Archive for April, 2009

Image by TJ Scenes

Speaking today at the Canadian Social Media Summit, David Alston of Radian6 pointed out to the audience that the decision to get involved in social media is not yours to make – it ’s a fait accompli. Your customers signed you up.

“Why aren’t you answering the social media phone – it’s already ringing. It’s probably hidden in a closet so you can’t hear it.”

A new report from Nielsen, “The Global Online Media Landscape: Identifying Opportunities in a Challenging Market”, shows that active Internet users prefer sites that contain more specialized content, such as video and social networking sites- the two fastest-growing categories this year.

Social network usage exceeded web-based e-mail usage for the first time in February. The number of Americans frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339% since 2003, with the time spent on video sites up almost 2,000%.

PR Lesson:

People want relationships, they don’t want corporate messages pushed to them

“The Internet has changed dramatically as people seek more personalized relationships online,” says Charles Buchwalter, Nielsen Online senior vice president of research and analytics.

We are in the business of public relations. Social media is about relationships

Check out the examples on this blog post from jason Cohen of how companies who jumped in to the conversation are reaping the benefits:

NIke

Zappos

RubberMaid

MarketingFM

Be prepared when you pick up that phone.  Do your homework now and find out

• what is being said
• who is saying it
• how much is positive vs negative
• are there real issues to handle
• do we have brand evangelists
• what are our competitors doing
• what’s our share of the voice in this conversation
• what are the threats and the opportunities
• what resources will I need to pick up that phone.

Meet me in NYC May 16 – 19 at the Media Relations Summit

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A few years ago blogging policy was on the minds of corporate communicators – now it’s a corporate social media policy that’s got their attention.

Telstra, a major Australian telecom company recently set down guidelines on the use of Facebook, Twitter and similar websites by its employees.

“Hopefully organizations are beginning to understand that employee use of social media is a reality, and that the risks and opportunities of their employees engaging online need to be addressed,” writes Ross Dawson¸ CEO of consulting firm Advanced Human Technologies.

“Social media is a free-flowing, wide-open phenomenon that needs to be handled and handled well. So frame its use for your staff, volunteers and base,” advises Nancy E. Schwartz, the primary author of the Getting Attention blog. She suggests that these are the core areas to cover:

• What’s the personal/professional split, if there needs to be a split?
• Any approvals necessary, at any point?
• Who responds to conversation about your organization and how?
• Who else needs to hear about that conversation?
• How do you protect your brand?
• Can anyone on staff who wants to be a spokesperson?
• Which platforms do you get active on, and how?
• What social media-ing is ok to do at work, and what’s not ok?

Here are some examples collected by 123 Social Media. Note: some are blogging policies.

• Blog Council – Disclosure Policy
• Greteman Group (Marketing Agency)
• IBM Social Computing Guidelines
• CISCO Internet Postings Policy
• HP Code of Conduct
• Intel – Social Media Guidelines
• Opera Employee Blogging Policies
• Sun Guidelines on Public Disclosure
• Harvard Law School – Terms & Policy
• BBC – Editorial Guidelines, personal use of Social Networking
• US Navy – Web 2.0 – Utilizing New Web Tools
• CivilService – Code for Online Participation
• (CIPR) Chartered Institute of Public Relations Social Media Guidelines
  CIPR – Social Media Guidelines for Consultation
• US Air Force Social Media Policy (with flow chart)
• Porter Novelli (PR Firm – added 2-26-08)
• Government Policy (added 2-26-08)

It seems like executives (and nonprofit boards) are primarily concerned about three things, says Beth Dunn

1. Employees will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, vendors, customers, etc.);
2. Customers/constituents will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, staff, vendors, etc.);
3. Employees will tell secrets.

PR Lesson:

Markets have indeed become conversations. Both outsiders and employees are using social media sites and there is no way to control this conversation. But you can set guidelines for employees’ use of social sites. For the most part it boils down to common sense and good manners:

• what you write online never goes away, so don’t write anything that could come back to embarrass you or the company

• don’t say anything you would not say in a public forum offline, when you represent your company in any way

“You’ve (hopefully) hired smart people that you trust, and are willing to empower and trust them to make the right decisions both online, and offline,” says Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester. “In many cases, these companies have over-arching ethics policies that span behavior not just on blogs and social networks, but also at corporate functions, or even when wearing a company shirt at a bar.”

Image by Pandemia

Social Media is indeed causing a sea change in how we connect, how we access information and our ability to reach out to others. 

This week several celebrities and mainstream media outlets raced to be the first  Twitter user to get 1,000,000 followers.  Ashton Kutcher won.  CNN was second.  Oprah featured Twitter on her show and started tweeting.  In just a few days she’s got half a million followers.  According to PC World unscientific estimates put the number of new users signing up in the post-Oprah days anywhere from 500,000 to 1.2 million. Those figures come from looking at the progression of user ID numbers assigned to new accounts.

Twitter and Facebook are no longer just social networks, they’ve become the focal point of millions of people’s lives.  It’s where they get their news, information and gossip. 

PR Lessons:

 “For one person to actually have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network, sort of signifies the turning of the tide from tradition news outlets to social news outlets. With our video cameras on cell phones, picture cams, blogging, twittering, posting, and Facebooking, we actually become the source of the news, the broadcasters of the news, and the consumers of the news…we have the potential on this day to turn the tide…where social media and social news outlets can become as powerful as the major news outlets. We’re doing that with the help of you. It’s sort of power to the people and I like that, a lot.” 

