Social Media

Sustainability, Social Responsibility And Social Media

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

It’s got to be more than 10 years ago that I was first exposed to sustainable hysteria. I was, at the time, working for a well-known FTSE100 constituent who – it has to be said – had a fairly good (if somewhat misguided) track record in the field of corporate philanthropy (because that’s what it was in those days).

It would have been possible to argue that a literary sponsorship did far much more for the literati than it did for reading in schools, and that the continued funding of a manufacturing plant’s brass band, long after the plant had closed down, was a refusal to let go of the past, rather than an investment in the future. That (rather churlishly) being said, the company tried, and tried to get its workforce involved and on-side.

So, as an exercise in community relations – and this was a company that operated in communities – and as part of building a cohesive internal culture, this company’s CSR programme didn’t do too badly.

But then along came the concept of ethical investing. For the first time, it seemed as if investment decisions – particularly amongst the big investors – would be made as much on ethical track record as on corporate business performance. On top of that, it was suggested that consumer purchasing decisions would be made on the back of the brand’s ethics – so either way you looked at it CSR, sustainability, corporate ethics became the things that would make the difference between success and failure.

And in no time at all, an industry had grown up around it – consultants to advice you on your CSR and your sustainable business model, and organisations that would benchmark you, so that you’d know how you’d performed. FTSE4Good, Business in the Community, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index – all time-consuming, all expensive – but all doing a very good job of selling themselves to the business community to the point where absence was more conspicuous than inclusion.

It’s just my perception – and many would argue with me – but there was something of the Emperor’s new clothes about it all – and I for one, in my next job, told the executive Committee that we would not longer take part in FTSE4Good, or the DJSI as they cost money, wasted resource and delivered no real value. I have a feeling that many communicators felt like me – not dismissive of CSR, rather dismissive of the parasitic industry that sprang up to feed on the corporate social conscience.

Of course, ethics never went away – in the same way that they’d always been there in one form or another, long before someone invented the term ‘ethical investment’ – and a set of corporate ethics is fundamental to all business success. Simply put, if you make your products out of toxic waste, employ slave labour in the manufacturing process, and test the results on children, then you WILL be found out. You don’t need a consultant to tell you that. (I hope.) Business ethics have been around since Dickens’ Christmas Carol – some companies shout about them, others choose not to. No company needs to pay an outside organisation a fortune to judge their ethics for them.

Sustainable hysteria took hold again about two and half years ago. As the icecaps melted, the last few square hectares of rainforest were cut down and (in the UK anyway) there was the threat of a) a change in government and b) legislation in terms of emissions and operating practices, so companies started on their Social, Ethical and Environmental Policies – put something in place to stave off the worst excesses of the legislators. Again, out from the woodwork came the mountebanks and the charlatans – the advisors on sustainability, ready to devise you a plan and relieve you of your budget. A budget, incidentally which hadn’t existed before and which had thus been taken from other areas of your business. A business that was probably already in decent shape.

And then came the Great Recession of 2008/09. Suddenly a lot of people – business leaders, legislators, consumers – all realised that corporate ethics are all well and good, but really, you’ve got to treat business like the grown-up that it is. On the one hand you have to trust that it will behave ethically most of the time and on the other hand, you’ve got to believe that it merits your trust. The recession demonstrated that there are more important things in life. Not that anyone forgot about emissions, recycling, energy saving – they simply stopped wasting time agonising and proselytising.

The Great Recession, however, by some strange twist of fate (and this cannot be coincidence, can it?), has been accompanied by one of the greatest social shifts of modern times – the global embracing of social media. And, as I’ve posted here before, the rise of social media has created – mostly in America, but I fear for the UK – the cyber-hippie, who believes that all people are equal under the blog, that everyone should be free to have a voice, that the very fabric of capitalism will change as the inherent contract between consumer and brand becomes a contract between consumer and brand employee, via the social medium.

This is both frightening and infectious – the idea that business as we know it will change, become more embracing of its stakeholders, accept and act upon feedback and suggestions – to the point where products and services will not be created by the companies who manufacture and supply them, but by the consumer. A Utopia where the consumer simply has to blog that they want a frozen pizza with banana and limestone, and a brand owner will make one.

