Facebook Word-of-Mouth Campaign :: ASCCA Trying Something New

Facebook is an interesting social media community. For ASCCA’s interests of connecting with college students, it seems like the natural community to engage. ASCCA wants college students to work as counselors, program staff and for internships. So, we’re trying something new to reach them.

ASCCA is going to run approximately 50,000 flyers a day, for three days, targeted at students from the following universities: University of Georgia, University of Florida, Troy State University, Montevallo, University of Alabama-Birmingham, University of North Alabama, University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) and Auburn University (Auburn).

This will give us over 150K impressions. Now, realistically, we’d like to run more - and target many more universities. But, the Facebook flyer program does have some limitations. I’ll discuss those. And, just so you’ll know, Camp ASCCA is not paying for this. A new tactic in our strategy of reaching students, I felt it best to cover this myself as a test. We’ll see how well it goes. The cost of this program equals about 1/2 of a week long campership. So, I thought it best to test the process, first. Still, that cost would be a small fraction of what we’d usually spend to advertise in college campus newspapers. More on that in a bit.

The image to your left is an example of one of the flyers. That is what students at UGA will see on Sunday through Tuesday when they log in to Facebook. It appears just below their lefthand menu. A nice placement, I think. Click the image and you’ll see all of our flyers. On Facebook, when students click the image, they are sent to a purpose built page on our site that offers greater detail. See ASCCA Public Relations Internships. In the future, I’d actually like to target the top 25 universities with PR programs. Maybe we will, still.

So, what are the limitations of the Facebook flyer program, as I see them? Well, currently you cannot target students beyond simply choosing a specific school, or schools. I find this a bit strange, since Facebook does have the demographic and lifestyle (interests) information of their audience. Ideally, I’d like to use that information to specifically target the students most likely to be interested in what ASCCA has to offer.

For instance, if we wanted to seek male counselors, I should be able to target a specific school, reach only males, and reach only those that have listed interests like: recreation, education, or even special education. Facebook is still relatively young and their flyers and advertising programs are still maturing. Right now, Facebook flyers are more of a broadcast tactic than a targeted one.

You might be wondering, “How effective is the Web for accomplishing ASCCA’s marketing and hiring needs?”

Today, Matt Rickman told me that he has yet to run a single ad in college newspapers during his counselor recruiting process for Summer ‘07. That’s remarkable. Even more remarkable, Matt shared that he is ahead of his annual hiring targets. He would usually start college newspaper ads in April. This year, he may not run any of them. So, why is that? What is different this year?

Although we have sketchy data upon which to base this claim, so far the difference seems to be our Web site. Yep, apparently the site is accomplishing the goal of reaching potential counselors - just as we hoped it would. We’ll poll the counselors and program staff this summer to see exactly how many actually found us online.

I’ll report back in a week or so to let you know how our experiment with Facebook went this time around. For now, let me hear from you. What do you think about this tactic? Do you have any suggestions about other processes we may undertake to reach potential interns?

Did you know that Camp ASCCA is in Facebook? If you are too, please go on over and “Friend” Camp ASCCA. This way you may keep up with what we’re doing all the time. Join the Camp ASCCA Facebook group, too.

William Murray, PRSA COO/President :: Chats with Students

Yesterday, our Style and Design class enjoyed a telephone interview with Mr. William Murray, the new COO / President of PRSA, the Public Relations Society of America.

The experience was enjoyed by the students very much. Mr. Murray was very kind and more than willing to take all of our questions. It lasted approximately fifty minutes. I want to thank Mr. Murray and Mr. Cedric Bess, who set up the interview, for making this possible for the students. We are very grateful.

I will wait to post about the interview until after my students have made their posts. I’ll be sharing the URLs of their blogs after the first posts. I don’t want to influence their opinions any more than I may already have done in our lead up to the interview and the follow up discussion after it concluded. You may view a list of the questions we pre-submitted for the interview. Not all were addressed, but the majority were covered.

Below is a letter I sent to Mr. Murray today. It outlines some suggestions for PRSA. As I said in the letter, unsolicited advice is cheap. I don’t know if any of it will be accepted, but I hope it is at least discussed among the PRSA staff.

Your comments, criticisms and suggestions will be appreciated.

Read more

Welcome Gary Schlee of Centennial College in Toronto to Social Media

Great news to report at the beginning of 2007. We have yet another college faculty member joining the exploration of social media.

Meet Gary Schlee (pronounced shlay), co-ordinator of the postgraduate Corporate Communications and Public Relations program at Centennial College in Toronto. (Gary’s blog - Class Act)

From the program’s description online:

Centennial has an enviable history of training highly competent junior communicators. In fact, we’ve been training corporate communications students since 1980!

And, so, our postgraduate program—introduced in 2000—draws on the strengths and reputation of the former two-year program. These deep roots in the communications community mean you can rely on the program’s well-earned reputation.

