The good folks over at the National Black Public Relations Society have invited me to present  their April Web Cafe Webinar, today from 12:30-1:30pm EST. My topic is Essential Social Media for Communicators, and I’ll be talking about the top social media tools you have to be using if you’re in PR.

I only have 4o minutes to talk so I will be talking about my top social media tools for PR and how to get the most out of them. Did I mention the webinar is free?!

Register here.

Here’s the PR for the PR talk, so to speak:

Essential Social Media for Communicators
How to Use Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter for PR

By now you’re using social media tools in your communications matrix, right? If not, you’re missing a tremendous opportunity to leverage popular and inexpensive online tools to get the word out about your cause, gather valuable feedback about your brand’s reputation, and build relationships with media and your target audience. These days, everyone is online, so if you’re not, you will inevitably be left behind.

in this webinar, we will

• outline the basic tools you HAVE to be using for communications, and HOW to use them
• offer valuable case studies of organizations who are using social media effectively for PR
• show you ways to reach out to journalists using social media, and
• give you simple tools for measuring the reach of your social media program

If you’re on listening and on Twitter, use the hashtag #NBPRS

Please leave comments, feedback etc. about the webinar on the Mopwater PR + Media Notes Facebook Page! (And uh, can you become a fan if you aren’t already?!)

Like everyone else, journalists are using social media to multitask, carry on multiple conversations and be in more place at one time. Of course this ends up meaning they are able to communicate with more potential sources than ever before. The limitations of communication are (almost) removed, creating a hyper-journalism. Kinda like journalism on steroids.

PR pros consider these limitless pathways to communication in a pitching context of course, but it’s nice to know that journalists think of it that way as well. Thanks goes to DC Social Media Examiner Mary Fletcher Jones for capturing this great footage at Twitch! Public Relations in the Age of Social Media, the panel hosted by Mopwater on Thursday evening.  In the clip, Washington Business Journal reporter Jennifer Nycz-Conner discusses how reporting, aided by social media, is akin to cooking on a restaurant range as opposed to on your standard kitchen stove.

[Other #TwitchDC panelists included Jim Long of NBC (@newmediajim), McLean Robbins of Washingtonian Magazine (@deacondoesdc), Jamila Bey of NPR (@jbey), Arthur Delaney of Huffington Post (arthurdelaneyhp) Lindsey Mastis of WUSA9 (lindseymastis)]

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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You haven’t heard from me in a while because I have been working day and night putting together the very first Mopwater PR + Media Notes Panel, and it promises to be amazing. If you’re in the Washington, DC area, you won’t want to miss it. If you’re not, hopefully we can do some sort of recap for those of you who could not attend.

If you manage the public’s perception of your company or are concerned with increasing your organization’s media exposure in 2010, you will want to attend Twitch! Public Relations in the Age of Social Media. If you are like 80% of PR professionals who participated in the VOCUS fall survey on PR planning for 2010, you will be focusing more on social media this year. And if you are working in the nonprofit world, you probably can relate to the 85% of nonprofit executives polled by Weber Shandwick who say social media will be demanding a larger share of nonprofit spending dollars in 2010. But how do you harness the power of social media to get traditional media coverage? How do you embark upon, what I like to call, “social media relations?”

Find out how at Twitch! This event will feature a panel of working journalists who use social media daily to interact with PR professionals, communicators and the public. Think of this event as a “How to Pitch 2.0 Workshop.” Come with your questions about how to effectively use social media to land traditional media coverage. Learn how journalists are accepting pitches and twitches via twitter and Facebook, what they like and what they hate. Do some networking and  workshop the idea of social media relations.

Twitch! Public Relations in the Age of Social Media
Thursday, Jan 14, 2010
Busboys and Poets Langston Room
2021 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009
Cost: $20
Note: Space is limited. We can’t accept payment on-site. You must register online through Eventbrite.

Register Online

Panel

Moderator:
Jim Long, NBC Universal / Verge New Media, LLC (@newmediajim)

Panelists:
Jennifer Nycz-Conner, Washington Business Journal (@jenconner)

Lindsey Mastis, WUSA News Channel 9 (@lindseymastis)

Ryan Grim, Huffington Post / Author of “This Is Your Country on Drugs.” (@ryangrim)

Jamila Bey, National Public Radio and WAMU (@jbey)

McLean Robbins, Washingtonian and DC Modern Luxury Magazines (@deacondoesdc)

Organizer:
Amanda Miller Littlejohn, Miller Littlejohn Media Group / Mopwater PR + Media Notes / Author of “The Mopwater PR + Media Notes Manual for a Stellar PR Career” (@amandamogul)

Other fun stuff:

RSVP on LinkedIn

RSVP on Facebook

Join the Mopwater Facebook Fan Page

When referencing the event, before during and after, please use the #TwitchDC hashtag on Twitter.