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10 Tips for Social Media Moxie

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This is directed at you — the laggers who are likely NOT reading this blog among my colleagues (who shall remain nameless) who are creeping along outside the action like a voyeur.

I hit a wall this week with the umpteenth public relations and/or marketing peer not engaging in social media with the basics of basics – Twitter. Then there was a fabulous new company launch with a highly creative site from an old colleague with whom I was eager to tweet. Sadly, his last tweet was 20 days ago.

Are you engaging for real, people? C’mon, don’t kid yourself…we both know you’re not.

From a seriously real cross section of colleagues, peers, practitioners of all ages and experience ranges, who are experts in their own right with budding businesses, etc., the writing is on the wall. Marketing and public relations are NOT engaging in social media, and that’s a SAD state of affairs.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT GOING AWAY! SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT A TREND! (Yep, caps on purpose; felt better than boldface.)

I’m here to push you off your derrière and raise your bar. How can you ignore something so incredibly exciting for marketing public relations when clients and employers expect you to be the expert who leads them to social media opportunity?

I own a virtual public relations agency, Soulati Media, Inc.  I can’t find anyone yet (within the confines of my circular engagement) who knows more than me in social media. Why’s that? Because I’ve been busting my chops for the last three years to learn, engage, test, fail, test, and become knowledgeable. (See that “fail” word in there? Painfully, it has to happen to become learned, and then the doors swing open and shut more smoothly.)

This is not about blogging, either. It’s simply about carpe diem. There’s gold in them ‘thar hills, people, and if you don’t go mining, you’re never going to get your social media mojo.

Here are Jayme Soulati’s 10 Basic Social Media Engagement Tips:

1. Launch a Twitter account associated with business. Brand yourself as an expert, but first believe you are one.

2. Expect to fail (failure comes in many sizes) and embrace the pain as learning anything new. You will get through that episode (spoken from my own trial and error).

3. Re-launch the Facebook  account you closed down because you couldn’t handle connecting with high school alumni. Consider it a business venture and make it so with a fan page to fuel your business or expertise.

4. Adopt a mentor, but don’t suck them dry! Be respectful of their time and their own hard-earned pathway to knowledge.

5. Engage, people, really engage. That means post a comment on a blog with your perspective. Make yourself known to the blogger you’re reading who has no idea you exist. Communication is a two-way street.

6. Understand fear and get beyond it. Your fear may be lack of confidence in your own expertise. Get out of your own way, and just do it already.

7. Tackle one new thing every day. This is as easy as tweet five times. Follow five people. Post one comment on a new blog every day. RT someone’s blog post. Explore a new social media application everyone else is so you’re in the know, too.

8. Don’t get left behind! I’ve been tweeting for maybe 15 months now, and it’s the sole reason I’ve met the cool people who are now my new colleagues and friends. It saved me days of boredom through the dark winter because social media takes you to Bali, Singapore, Australia, and South America where peers there seek engagement, too.

9. Set a goal. While I’ve never written goals, they are in my head. Yesterday I had the same number of followers and following on Twitter, 1817. Because I compete, I want to get to 2000, but it’s getting tougher to create a Twitter stream that’s not littered with spammers, scammers, and salespeople.  So, I’ll go for quality over quantity. Don’t let the numbers fool you.

10. Ask for help. I don’t know what I don’t know, but I’m glad to help you get there, too. Post your little question down below, and we’ll journey.

Got social media? Please say “yes!”

Using a Holistic Approach in Public Relations

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The May 3, 2010 BtoB story on Microsoft’s marketing reorganization earlier this year struck me a bit odd. Microsoft is executing a new, more holistic approach with its agencies by working horizontally across all campaigns to be more collaborative. The old Microsoft way was to brief agencies and then wait until they returned with impressive creative.

Collaboration breeds success, and this is why I was taken aback with the Microsoft story. No agency functions well without full disclosure (or close to it) and understanding of a client’s business, services, products, people, stories, and goals. While the Microsoft story in BtoB magazine was about marketing and advertising agencies, a collaborative approach applies across disciplines.

When in a client/agency relationship, public relations succeeds when there’s give and take. I’ve been in a one-way client/agency relationship (as the agency), and it went poorly; nobody wins.

Perhaps there needs to be more understanding how to work a new relationship at the onset. Here are some basic suggestions to put a win-win approach in place when hiring a public relations team:

  1. Clients should appoint a day-to-day point of contact for the agency. This person should be a middle-manager or director level with some decision-making power.
  2. The public relations team should be introduced to internal client teams and be allowed some maneuverability within the company.  
  3. Keep public relations teams informed at all times about what’s happening internally. Add outside public relations teams to distribution lists and forward background frequently. 
  4. Feed and fuel the relationship with discussions about current events and how global and national news impact the company.
  5. Invite the public relations team to internal meetings with marketing and sales.
  6. Understand that public relations continually develops strategy based on new information. Information sharing keeps high-level strategy and program execution at a fast and results-driven pace.

What other tips can you add to help a client/agency relationship succeed?

PepsiCo And Its Earth Day Trifecta

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Had another post all ready to go, and then I opened today’s Wall Street Journal which changed everything.

PepsiCo (and Waste Management) announced yesterday a recycling program called Dream Machine with kiosks that reward users. I didn’t know this until just now. Back track to earlier this morning when I was scanning the morning paper:

Full-Page Advertisement

PepsiCo announced a new recycling program today that I first learned about in a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal in section one.

