Where to begin: Life as my muse

Anyone who’s been around me in the past few years or so knows I planned to go to Vancouver 2010.

It was watching the ’88  Calgary Olympics with my little brother that made me an extremely proud Canadian.  Patriotism is what the Olympics have always represented for me. Being there completely reinforced why I had “I know I’ll be living it in Canada” (Sloan) embossed on the back of my iPod years ago.

We went to two events (men’s ski jumping preliminaries before the opening ceremonies and women’s freestyle moguls where Jenn Heil took home a silver).

Quite literally, these athletes have tens of seconds to qualify for the finals and if they do, they have same amount of time to make the podium. So really all of those years of dedication come down to less than a minute of performance time and that’s what defines you forever after. That kind of determination is unbelievably admirable.

You could feel the energy from the crowds the moment the Opening Ceremonies started and when we got caught the path of torch bearing Wayne Gretzky, even though he didn’t seem too excited.

Globe and Mail columnist Stephen Brunt’s did a great video essay for CTV about the undeniable pride and patriotism that the Games seem to have inspired.

Having Alexandre Bilodeau capture the first gold on home soil couldn’t have been more perfect. Like most Canadian athletes, his absolute genuineness shines through.

The story of inspiration and sibling love with his brother Frederic, who has Cerebral Palsy, really put the spotlight on what he brings to the world in spite of his condition. I had the opportunity to join a torchbearer with Cerebral Palsy in January and affected me in a way I never expected.

The Bilodeau story was also perfect because he’s an athlete from Quebec. Yes Quebec is part of our great nation and I, like many Canadians hope it always remains. There was no doubt, Bilodeau is a proud Canadian.

There’s just so much to say about the whole experience but here are some of the not so good parts.

1. Sustainability: Back in June ’09, I was at the CPRS National Conference and took in a few presentations by VANOC representatives. One presentation was on how these games would be the first sustainable games. In fact, London 2012 would be using Vancouver 2010 as a template to plan their events. So knowing that, I was quite disheartened when my friend was asked to get rid of an apple and water when going through security. Also, because the sponsor was Coca-Cola, you could only buy bottled water on the hill. Selling food at the venues was also a disaster because you could only buy form one spot and the lineups were hours long (so that by the time you’d get to the front, the event would be done). If they would have let us keep our apple and fill the water bottle at a Coca-Cola sponsored water jug on the hill like they do at golf courses, they would have had me as a customer for life. I know when it comes to corporate social responsibility, organizations can always be 100% sustainable, but that was an easy one that the sponsor could have offered.
2. Sponsorship: The other part about sponsorship that made me angry was that I had to get a Visa card. I have many other credit cards, but because Visa is a sponsor, my choices to buy tickets were to send a cheque and hope it gets there in time or get a Visa. Because I like confirming everything online I got a Visa. Then before leaving I had a notice sent to me saying that all the venues will only accept cash or Visa. For stuff that you buy at a concession, cash is not a big deal. But when we went to the Olympic Superstore in The Bay in downtown Vancouver, the choices were the same. Most people will buy over $100 worth of stuff, so chances of paying cash are pretty slim. Seriously though, it was the Bay, so they are setup to do all forms of payment. I guarantee I won’t be keeping my Visa.
3. Event logistics: For the most part, our trip out to Whistler went quite well. Even when we were sitting out in the stands, it was like someone ordered the sunshine for the event and the moment it was done, it went behind the clouds. Our day at Cypress Mountain was not so pleasant though. It started by having our mandatory bus transportation to the venue bring us late to the event because bus drivers didn’t show up. By the time we completed the trek from the drop-off point to our seats, we only saw the last few skiers come down in the preliminaries. Still we weren’t too bothered by it all because we were excited to be there. We then decided to grab something to eat and drink and once we made it through the crowds from the stands to the only area where they sold food, we were told the lines would be 2.5-3 hours long. With a two hour break in between the preliminaries and the finals, that would mean the event would be over by the time we’d get to the front of the line – of course if there was any food left. So we decided to head back to the entrance to some vending machines that we saw, where we could at least get something to drink. When we got there we realized that the vending machines were a few feet away from us but on the outside of the gate (maybe 20-30 feet away) and if we attempted to get to them we wouldn’t be allowed back in even though we were in plain sight of the workers. At this point we were cold and wet and the thought of fighting through the bus lineups in the dark as everyone left at the same time a few hours from then didn’t appeal to us. Instead we hopped on a bus right away (although we had to wait a while to get clearance to leave because no one seemed to know what was happening) to catch the end of the event in a bar at the bottom.

