A nugget has stuck with me by my mentor “Don’t be a specialist, you’ll niche yourself. Be awesome at lots of topics, and sell yourself as a hybrid. You’ll always have opportunity.”
I went into this session not knowing what to expect – panels can be a bit tricky, especially when they are limited to 10 minutes a piece. I think the below example did the best at integrating and engaging with the audience, as well as providing information that was not too 101 for my audience.
So who was it?
Deirdre Breakenridge kicked off the panel by stating that she’s in a hybrid role. (THANK YOU.) What does that mean? In PR, a hybrid role is “taking the best of the past, and blending it to make it social.”
The thing is? We should be applying this concept in the workplace. The hybrid model should be all departments working together. Silo’ing yourself isn’t going to help the company brand or actual brands you work for.
DB used an example of a repossession company called the International Recovery Group for her case study of traditional PR/social blend.
They wanted to:
- Raise their profile
- Groups they wanted to talk to and build relationships (talk with lawyer types, but they still have a social community)
- Take their Web site that positioned them as a typical repo company (not low end type reality show – think Dog the Bounty Hunter mentality) and create an actual brand presence and representation
On the third? Why is that? In actuality, they are more high end – take the high end collateral (jets, yachts, helicopters) so they gave them a makeover on the Web site.
With traditional PR tools, they landed in the WSJ. After that piece came out, they got an influx from Fox & Friends, Bloomberg, Today Show among many others.
So, how can we share? How can we make it social?
First: Listen. You can’t just take YouTube videos and post it with the community. Approach your avenues and realize that not everyone is going to respond to the same things, nor is any approach fail-proof. You have to understand and utilize your audience as a resource and sounding board. Hear them out, then provide.
DB also talked about going how brands can go into any community with keywords and search for anything release to the brand.
Then? Plot it on a grid. There is software for this, but this shows the benchmarks met as well as what networks and platforms where your brand can engage.
You can go into any community with key words and search for anything related to the brand.
We then moved into Social Media Optimization – some of my favorite words. Catalysts for Conversation, we see what the people are talking about, and start introducing it in the conversation. The influencers are in the community. The thing is? You have to track it. You have to understand where the audience is coming from.
Tracking is extremely important – why bother having conversation if you’re not understanding where it’s going?
So you need to:
- Define your reach
- Measurement – Weekly, plot benchmarks, how many times certain keywords were used and checking out influencers.
Key takeaways from the rest of the panel (much was basic, and it’s nothing new)
- Web site ROI can be: Total visits, unique visitors, new v. returning (interesting to see this as percentages)
- Using a tool such as bit.ly to see what percentage of your Web site traffic comes from Twitter
- ROI = Relationships + Opportunity + Involvement
- Internal v. External Sharing – Internal is blogs, discussion boards, wiki, SM resources, presos given
- External is something such as a jobs widget- people put a widget on FB and can receive jobs alert
