Teaching PR

The Week's Best, 31 August 2009

• A Recession-Proof Graduate Guide, Russell Miyaki (via @researchgoddess)
• What Facebook Quizzes Know About You, Sarah Perez and Facebook Exodus, Virginia Heffernan(via @jryoung)
• #PRStudChat
• Social Media's Top 10 Dirty Little Secrets, David Armano
• The Two-Faced God and Our Cusp Catastrophe, Catherine Arrow
• Twitter and Iran: Much Ado About Nothing, Urs E. Gattiker
• Opening the Door to Social Media Impacts the Entire Organization, Toby Bloomberg
• 5 Lessons for Moving Into Management, Tiffany Monhollon
• 14 Key Skills and Attributes for New Public Relations Professionals, Dave Fleet
• Managing Your Career Online (podcast), Donna Papacosta

"Strategies to Attract and Keep Diverse Students and Faculty"

Yup, it's another weeks-old AEJMC panel to discuss. (Better late than never, I hope.) This one was hosted by the Commission on the Status of Women and the Public Relations Division, and it featured, in addition to moderator Judy VanSlyke Turk of Virginia Commonwealth:

• Lauri Grunig, Maryland
• Hayg Oshagan, Wayne State
• Elizabeth L. Toth, Maryland
• Brenda Wrigley, Syracuse
• Fritz Cropp, Missouri

First, Elizabeth Toth discussed different ways of defining or thinking about diversity.

• Diversity as demographics like race and gender, but also things like class, language, income, etc.
• Diversity as social identities, which includes personal identities (avowed) and others' characterizations (ascribed).
• Cultural distinctions-- norms, values, styles, patterns of thinking, transmitted over generations
• Diversity as a commitment--not just laws but eithics such as equity, representativeness
• Diversity as social action--recognizing points of tension, such as generational differences

Diversity's meaning is evolving. It's becoming watered down to the point that everyone has their own special interest group. A better approach might be awareness and sensitivity to difference and seeking linkages across differences.

Hayg Oshagan called for a pragmatic approach, arguing that the single most important factor in attracting and keeping diverse faculty and students is focusing on social support and mentoring. Create a place where people can meet and see each other; hire a diversity officer who will push the agenda forward. He also pointed out that in 2007-08, only 5% of AEJMC officers and presenters were African-American, Hispanic, and Native American (combined).

Brenda Wrigley spoke about the undergraduate program. The first step is personalizing the process -- all admitted students (regardless of demographics) get some form of personal contact from her school's diversity officer (phone, social media, etc.). Next they have an ambassadors program where students adopt 3 other students to help build group identity. Third, they follow up with people who were admitted but didn't attend to ask why, what factors led to their decision. They build partnerships, such as with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, for money. They held a diversity essay competition, and 15 students were invited to visit campus for 2-3 days, go to a basketball game, visit classes, etc. Finally, they have a Professional in Residence program, where invited professionals can teach diversity classes and represent diversity by being role models.

Fritz Cropp provided an international perspective in his discussion. By training diverse Ph.D. students, we are preparing diverse faculties of the future. Sending students abroad and bringing undergrads from other countries in; Visiting Professionals and Visiting Scholars programs can help to introduce diversity of thought. Finally, his school is setting up satellite campuses in other countries.

Lauri Grunig talked about what we can do when we don't have as much money as we'd like to implement diversity programs. Validation -- giving students a voice; mentoring and advising; hiring faculty who can be role models especially for first generation college students. She also pointed out that all professors help to create the environment. Diversity of thought is the next frontier for public relations, but we haven't even achieved the first level yet. Institutional culture is the most important factor in hiring and retention of minority faculty. Other points:

• Maintain focus on important diversity initiatives.
• Promote greater interaction of people.
• Remain wary of imposing values and practices of the dominant group.
• Inspire a sense of common purpose.
• Explore the range of acceptable and desirable behaviors.

PR Camp Atlanta: Tapping the experience of junior colleagues

The second session at PR Camp Atlanta focused on helping "senior professionals tap the social media experience of junior colleagues." The discussion groups were led by pairs of senior and junior (I think they were all 22-year-olds) professionals: Nick Ayres, Home Depot and Corvida Raven, SheGeeks.net; Marilynn Mobley, SVP Edelman and Matt Epstein, Definition 6; Shirley Powell, SVP Turner Broadcasting and Tolu Ogbechie, Prevent Blindness Georgia; and Jenny Schmitt, President of Cloudspark and Lauren Culbertson, Sen. Johnny Isakson.

Suggested discussion questions included:

• Do young professionals look at technology differently?
• How do we tap the expertise of young professionals?
• How do we teach them to think more strategically?
• How much expertise do we need to have ourselves?
• How much can we rely on them to do social media?

