Transcript for PRSA Yankee Social Media Skills Workshop

Listen here

Doug Haslam: This is Doug Haslam of Topaz Partners. I'm here with Chip Griffin of Custom Scoop and we're speaking with the Yankee chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. We have a Social Media Workshop today, I'm blogging and podcasting.

What we wanted to do today is create kind of an uber commenting here, as we go around and get comments from each of the people at the workshop today and what you're doing with Social Media, if you're new to it, what you hope to do with Social Media. Or maybe even what your main questions are that still need to be answered.

So, we'll just start with here. Just say your name and who you're with.

Elizabeth LaRocha : Yes, my name is Elizabeth LaRocha and I'm Community Relations Manager with PS&H, we're an electric utility in the state of New Hampshire.

This is new to us and I'm here to see how we might be able to maybe jazz up our communications with the public, particularly with the fact that there's less local media these days. We're wondering if we can create more of a forum for ourselves. Perhaps put podcasts and things of that nature on our websites, and make them more interactive and interesting.

Jane: Hi, I'm Jane. I'm from New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, and I'm the Communications Administrator there. We are not for profit, we are tax-exempt, so we're non-profit. We concentrate a lot on educating the public on home ownership; we do a lot of first-time homebuyer seminars, teaching the public on the dos and don'ts of buying a home. So, I think a podcast might actually be a great idea for our seminars.

Allison Bram: I'm Allison Bram and I work with New Hampshire Higher Education and we mainly work with students and parents. So, we're trying to figure out how to contact them in not only a way that works for the students, but also the parents can feel comfortable that we're using these different types of media.

Marcie Haite : My name is Marcie Haite and I work with Biss and Barcelona, it's a PR firm in Bearington, New Hampshire. We work with a lot of authors and entrepreneurs. So, I'm looking to hopefully spice up some authors, mainly their websites and get the word out there about them and about what they do.

Doug: Do you have any ideas about a technique you might use going forward?

Marcie: We use a lot of podcasts, but we pay other people to do it. So we're hoping to bring that in-house a little bit more and get more active with blogging.

Beck Pavinper: Beck Pavinper with Burgess Advertising in Portland. I'm basically here to prove that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

[laughter]

Beck Pavinper: What we are going to do is reach a younger demographic for our clients, and I think this is a great way to do it.

Tracy Hatch: I'm Tracy Hatch and I'm with the Nashua Chamber of Commerce and we're looking at new ways to reach out to our members and start some dialogue going back and forth. And, in particular, we're starting a new off-shoot organization focused on young professionals and thinking this is a great way for us to get that message out to them and encourage them to become more involved.

Susan Noon: Hi, I'm Susan Noon with the New Hampshire Bar Foundation, I'm the Program and Communications Director. We make grants to non-profit organizations that provide civil legal services for disadvantaged people or education about the law and the courts.

And we have many agencies in the state that provide services, but they don't necessarily know about each other and what they do. So, we're looking for ways to help them connect with one another, and this might work out.

Annette Curmin: My name's Annette Curmin from Daniel Webster College and I've actually had podcasts, and blogging on my goals for next year - well, for this coming year.

I was thinking about podcasts, maybe on a monthly basis with different members of the Daniel Webster College Community and I'm not quite sure what we would do with blogging, but I could see where we have a lot of young alumni and they would probably take to this like a duck to water.

Stephanie Skylar : I'm Stephanie Skylar and I'm with Unitel, which is a gas and electric company that serves New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts. And I was here today to learn a lot more about social media because our company has been the subject of a lot of blogs. And I want to understand a little bit more about how we can handle that and what we can do, moving forward.

Also, I'm a sponge today and I've gathered a lot of information. I'm looking forward to researching and understanding best practices and understanding where social media is best utilized.

Retha Fielding: My name is Retha Fielding, I'm a private contractor. I'm interested in how we can use this tool for community relations, especially for higher education clients, because it's really, really hard to reach external audiences. I do feel also today that I've begun to learn a foreign language.

[laughter]

Pat Ross: I'm Pat Ross, I'm with Measured Progress and we produce state level standards based testing. And from what I can surmise, the main thing we would use a blog for would be to facilitate conversation between state level clients, but also right down to the teacher and building level, sharing information about how to administer tests and the like.

On the other end of it, I was just telling my co-worker here that part of our media monitoring is now showing people who have done temp work for us, scoring and the like around the country, talking about it on their personal blogs. I did media in quotes because it certainly opened my eyes to what media always was to me versus what it is now.

