Yesterday Peter Shankman was back in Rochester again, this time speaking to a full room of mostly women at a breakfast event hosted jointly by RWN (Rochester Women's Network) and GRC-NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners). It was held at the Woodcliff Hotel, which was a perfect setting located east of the city on one of our higher points overlooking the area on a much needed beautiful, sunny morning.
Now I had the privilege to hear Peter speak when he came to visit last October at a luncheon put on by our local PRSA chapter. Yesterday's talk was titled ""Social Media - Be better or take up residence on the Isle of Mediocrity', which was very similar to what he reviewed with us in October. However, I was still highly engaged and entertained by his lively, hour-long discussion. He again didn’t use any slides or video. He even got rid of the mike, which was too loud and poor quality.
He started out by telling us that he arrived the night before and tweeted that he was flying into the Rochester airport and if anyone would pick him up and give him a ride he would buy them dinner. Well one of my friends, Kelly, known as @craftyb on Twitter, responded and greeted Peter with a small balloon sculpture of a skydiver. For those that don't know, Peter's Twitter handle is @skydiver. He thought it was so cool and had the balloon skydiver with him that morning.
Peter is the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc a boutique Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. He is perhaps best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in just a year has become the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline.
It's difficult to summarize all that Peter shared with us, but as before he focused on these 4 basic rules that were the key points that I believe he
wanted us to walk away with.
Transparency
– This is the "new black". Today we all need to be more open. In the long run it will save us. We are more apt to buy from companies today that we can connect with, such as those that have a CEO who blogs.
Relevancy – Make it relevant to your audience. Ask them what information they want and how they want to receive it.
Brevity
– Keep your messages short. The average person’s attention span is now
2.7 seconds. That’s about as long as it takes to read a text message or
tweet. Back in the 80’s it was 3 minutes, the time it took to watch a
music video! Learn how to write.
Persistance – Make use of today’s social media tools
and put yourself out there. Get on Facebook and connect with your
network. Check to see who has a birthday today and send them a
greeting. I remembered Peter's advice this morning and checked my Facebook birthdays and actually found 4 of my friends that have birthdays today. What's the chance of that? I wrote all of them a Happy Birthday greeting on their wall.
Peter closed with telling us that social media is really
all about having someone else do your PR for you, whether it’s good or
bad. So if you want positive buzz, you need to gain your customers’
trust, focus on customer service and give off good karma.
Thanks Peter for visiting Rochester again. Yes, he was promoting those pokens again as well. I got my Kitty from him the first time we met. One of his next stops he mentioned with be SXSW in Austin. Thanks also to my friend Kelly Mullaney for sharing the photos she took at the event that I've included here. You can see all the photos Kelly took here on Flickr! I forgot my camera again! Finally thanks to all the women who helped put on a great event.
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Posted by: vanessa schultz | March 25, 2010 at 02:43 AM