Tackling social media

A lot of companies misuse and abuse social media. They know they have to do something. They’ve been to one of those crazy overpriced social media conferences and talked to a few agencies and vendors. They keep reading scary stories about it in the papers. They are exposed to the risk of last mover disadvantage and they know it.

So they jump in to tackle social media with both feet off the ground and their studs showing. Little wonder their customers show them the red card.

So where did they go wrong?

They invited a bunch of senior bods from the Communications, PR, Advertising and Marketing teams to form a squad. All good people – top performers and experts in their chosen fields – after all, this is important stuff.

The only problem is none of them were active users of social media.

And so they kicked off by applying tried and tested old world communications values to a medium they didn’t really get. They applied military style planning to detailed and time bound communications campaigns. Not realising that command and control does not work in the world of social media, the downward spiral of selling and spamming began.

All they had to do was leverage the existing expertise and enthusiasm of the growing band of natural born social mediarites already on the payroll. The people who understand that social media is not a broadcast channel but a place where people converse and create meaningful relationships.

They should have listened to self-styled Community Evangelist at LinkedIn, Mario Sundar, who made the following observation two years ago:

“Your employees, starting with your executives, influence your company’s employment brand more than any advertising campaign that you will ever craft. They do so through their blog, word-of-mouth sites like Twitter, and of course on LinkedIn, where they build their “professional brand” in ways that are intrinsically tied to your company’s brand.”

They do this through natural authentic daily interactions with their personal and professional networks. They don’t sell. They don’t spam. They don’t follow orders. You cannot script them. All you need to do is allow them the freedom to express themselves and allow their natural advocacy to shine through.

These are the people who should be involved in formulating and delivering your company’s social media strategy.

Asda’s Green Room re-visited

This time last year I scribbled down a few thoughts on Asda’s Green Room, a website where Asda staff can get together to find out what’s happening around the company as well as share their own stories, pictures and videos.

What makes the Green Room so special is that whilst most companies do this kind of thing, very few do so in public. There’s no hiding behind the corporate firewall here. Customers, shareholders, media, rivals – in fact anyone with a passing interest in Asda can visit the site and have their say.

So when I heard that the Green Room had a makeover last week I rushed back to pay a visit – and I must say it looks amazing.

The new homepage is very easy on the eye and packed with attractive hooks to draw you deeper into some great content. Additional functionality has been added to make it easier to submit comments, upload and preview pictures, and receive progress information on both.

New design elements have enhanced navigation around the site as well as point you to other linked resources like the Green Room’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. I really really like what they have done.

I said some pretty negative things last time round about my disappointment at the lack of obvious staff interaction with the site. I’m pleased to say things have improved on that front.

There was a lovely news piece from early December where Asda President and CEO Andy Clarke thanked staff for their Herculean efforts in keeping the business going during the extreme weather conditions, in short informal video. This in turn attracted a bunch of comments from staff and customers, telling their own stories of braving the Arctic conditions.

If I were to be really picky (which obviously I am!) I’d have loved to have seen a follow-up comment from Andy Clarke in the thread acknowledging the stories, in particular the comment from an Asda customer who explains why the residents of Slack Head in Beetham are “very lucky to have one of your employees in our community”. This kind of content is priceless. But only if people are reading it.

There is still a lot of work to be done to make the Green Room the runaway success it deserves to be. Despite improvements, levels of engagement with staff are still patchy. Most of the news stories don’t seem to attract comments, including one where the company announced it had raised £4m last year for partner charity Tickled Pink. Another story about a member of staff who had just won £5.6m on the National Lottery attracted a single solitary comment.

The same lack of engagement is reflected on Facebook, where since the beginning of December, the 30-odd posts on the Green Room wall have attracted just 4 comments.

The next step for the Green Room team has to be off-line.

The on-line offering is more than fit for purpose. It is actually bloody good. What is needed now is awareness, education, and encouragement. Staff need to be encouraged and empowered to get involved. The easy bit has been done – the hard bit starts now.

