The Access Point

PR 2.0 is Not Just About Social Media and Blogging

Tom Foremski is calling BS on PR firms who claim to have social media practices that don’t have blogs and is generating a bit of a wave. While he made a good point – you can’t know it unless you use it – the comments on his post tell a more rounded story. Several firms weighed in, noting that practicing PR 2.0 encompasses more than simply blogging, but being active multiple platforms and using a variety of tools. At Access, we’re testing a range of Web 2.0 technologies with clients, including Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, wikis, blogging, podcasting and SEO press releases.

But what no one (as far as I can tell) is discussing is how PR firms are changing their structure and management using Office 2.0 tools to actually be more productive internally. I portend that PR 2.0 is also about being able to work more collaboratively amidst the Web 2.0 data storm.

Most still shuffle tons of paper, clog up inboxes with Excel grids and PowerPoints, use Cision MediaSource as a phonebook and have to dig through archaic server hierarchies to find historical documents. The PR workflow has been ingrained in our ethos after years of experience in agencies or on the corporate side, however, it is inherently flawed – it is a social consciousness and oral history that relies on old, disconnected technology.

Take tracking the stories we’re working on and keeping clients updated, as an example. We all know the drill: Keep all your media opportunities in an Excel grid, prior to the client meeting, e-mail it around to the team for updates, spend a half an hour reformatting it, fixing print areas, typos, searching for coverage that’s supposed to hit, then once it’s ready, shooting it off to your client.

But that’s all over now…our teams at Access are now able to track and manage all their interactions with reporters and upcoming coverage all in one place – online – entering data once and our reports are always up to date, no matter when our meetings with clients are or where we are. Expected coverage rarely goes unnoticed and reporter follow-up never slips through the cracks.

We’ve got PRBase.

What is PRBase? PRBase is a custom on-demand application that combines the tracking of media opportunities, campaigns, trade shows and media with PR workflow and reporting needs. We created it in-house using Intuit QuickBase without writing one single line of code. [Please note: this post is not meant to be a case study or a sales pitch – Intuit is a client and we’ve been collaborating with our internal clients for years using it.] PRBase is designed to follow our PR workflow and can be customized easily for any client or team.

PRBase does exactly what we need it to, in exactly the way we want it to:

• Track open & closed media opportunities. See where pitches are in the news cycle, next steps and which team member is working on what. Keep time-stamped follow-up notes. Find resulting coverage (attachment or link) or the reasoning behind why the reporter didn’t write about your client.
• Manage workflow. Stay on top of opportunities with “Follow-up on” dates. Just tell the system when you need to contact the reporter again and it’ll e-mail you to remind you. PRBase even e-mails you when your article is expected to hit. Reports like My Open Media Opportunities show users everything they’re working on at a glance and color-codes opps that are past due on follow-up.
• Manage your media list. Houses your entire media list and allows you to keep and search data MediaSource can only dream of. Photos, blog URLs, IM handles. The application associates every opportunity with the media contact, giving us a full history.
• Manage pitch campaigns. Easily see when they start and stop to plan for the future. Plus, associate campaigns with media opportunities to track how many opps resulted from your efforts.
• Reports, Reports, Reports. What opportunities are we working on, what coverage is expected? How many briefings did we do it March? How many reviews did we secure in technology trades in 2007? What have we briefed Entrepreneur Magazine on in the past two years? How many articles did we get as a result of the launch? Customizable reports enable us to better serve clients with quick answers.
• Roles. PRBase can be customized for any number of roles, which is especially helpful for large accounts with multiple business units and internal clients. Role-based dashboards show team members exactly what they need to see when they log on. Role-based reports eliminate clutter.

PRBase is just one application we’ve built. We’re also using it to manage our vacation calendar, new business pipeline, measurement and have several more apps in the works. And they’re all hosted on one online portal. Stay tuned for more info…

-- Jared Leavitt

Talking Digital

Rumblings from the PRSA Digital Impact Conference in NYC

Day 1
So it seems like a lot of PR professionals are getting the hang of this 2.0 thing. Over the course of my two-day PRSA Digital Impact experience, I shared tips with my new PR friends about how to subscribe to Tweets (aka Twitter posts) posted by others attending the conference and learned how to use TWhirl and Summize applications on Twitter. Oh but that’s not all…the conference was chock full of useful tidbits to help get me more acclimated into the digital world. Here are some of my thoughts.

