OpenCa.mp DFW is a conference focused on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! and .NET development. There are a few sessions touching on blogs and social media and surprisingly, one on public relations. Paula Berg was with Southwest Airlines for 10 years building their social media effort to 8 people and becoming a very legitimate and significant source of revenue for the airline.

Her presentation at OpenCa.mp started with an admission of being somewhat hungover, we are at a tech conference after all, and a rate of speech that was more like East Coast than South West. She was engaging and entertaining.

A lot of companies are doing “Third world social media”. They’re doing things tactically and not integrating into their overall business.

1. About jaw dropping reports:  Sure, servies like Radian6 can create nice looking reports, but what does it mean?

It’s not all about the numbers. What is the data trying to tell us? What are we tring to prove or accomplish. What should we be doing differently. Who cares about this insight?

2. Launch an all out PR assault – tell everyone about your social media program

3. Make executives love it. Dazzle them. Scare them. Do what you have to do.

The PR industry is in a state of flux with increasing emphasis on the digital and social side of communications.   In the context of digital PR, social media and search engine optimization can work together to compound results.  As PR efforts continue to emphasize content publishing, digital and social communications, the opportunity to keyword optimize content for search is low hanging fruit.

Forward thinking companies would do well to assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources.  Is the current digital PR effort leveraging improved visibility through search engines? Do current PR and Marketing staff or vendors possess the digital PR tools they need to offer competitive consulting in a “PR 2.0” world? Consider the following questions to assess the SEO and social media readiness of your digital PR assets:

1. Is social media participation conducted without attention to SEO?
   According to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, social media adoption outranks organic SEO. Yet more than 82% of Internet users surveyed in “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers” (published by Tom Smith, one of the researchers of the Digital Readiness Report) stated search engines are the tools most frequently used to source information about products, brands and services. That disconnect reinforces the need for search engine optimization as a key digital marketing and PR tactic.

PR budgets have been affected just as much as marketing and Public Relations departments in every industry are trying to figure out the  mechanics of how to improve PR effectiveness through social media. At the same time, optimizing news content for search engines is fast becoming an established part of the mix for many PR programs.

On their own, SEO and social media channels offer attractive opportunities for reaching industry influentials as well as end consumers through push and pull PR. Together, SEO and social media combine to create a competitive edge that can boost online PR results.

Why is this so? Changes in the way the media and end consumers discover, consume and share content illustrate the intersection of opportunity for search and the social web. Today’s increasingly social savvy content consumer not only expects to find what they’re looking for on search engines, but to interact with the results. Those interactions take many forms including: commenting, voting and sharing. As a result, social media can affect search engine visibility in numerous ways, creating new promotion opportunities for public and media relations efforts.

Listening and continued engagement. This is how Craig Newmark, creator of Craigslist, explained the success of his business during a PRSA International keynote address: “How Social Media Creates a More Democratic Society”. Newmark explained that you have to do what makes sense and continue to engage your community. By engaging you build a culture of trust where shared values are expressed and followed. Success is achieved.

Craigslist is almost 99% free, with only 1% being charged for a services. To be successful Craig Newmark realized that he didn’t need to overtly charge the public who viewed and used Craigslist, but instead offer services to help cultivate and aid in the public’s growth. By helping to shape your community you are helping people try to succeed. You are doing well. Craig Newmark beleives by doing well in his business strategy he is doing good in his community.

“To do well in business by doing good,” is the simple business philosophy of Craigslist. PR and Social Media has a bad rap as not being a service for anyone but ourselves, as not being honest, but we are doing well in business, we help promote small businesses, we encourage growth of communities. Aren’t we doing good for society.

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.

By Kevin Sawyer – Media Relations Specialist

By all accounts, Barack Obama had the Democratic presidential nomination in the bag two weeks ago. All he had to do was come close in states like Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania, and coast to Denver this summer. But his campaign made a serious miscue. While floundering in Ohio, Obama’s campaign challenged Hillary Clinton to quit if SHE lost in Ohio. Big mistake…

It used to be that success in American politics consisted of a series of turning points. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, Fireside chats, and the “Checkers” speech all consisted of a politician seizing a moment to elevate his cause. Nobody saw them coming, and nothing was the same after.

Today, if a prominent politician schedules a major event, news venues will analyze the speech from every angle before it has been drafted. Social networking sites will come to a consensus about what he or she should say, and the politician will speak against the backdrop of a plethora of expectations, against which even the most successful speech has the potential to fail. Many will watch the speech on YouTube days later, reading and contributing comments as they watch.