While some advertising agencies have begun experimenting with social media in their ad campaigns (e.g. Trident’s full-page ad showcasing Twitter messages from its customers or the Old Spice YouTube videos created by the ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy, with the help of social media consultants), social media firms seem a bit more cautious incorporating advertising into their marketing campaigns. This may be due to the distrust people generally feel toward advertising, which makes its introduction into a community-oriented social media channel rather tricky.

However, advertising can work especially well in social media due to the high engagement level of social media users. Page One PR has run Facebook ads, Twitter ads, and even placed ads on message boards and newsletters for our clients. The ads we ran can be divided into two objectives: to increase the reach or engagement level of a channel and to increase direct sales and downloads of a product or service.

What worked and what didn’t?

Message boards and newsletters tend to cater to audiences that are not being targeted by traditional forms of PR and marketing. By locating message boards and newsletters that are relevant to a client’s market, we can identify a niche audience that is very likely to be interested in a product or company. Though we may be reaching a smaller audience, it is one that is pre-vetted and predisposed to listen to our client’s message. The target audience is narrow but deep.

In contrast, running ads on Twitter-specific networks garners a very wide audience, but it is one that is primarily interested in Twitter. Even though an ad may be seen by a great number of people and can lead to a huge spike in followers, the viewers are rarely “quality” leads. As a further detraction, we have noticed that a significant number of followers generated from Twitter network ads drop off after a short period of time. The target audience here is wide and shallow.

We’ve generated better results from Facebook ads, though the outcome depends largely on the goal of the campaign and the “call to action.” We’ve found that ad campaigns that keep fans within Facebook’s platform lead to better returns. In one instance, we created and ran an ad to drive new fans to a Facebook Page. The number of fans grew by 44% with a gain of nearly 1,000 in one month and a conversion rate (percentage of people who became fans after clicking on the ad) of 30.3%. In contrast to Twitter network ads, fans generated from these campaigns did not drop off.

However, the results have been negligible for ads that require a user to leave Facebook’s site. We created a Facebook ad to increase attendance to an event. Though a high number of viewers who clicked on the ad ended up purchasing tickets to the event, the total number of clicks on the ad remained relatively low. This could indicate the keyword triggers and other ad filters were too well targeted to appeal to a large enough audience. A second Facebook ad offered a white-paper download from a client’s website, again taking the audience away from Facebook’s site and again leading to unspectacular results.

The last is also an example of what happens when ads are not integrated with an interesting marketing campaign. For instance, we ran an ad in which viewers were asked to share their funniest customer requests regarding a specific product. Perhaps not surprisingly, the results far outshone those from the ad that offered a whitepaper download. At a very basic level, the call to action should be more than just “buy now” or “click here.”

What’s on the horizon?

Social media at its best consists of both give and take – users generate and promote valuable content, while building relationships and engaging with communities. In contrast, consumers of traditional media and search engines are accustomed to a one-way street of communication. Because social media users tend to be more engaged, it signals a greater likelihood that they will interact with an ad, especially one which develops their relationship with a community further.

We’ve found the conversion rates from social media ads have been high, especially relative to more traditional forms of online advertising. In future, we plan to run more ads targeted at driving community interaction, specifically ones that keep an audience on Facebook’s site. We will also begin incorporating LinkedIn ads in our marketing campaigns and continue tweaking our campaigns on Twitter-specific advertising networks to generate better results. While care must be taken to ensure results are not offset by the cost of the ads, we have witnessed enough promise to continue using advertising in our campaigns where appropriate and we see this trend continuing for social media marketing as well.

I first got word of Facebook’s new guidelines when I considered designing a Facebook contest for a client. After getting in contact with a Facebook employee, I learned creating a custom tab to promote a contest would cost me an ad buy of $10,000 per month.

$10,000? Facebook contests used to be free, simple, and spur-of-the-moment campaigns. Long gone are the days when any Page could ask trivia questions to their fans via wall post, and the Page would pick a random winner from the answers they received in the comments. For marketing professionals, contests and giveaways are a great way to attract new fans and encourage existing ones to interact with a brand. But now, only companies with a substantial advertising budget can use this method of increasing their fan following on Facebook.

Part of Facebook’s appeal to me is that it’s a great outlet for small businesses, new brands, and indie artists to build a loyal legion of fans. $10,000/month is out of their reach. I understand Facebook needs to make money. But once upon a time, Facebook also started out as a small start-up. They too spread virally through word-of-mouth because they found a niche market and provided a useful service. Now that they’re a big gun, I hope they don’t forget about the little guys that need them the most.

I’ve always declared myself to be (in an admittedly blissful manner) somewhat of a social media purist. For me, social media’s biggest value is that it facilitates relationships – for both the big corporation and for the local indie band. Social media is most effective when a brand is able to connect with consumers on a deeper level that is never achieved with traditional advertising or marketing campaigns. The basic framework of social media platforms allows for instant feedback, interaction, and engagement. When it comes to using contests as a strategy to quickly attract and engage fans, Facebook’s promotions guidelines give an unfair competitive advantage to large advertising budgets.

To reiterate, the new guidelines are a smart way for Facebook to make some money, and to cover their bases when it comes to liability. But I think the $10,000/month price tag is too steep, and I guess I can’t help but root for the underdog. I confess, I don’t have a solution that will make both parties happy. I’ll give it some more thought and will hopefully have some concrete conclusions in my next blog installment. But until then, there is always Twitter. Zing!

Unfortunately for marketers, Twitter guidelines can be confusing.  The guidelines are often vague and enforced suspension can be handled by automated algorithms.   It’s possible for accounts to get suspended during the middle of a campaign due to a misinterpretation of Twitter guidelines.

Here are five important points social media marketers needs to know about doing business and advertising on Twitter:

1) Avoid aggressive following.

- Any user can follow 2,000 people total, but this does not mean that you cannot have more than 2,000 followers. After 2,000 followers, Twitter will pay close attention to your “follower-to-following” ratio. For example, if you are following 5,000 people but only have 100 followers, Twitter will consider that “aggressive following” and will send an error message because you have reached your limit for your account.  Repeat violations or overly aggressive following may result in account suspension.

2) Avoid spamming.

- Do not post the same update multiple times on the same day.

- Do not post the same update on multiple accounts (this is not the same as a retweet, or RT, this is if the same company owns multiple accounts and posts the same tweets on each account to garner more attention.)

- When Twitter users constantly follow and un-follow many users, this is what Twitter calls “aggressive follow churn.” The only automated function Twitter allows is auto-follow, which, when enabled, simply means that your account automatically follows any user who first follows you.

- Do not “squat” a username for more than six months. After six months, Twitter can remove that username. Selling usernames is not allowed unless you have arranged a separate agreement with Twitter.

3) Remember to stay within the limits.

- In addition to aggressive following, Twitter has a few other limitations to an account on a daily or timely basis:

a. Direct messages are limited to 250 per day

b. API requests are limited to 150 per hour

c. Updates are limited to 1,000 per day (including retweets)

d. Changes to account e-mail are limited to 4 per hour

e. Followers (daily) are limited to 1,000

4) Third parties are not allowed to submit paid tweets into the Twitter API.

- Promoted Tweets are the only paid tweets allowed. Twitter says that the reason for this is that third parties do not have Twitter and twitterer’s best interests in mind, andTwitter emphasizes the preservation of “long-term success for all advertisers, users and the Twitter ecosystem,” and also want to encourage creativity and innovation.

5) Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends

Although this doesn’t impact account suspension, marketers need to know about these new tools for businesses on Twitter, weighing the costs of paying Twitter directly for promotion versus paying your staff to run campaigns.

Page Wonder Hartley blogged about the benefits of promoted tweets, as well as places where promoted tweets could use some improvement. Although it has not yet been released to all advertising companies, Twitter has given us a few pointers on how promoted tweets work.

- “Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses want to highlight to a wider group of users.” – Twitter Business Help Resources

- Promoted tweets rely heavily on resonance, a platform Twitter is developing currently to determine which tweets will become promoted by measuring a company’s interaction with its customers (“@replies, re-use of hashtags, avatar clicks, hashtag clicks, in-Tweet link clicks, views after Retweet and more”). This indicates that all tweets begin as regular tweets, and Twitter’s resonance algorithm will determine which tweets are eligible to become a promoted tweet.

- Promoted tweets will appear at the top of relevant search result pages, and a “promoted” button will indicate promoted trends.

Although this isn’t an explicit rule in Twitter’s terms of service or guidelines, it is best for businesses to try  to keep up with their followers and fellow twitterers: monitor what is being said about your company, pay attention to #hashtags and @replies, and connect with the people behind the brand you are trying to reach out to. Tweet more than just links and promotions. Twitter strongly believes in a friendly environment, and I believe social media marketing on Twitter can and should fall under that category.

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Research and writing assistance provided by Paulina Singhapok of Page One ( Twitter @sf_paulina , paulina@pageonepr.com)

Today, Twitter still remains one of our more popular social media services, but our measurements have shifted to measuring engagement with top influencers.  We now look to capture Twitter metrics like influential @replies or retweets, traffic or clicks to marketing collateral like white papers, videos or specific pages on the client’s website, downloads of free trials or products and positive comments about our clients.  In order to increase these metrics we make sure our follower base is made up of influencers and then run a series of campaigns or activities that are designed to encourage interaction with these followers.

