Changing Relationships with Audiences:
Social Media & Two-Way Conversations
Prepared for PR group and its partners
By: Jason Silverstein / Jan. 23, 2009

Presentation Notes
• Many ideas build on others; I have
learned from many
• Photographs mine unless noted in
appendix (Creative Commons)
• Presentation to be posted on
jasonsilverstein.com and
observerinteractive.com

intro: information & trust
First, put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. Then act.

Theme: Pace of Change
The pace of change in
information and supporting
technologies today -- across
industries and geographies --
is nothing short of an
industrial revolution.

Media

Automobiles

Banking

Implications
• Pace favors nimble & technical
• Customers favor openness
• Costs of business / real & imagined
• Information increases competition
• New biz models must occur

Theme: Online Communities are People
Social and online media best
practices are built on familiar
offline principles of basic
human interactions.

Let’s have a thought experiment.

Would you trust this (tired-looking) guy?

Now, let’s change the thought.
(Yes, let’s!)

Today’s Speaker: Jason Silverstein
• VP, Interactive Media
largest news organization in the Carolinas
• Seven years at
One of internet’s top brands
• Formerly at &
• Constant knowledge seeker - started
businesses and has three degrees
• E-mail: jason@jasonsilverstein.com or
jsilverstein@observerinteractive.com

What Changed?
• Different information & presentation
• Known Associations
• Context understood
• Appears more credible (trust?)
• Contact information available

Making Interactions Trustworthy
All successful on- or off-line conversations
should be:
• Authentic
• Verifiable
• Relevant

what is social media?

“Social media are primarily
Internet- and mobile-based
tools for sharing and discussing
information among human
beings...” - Wikipedia

Additional Qualifiers
• Can be product or feature
• Anonymous vs. Verifiable
• General and/or Targeted
• Business and/or Consumer
• Typically “unicast” vs. “broadcast”

Categories of Social Media Users*
• Creators - the publishers
• Critics - commenters
• Collectors - RSS, taggers
• Joiners - network joiners
• Spectators - readers/watchers
• Inactives - online, not social
* Via BusinessWeek, as is graphic on following page: http://www.businessweek.com/
magazine/content/07_24/b4038405.htm

Different Interests in the Same Place

What is successful
social media?

Success for Today’s Discussion
• Each person/company must define success
• Influence (one measure)
• Can you shape the thinking of your
customers / fans / audience?
• Engagement (one measure)
• Can you be a “real” person? (accountability)
• Are you increasing customer interaction(s)?
Sales? Etc.?

Success for the big players *
• 100M videos/day on YouTube (!)
• 346M people reading blogs/day
• 3M “tweets”/day
• 150M users total on Facebook
• 63% twitter users are male
* Source: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-s

A Note of Caution (!)
• None of the big sites are profitable
• Gathering audience
• YouTube bandwidth/day - estimated
$1,000,000
• Twitter just hired its first product
manager
• flickr a loss leader for Yahoo!

changing media landscape
What are media companies to do? Listen to your audience!

New Audience, New Attitudes
“If the news is that
important, it will find me.”
“Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On”
- New York Times.
(Emphasis above on “find me” is mine.)

Newspapers

RSS / Mobile / Niche

Radio (Programmed)

TV News

Trusted Brands
• “Short” window of opportunity - TBD time
• Still needed (remember “verification”?)
• Brand affinity not what it used to be;
accelerating with web / “pace of change”
• Some making great investments; other
struggling with culture

media in another definition

Changing Web is Changing Entertainment
• Phases of Engagement
• Walled Garden (CompuServe)
• Portal
• Search
• Community
• Economies of Scale / Distribution

TV Shows

Path of TV
• Broadcast Networks
• Cable, then Satellites
• VCRs, then DVDs
• VOD
• DVR
• Internet TV

Books

Movies

Music

Forget What You Know About Media
• Broadcasting is moving toward live
events quickly
• HD/digital changes TV
• If it’s able to be digitized, it will be
• Time shifting
• Two-way is the new “normal”
• Net changes all paths (next slide)

power of social media

#motrinmoms

The Aftermath
• Immediate and swift reaction
• Demands from users
• Commercial removed
• Main website taken down
• Apology
• Lesson learned about online responses

FedEx/Memphis & Ketchum
• PR rep on way to FedEx visit
• Updates Twitter with Memphis remark
• FedEx finds, takes offense to update
• Irony: PR rep to discuss social media
• Lessons: 1) It’s easy to listen/be heard
& 2) Professional / Personal

AdAge’s Marketer of the Year
iPhone screenshot courtesy
http://dogearnation.com/

LASIK
• Our dev manager updated status
• Included LASIK
• Replies back from unconnected
people
• Lesson: Mine data for your use, add
value

getting started

Internally
• Identify who and what
• How will you use your brand?
• Separate personal from professional
where possible (execs can not)
• Be ready to see the bad, the worse,
and the ugly
• Be cool

listen to your audience

Externally
• Don’t react (aka “Be Cool,” again)
• Pace is the trick
• Find your friends, connect
• Super friends take up for you
• “You can’t win them all.”

managing info overload

Finding Tools Right for You
• Google Reader
• Technorati
• Twitter searches
• Social bookmarking sites
• more...

in conclusion

• Pace of Change
• Social media = offline mirror
• Audiences choose convenience over
quality most of the time
• Media world dictated by users
• Step out there!

additional info

Pace of Change influences
These books and online research have influenced my thinking.

Social media influence
These books and online research have influenced my thinking.

Credits
• Image with Wikipedia definition - kara by john
curley - http://flickr.com/photos/jay_que/
2501197232/
• Image for “Automobiles” - IMG_7055 by
i_am_lee_sam - http://flickr.com/photos/leesam/
3207747285/
• Book covers from Amazon.com.
• All other images (c) Jason Silverstein.
• Other sources cited throughout.