Social Media Saturday with Peter Shankman

I make a semi-annual retreat to be with a group of my agency-owner peers in an organization called Innisbrook, where we share best practices on client services, employee development and the like. We just wrapped our most recent retreat in New York, NY, at our host agency’s company, DCI. (Thanks to Scott Mills for the cool video shoot of our week, and Mark Alison for his awesome photography of the event!)

We try to get notable speakers in to talk to us, and the Saturday, 8 am slot is hardest to fill. We usually have to arm twist and bribe anyone worthy to share that sacred time with us.

For this retreat, we were on the edge of our seats by 8:32 Saturday morning, when we were treated to a riveting, funny, informative and motivational discussion on the world of marketing and PR by the one and only Peter Shankman.

If you haven’t heard of Peter Shankman, and you’re in the PR/marketing business, I’d be surprised. If you haven’t heard of Peter, you most likely have heard of HARO: his entrepreneurial venture to Help A Reporter Out. Peter is an author, the founder of Geek Factory and the 100,000 member strong community of HARO.

His thrice-daily emails of HARO began as a labor of love (or a side-affect of his syndrome somewhat related to ADHD: ADOS (attention-deficit “oooh shiny….!”) for his friends in the editorial side of the business.

He speaks all over the world and his speaking fees could even rival David Meerman Scott. Here are some highlights of his conversation with us, as they were conveyed in their entirety by 10:30 am, certainly before most people back home had had their pancakes and coffee.

(For those who want to read the transcript of a similar speech made to the Affiliate Summit East 2009 conference, you can read the transcript, or download audio and video. Listening to his delivery is half the fun…)

If you’re reading this blog post, however, be sure to imagine a very active man who looks a decade less than his resume suggests, with a lot of flailing, gesticulating arms, and you can be right there with us for the experience.

So, here goes the highlights:

Peter Shankman is the epitome of high energy. His attitude on trying new things stemmed from the early days of AOL—he was such an early employee he was able to snag peter@aol.com. Since there were no rules, the only rule was to keep doing those things that worked, and don’t do the things that didn’t. Sounds obvious, huh?

As he segued from one topic to the next, he managed to plug his remarks into four primary buckets:

He looks to four reasons for the proliferation of social media, as well as the responsibilities of social media. While it’s not ubiquitous today, there will soon not be any distinction between “social media” and how we live our lives as humans.

1. Transparency

As he describes the landscape today: for the past 100 years or so, the country has been run by old, white men. When those old white men died, they replaced themselves with more old, white men. Zero transparency. In the past 10-15 years, in the years of everyone having a cell phone with a camera, citizen journalism, whistle blowers, etc., transparency became the norm. Our current administration ran their campaign on transparency. We’ll never go back, and now is the time to set those new parameters. Companies that don’t get this, and get this quickly, can’t possibly survive or succeed.

2. Relevance

The biggest point here is that most communicators have no excuse to forget, except for the fact that sometimes we choose to forget it! In a nutshell, Peter’s relevance refers to the ability to make sure you are delivering relevant help, support, content, solutions and ideas, to the people you want to help, support, cater to, in the manner in which they like to consume information.

As a case in point, Peter will tell you he doesn’t watch TV, but he listens to podcasts; doesn’t open attachments (“they are Al Qaeda to anyone without an attention span”), but has three flat screen TVs in his home to monitor his Twitter feed, CNN and Facebook. While he doesn’t read print newspapers, per se, you still can’t miss the mass of people in the morning NY subway system with a print newspaper of the day under their arms. So, newspapers aren’t dead, yet.

Everyone has his or her preference for consumption, learn it, and do it. And if you don’t know their preference? “Double Duh….why don’t you ask them?”

3. Brevity

Companies that survive will be the most succinct. Great writing will inspire in fewer than 140 characters.

4. Top of Mind

In an over stimulated world, the importance of connecting with people will never change. Peter told a great anecdote referencing Barry Diller the former head of Paramount, who steadfastly stuck to a routine practice of calling ten people from his rolodex every day. He connected on a regular basis with everyone who helped put Paramount on top during his time. Give, don’t just receive, and it pays in spades, was the lesson.

A few other nuggets to share before I sign off on this report - if you are intrigued by these points, listen to his speech:

- Social media is like the next generation of lava lamps

- Social media is more about listening, the ultimate customer service

- Peter is a raving fan of Southwest, Omni Hotels, and Poken. Find out why.

- Our job as PR/marketing folks is to make our client's customers do the PR and marketing for them. Create raving fans. Social media enables those conversations.

- Elizabeth Shea