8:45 - 9:45 a.m.

Social Media Relations: Getting Positive Coverage in the Conversational Age
When social media’s emergence was still in its embryonic stages, the question among PR professionals was, “Is a blogger a journalist?” Now that social media is firmly entrenched in every aspect of professional and personal communications, that question is moot. Influencers, be they bloggers, tweeters, customers or complete strangers, are the necessary targets of all media relations efforts, thus requiring a total revision of all outreach strategies.

This panel will organize the chaos of media relations in the Web 2.0 environment, offering strategies, tools, tactics and best practices to solving your questions surrounding:

• Finding and engaging the most influential bloggers and online journalists in your industries and markets.

• Developing foolproof pitching strategies for your target media in the blogosphere and tweet-o-sphere.

• Building online newsrooms that attract visitors and generate stories.

• Writing news releases and Web content that gains traction among your organization’s most influential media.

• Creating social media policies to encourage and enable conversations on your own blog/social network without completely losing control over content.

• Understanding when to respond to negative coverage online.

Speakers:

9:45 - 10:45 a.m.

How to Measure All Your Digital PR Efforts
More than a year of economic turbulence and depression has upped the ante even more for communications executives to prove their value and quantify their contributions to their organizations’ brand, reputation and bottom line. The proliferation of social media platforms has expanded the communications universe exponentially, but in doing so it has provided PR execs with an ever-growing number of built-in tools and metrics for tracking, analyzing and evaluating their initiatives.

This panel of experts will conduct a deep dive into the various tools at communicators’ disposal, providing a roadmap to help you:

• Understand the differences between digital outputs, outtakes and outcomes.

• Assess the quality of relationships with various stakeholders.

• Measure campaign effectiveness and efficiency.

• Define campaign objectives that will product measurable results.

• Identify the most meaningful metrics, including tone, prominence, volume, sentiment, impact and engagement.

• Finding cost-effective tools to monitor and measure conversations about your brand in social media channels, including Twitter and Facebook.

• Allocate the right resources (people and budget) to measurement efforts

Speakers:

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Search Engine Marketing, Optimization and How to Write for the Web
Every element of digital communications has its own degree of importance, but there is one thing that consistently ties it all together: Search. In this vein, knowing how to optimize Web content for search is as crucial as knowing how to write Web content that supports your messaging, heightens engagement and meets bottom-line goals. This panel will untangle the Web of confusion surrounding how search engine optimization and marketing actually work; it will also provide you with the tools that will make media professionals and journalists more apt to engage with your brands online. With our panel of experts, you will learn how to:

• Create guidelines for creating cost-effective SEO and SEM strategies

• Write highly optimized online press releases

• Develop an understanding of how your company and brands are being searched

• Identify the best search terms and keywords for your campaigns

• Differentiate between what type of social media contents works and doesn’t

• Optimize blog entries to increase reach

• Track optimization's effects and measure a promotion's results

• Link techniques for blogs and social networking page

• Create an online newsroom that gets traction

• Write the type of content that attracts journalists and learn what turns them away

• Write transparent text

• See examples of outstanding PR Web content; plus, learn what not to do online

Speakers:

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Luncheon & Keynote Speech: The Big Picture of Social Media

As host of The CEO Show, Robert Reiss has interviewed more than 120 top CEOs over the past two years (including leaders of: Deloitte, Zappos, LinkedIn, Hearst Magazines, Ben & Jerry's, The Ritz-Carlton, Marvel, Starbucks, NetApp, The Home Depot) to gain a broad perspective of how CEOs view our ever changing world. In this keynote address, he will share insights into the best ways for "selling" social media to your CEO, as well as an overview of how social media will inevitably change the way business leaders communicate. Then, he will do a live interview with Matt Preschern of IBM, where they will discuss IBM's perspective on the future of digital media both from a strategic and tactical perspective.

Keynoter:

	Robert Reiss CEO, The CEO Show
	Matthias Preschern Vice President of Demand, Americas, IBM

1:15 - 2:00 p.m.

