Social Media, PR and Internal Communications.
What are the latest trends in this area?
See examples on how Dow Jones helps its customers to understand the complex media landscape and efficiently communicate to its workforce and key external stakeholders.
What are the best strategies and techniques to measure and prove the value of corporate communications?
What do corporate communicators need to know about social media and what does it mean for the business?
How can communicators keep employees informed and engaged in times of continuous change and crisis?
Whether you know it or not, there is a conversation occurring about your company and products right now. Customers are sharing opinions. People are forming and sharing perceptions. Bloggers, journalists and other influentials are watching and commenting. And often these perceptions ā laudatory and critical ā are made highly visible in search engines.
An overwhelming majority (88%) of marketers in a recent survey say they are now using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less, according to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009. If you have created a community for your customers, your company needs a voice in that community. A blog is a natural way to meet this need. The study, which set out to understand how and why marketers are using social media to grow and promote their businesses, found that Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook - in that order - are the top four social media tools used by marketers.The research also included an analysis of nearly 700 open-ended responses, which revealed the top-three questions marketers are asking about social media:What are the best tactics to use? How to do I measure the effectiveness of social media? Where do I start? Results of the study are summarized below.Growing Use of and Interest in Social MediaThe survey began by gauging the depth and breadth of respondentsā use of social media to market their businesses. When asked if they used social media for marketing purposes, the overwhelming majority (88%) indicate they are employing some form of it. In addition, business owners are more likely to use social media marketing (90+%) than employees working for a company that is not their own (81%), and respondents ages 30-39 are most likely to use social media marketing (92.8%), the study found.When asked to rate their experience level with using social media marketing for their businesses, 72% of marketers say they have either just started or have been using social media for only a few months.The largest group just getting under way with social media marketing is sole proprietors (30.2% reported just getting started), the survey found.
Unlike previous generations, Generation Virtual (also known as Generation V) is not defined by age ā or gender, social demographic or geography ā but is based on demonstrated achievement, accomplishments and an increasing preference for the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights. The definition of Generation V derives from the recognition that these common behaviours, attitudes and interests are starting to blend together in an online environment.When doing business with Generation V, marketers will need to attract online personas by creating multiple, engaging
\"Corporate marketers charging into the unfamiliar waters of social media can have the same effect as crashing a cocktail party uninvited and uninformed about rules, etiquette and people--thereby alienating the very communities they're trying to reach. That's why \"Social Media is a Cocktail Party\" is such a useful paradigm for understanding how best to understand the strategy and tactics for marketing on the social web. From: David Meerman Scott / Web Ink Now:Seeing the Web as a city helps make sense of each aspect of online life and how we create and interact. Corporate sites are the storefronts on main street peddling wares. Craigslist is like the bulletin board at the entrance of the corner store; Ebay, a garage sale; Amazon, a bookstore replete with patrons anxious to give you their two cents. Mainstream media sites like The New York Times online are the newspapers of the city. Chat rooms and forums are the pubs and salons of the online world. You've even got the proverbial wrong-side-of-the-tracks spots via the Web's adult-entertainment and sp*m underbelly. So what about social media? I like to think of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites as the cocktail parties of the city. To extend the tortured analogy even further, Twitter is sort of like when the girls go to the ladies room and talk about the guys while the guys are discussing the girls while they are away. Photo credit: cityscapeabudhabi.comWhat this means for youViewing the Web as a sprawling city with social media as the cocktail parties helps to make sense of the best ways for marketers to use the tools of social media. How do you act in such a situation?Do you go into a large gathering filled with a few acquaintances and tons of people you do not know and shout \"BUY MY PRODUCT\"?Do you go into a cocktail party and ask every single person you meet for a business card before you agree to speak with them?Do you listen more than you speak?Are you helpful, providing valuable information to people with no expectation of something tangible in return?Do you try to meet every single person or do you have a few great conversations?Or do you avoid the social interaction of cocktail parties all together because you are