While some parts of the planning and logistics really disappointed me, I wouldn’t trade anything for having experienced it because it is truly about the people and the stories that come from it. That will always remain with me.

Later this week, I am fortunate enough to be heading to the Olympics in Vancouver. It’s been a lifelong dream to actually experience the games first-hand.

For me, the Olympics don’t keep me interested because of the politics or the controversies. It’s about the people who dedicate their lives for a chance at glory. I absolutely love those stories and experiencing the emotion in real-time.

The emotions that games evoke are strong – and fortunately can be relived infinitely through social media.

Fifty-year member of the Canadian Public Relations Society Don LaBelle, APR, FCPRS shares a story from a fundraising gala in ‘76 for the ’78 Commonwealth Games. His committee brought in the top three runners from the four minute mile at the ’54 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, including Roger Bannister.

Hear Don’s story: (keep in mind the crowd’s reaction was some 20+ years after the four minute mile)

If you’re not familiar with the run, watch this video first.

Stories from athletes around the world are great, but seriously GO CANADA!

Some PR practitioners have been turned off of Twitter because of all its “useless information” or have complained that Twitter’s audience is too small to have an effect on their communications campaigns.

Reality is that much of the value can be found in applications that are built to support and share Twitter’s data. One such local tool is ShareEdmonton.ca.

ShareEdmonton was built and launched in October 2009 by local blogger Mack Male. Basically it’s a free events calendar that also aggregates information about your event from Twitter.

While it’s still a relatively new tool, it’s already gone through a series of improvements to make the information about events more user-friendly.

ShareEdmonton is a perfect tool to add to any public event communications planning.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Go to shareedmonton.ca.
2. Click “Events” in top header.
3. Click “Add your event” in the far right column. (You can also email events to mack@paramagnus.com)
4. When filling out the form, make sure to include any relevant tag words (way that Twitter posts come up related to your event)
5. All event posts are moderated so you will have to wait to see it come up after you submit it.

Tips on posting to ShareEdmonton

• Use a URL shortener link (ex. http://cli.gs) for your links on your ShareEdmonton event page so that you’ll know how much traffic came from ShareEdmonton because it tracks click throughs.
• Using a vanity URL – where you choose the keywords in the shortened URL – is also a good idea, so that people can remember your link from memory. It’s also more attractive in the post. (This can be done on Cli.gs by selecting “Edit” after you’ve shortened your URL) Ex. http://cli.gs/NAITBondar
• Create an event hashtag (keyword with # preceding it) and include it on your event posting and in the tags so that you know when others are talking about your event because the Twitter posts will appear below your ShareEdmonton event. Ex. #NAITChef
• Include #yeg (Edmonton airport code) in tweets so that people know the posts are related Edmonton and show up on ShareEdmonton’s front page in the “Recent #yeg” box (right column).
• Connect ShareEdmonton to your Facebook account (top right corner icon on ShareEdmonton) to also share your event with friends.
• Follow @ShareEdmonton and @mastermaq on Twitter to hear about updates to the website.

Benefits of using ShareEdmonton

• You’re expanding your reach well beyond your current Twitter followers.
• When planning your event, you’ll also know what you’re competing with locally, which just helps to make your job that much easier. (Something we all need!)

Related

• State of the Edmonton & Calgary Twitterspheres (usage statistics)

Originally posted in CPRS Edmonton members’ only blog February 4, 2010

Last year when I had the chance to meet Brian Solis at the CPRS National Conference I brought up the fact that like many PR practitioners, I constantly refer people to his conversation prism and that I thought the foreword he wrote for Deirdre Breakenridge’s PR 2.0 captured in three and a half pages the best way to describe what social media has done PR in its 100+ year history.

I highly recommend the entire book, but here’s a brief summary of the key points from the foreword.

Two key players are attributed with creating public relations just over 100 years ago – Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays.

After an accident at the Pennsylvania Railroad, Ivy Lee created the first press release because he believed PR was a “two way street” in that companies had a responsibility to inform their audiences.

Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays was PR’s first theorist who based his approach on people’s irrational and unconscious motives.

For decades following, the work of these two individuals shaped public relations, and somewhere along the way the industry lost its vision – leading into “hype, spin, hyperbole, and buzzwords.”

Enter social media and PR moves from companies marketing at audiences to humanizing conversations with people. It was a return to “two way conversations” by forcing PR to stop broadcasting and to begin a dialogue.

