How I spent my summer at @ButlerTill agency [video]

Over this past summer I was lucky enough to spend some time at a Rochester, N.Y. agency Butler/Till seeing how they manage an enormous volume of advertising work while still staying sane.

My visit was part of a new Academic-In-Residence (AIR) program devised by myself and company president Peter Infante with the blessing of Butler/Till’s principals Sue Butler and Tracy Till (both of whom, I have to say, are fun people to work with).

For fellow college professors and instructors I can’t recommend this type of program too highly.

Where else can you spend several days being a fly on the wall and gaining a true understanding of current challenges and how agency types are meeting them?

How else can you chat with people on all strata of the business about what they are doing and what skills they find they use every day or not at all?

It also helped that Butler/Till is a fun and creative place to be with spontaneous games breaking out, pets visiting the office and (the week I was there) the bosses at the grills cooking out for all the staff.

At the end of my time there video wiz Alex Weiser interviewed me about my experience at Butler/Till.

Here are five excerpts and what each is about:

• How I was impressed by Butler/Till’s evolution while still handling a massive volume of work.
• The volume of work and unbridled enthusiasm that makes Butler/Till a great place to work.
• How thinking about the next iteration of yourself and your business is so important.
• What goes into "the sausage" behind the scenes at an agency and how Butler/Till is making a "caviar sausage".
• The changes in marketing, advertising and public relations where the skills are combining into a virtual Swiss Army knife-approach to business communications.

So, thanks again to Butler/Till for the opportunity and I hope the program continues for many years to come.

Social Influence: 3 Questions for Marketing and PR Pros

How important is social influence and why should we care?


Those two questions have been buzzing around my head like maddening bees for days now as I prepare a discussion for a Social Media for PR class at RIT.


With the seeming boom in social influence measuring tools (Klout, PeerIndex, Empire Avenue, TwentyFeet, to name a few) in the end what do all of these scores mean if you are a marketer or a public relations professional?


So to find out what the world thinks I’m simply going to ask three questions and see who responds.


For this unscientific survey I will ask people active in social media and perhaps not-so-active in social media to give short answers (by Twitter DM or "@" message to @mikefixs if necessary).


The three questions:


1. Why does social influence matter to a brand, business or organization?


2. How or does social influence determine who you interact with?


3. Has social influence on your end or the customer/client’s end played a role in a successful or better outcome?


Please use the Comments area below to answer.


Any help you can give in spreading this request to others in social media would be greatly appreciated.

Does Klout have a PR crisis?

With all the buzz in the past week on social media about the change in the Klout Score algorithm you might be wondering if Klout has a public relations crisis on its hands.

Seemingly across the social-sphere people who had come to place value on their Klout Score were upset that the scores had dropped suddenly - in some cases significantly. (For some background see Klout Changes ... Scores Drop and Complaints Rise)

Curious about whether Klout was facing a PR crisis I turned to my friend Jim Reynolds, the Strategic Accounts Manager, Social Media Solutions at Alterian - a company that among other things offers SM2 , a social media sentiment monitoring tool.

He ran the reports and, in a nutshell, Klout has upset a relatively small, although possibly influential, cadre of its users.

The details

Jim pulled reports for the time period Oct. 20 through Nov. 1 that focused on the term "Klout Score" to examine such things as total searches, sentiment and where the conversations were taking place.

First he looked at total searches. There was a big spike in searched on Oct. 26 and 27 (the day the change was implemented and the day after that). But by Oct. 28 it was down to half of the peak and by Oct. 29 searches were back to normal levels.

Then Jim examined sentiment. He and I were surprised to see that in the timeframe of this report almost 79 percent of the mentions were neutral, almost 11 percent were very negative and almost 10 percent were very positive.

Next up was a look at the number of searches by day. During the spike in search Oct. 26 and 27 the numbers of neutral, very negative and very positive results mirror the above sentiment rankings and the total number of searches (around 7,000 per day at the peak) are what Jim described as "a lot for Klout, but not a lot for a brand." He cited Home Depot, which typically gets more than 8,000 every day.

