Public Relations

Social Media – Socialnomics – Please, Make It Go Away

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

Help, help – they’re at it again! Them! The social media gurus, the digital numpties, the facebook freaks! The horrible cyber-hippies, with their hessian and their mung beans and their ridiculous belief that if they chant spurious data often enough, one day it might turn out to be true.

Well it isn’t and it won’t. Here’s a new example of social media snake-oil salesmanship, featuring a short fashion show by – ladies and gentlemen – the Emperor!

Have a look – note the lack of any tangible hows, or whens, or wheres and the apparent inability to distinguish between digital marketing and the (very small and practically valueless) subset of digital that is social media. 

Frankly, this is dangerous voodoo nonsense and it makes me quite uncomfortable.

Corporate Communications – The Authentic Enterprise

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

Found this down the back of the internet. It’s a report – entitled The Authentic Enterprise – from  the Arthur W. Page Society (an American organisation for the promotion and betterment of public affairs and corporate communications professionals). It examines the changing nature of a business’ relations with its publics and what it needs to do to adapt to, exist in and survive today’s world of open and transparent communications. I should say – it’s from 2007 – but I hope the following exerpts will intrigue you as much as they intrigued me. It’s genuinely quite sensible.

“The quality of the company’s products and services (or lack thereof) is apparent to all customers and potential customers. Its treatment of employees and retirees is visible across the corporation and to potential employees and public interest groups. Its citizen ship, environmental behaviour, corporate governance standards, executive compensation practices and public policy recommendations are transparent to all.”

“A company must be able to answer such questions as: What business are we in? What markets do we serve? What differentiates us as an employer, an investment, a partner, a neighbour? In what do we deeply believe? What will endure? What do we value? And how can we ensure that everyone associated with the far-flung enterprise understands and acts in accordance with our mission, values, goals and operating principles?”

“However, building a management system based on values is a significant challenge.”

Crisis Management – The Idiot’s Guide To Creating a Plan 4

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Crisis Management Guides, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , .

So, Who Owns the Crisis?

First, an apology for the depths of ennui that I plumbed in yesterday’s post. *rse. I’d forgotten how mind-numbing the whole preparation deal can be – but, just because it’s teeth-grindingly tedious, doesn’t mean it’s not important. Go away and do it. You’ll be happier when you have. Honest. You can make it more interesting by identifying the things that I’ve forgotten, thereby adding to the wow factor of your preparation experience. OK, that’s nonsense. Just get on with it!

I’m going to divide this section into two and, to the undoubted and unbounded relief of those who are sticking with this out of some misguided sense of duty (thank you so much), I’m going to keep it brief.

First, let’s talk about who actually owns the crisis management plan – the preparation of parts of which you are so deeply embroiled in right now. Well, on the one hand, it should be the top bod. Mr Pinnacle. Your MD or CEO. He, or indeed, she, is ultimately responsible for the direction, development and performance of your business and therefore should take responsibility for the business when things get a bit out of shape. On the other hand, as we all know, these people operate on a slightly different plane to the rest of us and simply do not (mostly) have the focus, or the patience to deal with the detail that’s necessary to get this right. And, although they may not seem it, these people are professional optimists – they cannot allow themselves to believe that anything can go wrong with the business that they are stewarding (it would drive them nuts).

So, in brief, you need to find someone senior enough to be able to lead and enrol other senior people in the business and yet paranoid and detail-oriented enough to be concerned about  getting it right. There are normally two candidates – your Head of Legal Affairs, or your Company Secretary. If you’ve got one person doing both roles then, in the vernacular, bingo!

(Apologies to all those of my blog snorkellers who work in companies that have Health and Safety departments or officers. You’ve already got plans, and quite scarily-committed people looking after them. With hi-vis jackets, no doubt.)

Which brings me to the second part of this post – who actually owns the crisis when it’s happening. Clearly – and everything I’m posting here is not meant to be definitive, it requires the fertilizer of your thoughts for it to bloom – it’s going to depend on what sort of crisis you’ve got – whether, in fact, it’s just an issuette, or whether it’s something that is going to have a long-term, company-wide impact. And therefore, in amongst your preparation, you’re going to need an escalation plan – a sort of chart which shows who needs to know what and when.

