Archive for August, 2009

When public relations first started back in the early 1900s it was defined as “a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interests of an organization. . . followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.”
Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, conducted large-scale studies of the effects of communication through mass media on society.  He found that the majority of the general public did not form their opinions or decide on a course of action based on directly receiving information, but rather relied on “opinion leaders.”
People relied heavily on other people for the information they used to make their decisions.
One of the most important functions of PR at that time was reaching opinion leaders in the media – journalists and analysts were top of the list.  And it was not hard to find them.

A more recent definition from the Encyclopedia of PR says  “Public Relations is a set of management, supervisory, and technical functions that foster an organization’s ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organization are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values.”  That seems more appropriate for the media landscape we’re operating in today.
The web has given people the power of voice. Peer reviews and opinion are more influential than ever before.  The Edelman Trust Barometer has shown that “someone just like me” is the most trusted source of information.
So the ‘opinion leader’ scenario still applies.  They’re just called different names today – influencers or trust agents.

Chris Brogan, co-author of Trust Agents defines the term as “people who use the web in a very human way to build influence, reputation, awareness, and who can translate that into some kind of business value.”

So how do we find these new influencers?

Social media has made it a lot easier to foster the ability to listen and respond.  But how do we identify the right people?

Are they the same as they were before?  Not at all.

In fact journalists, analysts and A-list bloggers, although still important, are now only about 40% of your influencers.  The other 60% are probably unknown to you.

And only 9% of companies are identifying and making an effort to build one-on-one relationships with those influencers, says Nick Hayes of Influencer50.  “Influencer marketing is at the same stage PR was at a few years ago –with a small number of firms that understand the benefits reaping big rewards.”

David Phillips said in the Journal of Communication Management – “Building and managing relationships with those who influence an organization or individual’s audiences has a central role in public relations.”

If the role of PR in the past was to find and work with the journalists and analysts (who were the major influencers) then PR’s role today is to find these unknown influencers and build positive relationships with them.

You may not immediately know who your influencers are. There is no universal ranking system. Someone who is an influencer for me might not be for you.

Work with the people you identify and watch your analytics.  The proof is in the decision and the action people take as a result of information they get from an influencer.

Correctly identifying influencers is a large part of your social media strategy.

Image credit:  J B Curio

8/26  UPDATE :  US Air has announced that they are rising their bag fees even more.

Yesterday I flew across country on US Air. This was my first flight with them. And it will be my last.

At the check in counter I discovered that to check my bag I had to pay $20. When I expressed surprise the attendant was very offhand – ‘we’ve been charging since last summer.’ she said with an annoyed tone of voice and a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude.

They may indeed have been charging since last summer when the gas prices were high. But no airline that they did n regularly charges $20 per bag. There is nothing that she could do to change the charge, but she could change her attitude. Airlines in the US could take a leaf out of the Scandinavian Airlines case study.

In 1981, Jan Carlzon became CEO of the problem-ridden Scandinavian Airlines and turned the airline around by focusing on what he referred to as “moments of truth,” the various points at which people with the airline came in contact with airline customers. His book Moments of Truth: New Strategies for Today’s Customer-Driven Economy is more relevant than ever in today’s social media world, where every customer has the power to amplify their experience and influence thousands.

Carlson realized that airlines were concentrating on the technical and administrative aspects of the business and not on the customer experience. “We used to fly aircraft, and we did it very successfully. Now we have to learn the difficult lesson of how to fly people.” And every interaction with a customer is a moment of truth.

As Charlene Li said in her keynote at Search Engine Strategies: we have to move from focusing on the technical aspects of  online marketing to being focused on the people.  Deja vu all over again.

Aircraft in and of themselves are not of value to an airline.   It is only when they are filled with satisfied customers that they have value, said Carlzon.  The company thought that the technical quality of their aircraft was what influenced the perception of the customer when in fact most of them had no idea what type of aircraft they were flying in.  The perceptions came from interaction with the people in the company.

“If those meetings are good meetings, our asset side on the balance side will increase. If those meetings are bad meetings, the value of our assets on the balance sheet will decrease. In other words, the only thing we have to do is to see that those critical meetings are as good as ever, that they exceed the expectations of the customers. Then we are going to be a successful company in moments of truth.”

