Brad Marley

On my bucket list, titled “Things I Would Like To Do Someday,” working for a professional sports team has to be on there somewhere. (And if it isn’t, rest assured I will write it down as soon as I am done writing this blog post.)

But unless I develop a Howitzer of a slap shot, or a nasty curveball, a job in sports will likely never pan out at this stage in my career, so I’ll just have to live vicariously through those who do work in the industry.

Coincidentally, today’s guest on the “Five and One” is one of those lucky people.

Nicole Yelland is a social media coordinator for the Detroit Red Wings who was nice enough to take time out of her hectic schedule to answer some questions about her role with the team, how social media acts as a component of fan interaction, and what the job is like on game day.

I’m really excited to have her here, and I hope you enjoy what she has to say.

Let’s get started.

Q: Social media, and jobs within that space, is still relatively new. Can you take us through a typical workday?

Nicole: My day as a social media pro is not unlike my former job as a PR pro in that every single minute of every single day is different. The truth is that there is little to no routine in this position, which is what I love most.

Some of my action items are similar, so here’s a bit of insight into my day (in absolutely no particular order):

- Walk into Joe Louis Arena, answer questions and grab people on my mental to-do list generated during the drive in

- Fire up my Mac, check email to see if we have any breaking team news, updates on ticketing, requests from corporate sponsorships or emails from our bloggers

- Log onto all social networks (the multi-tab function in Internet browsers are a life saver!), start searching for questions, responses, news or problems reported by fans (these stay open all day and I respond all day). Forward on any issues to corresponding departments

- Answer as many questions as possible (maybe generate some new ideas for the day or upcoming game promotions based on questions) throughout the day

- Read as many DRW fan-generated blogs as possible. Comment when appropriate

- Cut any social media video created as an event recap from the previous day

- On a non-game day, I head to practice, post photos and interviews from the locker room after practice

- On a game day, I head to morning skate, post photos and interviews from the locker room after practice. Later, I attend the media dinner (which is truly cool for a previous PR person getting to sit and eat dinner with Detroit’s sports writers), read the game notes with any good stats I might want to share during the game, head up to the press box where I live tweet the game, work on WingsLive (a live blog hosted on the DRW.com homepage) and keep the fans as updated as possible using all online mediums available. After the game, I head into the post-game press conference and (during playoffs) live stream it for fans outside of Michigan.

Q: How is working for a professional sports team different than working for an agency or a corporation?

The biggest difference is that the night before heavily influences the next day.  I mean if we win, lose, if there’s an injury, comeback or serious problem on the ice, my day is completely different.  Planning is usually on a tighter turn-around too, not because we aren’t organized but because planning for social media involves timely information and events that are sometimes tough to predict.  The audience is also different.  Working in sports provides the most engaged and responsive audience there is which is what makes it exciting to be on the frontlines every single day.

Q: I would imagine it can be a little distracting working for a team like the Detroit Red Wings. When was the first time you sat down and thought, “Oh my God, I work for the Detroit Red Wings”?

The 12 year-old who skipped her eighth grade farewell dance to watch the Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals with the boys down the hall squealed a little bit. Okay, a lot a bit.  Now that I’m here, it’s not distracting at all, it’s a fun and exciting atmosphere – especially in playoffs!

Q: Obviously you’re part of the team that composes the tweets, the Facebook updates, etc. Do you have free reign to go out and find content that you think would be interesting to the fans?

I do and it’s fantastic to have so much freedom.  Having the ability to communicate freely and ask people what they want without needing to go through an approval process is amazing.  It’s also great to work with a collaborative team (on and off the ice) who is interested in what I do and open to helping out.

Q: Aside from commenting on Detroit Red Wings fan blogs, how else do you interact and make them a part of the Detroit Red Wings community?

Good question.  I ask and answer questions across our social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace), create opportunities for fans to have more access by incorporating QR codes into our print magazine, help to manage WingsLive (a live blog hosted on our homepage) for all home games where fans are able to interact with both the staff and players, develop contests where we meet our fans IRL, I even talk to a few fans on the phone from time to time. There are so many outlets for communication these days, but I’d really like to think I help us hit the big ones.

