A Conversation with Thunderbird’s PR & New Media Specialist Samantha Novick

Introducing the Digital Reality Conversation Series: The following is the first in what will be a series of conversations (some written and some recorded on Blog Talk Radio) between VMR and other digital media marketing agency and in-house practitioners. There’s no shortage of insightful talk about digital and social media marketing theory. But as Chris […] The post A Conversation with Thunderbird’s PR & New Media Specialist Samantha Novick appeared first on VMR. A Conversation with Thunderbird’s PR & New Media Specialist Samantha Novick was first posted on March 6, 2012 at 10:10 pm.©2015 "VMR". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Introducing the Digital Reality Conversation Series : The following is the first in what will be a series of conversations (some written and some recorded on Blog Talk Radio) between VMR and other digital media marketing agency and in-house practitioners. There’s no shortage of insightful talk about digital and social media marketing theory. But as Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com recently opined:

With those words in mind, these conversations will hopefully complement the theory-oriented dialogue by introducing our online community to some of the best and brightest marketing and communications leaders who are putting the best theories to work. Our focus will be how best to apply the theories to the every day practice and implementation of internet marketing and communications initiatives in the age of the real-time web.  I’m delighted to share the first conversation in this series, with a rising star in the world of digital marketing and communication, Thunderbird’s Samantha Novick. – HM

Samantha Novick is Public Relations and New Media Specialist for Thunderbird School of Global Management, one of the world’s most prestigious international business schools with operations in the U.S., Geneva, Moscow and Beijing. Samantha’s past professional experience includes work as a journalist and editor for newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.

In September 2012, she taught in the N2K Media Sustainability Program at Thunderbird, sponsored by the US Army and the State Department, which delivered business skills training to radio broadcast journalists from Afghanistan. Her program focused on social media engagement via mobile and SMS technology, essential in a country with less than 6 percent Internet penetration.

A journalism graduate from Arizona State University who has undertaken advanced coursework at The World Bank Institute and Thunderbird, Samantha is a member of the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations and leads the Academic Conference Call series between Thunderbird and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an avid hiker and world traveller. What follows is the result of an email exchange in February of this year. Special Thanks to Samantha for her willingness to be interviewed by VMR.

Hugh Macken: Samantha, can you summarize in a nutshell the nature of your social media /new media work experience at Thunderbird to this point?

Samantha Novick: I am responsible for leading and executing our institutional social media strategy. That means taking care of the content for our diversity of social media sites— http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/research/social
Mainly, I work with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I also work with different stakeholders around campus to help them meet their goals through social media. So that could mean assisting  someone in Executive Education with finding a new client through LinkedIn. Or by helping someone in Admissions and Recruiting publicize their event through Facebook or a combination of platforms. I’m there on the strategy side, but also spend a fair amount of time training and helping my colleagues understand these platforms and utilize them to their best advantage. I also guest lecture in our digital marketing class and in our global business plan course.

HM: It sounds as if you’ve worn quite a few hats at Thunderbird.  Of all your roles, which one (if you could pick one) do you feel has had the biggest impact on Thunderbird’s embrace of and success with social media communications? Strategy leadership? Execution/Content Development? Training/Education?

SN: I feel that my most valuable contribution to Thunderbird has been the training and mentoring I’ve been able to give to my colleagues and even those outside the organization in social media. One of the best parts of my job is being able to work with someone else and show them how they can achieve one of their goals in a new way. Sometimes these training sessions turn into big strategy sessions, and that’s when it gets really cool. You can see people looking at  sales, connections and their personal network differently. There is always an excitement about it too, and it is great to be in a position to encourage that discovery.

Social media is not completely rewriting business development, but it is changing it. And I want my organization to be on the cutting edge of that trend. So being in the position to dispel myths, provide a new way of thinking and share my experiences has been really powerful.

HM: Do training sessions often turn into strategy sessions and vice versa?

SN: Usually. What I do when I go through training an individual or a group, is customize the presentation to their needs as much as I can. It is always very fluid and there will be lots of questions. I always start each training session with—- “what do you want to accomplish? What is your top goal with this?” These types of questions. That usually sets the tone of the discussion differently, and we work out as a team how to make social media work for them.

HM: How do you respond to colleagues who ask you how to link social media outreach to quantitative ROI measurements?

SN: I always tell colleagues to have a very clear goal in their mind before doing anything in social. What do you want to get out of this? You don’t know how many times I have gone into meetings with people who can’t answer this question, or else say— “well, we just have to be there.” That doesn’t tell me anything, and that doesn’t help you. Define what you really want— Do you want to have a better line of communication to prospective clients or the media? Do you want to have a quicker, more transparent line of communication to your customers? Would you like to be better aware of your competitors? Would you like to connect with prospective clients in XYZ industry? Social media is a tool you can use to meet some of these objectives. Say you are in the business development side of a firm, and you handle B to B sales. If you need to close three deals this quarter, there are certainly ways you can use social media to help you meet that. It can help complement the work you are already doing—- hitting the pavement, collecting business cards at conferences, making cold calls.

HM: Do you have to report the ROI from your work? What qualitative or quantitative measures do you find to be most useful?

SN: At this point, I am not asked to report anything more than follower or fan growth per each platform, even though that only tells part of the social media story. I like to look at metrics like number of retweets, mentions and click-throughs on links. Other things could be the number of online RSVP’s you receive on Facebook or LinkedIn events. These show how engaged your audience is with your brand. I think Crowdbooster is a pretty adequate platform for providing this kind of data. It can also gauge your impressions—  an estimate of the total possible number of times someone could have seen your tweet.
I frequently will “favorite” tweets that have something really positive or constructive to say about our brand. These are great to have easily accessible, and help to make a case to someone who is wary. Anytime you can participate in a conversation that you couldn’t have been apart of before is a value add.

HM:  Does Thunderbird use social media monitoring using tools like Radian6 or Crimson Hexagon or google alerts to evaluate sentiment or share of voice?

SN: We use Cision and Google alerts to monitor our web coverage, but do not necessarily pay for any further advanced social media monitoring. For an organization of our size, it doesn’t really make sense. I also feel that the technology behind social media sentiment analysis has a little ways to go before it is worth investing in.

HM: What is one of your top strategic priorities / goals for 2012 for Thunderbird’s social media outreach?

SN: I think that we would like to do more with international social networks, specifically influential platforms in China such as Renren, Sina Weibo and Tudou. There is huge potential here if it is accessed effectively. Also I think that we would like to do a better job of monitoring foreign language content and becoming more prominent in international blogs. We could do a lot more by utilizing our international base and our foreign language capabilities.

Interested in checking out our next conversation in the Digital Reality Conversation Series? Click here for more information on Hugh’s upcoming conversation with PR 20/20 ‘s Paul Roetzer. Paul is the author of the recently published and highly acclaimed book (affiliate link)  The Marketing Agency Blueprint: The Handbook for Building Hybrid PR, SEO, Content, Advertising, and Web Firms  (Wiley).

If you have any comments or questions you’d like to add to continue the conversation with Samantha Novick, please feel free to do so below!

The post A Conversation with Thunderbird’s PR & New Media Specialist Samantha Novick appeared first on VMR.

A Conversation with Thunderbird’s PR & New Media Specialist Samantha Novick

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