Chiming in a bit late on this one, but it was great to see Auburn and Robert French featured on the cover of PRWeek. The cover photo and interior feature article highlighted Robert’s integration of social media into the curriculum at Auburn University’s PR program.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of the Marcom Blog program at Auburn for a number of years and have visited the Plains a few times to speak with students (side note: If you haven’t taken the time to speak/work with PR students, do so now). It’s great to see Robert and the school get the recognition they deserve.

As students can now attest, when firms are looking for social media savvy graduates, guess what they do? They look at the social media the students are producing. Student blogs are their resumes.

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The Friday before Thanksgiving week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of communicators representing the top life insurance firms in the U.S. Our venue was the historic boardroom at the New York Stock Exchange, the topic, social media of course :-)

Here’s the problem though, when it comes to ‘talking’ about their major product lines, i.e. life insurance/annuities, they really can’t. There are so many legal restrictions and federal regulations involved with the industry that it kills conversation. If you have ever called your insurance agent and heard that canned message, “Insurance coverage cannot be bound or changed…..” then you know what I’m talking about.

That leads to the title of this post, what do you talk about when you can’t talk about what you want to talk about? The majority of the folks in the room wanted to know, “How can we blog or engage in any social media initiative around our core products with all these restrictions?” I told them, “You don’t”.

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Last week I was at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Research Symposium and Summit 2007 in Las Vegas, which, in my mind, is one of the “must attend” yearly conferences. Along with Jake McKee, I was one of the official conference bloggers. Being a designated blogger is a very different experience that being a regular attendee or even a speaker, and having now worked in that capacity, I have a much deeper respect for what goes into such a seemingly easy task. Aside from the typical challenges of racing from one session to the next, making sure your computer battery doesn’t run out of juice when there is no available plug, being flexible with program and panelist changes, and writing without the luxury of reviewing and editing what you’ve written, there is the responsibility of trying to record the highlights of the covered sessions in such a way that readers are able to get value from what you’ve posted.

Without question, for me one of the highlights of the conference were the research and measurement sessions. Not necessarily because they were the most entertaining (I’d put the lunch keynote by Richard Tait, Grand Poo Bah of Cranium Inc., the keynote by Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking or the session “No Fans, No Band” in that category), but because they provided the oh-so-important hard data validating the effectiveness of word of mouth.

Between the Research Symposium and the Summit, there were over twenty sessions on research and measurement. Additionally, attendees received the excellent Measuring Word of Mouth: Current Thinking on Research and Measurement of Word of Mouth Marketing, WOMMA’s third annual research volume (available for purchase as well) that contains over twenty papers covering a wide range of topics with a particular emphasis on the influencer model.

What’s also useful within the research volume is the section on WOMMA terminology, which aims to “provide a unified framework for describing and measuring word of mouth marketing.” It provides definitions of word of mouth (”the act of a consumer creating and/or distributing marketing-relevant information to another consumer”), work of mouth marketing (”en effort by an organization to affect how consumers create and/or distribute marketing-relevant information to other consumers”) and WOM Episode (”a single occurrence of word of mouth communication, which includes Participants, Actions, WOMUnits, Venues, and Outcomes”), among other things. There is also an excellent visual summary of what happens during a WOM Episode, along with the associated qualities thereof — namely a participant taking an action on a WOMUnit in a particular venue that then results in an outcome.

(Cross-posted from New Millennium PR)

The Word of Mouth Marketing Summit kicked-off earlier today in Las Vegas. As you would expect, the speaker lineup is just stacked, so there’s all sorts of insightful juice to squeeze out of this event — and that’s exactly what our own Andrea Weckerle is doing as one of two guest bloggers invited in to report and record this year’s event on the Summit Blog.

Already today, Andrea has covered multiple sessions, including Peter Waldheim’s “State of the Word of Mouth Marketing Industry,” and two panels on Social Networking and one on Influence vs. Network Size. Lastly, at least for today, she covered Lionel Menchaca’s discussion on Dell’s WOM and social media development work.

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Cross-posted from Media Guerrilla.

“So, how do you know when to talk back?”

Yeah, I get this question a lot…

The upside of companies recognizing the importance of online conversations is that they’re, well, increasingly listening. And with listening comes the inevitable urge to act and respond to a whole bunch of things, but when do you do this? And how? Do you leave a comment? Do you send an email? It’s not like you have a field manual to reference for on-the-fly tact, so calculating what action to take (if any) is a challenge and unfortunately, a determination you have to make fairly quickly.

Here’s the thing: there’s no formula for how or when to talkback. You have to take each instance on a case-by-case, however, there are three baseline questions you should try to ask — and answer — before you do anything:

1. Is the post factually inaccurate?

If yes, congrats, you’re dealing with the top 10% of blogs. Kidding. Proceed to question two.

