Increase in PR and Advertising Jobs

There seems to be some proof that the recession is turning around - both locally and nationally.

Locally, Joanna Sullivan of the Baltimore Business Journal interviewed 10 ad agency heads and described some of them as “downright giddy.” They are hiring and pitching new business, and their clients are spending more.

Nationally, a Council of Public Relations Firms (CPRF) survey reports similar news. Interesting stats from the survey are:

• Compared to the first half 2009, 74% of firms have seen an increase in revenues so far in 2010 (Q2 survey)
• 82% of firms expect to see the demand for digital and social media services increase in 2010 (according to a Q4 2009 survey)
• According to the following percentage of Council members, Consumer (56%), Healthcare (46%), and Technology (37%) had the most new business activity during Q1 2010

It appears that the PR and advertising fields are being revived by crises and social media!

Time-saving Online Tools

 Akin to Sawmill Marketing’s online list of Twitter handles for Baltimore-area media, I’m compiling this list of time-saving online tools. I’ll update it as needed, so this will be a live, fluid document, with the items in no particular order other than being grouped by free versus fee-based.

There are hundreds (thousands? millions?) of such tools out there, so I’m sure I’m missing many. Send me suggestions of an awesome tool you use!

Free Tools

• Groupsite - for file sharing and group management.
• SnapPages - create a very basic Web site (you can also use Wordpress to do this, either the Wordpress hosted or self-hosted versions)
• Google Docs - Don’t want to pay Microsoft licensing fees for their Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint? Use Google docs to create text, spreadsheets, and presentations.
• Google Voice - Integrate your telecom services with one phone number, send voice-to-text voicemails to your e-mail and more. Google Voice is currently only available for GrandCentral users, but will be open to new users soon.
• Del.icio.us/delicious.com - One-stop list of your favorite bookmarks. Billed as a “social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source”, you can bookmark sites, share them, and even check out popular tags.
• Twitter - need I say more?
• FaceBook - again, the dilemna of whether or not to put these obvious ones on this list.
• Google Buzz - Once again, Google is attempting to corner the market on, well, everything. Share updates, photos, videos, and more. Basically, it’s a combination of FaceBook, YouTube, and Twitter. Plus, you can import from Twitter, Flickr, etc.
• Tweetdeck - View your Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as see YouTube and Flickr images, all in one spot. Categorize Tweeters into columns so your topics are separated.
• Ping.fm - Type once, update several accounts at the same time.
• SocialOomph - Schedule messages on Twitter (plus, pay $29.95 per month to schedule messageson FaceBook pages).
• Gist - Though this is in beta right now, I’ve heard some buzz about it. Essentially, it will integrate and update your contacts from all your various social media sites, along with your e-mail contacts. I’m looking forward to playing with it when it’s out of beta.
• Hootsuite - Have multipel Twitter accounts and cant seem to find the time to udpate them all adequately? Hootsuite is your answer.

Fee-Based Tools

• Basecamp by 37 signals - A great online replacement for Microsoft Project, with cost plans ranging from $24 to $149 a month. It’s billed as a “web-based project collaboration tool.”

Jobs if you Love the Internet

And I always thought I spent alot of time online…

Turns out that is because of my job! CareerBuilder - as reported by CNN - has determined the top five jobs for people who love the internet, and three of those top five are public relations and/or marketing related.

Top 5 jobs for those who love the internet:

• Branding Consultant
• Public Relations Director
• Recruiter
• Social Media Consultant (can I say “duh”?)
• User Operations Analyst (and ditto)

Happy surfing!

Booming PR Industry

If you saw the January 14 posting by The Economist claiming that the PR industry is booming and, like me, you said “WHAT?”, then read on.

I read a few short synopsis of The Economist’s article and was dumbfounded.  About half of the people I know who are PR professionals were laid off this year, and now I’m hearing that, apparently, the industry is booming? Talk about PR spin.

Turns out that the full article is very interesting. And true. Here’s why:

• Increased need for PR firms from the “Uh-oh’s” in the corporate world (i.e. “undeserved bonuses, plunging share prices and government bail-outs, among other ills”)
• Increased demand for PR due to the recession 
• Spending on PR grew by more than 4% in 2008 and nearly 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion (comparatively, spending on advertising decreased by nearly 3% in 2008 and by 8% in 2009)
• WOM and social media have been a big boon; in fact, spending in these areas increased by more than 10% in 2009, and spending on them -  particularly social media - will continue into perpetuity
• Services provided by PR and advertising firms are blending (which I have mentioned myself)
• The crushing impact on the journalist community has profited the PR industry, as PR professionals have some specialized knowledge to figure out new routes to gain the attention of the dwindling number of journalists 

Very interesting article - it certainly changed my  mind about the profession, and gave me some hope.

Branding With Social Media

Your professional FaceBook page, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter account, and your professional blog - and any other social media outlet you utilize - should all have similar tone and a similar graphical ‘look’. You may be reaching different audiences, but YOU are the same. Yes, slight differences are allowed, even expected. But, overall, there should be a cohesive feeling - visitors should visit your FaceBook page and recognize it as your company’s.

Some Basic Tips

• Don’t use Twitter to tweet about your kids’ soccer practice if you also use it to tweet about your latest client. The same goes for FaceBook - if it’s a professional site, treat it as such. Don’t follow the path of this ‘wanker’.
• Don’t use the standard Twitter background - customize it to utilize your colors or, better yet, your actual design elements.
• Pick one item as your ‘core’, whether it’s your actual Web site or your blog, or anything else, and push to that from all your other areas.