The key to success in my opinion will be getting the entire management community to lead by example. They need to demonstrate through their own actions that engaging with the Green Room is not just permitted, but genuinely encouraged.

When is an iPhone not an iPhone?

I find myself on the cusp of leaving my current mobile phone provider.

Not because I can get a better deal elsewhere. And not because their competitors offer better handsets or have erected more masts.

Let’s face it, an iPhone is an iPhone, a Blackberry is a Blackberry and a signal is a signal. Does it really matter which company you choose to provide yours? OK, so price can be a differentiator, but fierce competition means narrow pricing spreads. Which is nice.

For me the real differentiator is customer service.

On two separate occasions recently, one over the phone and the other in the flesh, my current mobile telecoms provider has stretched my patience to the limit and caused my blood to boil. The crime on both occasions was borne out of nothing more than indifference and laziness.

I’m not usually this tolerant. A single piss-poor customer experience is usually enough to push me into the outstretched arms of a competitor; something I have done twice in recent years, once with my digital TV provider and once with my mobile phone provider. That said, I’m normally a very loyal customer. Ask First Direct; I’ve been with them for 22 years and I still love them because of their exceptional telephone operators.

On this occasion it’s going to be a question of 3 strikes and you’re out, because in fairness up until a month ago they had been pretty damned good. But given that 3 out of the 4 mobile contracts in my household are with them, I’d say they are in a state of high risk.

I thought I’d try a little experiment. I’ve read quite a bit about how enlightened companies are using Twitter as an additional customer services channel by intercepting negative sentiment and proactively engaging with unhappy customers and turning them from public detractors to advocates. I even wrote about it myself back in April.

I thought I’d try my current mobile provider out. I’m going to give them a chance to redeem themselves by identifying me as a seriously pissed of customer and go some way to restoring my faith in them by showing some interest and offering me some assistance if appropriate.

Instead of complaining openly on Twitter in the traditional manner I’m going to try something a bit different. Through a few deliberately provocative tweets I’m going to give them the chance to identify me as their customer without me actually telling them that I am.

I’m hoping one or more of my tweets will lead them back to this page, where they can read that they have my explicit permission to call me, DM me or email me to discuss the reasons why I am so upset with them.

If they manage to do this I will not publish details of the two very shoddy customer experiences they have recently forced me to endure.

In order to narrow the field, I will merely say that O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile or Orange – it could be you…

I’m not Spartacus

There was something really quite exciting about seeing the deluge of support sweep across the twitterverse in real-time this morning. In a humbling display of defiance and solidarity, twittizens across the world ignited and united in support of one of their own, falsely accused and wrongly convicted.

His crime was to tweet 109 characters that went on to be interpreted by the judiciary as a menacing threat to blow up an airport: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” were the words he apparently wrote to a woman he was due to visit by plane from an airport closed by excessive snowfall.

So on the one hand I find myself rather impressed by the #IAmSpartacus campaign. It resulted in thousands of tweets replaying the offending message. It led to a pledge from the King of Twitter Mr Stephen Fry to pay the fine and associated court costs. It led to 360 news pieces on Google so far today…

On the other hand I chose not to join in all the fun and frolics because I do think that @pauljchambers was a touch foolish to tweet the words ‘airport’ and ‘blowing sky high’ in the same breath (as it were).

I’m sorry but was a bit silly.

But since when has being a bit silly become a criminal offence?

Anyone can see that there was no intent to cause alarm nor to be threatening in any way. In his own mind and in the mind of any right minded person, he was just engaging in a bit of harmless banter and bravado.

None of the pre-requisites of a proper bomb threat were in evidence. No contact with the airport. No intended victim. No attempt to hide his identity. No muffled phone call. No coded message. No known terrorist affiliations. No innocent bystanders at risk.

It looks like the police weren’t sure what they were dealing with. “I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they’d never heard of it” @pauljchambers later told the Telegraph.