Then he looked at which countries might be seeing the most interest in the topic and hands down it was in the United States with more than 30,000 results. By contrast, the next highest total was that of Canada where there were 1,213 results.

Conclusion

I asked Jim for his expert opinion as to what all of this means for Klout.

"It’s a lot of people in social media talking about something in social media," he said, going on to say this this is unlikely to be a PR crisis for Klout.

In terms of sentiment Klout has a relatively small percentage of a relatively small group who were "extremely negative."

The hard thing to judge, according to Jim, is how much influence or reach the individuals making "extremely negative" comments might be. Given their relative small numbers and their relatively short-lived interest Jim thinks Klout will be OK.

So, what do you think? Was all the discussion around the change to the Klout Score just a "tempest in a teacup" or will there be public relations consequences for Klout in the future?

Possibly related posts
Klout changes ... scores drop and complaints rise
Klout questions for CEO Joe Fernandez
Klout responds to questions and critics

What are essential social media skills for PR?

Update Aug. 4: Since this original post the number of PR professionals who have taken the survey has risen to more than 100. Among the results the percentages have remained remarkably the same. - Mike Johansson

Twitter or Facebook? Blogs or Wikis? Search Engine Optimization or social media presence management?
What should graduating students interested in public relations careers know about social media tools and how and when to use them?
That was the question I posed via a three-question Survey Monkey survey recently as I started prepping for a new class called Social Media for PR that I’ll teach in the Winter Quarter at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
More than 60 public relations professionals responded to my admittedly un-scientific survey and the results were sometimes intuitive, sometimes surprising and always insightful. Here’s what I learned:

How important is it that PR students understand the various social media tools?
The results (with the percentage of respondents giving each tool a “10” on a 10-point scale) were:
• Twitter – 63 percent
• Facebook – 55 percent
• Blogs – 52 percent
• Social presence management tools (such as Tweetdeck) – 50 percent
• Linkedin – 50 percent
• YouTube – 41 percent
• Wikis – 23 percent
• Flickr – 14 percent
• Social bookmarking – 12 percent
• Geo-location services (such as Foursquare) – 9 percent
• Social gaming – 4 percent

Which tools and techniques MUST students completely understand how to use for PR purposes? Participants were asked rank-order the list: For example, only one tool or technique could be a “10” and only one could be a “9.”
The results (with the percentage of respondents giving each tool a “10” on a 10-point scale) were:
• SEO (search engine optimization) – 33 percent
• Twitter – 19 percent
• Facebook – 18 percent
• Blogs – 12 percent
The results (with the percentage of respondents giving each tool a “9” on a 10-point scale) were:
• Twitter – 23 percent
• Blogs – 22 percent
• SEO – 21 percent
• Facebook – 18 percent
The results (with the percentage of respondents giving each tool an “8” on a 10-point scale) were:
• Linkedin – 26 percent
• Facebook – 24 percent
• Blogs – 20 percent
• Twitter – 15 percent
The high ranking of SEO, frankly, surprised me, while the consistency with which Twitter, Facebook and blogs were given an 8, 9 or a 10 makes it clear they are the big three for now in PR.

How important is it that PR students understand how to use social media for the various public relations functions?
The results (with the percentage of respondents giving each tool a “10” on a 10-point scale) were:
• Crisis management – 63 percent
• Media relations – 60 percent
• Community relations – 57 percent
• Campaign management – 52 percent
• Employee relations – 32 percent
• B2B relations – 31 percent
• Investor relations – 19 percent
• Government relations – 13 percent
All of which tells me a couple of things:
First, social media tools are seen as an effective part of the PR toolkit for the top four on this list and less so for the bottom four.
Second, there may be tremendous potential for developing techniques for better using social media tools in the bottom four categories. Based on some of the comments at the end of the survey this is a chicken-and-egg situation where PR pros are unsure how involved in social media these four groups may be and therefore have not given a lot of thought to how to use them here.