The Great Recession, and the misery that’s gone with it, has made this a very attractive proposition. Everyone wants to believe that we can make a better life with what we know now and that the post-Great Recession world will be focused more on ethics and social responsibility than it will be on capitalism and the creation of profit. People-driven, rather than profit-driven.

Clever people have been suckered by this. Some, such as Robert Phillips writing in PRWeek, have been so taken in by it, that they’re actually setting the communications profession up as the next set of charlatans, mountebanks and snake-oil salesmen who will advocate this way of operation at the highest level. (Sorry, can’t link to the PRWeek article, which is a shame.)

Until the pain of the Great Recession fades, and we re-enter the ‘Good Times’ phase of the cycle.

Internal Comms/Social Media – Addenda to Social Media Policies

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Internal Communications, Internal Communications and Engagement, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The whole social media space is a minefield littered with UXBs and especially so for a company’s employees. Social media are growing and changing and influencing behaviours far faster than most people can keep up – it’s got to the point where a corporate use of social media policy is not only a business necessity, it’s actually part of the corporate ‘duty of care’ to employees.

Here’s a thought – educating employees in the use of social media may be seen, in the future, as an employee benefit provided by the company. Possibly those more forward-thinking companies, without exposing themselves to the free-for-all that is open employee access, might actually be seen to be taking a lead on the issue, simply by ensuring their employees are social media savvy in a semi-formal fashion. Brown-bag training sessions, interactive intranets. Who knows.

Anyway – here’s an article from The Guardian that deals with the specific problems of colleagues following you on Twitter, or friending you on Facebook. Particularly senior colleagues. The implication – and it’s correct – is that social media are blurring the lines between work life and personal life. There is no such thing as a personal life anymore – what you’ve got is a work life and life when you’re not working. Use of social media – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, et al – means that anyone can find you at anytime. Nothing that you post to these sites is private. There is a record of all you have written and uploaded. If it sounds a bit Big Brother, that’s because it is.

There is, obviously, a solution to the dilemma. It’s taken a lot of thought. It’s not popular. It flies in the face of current thinking. It’s this. DON’T USE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK. OR ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIUM. If you want to organise a party, send out invitations via email (still trackable, but not available to everyone). If you fancy getting in touch with someone – meet them for a drink. Give them a call. Write a letter. Go on, give it a try.

But no. You want to be free, to get LinkedIn, to have a good time. And this why – as the boundaries between you personally and you professionally blur and dissolve – it’s more and more important that there are not only corporate social media policies, but corporate social media etiquette statements also.

It pains me, but we’re here (how? how?) and now we have to deal with it. So, in the spirit of understanding and sharing, here’s something that I stumbled across earlier. I should say now that these are the thoughts of one Bristol-based managing editor (mid-thirties, apparently) who makes it clear on his blog that monkeys like me are not to steal his thoughts without due attribution and permission. I haven’t got permission, but consider this attribution. These are not my thoughts – I am simply passing on the wisdom of another.

(NB The guidelines that Mr Bristol sets out here are, actually, quite corporately focused. But they work equally well for use of social media on a personal level. You could adapt them. But I’d ask Mr Bristol for his permission first. You never know.)

Internal Communications – Solving The Sidewiki Issue

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

Oh dear. Much Fuss in the Wold. Google launches Sidewiki at the end of September and in reasonably short order – well, a matter of weeks – the blogosphere is givin’ it all that about how a) anyone can post anything about your website and b) your employees (if you’re a business) can get all disgruntled and post stuff about your website. Aaaagh – we’ll all be ruined!

 So, let’s get this straight. You’ve got a website and – for those people who’ve downloaded Sidewiki – they can now see visitor comments on your site, in a side bar. These comments are posted by both randomers visiting your site, and regulars, so they may – or indeed may not – be positive or negative or neutral. Those with Sidewiki can, obviously, post their own comments.

 And the hysterical rationale from those who’ve ‘embraced’ social media is that, of course, everyone who’s on social media will all get jiggy wid de Wiki and it’ll be the end of corporate web presences as we know it. Well, no. Bollocks.