Below I outline three techniques we have been using recently to help increase engagement on the VMware vCloud and SAP Crystal Reports Twitter feeds we are managing:

1. Twitter Polls. For both feeds we have recently run a series of Twitter polls aimed at increasing engagement with our followers.  You can use a free service like TwtPoll to easily set up the poll and then promote it on your Twitter feed to collect responses from your following.  Usually your followers will take the poll and also help you promote by retweeting it to their followers or @replying their responses.  Not only do these polls help you interact with your followers, but you can also select questions that provide valuable research data.  For example, on @crystalreports we polled our following to see which Crystal Reports products they would like to try out.  Based on the results of this poll we now have a better idea of the type of products we should give away on the feed when we run a product giveaway contest in the future.

2. Twitter Contests. Another great technique, although a little more work to pull off than a Twitter Poll, is to execute a Twitter-specific contest on the feed.  There are many different types of Twitter contests and frankly I could write an entire blog post about this topic alone, but in general the best Twitter contests are ones that are easy and fun to participate in.  The whole goal is to run an activity on the feed that entices your followers and gets them involved in some type of game or giveaway, ultimately achieving some pre-identified marketing goal.  Most Twitter contests are designed to require the Twitter user to retweet a specific phrase that includes a unique hashtag or bit.ly link or requires the Twitter user to follow the feed and then be direct messaged an instruction or prize code.  For VMware we wanted to collect use cases so designed a Twitter contest that asked vCloud users to submit their use cases on a contest microsite, follow @vcloud and then tweet the phrase: “Hey, @vCloud I just submitted to @Bluelock’s developer contest to win an iPad! http://bit.ly/dsXfI1 #cloudmonkeys” to be entered to win a prize.  Contests like this help promote the feed and specific marketing content, but also provide a means to interact with the following.

3. Twitter Q&As. This is a relatively new technique we are trying out, but the preliminary results look interesting.  For SAP Crystal Reports we have identified a long list of business intelligence and Crystal Reports influencers, some of which have rather large social networks.  In order to tap into those networks we have selected a few of the top influencers and will be facilitating Q&As with them on our Twitter feed.  We are currently running our debut Q&A with a prominent author of a top rated book on Crystal Reports and are asking the community to submit questions via Twitter or Facebook to be responded to by the author.  We are hoping to execute a series of these influencer Q&As with members of Crystal User Groups and other technical communities in the future.  A series like this can provide our Twitter following with access to Crystal Reports “superusers”, which will serve as a valuable resource and make our Twitter feed a go-to site for Crystal users.

These are just a couple of the ideas we have been using recently on the feeds we manage.  Since social media is in a constant state of evolution, I’m sure we will be using different techniques in the near future.  What’s important to keep in mind though is that a good Twitter feed will provide both valuable content and engage with it’s following, either through conversation or techniques like those outlined above.  Let us know what techniques you are using to stimulate engagement on your Twitter feeds!

1) Mind the platform:

2) Be Clear and Honest:

3) Take Full Responsibility:

4) Be Proper:

By abiding by these general points, marketing and advertising on Facebook shouldn’t pose a problem to your company’s campaigns. Facebook just wants to ensure users still have a good user experience while advertisers are promoting their company or product to a targeted audience. You should always be cautious when handling tools – Facebook is no exception. Use it wisely, and you will get results.

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Research and writing assistance provided by Craig Oda (coda at pageonepr.com, Twitter @codawork)

After announcing the upcoming revisions in October, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released their guide for advertisers for the first time since 1980 in December with some notable revisions. With fines up to $11,000 per penalty, companies and endorsers engaged in social media campaigns have to be a lot more careful.

The FTC is cracking down on social media endorsements. From celebrities to tech bloggers, if the relationship, or “material connection,” between the endorser and companies using social media is not obvious to consumers, the endorser must disclose this information. The FTC has the consumers’ best interests in mind, but places the responsibility on advertisers to know what consumers take away from their ads and promotions.

Although the guidelines state that the connection between the company using social media and the endorser must be disclosed, they do not say specifically how or where it must be disclosed. The FTC does hold the endorser responsible for disclosure, but both the endorser and the company can be liable: “The Commission believes that the endorser is the party primarily responsible for disclosing material connections with the advertiser.  However, advertisers who sponsor these endorsers (either by providing free products – directly or through a middleman – or otherwise) in order to generate positive word of mouth and spur sales should establish procedures to advise endorsers that they should make the necessary disclosures and to monitor the conduct of those endorsers”(“Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”, Federal Trade Commission, 39).

How will these new guidelines affect social media marketing? Andy Sernotivz of AdvertisingAge says the FTC’s new guidelines work to social media marketing’s advantage: “Now we have the clarity to properly invest in social media, without having to guess about legal risks,” and Dallas Lawrence of Mashable and Bulletproof Blog suggests that “there isn’t much companies should be doing now that they shouldn’t have been doing before these rules went into effect.” Here at PageOne, we excel in our social media marketing campaigns, all while complying with the new FTC guidelines.

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Craig Oda and Paulina Singhapok ( Twitter @sf_paulina)

That budget battle forced by the recession arrived at about the same time as more and more brands began to take social media seriously in their marketing. Many companies were frankly desperate to try anything that might work. And to their delight they found that the investments required in social media tended to start small. So they jumped in feet first.

Okay, now who decides what the plan will be?

Who’s in charge of that social media spending and strategy and execution?

Surprise! It turns out no one. The PR people tended to raise their hands first but many flailed since social media was so much different than the strict message control practiced by most brands’ public relations departments. The creative services agencies took the most of this opportunity. They understood a good idea and could create compelling content. Many had digital groups that could also do the digital plumbing required to publish that content on the Web. PR firms usually had to outsource this activity. Unfortunately a lot of ad agencies still only understand how to broadcast one way. They missed the engagement part of the equation required in successful social media campaigns.

Filling much of this gap in the meantime are some smart specialist firms that consult on social media marketing. Their principals pontificate on panels at prestigious conferences. They’re all over Twitter. We see some of them in our work with global brands such as Cisco and SAP. They’re smart. But most seem weak on the execution side of social media marketing. They have good ideas but they fall down trying to put them into practice. This phenomenon has been good for our business at Page One.

Tim Dyson, CEO of Next15, the UK-based holding company for some PR firms that we respect, pointed out recently in his blog that ad agencies were winning social media awards. Ad agencies are playing on the turf of PR agencies and winning. He observed that PR agencies can play that same game. At Page One, we’re already taking budget from the ad side.

Most of our big social media clients discover and hire us through individual business units. These groups have a business problem they want to solve. They have good budgets, too. They’re considering social media in the mix with other marketing spends, including advertising, webinars, lead generation, online micro-sites, games and more. The PR/communications teams within these companies know that we’re helping these business units, and we coordinate with them, but they’re not driving the strategy. And they don’t control the budget. It’s money that comes from marketing (usually from the ad spend), not whatever shrinking fraction has been allocated this fiscal year to PR/communications.

I think that there is an opportunity for PR to take charge of social media, but at the same time learn how to play well with the ad side of the house. PR can move faster and respond more quickly than the advertising people. We’re two-way communicators who just need to let go of our control issues. At the same time, ad people are great on content.

We’re in the middle of a pretty exciting social media campaign right now with one of the world’s largest software companies. We’re working closely with the client’s branding agency and the budget is split two-thirds, one-third between us. We’re driving the overall strategy and communications and owning the direct relationships with influencers. They own presentation of content. It’s going great right now. We’ll see when the results come in. I think it may prove to be an interesting model for future campaigns.

Advertising on Facebook

The ads on Facebook show up on the right side of the pages with the ability to choose an image to go along with your text. You have the ability to choose the title for your ad, the image, the ad text and the destination URL. And at Facebook has publicized, you’ll be reaching out to 400M users with the added benefit of targeting in great demographic detail.

As you’re building out your ad, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Advertising on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has two types of advertising programs. Advertising Sales which includes rich display ads for campaign budgets over 250K and DirectAds, the targeted option for simple text and image based ads. In this blog post, I’ll be referring to DirectAds. Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn ads give you the ability to choose your ad image, title, description and destination URL.

A few things to keep in mind:

Before I let you run off and create your wildly successful ad campaigns, remember to not shy away from experimentation – especially when you’re advertising on social media platforms. Try out different texts and taglines for your ads or change the image to see if there is any improvement. With social media advertising, one of the great benefits is that you’re running on unchartered territory and you can change or pull your ads whenever you want to make them more effective.

And you would be totally right: Mashable has arbitrarily named June 30 as Social Media Day—a holiday intended to “celebrate the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue.”

In honor of the day, social media aficionados are holding Mashable Meetups around the world, in hundreds of different locations.  Revelers are also invited to use the hashtag #smday or play the traditional game “Pin the Tail on the Fail Whale.”  (Okay, so I made that last part up).

I started thinking about how social media has evolved to become the dominant trend on the Internet.  From its humble beginnings in the chat rooms of the 1990s, Social Media now encompasses a countless variety of platforms, with new services launching all the time.

