Monthly Archives: February 2009

Coming soon: Network Overload

Posted on by

Source: Flikr user NorthernLaLa

Do you remember how your mom would tell you every year on Halloween that too much candy at once would make you sick? That you should save some for later, space it out over a few days? But that you were so excited to have all that candy that you scarfed it all down, and then paid for it later?

While a good deal of social networking might be in its infancy, we have to assume that eventually, a lot of these tools and tactics will become mainstream– if you can’t claim that already. As the late majorities and laggards start to come around, it’ won’t be long before Facebook and Twitter are as ubiquitous as e-mail. Niche-specific social networks have begun popping up like Whack-a-Moles. Will all this lead to a social meltdown? Will we really be able to keep track of all of our friends, followers, feeds and networks? Will we NEED a separate network for every conceivable aspect of our lives? Will too much make us sick to our stomachs?

I’m currently a member of two Ning networks: PROpenMic and my industry-specific network. (I’m sure many of you know this, but Ning is a platform for building a Facebook-like social network for a specific group of people.) As Ning and similar platforms become more widespread and more people become comfortable with social networking, I can only imagine that the number of groups creating their own social network will rise dramatically. Remember how it used to be so hard to build a web site and so not may people/organizations had one?

I can envision a point where my university alumni association, church, town, dentist’s office, neighborhood, family and even my pets all have separate social networks. It’s already underway- my family is getting into Geni, my alumni association has integrated lots of social networking features into its Web site. Dave Fleet just noted that he’s seen an uptick in Ning networks and inspired the title for this post:

fleet

The more diffuse my involvement in social networking, the less engaged I am. I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook. Then I discovered Twitter. I’m a member of Geni, GoodReads, TripAdvisor– and about a dozen other sites. The more I join, the less I seem to interact. My interest in one network gives way to another. I’m not so sure that it’s a matter of having the time to participate as having the attention span. Even services like FriendFeed that consolidate my activity into one place make it only slightly easier to handle. And often I’m connecting and interacting with the same people across all these different networks.

So what does the future look like? As we join more social networks, will we actually socialize less? Will people join everything but participate in nothing? What good is a network if none of the members actively participate?

People have been postulating for a while now that “social networking fatigue” will force more interoperability between networks. Will one network, like Facebook, dominate and roll-up all other, smaller networks under its umbrella? I don’t think people will want to manage dozens of profiles and interactions at dozens of Web sites.

As we counsel clients and businesses on social media and introduce them to the possibilities, I think it’s important to emphasize that just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD (see: shoulder pads, Furbies, and the Pontiac Aztek). Social networking strategies need to reflect a business goals and provide value to an organization’s stakeholders. Just because it’s easy to create a specific social network for your customers/employees/members doesn’t mean that it’s the best tool or method for engaging that audience. Look at what’s already out there and what tools the audience is already using. Are most of them active on Facebook? Maybe a fan page is a better alternative to a separate social network. Maybe all you need to do is jazz up your existing Web site with some interactive features that don’t require a login or profile.

In all our excitement about new tools and opportunities that social media presents, we have to remember that eating all the candy at once is going to make everyone sick. Mom was right – you’ve got to pace yourself!

Image via Flickr user NorthernLaLa

The basketball court of public opinion

Posted on by

I don’t follow college basketball (people, I went to Georgia!) so I missed this story when it broke over the weekend. I heard the tail end of an ESPN radio show in the car that alluded to a dust-up between the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball coach, Jim Calhoun, and freelance reporter Ken Krayeske. The topic was Calhoun’s $1.6 million salary as a state employee. Check it out:

Most of the callers on the radio show were defending Calhoun. One caller stated that while he didn’t have a problem with Calhoun’s salary, he had a huge problem with the arrogant and insolent way that he addressed the question. I’m guessing this may not be the first time those two adjectives have been used to describe Calhoun.

Krayeske is apparently a bit of a rabbel-rouser and his “freelance journalism” has gotten him in trouble in the past. To be fair to Calhoun, I don’t think the press conference was an appropriate place to ambush him. But to tell a reporter to shut-up and call him stupid? Hello? That even trumps OSU’s Mike Gundy (“I’m a MAN! I’m 40!”).

Organizations have a responsibility to media train anyone who might step in front of a camera and represent them. For universities with big-time athletic programs, that means coaches and sometimes their star players. I don’t know if UConn has put Calhoun through media training. I’d like to think that with as high-profile a basketball program as the school has, it would have done so. But Calhoun was clearly ruffled and reacted in about the worst way possible. He was rude and insulting. He started throwing out numbers to back up his point, and they didn’t quite add up. He and the university are now going to have to backtrack, apologize, and commence serious damage control.

Media training can’t be a one-time event: people get better, more comfortable, and more able to think on their feet by practicing over and over again. The more comfortable they are, the calmer they’ll remain when the tough questions come out or the awkward situations arise. Put them in front of a camera a few times a year and toss mock interview questions at them. Watch it back with them and critique their answers. Anticipate tricky questions that might come up in certain situations and equip the person with some points to remember so they don’t get flustered. And repeat.

