Defining a Social Media Policy

This week I was asked to provide input into my company’s policy on employee participation in online social networks. After reviewing multiple articles and the policies of other companies, I recommended including the following verbiage:

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The company provides internet, email and instant messaging (IM) capabilities to help you do your job faster and smarter, and be a well-informed business person. The facilities to provide that access represent a considerable commitment of company resources for telecommunications, networking, software, storage, etc.

The social media on the internet – including chat rooms, newsgroups, blogs, and networking sites – allow individual users the ability to disseminate facts and opinions. In doing so, please observe the following guidelines:

• You are personally responsible for everything you post online. What you publish will be public information and will be accessible for a very long time. Identify yourself when you discuss matters relating to the company and our operations. Unless your online activity is job-related and supervised by your superiors, you must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on the company’s behalf.

• Abide by existing rules. All existing company policies apply to your conduct online, especially those that pertain to intellectual property protection, privacy, misuse of company resources, sexual harassment, and treating associates with respect. Do not cite or reference customers, partners, or suppliers without their approval. Whenever possible, provide attribution and links back to your information sources, or be prepared to do so when requested. Respect copyright, fair use, and financial disclosure rules.

• Be mindful of information and data security. Do not disclose information that is confidential, internal, or proprietary to this or any other company.

• Be respectful and courteous. Don’t pick fights or use inflammatory or foul language. Be the first to correct your own mistakes and don’t alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.

• Add value. Provide worthwhile information that your readers will find useful. Only post material that you know is factual and accurate; even opinion needs to be grounded in fact and logic to be credible.

Anything you post on the internet using company resources or referring to the company and its banners can be construed, rightly or wrongly, as representing the company’s viewpoint. Please act responsibly and use common sense, and do not post anything that will place the company in an inappropriate light.

If you encounter any posts by other individuals, regardless of their affiliation, that are derogatory to the company, place the company in an inappropriate light, or are inaccurate or false, please bring these posts to the attention of the public relations group immediately. Do not engage in an online debate with the entity.

Also please contact the public relations group if your blog or online commentary attracts the attention of the media.

The company at some point may request that you temporarily confine your blogging or other forms of commentary to topics unrelated to the company. The company may even request that you cease all online commentary altogether. This may occur if the company believes this would be necessary or advisable to ensure compliance with government or industry regulations, or if your blogging or online commentary violates the guidelines described above.

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What have I missed? understated? overstated?

Winning Share of Wallet Through Share of Mind

“@brandexpression Brands focus too much on buzz that drives transient purchasing instead of integrating meaningfully into consumers’ lives. (via @Gennefer)” from Twitter

Image courtesy of www.gawker.com

What do our ads promote? What do our news releases and media advisories promote? Will consumers buy the shirt if we price it just so? Every week we browse sale ads that aim to draw us into stores to buy specific items of merchandise. TV commercials urge us to book a vacation now, because the best rates – usually for specific dates – will expire in two weeks. Will we attend that event at the mall just to buy yet another doodad at a discount?

Today we often confuse “share of wallet” with “share of mind.” Regardless of the state of the economy our customers are opportunistic when they vote with their wallets. They might be loyal to a product, but they may not be loyal to the store. When we win share of wallet, we ensure the sale today, but we have to work even harder to get the sale next week. It’s a cycle of putting out fires that will eventually exhaust us.

Sales Management 101: It is cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire another. How do we break the current cycle of short-term gains and objectives, and refocus on keeping our customers for the long term?

Are we paying more attention to our brand than to our customers? We’re all hung up on the image our brand projects. A lot of us have forgotten that if we maintain a positive relationship with our customers they will continue to come back to us.

Remember “I’d like to teach the world to sing” from Coke? Those who remember continue to buy Coke, regardless of brand – Diet Coke, Sprite, even New Coke and Classic Coke. The message was the brand, and while we remember the message we are loyal to the brand.

I won’t pretend to know what Coke marketers were doing or hoping to achieve. But they connected with me and established a relationship between the Coca-Cola Company and me. And I’d like to take a page out of their playbook and learn to build relationships with my company’s customers.

There’s a lot of talk about “controlling the message.” We need to talk more about making the message matter.