  • The ad appealed to me because our family voraciously recycles down to a worry about #4 plastics and how we can properly dispose of them.
  • I wondered how I could participate, get a dream machine for me, and whether I had to drink Pepsi to be on board (no pop consumed in my home).
  • The ad piqued my interest on the first viewing; great stats for ROI.

Social Media

The link in the ad referred me to the Dream Machine Facebook page. I tore the page to reference the url later. (I just visited the page and became a fan; 355 members to date — not too many, but enough, considering the program launched April 21. The page is incredibly well done with multi-media.)

Media Relations

Jump to Wall Street Journal in  “Corporate News.” Here’s the light bulb…PepsiCo in Recycling Push, a corner, above the fold story about the Fortune 50 company (along with NYSE: WM), announcing its new Dream Machine program.

  • “Up to 3,000 kiosks are to be put in high-traffic places this year, with incentives for consumers,” says the story call out.
  • “Every time you recycle with a PepsiCo dream machine, we’ll make a donation to help disabled veterans start their own businesses,” says the full-page advertisement.

Why is this significant? Take a look at timing with Earth Day. Look at the integrated marketing strategy with the blending of advertising, public relations, media relations, social media and thought leadership, among many others I’ve not discovered.

I applaud the marketing, advertising, public relations teams (corporate and agency) for their integrated and highly strategic work to launch what impresses me as a campaign exactly right for the time. Review its audiences (disabled vets, eco-conscious consumers, future consumers, Facebookers, corporate partners, stakeholders, and so many more). There’s something in this campaign that resonates with a plethora of audiences.

Nicely done, PepsiCo; nicely done.

Who Owns Blogs?

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Thought I could avoid this controversial topic of ownership, but why not further stick out the neck after blogging here that “Public Relations Drives Marketing?”

The hackles most raised by that post were those of Mr. Mark W. Schaefer, blogger extraordinaire at {grow}. Yesterday, Mark returned the favor while leading a Webinar on B2B blogging I attended.

To the question posed by the audience “Who owns blogs, public relations or marketing?” Mark prefaced his answer with “My PR friends are going to kill me…marketing owns blogs!” He suggested public relations can draft content all it wants, but marketing owns the strategy.

Because I tweeted the Webinar (can’t sit idle during those things) at #b2bblog, others weighed in. @NEMultimedia said “I see PR and Marketing as two sides of the same brain.” @X_youarehere said,” No 1 owns communications, but there are many…change own to coordinate.”

I concur with that statement Mr./Ms. X with a change from “coordinate” to “lead or direct.” We’re at a crossroads, and this ownership question continues to rear its ugly head. I report to a client’s brand marketing team, and I direct strategy and content for landing pages, blogs, social media, and more.  While I don’t own it, I certainly collaborate with marketing.

I vow, as of today, never to claim ownership of blogs, social media or other; rather, I’ll claim partnership. In Mr. Schaefer’s defense, he did respond to my tweet questioning his marketing-owns-blogs statement saying “we can agree to disagree only if he’s right.” (No way, dude, we both are! There, how’s that for starters?)

What’s your contribution to this discussion?  Let’s establish future guidelines for all of us.

Defining Public Relations

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On so many blogs I see the definition of public relations is confusing to folks, especially since the advent of social media. I’m not surprised; I’ve spent the last 26 years educating people about what I do and expect to spend the next 26 years doing the same.

What I can share is my passion:

  • I’m the most fortunate woman to have landed in a profession (quite by chance rather than choosing) that is always evolving and allows me to learn so little about so much.
  • I dabble in all industries and all shapes and structures of companies and organizations.
  • The explosion of new channels to communicate allows public relations to assess metrics, monitor the conversation, measure, and adjust strategy to engage tiered audiences.
  • Limitless opportunities exist to influence business goals with strategic and creative marketing public relations strategy.
  • My passion for public relations is palpable; every day, week, month, year are different and energy-filled – no sameness, no boredom, just a never-ending quest for higher learning.

That’s my somewhat description; let me share an author’s opinions who wrote a book on public relations in 2000. is author of “.”  In his book, he references Thomas L. Harris, author of , who brought us the term “marketing public relations,” which I love and am now using to show the blending of marketing with public relations.

  • Chapter one, line one in Mr. Saffir’s book states “In the corporation of the 21st century, public relations will rank higher than advertising.”  Line two states “CEOs of major companies will come out of the public relations field.”  (I love these powerful book-opening statements!)
  • I wrote in a recent blog post “.” If that’s so, which I firmly believe, then what drives public relations? Mr. Saffir says “Creativity and ingenuity drive public relations.”
  • More insights from Mr. Saffir include:
    • “Public relations has grown into a full-fledged discipline with the power and reliability to influence perception.”
    • The primary goal of public relations may be to “shape the broader context within which publics in general or specific target publics form opinions and make decisions.”
    • “While marketing identifies customer needs and satisfies them at a profit, public relations produces goodwill among various publics whose goodwill is important to the organization.”
    • Here’s a comment that might raise a few hairs – “Public relations is a discipline and marketing is a task to be accomplished by various disciplines in the corporation – sales, sales promotion, merchandising, marketing research, advertising and public relations.” (Interesting! Do you agree?)

What’s your definition of public relations? On the flip, perhaps it’s not necessary to clarify; mysticism is good!