PRSA Dayton PReSentAtion

Today I am address­ing the Day­ton Chap­ter of The Pub­lic Rela­tions Soci­ety of Amer­ica on the topic of blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, video, and other forms of con­tent cre­ation.  With all of the hype sur­round­ing Face­book, Twit­ter, and other social net­works, it is impor­tant to remem­ber the power that these tools can deliver.   I view these as fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks that can be used to cre­ate a story.   They make the cre­ation and pub­lish­ing of con­tent sim­ple.   They can be used inde­pen­dently or in con­junc­tion with one another, and can also pro­vide rich con­tent for var­i­ous social sites, where inter­ac­tive con­ver­sa­tions eas­ily can take place.    As part of the pre­sen­ta­tion I am going to pub­lish this post, along with video shot at the begin­ning of the event and a pod­cast recorded dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, both of which appear below.   The goal is to demys­tify blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, and video and show how they can be used in real time.

THE PREMISE:

His­tor­i­cally, one of  the great­est chal­lenges PR pro­fes­sion­als have faced is demon­strat­ing value to the client.  “What am I get­ting for my money?”  “What is all of this PR actu­ally doing?”  Tra­di­tion­ally PR was stuck with  show­ing activ­ity — “Here are the releases we sent to the media, and here is what got picked up.”  This is not use­less infor­ma­tion, but it is lim­ited in terms of it’s abil­ity to gauge real and last­ing value.

The hard part with that model was this.  The chan­nels were lim­ited, get­ting con­tent pub­lished was hard, and get­ting con­tent that was rel­e­vant to the intended audi­ence even more dif­fi­cult.  Most busi­nesses serve niche audi­ences, not mass audi­ences.  The con­tent that is appeal­ing to the tar­get niche is rarely appeal­ing to the mass of “nor­mal” peo­ple.  Thus to get place­ment, PR was tasked with cre­at­ing sto­ries broad sto­ries about a niche topic that appealed to mass media in order to reach that same niche audi­ence.  These sto­ries were chal­leng­ing to cre­ate and hard to place because the means of dis­tri­b­u­tion were scarce.  Con­tent had to be impor­tant to the media to be wor­thy of being pitched and have a chance of get­ting picked up.  Still impor­tant to the media is not the same as impor­tant to the audi­ence, and thus it was dif­fi­cult to deter­mine if place­ment actu­ally moved the needle.

Good news.  All of that has changed.  Blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, video, photo, social net­works have changed the dynamic from scarcity to abun­dance.  Now a story doesn’t have to appeal to the masses to be press wor­thy.  It sim­ply needs to be inter­est­ing to the niche.   No longer are pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als at the mercy of an exter­nal edi­tor or jour­nal­ist.  PR pro­fes­sion­als can guar­an­tee that con­tent is pub­lished.  They can help clients to cre­ate and pub­lish it directly through blog posts, blog­ger out­reach, pod­casts, video, social net­works, microblogs,  and var­i­ous other online chan­nels.  If a story is appro­pri­ate for push­ing out to a larger audi­ence, it can still be done, but now activ­ity can be mea­sured to much greater degree.  Not only that, PR pro­fes­sion­als can mea­sure the response of the intended audi­ence to that con­tent and shape the future direc­tion of the con­ver­sa­tion.  Con­ver­sa­tions that gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant traf­fic are instantly pitch wor­thy, while con­tent that floun­ders for atten­tion can be eval­u­ated against the over­all posi­tion of the com­pany.  This can drive valu­able changes to sales and mar­ket­ing, which are no longer dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent from PR.

No more is there a solid wall between PR and jour­nal­ist.  Often, they are now one in the same with regard to cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions.  PR is about telling the right story and the right time to the right audi­ence in order to achieve the right response — and PR pro­fes­sion­als are more capa­ble than ever of suc­cess­fully exe­cut­ing on this task because of blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, video, and social net­works.  From man­ag­ing prod­uct launches, main­tain­ing brand integrity, and orga­niz­ing pro­mo­tional events, to cus­tomer rela­tions, media mon­i­tor­ing and cri­sis man­age­ment, these pil­lars of pr are now empow­ered to own the chan­nel to the audi­ence.    This is why it is impor­tant to under­stand how these tools work.

Blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, video, and pho­tos are basic build­ing blocks for con­ver­sa­tion.  These pieces of con­tent increase activ­ity and can increase engage­ment on social sites.  They can help a brand to estab­lish thought lead­er­ship, refute and address pub­lic com­plaints, and improve organic search per­for­mance.  There is no short­age of value that can be deliv­ered through these chan­nels.  Even in an age dom­i­nated by dis­cus­sion of social net­works such as Face­book and Twit­ter, Blogs, Pod­casts, Video, and Pho­tos are the build­ing blocks of con­tent, which is the foun­da­tion of con­ver­sa­tion.  The dis­cus­sions, shar­ing, lik­ing, rank­ing, com­ments, and inter­ac­tions that take place on social media pro­vide con­text to the con­ver­sa­tion, but con­tent has the abil­ity to start and shape con­ver­sa­tion in rich and mean­ing­ful ways.  Con­tent is cre­ated and then shared on Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube, Google Plus and var­i­ous other net­works, serv­ing as the basis for thought­ful dis­cus­sion.  Approached prop­erly, these tools empower the client to be the pub­lisher, craft­ing sto­ries that appeal to an exist­ing audi­ence an poten­tially attract a broader one.

Great blog posts that com­bine audio, video, and text about a spe­cific topic con­tinue to draw traf­fic and improve organic search rank­ings for years.   Real, rel­e­vant con­tent sends pow­er­ful mes­sages to Google’s algo­rithms, which are doing their best to mimic your human think­ing.   Using con­tent to estab­lish thought lead­er­ship, gen­er­ate aware­ness and drive sales has the ben­e­fit of build­ing upon itself.  Because search engines love recency and rel­e­vancy, con­tin­u­ing to pub­lish con­tent on a sub­ject and bring­ing new and inter­est­ing per­spec­tives to the dis­cus­sion helps you appear in search results, while at the same time adds real value to the peo­ple you are try­ing to engage.  The more peo­ple that see and share your con­tent on social net­works like Face­book, Twit­ter, and YouTube, the bet­ter the con­tent  per­forms in search, ide­ally cre­at­ing a vir­tu­ous cycle of search­ing, find­ing, and shar­ing.  The result is the cre­ation of a rep­u­ta­tion, the build­ing of con­sumer trust, and the gen­er­a­tion of highly qual­i­fied traf­fic to your business.

THE PROBLEM:

Peo­ple are still resis­tant to write blogs, cre­ate pod­casts, pub­lish videos, and put orig­i­nal con­tent on the web — in spite of the ease with which it can now be done.  I think much of what con­tin­ues to hold peo­ple back from using these tools is fear.  It is intim­i­dat­ing to know that you have the power to cre­ate at your fin­ger­tips.  It is nat­ural to assume that some­thing that was once so scare must be com­pli­cated.  Fear is not a good excuse for refus­ing to act when the data shows that the action is wise.  Still, peo­ple resist.  My hope in today’s pre­sen­ta­tion is to help peo­ple over­come that fear.

THE PRESENTATION:

The fol­low­ing pod­cast and video were cre­ated at the event itself.  The text above is the basic crux of the first 15 min­utes of my pre­sen­ta­tion.  Then we shift gears.   I shot video at the begin­ning of the event, which I edited and uploaded quickly to youtube.  Then dur­ing the event, I asked Natasha Baker and Shelby Quin­li­van to sit down so I could record a pod­cast with them.  The pod­cast was short, and I showed peo­ple just how sim­ple it was to do.    Finally, I did some quick edit­ing, pub­lished the file, and embed­ded it here in my site.  Voila — Pod­cast cre­ated and pub­lished.  Social media mag­i­cal cur­tain pulled back.   In less than an hour we cre­ated these inter­ac­tive pieces, that could be used to pro­mote PRSA.  Imag­ine what would hap­pen if we took 2 hours.  Hope­fully see­ing how the trick works will encour­age peo­ple to put the magic to work wher­ever they may work.

PRSA DAYTON PODCAST: Recorded on my mac­book and pub­lished dur­ing the event.

PRSA Day­ton [ 4:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Down­load

PRSA DAYTON VIDEO: Recorded on my ipad and pub­lished as peo­ple came into the event.

THE CONCLUSION:

Blog­ging, Pod­cast­ing, and Video are pow­er­ful means of cre­at­ing con­tent, gen­er­at­ing traf­fic, and start­ing con­ver­sa­tions.   PR pro­fes­sion­als these tools can increase account­abil­ity and help to demon­strate the impor­tance of the ser­vices they pro­vide.  Hope­fully  this helps to pro­vide a sim­ple under­stand­ing of the impor­tance of these tools and the ease with which they can be used.

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