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PR 2.0 and Online Marketing are Starting to Look Alike, Thanks to Gen Y

Monday, February 8th, 2010

I’m beginning to realize that as much as PR and marketing folks don’t trust each other, the Maginot Line that separated them is starting to get a lot smaller.

And it’s all because of Generation Y.

Generation Y — people between the ages of 11 and 30 — have shunned traditional media and are regular consumers of online media. This is important, because Generation Y now outnumbers Baby Boomers, about 81 million to 78 million, depending on who you ask.

Gen Y consumes their media online: they read online newspapers instead of dead tree versions. They watch YouTube and Hulu.com, rather than traditional TV. They go out of their way to avoid marketing messages, rather than sit through 2 – 3 minutes of commercials (traditional “interruption marketing.”)

This has forced marketers to start reaching out to the Millennials where they are: video games, online videos, skate parks, social networks, and extreme sports sponsorships. They do this to build trust.

Public Relations 2.0 is all about building trust too. They use social media to expand their network to reach more consumers, and then try to create trust with the consumer. New marketing does exactly the same thing. They use social media, and try to build trust.

The ultimate difference is the motivation. Marketers try to make money for their clients, PR flaks try to get press for their clients.

I think we may see a day where PR and marketing agencies are no longer at odds, but begin cooperating, merging, or at least hiring someone from “the dark side” to handle that other side of the same coin.

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: online marketing, Public Relations, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Public Relations, Social Media, marketing | No Comments »

Why You Should Put One Space After a Period, not Two

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

This post was originally published on March 5, 2009 at DeckersMarketing.com, which has been retired.

I raised a bit of a Twitter ruckus this morning, when I posted the following tweet:

# Attention Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer: Here in the 21st century, we put 1 space after a period, not 2. That’s a typewriter thing.

It was just a random thought. Nothing sparked it, nothing set it off. I just like to post little pithy commenth every tho often.

I started getting replies from people I had never met, so I ran over to Twitterfall to see what was going on. Apparently, my little off-the-cuff random comment was sparking some serious conversation in Oregon, Texas, Massachusetts, and even England and Australia.

Oopsie. People really like their two spaces after a period. That’s fine. It’s not wrong to do it, it’s just not necessary.

The rule came from our old typing classes, where we were told to use two spaces after a period. Younger people (i.e. punks and whippersnappers who never had to use a real typewriter) learned the two space rule from people who. . . learned to type on typewriters. (I learned from Mr. Carey, Typing 1 teacher, Muncie Central H.S., in 1983.)

According to Wikipedia, this double-spacing is sometimes called English spacing, although since the mid-1990s, it’s been called French spacing. (Insert your own joke about the French, cheese, and surrendering here.)

The reason for the two spaces is because typewriters use a fixed width font. That is, all letters were the same fixed width. The letters ‘i’ and ‘l’ take up the same space as the letter ‘m.’ To set the sentences apart from each other and make them easier to read, we used two spaces. This practice actually hearkens back to the typesetting days, when typesetters had to hand place each character and punctuation mark. They just stuck in a double space and the habit carried forward.

But unless you use Courier on your computer, today’s software programs use a variable width font like Arial and Times New Roman, which means the letter ‘i’ and ‘l’ take up a minimum amount of space, while the ‘m’ uses more. In fact, an ‘l’ is almost one-third the size of an ‘m.’ Take a look:

m
lll

In addition to this, the computer jams the period in tight against the last letter in a sentence, which creates a little extra space on the other side. If you could measure it, it would be microns of a difference, but the space looks bigger because of how the period is placed against that last letter.

The world is ignoring that second space

If you create websites, you’ll find that html will ignore any space after the first space. (And I know, I know, there’s a whole other controversy about whether it’s website, web site, or even Web site. That’s for a different post.)

Plus, there are some cases, like using Twitter or other micro-blogging services, when every character counts, you don’t want to waste a character on an extra space.

The net result of this variable width is that sentences are easier to read, which means the extra space is not necessary. Again, not wrong, just not necessary. (Okay, maybe a little wrong.)

This issue is not without its passionate controversy.

There were plenty of Twitterers who said I could have their extra space when I pried it from their cold, dead fingers. They learned to type on a typewriter, and are trying to break 30 – 40+ years of habit (it took me two weeks to quit doing it, and I had only been typing for 15 years at the time).