Ashton Kutcher on the significance of gaining 1,000,000 followers on Twitter.

That applies to companies too. It is possible to gather millions of followers and fans. Some brands have already done it on Facebook – Coke and Victorias’ Secret,to name just two.  You can become the source of the news, the broadcasters of the news and reach millions with your message – directly.

 Monitoring these online conversations is vital. We’ve seen the effect negative content online can have. Dell Hell, Kryptonite Locks, Motrin Moms and the recent Domino’s debacle.  But those with their ear to the Groundswell are ahead of the game.  Naked Wines recent experience with a disgruntled customer nipped the complaint in the bud and turned it into positive  PR.

Yet the CMO Council report released in Janury revealed that only 16% of companies are monitoring social media conversations and commments. If your company is one of the 86% that don’t, get started right away.

Meet me at Media Relations Summit 09 in New York City next month.   And follow me on Twitter

Image by Creative Commoners

Is your organization or corporation lagging behind in adoption of new collaboration and productivity tools?

You’re in good company apparently – the Microsoft and Accenture ‘Oil and Gas Collaboration Survey 2009,’ conducted by PennEnergy in partnership with the Oil & Gas Journal Research Center, found that although many execs in this industry feel that social media tools produce better results, the companies by and large are still using old methods to retain and share knowledge.

• More than 70% of the engineers, geo-scientists and business managers polled believe that collaboration and knowledge-sharing are important for driving revenue, cutting costs and contributed to the health and safety of workers.

• 40% of them believe company adoption of new social media tools, including social networking sites, would boost productivity on the job.

• Only one out of four reports leveraging these newer tools to capture and share important information internally.

• Most respondents stated that their organizations are still using older means of collaboration, such as face-to-face meetings, e-mails and conference calls, even though newer, more sophisticated technology tools are available today.

And the way they’re doing it now is certainly not optimum: 61% of respondents said that they spend at least one hour each working day searching for information and knowledge sources necessary for their jobs.

That’s a lot of wasted hours – do the math. There are an estimated 65,000 engineering professionals in the global oil and gas industry today, and one hour searching for data every day translates into a potential loss of almost 10m people-hours a year among engineers alone, an average net annual loss of $485m for the industry, calculated by the U.S. Department of Labor salary statistics. Ouch!

“When every dollar counts and effective decision-making is crucial, new technologies such as social media tools can help oil and gas industry professionals find information, collaborate and generally be more productive,” says Ali Faramawy, VP Microsoft International.

According to the report Web 2.0 technologies can support the following industry requirements:

• connection with remote geographic locations

• knowledge capture

• knowledge access

• informal knowledge sharing

• joint ventures and team projects, reducing costs and driving incremental business value

Perhaps it’s time to take another look at how social media could improve your internal knowledge management procedures – and your bottom line.

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As the adoption of  sharing content in feeds climbs it looks as though we’re finally moving away from the  techie name of RSS to the more friendly term news feeds. And that is certainly one we as PR people can understand.

Getting your own news out in a feed has long been touted as a ‘must have’ strategy for your newsroom.  Back in 2005 Charlene Li, then a senior analyst at Forrester, said “if you do nothing else with RSS put your press releases in a feed.” Yet a quick tour of the Fortune 100 websites in 2009 reveals that  not many of them are using news feeds.

Be ahead of the pack – if you do not yet have a social media newsroom, or at the very least a news feed on your press releases, make that a priority.  The feed will boos the search visibility of your releases and reach new and niche audiences looking for the subject of your content.  Studies have shown that online press releases found via search have become the #1 source of info for business buyers, prior to purchase.  Tool choice:  PRESSfeed

Now for the pull in part:

You can pull in industry news feeds and display them on your site or newsroom.  This used to be a duanting and technically challenging operation, but there are free tools out there now that allow you to do this easily and quickly.

Here is a map of these tools from Robin Good at MasterNewMedia.com

Confidence and trust have taken some hefty hits in the last year and the public’s reponse is clearly visible in the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer.

Trust in corporations is down around the world.  The country hit hardest is the US, where  77% of the repondents say their level of trust is lower than last year.  At an overall 38%, trust in US business is at its lowest figure in the 10 year history of this survey – even worse than after Enron and the dot com bust. 

And we don’t trust the media much either. Indutry analyst reports and business magazines, which held the top spots last year, have lost ground. Trust in TV News dropped from 49% to 36% and trust in newspapers went from 47% to 34%.

Why is this so important?  Money is an idea backed by confidence. Research shows that trust is a pivotal component of company reputation and consumer spending – 91% of the 25 – 64 year olds polled say they buy from a company they trust and 77% refuse to buy from one they distrust.  Being able to trust a company is one of the most important factors when determining reputation.

PR Lesson:

“If businesses are to regain trust they will need to adopet a strategy of public engagement.”

 60% of those polled said they need to hear information about a company 3 – 5 times before they believe it. 

One bright spot in all this gloom is that outside experts are still seen as a credible source of information about a company.

The message has to be stated by the company and then echoed by outsiders -  experts, academics and the general public.  

Mainstream media is no longer the only way to reach opinion leaders and influencers. You need to commit to getting your information, speedily and regularly,  to the new influencers – bloggers and power users in online communities.

 Every company can be a media company.  Create and syndicate interesting useful content that can easily be saved, shared and improved by your public.

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