uncomfortable in such situations?I find these questions are helpful to people who are new to social media. This analogy is a good one to discuss with social media cynics and those who cannot see the value of this important form of communication. The Web as a city approach is especially important when dealing with people who have been steeped in the traditions of outbound marketing ā interrupting people to talk up products and using the coercion techniques of advertising. Sure, you can go to a cocktail party and hit everyone up as a sales lead while blabbing on about what your company does. But that approach is unlikely to make you popular. Guess what? The popular people on the cocktail circuit make friends. People like to do business with people they like. And they are eager to introduce their friends to each other.The dirty little secret: social media is NOTHING new. If you want to look at social media plain and simple, itās a bunch of tools that help us to network, share information and build relationships in a different way. The concept of social media from a human relationship aspect is nothing new either. Itās business development, which comes with engagement, professional etiquette, trust and respect.Ā
Whatās the Impact?Brands need to learn about and start monitoring social media.Whoās talking about them, their fans & friends ā before a crisis strikes!Video of Dominoās president: Over 700,000 views ā mixed comments (Dominoās, your pizza is great ā to āLook into the camera!ā)
Blogs exclusively about companies and products are what I think generate these low trust ratings. So donāt do a blog like that.Instead, adjust your strategy based on your objectives. (Sound familiar?)If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customersā problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. This takes time and effort, but it will enhance your companyās reputation and itās worth it. Want an example. Check out Rubbermaidās blog.If you have created a community for your customers, your company needs a voice in that community. A blog is a natural way to meet this need.
User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule: 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute). 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time. 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs. The problem is that the overall system is not representative of average Web users. On any given user-participation site, you almost always hear from the same 1% of users, who almost certainly differ from the 90% you never hear from. 90% of users are the āaudienceā, or lurkers. The people tend to read or observe, but donāt actively contribute.9% of users are āeditorsā, sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread, but rarely create content from scratch.1% of users are ācreatorsā, driving large amounts of the social groupās activity. More often than not, these people are driving a vast percentage of the siteās new content, threads, and activity.Inequality on the WebThere are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily. Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1. Inequalities are also found on Wikipedia, where more than 99% of users are lurkers. According to Wikipedia's \"about\" page, it has only 68,000 active contributors, which is 0.2% of the 32 million unique visitors it has in the U.S. alone.
Whatās the Impact?Companies need to monitor and understand those āspacesā - Dow Jones can help them, e.g. with Research-on-DemandIndia:The vast and growing Indian market canāt get enough of Orkut, and comScoreās latest figures state that it is in fact the most-visited social network in India, in a market that drew 18m viewers in December 2008 alone.comScoreās report on Indiaās 2008 figures is arresting. Internet audience as a whole rose by a fifth, while social network audience grew by 50%. Facebook, BharatStudent, Hi5 and ibibo make up the rest of Indiaās top five social networkingĀ sites. MySpace and Linkedin limp in at numbers 6 and 7.
Whatās the Impact?Companies need to monitor and understand those āspacesā - Dow Jones can help them, e.g. with Research-on-DemandIndia:The vast and growing Indian market canāt get enough of Orkut, and comScoreās latest figures state that it is in fact the most-visited social network in India, in a market that drew 18m viewers in December 2008 alone.comScoreās report on Indiaās 2008 figures is arresting. Internet audience as a whole rose by a fifth, while social network audience grew by 50%. Facebook, BharatStudent, Hi5 and ibibo make up the rest of Indiaās top five social networkingĀ sites. MySpace and Linkedin limp in at numbers 6 and 7.
Donāt market through all social networks at once, pick and choose those becoming a new communications channel to potential customers Build the customer relationship by communicating directly with them ā sharing news, answering questions, clarifying inaccuracies Tie Social Media Tactics Back to the Broader Strategy - Always consider how a digital or social media tactic supports the broader client strategy and provides value.
Donāt market through all social networks at once, pick and choose those becoming a new communications channel to potential customers Build the customer relationship by communicating directly with them ā sharing news, answering questions, clarifying inaccuracies Tie Social Media Tactics Back to the Broader Strategy - Always consider how a digital or social media tactic supports the broader client strategy and provides value.
