Ryan Grim, Senior Congressional Correspondent for the Huffington Post and author of the 2009 Wiley release “This is Your Country on Drugs” was billed as one of 6 speakers for Mopwater PR + Media Notes’ first PR. 2.0 panel  Twitch! Public Relations in the Age of Social Media on Thursday night in Washington, but ended up canceling last minute due to an emergency.

A journalistic emergency?

Not quite. Turns out, it was Grim’s third wedding anniversary, which he obviously could not skip.

Grim sent fellow Huffington Post reporter Arthur Delaney in his stead, and to avoid becoming an official Twitch Ditch, he also sent these responses via email to my questions about his use of social media during his reporting and sourcing.

Mopwater: How has social media changed how you do your job?
RG: The biggest shift I’ve seen is toward IM [instant message], both on Facebook, blackberries, gchat or plain old AIM. People seem more relaxed on IM. So build an IM relationship with a reporter.

Mopwater: How do you use social media to find sources for your stories?

RG: LinkedIn has been an enormous help and is a great way to find people online, as is Facebook. If you want reporters to be able to reach you, make those accounts as public as possible and have a phone number easy to find.

Here’s my broad point: The PR people who are successful for me are the ones who can get through. Getting through is a function of staying ahead of the stream of communication that rushes our way. Once, emailing a reporter was the way to do that, but the inbox now is so stuffed it’ll just get buried. There will continuously be new ways to stay ahead, though. Facebook chatting is a good and underused way now. Some reporters might get annoyed at getting a FB ping from a PR flak, but whatever. It’s not your job to make us happy, just to get our attention. A direct Twitter message would get through, too, as would a tweet with my handle in it. Reporters are always out there looking to see what people are tweeting or writing about their work, so you can trap us that way.

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Zackery Moore, 23
Birmingham, AL
Media and Brand Strategist, 4 years
Z Kreativ Media
Blog: Making a PRofessional Twitter: @zakmo

Mopwater: Describe your path to PR. Any pivotal moments mentors or internships that let you know PR was for you? ZM: I’m a media fanatic that grew-up in Arley, Alabama, a town in  the middle of nowhere.   Never someone that was especially patient (I tried to skip my senior year of high school just to start college early), I sought out a PR internship during my freshman year of college at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
I found a mentor and interned at a music/event venue and bar. That would be the first of four internships. Later I interned with my mentor at a custom motorcycle
shop that creates limited-addition motorcycles. Tom Cruise owns one of the bikes and one of the models was featured in a movie with Jet Li and a commercial with Brad Pitt.

I started my freelance career that same year with an innovative theater group called MUSE OF FIRE: Shakespeare at Sloss. The group turned nontraditional spaces into stages; MUSE OF FIRE specifically used a haunted iron furnace for now annual spring and fall showcases of adapted Shakespeare. On more than one occasion news crews’equipment would malfunction on-site. This project solidified my desire to one day own an agency. I’d already decided I wanted to work for myself.

While looking for freelance projects, I worked part-time in a restaurant, focused on finishing my degree and completed internships (some for school credit, some for the experience).

Mopwater: Describe your office setting and a typical workday including your work hours. What do you do all day? ZM: Usually my workday begins at 9. Freelancing gives me a lot of freedom to create my own schedule. Sometimes I work a couple hours a day, sometimes I work from 9 to 9. It depends on my workload. I completed my last-ever internship at a
creative branding agency called Cayenne Creative and still have office space with the group that I use when I want a change of scenery. They’re one of the most amazing groups of creative professionals and taught me so much about branding and the importance of strategy.

Mopwater: Who are some of your and what kind of projects do you take on for these clients? ZM: My past clients include MUSE OF FIRE, Broadway Across America – Birmingham, Nick Sparks for Congress, a short stint with March of Dimes and the National Center for Sports Safety. Presently I’m working with Lemak Sports Medicine & Orthopedics and I take on occasional projects with Cayenne Creative. I’m also looking for new clients and projects to grow my business.
I like to say I’m a creative media strategist; that means I use traditional and new media to help an organization brand itself. Copywriting, media relations, email marketing, writing for the web and branding strategy are the services I offer.

Mopwater: Describe a recent project where you produced results of which you’re really proud. ZM: The results of my last project included increased website traffic for three months in a row and media coverage from local media and mom bloggers. It was a 6- month project. With Lemak Sports Medicine and Orthopedics I’ve led a team in creating a new logo for the brand, a social network about health and wellness, two branded-email designs and I’m working with a designer to create a new
brochure for the practice.