Elka Auburg: I'm Elka Auburg, also from Measured Progress. We are currently working on our first podcast. We're doing a conference in July, and we want to give people a glimpse - it's professional development for teachers - we want to give people a glimpse of what they can expect during that conference. So we are going to send out emails about it and include the podcasts and people can listen to it.

Doug: Great.

Tracy Messer: Hi Doug, I'm Tracy Messer from the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire and we work with children and adults with disabilities. This is largely all new to me here, and I'm particularly interested in coming up with alternative forms of communication for people with different disabilities.

Tammy Boucher: Hi, I'm Tammy Boucher from Boucher Public Relations. I'm here today to learn about social media, it's not something I've known a lot about. Not only to learn it for myself, but also then to educate my clients about new ways to reach their target audiences, particularly now that most people are getting their news online. And also because my nine year old probably knows more about this than I do.

Audience: [laughs]

Isobel Parke: I'm Isobel Parke with the firm of Jackson Jackson & Wagner who specializes in behavioral public relations. And I'm fascinated because the possibilities of social networking is really changing behavior. But on the other hand I'm equally frustrated by my lack of the technical understanding of what's going on. So it has brought me to a new level of confusion.

Audience: [laughs]

Doug: We were hoping to simplify it.

Isobel: A higher level of confusion is better than a low level.

Audience: [laughs]

Doug: Okay, you made me feel better. Okay.

Sue Chadwick: Hi, my name is Sue Chadwick and I'm a freelance writer. I'm currently writing a health column called "The doctor is In" for North Shore Medical Group and it would be really fun to have podcasts of the doctors speaking as opposed to me interviewing them and just writing it out.

I have harnessed the power of the blogosphere before with the knitting community and the whole genre of knit lit which I didn't even know had existed prior to promoting an author of the fridaynightknittingclub.com.

Celine Gelbart: Hi, my name is Celine Gelbart and I'm with the Emeas Institute in Nashville, New Hampshire. It's a corporation, non-profit corporation and it provides mental health counselling with a spiritual dimension. I'm trying to... I'm interested in the podcasting aspect because I believe that people who are looking for mental health services probably would want to hear someone's voice, it would probably be a draw. I'm particularly interested in that aspect of it.

Julia: Hi, my name is Julia. I'm with New Hampshire Audubon which is an independent state-wide conservation non-profit. I'm here primarily because I'm interested in ways to allow our members to connect with the organization and interact with each other. I think that both the podcasting and the blogging would give us a good way to do that and also to get the word out to potential new members.

Susan Turbid: Hi, I'm Susan Turbid, I work in marketing communications at Northeast Credit Union. This year we're trying to kick off financial education workshops and we think this is a perfect venue to look at in the future for recording these workshops so we can reach more of our community members and our members.

Kim Sperry: I'm Kim Sperry with the Lakes Region Association. We are a regional tourism marketing organization. I'm here to learn more about social media and how we might assist our members in getting the word out as to what they do and also help potential visitors get more information about the Lakes Region and come here to visit.

Heidi Edwards-Dunn: Hi, I'm Heidi Edwards-Dunn from New Hampshire Small Business Development Center. And first I have to say I have read the "Friday Night Knitting Club".

Audience: [laughs]

Heidi: We work with business owners in New Hampshire, providing business counselling and educational programs for their entrepreneurs for business management progress. We are just starting to do e-learning on our website, and this would be a future step, a way for clients to communicate with us, and us to communicate with the greater New Hampshire business world.

Lisa Morrissette: Hi, I'm Lisa Morrissette, I'm the director of marketing for Northeast Credit Union. One of the new markets that we're reaching now to is the 'generation y' market and today I'm here to learn about whether or not these are the right tools to help us do so.

Stephanie McLoughlin: Hi Doug, I'm Stephanie McLoughlin. I just left Corporate America a few months ago and I'm starting my own small communications firm called "Savvy Communications". These things that we've talked about today are all things I've heard of before, but wanted to know more about how to do.

And the more I hear about them, the more I'm learning about them, the more hats are coming out of the closet that I'm feel like these things are appropriate to use, not only to promote my own business, but my clients' as well and some of the community organizations I'm involved with.

Doug: Excellent, thank you all. And congratulations, you are all now podcasters.

Audience: [laughs] [claps]