Last week, I attended the SNRC’s Annual Research Symposium in Boston. It was an interesting day, with the majority of the agenda focused on communications professionals presenting real world case studies (refreshing).

I was planning to digest the content and then write a few smart posts, but figured I’d share what I took away from the event (my notes might jump a bit).

Panel: New Media, New Influencers & Implications for the PR Profession

This panel had several prominent bloggers – including Paul Gillin and John Cass – presenting case studies from companies they’ve interviewed in the last year about corporate blogging.

Pulling from their examples and the discussion, here’s the list of what seemed to work well for corporate and CEO blogs:

  • Allow the blog to reflect the company’s/CEO’s personality
  • Focus on building an audience by mixing thought leadership topics with more personal topics (not updates on your children, but rather iTune playlists, the Red Sox vs. Yankees, etc.)
  • Interview other industry experts – even competitors if it’s relevant
  • Feature an ongoing quiz or survey to maintain traffic
  • Update three times a week to improve SEO
  • Comment on OTHER blogs to truly engage the audience
  • And finally, measure success across several dynamics (traffic, comments, etc.)

That said, in order to measure success, you need to have an early consensus on the blog’s goal. Then, make sure you’re measuring the relevant factors. For example:

  • If the goal is career advancement, measure levels of recognition
  • If the goal is to build a community, track the level of engagement with comments, guest posts and feedback sections
  • If the goal is to drive sales, track leads and $$$
  • If the goal is thought leadership, track the increase in press interviews, speaking invitations, etc.

Presentation: The Blogging Power Continuum (Joseph Carrabis)

This presentation fascinated me because it was based on a project that took super smart brain scientists (my terminology for them), threw in some quantum physics (or something equally technical) and then applied that science to analyze a subset of the blogosphere. In all seriousness, Joseph talked about a research project he’s conducting that takes a very scientific approach to measuring conversation across multiple aspects in the blogosphere (he even claims that they called the last presidential election). As an experiment, his team looked at the current presidential candidates’ blogs, including comment strings, and then mapped which ones were driving conversations and which ones were following conversations.

Out of that research, Joseph shared the following advice (some we already knew – but now it’s backed by fact):

  • What is power about in the blogosphere? Respect.
  • The most flexible communicators have the most “power” in the blogosphere because they can explain ideas to the masses and therefore have broader reach.
  • How do you gain power in the blogosphere? You gamble:
    • Give credit where it is due
    • Admit your mistakes
    • Manage your discussion (think of your audience as clients)
    • Be honest
    • Lead the discussion
    • Explain everything
  • How do you share power (and you must share power to maintain it … “give a little to keep a lot”)
    • Recognize other’s authority and experience
    • Accept chastisement graciously
    • Never argue (not to be confused with discussion. As Joseph said, “Inquiry, discussion and explanation come from differences.”)
    • Be willing to learn
    • Encourage the discussion
    • Never cover

Panels: Award Winning Case Studies

Several panelists shared case studies of social media in action, including a first hand account of the Coke/Mentos video. A lot of this was consumer-focused and interesting, but one comment really caught my attention (I don’t remember who said it): “Embracing social media and traditional outreach together creates a ‘PR Loop Effect’ that ultimately compounds the effect/result.”

Presentation: Social Media Global Trends

Shel Israel gave the closing presentation which shared highlights from a global survey on social media he conducted with SAP. It was a great presentation and he posted the report in a few sections on his blog, which is definitely worth the read. Below are the seven lessons Shel shared with us.

  1. Social media is kids’ stuff
  2. Social networks is the killer app
  3. Culture matters. Language matters.
  4. Measurement is improving, but it’s still unclear what to measure.
  5. The geek-to-suit gap is shortening. Kids overtaking geeks.
  6. Lose control to gain influence.
  7. The world is not yet flat, but it is getting hillier.

Shel’s closed the presentation by sharing his thoughts on the study and his predictions. The most notable for me was his advice to “watch the kids – they’ll lead you in the right direction.”