Q: Finally, the random question: What did you want to be growing up?

I recall drawing a picture of me riding an elephant and telling my kindergarten teacher I wanted to be in the circus. I also had a brief obsession with NASA in middle school. So I suppose that a professional nerd isn’t all that far off.

This scenario happens far too often to be good for anybody's mental health.

An influential person on Twitter is leaving on a jet plane, so they throw out a tweet to their people to recommend a good book for the trip.

What follows is hundreds upon hundred of recommendations for marketing, business, self-help and entrepreneurial books that nobody in their right mind would read on an airplane, but recommending it conveys a sense of savviness and marketing smarts.

Absolutely nobody recommends a work of fiction.

Of course, said person thanks everybody for playing and says they decided on "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution"! This makes matters worse, and serves to solidify two false truths in our Twitter-addled brains:

1. In order to stay relevant on Twitter and in the eyes of influentials, everything you tweet must be grounded in your field of business. (Don't we all follow that guy who tweets stuff like "How to Attract New Customers Through Social Media" at 10 p.m. on a Friday night?)

2. If you decide to stray from your area of expertise, you will be shot on site.

The beauty of a site like Twitter is that it gives us access to like-minded individuals who are likely in search of similar dialogue. But these conversations are never-ending, so if you disappear for even a few days — like, I don't know, taking a vacation? — you risk missing out.

As it is in any type of social environment, there is pressure to keep up appearances.

How far are you willing to go to stay relevant?

I'm excited this morning because I'm finally posting the first entry in what I hope becomes a regular feature on my blog: the "Five and One" series.

It's where I grill people in the communications field with five questions related to the industry, and one random question.

So, without further ado, my first guest is public relations practitioner extraordinaire and colleague, Brian Barthelmes. (On Twitter he's @bdbarth. Go follow him.)

I chose him for two reasons: 

1. He's really good at what he does and all of us in PR could stand to learn from him.

2. He sits on the other side of the cubicle wall from me in our office, so I could easily pester him to stop doing work and answer the questions.

Let's begin!

Q: Why did you decide to pursue a career in public relations?

Brian: I graduated from Michigan State University in 2000 with a degree in advertising. I was always curious about public relations, and signed up for the one and only "public relations concepts" class offered in my sophomore year. I learned two things: (1) public relations is about helping people and organizations communicate a message despite all the "clutter" around them; and (2) writing was the centerpiece of the profession. Not only did I do well in that class, but it made me want to roll up my sleeves and jump from "concepts" to "application" to really get a feel for what the field was all about. As it happened, MSU offered a specialization in public relations during my senior year, and I'm the first "enrollee" in that program. A benefit of being part of the specialization was access to a very substantive advanced writing class. From writing and perfecting a press release with a 10-minute deadline to daily AP Stylebook quizzes to an end-of-class professional portfolio project, it was that class — and the professor who taught it — that made me realize a career was for me.

Q: What is the biggest challenge facing PR practitioners in 2010?

Brian: PR professionals will continue to be challenged to leverage — and stay ahead of — the pace, manner and methods of communication in the world today. When I graduated 10 years ago, social media didn't exist, and Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were barely visions in their creators' heads, and even the Internet was in its infancy. After having been successful in the public relations field for more than a decade, it's as though I've got to learn the practice of public relations all over again. All of us as PR professionals owe it to ourselves to roll up our sleeves, learn the social media landscape, understand its value, and be counselors to our clients looking to leverage it strategically.

Q: Why do you get out of bed in the morning?

Brian: At its basic level, PR is about helping people. The uninitiated might say we're not saving lives, but then again, maybe we are. Whether it's a recall of an unsafe product, the discovery of a harmful prescription drug or the response to the aftermath of the massive earthquake in Haiti, somewhere there are professional communicators — PR people like me — helping to tell people how to stay safe, how to help, how to get help, and how to prevent. And it's not all about communicating in a crisis. When deciding whether to pursue a career in journalism or public relations, our CEO told me and a roomful of employees that her choice was between reporting or making the news. Like her, I chose the latter, and I haven't looked back.

