I am currently working with the latest group of interns at the office. Some of the brightest young minds in PR (Seriously, I’m intimidated) are jumping face first into the world of PR and digital media. I got to meet with them today and we talked a bit about the importance of how you are perceived by your peers and the influencers you work with.

Brand your personality

Yes, I know, we don’t like the phrase “personal branding.” But it works. We know what it means, so I’m going to use it. If every interaction you have with an influencer is a pitch, how does that affect all future interactions? I think that it is important that a PR pro’s relationship with an influencer, from Kara Swisher to a hyper-local news blog, be symbiotic.

If both parties are benefiting, then the relationship is much more productive. This is especially crucial in direct-to-consumer efforts when you may be working directly with an influencer throughout an event or media tour. Your personality becomes one of the most important aspect of your professional repertoire.

Be yourself

I do my best to be myself around an influencer that I will be working with in the future. But what else can you do to help maintain your place in the wide world of PR? Here’s my ideas:

• Walk the walk. Start a blog, learn about SEO, go shopping, become a PR Geek. The point is if you share the passion and excitement of a product you want your influencer to share with his or her audience, it will be far easier to tell that story.
• Be seen. Get out and meet the people you want covering your clients. Be part of the community. Be active and engage with them.
• Be genuine. Hopefully you end up representing clients you like and getting involved is easy. On the off chance you are stretching yourself daily, I think that sometimes it is OK to admit you are learning the space or learning the products and admit you are not an expert.
• Reach out and touch somebody. Once you establish a relationship. Maybe it was a successful placement of a pitch; could have been a cocktail hour. Whatever the start was, it is up to you as the PR pro to continue the relationship. Tweet them, comment on posts and maybe even give a phone call.
• Have an opinion. In this industry, it is important to be forward thinking and it’s not OK to put that opinion out there. Start a blog or even ask me (or somebody far more popular) if you can guest post.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the type of persona you think a PR pro should have. Tell me in the comments and let me know!

“Social Media and Blogging in Federally Regulated Industries” isn’t a really sexy title for a conference session, but it’s one that is absolutely necessary. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, firearms and liquor are trying to figure out how to not only participate on the conversations that are happening, but also how they can capitalize on them.

The challenge

For some companies, the challenge is the disclosure of certain material information, or Regulation Fair Disclosure. Any publicly traded company is subject to scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission and if a company were to publish a blog post committing to a new product and then not meet that commitment, it could be subjected to not only a costly shareholder law suit, but a costly SEC investigation.

Recently, the SEC relaxed its rules (or modernized them depending on your spin) to allow companies to disclose information through their blogs. This is a major step, but seems to be one companies are afraid of taking. I can not find any questionable uses so far, so it seems not many people are taking the risk. Companies such as Google regularly announce new products and Betas through blogs, but when was the last time a pharmaceutical company announced a new drug through it’s corporate blog?

The challenges aren’t specific to big business. Liquor companies need to check the age of their followers on Twitter, tobacco companies have to reign in their marketing practices. I’ve even had the Investor Relations person at a firearms company say they haven’t begun to use social media because they don’t know what’s allowed.

The solution

The solution is simply to take a risk and do something. I know this is a scary proposition for marketers and public relations companies, but by taking informed risks, you’ll find success.

I have advised companies to issue announcements through the blog only. An average distribution for one company I worked with would be nearly $1,000 based on the inclusion of a safe harbor statement and all the other knowledge. Customer wins, product updates and smaller announcements simply don’t need an expensive press release. A blog post with embedded multimedia provides the same value.

Molson-Coors is able to use Twitter to post stories about alcohol awareness and other positive stories, but the bio explicitly asks followers to be of legal drinking age. Ruger, Smith & Wesson and other firearms companies do not maintain corporate blogs. It looks like Ruger might have control of http://twitter.com/ruger, but it’s protected so it’s hard to tell.

