I recently attended my first PRSA Counselors Academy Conference in Asheville, NC. Tucked away in the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains at the Park Grove Inn, over 120 agency leaders met together to share ideas, network, and enjoy the company of one another. As one of the five student representatives invited by Steve Cody at Peppercom and Abbie Fink at HMA, I am grateful for the opportunity to see how leaders around the nation gather in an non-competitive environment to interact with one another and learn about new aspects in their profession. As a recent graduate, I am eager to start my career as a young PR professional. (Hopefully I will be working at an agency soon!) As an outcome from the conference, I have gained so much insight and knowledge from the Council Members. In addition, I feel inspired, more confident, and motivated.
Reflecting back on the conference, I decided to share my notes on the sessions I covered.
Jay Baer Creating Smashing Social Media Plans in 7 Steps
President, Convince & Convert
This session was very informative and I'm just scratching the surface. Many Council Members stated this session was worth their whole trip.
Baer introduced social media as where a conversation takes place.
"Social Media is not a conversation, its where a conversation takes place"
Remember, it is what are you saying and what you are doing that matters. What are the concerns about social media networking? How do you know you are going to be social first, what kind of relationship does your client want to have and how does social media make that possible? Tools always change. Here is the list of the 7 steps to social media. Enjoy!
1. Build a Team, Build an ark
-Get on board. Social media and real time web puts marketing in the center. The legal , finance ops..take 1 or 2 ppl from every corner of the business-ops, customer service, legal, senior management.
Social Media has to be based on passion. –if you don’t love social media, you suck at social media. Don’t force people on the team, empower them to make social decisions in the company.
-Set timelines. Committee needs to gather data-need to know who are the customer targets-demographics.
Any current social metrics(how many twitter followers do they have?)
Business metrics (save money or bring money-otherwise, it’s a waste of time)
2. Listen
-Listening queries: what is being said about us? What’s being said about competitors, what’s our sentiment and share of voice? Who is saying it? Where are they saying it? What’s the point?
-You need to know WHY you are doing it. You need a compelling strategy.
Generate awareness for company or product. Transit sales and your strategies to others.
Impact social media success Information to know:
- Only 2 out of 1 thousand Facebook updates makes the News Feed
- The best time to tweet is Friday at 4pm
- The more links you tweet, the less likely people are to click on the link
- The average Facebook user fans have 4 new pages/month
- Photo and video content is more popular than status updates on Facebook
- Social Media is pervasive: 83% Active
- There are 20 hours of video uploaded on Youtube every minute
- 3 billion photos uploaded on Facebook every month
- 2 millions Tweets every hour.
3. What's the Point?
-Break social media into parts: PR and influence outreach, campaigns, Inboudmarketing and Thought leadership, Brand Communication, Social CRM
-Set smart, achievable goals for social media. Be specific about your agency and what you will do.
Awareness? The Share of Voice-Deliverable: one time report on social media presence and opportunity vs competitors
4. Analyze Audience
Know your demographics and find out how they are using social media.
Is it by blogging, updating status on Twitter or Facebook, posting ratings?
Useful site for research: Forrester Research at http://www.forrester.com/
5. Find Your One Thing
What's your passion? Passion is the gasoline of social media. Find your one thing and make people feel it.
To do this, Listen and Watch, Ask Your Customers, Ask Your Agency
6. Select Outposts
Find where people are using social media. All companies are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.How to find what people are using the most of? Visit Flowtown.com
7. Pick Metrics
Web traffic from outpost by using google analytics. Web Analytics can track:
Where People Came From
Search Term Used to Find the Site
Whether They’ve Been There Before
What Pages They Look At, and For How Long
Carol Schiro Greenwald: Emotional Context of Rational Thought
Professional Services Marketing Consultant, MarketingPartnersta
Greenwald did a wonderful job on explaining how we learn through emotions. Did you know that we forget 95 percent of what we know? Also, that we only remember things that are important to us at a given time? My boyfriend sure didn't buy that one, but he didn't attend this session. I agree 100 percent with Greenwald. Here are a few notes I was able to take. By the way, there is no such thing as multitasking. Stop what you are doing and just read this.
How we learn
We were born to explore. We learn by testing. We focus on errors. We remember the negatives before the positives. Most important because it teaches if we are going to live or die.
2 percent of our body weight is in the brain and 20 percent of our body keeps are brain going.
Information Overload
We can only hold 7 to 10 pieces of information at a time.
And we forget 95 percent of what we know.
Mulitasking?