Q: What's one piece of advice you would give somebody who is exploring a career in PR?

Brian: Invest every minute of your time striving to be a professional who doesn't just write well, but writes well for public relations. What's the difference? The former is about adhering to the rules of grammar and usage, forming proper sentences, writing cohesively and generally following the rules. The latter is about all of that — plus writing strategically to reinforce a particular message. And when it comes to the written word, more words don't mean half as much as using the right ones strategically.

Q: What is one skill that is imperative for somebody who wants to succeed in PR?

Brian: Commit to continuing your public relations education after graduation. To keep up with the pace, manner and methods of communication, continuing education is essential. The good news is that educational resources are everywhere. Look up your local chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and take advantage of monthly luncheon events that offer the chance to network with professionals and learn from them as well. Sign up for a PRSA committee and work to line up topics that you want to learn more about. For example, I attended a "Social Media in Healthcare" panel discussion through the Detroit Chapter of PRSA last week, led my director-level social media professionals working in hospitals, physician practices and the media. It's this firsthand perspective about the challenges and opportunities associated with social media in healthcare that I'm now able to take back to my clients, which empowers me as a PR professional and a counselor to my clients.

Q: Finally, today's random question comes from Glassdoor.com's Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions Of 2009: What was your best MacGyver moment?

Brian: I once used a LARGE amount of duct tape to keep the bumper of my first car from dragging on the ground. Make no mistake, duct tape is probably the single best (and stickiest) product ever invented. Maybe the duct tape people need PR.

###

Like most of you, I'm sure, I did a lot of reading in 2009.

Whether it was a book, a newspaper article, or "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," 'the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of deriving meaning and/or constructing meaning' was something I partook in daily. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Hill, would be so proud.

So as I bid good riddance to the year that brought us four-hour waits for flu vaccinations, the advent of TMZ.com as a legitimate news source (because they were the only media outlet unscrupulous enough to run a report of Michael Jackson's death before it was confirmed) and teenybopper vampire romance trilogies, I want to take one more look at my favorite blog posts and articles from 2009.

• NHL: Brand Resurrected (MarketingDaily)

• How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live (Time.com)

• How Social Media is Radically Changing the Newsroom (Mashable)

• Could Twitter destroy real journalism? (ESPN.com)

• PR People: Stop Being Bad at Stuff and Read This (Bad Pitch Blog)

• An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All (WIRED)

• How To Be Interesting (Copyblogger)

• Apocalypse Then: a two-part series on the lessons of Y2K. Part 1. Part 2. (Slate.com)

• Anything Jeff Pearlman writes about on his blog.

There you have it. Those are mine.

What captured your fancy in 2009?

You probably think I have a ton of links saved up since I haven't posted a weekly grab bag of links since early September, right?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your thinking would be incorrect.

Truth is, work and baby preparation have gotten in the way of reading.

But with a week of little-to-no sleep on the horizon, I should have more time than I need to stay current on my blog reader.

For now, these will have to do.

• You don't mess with Montana's Communications students (Deadspin) – When Montana's football coach told his players to stop talking to reporters from the student newspaper, the student newspaper relatiated by covering the team's opponents. The coach has since allowed players to talk to the paper. Communications students 1, jocks 0.

• 5 Social Media Disasters (Penn Olson) – The headline says it all, really. Learn how Honda and Taco Bell handled social media the wrong way.

• An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All (Wired Magazine) – This is an article every parent-to-be should read. The topic of vaccinating your kids is polarizing, to be sure, but when the facts are laid out in a straightforward fashion, it's easier to make a decision.

• The Robots Are Coming! Oh, They're Here (Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com) - A group of students at Northwestern University have created a bot that writes game recaps that "captures the overall dynamics of the game" using stats from the game. It's called Stats Monkey, and I'm wondering if they set out with the intention to eliminate more jobs.

• Inside the NHL's social media innovations, growing pains (Puck Daddy) – This article explains how the NHL is actively trying to engage its fans (and fans-to-be) on social networking sites.

As always, you can see all of my links on my Delicious page.