Social Media

Social Media – How CAN it Work as a Corporate Communications Tool?

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

Anyone who’s bothered to read the opinions and examples that I’ve posted here (and if you have, thank you – thank you so very much) will know what my stance is on the social media phenomenon and how it relates to corporate communications and this business we call ‘spin’. For those who’ve not bothered to keep up with my musings, bimblings and meanderings (booooooo – and there are so MANY of you), I’ll precis here. Stick with me, it’s important as context for what will come later.

In brief, I’m of the considered opinion that what we’re seeing – in terms of the unseemly bandwagon-jumping, the social media marketing industry that has grown up to satisfy the ever-expanding need for a social media ‘fix’ and the lemming-like rush by brands, companies and organisations to grab a piece of the social media tartlet (so much tastier and more rewarding that the sausage and mash of traditional communication) – is nothing more, or less, that a repeat of the dotcom boom of the late 2oth/early 21st centuries. No matter how you look at it, because of its very nature, because of the enormity of choice, because of the way people interact with it, the internet is never going to be an terribly effective or truly measurable marketing tool.

There. I’ve said it. And guess what – I’ve not been struck by lightning and the door hasn’t been smashed in by the black-suited and be-sunglassed Social Media Police. Mind you, hedging my bets, I will caveat the big statement by saying – as I have so often – don’t ignore social media and the internet. In a traditional communications campaign – presuming all the resource you need and a perfect world – you don’t ignore weekly freesheets just because they don’t have the reach of a national newspaper or radio station. In fact, in certain instances, weekly freesheets deliver the sort of audience that larger media outlets won’t deliver. But – and it’s a big but – you’ve got to want to reach that audience and that audience has to deliver value back to you. Otherwise it’s not worth it.

Social media is exactly like that. If you’ve got the time and the resource – and let’s not forget that making use of social media is incredibly labour intensive and thus costly in comparison to other forms of communication – and you’ve got, most importantly, the need, then social media will deliver you stuff. Obviously. There wouldn’t be all this hype if it hadn’t delivered to someone, somewhere, something worthwhile.

I had a chat with an ex-colleague who is making a living out of providing content for t’internet recently, and for a period of at least half-an-hour, I thought I’d made a big mistake. Not only were his arguments for social media as a comms/marketing tool coherent and compelling, he also had some big corporate examples – one particularly – of how the use of social media (in this case Twitter) had delivered big monetary value to said big corporate. When I got home (after a great deal of beer, I’m afraid), in a Carrie Bradshaw moment, I started thinking about the instances in which the use of social media has delivered value to brands, companies and organisations, and whether there’s a formula or a pattern to be perceived.

Was I, in effect, wrong or – more palatable to me – were there specific circumstances that triggered results from social media, circumstances that cannot be simply ‘turned on’ by a corporate communications team and thus cannot really be harnessed? Does the Emperor have a fantastic designer suit in his wardrobe, or is he simply walking through a room full of falling handkerchiefs? (OK, that may be a metaphor too far.)

Something that aided the thought process was a question posted recently on LinkedIn, which was “Can Twitter ever be used successfully as a brand management tool?” At the risk of being seen to manipulate things to suit my own arguments, I’d suggest substituting ‘Twitter’ for the more generic ‘social media’. That’s the beauty of a blog – I can do whatever I want.

There were, as you’d expect, loads of answers. Some yes, some no, some puppyishly positive, some demonically negative. What there were, however, were examples, which I’ll list here, and I’ll also add the example provided to me by my ex-colleague (see above if you’ve been so enthralled by the last para that you’ve forgotten what went before). So – in no particular order:

“CCN is using Twitter to prove it is the news leader in timely deliver”(sic)

“Pres Obama is using it to prove that he and his admin are the most relevantly connected politicans on the planet”

“A variety of Hollywood personalities are using it to build and maintain their brands”

“The famous Los Angeles BBQ Taco Truck is alive and well because of Twitter!”