Creative marketing and communications practices are important to the success of any campaign. In federally regulated industries, creativity is even more important. Do you work for a federally regulated company? Share some of your best practices in the comments!

As I mentioned recently, social media and social marketing are in their infancies and we are defining the rules. But defining these rules is especially important for companies. Having clear guidelines makes a social media program versatile and transferable. Plus, it will make the lives of compliance officers a bit less stressful.

Don’t be an idiot

Sounds simple enough, right? If you are acting as a representative of a company anywhere that is visible to the general public, act as if your boss is reading over your shoulder (If you’re the boss, act as if your leading investor is over your shoulder). Having a little conscious whispering in your ear while you type should keep you clear.

Keeping a positive focus on the actions of the company should be a priority for the social media practitioner. It shares the spotlight with fostering discussion of the company’s activities.

Maintain your voice

When you operate as the voice of the company, it will be difficult to keep your voice out of the materials you generate — learn to embrace that. You will create “better” content if you keep true to your personal writing style and voice. Copy will come more naturally and your audiences will be able to better relate to it so long as you are being genuine.

Write what you know; write how you know and you’ll be surprised at the results. Plus, you will avoid the leading, unique tendencies to be a ground-breaking leader in your content vertical i.e. “marketing speak.”

Active or passive

When you are creating a content channel, make an overt decision on whether it will actively participate in any discussions that may or may not occur. Of course, I would recommend being an active voice within the community you are trying to create around your service or product. But it is sometimes necessary to broadcast.

What I would avoid, however, is simply being one or the other. If you only broadcast, no discussion, no community occurs. And that defeats the purpose of social media/marketing as a whole. If you are only responding to comments or external discussions, the audience controls the conversation. And, while it is important to participate, it is necessary that you lead the discussion as it relates to your product or service.

To delete or not to delete

Regardless of how you engage, be it broadcasting or conversing, I would strongly advise to proactively react to negative comments and feedback. Deleting the critical material is ultimately up to you, but I feel that addressing the issues is important. Unless the complaint is patently wrong.

Keep it current

Post, create content and keep it up to date. Not much to say beyond that.

Make it good

Making content that doesn’t suck is generally a good idea. If your job is to blog, make sure you read some of the popular blogs and see what makes them popular. Are they funny? Do they use lots of word play? How many links do they use? And so on. The point is to provide value to the people that pay your company money and the people you want to pay your company money.

Your tweets, blog posts etc… should be checked for grammar/spelling/typos. Your videos should have decent sound quality. Your podcasts should have a quick edit done to kill dead air or pregnant pauses. Posting solid content makes for a happy audience. It is frustrating to read through a post that is rife with errors.

Setting up social media rules is a difficult challenge to say the least. The problems compound when you add in the layers that are natural in a company. But I think that perhaps the most important rule should be “Don’t be afraid of change.”

What has worked in your company? How do you participate? What rules do you have? Share them in the comments.

There is no etiquette, there are no rules. Make your own and make them known.

Do you find yourself facing social media overload? With Twitter followers, Facebook friends, Flickr friends, LinkedIn connections and countless other social networks to manage, sometimes I just find myself a touch overwhelmed. Do you?

All of a sudden, I found myself with more than 800 followers on Twitter, which compared to some isn’t a lot, it is a daunting number to me. I can’t follow everybody back and feel like I’m making genuine connections. And this is leading me to make my social media rules.

Be genuine

The old standby is back again. If you’re putting a false impression of yourself out there, people will associate you with that and not respect the “real” you. Don’t be fake.

Twitter is disturbingly Google friendly. I spent a few years as a reporter and most of my articles have been over taken by Twitter musings, blog posts and a video interview I did more than a year and a half ago. It is vital that anything you put out into the public be representative of your talents, skills and opinions.

Be visible

If you truly want to foster genuine connections, don’t sign up for every shiny new bubbly social network that pops up. Unless you can actively spend time there and create a community. If you neglect connections and networks, they will quickly dissolve. I like to say that the best part of social networking is that it is a passive technology — you get out what you put in.