So, in honor of Social Media Day, I present a brief history of the social web:

1988 – Jarkko Oikarinen creates Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

1995 – Sun creates Java, leading to the first Java chat rooms, which allowed people to participate using their Internet browser

1997 – The term “blog” is coined by Jorn Barger

2002 – Friendster launches as the first modern social network.  Although it has since been eclipsed by competitors in the U.S., Friendster is still the #1 social network in Asia.

2003 – MySpace launches.  By 2006, MySpace had become the leading social networking site in the world.

2003 – LinkedIn goes live

2004 – Facebook launches at Harvard, and then later at other colleges.  In 2005, high school networks were added, and by 2006, the service became open to anyone.  By 2009, Facebook had overtaken MySpace as the dominant social networking site.

2004 – Flickr is created

2004 – Digg launches

2005 – YouTube is founded

2006 – Twitter is founded

2009 – Foursquare’s location-based social networking service launches

2010 – Google launches its social networking platform Buzz

2011(?) – Rumors are circulating that Google is plotting a Facebook-killer, to be called “Google Me”

Although Facebook is undoubtedly the King of Social Media today, the social media space is still young, and the tide can change very quickly (just ask MySpace).

With hundreds of different social platforms competing for mindshare, our clients often ask us which ones they should be monitoring.  The answer depends on the particular client, but in general, Page One’s social media services typically focus on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and blogs.  But we’re always on the lookout for the next big thing in social media.

Phase Two of the Twitter advertising model rolled out this month – Promoted Trends.  Once dominated by every Justin Beiber reiteration imaginable, the trending topics list will now incorporate topics sponsored by a company that will also be marked as “promoted.” Disney/Pixar was the first to try this new phase, by promoting “Toy Story 3” as a trend in advance of its June 18^th opening.

Last week, a clever campaign from Coca Cola demonstrated the potential of the Promoted Tweets model when executed well. The beverage brand capitalized on the World Cup fervor and “bought” the hashtag #WC2010, which was listed as a Promoted Trend on Wednesday, June 23 – the day of the U.S. vs. Algerian match and possibly the best (and most Tweeted) game in U.S. soccer history.  When Twitter users clicked on the #WC2010 Promoted Trend, a Promoted Tweet from Coca Cola with a soccer-related message and a link to their website appeared at the top of the search results. From this one-two Twitter punch, Coca Cola reported an impressive 86 million impressions and a 6% click-thru rate in 24 hours (via @mashable).

Twitter is very vocal about the fact that the evolution of this advertising model will be a slow one – heck, it took them two years to get to the Promoted Tweets idea.  But I can already see two places for improvement:

- Incorporating Promoted Tweets into broad searches: I could only find the Virgin America Promoted Tweet when searching for the phrase “Virgin America.”  I think Promoted Tweets would be of more value to companies if their Promoted Tweets were featured on broader searches – in this case, words like “Vacation,” “Airplane,” or “Travel.”

- Reaching TweetDeck users: In its current state, the Promoted Tweets model seems to skip over those Twitter users who use an external client, like TweetDeck or Twhirl, and don’t see trending topics (promoted or otherwise) on their interface. In searches for “Virgin America” on both clients, the Promoted Tweet from Virgin America did not appear.

At the Conversational Media Summit on June 8, Twitter COO Dick Costolo reported that Twitter now has 190 million users tweeting 65 million times a day. Clearly, Twitter is an untapped advertising goldmine.  However, I think that the Twitter advertising model has a way to go before more companies, especially those that are small-to-medium sized, see the benefit. With the flexibility of millions of advertising dollars, corporations like Disney, Starbucks and Virgin America are the perfect guinea pigs.

Now, the responsible disclosure/full disclosure argument isn’t new to the security industry, and its not my place to determine whether Ormandy was in the right or wrong. There is, however, an interesting take away for those of us in PR who represent security companies.

Interested in working for some of the Valley’s hottest startups and leading technology brands? Currently, we are looking for a creative, clever, and highly motivated Senior Associate who makes the most of every opportunity and wants to make a big splash.

Do you have 2-3 years experience in PR with at least 1 year in enterprise tech? Are you creative and energetic? Do you love to pitch and have a desire to drive awareness for some of the Valley’s most marketable tech companies? If so, come check us out!

Page One PR is a Silicon Valley public relations and social media firm that specializes in enterprise technology. At Page One we’re corporate, but also laid-back and collaborative. People at Page One come from all walks of life. We like that mix and we look for initiative, intelligence, humor, integrity, creativity, risk taking, fearlessness, management skills and a proven track record of success.

We want someone who has experience getting results and can work both independently and part of a larger team. While every day is different, the position will mostly entail the following duties and qualifications:

Job Duties:
• Drive some day-to-day management of one to two client accounts, including running weekly client meetings and oversight of specific account programs from planning to execution to project management
• Forge and maintain relationships with trade/vertical media and business press, as appropriate, both through proactive and reactive outreach
• Gain thorough understanding and knowledge of clients’ business and competitive environment and contribute to development of account PR or social media plans
• Facilitate and manage client press meetings, lead press/analyst tours and/or events; provide constructive feedback and analysis of briefings to clients
• Oversee management and development of client social media channels; compile social media monitoring reports and agendas
• Prepare full range of written materials including press releases, byline articles, ghost-written corporate blogs, client correspondence and reports

Qualifications:
• 2-3 years experience in PR, marketing, communications or media experience, with a focus on the high-tech industry, preferable in an agency
• Solid writing, presentation, and research skills
• Strong media relations skills and demonstrated ability to secure results
• Ability to drive client relationships, e.g. provide strategic and tactical advice, draft and implement plans, form thoughtful analysis, identify proactive opportunities, craft briefing materials, track coverage
• Strong organizational skills and demonstrated ability to multi-task and balance priorities
• Social media experience preferred
• High level of initiative
• BA/BS degree from top university.

Since Page One’s culture is all about great people doing great things, we reward our employees with exceptional pay, in addition to the following benefits:

* 20 days of PTO
* 12 paid company holidays
* Medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents
* Matching 401K (after 6 months)
* Long- and short-term disability insurance
* Life insurance
* Flexible spending account

This position is based in San Francisco‘s financial district. If you are interested in the position and you have the qualifications listed above, email your resume and a cover letter to SA at pageonepr dot com. Use “Senior Associate position” as your subject header. Be sure to include details of your work experience and explain how you would be a good addition to the team in your letter.

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond to each inquiry.
__

Interested in working for some of the Valley’s hottest startups and leading technology brands? Currently, we are looking for an Associate who has experience getting results and is highly motivated to make the most of every opportunity. If you have at least 1 year of experience in PR with a focus on enterprise tech, love to pitch creatively, and enjoy working with some of the Valley’s most marketable tech companies, then come check us out!

Page One PR is a Silicon Valley public relations and social media firm that specializes in enterprise technology. At Page One we’re corporate, but also laid-back and collaborative. People at Page One come from all walks of life. We like that mix and we look for initiative, intelligence, humor, integrity, creativity, risk taking, fearlessness, management skills and a proven track record of success.

We want someone who is clever and creative and who can work both independently and as part of a larger team. While every day is different, the position will mostly entail the following duties and qualifications:

Job Duties:
* Develop relationships with media, bloggers, industry analysts
* Pitch trade/vertical media and other influencers, both reactively and proactively
* Craft and place stories in the press and blogosphere
* Write both punchy blogs and traditional press releases
* Manage client social media channels on daily basis
* Research industry events and opportunities
* Prepare social media monitoring reports

Qualifications:
* 1-2 years experience in PR, marketing, communications or media experience
* At least 1 year of high tech PR agency experience preferred
* Has secured favorable media coverage for clients
* Successful track record of producing strong results
* Ability to think outside of the box and to take initiative
* Ability to work both independently and cross-functionally across multiple teams and job duties
* Exceptional organization, writing and verbal communication skills
* Strong research skills
* Ability to grasp complex technology
* BA/BS degree from top university

Since Page One’s culture is all about great people doing great things, we reward our employees with exceptional pay, matching 401K and up to 20 days of paid time off per year. The list of benefits includes:

* 20 days of PTO
* 12 paid company holidays
* Medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents
* Matching 401K (after 6 months)
* Long- and short-term disability insurance
* Life insurance
* Flexible spending account

This position is based in San Francisco‘s financial district. If you are interested in the position and you have the qualifications listed above, email your resume and a cover letter to Associate at pageonepr dot com. Use “Associate Position” as your subject header. Be sure to include details regarding your work experience and explain how you would be a good addition to the team in your cover letter.

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond to each inquiry.
__

The oil conglomerate has been dominating the headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past month-plus, and deservedly so. They have perpetrated perhaps the greatest environmental disaster in human history, and they have been shockingly apathetic about it.

To channel Tina Fey for a moment: “Really, BP? Really?!?”

Simply put, BP has become the face of evil corporate greed; I’m not sure if Goldman Sachs has sent them a gift basket yet, but I’m sure it’s on its way in any event. The oil spill is a disaster that is affecting nearly every facet of society. There’s no getting around this story, nor should there be. You’re just as likely to read about the dire economic impact the spill is having on fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, rare bird species whose existence is threatened by the deluge of oil attacking their habitat or the collective failure of BP and the federal government to properly regulate oil rigs. These are the facts, plain and simple.