The term PR 2.0 has been around since the 1990s, before web 2.0 was coined. It’s not about the technology – it’s a philosophy that changes the game by getting organizations engaging with people on a level playing field.

In the end it’s a renaissance that brings the public back in public relations. (also the title of Solis’ new book)

Back in June, I sat down with Don LaBelle, APR, FCPRS to chat about his public relations career, which spans some 50+ years. This story he shared was from 1957 when he served for six months in Sardinia with the air force. Don paints a picture of the Italian culture in the 1950s and shares a story that would challenge even the most experienced PR practitioner.

Remember it’s 1957 and big news will hit the paper the next day. I wonder how different this story may have been had YouTube or Twitter been around.

Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals, and serve the public interest. (Flynn, Gregory & Valin, 2008)

The delivery of public relations has certainly changed drastically over it’s 100+ year history, but the basic elements of what makes a successful career remain the same. This summer I sat down with one of my favourite public relations mentors, who has been a Canadian Public Relations Society member for 50 years. Founding member of CPRS Edmonton, Don LaBelle, APR, FCPRS, provides his two pieces of advice.

Complete aside: One of the proudest moments in my career was when I walked off the stage in Vancouver to accept an award and Don was seated by the stage and said, “way to go kid.” I should tell him that one day.

The thing I hear most with PR practitioners and their reluctance to get started with social media is that they don’t know where to start. Often people get intimidated with the technology. My advice:

1. If you’re not afraid to have a conversation with a person, get over being intimidated by the technology. Social media is not about technology, it’s about the people at the other end of that technology. In fact, face-to-face interaction is just an important as the relationship you maintain online. Technology is just an enabler of that conversation, so just start the dialogue.
2. There’s no “right” place to get started. BUT there’s a right time and that’s NOT when you’re trying to pitch something. It’s important to establish your credibility online before you can expect people to care about what you have to say and ultimately get engaged.
3. Social media does not replace your other PR activities. This comes up time and time again when people think that social media is the magic bullet to save their product after other marketing didn’t work. Truth is, if you have a product that people don’t want, putting a video on YouTube won’t save it. Through communications planning you can be strategic and see how social media can be incorporated by tailoring your content to what your audience wants to see.
4. Be a real person. I’m highly unlikely to follow you on Twitter for example, if all you have in your profile is business related interests. I want to know that I’m going to be talking to someone who’s not just going to pitch me all the time. Even if you’re reluctant to post personal information for privacy reasons, find something you’re comfortable with. So you may not be posting things about your family for example, but the fact that you’re an avid sailor may be something you’re comfortable with. Personally sailing doesn’t interest me but I’m more likely to follow you because I know you won’t be all business.

On January 28, 2009 @NAIT live tweeted a traditional media blitz with Canada’s Iron Chef Rob Feenie from Cactus Club Cafe, when he was announced as the Institute’s first Hokanson Chef in Residence. This was a big learning experience for us all. Below are twelve tips for anyone considering a similar live media blitz Twitter event.