Managing (or Avoiding) A Crisis Online
When dealing with setbacks of any kind, PR professionals like you must have the smartest, most updated crisis management plan possible– and that means leveraging the Internet and email communications. With the 24/7 news cycle that includes bloggers and citizen journalists potentially wreaking havoc on your organization, knowing how to use the Web to your advantage is critical. This highly interactive panel will address:

• How (and when) to respond to bloggers and other negative exposure online.

• How to set up a dark site.

• Leveraging social networking sites and other new media to manage your reputation.

• Knowing the crisis rules and testing your online processes.

• Integrated online and offline crisis management.

• Communicating to your stakeholders online during and after a crisis.

• 10 proven tips for post-crisis management.

Speakers:

2:15 - 3:00 p.m.

YouTube and Other Video Tactics to Advance Your PR
As the media continues to fragment, PR professionals are faced with a welter of challenges in today’s frenetic 24/7 news cycle. Thanks to its immediacy and ability to read significant constituents, video has become a required tool in every communicator’s arsenal. Channels, such as YouTube, present innovative solutions that will leverage your brand, manage reputation and reach out to existing and prospective stakeholders. This Workshop, which will include examples of outstanding video communications posted on YouTube and other platforms, will help you:

• Build Web-based video content that appeals to your audience.

• Understand the technology and the resources needed to launch a video program.

• Measure the impact of video.

• Leverage YouTube and other social media sites with your video and other’s video.

• Devise the tactics to get your video off the ground and running.

• Manage and protect your reputation using YouTube.

• Leverage YouTube for its viral impact.

• Smartly integrate YouTube and other video channels into your communications plans.

• Educate your stakeholders about issues that matter to your organization.

• Generate buzz and build media relationships with YouTube and other video sites.

• Engage with existing and new audiences.

Speakers:

3:00 - 3:45 p.m.

How to Shape Public Opinion in the Digital Age

The convergence of digital and traditional media has revolutionized the way stakeholders access information and engage on critical issues. Effective communicators know that in this increasingly complex media landscape, the key to educating and mobilizing stakeholders lies in reconfiguring traditional advocacy programs into new multi-channel integrated campaigns that help create a dialogue with your target audiences.

This panel of experts will demonstrate how you can combine traditional outreach techniques with new digital PR tools to create a powerful communication model that will help you:

• Integrate advocacy, earned media and social media tools to mobilize and engage stakeholders

• Identify key influencers who can move your message online

• Cut through the clutter and get more traction for you messages

• Build online resources that provide timely information and/or advance your point of view

• Tell your story through compelling online video content

• Create a stronger ROI by learning how to leverage your media assets across multiple platforms

Speaker:

3:45 - 4:30 p.m.

How to (Really) Use Twitter

Like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, Twitter is now a necessary tool in your social media communications arsenal. Practically overnight, you have become your organization’s Twitter expert: now what? How do you really use this microblogging tool to boost your company’s reputation, to drive sales, to get the media’s attention, avert a crisis and communicate with your many stakeholders?

Our panel of PR professionals and media experts will show you how to use Twitter, the do’s and the don’ts of tweeting and most importantly, how to tie Twitter to your business goals.

At this Webinar, you will learn how to:

• Set up a Twitter account – from branding your Twitter page to creating a profile.

• Create hash tags to create timely buzz for your initiatives.

• Engage with existing and new audiences.

• Use Twitter as a listening tool and learn how and when to respond to tweets.

• Sell your products and services on this platform – without really “selling”.

• Get the media to cover your stories by tweeting.

• Monitor what’s being said about you and your industry.

• Manage and protect your reputation using Twitter.

• Increase traffic to your Web site and other social media pages using Twitter.

• Educate your stakeholders about issues that matter to your organization.

• Use Twitter to market your events – plus, how to create twitter-centric events.

• Improve your customer service efforts.

• The latest and tested Twitter tools and resources.

Speaker:

4:30 - 5:15 p.m.

Champagne Toast & Networking