Kaplow CEO and president, Liz Kaplow was profiled in Media Bistro’s PR Newser on March 8, 2012. Part of the “Women Leaders in PR” series, Liz shared her tips for building a successful PR career.

Please read the full PR Newser interview here.

Kaplow has partnered with the New York Angels Network to launch the Knext business unit, which will help start-up companies and emerging brands with communications strategy development.

This new division of the company will be led by MD and chief digital officer David Richeson and SVP Chaim Haas. For additional information, please read the announcement in PR Week on March 9, 2012.

Since March is Women’s History Month, it brought to mind an event I recently attended that was a testament to the strength and grace that lives in so many fabulous women. For the second year in a row, I was moved to spend this past Valentine’s Day sitting in the iconic Apollo Theatre for their annual Dining with the Divas luncheon. Emceed by ABC News correspondent Deborah Roberts, the event featured women from Crystal McCrary’s new book Inspiration: Profiles of Black Women Changing Our World. It was a joy to be surrounded by women such as Gayle King, Susan Taylor, and Janelle Procope, who are continuing the fearless legacy of the Apollo Theatre, a venue with such a rich and illustrious heritage.

Dining with the Divas is also an annual fundraiser to support the Apollo’s year round education programs and community activities in NYC. Overall, it was an amazing experience to connect with women from all different careers and personal backgrounds over the mutual desire to help people. What better way to spend Valentine’s Day than by celebrating the “diva” in all of us?

Did you know that one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime? And that most cases of violence aren’t reported to the police? Before I started working with our client the Avon Foundation for Women and their Speak Out Against Domestic Violence programs, I wasn’t aware of these alarming statistics.

Last week, I was lucky enough to staff and help draw media attention to an important event for my client’s Speak Out Against Domestic Violence program at the 2^nd World Conference of Women’s Shelters. On February 28, the Avon Foundation held a luncheon to recognize the best global communications campaigns and programs that are bringing attention to the need to end violence against women.

Avon Global Ambassador & Honorary Chair of the Avon Foundation for Women, Reese Witherspoon, presented the awards and launched a new fundraising product just in time for International Women’s Day (March 8). And yes, she looked as beautiful in person as on screen!

The product Reese unveiled is the latest addition to Avon’s fundraising empowerment collection, the Circle of Support Necklace. One hundred percent of the net profits from the sale will benefit Avon’s Speak Out Against Domestic Violence programs.

The Circle of Support Necklace features the infinity symbol, which represents the limitless potential for women and is really quite beautiful.  International Women’s day is this Thursday and I hope you will help us celebrate by buying a necklace for yourself, friend, wife, sister, mother or daughter.

More About the Circle of Support Necklace:

• Available for only $5.00
• 100% of net profit from this product ($3.71) will be donated to the Avon Foundation for programs dedicated to ending violence against women
• Domestic Violence Resource Guide included with purchase
• Empowerment products are available through Avon Sales Representatives in more than 50 countries by calling 1-800-FOR-AVON or by visiting www.avon.com
• For more information about Avon’s efforts to end violence against women around the world, please follow Twitter hashtags, #AvonSpeakout and #IWD or visit www.facebook.com/avonfoundation.

 Today Kaplow announced the promotion of David Richeson to Managing Director and Chief Digital Officer. As Managing Director, Richeson will work closely with CEO Liz Kaplow in the managing, planning, and execution of accounts. He will also aid CFO Evan Jacobs in cross-agency operations. In his role as Chief Digital Officer, Richeson will continue to oversee the company’s social media division, Kdrive.

“David’s insights and development of our holistic PR strategy have been integral to our evolution as an agency,” said Liz Kaplow. “With the expansion of David’s role within the Kaplow family, we look forward to continuing to help brands create an emotional connection with consumers through a 360 degree storytelling experience across traditional and digital channels.”

