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Women executives have a long history of keeping their successes to themselves and avoiding networking. Often, while men are crowing about their accomplishments and brokering deals in smoke-filled rooms, women have their noses in their work.

Is their history of shying away from the spotlight going to stop women executives from using social media as a platform to propel them to the top? It could all hinge on how women in business view their role as players on the social media stage.

Were the Experts Wrong about Women Executives?

Pam Kassner, founder of Super Pear Strategies, who I follow on Twitter, makes me wonder if all the experts were wrong and women simply needed the means and opportunity to celebrate their successes with the world. Regularly, Pam, who is also a tri-athlete, sends tweets about landing a new client or securing a high profile media hit.

“I don’t see it as a bragging. I see it as updating my network on our results,” said Kassner. “When people are considering if your firm is right for them, they want to know what you do, what you have done.”

Ronna Lichtenberg, author of “Pitch Like a Girl: How a Woman Can be Herself and Still Succeed,” doesn’t think that women need to become comfortable promoting themselves to thrive on social networks.

Lichtenberg said, “Social media is a natural for women, because it means caring about and starting with someone else’s needs, and how we can help. Social media offer a chance to initiate and engage in conversations that can lead to opportunities. No one likes people who use social media to obviously toot their own horn….we all like social media that lift us up in some way..give us new ideas, new tools, or just a smile.”

Boy’s Club is Alive and Well in the Realm of Social Media

I think it’s important that women, regardless of their social networking style, help each other in the realm of social media. Even though women dominate social media, including Twitter, the boy’s club is alive and well on the microblogging site.

A study done last year by two Harvard bloggers found that “an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.”

Women Executives Should Seize and Support

My mentor, Jeannette Paladino, who gives me courage every day to stand up to the scrutiny of social media, agrees that social media is presenting an opportunity for women to gain ground in the business world.

Paladino said, “In companies, women can take the lead in social media, because a lot of men still look on social media as a ‘soft’ skill, like human resources and public relations. They can’t always see the immediate payoff, so they do the things that have worked in the past. Ironically, women can take more risks because they have less to lose. Social media can be the beachhead — where they can plant their stake and become the face of the company. I couldn’t be more optimistic about how social media is the place where women can really shine.”

I think women executives should seize the opportunity to use social networks to drive business to their companies. But more importantly, they should support each other in their efforts.

What do you think? Are you shy about promoting yourself or do you see social networking as an opportunity to help? Maybe you, like me, think social networking should be a combination of the two.

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We all know that BP is inept at plugging an oil spill a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. But what about capping a fake Twitter feed that is spewing tweets almost as fast? It turns out that they are failing at that too.

Shortly after the deep-sea leak began a tweeter pretending to be BP’s global public relations team sprang up. His spoof was so side-splitting and healing to a horrified world that he quickly amassed thousands of followers. Now, thanks to BP, he’s getting even more attention. (Notice how I’m writing a blog that I never would have if BP would have reacted differently)

BP recently made a classic mistake. Instead of disarming and diffusing the heckler by embracing him, they fueled the fire by demanding that he publicly declare the account to be phony. He complied all right. Now, his bio field reads, “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 52 days.” Touché!

If BP’s public relations team wanted to fare better than their floundering CEO in the eyes of the public, they should have made a huge donation to the heckler. He is smartly funneling the money he makes on the stunt to help the oil saturated region, which will help him fend off any litigation.

By fessing up to the fact that they have been pretty easy to make fun of recently, BP would have earned a lot of respect. Instead, they only solidified the perception that they are standing on top of one of their oil rigs looking down at the rest of us drowning in their disaster.

How to handle a heckler in the realm of social media is counterintuitive for companies. The natural reaction is to lawyer up, but what works is coming down to meet the crowd.

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Hundreds of discussion topics are proposed via LinkedIn groups every day. In the public relations industry and well beyond, the vast majority of them fail to generate any responses. The ones that do succeed in getting a conversation started stand out like bright flowers in a field of forgotten links.

What makes these select few so irresistible that people can’t help but comment? Following are six ways to spark a discussion on Linkedin.

1. Ask for Real Help
People who are genuine in their request for help typically get it. For instance, one user posted a question asking if she should fork over a media list to a client or protect it like precious intellectual property. LinkedIn users are happy to share their experiences and show off what they know and believe, but they can also tell if someone is asking for help simply to promote themselves.