The real crime here was the blindingly obvious lack of understanding and common sense from the bench. The judge described the tweet in question as “menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear. Any ordinary person reading this would see it in that way and be alarmed.”

I think not. That’s just crazy talk…

The Social Media Revolution

Ask anyone which invention had the greatest impact on mankind and you’d probably get a mixed response. The wheel, gunpowder, the compass, the steam engine, electricity, sliced bread; take your pick.

Me? I’d go with the printing press.

Think about it. Over the history of civilisation, who has held the keys to social and economic power? Answer – the aristocracy, aided and abetted by the Church. In other words, those with access to education, culture and knowledge.

The printing press democratised education, culture and knowledge. Its contribution to spreading knowledge and learning destroyed the age of belief and blew apart the Church’s claim to a monopoly on knowledge. It paved the way for the Reformation, the Renaissance, Nationalism, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and pretty much everything else we see around us today.

So here’s the thing. If the printing press had such a profound effect on the advancement of mankind, what on earth is Social Media going to do to us? OK, so a single printing press in the 15^th century could churn out 500 books in the time it took a scribe to write one. Those 500 books still needed to be distributed and consumed.

Just 20 years ago the giant publishing houses controlled much of the printed word. Today it is truly democratised. Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can publish whatever they want in a matter of seconds.

It is estimated today that there are around 1.4 million blogs in blogosphere, and around 900,000 million blog posts are published every day. Facebook has 500 million active users, who share over 30 billion pieces of content every month. Twitter has 100 million registered users and is growing at the rate of 300,000 per day, with 55 million tweets a day. 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, while the site enjoys 2 billion views per day. I could go on but I think you get my drift.

But before we get carried away on the tidal wave of social media euphoria, hold onto this thought. If you spit in someone’s face you’ll get their undivided attention. If you spit into the middle of the Pacific Ocean no one will ever know.

The power now resides with those who can help us navigate through all of this stuff.

Unclear proliferation

We live in a connected world. Buyers have found new ways to buy. Sellers have found new ways to sell. Motorists have found new ways to insure. Students have found new ways to study. Writers have found new ways to publish. Recruiters have found new ways to recruit. Gamblers have found new ways to gamble. Musicians have found new ways to be heard. Families and friends have found new ways to share.

In under a second Google can find more stuff than a pre-internet research assistant could have hoped to have found in a lifetime. In a matter of minutes companies can be rocked to the core by the whiff scandal spreading across the globe faster than the speed of light through multiple virtual channels that are virtually impossible to control.

Yep. We live in a connected world all right.

Many companies are jumping on the social media express, leveraging new and exciting communication technologies and behaviours to find new ways of connecting with their customers and staff. So given the ease, speed and reach of communication technology these days, it’s little wonder we all understand our company’s strategy right?

Wrong. On the contrary, while the world around us has never been more open, transparent and accessible, life in a typical organisation has never been more opaque and trust has never been in such scarce supply.

Why is that? Could it be because many organisations still hang on to the mechanical, bureaucratic, command and control models of organisation that have been with us since the days of the carrier pigeon? Is it because they still cascade carefully crafted, legally sanitised state of the nation speeches through multiple layers of distracted or disengaged management? And because they strip out any semblance of personality from CEO communications to make sure they don’t put a foot wrong, nor waste a single precious word? Somebody told me the other day that their company still sends memorandums around in the internal post! For sure – this could be part of the problem.

Too many organisations continue to inflict somewhat outmoded values and behaviours on an increasingly sophisticated young workforce; a workforce which is already shunning email because it’s too damn slow. Banning Facebook? What’s all that about? You may as well ban prayer in the mosque or swimming at the pool.

I am a very enthusiastic champion of social media. Getting active on Twitter has expanded my professional horizons immeasurably and demonstrated the power of networking on and offline. So when Yammer popped up inside the organisation I was one of the very early adopters because I got it. I didn’t need convincing. I tweet, therefore I yam.

