Comet Branding - Branding | PR | Social Media

Public Relations + Social Media Summit: Recap and Presentations

On Wed., October 14th Comet Branding + PR was happy to co-host the first PR+Social Media Summit at UW-Whitewater with Ann Knabe and the Social Media Club of Milwaukee. The event was well attended and featured great speakers who offered valuable insight into PR 2.0, social media, job search, SEO, conversion and other great topics. We are sharing a recap and list of some of the presentations below.

Developing this summit was an interesting case study into leveraging to social media as part of PR right from the beginning.

For the event to be a success we knew it had to be packed with great content and we were fortunate to be able to offer a great mix of speakers.

The program was strategically developed for professionals and students by including presentations and discussions on a mix of social media and PR activities.

Presentations were designed to give insight into multiple case studies and approaches to using social media – whether you are at the top of an organization or just starting your career.

To promote the event the group specifically avoided using traditional methods to promote the event. We felt it was important to “walk the talk” in terms of using social media to drive attendance and interest.

There was no structured Web site and there were no flyers to speak of. Only Twitter, Twitpic, Facebook, BlogTalkRadio and LinkedIn were used.

The result? 290 people traveled to UW-Whitewater to participate in the daylong event and from the responses, it seems that everyone enjoyed it. Beyond this, hundreds of photos were posted to Facebook (here’s a batch) and over 1,000 Tweets were sent with the hashtag #PRSMS leading up to, during and after the event.

**If you attended, what was your favorite part? A speaker? A side conversation? The alumni luncheon? Share your thoughts below in the comments please!

The day was kicked off by Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines’ Director of Emerging Technology discussing her company’s approach to leveraging social media for customer response, promotion, crisis communication and service improvement.

Following her session, Alysha Schertz from BizTimes Milwaukee did an interview with Berg to learn more about Southwest’s approach to social media and her visit to Wisconsin.

And the day was capped off by Randy Sprenger giving everyone a picture into Harley-Davidson’s use of social media to engage with prospective and current customers. One of the coolest elements of Randy’s presentation was this video….yeah try not to get excited…I dare you.

**You can also download video of Paula Berg and Randy Sprenger’s presentations on iTunes from UW-Whitewater. Follow this LINK and search for Paula Berg or Randy Sprenger.

Between Paula and Randy’s presentations were some other great ones. Here they are with a little information about the presenters:

Susan Spaight is VP of Account Management and Digital Strategy at Meyer & Wallis and she presented on strategy in social media.

Web site | Blog | @suespaight

Sara Meaney and I offered a presentation on leveraging social media in public relations to help events and announcements live beyond the day/time they take place.

Andrew Wintheiser is a founding partner of Lightburn, an interactive agency in Milwaukee and he presented on using PR and social media to influence SEO.

Web site | Blog | @andywintheiser

Sarah Soczka is an assistant account executive at Boelter-Lincoln in Milwaukee and she shared a personal story about how professional and personal brands can collide in social media.

Tags: Alysha Schertz, Ann Knabe, branding, Paula Berg, PR 2.0, pr summit, Randy Sprenger, social media agency, social media in public relations, Social Media strategy, social media tactics, Sue Spaight, using social media for events, Using SOcial media in Public relations