K Street Cafe

Last week, I posted about the Media Relations: Next Practices Forum, a conference sponsored by PR News that I was invited to attend as the Editor of the K Street Café Blog and Managing Director at Adfero Group. At the end of the day, I participated in a panel to provide a synopsis of the day’s events alongside of Robb Hecht who edits the Media 2.0 Blog and is the Digital Managing Director for imc strategy lab, and Richard Laermer, who edits the Bad Pitch Blog and serves as CEO of RLM Public Relations.

Though I am still reluctant of my newly discovered role as a “blogger,” I wanted to share my thoughts and reflections of the event – some of which we hit on during our panel discussion – with the readers of K Street Café.

Below, are the four primary observations I took away from the event:

Shift From Content Consumers to Content Creators
One trend from the conference (that I also mentioned last week) is that individuals are moving beyond their roles as consumers of content to also become creators of content. This isn’t exactly a brand-new concept – members of the public have always created content. In the past, though, this content has been shared with a very limited audience in the context of one-on-one communications: phone conversations, letters, and in-person interaction. With the rapid changes in communications, we now have the ability to disseminate the content we create to a much wider audience than ever before, often at virtually no cost. As the evolution of technology inevitably continues, this trend will become more widespread as people move beyond blogs and Facebook to embrace the next generation of communications tools.

A Growing Desire For Simplification
As I was sitting in the audience in my newfound capacity as a blogger, I became overwhelmed when I realized the number of things I was trying to accomplish at once. First and foremost, I was trying to be an engaged audience member by listening to the panelists and reflecting on their insights. At the same time, I was also attempting to collect my thoughts on what I would say in the blog posting I’m writing now, to think through the conclusions I could offer during the end-of the-day panel, and to summarize what I was hearing into written blurbs of 140 characters to update Twitter users following the conference. In between all of this cognitive processing, I also was trying to network with other attendees in the room. It struck me that as the number of communications outlets available to us expands, we are becoming overwhelmed to the point that we aren’t actually using any of them effectively. Maybe it’s just me, but I suspect that the average user of social media shares my feelings, which suggests that there may be a growing desire for simplification. As PR professionals, we need to be conscientious of this sentiment.  Before we rush to embrace the next newest tool that promises to help us get out the word, we should remember that one of our focuses should be on making things easier for our target audiences – whether it is reporters, bloggers or consumers. Information overload is a significant obstacle to effective communications outreach – the growing number of outlets we have at our disposal will only compound this problem without a conscious effort to simplify our strategies.

Twitter’s Value is in Reaching the Influentials – Not the Masses
Throughout the day, I joined others in live Twittering the conference using the hashtag “#MRF09.” By mid-morning, the hashtag had risen to #8 on Twitter’s list of trending topics. Yet surprisingly, during our panel at the end of the day, I asked for a show of hands of how many people had been Tweeting the conference and only 18 of the roughly 200 attendees raised their hands. When the Tweets of a group of only 18 people can skyrocket to the top of Twitter’s trending topics, what does this mean? Notably, that the vast majority of the general population is not yet using Twitter and that it is not yet the best venue for reaching the average consumer – and perhaps never will be.  Nonetheless, Twitter has important value for PR professionals seeking to reach influentials – journalists, bloggers and even policy makers are disproportionately represented on the micro-blogging site. Twitter has a valuable role to play for outreach campaigns targeting these niche audiences – it remains to be seen how widespread its use will become in the general population.

Movement Towards a Conversation Paradigm – With or Without Technology
In the opening session of the day, Chris Bozman, who serves as Communications Manager and Strategic Advisor at Shell Oil Company, provided conference attendees with an overview of Shell’s effort to engage the public in a conversation about energy security. The primary component of “”A National Dialogue on Energy Security” involved a national tour in which Shell’s president and other business leaders traveled to 50 cities around the U.S. to speak with more than 15,000 Americans. Members of the media were given a high level of access to Shell’s representatives, who also conducted interviews with local reporters.  Someone in the audience asked Ms. Bozman whether Shell used any social media or online tactics as part of this campaign, and I’m sure many in the audience may have been surprised to hear her answer “no.” The key to Shell’s success was engaging in a two-way conversation – the conversation just occurred in person rather than through a discussion on a blog or Tweetring responses to the public. As communications professionals shifted to finding ways to convey an organization’s unfiltered message directly to the public through tactics like advertising, many PR professionals forgot about the importance of two-way communications. With the advent of social media, we have recently shifted back to this dialogue-centric focus.  Whether it is by using technology or direct communications, retaining this emphasis on two-way communications will be the key to an outreach campaign’s ultimate success.