Perhaps you saw Richard Edelman’s post last week on five key points we need to remind clients about in a recession. It was an interesting piece on the value of PR in the current media environment. Much was said, some of which was on par (image: prosperity symbol by sharlini). Perhaps the best comment in the whole post was:
We need to ensure clients are equipped to convey PR’s ROI and credibility advantages over other communications disciplines.
Last recession, I was in a tech heavy firm, and though times were tough, walked out of it with a promotion and a significant increase in wages. Recessions often create opportunities for those who can navigate the troubled waters. Keys to success during this time:
1) A positive attitude no matter what. You cannot underestimate the importance of maintaining a we can attitude.
2) Redirecting business strategy to win away lower tier clients from the big agencies as well as stable industries sure to spend through the recession.
3)Finally, intrinsically tying our PR and marketing service to ROI.
Moving forward, PR and marketers have an opportunity to accelerate through the recession and differentiate themselves by focusing on ROI. Remember, companies are in business to generate revenue, and that’s the predominant reason why they hire us. If communicators focus on intangibles like "credibility" or "conversations" that cannot be tied directly to their clients’ or company’s bottom lines… Well, they put themselves at risk.
Yes, credibility is the primary benefit of PR services, and smart companies know this is necessary to survive and grow thorough a recession. But unfortunately some companies can’t see beyond three months into the future. Others simply have to make cuts. These less visionary or unfortunate players will focus solely on the bottom line.
Speaking engagements also create direct relationships, as well as many lead opportunities.
Events created for stakeholders can create outstanding value… and leads
Both traditional media hits and social media — if targeted with precision — can inspire leads, speaking engagements, and the right kind of SEO
White papers can turn into calls-to-action on the web site, in turn creating leads
Get creative. Stay positive. Inspire your strategy to position you to win, and impact your clients’ or company’s bottom line. And prosper through the recession.
Qui Diaz started at Livingston Communications this week as director of strategy. We’re going to practice what we preach and not slap the press release into a blog post. But we will tell you a few things about her:
She also blogs at the evange.LIST, a place where she discusses non-profits and social media
Qui has a PR background, and understands integrating PR and social media
And she’s quite a rock star in the local social media community
Next Tuesday, Qui will start blogging on the Buzz Bin in her usual slot. In a addition, we decided to interview her next Thursday to provide some more background info for our readers.
Personally, it’s great to have Qui on board. Her senior leadership significantly expands our offering.
F2C: Freedom to ConnectDC is coming to DC this March 31 and April 1. F2C is a meeting of people engaged with Internet connectivity and all that it enables, including vendors, customers, regulators, legislators, analysts, financiers, citizens and co-creators. This year, the theme of F2C is how universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production are changing our fundamental economic and social assumptions.
Keynotes are from:
Susan Crawford, founder of OneWebDay, ICANN Board Member, blogger.
Normally this event costs $1195. But there’s a Late Majority Price of $750 in effect now. Social Media Club members (and friends) can get an additional $50 discount by registering here. BTW, did we mention it was at the super hip Silver Theatre?
Doug Haslam remains one of the more prolific members of the online public relations community (he’s a great guy, too!). He’s been doing more that, too. Starting as a jazz DJ, then cutting tape and pointing fingers (in a non-accusatory, rather more of a “cue-speak now!†manner) at public radio’s best, I embarked on a technology public relations career just in time to ride the Internet bubble. After watching him use his twitter profile in some fascinating ways, we could not help but ask Doug to drop by the Buzz Bin for an interview.
BB: Your twitter feed is better well ranked as your other social media properties. Do you feel like blogging is even necessary?
DH: Someone pointed out a few months back that the Technorati ranking of my Twitter stream was way ahead of that of my blog. That really surprised me, but in retrospect it makes sense. I spend a lot more time cultivating relationships on Twitter, and as a result create a lot of link-backs. My blog is only so active on an isolated basis, in part because my more serious posts tend to appear on the Topaz Partners blog, Tech PR Gems (http://topazpartners.blogspot.com).