Since joining Kaplow in August of 2011, Richeson has driven the strategic growth of the agency’s social media division. Under his guidance, the firm has expanded the social strategy and community management teams, as well as in-house Content Creation and Analytics departments. As a full-service holistic communications agency with traditional media relations, strategic brand consulting, editorial, social media, and digital production capabilities all under one roof, Kaplow is at the forefront of the changing industry.

Richeson joined Kaplow from Porter Novelli, where he led global and digital public relations for Proctor & Gamble’s Gillette business. Prior to Porter, Richeson held senior-level positions at SapientNitro, Deutsche Bank and Lead Dog Digital, where he led numerous award-winning communications campaigns. A 15-year board member, instructor and student at The Institute for Hermetic Philosophy, Richeson completed his undergraduate study in Philosophy at Brown University.  He is the author of several stage plays and screenplays, as well as the book, 360 Degree Success.

After the release of the Timeline for Facebook Profile Pages in September, chatter around when Facebook would release Timeline for brand pages surfaced. With no clear answer as to when to anticipate any changes, it seemed inevitable Facebook would announce an official roll out of Timeline for brand pages. In this case, they choose to do so at their very first marketing conference, fMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) held this week. The brand pages include a heavy focus on visual elements, brand heritage and changes to the previous functionalities for admins. Here are the significant changes every brand marketer should be aware of.

Say Goodbye To Default Landing Tabs:

Tabs are no more! Banking on a Default Landing Tab is no longer the way of the future. Having been pushed into a section designated for apps, you are now limited to 12 apps, 4 visibly shown at the top of your page. Along with being given the option to customize the image former tabs, the dimensions of apps have also changed giving you added freedom with more space. What marketers previously used as a way to encourage Likes, now seems obsolete as fans will no longer be required to like your page.

Cover Photo:

Similar to what you will see on Timeline for Profile Pages, Cover Photo gives fans an immediate visual impact of what your brand represents. A new take on the welcome banner, it does come with some limitations. The inclusion of any calls to action, references to Facebook features, purchasing or brand information, are not allowed according to Facebook guidelines.

Friend Activity: Interactions your friends have had with a page are now highlighted in this section. Likes, tagged posts and comments are just one of the new ways Timeline for Brand Pages is trying to leverage brand story telling.

Pinning, Milestones And Starring:

Pinning allows you to anchor an important post to the top of your page for 7 days, a great way to keep posts from getting lost in a sea of content. This particular option will be a huge benefit for keeping fans up to date with promotions.

Milestones and starring enable you to tell the story of your brand. Starting from inception, you can now share with your community all your special dates and moments. When adding a Milestone, a photo is mandatory; you are also able to specify the location, exact date and story behind the mandatory photo. Starring also enables you to highlight particular moments, and stretch the width of the page like Milestones.

Activity Log And Admin Panel:

The new Admin Panel is meant to better assist provide you with greater awareness as to what is happening on your page, including the following items: insights, new likes, page tips, notifications, private messages and activity log. Private messaging gives your community the opportunity to reach out like they never have before. In order to utilize this feature, fans must initiate the conversation.

Your Activity Log, located in the Admin Panel, shows all post you have made to your page, including those which have been hidden. Here you can also change dates, star, unhide and delete posts.

Other Important Features To Note:

Ability to change the name of your Page: Facebook is now giving brand Pages the opportunity to change their name, should it be misspelled or inaccurate.

Pencil Icon: The Pencil Icon, located on the corner of each post, gives you the option to pin, hide, delete, change the date of posts and reposition for photos.

For a crash course into the new Facebook Pages, take a look at the video learning module provided by Facebook. Also important to note, as of March 30^th the new Timeline for Brand Pages will be mandatory, meaning brands will have one month to devise new strategies for how to best leverage these new features.