 1)       In order to use Google’s lovely Sidewiki, you’ve got to download it. And in downloading it, you tacitly allow Google to track your internet usage. And you have to have the IQ of an Eccles Cake to do that

2)       Those people who do have the IQ of an Eccles Cake are, obviously, not people about whose opinion anyone actually gives a shit

3)       Those fine folk at Google have the final say on what’s posted on Sidewiki and they’re interested, obviously, in the thoughts of those people who’ve given them the most trade/traffic/personal information. The average (and most dangerous) Eccles Cake-head does not figure in the Googlisation of the world and thus their comments won’t get posted

4)       What are you doing anyway? Why are you worried about your employees (those who are Eccles Cakers anyway) posting to Sidewiki – they shouldn’t be able to do it from work anyway. And they should be dissuaded from doing it at home by a  binding contract that will see them skinned alive, rolled in salt and then parboiled should they decide to get all clever on your arse

5)       What are you doing anyway, Part 2. Why on earth should your website attract unpleasant Wikiness? Are you not the model of a business? With a luvverly corporate culture, and employees who believe in you and a demonstrable set of ethics and – hopefully – no instances of toxic waste and smothering children in your past? Of course you are and therefore – why should you be bothered?

6)       No company is wholly able to tick the point 5) box – get (and enforce) a Use of Social Media Policy, quick-smart, choppy-chop

 Oh – and please, please, can we stop panicking. How have we – perfectly sensible people – come to this?

Social Media – A Presence On Youmytwidioboobespace

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Some time ago, I suggested the imminent coalescing of one or more social media – as the only real way that they can survive individually is by broadening their offer and thus encroaching on each other’s space. (It’s my space! No, it’s not, it’s TwinkedIn.) Just in case you’re not an avid follower of my random – but increasingly accurate – musings, you can catch up here.

Hurry up, the rest of us aren’t going to wait all day.

Right. Anyway, the point is that I’ve just received my first request though LinkedIn to be someone’s bitch follower (or was it that she wanted to be my follower?) on Twitter. Oh, but yes. The gradual merging of media has started and who knows where it will end. As an aside, I cannot see how the Twitter/LinkedIn deal is going to work – LinkedIn has already taken on some of the aspects of Facebook, as people forget that it’s a business tool and post quick updates on their musical tastes – and the culture of Twitter (the Twattish behaviour, if you like) will not mix well with the orignal culture of LinkedIn.

Be that as it may. This is the beginning – as I’ve said several times before – of the end, specifically the end of the social media free-for-all that exists now. So – if you’re a corporate, and you’re thinking of dipping your toe – perhaps even investing something in it – is now the time?

Remember Betamax. You don’t want to be Twitter-savvy, if it turns out that Wave is the future – and yes, OK, I know that’s a bit faux-naif. (Qui? Moi?)

But social media, as a business tool – marketing, comms and to a certain extent, sales – does not deliver tangible benefit. And while it’s still sorting itself out, it’s unlikely to. So curb your enthusiasm – because I know you’re just busting to get involved – and let’s see how it shakes down.

It won’t take long, mark my words……..

Social Media – Twitterette’s Syndrome

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , .

Twitterette’s Syndrome is a localised but extremely virulent strain of Social Media Tourette’s (oh yes it fucking is) which, as you will know, gentle blog snorkeller, is an odious ailment that afflicts a small but significant proportion of the population when they are presented with the opportunity to post whatever they like to a public forum.

It can take the form of simple intolerance of anyone else’s point of view, or extreme bad language, or posting of inappropriate material (visual or written), or racial harrassment (and yes, Nick Griffin is a white bollocks – he’s a White Nazi Bollocks, actually), or career-threatening stupidity. Or one of a myriad of other opportunities to be a complete arse.

Twitterette’s Syndrome is the delusion that people are interested in everything you do, leading the sufferer to tweet things that are wholly unimportant, have no relevance, wouldn’t be considered appropriate to say out loud or are simply the product of a mind with the consistency of blancmange.

Stephen Fry, recently. So you’re a manic depressive Stephen – that’s not a good thing, and I know you struggle with it, and I appreciate that it’s not easy – but if you’ve got a Black Dog, step away from the Twitter feed. Duncan Bannantyne, not so long ago. No-one wants to know that you’re in the airport, coming back from your house in France. In fact, most people actively don’t want to know. There are a million other examples, if you go looking for them. Most are, however and thankfully, hidden from overly public view and their authors are only perceived to be useless cretins by a small group of their peers.