Overall, the responses are tremendously valuable as I develop the course and I’m extremely grateful to the PR pros who took the time to complete the survey.
I’m also impressed that in a very short time (two years or less by my estimation) PR practitioners have gone from casting a wary eye at social media tools and tactics to embracing them as a way to connect with and inform publics everywhere.

Possibly related post
PR crisis management in the ‘Twitter Age’

How do you cook up a new name?

One of the biggest challenges for a public relations professional can be helping a business find a name for a new product, a new service or even a new company.

Add to this the complication of trying to come up with a name that works across all media, including social media and, well, you can see how the dream of the new can quickly become a nightmare.

I was working at a startup six years ago and it wasn’t the financing, the staffing, the office space, the suppliers, the distribution or any one of countless other problems that took the most time. No, it was the name of the new product.

Even though I was working with some incredibly creative types (including the great Rob Westcott - @robtnowes) it took days and days to get to the name.

So, in a nutshell, here is the four-step recipe I’ve since practiced each time I need to cook up a new name:

Step 1: Creative thinking

Start by writing a list of words that relate to your new product, new service or new business.

Now mix up those words in interesting ways – using Scrabble tiles, index cards or a whiteboard/chalkboard can help.

Are there words you can combine in playful and intriguing ways?

Are there words that can have multiple meanings?

Are there words you MUST use?

Always keep track of all the names you come up with. Some that don’t click right now might click tomorrow with just a small tweak.

Now write out a dozen or so potential company names and move on to …

Step 2: A pinch of luck

Take some time to look over this list:

Are any of the names distinctive?

Do some of the names resonate more than others?

Can some be taken in a bad way?

Which are easy to spell … consistently?

Which are pronounceable?

Are any incomprehensible?

Run your favorite(s) by a few people:

Do the names sound pleasant to their ears?

Do they instantly get the meaning?

Do they have a favorite?

Do they reject any of them outright?

If you eliminate any names here, go back to Step 1 and come up with more. The key is to have many that you can test when you move on to …

Step 3: The secret ingredient … fun!

OK, so you have several names. Are they fun?

The real secret to a great name is one that is memorable. The shortest route to “memorable” is being fun.

Are their words or word parts you can switch to add a smile? Are there letters you can replace with other letters (“y” for “i” for example) or numbers you can use to replace word parts (“2” instead of “to” or “4” instead of “for”).

Step 4: Finding a URL

A business name that does not work on the Web is a name that has no use.

By using one of the free web tools to check (two I like are Who Is and Go Daddy) you can find out which of your favorites is available.

If a name you like is available as a URL, great! If not, will some small adjustment make it work? If not, do you need to go back to Step 1?

Like all good recipes, this one can always be adjusted to suit your needs. Happy (and creative) cooking as you come up with the name for your next social media business.

Was this post helpful? What did I miss?


Related reading:
Where do creative ideas come from?

PR crisis management in the ‘Twitter Age’

“In the Twitter age” is a term I heard this past week from a slightly frustrated public relations professional talking about how he’s been forced to modify his crisis management plan.

And change he must. The best-laid crisis management plan will quickly unravel when information – true, untrue or even malicious – starts spreading on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

So how do PR professionals get from “being there” in social media to modifying their crisis management plan in the “Twitter age”?

Engagement: More than ever it’s important that solid social relationships are being built before a crisis breaks. Doing the basics on social platforms is a start; being fully engaged with social audiences will help save your reputation at a time of crisis.

Resources: If you don’t have someone on social media fulltime then you need to have them on it most of the time. Look at how your organization currently spends time. How much effort is still going into maintaining relationships with a few traditional media types? The ratio of time devoted to traditional media vs. social media needs to be flipped … even if slowly at first.

Listening: From basic free tools such as Google Alerts to paid services such as Alterian’s SM2 or Radian6 you can’t afford to NOT be monitoring conversations in social media around your products, your organization and your key people. You don’t know what you’re missing – literally. And that should be a very frightening prospect.

