The second session of NewCommForum I attended featured Shel Holtz of Holtz Communications. Shel brings his insights of employees becoming the brand of a company, particularly through blogs.

What is the definition of a brand?

An audience member says it is how customers perceive you. Shel sees brand as the aggregate of all the experiences you have had with a company, which turns it into what you see, feel, and think. Brand is owned by each individual.

Shel points out that every time an employee says something or does something, and they are NOT happy - it creates a risk. Think of Ryan Kuder being let go from Yahoo!. His experience was chronicled on Twitter.

Positive brand experiences can be created by individual employee bloggers who have the opportunity to represent companies well. Thomas Nelson Publishers provides an aggregate of employee blogs that are highlighted on the website. The most trusted spokesperson of a company comes from a REAL person who just happens to blog about where they work - not the CEO, not the official marketing person.

Examples of Employee Bloggers

Shel shares his experience blogging about a negative experience with Park ‘N Fly, and the following comment from a Sales & Marketing Administrator who promptly responded and offered to make it up to him with free parking (and the all important apology).

Customer service should then be seen as the frontline of the brand and company experience. People who deal with issues themselves are EMPOWRED by their companies, and it’s better for consumers too when they are not constantly approached from a PR or media perspective. Real people and authenticity win every time.

Shel points to the Coca-Cola Second Life Campaign which shared a video update to let consumers know where the campaign was headed and to thank people for participating.

The TSA blog Evolution of Security is aimed at the traveling public to improve relations and have a genuine conversation. The bloggers for this blog are TSA employees who range from screeners to former air marshals, the voices are true and provide an insider’s look to the organization.

Strategies

A few questions on strategy:

• What is the role of internal communications?
• What is the role of content "owners"?
• How do we get them to have the right knowledge but know the facts, without astroturfing?
• What is the role of management and leadership?
• What about policies? On employee behavior and employee access

Overall, Shel says the same thing as Microsoft, "Be smart" (or "don’t be stupid") when you are having employees blog, and when you are blogging about the company you work for.

This five minute snippet was just shot at NewComm Forum 2008 (SNCR). Dell was today’s opening keynote discussion. Dell’s Richard Binhammer answered a couple of questions from SNCR Founding Fellow John Cass. A quick overview of Dell’s journey was given, followed by their four step approach to social media engagement.

Here at the NewComm Forum in Santa Rosa, CA, I’m kicking off the conference sessions with new communications strategies for public relations and corporate communications. Katie Paine from KD Paine & Partners, Janet Eden-Harris from Umbria and Blake Cahill from Visible Technologies came together to share some insight on new communications measurement and evaluation.

Blake started us off with the idea of chaos in the market with so many different mediums. Business intelligence from a market perspective is analyzed, especially the comment thread which is a critical part of the discussion. Identifying key people and developing an outreach strategy are key.

A case study from Kodak shared some goals of identifying a market of potential customers to establish tactics to engage them, as well as informing relevant customers about the full scope of features and functionality offered by the Easyshare printer line.

Visible Technology found a huge audience of people with no brand affiliation to a printing device, so a campaign was launched to drive positive conversations and the product launch for Easyshare.

Another software company proved that engagement with a community increased the average volume of comments by 41%: Interaction CREATES dialogue. During the launch the company saw an overall increase in positive sentiment, increase in brand equity and greater event visibility.

Janet Eden-Harris talks about the intuitive nature of male vs. female conversation and use of mediums, whether writing a blog post or other mediums. These patterns of speech gives us a clue to who we are and is important based on the evaluation of marketing campaigns.

Janet brings up a couple case studies, sharing examples of ways companies have used social media.

• Tell me about my brand. Who are they? How do I compare to my competitors?
• Traditional communication asks for customer surveys to find out what people are saying about a brand. Social media says, “I don’t have to give out a survey.” I can look at conversations about my brand. If they’re posting or commenting - I can see that.
• Tell me about my industry. Are there trends I should be paying attention to? Are there sub-segments?
• Tell me about my customers. We want to understand what customers want and know.
• Help me with new product innovation. What do people wish they had?

Today represents the two year anniversary of this blog (image by Matt McGee). The first post was written the night before the launch of Livingston Communications. Here is an excerpt:

This NewCo is an experimental mix of marketing excellence and ethical principles, similar to those that a classically trained journalist would deploy. The foundation is honesty in marketing and public relations, a dignified approach to doing business in the modern world. Mixed with aggressive, intelligent strategies, tactical marketing works better under these conditions.