Marilynn and Matt's group: The assumption that if you're a 20-something you know everything and reverse if you’re older is not true –- you can’t make age assumptions. Generation has nothing to do with this.  “You can’t shake hands with a closed fist.” Internal conflicts are problem – one-on-one mentoring is big. Use young people to bring new info to senior people.

Respect must go both ways: I’m older, you don’t know what you’re talking about/you’re old, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Bring both in from the very beginning.

*This team's biggest takeaway: Find practical everyday ways you can work together—especially mentoring in both directions

Jenny and Lauren's group:

A lot of this boils down to good management: make mistakes without fear, etc. –- basic good management. The team argued that both sides must share what they know: Know the business (older) and know the tactics (younger) – teach each other. In addition they emphasized credibility –- knowing the tools yourself and using yardsticks –- knowing what “success” is in measurement

*Takeaway: the importance of shared learning, teaching and learning from each other 

Nick and Corvida's team:

It's all about mentoring and reverse mentoring. Unlike the first team, this group agrees there is some degree of difference between the groups in technology. How do we find the happy medium? Digital natives can't be the only ones doing social media. As a junior person said, We really need to know what we’re trying to do (strategy) before we implement these tactics.

*Reverse mentoring is their one big idea; developing relationships – cultivate on level playing field as in social media space

Shirley and Tolu's team:

Lines between personal/professional blurring. Get older people interested in using social media professionally but getting them to use it personally (example of one exec who loved baseball and got involved in social media sites that way). This group also mentioned reverse mentoring and strategy vs. tools -- to teach Gen Y to think strategically emphasize the bottom line. Also, be sure you're analyzing customers, who you want to reach and reaching them in the best way.

My favorite tip of the day: Try printing out information from social media sites for bosses instead of just sending them links.

*This group's big idea: making it personal, find a personal connection for a senior professional and teach junior pros to think more strategically and less personally

I loved this session particularly because I enjoyed watching Lauren and Tolu, former students of mine, in action. They did Grady proud.

 

PR Camp Atlanta: overcoming resistance to social media

Last Friday I attended PR Camp Atlanta, organized by Dan Greenfield and attended by 200 people at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The first session focused on getting "clients and bosses to extend their interest in new media." Attendees broke up into four groups, with discussion lead by Melanie Babcock (Manning Selvage & Lee), Bert Dumars (Newell Rubbermaid), Carol Flammer (mRELEVANCE), and Katie Mingo (Delta Airlines). 

The discussion focused around several questions.

Q. What do bosses/clients resist social media? 

Answers: Wasting time; Fear of the unknown (including cost); No customers there, relevance; Sustainability over time; Too many channels, don’t know where to start; Legal liability, SEC; It’s a fad, just wait and something else will come along; Not authentic; Age, don’t use personally, so they don’t really get it; Cultural change, social media can bridge between bosses and employees; Fear of transparency and technology; Experience, staffing; ROI; IT fears; Blurring professional and personal; Exposing talent, poaching could occur. As the team headed by Grady grad Katie Mingo summed up: It’s all fear – loss of control, lack of cohesive strategy, legal issues all come down to fear.

Q. What are bosses and clients willing to consider? 

Answers: Monitor, listen; Comfortable reactive zone; Having a track record-- start small, do pilot programs; Immersion – one channel at a time; Encourage personal use, start with younger staff using personally already; Low cost, low risk; Sell it as experimentation—phasing in; Tactics, not strategy; Make sure it's both legally and corp comm. approved – in other words, putting out new releases; Hiring and recruiting; Anything trackable with results—the more measured, the better; Treating it as more of a broadcast channel at first, and then engage more 

Q. What is off the table? 

Answers: Intellectual property; Exec exposure to negative content; Gov’t regulation areas; Legal liability; Outside agencies speaking as employees; Employee participation seen as risky 

Q. How to overcome the biggest obstacles? 

Answers: It’s not going away, have to overcome the fear; Need a passionate advocate inside the company; Appreciate what it is – it is another channel to reach your audience; Consumers are there; Move from reactive to proactive 

After the quick presentations, Dan asked each team to pick the most important idea from their discussion. 

• Bert’s team: Control and manageability, fear of legal liability is really what needs to be overcome 
• Katie’s team: Bosses and clients resist because they’re afraid 
• Melanie's team: lack of education drives all other problems: understanding of social media as an effective channel isn’t there, therefore they can’t design a strategy or objectives, therefore can’t assess its value, therefore can’t make a commitment 
• Carol's team: focus on the idea of permission-based marketing; it’s going to stay in some form, even though the tools might change

Connect 2009 conference agenda

The agenda for Connect 2009 has been posted on the Grady Web page, and the conference is also featured on UGA's homepage today.

