Cross-posted from the Adfero Group blog

We’ve all seen horrible presentations. Most of us have probably given a few in our day. But in the professional world, public speaking is an unavoidable fact of life. Whether you love or loathe giving presentations, people on both sides of the coin can be really, really bad at it.

In reminiscing on the truly awful presentations I’ve seen, I came up with 4 basic pitfalls that can doom any public speaker:

Why you should host one, and how to do it

Bloggers’ roundtables have been around for a while. They’re especially popular for book clubs, with the Department of Defense, and among politicians. (One wag asked John McCain if he knew the difference between YouTube and MySpace.)

Yet roundtables never really took off as a form of outreach. That’s too bad, because as a vehicle to engage many stakeholders at once, roundtables can be as effective, if not more so, than their headline-grabbing cousins, Twitter and Facebook.

What is a bloggers’ roundtable? Technically, it’s a conference call. Figuratively, it’s a virtual press conference or editorial board meeting. Instead of standing at a podium, the speakers sit by a speakerphone, while the audience—the bloggers—dial into a conference line.

When is a bloggers’ roundtable useful? A roundtable works best when you want to share your story with a small, engaged group; when you want thoughtful feedback; and when you want substantive write-ups. (“Small” can range from a car-full of people to a dinner party to an NFL team.) The conversation is more intimate than a live chat, the invitation is more prestigious than a tweet or Facebook update, and the whole thing is more fun than an e-mail.

What do you need to do? After compiling a media list of pertinent bloggers, send each one an invitation to this “exciting new program.” Just as you wouldn’t invite the guy off the street to your press conference, so it’s best to review each blogger’s work beforehand to ensure that he’s relevant and respectable. (To be sure, this often is a judgment call: What do you do with someone, like a Keith Olbermann or a Glenn Beck, who’s very controversial but who commands a huge audience?)

Given the unwritten rule of RSVPs—of those who are invited, a minority will agree to come; of those who agree to come, a minority will actually show—it’s best to invite at least twice as many people as you’d like to participate.

Once you develop a distro list, you’ll need to set up a conference line. If you have the budget, consider recording and/or transcribing the call, so that you later can publish the audio file and transcript. Not only will this win you plaudits for transparency. It’ll also produce continuing returns on investment.

Now you’re ready to start inviting people. A few best practices:

 
• Make the invite compelling, so that it stands out alongside the dozens of messages that fill up the typical inbox each day.
• Send a calendar invite instead of or in addition to an e-mail.
• Send the invite a week in advance, and dispatch a reminder the day before.
• Instead of trying to cram everything into the invite, use links. Avoid attachments.
• Mention that the number of spots is limited. This engenders scarcity and thus commitment once someone has RSVPed.
• If you sense that a blogger is especially receptive, ask if there are others whom he’d recommend that you invite.

If you have the time, treat your most receptive blogger to an exclusive: A heads-up that you’re launching the roundtable, a pertinent article before it’s published, an advance one-on-one interview with your subject matter expert(s). Then, in your invitation, you can link to what the blogger wrote, which bolsters your credibility and inspires others to follow suit.

If you have even more time, consider conducting media training or murder boards with your expert(s).

How does it work? Generally, a roundtable lasts for an hour. After taking roll call, the host, who is typically the organization’s spokesman, introduces the experts and lays out the guidelines. Sample guidelines:

 
• Everything’s on the record.
• Use mute when you’re not talking.
• State your name and the name of your blog before speaking.

Each expert then provides a brief overview of the subject and his role in it. Then comes the crux of the roundtable—the Q&A.

On one hand, you can control the colloquy by calling on each blogger in the order everyone dialed in. On the other hand, you can let the conversation ebb and flow of its own accord. Or you can pursue a middle ground, which avoids awkward silences and doesn’t put anyone on the spot, by asking each participant to press the pound sign for his phone to be unmuted, after which he’s placed in a queue.

Whichever approach you prefer, while structure is important, don’t straight-jacket the conversation. Cultivate it. Your goal is a fruitful give-and-take.

For brownie points, consider preparing a backgrounder on each blogger, which your representatives can use to great effect when responding: “Hi Peter – Before I answer, let me just say how much I empathized with your recent tweet on the misery of being a Redsox fan.”

