Photo credit: Joanna Scarratt of United Agents

Whether you’re ready or not, all Facebook pages will convert to the new Timeline format on March 30, 2012. Here’s a couple tips on what to expect and how to utilize the new features to their fullest potential:

New page features

Two columns: For page visitors, the column on the right will show their friends’ activity with the page, and will be different for each person viewing the page.

Milestones highlight important moments throughout a brand/company’s lifetime. Ideas of what to document as a milestone might include:

• When the company was incorporated.
• When a new product was launched.
• When a new store/office opened.
• Major philanthropic event.

Star a post to make it bigger and span across both columns.

Pin a post for it to appear at the top of the page for 7 days.

Changes to page photos (with specs)

Large photo spanning across the top is a great opportunity to make an immediate impact on the user: 851×315. This cannot include:

• Purchase, price or discount information.
• Call-to-action.

Custom applications now appear as small squares on the top of the profile, and can have custom photos: 111×74.

• You have the option to choose which ones are immediately visible.

Page profile picture: 180×180.

New features for page administrators

• Admin panel shows notifications to administrators.
• Activity log shows all the posts by the page including hidden posts.
• Fans can send private messages to the page, admins can respond.
• Admin panel appears at the top of the page with notifications, new likes, insights and messages.
• Activity log shows all posts, even deleted or hidden posts.

Other changes

“Fan Gates” are no longer supported.

Insights are now visible to all, including likes and people talking about this.

• This is beneficial when doing research on other companies and competitors to see how their page is doing and what’s working for them.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/about/pages.

That was one message of a Jan. 6 Tampa Bay Business Journal article describing the importance of communication for companies going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Kyle Parks was quoted in the article, saying that companies need to build goodwill, and think through communications, before a crisis happens.

As former Director of Corporate Communications for Walter Industries, a $1.5-billion conglomerate at the time, Kyle handled crisis communications related to a major coal mining accident, a violent employee strike, and environmental issues.

He stresses that having a comprehensive communications plan in place is important to an organization’s well-being. Here are three key elements of a crisis plan:

1. Identify potentially damaging scenarios, and assign a general action plan to each;
2. Designate an internal team for each scenario, including lead spokespeople;
3. For each scenario, prepare customizable key messages to use in crafting statements for internal audiences, the news media, customers/clients and the general public.

• Grew chapter membership by 18 percent
• Invested in members by offering four scholarships to the 2011 PRSA International Conference
• Supported seven chapter members in pursuing their Accreditation in Public Relations (APR)
• Created a YouTube channel to share key learnings from professional development
• Launched new website with upgraded features and interactivity

I’m thankful for the support of the 12 Board members and 20+ committee chairpersons and members who contributed to the Chapter’s successes. The Board and committees manage the most valuable chapter benefits – monthly continuing education programs, an annual media roundtable with FPRA, a daylong PR seminar, special interest groups and a bi-monthly newsletter, to name a few. Their dedication and determination keeps the all-volunteer organization vibrant and successful.

Just a few days ago, I passed the gavel to Angela Walters, marketing manager for Hillsborough Community College. I look forward to seeing her lead the chapter to new heights while preparing for the PRSA District Conference, sunshine2012, in June.

A version of this post first appeared in the PRSA Tampa Bay Chapter newsletter in early December 2011.

We might say: “Well, client, the best that we can.”

There’re many ways to tell if a PR program is working – though, notably, there is no agreed-upon standardization by the governing body of our profession. (The Barcelona Principles provide some nice guidelines, but it’s not a formula where businesses can just enter numbers and simply quantify results).

And that makes sense, as the approach to PR measurement really has to be specifically tailored for each individual campaign. There’s an array of possible metrics to choose from – and a different combination is required for each unique situation.

Foremost, we look at: “What exactly are we trying to change?” Is it an enhanced reputation, or register-rings, or new customers, or more business with existing customers, or ticket sales, or increased attendance, or sponsorship money, or more volunteers, or votes, or web hits, or phone calls, or traffic in your store, or… you get the point? There needs to be at least one overlying objective to a campaign, and your PR representation should be clearly contributing to that.

Then, breaking that down, we consider such factors as:

• New relationships
• Improved relationships
• Changed opinions
• Spikes in web traffic
• Improved SEO
• Lead-to-sale ratio
• Newsletter click-throughs
• Social media activity/engagement
• A better informed and more actively communicating staff

If the campaign is mostly or heavily focused on media relations, we can also look at such factors as:

• Amount and type of news coverage
• Prominence and reach of coverage
• If key messages made it through
• If pictures are included
• Tone of the piece

And finally – sometimes most importantly – qualitative elements contribute to the long-term value of an organization’s brand, including:

• Validity
• Credibility
• Front-of-mind presence
• Positive perceptions

PR works (well, good PR works) – that’s why it’s a growing industry. But without a precise, uniform, accountant-friendly form of measurement, isn’t it sort of a gamble? Yeah, sure, especially with the abundance of firms out there that hide a lack of achievement in graphs and charts that are as colorful as they are meaningless. The key is to focus not on outputs but on outcomes – focus on what resulted from the PR results.

If you’re working with a firm that is still measuring column inches and using advertising-equivalency-values, maybe it’s time you suggest they leave their fancy charts back at grandpa’s agency, then shop around for a PR firm that’s focused on and proven in creating real-life bottom-line results.

