TextPR & Social Media

David Intercontinental Hotel - Tel AvivJuly 8, 2007

Discussion

• Business to Business focused

• Principles of Social Media PR applies even more in focused, niche markets

• Israel’s technology sector, with its focus on being a key technology provider to many of the world’s brands, lends itself well to this approach

Agenda• Social Media primer - focus on blogging

• How PR has changed

• Principles

• Coffee Break

• Business Wire presentation

• Real world examples

• Q&A

Strategic Applications

• Establish your credibility

• Expand distribution

• Create new partnerships

• Raise money

• Exit strategy

Engineering Culture Is Ideal

• Most tech companies in Israel tend to be founded by a technologist, an engineer, a researcher.

• They should thrive in a social media driven initiative

Social Media PR is Ideal

• You need a broadband connection

• Ability to write like you speak

• Willingness to figure it out

• A few tools like a publishing platform, a digital camera, maybe a video camera

• A sense of humor...

We’ve got great stuff!• Our technology is

superior

• We’re a small company

• We serve a very niche market

• We don’t have a huge PR/Ad budget

• We just want to get the word out

• We’re in Israel...on the other side of the planet

Traditional Media

• Trade - EE Times, VON

• Business - Fortune, Forbes, WSJ

• Consumer - PC Magazine

• Industry Analysts - Forrester, Gartner

“Newer” Media

• News blogs focus on industry specific niches

• Feed trade and mainstream media

• Embrace social media, community, feedback mechanisms

• Fast, breaking news

Markets Are Conversations

Customers Are Expressive

Consumers Reveal More

Customers talk to other customers

Bloggers Blog about other Bloggers

Strategic Approach

• What are your objectives?

• How can a blog support a vision?

• How can a blog differentiate you from your competitors?

• How will you dedicate resources?

• Is there a willingness to experiment?

Strategic Issues• Initiative must have CEO buy-in and if

you are publicly held have the ok from CFO and legal

• This is a strategic communications initiative; not some rant and rave exercise

• You can keep it in prototype in case this does not work

Sample Objectives• Stay current.... “others are doing it; we

should too”

• Demonstrate thought leadership

• Collaboration

• Change management

• Expand reach into search engines

• Counter negative blogging

News blogs now feed trade and mainstream media as well as broad readership

Trade blogs help you do a better job in getting the news out

How We Used to Do PR• Got “coverage” through the media

• We worked with journalists

• We worked under embargo (and controlled the message).

• It was OK to speak in techno-babble

• Buyers learned about the client via the media

• We were measured by coverage

Traditional Method

• Messaging

• Strategy

• Announcement cycle

• Managed outreach

• Managed messaging

• Controlled distribution of news

Analysts / Thought Leaders

Media

Traditional PR

Publics

Company

Develop and Manage the Message

Media

Social Media PR

Publics

Company

Content Creators

Community Builders

Media

Participate in the Message

Social Media PR

Bloggers

Social Networkers

Diggers

Social Bookmarkers

Wikipedians

Twitterers

How You Can Benefit...• Monitor what the

blogosphere says about your company

• Participate in the conversation

• Help shape the conversation

• Be “found” by the media

PR- Not Just The Media• It used to be about

who do you know.

• Now it’s becoming how to become “found.”

Here I am...I want to

particpate

What’s Changed?

• From working with publishers to becoming your own direct-to-customer publisher

Collaborate

• Share

• Entertain

• Inform

your publics want to

express themselves

How We Do PR - Now• Focus remains on

message

• We still have strategic vision

• We do traditional “PR” with emphasis on “being found.”

• Shift to publishing paradigm

• Shift to the conversation and reaching broader audiences

• Shift to seeing your company on the web

“It’s about the conversation...”

• Blog

• Wiki

• Podcast

• Photos

•Not about what editors you may know...it’s how to be found!

What’s Changed

What Has Not Changed

• Traditional pitching

• major breaking news

• contributed stories

• Editorial calendars

• related topics

How To Execute....

• Brain storm:

• what makes our company a good candidate for social media PR?

• who can we get inside the company to participate?

• how do we maintain what we do now and expand into this?

Coffee Break....BusinessWire Presentation

Examples

• Major corporations have blogging and social media programs in place

• Disrupting the communications cycle at the world’s largest telecom company

• Becoming an authority in a new market

• Generating media coverage through blogging

Old & New Media Converge

• Communities drives the convergence of the communications process

• Media is incorporating social networking into itself so you can participate

What Should You Do?

• Think of your communications strategies as highly distributed, instead of centralized

• Embrace social networking platforms

• Add value to your conversation by being open to the conversation

TextText

Dell pre-announces new product entry to the tablet pc market

CEO - Sun Microsystems Blog

Microsoft XBOX blog

Microsoft Wiki

AT&T U-verse billing - #1 ranking out of 230,000

AT&T DSL offer @ $10 Per Month #7 of 792,000

The right words and tags lead to great rankings, credibility and authority

iPhone Buzz: how do I stand in line to get one?

A blog’s credibility and authority leads to WSJ coverage

Free HD TV offering from AT&T - right after AT&T’s own content

Intel Blog...

A year long blogging initiative results in profile in WSJ

Tagging Results in high Google rankings when you search about Israel technology

#5 of 1,530,000

Referral from my blog to a client’s news

release

read all about it!

participating in the conversation helps correct and update

content

Client’s news release gets top ranking, supported agency’s blog promoting the client

#1 and #5

Being “found” in Technorati

Your publics are searching the blogosphere

Your publics are looking for real world applications from Pro-sumers

Bloggers can impact financial relationsranked #1 of 1,300,000 - and outranked

AT&T itself!

The conversation extends to the competition AT&T vs. Verizon’s offering

Publicly traded companies are also tracked in blog posts

Writer, book author, blogger, Mark Collier: VoIP Security Guru

Book reviews lead to credibility

Dell invites you to participate

Credible industry specific bloggers want to hear from you

Industry Sources

• BuzzLogic

• CustomScoop - www.customcscoop.com for blog monitoring

• iUpload - www.iupload.com complete social media platform (blogs, wikis, podcasting, etc) for enterprises to gather, organize and distribute all forms of User Generated Content.

Blogging Platforms

• Blogger - http://www.blogger.com

• TypePad - http://www.typepad.com

• WordPress - http://www.wordpress.com

• PBWiki - http://pbwiki.com/

• WikiSpaces - http://www.wikispaces.com/

• Wikia http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia

Wiki Platforms

Social Networking

• Digg - http://www.digg.com

• Flickr - http://www.flickr.com

• LinkIn - http://www.linkedin.com

• StumbleUpon - http://stumbleupon.com

• YouTube http://www.youtube.com

the evolution of the virtual dinner party

Worth Reading

• TheNewPR/Wiki http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php

• Micropersuasion: http:www.micropersuasion.com

• Social Computing Magazine http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/

Contact:

• Alan Weinkrantz

• alan@weinkrantz.com

• +210-820-3075

• http://www.weinkrantz.com• All materials, intellectual property and photos (c) 2007 - Alan Weinkrantz

My Other Blogs

• http://www.3screens.net

• http://www.satechblog.com