Saturday, October 6, 2007

who you are & what you want

A team of undergraduate students from Dr. Karen Miller Russell's PR Campaign's course recently conducted a survey of people interested in attending UGA Connect in Athens Oct. 19-20. They had 40 people take the survey.

Boy oh boy, this group is tech savvy to say the least!

More than half used the following social media tools for PR:
  • Blogs - 79.4%
  • Social networks - 58.8%
  • Search Engine Optimization - 55.9%
  • Podcasts - 52.9%
They think social media tools are very useful for PR purposes:
  • Blogs - 64.7%
  • Podcasts - 58.8%
  • Social networks - 57.6%
  • Video sharing - 52.9%
  • Social Media Press/News Release - 43.8%
Ahhh - but these SM believers say that they still want to know more! They are very interested in:
  • SMPR - 76.5%
  • Social media newsroom - 76.5%
  • SEO - 70.6%
  • Social networks - 64.7%
  • Blogs - 61.8%
  • Microblogging - 57.6%
  • SecondLife - 51.5%
  • Podcasts - 51.5%
  • Mobile/cell marketing - 51.5%
So who were these 40 prospective attendees?
  • 62.5% of the participants are professionals.
  • 75% of the participants have used social media for public relations purposes.
For the complete survey results, check out their report (google doc).

1 comment:

philgomes said...

Interesting... I came across this by way of Kevin Dugan and just signed up for the Twitter feed. Very much looking forward to seeing what results.

Some thoughts:

- Many would deny that "Search Engine Optimization" would qualify as a "social media tool." Too often, SEO is used as a (wished-for) substitute or band-aid for a social media approach.

- Efforts around (long overdue) improvements in the press release would probably be best referred to as a "New Media Release" rather than a "social media news release." No matter how many del.icio.us links or digg buttons you put on there, a release is not an inherently "social" tool. When it comes to Edelman's StoryCrafter work, I tend to encourage users to think of news releases more like "packages" rather than a simple transmission of news and text. There's a big misconception out there that the "social media news release" puts some kind of tonic into your traditional press release that will make bloggers fall in love with a company's news. Nothing could be further from the truth.

- Indeed it appears that you have a remarkably savvy group there. I would be careful not to conflate "PR practiced online" with "social media."

My pair o' pennies.

/pmg