While the spill is certainly the main story here, BP could have and should have done much more, much sooner from a PR/marketing standpoint. As it stands, the company is staring bankruptcy in the face and people are far more likely to voice their collective disgust with CEO Tony Hayward’s pathetic “I want my life back” spiel than to express any kind of confidence in BP and their ability to clean up the spill.

Perhaps the best microcosm for this phenomenon comes from comparing two Twitter handles: BP_America and BPGlobalPR. The first handle is BP’s official account and provides semi-regular updates on the company’s “progress” in stemming the spill. It’s all well and good that they’re cleaning up 5,000 gallons a day, but don’t you feel slightly misled to learn that the daily volume of oil leaking out of their well is far greater than that? BP’s lack of transparency has alienated the vast majority of the public and has tarnished their image even more than the spill itself.

Which brings us to BPGlobalPR, the Twitter phenomenon that has gained over 150,000 followers in just over a month. The handle skewers BP by satirizing their seemingly apathetic response to the spill and their continued opacity and failure to keep the public adequately informed of the ongoing cleanup effort. Unlike its prim and proper corporate counterpart, BPGlobalPR actively engages its audience and has channeled popular sentiment to build a strong online following almost overnight.

Take a look at this extremely telling graph, courtesy of TwitterCounter, that tracks each account’s followers over the past month (BPGlobalPR is orange, BP_America is blue):

The chart speaks for itself and is indicative of BP’s massive public relations failure throughout this ordeal. As of Wednesday afternoon on June 9, BPGlobalPR had literally ten times the number of followers than BP_America did. This last fact prompted this poignant Tweet from BPGlobalPR (for more on brand hijacking, see this post from my colleague Kim Terca).

BP has completely lost its voice in this crisis. They can go on about their efforts to clean up the spill until they’re blue in the face, but the fact is, nobody is listening to them anymore.

When it comes to crisis PR, especially on a scope of this magnitude, the most important thing to keep in mind with corporate communications is transparency. BP has taken the opposite route from the get-go, choosing to tell us about their “dilligent efforts” cleaning up the spill while conveniently omitting to tell us that they’re barely making a dent.

For those of you that think recent pressure has BP changing their tune, I offer this story from June 9 that details the millions (and counting) BP has spent on search engine optimization to redirect traffic looking for oil spill updates to “BP-sponsored updates”—think Stalinist propaganda here, though that may be a bit of an understatement.

BP recently hired a hotshot communications executive to take over their PR efforts, but I can’t help but wonder whether it’s too late. They’ve seemingly rewritten the book on “what not to do” in crisis communications with their response so far; it’s hard to see the public forgiving them at this point.

What’s more, they just overtook Paris Hilton on Google’s search rankings. When that happens, you’ve either got a serious problem on your hands, or you’re the next Justin Bieber. And I don’t think Tony Hayward’s got much of a voice.

More than 90% of the messages that result in distribution or interaction from the B2B social media communities fall into three categories:

1. Tips and tricks to save time with product (example – use a virtual image in a router)
2. Interesting information related to technology that appeals to enthusiast (example – performance tests)
3. Human networking information (example – submit picture of your network switch)

This is based on an analysis of Cisco and SAP campaigns that we’ve worked on over the last year.  There are important exceptions to these three categories.  A small number of compelling videos that looked like a flashy advertisement did go viral and we learned that a single video could generate millions of views.  Unfortunately, it was difficult to predict which videos would go viral and the results were not often replicable.  Also, it wasn’t clear if the videos were viewed by the key target audience groups or viewed by people that simply enjoyed the music and visual flash.  There were also several examples of information being passed on due to leveraging other news trends.

There can be many triggers for information to be virally transmitted by Facebook Fans or Twitter followers.  Some information can result in millions of views.  In marketing, we sometimes refer to this type of win as hunting an elephant, a big win with big results.

Unfortunately, hunting only elephants can lead to erratic results.  Over time, the results are often lower than a stronger focus on smaller wins.  Technical tips will probably only results in thousands of retransmission per tip.  However, the results are consistent and easily replicable.

In a future blog post, I’ll explain techniques to get technical howto information when the person managing Facebook and Twitter isn’t capable of generating it themselves.

–

Craig Oda, coda@pageonepr.com

Managing Partner

MONITORING – Without it, we wouldn’t know what strategy to develop for a social media campaign and we wouldn’t be able to make a campaign dynamic and actionable.

To build a social media campaign strategy, we need to first conduct an audit just as we would for a more traditional PR campaign. The social media audit consists of four major monitoring-and-analysis components. The first three, which we break down in our September ’09 issue, monitor and analyze where a company (and its product) stands in comparison to its competitors, its market and its current social media efforts. The fourth component monitors and analyzes influencers who are most relevant to a campaign, a process we describe in our March ’10 issue.

But monitoring doesn’t end with the audit process and development of campaign strategy. Once the campaign has been launched, we continue to perform ongoing monitoring in order to identify specific actions and opportunities to proactively engage with target audiences (customers, potential customers and influencers). Ongoing monitoring differs from monitoring during the audit phase in that it leads to specific actionable recommendations that feed back into the creation of strategic content.

MEASUREMENT – Did the campaign accomplish its intended goals? Was it worth the time and resources? Measurement allows us to evaluate the success and value of a social media campaign.

The first question requires a method to identify and report the results of a campaign. To begin, it is necessary to set specific actionable goals for a campaign and to then determine metrics that have a direct correlation to the goals. Those metrics should be used to measure the effectiveness of a campaign. The goals for a Twitter campaign typically involve increasing awareness (of a company, event or product), so metrics that determine the number of impressions and the level of interaction (or interest) produced by a campaign serve as a good indicator of whether goals have been reached. Our June ’09 issue details the metrics that we generally use when measuring the results of a Twitter campaign. However, these are just starter metrics and we should always make sure the goals are really appropriate for a campaign. For example, reaching the largest number of people may be less important than reaching specific people.

The second question of whether a campaign was worth the time and resources addresses the issue of ROI and is unfortunately a much harder nut to crack. Though we would be the first to recognize there’s no simple solution, we offer one way to tackle the issue of measuring social media ROI (especially in comparison to other marketing programs) in our July ’09 issue. We hope to offer more on this topic as we get more hard data from our campaigns for clients.

MANAGEMENT – You’ve completed your audit, developed your strategy, and even determined the metrics for measurement. Now begins the work of producing and communicating content as part of your campaign, a process that can be overwhelming and time-consuming. How do you optimize limited time and resources?

Our debut issue from May ’09 outlines steps to increase the results of a product launch by incorporating social media channels like blogging, Twitter, and video. But how do you manage those channels individually?

For example, many companies struggle to find a process that allows them to publish and promote posts regularly for a corporate blog. In our February ’10 issue, we introduce one method, which follows a publishing model practiced by media companies and which addresses the three main obstacles of corporate blogging: 1) getting busy people to consistently contribute content; 2) identifying relevant topics; and 3) generating enough blog views to justify the cost of time and effort.

With Twitter, the challenge lies in managing the flood of content that is pushed out to the Twitterverse. How do you know what requires a response? Is there a way to minimize the amount of time spent searching for and writing mini-posts to publish? We have found that some tools can ease the process and we provide a guideline to using such tools effectively in our issue from January ’10.

Integrating video into a product launch is especially effective due to video’s visual impact and YouTube’s viral potential. Video can tell the story of a company or a product in a way that cannot be accomplished by the written word (e.g. press release) alone. Unfortunately, producing a video is a foreign process to most companies. Budgets rarely allow for the employment of professional production studios, so how do you make a video that looks professional, yet doesn’t cost tens of thousands? We struggled with the issue ourselves and share some tips we learned in our November ’09 issue.

Want to hear more about our experiences with new social media technologies and the lessons we learn while carrying out campaigns for clients? Sign up for our newsletter

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1. Use of official hashtags
The conference underwent a name change, from Sapphire 09 to SAPPHIRE NOW. To make sure social media users were clear about the re-brand, Page One made sure to use the #sapphirenow hashtag in the majority of our tweets from the @SAPPHIRENOW Twitter feed. This helped to ensure that the new name would gain visibility before the conference started. We didn’t want to risk having the Twitterverse split up mentions of the SAPPHIRE NOW conference by using more than one hashtag when they tweeted about the event.

Hashtags allow tweets to be grouped together so that they can be easily located via Twitter search. For a large conference event like SAPPHIRE NOW, the hashtags were particularly useful for three groups of people. Many conference attendees in Orlando and Frankfurt were active live-tweeters who used the #sapphire to tag their updates, especially during the keynote speeches, which were timed to be presented to both locations simultaneously. SAP also launched an innovative website that allowed people to attend the conference virtually, and many online attendees were live-tweeting while streaming the keynotes. Finally, for people who could not attend the conference physically or virtually, the #sapphirenow stream was publishing such a high volume of tweets that it provided them a play-by-play of the conference’s most important events.

The #sapphirenow hashtag collected over 12,131 mentions by the end of the conference on May 19. On May 18, during the executive keynote speeches by Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott, the hashtag was the number 4 Twitter trending topic in the U.S. This uniform use of the correct hashtag would not have happened without establishing #sapphirenow as the official hashtag weeks before the conference.

