My road to joining Comet can be summed up in one well-known saying, “It’s not what you know, but WHO you know that matters.”

Of course what you know–your professional experience, areas of expertise, etc.–is important, but in today’s economy and job market, having a great professional network is a must.

After deciding I was ready for my next professional challenge, my mentor, Laura Monagle, APR, Programming Chair and President-elect of PRSA Southeastern Wisconsin, recommended me to Al Krueger and Sara Meaney as an ideal candidate for their Social Media + PR Coordinator position.

I sent Comet my résumé a month after the job posting appeared on Big Shoes Network—which I assumed would be a waste of time as I knew hundreds of people had probably already applied. But given the strong recommendation from Laura on my behalf, I hoped luck was in my favor.

Sara Meaney called me that afternoon to set-up a phone interview for the following Monday. Just two weeks later I had an offer. Stoked doesn’t even begin to describe my reaction.

So although it’s my professional experience with public relations, social media strategy and implementation and academic accomplishments that got me the job, my professional network is what got me through the door.

The moral of my story: I cannot stress enough the importance of building your professional network through social media, by attending events, joining professional organizations and by having mentors whose career path you’d like to emulate.

Cheers to new connections!

I recently stumbled upon this social tool called Formspring.me. Formspring is a question and answer site founded in November of 2009. Formspring is a way to ask questions and share knowledge, and ultimately, get to know a person better. At first glance, Formspring is just an honesty box where friends can ask each other questions and this has brought about some controversy especially with high school students and cyber-bullying, but I feel it could make my blog writing a whole lot easier.

Well, here is where you come into the story. Help me, Help you. Everybody has questions, especially when it comes to social media. If you would allow me to, I would love the chance to try and answer your questions and increase our social media know-how in the meantime.

Now, I’m not positioning myself as a social media guru, master, expert, wizard or any of the other various titles. I’m a PR + social media professional who continues to learn each day, likes to find out answers and solve problems. I also think I’m pretty good with search engines. If I can find an answer, voila!, we have blog content. If not, it will give us an opportunity to extend the question to the great social media community. Collectively, we’ll find an answer.

So your mission. Go to Formspring.me/AndrewWiech and ask me a question about social media. I’ll do my best to find an answer, provide my opinion and increase our collective knowledge.

The Golden State Warriors, Oakland, California’s professional basketball team, have taken that interaction to the next level. I came across a very interesting article on ESPN about how the Golden State Warriors are using the power of social media to engage a wider fan base.

The Warriors are about to unveil a new logo for the upcoming season. Their problem was how to keep their fans from leaking it out. Their solution was to take a positive approach and get involved with their fan in the unveiling process.

Using multiple social network platforms, the Warriors leveraged their fan’s excitement by turning the logo unveiling into a scavenger hunt type of game.

Thus the “Warriors Draft Challenge” was born. Fans can sign-up on the Warriors website and each weekday from May 20-31, there will be a challenge question tied to each of the Warriors major social media accounts. If you get the answer right, then a small section of the logo will be revealed. If you get all the questions correct, on the last day you will see the whole logo.

This tactic is great because it gives the Warriors an opportunity to continually post new content during the off-season and give their fans a reason to seek it out.

They have leveraged current players like top rookie Stephen Curry to give fans clues, and subsequent clues will be revealed only when you tweet a specific message from the Warriors. Through every clue revealed, fans have an opportunity to share their experience via Facebook and Twitter.

The Warriors are giving more to their fans than just a unique interaction. Fans who sign up will be automatically registered to attend the team’s draft party at the end of June. In addition, there are also daily prizes available including a chance to be entered to win season tickets.

The Warriors also took a non-traditional approach to their public relations efforts, using Pitch Engine to post the official release.

Within the first 24 hours, the release generated over 4,000 views. A typical release gets sent out to about 400 people. The Warriors are one of the first professional teams to utilize the Pitch Engine service.