“Just started a Twitter account for a music-sharing site – now have 1,000 followers”

“(Big American Computer Company) addressed their famous customer service issues on Twitter – an extra $xxm orders were received on the back of it”

On the face of it – all good and, in some cases, high profile uses of Twitter to achieve an end for a brand, company, organisation or proposition. But. And there’s always a but. In each case, there’s a reason why they’ve been successful and they’re not reasons that you just ‘turn on’ to make your brand more social media-friendly.

CNN is a media outlet already and people are used to accessing CNN for their news – therefore getting users to sign up for CNN ‘tweets’ is hardly a triumph of new media marketing. It could be said that CNN must have big issues if it needs to use Twitter to promote itself.

Barack Obama – he’s the most powerful man in the world! Of course people are going to try and be friends with him on Facebook!

Ditto Hollywood personalities. As a crass example, if George Clooney, or Scarlet Johansson are on Twitter, they’re going to have followers. Go figure.

The famous BBQ Taco Truck (whatever that is) and a music-sharing site – these are things that push social media buttons – everyone wants music (especially for free or for cheap) and everyone wants tacos (well, within reason). What I’m saying is that both of these examples are pushing against an open door – they’re things that people want and if you have these things and cannot get followers then you should retire. Now.

The (Big American Computer Company) example is, however, interesting, and here’s where I leave you for today. This company were sitting on a crisis. Their customer service was shocking and customers were up in arms. At this point, they had a choice, do nothing, or open a dialogue. Their customers were ready and prepared to engage in dialogue, so the door was already open. Yes, they could have got it wrong, but that would have been a display of communications stupidity so vast that they would have deserved everything they got. What they did was invest, spend time, maintain regular and open dialogue, monitor responses and issue prompt and sensible feedback. They turned things around, they got extra orders. (Now that their crisis has been ‘resolved’ mind, it would be interesting to see how many people are still following their Tweets.)

Of course, for every good example of crisis management through social media (and this is the first I’ve heard of) there’s a poor example. I think I need only say ‘Dominos Pizza’ and ‘YouTube video’.

So, for social media to be a success, you need to be a brand, company or organisation that people know about and want to engage with (and the only way to achieve that is through traditional media channels) or you need to have a big problem and be prepared to front it up and engage in open dialogue with your audiences. Which might, of course, backfire.

But I see a business opportunity. Recommending crisis scenarios to big companies. Bear with me. If you have, for example, a deodorant brand, you could STAGE a crisis. Say you release a few cans of deodorant that, instead of smelling like lemongrass and patchouli (like it says on the label), smell of distilled rancid skunk. Massive customer furore, multimedia press coverage – and the perfect opportunity to create a Twitter account to ‘apologise’ and ‘explain’ to your customers.

Genius. Only it might, of course, go horribly wrong……………….

Social Media – A Slap in the Facebook

Posted on by in External Communications, Social Media.

I promise I will go into more detail about these posts – there are many (and varied) conclusions to be drawn – however I have recently suffered what I believe to be a terminal glass-of-cranberry-juice-in-the-keyboard error and am now reduced to stealing moments here and there on other people’s computers. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I can haul my sorry *rse (copyright Prince Harry, 2008) down to PC World. (And the moment I typed those last few characters, I could hear the annoying jingle in my head. Get out! Get out!)

Anyway, thanks to Communicate Magazine for these two pieces. Which seem to contradict each other, slightly. Or is it just me?

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=274:slap-in-the-facebook&catid=1:stories&Itemid=115

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=265:masters-course-in-social-media&catid=1:stories&Itemid=115

Social Media – Royalty Without a Stitch

Posted on by in Evaluation, Social Media.

I’ll post more about this later, because I’ve had a few more thoughts, but in the interim, for your delight and delectation, here’s a piece from Marketing Week, March 25 2009. Apologies for the delay in getting it up here.