Mopwater: What are your favorite and least favorite PR/marketing/SM tasks and why? ZM: My favorite part of my job is writing. I love copywriting for email and websites/blogs. I also really love to write press releases and pitch news stories.

Mopwater: What’s the worst part of your job? ZM: The worst part of my job is uncertainty. As a freelancer I’m responsible for every part of most projects: traffic, planning, creative direction, execution and deadlines. It leaves little time for business development. That’s why I’m about to start a search for a business development pro.

Mopwater: What  advice would you give someone who is trying to break into your field? ZM: My advice is don’t wait. My college experience has changed me for the better, but I’m not going to let a piece of paper define my talent, creativity and professionalism. Don’t let [graduation] hold you back. I’m still in college (a 5th year senior) but I’ve started my career when some of my friends who recently graduated are still struggling to find a job.

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The ability to create a sound strategy to promote an event, person, product or cause lies at the core of our profession. That means making judgment calls about what medium or combination of media to use when crafting a good pitch. Increasingly, spreading the word and generating buzz requires a multitiered, multifaceted and multimedia approach. In addition to the original channels of media, we must continue to push the envelope and learn creative ways to attract attention and engender the compassion of our target audience-whether they are reporters at the Wall Street Journal or consumers.

This video for Share Our Strength is a great and inspiring example of this outside-of-the-box thinking. Created by the genius creative minds at Washington, DC-based iStrategyLabs, the video is beautifully scripted and animated. And what’s more, it’s scored with original music. Can you imagine sending this thing to a journalist as your pitch?

I recently sat down with two of my favorite and D.C.’s best new media, social media, all things digital strategy and public relations genius wonderboys, James Walker and Peter Corbett. While the two chats occurred on two different days and in two different locales, the commentary is not surprisingly of the same vein, as great minds truly do think alike. Check out James and Peter’s thoughts on why public relations practitioners should use social media and how.

Need help getting social media savvy?

In lieu of a photograph, I snagged this recent video interview of today’s TDMJ subject Ged Carroll. This London-based PR man is the head of digital strategy for the UK office of Ruder Finn Public Relations. In the above interview with Econsultancy, Finn gives us a few social media best practices.  Below in TDMJ, he tells what it’s like to work in the UK and in the digital department of a top global public relations agency.

Name: Ged Carroll, 38

Current City: London, England

Company: Ruder Finn, 40+ people UK and 600+ worldwide. Prior to this he helped found Waggener Edstrom‘s digital office and worked in house at Yahoo!

Job Title: Director, Digital Strategies

Mopwater: What made you get into public relations? What do you like best about the field?  GC: I got into PR through wanting to work in an agency environment following completing a degree in marketing. I had previously worked part-time marketing club nights, DJ’ing and working in the oil industry as a plant process operator.  PR as a career has been good to me; I have managed to travel internationally and meet some interesting people.

Mopwater: What aspects of the industry are you currently most excited about? GC: Probably the most exciting bit about the industry at the present time is the change that it is undergoing, which I think that the recession will accelerate. This change will be structural as marketing communications disciplines mesh together and the opportunities opening up as the Gordian knot of how to measure PR is finally broken!

Mopwater: Describe a typical work day including your typical work hours. GC: There is no typical work day in digital. The other day I went from dealing with lice shampoo to semiconductors in the space of half an hour. My role involves doing web research, conducting online outreach, designing online campaigns, working with internal designers, developers and third parties to build websites, providing advice to teams and clients, running external training programmes and speaking at conferences. Sometimes it can be long hours, but on the up side the firm is pretty flexible and efforts are appreciated. Read the full story

CNN correspondent Joe Johns offers what could be a case study in bad PR, and a cautionary tale for all of us.  Johns tells the story of an unfortunate PR person who pitched  the top of the CNN  food chain (the producer) instead of involving the corresponding reporter directly.

This morning I attended the PRSA National Capital Chapter’s panel in Washington, DC: How to Get Big Media Hits in a Social Media World. Joe Johns, a correspondent for CNN, gave this great synopsis of how he uses Facebook to get information for his stories. While he loves Facebook, he’s not such a big a fan of Twitter. So the lesson here is, know your journalists’ tastes.

Enjoy the clip.

Name and News Organization: Kate Michael, KStreetKate.net and The District Dish
Beat: DC topics (People, places, events, charities, businesses)
Job Title: New Media Personality
Length of Time in this Role: 3 years
Web Site and/or Blog: K Street Kate/ The District Dish
Twitter Handle: @kstreetkate

Mopwater: What kind of stories/people/companies are you most interested in covering, and in what context?  KM: Both the online magazine and talk show feature the best of DC, lifestyle stories that highlight the real District of Columbia and its eclectic neighborhoods.