With the marketplace becoming increasingly skeptical of marketing and PR messaging, honest communications may be the one of the best ways to succeed in the future. It will at least separate many companies from the mediocre marketing that is commonly used today. I believe in this theory because in my past practices it has worked with resounding success. As a sole proprietor, I can offer this kind of strategic and successful marketing all of the time.

After two years, four additional full-time employees (one of which has yet to identify themselves), permanent offices on the way, 679 Buzz Bin posts and one book, I can say we’ve done a lot to prove this vision. Perhaps the best thing about this blog is all of the many like-minded individuals it has introduced me to. It’s been an honor. Thank you for your support.

What better way to celebrate two years than provide access to the powerpoints that Kami Huyse and I developed for NewComm Forum. There is some overlapping content between the two, but the first one is from our three hour session on integrating social media. The second powerpoint is being given today and discusses how to build a brand using social media.

Did you know Jamie Lee Curtis writes children’s books? She’s penned nearly 10 of them, including “Is There Really a Human Race?,” a story of a boy who wants to know, “Is the human race an obstacle course? Is it a spirit? Does he get his own lane? Does he get his own coach?” The babies and kids in the story run around in circles trying to win friends and influence people, until the book concludes with the boy’s realization: the human race is not meant to be won at all.

(For what it’s worth, I chose this image of the book cover over a video of JLC’s hilarious True Lies strip tease - Not totally SFW.)

A copy of “Human Race” was gifted to me last month. It came to mind yesterday after I read Jared Goralnick’s poignant post: “Avoiding the online popularity contest to seek a deeper connection.” Jared is a true blamigo. His willingness to call out those who fake “frolleague” (friend + colleague) status in exchange for the spotlight is appreciated. We humans are a special breed. Gives us the tools, we’ll build empires for ourselves. Give us the Internet and some tricked out AJAX platforms, and we’re still building empires to ourselves. We all want to win the human race, in one way or another.

Call it what you will: popularity, pretentiousness, pride. Far be it from me to name names or deny my own fallibility here. If you are, indeed, atop a mountain of supporters/friends/followers, then do what we tell our clients: stay grounded, keep in touch, engage your fans, and be a conduit for change that’s bigger than yourself. Thanks to the online powerhouses who are already doing this (you know who you are). To overstate the obvious: I would not be working for Geoff if he didn’t practice what he preaches.

Thursday’s Tech cocktail DC is one of countless opportunities make new blog friends and determine the best way to keep in touch. I’ll be engulfing a few real world friends in hugs and meeting new blamigos - hope you find opportunities to do the same.

(Above: Jared at last week’s Pimp My Nonprofit: Global Giving, hosted by Net Squared at Affinity Lab. If you see Jared at Tech cocktail DC, be sure to ask him about PSO.)

Just in time for the Pennsylvania Primaries, Straight Up Search correlates the support of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft users to the amount of contributions the candidates paid for their campaign ads in those Internet engines. According to the post, McCain and Clinton spent the most on Microsoft while Obama contributed to Google.

Chris Wilson of The Marketing Fresh Peel discusses Proctor & Gamble’s newest line extension: Mr. Clean Performance Car Washes. Chris cites one of his older posts stating that this new extension is, “comical example of brands that had stretched too far with unrelated line extensions.”

1 Good Reason’s Chris Kieff dishes about his brush with spam on Facebook chat. Apparently, his first chat on the new social networking application came from a friend who “pumped” him with cause links. “Now it does appear that Facebook is taking precautions, I think. You can’t use separate Instant Messaging software with the system. And it is closed to all of the FB applications, but there is no indication if that’s permanent. On the other hand it could just be that they are releasing features gradually because you can’t chat with more than one person in a single conversation,” stated Chris. He also asks, “…does the world need yet another online chat application?”

Small Fuel Marketing’s Dave Navarro discusses ways to improve more marketing for small businesses in a lesser amount of time. Dave stated, “The simplest way to get more marketing results packed into less time is by systematically refining and improving your strategies so that they get you results faster. This isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t common practice either. It’s so easy to get caught up in the mad rush of doing business that we often don’t step back and ask ourselves how we can make what we’re doing more effective—but if we don’t, spin our wheels a lot more than we have to.”

