The Summer of Social Media 2011 has come to a close, but of course, not without a party to crown our cabin champions Digital Delta Force led by Jess Dillman.

Thanks to all of the spirited Powell Tate Campers who participated and helped to make #PTSummer a huge success!

Invitations to the exclusive Summer of Social Media Closing Ceremony.

Bragging rights and swag for our cabin champions!

Happy Campers.

Overview
Incorporating a media intelligence plan into our daily activities, is  no longer a nice to have, it’s essential to informing our work. To produce the best stories and support the best campaigns we must listen to what people have to say, understand how conversations evolve, and consistently measure and benchmark our progress.

What We’ll Cover
In this session we’ll talk about how to leverage your clients’ goals in order to identify the metrics that will help you evaluate your success.  We will walk you through a basic plan to help you best understand and analyze the conversations happening around your clients, and your issue area.  
 
Pre-assignment
Listening and analyzing conversations is much like going on a virtual scavenger hunt. For your pre-assignment we would like you to go on an actual scavenger hunt for mentions. To do this, we’ve identified a recent news event and pulled actual Tweets, news items and blog posts. We’ve posted those mentions around the office on yellow Post-It notes and would like you to track them down and identify the following on a 3x5 card:
·         Total Volume (How many mentions - post-it notes - did you find?)

·         Share of voice (How many Tweets? News Mentions? Blogs posts?)

·         Sentiment (How many mentions were positive or negative?)

·         Was the content on Twitter engaging? (How many Tweets, Retweets, @replies did you find?)

Congrats to Pam Hughes, this week’s Summer of Social Media Camper of the Week. Pam, a latecomer to the Summer of Social Media party, has come on strong in the last few week’s getting involved in sessions and on this very site. She’s also has been quick to link her day job to what we are discussing each week in our session, and share it on Twitter for the world to see.

Thanks Pam. Keep up the great work!

Here (by popular demand) is another round of #smacktalk featuring cabins Digital Delta Force and Team Wi-Fly. 

(A special thanks to our featured campers for being great sports!)

Following last week’s bonus #PTsummer session with the Huffington Post, some people asked how to access HuffPost Hill.

It’s a daily email publication, sign up here.

SCENARIO: You’re on the account team for a non-profit client that advocates for nutritional school lunches. You’ve been tasked with devising a campaign that increases awareness of the issue and drives engagement around pressuring school districts to introduce healthier menu options.

To solve a problem like this, a designer would probably begin by sketching. Using what you learned in the Design Thinking talk, use some kind of visual technique like a sketch, diagram, or visual timeline to map out your campaign for healthy school lunches. You could incorporate elements like the audience, the message, delivery medium, context in which audience will experience the message, audience’s intended action, etc. etc.

Draw out your campaign (doesn’t have to be crazy detailed but should demonstrate visually how the campaign will operate) on a sheet of paper. You can upload it and link it in the comments thread, but it might just be easier to drop off your sketch to our hallowed points Sheriff John Scott.

Where: 8th Floor Large

When: 3 PM, July 12

              11 AM, July 19

Overview
The lines have blurred between traditional and digital influencers. As communication professionals, it is our job to work across both spectrums to identify the individuals that matter to our area of expertise and our clients.

What We’ll Cover
In this session we’ll talk about what it means to follow the full conversation, conduct an audit of “traditional” influencers to identify their digital footprint,  share tips for building influencer lists, and cover best practices for building these relationships.
 
Pre-assignment

When it comes to building influencer relationships, we can all learn from each other. On a 3X5 card share with us some of the tools or approaches you have used identify people that are of interest to you or your client and how you keep up with them online.

Congratulations to Kathleen Siedlecki, this week’s Camper of the Week! There are many reasons why Kathleen is a digital evangelist. Mostly, it’s because it feels like she’s preaching to the choir each time we discuss the Summer of Social Media. In fact, the last time I left her office, shortly after taking this picture, I left saying ”Preach!”

More than being a digital evangelist, she’s also a PR psychic. Kathleen has taken it upon herself to remind us all that becoming digitally savvy isn’t an add-on or a special skill, but a requirement for how we need to evolve as communicators as this crazy world continues to change into the future.

Thanks Kathleen. We like what you see when you look into your PR Crystal Ball. Keep up the great work.

This week saw a change in pace with some content production coming from some campers. Fittingly, in a week where we learned about video storytelling, the most-discussed item was a video from Jess Dillman where she found out, with the help of Bradley Portnoy, what is Digitally Hot or Not.

The week’s session was led by Amil Husain and the newest addition to the digital team, Michael Kleinfeld. With a slew of video examples, Amil and Mike shared their insights on how good videos are made and gave us a step-by-step guide to the process of making a video in an agency setting.

Leaderboard Update

It was an exciting week on the leaderboard update as #Sweetreatz made their best attempt to grab the top spot from Digital Delta Force as they came withing 17 points by the weekend. DDF, who are our first cabin over 1000 points, and Hootenanny both made strong appearances in the second round of Video Storytelling and left #Sweetreatz in 3rd.

Digital Delta Force - 1003

Hootenanny - 857

#Sweetreatz - 836

Nobody Puts Social Media in the Corner - 789

Wi-Fly - 622

Have a great week campers,

Points Czar John

Where: 8th Floor Large

When: 3 PM July 7

      11 AM July 12

Overview

Not all design is visual design - in fact we can all use creative, visual techniques to solve problems and develop the best ideas and strategies for our clients.

What we’ll cover

Our digital design and experience team will walk through their learnings, methods and techniques to provide a new way of approaching challenges and arriving at the best result. Learn how user centered design practices and visual thinking can be employed in your day-to-day work with clients.

Pre-assignment

To prepare for our session, briefly describe a problem or strategy you approached employing brainstorms, collaboration or visual diagramming or sketching. Also note how you think this helped you in the process.  Bring your completed pre-assignment with you on a 3X5 card for credit.<—>