Blogging is still necessary, as Twitter is still a limited communications tool. Twitter, for me, is a hub. Because the people I consider my community are on Twitter, anything that doesn’t fit there: longer posts, photos, audio and video, I link to via Twitter to alert the community. That, of course, is just in case anyone is interested. Sometimes they are.
BB: What are your favorite uses of Twitter?
DH: My favorite use of Twitter is as an instant feedback group. I hesitate to say “focus group” because I am familiar with the sweet science of putting together a focus group for market research. With Twitter, I can take the 1,700 or so people in my network (as of this writing), ask them a question, and know it is relevant to enough of them that I always get some useful answers. I use this method to ask questions for clients, and also for business prospects, to dig up a little quick intel on their industry. For example, during a messaging session with a new client, I used Twitter during the meeting to ask impressions about competitors. I fed the answers in real time to the projector screen, and it actually helped us form some of our messages.
Another more fun use is simply to vent. Because Tweets are ephemeral, quick quips come and go, and it’s ok to have hits and misses, so if I’m online and am watching a sporting event or simply feeling snarky, the one-liners just come flying out. These Tweets don’t add to the enlightenment of the crowd, but they’re a lot of fun, and if one person gets a smile out of them, then great.
BB: What are the greatest challenges facing social media?
DH: I think the main challenge hasn’t changed in a while- that is, mainstream acceptance. More and more companies are adopting social media in some form, but it still feels like an “early adopter thing” to an extent. In public relations that is even more evident, as I feel the move towards adopting social media, while it is happening, still feels slow.
BB: How long do you think we have until this is an old hat?
DH: I can’t put a time stamp on it. Probably, when something new comes along that we all jump on, we will realize this social media stuff has been broken in.
BB: How will the recession impact the growing social network medium?
DH: From the standpoint of people writing blogs and creating other media, not much at all. The means to create personal media are very inexpensive. From a corporate side, it depends. Economic struggles will force prioritization, and social media may have to fight for budget alongside traditional marketing. That could get ugly unless companies stockpile evidence that social media ROI is great enough to dislodge the suits from their comfy chairs. I don’t sense that is true yet. If it gets really bad really quickly, companies will retreat to the familiar and experimentation will suffer.
BB: What’s your biggest pet peeve?
DH: Going back to Twitter? People forgetting that individual messages are ephemeral. If you are responding to someone talking about a link, include that link in your response. I try to do that as much as possible, even at the risk of seeming egotistical by repeating my own link if it’s part of a conversation. Make it easy for people to know what you are talking about. Always err on the side of giving more information. On Twitter especially, repetition is not a crime.
BB: And your greatest hope?
DH: My greatest hope is that we do reach that point soon where we strip the “new” from “new media.” As a PR guy, I approach blogs, podcasts and other social media relations as part of the greater world of media. Different media and different individual outlets need to be treated differently, but I am a fan of integrated approaches. The important thing is your communications are finding the right people in the right places. The media you use to do that need to fit the strategy, not the other way around.
Social media professionals like to tout the advantages of integrating social media for corporate or even personal use. As the relationship between technology and marketing continues to evolve, the ability to create and reach out to specific communities, develop relationships and networking skills, and build Web 2.0 friendly skills will remain a top priority. It also means that social media will continue to grow and be a hot topic.
It’s easy to say all of these things when we’re on the inside. Someone who is new to social media can easily get obsessed and become wrapped up in “A-listers“, technologies and tactics, and end up getting burnt out and disengage before even getting anything out of it. So, what’s the bottom line, what is the top benefit to engaging in social media?
Relationships.
The best takeaway from engaging in social media is the social part. Forget reaching out to communities and starting conversations, the real gem is in developing your own personal relationships, beyond the web.
Take these examples:
Aaron Brazell aka Technosailor shares his experience in forming a real friendship in an Internet-centric world. He follows up to say that when social media gets to be too much, the real value can be found in shutting down the “online” relationships, and bringing it to the “real world” and real life.
