.

3. Grow Registrations for In-Person and Virtual Attendance:  And of course, part of the success would be measured by the number of registration for the in-person and virtual versions of the event.

Key Tactics

1. Focus on Public Relations: My foundation is in public relations, so this was a natural area to focus our efforts.  In addition to the general press releases about keynote speakers, new sponsors and the program, we looked at how we can generate discussion in the industry, while promoting the Summit. For example, we decided to develop an infographic that summarized the key virtual events industrystats from 2010. The purpose was to provide the industry with a visual way to synthesize the progress that virtual had made over the past 12 months. In addition to posting to the Summit blog, we contacted key reporters, industry bloggers, and sponsors. The resulting blog posts and discussion around the infographic keeps the Summit and Virtual Edge Institute front and center.

2. Start and Seed a Summit Blog: Our speakers are the innovators within the virtual events and learning industries. We started a blog and invited our speakers to submit 300-400 word blog postings related to their presentation or industry. With a dozen speakers taking up the offer, this provided credibility to the blog, allowed us to generate relevant content quickly, and distribute this to a wider audience through speaker promotion. At this writing, our hope is to continue the blog to drive the conversation until the next Summit.

3. Social Media: While Twitter was leveraged last year, we drafted a more formal strategy for our social media program this year.

a. The cornerstone will continue to be Twitter, assigning each room with a unique hashtag to receive questions from the audience. We also created Twitter lists of attendees, speakers and sponsors to recognize all the different audiences supporting the Summit. Finally, we reached out to speakers and sponsors to promote their participation at the conference, which generated many tweets leading up to the conference over the past few days.

b. We researched groups in learning, training, events, conferences and meetings on LinkedIn.  Following group guidelines, we posted information about the Summit, participated in appropriate discussions,  and/or started discussions.

c. With regard to Facebook, this is being leveraged as an alternative way to connect with our audiences. We cross post all blog posts and post questions to solicit engagement. While this part is nascent, we’re contemplating using Facebook as the main photo archive for the Summit and inviting virtual attendees to post photos of where they are attending the Summit to the page.

Wish Us Good Luck

While this doesn’t cover everything we’ve been doing, I’m pretty happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. If you’re interested in checking out the summit, you can register at http://www.virtualedgesummit.com/registration_reader. The interesting aspect is that the Summit will have ten different technology vendors streaming the content. The idea is to provide people with a choice and way to evaluate different ways of holding a virtual event.

In the post-event summary, I’ll highlight some other unique aspects of the event, initial results and some areas of improvement.

And I’ll also be one of the virtual hosts to bring content live from the exhibit show floor to the virtual audience! (wish me luck)

I belong to several groups in LinkedIn and came across a case study regarding the use of social media to increase membership to a LinkedIn group, which then drove conference attendance. I interviewed Bob Etheridge, social media aficionado, to learn more about his experience.

Bob Etheridge’s background has been primarily in the online recruitment and job board industry. In 1999, he co-founded JobCircle.com, a regional job board in Philadelphia and 2003,  started a physical Job Fair division for the company, thus entering the event production and  marketing world. The economic downturn and lack of hiring had a large impact on the business, so in May, they took their event production experience and created a B to B conference called Social Media Plus, capitalizing on the growth and interest in Social Media. Bob can be reached at bob.etheridge@networksunday.com.

1) We both belong to the same LinkedIn Group and you mentioned how you increased membership to a group you were managing for a conference. Can you provide an overview of what you did?
Yes, creating a Linkedin Group is easy enough, inviting your first degree connections to join the group is also relatively easy.  However, growing your group quickly after that becomes a challenge.

November 21, 2010 – Per Bob’s request, I have replaced the previous text with the below two paragraphs:

We utilized a service called Community Leadership offered by a company called Network Sunday. Network Sunday has virtual assistants that can help you with your Social Media marketing outreach. Network Sunday works with business development  and conference marketing professionals to leverage Linkedin to help grow communities, create awareness and build personal and professional brand.

By joining relevant, Industry specific Linkedin groups using the Advanced People Search engine on Linkedin, we created a targeted list of members who would most likely be interested in learning about Social Media and networking with other Social Media Marketing professionals. We then invited these people, through Linkedin, to join the Social Media Plus Conference group using a simple, straight forward message. The campaign lasted for approximately 2 months before the conference.