This tight, intensive program is geared toward students with strong writing skills, an appreciation of graphic communications, and the ability to manage various communications projects. (Source)

Please visit Gary’s blog - Class Act and welcome him online.

PRblogs.org Offers SimpleSMPR News Release Plugin

The free blog provider, PRblogs.org, is dedicated to providing blogs to all public relations students, educators and practitioners that wish to explore blogging. To that end, we also always try to provide the most appropriate tools to use within those blogs. Today marks a new addition to PRblogs.org.

To further the use of PRblogs.org for the purpose of learning, sharing and incorporating PR practices into blogging, we now offer the SimpleSMPR plugin from Shannon Whitley of PRX Builder.

So, today students, educators and practitioners may create a blog at PRblogs.org and experiment with social media releases.

Use the SimpleSMPR plugin by activating it in the Admin area. In addition, you may use the Viper007Bond.com Viper’s Video Quicktags to further enhance posts and releases with video from YouTube, Google Video and iFilm.

Beyond these tools, PRblogs.org also offers the use of Sidebar Widgets to make creation of a unique sidebar and custom blog.

Finally, regarding the SimpleSMPR releases, you may also download Shannon Whitley’s Media Tools to easily access and use the elements of releases created with the SimpleSMPR plugin.

The release announcing SimpleSMPR on PRblogs.org is available PRblogs.org. It was created with the SimpleSMPR plugin.

PRX Builder SMNR WordPress Plugin

Shannon Whitley, of PRX Builder, has released the first plugin specifically designed for the creation of a social media news release. SimpleSMPR WordPress Plugin Alpha Version 0.3.

I’m going to play with the plugin to create a release, but first I’ve simply placed the “sample release” Shannon provides in this post (see below).

First of all, congrats and thanks to Shannon for creating this plugin. I think it has potential for positive use.

I’m just going to jot down my thoughts, in no particular order, as I look at his plugin. I did this fast, so please forgive any errors.

This plugin is the first to format a post specifically for a release. Yes, the Structured Blogging Plugin may be adapted to accomplish this task. Also, the WP Default Post Content could be used to create a blog solely for releases and seeded with the appropriate code tags. Then, you edit the post as needed. That would take time, though.

Shannon has created a tool which will allow you to create the SMNR for your blog and also upload it to your PRX Builder account.

The plugin works much the same way the WordPress quicktags editor does and uses BBCode, of sorts. You highlight text and click a button to apply the tags like [body] and [multimedia], [quotes], [links] etc.

Shannon calls this the SMPR plugin and I’ll keep using SMNR as these releases are more for the release of news, in general, and not necessarily intended for the press. A small quibble for now, but it reminds us that in this early adoption process an agreed upon name is still in question.

For those worried about validation … The plugin/template uses tables. For some CSS/markup purists, this may cause some angst. Let’s remember that the plugin is in Alpha stage and this can be changed.

It might be nice to provide a unique CSS file for the release plugin just in case this PRX Builder plugin’s div class=”body” and p class=”body” conflict with someone’s existing CSS stylesheets. Don’t know if that is a big issue, but it may happen. Right? Also, it might be best to use this on a blog whose theme is one column.

OK, I’m out of time right now, but I’ll revisit this a bit later. Read on to see the sample release Shannon’s plugin generates. I think you did a great job, Shannon. Look forward to talking with you about it in the future. We’ll try to use it in class, too. Thanks!

P.S. I already see one glitch. When posted, the quicktags from the comments section show up above the !–more– tag. Interesting and strange. Remember, it is an Alpha version and therefore still under development.

PRblogs.org Now Offers Personalized Widgets

For some time, users of PRblogs.org have desired the ability to personalize their sidebars. Now, that is possible.

Widgets have arrived at PRblogs.org. This will add significant functionality and likely please existing and new users.

Fiddling with plugins, I’ve been able to get Widgets to work on PRblogs.org.

Pretty cool. Visit the example blog at widgets.prblogs.org to see how they look.

In the sidebar, you will see - from the top

• a text widget pointing to an image file,
• a text widget holding Constantin’s code to search for all PR blogs,
• the Google search widget,
• an RSS feed widget, and
• a del.icio.us feed widget.

Pretty nice, huh. Currently widgets only work on two themes - default and classic - but we’ll fix that over the coming week.

I’ll be going through and identifying themes that will work with widgets. All don’t, by the way, and it will likely take awhile for “all” to be made widget friendly. But, I’ll come back and identify the ones I find that work both with widgets and WordPress MU, the versions of WordPress we are running at PRblogs.org.

I’ll consider adding other widgets, if you wish to suggest them. I’m thinking that I’ll not put the PHP execute widget in as that is a security issue. But, there are others out there and I’m open to considering them, if you wish.