2. Designating multiple routing paths for the Twitter concierge
In addition to being the official voice of the conference, one of the functions of the @SAPPHIRENOW Twitter feed was to act as a concierge for attendees who needed assistance with anything from finding the nearest bathroom, getting more information on a certain session, or navigating through the virtual website. Many attendees asked questions via @reply or DM, and Page One and SAP worked together to designate the proper routing path for each type of question and for each location (Frankfurt, Orlando, or online). Each routing path led to the appropriate SAP employee either on-location or back at SAP headquarters. This made sure that every question asked would be answered as soon as possible via Twitter.

A Twitter feed cannot just spew out information. It needs to listen. Social media platforms are expected to meet a higher standard when it comes to customer service. Corporate accounts are expected to have a personal voice behind the brand that engages with its followers and fans. Social media users like to know that their opinions are being heard, and when the @SAPPHIRENOW feed responded to followers who had conference-related questions, they were appreciative of our help. This helps spread positive content about the Twitter feed, and it lets our followers know that they are important to us.

The development of both these strategies helped to make @SAPPHIRENOW a successful Twitter feed leading up to and during the conference. An overwhelming majority of the Twitter conversations about the conference were extremely positive and attendees were very impressed with SAPPHIRE NOW’s social media initiatives. Key takeaway: in social media, a little pre-planning can lead to a high payoff.

The Nestle Facebook debacle in March is a now-legendary example of how NOT to respond to criticism online.  In this case, angry consumers began posting comments on Nestle’s Facebook wall about their use of palm oil in products.  A page that was supposed to promote Nestle got hijacked by consumers and became a place to criticize the brand, instead.  That was unfortunate, but the real trouble began when Nestle began censoring and removing negative posts from their wall.  An Internet-wide backlash resulted, and Nestle was forced to apologize.  In the end, Nestle conceded to the critics and partnered with The Forest Trust to support the sustainable harvest of forests.  Lesson learned: when you engage via social media, you have to be prepared to listen to what your customers have to say, and if what they have to say it negative, don’t even think about trying to censor it.

Another interesting example is the Bros Icing Bros phenomenon that is currently sweeping the nation by storm.  What started as a frat-boy drinking game has expanded to universities, offices, and Wall Street trading floors, mostly driven by social media as people post photos and videos of “bros” and even celebrities being “iced.”

Many have speculated that this is an undercover marketing campaign devised by Smirnoff, but that seems unlikely to me.  Sure, this fad is helping them sell more product, but the catch is that Smirnoff Ice is the butt of a joke.  As brosicingbros.com says: “try and buy the most disgusting flavored ice or a 24oz ice. Pineapple, mango, and grape are top of the list for the most gut wrenching, mind numbing, throw up in your mouth, Smirnoff ice flavors.”  Somehow, I don’t see Smirnoff’s marketing team writing that.

How should Smirnoff respond to this hijacking of their brand?  On the one hand, it’s a popular phenomenon that must be helping to drive sales.  But on the other hand, the game is immature and potentially dangerous, and Smirnoff doesn’t want to be seen promoting irresponsible drinking, not to mention the possible legal liability.  If you go to Smirnoff’s website, you will find no mention of “bros” whatsoever.  Smirnoff’s official statement is that: “Icing is consumer-generated and some people think it is fun. We never want underage “icing” and we always want responsible drinking.” What Smirnoff is doing is probably the best strategy: acknowledge the fad but stay out of it as much as possible.  If they condemned the practice or tried to shut down the Bros Icing Bros website, people would probably revolt.  If Smirnoff embraced the game and tried to promote it, people would assume it was a marketing ploy all along and shun it.

Another current example is the fake BPGlobalPR Twitter feed, which posts funny, derisive comments about the Gulf oil spill, as if written by BP’s public relations team.  In only a week, the feed has grown to more than 74,000 followers (by comparison, BP’s official Twitter feed has only 7,754 followers).  To add insult to injury, BP’s official feed was just hacked this week, as well.

When you take your brand to the social media channels, you have to be prepared for criticism.  Trying to censor people’s comments is a PR disaster waiting to happen.  Instead, your best strategy is to listen, acknowledge your customers’ opinions, and consider whether to incorporate their feedback into your business practices.

Amazon. Yikes.

This Amazon challenge raises an interesting question about timing in general for social media campaigns. Should a vendor initiate a social media campaign as part of a strategy to enter a new market without a product or service that is generally available? After all, a big component of any serious social media campaign is identifying, attracting and energizing a community conversation around shared interests. For vendors, that usually means customers.

We think the answer is yes. Especially when you are raising awareness with a targeted community of early-adopter prospects while at the same time educating the industry influencers about your strategy and upcoming offering. It also helps you attract beta customers before your GA formal launch. This kind of pre-release campaign is particularly effective with technical audiences used to doing things another way (i.e., using Amazon).

For this new client, we followed the Page One process for developing a strategy for our social media campaigns. We monitored the online conversations around the client and its competitors, identified the key topics and influencers, prioritized the communications channels, and recommended a series of targeted programs that we could measure to achieve our business goals.

Fast forward to today, and yay! we surpassed Amazon on Twitter (measured quantitatively by followers and qualitatively by engagement), caught up with them on Facebook and still have some work to do on blogs. But by any measure it was a very successful start for just six months. What did we do?

First, we quickly recognized that we couldn’t compete with Amazon around the terms associated directly with “cloud computing.” They pioneered this category and we didn’t want to start our campaigns from a deficit position. Rather, we recommended to the client that we start by building on their positions of strength. In this case, those strengths were virtualization leadership and a very large installed base of developers already familiar with their enterprise solutions. We said, “Let’s talk about how easy it is for enterprise developers to use what they already know and move some of their work to a public cloud. And back.” It was and is a cool simple story and a unique value proposition that appealed to our target audience.

Following are some of the metrics we reported back to our clients at the six-month stage in our engagement. By the time the client launches a generally available offering, the key influencers and early prospects in the market will be well informed and ready to act on the details of that forthcoming announcement.

Growth in three social media channels managed by Page One:

Between standard feeds such as @NBA and @ESPN, analysts like @jadande and @jalenrose, and the athletes themselves (everyone remembers @the_real_shaq joining Twitter), I must say the NBA is very well represented. And it’s great for fans.

Whereas in the past I read about NBA rumors in stories, now I’m reading about them in 140 character tweets by those involved. Example: free agent Chris Bosh asks his followers on Twitter what team he should go to.

Or I’m seeing a flurry of controversy that erupts over what a player supposedly did or did not tweet. Example: Paul Pierce (maybe) tweets the Celtics were going to sweep the Magic. For days after, Pierce vehemently denied he wrote this (it was immediately deleted, too).

Or people are responding to rumors via Twitter. Example: Lakers exec Jeanie Buss acknowledges rumors are circulating as to where Phil Jackson will coach next year.

Today, people are choosing to address issues on Twitter. No more need to go through the circus of calling and hosting a press conference or even answering the same questions over and over. Simply type up a couple lines and click a button. Done. These messages are low-effort and reach millions of people.

There’s no denying Twitter has had a huge impact on the NBA, and that the NBA has tremendously benefited from this social marketing channel. But is it all for the better? It certainly brings fans closer, puts athletes under even more of a microscope and gives new meaning to the term “trash talk.” I like the accessibility, the real-time updates, the wide range of information out there that Twitter aggregates for me. Twitter as a marketing tool for the dissemination of news, fan engagement, and overall brand promotion works great for the NBA. I’ve also seen it work well for some of my tech clients. Though on a different scale and with a different audience, the same rules apply. The notion is pretty transferable across all industries capitalizing on social marketing.

The team is still working on the final analysis reports, but I thought I’d share a couple of the tactics we used.  These two seemed to  work out especially well:

Influencer Identification and Outreach

SAP’s sheer size is both a blessing and a curse.  While a large ecosystem definitely helps amplify social messages there are an overwhelming number of groups within SAP and they all tend to have different goals and objectives.  One of our first tasks was to identify all the potential external and internal influencers and organize a master list.  We then developed a strategy for outreach to help amplify our reach.  Using a combination of automated social media monitoring tactics and good old fashion direct phone calls and in-person meetings, Page One was able to pull together a list of external influencers (analysts, media, bloggers, SAP Mentors, SAP Alum, and customers) and identify their social media locations.  We then went to work identifying the internal influencers (employees, partners attending the conference, marketing teams, speakers) and organized their various messages and goals for the conference.  All of this came together in a master multi-tabbed Google Doc spreadsheet that the team accessed on a daily basis to reference which assets to promote, who to reach out to, and when to push certain messages.  A master content calendar of our daily Tweets and Facebook posts was also created and regularly updated to share with SAP so the internal teams could help retweet and re-post our content.

Live Social Media Coverage

During the month’s leading into the conference we worked with SAP to develop a “week-of” Twitter and Facebook strategy to facilitate conference conversations through social media channels.  While there were many on-site programs that came together last week (a Twitter Concierge program, social media Q&As during keynotes, video content from the show floor, jumbotrons displaying tweets at the Santana concert, etc.) the real gem was the Social Ambassadors program.  In addition to the main @SAPPHIRENOW Twitter feed, we had a group of social ambassadors on the ground at both conferences that live tweeted highlights each day.  Each ambassador reported on a specific conference topic and acted as the real-time eyes and ears on what happened at Orlando and Frankfurt. They were given a dedicated Twitter feed, topic hashtag and FlipCam to help upload videos straight from the floor, as well as share their thoughts and insights on the latest news that came out of SAPPHIRE NOW.

