Teaching PR

Meet the Teacher: Mihaela Vorvoreanu

Today's "Meet the Teacher" features one of my favorite social media friends (as in, without social media I wouldn't know her very well) Mihaela Vorvoreanu of Clemson University. Among other things, she's 2008 fellow of the Society for New Communication Research, and she's always willing to give new social media tools a whirl. Here's what she had to say:

Q. What is the purpose of your blog? Which other social media do you use?

A. I intend my blog to be a site of establishing connections among ideas and people: PR educators, practitioners, students. I hope to translate some of the academic theories to show their utility for PR practice and to make sense of PR practice in light of concepts and theories.

I'm on Twitter (@prprof_mv), flickr, del.icio.us, FriendFeed, Plurk, Facebook, LinkedIn, Second Life, a couple of niche networks on Ning (PR Open Mic is of interest to your readers). I get accounts and try out several things, but I don't always end up using all of them, of course!

Q. Tell us a little about your school and how PR is taught there.

A. The PR courses at Clemson have just undergone some revamping and restructuring. We follow the classical intro-techniques-campaigns structure. All the courses I teach include social media, and from time to time I teach a special topics course in Internet PR.

Q. Your discussions at the Edelman Digital Bootcamp showed that you're integrating social media into many of your classes. What are some of the most successful ways you've incorporated social media into the classroom?

A. I think students benefit most from case studies and examples. I get my students to use twitter, to blog, and read blogs. What I'd like to do is help students create their social media habits. Of course, they use social media all the time even if they haven't heard the term. But I'd like them to understand how to use it professionally, and how to keep on learning by participating in the professional online community - even when I'm not around!

Q. Do you have any advice for other PR educators who are considering starting a blog or getting involved in social media?

A. Social media is not about technology, it's a culture. Take the time to listen and learn the culture, then jump in, don't be afraid. Your computer won't blow up, I promise :)

The Week's Best, 28 July 2008

• Twitter for Beginners -- 5 Things to Do As a New Twitter User, Darren Rowse
• Not All Social Media Fun and Games, Todd Defren
• The 11 Skills of the PR Practitioner of the Future, John Bell; A Sort-of-Unified Definition of Public Relations, Bill Sledzik; and Tomorrow's PR Practitioner, Lauren Vargas
• Mapping Social Media on the Weather Channel, Dan Greenfield
• Blogging's Glass Ceiling, Kara Jesella (New York Times)
• Blogger or Journalist?, Toby Bloomberg
• 10 Business Lessons from Tibetan Monks, Anna Farmery
• 1.3 Billion Now Registered to the Top 60 Social Networks, Sean Moffitt

Connect 2008 Web site, blog up and registration open

The Connect 2008 Web site and the Connect 2008 blog are both up and running, and registration for professionals and educators is now open. (We're holding student registration information until classes start in August.)

The program hasn't been finalized yet, but speakers will include Kami Huyse, of My PR PRo and the Communication Overtones blog; Bert DuMars, SVP of Newell Rubbermaid; Jim Fetig and Kathi Wallace of Georgia Tech's comm/public affairs office; and keynote speaker Peter Himler of Flatiron Communications and The Flack blog. The Connect 2008 blog will run a post on each of the speakers during the next couple of months.

We are limiting the number of seats, so if you're interested, register soon!

Portfolios guest post on Culpwrit

One of the most popular search terms that lands people on this blog is "public relations portfolio" (or some variation on that). During the last year or so I've been using the Campaigns class lab fee to buy inexpensive but professional portfolios so our graduating seniors have no excuse for not putting one together. But, I think it's a topic we may not be emphasizing enough in preparing students for careers in public relations.

So, when Ron Culp (of Ketchum and the Culpwrit blog) asked me to write a guest post on the topic, I jumped at the chance. In his intro to the post, Ron says only about four out of 10 job candidates bring one to their interviews -- what an obvious but apparently overlooked way to let yourself shine!

