Shel Holtz Leaves ‘Em Beggin' for More

A couple of weeks ago we had a great visit from Shel Holtz. He led a professional development session, “Introduction to Social Media” held jointly by the San Antonio chapters of PRSA and IABC and sponsored by Frost Bank. Not surprisingly, people are still talking about it.

I circulated a follow-up survey by e-mail to participants who had registered through PRSA’s web site. Here are the results.

There were 10 responses to our follow-up survey (out of 44 registrants through PRSA, a few of whom were not able to attend). Thre were about 70 people at the session.

Most respondents (80 percent) rated the event a 5 (highest), the rest (20 percent) rated it a 4.n Below are all of the responses to the open-ended questions. I did not filter any.

When asked what was the most useful thing they learned in the workshop was, responses were:

• Big picture truths, plus, I now have a better understanding of microformats and edge content.
• About new processes and resources such as social tagging, edge content and RSS• I learned a little more about microcontent and the talk sparked some interesting thoughts that I will be able to use with my clients.
• Too many interesting things to list.
• Considering my low starting point, it was almost all useful.
• General info on social media. Overview was great. Speaker engaging and knowledgeable.
• All the different monitoring sites.
• Everything he presented was new information that I was not familiar with. Very interesting and insightful!
• That social media is real and is, to some degree, disrupting the PR business.
• Citizen marketing

When asked what they wish they knew more about regarding social media, the responses were:

• The rationale for elements of a social news release so I can determine which elements are right for my situation.
• More about nuts and bolts of "how to use"
• How to measure results of social media
• How to better deal with pushback from upper management
• More on open source marketing & co-creation
• Technical training on how to create podcasts, other similar tools to communicate with our audiences.
• Applications

Additional comments included:

• This was my first PRSA-SA participation. If all of your future topics are as interesting and useful as the social media workshop, you will be very successful in your educational mission.
• Unsurprisingly, Shel led a great presentation! His use of both data and real-world examples help paint a clear and credible picture of social media and communications. I'm sure this will prove to jump-start many of our professionals into the world of social media.
• Great program!
• Great collaboration of IABC and PRSA. We should do more of this kind of partnership. Better to have fewer great meetings than more less-than-great meetings. You're doing a great job on the programming! Thank YOU.
• Good speaker, good event.
• This was one of the best seminars I have been to in a very long time. Shel was articulate, funny and informative.
• Wonderful high caliber speaker - great job!

By the way, Shel was interviewed by Shel (Israel) the other day.