How do you nurture your audience?

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Benson Hendrix

Ok, this is a quick note to remember that social media should be primarily about the content you create and how it helps your organization to develop an audience. That’s one of the first questions you need to ask when you’re coming up with your social media strategy, where am I? Who in the hell do I want to talk to? And what do I want to tell them?

Is it an internal audience? Shareholders? Customers?

Look, you need to connect with your interested audience via social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and develop your community there, but it should always have the goal of bringing people back to your blog, your online home where you bring your social media elements together. You can show off other elements people won’t see on Facebook or Twitter, but you always have to keep in mind the goal of bringing them back to your site.

And with this, I have to disagree with the idea being floated around out there of some kind of “site-less Internet” future. This is asinine. Dude, you don’t want to keep a lot of exclusive content on Facebook or other external networks because you never know when Facebook is going to turn into the next Friendster and fall apart, which is possible if Facebook keeps screwing around with their privacy settings and not telling anyone about it, or pissing off their users.

It’s not about the “supremacy” of Facebook, or Twitter. It’s not even about SEO when you think about it. It’s about using these social networking elements to engage your potential audience on a more neutral field and then bringing them back to your site where you have your kick ass content.

How do you do this? A lot of this is social media 101 but it’s always good for a refresher.

Pre-load your site with content before you start reaching out – you want to have a lot of good stuff up before you start engaging with people
Listen before you leap – Monitor what people in your industry are saying before you start reaching out to them
Engage people – Once you start getting people commenting on your site, respond to them. Don’t ever develop the mentality that you are too important to talk with people who take the time to read what you’re saying.
Focus, Daniel-San – Remember that you need to dedicate time to working in social media.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat – Keep cranking out interesting content, depending on the social media vehicles you are using.

After checking out your content, continuing to give them additional great content should keep them coming back to your site. This will start to, if it’s not already, replace SEO. If you want to bring SEO into your strategy, look at making every third or fourth post an SEO focused post. This just means you need to build up content faster.

These are just a few of my ideas, what do you look for when thinking about how to add social media to your mix?

public relations, social media

PR Firms as “News Stations?”

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Benson Hendrix

(crossposted at PR Open Mic)

Why aren’t Public Relations firms more effectively using new media tools to create their own “news stations,” reporting on what their clients are doing? As long as those firms fulfill government requirements for disclosure regarding clients/freebies/etc., it makes sense to create content to their client’s advantage.

Now this might seem to run counter to what I’ve said recently about the importance of companies taking control of their own social media messaging. It is important for your organization to create its own social media content, especially blogging and video work. But if you have a PR firm on contract, then you should let the firm showcase its content on their own blog. It not only promotes the firm (and you as a client of the firm), it’s additional information about your organization that can be picked up by Google searches.

Why and how should a firm set up an online newsroom?

It’s like setting up any other blog, with categories and/or pages for each client, and using tags for subcategories.
With a WordPress theme like Thesis, and/or an SEO plug in like you’re posts about each client will also appear in an SEO-friendly format
Firms usually give the responsibility of creating basic content (press releases, story pitches, etc) to younger assistant account executives. Also put them in charge of creating the social media content as it relates to your clients.
Give these junior AE’s ownership of promoting their client on your Firm’s News Blog. This helps them to develop the needed social media skills for the changing PR sphere.
Firms should let their Account Executives promote this material to the media, especially the media in smaller communities where local news outlets might have suffered most from the recent economic crunch.

And as long as they follow some SEO rules (keeping in mind that SEO might become secondary from this point on, falling to more organic social connections) PR firms will be able to drive more online searches not just to their client’s site, but to their own as well, which can help in getting more business. (Since the firm can show potential new clients that they are able to work outside the traditional media, or even the recurring idea of “blogger relations”)

Now what do you think? Should more firms take the lead in developing their own news outlet for client and firm news? Or should they spend more time working with the traditional media?

blogging, social media

Another Take on "Blogger Relations"

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Benson Hendrix

Social media is more about social interaction and being online as another means of message distribution than it is about “blogger relations.”

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that we in public relations should not be focused as much on blogger relations in our social media planning and usage, we should instead be focused on creating cool content and building relationships with other bloggers/podcasters/etc. It involves being engaged with people on a smaller level, much the same way as the mainstream outlets are fragmenting more and more. But interpersonal relationships are like that, you can’t be best buds with thousands of people.