You see, in this case, the ultimate owner of the crisis IS the MD or CEO – ‘cos he or she is the one who’ll be doing five years in Pentonville if the company’s found to be negligent – but (for all the reasons stated above) she (or he) is not going to want to be bothered by a small glitch on the production line. While it’s not entirely your job to decide how far up the food chain the news of your issue/crisis needs to be escalated, you can be certain that senior people are not going to be terribly forgiving if they read it in the paper before you’ve told them about it. Or worse – if they’ve been stupid enough to give their ‘phone numbers to the media – they get a call about it before you’ve briefed them.

Finally for this post, your escalation plan – which, as I hope I’ve already made clear, will, like the rest of your prep, be formulated with the help of others from around your business who are likely to be involved in the event of a crisis – should show ‘levels of engagement’. Simply put, this describes the teams that come together to co-ordinate the management of the crisis.

Normally called Gold, Silver and Bronze – something to do with the military or the emergency services, I think – they are basically a junior team, dealing with things on the ground, a middle-ranking team, directing things on the ground and making longer-term decisions, and the senior team, formulating strategy, handing down approvals and shaping the future. To be clear – dependent on what your crisis is, you may never need to call your middle and senior teams together – simply keeping them informed may be enough. But you need to be clear on how those decisions are made.

Next time, on ‘I’m an Idiot, Make me a Crisis Management Plan’ – I’ll summarise where we’ve got to. And then it’s on to the fun stuff………..

Crisis Management – The Idiot’s Guide To Creating A Plan 3

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Crisis Management Guides, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , .

Preparing to Deal With a Crisis

Today, dear and faithful blog snorkellers, we’re going to look at the homework you need to do in preparation for dealing with a crisis, whenever it happens.

First, however, some home truths. You, the corporate communicator, do not own a crisis. Communication is key to the crisis management process – but so is the safety of your employees, customers and the community, operating within the law, making sure your business still does business, guaranteeing your suppliers and staff are paid and ensuring your records and data are safe.

The comms team protects corporate reputation and maintains stakeholder confidence, and is central to all aspects of the crisis management process – but we do not lead it, we do not own it and we are not the single most important thing.

Not so long ago, in a crisis simulation exercise, I felt that an operations person had been slow in providing my team with information fundamental to the external comms strategy.

In the heat of the moment, and in front of his colleagues, I said I didn’t care how busy he was maintaining his part of the business and that it was none of my concern. I was solely interested in the reputation and trust that would allow the business to function in the future, and that his duty was to help me achieve my goals. Needless to say, backs went up, and the situation has a couple of ugly moments.

I still believe I was right – but I had made the mistake of forgetting that comms works in tandem with all the other strands of crisis management. I’ll come back to the issue of who owns the crisis and how it might work in another post, but in the meantime, remember that, in all your preparation (as outlined below) you should involve others. It’ll make it easier later.

In preparation, these are the things you should consider:

Scenario planning – what are the issues that could affect your company, and how would your company be affected if one (or more) of them became reality? Make a bullet-point list of all of them.

Reserve statements and Q&A – bear in mind that when a crisis strikes, you will not have all the facts and you will not have had time to assess the situation. You may, however (dependent on the nature of the crisis), be expected to communicate immediately, without access to a spokesperson, or any form of approval process. Create a holding statement, or statements, if necessary leaving gaps for names and places, and get approval in advance. All the holding statement needs to do is acknowledge that something is happening, accept that information needs to be gathered and promise to issue further details within a specified timeframe. Looking at your scenario list, you should also be able to make a start on a generic Q&A document, which can be approved in advance. This will need updating on a regular basis.

Equipment and location – what will you need to run a communications centre? Computers, telephones, fax machines, whiteboards, headed paper, plain paper, envelopes, plastic folders, pens, staplers, desks, chairs – make a list. Bear in mind that your office may not be accessible – where would you go, and does that location have all the things you need?

