PR 101

When I first met my doctor almost 30 years, I walked into his office, sat down and asked him: “so, what was your grade in anatomy?” He laughed. I asked the question again. He saw I was serious. He pointed to his medical school diploma that was hanging on the wall behind me. It said he had graduated summa cum laude. I was satisfied.

Why did I ask? Because as the joke goes: do you know what they call the medical student who barely passes? Doctor.

You should be asking the same kind of questions when you decide to hire a social media agency. Too many times, I see people and agencies pass them selves off as social media experts when in reality, all they have done is signed up for Facebook and have a Twitter account. When you ask if they use social bookmarking, or how they measure ROI, their eyes go blank. Or, they give you some gibberish about how ROI is difficult to measure.

The agency you want to hire should have a solid grounding in both traditional marketing and public relations and social media. They understand how to use both, how to meld them and how to measure results.

Social media as a method of public relations and marketing matured about four years. That’s when broadband became widespread. Broadband is necessary to run most social media platforms.

Because it is so new, there are not yet any solid standards for determining who’s an expert and who’s a pretender. I have studying and using social media for about three years. I started doing podcast scripts and moved on from there. I have been doing it long enough that I know what I am talking about.

What distinguishes one agency from another is how long they have been using social media, their level of commitment to it, and how successful they have been.

So, if I were looking to hire a social media expert, here would be the questions I would ask:

• How much experience with social media have you and your agency had?

You want to know if they attended a couple of webinars, maybe have a Facebook page and Tweet and now think they are an expert. That does not make them an expert, not by a long shot. Ask to see their blogs, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn usage, Facebook pages, and YouTube posts. This shows they are experienced users. Ask if they use Digg, Stumbleon and other social bookmarking sites.

• Where did they learn social media?

This shows their level of commitment. And also ask how they stay on top of the changing trends in social media. That’s important.

• Ask for the names of clients for which they have run successful campaigns. You want to be able to check on what they did and if it worked.

• How do they view social media – as a tactic, a strategy, or an entire new way of marketing?

The answer is the last one. Social media is not a one-off. It requires a commitment of time and resources. I would argue that it is more effective than traditional marketing, but it takes knowledge to do it right.

• How do they integrate traditional marketing and public relations efforts with social media?

Traditional methods definitely still have a place. Often there is a melding of the old and the new. Many journalists now use Twitter for instance. You need to make sure that traditional methods are not neglected.

• Who handles social media in their agency?

You want to know the senior people are committed to social media. You don’t want to find yourself working with some junior assistant account executive that got the assignment because he or she has a Facebook page.

• How do they measure Return On Investment (ROI) for social media?

There is no one method to do it. Personally, I believe it can best be measured by increased website traffic and sales, but there are other ways. Make sure the agency has a method for measuring ROI.

Those questions you should get started. Next week, I am going tell you about to set up a social media campaign.

And as for Wednesday’s rant: well, I am going to give you my take on NBC’s decision to interrupt the Olympic closing ceremonies.

This rant might not resonate with you unless you live someplace where it snows a lot. I do. I live in Milwaukee, WI, a great, great city. Milwaukee is located in the northern United States. Winter can be tough here. It get’s cold and it does what it does every winter, it snows.

Snow is no surprise here. We tend to expect it to start snowing sometime around late November or early December. It keeps snowing until late March or early April – sometimes it snows into May. For those of you who live anywhere on Earth where there’s winter, I am sure the same thing happens where you live. As I said, it’s winter, it gets cold, and it snows. This has been going on for millions of years.

So, why do television stations go crazy whenever more than two inches of snow is predicted? Now, I am not talking about snow in a normally warm weather city such as Dallas, Texas or Charlotte, N.C. Snow is news there because it so rarely happens.

However, in my home city of Milwaukee, or in Chicago or Boston, snow is not news to most of us. Yet, every time the forecast calls for snow to fall, the local television stations treat the event as if aliens were invading. Broadcasts start at 4 a.m.; reporters are deployed around the area; all programming is canceled to make way for weather reports; and television meteorologists stand in front of blue screens looking very serious.

(A quick television note: the meteorologists cannot actually see that large, nifty map behind them. All they see is a blue screen. When they do the broadcast, they are looking at off-camera monitor that shows the map.)

Now, this hysteria over some snow is a result of marketing run amuck. A long time ago, some marketing consultant told some station manager that people like weather news. I always imagined the conversation happening in a bar after the station manager had consumed several adult beverages paid for by the marketer. Once the station manager was in an “agreeable” mood, the marketer told him about the “viewers like weather” idea. At this point, the station manager decided that sounded good and signed the contract the marketer shoved toward him.