In theory, if we carefully craft the message and manage its delivery, we will be rewarded with the sales we seek. In the real world, we don’t have enough knowledge to fine-tune the message as much as we would like, and once we release it through the channels we have chosen, it really has to live or die on its own. We need our customers help us keep our messages alive.

The growing availability of the web enables Joe-on-the-street to look behind the curtain of the brand at, and into, the company that holds it up. More consumers now understand that brands are illusions and are simply the carriers of the company’s messages, and they will shoot both the messengers and the sender if those messages conflict with each other. Beauty is only skin-deep; ugly goes to the bone.

For example, when Saturn opened for business in the 1980s, it was positioned as a “different” kind of car company, implying that the business practices of all other car companies were inferior or wrong. But Saturn’s corporate owner was GM, at the time the largest of the Big Three and the greatest proponent of success through the current formula. In time, GM had to reconcile the conflict and integrate Saturn as one of its divisions; the current economy will claim the division as a victim.

Our company’s messages need to resonate with all our customers, regardless of which of our brands they buy. Our customers need to trust our companies as the source of those messages, a trust that is built up by understanding, acknowledging and meeting their needs on an ongoing basis.

Where to begin? Begin by eliminating conflicting positions between our brands. They can all be positioned uniquely, without being in conflict. Extol the virtues of organic foods, and acknowledge that the budgetary needs of the majority of American consumers by providing a quality, non-organic product. All the elements of the marketing mix again will come into play – advertising, public relations, promotions, customer service, product design and integrity – to build a relationship between our customers and our companies, not just our brands and products.

Making the shift from brand management to relationship management requires a leap of faith. We don’t quite know what changes we will have to make. But consider this: There was a time when consumers trusted companies and remained loyal to them and their brands. We can come full-circle to that state of business and win “share of wallet” because we have “share of mind.”

Image courtesy of www.trendspotting.com

(Please click on the Donate button in the right column to ask Sprint to make a donation on your behalf. Thank you.)

Studying for PR

If you could define the college syllabus for a PR professional, what courses would you consider mandatory? Armed with my years of experience, here are the classes I would study if I could do it again.

First, the obvious.

English Composition – Every communications professional needs the skills to compose a clear, concise sentence. Sentence structure and word selection are the keys to communicating thought. We have a responsibility to practice correct grammar: Starting a sentence with “Me and my friends…” is not acceptable.

English Literature – To learn how to write, we need to read. Reading good literature engenders good writing. Poetic license has a time and place; using it wantonly makes it poetic crime.

Journalism – What makes a good story, and what makes it compelling? We need to enter the mind of the journalist to successfully engage it.

Business Math – Whomever said that math is unnecessary has never read – or understood – a balance sheet or income statement. We need to be fully aware of viability of the businesses we represent.

Economics – How well our companies do is always relative to the business environment. Understanding economic forces and how they can affect the companies we represent enables us to anticipate and plan for success.

Foreign Language – Globalization. Enough said.

Sociology and Psychology – Our audiences cry out to be understood. Discovering what moves them is central to message development and delivery.

Elocution and Debate – We are called on to be persuasive and to defend the position statements we develop for the products and companies we represent. Successful elocution and debate are the result of sound research and planning.

Computer Science – There is not one medium untouched by the electronic age. Understanding the rudiments of telecommunications, with its growing influence on message delivery, is becoming an essential skill.

Graphic Arts – Sometimes it is not enough to paint a picture in our audience’s mind. There are times when a graphic or photo is necessary, and we need the skills to conceptualize one, if not actually compose and produce it.

Next, the not-so-obvious.

Philosophy – Learning about different schools of thought expands our ability to look at situations from multiple angles. The ability to critically dissect an idea enables us to better understand it. Studying ethics helps us practice ethical behavior in the real world.

Drama – Effective messages are rarely delivered in monotone. Inflection makes messages richer and more memorable. Successful campaigns are usually great drama. Note that I don’t equate this with melodrama.

World History – Public relations campaigns are similar to military campaigns, with objectives, strategies and tactics. Successful military campaigns were backed by propaganda and manipulation of perceptions.

Finally, the unusual.

Martial Arts and Self-defense – The ability to think on our feet and strategize on the run are the touchstones of flexibility and creativity. After we build the box that we think will do the job, we need to be able to repair, extend and restructure it for success.