The Week's Best, 21 July 2008

• Another Good Example of the Risks of Guerrilla Marketing in a Post-9/11 World, Corinne Weisgerber
• Forrester Report: Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing, 2008, Jeremiah Owyang
• 50 Most Influential Female Bloggers, Jarkko Laine
• 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Internship, Newly Corporate Blog
• A Primer for Nonprofits: Using Google Analytics, Beth Kanter
• User Generated Context (downloadable PDF), Havas Media Lab (via Elizabeth Albrycht)
• A Seat at the Table, Daniel Lally

Campaigns class event: Countdown to Kickoff

Today my campaigns students got to work at our client's big event, the third annual Countdown to Kickoff.

Although the team didn't plan the event, they publicized it in the Athens area and tried using social media tactics for the first time on behalf of the fundraiser for children's health.

The results aren't in yet, but I hope the team benefitted from attending the event, working with the "celebs" -- current and past UGA football players, watching the media do their thing, and just observing how the event worked. (Not to mention sweating in the astroturf-multiplied heat. I have a new respect for athletes who actually perform on that stuff.) They also asked everyone who attended "where are you from and how did you hear about this event?" We'll be able to gauge Athens attendance and the effectiveness of some of the team's tactics from the answers to those questions. More on that when the results are in.

Update on Connect '08

The Connect conference team -- Grady graduate student Kristin English, undergraduate Liz Azzolino, public service director Diane Murray and event coordinator Karen Andrews, and I -- is well underway in planning the second Connect conference, to be held Sept. 19-20 here at UGA. We've confirmed several speakers, including Kami Huyse, Peter Himler, and Bert DuMars, and have acquired a sponsor (to be announced next week, along with a couple more speakers).

To keep it small and interactive, this year we are limiting participation, so if you're interested you'll need to register early-- I'll let you know when registration opens. You can also follow @UGAconnect on Twitter (same account as last year), and I'll let you know when the blog is up and running.

The Week's Best for PR students, 14 July 2008

Lots to read this week. Check out these posts:

• Client Service and the Job Interview, Leo Bottary  
• Six Best Practices for the Fair Use of Video, Kami Huyse
• Intelligent Dialogue: Millenials (downloadable PDF), Porter Novelli
• The Social Web Analytics eBook (downloadable PDF), Philip Sheldrake
• Scheme to Blame Intern for PR Fraud Fails, Ryan Tate
• its gr8 2b able 2 text..., Dan Santow
• To Friend Or Not To Friend, Cheryl Smith
• 12 Tips On Creating Great Content for Social Media, Matt McGee
• Getting Started With Social Media -- A Guide and Resource List, Jared Goralnick

Also, David Reich, who did a great post for my "12 Things" list, has two more interesting posts for students and newbies:

• PR Competence vs. Experience -- Which Is More Important?
• Cheap Labor

Book review (kind of): Tuned In

I jumped at the chance to review Tuned In, by Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott, because I used David's last book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, in my word-of-mouth communication class last semester, and both my students and I liked how it worked. Unfortunately, Tuned In is much more a marketing book, and I don't feel qualified to analyze their take on product development and other marketing issues. If it's PR you're interested in, stick with The New Rules.

Nonetheless, there are some worthwhile takeaways from the PR side as well. Their basic premise is that "tuned in" companies go through a six-step process to understand how to create and market products that people want to buy: find unresolved problems, understand buyer personas (which is explained in more detail in New Rules), quantify the impact, create breakthrough experiences, articulate powerful ideas, and establish authentic connections. My absolute favorite thing about this book is a simple sentence that I will use in class from now on: "Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant." My students will tell you that I don't often keep my opinion to myself, but that simple sentence is a lot more polite than "It doesn't matter what you think or I think," and more to the point, it explains why it doesn't matter.

I also appreciated the book's emphasis on potential, not just current, customers. The authors identify potential customers as the most important category to spend time with, and they point out that salespeople can only identify with what current customers want, need, or like. Potential customers have to be considered a separate category and may be looking for something entirely different.

Finally, the authors state that "Authenticity beats 'messages' every time," a point also made in New Rules, but one that can't, in my opinion, be overstated for PR people working in the social media sphere. The book is particularly critical of "PR campaigns" (the name of my class this semester): "If you're engaged in a 'campaign' you're probably working too hard." Communication should focus on what the customer, not the company, wants; if you have what the customer wants, you shouldn't have to work so hard to sell it. My students are "campaigning" (hard) this semester on behalf of a fundraiser that benefits children's health, and there's a fundamental difference between that and the kinds of products that serve as examples in the book. But the larger point is, I think, true. The authors tell us to stop interrupting people with "messages," stop using jargon, stop spinning, and start providing what the customer wants.