Page One has been asked to provide social media support for quite a few conferences in the past few years, ranging all the way from Google I/O to McAfee FOCUS.  While there are still no silver bullets, each time it seems like we pick up a few more tips and tricks to make the social media experience better for the conference attendees.  What tactics have you found most useful for conference promotions?

Companies like Facebook and Twitter are changing their terms of use to capture more marketing dollars themselves.    Many people feel that Twitter’s announcement to ban paid Tweets was motivated by a strategy to limit competition for their Promoted Tweets service that they launched with Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America as customers.   Before scoffing at the concept of Tweeting for money, consider that the initial customers for Twitter’s Promoted Tweets services are big, global corporations with massive marketing budgets.

Six months ago, a powerful social media technique was to identify and build relationships with key influential people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.  This technique quickly evolved into building the relationships with travel expense reimbursements, other marketing gifts, and to direct payments of money.  Although there are legal requirements for the disclosure of payment in some cases, the technique of paying people to produce content is in widespread use.

So, should you care about the Twitter announcement about banning of Paid Tweets?  Well, if you already knew about the practice of Paid Tweets and it isn’t part of your business processes, then you can pay little attention to the announcement.  However, if you have a limited understanding of how marketing techniques involving payment for content work, you need to dig in now and do some research.

I’m not recommending that companies pay for content.  The vast majority of marketing campaigns are based on traditional techniques of information organization, publication on official channels, and helping reporting to understand the information.

However, I do believe it is important to understand what other techniques are being used by competitors.  It is also extremely important to have a thorough understanding of the rules of use and the laws that affect these new types of marketing technique that involve payment.

Craig Oda, managing partner

coda@pageonepr.com

—–

Eight paragraphs into the blog post, this statement pops up:

we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.

Twitter is changing its terms of services and using legal tools to block paid tweets.

Being the proud PR professional that I am, I can’t help but think PR has had something to do with it. Apple has always been a very secretive company; their strategy around product launches and announcements has remained consistent throughout the years. This plus their keen sense of what makes people tick has earned them both ink and respect. Product leaks are rare and pre-briefings and embargos don’t exist at Apple. This in turn, escalates the hype and keeps people guessing and wanting more. The 30-year-old computer company has been able to repeatedly set off public frenzies with its innovative products.

In order for Apple to appreciate the respect they have now, they must think about where they’ve been. Things haven’t always been so rosy and I think those humble beginnings helped get them where they are today. After Windows 95 came along, Apple kind of disappeared. Had that not happened, I’m not sure they would have made the strong return that they did. The extreme pressure they felt from Microsoft forced them to figure out a unique way to communicate with customers. They developed a variety of campaigns based on that distinct style of communication to promote the iPod some years later. I can still remember how I felt the first time I saw Apple’s iPod commercials. I strongly identified with the product, as did the rest of the world.

However, I realized that this secret way of doing things wasn’t right for every company during the two years I spent doing PR for smartphone maker, Palm. It seemed as though they were trying to emulate Apple’s secret success by not letting anyone know about their plans for CES in 2009. They withheld information about launching their webOS and Palm Pre at the event. The reason why I don’t think it went over well was because Palm, unlike Apple, had always been relatively open about its plans and future products, especially with well-known reporters and influencers. The sudden change in direction was perceived in a negative light. Reporters were angry and didn’t understand where the secrecy was coming from. Even though Palm’s goal was to try to build buzz around the launch and new operating system, it ended up severely threatening some long-term relationships with media.

On the marketing front, Palm launched a campaign for the Pre right after CES that featured a series of commercials with a strange Nordic girl. Popular tech outlets like Gizmodo and Engadget deemed the commercials as extremely “creepy” and “outright absurd.” The ads sent confusing messages and customers were left wondering how the girl related to the phone’s features. Unlike Apple’s commercials, Palm’s style of communication was perceived as odd and people had a tough time relating to their products.

Palm wasn’t successful following in Apple’s footsteps, which proves that what works for one company doesn’t always work for another. Obviously, keeping things secret when you’re doing PR for start ups wouldn’t make sense either. These companies are just beginning to get their message out and are trying to be heard. At Page One we are constantly doing everything we can to get the word out about the technology our clients are developing.

Today, Apple is the company to beat. Their commercials evoke emotion in people, making them passionate about their products. Whatever Apple does, tech reporters write about it and developers bend over backwards. It can’t all be attributed to their PR and marketing greatness but I think it deserves a shout out.

What are your thoughts on Apple’s secret PR tactics? What do you think the well-oiled machine will do next?

The PR industry is no exception to this rule. More and more, PR practitioners are emphasizing marketing metrics when they report results back to their clients. We at Page One have been emphasizing metrics for several years now. Since 2007, we’ve included them in our monthly reports to clients. Our dashboards map back to client goals, and how they’re performing relative to benchmark competitors. Additionally, it helps teams within the agency focus on areas that generate the highest ROI from PR efforts.

Analytics tools have evolved over the years and ease of use has improved significantly. Gone is the era where you need a Ph.D. to conduct any type of data analysis. Today’s offerings—which range from longstanding legacy products SAS and SPSS to more cutting-edge models running on advanced programming languages like R, to specialized tools like Google Analytics—allow business analysts, PR professionals, and the blogger-next-door the ability to mine through data at a far more efficient rate than before and identify key user/market trends.

As a tech PR agency, we work with a number of venture capitalist-backed startups that measure everything in marketing. If the agency doesn’t provide Chief Marketing Officer X with material metrics that demonstrate a high ROI, you can be sure that he or she will have to come up with their own data to report to the board. By mining through the data and delivering it to clients in a presentable manner that outlines key metrics, we’re able to drive the process that demonstrates ROI and make everyone’s life easier in the process.



We’ve also focused on metrics in the ever-expanding field of social media. Many organizations are still trying to define the parameters of what exactly constitutes success (or failure) in their social media marketing efforts. How do you measure the success or failure of a Twitter campaign? Does a Facebook page with 10,000 “fans” really lead to more consumers buying your product? The model we’ve developed and honed over several years has become a powerful tool for us as we’ve gone deeper into the social media space and has led to the acquisition of some of our biggest clients. All thanks to the data.

I tend to sit on the New Media side of the house and would argue that since so many traditional journalists now have blogs too, and would still claim legal protection for anything posted on their newspaper column or blog, then bloggers who are covering the news should also get the same type of protection.  Regardless of which side you land though it’s undeniable that there are shifts going on in the communications industry.  I’m beginning to question if the debate stops with just “journalist vs. blogger” though.

A blog published on Read Write Web yesterday covering the HP/Palm news is based entirely on Twitter content.  The article is basically a cut and paste of “the smartest tweets” from industry thought leaders about the acquisition.  After doing some internet trolling, it seems to me that this is one of the first articles to rely solely on Twitter content.  In fact, I myself hardly ever scan my Google Reader anymore and tend to just rely on my Twitter feed to get my daily news.  So if journalists first became bloggers and then bloggers became tweeters does this now mean that Twitter users get legal protection too?  What implications are there exactly for the Joe Schmoe who decides to use his Twitter feeds as a “reporting” mechanism and happens to tweet about a confidential product?  Does he get legal protection too?

The April blog club meeting was held at R and G Lounge in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  We walked up there from our office in the Financial District.  After two Dungeness crab dishes, BBQ pork, roast duck, and walnut prawns, I can saw that this highly rated.

One of the purposes of the club is to discuss marketing trends and explore potential blog topics for the next month.

With the growth of social media marketing campaigns, the industry is seeing more and more failed campaigns.  We’re starting to discuss campaigns that we encounter in our research to educate ourselves on the risks of social media.  This knowledge helps our clients to implement campaigns with less risk.

Among the topics we discussed:

* Major department store chain launched a contest on Facebook with unclear rules.  The contest helped to boost Fans to 30,000+.  Unfortunately, the store got slammed on the Wall posts, with the vast majority of posts being negative, spawning a negative feeding frenzy;
* Someone’s friend got their Facebook campaign halted by Facebook for not abiding by the Facebook Promotion Guidelines.  Holy smokes!  Many of us did not know that the guidelines had been rewritten on Dec 22, 2009!
* We exchanged many Twitter feed stories with feeds we read about getting locked due to automatic usage triggers;
* YouTube’s use of automated music verification and audio-stripping when background music is illegally used in videos

Some club members brought up the new trend in paying famous people to Tweet.  One remember even referred to an ROI analysis that showed greater value from paying small amounts to less famous people rather than one large sum to a famous person like Ashton Kutcher.

One member spoke about the new influencer widget in Radian6 and the increasing use of influencer identification and analysis in social media campaigns.

Many of these topics should turn into blogs this month.  Check back soon for more information.