L-r: Carlotta Jacobson, president of CEW and Liz Kaplow, CEO and founder of Kaplow Communications, at the Beyond Beauty Gala

Our very own Liz Kaplow was among the honorees at the recent 8^th Annual Beyond Beauty Gala, which benefits the James E. Marshall Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation. Hosted by Emmy Award-winning WCBS-TV reporter Dana Tyler, the event featured actress Dendrie Taylor from The Fighter as the evening’s guest speaker. The foundation was created in 2003 by Elysée Scientific Cosmetics President Linda Marshall and family, in memory of her son who battled the condition his entire life. James died in 2002, at the age of 39.

In her acceptance, Liz Kaplow referenced her own transformative experience at the Beyond Beauty event three years prior: “Linda told her story with blatant honesty, but also with heartfelt love and optimism. She talked of the real life her son James had bravely lived.  She honored his life by telling the truth. And it was in the power of storytelling that she helped us to understand OCD in a way that statistics never could. I founded Kaplow 20 years ago because I believe in the power of storytelling.”

The $225,000 raised at the event went to support Dr. Gerald Nestadt and his research team at the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, who are working on better solutions to manage, treat and perhaps, even prevent OCD.

Kaplow, who was introduced by CEW president Carlotta Jacobson, placed the night in context: “I am honored to have been chosen for this award and I hope you will join me in a commitment to share Linda’s story and her message: To be positive, to laugh, love, to take something devastating and use it as a foundation to move forward and bring good to the world.”

Lately I’ve been feeling a lot like Frasier, that curmudgeonly sitcom psychiatrist who would always start his radio show with: “I’m listening.” Instead of patients, though, I’ve been eavesdropping on people talking across the social Web — and trying to make sense of their conversations for our clients.

Social media analytics of “big data,” as it’s called, is the elephant in the boardroom of many big brands today because it’s such a daunting task.  It’s kind of like attending a million focus groups in five minutes and trying to boil down all of those opinions into a cohesive marketing or PR strategy.

Sure, there are plenty of tools out there to help you listen (Sysomos, Radian 6, Alterian, BuzzMetrics, etc.) and synthesize the data into nifty charts and graphs. But successful listening really requires a sound analytical plan — along with a savvy analyst crunching the data and monitoring the trends  — to make the insights sing.

The point of social media analytics, after all, is to understand what’s being said about your brands and leverage that information to meet your business objectives, be it more sales, enhanced customer communication, better brand reputation, or greater customer loyalty.

It’s all part of the social CRM wave. I listen to what consumers are saying on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and so forth so I can better understand their needs. Then I can improve my products, create cross-selling opportunities, and compete and communicate more effectively.

So what’s the best way to analyze the millions of social conversations around your brands to get at these golden data nuggets? Here’s a suggestion:

Listen Daily: Create a search agent that scours the social Web and gathers keywords being said about your brands. Respond quickly to negative comments and foster relationships with those who speak highly about your brand.

Measure Monthly: Establish social media KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), such as brand mentions and consumer engagement indices. Track trends to uncover changes in consumer attitudes towards your brand and how effectively you are reaching them in the social space.

Monitor Quarterly: Take a giant social media dipstick every three months that looks at your brand share of voice, key influencers talking about you, and overall brand sentiment compared to your competitors.

Later on you might consider doing some advanced analysis like correlating what’s being said in social media to your sales data or Web site traffic.

We’d like to hear about what you’re doing to analyze social media data. Our ears are wide open.

If you work in Social Media or PR, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard the term Pinterest being thrown around in a brainstorm or two recently.  If you’re unfamiliar with the site, it’s a virtual inspiration board that allows consumers to quite simply “pin” a photo or story that they’d like to refer back to at a later date.  It’s a fancy bookmarking tool that allows you to share favorite stories and images with others.

Although it’s the new hot topic in conference rooms nationwide, it’s important to think about your brand’s strategy before diving into Pinterest.  If you make a product that appeals to young women that is also very visual and available online, it may be worth exploring!  As you surf through the pages of Pinterest, you’ll see that the most commonly pinned – or shared – items are vibrant in color, accompanied by a link to where the item can be purchased online and include tips on how to achieve a certain look.

