I spent a really informative day at the ‘PR & Digital Media’ conference yesterday. The day was crammed full of informative sessions on how to implement social media strategy, engage with followers in a more âhumanâ way, how to build a dialogue with them, using social media in crisis management scenarios, and much, much more.Â
The case study I found most valuable was from Mary Walsh, director of communications at Eurostar who talked openly and honestly about the crisis they underwent just before Christmas 2009 where five trains got stuck in the Chunnel due to the severe snow. Mary was open and honest in her description of what went wrong, why they came under attack, what they did, the lessons they learnt and the social media strategy they now have in place as a result. It was a real eye opener.
Other speakers of note included Stuart Ross, director of News at TfL who talked about using social media to protect reputation; Tom Nixon, director at NixonMcInnes who provided ideas on who to involve in creating and implementing social media strategy; Gabi Whitfield, communications director for Nissan Motor (GB) who discussed engaging with followers on Twitter; and Ian Williams, director of communications at moneysupermarket.com, whose case study looked at how to work across disciplines and channels to seamlessly deliver messages.
My top five takeouts from the conference are:
1.      Transparency, speed of reply, being honest and âhumanâ are essential for an effective social media strategy and implementation
2.      Organisations should keep social media strategies clear and simple to be successful
3.      Social media needs to be integrated into the organisation. It should not just be the responsibility of the PR or corporate comms teams. Best practice suggests social media should be decentralised underpinned by central guidelines allowing all departments to be involved
4.      Clarity is key. Shorter PR messages, due to the 140 character restriction on Twitter, are more likely to be misinterpreted
5.      Social media will lead to the death of AVE. New ways of measuring the success of campaigns need to be identified before you embark on any campaign