1. Listen and get to know your audience. You hear this all the time when people give advice about getting involved in social media, but if you skip this step, you won’t have an audience. This takes time, but the beauty is that you can start right now by setting up a Twitter account and engaging with people talking about you/your organization or topics that you’re interested in. Also very important is to get to know the people in your audience both online and offline. Tweetups are a fantastic way to get to know local people on Twitter.
2. Determine the appeal. People are live tweeting all the time. For our media blitz though, we knew that because it wasn’t public and because of the chef’s celebrity that people may be interested in watching. Our media relations specialist Rayne Kuntz @kuntzie suggested a YouTube video. It was only later that I asked if I could tag along to live tweet it, to give our audience real-time direct access. We figured this could appeal to foodies and people involved or interested in social media, traditional media and public relations.
3. Get buy-in from the media outlets. Since our plan was to follow Chef Feenie in-studio, it was important that the media outlets knew what we were doing in advance. Fortunately in our case, Rayne worked in television for almost 20 years and had no problem getting access for both the video and microblogging.
4. Get critical feedback. While we were very excited about this idea, it was only in chatting with others that we were able make the idea better. People within our department, the Institute’s Social Media Discussion Group, students and external stakeholders made suggestions about their expectations for such an event. The suggestions ranged from making the chat available on our homepage, providing steps to get involved for those unfamiliar with Twitter and avoiding the use the lingo in order to appeal to more people.
5. Practice.  It is important to get to know your tools and their limitations. In order to prepare for our big event, I live tweeted a class with instructor Jason Dabbagh on January 16 (Culinary Date Night at Servus Place). While I was only using my iPhone and was only in one location, this helped me determine how many tweets were possible and what my battery life would be like (44 tweets over three hours with just under ½ the battery life left). Also, I switched to Twittelator Pro to post to Twitter and to post my pictures to Twitpic, because I can manage multiple accounts on my iPhone.
6. Prepare and tell people.  We posted directions about what we were doing on our homepage calendar and we told as many people as possible about the chat. We also knew in advance what our day was more or less going to look like. So I prepared some posts including previously shortened URLs (with Tweetburner and Cligs to also track click through rates), found media and the chef’s employer (@cactusclubcafe) on Twitter and also planned some posts based on where we were going to be.
7. Create a hashtag to group the chat. Creating a unique hashtag (keyword with the # symbol preceding it) helps people see what you’re talking about, but also helps with measurement once your event is done. We used #naitchef then we were able to group the chat in Tweetchat for more knowledgeable Twitter users.
8. Make it easy for your audience. We knew that our potential audience had varying degrees of knowledge of Twitter. By using Tweetchat and having real-time updates on our website, we were able to make it more dynamic by having real-time posts appear instead of directing people to a static Twitter page that they would have to refresh. We also posted instructions in our homepage calendar, offering various options to get involved.
9. Account for technology failures. Twitter goes down, all applications tied to Twitter go down, batteries die, wireless networks go down and Internet connections get lost so it is important to have a backup plan for all these scenarios. One of the worst things we could do was build up excitement for our event but fail to follow through. We had a backup plan for each possible failure and brought extra tools along. I had a spare laptop, spare camera, spare laptop battery, power hookups for the vehicle, a wireless connection from Telus for my laptop and a Rogers connection on my iPhone.
10. Make sure you’re not in the way or interrupting. The night before, when I was charging all the batteries, I made sure to turn off the ringing on my phone, muted my laptop and turned off the flash and sound on my backup camera. The day of the event I simply observed and communicated what I saw in the studios and when we were in waiting areas or the vehicle, I took the opportunity to ask the questions that were coming through. I also dimmed my laptop the night before so that I could save battery life.
11. Measure. By using URL shorteners and a photo service like Twitpic, we can tell how many people clicked through on our content. New followers, the number of people that interacted with us, blog follow-up posts and traffic to various pages on our website are all part of our metrics. My goal was to get ten comments/questions from different users on Twitter.
12. Take the risk and have fun. Doing something like this made me very nervous. I was more excited though by the challenge presented and the opportunity to try something new, so I had to get over my nervousness. We’ve received so much positive feedback (typos and all and I would do it all over again, maybe next time attempting video or audio clips.

Facts about the day:

• 91 posts by @NAIT including replies and posts the day before
• 48 comments/questions from users
• 23 users interacted with us, most were local although we did have a few from elsewhere including Calgary and Guelph, ON
• Many more watched the chat and we’re still gauging its impact through web analytics and future posts
• Four autographed cookbooks were given away
• A summary of the chat will be posted at www.nait.ca/naitchef
• A representative from our student newspaper (The Nugget) and two sections of PR students in our business school also participated, which demonstrated our mandate to provide “education for the real world.”
• At CBC Radio One, both the laptop wireless card and my iPhone worked. In studio at CityTV only my iPhone worked. At CFRN, again only my iPhone worked in the green room. In the studio at CFRN, my iPhone worked when I was by the door, but further inside the studio I lost the connection.
• At the Ernest’s dining room at NAIT, the laptop wireless card worked most of the time, but I did eventually lose the connection. The iPhone kept going though.
• Because it offered the best connection, most of my day was done on the iPhone. I would still bring a laptop around though because when you can get a good connection, you can copy and paste posts and links. The iPhone does not have copy and paste capabilities.
• The tweeting actually made it to air at CityTV as did a local blogger’s question.
• A funny part during the day is that I forgot to tell our van driver that I had posted a picture of the van on Twitter and told people to honk when they saw us.  Our driver Bruce was waiting for us when someone was honking at him and he had no idea why – I felt bad.

Watch our behind the scenes video from the day.

Originally posted January 30, 2009

Update: June 10,2009

This initiative was recognized with a gold Canadian Public Relations Society Award of Excellence in Social Media at the On the Edge conference held in Vancouver.

Diane Bégin accepts the CPRS national award for NAIT.