It’s the argument of the “cool kids” vs. the “popular kids.” The “cool kids” are too busy creating content to worry about whether or not you are hanging out with the “popular kids.” If you have to choose, you should pick the road less traveled – the one of creating content to attract an audience of interested people who want to listen to what you have to say, and then developing your online connections.

Take Twitter (please! Just kidding) for instance. You can have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, but is that anything more than just a status symbol? It’s especially telling for people like Ashton Kutcher, or other celebs on Twitter – those people with millions of followers, but are only connected to a couple of dozen themselves. In cases like this, these accounts are used as purely broadcast platforms for people who want to “see a part of the life” or “catch of a slice of AK.”

This is not a bad model, in and of itself, and it leverages the popularity of these celebrities quite well. But for average companies or people, it’s not really a model that works. Remember, people are interested in connecting with people, not with companies. It’s the uncommon company that can get away with having a fierce group who just want to be part of the brand (i.e. sports teams, Apple, etc)

In the meantime, it might be better for people to focus more on developing the content that will interest and attract people to their “brand” and produce enough content to keep them interested in returning. Believe it or not, the content might not be directly related to their work or product. If the people keep coming to check it out, your personal brand might achieve that “top of mind awareness,” or to put it another way, might stick in their mind.

When I spoke a little bit about this on the video linked below, I didn’t realize that the Godfather of Social Media, Chris Brogan had given a different take at his site. This is just my humble two-cents.

Are We Focusing Too Much on Blogger Relations? from Benson on Vimeo.

social media

Iron Chef – Social Media #3: “Who is your chef?” (Who represents your brand via social media?)

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Benson Hendrix

Why is a personal brand important for a company in social media? Because consumers don’t want to interact with a “company” or “brand” they want to interact with the people behind a brand. That’s why people won’t follow “Dell” because it’s a company, but they will follow Richard at Dell or Lionel at Dell because they give that company the personal interaction with their consumers. As a result of that, people will want to become connected with your company or organization, look at the iCabal, the Apple fanatics who are incredibly tied in with the Mac brand, because they have probably been influenced by the Mac Evangelist crowd (and/or they are easily led by shiny things. 🙂 )

(Just kidding, relax y’all.)

Companies can’t interact with people. The people in your company can.

You have to make sure that the right people in your company are interacting with those people. That’s one of the strengths of PR people working on your social media team, PR people are great at connecting with people – it’s our job, heck it’s in the job title “Public Relations.” Who in your organization can you trust with the social interactions with your customers?

What are some of the ways people in your organization can get involved in social media? Here are a few of my ideas, what would you like to see your organization do to open up and engage more online?

Set guidelines, not restrictions – you want to have guidelines that people blogging/tweeting/etc for your company need to follow (think of them as talking points for your evangelists, why do they rock?) But you don’t want to restrict what they can say too much.
You don’t need to vet everything that’s said – your employees, check that, the employees who love your company (and these are the ones who should be representing you) should not have to run everything by the legal department. You trust your customer service team in India to represent your company without running every statement through the mothership, you should trust your social media employees to do the same.
Who in your company is already blogging? – Who’s already doing it? Can you pay them to be part of the social media team at your company? Why reinvent the wheel? Take these people on a long weekend retreat to Vegas, or the fun destination of your choice and intersperse some workshops on developing your social media team in between visits to the casino/park/hiking trail/etc.
Are there any free agents out there? –Is there anyone in your organization, or someone that one of your employees might know, who is already active in social media and social networking? If so, you might want to consider offering them a job to produce your content. They have an audience already established, and you might be able to attract some of them to your new brand. And at the same time, if you are working on your own personal brand, you can learn quite a bit from your new free agent star.
Who should represent the company? – Your new free agent? How about the guys you have on the team already? What about the CEO? Is he/she tech savvy and interested in this communications medium? If not, it would be better for them to give up the reins here and let the people in the know take the lead, then report successes and concerns to the CEO.
Experiment, experiment, experiment! There are a lot of kinds of social media out there, what works the best not only for your company, but for your team? Remember, there are some pieces of social media that work best as entrees, and others as appetizers. Maybe your video person loves working on video but has a voice that would only be improved by gargling with rusty razor blades. Then he shouldn’t lead the podcasting. Your podcast guru has that smooth radio voice but can’t hold a camera steady long enough for a picture, then you don’t need them leading up your Flickr stream. Different people have different strengths, what tools are out there to augment them and how can you combine them?
Training – Cross train your team, turn them into backpack journalists – able to develop news across all kinds of new media.

