Engage in PR

In my remaining days of unemployment I’m trying to do many of the things I enjoy but don’t have as much time for when working. Running and cooking are the highest on that list. I would be remiss to detail the slow and sweaty jaunts Mikayla (she’s the dog in the picture) and I take through the Blue Hills. Instead inspiration hit me yesterday as I was making a dinner for friends. I had decided to theme the dinner around ‘tex-mex’ in celebration of our pending move; White-bean chili, honey-salsa grilled veggies and empanada’s (a meat and veggie option). Making all of this from scratch takes me just about 4 hours, but it is obviously worth it to hear people asking for seconds.

There are often conversations about where social media fits, who owns it now and who will own it in the future. I’m not one to believe in the strict definition of ‘ownership’ when it comes to engaging with a community, instead there will be a group that pushes the direction and strategy. In many instances there will be one person who may lead this group…Let’s consider them the “chef”. The Social Media Chef needs to direct the kitchen in how to prepare the meals that will help the restaurant (the company if you are following along with the analogy) give the community what they need.

“Table 11 needs a Twitter account, medium rare, side of del.icio.us and is going to finish up with a Ning group.”

“Table 14, yeah the guy with that horrible rug, he’s looking for an open forum, served wiki-style to start. His main is going to be the special of the day, the video blog. He tells me he doesn’t want desert, but by the look of that gut I’m going to guess he calls us back in for something.”

The social media chef directs the sous chefs and preps in order to get the “meals” complete, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, the social media chef hears about it from the community. The best social media chefs do three things however that put them above the rest:

• They go out on the floor and engage with the people directly in order to improve communications over time.
• They are creative and take risks, not simply making the same dish every night. Sometimes it can be tough to swallow simply because it is new, but in the end it will be worth the risk.
• Work properly with the ‘front of the house’.

The kitchen is obviously where the magic happens (IMHO) within a “restaurant”, but the front of the house holds the key to proper customer service and the ability to make the experience seamless. The host, the wait staff, the bartender, the sommelier…all critical components. Taken as one entity social media can serve up the main dish, but it is up to all other facets to pair the dinner with the right wine, fill up the water glass, advise on the specials and get you your bill. Social media is the meat of communications, but in order to fulfill the experience it must work with the other components of marketing and communication.

Are you a social media chef? Better than the overused egotistical term ’social media rock star’ huh?

–Kyle F Flaherty

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.