Calhoun should have stayed calm. He should have let the reporter know that he was there to talk about the team’s performance in the game that had just been played and not his salary or contract. He could have offered to sit down with the reporter at a later time in a more appropriate venue and discussed the topic.

This is basic blocking and tackling, guys. Or whatever you basketball fans call it.

More coverage from:
The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs
The Hartford Courant’s Colin McEnroe

Answer Honestly: Communications conundrums

Posted on by

At my recent ski trip out to Lake Tahoe with good pals, we ended up with a case of Molson Canadian beer one night. The bottles contained labels with the phrase “Answer Honestly” and then presented an either/or question: Would you prefer to be rich or good looking; would you prefer to be a vampire or a werewolf; etc. It led to some pretty heated debates among some slightly tipsy people about the relative merits and ethical implications of flying vs. being invisible, for example.

Last week Steve Crescenzo even asked his own “Answer Honestly” -  tweet:

crescenzotweet1

Communicators are often faced with situations that feature unappealing options and we have to make the best decision we can based on our constraints, resources, and the needs of our organizations or clients. We don’t have a choice -  we are called upon to handle whatever situation lies before us. But wouldn’t it be fun to pick and choose? Here’s a communicator’s version of “Answer Honestly” :

Answer Honestly: Would you rather have to communicate a layoff of 10 percent of your workforce or a 20 percent pay cut for all of your workforce?

This one’s tough, and both of these scenarios are happening at a lot of companies today. On the one hand, a pay cut seems to appear more equitable: everyone takes a little bit of pain to save the jobs of some of their co-workers. But it also means that everyone’s left unhappy. A layoff affects fewer people more profoundly. From a communications standpoint, a layoff is more of an “event” that happens and is over relatively quickly. I know there’s plenty of research about “survivor’s guilt” among remaining workers, and communicators need to be extremely sensitive to how the news is delivered not only to departing employees but also remaining ones. How will their jobs change now that staff reductions have been made? How will the organization continue to meet its goals with fewer people? Is this all or will there be more layoffs to come? But I still think I’d rather have to communicate a lay off than across-the-board pay cuts. The pay cuts mean that everyone remains in the organization, but everyone now has something to complain about. And they will complain – here is some pretty solid evidence of that. While across-the-board pay cuts are often communicated with a “we’re all in this together” mentality, it’s tough to get people to focus on the needs of group/organization versus their own personal situation. It depends so much on the culture of the organization and its leadership.

Answer Honestly: Would you rather have to communicate a product recall or a financial/ethical scandal?

Hmm. Both of these scenarios can be red flags for endemic corruption within an organization. A product recall can be difficult if the source or reason hasn’t been identified. But at least in that situation there’s a chance it was an accident or honest mistake that led to the quality issues. There are plenty of great examples known throughout communications-land as best practices for how to handle this type of event: Lexus, Tylenol = good, Ford/Firestone, Peanut Butter = not so good. If handled correctly, the damage to an organization’s reputation can be minimal, and in some cases it’s an opportunity to provide outstanding customer service. With a financial or ethical scandal, however, the root of the problem is usually shady people doing shady things. There’s not much you can do to overcome that, and it typically indicates that a culture existed within an organization that allowed it to happen – management either participated, encouraged, or looked the other way (do I even need to say Enron? Didn’t think so). There’s typically great distrust of an organization after a scandal, and often attempts to repair the reputation are immediately labeled as disingenuous spin. I’d have to go for a product recall here (and hope that the recall is not due to some sort of deliberate malicious behavior – which I guess would make it an ethical scandal, right?).

Answer Honestly: Would you rather duke it out with Human Resources or Legal over your communications strategies and wording?

Shoot me now. Obviously communicators have to work with all involved stakeholders when communicating internally or externally. There are certainly laws regarding employee privacy, forward-looking financial statements, and competitive/proprietary information. But a communicator’s quest for transparency is often foiled by one or both of these functions. They are business partners, however, and deserve the same respect that we seek as communicators. Working with them is not optional and often these functions to provide a different viewpoint that can enhance communications. If I could choose to only work with one, though, I’d have to go with HR. Often times the run-ins I’ve had with legal come down to, “It’s the law. We can’t say it your way. End of story.” With HR, there can be a little more wiggle-room and with some good supporting arguments, you can often win them over– or at least meet in the middle.

Answer Honestly – what would you choose?

Where the boys are (hint: in the business school)

Posted on by

It’s one of the most prolific and most incorrect stereotypes about PR practitioners – that of the party planner, publicist, product promoter. Perhaps because editing press releases doesn’t make for compelling television, the portrayals of PR pros in the media tend to overemphasize a glamorous lifestyle with characters that are really more like caricatures. More often than not, these portrayals are of women. Arik Hanson recently wondered whether these portrayals were good or bad for the PR industry, and David Mullen had an excellent comment:

I think it has contributed to the decline in young men entering in or interested in public relations. Most men don’t want to plan parties for a living. They want a seat at the big table, so they major in marketing instead.

