I’m usually pretty good at including links in my blog posts (as I advise any of my clients to do) but surprisingly, I can’t find much about a topic that has been very near and dear to me recently – advising businesses on how to effectively leverage their media coverage and other news to their targeted audiences.

Myself included, I believe that PR professionals should take a hard look at how we are conducting business. Too often the end result of our efforts are in the form of a “clip report” listing out all of the media hits we’ve received for the month or targeted campaign. Although media coverage is an essential part of what we do, it is only the beginning to an end.

As a result I’ve come up with “5 Steps to Effectively Leverage Your Media Coverage”:

1 – Gain Organizational Buy-In - It is so important that the most influential departments of an organization (not just marketing and sales) understand the value of passing along successful media coverage to their targeted audiences. These departments don’t need to create new ways to communicate with their important audiences, they just need to understand the value in “merchandising” these stories to such audiences. By doing so your entire organization is hedging your PR spend bet by ensuring these audiences have seen the coverage…directly from you.

2 – Customize Your Distribution – Once you have buy-in from the most influential departments (i.e., sales, marketing, customer service, HR, IT, IR, etc.) you need to make sure the materials you are arming them with are customized for their specific needs. For example, HR might prefer to send something out to the employees via an email while sales might prefer some speaking points about the coverage since they typically meet face-to-face or over the phone. In order to support the entire organization, you must customize your correspondence accordingly.

3 – Designate a Department Contact - It is one thing to arm a department with the right tools to effectively communicate with their respective targeted audiences, it is another thing to assume they know what to do with these tools and/or will use them at all. As a result, you must have a point of contact within each department who takes ownership of this communications strategy. Someone who can train, advise and measure how effective such outreach was within each department.

4 – Measure Your Impact - Building on point #3…you must develop the appropriate mix of measurements that are consistent with you management team’s expectations. Typically this is a blend of quantitative and qualitative measurements. Quantitative might be tracking how many people each member of your department reached out to with these tools – via email, phone, in-person, etc. Qualitative might be some anecdotal feedback you received from your targeted audience about the coverage.

5 – Report to Key Management – Once you’ve discovered the right mix of measurements for this program, you have to ensure that the executive teams are able to see how such a program is being implemented across your entire organization. In addition, they have to see how effective such outreach is for the overall goals of the organization. Seeing that you’re creating a minimal amount of work and leveraging existing means of communications…they’ll likely see the value of such a program.

I’m sure I’ve left out some of the important steps or details but I believe we as communications professionals need to remember that the validation we create with media coverage is only as good as the number of targeted audiences that see it. What am I missing? As always, thanks for reading and/or joining the conversation!

It’s time to put my foot down and just say it…social media isn’t a savior for businesses. It isn’t going to be that secret potion that pulls us all right out of this recession nor will it compensate for a business model that…well, wasn’t going anywhere anyway. It’s not to say that social media can’t supplement your business communications, marketing, customer service and many other departments. I just want to be clear that it isn’t for everyone BUT if you take the appropriate steps it can be an amazingly powerful move for your business.

It is my belief that most business professionals (or consumers for that matter) don’t fully understand what it means to participate across these social media platforms. As I continue to work with businesses in this space I continue to hear the same song and dance, “we’re using Twitter and Facebook but think they’re a waste of time for our business” – if they’re even on the platforms as most are standing cautious to determine if it is right for their business (which is actually a better move than just jumping in unprepared).

WARNING: If you’re drinking the social media Kool-Aid, you may not like what I’m about to say…social media isn’t for everyone.

I’ve put together a brief checklist of 5 considerations any business professional (or organization) should make before make before moving any time, $ or resources over to social media. Here we go:

• Are your audiences participating: The simple fact is that if your audiences aren’t participating in social media…you and your organization shouldn’t spend time, $ or resources on a social media program. However, if any are there, so should you
• Plan, plan, plan: Quoting the great Paul “Bear” Bryant (former University of Alabama football coach) – “Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised at how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it is easy to beat most folks.” Like anything else in business…without a strategy, plan and measurement your attempt at social media will fail
• Get ready for the good, bad & ugly: If you decide that participating in conversation is important to you and your organization…get ready for the good, bad and ugly. You can’t block negativity within social media (i.e., delete negative comments on your blog), you can only hope to neutralize or if you’re lucky convert them into positives
• Consistency is crucial: The single biggest way to fail at social media and dig yourself a deeper hole than not participating at all would be to start a blog, launch profiles and then have your audiences experience the deadly silence. Consistent participation is crucial
• Gain executive buy-in: Even if you’re ready to make the move into the social media conversations, are your executives comfortable and supportive of your efforts? If not, you need to ensure C-level buy-in before making any next steps

I’d love to hear what advice you provide to business professionals looking to get into or fine tune their social media program or what you practice yourself. In addition, I welcome each of you to join my new Twitter profile (SM4Biz) which will be focused on this exact subject – helping business professionals understand, plan and participate in social media.

This morning I was once again reminded that not everyone truly understands the value of social media – transparency, authenticity, 2-way, personal, etc. Last night I decided to go against the grain a little and visited two of my favorite tools to find people on Twitter – Twellow & Mr. Tweet. I found many that “seemed” to be folks that I should be engaging with. They were in PR or marketing, jouralists, social media hounds, etc. WRONG!

Once again, I was bombarded by many (probably 75% of the people I just started following) who sent me automatic direct messages. I’d list them all here but I’m considering starting a new advocacy site called StopAutoDMs (www.stopautodms.com – not yet mine).

Then I read this great post from Mike Doyle at ChicagoNow.com entitled, “Four Reasons Why Bloggers on Twitter Shouldn’t Pimp Facebook.” It reminded me of a post I made back in March entitled, “The New Era of Template Personalization.”

Perhaps I’m a little set in my ways about this, but I just think there is a black and white way we should be acting here on social media. Do you agree? Disagree? As always, I’d love to hear from you on this one!