Panel 4 here.  2 more to go. Big news is that I won the raffle during this session and it’s Stephanie’s new book – Perspectives on Social Media Marketing (when I won, she said, “oh, you don’t need this, he’s a digital guy.”)

Cutting through the Clutter: How to ID and Engage with the Right Influencers

Panelist – Stephanie Agresta (Porter Novelli)

All things digital should be grounded in community.  Big shift in how “digital” has been thought about in the past.

The amount of time and effort that goes into this can’t be about the platform.  It’s understanding that we need to manage an ecosystem of relationships.

Showed their “Engagement Protocol” – Listen, Set Objectives, Asses Influencers, Define Participation/Content Strategies, Develop, Measure/Optimize.

Who owns SM – PR or advertising?  Some of the challenges for ad agencies is what it means to develop and manage things like editorial calendars.  PR also has advantage of being able to craft messages around different scenarios.

Gillette Fusion ProGlide case study – their community management started long before the “launch.”  Approach a combo of “influencers” and consumers.

Some of her favorite tools to find “influencers”/thought leaders – klout.com, oneforty.com, slideshare.net, and of course, search.twitter.com

Panelist – Deirdre Sullivan (MWW) – consumers are no longer influenced by branded ads.

Users are now turning into valuable contributors.

There are a zillion conversations out there in many different communities.  How do you join the conversation?

1. Build social capital – present yourself as a trusted source/authority.

2. Become influential – if you want to attract other influencers, become one yourself.  Create content.  Speak your mind.

3. Develop strategic partnerships – you don’t have to “pay” to play.

Panelist – Heidi Sullivan (Cision)

You must be able to understand which “influencers” are most appropriate for your brand/industry.  Not all influencers are created equal.  It’s not necessarily the number of eyeballs, but the impact within that community.  As you look for influencers, it’s important to look beyond “followers.”

Her 5 key steps to ID’ing, finding the right influencers:

1. ID your keywords

2. It’s all about RESEARCH – more and more agencies are beefing up their research staff.

3. Do the math – Web analytics + social analytics.

4. Map your results – it’s more than just their “followers.”

5. Engage – build that relationship! Rule of 1/3 – 1/3 is about you, 1/3 is conversation/engaging, 1/3 is social karma (find other articles you like, retweet their stuff) – (I don’t do a good job of the conversation/engaging part – gotta work on that!)

Panelist – Kellie Parker (Sega – Community Manager)

Been doing community for 10 years now.  She works w/ PR & marketing within Sega.  Most of the time, it’s the same content, just framed/said differently, depending on audience.

Measuring return on “new” marketing is about measuring more of the intangible vs. the tangible.  Big shift.

It’s important to evaluate your current measurement tools.  Do you know how to use them?  If not, get a hold of the vendor and ask them questions.  They probably have webinars.

Questions – how many people do you have working in your SM dept?  Kellie – there are 3 of us.  Have a staff member in London.  Helps for time zones.  They’re active 2/3 of the day, which is a great advantage.  Small, scrappy team.

Question – a lot of times there is no one on the client side who is an advocate and not willing/able to run communities, what’s your perspective on “selling” it in to the client and managing the community?  Stephanie – from a community management perspective, there are CM’s on staff, fully disclosed as PN staff.  Ideally, there is someone on the agency side who can own, or halfway own, community management.  There can be a hybrid, too.  From thought-leadership perspective, you can always partner with SM influencers – have them guest blog for instance.  Approach from content-management, story-telling perspective.

Question – What’s your view on sentiment analysis on listening platforms?  Kellie – it’s good and bad.  Quick look, finger on the pulse.  You’ve really got to go into the conversations and see what the real sentiment is – if you want to do a good job of managing the community.  Understanding this can even affect business b/c you learn what people like/don’t like and then can filter than information back to the right people in the organization.

Lunch Keynote:  Social Media – What’s on the Horizon?

Sarah Evans (@prsarahevans)

“What I’m going to say is probably not that cool.”  (But she’s got cool boots on).

In February, she tweeted an earthquake that happened in Chicago, then posted on CNN iReport and before you know it, she had NYTimes and CNN calling about the story, then before you know it, she had business leads because it seemed like she “got” social media.  She said, “I don’t do traditional advertising/outreach for my business.  It takes time to build relationships.”

It’s not about the next Twitter or FourSquare.  It’s about understand how people use online communications and bringing a little structure and focus on how to use social.  It’s about creating tactics NOT around the tools – not platform specific.

Focus on these things first – need to have these things in place:  SMP and ID how organization is going to be structured around SM.

Some guidelines that she outlined:

Find an opp to showcase what you do best.  Many times, you’re going to be the first company to do something in this space.  That’s a GREAT opportunity.

Hijack a conversation.  Livefyer (check it out)

Meet a need in an innovative way – #journchat – online weekly community dedicated to making industry better, networking.

Ask them what they want.  Give them what they want.  If you ask people what they want, you have to be prepared to give them what they want.

Don’t underestimate mainstream or traditional media.

Generate A LOT of quality content.

Do it for a good cause.  She talked about her Blogworld ’09 experience & Beat Cancer initiative.

Give freely, give often.

Questions – what do you think about the recent Gladwell article in The New Yorker?  (Impacting “real” social change.)  She doesn’t necessarily agree with it.  Social media is another tool and it can work and it can be valuable.  If it works, it works.

