I'm a big fan of the AMC show "Mad Men." I especially like the character Don Draper, the creative director at Sterling Cooper advertising agency, a complicated guy who represents the best minds that made up the golden age of advertising on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. Draper, played by St. Louis native Jon Hamm (Hi Jon, missed you by this much at Mizzou. Just think, you could have been Mr. Marijean).

Ahem.

One of the reasons I enjoy watching Mad Men so much is because Draper's lines are frequently completely relevant to the PR industry. This one stuck with me for weeks and has made it all the way to this blog.

"PR people understand this, but they can never execute it. If you don't like what is being said, then change the conversation." -- from Mad Men: "Love Among The Ruins," Season 3, Episode 2.

Back in the 1960s this was true; PR people couldn't execute or even rarely were able to influence the conversation. Now, though, with social media and the ability to self-publish and develop relationships with their communities, companies (i.e., advertisers) CAN change the conversation, and PR people -- the best of them -- know how to make that happen.

Wonder what Don Draper would have been able to do with social media.

Another Don Draper-ism I'm fond of begins, "This is what's going to happen ..." but that's another blog post for another day.

I've been doing a lot of coaching with clients on how to repurpose content they're already creating to maximize their reach, particularly in the online space. All the content created by members of your team -- whether it's in internal e-mails, on social networking sites, in printed materials or in comments left on external blogs -- may have a place in helping to support your brand and as part of your overall strategic communications plan. During one such coaching session earlier this week, I was again going "old school" drawing with pen on paper to illustrate the point I was trying to make. After I was done, the client wanted to keep my chicken-scratch drawing and I thought: "That's it. I've got to develop a better illustration rather than continuing with my messy on-site talentless drawing."

Ta da! (Disclaimer: I am not a designer, nor do I pretend to be, but this is better than the pen and paper version; trust me.)

I ended up with two different illustrations, both of which show the core of the message -- that every organization needs to establish a Home Base for their content, be that a company Web site, a blog or "other." I've included "other" because sometimes it makes sense for an organization's home base to be a wiki, or a Facebook page, or some other online presence that just makes more sense than the traditional solutions.

The radiating globes represent all other places your content can be shared -- all of which direct back to your home base, the primary clearing house, archive and active home for all your content. The callouts above are our suggestions -- the counsel that Standing Partnership provides to clients about how they can be thinking about repurposing content they've already invested time or dollars in creating.

The second illustration is a companion to the first and appears below:

This illustration provides some of the thoughts and reactions we've heard from clients as we've shared this information with them. Hopefully as you review this image, similar thoughts occur to you, and you're beginning to formulate ways you can take your newsletter, photos of your team, your promotional video or television commercial, your articles and blog posts and break them into bite-sized pieces to share across all the platforms in which your audiences exist.

I'm going to continue playing with these illustrations and using them in presentations down the road. I welcome your feedback!

Imagine you want to reach a small but influential group of people and engage in more personal dialog than a Webinar allows ... enter Skype, the free, online video- and voice-conferencing and file-sharing tool that is moving from primarily personal use to more commercial use.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is offering a contest using Twitter and Skype to promote his new book. What a great way to drive conversations around particular subject matter (and in this case, promote book sales) and reward enthusiasts! The winner gets 12 books and a Skype conversation (presumably with a book club). Sure, a Webinar could potentially reach more people, but it’s certainly not the same. How could your business use Skype to target new audiences or engage in more meaningful conversations with existing audiences?

If you’d like some ideas, give us a call.

I recently read an article posted by the St. Charles Journal about local hospitals using social media. In the article, I learned that Progress West Hospital in O'Fallon posts emergency room waiting times on Twitter. While focusing on wait times alone seems, to me, like a silly, limited scope, I do applaud the hospital for dipping its toes into the online world.

After doing a little Twitter research, I've concluded there are a number of local hospitals using Twitter that could do more. From what I've seen, I would advise local hospital Twitter teams to: 

• Follow lots of people - Just following media contacts is not the way to go. Media are conduits to the general public and - ta-da! - so is your Twitter page. You just cut out the so-called middleman. Go out and find other healthcare organizations, as well as local people and companies, to follow. And if your page is followed by somebody, seriously consider following back.
• Complete your profile page - There definitely should be a bio for the hospital, and it should list the name of the person (or persons) who tweets on the hospital's behalf.
• Engage in conversations - Don't just spit out news stories; instead, mix in some personal tweets, re-tweets and mentions. And put some unique stuff out there. Links posted to a hospital's Twitter page should not be identical to those posted to its Facebook feed. Give people a reason to hook up with the hospital on both platforms.
• Be a regular - At a bare minimum, post a few times per week. Posting once a week is not frequent enough.