If I think back to my PR classes, I can count about nine or 10 men in them – combined. If you took a stroll across the street to the business school’s marketing department, you’d find it reversed. At my undergraduate institution, the business school has a 64%/36% male-to-female ratio, while the journalism school is more like 20%/80%.

So how does PR shake the perception that the profession is not just party planning and that practitioners can and do have a seat at the table? How does PR gender-balance the profession to ensure a variety of viewpoints and approaches? Here’s what I think:

1. Stop using “fluffy” topics for writing assignments in PR classes.

Writing is the absolute crux of our profession. In college, I remember writing news releases about Peach festivals, charity fundraisers and student “awareness” groups. All of these assignments helped me learn the structure of a news release and proper AP style, but the reality was that in my first two jobs after college I was working for companies who were almost never going to pitch a light-hearted story to the features editor of a local daily. PR students can benefit from learning to write technical press releases intended for trade publications. If you can discuss the benefits of non-halogenated flame-retardant resins in automotive wiring harness applications, you can handle a Peach Festival. PR professionals who can effectively distill an organization’s or a product’s key attributes will certainly be invited to the big table.

2. Ensure that business financials are a key part of the PR curriculum.

Every PR professional should know how to read a balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. This is the language that our clients and stakeholders communicate in, so we need to be fluent in it, too. Students should have to practice writing quarterly earnings releases and Q&A statements about them. The boys over in the business school may be lured back to PR if they recognize that someone in the organization needs to be responsible for communicating how a merger or divestiture or new product innovation will impact a company’s bottom line, and that someone is typically a PR person.

3. Integrate business and PR students more frequently.

In my undergraduate classes, there was almost no interaction with business majors. Despite a lot of similarities between PR and marketing, there were very few business students as members of PRSSA, and very few activities that brought students from those two schools together. Why not pair up a PR and marketing class for a capstone project? Have them develop a new product, define a target market, research feasibility and time to profitability, create a launch plan, and evaluate and measure success? As many comments on Arik’s post noted, this would help business students get a better understanding for the value of PR, before they’ve even started their careers.

4. Show that event planning isn’t just parties.

Sex and the City’s Samantha and her ilk are publicists, a segment of PR that’s it’s own animal. But there is a lot of event planning that goes on in PR – and it’s not just parties. Trade shows, customer visits, executive retreats, media receptions – all of these events take organization, creativity and a strategic mindset to be successful. Guys may not be intrigued by the idea of choosing table linens or creating invitations for a charity auction, but how about creating an interactive booth display for a trade show and planning aspects like a media interview schedule, product display demos, executive speeches, and investor cocktail reception? These are the kind of events that give a PR pro lots of visibility to those at the big table, and if you can succeed in pulling off events like this, you’ll get a seat there, too.

These are just a few suggestions that might help more males feel that PR is a legitimate profession where they can play with the big boys. What else do you think could tip the scales and lure more male students out of the business school and into PR?

Maybe we’ll eventually get to the point where those negative portrayals of PR professionals on TV include a few men, too.

Web 2.0 in a 1.0 industry

Posted on by

When Marty McFly rocks his guitar solo in ‘Johnny B. Goode’ at his parents’ high school dance in Back to the Future, he leaves the shocked crowd slack-jawed at what they’ve just heard. The line he drops is something like, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet… but your kids are gonna love it.”

Welcome to my day job. I work in a 1.0 industry (construction). My main goal is managing my company’s relationship with the independent dealers who sell our product, and most of them are small business owners in their 50s who buy our products via distribution partners and resell/install to homeowners. These dealers are old school. Great, hardworking, dedicated businesspeople… but old school.

During a recent flight I read through Todd Defren’s excellent new (and free!) eBook on social media marketing called “Brink.” It’s filled with fantastic nuggets on how to “make an entrance” into social media, including tips on blogger relations, creating content using a variety of media channels, and reaching out using Facebook, Twitter and social bookmarking. Reading it made me excited and disheartened at the same time.

How do you implement social media tools and strategies if your audience isn’t ready for it yet? My audience – our network of dealers - can barely handle e-mail. I’ve had several phone conversations with dealers where I’ve had to explain to them how to open Internet Explorer. At length. A lot of them only want to send and receive information via mail or fax. (Apparently a fax machine is this thing from the early 1990s that you fed paper into and then that paper was magically transported to other fax machines).

Last year I created a secure extranet site for our dealers. It includes a blog where I post news items about our products and programs; forums for dealers to share information and best practices with each other; a media center where they can download .pdfs of our literature and view presentations from conferences; and lead management tools. Despite the fact that this group of dealers has hundreds of combined years of experience in their industry and could benefit greatly from more interaction, the utilization of this extranet community is near zero. No comments on blog posts, no posts or discussions in the forums, and rarely do people access files from the media center. It has the potential to be a great community for these dealers. But a community doesn’t exist if there’s no one there.

So what do I do? How much do you try to drag an audience along? How much should your communications strategy reflect where your audience currently is, versus where you’d like them to be? How do you keep from pulling a Marty McFly?