Peter Shankman was the featured speaker at yesterday's NAMA/PRSA meeting in Nashville. Peter is the founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO), an e-mail that goes out three times a day to 125,000 subscribers, filled with requests from reporters for sources on whatever story they're working at the moment. We use it to see if our clients would be a good fit for any of the stories and, if so, pitch them.

Peter shared his four rules for social media success during the entertaining presentation. He attributes these to helping HARO make $4.1 million in revenue and for getting his e-mails read -- it has a 75 percent response rate, compared to the commercial e-mail average of 0.75 to 1.25 percent. (He sells one ad that goes on the top of every e-mail he sends out.) The overarching rule is to create something your audience needs, but then he breaks it down to:

Rule 1: Transparency

Peter says when HARO does something, they announce it. When they do something wrong, they announce that too. Getting out in front of the situation breeds trust and familiarity, which breeds fans. As an example, HARO hosted a conference call a few months ago about pitching reporters. For some reason the line went down and the call was abruptly cut short. Peter wrote about it on his blog, set up a call for the next day and offered to refund the call fee to anyone who couldn't make it. Instead of writing blog posts complaining that the call was cut short, people wrote about how they were impressed with HARO's fast response and customer service.

Rule 2: Relevance

Information has fragmented. In Peter's words, the average age of people who watch the evening news = dead. It's not appointment television anymore (as NBC started to realize after moving Jay and Conan around). People get their information from a variety of sources. So how do you reach your audience if it's so fragmented? The answer is simple: Ask them. He said every change HARO makes comes from member suggestions.

Rule 3: Brevity

The average attention span is 140 characters or 2.7 seconds (Twitter anyone?). To reach an audience with such a short attention span, you have to learn to write. Every try conveying an important idea in a text message or tweet? It takes skill.

Rule 4: Top of mind

When Barry Diller was president of Paramount Pictures, he used to call 10 people in his Rolodex every morning just to catch up and stay connected. Peter does the Facebook version -- every morning he checks Facebook to see which of his friends have birthdays that day. A third of them he'll write on their Facebook wall, another third he'll send a tweet to, and the last third he'll send an e-mail. It's his way of keeping touch with most of his contacts at least once a year.

The future of social media

Peter ended his talk with where he thinks we'll be in 36 months. He's a big fan of Pokens, which are basically USB drives that hold all of your social media contact information -- Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, etc. Instead of exchanging business cards when you meet a new contact, the two of you can touch your Pokens together and automatically share that information. Download it when you get home or to the office, and you'll have that person's contact info in Outlook.

Peter also thinks social networking sites like Facebook will become more relevant. They'll start to figure out who you spend your time with and whose opinions you listen to most. Your best friends' recommendations or reviews would come to the forefront. The implication for business is that if someone has a bad experience at your store/bank/clinic, it will be really easy for that person to write a review, and with no effort his or her friends are likely to see that feedback and act upon it. More than ever before, your goal will be to provide excellent service so positive feedback spreads through your customers' networks.

About the Author

Nikki Klemmer is an account supervisor at Atkinson Public Relations.

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