2. Dish Dirt
If you can tie your intellectual capital to the Tiger Woods scandal or whatever story is dominating the headlines, you have a hole in one. In this instance, you can provide your point of view and ask people to agree or disagree with how you would handle the situation if you were in the newsmaker’s shoes.

3. Invite Plugs
Inviting people to pitch their products or their skills is popular for obvious reasons. Who can resist a free plug?

4. Request Inspiring Quotes
One of the most outrageously popular discussion starters on LinkedIn simply asks people to share their favorite quote. People seem to relish the opportunity to inspire others.

5. Tap Industry Controversy
Right now there’s a debate raging (137 comments) in the “Public Relations Professionals” group about the misperception in and out of the industry that public relations and media relations are synonymous. At the same time, in a Business Intelligence group, the fact that BI has fallen down the priority list of senior executives is gaining stream.

6. Request Twitter accounts
Asking members of a group to post their Twitter addresses generates hundreds of replies, which is understandable. It’s easy to do and many people want more followers.

Just as we consider what makes a tweet retweetable and what makes a blog engaging, we should consider how to successfully ignite a LinkedIn discussion. What has worked for you?

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As a social networking consultant, I find Alexa.com, one of the top rankers of traffic to web sites, to be a valuable source of information. Knowing which sites are most influential and how my customers compare shapes my outreach strategy on their behalf. That’s why I found it ironic that a lack of information is what led to a missed public relations opportunity for Alexa.

On Twitter last Friday, the technology reporter for USA Today, Jon Swartz (@jswartz652), was on the hunt for someone from Alexa. He didn’t say whether or not he was working on a story, but that his antivirus software was blocking his access to Alexa.com. He sent a tweet requesting that someone from Alexa contact him. As Swartz pointed out, typically when he throws a request like that out into the Twittersphere, there is fast and furious response. This time, there was nothing but crickets.

Out of curiosity and a drive from my inner reporter, I wanted to see how easy it would be to track down someone from Alexa to alert he or she what was unfolding on Twitter. A major national reporter, probably in the midst of working on a story about their industry, was under the impression that their web site might be dangerous.

I found a page on the web site listing the founders, but there were no Twitter or email addresses to be found. I found their LinkedIn pages by searching Google, but I would have had to upgrade my LinkedIn account to send them “InMail” and who knows when they would have read it anyway.

Just as I gave up, Swartz tweeted that he was moving on to Quantcast and Compete. “Major fail on their part,” he tweeted.

For fun, I plugged Alexa.com into the search box at Alexa.com. How does the ranker, rank? Funny enough, no traffic ranking exists for Alexa.com. But, what it did say about how fast the site loads in comparison to others….”very slow (5.219 Seconds), 83% of sites are faster.” Fitting.

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First it was Balloon Boy’s dad. Now it’s the state dinner party crashers. Doing something outrageous and illegal to catapult from obscurity to over-saturation in an instant might be the latest technique that wannabe celebrities are using to lasso the limelight on a crowded stage, but it raises the age-old question: is any publicity good publicity? As a public relations consultant, I contend that it depends on your goals.

There seems to be a direct correlation between the velocity at which stars skyrocket to fame and the pace at which they flame out. If your goal is to get rich quick, to be forgotten fast and hated around the world, the more audacious and insidious your stunt is the better. Not many people can resist watching a car crash and corporations are allergic to passing on cash. So, now the most famous party crasher of all time, Michaele Salahi, will likely land a spot on the Real Housewives of Washington D.C. and Balloon Boy’s dad will probably end up on Dr. Drew’s not-yet-created anger management reality TV show. But, they will soon end up in the dustpan of history.

If you want to be etched in the history books and inspire greatness in others, the long haul of hard work and tremendous talent is what stands the test of time. In fact, many of the greatest artists who are still talked about hundreds of years later had to die after decades in the dark before they got noticed.

Like all public relations programs, the strategy and tactics should support the goal. If you want to live hard and die young on the world stage, pop balloons and crash parties.

What do you think? Is any publicity good publicity?

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What’s scarier for C-level executives than talking to employees, letting them talk back and addressing their concerns? Unionization.

Senior executives have kept employees at arm’s length over fears about what they might say about the company inside and outside of the firewall. But, now that Congress is on the brink of passing legislation that would embolden unions–the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)–labor lawyers have joined public relations and human resources in counseling companies to engage, embrace and empower employees. While C-level executives might choose to ignore the advice of HR and PR, they are more likely to listen to their lawyers.