David Jones of PR Works talks about the infamous game, Frogger, and how the Vancouver Aquarium is using and marketing the classic arcade game as a teaching tool about the extinction of frogs. According to Jones, “Your frog doesn’t just get hit by a car, or expire when he misses the floating log; he dies due to human interference or water pollution among other horrible sounding things.”

Brandflakesforbreakfast discusses Twitter’s TwittEarth. Through this new application, fellow tweeters can now view “tweets from around the world, but on a wondrous 3D globe.”

Andrew Careaga of higher ed marketing, listed helpful web analytic tools for marketers, PR pros and fellow bloggers in his blog. Among the few were Yahoo’s IndexTools and BlogPulse.

Several recent discussions about social media question the validity of the tool set (image by joguldi). Many think that social media represents a fad or a complimentary tool set that should be used only as an add-on to existing campaigns. In some cases depending on industry and organization, these observations may hold water. At the same time, in other situations they do not. Shel Holtz makes a compelling argument about why social media is a must. Every PR and marketing pro must determine if and how to integrate these new tool sets into their larger outreach effort.

The key word is integration. Social media does not replace traditional media hits in top-tier publications. Nor does it effectively displace direct marketing or intelligently designed advertising campaigns. Often, word of mouth needs real brick and mortar experiences to drive it.

Together, these toolsets can be a powerful combination. For example, one national agency likes to cite an 80 percent increase in blog and social network campaigns when complemented by an advertising purchase. For many industries a media relations campaign that does not take into account new media and how it can successfully augment — and in some industries drive a campaign — represents a strategic failure. It’s hard to ignore the symbiotic relationship between traditional and new media.

If a brand is communicated visually, verbally, and most importantly, through actual experiences, then social media offers a tremendous tool set because it offers the ability to deliver all three. Customer conversations in print, audio, and video, infuentials’ views, search engine placement and third party definition of actual product experiences all tremendously impact a brand.

Great, how do we integrate? Consider how social media can impact PR and marketing. First PR:

And marketing:

Consider how these tools can benefit a program (select case studies here). It gets back to outcomes. If you design a social media program to succeed with great value and intelligent ties back to the larger corporate objectives and the marketing plan, then it should work.

As to the lack of results, what was the desired outcome? How are the tools used to achieve an objective? Were the tools intelligently integrated? Or was a blog or a Facebook group launched because someone in the CxO suite said we needed one? Were basic communication principles addressed? It’s easier to blame the medium than the marketer or company.

In the spirit of today’s PodCamp DC here is a podcast featuring this year’s break-out blogger in the social media space: Jason Falls. Social Media Explorer has rocketed up the rankings, and with good reason. Jason’s content is outstanding, adding a fresh voice to many topics, including social media and PR.

On Wednesday night, Jason took the time to sit down with The Buzz Bin and talk about several prescient topics, including:

• A-List blog fights
• How he did it with Social Media Explorer
• There’s much more to be said about the social media PR and marketing conversation
• The need to be much more transparent about case studies, good and bad
• How ego prevents criticism from being taken the right way
• Nomenclature’s effect on those new to social media

Also, congratulations to Jason on the birth of his daughter Katie.

You can download the podcast here.

The PR pro is a gateway to information; the journalist is a gateway to visibility. The couple is entangled in an epic saga of deadlines and details. Yet, is the scale balanced?

A lot of time and energy is spent luring journalists to the story and sustaining the courtship. (Photo spotted at Birdsasart.)

Finding the message. Tricking out the release. Crafting the pitch. Getting attention. Constructing a provocative newsroom. Exploiting the sexiest medium.

Aside from journalists, bloggers, investors, members and prospects are also benefiting from this ceremony. You should do whatever you can to keep them coming back for more. Brilliant content powered by social media tools can add a lot of charm (although a lot of corporations are still making limited use of new media in communications).

This includes adding the ability to comment on news items and multimedia assets. As reported by eMarketer earlier this week, “US Internet users clamor to express their opinion online, judging by a Forrester Research study conducted in the third quarter of 2007. More respondents said they wanted Web sites to offer ‘user ratings and reviews’ than any other site content or functionality.” (See chart.)

How do journalists display their own allure?

