PRSA Tech Section Chair RickTeplisky

Social media effectiveness and crafting social media policies are based on the unique goals of your communications strategy, says Rich Teplitsky, Technology Section Chair for the Public Relations Society of America. Social media measurement is challenging unless an organization understands why it engages in social media and has identified the right tools for measuring social networking effectiveness. In this episode, Rich talks joins guest hosts Sandra Burrowes and Greg Reeder to discuss the challenges of social media measurement, trends in emerging technology and the art of setting social media policy.

In September 2010, a Sysomos analysis of 1.2 million tweets from a two-month period reported that 71 percent of tweets did not stimulate a reply or a retweet on Twitter. Is this failure or success? That depends, says Teplitsky, on whether the individual, company or organization is using the channel to engage, inform, build brand or drive traffic to a web site, for example. Different tools are used to measure different social media goals and it takes a well-informed public relations professional to stay current with the best tools for the job.

To create sound social media policy with organization-wide buy-in, public relations pros should gather representatives from every department that has a stake in social media and broker two sets of suitable policies—one for employees (or organization members) and one for the PR/marketing people who will communicate on behalf of the company.

Teplitsky also discusses the challenge for PR professionals for staying on the “cell-dividing edge” of emerging technology and outlines three areas of rapid growth: cloud computing, wireless devices and content banking.

Rich Teplitsky is also Vice President at Lois Paul & Partners in Austin, Texas.

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ABOUT THE PODCASTER
@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and social media governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, NORAD Northcomm, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United States Marine Corps and many small to medium-sized companies and agencies.

Eric is the instructor behind PRSA’s top-rated social media and emerging treads training seminars, the Social Media Boot Camp and the Social Media Master Class, which are offered monthly in the US.

His book "Social Marketing to the Business Customer" with Paul Gillin about B2B applications of social media communications is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

These podcast show notes were written and optimized by @SandraBurrowes.