Question – Can you talk about the Crisis Center experience?  Crisis center came to her and E.D. said, “I heard you do something w/ computers.  The shelter is way behind on payments owed to the state.”  So, they launched a letter of support.  E.D. said they used to have reporters come in and tell about their experience staying the night.  So, Sarah said she would go in and stay the night and tell her community about it (Crisis Overnight).  This was the first time she asked her community for anything.  $161,000 raised over 3 weeks and the doors remain open.

Question – Tips on how to build relationships w/ journalists online.  What works the best is real, engaging conversation online.  If you find something that they’ve written that you like, tell them about it.

Question – smaller groups/non-profits workflow re: social media.  Should we hire an intern to run social media?  Think of dividing responsibilities with current staff.  And change as regularly as needs to change.  Sometimes, unions can change what people can/can’t do.  But if you can adjust job descriptions, you should explore.

Panel #1 of the day at the Digital PR Next Practices Summit – IMO, the best part is the questions at the end!

Creating the Digital PR Dream Team – Mary Henige (GM), Lee Mikles (Archer Group), Holly Potter (Kaiser Permanente)

Mary – (yes, this is one of my clients) – she showed their org chart – Communications surrounding by Marketing

From her perspective, on the Communications team, it’s important to hire marketers.  Need to think like a marketer.  Important that Marketing doesn’t see Communications as the enemy.

Also have graphic designer, who is really important because he/team can create things and talk the talk.

Lee – I think he said they don’t hire interns for community management (“Twitern”) (mic is way down right now) – it’s a temptation b/c they understand social media, and they’re low cost, but they don’t understand your brand intimately.  It creates problems.

The A-Team:  The Digital Genius, The Content Creators, The Listener, The Law

Difference between social networking and traditional communciations – you don’t have the time to craft a perfect response.

Don’t yell – you have to have a voice that’s consistent with your brand.

Your team is not an island – need to be in tune w/ the brand teams, they need to be aware of the social team.

Have a plan – it’s important to have a plan before the “fire” starts.  Make sure people in the company know it.  And are comfortable with it.

It’s important to get the social team pushing/looking ahead so they stay relevant.  And they need to communicate that knowledge with the other teams.

Report on progress – step back on increase sales b/c that’s obviously what we want to do.  But do you want to increase followers

Social isn’t PR – PR isn’t social – customer service, innovation, relationship building.  You can’t have a social team sitting on an island away from the rest of “PR.”

Diane – they re-structured a couple of years ago and added a “PR” department where social media teams were just part of it.  Teams are: Public Relations, Corp Comm, Issue/Brand Mgt, Mktg/Advertising/Internet Services.  They have “Digital Sponsors” group with representatives from each team.  They just hired “Digital Media and Syndication Director.” Others in the Digital Sponsors group – Internal Web Capability, Digital Engagement Svcs, Digital Mktg Strategy.

When they re-organized, they changed everyone’s job description (even the traditional PR practitioners) to include social media capabilities – they listen/monitor, pitch bloggers, engage in conversations, correct misinformation, & facilitate service recovery.

Questions – how are you finding talent? Is it better to find someone more experienced in PR strategy or someone with a digital background?  Mary – in this field, they don’t have to come from a communications/PR background.  Some of this is very much learned.  If you find someone who is agile, risk-taking, and willing to learn – we’re willing to bring them on and train them.  There’s a whole bunch of people who want to get into this, but they haven’t done anything.  It’s about finding the people who have done things.

Holly – It’s nice to find people with strategy experience – how to get your story out overall.  Having a silo’d expertise around social media might not have the impact for the brand that you want.  Good to have balance – risk takers and nay-sayers.  Involving legal team early and often works well for them, too.

Question – What if you’re a team of 1?  What are some strategies for building a team?  Lee – the best thing you can do is show leadership the conversations that are happening.  If you’re not participating in those conversations, then who is?

Holly – listening is really critical.  They create monitoring report each week and share w/ team + C-suite.  The more you’re in it, the more you see opportunities to engage in it.  If you try to address everything in the social space related to your brand, you’re never going to sleep again.

Question – How did you develop the “right” voice?  Mary – starting about 2 years ago, they had so many people tweeting on their behalf so it’s going to be a little bit playful/different.  A lot of brands make their brands synonymous with 1 person – they don’t agree with this b/c eventually, that 1 person is going to not be there.

Question – 3 key characteristics of a candidate.  Holly – 1) skeptical of anyone who tells me they’re a guru or touts themselves like that.  We all have a lot to learn and in reality, we’re all making it up as we go along.  Anyone who claims otherwise, is wrong. 2) there needs to be a balance between willingness to take risks and challenge the status quo.  Have to acknowledge the PR landscape is not the same as it was 10 years ago.  3) pragmatist – it’s not all puppies and kittens when you go out in social media.  You need to be aware of what’s out there and be able to approach it from a realistic perspective.

Lee – 1) communications background – need to be able to communicate 2) understand there is a measurement aspect 3) they need to be likeable.  They’re going to be conversing with people, they need to be likeable.

Question – does it matter if the staff is in the same building? Holly – I don’t care, but ultimately, news is occurring 24/7, so as long as they’re on it, it doesn’t matter where they are.

Mary – You can coordinate your efforts without being in the same spot, generally speaking.

Question – where things are shifting for your team?  Mary – content creation – searchable, working with marketing, web development.

Lee – integrating the social conversations into all forms of communications.

Holly – content creation, overall, is foundational to everything they’re doing.  The more content they can create that is shareable, the more it’s going to help them.  Video is a critical piece to sharing their story.  They will focus on this over the next 3-6 months.