With last-minute phone calls, of course. If you’re not devoted to press inquiries, this can derail you every time. It might not feel like a mutually fulfilling relationship. (Thanks to Larissa for the excellent video.)

But there is another way. Presenting: a quasi-social network for reporters seeking input. If I Can Help A Reporter Out (www.helpareporter.com) is a potential Craiglist for the media industry. Two or three times a day, publicist Peter Shankman sends out a digest of press inquiries to registered users, who can then make a judgment call on whether or not a response is warranted. PR Week has the details.

• It’s free
• It’s got a renegade feel (started as a Facebook group)
• “It now has about 5,000 members that get a three-times daily e-mail containing two to 10 reporter queries.”

Denise Wakeman at Biz Tips Blog thinks HARO is a goldmine: “I read Help a Report Out emails as soon as they hit my email box because media inquiries usually require a quick response.”

Sounds like a little more balance could be on the horizon. HARO’s network will only be as good as the quality and quantity of interactions it facilitates, so spread the word to your PR and press colleagues. PR pros like to band together anyway. Cavorting with journalists in a Craigslist fashion could be good for everyone.

Originally published by Debbie Weil on BlogWrite for CEOs. Hard to believe that BlogPotomac, DC’s premiere unconference on social media marketing, is just around the corner (Friday June 13th to be exact).

Washington Post local business editor Dan Beyers took a few minutes to do a quick Q & A about The WashBiz Blog, which he edits, as well as the broader topic of the relationship between old and new media, which he’ll be talking about at BlogPotomac.

Debbie: What’s the role of The WashBiz Blog in the Washington Post’s local business coverage?

Dan: The WashBiz Blog aspires to be the Post’s main street for news and commentary on local business. We’re still very much in our infancy in developing the site, and you’ll see enhancements in the weeks and months to come.

For instance, we’ve recently added weekly online columns by staff writers Tom Heath and Zach Goldfarb, both of which are off to promising starts. I’ll be starting a weekly editor’s note soon and we have plans for guest bloggers and other new features.

Debbie: How hard was it for you to get the blog started? Was it considered a daring experiment?

Dan: Getting the blog started was a piece of cake. Never in my time at The Post has it been so easy to start something new. Sustaining the blog, developing compelling content that meshes seamlessly with what we print in the newspaper, is another matter.

We’ve only begun to scratch that itch. And while daring is not an adjective I would use for the blog, we are trying to test a premise here. The Post has successfully launched blogs dealing with national politics, celebrity and technology. Can it do so with a subject like local business? I think so, but it will require we be creative in how we engage readers.

Debbie: The colliding of old and new media is a topic of endless fascination. What’s your take on it? 

Dan: At the Post, the issue is hardly old versus new. We have to embrace both. Newspaper readership, though shrinking, is still substantial. Our online business, though growing, is still not as lucrative as the newpaper’s. The focus of a lot of my attention these days is navigating the transition, trying to blend both new and old ways of doing things.

Our plans for the Post 200, our annual guide to the region’s biggest companies, offer a glimpse of the sorts of things we’re trying. In addition to the printed guide that will be distributed with the newspaper, we’re building out our 200 company profiles on the Web, adding live news feeds, links to SEC documents, videos when available, and other content.

We’re also teaming up with the Greater Washington Board of Trade to host a Post 200 event, featuring Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. as the keynote speaker. The idea is to connect with people in the way they find most comfortable, either through the newspaper, on the Web or in person.

Debbie: How do you foresee social media affecting the Washington Post’s coverage of local news in the next year or two?

Dan: Social media is already having an effect. It’s a resource for reporters. For instance, our ability to reach people through Facebook was important to our coverage in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. And we’re experimenting with social media as a way to reach out to readers, with Facebook apps, with Twitter, with some of our comment functions.

Debbie: How active are you on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Do you find them useful in your role as a Wash Post editor?

Dan: I dabble but so far have not found my killer app. Some story ideas and contacts have flowed through the networks. But it can be very hit or miss. The networks are only as good as the people on them. And the anonymity of people on some networks can be difficult to parse. Are they loyal readers? Spammers? Sometimes it is hard to tell. That said, I do think we ignore such networks at our peril.

 Visit BlogPotomac for more information and to register. Dan Beyers will be speaking at the event at 9:35 AM on Friday June 13, 2008 at The State Theater in Falls Church, VA. You can also follow BlogPotomac on Twitter.