Many of the rules listed above could be applied to a number of local hospitals using Twitter, including Barnes-Jewish, St. John's Mercy Medical Center and St. Louis Children's Hospital.

So why do so many hospitals - and similar organizations - shy away from fully engaging in social media like Twitter? I welcome your thoughts in the comments section. And if you work for a health care organization and would like to discuss ways to grow online communities, I'm happy to talk to you.

An article posted today on CNN.com asks, Does your social class determine your online social network? This caught my eye because it's something I've been saying for a while. In fact, I blogged about it in the post Facebook is the Suburbs, MySpace is the Ghetto, raising a few eyebrows in the process.

The numbers provided by Nielsen, at left, certainly back up the theories that claim more affluent users flock to Twitter, and the business community, whether they've fully engaged or not, have long had memberships within the business-focused social network, LinkedIn.

Then there's this statistic, which should make marketers take notice of LinkedIn, "Almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year." However, if it's consumer products or services you're selling, Facebook's female users over the age of 24 (you know, the people who make ALL the buying decisions) are a majority; if that's your audience, that's where you want to be.

This is the part of the article that made me do the Meg Ryan head tilt:

Nielsen isn't the first to find this trend. Ethnographer danah boyd, who does not capitalize her name*, said she watched the class divide emerge while conducting research of American teens' use of social networks in 2006.

When she began, she noticed the high school students all used MySpace, but by the end of the school year, they were switching to Facebook.

When boyd asked why, the students replied with reasons similar to Owens: "the features were better; MySpace is dangerous and Facebook is safe; my friends are here," boyd recalled.

And then, boyd said, "a young woman, living in a small historical town in Massachussetts said to me, 'I don't mean to be a racist or anything, but MySpace is like, ghetto.'" For boyd, that's when it clicked."

OK, OK, the ghetto comparison was not original when I said it, and I never claimed that, but really, if you Google "Facebook is the suburbs, MySpace is the Ghetto" what do you get?

My point being, we do not need an ethnographer (*who doesn't capitalize her name, no less) to tell us that the population has self-selected to join communities to which they have a sense of belonging.

Social class does NOT determine your social network, but YOU do - and it's likely that, as in religions, neighborhoods, clubs, hobbies and professional organizations, social networks that bring us together do so because of our similarities, not our differences. The lesson here is that if there's a segment of the population you're trying to reach, but to which you do not belong, it makes sense to join it, and to pay attention, to cultivate relationships by engaging with its members. As I tell my daughter about the perils of the Mean Girls in middle school and the many ways to make friends, look for those outside the group and no doubt you'll find something in common that might surprise you and result in a brand new friend.

A popular technique that almost every television series I can think of has employed at one time or another is the "flashback episode." I've often thought of it as a lame copout for a "new" episode, but in blogging, I think it's a different story. This is the flashback post and if you're new to this blog or have been enjoying it (and hopefully, learning from it) for a while, you might enjoy this series of my favorite blog posts from this year. I'm hoping my colleagues and our long-time readers will share links to their favorite past posts in the comments.

(And no, I didn't just choose blog posts authored by yours truly.)

My "Best of" Standing Partnership's Where Do You Stand? Blog Posts for 2009

New to the Blogosphere? READ THIS FIRST!

Media Relations for the Media by my esteemed colleague Patrick Lunsford

Five Things CEOs Really Oughta Be Doing with Social Media

A Solid B on Twitter Grader -- What's Your Score? by my right-hand man, Justin Lopinot

A slightly controversial post: Facebook is the Suburbs: MySpace is the Ghetto

If Standing had a godfather, it'd be this guy and you can tell why from his posts, including this one: Who'll Be Left to Write the Media's Obituary?

What are some of your favorite posts on Where Do You Stand?

Standing Partnership client Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) approached us with a challenge. The School of Pharmacy would be hosting a learning summit for pharmacists and students studying pain management and palliative care. The school wanted a solution to offer both participants in the summit and those who could not attend. They envisioned some kind of online space that would foster collaboration and idea sharing, creating an ongoing discussion and reference point for all those interested in pain-related pharmacy.

At Standing, we're not Web developers. In fact, we typically partner with Web developers when a Web site is needed, working on the strategy and content on our end, but leaving the development to those for whom it is their core competency. We, however, are social media specialists, which means, in our case, having deep knowledge, capability and experience in working with WordPress for a host of client needs, including simple Web sites, campaigns, online annual reports, podcasts, newsrooms and, of course, blogs. There are, obviously, other free and open-source tools like WordPress available. However, we have found through working with numerous clients and nonprofit community partners that WordPress is preferred for many reasons -- its templates are easily customizable, giving the site a branded look and feel, the sites can be self-hosted with a desired URL and, above all, WordPress is very easy for even the most technologically challenged clients to learn and maintain internally.