And Yammer has been a very positive experience for my company. It has got our people sharing ideas, intelligence, information and (dare I say it) banter, across the company irrespective of traditional organisational boundaries, allegiances and geographies. It provides us with a means to improve knowledge management, collaboration and innovation in ways I had not thought possible just a few short years ago.

However, it has also given us another channel to contend with. Another application which needs to be opened up every morning, and another source of potentially distracting real-time alerts set to interrupt us as we go about our work.

As you can imagine this causes me some conflict as I have been beating the social media drum hard and fast for quite some time in and out of work; while at the same time witnessing my own increasing failure to keep track of an ever growing number of external and internal sources I rely on for professional and industry news, views and ideas.

I managed a wry smile when I read the following tongue-in-cheek plea for a ‘ceasefire’ recently on one of my favourite community forums:

“Most working days start with logging in to desktop, Yammer, Intranet, IM, Jabber, Jira, Confluence, Conference Calls, Outlook, OCS and getting a coffee. By then it’s almost time for lunch.”

Beware folks, there’s many a true word spoken in jest. As Internal Communicators we absolutely need to embrace these new channels, but we cannot let them multiply at will with no checks or balances. There is a clear and present danger that important information and meaning gets lost in all the noise. Rather than bringing more clarity, the proliferation of communication channels could well be making things less clear. There needs to be some form of unclear deterrent if we are to avoid meltdown.

When it comes to Internal Communications you need to have a single source of truth. One place that staff enjoy visiting and trust; which is a well-managed, easy to find and full of good quality up-to-date, fresh content. I still believe that place is an intranet; albeit the 2.0 versions built on blogging software that encourages instant feedback and interaction as well as opt in/opt out and ‘alert me’ functionality.

Sure, drive footfall through a multi-channel approach, including word of mouth, email, noticeboards, video on demand, and the pervasive SM channels including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn that to varying degrees most staff are using already. But do just that – drive footfall. Don’t repeat the same messages time and time again across every different channel. It’s called spam and your audience will switch off sharpish if you do it.

Social Media in particular should not be used by corporate communicators for pumping out corporate messages. These channels are designed for discussion not presentation; relationship building not hectoring and lecturing.

Everywhere I look I see people predicting the demise of the machine bureaucracy and the rise of the ‘networked’ or ‘connected’ organisation. Centralisation will be swept aside by decentralisation; formal hierarchy will bow down to informal networks; executive planning will succumb to collective learning; leadership will be usurped by the ‘wisdom of crowds’ and instead of working for departments, we will all band together in tribes. Their message is clear – organisations that fail to embrace these new paradigms are dinosaurs heading for extinction.

Poppycockasaurus. It’s all a matter of balance. Machine Bureaucracies that loosen up a little and open their minds to the new possibilities and opportunities offered by embracing the ‘networked’ or ‘connected’ revolution will live long and prosper. But only if they hang on tightly to some of their rigour and discipline at the same time.

And thrusting new business upstarts will find that all that flashes, blinks and swarms is not necessarily the route to salvation and sustainability. There will always be a place for strong leadership and high level company strategy will never successfully be determined by an all-staff vote.

Maybe, just maybe I could be persuaded to turn up for work in a loin cloth.

The Communications Revolution according to Stockholm

On 15th June 2010, the World Public Relations Forum gathered in Stockholm. PR practitioners, researchers and educators from every continent and over 20 countries ratified the Stockholm Accords, a new manifesto re-affirming the importance of PR and Communication Management in organisational success.

I must confess when I first read the Stockholm Accords it came across as a bit of a last gasp from an industry in its death throes. An industry which recognises it has to adapt or die in the face of a social media and networked organisation tidal wave which threatens to sweep aside the old order.

Let me remind you. Like it or not, it isn’t about mass communications anymore – it’s about masses of communicators.

The authors of the Stockholm Accords spelled it out quite clearly. Their objective was to launch a “global public relations program for the public relations profession” in a “conscious and planned effort to argue the value of public relations”. Oh dear thought I – more PR spin.