Toby Bloomberg says that business IS personal, and that the best way to have successful and meaningful relationships is to physically get together with clients and business partners; laugh, talk, listen and learn from and with one another.
Jeremy Pepper calls on us to look at what really matters, and step outside the box to see what the very people we talk about reaching as an “audience”, are really saying. Take notice of what is important to others, and how they interact.
Brian Solis talks about social media “experts” who really observe from afar, without really becoming a true member of the societies they are striving to become a part of. Engagement is one thing, but developing relationships built on trust and loyalty are another.
Kyle Flaherty talks about the “human voice” of social media, and how at the core it’s really about “reaching out and touching someone”, building relationships and also providing the technology to stay close to existing ones, when you may be separated by distance. That is a tangible benefit that anyone can understand.
The old adage that you attract more bees with honey than vinegar rings true as well. If you are genuinely interested and sincere in your relationships, taking the time to look beyond your immediate need (we must be blogging, commenting, Twittering, Facebooking, etc.) and moving towards the bigger picture, you will have more success.
Take the relationships you have online through social networks beyond the web, make it personal, meaningful and fun. That will give you the most return on your investment.
The true value of social media is that these tools and technologies allow us to do the things that we have always done; meet people, find out what they are about, develop rapport and form relationships that help you in both business and personal life.
It’s up to you to take social networks a step further, beyond the computer screen, and turn them into real, tangible relationships.
This week’s (District of Corruption download here) was pretty outrageous! First, Aaron and I banetered about bracketology. Commenters didn’t want to talk about sports.
The Origin of Brands blog asks if monolithic companies like Microsoft are failing to innovate because they can’t relinquish control. Instead of providing new, innovative products, technologies and solutions, these companies are buying them (Microsoft buying Yahoo, Coca-Cola buying VitaminWater).
The next time you accept a position to moderate a panel, check out these tips from the Client Side blog.
Visualization comes to a whole new level thanks to new technologies based on Web 2.0 tools. From music and movie preferences to IT management, check out these links from the Wikinomics blog.
Forget Digg, the new buzzword is, well, Yahoo Buzz. At least according to Nick O’Neill at the Social Times. Yahoo has the potential to reach a much more diverse audience than Digg, which could push it to the top.
Are you a delusional blogstar? If you’re not sure you’re an "A-lister", just ask Rohit Bhargava. He’s doing his part to make sure that we are all playing nice.
Unfortunately, because we were using wordpress.com as sand box, we were limited in the plug-ins and metrics we could deploy (HCI is actively building a blog on its site for future efforts). Therefore, some of our analysis is estimated based on prior experiences.
In just a short two weeks, the National Human Capital Institute liveblog generated 4,851 page views. Usually a blog will generate 1.4-1.8 page views per visit. Dividing our page views by 1.6, we get 3032 visits, and if we were to provide an estimated range the blog hosted approximately 2700-3400 visitors. On its best day, March 11 (day two of the summit), the blog received 1985 page views or between 1100 - 1400 visitors.
How many of these visitors were repeat visits? An established, mature blog may experience a 55-60 percent new visitor ratio, and a rapidly growing blog may experience a 70 percent new visit ratio. This however was brand new blog, we conservatively estimate that 80 percent of visits were new, with the remaining 20 percent being folks revisiting the site for updates. That puts unique visitors at 2160 to 2720, or approximately 2440.
What about Google?
In addition to Google juice, you can see the blog sparked other conversations. You can track those conversations here on Technorati. All in all, including trackbacks the comment ratio was 1 (24 posts, 24 comments and trackbacks), not great, but this may be a function of the blog being brand new.
Finally, in addition to my blogging, I was joined by Amanda Craig from HCI. Amanda picked-up WordPress skills very quickly, demonstrating that it was a tool that could be easily adopted by the HCI team.
Conclusions
The end results were overall very, very strong. There’s clearly a need for such information in the social media marketplace. As a result, the Human Capital Institute should proceed with several new social media initiatives over the next few months.
