Navigating the Social Media Frontier

Social media is the buzz word in PR and marketing circles these days. You can feel awfully left out and lonely if you're not talking blogs, Facebook, wikkis, RSS, Twitter and all the other new digital applications.

In our workshops we always recommend organisations seriously consider using social media to reach their audiences. But then we add three common sense caveats:

• The people you need to reach must use that media .... using social media just to be cool will waste a lot of communications effort.
• You must be prepared to engage in, not control, the conversation with your audience. And organisations locked into top down, command and control communications suddenly start to sweat when they realise the new media is about a philosophy of participation as much as it is about technology.
• And finally when in Rome do what the Romans do. You need to communicate like others folks in the social media zone ... and they don't use corporate speak and words like vision, mission statement and outcomes. When you bring organisational language into a social media conversation you look like the man wearing a suit and tie on a summer beach. Uncomfortable and silly.

At this stage social media is new and no-one knows where it is heading. But sticking to some common sense principles will help most of us navigate this pioneer territory.

Telling the Climate Change Story

The environmental alarm clock just went off and it's five minutes to midnight.

On Friday 4 July Professor Ross Garnaut released his 537 page report about global climate change and its impact on Australia. It pulls no punches. Early economic modeling shows that unless we take action now, by 2100:

• Around 4.8 per cent will be wiped off Australia’s projected GDP.
• Projected household consumption will drop by 5.4 per cent.
• Real wages will decline by 7.8 per cent.
  

If we sit on our hands now the quality of life for our kids, grandkids and other Australians will be considerably worse than our current lifestyles.

The report poses special challenges for Australia's communicators. As the nation's story tellers, from this point onwards, more of us are likely to be called upon to use our communications skills to:

• Help the man and woman in the street make sense of the claims and counter claims on what should be done in the next few years and beyond.
• Help people understand their role in finding solutions. (This year's Earth Hour is a good example of telling people how they can become involved).
• Explain simply the complexities of the tough measures Australia must take to mitigate against the effects of climate change.
• Accurately communicate the impacts of these measures on whole industries, whole communities right down to individuals.

If the tobacco industry is an example, some in the PR community may be called upon by clients and others to fight rearguard actions to preserve sectional interests. They may be asked to sow doubt and confusion by communicating that change is unnecessary or the adjustment is too harsh. Mnay more may be tasked to green wash their organisations ie to promote token changes done more for good PR than sustainable posterity.

As a group I hope Australia's communicators put the global and national interest ahead of client and organisational self interest.

When Saying 'Sorry' can be the Best Communications

The media coverage of Federal MP Belinda Neal has been intense in recent weeks.

You'll recall Labor Parliamentarian Ms Neal and her partner, former NSW Minister John Della Bosca had a run-in with staff at a Central Coast nightspot. Heated words were exchanged and Ms Neal and her partner were subsequently accused of overbearing and bullying conduct.

The matter has turned into a mini-media storm putting both the Prime Minister and the NSW Premier on the defensive over the behaviour of their colleagues. Both Neal and her partner have gone to ground - maybe on party orders - and are saying nothing.

In the very early days of the affair the two may have been better advised to follow the crisis communications mantra of "fess up and dress up". If so the the story may have ended in two days rather than drag on for two weeks.

When public figures find themselves in an unfavourable public spotlight -and they have done the wrong thing - often the best course of action is to admit the lapse in judgement, tell the community how they will rectify the situation and move on quickly. In this case perhaps an early apology from Ms Neal to the staff involved was in order.

In these situations saying nothing or trying to stonewall leads to continuing public and media speculation and, when you don't talk others will fill the communications void for you.

The guidelines in this video for dealing with the media in a crisis, could have saved a lot of angst for all parties in the past two weeks.

Did the Traditional Media Release Just Die?

Is the traditional media release dying?

It could well be because most media releases don't succeed despite all the hours of love and attention that goes into them. Most are full of corporate speak and look more like policy platforms rather than documents designed to attract attention.

How long are cash strapped, time poor organisations going to tolerate this poor return on their PR investment?

The social media release may be the next generation way of sharing information with the media and others. It is an on-line document drawing together text,video,audio,images, quotes and in-depth information.

There's not much information about this new tool but this video shows the new format. (You'll need to excuse the blatant advertising by the three UK lads promoting their services).

Communicators Can't Risk the Fate of Middle Age Monks

A recent international report shows PR agencies around the world enjoyed boom times in 2007, clocking up their best ever financial performances.

It’s all symptomatic of the rise and rise of communicators who are increasingly critical in the fortunes of governments, political parties, businesses, not for profits and just about every other type of other organization.

They may not know how it works, but managers at all levels now instinctively recognize the value of PR. And the more astute ones understand that without good PR, corporate or personal reputations can be end up in the trash.

Apart from (long overdue) management recognition, the boom times are also here because communicators now have more tools than ever to connect with customers, clients and citizens. Web2.0 technologies have given us the chance to engage with the people we need to reach, without going through traditional gatekeepers or self appointed mediators.

Despite all the hype no-one really knows where the world of on-line communications is heading. Just when we come to grips with one application, others spring up. Which means communicators are entering pioneer territory and the way ahead is likely to be uncharted, unfamiliar and often uncomfortable.

I hope we take a key lesson from the 1990s when the Internet really began to emerge. Then, most PR areas didn’t understand it, so almost by default, it became the property of the IT department. The “techos” quickly captured the new technology and from that point on people, who knew little about communicating, owned history’s most powerful communications tool.

In today’s organisations communicators must understand, use and promote the use of Web 2.0 or risk the fate of the monks in the Middle Ages. Then monks in cloistered monasteries labored for years to produce Europe’s manuscripts. In 1440 when German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented his wooden printing press, a generation of monks likely looked at each other and said “this printing press won’t work… can’t understand it… not for us”.

Fast forward to today. Many printing presses … few monks!