If no, okay then, a response may be necessary. I tend to weight the response tactics according to the severity of the inaccuracy. If it’s a simple mistake (e.g., a misspelling, a misquote, etc) then try contacting the author privately and directly. State your case and request the change, that’s all you can do. It’s no guarantee of a timely fix, but I think most folks will make an honest effort to correct their mistakes.

For those that don’t or who make more severe, err egregious errors, you have a reasonable case for leaving a public comment. Again, it’s no guarantee that the problem will be fixed or that the author will even allow your comment to be posted. In this instance, you may also want to consider contacting the author privately and directly too. And if you really want to escalate things, consider dragging the link out with your own blog post, bookmarks, tags and annotations - this is a response 202 tactic, proceed with caution.

2. Is the post a fair expression of opinion?

If yes, proceed to question three.

If not, you could consider talking back, but be careful, this is where most companies get tripped up because the only fair point-of-view is, well, the corporate one. I think this where you just have to be *really* honest about your company’s strengths and weaknesses. If, for example, a post is recounting a terrible experience with your product, there is very little you can do to change that person’s experience. Think about what purpose talking back with serve and what outcome you’re really looking for. Are you trying to appeal to the author or future readers who stumble on this post?

3. Is a relationship with the author important?

If yes, then you have to go one step further and ask yourself if talking back via comments or the back channel will augment and extend the relationship. Only you can answer that question.

If no, then you still have to go one step further and ask whether or not the blog post itself can impact and influence people’s perceptions. In most cases, if a relationship with the blog author isn’t a priority, neither is the blog’s readership, and therefor there’s no need to talkback. Case closed.

This is admittedly an incomplete post, there are nuances to all of this that I’m not digging into here, it’s response tactics 101, get off my back, but seriously, hopefully this provides some good starting points for reference for companies that want to talk back.

Also Read

The Purposeful Conversation

Social media strategy doesn’t always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed….and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.

The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr….why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That’s what the Georgia Aquarium has done.

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In this Q&A, I asked two of our brightest “edge-workers” to share their insights and opinions on using social media tactics and tools for B2B and B2C clients and programs. Michael Moeschler (pictured left) talks about things from a B2B perspective; Ryan Lack (pictured right) from a B2C one. It’s interesting to see/read that the dichotomy of their day jobs really isn’t that great. Enjoy!

Question #1: Is blogger relations a must-have element in consumer communications programs?

Ryan (B2C): It can certainly depend on the company or product the program is designed for, but generally speaking, yes. What I’ve come to find over time, as have many, is that blogger relations provides great value as an addendum to traditional media relations. Today, many people get their news online and discussion is taking place there, in a number of forms, whether it be in comments sections of blogs or in forums, talk like this is happening online - the question then becomes: how do you insert your client into those conversations? Blogger relations is one tactic for achieving that, at reaching the new water cooler, the place where people are congregating online to talk about topics they care about.

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Welcome to the second installment of our Voce Nation Podcast series, which focuses on companies and individuals doing meaningful and innovative things in the social media and communications space.

Here I talk with Ike Pigott, the American Red Cross regional communications director for the southeastern United States. Click the player below to listen to the podcast interview with Ike. If you prefer to download the file directly, you can click here.

Ike talks about how the ARC is successfully using social media tools to convey vital information and help people connect during times of crisis — lessons other companies can apply to their own communications programs.

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Cross-posted from Media Guerrilla.

In my world, this time of year is always crunchy, it’s an endurance race to the holidays. It means unfortunately that I don’t get to read as much, blog as much, breathe as much, etc., but oh well, so be it. I figure I can either put my head down to cover ground and get some creative stuff in the works for ‘08 or stand still debating the finer points of bad PR vs. ugly PR vs. fugly PR. It’s a pretty easy decision, right?

One observation I will share as I’ve been scooting about, is that I’m increasingly seeing this me-too mentality surface inside companies that want to do more with social media. My hunch is that this stems from a mix of places, but mostly, it stems from fear. Fear that companies that are embracing new tools and new practices online are gaining “all sorts of business advantages” — and that other companies somehow, sadly are falling behind because they are not.

Truthfully, this is a healthy fear to have, but please don’t kid yourself or let it blind you.

If you’re considering social media projects, don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions first.

Can your company tell its story with a blog? How will a presence on MyFaceSpace augment communications? Does a SMPR have any utility? Can a widget add value? Do your customers watch online videos? Does a mention on a blog really get you anything? Do you have the time to invest to do this right?

The list goes on, the important thing is that you ask the questions - both internally if you’re on the corporate side and externally, if you’re talking to a consultant. Oh, and for all of these questions, there’s the big, fat inevitable one, right, which is “where has this been successful?” I mean, if you’re gonn’a try and replicate something that’s been done, know that it worked, right?

Fear is one of those classic business motivators, and at times it’s a healthy one, but don’t let it cloud your judgement or get in the way of what you’re company is trying to accomplish. Social tools, social strategies might be be able to help your business in a number of ways, but they might also be a terrible distraction.

The only way you’ll know which is to be uncomfortable with the easy answers and always ask the hard questions.