July 29, 2007

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Interview #12 - Annie Heckenberger - GPTMC.com

 Annie Heckenberger has a great job as a Social Media Director where she’s successfully bringing social media to her company’s doorstep. Read on to hear her take on connecting with bloggers, the future of social media, and advice on becoming a social media director yourself.

1. For those of us who are unfamiliar with you, could you briefly describe who you are and what you do?

I’m Annie Heckenberger, Social Media Director at GPTMC (Hi Everyone*).

Basically, I help the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation look at social media tools and find new ways to use them to better connect directly with consumers to promote the greater Philadelphia region and to enhance how visitors see, perceive and explore the area.

What are social media tools? They are everything from blogs and online social networks like MySpace and Facebook to mobile social networks like Dodgeball, and microblogging tools like Twitter, virtual communities like Second Life, community news edited sites like Digg, videosharing sites like youtube or viddler, social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us and reddit, even computer games and more. *whew* It’s a lot and our social media universe continues to expand every day!

2. How and why did you get started as social media director for GPTMC?

I joined GPTMC in this new position in October of 2006. I moved to Philadelphia from NYC, where I had created a similarly focused practice for a top-ranked NYC PR agency. I moved to Philadelphia because I realized that after 11 great years in Manhattan, NYC was rapidly moving in a direction that no longer included me. Simply put, I was living to work rather than working to live and my low quality of life was a real issue for me.

3. What other responsibilities do you have other than running fantastic social media conferences?

Hey, thanks for the compliment, I thought BlogPhilly was great too! I work with all of the marketing disciplines within GPTMC to lend social media thinking to all of our campaigns. So I work with our www.uwishunu.com and www.gophila.com teams and suggest new ways to use social media that may appeal to our target audiences; sometimes I lend thinking to new campaigns that have web components, like boundlessphiladelphia.com; I maintain our uwishunu page on myspace (http://www.myspace.com/uwishunu); I work on developing and executing new events or initiatives that will help promote our region; and of course, I interact with bloggers/podcasters/vloggers on a day to basis.

4. What is the best thing about what you do?

The best part of what I do is being a part of this great Philadelphia community, like we saw organized in the flesh at Blogphiladelphia, and telling the world about it.

5. Do you see a day when most, if not all offline companies are involved in social media?

When I was in the for-profit world and explaining the social media revolution to Fortune 500 companies, I explained it like this: We are no longer living in the marketing world that you’ve known. There is a social revolution occuring globally and the power is now in the hands of the individual user/consumer. So you can either get up to speed and join their world, or you will be left behind in their dust because this is not a fad.

6. It seems as though quite a few people are finding success through connecting with bloggers in promoting their products and/or companies. How important do you consider this aspect of social media PR to be?

For marketers, communicating with bloggers is critical. If you aren’t engaging in a dialogue with these people whose voices are sometimes heard by audiences as large as small town newspapers, you aren’t doing your job. Bloggers are no longer a specific target (age, income, sex, etc), they are a psychographic of people - all ages, races, incomes, locations, etc.

7. What advice can you offer to someone looking to get their foot in the door as a social media director?

I’d say learn how to dribble *and* make 3 pointers. That means, just because you blog and facebook doesn’t mean you are qualified. You still need to know the basics of marketing and that means studying how marketing evolved traditionally. There is value in case studies in this new medium. For those seasoned professionals out there this is great news for you - jump in an join the revolution. Learn 3-pointers like twitter and feedburner. Don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed; this is brave new world for everyone. It’s still evolving and there are no experts, just people with more knowledge than others. Listen, ask questions, and try things.

8. What is the one thing you would tell a company that is apprehensive about getting involved in social media?

Test and learn! You don’t have to do everything at once and you don’t have to do one thing in a huge way! Pilot programs are key. Maybe reach out to 5 bloggers who cover your industry. See how that works for you. Maybe do a podcast. Just make sure you clearly define your goals in advance so that you have a measurement of success and remember one thing: If you don’t have the time to spend on executing then you better have the time to spend on hiring someone to do it for you because at the end of the day, you are engaging the consumer…a real person…people…and each one of them needs individual attention and interaction. It’s takes a lot of time and effort but it’s worth it!

Thanks for the insight Annie-great stuff!