Their overall strategy is solid and speaks to their fan-base. They have come up with a unique engagement for their fans and have given them a reason to come back for more.

I also applaud their willingness to embrace new tools and strategies, where it could have been very easy to go the traditional route and “do things how they’ve always been done.”

Other sports teams should take a page out of the Warriors’ book.

What do you think of the overall campaign? What teams do you think are doing a good job leveraging social media?

Following this interaction, we continued to have a conversation with the bartender and received some great recommendations of places to visit. My friends and I had an enjoyable experience at Comet Cafe, which was enhanced because our bartender was eavesdropping on our conversation.

In my opinion, the same is true in social media. Just look at Twitter. How many tweets are sent each day? I don’t even consider myself a highly active Twitterer but according to my TweetStats, I average 2.6 tweets per day. Multiply that times the number of users on Twitter and you have a lot. If one of those updates is something negative about a business, it’s important to respond immediately. By not responding, it might show to your followers that you’re not listening. Social media has given companies a tremendous opportunity in terms of customer service. The ability to listen and respond to the online conversation personifies a business and that personality is something that I look for as a consumer.

Likewise, the conversation is constantly happening in traditional PR. Editors and publishers build out content calendars and journalists are out reporting. In PR, it’s our job to listen to that conversation and decide if our client has the right voice to contribute. There are even Web sites dedicated to connecting reporters with proper sources. Help a Reporter Out is an excellent example. Through this Web site, journalists receive the expert opinions that they need to construct a credible story and sources get the earned publicity that they need to grow a business. Each day, HARO sends out three emails from journalists requesting expertise insight on a particular issue. If a client has some information that will enhance the story, we pitch it. It’s the definition of win-win.

Do you look for and support companies with an online presence?
Any personal stories of social media interaction with a business?

The logo for my fictitious PR firm from college.

1. Getting a crash course in traditional PR in the real world – Wisconsin Lutheran College is a small, private liberal arts college that doesn’t offer a ton for students looking to pursue PR. I majored in business and communications and took whatever classes my advisors and I believed would translate well with the PR profession. One of my PR classes had us create our own PR agency and gave us an actual client. Our PR and Social media shop, Spark, did its best but that work doesn’t compare to real life experience. Honestly, it’s pretty cool to be able to dive in and learn more about real world public relations from Al, Sara and Kristin.

2. Moving to a rad new space – As you probably know, we recently moved offices. We use to be located on the corner of 5th and Walker. On the first of February, we loaded up the Budget truck and moved to the Mercantile Building on the corner of Water and Buffalo, with a stop at IKEA in-between. The new space is awesome! For some reason, whenever I start a new job we pack up and move to a new space within the first month. It happened while I was working at ThirdCoast Digest too. Jon Anne Willow from TCDigest jokes I have the super power of transience.

3. Makin’ Movies – In order to inform the public that we were moving to a new office space, Al had the idea of making a stop motion movie of the iconic Comet Branding recliner finding its new home. To implement this plan, Kristin and I took pictures of the recliner “walking” up the sidewalks of Water Street to the new space. Besides the snow and bitter cold, it was awesome to be a part of this process. We got a few honks from cars passing by. Apparently lugging a chair down the sidewalk means that you know your way around Milwaukee, because two people stopped me to get directions. One of my favorite moments was documenting the story through Twitter and having my friend Ryan respond, “I really don’t understand what u do.”

This past month has been full of adventure already and I can’t wait to see what is in store next.

My buddy Ryan doesn't understand my job.

One NFL Sunday, some friends and I decided to go out for dinner. We decided to sit in the bar to watch the game and the host informed us to grab any table we’d like and a server would arrive shortly. With eyes fixed on the big screen, five minutes flew by with still no greeting from the waitstaff. Our internal alarms were buzzing, but we were entertained by the game. After a delayed arrival to our table, our server asks us, “What can I get you?” one of the cardinal sins in hospitality, especially when we didn’t even have menus or waters on the table yet.