By focusing your efforts/connections into fewer places, you are able to have more quality interactions that are more beneficial to both parties.

Be flexible

The other day, I unfollowed about 50 people on Twitter, but since then I’ve followed just as many new people. There’s a sociological theorum out there called Dunbar’s number, which states that a human is only capable of so many stable connections at any one time. I think that social networks have greatly expanded that capacity, but your brain and attention are still finite resource that require flexible management.

It’s important to know that you can’t connect with everybody and you can’t manage 1,000 profiles. By being flexible with your interactions, you are able to provide a more genuine social interaction.

In a nutshell

Here are my rules in a nutshell:

• I will be myself
• I will not follow, friend or accept everybody.
• I will engage, interact and participate
• I will not be disappointed by a lack of response
• I will ask for you to read this blog
• I will not force this blog down your throat
• I will look at your profile.
• I will be genuine.

What are your rules? What are your social networking guidelines? I would love to know.

Do your customers and prospects trust your blogs? New research from Forrester says they don’t.

Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff recently released a report that had this interesting tidbit, amongst others:

Consumers trust company blogs less than any other channel.

This result comes from a survey wedid in Q2 of 2008. Have a look at the data yourself. Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company
email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. If you’re a corporate blogger or somebody who advises companies, you need to take this into account.

I’d like to know if you trust what we say here on these pages. we strive to create an open discussion on cloud computing, enterprise software and Web app distribution, amongst other topics.

Last year, Etelos was named as one of Inside CRM’s top 20 corporate blogs because we have made an effort to make sure every post is not a promotional spin piece for Etelos.

More to the story

There’s more to this story, though. In the original post, Bernoff lists other sources that people trust more than corporate blogs.

This graph is from Forrester and explains the break down in what sources people trust.

“Email from people you know” at the top is no surprise, but to see items such as wikis and yellow pages ranked higher is interesting. Most yellow pages services are sponsored listings — ads.

Quite frankly, I’m more willing to put faith in a quality, open and honest blog post than in an ad.

What I see in the general trend of trusted sources is that newer sources of energy are decidedly at the bottom of the list, while established or older relationships trend toward the top.

Earning trust

In his summary blog post, Bernoff advises that an open discourse is essential to establishing trust. Basically, what that means is that trust is earned. For a smaller company in a specialized industry such as we are, this trust is earned first in a small circle of companies.

So, how can companies earn trust? Here’s a couple of ways:

• Don’t just blog about the positives. Perfect software doesn’t exist, especially if yours is wearing a Beta tag.
• Link out, link early and link often. I feel that referring to others enhances your credibility.
• Let your content speak to your expertise. If you are truly innovative, your content will say so.
• Convers with your readers. Invite comments, respond to comments and post comments on others blogs.

So, my challenge to you is to earn some trust. Let me know what steps you’re doing to earn that trust.

Most large companies simply aren’t agile enough to actively be involved and followup on a campaign. And a lot of smaller companies simply don’t have the time to be actively participating in conversations.

Participating in a marketing campaign is about connecting with the audience. Let them into your world. Show them how things work and show them why your product is the best.

One of the best examples of participation is Wine Library TV. The point of WLTV is not to get video views or Twitter comments, it is to sell wine. The videos that are produced, the events Gary speaks at and the messages he sends on Twitter are a means to an end.

But other examples exist as well. Every party thrown is an act of participation. When Scott Beale at Laughing Squid has a drink up, the goal is to meet new people, interact with his audience and hopefully score some new business.

More traditional methods exist as well. Take the Webinar as an example. A project manager or product architect giving a personal, non-marketing tour of a product or technology goes a lot further with an engaged audience than a banner ad on Digg.

So, participate with your audience. It’s not about being seen, it’s about seeing and connecting with the audience.