Mopwater: What’s the best pitch you’ve gotten recently and why?  KM: A unique and interesting business (trapeze school) moved into the area and featured lessons with the instructor who taught “Carrie” on the trapeze episode of Sex and the City.  We booked him immediately to tell people about the trapeze school on The District Dish!

Mopwater: What’s the worst pitch you’ve gotten recently and why? KM: The sister of a local woman asked me to do a feature on her because she was “so nice” and “people should know about her”… I’m not sure why.

Mopwater: What’s the easiest way to get ignored by you when pitching?  KM: Forget to take out the name of the other publication you were pitching when you were cutting and pasting your pitch.

Mopwater: What’s your preferred method of contact? Phone, email, your web site, your twitter account, your Facebook? KM: Email and twitter, equally.  My actual e-mail is listed on my facebook page, so why use a facebook message?? Read the full story

Traditional media outlets are, sadly, a thing of a bygone era. It has become almost an improbable proposition to start and sustain a pricey print publication, or an expensive-to-produce television show. Journalism is evolving, some would say dying;  and we have not hit rock bottom yet.

With the number of major news organizations downsizing and/or folding altogether, public relations professionals have to begin to develop a stronger roster of new media contacts  to get their clients’ stories told. As a PR2.0 professional, I am always on the lookout for the New Influencers: professional bloggers (many with journalism backgrounds), freelance writers who write for both the Web and print publications, and new media producers.

Though media database services like Cision and Vocus are great tools that still very much have their place, scrappy PR2.0 professionals realized long ago that Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter have made it much easier to find and connect with journalists. In the same democratizing way,YouTube, Vimeo and other free video sharing sites have destroyed the barrier between the would-be television producer and the audience, and   WordPress and Blogger made it possible for anyone with content to easily publish that content on the Web. Producers don’t need tons of money or the backing of major networks to get a show up and running: all they need is a camera, a YouTube account and a great story to tell.

Which is where we come in. Read the full story

Name: Colleen Moffitt
Age: 39
Current City: Seattle
Job Title: Founding Partner & Author

Company Name: Communiqué Public Relations
Book Title: “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR”
Length of Time in this Role: Five years since founding Communiqué
On the Web
Facebook
Blog
Twitter: @SeattleCM

Mopwater: Describe your path to PR. How did you wind up in this field? (Be sure to mention your course of study in college).
CM: My path to PR was not direct or necessarily a traditional one. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Puget Sound with a minor in Business Administration. While in college I also earned a certificate of study from Centre Universitaire d’Etudes Francaises (CUEF) of the University of Grenoble III.

After graduation I worked in the public sector for a few years before being hired at Microsoft as a recruiter. There I was responsible for finding and attracting some of the nation’s top technical talent to the company. I developed strategic recruiting plans for Microsoft’s consumer and hardware divisions and helped attract key talent from Moscow as part of an acquisition.

I joined RealNetworks (Progressive Networks at the time) in early 1997 to drive technical recruiting for the company. Ready for a new challenge, I moved into a program manager position in 1999 where I managed product-review programs, key customer relationships and product development. During my seven year tenure at RealNetworks I had an opportunity to work on it server solutions as well as its Windows and Mac based consumer products.

The experience I gained in these roles – influencing, negotiating, interviewing with various audiences including technology editors, product reviewers, customers, partners and executives – led me to public relations, to found Communiqué PR and to author “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR” Read the full story

These days, everyone is trying to get more for less. And when you’re a public relations practitioner, that especially includes your clients.  We’re in a recession, so smart business owners are out to get more than their money’s worth. Clients want to see the impact of each dollar spent.

But what can you do to add value to an existing public relations contract without investing too many precious hours that you don’t plan to bill? Here are a few ways to easily add components to your contract and enhance the public relations work you’re already doing. Tip: Assign these tasks to a PR intern who is eager to learn.

Set Up a Facebook Fan Page

The new Facebook Fan Pages are much better than the old Facebook groups because they allow you create a profile for a business much like you would create a profile for yourself.  Fan pages allow businesses to list standard business info like hours of operation, web address and phone numbers, as well as update the status bar to answer the “What are you doing?” question much like you would do on Twitter.  I like the fan page because it allows business to combine the lightweight functionality of Twitter with a photo gallery, video, and more. The client can update their fan page to quickly reflect changes in hours, menu, prices, sales, promotions, etc. The client can also upload photos to show potential customers the interior of the establishment, etc.