Josh Bernoff, social technology industry analyst at Forrester and co-author of “Groundswell, Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies”, kicked off the event with the morning keynote. His discussion touched on how social technologies are creating a groundswell of viral opportunities where people connect with and draw power from each other. He discussed how essential it is to create and stimulate conversations without attempting to control the message. He also gave some colorful examples about how brand can be affected by social technologies, including the YouTube video of the Comcast technician sleeping on the job, or how you don’t want to stir the Internet hornet’s nest because you might get stung.

If you haven’t already picked up Bernoff and Charlene Li’s book, it sounds like a must-read.  Groundswell’s Social Technographics Ladder is also a great tool to help understand the impact of social technologies. If you want to learn more, click here or, of course, just buy the book.

The media lunch session presented a good networking opportunity, but not much value in terms of learned lessons or discussing 2.0 trends outside of those I already follow. The panel included Stephen Baker, BusinessWeek, Michele Gershberg, Reuters, Betsy Alexander, Early Show, Richard Wilner, New York Post and Jude Biersdorfer, New York Times. But I have to say, it’s always nice as a west coaster to get the chance to get face to face interactions with NY-based media – people with whom I’ve developed relationships over the years. It’s always good to show your human side.

Oh and by the way, people can’t stop talking about Google: how to optimize your press release and marketing materials on Google, how to do research on Google, how getting visibility on Google will make or break your launch, etc. Google would have been flattered by all the attention.

The finale…a moderated discussion with Spencer Ante from BusinessWeek who talked a little about his book, “Creative Capital” and a lot about his perspective on offline and online media and how advertising on social media will be an interesting topic to track in the next year. Ante’s on Twitter, but only for professional reasons and don’t try to become his friend on Facebook…reporters don’t need more spam. 

Day 2
David Carr from the New York Times opened the morning, talking about his years in the business, his Carpetbagger column and how he likes to cover the Oscars. 

However, what I found most useful was Paul Gillin, author of “The New Influencers”, who gave a how-to talk about new social technologies and practices – which ones to follow and which ones can empower you to become your own SEO or SEM. I definitely feel smarter about the technology and about ways in which I can help measure the impact of PR in the blogosphere, in social media and beyond. Conversation mining tools like Nielsen BuzzMetrics and CyberAlert seem like handy PR tools that help get an accurate read on client’s brand affinity in the social media-sphere. These were obviously just the highlights, but I’m sure there’s more detail that can be found on Paul’s blog here.

There are two kinds of people in the 2.0 world, those inside and those outside the 2.0 bubble –basically those who get it and those who don’t. Fortunately, I think I can now say that I’m actually in the bubble, and I hope this bubble doesn’t burst. There’s a plethora of cool opportunities and unique tools at our fingertips and us PR folk are tasked to evolve along with the trend or get ahead of it.

-- Danielle Brincko

Whither a PR 2.0 Strategy?

It seems like the question I get asked by clients most frequently these days is: “What should we be doing in social media and PR 2.0?” Not surprising, given that one in four online consumers now participates in a social network such as YouTube or Facebook, according to the latest Forrester research. Nearly half are consuming content created in blogs, user-generated video or discussion forums.

The question that’s most important is, how does a company design, implement and execute on a successful social media communications strategy – and it’s something we at Access, spearheaded by our dedicated PR 2.0 team, are investing a great deal of time in understanding. What we do know is that the rules of engagement have been irrevocably altered. Even as we’re able to create more intimate connections than ever before with customers and consumers, they are feeling increasingly more empowered in the decision-making process, thanks to the tools and technologies that give more volume to their voice in the social media dialogue.

What we know from helping clients navigate new courses in social media is the imperative of authenticity – keeping it real. Consumers today – across every demographic – demand a new engagement…one that is interactive, empowering, democratic and personal…these are the attributes that must inform any social media strategy.

We are in the process of unveiling a new Access website, even as we are amidst developing social media strategies for several of our clients. In the meantime, we showcase in this edition of Inside Access the results of three successful campaigns on behalf of clients in security, remote collaboration software and gaming. As always, I welcome your feedback, insights and thoughts.

Susan G. Butenhoff, President & CEO
susan@accesspr.com