On the other hand, Luke Maciak at Terminally Incoherent said clients would count spaces in Word documents and send them back for revision if he didn’t use two spaces. Needless to say, he hated these clients.

So who’s wrong, and who’s right? Nobody, although I’m claiming moral superiority in this matter. I salute the traditionalists who want to stick with two spaces after a period. I love tradition and doing things old school (I still listen to radio theater). But I also see the need for ease of use, and eliminating extra keystrokes. And really, that’s what it’s all about.

(I’d be interested to see if someone has ever figure out what the saved spaces translates into for saved disk space.)

So what about you? Are you a single spacer or a double spacer? Why? If you’re a double, would you ever consider switching to single? Why not?

———-
A little more about it from the Chicago Manual of Style:

The view at CMOS is that there is no reason for two spaces after a period in published work. Some people, however—my colleagues included—prefer it, relegating this preference to their personal correspondence and notes. I’ve noticed in old American books printed in the few decades before and after the turn of the last century (ca. 1870–1930 at least) that there seemed to be a trend in publishing to use extra space (sometimes quite a bit of it) after periods. And many people were taught to use that extra space in typing class (I was). But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability—as your comment suggests, it’s probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it’s actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought—many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.

Tags: punctuation, typing, writing
Posted in Twitter, Writing | 9 Comments »

What Tom Waits Can Teach You About Powerful Writing

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Tom Waits isn’t just a musician, he’s a lifestyle choice. The growly-voiced singer-songwriter has created some of the most powerful, haunting music I’ve ever poured into my ears. Waits does it with simple, sad music, but more importantly, with a mastery of poetic language that would make Lord Byron pull his hair out with envy.

Especially the metaphor. Waits’ music is filled with metaphors, which gives it the emotional impact and depth you just don’t get with the Single Ladies and Poker Faces of the world. (Most of today’s music has all the emotional complexity of a high school prom, but Waits is an in-depth, all-night discussion about the meaning of life.)

A couple months ago, I wrote about why metaphors make for more powerful writing than similes. I said:

I don’t like similes. They’re weak. They’re the pencil-necked milksop of literary devices. They say things are similar, but not quite that item. Life is like a box of chocolates, but not really.

Take a look at (this) example: “Men’s words are bullets.” That’s a powerful phrase. It doesn’t say they’re like bullets, that they remind people of bullets, or “words can hurt people sort of like bullets can hurt people.” That’s just smarmy, wishy-washy pap.

“Men’s words are bullets,” on the other hand, makes you feel the the emotional damage that can be done by words, feeling the piercing, crashing power of a bullet fired from a large gun.

I’ve been listening to Waits’ Nighthawks at the Diner album a lot lately. It’s my favorite Waits album, and carries my favorite Waits song, Putnam County.

Any writer who wants to learn about the power and grip of language should give this a listen, and pay careful attention to Waits’ use of language. A quick check showed only one simile in the entire piece, and the rest were metaphors.

If you want to master writing and create language that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you to pay attention, study these lyrics, listen to the song, and see if you can introduce this style into your own writing.

Putnam County, Tom Waits

I guess things were always kinda quiet around Putnam County
Kinda shy and sleepy as it clung to the skirts of the 2-lane
That was stretched out just like an asphalt dance floor
Where all the old-timers in bib jeans and store bought boots
Were hunkerin’ down in the dirt
To lie about their lives and the places that they’d been

And they’d suck on Coca Colas, yeah, and be spittin’ Day’s Work
Until the moon was a stray dog on the ridge and
And the taverns would be swollen until the naked eye of 2 a.m.
And the Stratocasters slung over the Burgermeister beer guts

And swizzle stick legs jackknifed over naugahyde stools
And the witch hazel spread out over the linoleum floors
And pedal pushers stretched out over a midriff bulge
And the coiffed brunette curls over Maybelline eyes
Wearing Prince Machiavelli, or something
Estee Lauder, smells so sweet

And I elbowed up at the counter with mixed feelings over mixed drinks
As Bubba and the Roadmasters moaned in pool hall concentration
And knit their brows to cover the entire Hank Williams songbook
Whether you like it or not