What other advice would you add for leaders interested in getting their people involved with their customers, competition, and colleagues?

blogging, Iron Chef Social Media, social media

“Bigger Boobs Through Social Media?”

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Benson Hendrix

If you are interested in social media, and learning how to get started or engage more in this burgeoning online media-sphere, then you have probably run across quite a few stories/blogpieces/ads pimping how “You Can Get 10,000 Twitter Followers in 30 Days!” or “You Too Can Become a Facebook Gawd!!1!!” and other such nonsense. To me these are nothing more than just the latest “How To Get Bigger Boobs Through Social Media”-esque BS lures to remove you from your money or time (both of which are important).

A lot of these try to latch onto our need to be recognized, to be acknowledged quickly for our brilliance – and claim to provide a quick, “gimme gimme gimme now” fix to achieving this. Like most things in life and business, working in social media is going to require a lot of patience, time, strategic planning and hard work.

One of the big ideas these “plans” leave out – especially important if you are a business owner or corporate type – is the need for some kind of merging of your strategy between social media and communications. Social media are great tools for building additional communications and increasing your community outreach/developing a community relations platform, but they will never really replace your communications/pr strategy. They can help augment it, but your social media outlets are really one more avenue to communicate with people, and need their own strategy to . But you need to have a firm strategy in place before you really jump in and drown in all the noise out there.

(as an aside, there will be a Holiday present for those people interested in social media and strategy coming up before Dec. 25.)

At the end of the day you’re not going to land 10,000 followers in a month, nor are you going to achieve deitific bliss on Facebook or – Buddha forgive – MySpace. As with most things in life, you need to work at it and show patience. Engage with your target audiences, look at the strategy you have developed – what do you want to say to them? What goals are you hoping to achieve? Why are you writing or recording?

CEO Chat, Crisis Management, social media

When Bloggers Attack – Swinging Back

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Benson Hendrix

I love working in social media – blogging, podcasting, video work, social networking and more. All of them give you ample opportunity to interact with others. Sometime for good, and other times you’ll find you or your organization getting blasted by a blogger, content creator or just a plain old curmudgeon.

While many people in social media, a lot of whom are incredibly knowledgeable, and many communications officers feel that your organization should “rise above” any kind of crossing swords with people online who are attacking you, I wish to disagree. There is a line in the sand where you should be willing to kill any detractors with kindness (always remember to be understanding and offer the honey-laden olive branch as much as possible) but once that line is crossed you should be able to respond factually, forcefully and passionately.

Many social media peeps, especially when looking at business social media, will tell you to keep your statements and content as even-keel as possible. You never want to engage in mud throwing or flame wars. I agree with them on this, but where we might diverge a little bit is my opinion that when your organization is being attacked, possibly unfairly, by online peeps who are unwilling to look at facts, or try to skew facts to match a caricature they created to attack your organization. Then these are the times when you will need to stand up, use the facts as your sword and shield, and call out your detractors.

This isn’t an open call to start flame wars and a rousing round of “nanny nanny boo boo.” Keep your responses slightly snarky (maybe a little more. Remember that you want to keep a little bit of a bite to them). They need to be classy, but sharp as a razor’s edge. You want to remind your opposition that if they want to misquote you, or tweak facts to match a false claim, that you are going to repeatedly respond by throwing high and inside.

Look at how various political campaigns ran their social media outlets during the 2008 and upcoming 2010 campaigns. They brought in bloggers who already had followers, but more importantly were passionate about their candidate’s stands (or, let’s be honest, became passionate about their positions once they started receiving a check) and were willing to stand up for them. In addition, Barack Obama’s campaign built online tools from scratch to help foster their community of supporters.

Balancing the Playing Field

If your organization is going to have “what it takes” to respond to online attacks this way, you need to have a CEO who has the spine to understand that for a short while, the attacks might intensify as your opposition tries to determine how far you will go before folding. In order for this to work, you have to be willing to repeatedly defend your position with this idea of “classy passion.” Again, humor is one of your best weapons here.