Update: Themes that work with widgets on PRblogs.org are now these…

• WordPress Classic
• WordPress Default
• whiteasmilk
• and more to come…

Josh Hallett Returns To Auburn University

For the second time, Josh Hallett has kindly offered to visit with our class and discuss social media and marketing.

Of late, Josh has been making big news with his blog. The senatorial campaign of Katherine Harris was outed by Josh regarding their outsourcing of blog relations tactics to India.

Last week, Josh kicked off his successful BlogOrlando unconference. That garnered many attendees and a lot of blog traffic, too. Technorati and del.icio.us for examples of the blog talk centered on blogorlando.

Josh understands blogs and social media. A frequent invited speaker at many conferences, Josh has built a popular online presence, including his blog - hyku. Hyku currently has a Technorati ranking, for example, of 8,315 (out of 60 million blogs) and he has 885 links from 281 blogs referring to his site.

We look forward to welcoming Josh back to the Loveliest Village on the Plains. Thanks, Josh, for your support and help over the years.

Update: Kristin Hill interviewed Josh and we’ll have that interview up on the Loveliest Village blog later this week.

FPRA Conference :: Live Blogging

The Florida Public Relations Association (FPRA) is heavy into their annual conference. Josh Hallett is heavy into live blogging the event on the FPRA blog.

Lest we forget, Josh and FPRA are the ones that launched FPRA Blog Week in April of 2006. Josh and FPRA have proven they are leading the pack when it comes to involving PR associations in social media.

Check out the blogging at FPRA. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Internship Available :: Traditional PR and Social Media

Great opportunity for an intelligent and creative student.

Camp ASCCA is looking for a new PR intern. Visit the site and check out the opportunity.

Want an excerpt? Listen to Jeremy Pepper, Weber Shandwick / San Francisco. He writes:

Public relations continues to evolve, and the best way to prepare for the changing PR is to have a balanced internship. Camp ASCCA is balanced in that it is traditional PR with media outreach, combined with blogging and podcasting - skill sets that are valuable to PR firms.

Plus, philanthropic internships always look good.

Please visit the Camp ASCCA internship info and download the information forms. There is even a podcast for you. Feel free to share this info with others, too.

Astroturfing :: Another Bane of Bad PR Practice

Astroturfing is “The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant ‘concerned citizens’, paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (AstroTurf? is fake grass; hence the term). See also sock puppet, tentacle. (Source)” according to one of the definitions posted on the AntiAstroturfing / HomePage in the NewPR/Wiki. This is a new project from Paull Young and Trevor Cook.

Here is Paull Young’s appeal for involvement. You may read more about the program at the NewPR/Wiki AntiAstroturfing.HomePage.

Seeking advocates that will join together in battling this unfortunate practice, Trevor Cook offers this post urging involvment.

Something that spurred on this campaign was Paull’s PRIA post about the sad practice undertaken by a PR advocacy group.

I wrote previously about how Kayak.com’s ad campaign is being called - if only by one person - an astroturfing effort. I don’t believe it is, but the idea intruiging.

Check out the new project from Paull and Trevor. I wish them luck with it. You can even get a cool button for your blog. Transparency requires that I share my discussions with Paull about the project. I helped a teeny bit on some technical issues and am not directly involved with the project. It is an issue that needs to be addressed, however, and I support their efforts.

Something I forgot to mention, who wants to guess how long it will take for someone to claim that this anti-astrofurfing campaign is actually an astroturfing campaign itself? It isn’t, of course, but the irony just struck me.

Social Media Internships :: Visit Katie and Danielle’s Online

The Camp ASCCA interns have been doing a wonderful job creating a new site highlighting the therapeutic recreation activities at ASCCA, Alabama’s Special Camp for Children and Adults. Visit the Camp ASCCA Journal to see their work. Do them a favor, too. Comment on one of their posts. This work deserves recognition.

From audio interviews to video excerpts from camp activities, Katie and Danielle have been posting to the site consistently for over 3 weeks, now. There are currently 21 podcasts, audio excerpts, on the site and 17 videos. As the camp picks up steam (with five full weeks of physically disabled summer camps to go) you can expect a lot more to appear in the Camp ASCCA Journal. Dont’ forget, the camp is open year-round and campers keep coming each and every month.

Katie (below) and Danielle (above) are doing their internship and gaining experience in creating multimedia content, writing and much more. An extra bonus of the internships, aside from the fun of being at camp, is that they are paid internships. Housing and meals are also provided.

Just go read their posts, listen to their podcasts and and view their videos and posts. I believe you’ll come away with the belief that they are particularly enjoying being with the counselors and campers very much. It is often the result that a work experience at Camp ASCCA can change your life. It may well send them off in new directions with a new outlook on life, let alone work or PR.

Please go visit Danielle and Katie’s work - and comment on a post or two. You’ll have fun and also make their day, too.

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