Sara and AL from Comet Branding

Photo by Laura Gainor

By Jeff Wolf

So I was fortunate enough to sit in on the 1 p.m. presentation from Comet Branding, the Milwaukee PR firm that organized this whole event.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. On one hand, I had high expectation from the social media experts that set up this much  anticipated-panel. On the other hand, I had a stopwatch ready to count the time until someone presented another case  study of local social media poster-child AJ Bombers. So with my preconceptions firmly in place, I sat back to hear Comet  founders Sara Meaney and AL Krueger.

(SIDE NOTE: Since this summit took place at Marquette University, the name ‘AL’ will be printed in caps, as it appears on the MU basketball jerseys to honor the late great Al McGuire, throughout this article.)

Their presentation started with a case study – and its wasn’t AJ Bombers. An inaudible sigh filled the room. Perhaps quite fittingly the case study was Comet’s own effort to organize and promote this very event using PR and social media tools. Also, they decided to present the case study backwards.

They started with the results, which pinwheeled on screen to the tune of Green Day’s Brain Stew. The John Steel in me that hates bad Powerpoints started to tune out. I did pay attention when they showed the $7,000 raised for MU’s PRSSA scholarship fund. That information genuinely meant something to me. Plus it was circled in red with an ink-filter brush to let me know it was important.

The work-backwards thing was an interesting angle, though, especially since their stated focus was about getting results from social media, and the results were what they lead with.

After stirring the crowd’s rebellious nature with 90s punk music, Sara showed a chart of the Google Analytics of the PR Summit website, then layered the social media activity done by the PR Summit entity itself. She then highlighting a point in mid March at which the Summit’s activity waned, but the web hits kept going up, In other words, the Summit’s message had gone viral, and the community was now driving itself. In the words of Borat, “Great Success!” This piece of data told me more than the combined strength of those previous numbers auditioning for Ringling Bro’s. I was interested.

Then the torch passed to AL, who roused everyone from their post-lunch comas (he made that joke, not me) by talking about tactics. Social media, he said, gave you the ability to create your own content and harness it for the power of good (something to that effect… he talked fast and I type slow), and he demonstrated his point with a short video documentary of the two presenters in their initial stages of planning the event.

I looked down at the stopwatch. 11 minutes and still no AJ Bombers. I was impressed.

I looked back up just in time to hear AL expound on the impact social media has on storytelling. Again, I was pulled legitimately drawn in. Given today’s landscape where engagement is a must, storytelling is an even more vital skill than ever. It’s something we can all take to heart and get better at.

AL also talked about the vast holistic network they used to get the word out about the Summit cheaply and effectively. I had “holistic” on my buzzwords bingo card, so I stopped typing for a second to stamp it. Meanwhile, AL mentioned reaching vast amounts of people through MU and PRSA spreading the word, actually having another PR firm in town to plug the event (which was very cool), taking advantage of partnerships with several of their speakers to spread the word, and even having some of the speakers as guests on the weekly Comet Branding radio show.

Another thing that caught my attention was the idea of the “tempting picture” – using twitpics of in-progress Summit material to tease the event. Anticipation-building at work. I began to anticipate more of the presentation.

Tempting picture of the event. Courtesy of Paige Jorgensen.

17 minutes in. Still no Bombers. And the animated slideshows of all the live tweets on either side of the stage made it even harder to concentrate. I missed more of the presentation, but learned from the tweet boards that you have 5 seconds to get peoples attention on the internet, and that it is best to reply to job postings within the first 5-7 days.

Perhaps my favorite part of AL’s discussion on tactics, however, was the idea of “Helping non-attendees feel the pain of missing out on something really cool.” Basically, one of the goals was to enable attendees to live-share as much as possible about the event so the people who didn’t go felt bad for not being there. Ah guilt… the ultimate motivator. Half of my family is Italian and the other half is Jewish, so I understand this tactic all too well.

The reverse-engineered case study continued with Sara talking about strategies. There were many of them, and there were individual sets relating to the before, during, and after the event.

Again, she was talking fast and I type slow, so during the pre-event part I caught “Utilize free platforms to create results,” “all info to focused info hub” and the logo for a website called blogtalkradio, which I can only assume is for podcast hosting. I’m going to check it out as soon as I’m done writing this, since I’ve been in need of a free podcast host for some time now. (Believe it or not, this aside serves a purpose –pointing out that with social media you can always find random bits of useful information applicable to things you weren’t expecting them to be useful for.)

The most important “during the event” strategy I noticed was to tell the evolving story of the event as it unfolds and to provide tools for participants to do the same. Great advice for a social media conference – where about 90 percent of the people there will be live tweeting anyway – and probably good advice for any event in this day and age.

I also liked the fact that they covered the “after” strategy in-depth. Since after-the-fact-engagement cannot be an after-thought (haha, I make pun…) when you’re trying to build lasting relationships.

Using this event to help build up Milwaukee’s business community was a big point of emphasis for them, as was proving they could full up the auditorium with social media interested people by spending little to no money and only using PR and social media.

Sara came back on the stage. With three minutes left in their talk, I started coming to grips with the fact that AJ Bombers would not be mentioned. On a side note, I started to feel a little hungry.

She mentioned that during the planning stages, someone had asked her if – while including all of their various partners and subject experts in this event – she was worried about helping out her competition. I recalled two weeks previous when I heard Mullen’s Edward Boches speak on social media at an Adworkers event. You cannot hoard information in social media, he said. Collaboration and sharing rule, and the selfish die. Sara was not nearly as blunt about it as Boches was, but she said something similar.

Sara went on about “strategic ideation,” which I proceeded to stamp on my bingo card. I was hoping to get “ownable” for the straight-across win or “ROI” for the diagonal, but instead she talked about something more important: planning. You can make things happen through social media if you plan ahead, she said. But there needs to be a lot of prep time at the front end since everything needs to happen so quickly – and immediately – during. Often you cannot wait until even the day after for follow-ups, like I am with this blog post.

And that was about it for AL and Sara of Comet Branding. In the end perhaps it was a bit Seinfeldian – they made an event out of putting on an event – but they certainly practiced what they preached. And like anything in social media, there were lots of valuable nuggets take away from it. I left looking for a place to get a good burger….