That First Connection

                                                          That First Connection

Starting my career as a public relations specialist, I quickly learned one of the most important aspects of being a publicist was the importance of connection and building relationships. This is something they don’t teach you through your post-secondary education, but I assure you if this is the field you want to go into it will be a vital part of the job. In today’s society the concept of communicating and building relations with others goes beyond aiming to get the next “big client”. Once you have completed school and you are out in the “real world” you will quickly find that you will throw out all those extensive hours of theory out the door and your practical skills in terms of how you network with others, how to create the best pitch, how to make your PR firm stand out from the rest, will be questions that you will ask yourself on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong education through theoretical studies is very beneficial but once coming out of school you will slowly start to find that you will be tested in various situations that are beyond what you have learned through a textbook.

Although, today with the great advantage of social media building relationships have been a lot simpler to create! No longer do we need to feel a sense of uneasiness when it comes to trying to connect with others within our field. You don’t have to necessarily pick up the phone or approach a publicist you may not know but whom you idol. Now you are able to easily use sites such a Linked-in, Twitter, Facebook, Google Circle and Blogs to connect with whomever it is you like. Having the advantage of all these social  network sites allows you to not feel any “build up” or  signs of nervousness when communicating with them, it will also help you to build your confidence as a  new PR person starting up to get a feel of where you see yourself fitting in. You may start your career out in the exciting world of fashion and lifestyles marketing and PR and as you grow into your career you may find that you want to try another aspect such as marketing for a tech or corporate company.

I highly recommend you do not hide behind social media, it is crucial that you step out behind that laptop or tablet at some point and connect with the individual in-person: not only are you able to get a feel of the person and see if you can relate to them, you are now able to get a sense of how your conversation flows that aura you feel around them (hopefully it’s a positive one) and also where do they fit in your career path or business. Talking  in –person will create a different atmosphere, as you are now able to analyze the individual in relations to their body and facial expression, tone of voice and so forth.

I know as you start out in your career this will be a little overwhelming at first, but remember you are the one who decided to embrace this wonder field of Public relations, so you must make this step as building relations and network is what majority of your career is based upon. Starting at the prime of your career will give you advantage down the road, you may find that completing this simple task of networking with other, will most likely grant you many rewards down the road in terms of your career opportunities, exposure to the industry as well as other various paths you may choose. Pulling these meaningful connections, in your favor will create an environment of connections that suits the needs of your constituents.

Advertising Gone "New School"

   Advertising Gone “New School” – How To Build Traffic Towards Your Campaign

There is always that tidbit of frustration when one has to rely entirely on the media and costly advertisement to deliver a company’s message. Not every company can produce the advertisement funds to place their ad in Dundas Square or on a bill board overlooking the QEW. I am glad to announce those days are long gone! Okay, well maybe not long gone, media is still very important but its role is plummeting, as savvy marketers and publicist are now utilizing the maximum potential of the World Wide Web to convey information to their consumers.

Marketers and publicist are feeding their consumers viral through social networking sites such as: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc. Once the consumer seeks out this information, they then share it with their community of people either by “retweeting”, ”pinning” sharing through invites, or posting on the social network site of their liking. This developing method of advertisement has been proven to target more people at an accelerated rate. For example, YZ PR firm is placing and advertisement for their clients new magazine. Now instead of going through the expense of billboard ads, transit ads etc. The publicist can easily target the demographic that may be interested in this magazine by creating an advertisement that potential consumers are able to participate in, such as: Placing the advertisement with a related YouTube video that is directed to your target audience. This advertisement can easily go viral through consumers passing it on to friends, by sharing, “retweet” or inviting others to view the video.

For many companies, marketers and publicist that are making the attempt to reach consumers through web content will hold more power over time and saving a lot of money in the process. Many organizations create content especially to position them as something that holds a great significance within their specified target market as opposed to something that is simplistic and holds value. Don’t be shy to let your next advertisement stream through a podcast or YouTube or any social network site. Not only will your advertisement be cost efficient, it is prone to gain and captivate your audience at a faster rate.  This will also show you as the kind of marketer who understands your market and marketing trends exceptionally well.  Lastly combining the vastest of the internet and the power of social media will allow your online reputation to rise as a leader of new market place ideas!              

The Bustling Town Of Social Media!

