New influencers are creating new sources of media, who are these new influencers? You, me and even Joe the plumber. How is this possible? We are now publishers we are able to report, comment and even create news content, we have the news and the media is now coming to us.

Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, states that there are Ten Secrets to Success of Social Media. But to understand these we must first realize that traditional media is declining and that search is the new circulation. Once we understand this we as PR professionals will be able to understand how each person is an influencer of media marketing and will become more successful in our marketing and media strategies.

Secret # 1- Don’t Fear Negativity. We must learn to accept that we cannot control what people say, but that we can contain negativity to a certain degree. There are always going to people that may disagree with what you say or what you do, but the trick is to realize it and accept it. If you make a mistake fess up to it. After all if you don’t and it is proven that you were in the wrong you are just adding fuel to the fire.

Dr.Pepper and Guns N’ Roses, two things that couldn’t be further from each other -  yet Ketchum – has found a way to connect these. On behalf of Dr. Pepper, Ketchum launched a promotion, if Guns N’ Roses finally released their album Chinese Democracy, then Dr. Pepper would give everyone in the United States a free Dr. Pepper.

Guess what? Next month, Guns N’ Roses is releasing their much anticipated album. So what does this have to do with PR and Media Relations? Joanne Puckett, Vice President of Global Research for Ketchum and presenter of “Deriving ROI for Interactive Communications,” believes it relates due to the platform on which the promotion was sent. Ketchum realized that mass media is slowly declining, and that to create buzz around their client there needed to be an embrace of a new platform of communication enter Social Media.

By using social media to connect with an audience that may have never drank Dr. Pepper, Ketchum did something amazing. They connected two brands that probably would have never joined together, but by doing this they connected to a wider audience. This is proof that those who use social media are not just generation Y, but also generation X, baby boomers and everyone else in between. Dr. Peppers awareness has increased and they are now seeing an increase of 15% on their ROI. Ketchum embraced social media to derive a greater ROI for Dr. Pepper.

What are the most commonly used marketing objectives? What variables are used when planning a marketing strategy? What is the most influential contact point? These questions were the opening of, “Marketing, Media and Word of Mouth.”  We know the answer to all these questions right?

• Awareness
• Target
• Word of Mouth

Presenter Jeffrey Graham, executive director, customer insight, The New York Times, stated that, ” there is a huge disconnect when it comes to word of mouth and context.”

What does this mean? For a person just starting out in PR and Media Relations it means we may be overlooking a significant part of our target market. By not paying attention to where information and opinions about our clients or their services are coming from we are missing what could be a either fatal or significant loss or win for out clients. How does this really effect us and our clients? Gabriel Tarde stated, “Conversation is the strongest agent of imitation, of the propagation of sentiment.”

Constantly things are changing, communication itself is experiencing a renaissance of change, but can we handle it? Detroit, MI – once the center of the motorized world – is experiencing a rebirth from industrial motor plants to hosting international conferences like PRSA International 2008. If this once industrial city can evolve into a  robust and vibrant city of culture and information, then we can learn to adapt our methods of communication.

The programming of the 61st PRSA International conference demonstrates that once traditional approaches of PR are now giving way to a digital world.The first conference session that I will be attending is titled, “Word-Of-Mouth Online and Off: What’s the difference?” The session is going to examine how traditional word-of-mouth sells, the messaging is the same, but how we communicate that message is changing.

Example, in the 1920’s people found out how amazing automobiles were, this was done by talking to people that had one, had seen one or had heard about them from someone else. Now almost a hundred years later automobiles are advertised by word of mouth, on the radio, in newspapers, on social media sites, on television and on the internet. By learning how to evolve messaging we are able to influence our customer base and increase our clients ROI.

The buzz about SEO in the public relations industry has grown steadily over the past 2-3 years. Press releases were the easy target for promotion as candidates for optimization. With the growing use of Google and Yahoo News, optimizing press releases have been an easy way to gain prominent visibility with nominal effort.

As both a SEO and a PR practitioner for the past 8+ years, I get to educate clients and audiences at both PR & Search Marketing conferences. At public relations conferences, I’m the SEO guy talking about optimized PR. At search marketing conferences, I’m the PR guy talking about using PR for SEO.

The continuing convergence of both PR and SEO is inevitable. Neither is based on pay to play, although there are advertorial and paid editorial placement offerings. Editorial visibility in offline and online publications is for the most part “earned” as are the top rankings of web pages on search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Public relations practitioners have significantly warmed up to well documented possibilities and opportunities to extend their effectiveness for clients through implementing search engine optimization into their programs. The reality is that PR doesn’t have control over all of a companies digital assets.