The Week's Best, 7 July 2008

• The Question of Privacy on Twitter, Ben Matthews
• Culpwrit: Guiding the Career in Public Relations, Ron Kulp (Ketchum, Chicago)
• Calling Students Dumb is Just Dumb, Heather Yaxley
• The Internet Tail Isn't So Long After All, Steven Silvers
• Social Media and the Crisis in Zimbabwe, David Wescott
• A Work of Electronic Literature for Each Web 2.0 Tool, Jill Walker
• Who Has More Data about Gen Y: Facebook or the US Government?, Jeremiah Owyang

Edelman academic summit, part 3: misc. thoughts

At the summit I was most interested to learn about ways companies are using social media with their employees. Starbucks has a confidential network for employees to talk about ideas, problems and solutions. American Express asked its employees to list pop culture references to AmEx and got back much more than they expected -- everything from hip-hop and country music to movies and TV shows -- and then they generated ideas about how to promote all that. The employees could have fun, learn about brands and absorb company values.

We had a chance to meet Jesse Jackson and Dan Edelman at a cocktail reception at the Edelmans' home. As I historian I suppose I looked at these men with a different perspective than most of the attendees. I see Mr. Jackson through the prism of (all three volumes of) Taylor Branch. When Mr. Edelman mentioned that he had some psychological warfare documents from World War II in a box somewhere in their home, I begged him to donate them to the Mass Communication History Center at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, which already has collections from John Hill, Earl Newsom, Arthur Page and others. He said, "But they're not about public relations," and I said, "It doesn't matter!" I hope he'll consider it.

The weasel moment: a representative of Unilever answered a question by Brad Rawlins of BYU about the inherent conflict between the Axe and Dove campaigns -- particularly relevant because of the response in the social media sphere (like the YouTube mashup video based on "Onslaught") and the title of the panel was something about branding and corporate reputation -- by saying the company did have an answer but he didn't know what it was; they just try to maximize each brand in the space. I would have to say it confirmed pretty much everything I already thought about Unilever. Corporate reputation, right?

My biggest takeaway: measurement is where the action is. Time to move beyond experimenting with this stuff and figure out what it's actually doing.

As for Edelman, I walked away impressed. No other big agency or organization has put its resources (time, money, talent) into PR education the way Edelman has. The agency isn't perfect, but it's put its money where its mouth is, through two educators' summits, in New York and Chicago, and the bootcamp for students held here at UGA. It's one thing to criticize PR education, and quite another to do something about it.

Other posts about the summit:

Gary Schlee (recently retired from Centennial College)

Sean Moffitt (aka Buzz Canuck)

Neville Hobson (report on the Hobson & Holtz Report podcast)

Robert French (Auburn University) is posting videos on PR Open Mic

Richard Edelman

Addition: Barbara Nixon (Georgia Southern) links to a few others

Edelman academic summit, part 2: measurement

One of the first topics to come up, and the one that kept coming up at the summit, was measurement. I must admit that since my research training is in historical methods, this is my weakest area in understanding social media. Nonetheless, my acquaintance with Katie Paine keeps it front and center in my brain, so I took good notes during the "Monitoring and Measuring Conversations" session with Marcel LeBrun and Sean Moffitt.

Marcel started by identifying the top 10 conversations to monitor.

10. The Complaint –respond quickly and transparently, opportunity to impress with great service

9. The Compliment – say thank you, return the favor, save it (ie del.icio.us)

8. The Customer Problem—listen for known or potential customer issues so you can respond prior to the complaint. Proactive service is remarkable.