Spokespeople and contact details – if you’re unlucky enough to face a crisis with immediate media interest, your reserve statements will only hold for so long – probably about half an hour – before you need to give a more detailed briefing. At this point, the media will want to hear from someone who isn’t part of the comms team – preferably a senior executive. You should create a bank of senior spokespeople, media trained and familiar with the crisis comms plan, on a rota and ready to be contacted at any time during their ‘on-call’ period. The comms team, the spokespeople and all those involved in the crisis management process should have a copy of the rota and a full contact list, containing the entire team’s contact details.

Holding and waiting areas – in that case of a full-blown crisis (especially one involving destruction of property or loss of life) the media are likely to be there before the emergency services, closely followed by the general public. You cannot afford to have either group simply milling around – they will inevitably stray into areas that may be unsafe, or restricted and they will ask questions that people may not be able to answer. You will need to provide areas where both groups can wait – if possible separately. Again, remember that your buildings may not be accessible – is there an alternative?

This is simply a starter. You will probably think of other things that you need to have, or need to do. Also bear in mind that, in the case of crisis involving death and/or destruction, you’ll be working with the emergency services, who have a tendency to take over. Be prepared, but also be flexible.

Next time, we’ll look at who owns the crisis in more detail, and who should be involved.

Crisis Management – The Idiot’s Guide To Creating A Plan 1

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Crisis Management Guides and tagged , , , , , , , .

2009 Research by Burson Marsteller (a PR company) into European companies’ level of crisis-preparedness revealed that while 60% of companies polled had encountered some sort of crisis, 53% didn’t have a plan in place to deal with a crisis when it happens to them. Just so the full horror of this has time to sink in – I’ll repeat it in slightly different terms.

Over half of European companies, it would seem, are wholly unprepared for the ‘phone call at 3.00am that tells you your factory’s on fire, or one of your planes just came down. The Monday morning call from the Department of Health to say that hospitals up and down the country are stuffed to the gunwales with patients, poisoned by your range of ready meals. The sight of two of your workforce plummeting past the window, having been issued with badly-maintained harnesses. Your CEO shooting himself in the foot, describing your product range as ‘off the record, real shit, know what I mean’, or your CEO simply shooting himself, having realised that the whole fraud game is up.

Do I need to go on? Everyone knows that a good crisis – or sometimes just a minor issue – can destroy a company, brand, organisation, or person’s reputation overnight if it’s not handled in the right way. Think of the examples. Hoover and the flights debacle, Ratners, Nestle and the baby milk, Coke and Dasani, Thierry Henry, Goldman Sachs, Britney Spears, Enron, Exxon Mobil – the list is, quite literally, endless.

And still, over half of European companies do not have a crisis plan in place. Without labouring the point, a crisis can happen at any time, and it’s one of those strange serendipity things that at any time is exactly when crises do happen. There’s no warning and it will be the middle of the night – that much is guaranteed. It is tantamount to malpractice for any communicator daring to describe himself or herself as professional to ply their trade in, or on behalf of, a company that doesn’t have a plan in place. Think about that for a moment.

Of course, it’s easier said than done. If you’ve not created a plan before it might, understandably, seem a bit daunting – and it’s not made any easier by the fact that there are a million conflicting opinions on what a plan should look like and what it should contain.

It’s also all to easy to put off, or ignore. Hey – your company, or your client’s company has never had a crisis – why’s it going to start now? Anyway, how difficult can it be? And just think of the cost, time and effort involved in putting a plan together! All perfectly good arguments – until such time as you are bitch-slapped by the big, wet, metaphorical haddock of crisis. At which point you are going to be really, really, abjectly sorry. Trust me.

In a perfect world, one would expect the industry bodies, or the industry’s ‘bible’ (copyright PRWeek 2009), to provide a handy cut-and-out-keep guide for the benefit of their members and readers – something to get you started. But it’s not a perfect world, and they don’t. In fact, as far as I can see, during the lazy and brief trawl of t’internet I conducted earlier today, there’s not much out there that doesn’t have a price attached to it.

So, for the good of mankind, I’m going to do a partwork here, just for you, my faithful blog snorkellers. Over the next few days – could be weeks, depends how deeply I dive into my subject – I shall, I hope, give you enough information on the key aspects of crisis management for you to develop your own skeleton plan. I shall deal with what constitutes a crisis, when issues become crises, who is responsible for the various facets of a crisis, preparing for a crisis, communicating during a crisis, business continuity and getting back to normal after a crisis. And, most likely, one or two spin-off topics.