Look at what the Obama White House is doing right now with FOX News, they are repeatedly responding to FOX News when they believe facts are in error. For a while the peeps on FOX News were calling it the “War on Fox,” or some such thing.

There used to be a saying that you never go to war with people who buy ink by the barrel or tape by the yard. Meaning it was never in your best interest to cross swords with people who run the media, because they can come after you day after day for any perceived slight. That used to be true, but with the advances in social media, social networking (for audience building) and online communications you suddenly have the tools to create your own media outlet to respond, “balancing the playing field” more in your favor.

Being the old rugger I am, I’ll leave you with this analogy. While you want to play cleanly as much as possible, and give people the benefit of the doubt, I’ve found that one of the best ways to stop someone from throwing punches in the ruck is a good, old-fashioned cleat rake every so often.

blogging, public relations, social media

When Bloggers Attack – Swinging Back

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Benson Hendrix

Balancing the Playing Field

Community Relations, Creativity, social media

What’s Your Common Thread?

Posted on November 23, 2009 by Benson Hendrix

Earlier this month, my wife and I spent a relaxing week on honeymoon at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. One of the first things we noticed walking around the Magic Kingdom was the variety of languages floating through the air. Swedish, German, Spanish, Chinese – all bouncing around at the same time. (Not to mention the Disney program that allows college students from all over the world to work for Disney for a year – we met so many great people from around the globe that week)

What brought all of these people from locales all around the world to one place? Their love of Mickey and all things Disney. This place and what it represents to people around the world is a strong enough bond to bring together people who might not have much else in common. There are very few brands that can do this on a global level (Disney, Coca-Cola, the Pittsburgh Steelers, various religions, etc.).

But many more organizations have this potential, albeit on a more regionalized level. Whether it’s graduates from your school or university, sports fans, people who use your widget or follow your politics (if you’re a politician) there is a group of people who are passionate about being a part of a like-minded community. Ask yourself, “what have we done to nurture this group? How can we engage and develop this burgeoning community?”

Creativity, social media, Strategy

Entrees and Appetizers – Social Media, Iron Chef Style

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Benson Hendrix

Earlier (before taking some time off to turn the geezerly age of 36) I had started a series of blog posts dealing with the idea of using the elements of social media to create a plan that is unique to your company’s needs. One of the keys to designing a solid social media plan (as well as a great dinner) is figuring out what you want to base your social media efforts around (the entrées) and what social media tools will serve an ancillary purpose (the appetizers).

You or your company’s needs will differ, which is why you need to plan before you start a social media (or any communications) program. Too often there are manager, CEOs, CCOs, etc. who want to jump into a new communications model because they’ve heard about it in PR Week, or Fortune/Forbes/Inc., or they are solidly rooted in PR from the past. Press releases printed with carbon paper were good enough for them, and damn it they should be good enough for you.

Look again at the example of Iron Chef (where the idea for this came from). In Iron Chef, each chef is given the secret ingredient just before the competition begins, and has to come up with a number of dishes

While you look at the myriad kinds of social media available to you or your company, from blogging to podcasting, YouTube to Facebook and MySpace and Flickr and beyond, you need to look as each of these as part of that secret ingredient from Iron Chef. Then start asking some questions

What tools should be your main focus? What do you want to devote a lot of your time and effort to? Blogging? Podcasting? These are the equivalent of your entrees. When you consider what to focus most of your time on, think about who you’re trying to communicate to. Are you trying to create your own online media outlet? Then you might want to center around a blog and use Flickr for images and YouTube for your videos. If you’re a professional photographer and haven’t set up a Flickr account to show off your work, what are you waiting for??

Are you trying to reach out to younger people, maybe you’re a school or a video game maker. While MySpace has lost much of its luster in recent years, there are still over 70 million people on the social network. (and while Friendster is kind of a joke at this point, it’s still very big in much of the Asian Pacific Rim countries, do you need to reach that audience)

Then ask yourself, what other social media tools might help you achieve the goal of communicating with your target audience. Maybe you’re not in an industry that needs to use too many pictures – you can still use Flickr to show off community events, or record your yearly shareholders meetings with a podcast. You are limited only by your imagination on how you can use these tools.

In Iron Chef the competitors only have 1 hour to complete all of their dishes. Thankfully, you have more time to develop your plan – but if you haven’t started yet then your competitors have a three dish, five chef advantage on you.