This morning, however, we have the salutory tale of the woman who tweeted details of her miscarriage, while she was having it. Now, OK, I wouldn’t know about it were it not for the media picking up on it. And they wouldn’t know about it were it not for a few outraged souls who feel that a woman should not be pleased that she’s having a miscarriage – in fact probably shouldn’t be allowed to have a miscarriage full stop. Penny Trunk, the miscarriagist, (with a name that ‘minds me of a cheap elephant) put forward the perfectly valid point that if you don’t want to know about it, don’t log on. Totally agree.

But what, on earth, was she thinking when she decided to tweet about it? It’s not the sort of thing that most sane people would consider a valid conversational topic. I don’t know Ms Trunk, but I’m presuming that she didn’t actually say – in her board meeting – ‘Hey up, lads, I’m having a miscarriage – great!’ But she saw fit to tweet it. This is Twitterette’s Syndrome – and I can’t help but thinking it’ll get worse before it gets better.

Oh – and Ms Trunk – she’s the ‘boss’ of this firm. She was in a board meeting. And she’s tweeting. Goes to show that social notworking is everywhere.

Social Media, Social Commentary

Posted on by in External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

“Meanwhile Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said the latest Fry-related Twitter slaying strengthened his theory that social networking was steadily turning everyone into a clinically insane 14 year-old girl.”

From The Daily Mash – read the full article (if you wish) here.

Social Media – Blurring Boundaries

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I read someone somewhere complaining about how LinkedIn was rapidly losing value – how, as social media became the hot topic du jour, there was a massive influx of new people, the curious, the band-wagon jumpers, the late adopters – and as they joined, so the ‘background noise’ increased and the value to those who were already there began to decrease.

Which made me think about the different social media and what they’re used for. Undoubtedly, as Twitter thinks about offering video, there’s a convergence of the media and that will mean – inevitably – that a few big brands will survive and many will fall by the wayside. But, further to that, there’s – until now – been a clear difference between, for example, LinkedIn (a business social network) and Facebook (a social social network).

I say until now. Only yesterday, one of my newer contacts posted an update which read (I’m paraphrasing) ‘enjoying some sleep after a successful product launch’.  To my mind, this is something that would be better tweeted, or posted to Facebook.

And it’s not an isolated example. And it shows, if I can venture an opinion, that the social side of social media is far stronger than any commercial or business networking element.

 

Social Media – Size Matters

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, External Communications, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

The following excerpt is from a post about the Interbrand Top Global Brands survey, vs the Sysomos on-line presence survey – which shows how top brands are perceived in terms of social media ‘buzz’. (Horrible word, not mine.) Here you go:

“One conclusion that could be speculated based on the data from this small study is that well-established, mature brands don’t seem to need the high levels of social media buzz to sustain their value, while new and growing brands can reap great benefits from the power of a social media buzz.

Of course, this is a very small study of just the top 20 brands based on global value, so conclusions can only be hypothetical.  However, it makes sense that new and growing brands have more to gain from investing in social media advertising and branding campaigns than established or new brands do.”

While this is quite clearly a statement of the bleeding obvious, on a bit of reflection, like most statements of the bleeding obvious, it actually needs saying.

If there is any benefit in social media as a marketing tool, it is most easily accessed by small companies who a) have nothing to lose b) have everything to gain c) do not have massive organisations and overheads d) have limited employee numbers e) do not have massive marketing budgets and programmes, thus having the ability to dedicate time to social media as their sole (or major) route to market and f) will see and appreciate any ROI their activity generates. And if you reverse engineer points a to f, you’ll see why established organisations are wasting their time.

Here’s a link.

Social Media – @DameElizabeth

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Social Media.

Elizabeth Taylor tweets support for Michael Jackson movie. How wrong is this? Let me count the levels.

1) Liz is geriatric and not known for her hi-tech leanings. Someone is tweeting on her behalf. Either she’s pressed her butler into service, or she’s hired someone new. Mind, Babs Cartland used to dictate her ‘novels’ to a secretary, so perhaps it’s not that bad. Oh, who am I kidding.