Do you think you could do me a favor? Close your eyes for just a moment and envision the internet as a busy town where people are constantly bustling to get to the next mtg, after the mtg you run to catch your friend for lunch followed by a  pitch for a client then off to that yoga class you recently joined. Now think of social media as the way individuals interact on blogs, forums and other social networking sites as a coffee shop or your local pub. The analogy of viewing the web as a bustling town, demonstrates the concept of social media being a place where people congregate to get enlightenment; this shows how entrepreneurs today can utilize social media tools to its maximum potential.

Think about your actions during a social gathering:

-    Do you go in to a group filled with a minimal amount of acquaintances?

-    Do you go amongst a group of people and gruffly shout “purchase my product!” or

     “my company is the best!”

-    Do you have a few memorable conversations or do you meet every person at the gathering?

From my experience I find these questions to be very helpful, especially to those who are new to social media as well as those who fail to see the reinforcement that social media can provided to your product or company in terms of communication and marketing. Envisioning the web as a busy town where social media spots are used for individuals who join together to socialize, allows us to make sense of how marketers can utilize social media tools to its maximum potential, in order to gain success for their company or product.

Of course you can attend social gatherings and blab about how brilliant your company or product is, but will this make you popular? Probably not. It would be wiser to make friends and acquaintances that like conducting business with people they like.The same concept is applied in the world of social media.It is good to join and participate in advancing networking sites such as forums and blogs and social network sites i.e. (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) etc. but be aware to give more than you get. Do not overwhelm people with your product or company, be able to part take in other things that are going on in the sites that you are taking part in, such as: discussions, commenting on other material, participating in survey’s etc.this will allow other members to view you as a more approachable individual as you are not overwhelming or making them feel obligated to your business or product. As an entrepreneur you want to “reel in the bass and fish out the tuna.”  This means start small simple conversation and take part in social activities in the sites you are involved in as I mentioned earlier, can help build your personal reputation making yourself feel more approachable to people. Try to create a sense of comfort between you and  the person, this will allow an opening to be formed for you to “reel in the tuna” or in other words, discuss your business or product.  Conduct business as you would in a social setting, not as you would in a bank. Meaning, do not approach people by discussing purely your company or product, make sure you are embracing “small talk” as well.  People do not like to feel as if they are being corner attacked or overwhelmed by something. A little conversation will go a far way. You will be able to create an opening for you to discuss your business product or company. I can guarantee you will slowly start to notice your valuable interactions will lead to more promising business opportunities.

Online Influence is Social Media Influence

So how did that work out for you? Influencing social media to your campaign and reestablishing the direction of your company? Hopefully it made a positive impact towards your campaign by following the guidelines from our previous discussion. Let's take our discussion a step further shall we? I would like to introduce you to tools that will take your campaign to that next step you have been waiting for.

PR specialist are starting to lean out of their comfort shell and becoming familiar with value of simple website tracking and analysis as well as building basic web content. No longer is the time where we depended on a web team or marketing analyses. Social media has made it easy for us to benchmark our company's own  success, and determine how to drive people to your website. 

Google Analytics is probably the most frequent and easiest of all analytic tools. This online based program contains simple reporting of website user statistics as well as other features such as; standard reporting, custom reporting and multiple charts and graphs which will allow to see the feedback you need in order to determine what direction your campaign is leaning towards. Now depending on the size of your campaign or company you prefer to use other analytic tools such as: GoingUp, Reinvigorate and my personal favourite Clicky. All these sites are inexpensive and only require a yearly fee. 

Now that we have chosen our preferred analytic tool the question still stands, "what should we publicist's try to determine?" "what will we gain out of analyzing our website's or our clients?" well don't ponder anymore, take notes while I share the answer with you. 

It could be for your own company or it could be for your client, either way it is crucial that you review and analyze these certain aspects from the content: 

 -Keywords (What words are being using in search engines etc. to locate your website?)

 -Page view (How often does the traffic on your website increase? Monthly? weekly? daily?)

 -Number of visitors (How often do people come on your site?)

 -Visitor location (What is the majority geographic of your consumers? Where do they visit before coming on    your site, Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest?)

 - Inbound link monitoring (what link are consumers using to access your site?)

 Profile data (What tailoring is needed to made in order to reach your consumer's browsing habits?) 