Community Service and Volunteer Work – Life shouldn’t be all about you or the money. We all need to give without expecting a return on the investment. The intangible rewards will help us move beyond the here and now, giving us a sense of optimism that everything we do can have a positive effect.

Theology – The study of belief empowers us to practice it. We need to believe in something to successfully promote it. And, deep down, we need to believe in something grander than ourselves – regardless of our religious practices – to put everything in context.

What courses would YOU choose?

(Please click on the link in the right column to ask Sprint to make a donation on your behalf. Thank you!)

Audio. Video. Pario!

In the July 2009 issue of Motor Trend, Frank Markus in his “technologue” column writes about the future of communication: 3D fax. He talked about our progression from audio to video, and now to pario.

Pario is the ability to electronically send a three-dimensional facsimile of an object in real time. Several steps ahead of 3D holography or virtual reality projection, pario would generate a synthetic reality that allows recipients to touch and manipulate the solid object they receive. Unlike holograms and virtual reality images, there would be no need for special goggles, gloves or projectors.

Carnegie Mellon University calls the technology claytronics and Intel calls it dynamic physical rendering. Millions of microdevices – claytronic atoms or catoms, for short – will assemble themselves into macroscale objects. The catoms could have LCD or LED surfaces, emitting light and color to make the model more lifelike.

Claytronics research – led by Seth Goldstein and Todd Mowry at Carnegie Mellon – combines the work on microscale computing devices and the work on telepresence. According to worldchanging.com, the technology could be a means of holding “virtual meetings with apparent physical presence.” New Scientist says it’s not teleportation, but it’s the next best thing.

The application possibilities are mind-blowing: product design, telemedicine, forensics, online sales. Claytronics could break down the barrier of the customer’s need to touch a product before buying it. How many of us stop just short of buying that one item because we don’t know how it feels in our hand or if the color is just right?

Philips Breeze headset, from iTech News Net

Allow me to fantasize for a moment…

It’s the year 2020. My client is launching a new mobile communicator earpiece. We send claytronic models to otologists and audio technologists for evaluation. They respond to my client models with their recommended product changes. My client implements the design changes, then brings the earpiece to market. My client’s targeted customers use pario to try before they buy. They send my client a model with personal specifications, which are implemented in a customized earpiece.

…but bring me back to today.

Pario is still an infant technology. The first proof-of-concept catoms are the size of marbles, and their mass and the magnets used to connect them restrict them to two-dimensional forms. The next generation will be the size of BB pellets and will likely weigh less than a gram, producing low-resolution 3D pario. And it will be one step closer to making Captain Kirk’s order – “Energize!” – a reality.

KRXQ: The Apology

Earlier today I listened to the iTunes recording of the first 15 minutes of the June 11 edition of the Rob, Arnie & Dawn morning show. Here are a few soundbytes from Rob Williams’ opening monologue:

“We were told by our fans…”

“Our tone and delivery made it seem…that we tolerate harming a child.”

“If…you are demanding that everyone sees the world the way that you do…this is not the show for you.”

“This show is and will continue to be about honest debate and discussion in an attempt to open everyone’s mind, including ours.”

I credit Williams for making the on-air apology and for acknowledging that they had fallen down on their responsibility as broadcasters. He emphasized that the driving force for the on-air apology was comments they received from their fans and regular listeners. He took the stand that extremists who either demanded that the show be left blameless because of their free speech rights or that it should be taken off the air because the hosts deal with controversial topics would not be satisfied.

It’s too bad they moved into a “proper” interview with a transgender. The discussion was calm, subdued, and not quite the same as the show their regular listeners are accustomed to hearing. I think they should have launched into a discussion about yet another controversial topic – body art in the corporate world, for example – with abandon and energy.

The interview with a transgender should have been postponed to another day. It came across as staged and it made them appear to pander to forces outside the show. It belabored the point and dulled it.

Again, I wonder who the true victors and losers will be.

(For the original blog post on KRXQ, go to KRXQ: Firestorm on the Air.)

KRXQ: Firestorm on the Air

The Rob, Arnie & Dawn morning show on KRXQ has not been live this week, after a firestorm over comments that Rob Williams and Arnie States made on the air about transgender children.