First impressions matter, not only in a restaurant but especially in the professional world. This principle has been instilled in my mind ever since my first restaurant job at Pizza Hut. How you present yourself to a client or a customer sets the tone for the conversations to come. A strong handshake and genuine smile doesn’t only sell entrees and drinks but can build a trusting relationship with a client.

From my experience, first impressions are also important in the realm of social media. Past employers have Googled my name or read my previous tweets. When I set up my mother’s Facebook account a couple years ago, I told her she wasn’t allowed to judge what she saw. Now, whenever I post an update, I think about what she will say when she reads it. If I think it will make her blush…it’s probably not appropriate. Having this in the back of my mind has been a great benefit. (Thanks Mom!) Learning that filter can go a long way in establishing a professional social media presence, which can only lead to more positive things.

Has anyone learned this lesson the hard way?
My background is food service. How does PR translate to other industries?

Sara Meaney and I attended the 2009 International PRSA Conference over the last few days. While there we attended several presentations, events and covered the event as guest bloggers for PRSA’s Comprehension Blog. You can see our posts, along with others’ here. Before heading back to Milwaukee we want to take the opportunity to do a radio recap of what we saw and experienced.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Could go either way, right? We’ve all gotten emails like that. And we’ve all debated about how to respond. So we craft and rewrite our responses with care and caution. We waste time worrying about whether our response will set the sender off into a tizzy of more terse words in yet another unclear email.

But what if – stick with me now – what if we just picked up the phone instead?

Yeah. I said it. In this day and age of faceless, conflict-avoidance electronic communications, a phone call might actually be the solution. (Of course if we work in the same building with the person, a face to face conversation would suffice, as well.)

We are all guilty of it from time to time. Sometimes it’s easier and faster to simply shoot off a reply and forget about it for a while. But at the end of the day, if your communication is already failing you, so will another email in a long chain of emails.

Conversations aren’t just for conflict resolution anymore. They enable a cursory relationship to solidify into a lasting exchange of ideas and respect.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my Twitter banter. I can appreciate a well-crafted email overview. And I’ve had the pleasure of “meeting” some really clever and successful people through social media, having never had a live conversation. But those quick back and forth conversations can only go so far. A phone conversation or a personal meeting and a handshake will always trump a tweet or a wall post or an email.

As a Marketing/Communcations kind of person, I would like to think that I do alright with human communication, but I must admit that I catch myself being a lazy communicator from time to time. I have to remind myself that a phone call says more to the client or friend or colleague than what is actually said over the phone.

It tells him that he matters enough for me to make the time to talk to him, listen to him, ask about his wife, his kids, his upcoming vacation. It gives him another reason to think twice before cutting my line item from his heavily scrutinized budget. And it offers another reason for him to give me the benefit of the doubt when an occasional vague email comes from me in haste or under stress.

So I challenge you to do what I am trying to do more often: pick up the phone. Or maybe even start Skyping a bit. Use your voice (literally) more in your communications and deepen your relationships with the people that matter to you. It’s amazing what a conversation can do for clearing up misunderstandings, much less avoiding them in the first place.

It turns out the email mentioned at the beginning of the post was typed on a mobile device – while driving (don’t try this at home, kids). Which explains the dismissive tone and lack of clarity. I’m glad I called to find out.

Jennifer Leggio

What is PR’s role in social media and do agencies and clients see eye-to-eye?
Jennifer Leggio — Blogger, Social Business – ZDNet and Director of Strategic Communications, Fortinet
Nicole Jordan — Blogger, Bub.blicio.us and Kicking Sand, as well as PR Director, Rubicon Project

Back in November of last year, Jennifer Leggio kicked off a research study which asked (client-side) decision makers a bunch of questions about their public relations agencies. She was venturing to determine if PR firms are the ones best suited to develop social media programs and to find answers to this question: “Is social media even what clients want?”

