This morning was the annual Utah Technology Council (UTC) public relations event. This event has become increasingly popular—the third year UTC has offered it. The topic was New Media (surprise!) the fundamentals and forecast for 2008.

Three experts presented: Malcolm Atherton, regional lead and SEO expert for BusinessWire; Brad Baldwin, podcaster, pundit and co-founder of Utah's Rocky Mountain Voices; and R. Dean Taylor, VP Marketing and Sales for COMPLETExRM (a strategy and development partner of FranklinCovey) and the founding executive of Caldera who was instrumental in launching the Open Source user community that helped to create and define the Linux market.

All three speakers had interesting things to say about social networking and search optimization. Malcolm noted the growing prevalence of RSS, blogs and microblogs (like Twitter), social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us, multimedia and universal search tools. Malcolm notes that while bloggers are now generally considered full credentialed members of the press, they often operate under different rules. They need to be approached differently than traditional journalists. And for PR professionals: You have officially now lost control. Our job is to recognize it, deal with it, and find the ways to embrace this fact as we move on.

Brad Baldwin talked about the growing popularity of video media, and the roles this medium played at last week's CES. At least one company Brad mentioned, Celio Corp., used a podcast as the first-ever appearance of its REDFLY Mobile Companion. A quick Google News search on REDFLY will tell the rest of that tale: the story spread like wildfire and more than 22 news stories were out before CES even began. Brad also recommends PR folks interested in social networking get acquainted with Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research Social Computing. Jeremiah publishes a weekly update, www.web-strategist.com.

Dean Taylor talked about finding the holes in the information vector and identifying the ways your company and message can fill those gaps. He advocates forgetting the myopic focus on “message" and instead stresses the importance of the “concept." Feed your news – in a highly web optimized fashion – in a way that fills those holes and you'll effectively stimulate what Dean calls the “Piranha effect." As a case study, Dean illustrated the recent announcement of COMPLETExRM – a strategy and development partner of FranklinCovey in the development of PlanPlus™ Online. Prior to this release, no one had ever heard of COMPLETExRM. So using all of these concepts, Dean and his PR team (yes, that was us—Snapp Conner PR) to identify the holes. In this case, it was tying the concept of Enterprise 2.0 to CRM (contact relationship management). No one had done that before, but we could see there was a significant interest and need.

COMPLETExRM also has some notable investors – most importantly, Donald L. Lucas, who has been instrumental on the boards of Oracle and Macromedia. He's never invested in a Utah company before, and there's a significant cadre of investors and industry watchers keenly tuned into what he might be doing next. Now they know.

The rest is history. Within three day of issuing its launch press release, COMPLETExRM had been picked up by 911 other sites. Within five days there were more than 10,000 pickups. Within nine days there were—wait for it—more than 7 million URLs linked to this single release. To say that social media is important for this company's launch would be a vast understatement.

All of these speakers are available for follow up discussion. They'll all be easy to trace—you can just search them on Google

Cheryl Snapp Conner

Managing Partner

Today's blog entry comes from Paul Gillin's Social Media Report. In his report, he mentions that it is one of the most common questions, and one of the most difficult to answer.

Here’s a little quiz (provided by Paul) you can take to determine if blogging is right for you. Answer appropriately and then total up your score.

Do you want to do it? A blog isn’t a short-term project. Once you start, you need to consistently update your site, at least once per week. The novelty will quickly wear off, so ask yourself whether you have the stamina and a wellspring of ideas to keep you going beyond the first few months.
Yes: 5 points; No: 0 points

Do you have a topic in mind? Ideally, your topic should be expressible in less than a dozen words displayed under your blog title. This isn’t always easy. Some markets (marketing, entertainment and sports, for example) have hundreds or thousands of bloggers. In an environment like that, you need to focus your topic very precisely. Other markets (architecture and construction, for example) are nearly wide open. Pick a theme for your blog and be sure it doesn’t duplicate what’s already being said. The more distinctive your topic, the faster you’ll achieve success.
Yes: 3 points; No: 0 points

Are you passionate about the topic? Good blogs have personality and personality is a product of enthusiasm. That doesn’t mean you need to be a cheerleader; in fact, some very successful blogs are negative in tone. It does mean that your topic should be something that you can talk about for hours, because that’s basically what you'll be doing with your blog.
Yes: 3 points; No: 1 point

Are you knowledgeable about the topic? A public forum isn’t the place to go to school, particularly if you represent a business. It’s important to engage in dialogue and learn something from your readers, but you should also have a point of view backed by expertise and experience that makes you credible.
Yes: 2 points; No: 0 points

Do you communicate well? Some people don’t, and a blog is probably not the right promotional vehicle for them. You don’t necessarily have to be a good writer; many successful bloggers use video and sound to great effect. But you do need to be able to express your thoughts coherently in some form.
Yes: 2 points; No: 1 point

Do you have a thick skin? If you're opinionated enough to sustain a blog, you need to accept the fact that others may differ with you. Assuming you accept comments (and I strongly recommended that you do), be prepared for some pointed response to what you say.
Yes: 2 points; No: 1 point

Scoring:
12 or more points: What are you waiting for?
8 to 12 points: You're on track, but you need more focus or enthusiasm
5 to 8 points: Think hard about whether this is the right vehicle for you
Less than 5 points: Don't bother