When asked how he came to this conclusion Carlzon said it took lots of research – they asked questions and listened to what people had to say. And back in the eighties this took some serious research dollars.

But with all the social media tools as your disposal today, this is easy to do.  Listen and learn is the first step in becoming customer focused.

And if you don’t take Carlzon’s advice and focus on those moments of truth, you just might find that the one customer you  treated badly is on online influencer with thousands of followers on Twitter or Facebook.

Related Links:

Interview with Jan Carlzon

Charlene Li Keynote

Charlene Li, author of Groundswell, gave an excellent keynote at Search Engine Strategies, San Jose this week. Titled The Future of Search she spoke about where the web is going, how search and social will intersect and how we can prepare for what’s ahead.

In  just 10 years we’ve moved from 10 blue links on a page to Google Universal  with blogs, twitter posts, images and videos featured on a search results page. And the search engines are innovating all the time.  Already we’re seeing new features that integrate personal preferences into the search results.

User intent and trust are the two factors we have to prepare for.   We have to move from keyword-focused strategies to being people-focused.

Google has always said they are a relevancy engine.  They strive to give you the most relevant result.  If you want your content to appear on page one for a search you have to understand that relevancy falls between content meaning and user intent.

User engagement in social networks is the new relevance.

Starbucks posts something on their page and 7000 people say “I like this.”  they pass it on and share ideas and links.

But search and social are still a bit disconnected – search engines cannot crawl content in a site like Facebook, but they’re innovating and adapting to this  new landscape.  In the future they will  incorporate this new relevance factor.

Social networks will be like air – everywhere. They’ll just be a natural part of our everyday lives and we’ll find it quaint to think back on the time when we had to log into Twitter or Facebook to talk to our friends.  Our social graph will be part of all our online activity – whether we’re shopping, traveling or searching.

Similar to the way Amazon personalizes our experience, our social graph, and reviews from people we know and trust, will be incorporated into search results.

How can you prepare for this change?

1. Always focus on the user intent, not the keywords.  It’s about the relationship, not the technology
2. Be aware of the value of a customer – what is her influence factor?
3. Listen to your customers and learn from their conversations
4. Include social-graphics into the profile of your customers and your publics
5. Integrate social into your website now. Get your back end data in order
6. Talk to your customers and other people interested in your company
7. Help and support them in the buying cycle, online and offline
8. Include them in your decisionaking
9. Create useful, helpful content
10. Encourage them to share your content
11. Partner with other social sites
12. Be willing to give up control.  The biggest reason companies are not implementing social  media programs is that they’re not willing to relinquish control of the message

See you in Chicago in December at the next SES.

Sally Falkow

The Proactive Report

While one study shows that the number of companies now using social media marketing has jumped from 20% in 2007 to 66% today, the national study of management, marketing and human resource executives.reveals that one in eight has concerns about what the effects might be.

Among those not yet using social media, the primary concern is confidentiality and security (40%.) closely followed by damage to the reputation (37%.) These fears are understandable – there have been some horror stories reported.

But there have been many more successes and despite these misgivings social networking is being viewed as a key strategy: eight in 10 ssay social media can enhance relationships with customers/clients and build brand reputation

So why aren;t they all using it? The number one reason companies are not yet implementeing a social media strategy is they don’t know enough about it. (51%)   Yet only one in three businesses surveyed has a policy in place to govern social media use, and only ten percent said they have conducted relevant employee training.

Stumbling around in the dark can certainly lead to security and reputation issues. Social media training should be high  on the list for all employees this year – not just your PR team.

Does your company have a social media policy in place. What’s your biggest concern?

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When Abrams Research polled 200 social media leaders about the future of social media and they got some surprising answers:

Best social media tool for business:

• 40% of respondents picked Twitter
• 21.3% chose LinkedIn
• 18.8% said YouTube
• 15.3% said Facebook

However, when asked which tool they pay for the result was very different:

• Facebook came in first with 32.2%
• LinkedIn was not far behind with 27.7%
• Twitter only got 21.8% of the votes

Looking at the future it seems that going from cool to uncool is the kiss of death in social media and is to be avoided at all costs.

What is cool right now?  Status updates.  It was chosen as the social networking feature  most critical to users for everyday use. (Are you on Twitter?)

And the dark horse?  LinkedIn.  It came in second in both categories:  best for business and most likely to be paid for.

Now you know where to spend your social media time.

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