So – tomorrow, in Creating A Plan 2, I’ll deal with What Is A Crisis.

Corporate Communications – Doing God’s Work 3

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

More sequels than a Governator franchise. Anyway, this one’s for those committed blog snorkellers who’ve waded through my musings on the whole Goldman Sachs/Sunday Times ‘doing God’s work’ SNAFU. Earlier today, I posted links to commentary from the London Evening Standard (which I agree with), which say that Goldman’s have (and I’m paraphrasing) made the mother of all cock-ups with their attempt at public relations, and deserve the pillorying (doesn’t look right – pilloring? pillorising?) that they’re getting.

But then it struck me. (Well, I was watching TV last night, and there was an entire programme dedicated to it.) The London Evening Standard. Owned by a Russian. Ex-KGB. Is it too much to suppose that he (or those who may be backing him) might have an interest in destabilising a leading bank such as Goldman Sachs?

But, you’ll scoff, the original damning Goldman Sachs feature/interview was in The Sunday Times (of London). Yes. It was. Owned by one R Murdoch Esq. Who might also – and I don’t have to stretch my imagination too much – have an interest in destabilising the world’s economy, one bank at a time.

I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. Well, actually, for the sake of conspiracy theorists around the world, I hope there is.

Corporate Communications – Doing God’s Work 2

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , .

 Last time, on ‘Doing God’s Work’. A global investment bank – let’s call them Goldman Sachs – breaks the silence of decades and has some of their senior executives interviewed, for a feature piece, by a medium with global reach – let’s call it The Sunday Times (of London). In the course of the interview, we discover that one of the senior executives likes big boats, that all their employees are being paid obscene amounts of money (nothing wrong with that, mind) and that the ultimate boss – let’s call him Lloyd Blankfein – believes he’s ‘doing God’s work’.

The whole thing raised few issues for me. On the one hand, I was impressed that their Corporate Communications head – let’s call him Lucas van Praag – had managed to get the notoriously secretive bank to ‘go public’ (if you like). I think I understood what they were up to – the threat of governments poking their legislative noses into the affairs of the world’s money-machines needed (needs?) to be averted, so what better than to open yourself to the media and demonstrate that, behind the hype and the rumour, you’re simply a business, under the same pressures as other businesses, trying to turn an honest dollar.

On the other hand, I think they (the Corporate Communications advisors) dropped a clanger. Unfortunately – so I thought – this big financial institution didn’t come off terribly well. The big boss wasn’t terribly likeable (and who cares what he’s really like – if he’s going to do media, he needs to pretend that he’s, at the least, human), quotations from employees simply reinforced the preconceptions and, frankly, no-one needs to know that they like big boats. I think we probably assumed that, anyway.

And then the ‘doing God’s work’ quotation. Well, I assumed (and when we assume, we make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’) (now I feel ill) that this was a joke that fell flat. A throwaway comment, made by a man with not too many social skills. However, this piece, from London’s Evening Standard, tells me otherwise. (Here’s another article, again from the Standard, which showed how they tried to spin it. Oooops.)

And so to today’s lesson, dear blog snorkellers. If you are a corporate communicator, and you are parading your top bods in front of the media, make sure that they are a) trained b) on-message and c) understand that this is not the time for off-the-cuffs. If you cannot tick the boxes against these three points, then do not proceed.

As Goldman Sachs has proved – a bad result is worse than no result at all, and, in their case, may have the opposite effect to the one they were (probably) looking for. Their performance has simply given the world’s media an interest in, and an excuse for, forensically examining everything they do. And guess what? There’s lots to write about.

Social Media – Nothing More To Be Said

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

“Fry warns on social media” – yes, it’s PRWeek again. (Or, if you’re in the States, it’s PRWeek – but monthly. Of course.)

