PRSA T3 Conference Wrap-up
Yesterday I sat on a panel at the PRSA T3 Conference with my buddies Paull Young from Converseon and David Bradfield from Fleishman-Hillard. Our session was called, “Tech PR & Social Media: New Skills & Opportunities for PR Pros.” There was quite a back channel of conversation on Twitter.
What made our session stand out, in my opinion, was the use of actual case studies (B2B, B2C, etc.) that actually illustrated how our clients are using social media platforms. Too often, you see the same four or five case studies (Dell, Blendtec, Boeing, Wal-Mart, etc.) so it was refereshing to talk about something else.
At the end of our session we forgot to direct attendees to the list of Delicious links we created, so check it out. There’s even an RSS feed OPML file you can download there to get you started if you don’t currently use one that features links to the blogs from most of the speakers.
I was most looking forward to Brian Solis’ session “Return on Participation: Measuring Social Media Strategies in Tech PR.” It was a bit discouraging, in that Brian’s main recommendations seemed to require heavy manual search, web analytic software on your own website/blog, the implementation of widgets and of course, checking your Facebook/Twitter numbers. These are all absolutely important, but also already adopted by many social media practitioners. I hoped to hear more about how to actually develop the strategy with measurement in mind.
I was running late, and I forgot to bring my camera, which means I have no pictures to put up on Flickr or to include in this post. Also, I recently bought a larger memory card so I could use my camera to capture video as well, and it would have been really useful to be able to interview a couple of the people I met there. Stupid!
Anyway, I’ve said it before, but conferences are an important way to build meaningful relationships offline with the people you interact with online for the majority of the time. If anyone reading this attended the conference as well, please share your impressions or any key takeaways with us!
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David Bradfield // 09-12-2008 at 11:57 pm
Aaron - it was a real honor presenting with you and Paull. I got great feedback on our session. One person said it was the most organized session of the conference. Nice. We’ll have to do it again.
navigate communications » Blog Archive » Event Recap: Social Media the Main Focus at PRSA’s T3 Conference // 09-13-2008 at 12:45 am
[...] while attending. If you’re interested in more of what went on, check out Aaron’s great conference wrap-up. He includes a post to the Delicious profile called T3PAD (T3 Paul Aaron [...]
Brian Solis // 09-13-2008 at 6:01 pm
Hey Aaron, thanks for being there and thanks for sharing your thoughts. Truthfully, I had an entirely different presentation to share strategies based on listening and how to create campaigns based on the metrics we deemed important. However, it was recommended that I start by sharing the tools and techniques for capturing real world data that either shows you’re successful or you’re not. I’ve spent several years interviewing companies on the metrics they’re using for social media, so I have to disagree with you when you say that this is “already adopted by many social media practitioners.” They’re not benchmarking traffic, activity, perception, or authority to specific points in time or against their competition. They may be doing this personally, but not for the businesses they represent. It’s just not happening out there on a consistent or widespread basis. And yes it’s manual. It has to be if you want to uncover accurate and incontestable numbers for which to prove efficiency and effectiveness to upper management. I’ve been working with a development team to create a solution that automates this because the only tools that are available automate some listening, but only for responding or tracking, not for measuring. Regarding your point that you “hoped to hear more about how to actually develop the strategy with measurement in mind,” we can talk about it any time you’d like…in fact, I’ll write a post on it as soon as I wrap up this book…one, how to measure, to how to develop strategies based on key measurement criteria. Let me know if there are other things you’d like to see covered and I’ll add it to the outline. Thanks again Aaron.
Aaron Uhrmacher // 09-14-2008 at 2:45 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Brian.
It was a real pleasure to hear you speak, especially after reading your blog for so many years. Your presentation was great, don’t get me wrong. As someone who has spent several years answering the same types of questions about measurement as you addressed, I had simply hoped to hear about an alternative approach.
While most marketers might not be measuring the impact of their social media campaigns, I do think that most “social media practitioners” had adopted these metrics, or those that are similar.
I’ve got a close eye on the work that the SNCR is doing in this space, as well as Katie Paine (whom you mentioned). The problem I have with so much manual input is that it’s not an efficient solution for an agency with a small budget. Junior staff aren’t yet able to manage this process alone, and it takes up much too much time to make it worthwhile for more senior staff to conduct the analysis. So what we end up with in most cases is this hodge podge solution where the agency says 1,000 Facebook friends, 300 Technorati mentions and 2,000 Twitter followers is success. I’m just not sure that’s the right approach…
Again, thanks for taking the time to respond!