Business Insight Zone

One of the advantages of using social media for business is that you get to meet all sorts of nifty people who share interests with you on both personal and professional levels. Case in point: Jessica Flynn of Red Sky Public Relations in Boise.

I got to know Jessica a little bit from reading her blog and from talking with her on Twitter. Among other things, I found out that we both went to the University of Texas, and that we share an abiding love for the croquetas at Bar Gernika in Boise.

Like me, Jess brings a journalist’s background to the business world; also like me, she spends a lot of time thinking about how social media is changing the business landscape. Since she’s a P.R. professional, her particular areas of focus are (1) how social media can enable a more enlightened practice of public relations, and (2) how the Web is altering the traditional journalistic media.

Jess was nice enough to answer some questions I posed to her about her views on social media. Read on . . .

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How did you begin using social media in your professional efforts?

During my career as a journalist I used blogs to search for leads and find story contacts. That’s how I initially experienced the power of the social web — and the immediate sharing of opinions and information. The disappearance of the traditional news cycle and the move to news shared at the speed of thumbs. We began utilizing social media in earnest in our public relations efforts when we launched our agency a year ago. As communication professionals, I feel it is our duty to stay at the forefront of where the industry is moving. If you don’t engage and exist in the social media space yourself, you are not able to advise clients and develop strategy. I was fortunate to have a group of early-adopter tech friends who shared the KoolAid with me.

What do you and your firm use the social media for?

We utilize social media in three main ways: to promote our company through establishing and maintaining an online presence for us as individuals and therefore our agency; to monitor for industry trends and breaking news that provides opportunity or potential crisis for our clients; and to grow the reach and reputation of our clients through engaging in the social web.

All of our staff maintain Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles, and several of us blog regularly.

Whether for yourselves or on behalf of your clients, what steps do you take to monitor social media conversations?

I have tried out several tools in Beta as they emerged — Twitter is great for giving you links and feedback on the latest tools available. Right now my favorites are TweetDeck as a platform for monitoring conversations. I have it set up to monitor for several client names and trends, and it has enabled me to place three stories/reviews for a technology client by tracking conversations and responding immediately. A colleague — Tac Anderson at New Comm Biz — turned me onto TechRigy, which is the latest software solution to monitor and measure social media. We’ve been using it for several weeks for a Fortune 50 company and a technology client and have been impressed with the measurement — sentiment analysis, trend comparisons, geographic analysis, theme detection, authority measurement, demographic, and geographic analysis. I also love my Google Reader — it is one of the key tools I encourage clients to utilize when I’m asked “How do you have time for it all?” I subscribe to industry blogs for PR/Marketing to keep up on the latest trends and industry blogs for clients to look for opportunities, and input my Google Alerts into my Reader as well.

You’ve been in journalism and P.R. long enough to see lots of evolution as first the Internet and now the social media have grown. What has changed for P.R. pros because of social media, and what has stayed the same?

What has changed is the transparency and PR’s so-called gatekeeper role. No longer can PR pros consider themselves as gatekeepers. The gates are open. Conversations are occurring whether or not you (or the organization you represent) chose to be involved. Social media has broken down the walls. In a way – I believe it has brought PR back to its true core. It is about communication and relationships again. Now it is about acting as a conduit for information. Finding the right channels to reach the people who want to hear your story. It’s also made relationships even stronger — bridged the gap in some ways between media and PR people. Made each other seem more human. I don’t believe that in our profession you can have a professional social media profile and a personal one — they are one and the same. Social media has made us all human again and able to communicate in a way that is intensely more personal and more meaningful.

Also — it has forced a lot of PR people out of their comfort zone. For the first time since the inception of the Internet, PR people have been forced to either get on the “bus” or get left behind in the dirt. Grow and evolve or go extinct.

About a year ago I got to visit Boise for the first time in 20+ years, and I was impressed with how cosmopolitan it seemed. That said, it hardly has the reputation of Silicon Valley or Austin for technology adoption. What’s it like being a social-media enthusiast where you live?

Hey! Entrepreneur.com thinks we’re the next Silicon Valley! Seriously, I don’t think you have to be a cosmopolitan-techno-hotbed in order to have a vibrant social media community. While Boise may be small, it is the very Word of Mouth culture that exists in communities like Boise that supports social media. There is a lack of pretense that makes the social media experience in Boise more approachable than it may be in larger cities.

And the beauty of social media is that, unlike other networking, there are no geographic boundaries. We are all on a virtual level playing field where my thoughts and opinions hold the same weight as those [of someone] in a larger city. It is about the quality of the conversation — not the size of the population. We handle clients and integrate social media strategies beyond our Idaho borders. I don’t have to be in a certain city to engage in conversations, initiate dialogue, monitor for a client’s share of voice, and craft a strategy to grow it — the world is now without borders. Those professionals engaging every day are the ones who will succeed — regardless of where they are.

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Thanks to Jess for sharing her thoughts. Be sure to check out her blog!