Englands most treasured national treasure, the warm, mellow, avuncular and perhaps, even, a little tweedy, Stephen Fry (for all those of my faithful blog snorkellers who are not familiar with this afternoon-tea-and-crumpet of a man – he’s a middle-aged, rather camp, comedian) has pronounced on social media. This is the same man who made a complete Twit of himself – he had a Call-me-Dave moment with a surfeit of Tweets – not many weeks ago, so I suppose he has the experience to back his pronouncements up. Anyway PRWeek pounced on the pronouncement (I’m channelling the spirit of Stephen here) and published it (issue dated November 27 2009 – if you haven’t seen it, go out and buy one for £4.22, or whatever spurious cover price they’re featuring this week, it’s a collector’s item, in that there’s not going to be a print version for much longer). (Apparently.)

Anyway, summarising wildly, dear old baggy, arch, loveable Stephen has (apparently, again) ‘warned communicators of the risks inherent in using social media as a new type of PR channel’. (Welcome to the party Stephen! Better late than never, I suppose.) He went on to say (according to t’Week) “All new means of communication have been derided and decried because they are seen as encouraging demagoguery of the worst kind. It may be that there will be dark days when social media are seen to cause genuine damage and even death by inflaming people wrongly.’

By which I think he means that every new type of communication that comes along gets hi-jacked by the snake oil salesmen and the charlatans, and, if a majority of people continue to insist on using social media as an extension of the nasty, murky dark bit in their heads, then there could be fisticuffs.

And it’s not that he’s wrong – rather that what he’s saying is so dreadfully obvious and has been done to death on fora around the world. As Mr Fry is an enormously clever man, I can only take from this that there is nothing more interesting, relevant or current to be said about social media.

The conversation – which, after all, is what social media is all about – appears to be over.

So, Farewell Then, PRWeek

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , .

Must……..stop…………reading………..PRWeek…………..gnnnnnnnngh………………..

Morbid fascination, that’s what it is. Anyway, there I am flicking through November 20th’s offering, doing my best to suck what little value I can from the less-than-compelling mix of not-news, hagiography and terrifying light-weightedness (tell me it’s not so) and my eye is grabbed by the ‘From The Editor Column’.

“Striking a Balance Between Print and Web” is its title. It goes on to inform me that I will be noticing a few changes to the ‘Week – cutting news pages and and adding extra space for analysis. (Of what, exactly, pray?) They’re also going to dedicate a page in the magazine to content featured online – which has to imply that there’s not that much news or analysis to fill the pages that they have.

In fairness – it all makes sense. The website is rapid reaction, more easily updated and attracts far more viewers. The print version is out-of-date by the time it’s published and has never really contained the sort of thought-provoking, enduring, educational and value-providing content that would justify its existence.

What all this is clearly leading to – especially given Haymarket’s current title rationalisation – is the closure of the print version of PRWeek, although the editorial team are doing their utmost to hide it behind the smoke and mirrors of increased analysis and assertions that the ‘industry’s bible’, which has ‘enjoyed a major redesign’ is and ‘remains the mainstay of our offering’.

Well, no it won’t, beyond, I’d say, January 2010 – unless it genuinely can reinvent itself and become the ‘industry’s bible’ – and by this I mean something that sets standards, leads the way and provides the industry (at all levels) with stuff we can use.

For example, recently it was reported that very few European businesses had crisis management plans in place. In this very issue of PRWeek, there’s four pages dedicated to ‘crisis comms’ -case histories and commentary from industry pundits. Good start. But.

Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to create a guide to creating a crisis plan? Outline the basics, so that everyone knows where to start? Show the differences between plans for global organisations and local organisations? Demonstrate the potential consequences, the signs to look out for and how to counter them? Suggest a process for employing a crisis consultant? Provide examples of best practice desk-top exercises and full-blown crisis plan trials?

Wouldn’t this be significantly more useful? More useful than yet another Thought Leader supplement, but probably attracting a similar amount of advertising? Useful enough to merit a print version, and useful enough to motivate people to keep it on file and share it with others? Hmmmm?

I don’t want to see any print media disappear as a consequence of the rise of the internet and online content. I do understand, however – and PRWeek almost certainly does as well – that unless print media offers something that t’internet can’t (and I’m guessing that this includes in-depth consideration of topics and issues) then disappear it will.

Luckily, the communications industry has a myriad topics and issues that are ripe for this sort of treatment.