2) We can’t be sure it actually is Liz. 177,052 sad souls are following her (100, to date) tweets, hoping for a 140-character touch of greatness, and all they’re getting is guerilla publicity for the cynical money spinner that is This Is It. A fair proportion of the 177k will go and see the film. Who says Twitter doesn’t deliver ROI? Ah yes – I do.

3) These tweets quite clearly aren’t Liz’s opinions or her words. At least I hope not. And if you’ve not read them yet, you might wish to furnish yourself with a bucket and some kitchen towel. You’re going to need it.

4) This ‘film’ is simply appalling, in its premise and delivery. No, I’ve not seen it, and I have no intention of doing so, ever. Does anyone else see anything wrong in watching a frail, sick, old man, with some form of body dysmorphic disorder, quite literally dancing on his own grave? This is a train wreck happening in a cinema near you.

5) Here we have proof that absolutely nothing is sacred, and that there is nothing that people will not do to part other people from their money. In this case, we get the particularly edifying and salutory spectacle of a family eking the last few cents out of their dead child and sibling.

It’s a free world, I guess. This sort of stuff makes me wish it wasn’t quite so free.

Social Media – The Other End of the World

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

As my regular blog snorkellers will know, I’ve not been backward in coming forward with my theory that social media is on its way out. This is for reasons too innumerable to mention here, including the fact that no-one’s making any money out of it, it’s being swamped by spam, the user growth figures are slowing, the user growth figures have never reflected the reality of the amount of people who sign up then never use the service again and – my favourite – because I say so.

There is another theory, however and in the spirit of fairness and balance, I give an iteration of it a hearing here. Clickety-clink – here’s the link!

(Can’t believe I just wrote that.)

The theory says that the traditional digital comms tools – email, websites – are themselves on the way out, to be subsumed into social media. The reasoning goes that social media provides opportunities to communicate and to provide content that email cannot – to summarise and paraphrase – email is one-dimensional and the social media are not. Same goes for the traditional, reasonably static website – why would you, really, when user-generated, arguably richer content pertaining to a brand or organisation is out there in the blogosphere, or posted on Facebook?

But then the theory trips up. I think it trips up because of the widespread inability to separate social media into its two component parts.

  • Something that people do in their spare time (and when they’re notworking, obviously) to keep up with friends and family, ask for advice on things that trouble/interest them and view/download jokes, clips, tracks, patches etc etc.
  • Something that simply is not working as a marketing, communications or reputation-building tool.

Just because individuals, in their day-to-day lives, may decide to run those lives via Facebook or Twitter or some combination of the two, does not make them valid, or valuable, business tools. Business requires communication without distractions, without logins, without a ‘spirit of community’ and – most importantly – without commentary from everyone who reads it. This is why email, as it is currently, works – for business purposes – so well. You can choose who receives it, you can monitor it and you can cane people who misuse it or try to hide their use of it. The thing that will change about email is how we send and receive it and what it looks like when we do send and receive it.

I also draw attention to the school of thought that says ‘ask a 20-year-old whether they’re using email’ as if this has any bearing on the matter. No, they’re not – they’re texting and using social media (well, some are, anyway) – but, quite frankly, who cares? Email is a business tool (and I include marketing and corporate comms within ‘business’) and 20-year-olds are a notoriously difficult-to-reach audience with limited appeal. You might as well ask an 80-year-old whether they’re using email for all the relevance it has.

And traditional, static websites – well, here’s a sensible post. Actually, there’s more of a place for traditional corporate websites that ever before – and why? Because, thanks to social media (and the way the bigger internet players are forcing us to behave – yes, forcing – Google SideWiki, anyone?) there’s such a slew of information that, ironically enough, the only place you’ll be able to go for reasonably accurate and (dare I say) impartial information will be the corporate website.

Now, I’d just like to make it clear – again, and mainly for my wife, who thinks I’m a cave-dwelling technophobe – that I am not either denying the existence of social media or telling anyone to stick their heads in the sand. Social media is here. Loads of people are using it. It is right and fitting that if we work in communications then we should have a knowledge of it. That being said – I repeat – do not confuse the social media that people use to run/ruin their personal lives and the social media that has all the potential to ruin your business (uncontrolled rumour and bad-mouthing) and none of the potential to materially enhance your revenues.