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How to survive and thrive in a world of real time communications What is social PR? Michael Nutley – Editor in Chief, New Media Age The rise of earned media Transition of control, considerable control to consumers Markets are conversations – Cluetrain Manifesto Advertising no longer drives sales, it drives considerations. Consumers drive sales < huge shift You knew some WOM was going on but it was tricky to measure – maybe role of advertising was over-stated and the power of consumers understated.

The conversation drives the sale Engagement? Can every brand have engagement? Apple – consumers ferociously engaged Creativity can get you engagement Can my brand be active in social media – you can get social to work in any category if you do it right – it’s all about creativity Unless you can create something of value, people will engage in their own terms; it’s a huge problem The scarcity is people’s time; this engagement has to be of value to them otherwise they won’t engage How do you measure? Vanity measurements – how many friends, fans, followers. What do these things mean? Need to measure stuff that matters – e.g. how many visitors return to my site? How many visitors perform an action – e.g. how many order a brochure, how many book a test drive? Important next 12 months – what really matters, what do you want to measure? Clampdown on payment in social media – if you pay someone to tweet / blog it has to be transparent. Already happening in the USA << Advocacy is going to be harder to manage

link to ASA's policy on changes to social media regulation @mikenutley referenced. http://is.gd/NTSGXi #SocialPr Implications of social: Internally: How does social media fits within your organisation? Who should eb in charge? Marketing, advertising, customer service or is it HR?

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Who owns the space? PR, Advertising agencies (historically in charge of tone of voice), Digital agencies? Who is best suited to do it? Listening Be prepared to listen to what people are saying about you, then engage. Listen to what your customers are saying and let them influence you LEGO case study Creating new trains: brief sent in house to design teams and adult LEGO enthusiasts. Enthusiasts came back with better designs and only wanted to be paid in bricks… Katy Howell - What does social PR mean for brands? Social belongs everywhere – the brand becomes social PR – generalist attitude; need to move away from. Need a new skillset Fundamentally social media may have its roots in PR (relationship building) but is owned by no one... #socialpr Brands need to avoid social media becoming another silo Social Media is people talking to people... Do your staff love their job? Start there. #socialpr Companies looking for help untangling social media internally @katyhowells #socialpr @katyhowells making sense regarding how important internal comms is for social media. need an internal conversation #socialpr @katyhowell - Internal comms is a key & fundamental area of investment in #SocialPR, internally ppl need to understand its role Social CRM is going to be hugely important… but adoption and resources is a problem SM Crisis Big oil spill crisis – needs big crisis plan in place Employee crisis e.g. Vodafone; educating what your staff can and can’t do Consumer negativity – boils up and can create a crisis Monitoring the gaming industry - case study Monitoring Reputation management Campaign tracking Marcomms insight Business insights

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Influencer identification Monitor pre-launch, launch and post-launch Seeding content prior leads to spikes in conversations Pre-release: acquiring and sharing content Release – ownership high Post-release: reviews etc We now have a clearer picture of what drives conversation around a game’s launch and how content strategies can be used to maximise its impact: Content format, time of seeding, defined target audience, genre of game, format of game Monitoring for what your audience wants is key. Product launch: having a relevant content strategy will maximise impact. Sony Ericsson Case Study – from 300K to 3M Facebook fans in 9 months Facebook is the fan club of Sony Ericsson – it’s where we recruit brand ambassadors Marketing was launch focussed Always on = always communicating How do we drive engagement and acquisitions paths? Competitions, questions of the week, Sony Ericsson fan of the week, On-site OpenGraph implementation – spike in acquisition and engagement You have to be brave and be prepared to try things – experimental approach Just because it was right then, doesn’t mean it’s right now! Your community evolves. Just because it was right then, doesn’t mean it’s right now. Community evolves. How are you going to segment, who are you going to be talking to? Need to have a narrative over the course of the but you need to tie in hard business metrics Sony Ericsson filled the gaps in buzz with customer surveys, competitions, questions of the week. Treat content like micro-press announcements: plan, schedule align, create narrative How to identify influencers? Analytics: Klout, TRAACKR, MPACT, Ecairn, PeekYou Monitoring: Radian 6, Symosos, Alterian, SM2

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Twitter: Tweetsearch/FollowerWonk PushKart – mobile platform beta tested in New York that finds deals but they look at your social graph for likelihood to purchase based on interests Klout smart because they’re supplying information to publishers they need How to deal with negative PR in social media? Apply the same rules as if it were a traditional media crisis Humour, humility, humanness - own up, own the mistake: top tips for social media crisis management - Pete Goold #socialpr Swiftness of thought and action in response to what’s going on in the outside world. What’s an acceptable timeframe?

1) Twitter – 3 minutes to respond 2) Forum – 2 hours timeframe to respond 3) Blog – 1 day to respond

Crisis Management: you need an Evaluation Framework to handle negative conversation online Once a company incorporates Social Media into their Comms & Marketing strategy there's no opportunity for avoiding negativity Are we engaged yet? @kdpaine Old school metrics - eye balls, hits etc The phases of engagement

1) Click throughs, unique visitors, likes – unengaged eyeballs 2) Repeat visitors, Twitter, followers, comments 3) RT, repeat, comments, reposts, shares, use of hashtags, @message 4) Registration, positve sentiment, NPS 5) Trial, purchase, advocacy

The 7 steps to measuring ROI of social media

1) Define the R – what are your expected results. So what if they’re engaged? What does it mean to the organisation?

2) Define the I – what’s the investment? 3) Understand your audiences and what motivates them 4) Determine what you are benchmarking against 5) Define the metrics (what you want to become) 6) Pick a tool and undertake research 7) Analyse results and glean insight, take action, measure again

KPIs lead to goals

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Making social media work for BarclayCard PR Web relations manager who determines whether it’s a fast track complaint, PR opp or level ½ complaint Finding new ways to tell our story Finding new ways to engage with our key influencers Continuing to lead thinking internally about what social can do Blogger outreach PR companies are In and out Need to think I want to have a relationship with this blogger Describe a service via video – easier to explain than press release Why not segment your campaign? Before the campaign – hype Campaign – kick off After campaigns catch ups – campaign success stats, sales, who’s using it, what are people saying, pictures of an event, video clips of someone talking about it Create blogger hubs for those who are campaigning with you Don’t just REtweet, REcruit How to plan and execute real-time Social PR? Reading: The Business of Influence – Philip Sheldrake (out April 2011) What does success look like? Who? Topic, expertise, time zone, language What? Active listening; then creating pro-active opportunities and reacting with the appropriate content How? Appropriate tone of voice in the appropriate content format When? As timely as conversation demands Creation, Curation, Circulation and Consumption – continuously expanding capabilities for highly personalised content

Google: Sheldrake – Bullshit

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The Future of Social PR Organisations trying to get their heads around SM Stop talking about digital PR – it’s not an area of specialisation. Need to move away from silos