Black pages: If your news web pages don’t have “black pages” (pages designed to go live in response to various issues) you need to prepare them now. Every organization can predict certain types of issues that are likely to arise. Having a landing page that answers some likely first questions and that can go up on your website at a moment’s notice is smart planning.

First responders: You’ve already assigned responsibilities during a crisis, but whose job is it to manage social media messages and to respond to any inaccurate messaging? What is on that person’s checklist? Not responding is no longer an option … if it ever was. In the social world silence can equal acknowledgement that things are bad. Your social media first responder needs to understand this and the critical role they are playing in social messaging.

Prioritizing: Which social media platforms need the most attention? Without a doubt Twitter is an instant news service and deserves the most attention. Don’t be fooled by the numbers of Twitter users in your organization, your industry or your community. Twitter users are some of the most-educated, most-active and, possibly worst for you in a crisis, most-likely to spread what they see on Twitter via word-of-mouth. In other words their broad influence should be of great concern. Facebook is also a default communication platform by people who are concerned. Be sure to message there too and note that once the heat of the moment dies down the conversation around the crisis will likely linger longer on Facebook.

Follow-up: Once the crisis has passed don’t ignore social media. Find a way to post a reassuring video message from the CEO on YouTube or have someone in authority blog about the event and its successful outcome … load it up with photographs. Be sure to reach out to those who were most active during the crisis to alert them to this follow-up.

Can PR professionals control messaging on social media platforms during a crisis? No. But they can be there, be engaged and can quickly tamp down the small sparks of inaccuracy before they become damaging firestorms of bad information. Social media is changing the PR professionals’ job description, what else about crisis management did I leave out?

Possibly related posts:
10 Ideas to Help Business Navigate Social Media
Just How Big is Social Media?

The Social Media Release

Best Practices and Some Examples

The Social Media Release – also called the Social Media Press Release and Social Media News Release – has rapidly become the way for anyone trying to “get the word out” to provide all the resources necessary for anyone from citizen-customer to journalist to find the information they want (in the format they like it).

So, what is a Social Media Release? In a nutshell it is a page, usually a Web page, that collects words, images, audio, video, links, social bookmarks and more around the topic you care about. And by “you” we mean both the person spreading the word and the person looking for information.

Background: In a 2006 post titled Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die! blogger Tom Foremski tapped into a broad media sentiment that the days of the standard old-school press release needed to end. His main points: Cut out the spin and provide information in many different formats

It was then that Todd Defren of Boston’s Shift Communications suggested a better way: the Social Media Press Release – a more conversational and useful collection of information and supporting materials. He offered up a Social Media Press Release template

This was followed on the blog Conversation Marketing by Ian Lurie wondering about the lack of an HTML version and so he made one. You can preview Lurie’s Social Media Release or download the HTML as a Zip file.

10 Must-Haves in a Social Media Release

Contacts: Information – front and center – on how to reach the author of the release, the key person quoted in the release and the online newsroom of the releasing organization.

Words: A brief description of the point you are trying to make (with no spin) and why any reader might care to check out all of your wonderful, related content. Aim for 250 to 750 words – no more. Be sure to optimize for the search engines by including one or more of your keyword phrases.

Images:That are linked to from Flickr or some other online resource where the entire album is available.

Audio: Saved as a podcast on iTunes or saved on your server/Web site as a common-format audio file that is linked to from the release.

Video: Which is hosted at YouTube allowing consumers to watch it directly and journalists to grab the embed code for possible inclusion on their own web sites.

Print It/Email It buttons: These are no longer “nice touches,” but are absolutely expected.

”Share This Page” buttons: These invite visitors to share your content with others through social bookmarking and social media sites … and makes it very easy to do. For example clicking on the Twitter button opens a Twitter window asking the user to sign in to their account and pre-fills the Status Box with a short message about your content and shortened URL leading right to it. Other buttons should cover the major Social Media information sharing sites likely to be used by your target audiences.

Links: Be sure to include links everywhere. The more links you have to targeted and relevant information, the company’s principals and the company home page the more interaction you encourage. This also doesn’t hurt your Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, efforts either.

