The Paragon Awards recognize outstanding work in public relations campaigns. Similar to the Oscars, these are the type of campaigns that make you laugh, make you cry, or in the marketing world, make you buy in.

Laughlin Constable is thrilled to have brought home not one, not two but three of these awards last night.

An award of merit was given for work on the Wisconsin Department of Tourism iPhone app launch. An advanced look at the app by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and well-planned distribution of a news release to select media helped make the release of the app a great success. Coverage in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Associated Press resulted in hits in ABCNews.com, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Times-Picayune and many more. The immediate result was more than 80 million impressions, $3 million in publicity and more than 2,000 downloads.

LC also snagged an award of merit for the 2010 Department of Tourism’s press kit. The team used sound media relations, creative ideas and strategic planning to develop a kit that generated significant awareness of all the unique events, activities and attractions in Wisconsin and ultimately, caught the attention of the media. Not to mention, it looked pretty cool (our designers rock). The team met with more than 25 different media outlets in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Milwaukee and also mailed or dropped off press kits to 30 more outlets. Many of the reporters complimented the team for having designed such a useful and easy-to-navigate press kit and supplementary USB flash drive.

And finally, there was an award of merit for the social media successes for the Department of Tourism.  When the Facebook page, Twitter account and blog were initially launched, consumers flocked to the pages within minutes (okay, not minutes, but quickly). The 2010 summer campaign character Miles Feldspar was introduced on these platforms, and unique content, trivia questions, and giveaways followed. From its launch, the Facebook page has grown to over 24,400 fans, with the Twitter account at just over 2,000 followers. The blog has received over 64,181 views since its launch and is consistently a top 10 content section on TravelWisconsin.com.

All and all, it was a great night. While these are public relations awards, the effort on all three of these campaigns was agency-wide. Our hard work and dedication to our clients really paid off.  So now, after a night of celebrating, where’s the afternoon coffee?

There’s a lot to learn, but you can begin to put yourself on the track to corporate social media success by following these guidelines:

1) Listen.

Before diving in, monitor social media outlets to find out what (if anything) users are saying about your brand. This will give you a better feel for the environment you’re about to enter and may change your strategy going in.

2) Earn their trust.

In order to build the foundation for a positive relationship with social media participants, it is imperative that you be as honest as possible. Be transparent. If participants feel like they’re being deceived they’re not going to engage with you. So say who you are. Be honest about what you’re promoting. Consumers will appreciate that much more in the end. Remember the Wal-Mart blog scandal? You don’t want that.

3) Engage.

Don’t just use social media to blast out promotional messages. I have seen too many corporate Twitter feeds without a mention or hashtag in sight.  It’s not pretty. Use social media to engage with your consumer, not to inundate them. Participate in conversation. Better yet…start conversation.

4) Listen (again) and respond.

It’s important to continue to monitor what is being said about your brand. Not only can you feel out what the general attitude toward your brand is, you can also efficiently respond to both negative and positive feedback when appropriate. Look at Ann Taylor’s positive reaction to a negative Facebook comment.

Want to learn more? Check out this Mashable post which profiles the corporate social media success of five major companies.

Last night, a group of Laughlin social media staff and I attended the ‘Obama For President: Interactive Strategy’ event hosted by MIMA (Milwaukee’s Interactive Marketing Association). Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, shared his insights, strategies, and lessons learned from executing Obama’s social media campaign.

Although I am standing by the notion that social media is not a campaign – I will refer to it as that for the purpose of this blog.

After hearing the genius that went into creating Obama’s social media strategy, I learned that no matter the campaign size, big or small, the key to success lies in the targeting of the message. So, whether it’s email, video, photos, or an interactive platform, each social media channel should harness a different message.

Take for example Obama’s email marketing strategy. Although email marketing doesn’t necessarily fall under social media, the lessons learned from this example can be applied to any two-way conversation.

Obama’s team knew that they couldn’t send out one, mass email to all of his supporters. They knew that the message needed to cater to each specific person, their interests, and their behavioral data. Hours of research went into making sense of this data and the results came back with an interesting insight.

Out of 13 million email subscribers, there were 300 segmented groups of people with similar interests. Obama’s personalized approach raised millions of dollars for the campaign because they were targeting the right person at the right time.

Now, if the notion of customized messages, delivered at the right time, to the right person, makes sense for a campaign as large as the Presidential election, imagine it for your corporate social media strategy…