In my mind this also proves the value of blogging as short term, precision communications tool. While 2450 visitors is not 24,500 visitors, they are extremely targeted… The right 2500, comprising HCI’s membership and the extended talent management/human resources marketplace. Getting them to voluntarily visit HCI is a huge plus.
You want ROI? At the same time, HCI saw a large uptick in webinar registrations for its best week so far this year. It’s not a coincidence that it was actively engaging its constituents socially at the same time.
The Wall Street Journal listed Now Is Gone as a resource today for "… companies [trying to] build buzz even when marketing budgets are small." Thanks to Scott Monty for including Now Is Gone in his interview.
"The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media" by Paul Gillin
"The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly" by David Meerman Scott
Part II of Social Media’s Role within Global Businesses
The band would "go down like a lead zeppelin,"Keith Moon and John Entwistle’s alleged remarks about the New Yardbirds, the band that was quickly renamed Led Zeppelin. VH1 ranks Led Zeppelin as the No. 1 band of all time, and Rolling Stone magazine describes them as "the biggest band of the 70s."
Social networks impact on business will be like flying a led zeppelin… the Page /Plant variety. At first, businesses avoided social networks. Ironic — as like Led Zeppelin’s impact on music — they will have a lasting and permanent affect on the very way commercial activity is conducted.
Charlene Li recently wrote that social networks will be like air. While certainly a strong and valid view of the future experience, as a communicator, the proposed "pay per ad based on influencer’s weight" model seemed far fetched. There was not much more on business impact or communications.
As discussed in Part IBeyond the Echo Chamber, social networks are already having a huge impact on businesses, particularly enterprises. So it seemed appropriate to further the discussion with the flying led zeppelin metaphor.
The first will be widespread co-creation experiences in all aspects of businesses, from purchasing to employee teams. Second, will the expansion of globalization as a trend and increased homogenization of best practices across businesses. And third, will be the widespread opening of corporate communications throughout the enterprise. Lastly, in reference to Cluetrain, there will be a market for company-introduced messages, er, um, ideas.
Co-creation (Rock and Roll) There’s simply not enough space to explain the theory of the long tail/meatball sundae to you here (get the book!!!). Some of the products and services purchased in the Long Tail are executed through co-creation with customers (as introduced to me through C.K. Prahalad). For example, the process of building a more customized bear, a Nokia ring-tone or a Mini-Cooper from a platform. Companies produce less and charge more for these customized products and services, and customers enjoy them more due to their role in creating the product.
Similarly, the next generation of workers wants to be part of development and fulfillment. They expect to co-create the company’s products and services, not just sit on the assembly line.
In essence, co-creation opens up the very function of business and harnesses the human power of socialized networks, both public and private. It assumes that the collective power networks offer is greater than that of any given institution (see Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff’s video below found through Piers Fawks). In order to successfully collaborate, companies have to relinquish control of their product design, of their development processes, of their customer service approaches, and allow customers and employees input for the betterment of the whole.
Social network communication tools serve as an ideal mechanism to foster collaborative co-creation. They allow for teams of people in and out of the company that are geographically, ethnically and religiously agnostic. Our jobs as communicators is to foster these environments, and serve the communities by providing information on demand, and to provide real value in our outbound initiatives. See Jeremiah’s description of a community manager.
Expansion of Globalization and Increased Homogenization of Best Practices(Misty Mountain Hop)
Like it or not, the United States is experiencing a great economic change, and the forces are not just recession based. At the heart of the change is an inability to effectively compete in the new networked information economy, one that has destroyed boundaries and opened the entire world’s workforce.
Our education system, our financially ruined economy, and our limited workforce are forcing companies to actively spread their wings and deploy to other countries. This expansion extends beyond sales and into workforce development. Examples:
With development expanding across the globe, systems and networks need to foster co-creation. Communication processes need to extract cultural, ethnic and religious barriers to collaboration. The end-result of successful efforts will be dynamic information sharing environments like we have never seen (Image: Skikoku mountain village by autan). Some dub this new approach Enterprise 2.0.