Comments box: Make it easy for anyone to talk back to you. No-registration-needed comments fields are best as even a simple registration process will deter many from taking the time to leave a comment. And you do want to hear from everybody and anybody. A name and an email address is all you need ask for.

Invitation to sign up for notifications: Invite anyone to share their email to be alerted to future Social Media Releases.


Some examples of good Social Media Releases (SMR):

- Ford’s 2008 Ford Focus release

- Coca-Cola’s Virtual Thirst competition for Second Life release

- Cincom’s announcement that its Smalltalk software programming language had won the Dynamic Language Shootout competition



Related Content:
Social Media and Public Relations

5 Ways PR Can Benefit From Being in the Social World

Social Media has can appear to be a one-size-fits-all solution for businesses or organizations – a way to fold sales, marketing, customer care and public relations into one do-it-all tool.

While there may be occasions where this is true it is clearly not in the best interests of the brand, business or organization to make Social Media THE answer.

Which brings me to thinking about Public Relations and how Social Media has taken the once one way talking-head-to-media-head conversation and made it more universal.

Here are Five Ways Social Media can help in the new Public Relations world:

1. Relationship building: By connecting with key influencers on Social Media PR professionals now have a chance to truly understand what it is those people care about. Knowing this they can then target their messages more effectively.

It can also help with your transparency and trust factors. In their informative book Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand Shel Holtz and John C Havens and say: “The flood of Social Media has brought in an age of digital transparency that is putting the power to create or destroy a reputation into the hands of consumers.” They argue that being transparent and trustworthy upfront mitigates much of the danger lurking in Social Media for brands and businesses.

2. Message delivery: This seems obvious, but there are PR professionals who still see Social Media as a “fad.” But, really it is a highly efficient and effective way to engage important channels from the small media audience to the mass community you wish to be a part of.

David Meerman Scott in his excellent book The New Rules of Marketing & PR says the old PR meant trying to impress a few media types in hopes of having the media tell your story, but the new PR means tremendous opportunity to tell your own story directly to customers and the community.

3. Branding: This has always been about getting g the word out on what makes you, your brand or business different from anything else. How better to do it than directly to the customer/community?

But there is also another aspect of branding that too many PR professionals do not understand – SEO or search engine optimization. This is the ability to ensure that all messaging around what you are promoting contains the words and phrases you want to “own” and can assure your brand is top of the search engine rankings. In today’s world that usually means top of mind too.

4. Listening: Just paying attention to what is being said generally and what is being said in Social Media specifically about your brand, business or organization gives you insights previously unavailable to you without a lot of (expensive) research.

You can go low-tech and, for example, set up free Google Alerts notifications or you can go high-tech using services such as Techrigy and Radian 6. The important thing is to do it so that you can know what is being said and where, and also acknowledge your promoters and reach out to your detractors.

5. Crisis management: So all the relationship building and monitoring has still not avoided a crisis? Social Media can help. Brands and businesses can use their presences to offer an apology, offer reassurance, to be seen making amends, to apologize again and then to monitor the response.

In the new media reality the same consumers or community members who were outraged by the YouTube video or the shared blog post are unlikely to be reassured by the company or organization’s official statement as related on broadcast news or in a newspaper. What is far more likely is that they will learn of your timely and effective response through a shared tweet on Twitter or a link to a social bookmarking site.

What is true of all five ways Social Media can help Public Relations is that they take place where many, if not most of the people you want to reach already hang out. Isn’t it time for PR to fully embrace Social Media?

Some great bloggers on Social Media and PR:

Brian Solis has been a blogger on the subject – PR 2.0 for more than 10 years and co-wrote Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

Deirdre Breakendridge has co-written Putting the Public Back in Public Relations among several books on the topic and blogs at PR 2.0 Strategies

Shel Holtz is co-author of Tactical Transparency and has a blog called A Shel of My Former Self

Jason Falls has a burgeoning reputation as a Social Media thinker especially as it relates to PR. His blog is called Social Media Explorer