We recommended, given the time frame, budget and purpose of the site, that we create a WordPress site for the Pharmacy Pain Summit and did so, staying within a limited budget and with a rather short turnaround time. The client was quite pleased with the result. (We were significantly cheered when one of the leading pharmacists sent an e-mail saying simply, "You rock!" Those are moments we live for in our jobs.)

The site launched in conjunction with the event and became what the client wished -- an online gathering space for those in their industry. The client was thrilled when several comments appeared on the site's blog section within hours of the launch -- evidence that the added effort by the school was much appreciated and would, indeed, be used as intended.

As for the Standing team, a few team members had the opportunity to work closely together on a project that was, all at once, gratifying, challenging and completely enjoyable. It's times like these we savor and hope to replicate again and again.

If you live in the St. Louis area, you may have heard this news already: The St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs. Yes, it's true. They'll be playing in the postseason starting on Wednesday. What's that? You've heard the news already? Oh, people already know? Really? Almost entire newscasts have been devoted to this news? Wow. And you're telling me the "Tonight Show" will be bumped back by KSDK-TV (Channel 5) each night so we can learn more about the Cardinals? And even KMOV-TV (Channel 4) might feature sports again on all of its newscasts? Crazy.

OK, so maybe I'm being just a tad bit facetious. I know Cardinals baseball rules in this town, and I'm as excited as anybody about the team's World Series title prospects. However, as a communications professional who often dabbles in media relations, the over-abundance of baseball coverage concerns me.

Ratings sell, I know, so the Cardinals will be getting a lot of press and air time. It's deserved. But there ARE other things going on in St. Louis this week. It's a huge challenge for media relations specialists to promote an event during a week like this. Can you imagine the intense pressure the folks at the St. Louis Science Center must be feeling at they try to garner some news coverage of the opening of SciFest on Wednesday? And that's just one of the dozens and dozens of great events lined up for our region that may find themselves on the media bench during October.

So, fellow PR practitioners, how do you sell the local media on covering a non-baseball story while the Cardinals are in the postseason? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments section.

David Letterman's audience didn't witness a typical late night comedy show on Thursday. Rather than his Top 10 List, the show host shared that he had sexual relationships with female members of his staff and was the target of a related extortion plot.

Besides being fodder for Mr. Letterman's competition, the event is an interesting case study in crisis communications.

Mr. Letterman obeyed Crisis Communications Rule No. 1 - Tell your own bad news first. He chose to tell his own tale before someone else did it for him. By embarking on a proactive communications strategy, he may have been able to somewhat minimize the impact. For example, Mr. Letterman may have contained the situation to a several-day story versus a several-month story and avoided recurring headlines such as "Another Letterman Indiscretion Revealed."

Even if you are not a celebrity, a few guiding principles for solid crisis communications will serve you well - telling the truth and doing what is right. Organizations (and individuals) that fare best during crises share some similarities, including accepting responsibility for problems and making whatever amends are possible.

If all celebrities handled their gaffes like David Letterman, I wonder what every other talk show, entertainment magazine and tabloid would cover?

Lesson #1
I worked for Walt Disney World Publicity in the mid ‘90s. Back then, Disney fiercely protected its brand. For instance, for the 25th anniversary of the park, we had planned to create video profiles of a few Disney fanatics, but had to suspend the project because most of them had unlicensed Mickey images and the video would have forced legal action - ironically against some of the people that love Disney the most.

Things have clearly changed over the years because I recently stumbled across a blog that is so "Disney-fied," I thought it was company run - Disneyfoodblog.com. However, after a little digging, I learned the site is run by a Disney fan hard at work to dine around the "World." In the past, I think something like this would have been shut down by Disney lawyers faster than a theme park ice cream cone melts in the Florida sun.

We counsel our clients to embrace social media conversations about their companies - that it's this authentic dialogue that consumers want and trust, rather than the one-way marketing speak companies pushed out pre-Web 2.0. Companies unable to let go of their strong desire to control every message could learn something from Disney when it comes to this blog.

Lesson #2
The two major points we hammer home in blogger training are the importance of transparency and that a blog is about building a relationship between the blogger and his or her readers. Disneyfoodblog.com misses the mark on both because it is annoyingly purposefully unclear about who is actually blogging: 

• The "about" section is very vague and only talks about the purpose of the blog. 
• The "contact me" section is a form with no contact information listed.
• The only e-mail address is webmaster@disneyfoodblog.com in connection with a plea for readers to send in photos.

I guess one could argue that with a brand as endearing as Disney, your relationship is with the brand itself or maybe with "the mouse." But when it comes to a blog, I want to know who the author is. And for a topic as fun as Disney food, it would be nice to personally bond with the writer so that I could experience the tastes right along with them.

What do you think?