And the old National register was singin’ to the tune of $57.57
And then it’s last call, one more game of eightball
Berniece’d be puttin’ the chairs on the tables
And someone come in and say, ‘Hey man, anyone got any jumper cables?’
‘Is that a 6 or a 12 volt, man? I don’t know…’

Yeah, and all the studs in town would toss ‘em down
And claim to fame as they stomped their feet
Yeah, boastin’ about bein’ able to get more ass than a toilet seat

And the GMCs) and the Straight-8 Fords were coughin’ and wheezin’
And they percolated) as they tossed the gravel underneath the fenders
To weave home a wet slick anaconda of a 2-lane

With tire irons and crowbars a-rattlin’
With a tool box and a pony saddle
You’re grindin’ gears and you’re shiftin’ into first
Yeah, and that goddam Tranny’s just gettin’ worse, man

With the melody of see-ya-laters and screwdrivers on carburetors
Talkin’ shop about money to loan
And Palominos and strawberry roans

See ya tomorrow, hello to the Missus!
With money to borrow and goodnight kisses
As the radio spit out Charlie Rich, man,
and he sure can sing that son of a bitch

And you weave home, yeah, weavin’ home
Leavin’ the little joint winkin’ in the dark warm narcotic American night
Beneath a pin cushion sky
And it’s home to toast and honey, gotta start up the Ford, man

Yeah, and your lunch money’s right over there on the drainin’ board
And the toilet’s runnin’! Christ, shake the handle!
And the telephone’s ringin’, it’s Mrs. Randall
And where the hell are my goddamn sandals?
What you mean, the dog chewed up my left foot?

With the porcelain poodles and the glass swans
Staring down from the knickknack shelf
And the parent permission slips for the kids’ field trips
Yeah, and a pair of Muckalucks) scraping across the shag carpet

And the impending squint of first light
And it lurked behind a weepin’ marquee in downtown Putnam
Yeah, and it’d be pullin’ up any minute now
Just like a bastard amber Velveta yellow cab on a rainy corner
And be blowin’ its horn in every window in town

(Here’s a YouTube video of a different version of Putnam Conty than the one you’ll hear on Nighthawks at the Diner, but the lyrics are the same. Listen to it and read the lyrics again. You’ll get a sense of what Waits can do with language, and the power it can have to move people.

Tags: metaphors, similes, Tom Waits, writing
Posted in Business Blogging, Communication, Opinion, Writing | No Comments »

Gmail is the New Black: Why You Should be Using Gmail Right Now

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Do you use Gmail or some other web-based program, or are you still accessing email strictly on your computer, cursing Outlook, and praying for the sweet, sweet release that ~~death~~ a hard drive crash will bring? Do you have a backup of your address book and necessary emails, should that blessed day ever come?

When I give a social media talk, I tell everyone to use Gmail for basic contact management. It has saved my bacon more than once, and I’ve become such a raving fan that I use it as my only email interface. I even forward my work email and other addresses into Gmail, so I have one window, one set of contacts, and the cleanest, least buggy interface I’ve ever had the joys of using. I can send email from any of my addresses, but the interface is all Gmail.

The joys of Gmail

If you’re not using Gmail yet, here are a few reasons why you need to:

Social network building Any social network you join is going to have a way to import your address book into the network so you can see if your friends are on there. Gmail is the easiest one to bring in. Some networks don’t even import web-mail programs like Hotmail. Others are a little more forgiving and will let you import Apple Mail, Outlook and Outlook Express, and comma-delimited CSV files.
Offsite storage of your contact list Let’s say that your work computer crashes, and you lose everything. Or you are, um, no longer allowed to. . . access your work computer due to a new arrangement you have with your now-former employer, and you need to let your friends and colleagues in other companies know about your new work situation. Having a copy of your address book in your control will make this a lot easier. You can even sync Gmail with Outlook, so any time you change or add a record, that is reflected in the other. Warning: some solutions will split up multi-email records, and then sync all those brand new records into Gmail. I had that happen twice, after I spent hours cleaning them up.
Emergency access If you ever need to reach people over the weekend or in the evening, but your computer is at work, you can still do so. This is especially important for people in crisis communication whose organizations are still planted firmly in 1997. If you’re counting on your email server and your email list to be available if you need to do a press release or media alert, you’re totally hosed if that thing ever crashes because of a large-scale disaster. When I was in crisis communication, we had to come up with some plan to work around just that contingency. And if you’re in the middle of an emergency, and you can’t get access to your email server, you need another solution. There are so many workarounds to getting online, as long as you can get there, you can communicate. But if you’re depending on one computer’s data, forget it.
Enterprise email You can even use Gmail for business. For $50 per user per year, you can get 25 MB of storage per user, plus it syncs with Outlook and Blackberry. (For the record, I can also sync my personal email with my HTC Droid.) You keep your corporate identity and addresses, but you have the security and ease of use of Google’s email, calendar, and Docs.

