I always tell my clients they need a plan of action for anything they do in marketing and PR. Social media is no different. And, if they don’t get the “buy in” from upper management, then it makes it that much more difficult to try to communicate through social media tools (where dialog flows and brands can’t control the conversations).

Although most companies consider two paths to engagement, I’m going to focus on blogger relations with influencers (my next post will be on corporate blogging). Many companies set up a blogger relations program with the objective to secure editorial endorsements from their influencers.

There are many things to consider before diving into a blogger relations program. You should:

• Develop your strategy
  • Establish clear objectives
  • Inventory your opportunities,
  • Define a realistic timeline
  • Create metrics for success.
• Identify of your influencers
  • Search for the bloggers who cover your industry and discuss relevant topics
  • Evaluate the authority and popularity of the blogger
  • Develop your targeted blogger list
• Listen and monitor
  • Observe topics of interest
  • Track these topics regularly
  • Set up a monitoring program
• Participate
  • Comment on your influencers blog regularly
  • Be transparent
  • Provide meaningful information
  • Avoid any form of self promotion
• Engage with your influencers
  • Illustrate an understanding of your influencer’s needs
  • Customize communications to meet those needs
  • Have meaningful conversations that lead to trust

If you follow the steps to blogger relations and engage transparently you will find yourself immersed in meaningful conversations with the people who need to know about you and your products and services. A good blogger relations program will allow you to gain the trust of your influencers and build strong relationships.

It was a fantastic event, meeting people, listening to their concerns, ideas and overall excitement regarding PR 2.0 and social media. I was happy to see that there are industries (beyond the tech sector) progressing nicely in the 2.0 arena. Several educational institutions and learning centers as well as healthcare companies were very interested in speaking to me about in best practices in social networking, engaging the millennials, social media marketing and how to apply 2.0 practices.

However, on the other end of the spectrum, there were several PR and marketing professionals that came by my table, thumbed through my book, and said to me, “We’re just not ready for 2.0 yet.” This is one of the reasons I wrote PR 2.0. IABC brought together representatives from over 30 countries and not everyone is completely on board with social media.

Most people don’t realize this when they’re networking on one of their favorite micro blogs or social networking sites because the participants are so tech savvy. The jargon flies around and everyone knows the terminology. There’s also a great understanding of the importance and value of social media applications and engaging in conversations. But, that only represents a portion of the general population.

The two most common reasons for lack of participation: how do we convince management to put resources toward researching social media marketing and our IT infrastructure does not support social media applications. When I think about every industry, I can see the need to communicate effectively, to engage in meaningful communication, to help people by sharing information, to build better relationships and engage in conversations that are peer-to-peer. It is such a disservice to a brand to avoid investment in the resources and the infrastructure because they miss out on the opportunity to advance communications with company stakeholders.

The IABC conference taught me that there are many companies and industries that are advancing quickly, but social media education is still very important. I’m sure we will continue to see more conferences, like IABC’s, that focus on social media education and getting companies to understand the benefit and value behind social media applications. I thought we were past the “why should we engage in social media” question. In some cases we are, but there’s still a population that needs some additional counseling.

With all of the social networking we do, jumping from community to community, socializing with different sets of “friends” we spread ourselves very thin. Remember it’s always quality rather than quantity. That goes for everything in life and it’s one of our most important lessons to learn, even in the social networking world.

I guess I try to keep the quality over quantity by staying focused on the networks that provide me with the most satisfaction, interaction and information. For me, it’s no secret that Twitter is my #1 favorite place to be. Then I would say that Facebook is a close second. Then, there are also those networks that I go back to and check on regular basis but I’m not participating daily. These include MyRagan.com, MyManagersNetwork.com and LinkedIn. I also have my favorite blogs which are PR 2.0 (www.briansolis.com), Communications Overtones (http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com) and Web-Stategist.com (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog).

Lastly there are those social forums that I find interesting and I hope to increase my participation because I do see value in their communities. But, unfortunately, right now I just can’t find another minute in the day to participate. And, keeping the quality over quantity approach in mind, I will continue to peruse these sites and engage when I have more time to devote to them.

So here’s a list of interesting forums that provide value. Check out when you have some time:

Pitch Engine (www.pitchengine.com): PR pros sharing ideas, discovering tricks and finding practical ways to implement a strong social media PR campaign for agencies and in-house pitchers.

FamZam (www.famzam.com): Start connecting with family and friends in your own unique private secure network.

BriteKite (www.britekite.com): Meet real world friends. Reveal your location, befriend, and chat with people around you.

Here’s how I know that my Twitter addiction has grown:

• When my family wants to know where I am, they check Twitter rather than calling or emailing me first.
• I joined a great Twitter Strategies Group on Facebook. Mark Carter started it about a month ago and it’s been an excellent source of information.
• I have been using Twitter on a new level – almost as a journal to track my progress with a recent health issue. I’ve also received a great deal of support from the community who reaches out with words of encouragement.
• I’ve introduced Twitter to so many people and now I let them know that if they want to reach me, they can always find me there.
• I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter and I get very frustrated when “she” isn’t behaving, which unfortunately has been happening quite a bit lately.
• Yes, as you can tell from my last point, now, I’ve moved to a new level of my twitter engagement – I’ve personified the microblog.
• I am successfully learning to be succinct and find pleasure in brief, concise messages. It feels good to say that as a PR person!
• I’ve been using Summize and Tweetscan to uncover all of the tweets that I miss; the ones that don’t begin with @dbreakenridge and to review threads of communication on a particular topic of interest.