7.  The Inquiry/Question – as online participation becomes known, customers will ask you Q. they might not otherwise call to ask. Gain insight and promote your strengths—not pitching but answering a Q. others can see

6. Campaign Impact – measure the conversation effect caused by your campaign

5. The Crisis—setup an early warning system by monitoring conversations that could potentially lead to crisis, catch issues before they go viral or mainstream if possible, think about brand’s potential crises now

4. The Competitors—listen to conversations about them, including all conversation types (complaints, questions etc.)

3. The Crowd—Monitor broader industry conversation to identify which related topics garner the most attention and engagement. Participate in the broader “crowd discussion”, be active and timely, track which concepts are resonating and your share of conversation relative to the overall topic

2. The Influencer—community that forms around an influencer helps to spread ideas and opinions faster, calculate and track on-topic influence to ID your topic’s key influencers, participate in the conversation with key influencers and work on building the relationship (from strangers to friends and friends to fans).

1. The Point of Need—track keywords that people might use to express needs that your company can solve, if you meet people at their point of need, you are not interrupting or pitching, you are helping and responding to an expressed need. Lead generation: don’t pitch until you find/hear a point of need. Connect, participate, build, relationship, but don’t pitch.

Then, Sean listed 10 somewhat immutable laws of measuring conversations

• This is not a perfect science
• Social media value is trapped in the Long Tail of its metrics – we measure traffic, unique visitors
• It’s an intimacy medium
• How you measure is influenced by who you are (we can’t agree on one standard—e-commerce is diff from community owner / engagement vs. surveyor who wants competitive insights) Pr often looking for influencers
• Social media outcomes trump traditional media inputs
• Those who measure social media are those who manage social media (CEO key metric is bottom line profits)
• Conversations doen’t just happen in one place anymore-- Where to find data: monitoring tools—Technorati, del.icio.us, Google Analytics, Feedburner, Alexa, Appsholic, Digg, StumbleUpon
• There are 27 types of social media conversations (referencing Katie Paine)--what are you aiming for?

REACH—how far does it go?

RELEVANCE—does it support your intended direction?

INFLUENCE—who shares and with who? How many generations of impact?

AUTHORITY—how trusted is the source?

ENGAGEMENT—how involved do they get?

INTERACTION—did they do anything with it?

VELOCITY—how fast does it travel (viral)

ATTENTION—how much time do they spend?

SENTIMENT—how positive are they?

NET PROMOTER—are they recommending you to others? Would you recommend Brand X to a friend or colleague? (On a scale of 1-10, the formula is "People who say 9-10 (extremely)" minus "those who answer 1-6" = your score). And this is what really matters most.

• Faith goes a long way

Sadly, this only adds up to 9, so I missed a law. (Sorry, Sean.) Then, he provided some good examples: Dell, Stonyfield Farms, Intuit QuickBooks, Southwest, Dove, Firefox, Starbucks Idea, Nike+ community

My favorite part was Sean's "Take it back to the classroom" section, in which he advised us to have our students:

• Join the conversation
• Start a new conversation
• Measure the conversation
• Build insight
• Let the next class work through it—in other words, make a two semester blog requirement so students have to apply what they learned through the measurement to continue to improve their communication skills.

Postscript: after the conference, Katie posted 19 classifications of video, from Advertisement to Videolog.

Edelman academic summit, part 1: International

I intended to live-blog and Twitter the Edelman/PR Week new media academic summit, but was disappointed to find the meeting site didn't provide wireless Internet access. No matter, Twitter's been down for most of a week and both Edelman and Robert French live-blogged it instead. So, I've decided to highlight a few of panels and discussions that really caught my attention. I'll start here with the session on "global perspectives."

The panelists emphasized that social media adoption varies by country. Wolfgang Luenenbuerger (Edelman Europe) reminded us, "There is no such country as Europe." Marshall Manson (Edelman Digital Strategy) pointed out that language and interests are much more defining than geography or market; he repeated something I've seen Brian Solis emphasize, namely that this is not a tech story but a social and cultural story of a fundamental shift in the way people form groups, solve problems, and so forth. Neville Hobson pointed out that social media is disruptive to media systems ... and therefore it's a lot of fun. The speakers said that Wikipedia is popular in Germany, Facebook in the U.K., Poland has a local version of Facebook, and in Russia LiveJournal is the preferred blogging platform.

There's a study here: specifically, an analysis of social media adoption based on Geert Hofstede's five cultural dimensions. I don't have time for it, so if you're a grad student looking for a thesis topic, have at it!