What about you? Why do you use Gmail (or your favorite web-mail application)? Why should people switch to web-mail from computer mail? Or, why shouldn’t they?

Tags: Gmail, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in All Posts, Crisis Communication, Social Networks, Twitter | 4 Comments »

My Talk at Blog Indiana Bloomington, January 2010

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

I had a chance to speak at Blog Indiana’s first regional event in Bloomington, Indiana, at the Sproutbox office. (Sproutbox is a venture capital firm that works directly with startups to help them launch. And they’ve got a killer office, complete with liquor cabinet and three in-wall beer taps from the Upland Brewing Company.)

Shawn Plew and Noah Wesley from Blog Indiana were kind enough to ask me to speak, so I talked about promoting a blog with social media. I discussed some of the tools I use to help our clients, as well as my own personal blog.

Special thanks again to Sproutbox for hosting us, and to Scotty’s Brewhouse for providing us with some great food.

Tags: blogging, presentation, Social Media, video
Posted in Communication, Presentations, Social Media, Social Networks | No Comments »

Are You a Pioneer or a Settler?

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Are you a pioneer or a settler? Do you blaze trails, follow them while they’re still rough, or wait until there’s a nicely paved road?

Being a settler is easy. You just tread down the same old path everyone else has, making sure it’s safe. But being a pioneer is tough. You’re the first to pass this way, you’re not sure if you’re heading in the right direction, and some days you’d swear you’re going the wrong way. But the rewards are well worth it.

So how do you pioneer your new niche? How do you become a leader in your field, especially when there is no niche, or the people in it are not connected? In this case, it’s actually easier to be the pioneer, rather than to be one of many. By the time the settlers are finally getting involved, there’s a traffic jam on the road the pioneers have paved. But by this time, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

Becoming a Pioneer

Here are a few tools and techniques you can use to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Before you start, make sure you have identified your niche, know who the players are, and actually have some content on your blog or website.

Find your flock. Use NearbyTweets.com, Twitterment.com, and Twitter Search to locate them and start following them. Avoid those “get 2,000 followers per day” spam programs, and earn your followers the honest way.
Talk to strangers. Read and comment on the blogs of other people in your industry. If there aren’t any, find logical allies to your industry. If you manufacture marbles, and you’re the only marble manufacturing blog out there, find marble collectors and marble players. Leave comments on their blogs and respond when they leave comments on yours. Not only do you build up some link juice, you create relationships with potential customers.
Share knowledge. If you find articles that would be of interest to your audience, share it with them on Twitter and your blog. Write commentary about the articles on the blog, and share those as well. If you can become a source of knowledge, people will look to you for answers.
Consider video. Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv and the author of Crush It, has built a social media footprint like an elephant’s by using video to sell and promote wine. Do video posts of you sitting at your desk, pontificating about industry goings-on. Publish excerpts of you speaking at conferences and events (this is also useful if you’re trying to build a speaking career).
Build your contact list. As you meet new people, keep your contacts organized in Gmail. If you use Outlook, sync it up with Gmail and keep that list fresh. Gmail is the go-to contact list by every social networking tool out there. Want to find friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube? They’ll import your Gmail contact list with no problem.

These are just a very few steps to get yourself started finding your niche. I haven’t even touched on LinkedIn or creating an industry-related social network yourself. But these are enough steps to get you started.