Nicole Jordan *photo Brian Solis

The study caused some interesting responses, including some PR agencies using positive results in Jennifer’s study as validation of social media expertise that then fit nicely into their marketing pieces/blogs/websites.

It also, for the first time, put some quantitative data to PR’s role in social media, or lack of a role actually. After publishing the results in February, Leggio got to talking with Nicole Jordan about doing a new study that would dive into the agency side perspective. Now, what is that agency side perspective? Interested? Excited? Intrigued?

Earlier tonight, Ms. Leggio fired up her blog and posted her preview comments – they are as follows (find them here too).

“The first PR Survey results caused quite the stir in the PR industry. The second set of results are pretty telling, too. Nicole Jordan and I got together a few weeks ago to dig through the answers. We’re pretty disappointed with the amount of information we got, but overall the results were pretty telling: there is still a clear disconnect between clients and agencies.

On Wednesday, May 6, at 9 a.m. PT, Nicole and I will be guests on Al Krueger’s Comet Branding radio show to provide a sneak preview of the results before they are published. We’ll take the gloves off and even provide some comments on the first survey as well.”

Now, Nicole, Jennifer and I have had some great conversations in the past on the Comet Branding Radio show regarding the current state and future role of public relations. All of our conversation have been geared toward shining a light on how the industry can improve and what it needs to do to improve. Take a listen or read their accompanying posts:

1. The PR crisis, the evolution of PR agencies and why we need to start now (March 11, 2009)
2. Social media will not kill PR (December 3, 2008)
3. The changing role of PR as media evolves (September 10, 2008)

Hopefully that didn’t scare you off. That definition is rather convoluted and pretty contrived, so let’s simplify. Public relations helps organizations or people credibly and strategically relate and communicate with a desired group(s).

There are many roles of roles of PR. A leading one is media relations, and it differs from advertising and marketing in that it is earned and not purchased – and is seen as more credible. If you have the money, you can walk into the offices of The New York Times, and buy a full page ad and put a big picture of your smiling face on it that reads, “Hi, my name is (insert your name here) and I’m a really great person who you can trust. Let’s be friends.”

Now, I don’t doubt that you’re a great and trustworthy person, and some people will see that ad and agree to be your friend. But, a larger group will have doubts. They’d be skeptical. Their doubts would be understandable and justified because they know that you paid for that ad and know you would never, ever say anything bad about yourself.

This is a major hang-up of paid advertising and marketing. There will always be skeptics because they know you are the one controlling the message and paying for the placement.

Now, if we look at that same objective – for you to make friends – and instead use PR, how would this situation be different? The role and function of a PR practitioner or agency would be to meet with you and learn about the who, what, when and where of your wonderfulness. A great PR practitioner will dig deeper and find some amazing stories and talk to a bunch of your friends and family to add rich color and validation to your story. This person would be able to uncover the how and “why it matters,” which will help create the best possible story to propel your brand and connect with customers in the best manner possible.

Then, that PR practitioner will work with a third party – The New York Times in this case – and share all of the amazing stories and reasons why you’re so terrific. That reporter will likely do their own research to affirm the stories and if things work well, they will tell their readers about you. In this case, the journalist would be providing credible, third-party validation of your story. People do not expect the media to lie. Because of the added credibility of the journalist, there will be fewer skeptics and you will likely make more friends.

Public relations or any marketing element should never be used as the singular way to communicate with your potential customers. It’s best to use a mixed and varied approach that includes multiple forms of advertising, marketing and public relations.

This is just a small anecdotal snapshot of how PR can help you and your business. Public relations helps foster credibility and enables rich, brand storytelling, while costing much less than its marketing channel buddies. Beyond this, PR is evolving and is proving time and time again, its worth as an integral component in business-wide strategic planning and a key player in helping the company achieve success, impact branding, help determine product mix and grow sales.