Then I read a magnificent blog post by my friend Mike Klein, which triggered a few dormant neurones into life and I saw that I had been missing something really quite exciting.

It’s not about the huffing a puffing of PR practitioners desperately trying to justify their existence. It’s about the very real convergence of two previously distinct endeavours. It’s about external and internal communications coming together. It’s about cross functional “strategic communication” emerging as an indispensable driver, definer and guardian of corporate strategy and reputation.

On page 12 of the Accords, one of its architects Toni Muzi Falconi acknowledges that even the most empowered public relations director cannot realistically hope to directly monitor more than ten percent of the communicative behaviour of her organisation. It has probably always been thus – however the difference today is that the communicative behaviour of the organisation can spread across the globe, into every digital nook and cranny within seconds. The old order still sees this as a threat not an opportunity. It is both of course.

On the same page comes the welcome recognition that much of the value created by the organisation comes from fuzzy (not linear) and immaterial networks that normally disrupt the distinction between internal and external audiences. I say welcome, because if you don’t recognise a problem it is very hard to fix it, and I fear that too many communications professionals continue to bury their heads in the sand over this one.

Furthermore, I absolutely love the assertion, actually, let’s call it recognition, that the most important element of communication management is understanding how an organisation’s reputation depends largely on the actions of employees. My definition of action includes words and behaviour; I trust theirs does too.

Some of the language used in the Accords worries me a bit. The authors talk of coordination and oversight to ensure consistency of content, actions and behaviours. This smacks a bit of the old corporate communications paradigm.

Sadly, the authors chose to call it coordination of internal and external communications, not convergence.

I may just have a bash at getting that amended…

Trust is still a must

On the rant I mentioned yesterday. Maybe rant is a little strong. Letting of steam may be a bit fairer. Anyway, the post came across as an impassioned plea for more trust and transparency in the work place.

The guy was clearly frustrated, and he broke a few basic rules of social media netiquette by ‘SHOUTING’ a bit at unnamed individuals who in his eyes seem to get a kick out of ‘being in the know’.

I was with him 100% in sentiment, but feared that his manner had the potential to undermine a very important debate, as well as create a negative perception among people that didn’t know him and thereby damaging his own personal equity.

I also feared that the naysayers could use the post to take a swipe at my beloved Yammer.

So I called him up for a chat. And guess what – I was beaten to it. A call from up on high had already been made to his boss, along the lines of “have you seen what this guy has written – how can he be trusted with sensitive information after writing something like that?”

Exactly as I feared. His rant had diverted attention away from the real issue and drawn attention to himself in a way that he had not intended or desired. Many people would have been put off by such a reaction and it would have been easy and forgivable to say “sod that, I’m not playing on Yammer again, it’s far too dangerous”.

Fortunately he didn’t. After a few hours of reflection he returned and apologised for his earlier rant, explaining how his passion for the company and his desire to see it be the best it can be lay behind his emotional plea.

He then went on to list the following reasons why he believes transparency in the workplace is a good thing:

It helps employees understand why
It allows for consistent messaging across the organization
It leads to faster, more efficient execution
It heals we/they divisiveness
It keeps good people from leaving
It facilitates the best possible solutions

That’s better! That’s what I call a proper contribution to a very important debate.

And it’s made even more compelling by the fact that it’s not from a text book on employee engagement or from the mouth of an organisational effectiveness guru.

It’s straight from the heart of a very engaged employee.

Twitter:	I need to pee.
Facebook:	I peed!
Foursquare:	I’m peeing here.
Quora:	Why am I peeing?
Youtube:	Watch this pee!
LinkedIn:	I pee extremely well.
MySpace:	Peeeee, maybe the face I can’t forget…
iTunes:	Download the single for just 79p.
Bebo:	Mummy I need a pee pee…
Urbanspoon:	The pea soup was to die for.
Wikipedia:	I just passed a liquid by-product of my body, which was secreted by my kidneys through a process called urination and excreted through my urethral passage.
Wikileaks: Google+	I just peed my pants… Let’s all pee in a circle!