What other tools and steps do you recommend? Leave a comment, and we’ll try to feature it in a future blog post.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Tags: Gmail, Social Media, social networking, twitter, youtube
Posted in All Posts, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | 3 Comments »

Newsday Has 35 Paid Subscribers for Online Newspaper

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

I can’t decide whether to feel schadenfreude or pity for Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper. They have 35 (yes, thirty-five) paid subscribers for their online newspaper.

The New York Observer reveled in schadenfreudic glee as they reported this news:

As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.

Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.

“I heard you say 35 people,” he said, from Newsday’s auditorium in Melville. “Is that number correct?”

Mr. Jimenez nodded.

Man, I haven’t written with that much malicious glee since Ann Coulter had to have her jaw wired shut.

What’s worse is that Newsday has had their newspaper behind a paywall, newsday.com, since October 2009. (I’m not going to hotlink newsday.com, since you’d have to pay to read any of the stories anyway.)

Apparently, this new website cost Newsday $4 million, and they have grossed $9,000.

That doesn’t mean there are only 35 people reading the website. Anyone who subscribes to the paper or has Optimum Cable gets free access — about 75% of Long Island. I’m not sure how many subscribers there are to the paper, but it’s a nice little out to give free access to cable subscribers as a way to boost subscription numbers.

Still, other dailies considering going to a paid-only option may be feeling a little more panic than they’re already feeling, having laid off most of their local writers and getting local content from non-local providers, and then wondering why people aren’t subscribing anymore.

We can learn or surmise a few things about the newspaper industry from Newsday’s crappy subscribership and the Indianapolis Star’s not-so-slow descent into USA Today: Indianapolis Edition.

Readers have gotten spoiled. We’re used to getting our news for free, so we’re a little hesitant to pay for something we can get elsewhere. Since the Star is nothing more than an Associated Press outlet these days, I can hop over to AP.org if I want some national news.
People want local content. And not-so-surprisingly, we want it from local sources. The Indy Star is getting local content from Metromix, a company based out of Chicago. Long Island’s Newsday is putting local spins on national stories. “What LIers Want to Hear In Obama’s Address” was one of today’s headlines. Why would people want to pay for something like this? If it was truly local news, I would care. But it isn’t, so I don’t.

If newspapers truly want to make money online, they need to consider going back to truly local news, written by local reporters who have more experience than a journalism internship and six months of covering school board meetings. Let the national news outlets cover the national news. Make your newspaper the best and only source for local news.

This is where the small weeklies and dailies are going to survive, and even succeed by focusing on local content, with only a brief mention of world and national affairs.

Photo: Nitroglicerino

Tags: Gannett, Indianapolis, News, newspapers
Posted in Communication, News, Traditional Media, Writing | 2 Comments »

Want to Improve Your Writing? Be Intentional

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Years ago, I had a chance to hear one of the Philadelphia 76ers speak about how he became a professional ballplayer. Now, I couldn’t tell you who the guy was even if he walked up to me today. But one thing he said always stuck with me.

When he practiced shooting the ball, he was always intentional when he practiced. When he practiced his shooting, he didn’t screw around. He didn’t goof off, and he didn’t take shots he wouldn’t normally take. He wasn’t a sky-hook shooter, so he didn’t shoot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famous shot. He didn’t do backward shots or trick shots. In short, every practice shot he took was a real shot.

“I don’t shoot these shots in a game, so I don’t waste my time practicing them.”

It’s the same for writing: if you want to get good at it, you have to be intentional with it. (Actually, this is true for getting good at anything, but I’m a writer, so I’ll stick with what I know.)

My Moleskine at Hubbard &Cravens What does that mean? Writing is one of the most intentional activities we can do. It’s not like shooting trick shots in basketball, or going for a slow leisurely ride instead of a training ride on your bike. You’re either writing or you’re not, right?

Actually, no, you can even screw around when you’re writing. It’s in your attitude, rather than your subject matter. It’s reading when you should be writing (and no, “I’m doing research” doesn’t count). You can be just as intentional writing an email as you are a novel, or writing a comedy sketch as you are a marketing piece. It doesn’t matter where, when, or how you do it. Chris Brogan will write wherever he can find the time. And I carry my laptop and a Moleskine wherever I go.

How do I write with intention?

When I’m writing, I always have three questions in the back of my mind.

