Chuck Hester is a long time colleague in the Society for New Communications Research, and Head of Communications for iContact, an email marketing company based in North Carolina. Chuck is the author of “Linking In to Pay it Forward,” and is a nationally known speaker on the topic of using LinkedIn.com for business. He is also an advisory board member of the Social Media club, and host of the LinkedIn group in Raleigh, NC.
I'm pleased he accepted my invitation to speak at the next GSO tweet up event here in Greensboro on Thursday June 24th at 6:00pm.
To add some details to the conversation on the day, I asked Chuck to answer a few questions in preparation for his get together at the #gso4 event.
John: How did you first get involved with PR?Chuck: I started out as a Journalist in the early 80s in Los Angeles. I was recruited to work at a PR agency shortly thereafter. I've been in high tech PR since 1984.
John: How did you first get involved with social media?
Chuck: I was a LinkedIn user since 2003. At the time, I had around 37 connections. After getting my job through LinkedIn in 2006, I really began concentrating on Social Media, and LinkedIn in particular.
John: You have focused a lot on LinkedIn, why is that?
Chuck: I believe LinkedIn is the best social network for business professionals. It is primarily about business relationships, not grandkids or where you partied on Saturday night. I have had great success with LinkedIn - both from the media relations side as well as the business development side.
John: How does your company, iContact, use social media to market, and engagement your customers and audience?
Chuck: We are actively involved in four primary social media sites: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. We use the first three to communicate with customers and YouTube to promote our company culture and our initiatives. We recently revamped our corporate blog as well - www.icontact.com/blog and cross-pollinate content on the blog, our LinkedIn users group, our Facebook page and through the three Twitter accounts we maintain. It's worked quite well.
John: What PR 2.0 content tactics do you use in social media? How do you develop content that then gets picked up by social engagers?
Chuck: On our blog, we offer information - not promotion. We are constantly posting information that would be of interest to our core audience - small businesses and entrepreneurs. We then repost the information with links back to our blog on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We have also developed a site called Business Fuel - www.fuel.icontact.com - that is all about small business issues and topics of interest - similar to the American Express Open site.
John: As you look back over your time in PR, what are the big changes you've seen in the last 20 years?
Chuck: The mobile web. Now, it's instantaneous communications. Back in early 2000, there was no Twitter where you could know about an issue almost instantly. The web has come a long way towards what I call consumable news - with shortened news cycles and attention spans.
John: Looking forward to the future, what's next for the use of social media for PR & Marketing?
Chuck: I may be old fashioned, but I truly believe that the great journalistic institutions - newspapers, TV, radio, will reinvent themselves around social media. It's already happening today. The fundamentals - good content, truthful unbiased information, good grammar, will not go away. People appreciate a good story told well.
John: How do you expect iContact to grow its social media presence?
Chuck: We have launched a new blog, the Business Fuel site and a redesign of our primary website. We will continue to be a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, but also plan to increase our customer interaction on social media.
John: Lastly, what are the top 3 social media books you think every communications professional should have in their starting social media library?
Chuck: Tribes, by Seth Godin - not a social media book per se, but it speaks to the power of followers.The New Influencers by Paul Gillin - great overview of the key players in social media
Engage by Brian Solis - Brian's insights into the "new web" are priceless
Twitterville by Shel Israel - great stories on how Twitter works in business and personal lives
(okay that was four!)
John: Thanks Chuck, great interview, and I'm looking forward to seeing you on the 24th here in Greensboro at the GSO event.
