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Last week, PR professionals from across Michigan attended the PRSA 2010 Michigan Conference, PRevolution. Attendees heard a keynote by Peter Shankman, a successful entrepreneur, author, PR firm owner and founder of HARO, one of the biggest game-changers in public relations in recent years. Peter has been starting businesses, working in PR and navigating through the social media space for years and shared four simple rules to remember when communicating on the social web.

Rule 1: Be Transparent. Since content started living online, information has decided it wanted to be free. Traditional media outlets no longer control news and the dissemination of information is happening in real-time, shared via social media channels. The concept of a company successfully hiding less-than favorable news is no longer plausible, so it’s more important than ever to be out in front of sharing both good news and bad. If you screw up, get in front of it, admit it, apologize and move on. The quickest way to get a negative story blown up into a bigger deal and spread to a wider audience is to try to hide it.

Rule 2: Be Relevant. Information is coming at us in so many different ways, it’s a huge challenge to stay relevant. As PR professionals, it is our job to tell our company’s or client’s story to the people that need to hear it. Only the interesting tidbits will stand out in the constant stimulus stream, so finding creative ways to share a message is key.

Ask your customers how they want their information. Plain and simple. Social media offers an opportunity to talk directly to them, so use it to find out how they consume information, how they like to experience content and then give it to them that way. People love to be “finders” online and when we discover something cool or interesting, we share it with our networks. Be relevant by providing good stuff to talk about.

Rule 3: Be brief. Attention spans are short, and the window of opportunity to grab that attention is somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half seconds. Yes, 2.5 seconds, about the amount of time it takes to read a tweet, status update or text message. These short messages are teasers, meant to hook a reader and bring them in for more. The key to success here: learn to write.

No matter how much things change, a well-written message is still going to be the most important tool for telling a story and sharing accurate information. PR professionals need to be great writers and have the ability to give information completely and concisely. Even more, much of the world is reading everything via mobile devices, so brevity is even more important on a few-inch screen. Don’t clutter your messaging with links and corporate when all you really need to do is get to the point.

Rule 4: Be top of mind. This is simple to do and fundamental for success. We remember the things we experience that are interesting, easy to understand and relate to what matters in our lives. Remember, social media is still a means to talk to other human beings, so we’ve got to remember to relate to each other that way. Staying top of mind is as easy as staying in touch, wishing a happy birthday on facebook and talking to your audience rather than at them.

The best relationships between PR professionals and reporters are those that are ongoing and mutually beneficial because both sides feel they can reach out at any time.  If you’re practicing good media relations, you know what your targeted reporters are covering, what’s happening in your industry and making yourself or your clients available to be  helpful sources for stories. By simply keeping in touch and nourishing a relationship, you’ll be top of mind when that reporter needs information you can provide.

At the end of the day, online relationships are merely extensions of real-life relationships. Social media is about trust. If you become a source people care about, followers and friends will read and share what you post.

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Additionally, I want to address one more thing. A post popped up over at PR Cog’s blog earlier this week, taking some out-of-context soundbites tweeted during this presentation and doing its best to take them and turn it into an example of bad or misguided advice for PR professionals at the conference. The author titled it “No More Kool-Aid” and seems to think the attendees drank a little too much. I left a comment, asking the author to read the solid information and helpful reminders that were really shared by Peter and not just the quirky sayings with “tweetable” rhetorical impact. The post made a good point about thinking critically about the things we hear and read and not to consume information as truth simply because it comes from a popular name like Peter Shankman.

I got a little frustrated reading the post for several reasons. First, in the interest of transparency, Peter is a friend of mine and I think he’s proven through success in business and an incredible social media following that he does know what he’s talking about. Second, because I talked with a lot of people the rest of the day at the conference and they all had positive takeaways from Peter’s keynote. Each speaker I saw in the breakout sessions that followed mentioned specifically “you heard about this from Peter earlier, and here’s an example of why that works” in examples of successful PR case studies. And, third, because this post was put together based on PR Cog’s evaluation of what Peter must have said based on following a twitter stream with limited use of a hashtag from a presentation he didn’t attend in person.

This point is important because maybe the collective we (conference attendees) need to be better about sharing the solid information, not just the witty soundbites. Let’s remember that if we’re going to share what we’re hearing with those not in attendance, we have to paint an accurate picture of what is happening and give context for and explanation of the information. I’ll take this challenge upon myself for next time and hope others will too.

I believe I’m among the attendees of this conference that felt like I received value from this speech. Or, maybe I just like the Shankman kool-aid. Even if that’s the case, I thought it was delicious enough to share.

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