2) Besides LinkedIn, did you use any other marketing and social media tactics? If so, how did you leverage these tactics for driving attendance. 
Yes, we created a Facebook page and a Twitter account for the event. While Twitter was a great tool for communication during and after the conference with our #SMPlus hashtag, neither produced significant results in driving attendees.

3) What was the result of your efforts?
The response was phenomenal. In 2 months, our Conference group grew from 50 members to around 1800 and over 700 people attended the conference.  We did some traditional marketing such as direct mail and e-mail marketing, but Linkedin was the most effective marketing tool by far. We tracked the click through bit.ly URL’s, measuring the use of unique coupon codes that we offered and by comparing the final attendee list to our Linkedin Group members. 450 attendees had joined the Social Media Plus Linkedin group prior to the conference. (Disclaimer – Bob was so impressed with the results that Network Sunday provided, he is now the US Partner helping other conference organizers in their Marketing efforts).

4) What three tips would you provide to those seeking to use social media to promote their conference?

 1) Social Media Marketing is a two way street. Be prepared to spend time communicating directly with your audience.

2) Don’t over sell in your Marketing message. Less is more in this case. People want to explore and learn things on their own. If they have specific questions, they’ll reach out to you.

3) Don’t go it alone. Social Media Marketing can be time consuming and often companies start off with a bang, but burn out quickly. Social Media Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

In February 2009, I wrote a post titled “Would YOU Trust a PR Firm without a Social Media Presence with Your Social Media Programs” to determine how many agencies were active in social media.

While anyone who establishes a Twitter account or LinkedIn Group is not automatically an “expert” on social media, I do believe that you should practice what you preach. This point, as well as the role of a corporate presence vs. individual contributors, generated a lot of discussion.

Since the original post, my position about individual contributors has evolved. I believe that employees are an integral, if not essential, part of a successful social media strategy. However,  to simplify the data gathering and analysis, I opted to focus on corporate presences, recognizing that multiple individuals are contributing on behalf of the agency.

I’ve included a slideshare presentation below, images on flickr that you can share (including the infographic to the left), and the list of PR agencies accessible via Google Docs (All changes for 2010 are indicated in red. Please feel free to make an update and include a comment below). 

Key Findings: PR Firms More Social in 2010

* PR agencies increased their social media presence in 2010, with Flickr (500%), YouTube (379%) and Twitter (131%) demonstrating the largest increases respectively.

* While most agencies didn’t link to their social media channels on their website in 2009, 83% included this on their home page in 2010.

* Twitter was the most popular social media channel, with 80% of PR agencies having a presence. 35% had followers numbering over 1000.

* 2 to 1, PR agencies had a Facebook Page or Group vs. a LinkedIn Group Page

Conclusions: What a difference a year makes

In just over 18 months, PR agencies have increased their presence on several social media channels. While content was not evaluated as part of this review, some agencies leveraged Flickr and YouTube to promote their clients. This raises an interesting issue about agencies becoming an active publishing entity.

If a PR agency ammasses thousands of followers or create a highly-ranked/influential blog, will it have the potential to become an informal media outlet itself? And if so, how will PR agencies manage this changing landscape? What do you think?

Methodology

I initially evaluated PR firms listed on O’Dwyer’s list of top 100 independent PR firms. This list was based on worldwide fees for firms with major US operations. As such, some prominent firms, such as Ogilvy & Mather, Ketchum PR and others. An additional 13 firms, who had proactively added their information to the PR Firm Social Media Wiki, were added to the 2010 review, yielding a total of 113 firms.

* I looked at if the agency had a blog, Twitter profile, Facebook page (both group and/or fan), LinkedIn Group, YouTube Channel or Flickr photostream.

* I didn’t categorize the type of PR each firm did – I took the list at its word

* If the blog wasn’t listed on the home page or easily found via a sitemap, I assumed there was none

* I searched on the agency’s name or common abbreviation as presented on their website. Anything more exotic or too cute, would not have been found

* For Twitter, I used Twitter search or tried to manually type in what seemed like an appropriate Twitter handle. Number of followers were based on number the week of September 20, 2010.

* I used the group search functions found on Facebook and LinkedIn respectively. I was looking for those who had proactively created a group page or claimed their fan page on Facebook. As such, LinkedIn Company pages were not included.