The story: On May 28, Williams and States opined that transgenders were “freaks” and “fruits” that had a “mental disorder. “God forbid if my son put on a pair of high heels. I would probably hit him with one of my shoes,” said States. An undetermined number of regular and “second-hand” listeners launched an online attack – email and social media – to shut down the show and demand that advertisers withdraw their support of the show and station. On June 3, the three hosts addressed their listeners and detractors on the air; Williams and States defended their right to voice their opinion and stated that they did not advocate violence against children. By the weekend of June 6, nine advertisers had cancelled their contracts and another had declared it would not renew.  On June 7 Williams announced that no new shows would air until June 11.

Much of the outrage came from “second-hand” listeners, people who only had heard a recording of the May 28 show. They were not regular listeners; many didn’t even live in the Sacramento station’s broadcast area. They simply made it their business to campaign against an apparent endorsement of violence against children and transgenders.

These types of violence – and advocating them – have no place in my world. I am offended that anyone would even joke about them, as Williams and States claim to have done. So I understand the public outrage.

If Williams and States were indeed joking, they forgot that they had a responsibility to their viewers to maintain the line between humor and hurt. Their listeners might espouse the violence, but to make light of it and to actively participate in it abrogated their job as broadcasters to be fair to all parties involved. They were entitled to express their opinion or to joke about the issue, but fell down on their responsibility to balance it.

At the end of the day, the show cost the station a significant number of advertisers. But I don’t think the show has lost many regular listeners. Some of those listeners have voice their opinion that the broadcasters’ right to free speech has been curtailed.

I’ve always voted with my ears for the radio shows and stations I support (and with my eyes for TV and online media). I resent other people telling me what I can and cannot listen to, because that takes away my right to choose. So I understand the regular listener’s outrage: All these outsiders may cost me a show that I would choose for my morning drive.

On Thursday, June 11, the Rob, Arnie & Dawn morning show will once again go live and the presenters will “say what needs to be said.” According to Williams’ online statement, “Apologizing in a written, posted statement is a form of cowardice.”

I wonder for what they will apologize, and who the true victors and losers will be.

(For the followup blog post, go to KRXQ: The Apology.)

News: A Snapshot in Time

I was reading an article on why a photographer — even a neophyte — should turn off the automatic settings on a camera, to explore everything that the camera can do. Armed with the knowledge of a few basics — lenses, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO — you and I can control the image’s width, brightness and contrast, depth, and granularity to produce a great photo every time.

As public relations practitioners we’re often tempted to shoot on auto — to break news using the bones of an old announcement or to reuse an old media contacts list. As professionals we know and should challenge ourselves to do better.

Lenses — Can we target an untapped audience? Who will care about our message? Whose minds do we want to change or win?

Brightness and contrast — Can we position against conventional knowledge? How different are we, truly, from our competitors? Is the strongest feature of our product a benefit to our customers? How do we highlight the features that benefit our audiences?

Shutter speed — Should we tighten the focus of the information or provide more background? How much will our target audience understand?

Granularity — How much information is too much? What level of product detail to we need to provide?

We can be lulled into a false sense of comfort, and allow the practice of our craft to degrade into a recitation of rote. Our challenge is to bring something new into everything we write, to experiment with the message and the medium, to discover everything that PR can do. Every news announcement we distribute is a snapshot in time. Are we taking a great photo?

“I am my company.”

In today’s Media Post Online Spin blog, Max Kalehoff talks about enlisting the entire company as its marketing team.

“Why limit imagination and opportunity through silos and top-down departmental power structures? … if marketing is not fully embraced as part of every employee’s job, then the firm is strategically disadvantaged.”

I couldn’t agree more. When I first I got my legs as a PR professional at Hill & Knowlton, one of the first gems of insight I gleaned was that everyone in an organization is a spokesperson. Whether you realize it or not, you represent your company 24/7 — when you interact with the public face-to-face on the store floor, when a friend casually asks you over lunch how things are at the office, when you negotiate prices or terms with a supplier, when the local TV station asks you to comment on your company’s participation in the holiday food drive, when you blog.

I’ve tried to impress this idea on management and everyone I work with, everywhere I’ve worked. Some coworkers understand, some don’t, and some I just don’t meet until it’s too late. (That’s a topic for a future blog.) I believe in developing spokespersons at every level of the organization, and providing the training and information that will make them confident and credible.