Pundits predict that union leaders will succeed in convincing legislators to compress the amount of time that companies have to respond to a union push to organize employees. Currently, after employees express their interest in unionizing, which most do when presented with the opportunity, companies have over a month to make their case for a union-free environment. That could shrink to five or 10 days. Since companies can’t change the culture on the fly, labor law firms are advising companies that the most powerful preemptive strike against unions post-EFCA is an unbreakable bond with employees.

Give employees the information they want about the business, create an atmosphere of openness and make employees feel like they don’t need a union because they are already being heard and helped is what labor lawyers are saying. Internal communications departments are positioned to help C-level executives heed the call.

The impending strength of unions is building the strongest business case for internal communications the public relations industry has ever seen. Executives and employees who are united cannot be divided and authentic communications is the bridge that will bring them together.

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A pen can be used to write someone a love letter or to stab them in the eye. Like most tools, “Twitter lists” can be used for good or evil.

Twitter’s new feature enables users to group and label other tweeters for public display or private use. Whether it’s “the most influential” or “the least interesting,” lists have the potential to land companies on the list of “Top PR Gaffes.” Before companies get lost in list bliss, they should think about the following 5 ways lists can lead to trouble.

1. Private Lists are Revealed for All to See

Twitter’s list technology, like Twitter itself, is in its infancy. Evil doers are constantly devising ways to take advantage of Twitter’s technological weaknesses. In fact, we recently learned that hackers have found a way to access private direct messages. It’s only a matter of time before these trouble makers can make private lists public. Be careful not to create a “most annoying customers” list that could be exposed.

2. Private Purchases are Made Public

A Mashable blogger recently suggested that companies create a public list of their customers as a way to reward them through recognition. This reminded me of the time that Facebook was sued for listing the purchases of friends for others to see. If you’re considering publicizing your customer list, make sure you have the expressed permission from the customer to do so, especially if you’re selling sex toys. You could also end up making your customers vulnerable to cyber-stalking. Besides, who wants to list their customers for all their competitors to see?

3. Your Customers Consider you Catty

When I was in the eighth grade, a group of boys created a list of all the girls in the most popular clique and ranked them from 1-10 based on how pretty they were. For many people, the simple idea of these lists is distasteful and potentially hurtful. In fact, many people are choosing to shun the feature all together. If you create lists of the most influential people in your industry, for example, and leave someone off, he or she might hold it against you.

4. You Give Someone’s Location Away

Another suggestion from the Mashable blogger was that conferences create lists of their attendees. There are a host of reasons why someone might not want to be included on such a list. Maybe you’re attending the competitor’s conference or you’re a reporter who doesn’t want to be overwhelmed with requests for meetings. If it’s a conference that’s not work related, such as a yoga conference, your boss could find out why you really skipped work. Again, if you’re a conference organizer, make sure to get permission to post attendees on a public list.

5. Your Company Makes One of the Worst Lists

Companies don’t have to create lists for lists to become a public relations nightmare. What happens if your company makes the “worst customer service” list? Do you sue the list creator for slander? Companies will have to think of creative ways outside of court to appease negative list creators so their names are erased.

Once you slap a label on someone, you’re stuck with a great responsibility. I’m sure we’ll see a plethora of ways that lists can be used to damage reputations. What have I left out?

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Avid sports cards collectors, like Chris Curran, the CTO of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, take great pains to cherry pick the finest players to add to their collections. In fact, you can visit YouTube and enter the keywords, “baseball card break” to watch eager fans culling their cards.

When Curran isn’t cracking open a fresh deck, he employs his collecting prowess to help John Sviokla, Managing Director of Innovation and Research for Diamond, select who becomes a member of the “Diamond Fellows,” an eye-popping list of 10 intellectual powerhouses that Diamond keeps on contract like Gordon Bell and Alan Kay. To gain a competitive edge, the firm hosts cozy events for clients with the Diamond Fellows through the program, DiamondExchange.

“Through Diamond Exchange small groups of clients come to interact with the greatest business and technology minds in the world,” said Sviokla. “It’s like intellectual fantasy camp.”

And, when there is a special client problem that calls for a paradigm shift in thinking, Diamond hand selects the perfect player from its star lineup.