Offer to Set Up a Blog 

I happen to love setting up blogs for clients because I’m a writer and content is my middle name.  If you’re a writer, researcher, or creative type (which you are if you’re in PR) suggest helping your client set up a blog focusing on their industry. But be sure to make the blog industry and solutions-focused, not company service-specific. Readers don’t want to feel like they’re getting sold; they want to feel like you’re helping them solve a problem.

Your client may want to build out a blog section as a part of their custom site. If not, there are tons of free blog publishing platforms out there, so the investment will be nominal. My personal preference is WordPress, but there are a few other blog services that offer powerful publishing capabilities for little or no cost.

Setting up a blog can be time consuming though, because you want to get the colors, design, fonts, headings, and taglines just right. If you need some help on this, subcontract some of the content development  out to a professional writer.  Be sure to suggest topics for your client to blog about, or be prepared to provide the first few posts to get the ball rolling.

Set Up a YouTube Channel

Another easy, free way to get your client maximum exposure is a YouTube channel.  Take the blog beyond mere words by embedding video. Bonus: Once you upload your video on  YouTube, you can tag it with keywords to make it instantly searchable.  This, of course will aid in SEO-one of those ROI factors clients love. Videos are also a great way to incorporate “how to” messages, product demonstrations, on-site facility tours, employee interviews and more. There really is no limit to where you could go with video. And again, since YouTube is a free service, the investment is only your time.

What have you done to add value for your clients?

If you missed the first Social Media Seminar of the DC Chapter of the Black Public Relations Society, you didn’t get a copy of my whitepaper “Selling Social Media”. But fear not: I’ve compiled the main points here for you.

If you’re like me, you are in charge of convincing business owners why social media is important to their bottom line; and you’re probably also trying to get them actively  engaged in it.  It’s a process to truly win over those who are extremely private or just simply averse to telling the world what they’re doing.  Here are a few tips to get those you’re working with on board.

Sell It. Before you can expect your client or boss to buy into the virtues of social media, you must first answer the obvious questions: “What’s in it for the company? Why should we invest our resources here?” As your client or company’s social media ambassador,you have to do your homework. Offer up clear examples of where social media worked for a similar company. Show where a direct competitor saw results and you’ll get and keep a client’s attention.

Educate the Gatekeepers. Consider hosting a half-day social media camp for your client or Marketing Director to go over the basics. Make your presentation fun, interactive and easy to follow. Remember: those who don’t use social media are often intimidated by it or at the very least, don’t understand how far-reaching it is. Hold your boss or client’s hand and let them know you understand their apprehension. Repeat your belief that social media is a worthwhile investment.

Offer a Roadmap. What good does it do you to create an incredible plan that can’t with real ways your client or boss can begin using social media immediately. Set up accounts on social media sites for them and hand them a username and password.

Set Metrics. Be sure that you set goals that your client can really measure. Give them participation goals (i.e., two blog posts per week, or 1 Twitter update a day) as well as goals for the newly implemented social media program (i.e., 200 new Twitter followers by [date], or an improved online brand image by [date]). If you set goals, you can chart your progress easily. Knowing your progress allows you to change course if your strategy isn’t working.

Build It In. Developing your marketing and PR calendar for next year? Build social media into the plan so those in charge can
see exactly where it fits, and exactly how it complements the work you’re already doing.

Communicate the Commitment. While implementing a social media program may seem to have no real associated costs, developing quality social media programming can be extremely time-consuming. Communicate this fact to your client or director to be sure that you are well-compensated for your time.

Whether you’re a journalist or PR professional, you should be using Pitch Engine. It’s another one of those great 2.0 applications that makes all of our lives easier. Pitch Engine allows journalists to browse thousands of social media press releases, and gives publicists the chance to house their SMPRs online for free.  The press releases are easy to link and share on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Technorati, etc.  You can even upload photos, video, and audio.

I wanted to try out the service on myself before using it for clients. Check out my social media press release before it expires.

Why Twitter? (Part II)

As you may recall in Why Twitter (Part I), I promised to follow up with more ways that you can use Twitter for business.  If you’re a business owner/entrepreneur, artist, celebrity-in-the-making, you need to get on Twitter. Here’s why: Your customers are on Twitter.  Your would-be customers are on twitter. And more than likely, the competition is on Twitter.

Let’s say you sell…uh I don’t know, post-it notes (first thing I saw on my desk, sorry).  So anyway, you’re selling these post-it notes and you set up your Twitter page online.  You’re following a few people and you’ve got your mom, cousin and best friend following you back. But that’s it. You’re thinking “How in the world is this silly page gonna help me sell more post-it notes?” Let me tell you. Read the full story