CaliberPulse

It’s been an evolutionary year for social media. Many new trends and facts have been published that may help you shape your 2010 marketing and PR plan. We have included a sampling of these facts and our recommendations on how you can use them when developing your 2011 plan. FACT: 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. Source: Social Media Revolution 2 Video, based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman

Even though it is difficult for me to get out of the office for a few days, each year I attend professional conferences to stay on top of the latest consumer trends and new media technologies. This year I attended the Public Relations Society of America’s International Conference Oct.16-19 in Washington D.C. My education started the minute I landed at Reagan National Airport and continued throughout the conference, at the workshops and during the networking sessions, where I interacted with respected peers and educators throughout the world. Here’s a summary of the top ten trends I learned — or confirmed — this year at the PRSA Conference that I hope you will find valuable as you prepare your strategic plans for 2011:

The “it” tactic for companies to stand out in the crowd and promote their brand is by setting a Guinness World Record. An article by the Wall Street Journal highlights a number of companies who have set their way into the Guinness World Records: - Starwood’s Sheraton hotel chain set the record for the most people gathered to participate in the largest-ever resistance-band strength-training class at a Sheraton in midtown Manhattan. (270 people) - Estée Lauder set a record for having the “most landmarks illuminated for a cause in 24 hours” when it had t38 landmarks lit up in pink to promote breast-cancer awareness. - Cricket Communications Inc. teamed up with Samsung Electronics Co. to produce the world’s largest cell phone. At 15 feet long, 11 feet high and three feet wide, it was fully functional. A Guinness World Record helps to create buzz for a company and gives it something to promote. Usually the record set is unusual enough in itself to garner attention, so the company can ride the publicity wave.

Last week I attended a presentation by Dr. Lattie Coor, chairman and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona and Arizona State University president emeritus, and learned some meaningful statistics about Arizona residents that communicators will find valuable when engaging with Arizona audiences. These facts were published recently in a state-level report on Arizona’s civic health prepared by the center, with help from the National Conference on Citizenship, a Congressionally chartered organization that publishes America’s Civic Health Index (1).

Earlier in my career, I met with a business owner who asked me to promote his achievements. His goal was to build awareness and credibility as an expert in his field, among his prospective customers, peers and the media. After telling me about his many good deeds that deserved recognition, I asked him whether he had done any bad things that could harm his reputation and would make it impossible to reach his goal. Naturally, he responded that he had a stellar career and there were no skeletons in his closet. This challenge sounded intriguing, so I went to work and developed a smart public relations strategy to build his reputation. While I was preparing to execute this strategy, I opened the newspaper and discovered one skeleton that my client failed to share with me. To counter the bad news, my client asked me to immediately ramp up his public relations plan and start communicating all of his accomplishments. However, he failed to explain why he was not truthful earlier about his past mistake that made the news.

Imagine a reporter is interviewing you on a topic of your expertise, whether print, broadcast or online. You’re having a robust, yet friendly discussion that wanders from the original topic into area that is more sensitive. The reporter is engaging and disarming. You’re comfortable with the reporter and begin a sentence: “Off the record …” You feel deceived and a bit hurt when your “off the record” words are in ink and blasted all over the Internet the next day.

New technologies changed the way businesses communicate with customers, friends and families throughout the last decade. For public relations and marketing professionals, the emergence of social media created new opportunities to build relationships never dreamed possible. Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, LinkedIn…Where are these social media platforms taking us? Will there come a day when information is somehow beamed directly into the cortex of our desired audience? While that seems unlikely, so did the concept of a social networking site like Facebook ten years ago. Today, one can update customers through a company’s social media account through a cell phone or notebook. Restaurants and businesses have free wireless Internet services to plug into. The news doesn’t wait for the evening broadcast or morning newspaper; rather, news reaches us instantaneously on our mobile devices through the latest post or tweet. Even traditional news sources allow for public comments after each story on their Web sites. Remember the days of dial-up Internet service or sending faxes to communicate 10 years ago? The times are certainly changing.

My business partner and I attended an Agency Management Roundtable (AMR) meeting in early November with some pretty savvy marketing and public relations professionals who own small agencies across the country. These entrepreneurs meet semi-annually to share best practices designed to improve the performance of their businesses. After two days of swapping new ideas and advice about their agencies and doing business in a recession, it became clear that most of these agency owners face many of the same business challenges I do. Our discussion also reaffirmed that we need to plan for what likely will be the new “normal” way of doing business, even long after an economic recovery. Here are a few of what we marketing types call the BGOs, or “Blinding, Glaring, Obvious” takeaways from my AMR experience. Many of these BGOs are not new concepts. But all are worth revisiting as we adjust our business plans for 2010:

If a conversation happens in a forest and you're not there to be a part of it, did it really happen? In the online world of social media - you bet your bottom dollar it did. And an entire network of friends, fans and followers heard it, participated in it and repeated it to their friends, fans and followers. When I worked for a small town newspaper right out of college, we often joked the biggest threat to being scooped was the gossip that took place at a quaint diner downtown. There's no message tool more effective than word of mouth - especially when the topic is heated, controversial or sensational. That's how I like to think of social media. It's not really all that new to those of us who understand how gossip works - it's fast, can often be misleading (think the children's game of telephone - the more you repeat something, the more inaccurate the message becomes) and sometimes damages someone's reputation.

Cool post at SlipperyBrick.com! According to the blog, Cyclist Lance Armstrong has returned to the 2009 Tour de France to raise awareness of his Livestrong Campaign. And to cheer him on, Livestrong and Nike teamed up with DeepLocal and StandardRobot to create this robot that paints messages on the Tour de France path. The best part? You can send your own message of encouragement!

Google has recently added the ability to search news by a journalist's byline, which could help the savvy PR practitioner improve on his/her message strategy and media relations. It can be embarrassing to call a reporter about your client's great new service and find out they covered a similar story in the past week. Not to mention the eye roll you can feel coming over the phone connection as the reporter tells you, "been there, done that." Rather than getting caught for not having done your research, you now can search a month's worth of any journalist's articles. Doing so enables a savvy PR executive to craft a story pitch to his/her target reporter - the way it's supposed to be done.

As social media continues to dominate marketing, media and PR conversations, I keep getting the same question. It's a fun tool, but what's it really have to do with business? In a nutshell: There are conversations taking place about your company/business. Whether those conversations take place in the men's room, at the watercooler, at the customer service counter or online, shouldn't you know what people are saying about you?