Craig Oda, managing partner and product launch enthusiast

Step 1: Identify the overall goal of your Twitter campaign. Similar to traditional PR, the messages you push out via Twitter should have an agenda (or potentially a variety of agendas). Goals for a Twitter handle can be one or a combination of the following:

1. Boost Awareness of a Company or Product

2. Broadcast and/or Promotion Channel: Positive news and information surrounding a brand, cause, or company launch.

3. Engagement with Industry Influencers and/or Potential Customers

4. Reputation Management: Proactive and Reactive Customer Service Channel.

5. Notoriety – Twitter can deem you an expert in a given field.

These may seem like common sense to an active user or even a Twitter novice, but often times the ultimate goal can be overlooked.  It’s important to take a step back and specify your goal(s) first as this is the foundation of a campaign.

Step 2: Identify the key components of your strategy. Whether it’s traditional or digital media, knowing what elements drive your marketing messages is imperative. The following are building blocks for an effective Twitter strategy:

1. Audience – Identify what type of customer/influencer is active in social media. For example, in the high-tech space we often ask ourselves: how technical is this audience? Are they developers, engineers, or is this audience connected to the product/service in terms of buying power for a company/organization? (These questions differ depending on the social media space.)

2. Messaging – The messages you push out are relative to #1: what type of information is the audience you specified interested in? Here at Page One, we construct Twitter messaging matrixes to review with clients before we even draft our first Tweet.

3. Content Production & Editorial Calendar – It’s important to note ahead of time appropriate corporate assets such as whitepapers and case studies that may be useful for promotion. Schedule this content by creating a monthly editorial calendar. Also, if you’re running a blog, it’s useful to outline a blog pipeline to promote via Twitter. This way the messaging has fluidity in terms of themes and timing.

4. Interaction/Engagement – As you build up your feed begin to target community influencers. Twitter is all about participation and recognition: a simple ReTweet or #FollowFriday can catch their attention.

In conclusion, once you’ve addressed your main goal for Twitter and outlined the key components driving this goal, you’ve successfully developed a Twitter strategy. Hopefully these tips have been useful for Twitter experts and newbies alike, and feel free to contact me on Twitter @haleyhebert or comment below if you have other ideas or questions. In part 2 of this series I’ll be covering how to gain followers on Twitter and how to find other desirable handles to follow, so stay tuned.

For example, one of my favorite groups of people to follow on Twitter is the cast of Modern Family. A number of the show’s actors have active Twitter accounts, where the majority of their tweets are @replies to fellow cast mates.

The content is all very light-hearted – they tweet about what’s for lunch, or post photos of their travels while on the job. The key is that they tweet content the average user would post to their own friends, except these guys just happen to be well-known actors with a hit TV show. Since I follow most of the cast, their @replies to each other all show up on my Twitter feed. Reading these “personal” conversation chains on a daily basis while I catch up with the Twitterverse keeps the show on my mental radar. Essentially, it’s free advertising for the show due to the public nature of Twitter, and the direct access it gives us to anyone with an account.

Nowadays, actors can do more than appear on talk shows to promote their movies or films to reach out to their fans. By maintaining an active Twitter account, they can stay visible to their followers, and once in a while, throw in a tweet about their new movie opening this weekend, and the follower probably won’t subconsciously tag this as an overt advertisement.

For example, the actor that plays Cam on Modern Family (@ericstonestreet) tweeted the following:

To me, this is a more effective way of getting a fan to tune into a new episode than sitting through a 15-second television spot that cost ABC a chunk of their advertising budget.

This is the kind of advertising noise that I welcome into my daily media consumption. And if you find my views to be too idealistic, I understand that the actors could have “Twitter campaigning” written into their contracts and that they may be getting paid by ABC to be online ambassadors for the show. I’m also aware that celebrity accounts do not benefit Twitter financially, yet. If Twitter figures out a way to seamlessly integrate promoted tweets into our Twitter experience, much like the Modern Family cast does with their @replies and indirect episode promotion, this form of targeted advertising could be Twitter’s golden ticket to a profitable business model.

I learned Twitter at Page One PR. Twitter’s prompt, “What are you doing?” (before Twitter changed it) never reflected well how people use Twitter. In the minds of Twitter users, I think the prompt was always closer to “what are you thinking about?” or “what are you reading that’s interesting?” or “what’s your opinion on the things that matter to you most?” On Twitter, unlike Facebook, the threshold for following or being followed is low. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never met the person before face-to-face. In many cases, you never will. But if you share a mutual interest and find mutual benefit in conversation, it makes sense to connect. Running corporate Twitter feeds on behalf of clients at Page One, it’s not all too difficult to find people who care about the same issues as my clients, since people on Twitter are more or less defined by their profile, which is a public stream of content and ideas.

These norms that inform how the typical user (I’d argue I’m typical) acts on Facebook and Twitter have consequences for marketers who are looking to leverage these tools. Because Twitter places emphasis on the exchange of ideas and has a low threshold for personal interaction, the platform is more intuitive and easier to use for marketers who want to discuss their messages with a target audience. Because Facebook is generally used as an avenue for social connections with real world acquaintances and friends and has a high threshold for personal interaction, the platform is more difficult to use successfully for marketing purposes.

There are certainly examples of companies that have had successful marketing campaigns on both Twitter and Facebook. I’m arguing that the act of marketing companies (in an engaging, interesting way that puts the “social” in social media of course) aligns better with the fundamental values of Twitter than it does with those of Facebook, and is therefore easier.

Facebook has taken specific actions to appeal to marketers. Examples include corporate Fan Pages, advertisements, more Twitter-like “Walls,” the “News Feed,” and (controversially) the reduction of privacy. It’s true that some people are beginning to treat Facebook Wall posts the way they would Tweets. However, marketers face two problems on Facebook that don’t exist in the same way on Twitter – 1) how do you discover people who would be interested in your Fan Page? 2) how do you influence people to become your fans?

Answering the first question on Twitter requires technique and strategy, but put simply, just find the people who are talking about the things you talk about. On Facebook, this often is not possible because many people choose to keep their personal conversations with groups of friends, as well as their personal information, private to outsiders.

Answering the second question is difficult if you don’t have an answer to the first. Several techniques on Facebook include advertisements and the “Suggest to Friends” button, but it’s difficult for the manager of a Page to target strangers who share specific interests. Contrast this with the free-for-all of people and information on Twitter, where barriers to strangers connecting by virtue of their shared interests and ideas are few.

My bet is that Facebook will continue to become more like an idea-sharing platform in the fundamental areas that will help the company bring in revenue from marketers. Although changes to the interface and various applications further this end, the norms by which people model their behavior on Facebook won’t change anytime soon.

In a post for TechCrunch (http://tcrn.ch/ct25pM), Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff writes that “we are moving from Cloud 1 to Cloud 2, and the iPad is the accelerator.” If Cloud 1 is defined by chat, type, tabs, pulling information and the notebook, then Cloud 2 is all about video, touch, feeds, pushing information and the tablet.  Benioff calls this transformation “cloud + social + iPad.”

I believe that the touch and video aspects of the iPad are going to have an especially large impact on the future of marketing and advertising.  Advertisements are going to be forced to become even more interactive, finding new and better ways to engage their target audience. Consumers will be able to touch, drag and manipulate products that appear on a sidebar, or touch to play a video to see the product in action. Wired Magazine offered the industry a glimpse into the future with the video demonstration of their new iPad App (http://bit.ly/ccCLkR). The user in the preview touches a car in an advertisement, and turns it 360 degrees.  In a body wash ad, the user touches the words to have more or less information appear.  An article that highlights a product is touched to go directly to the product website.

Tablets are a new, mostly untouched avenue for marketers to reach consumers.  And the tablet format will become much more pervasive as competitors like HP, Google and Dell join the race.  The iPad is pushing brands to the brink of the next phase of marketing, and I think brands that are quick to embrace this opportunity will be seen as innovative, relevant and savvy, and those brands that are resistant to the tablet format will be seen as (literally) out of touch.

The passage of comprehensive health care reform into law last week made the controversial bill a reality, but the debate rages on in the blogosphere and beyond. Regardless of where you personally stand on the issue, it’s interesting to take a step back and look at the health care debate through a social media lens.

Health care reform is perhaps the single most controversial and significant piece of legislation enacted since the advent of social media. It stands to reason, then, that there is much to be gleaned from the web.

Social Radar, a web analytics tool that tracks social media, came up with some particularly interesting data about the debate and its general trends. Web traffic was predictably highest on the days leading up to and immediately after the House passed the health care bill, but a closer look at the analytics suggests that the fiercely contentious nature of the debate (even by Capitol Hill standards) was fueled by an equally contentious debate being waged by the general public over the internet.

As the graph below indicates, the majority of conversations related to health care were happening on microblogs (read: Facebook and Twitter), followed by blogs, and finally web forums. This fact was not lost on Congress; both Democratic and Republican leadership employed Twitter and other social networking mediums at an unprecedented rate in an attempt to directly engage Americans in the health care debate.

Both sides, Democrat and Republican, are predictably claiming victory in out-maneuvering the other in the social media space. While Republicans are claiming victory based on momentum (@GOPLeader, the Twitter alias of House Minority Leader John Boehner, picked up over 2,500 followers last week alone), Democrats are touting the quality of their content, including a Facebook page that added 12,000 followers last week.

According to Social Radar’s statistics, which mines through blog data for buzzwords and key phrases, 59% of the conversations related to health care reform were positive, 36% were negative, and 6% were indifferent.