The marketing guy goes to work the next morning and remakes the station’s newscast, giving weather reports way more prominence then deserved. For whatever reason, ratings rose. The marketing guy discourages doing an actual study of why ratings went up. Hey, the only change was the way the forecast was delivered, right? So, it had to be that.

Other local television station managers took note. Station managers are under constant pressure to raise ratings – their jobs often depend on it. Local news is a revenue source. So, seeing what happened to their buddy’s station, they do the same. The next thing you know, from Bangor, Maine to Portland, Oregon, television reporters are standing on street corners with rulers, measuring snow depth. Others are asking truck drivers whether icy roads are slippery. All this is done with the gravitas of reporting a major announcement from the White House.

So, when there is a normal snowfall coming, we now get hysterics instead of reasoned, normal coverage.

And I don’t think people care that much about snowstorms. I think I am like most people – all I want to know when it is going to snow and what the temperature will be. Of course, they get those wrong more than half the time.  If there is a major freeway accident, tell me about that too so I can change my route. But don’t treat it like World War III has broken out.

One final note: a very fine classic rock radio station in Milwaukee, WKLH, now has what they call “storm tracker tracker.” Basically, they make fun of the hype over the weather. I recommend listening to them. Just click on the link. You will laugh out loud.

Since posting the very popular rant last Wednesday on there being too many social media sites, I have had some requests for a post on what is proper social media etiquette. I wrote on the same subject almost a year ago. Like Emily Post did, I think it is time to update. So, let’s get to it.

• Let’s start at signing up for a site. Think of yourself as being at a party or in a meeting. You would tell people your real name, something about yourself and what you do. It’s no different in social media. So:
  • First, use your real name – not something cute. This is the only way that people are going to know you. If you were hunting for an employee, or hiring someone to perform a service, would you hire “drunkguy05” or “sexxxygirl02?” Plus, if you want to be found, the odds are much better if you use your real name.
  • Second, post a picture of yourself, not your dog, not a pretty sunset, or some weird avatar. People want to know what you look like. Why wouldn’t you post your own picture? You on the run from the law?
  • If you have one, include a link to a blog, another site such as LinkedIn or Facebook. This shows you are a real person. Definitely link to your website if you have one.
  • Include a short bio of yourself. Again, this gives people an idea of who you are.
  • This next rule should be obvious, but people violate it all the time. DO NOT SPAM. If you are joining a site simply to sell me something, go away. That’s not the purpose of social media. I am glad you asked – it is to have a conversation, link with like-minded people and share information. It is not to buy real estate in Goa, or some system that promises me I will get rich working five a hours a week. Or a system that makes me into a spammer. If I get those kind of invitations, I will block you, and I will report you to the site administrators. Of course, that goes double for all of those porn people out there.
  • Once you sign up for a site, it is perfectly acceptable to invite your friends – once. Not six times. As I said last week, if I don’t respond to your invitation, it means I don’t want to join. After the third time, I am going to send you to my spam filter, never to return. And know something about the people you are inviting. As a personal example, I am an Apple; I will never be a PC. So don’t invite me to join Windows Live. It is not going to happen.
  • On that subject, there is quantity versus quality debate in social media. Some experts argue that the idea is to accumulate as many followers as possible. Their thesis goes you want to distribute whatever you are sending out to the widest possible network. The other side it is better to be followed by a 100 people who are influencers in their networks. I come somewhere in the middle. It is up to you to decide. However, this is not high school – the person with the most friends does not win.
  • After you join a site, get active on it. Why else would you join?  That doesn’t mean you have to spend every waking minute posting. But, if you join Twitter, tweet twice a day. If you are Facebook, post an update or two each day. You get the idea. I will not follow anyone who invites me to join a site, but has done nothing there themselves.
  • As part of the above bullet, respond to other people’s post. That’s just good manners. If you want people to respond to what you do, you should have the courtesy to do the same for them.
  • Another thing for you LinkedIn people – unless you know someone personally or have worked closely with them, don’t recommend them. And do not send out blanket requests for recommendations to total strangers. How good could a recommendation be if you nothing about someone? Plus, what if you called by a potential employer who asks you about some stranger you recommended? You are going to look dumb and the odds are very good that the candidate will not get the job.
  • A final note – there is no privacy in social media. Well really, there is no privacy in the Internet Age period. So, if you don’t want people to know something, don’t post it anywhere. Things on the web never really go away. Along those lines, all of you college kids who have those really cool photos of that weekend in Cabo where you took your clothes off and jumped into the ocean – take them down. Many companies will not hire someone if they see such photos. Yeah, it is not fair, but that’s the way it is.