How do you judge success? Success comes when the bloggers write about what they heard. When this happens, encourage your expert(s) or spokesman to do something to show support, like leaving a comment on the post or tweeting about it; public displays of affection go a long way on the Web.

The bottom line: There’s more to online outreach than “Twitbook.” Sometimes the best tool is the oldest: The telephone.

What’s your experience with the bloggers’ roundtable? What advice would you add?

Can opinion research help unlock the key to winning your advocacy effort? From free survey platforms and social media polling to state-of-the-art message testing, Adfero Group’s Sue Zoldak will be discussing the research tools that you can apply to increase your campaign’s effectiveness.

Join us as we explore how public affairs campaigns use research to find, reach, and win over their audience. We will take questions from attendees and discuss your case study live.

Click here to find out more
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REGISTER TODAY!

To some, this scenario spells new business. (In part, this explains why many agencies separate their “digital” practice from their traditional ones.)

Yet an honest blogger whisperer will let you in on a secret: If you can pitch a reporter, producer, or booker, you can pitch a blogger. After all, bloggers are just people—susceptible to the same charm-and-disarm techniques that every PR pro performs every day.

Indeed, the best way to understand bloggers is to view them as members of the media. Think of blogger engagement as public relations, albeit a new kind. Neither straight reporter nor pure pundit, the blogger is a hybrid creature who observes his own rules.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Last year, Wired Magazine proclaimed that “The Web is Dead.” The authors of the article argued that although the Internet is alive and well, its users are increasingly turning to simple and semi-closed applications.  Demand for accessing the wide-open Web through browsers is fading.  Instead, we now prefer the type of mobile, streamlined computing available through smart phones and iPads.

One recent marketing trend shows how right the Wired article may be.  More and more, companies are moving away from listing their Web addresses in print and TV advertisements.  Instead, many top brands are pushing their target audiences to a Facebook fan page.

In Volkswagen’s “Meet the Volkswagens” commercial, the company lists its Facebook address on the final shot of the ad: facebook.com/vw.  Procter & Gamble, one of the biggest companies in the world, is now regularly listing Facebook addresses in print and TV advertisements for many of its top products.  According to AdAge, P&G now has more than 15 brands with Facebook followings in the six figures.  Two of its brands — Pringles and Old Spice — had 9 million and 1.3 million, respectively, as of April 2011.

This shift away from using traditional Web addresses as the tagline for advertisements in favor of Facebook URLs is fascinating from a business perspective.  For marketing professionals, every decision boils down to how to best maximize a company’s return on investment (ROI).  Some companies have clearly decided that increasing traffic to their Facebook pages offers a better ROI than driving traffic to their Web sites.  A company as large as P&G would not make this move unless its marketing executives were confident that sending consumers to Facebook is more likely to increase sales.

Part of this ROI calculation likely stems from the type of long-term consumer engagement that Facebook offers for companies.  A potential customer who “likes” a brand on Facebook has effectively integrated the brand into their everyday lives.  Fans will see the brand’s status updates in their News Feeds and may even join a conversation alongside of other brand aficionados.  The potential for this type of long-term engagement may well be what is motivating companies to drive traffic to Facebook, even though a web site offers consumers the chance to actually research and even purchase products.

What does this mean for advocacy organizations?  Every organization should be thinking about whether it would get a better ROI by driving people to its Facebook presence as opposed to its Web site.  We should be thinking about the value of a “like” for our organization on Facebook.  We should be thinking about the return we might get if a member or potential member receives status updates about the organization in their News Feeds.

Even if you think that your Web site offers more value to members and is a better clearinghouse of information, your organization would be well-served to consider using your Facebook URL in marketing materials and emails.  The ROI just might be worth it.

Cross-posted from Adfero

Last week I gave a presentation at America’s Small Business Summit, sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, about how small businesses and organizations can develop an effective — but manageable — social media strategy.

I deliberately stayed away from talking about the latest and greatest tactics, and the newest and coolest tools.  Why?  It has become far too easy to get caught up in looking at what’s new, interesting, or different.  In reality, what we should be focusing on is what will fundamentally help our organizations achieve their missions on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.

Organizations too often develop a social media strategy that is not properly integrated into its overarching goals.  So rather than spending time on the latest Twitter app or discussing the merits of Facebook’s latest design changes, I encouraged attendees not to get bogged down in the tactics.  Instead, I urged them to develop their social media strategies in the context of their organization’s key goals.