Max Kalehoff asks, “Is your company the marketing?” Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” I am my company, and I am my company’s message. What I do — as much as what I say — will give outsiders insight into what my company represents and its place in the market.

We can still express a personal opinion, circulate jokes by email, profess our faith. Every good organization has avenues for constructive self-criticism. But as we face the world, we really shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds us. Undermining our company will hurt us in the long run. If we truly oppose our company’s mission or actions, then perhaps we owe it to ourselves to find professional fulfillment elsewhere.

“If you work for a man, in heavens name work for him! If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.” — Elbert Hubbard

Buzzzzzzz

“Spelling Bee finalists all got cookies…. I want cookies!!!”

“Cant believe there are 2 ppl from illinois in the finals for the national spelling bee!”

“@WCPO Local Student Eliminated In National Spelling Bee http://ow.ly/9GHp”

“@modbee The agony, the ecstasy, the scrunched faces of junior high kids: The National Spelling Bee. http://www.modbee.com/2064/gallery/720306.html”

“Watching ESPN Spelling Bee. Great diversity of students. As an immigrant I was drawn to this contest soon after we arrived from Mexico”

“This spelling bee contest is intense. I hope these kids have a social life when they grow up.”

“ESPN spelling bee iPhone app? Brilliant.”

“The words are randomly selected and already in order when the kids enter the auditorium. Racism as an excuse? Cmon now!”

(Photo credit: Scripps National Spelling Bee)

The tweets on the National Spelling Bee keep rolling in. It’s amazing how many people are tracking the Bee in real time, and even more interesting is the number of comments they — and the media — are posting online. The comments cover such a wide range of facets: the diversity of contestants, an accusation of racism, cookies at the end of the round, a possible iPhone spelling bee app, local contestants moving forward or being eliminated.

There’s so much buzz that tonight’s finals appear to have a guaranteed audience.  Wow.

We’d all like to get that kind of buzz when the companies we represent sponsor an event. It doesn’t happen magically; there’s a lot of work going on in the hive.

I currently work for a company that is just now dipping its toe in the viral marketing and social networking space. I’m certainly not an expert, but I’m continuously surprised at how some of the folks I work with hesitate to explore the web and its options. They’ve seen so many instances of companies being burned online — Domino’s pizza was a recent example.

I need to present more stories of how enterprises can succeed online, how communicating smartly on the web can build an audience that will follow us. While the web is a maelstrom of uncertainty, it’s also a hotbed of opportunity. We do need to remember that everything we do online will live forever, and that before anything we must deliver value to our audiences. Just like the value we deliver to customers in our stores everyday.

One of the tips for using Twitter is to be helpful and relevant to your audience, not salesy. If my company can do that as well online as it does in person, the viral buzz will follow. Just like the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

McLuhan to Utko

The demise of the daily newspaper is a hot topic. But does the daily have to die? Like so many people who have been buffeted by the challenges of the economy, can it not reinvent itself?

Jacek Utko is an architect turned newspaper designer who has reinvented a number of Eastern European newspapers. Each of these dailies have gotten a new look and a new twist on content. They’ve won design awards. More importantly, they have greatly increased readership.

Utko is using his talent for architecture to reconstruct the newspaper, and to make it more marketable. He has made his redesigned dailies a manifestation of Marshall McLuhan’s proclamation that “the medium is the message.” Subscribers are buying Utko’s papers — not just the content, but the form as well. The readers of these papers would not have bought content without the form.

And the content itself has morphed from a recitation of facts to analysis. The facts themselves take another form, one that both engages the reader and challenges the reader to find the raw data.

When “the medium is the message” was launched in 1967 I was too young to grasp the concept. As I have gotten older, I understand it a bit better and have started noticing how it can be applied in today’s daily experience.  And I wonder how the concept can transform my job as a marketer.

Will I apply Utko’s principles to the news releases and media advisories I produce? Will press materials become even more aggressively positional in the guise of analysis? The media have progressively become more pressed to produce content that over the years they have relied more heavily on their trusted sources. Perhaps the question to ask is not IF I will utko my press materials, but WHEN.