Social Media – Explaining It To The Non-Believer

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

Never let it be said, that just because I don’t believe in it (as a valid or valuable communications and marketing tool) that I don’t share the opposing viewpoint for the benefit and edification of you, my dear, dear blog snorkellers. So here is the script of a presentation given recently at an events industry event. (Yes, you read that right.) As I read it, I thought – well, if I HAD to try and convince someone of the value of social media, this is the sort of thing I’d use. I will issue a health warning though. It doesn’t, at any point, answer the questions ‘how much will I have to invest to leverage social media to my advantage’ and ‘what sort of return can I expect on my investment’. This is OK for the events industry, who have always struggled with ROI, and just keep talking until people forget what it was they wanted to know, but in other, more focused sectors, this might be an issue. Make up your own mind.

“WHAT THE HELL IS SOCIAL MEDIA?   

Social media is “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos, and audio.”

More simply it just describes the millions of conversations people are having with each other across the world 24/7 

Why the HELL should I care?  Here are 10 really, really good reasons why…  
REASON #1   

Because social media is now the number one online activity beating porn and personal email to the top spot. 
(Nielsen Wire)  
REASON #2   

Because 2/3 of the global internet population visit social networks.

(Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places) 
REASON #3   

Because time spent on social networks is growing at 3x the overall internet rate, accounting for 10% of all internet time.

(Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places) 
REASON #4   

Because online including social media has become the most influential source in helping consumer make purchasing decisions.

(Weber Shandwick Inline Research)
REASON #5   

Because social media is like word of mouth on steroids.
REASON #6   

Because social media is democratizing communications. Big time.

“Technology is shifting the power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are in control.”

(Rupert Murdoch, Global Media Entrepreneur)  
REASON #7   

Because millions of people are creating content for the social web.

Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.

(Business Week, February 19, 2009)
REASON #8
The next 3 billion consumers will access the internet from a mobile device.   Google Already 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices.  People update anywhere, anytime. 
Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences!       
(Mashable.com) 
REASON #9   

In almost all cases social media is free.  All it will cost you is time.
REASON #10   

Because social media is hell of a force to be reckoned with.
Years to reach 50 million users:  
Radio – 38 years
TV – 13 years
Internet – 4 years
iPod – 3 years
Facebook added 175 million users between in less than 11 months 
The phenomenal growth of Facebook:
January 2009: 150 million users
April 2009: 200 million users
July 2009: 250 million users
September 2009: 300 million users
Friday, November 6th, 2009: 325 million users
That’s half a million users every single day
(Mashable.com) 

If Facebook were a country it would be bigger than the USA and the 3rd largest in the World  
1.                         China
2.                         India
3.                         Facebook
4.                         United States
5.                         Indonesia
6.                         Brazil
7.                         Pakistan
8.                         Bangladesh
9.                         Russia
10.                      Nigeria     

13 hours:  the amount of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

412.3 years: the length of time it would take to view every YouTube video.

1 billion: the number of YouTube videos viewed per day.

3.06 billion: The number of photos archived on Flickr.com as of June 2009. That’s roughly 1 photo per every 2 people on the planet.

1382%: The year on year growth rate of Twitter users from February 2008 to February 2009.

3,000,000: the average number of Tweets sent per day on twitter.com

5.4 billion: The number of twitter messages sent since launch
5 billion: The number of minutes spent on Facebook each day
1 billion: The amount of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

Social media is not yet another channel for broadcasting bullsh*t.

You see, it’s supposed to be a dialogue, not a monologue.

One way marketing has had its day! 

Stop thinking “campaigns”. Start thinking “conversations”.

Listening first, selling second 
Unfortunately most companies are still treating social media like just another marketing channel when in fact it’s so much more…

1: public relations

2: customer service

3: loyalty-building

4: collaboration

5: networking

6: thought-leadership

And yes, customer acquisition, too.  

If your product sucks, social media won’t fix it.

However, if your customer service sucks, social media can help.

If your repeat business sucks, social media can help.

If your company’s word of mouth sucks, social media can help.

Social media playtime is over – its time to get serious!     
Never forget the basic rules…

Rule #1: listen – Google alerts and Tweetdeck (for starters)

Rule #2: engage

Rule #3: measure – audience, engagement , loyalty, influence action (metrics should map to goals)

Now go out there and get social!  Because this is only the beginning.”