By Lee Odden

In the world of using search engine optimization tactics for extending the reach of media relations, optimizing press releases alone leaves a tremendous opportunity untouched.

Increasing numbers of companies have realized this and are adopting more formal holistic news content optimization strategies. Digital Asset Optimization is a SEO Point of View that our search marketing agency, TopRank started developing in early 2007.

Limiting news content optimization to press releases with a web site rich with news, media coverage and digital assets leaves a lot of the “good stuff” out of the scope of SEO attention. There’s a tremendous opportunity for a competitive advantage in search engine PR when all of the news content digital assets involved with the SEO effort.

The first step to managing a news digital asset optimization program is to take inventory of the media assets and content types that are currently being created. It is important not to discount content because it is not published online. Many types of press clippings, news coverage, digital communications, video and image assets can be repurposed for news content optimization and promotion.

One of the most valuable resources at an event like the recent Media Relations Summit conference in San Francisco is the opportunity to listen to what journalists themselves have to say about how they interact with PR people. I attended several panels with reporters from publications ranging from the New York Times to CNET. The reporters were fairly candid about works and what does not. Here are some key tips I gleaned from the summit reporter sessions.

• Reporters STILL hate PR spam and irrelevant pitches. Such tactics are unlikely to generate coverage, it turns out. Shocking, I know.

• The press release is still important. With all the talk about new media, I was surprised to hear virtually every reporter sing the praises of the good old fashioned press release, which they use to ensure accuracy and to organize information.

• Print journalists are no longer breaking news. This is a major change that has happened over the last several years. Now, more than ever, journalists are looking for stories that analyze recent news trends. Online media, on the other hand, can be fiercely competitive for breaking stories.

“Do it Wrong Quickly: What Corporations Need from PR in Today’s Transforming Marketplace”Mike Moran begins the afternoon keynote with what is perhaps the most salient point of the whole conference. We don’t need to be the expert in new media or blogs. We need to be the expert in how to solve our client’s problems. Otherwise, we might as well give up. We’ll never be the blog expert because the blog experts exist, and they’re not getting any dumber.

Moran’s tone is optimistic, and not at all condescending, which is a refreshing change from many speakers on this topic, who seem to want to tsk-tsk us for not having discovered social networking years ago. Oh, and they are eager to inform you that whichever social media platform you have succeeded in engaging was obsolete in 1999. Moran eschews alarmism to good effect.

PR types tend to view new media as a sort of death knell for Public Relations. Moran sees them as an opportunity. The new model allows Public Relations to deliver hard results where we know we are making an impact on behalf of our clients. We can target more closely, measure results more accurately, and respond more quickly to customer feedback.

So, between Lee Odden losing his camera in the bay, and my failure to bring a charger to town, this will be less-than-visual post. Feel free to Google for a stock photo image of Robert Scoble, if you want the full effect.Scoble begins by informing us that he doesn’t have slides, but rather wants to give us a glimpse into his life. This sets the tone for a very informal presentation that introduces a variety of new social media platforms (even I wasn’t familiar with FriendFeed, but then, I’m something of a dinosaur). As such, I’ll give you all a very informal blog post.

Among his Twitter friends are none other than Barack Obama, yet more proof that his campaign is making an earnest effort to engage new media. I suppose all the campaigns have some social media presence, but Obama seems to be the only one effectively using it. A blog is just a blog until someone reads it. Then it becomes a tactic.

I am familiar with sliderocket, but Scoble illuminates perhaps its most valuable feature, which is version control. Presentations tend to be collaborative efforts, and revamping existing presentations to accommodate edits can be a chore. PowerPoint in real-time is a powerful idea, I think.

“Evergreen Magic: How To Make News When There’s No News”

This session is being introduced as PR for the “little guy”. That’s apropos. After a series of case studies highlighting all the great work Disney was able to do great things (on a shoestring budget, or so we were told), it’s hard not to wonder what a company with lesser brand awareness can do to create ripples.

Sandra Fathi begins by citing a familiar dilemma. Company a buys company b and launches product x gives reporter z’s, unless your company happens to be Microsoft (or, say, Disney). Her advice is to marry the message to the reporters needs. This should seem obvious, but it is vitally important to sell the importance of this to the client.

To the specific advice, Sandra proposes that smaller companies “ride the wave of trends”. Well, yeah. Isn’t that what public relations people do? Easier said than done, though, eh? Sorry, I’ll keep the cynicism in check. So what does she propose?