I’ve been using Pinterest for a while – it helps me organize my favorite things like recipes, hair tutorials, inspirational quotes, cute puppies and nail art.  While many of the things I pin come from articles I’ve read in my RSS feed, I also follow a variety of brands that provide me with inspiration in a variety of ways.

If you’re thinking about exploring Pinterest for yourself, I recommend following the brands listed below. They are doing a great job so far of connecting with their target consumers through this platform.  Over the next few months, I anticipate that we’ll be looking at a ton of other brands that are taking the examples below to the next level.

• Lots of magazines are jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon, but InStyle, Lucky and Real Simplehave really embraced the site as a way to expand the content they’re sharing in-book, online and via Facebook and Twitter
• Refinery 29 is one of my favorite blogs and therefore, one of my favorite brands on Pinterest. They focus on style, beauty and DIY tips and tricks that get my right-brain’s juices flowing
• Mod Cloth, a popular fashion start-up, uses its Pinterest page to share a variety of products, creative ideas and vintage finds that its staff members find personally inspiring
• Who doesn’t love Martha Stewart?  Her Pinterest page is chock-full of recipes – enough to keep you inspired and creative in the kitchen
• Nordstrom uses its Pinterest page to curate different ensembles, trends and gift ideas for the holidays.  They also feature boards devoted to its Style blog and in-store Spa, giving them increased exposure to fans

Have you played with Pinterest yet?  If so, how do you use it to curate your favorite stories?  Share your favorite Pinners in the comments!

I admit I’m not sold on Google+. It’s selfish really – I don’t want another profile to update or network to build up. But, amidst reports that the social platform has surpassed 90 million users and will be rolling out its Search, plus Your World initiative, I felt I owed it a second glance.

At the start of the Global Google+ Hangout session at Columbia’s Social Media Weekend, I was happy to hear Sree Sreenivasan, the event’s organizer, mimic my feelings on the subject of new social media platforms. He shared a few wise words to consider before hopping on the bandwagon of a hot new social tool:

“Think first, does it fit into my workflow? Does it fit into my life flow?”

“Always be an early tester and a late adopter.”

Leaving us with the statement that, “Google+ is Google’s last stand with social, their last chance to make it work,” he introduced us to Daniel Sieberg of Google.

I watched with a skeptical eye as Daniel rattled off brief factoids about Google+ (200 features have been added since its launch, 3.5 billion photos have been shared through the platform, etc.), but when we hopped on a Hangout On Air video chat with Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product Management at Google and journalists in London, Berlin, Jakarta and Istanbul, things got a bit more interesting.

See, a Hangout On Air is not just another video conference call. Still in the Whitelist stage, Hangout On Air is the evolution of the Hangout (yes, a tool that just launched four months ago is already evolving). To summarize, Hangout on Air turns your computer into a mini broadcast tower. In their words, it’s the next generation of citizen journalism.

Here are the two key Hangout On Air stats that really struck a chord with me:

• As you video chat with up to 10 people from your Circles, the Hangout On Air can be seen live on your Google+ stream for all to see
  • This allows others to see and talk about the video chat, even if they cannot participate in it(engagement, engagement, engagement!)
  • When the video chat is over, it is automatically saved as a private or public YouTube file
    • This saves the video chat for use as future content on all social pages and guarantees additional visibility (YouTube is the top video search engine and second largest search engine, period!)

While remaining an intimate video chat among a small group of people, the whole world has the ability to listen in and discuss during real time, and can refer back and engage with the content at any point afterwards since it is a saved YouTube file.

Daniel and Bradley shared stories of rural hospitals receiving live expertise from large city hospitals during surgeries and other unique uses for Hangouts. The possibilities for this new technology are far-reaching.

I still may not be sold on Google+ for personal use, but I can absolutely see the amazing potential the Hangout On Air feature holds for brands.