There is no such thing as multitasking. Multitasking cannot be done because we can only focus on one thing at a time.
David Henry: A Sleeping Giant
President & CEO, Telenoticias LLC
Henry introduced his session in Spanish. Hola. Como estan todos? After a few words, he switched the conversation in English and asked if we understood what he said. Only a couple of hands rose. Henry used the excerise to show Hispanics feel when agencies market their product in English. This session was very important because explained how the majority of agencies ignore the fastest growing market: the Hispanic. Henry also gave suggestions on how we can approach the Hispanic market.
46.9 million is the estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2008. By 2050, it is estimated that 30 percent of the population will be Hispanic.
Marketing
Hispanic or Latino is a person from a Spanish speaking country of the Americas. Hispanics or Latinos are not from one nationality or one culture, but from many different origins. Research and pick a demographic to create value-based messages. Buying decisions are family oriented.
How to reach Hispanic Audience
- Adapt to market to the Hispanic Audience. Research the culture and gather an understanding (This also applies to other consumer groups and niche markets as well.)
- Become bilingual
- Understand the core values of the culture. Buying decisions are family oriented.
- Communicate with Hispanic organization around the community
- Remember: Even if you know Spanish, it doesn't mean you know the Hispanic market
82 percent of Hispanics have computers. Fifty-eight percent of the total Hispanic population is online and 55 percent use Spanish language sites. Use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter to connect with family and hispanic and non hispanic friends.
Darryl Salerno: English as a First Language & Roundtable: Networking for Senior-Level Professionals
CEO, Second Quadrant Solutions
English as a First Language
This session was one of the most funniest sessions I attended. Though it was a bit humilating when we took our quizzes, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Here are some notes I jotted down.
Redundant words
•Free gift. A gift means free
•Toll-free 800 number. All 800 numbers are toll-free.
•For free. Free is not for something, it's nothing
Pronunciation
•Bade is pronounced "BAD," not "BAYD."
•Forte. The word forte, means "one’s strong point" and is pronounced like the word "fort," in a single syllable, not "fortay." The pronunciation "fortay" is used exclusively for the symbol music term to play loud
•Hostile. The second syllable of hostile is pronounced like "till," not "tile."
Definition
•Imply vs. infer. The person making a statement is not inferring; he is implying. The person hearing the statement is inferring based on what the person is saying.
•Loathe vs. loath. Loathe means to hate. Loath means to be reluctant to do something
•Verbal vs. oral. In proper usage, verbal means "of or relating to words," whether oral or written.
Roundtable Networking for Senior-Level Professionals
Even though I am far away from being a senior-level professional, I found this roundtable to be very useful.
- Don't contact someone just because you need something, remember to stay in contact. It only takes a couple minutes to call someone up just to see how they are doing.
- Be a farmer. Plants the seeds today. Start networking.
- It's not who you know, it's who they know. Make strong relationships with people
- Remember that it's not about you, it's about them. Ask about them and their agency.
- Give, give, give. If you give to people they will feel obligated to give back. Suggest ideas, quotes, books. Leave someone feeling positive.
- Read people's body language. 30 percent of communication is auditory while 55 percent is body language
- You have to be persistent. You cannot give up.
- You need exposure. People need to know you.
- Uncover common interests and experiences
- Always remember, as a human being you are your own brand.
Vice President, Linhart Public Relations
I found this session useful. Womer discussed how leaders can retain their best during a recession and other problems in the job market.
Define clear roles and career paths
Employees need to understand what they are expected to do and what they can do to continue to grow.
Start an annual performance review with quarterly check-ins to discuss progress and priorities. Establish two or three goals-something meaningful, measurable, and reasonable
Measure Satisfaction
Determine what your employees want and need to feel engaged. aggregate results openly shared, celebrated and acted upon
Get your employees off the sidelines and into the game
Make employees feel as if they have ownership in the agency. Have regular staff meetings to reiterate firm goals and progress updates
Upgrade or create recognition program that is meaningful to employees
Peer-to-peer recognition that allows team members to celebrate each other's accomplishments.
Ask questions and listen
It's important for supervisors to ask questions and act upon response. What would make your work more satisfying? Which of your talents, strengths or interest are not fully utilized? What do you like the most and least about your work environment?
I found the sessions to be the very useful and I would like to acknowledge all of other incredible people I've met during at the Conference in Asheville, NC. I truly enjoyed the conversations and advice from each Council Member. Thank you for opening your doors to me and giving me such an invaluable and wonderful experience.