Since my last update, we've added Stephanie Agresta, from our sponsor Porter Novelli, and Lauren Fernandez to the list of speakers, with just one or two more to come. 

Register here.

Addition (7 p.m. Aug. 24)-- the Grady site has been hacked again, and the agenda and registration pages are inaccessible right now. Updates to follow.

(9 p.m., Aug. 24) -- We're back online. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The Week's Best, 24 August 2009

• Passing the Buck and Ethics, Jeremy Pepper
• Creating the Desire for News, Valeria Maltoni 
• 45 Percent of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Candidates, CareerBuilder (via Steven Silvers)
• Talk Like We Do, Amber Naslund 
• Facebook Dominates How People Share Content on the Web, Amy Mengel 
• What Real PR HR Managers Want from New PR Hires, Michael Tangeman 
• 4Chan Launches Embarrassing Attack on Devout Christians on Facebook, Zee M. Kane (via @jspepper)
• How to Go from Anonymity to Fame with Just One Tweet, Wendy Marx (via @danschwabel) 

"Working Social Media Before It Works You"

On Wednesday, August 5, I had the pleasure of attending a panel discussion on social media at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Boston which focused on best practices for advertising and public relations. The panelists were:

• John Moore, Mullen Advertising and Public Relations

• C.C. Chapman, The Advanced Guard
• Kevin Rettig, MediaVest Worldwide

I really enjoyed the discussion, so even though it's now two weeks old, I'm going to share it with my readers who didn't get to be there.

John argued that "social media is everywhere, and social media is nowhere." It's everywhere, not just in the big obvious places like Facebook and LinkedIn, but in Black Planet and Mom Cafe. It's permeated advertising -- as when he clicked an Absolut vodka banner ad, which took him not to the consumer Web site but to a Facebook fan page. And anyone who likes Absolut can tell all their friends with a simple click of their mouse, via the Facebook news feed. Social media is even starting to enter television; for example, you can watch a show and see what people are tweeing about that show at the same time. Yet, social media are also nowhere. 69% of Americans don't know what Twitter is; clients think that agencies don't get it; and there's no silver bullet in social media, because no one's got it figured out yet.

Kevin agreed that agencies aren't getting it, and he urged them (and us) to stop thinking in a campaigns context. Communications are still siloed, with different agencies having different agendas; he argues that organizations should bring them together to construct a coherent strategy. He provided a list of 5 things to understand:

1. Social media is more than social networks
2. Social networks are at scale and gaining ground (in terms of unique visitors, Facebook is number 5 for instance, and the amount of time spent on these sites is increasing)
3. Social media reaches every demographic (for example, African Americans and Hispanic Americans have a higher propensity to use social networks)
4. Marketing use of social media can take many forms (surrounding communication through media placements, being a part of a conversation through listening and acting upon what's heard)
5. Tracking social media informs many touchpoints (for example, informing media plans, crisis plans, creative messaging, identifying influencers, as well as social media channel management)

C.C. emphasized trust and passion. Passion is contagious, and advocates are already there. Organizations should leverage that passion. Trust is like asking your friends first, but on a global scale. (He referenced Chris Brogan's new book "Trust Agents" here as recommended reading.) He also described subtargeting within social media -- one example would be finding American Eagle fans on Facebook, and targeting college-age women within that group.

There was a lively discussion after their short presentations, but my notes aren't good enough to reconstruct the whole thing. Here are some bits and pieces that might be useful:

• Southwest Airlines is a great example of how to use LinkedIn. CEO Gary Kelly is on there as a person, not a company. Microsoft's small business section is also a great use of LinkedIn. (Kevin)
• Legal, PR and marketing have to work together. The lines between PR and marketing are blurring, and PR is getting it faster. (C.C.)
• There is a disconnect between marketing (ultimate goal = sales) and social media. We should be trying to create content that the consumer finds useful -- a real divergence from the past -- and will seek out, share, use (John)
• The organizational voice starts with culture. Zappos has an open culture, and their employees are all over Twitter. Bill Marriott's blog is conversational -- because he dictates it. Other companies are not as open. You should find a person who wants to blog or participate in social media, and then give them guidelines; but other people will also be contributing unofficially. (John)
  
  

The Week's Best, 17 August 2009

• The Evolution of Blogging, Om Malik
• Skills for the PR Professional in Today's Market, Lindsay Olson
• What Could "Neuro-PR" Do for Our Trade?, Paul Seaman and I'm a PR Person, Let Me Read Your Mind, Heather Yaxley
• Study: PR Pros Are Unjustly Perceived as Liars--Scoring Higher in Ethics than Surgeons and Accountants, Bulldog Reporter
• The Science of ReTweets, Dan Zarrella

The Science Of ReTweets

View more presentations from Dan Zarrella.

