PR & Social Media Summit

Today, I attended Marquette’s PR & Social Media Summit at the AMU. I chose to attend #Go Brewers: Using Social Media to Engage Fans & Build the Brand and Move Fast and Be Open: Representing Facebook Through Public Relations. The talk on the Brewers use of Social Media was by Caitlin Moyer the Director of New Media for the Brewers. The talk on Representing Facebook Through Public Relations was by Genevieve Grdina.

The Brewers talk by Caitlin focused on the Brewers use of social media and how it uses the use of social media is driven by marketing and business aspects. Through each type of social media that the Brewers use, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram, each one focused on promoting events, different ticket offers, contests for the fans, as well as interacting with the fans.

Caitlin also talked about Hank the dog, and how he became the Brewers unofficial mascot. The story started with Hank being a stray dog that showed up at Spring Training. The team used social media by showing different players interacting with the dog, while at the same time trying to find Hank’s owner. Eventually, the Brewers adopted Hank and he became the unofficial mascot of the team. The Brewers would also go on to add different items involving Hank, such as K9 T-shirts, Hank the dog stuffed animals, even a bobble head day in his name. The Brewers most successful marketing plans this year were centered around Hank. The most valuable lesson from Caitlin’s talk that I learned was that you can have a set social media strategy, but also be prepared for the unexpected, such as Hank showing up at Spring Training.

The talk by Genevieve Grdina on Representing Facebook Through Public Relations was about how ads on Facebook can attract the users attention to then buy the product being advertised. Most of today’s teenagers are on Facebook or some form of social media. Different companies will purchase ads to attempt to get the users attention on their product. I learned that the types of ads that come up for each user is slightly different because of the algorithm Facebook uses based on your likes, Facebook decides what kind of advertisements you might be most interested in buying. Genevieve gave an interesting stat, “around 85% of the ads the user will take notice of” either by clicking on them or searching the company’s Facebook page. This really surprised me because I didn’t think the number would be anywhere near this high.