“While one client’s challenge might be better suited for Chunka Mui, a former Diamond consultant and co-author of ‘Unleashing the Killer App,’ another client could thrive in a brainstorming session with the inventor of the spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin,” said Sviokla.

In this viral economy, delicately arranging partnerships with high profile personal brands with people power can be potent PR for brands that want to expand their online presence. Innovative media outlets understand this. To move beyond its print magazine, Harvard Business Press is selecting big brains like Sviokla to blog, so now Sviokla, the collector, has become the collected.

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Recently a business-to-business client hired me to develop and execute a public relations strategy a month after they engaged a Search Engine Optimization firm. I made a beeline to the Internet. I wanted to see how often their name surfaced and where. In doing my due diligence, I discovered something shocking.

I ran across an Ezine article that was supposedly written by one of my client’s employees. Not only was the article poorly penned, the firm’s name was spelled wrong. To top it off, it was so basic that it brought the firm down to the level of a kindergartner. In reality, the firm had won award after award for industry innovation.

The SEO Firm Didn’t Bother to Get Client Approval!

I brought the article to the attention of my client. He admitted that it was the first time he had seen it. He guessed his SEO firm must have been responsible and said that he would put a stop to it immediately. Unfortunately, another article reared its ugly head not too long after he confronted them. So, for the second time, the SEO firm hadn’t even bothered to get the client’s approval before they published a piece that would forever linger on the web!

Spraying the Web with Keywords without a Strategy

What was abundantly clear was that the SEO firm didn’t care about the firm’s strategic positioning. They didn’t take the time to learn the client’s industry, how the client differed from its competitors and how best to showcase the brand in a thoughtfully crafted article. All that mattered to them was spraying the web with the client’s keywords and propelling them to the top of search engines at a break neck pace, even if it broke the client’s brand in the process.

It was this experience that inspired me to create Keyword Communication, the strategic process of developing and distributing compelling keyword-driven content consistently across an array of communication channels, using SEO as the driving force to deliver measurable results.

PR and SEO: The Art and Science of 21st Century Communications

The best SEO firms will admit that they are not PR experts. In fact, the smart ones, like Pete Hollier, President of SEO Wizardry, strike strategic partnerships with PR firms to deliver both the art and science of communications in the 21st Century. He understands that it’s not enough to simply drive traffic to a client’s site. You have to keep potential customers engaged with compelling content that positions the company in a positive light. In turn, I understand that tapping the power of SEO is a golden opportunity for public relations to make a deep impact on the bottomline like never before.

In my experience, SEO firms are not communicators and PR people are not techies. In this new media environment where people use keywords like smoke signals to connect in this ocean of information and interactivity, PR and SEO are destined to merge. We need each other in the worst way. I’m thankful that SEO experts like Pete get it.

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In response to the epic explosion of social media, companies are moving in two diametrically opposed directions.

For example, J.Crew recently banned its employees from using social networks. Around the same time, Intel issued employees a set of social networking guidelines.  But, the vast majority of companies have done nothing at all. Mainly they are paralyzed with fear at the simple thought of arming their employees with branded bullhorns.

Don’t Ban Them, Brand Them!

Inside out public relations is the process of empowering employees with access to external social networks to serve as brand ambassadors.

At a time when customers are talking at you, about you and making conversation circles around you, what is the alternative to turning your PR inside out? Paying a search engine marketing firm a fortune to pretend they are as passionate and knowledgeable about your content and customers as your employees are? Being perceived as inauthentic? Not saying anything?

Social media is a classic case of, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”

7  Steps to Turn your PR Inside Out

During  “Free Webinar Wednesday” on August 19 at 1:00 EDT, my colleague, Jeannette Paladino, “Write Speak Sell” blogger and internal communications expert, and I will expand on the following 7 ways that companies can turn their public relations inside out and take their marketing communications to the next level. To register for the event, visit http://www.freewebinarwednesdays.com.

1. Establish Two-Way Communication

The first step for companies that are thinking about turning their public relations inside out is to ignite internal social networking.

Employees who have a vehicle internally to share their complaints will be less likely to air their dirty laundry using external social networks. But, it’s not enough just to let employees talk, it’s critical that management listens and takes action based on employee feedback.  Once companies have an understanding of how they are perceived in the minds’ of employees, they will have a clear idea of the messages they need to communicate to their employees about what the company really stands for. Establishing two-way communication will foster a foundation of trust upon which a solid inside out PR program can be built.

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