Connect '09 registration now open

Registration for UGA Connect, the conference on public relations and social media sponsored by Grady College and Porter Novelli, is open. The conference is Sept. 19, and the cost is $150, same as last year, which includes lunch and dinner on Saturday.

Register here. And remember, last year it sold out, so don't wait!

SMB15. Or, on meeting the Boston social media crowd.

While I was in Boston for AEJMC last week (more on that later), I attended the Social Media Breakfast at Communispace in Watertown, where I met a bunch of people I've been following on Twitter and/or blogs for a while now: Bryan Person, Diane Hessan, Steve Garfield, and others -- and saw Doug Haslam, whom I'd met for lunch the day before. As my cab driver gave me an unguided and rather expensive tour of the area, I missed the breakfast part of the SMB, but I did arrive in time to hear the speakers.

First up, Bryan Person of LiveWorld, Inc.. who provided some "do's and don'ts for successful communities." A few that I thought were especially important:

• Do consider community culture
• Do publish clear guidelines on what is acceptable -- and unacceptable -- behavior
• Do make newcomers feel welcome 
• Do bring your personality into the community 
• Don't treat the community as an extension of your marketing department 
• Don't throw open the doors to an empty party 
• Don't let a few members dominate discussions, and consider "firing" the bad apples 
• Don't assume that everything you try will work, and be willing to abandon what doesn't   

Next up, Rachel Happe of Community Roundtable. She said that social is like a cocktail party (you know some people, others come and go), whereas community is like a dinner party (a smaller, invited group with a bigger investment by the host and the guests). She emphasized that community is not campaign-based, so you can't measure it in the same ways as other marketing efforts.

Last, Diane Hessan of Communispace explained her company's history and explained how they create small customer communities for brands. (They also have 3 proprietary communities of 500 people each -- women, men, and youth -- which they ask questions for different brands.) She stressed the importance of keeping the communities small, maybe 300-400 people, and invited; it's important to develop "social glue" so that they talk to and bond with each other rather than with the facilitator. She also pointed us to "C-Suite vs. Main Street: Bridging the Divide" (PDF), a Communispace report on the differences and commonalities between those two groups.

The presentations were great -- it seemed that no one wanted to leave -- and I hope to get to an SMB in Atlanta.

Rachel's slides:

The Power and Peril of Online Communities

View more presentations from Rachel Happe.

International History of Public Relations conference, 2010

I'm so excited about this. Bournemouth University in the UK is holding the first ever International History of Public Relations Conference on 8-9 July 2010. Dr. Tom Watson is the organizer, and the Journal of Communication Management has agreed to publish a special issue which will include some of the papers from the meeting.

They're accepting full papers, working papers and posters, and they welcome submissions from faculty, students, and professionals. Abstracts are due on 7 December (so I guess I'd better get to work on mine). Hope to see you there!

The IJPC (Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture) Journal

On the strength of a paper I wrote about the image of PR and its practitioners in books and movies, I was invited to join the editorial board of the IJPC Journal. The first issue is online now -- free and open to the public.

One of the editors, Matthew Ehrlich, writes a good explanation of studying pop culture images, which I recommend to anyone thinking of writing about PR in pop culture. 

The Week's Best, 10 August 2009

• Social Media Skills Wanted by Employers, Study Shows, Eric Schwartzman
• Special Report: Social Media and Risk Communication During Times of Crisis (PDF), via Michael Allison
• Downturn In Economy Depresses Market for Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates (although PR is the strongest sector), Cox Center, University of Georgia   
• Is PR Right for Me, Part 3, Angela Hernandez, and Is PR Right for Me?, Deirdre Breakenridge 
• Education: To Succeed, Just Be Good Enough, Lauren Vargas  
• Young Adults and Teens Don't Tweet... And the 10 Reasons Why, Sean Moffitt 
• 5 Steps to a Fantastic LinkedIn Profile, Lindsey Pollak (via @DanSchwabel)
• The Art and Foolishness of Tying PR Into Tragedy, Rachel Kay 
• PR Camp Atlanta Names "Counselor" Lineup for August 21 Event, Dan Greenfield  

The Week's Best, 3 August 2009

• 5 Critical Lessons from a Social Media Campaign Gone Horribly Wrong, Jim Louderback
• McDonald's 'Trust Bank' Helps It to Another Win, Trevor Young 
• Google Adds Image Rights to Photo Search, John Stauffer 
• A Conversation with Rebecca Timms, 2009-2010 National President of PRSSA (podcast), Steve Lubetkin (on PROpenMic)
• Hey PR Person -- Don't You Know Who I Am?, Heather Yaxley 
• Faith in Business Returns, Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson, and Edelman Trust Survey Requires Some Skepticism: Again, Paul Seaman 
• Social Media Burnout (PDF), James L. Horton (via Richard Bailey) 
• Female Role Models, Part II, David Wescott