I love my addiction and I will continue to feed it every day. Sometimes, I’m even to tired or sick to tweet that I lay down with my laptop on my legs just so I can look at the tweets (this position is not conducive to typing tweets, but at least I still feel connected). I hope that if you are reading this post and if you’re not familiar with Twitter you will check it out immediately. And, if you are already on Twitter then you continue to feed and grow your addictions, so we can be addicted together!

If there’s one thing that we do know about this group, it’s that they live for social media. They are the generation that grew up with computers; they are early adopters and collaborative beings, as evidenced by the many social networking statistics available today. This generation definitely grasps social media applications easily and they expect to communicate in this manner whether it’s with their friends or as a part of their work experience.

When I think about engaging employees, I see that a lot of companies are savvy about using multimedia including Flash, audio, and video to create internal communication campaigns and messages to excite the millennials. However, how many companies are using social media as an engagement tool; to keep the millennials satisfied and collaborating in the workplace. If 8+ hours are spent on the job every day, then the job should mimic and mirror some of your employees’ personal communication behaviors.

An internal social media program will not only engage your employees and keep them interested in what’s going on within your company, but it will also help them to perform better in their work functions. In my last post, I wrote about engaging within, which gives an employee the education to have a voice both internally and externally. But if you take this one step further, the engagement will lead to be more than a temporary investment in your company. Through social media engagement, employees will become committed and join your team as a long term asset.

If we keep saying and believing the statement, “You can’t teach an old dog a new trick,” then all of us traditional marketing professionals may as well hang up our marketing hats and find new careers. I’ve been in marketing/PR for 20 years, so you may consider me an “old dog.” I didn’t grow up on computers and I even remember my first job I was hand typing letters on a Brother typewriter (that was a scary time).

I think we need to change the phrase to help us be more motivated to move with the times and the advancements in technology. The new saying would go something like this, “You can teach anyone a new trick (regardless of their age) as long as they have the right mindset to accept change.” This is a much more positive statement and supports the fact that many of us traditional PR people are now connecting on Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter and LinkedIn to name a few. I do think that many communications professionals may accept technology at different rates, and through support, education and motivation they will continue to grow and excel in PR 2.0.

There’s a big difference between people hearing about social media and those that really understand and engage in social media.  When PR people and marketers are social networking, they take off their marketing hats to become peers who join in the dialogue – instead of simply focusing on the latest tools and trends in developing short term buzz.  But, it even goes beyond the PR and communications department in a company.  Social media allows every person and every department to become a member of the PR team.  It’s very important that the people on the inside of the company understand what and how the brand markets on the outside.  For example, companies including UPS, eBay and Cisco use social media for internal communications to inform employees, and at the same time their employees learn, embrace and use these tools daily.

I think it’s critical for companies to educate their employees about the social media programs and tools that they are using for external marketing programs.  The only way to do this is to actually make the tools and social media applications available within your company.  You may be surprised (through a quick poll or questionnaire of your employees and executives) how very little your internal marketing evangelists know.  But, there’s such an easy fix.  That’s why Cisco has internal TV station where streaming video is always used to inform employees and a “Facebook” type of application lets employees build profiles so that you know more about a person than just a name, title and extension number.

Sure, you can skip the internal education and engagement and go right to social marketing with you external audiences.  However, your own employees are the folks who know the most about your company and its products/services.  With that said, their personal engagement and ability to take social media from an internal platform to the external world will provide your brand with so many more meaningful conversations.  It’s worth it to take the time to educate and engage from within.

Call me crazy but I love change. It’s been my life. From the time I was little and I would try everything from clarinet lessons to horseback riding. In my adult years I’ve experienced immense changes in my life… in marriage, child birth, divorce, remarriage (soon), entrepreneurship, near bankruptcy, business growth, more years of schooling than I ever thought possible, and in my efforts to constantly move at the speed of light. I truly believe that change means growth and leads to strength and monumental accomplishments.

PR 2.0 is a tremendous change and it marks an evolution in PR. But, there’s a great deal of conflict over the moniker. I don’t think we should be hung up on 2.0. The most important part about new communication approaches, such as PR 2.0, is that it leads to great communication and quite frankly, the best PR that you will ever know! The PR industry has been blamed, embarrassed, lost credibility and has been seen as just a necessary evil. I know PR is so much more than this and deserves praise and recognition. PR, when practiced properly, has and will always be the greatest means to reach and capture public attention, and to build strong meaningful, trusting relationships. With the movement of PR 2.0 or new PR, as communications professionals, we have a chance to reinvent our industry and give it back the credibility it deserves.

Wouldn’t it be nice to put the “public” back into Public Relations? Everyone says this but not everyone does it. The answer is yes. The ability to reach people directly and have direct conversations and to provide valuable information and help them make informed decisions is a step in the right directions. No longer will our brands be “talking at” the market or their customers. They will experience great conversations and “talk to or with” markets and customers. Big difference!

Sure, there will always be advertising, direct mail and other types of marketing from the traditional marketing model, but today we have two-way communication, which goes back to what Ivy Lee, one of the founders of PR, believed PR should be. Perhaps, PR has come full circle, almost a Renaissance, in a sense. We are changing and so is our industry. The change will continue so that we can find our way back to the essence of what the PR industry should be….great communication with the public.

I urge you to keep an open mind as you witness the change. And, even more importantly, get involved in the change. Together we will create the path to meaningful, trustworthy and credible PR. I think that would be a monumental accomplishment.