Where to begin: Life as my muse

A few times a year I get the chance to speak to students about careers in public relations. In my discussions I always ask how many are on sites like Facebook. Not surprisingly most are, but I’m actually more intrigued by those who aren’t because they usually question its value altogether having seen what people will share.

A few weeks back I came across Flickering Pixels – How Technology Shapes Your Faith by Shane Hipps. While some of the later chapters in the book seemed a little out of place, the overall message was good.

Hipps makes the argument that community is a large component of faith. He goes back to the shift in oral cultures to literate cultures, which created and reinforced individualism. Today other technologies continue to reinforce individualism.

People now rely on tools from phones to email to Facebook to manage their relationships, leading to less in-person contact. Hipps doesn’t make the argument that technology is evil, but rather a reality of our lives, which makes it important to understand how it can shape us. He makes many references to McLuhan‘s work in this area.

The best analogy I’ve heard about this compared “community” to “food.” Everyone needs food to live. To maintain health, we’ll often supplement our diets with vitamins. Face-to-face community is like food and social media helps to supplement as vitamins do.

This lesson is also true in professional community. Healthy relationships are not based on technology, but rather a very intentional act of making an effort to create a relationship. Whether or not a PR student or practitioner is involved in social media, an understanding of how it should be used is critical. Basically social media supplements and will never replace what we all need to do to maintain healthy relationships.

This is about as personal as I will get in this blog, but I wanted to share this video that I had the opportunity to shoot this week. It can serve as a reminder to us all to begin by being happy.

Steve Parent-Korbie was born with Cerebral Palsy and given a 5 per cent chance to live past 24 hours. Even if he did live, his parents were told that he’d likely be paralyzed or mentally challenged. Of course he’s neither, in fact he’s quite mobile and active.

What comes across most though is his enthusiasm. When you are around Steve, it’s absolutely clear that he’s a genuinely grateful man. He’s someone you just want to continue being around. His story touched a number of us this week and the emotion I felt when he had the opportunity to carry the torch was just overwhelming. I applied a couple times to be a part of the torch relay, but this was by far the best way to take part.

My hope is that his 15 minutes of fame continue well beyond because if you have the opportunity to be near him, you will understand how we should all lead our lives. Great inspiration as we near the Olympics.

We did this video over the summer, before Twitter lists was introduced. Regardless, a good basic understanding of how you should tweet. Why people tweet came from a Pear Analytics report released in August.

In early January this year I received a Facebook message from someone I hadn’t heard from since high school. When I read the message, it made me feel worse about the cold winter day that was already making me feel crappy. It was an invitation to organize our 15-year high school reunion. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was a milestone year.

That night, I went home to check out a new show I had read about on the Inside the CBC blog called Being Erica. Being someone interested in social media I fanned Erica Strange on Facebook and was excited to check it out.

Ironically, the first episode that night was about Erica Strange going to her 15-year high school reunion. The premise of the show is that Strange travels in time with the help of her “therapist” to address her regrets. They even play music from each era when she goes back. I became hooked with the very first episode and it amazes me on every time I watch how much I identify with the character because of the great story lines.

Every week, some insightful quotes also are part of the dialogue. Perfect for posting on Twitter and Facebook. Here are some I’ve done:

“Act the way you’d like to be & soon you’ll be the way you act.” Leonard Cohen but #beingerica said Bob Dylan

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.” Winston Churchill #beingerica

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” Elvis Presley

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Galileo #beingerica

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” Albert Camus #beingerica

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” CS Lewis #beingerica

“Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it…” Marshall McLuhan

My one criticism of the show though is given in a time that “unfriend”  is the Oxford word of the year, why hasn’t Being Erica included even a passing reference to social media, especially Facebook? Think about how many times this year you’ve talked about something you saw on Facebook or even how it changed the dynamics of your relationships. For a show that brilliantly uses social media, it should also make it into the dialogue at some point. If has and I’ve missed it, let me know.

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.

When a friend suggested that I use my last name in the title of my new blog, I wasn’t convinced that I should. The only other time that I had used my name that way was to set a birth date for my stray dog Autumn by adding “ ’s birthday” to the calendar on the date that fall starts.

After thinking about it for a while “where to begin” popped in my head because I kept hearing how intimidated people are with social media. While this blog is for public relations practitioners who want to use more social media in their activities, anyone with an interest in social media should get something from it because it’s about everyday stuff.

Using “Begin” was also fitting because my whole life whenever someone saw my family name spelled out, they’ve never pronounced it like the English word “begin” (the preferable pronunciation should you not be French). In fact, when I pronounce it in English, I’m almost always asked to spell it out. Great analogy for social media: it’s human nature to make things more complicated than they are.

While there’s technology involved and generally some etiquette and norms, it’s really just about conversations and if you’re not afraid to talk to people, you shouldn’t be afraid to get involved in social media.

A nice twist none-the-less to my name because every single day there’s something new to learn in social and my colleagues and I often feel like the Carpenters’ song suggests “We’ve only just begun.”

Diane Bégin currently works in corporate communications for a PR agency in Toronto. She has been an active member of the Canadian Public Relations Society since 1999.

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.