Now  I know from my own experience the whole concept of using analytics is a little frustrating and overwhelming to absorb at first, but I can assure once you understand and grasp the general idea of it, your social media and overall online influence will rise vastly. The best way to understand analytics is to captivate what is going on in "real time" this will allowing you to figure out instantly how your site competes with the other within your sector. Lastly, never forget demographics, psychographics and geographics. These are very important things to learn, as it will help you view who exactly your consumer is. This way we can break this further into niche markets which will allow us to analyze our consumer down to the tea, in terms of  there lifestyle, personality, location, characteristics and traits. All this information will  how you to determine your traffic and content and will also tie your campaign together brilliantly, making you better as a PR professional. 

  

Is it critical?

Last week we started off by embracing the beautiful relationship between a publicist and social media. We established that the two can be defined as a "match made in heaven" and go very well hand in hand. We also discussed the importance and empowerment of social media that many organizations and companies fail to comprehend. Let us further our discussion by determining how to establish this concept of using social media to impact our company for great success.

As every industry, public relations also has core fundamentals that are used on a day to day basis in order to achieve successful results. Above all, the most important steps are critical thinking and how to grasp the public's attention are the basics tenets of PR. As publicists we tend to be very constricted, only relating to these steps in a certain manner and using it only for the typical press releases, advertisements media kits and pitches. But now with the new era of social media we are able to view and utilize these steps in a whole new manner. Let's make a few replacements shall we? Is critical thinking really necessary when instead we can incorporate new knowledge and skills in to our daily work? Instead of reflecting carefully, let's take the applied route by using what we already know and enhance it to a further level.

 For example, your client tells you that she is opening a new restaurant. Normally hearing this as a publicist, we would develop communication strategies which will allow us to determine the best way to reach the public. But it's time to kick that concept out the door, social media is the best possible way to reach our public! 1 in every 13 people in the world relies on social media and over 50% of world uses social media on a daily basis..yes these are the facts. So now that we know this, we can now determine that building a social media campaign based on new knowledge and skills. So let's replace that restaurant ad on the radio with a "pin it to win it" Or a "retweet to win" campaign using pinterest or twitter. These are some leading social media sites that are used by over 250 million people in the world. We all know once we hear a commercial on the radio we switch it to the next best thing anyways. Having social media campaigns will not only grasp the population attention, but will also take an applied route getting consumer's involved and interactive with the campaign making the experience memorable and unique from the gecko.

Whether it's your own company or your client's you must realize that as a publicist you can influence the impact that social media can make on your campaign. Embracing this digital era of modern thinking, applying necessary knowledge and lastly, re -establishing your direction of the campaign. Are all steps needed to make your social media campaign a valuable asset. Once you are comfortable gelling these factors together, you will start to realize the transition you have taken into a higher plateau, as you are now starting to accept the new modern digital era. It can be slightly nerve racking but with a little practice, you will find yourself in a new exciting world with new exciting changes.

A New Level Of Relations

Public relations will continue to transform, and the changes we are seeing have been exceptional for the industry. For better or for worse, a career in PR entails of handling communications within the public spotlight due to the increasing use of social media. As content become more accessible and companies become more digitally connected to their consumers, The field of public relations has embraced the digital era of social media. This new approach towards planning, implementing and strategic marketing has opened many routes for this industry. As publicist discover a new scheme to reach out, build and connect globally through the usage of social media.

It just simply amuses me how the these two tools go hand in hand, as if they are soul mates or a match made in heaven. Today publicist's utilize social media to it's full capabilities and the results have a greater impact than the days of press releases and media awareness. PR has evolved into a digital era, it has become mandatory for publicist's to understand and embrace social media to a maximum degree as PR specialist's have now found a new home among marketing,advertising and content. Social media has unrevealed the need to be closely knitted to this  high-level development.As a blooming publicist and entrepreneur I have witness this transition being made, and felt it was necessary for future marketers, entrepreneurs as well as  other savvy individuals to understand and grasp the potential of social media and how far you can take your company with this simple tool. Don't feel that when I say "company" I am referring to a huge organization of people that work for you. You are your own company. In order to raise social awareness for your personal self or business it is vital to accept and comprehend this concept. Without establishing your own well-being and thoroughly coming to terms with the professional you are, it is impossible to create awareness, or the social impact that is needed to earn success. As we go from week to week we will discuss this topic further as well as how you can become more established through using social media and where it takes place within your company,but for now..set your brain to broil and  just let this concept simmer in your mind.