This, for me, says it all. No – stop – don’t ignore social media, or chuck your digital strategy in the bin – but don’t – don’t – let it become an all-consuming obsession.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=64782&u=pg_dtl_art_news&m=pg_hdr_art

Social Media as a Communications Tool – the Fish Theorem Part II

Posted on by in Social Media.

There I was, bimbling round the outer reaches of t’interweb and, much to my joy, I found someone else shared my views on social media and fishing. I don’t know why I find this surprising – it’s the old infinite number of monkeys/infinite number of typewriters principle – and two of us came up with social media and fish. Bound to happen, sooner or later. If only I could apply this same level of serendipity to my, so far, unsuccesful attempts to buy a winning lottery ticket.

So I had a look at this person’s Social Media/Fish presentation and – oh, big letdown – it’s pants. Pants in the English sense – big, grey, baggy y-fronts. My theory is much better, and more easily understandable. But, I suppose, it doesn’t have pictures.

If you’d like to look at the substandard Social Media is Like Fishing presentation, here it is. Personally, I’d avoid it like the plague.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/03/24/social-media-marketing-storyboard-1-fish-where-the-fish-are/

Social Media and Crisis Management. No. Just no.

Posted on by in Social Media.

So I responded to a question on LinkedIn – see. I AM hip. And savvy. I DO know something about social media and I DO quite like it – I just don’t think it’s going to save the world of PR and Communications. No matter what Anthony Hilton says (PR Week April 23 2009). Sadly, I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about, which is a shame.

Anyway, I had a go at social media – again – and whinged on – as usual – about how you can measure it, but not evaluate it and thus it’s all fine and dandy if numbers of hits and views are your bag, but if you want to know what people have ACTUALLY DONE in reaction to your content, then social media does not deliver. End of.

The hapless soul who’d been on the receiving end of my jaded rant (a jaded rant, I may add, that is absolutely 100% correct, every time) came back with another question, which got me thinking. Here’s the question and my response:

“I am curious: What do you think about brands using SM as a tool to deal with a crisis? Similar to what Dominos is doing now with the YouTube videos, Twitter account, etc. Is this a smart tactic?”

 

I’ll go back to what I said earlier – one shouldn’t ignore social media, but I don’t see it (at the moment anyway) as a serious tool for ‘front foot’ PR/comms campaigns. If you want to publicise your brand or product, or want to enhance corporate reputation and – importantly – you want to be able to evaluate (not measure) the results, then social media, for all sorts of different reasons, is not your first port of call.

But when you come to bad news, ‘back foot’, reactive stuff, then social media is real trouble, as Dominos found out. And because you cannot evaluate it, they’ll never know – apart from impact on sales – what the damage is. My gut feel is that it’s a flash in the pan, it’ll be forgotten and Dominos will continue as normal.

That being said, while they cannot control the spread of a message through social media and nor can they, effectively, counteract it, they did make some stupid errors.

Firstly – why did their employees (or their franchisee’s employees) see fit to post a video on YouTube anyway? I’d make sure that it was company policy to ensure that every single employee knows what the Dominos’ Code of Conduct is and, more importantly, what can be expected if it’s broken. There clearly aren’t enough controls in place.

Second – if there’s something wrong with their food hygiene processes – why is this and how can it be rectified. Prevention is better than cure.

Third – why did it take them so long to react? And when they did react, why did they use Twitter and not a media announcement to all media? If it’s that important, why didn’t they take out print advertisements to put their side of the story?

I’ll repeat myself – because of what social media is, and because of the way that people who use social media react to ‘Big Corporate’ content (they ignore it, or are deeply suspicious of it), a Big Corporate response against user content is always going to be a loser.

In addition, let’s not forget, a lot of their customers are not going to be ‘hip’ to social media and thus, while they’ll be exposed to the hype and title-tattle arising from social media (via friends and family) they won’t be exposed to the company’s message because it’s not been disseminated to their diet of traditional media.