If your organization is looking to develop or refine your social media strategy, here are six steps to guide you along the way.

1. Clarifying the Organization’s Priorities. Even if you “get” social media, you can’t jump right in to creating a tactical plan.  First and foremost, it is critical to identify your organization’s goals.  For a business, it might be trying to win more customers, to recruit top talent, or increase revenue by a certain percentage.  For an association, a goal might be to recruit and retain members, to increase attendance at a tradeshow, or to achieve a certain policy objective.  Before you even think about tactics, you need to start by understanding what is driving your organization as a whole.  Otherwise, you will be implementing a plan that lacks any real purpose.
2. Setting Social Media Goals. With these key goals in mind, you should move on to develop specific goals for your organization’s social media efforts.  One example: increase your Facebook page’s monthly views by 50%.  Although traditional PR campaigns focus heavily on setting goals for media coverage, we often skip this step for social media efforts because we have no idea what to expect.  But even if social media represents unchartered territory for your organization, forming goals does two important things.  First, it focuses your social media team on what is really important.  Second, it gives your team an idea of what to work towards, even if that goal turns out to be unrealistic.  A corporation would never launch a new product without giving its sales force target revenue goals.  That’s true even if the company is completely unsure of how the product will perform.  Setting social media goals, even if they are somewhat arbitrary, provides direction for your team and sets expectations.
3. Choosing Social Media Tactics. Perhaps the most overwhelming step in this process in deciding where and how to spend your social media resources.  Over the past few years, there has been an explosion in social media sites, especially those designed to facilitate sharing.  But in the past year or two, the dust has settled.  Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have emerged as the three most widely used social media sites and the most important sites for your organization to consider using.  Picking among these sites requires knowing your audience.  Each social media outlet has pro’s and con’s for individual audiences. Facebook, for example, is best for appealing to a broad-based, mainstream audience.  In contrast, Twitter users – although far fewer in number than Facebook – represent a highly engaged segment of the online population and are much more likely to create (rather than just share) content.  Finally, LinkedIn is a professional site that might be right if your organization is hoping to impact the business community or to use working groups.  Choose the right vehicle (or vehicles) for engaging your target audience.
4. Developing an Operational Plan. The next step is taking your goals and your selected tactics to form a comprehensive plan that breaks down what your organization should be doing on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  This operational plan should lay out each activity and assign each one to a specific person in the organization (in some cases, that may be the same person).  Your operational plan should also detail how you will monitor responses to your online activity and what your approach to engagement will be (for example, it should detail your comment policies).  Finally, your plan should include a process for reporting and evaluating your progress. You might wonder if such a detailed approach will stifle creativity.  It shouldn’t, as long as your plan allows for opportunities to be creative along the way.  The key is to set specific times to reevaluate and refine your tactics and goals
5. Getting Organizational Buy-In. Your strategy will only be successful if it has organization-wide support.  One way to get buy-in is to involve as many people as you can in the planning process itself, which will create a sense of ownership in the employees who participate.  Once you have your plan, be sure to educate other employees who may not have been part of the planning.  You should emphasize that social media success will translate into broader success for the organization as a whole, ultimately benefiting every employee.  Finally, to the extent that is possible, delegate responsibility for the social media strategy to as many employees as possible.
6. Implementing the Strategy. The last step involves executing the strategy you have created.  At this stage, it is best to think of classifying each of the activities listed above into the following categories: research, design (organizational priorities, social media goals, and tactics), implementation (getting buy in), administration (operational plan), and optimization.  As I noted above, implementation will work best if you have carved out time to refine and optimize your strategy as you move forward.  These opportunities will ensure your strategy remains effective and manageable.

Yet bloggers are neither straight reporters nor pure pundits. They can be your loyal customer or your loudest critic, your champion or your competitor. They speak their own vernacular, observe their own standards, pursue their own goals, and loathe press releases. To reach these influencers, you need to understand their universe.

Last week, I detailed this universe in a presentation to the  DC chapter of the American Marketing Association. My title plays off Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, since the essence of my advice derives from Carnegie’s timeless guidelines.

Here’s the deck.

Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S. (NY Times)
As more consumers go online to fulfill their entertainment needs, television ownership drops for the first time in twenty years.

The first event, “Blogging 101: How to Create the Right Type of Blog for Your Organization,” takes place on Friday, April 29^th. Adfero Group Partner Chris Battle will talk participants through the different types of blogs in the blogosphere and what organizations should consider when deciding which type is the right fit. As more organizations begin to utilize blogs as a way to communicate directly to their audiences, it has become increasingly important for the individuals managing those blogs to gain a deeper understanding of the medium. This event has something to offer to both the novice looking to get started in the world of blogging and the expert blogger looking to refine their skills.

A full list of upcoming Get PR Smart events can be found below. Register today!

Conferences

Mastering Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, and Three Successful Case Studies
Friday, May 20, 2011
8am – 1pm
Your organization has developed a presence on social media – now what? Master the art of taking these tools to the next level and see how successful organizations have done it.

How to Keep Your Issue Alive in the 2012 Elections
Friday, November 4, 2011
8am – 1pm
Afraid of your message getting lost in the excitement of the 2012 presidential elections? Learn strategies for leveraging the election to gain attention for your issues.

Workshops

Blogging 101: How to Create the Right Type of Blog for Your Organization
Friday, April 29, 2011
9:30am – 11am
Blogging has come a long way from the days of the “Guys in Pajamas.” The blogosphere has evolved into a sophisticated environment comprised of various categories of blogs – from corporate blogs to expert source blogs. Even professional journalists are commonly bloggers today. How do you know what kind of blog is right for your organization, and what are the keys to successful blogging?

How to Use Video to Get Your Message Across: Thinking Strategically About Content
Friday, June 24, 2011
9:30am – 11am
As people watch less TV, they are watching more video on their computers, tablets or smartphones. That means your video needs to more compelling, creative and contagious than the competition. We’ll help you understand the anatomy of a great video – from concept to promotion – so that you can powerfully reach, teach and activate your target audiences.

Using Research to Guide Your Advocacy Strategy
Friday, September 9, 2011
9:30am – 11am
From messaging to tactics, can opinion research help unlock the key to winning your advocacy effort? Join us for a fireside chat with a leading opinion researcher and learn how public affairs campaigns use research to find, reach, and win over their audience.

Leveraging Digital Advertising Effectively: From the Tried and True to the Next Big Trend
Friday, December 2, 2011
9:30am – 11am
What’s the best digital arsenal for your audience and budget? Should you be employing ad networks, mobile advertising, sponsored tweets, or iPad apps? We will share lessons learned from banner campaigns to social media campaigns – best practices that you can apply today. Then we’ll take a look at what’s next and how it impacts the communications campaign of tomorrow.

Last week, event registration site Eventbrite released data indicating that an individual Facebook “Like” is capable of driving more sales than a single tweet.  The study used in-house social analytics tools to track ticket sales, finding that the average tweet drove $0.80 in sales as compared to the average Facebook Like, which drove $1.34.

It may very well be that Facebook is a better tool for direct marketing to the general population.  But Eventbrite’s findings – and the media coverage that followed – miss the point about Twitter’s value.

Because Eventbrite’s findings were focused on how often the general population signs up for event, it’s not surprising that Facebook would win the head-to-head battle with Twitter.  As I have written before, the Twitter-Facebook divide can be explained by an analogy to two important but very different Inside-the-Beltway publications.  Facebook is best compared to Politico: both appeal to the general population and have a high volume of users/readers.

Twitter, in contrast, is about influencing the influencers.  Twitter is more like the National Journal of the social media world: it has a smaller user base, but the users themselves are more media-savvy and connected.

A study performed by ExactTarget last fall shows the influence of Twitter users.   The email marketing company found that active Twitter users’ reach goes far beyond Twitter: 72% of Twitter users publish blog posts at least monthly, 70% comment on blogs, 61% comment on news sites, and 61% write at least one product review monthly.

Morgan Stewart, the principal of ExactTarget’s research and education group, commented that the study’s findings showed “that even though the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook or email, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivaled.”

If your goal is to sell tickets to a particular event, Facebook may be the right place to focus your efforts.  But ignoring Twitter altogether is a mistake – it is the best place to engage with content creators whose influence and connections extend far beyond the site itself.