With so many people from different cultures participating, it’s inevitable that unique best practices will become socialized and adopted. So Germany’s engineering savoire-faire and Chinese low-cost manufacturing practices may be shared. Of course, with more people some of these practices may become watered down (or improved). But overall, the homogenization of unique best practices will be another end-result of globalization.
Opening of Corporate Communications (Communication Breakdown)
With widespread use of social networks inside the business and externally throughout the world, information will be much more accessible through many more sources. The incredible information flow resulting from co-creation process and collaborative sharing will produce new communication challenges for companies. Questions and answers will be expected, and without hesitation.
Like Shel, I also disagree with Forrester’s Josh Bernoff that companies can act as an entity in socialized worlds. Because of the very nature of social media, it will be much harder for companies to diffuse their messages as an entity.
The monolithic command tower approach from businesses are frequently rejected in social networks. Spin and message control — a practice used in mass communications environments — is pretty unattainable in fractured two-way conversational communities. Patience is short with companies here.
Instead, personality must be infused into social environments. Identifiable people that work inside companies must represent the entity. And they need to be ready with factual timely information that actually matters to the stakeholders — both internal for employees and external for buyers, partners and investors. A Twitter example is@richardatDELL versus @applecomputercorp.
In that sense, the communicator truly becomes an ombudsman between stakeholder and management. Yes, there will be marketing and initiatives, but it will be much more service oriented. Successful communications will deliver clear value. And companies that want to maintain good relations with their stakeholders will treat them as if the company was in a permanent crisis: Always prompt, always factual, always open.
This change breaks many traditional PR, communication and marketing department’s methodologies. Almost every conversation I have today with PR and marketing types deals with this paradigm shift. Social media has really turned the business upside down.
The Idea Market (Achilles Last Stand)
So, yes, I agree with Doc Searls when he said there’s no market for messages. At least canned ones meant to manipulate customers into buying bad product. But there’s still a market for companies to participate in the larger discussion. Instead of just consumers, why couldn’t a company introduce its ideas in social environments?
When companies play in larger communities and social networks, they can vet ideas for co-creation. These don’t need to be messages, but they can be concepts or product ideas. Isn’t that what GM is doing with its increasingly transparent design process? In the co-creation model stakeholders accept, reject and/or modify these concepts and ideas. If there’s clear value, then it’s likely the idea may take off (image by petervanallen).
So in that sense, there’s room for the company to play a significant role. That role can be introducing ideas to the marketplace, creating environments for co-creation, and ultimately making the decisions about which ideas get funded. That’s business, folks.
For example, a current co-creation environment is Dell’s Idea Storm. Not every idea created and vetted in Idea Storm goes to market. Far from it. Dell must make decisions about which ideas will lead to profitable ventures.
Conclusion
The socially enabled business environment is an emerging one. But companies are moving there rapidly. Ten years from now, things will be much different as what was the toy of the amateur will be the engine for big industry. This seems good to me, as co-creation and collaboration can only make for stronger, more responsive businesses that better serve the marketplace’s needs.
Communicators will have to change their practices to meet the medium. As we have already seen, this change may be very difficult for some. But the good news is there will be companies that reject social networks and the global nature of today’s information economy. Such companies offer the perfect home for those reticent to change.
The Buzz Bin offers readers musings and analysis on marketing, buzz, PR and Washington, DC from the team at Livingston Communications. Read more about us ...
Perhaps you saw Richard Edelman’s post last week on five key points we need to remind clients about in a recession. It was an interesting piece on the value of PR in the current media environment. Much was said, some of which was on par (image: prosperity symbol by sharlini). Perhaps the best comment in the whole post was:
F2C: Freedom to ConnectDC
The best takeaway from engaging in social media is the social part. Forget reaching out to communities and starting conversations, the real gem is in developing your own personal relationships, beyond the web.
Take the relationships you have online through social networks beyond the web, make it personal, meaningful and fun. That will give you the most return on your investment.
The Origin of Brands blog asks if monolithic companies like Microsoft are 
Like Shel
Social Governance Won't Come Easy:
Rebutting Six Arguments for Personal Brands: