You Say You Want A Revolution?

Traveled north to my hometown on May 10-11 for the "premier professional development opportunity for communicators in the Portland metropolitan area since 1996."

With social media increasingly taking center stage in announcing breaking news -- Osama Bin Laden's death was reported via Twitter, scooping all the major news organizations -- this year's PDX Communicators Conference was particularly salient. Indeed, social media is playing a key role in revolutions throughout the "cradle of civilization," with uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, Syria and even in Libya.

The conference theme of "Communicating in a Changing World" focused on delivering key messages using social media and measuring its effectiveness. This year's confab, sponsored by the PRSA Portland Metro Chapter and the Oregon-Columbia Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, included three keynoters and various and sundry breakout sessions.

Jeanette Gibson, Director of Social Marketing for Cisco Systems, said that business-to-business communication trends are the ones to watch in 2011. Participatory blogs are working particularly well because customers and employees feel involved in "meaningful engagement."

Why participatory blogs? To "create conversations," providing an opportunity to listen and test ideas while being open and transparent. "Ideas can come from anywhere," she reminded the audience. My takeaway? Use some of those ideas.

Katie Payne of KD Payne and Partners, in discussing "How to Measure What Matters," said the "main reason to measure (the effectiveness of communications) is not to reward for success or punish for failure, but to determine from research whether a program should be continued, revised or dropped in favor of another approach."

Although some may use website hits to measure communications effectiveness, she joked that keeping a count of "hits" is "How Idiots Track Success." PR practitioners need to measure outcomes not output: "It's not how many you've reached," she offered, "but how many have responded" to your communication efforts.

Michael Pranikoff, Global Director of Emerging Media for PR Newswire, is always an insightful and entertaining keynoter. In discussing the challenge of managing communications chaos -- with different messages for different audiences changing in real time -- communications professionals must learn to adapt and adopt with agility: "if content is King, then context is The Almighty" when communicating with target audiences, he noted wryly.

The breakout session of note was Mark Ivey, former bureau chief and senior writer at BusinessWeek and national media spokesman at Intel, who discussed "Seven Reasons Your Content Is Killing Your Business."

Among the more prominent of the seven reasons why your digital content may be floundering is that you may lack clear goals or you're not listening to your audience. His recommendations: create digital content that is consistently engaging, dynamic and relevant (read: not boring) and use free listening tools available such as Google Reader, Twitter Search and IceRocket.

At the end of the conference, sensing that rush hour traffic was at its peak, I remained for the social hour and raffle. Reconnected with some of my PRSA cronies and former students, and was one digit away from a relaxing weekend at a guest house in Yachats. Unfortunately, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.