Marty shares with OPRP listeners how the Chamber has moved from a static website to a more dynamic online presence. One of his primary communication tools now is the Salt Lake Chamber Blog, an effort he launched for the Chamber in December 2009.

Marty Carpenter, director of communication and marketing for the Salt Lake Chamber

Pete and Mark talk with Marty about his experience in moving from a static website to a content management driven site. They also discuss the other social media channels being used by the Salt Lake Chamber, from Facebook to Twitter and video sharing on YouTube and Vimeo.

The discussion underscores what the Online PR Podcast is all about – combining technology with communication and revolutionizing how marketers and public relations practitioners do their jobs.

1. What is digital public relations?

2. How to effectively manage lead generation online

Digital Public Relations

Pete discusses his definition of digital public relations and how it’s different from traditional public relations.

Lead Generation

Mark and Pete talk about using online tools for business development and effective lead generation.

• Public relations services that connect PR professionals with journalists
• Grader.com
• Virtual social networks and real-life social networks

PR Services

Mark and Pete first review a handful of services aimed at connecting reporters who need people to interview and contribute to stories with public relations professionals who represent companies, organizations and individuals.

Pete talks about his experience with ProfNet by PR Newswire, and Help A Reporter Out (HARO) which was recently acquired by Vocus.

The newest such service is NewsBasis. Pete is checking it out now.

Grader.com

Following up on a previous Online PR Podcast topic of discussion – the social media audit – Pete and Mark discuss the suite of tools available to public relations and marketing pros at Grader.com.

Created by the talented team at HubSpot, Grader.com provides tools to help you measure your:

• Website
• Google alerts
• Press releases
• Facebook page
• Blog
• FourSquare
• Book
• Twitter account
• Calls-to-action
• LinkedIn profile

Virtual Social Networks

Finally, Mark and Pete discuss a concept from Paul Adams’ SlideShare presentation, The Real Life Social Network v2. Paul works in the UX team at Google and spends a lot of time researching and talking with people about how they use social media.

Mark addresses the concept of having someone in one of your social network groups – like old college friends – post and tag you in a photo that you’d prefer people in another social network – like the soccer team you coach – not be able to see. This is something that Facebook isn’t very good at filtering. But neither are any of the other social networking services out today.

Some other key findings from the comScore study include:

Mark and Pete’s discussion also includes the importance of carefully identifying the target audience for a website and measuring how well the site meets its goals and objectives. If the site isn’t accomplishing what it was designed to do, then course corrections are necessary.

Most often, building websites is not a one-and-done type of project. Rather, web development is a living, breathing and changing process.

Social Media Audit

A social media audit, as Pete and Mark discuss, is a tour of online properties that could include some level of engagement from a company or organization. The platforms to review are a:

• Blog,
• Facebook page,
• Twitter account,
• YouTube channel; and a
• LinkedIn group.

These are the foundational elements of today’s social media engagement. You may also look for a Flickr account and photostream if the brand or product is visual in nature.

What level of activity is there for your company, or a competitor, or a client?

Also, be sure to measure sentiment on all the channels. Are there negative comments posted on Twitter or in Facebook? If so, be sure you have a plan for addressing those criticisms.

Setting a Vanity URL in Facebook

Pete and Mark also discuss the importance of representing your brand in Facebook, which now boasts more than 500 million users.

Companies ought to have a presence on Facebook. Mark and Pete discuss ways companies can get dozens if not hundreds of people on Facebook to say they ‘like’ your company page by starting first with employees and team members, clients, colleagues and even family and friends.

Once you have 25 people who ‘like’ your Facebook page, you visit Facebook.com/username to set your vanity URL for your page. Keep in mind you can only set this username once and the only way to change it (right now) is to delete it and start over. So be sure you name it correctly the first time.

In case you mistakenly set your personal URL to be the URL you wanted for your brand, you’ll have to first change your personal URL, then set your page URL as desired.

Right now you can only change your personal vanity URL once. To do so, login to your Facebook account and go to https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php.