I suppose the point is that, in times of crisis – no matter where that crisis arises – do not ignore social media, but do make sure that your message gets to the widest audience possible, as quickly as possible. And that can only (currently) be achieved through traditional media outlets – traditional media is your priority, social media is secondary.

Social Media as a Comms Tool – The Fish Theorem

Posted on by in Evaluation, Social Media.

So. There I was, in Belgrade, attending a press function. As you do. It was a CSR affair, so there was the usual smattering of government officials, intellectual elite and the odd random performance artist. Unfortunately, that very morning, the Serbian government had called a press conference to unleash the latest war on, and I quote, (a quotation from one of the intellectuals there), ‘the mob’. Thus, all things being equal, war on the mob vs CSR, there weren’t any TV crews. Oh – and the centre of Belgrade was gridlock, probably because of all the TV crews trying to get pictures of dubious men (and possibly women) in dark glasses.

Be that as it may, as the event wound down, I got into conversation (over a complimentary glass of the local hooch, which appeared to be – to all intents and purposes – peach flavoured meths) with a lady from the PR agency who’d organised the whole shindig.  Having ascertained that she’d been in the business we call spin for some five years, I asked her what she considered her speciality and she told me that she mainly practised digital PR, on behalf of a number of hi-tech clients. She also said – and here I had to question whether I’m actually wasting the money I give to that nice Mr Clinique and his wonderful male grooming range – that I would probably hate digital. The words ‘because you’re a bit old’ were left, politely, hanging unsaid.

And maybe it’s because I’m a bit old, or maybe it’s because I feel the Emperor is slightly bereft in the vestements department, or maybe (altogether) it’s because I’m a Londoner, I rose, snapping, to the bait and developed the fish theorem of social media. Or maybe it’s because of the peach flavoured meths, which, I have to admit, is the only drink in recent times that I have had to put down unfinished. If you ever find yourself in Belgrade – well, don’t. Just don’t. 

So I asked the nice young lady how she measured her work in the digital field. How she could actually deliver a sensible measure of ROI to her client. What she felt was achieved by the whole social media effort. Whether, in point of fact, there were any tangible results at all. And we progressed to the big debate around social media (in its ‘real’ sense) vs the commercial aims of a comms practitioner’s clients and, further, the raison d’etre of a comms practitioner period. After all, what do we, the benighted few, actually do – if it’s not sell our clients products through image and reputation creation?

The stark fact is that, with social media, the only way to achieve an end is to produce something that people want to read or view and that they then want to re-post or circulate to their friends. It’s all a bit Ronseal – social media. Does exactly what it says………… The other unavoidable deal about social media is that it is completely uncontrolled. To quote Will Smith in Shark Tale – you may think you know, but you have no idea.

No – until someone can actually measure social media and tell you (or your client) exactly what you’re getting for your investment (financial or opportunity) then it must remain second string to traditional media.

You see, going after social media as a comms tool is like fly fishing. You cast your fly and you watch as all the little fishes gather round it. All the little fishes are thinking “oooooo – look at this, something new, are we going to like it?” But to hook them, you’ve got to be oh so careful. Adding a commercial message at the wrong time is like striking too soon – you rip back the rod and all the wee fishies scatter, never to be seen again. And unlike fish, which are renowned for being stupid, your social media audience will never come back. However, even if you get it right, and you strike at the right time, then your reward is one fish or, possibly, if you’ve got a few hooks, several fish. OK, so they’re yours to do what you will with, but it’s still just a few fish.

Traditional media is like a stick of dynamite. Get the story right, get the mass coverage – BOOM. Fish everywhere. OK, they may not all be the right fish, but amongst your gasping, flapping haul, there’s going to be a great deal of the right fish.

And, not that I’ve ever bought a stick of dynamite, but it’s got to be cheaper than a couple of days fly fishing on a decent stretch of river. And that’s the deal – working against social media is disproportionately expensive, especially as you – no matter what anyone says – cannot measure the results.