Bottom line: Even in today’s digital age, it’s still beneficial to work with traditional news media as long as you’re taking some key steps to help ensure that your message is reported accurately. In the article, Kyle puts forward his top three tips for working with the news media:

• Keep your answers short and to the point.
• Don’t answer a question unless you are certain of the response and are the right person to be providing the information.
• Be extremely careful about going “off the record.”

Succeeding in public relations often requires a similar mentality. Many times we need to rapidly soak up information and understand a business quickly, so that we can help a client craft a message that’s both compelling and easy to understand.

This has been a key in our growth at Bayview PR as we build a diverse mix of clients. As two examples, that mix now includes Connelly, Carlisle, Fields & Nichols (CCF&N), one of Florida’s top insurance agencies, and Sterling Payment Technologies, one of the fastest-growing card processors in the electronic payments industry.

For CCF&N, we have secured placements in the St. Petersburg Times (a Q&A with John Connelly), and Tampa Bay Business Journal (commentary by Charles Chunn on the outlook for insurance rates heading into hurricane season). We are also working to make CCF&N top-of-mind with industry trade publications and websites.

For Sterling, we are forming relationships with trade media as well. In business-to-business PR work, trade media can offer a good way to reach a highly targeted audience of decision-makers. A key is putting out information that people in the industry will find useful. Showing our clients as experts is our goal – and that will get them more attention, credibility, and in turn, more business.

Colliers International began with Bayview last week and brought much excitement with it for the Bayview team. The Tampa Bay office was recently retained to list Baywalk, the 74,500-square-foot shopping complex in the center of downtown St. Petersburg, for $8 million.

Click to see news segment

 Bayview controlled the media outreach for the announcement and was able to garner interviews for Michael Milano of Colliers, who is handling the sale, with Channel 8, Fox 13, 10 News and Bay News 9. Although Baywalk has had its share of problems, people interviewed in the news segments saw the possibility of a sale as a good first step towards a hoped-for turnaround.

Bayview is very excited to be working with Colliers, and is looking forward to the future of Baywalk. Considering the Bayview office is a block from Baywalk, we have a few ideas on new stores and restaurants we’d like to see fill up the place. What are your suggestions for new stores in Baywalk?

In “The Future of Advertising,” Danielle Sacks brilliantly captures what’s going on with the traditional agency model. In it, Angelique Krembs, marketing director of PepsiCo’s SoBe brand, explained why she opted to work with only shops that specialized in digital, PR, or promotional work, excluding all generalist firms. “…we were going beyond traditional…We realized it was unlikely we’d find everything we wanted in one place.”

As a trusted resource for our clients, we recommend or partner with creative agencies, digital firms and solo designers that match our (and our client’s) expectations and core values to create a comprehensive campaign or fulfill specific needs like brand marks, websites and collateral.

Basically, we work with select partners to create dream teams for our clients. Each member of the team brings a specific set of skills or knowledge in an industry, or fills another specific need. For example, USAmeriBank tapped Schifino Lee to build its website and create collateral materials, while Bayview serves a public relations role. Working with Mercury Productions and Thomason Creative, we’re able to help the City of Tampa Water Department develop educational outreach campaigns.

In some cases, we’ll partner with other public relations agencies or independent practitioners for specialized or additional resources for our clients. The client benefits by having the best and brightest team members working to get results rather than having one agency that is strong in one area, but is a less ideal fit in other areas.

Some chalk the new model up to a generational shift in marketing decision-makers with a digital background rather than so-called “classic marketing educations.” Others realize the old way of doing business no longer makes sense, and are finding new ways to thrive.

It’s a whole new world in real estate, which means sellers simply have to alter their marketing and PR techniques to attract buyers.

Bayview president Kyle Parks recently spoke to approximately 100 attendees of the Urban Land Institute’s Real Estate Trends Conference, part of a panel that presented the audience with tips on how to “market in the new real estate market.”

Kyle speaking on "marketing to the new market" alongside Jennifer Lugar of Standard Pacific Homes and John Rymer of Rymer Strategies.

Credibility is job 1, and no marketing channel – whether it’s social media, traditional news media or advertising – will work if you can’t show that in a compelling way. To build credibility and support your buying proposition, marketing and PR need to show a buyer why they are getting a good value, instead of just telling them.

Here’s a list of marketing tips to think about for the new market.

WFLA- Channel 8's 6.p.m news coverage of Matt Geiger selling his mansion

You get news coverage.

Sometimes PR involves finding a trend or niche for a client to tap into. And sometimes the client news is so interesting on its own, that it creates its own path and as Kyle likes to call it, gives it “legs” – meaning the story walks around on its own (with our help, of course).

Bayview PR was recently given the job of doing media outreach for Engel & Volkers’ sale of retired NBA player Matt Geiger’s 28,000-square-foot north Pinellas County mansion. And we quickly realized how many “legs” the news would have.

Since this was mainly a local story, we created a targeted list of local reporters and outlets to contact and thought, “Let’s see how much the media cares.” As we were finalizing our plans for outreach, the St. Petersburg Times’ Mark Puente broke the story of the sale on a tip. Then, after getting the news release out and doing follow-up with other outlets such as the Tampa Bay Business Journal, The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-Channel  8, our story walked all over the place.

Turns out the sale of a 6-bedroom, 8-bathroom house with a shark tank in the bathroom, 12 buffalo, and a 330,000-gallon pool with a fire pit in the middle is newsworthy, and even conversational. We started thinking it was a theme park with a 5,000-square-foot guest house attached.