One of the great things about LinkedIn is the ability to start a group around an organization or topic. I co-manage the Virtual Events Forumwhich addresses topics related to virtual events and environments. In managing this group and looking at successful examples as the Event Planning and Management group founded by Julius Solaris, whom I’ve met virtually and one day will meet in person, I have these five simple tips for managing your LinkedIn group:

1. Set Up Email Templates: There is an option to set up automatic email responses to people seeking to join the group and when they are approved. This is a great way to add a personal touch while saving you time.

2. Create a Group Logo: When people join a group, they have an option of displaying the group’s logo. This is a great way to brand your group and spread the word through members’ profiles.

3. Communicate Ground Rules: Whether you have tens or thousands of members, it’s good to clearly communicate the rules of engagement for your group. Highlight what is tolerated and what constitutes banning a member or deleting a posting. This will keep things orderly for your group.

4. Assign Group Moderators: At a certain point, say about 150-200 members, you will want to assign a co-manager. This enables you to monitor the group and spread the responsibilities to a trusted member of your community.

5. Share it with Your Contacts: Finally, when you start a group, share it with your contacts by updating your status with the group name and link. I would then selectively send an email to contacts who may be most interested in the group. This way, you’re not spamming everyone in your contacts.

Any other recommendations?

The response to my post on which PR firms hasd a social media presence was, well, more than I expected. My post received 66 comments while Jeremiah Owyang’s post had 47 comments. When reviewing the comments, you could see two audiences emerging:

- those who believe that you have to practice what you preach and

- those who believed that corporate presence wasn’t as important as much as the work that was done for clients and the individual participation within those firms

Regardless of which camp you belong to, the discussion resulted in the creationing of a wiki to allow PR firms to proactively update their profiles. To the A few firms that did proactively update their profilesm thank you. To those who haven’t yet, why not?

Overall, here is the breakdown:

- 109 firms are on the list

- 50 firms have blogs

- While 38 firms have corporate Twitter profiles, 5 firms deferred to individuals versus corporate Twitter. In total, 13 firms had individuals participating on Twitter.

- 47 firms had a Facebook presence, while 38 had LinkedIn

- 16 firms have started using Flickr, YouTube and Second Life

So, who else is missing from the list? Go to http://prfirmssocialmedia.pbwiki.com to make the udpates.

There has been quite a bit of discussion from the original post and on a post by Jeremiah Owyang titled “Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess,”. I honestly didn’t think that my initial effort would generate such discussion, which I think provides a lot of fodder for thought.

I do want to provide my perspective on one aspect of Jennifer Leggio’s comment:

Client service comes first, always. Yes agencies should strive to have a presence of their own but not having a presence on Twitter or LinkedIn for their corporation is not a good measurement — at all.

When reviewing Jennifer Leggio’s post “Is ‘social PR’ for real?”, this paragraph resonated with me:

Agencies need to work hard to ease their clients’ or potential clients’ minds by showing hard metrics of how social programs have worked for other clients. There is also more justifiable pressure on marketers as a whole to demonstrate ROI from social media programs. Clients should start requiring these types of ROI metrics or case studies and not take “this is a new practice” as a valid excuse for the agencies not having proof points. The agency at the very least should be able to show how it’s built its own brand / the brand of its people through social media.

 I do agree with the position that a PR agency having a social media presence is not necessarily a barometer of how that agency can deliver results for clients using social media. However, I will argue that an agency’s ability to use these tactics/strategies to build awareness and industry expertise demonstrates understanding of the pressures that clients face and their objectives. This includes increasing incoming sales leads, communicating with key customers, building thought leadership, reaching key audiences, etc.

Besides this particular point, I want to add the following:

• I recognize that individual contributors are just as important as corporate brands. I will still assert that corporate brands will be just as important for establishing brand awareness and thought leadership

• With that said, how one participates in social media can be dictated based on one’s audience and goals. I strongly believe that having a presence in the right avenues helps to drive an agency’s lead generation efforts

• Since I was laid off, I decided to do this research out of curiousity. I knew it would take time and spent a several hours over a two week period to “research” the original list. As I was doing this myself, I acknowledge that I may have missing or incorrect information. As such, I appreciate those who have provided updates in comments or emails to me. I have updated the table accordingly. 

And finally, as this endeavor is much bigger than I originally anticipated, I have set up a public wiki for agencies and the community to make updates directly.