The most important lesson from this data may have nothing to do with health care at all, but rather a sign of things to come in politics. The increased emphasis politicians are placing on social media parallels that of corporations and is emblematic of a broader acceptance of the field and its long-term efficacy.

So, does this settle the health care debate once and for all?

Didn’t think so, but it definitely gives you something else to talk about…

Like a river, PR is constantly changing. Ten years ago, the primary goal was to disseminate information to reporters via fax with the hope that they would cover the news. Today, this is considered a dying tactic. PR has become much more interactive and engaging with the help of social media. Instead of sending bland, boring press releases, agencies are turning to rich media releases to share social media content. Reporters are also learning to appreciate more dynamic content from companies, such as an embedded video or demo. The truth is that social media channels are the basis of a majority of PR campaigns today and the landscape will only continue to evolve.

A fly rod needs the right amount of tension and finesse in the same way the media yearns for creative and accurate news angles. Fly-fishers need to consider weather conditions, fly choice and what time of day to cast among several other things. Knowing the whole story is essential for both fly-fishing and PR. The more a PR professional knows about current trends and what reporters are covering, the more respected and successful they will be. Fly-fishers have to be able to think outside the box and come up with creative concoctions that will attract fish. The PR professional needs to not only be aware of what is going on in the world and how best to represent a client but also which reporters to target.

Another tricky part to fly-fishing is setting the hook. Unlike traditional reel fishing, setting the hook in fly-fishing can leave newcomers discouraged. Instead of yanking hard on the line, the slightest flick of the wrist can set it in the fish’s mouth. The same issue applies in PR. Sure, you may have caught the initial interest of a reporter but how do you get them to commit and write? By doing research and presenting the information in an appealing manner, the reporter will bite. PR professionals can get lazy and overlook this crucial step but it is essential in gaining positive coverage. It takes extra effort but it’s worthwhile and produces favorable results for clients. Like the fish, the reporter can smell when something isn’t worth their time. A fish will swim right by your fly, if it’s not what they desire. A reporter won’t give you the time of day until you properly bait the news angle.

Whether it’s PR or fly-fishing, reporters or fish, there are plenty in the sea.

Happy Pitching!

Flying back from a sales call to one of the world’s largest technology vendors, I realized how much our business had changed while our business model had not. We were trying to run our exploding social media practice using pricing models from our legacy public relations business.

I suspect this problem is a challenge for other agencies new to social media. It’s also a struggle for clients used to agency pricing practices that are really just time and materials. Like a lawyer, I’m running a business that sells services by the hour. But the new product I offer is more like advertising agency creative. What’s the cost of a great idea?

Public relations agencies doing substantial social media work need to shift to value pricing (tied to client business objectives and clear metrics) while customers need to understand better where the value is in what they are buying. A surprising amount of the social media value a customer ‘buys’ is a great idea and a smart strategy (developed up front), not the tactics and execution after the contract is signed and delivered through hourly charges on the backend.

Before my team flew in to meet with this client (yes, we got the gig), we probably invested more than 100 hours of senior executive time developing a strategy. It was a lot of effort. But when we submitted the statement of work, there was no line in the contract’s pricing schedule for “big idea” and “strategy.” The pricing in the contract focused on people and time and hourly rates. As a small agency, we don’t have the luxury of using our own paper in contract negotiations. I don’t think there’s any way we will recover our up-front time investment in this three-month project. In this case the client actually threw in some extra money in recognition of the situation.

I struggle with how to manage pricing value right.

I’ve been surprised at the lack of conversation around pricing value in social media. Most of the heated conversations and debate are around ROI and measurement. I think we’ve largely figured out those problems and the social media experts who claim otherwise are disingenuous.

Every social media program that we run is tied to metrics that map back to the client’s business objectives (we blog here frequently on the topic). We measure the needles that social media can move and that the client agrees will also impact their business objectives. We’ve run now more than 100 social media programs to get to this point. So I don’t think the ROI measurement discussion matters anymore. You just do it. And everyone will be doing it right soon enough.

We ran a social campaign (it’s still on-going actually) for a client in the fall of 2009 around the global launch of the products that drive most of the company’s revenues and profits (a $200+ billion firm). We had to coordinate and lead on social media activities across eight different business units. The top objective was to drive traffic to a specific web site landing page. The client invested millions of dollars in other marketing channels as well. Our budget was a single digit percentage of the client’s overall outside marketing spend. But our programs drove one-third of the traffic to the target page. How should I have priced that campaign? Talk about value – and apples-to-apples ROI comparison to other marketing spends!

I’ll confess that in our early days of social media programs we landed some projects with some very big clients where we didn’t deliver the value I wanted. At the time we were so focused on tactics and execution (all this social media stuff was new!) that we failed to focus sufficiently on the strategy at the onset. We also didn’t listen well to what the client really wanted. As a result, we probably over-charged. We also lost that division of the company as a client.

Part of the pricing and value problem also lies with the client. In social media, so much of this work is so new that most clients frankly don’t know what they want anyways. They don’t know what they can get or what is possible. I think our job today is to help clients understand what is possible with social media in the context of their marketing objectives and price that value fairly. And for us, strategy is where we deliver the most value in the campaigns we run. But I still don’t know how to price it right.

If anyone has a good answer to my value dilemma, please comment below, reply back or DM me on Twitter at @p1lonn or email me directly at lonn@pageonepr.com.

Public relations and law enforcement professionals have seen tremendous benefits in using social networking in terms of boosting a company’s image and crime fighting. On the other hand, the sport and health industries have struggled with maintaining peace in online interaction.

Public relations often uses social networking to expand news coverage of a company, connect with other professionals and keep up-to-date with trends and national news. Law enforcement officials are also taking advantage of the real-time search capabilities to enhance tactics, disseminate public information, and prevent criminal activity. Mashable recently posted six ways social media is used to fight crime.

However, using the Internet and engaging in social networking is controversial in other industries. The health industry is seeing a large growth in “e-patients” or those who use email and online communities for inquiries about medical issues. Psychologists in particular are sensitive about crossing boundaries and view communicating online as informal and less business-like than making a phone call. Additionally, social media exchanges with patients, carry potential liability in a variety of areas, including confidentiality, timeliness of response, and clarity of meaning.

Social media has also been the cause of concern for sports. Last week, White Sox general manager Ken Williams described his frustrations with social media when manager Ozzie Guillen’s son, Oney made brash statements on Twitter. Oney was forced to resign from his position with the video department because his tweets were inappropriate for a team employee.

The response to social media in sports has gotten so extreme that the NFL has banned Tweeting during games. This harsh reality stemmed from Bengal’s receiver, Chad Ochocino posting updates to Twitter during regular season games. For a first offense, players are now fined up to $25,000. We all know Ochocino doesn’t need any more fines, especially after his last stunt.

Like most things in life, social media, should be regulated. The amount of regulation is under debate for industries where the increase in use of online tools has led to greater privacy challenges. Professionals should try to find a happy medium where they are able to cater to those who prefer online interaction but at the same time don’t cross any important boundaries. In the sports industry, sites such as Twitter are pertinent in reaching out to fans in discussing changes with players and the game in general but should not interrupt the flow or bash other players. Fans from all walks of life appreciate updates about their team and should not be denied this information.

As long as it’s done in a respectful and thoughtful manner, there’s no reason why social media can’t be a part of every profession. What do you think about social media and the professional world? How much of it should be regulated?

Facebook Fans got the pictures before automotive press. There was a large amount of negative comments. Reporters and bloggers went to the Facebook Fan page to look at the pictures and get the initial public reaction. Unfortunately, it was negative.

Honda Crosstour Facebook Page

The Internet is filled with speculation as to why the problem occurred. Analysis includes:

* The pictures weren’t good. The appeal of the car’s unusual shape isn’t represented accurately in the pictures that were put on Facebook;

* The demographic on Facebook didn’t match the target audience the car was designed for. The car is designed to be attractive to people that are older than the average Facebook fan;

* Honda marketing simply made a mistake in giving up control of their communications channel. They would have been better off keeping the photos secret until they launched the vehicle with a press conference and working with reporters that the PR people had relationships with.

Of course, pointing out errors after a failure is always easier than designing a successful marketing campaign.

I think that the verdict is still out on whether or not an official Facebook Fan page is a good platform to leak product photos. However, if I were hired to manage the Facebook Page to launch photos, here is what I would have done differently:

* Identify key Facebook influencers prior to the creation of the Facebook Page. Identify and prioritize influencers based on their reach on Facebook and in other social media channels;

* Use PR techniques to provide these influencers with organized information, special attention, and rapid responses to questions prior to giving them access to media like photos;

* Work out a process to let them see the car, either the physical car itself or a photo that they agree won’t be reposted;

* Use feedback from the influencer group to adjust the pictures as needed;

* Expand out the influencer group over time. By the time the photo got leaked, there would have been enough of a positive impression of the car to either weaken the negative sentiment or drown it out.

If a marketing campaign is run on Facebook, the platform becomes a marketing tool. By applying existing marketing techniques, such as those developed by PR experts, the risks of a failed Facebook campaign can be reduced.

Craig Oda, managing partner and product launch enthusiast