Is that the best word I can use? Is this conveying the right impact, drama, or humor? Dave Barry would take hours to write a single humor column, sometimes struggling with choosing which word carried the best impact for a joke. I’ll sometimes hit Thesaurus.com to find a good word.
Did I set this up for the best possible impact? In humor, setup is crucial for a joke to be funny. You can have the best punchline in the world, but if you tank the setup, the whole joke fails. It’s true for every other kind of writing too. This blog post, a marketing brochure, a speech, anything. If you want to have impact, you have to set the reader up for it.
How can I make this better? I edit everything. Even my emails get edited before I send them out. But I’m not always looking for punctuation errors or typos. I’m looking to make sure I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written. It usually works best if I can leave something for a couple hours, overnight is even better, and a week is a rare luxury. I have even edited some of my humor blog posts six months after I published them.

Becoming a good writer doesn’t mean taking all kinds of classes, or writing in your very special notebook with your very special pen in your very favorite coffee shop (just don’t tell my wife that; I use it as an excuse to get out of the house sometimes). It’s a matter of focusing on the task at hand and casting an eye at how you can improve. Not just the piece you’re writing, but future work you’re going to do.

Do you suck at dialog? Work on improving the dialog for the next piece you write. Then use that new level of competency as your starting point for the next time, and try to improve from that. Frankly, I used to suck at dialog, so I worked on it for months and even years. Now, unfortunately, my narration and scene description are less-than-acceptable, and I have to really focus on those.

But by writing my narration with my three questions, I’ll be able to improve my descriptions, so I can spend less time writing and more time sitting on a beach, drinking little umbrella drinks, served by. . . some kind of. . . woman wearing a dress that she bought at one of those. . . dress selling places.

Dammit!

Tags: Communication, writing
Posted in Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing | 5 Comments »

Defining Two Types of Crisis Communication

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Crisis communication has two different, distinct meanings. They require different approaches, different ideas, and completely different types of plans. And not knowing the differences between the two can create some problems if you try to use one approach in the wrong place.

There’s corporate crisis communication (CCC), and there’s CERC.

CERC — Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication — is what the government calls communication during a massive emergency, such as swine flu, a terrorist attack, or large-scale natural disaster. (And you can tell the government came up with it, since it’s so much longer and has more words than are truly necessary.)

Both are often called “oh shit PR,” but the difference is that in a CERC situation, a lot of people could die. With CCC, a lot of money could be lost. One type of emergency gives emergency first responders sharp chest pains and indigestion, the other makes the corporate lawyers pull out their hair. But they both say the same two words when something goes down.

Although these two forms have a lot of similarities, there are some important differences. And if you’re talking about social media for crisis communication, you need to know them, because they affect your strategy.

Corporate crisis communication

I’d like to say that it’s important to always tell the truth and to be as open and honest as possible. But the sad truth is that being completely open and honest can ruin a company. I’ve hassled corporate legal departments over their “wrecking” crisis communications, but they’re a necessary part of any response. They just shouldn’t control it. In CCC:

Transparency tends to go out the window. The emergency is usually something that will make the corporation (or individual) look bad, so the first instinct is to hunker down and contain the bad news. This often means trying to keep it under wraps. This hardly ever works.
The negative end result of a corporate crisis is a loss of money. It could be a hit to their reputation, credibility, or branding, but those will all effect the bottom line. And since that can be in the millions or billions, crisis communication is not something that should be taken lightly. Entire companies, like Chi-Chi’s restaurants, have been lost to bad communications. But it’s the attempt to avoid losing money that leads to bad communications.
Communication is about containment. Many corporate crisis PR professionals are focused on keeping their client from being found guilty or negligent. They’re not worried about whether people like them, they just want to win the pending lawsuits. So they’ll put out information that, while is not a lie,
The message is the biggest part of the response. There’s other stuff going on behind the scenes — product recall, legal preparations, brand managment — but the communication is what’s going to affect the public’s perception, and thus, their reaction, lawsuits, vendor relationships, etc. Information may be easy to get if you’re in crisis communication, but it’s not always easy to share.

Social media strategy: Guarded, but present. Correct misinformation, use Tweets and Facebook to communicate with customers in a brand management manner. Put on your best face, but don’t lie. Monitor the gossip sites, but don’t engage.

Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication

This is the area I came from. We wanted as much open communication as we could get. More was better, and there was no such thing as too honest. Our goal was to “prevent panic,” and make sure everyone knew what was going on. With CERC:

Transparency is crucial. This is information people need to know. Information about where to go for safety, supplies, or medication.
The negative end result of a public crisis is a loss of life. When I was at the Indiana State Department of Health, we trained for things like medication distribution during an anthrax attack. The goal was to tell as many people as possible where medication was available. Information has to be gotten out quickly and to as many people as possible.
Communication is widespread. The point of CERC is to get as much information out as possible, and to correct misinformation. There is nothing that should be contained or covered up.
The message supports the rest of the response. It’s the other stuff that’s going on — law enforcement, public health response, rescue/recovery, clean-up — that’s going to affect the public, and communication lets the public know what’s going on. If there’s medicine to be distributed, communication will tell the public where to get it, but it’s the Point of Distribution that will give it out. The problem with this approach is that the public information officers (PIOs) are trying to get information from the busiest people, which means it’s not always readily available or being put out as quickly as possible. This is one reason the PIOs have direct access to the Incident Commander, the person in charge.

Social media strategy: Strong social media strategy. More people are getting their news on Twitter and Facebook than they are in their regular media. Put information out on social media at the same time you give it to the mainstream media. Correct misinformation directly, rather than through mainstream media. Monitor the citizen journalists, and engage when it’s appropriate.

Photo: Slworking2

Tags: CERC, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networks | 3 Comments »

PR Pros Take Note: Social Media is Changing the Way Companies Communicate

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Social media continues to grow and have a big impact on the way corporations are communicating, both internally and externally. And now we have proof.

In their paper, An Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on Public Relations Practice, Dr. Donald Wright, professor of Public Relations at Boston University (official motto: “No, you’re thinking of Boston College”), and Michelle Hinson, director of development, Institute for Public Relations, found that social media continues to have a positive effect on the way organizations are communicating.

Every year for the last four years, they have looked at the impact social media has on corporate communication, mainstream media, the perception of blogging, and the public relations industry. They surveyed PR professionals from around the world, and received 574 usable responses. The 2009 study compared data between 2008 and 2009. The results may surprise you. (Or not. You’re a hard bunch to please.)

In a nutshell, the belief that social media is having an effect on external communication has grown by 11% from 2008 to 2009; internal communication has grown by 7%.

Similarly, the duo found similar results when they asked whether social media complimented traditional mainstream media, or conflicted with it. In 2008, 75% believed it complimented, but in 2009, that number grew to 85%

While the report is chock full of useful statistics (yes, I said “chock full;” I’m from Indiana, what do you want?!), these two are rather important for PR professionals. These two stats speak volumes about what PR professionals should be thinking about social media, and how they can and should be pitching it to their clients.

Companies are beginning to use social media to speak to customers. The fact that this number has increased by 11% from one year to the next says that companies are starting to take notice. And this trend will only continue to grow over the next few years. If your clients aren’t using social media, point out that their competitors are. And unless your client wants to slowly melt away into irrelevance, they will start using social media to get their own message out.
Publicity should no longer rely on traditional media. I recently wrote a blog post for a client about Generation Y, and how some marketers are calling this 82 million-strong demographic “The Unreachables.” That’s because they don’t read newspapers or watch TV. They read Yahoo, watch YouTube, and text the bejeezus out of each other. If you want to reach Generation Y, go to where they are, don’t make them come to you.
Your biz dev job just got easier. If more companies believe social media is beneficial, conversely fewer companies believe it’s detrimental. As a (thankfully) former salesman, the customers I truly hated where the ones who never saw the need for whatever I was selling, and were often stubbornly obstinate in refusing to try to understand why it was important. Now, while these stats don’t mean that 84% of all companies are open to using social media for external communications, it does represent a decrease in the number of companies that refuse to participate in social media. For the salesperson, this means fewer puzzled looks and steadfast refusal to accept that their thermal fax machine is now passé.

There are a lot more data points the study demonstrated, and a lot more surprising results that bloggers, social media pros, PR pros, and the mainstream media can all learn from. We’ll discuss some of them in future posts.

Tags: academia, Public Relations, Social Media, study
Posted in Business Blogging, Communication, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools | No Comments »

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