Elementary, my dear Watson? Maybe. But we’ve all seen so many people do this wrong. A few who’ve gotten it right? McCormick & Co.’s Old Bay 70th Anniversary events. Black & Decker DeWalt Top 17 Finish Carpenters contest is another. They utilized various techniques cohesively, were fluid in their content and reactions, and attracted their core audience and then some.

10 Questions to Ask when Developing Social Media Strategy

Simply slapping together a FaceBook page, LinkedIn site, and a Twitter account does not a social media strategy make. Per Dr. Sean Carton’s article in InView!, following are ten questions to ask yourself when developing a social media strategy.

1. What are we trying to accomplish?
2. Why social media?
3. What kind of social media will best help us achieve our goals?
4. Are we prepared to let go control of our brand?
5. What will we do to encourage participation? What are you planning on doing to drive people to your social media presence?
6. Who will maintain our social media presence?
7. Do we have the resource to keep this up, or will this be a short campaign?
8. How does engaging users via social meda integrate into our overall marketing/communications strategy?
9. How do we measure success?
10. What will we do less of if we’re spending resources on social media?

All important questions, and all need to be answered when putting together your social media strategy plan.

Twitter and PR

Jeff Davis, a recent speaker at the 2009 Chesapeake Conference, is somewhat of a local expert on social media and, specifically, how to use it for public relations and marketing. He has nicely uploaded the Twitter and PR Resources that he used in his presentation onto his blog and Web site, Sawmill Marketing.

Another great tool is their Sawmill Guide to Baltimore Media on Twitter - an invaluable resource.

2009 Chesapeake Conference

The 2009 Chesapeake Conference and Best in Maryland Awards on Tuesday, October 6 was a great day of learning, networking, connecting, and planning. It was a jam-packed day of multiple same-time sessions, covering topics including Twitter and PR, How to Get Big Agency Results from a Small Shop, Defending Corporate Reputation in the Age of Social Media, and Networking with New Media, among many others.

A keynote speech by Sandy Hillman of Sandy Hillman Communications started the day off - sessions by Jeff Davis, David Warschawski, Dave Imre and his panel, Bill Atkinson, Peggy Hoffman, and Dave Harrison, among others, followed. At lunch, the Best in Maryland Awards were announced and given out - congratulations to all the winners, incluging Best in Show winner Sandy Hillman Communications for their work on the 39th Annual World Series of Poker.

Overall, attendees had glowing feedback - some even calling it “the best conference I’ve been to since 1999!”. Many others raved about the Learning Journal given out instead of the usual binder and bag. The day was packed with learning and networking opportunities - including the happy hour after the sessions were over.

There were a few reporters in attandance for the Speed Pitching sessions, including Liz Farmer (who brought a photographer!) from The Daily Record.

Want to attend the Conference after the fact? Follow up on via the Conference’s Twitter stream under #Chessie09.

Social Media Guidelines

We’ve all heard about the companies whose social media policies reek of Big Brother - no blogging, tweeting, posting, e-mailing about the companies, its clients, or its products. The most recent induction into this group is ESPN.

ESPN recently established new social media guidelines, outlining that their employees are banned from discussing anything related to ESPN or sports on any social network. While companies do need to be aware of the legal risks their social-media-involved employees invite, broad-sweeping policies like ESPN’s are more often than not considered detrimental.

Banning employees from talking about ESPN or sports is harmful for employee moral and it hinders employee professional growth. Looking at the bigger picture, restrictive social guidelines hinder the company from benefiting from all that social media has to offer. They can’t use it to promote themselves or their product, develop relationships, or invite feedback or ideas.

While putting social media guidelines in place is a necessity today, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of these tools when determining how strict those guidelines should be.

Legal Risks of Social Media

The Twittering of President Obama’s off-the-record comments regarding Kanye West’s performance at the VMAs may hit home to many of us the unforeseen ramifications of the Big Brother, 360-degree ramifications of the social media world we live in.

It’s time we adress some of the legal risks of social media.

Employees’ Tweets and posts about your company, your product(s), your clients, and your employees. That’s right - even if you’re unaware of what they’re saying, or even of whether they’re saying anything at all, your company may be held liable. Let’s say you send samples of your product to your ad agency, or friends, and ask them to send messages out to all their contacts about how great it is. Well, their e-mails and social-networking messages may be subject to the federal law regarding sending unsolicited commercial e-mail.  

Free swag to bloggers and the like. Yes, it’s an awesome idea (and time-honored) to send free swag to people with the wherewithal to then proclaim about the goodness of said product to their readership. However, bloggers and other social media users need to follow the rules as well - the FTC requires that they disclose the free swag.

Not telling the truth. Just as making up testimonials is not only morally wrong but also illegal, so is making up positive reviews, posts, blogs, and the like and attributing them to fake customers. In fact, per the FTC, it’s illegal for an employee to endorse its own company’s product on a message board without disclosing that he/she works for the company.

Now, you don’t want to go off the deep end and ban your employees from using ALL social media to talk about your company, employees, or clients ALL the time. Rather, you need to take some control. A solution? A social media policy. Not only does it begin to address this gray area, but it also could give you some legal legs to stand on.