Blogs exclusively about companies and products are what I think generate these low trust ratings. So donāt do a blog like that.Instead, adjust your strategy based on your objectives. (Sound familiar?)If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customersā problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. This takes time and effort, but it will enhance your companyās reputation and itās worth it. Want an example. Check out Rubbermaidās blog.If you have created a community for your customers, your company needs a voice in that community. A blog is a natural way to meet this need.
About Indium Corporation Indium Corporation of America is an ISO 9001-registered developer, manufacturer, and supplier of specialty alloys and solders (including solder paste, solder preforms, solder spheres, solder wire, solder tubing, solder ribbon, and solder foil), solder fluxes, electrically-conductive adhesives, inorganic indium compounds (including indium oxide, indium-tin oxide, indium hydroxide, and indium chloride), fusible alloys, indium-containing fabrications of all types, and pure indium (from commercial grade through high-purity grade). The company is a five-time recipient of the Frost & Sullivan Award.Founded in 1934, Indium Corporation of America is based in Utica, New York, USA. It operates manufacturing facilities in China, England, Singapore, and the USA. The company has Sales offices at several locations throughout the world.
Since 1981, brothers Jalal and Mohammad Farzaneh have dedicated themselves to building new homes in the Oklahoma that offer the latest in amenities, design and locationā¦all at a price that has made homeownership a reality for thousands of Oklahomans. Home Creations strives on a daily basis to reaffirm its status as Oklahomaās premiere new home builder. This mission for excellence has taken Home Creations beyond the Oklahoma City metro into the Tulsa metro area (Broken Arrow, Kiefer, and Verdigris) as well as the Lawton area.
HyattConcierge, the first global, 24/7 dedicated concierge service on Twitter.Through HyattConcierge, our skilled guest service professionals will be able to respond to guestsā questions, needs and concerns, any time, any place, and by any digital means on Twitter - before, during and after their hotel stays.Ā Certainly, most of the technologically savvy people who read about our new service on this blog will already be familiar with Twitter. In fact, many major brands - including some hotel companies - are already experimenting in this emerging social media space. But HyattConcierge is not a promotional one-way stream of communication. It is a service designed to enhance our ability to deliver Hyattās very own authentic hospitality around the world.At Hyatt, weāve chosen to employ Twitter in a guest-centered way.Ā
You're in a high-ticket business:
Consumer confidence in the long-term health of financial institutions is dramatically influenced by advertising and communications efforts.Whatās the Impact?Especially financial institutions have to put more emphasis on PR Guess who can help them with tracking their press coverage and favorability?
Why measuring and analysing your media coverage?Reason 1: Demonstrate the value of your PRReason 2: Evaluate your communications activities across marketsPublications & journalists, campaigns, budget allocation, define and measure KPIs Reason 3: Measure the magnitude and growth of known reputation-impacting issuesNGOs, grassroots groups, journalists, bloggersReason 4: You canāt manage what you canāt measure
60% of companies are measuring PR/communications at the request of senior management. So as a communication professional itās probably wise to take an initiative and start measuring activities before management asks for it. Measuring just one form of PR/communications activity,Ā such as print media mentions, doesnāt offer a comprehensive view of your strategy ā a combination of data is recommended to provide a complete picture. In a recent article by Drs Gregory and Watson, they point towards the trend of using multiple formal and informal metrics and feedback to measure PR/communications. As PR/communications is primarily concerned with managing perception and building strategic relationships, one key metric should be measuring relationships. How can this be done? A good starting point is to read the Dr Grunig / Dr Hon āGuidelines for measuring relationships in PRā. Presentation of the measurement report is important. Top executives only need a high-level summary of results. Dr Macnamara calls this ātwo-tier evaluationā explained well in this article (pdf).
Ultimately, PR-related usability comes down to a simple question: Why spend a fortune on outbound PR (trying to pitch journalists) when you neglect simple steps to increase the effectiveness of inbound PR (satisfying journalists who visit your website While certainly not a novel insight, this statement leads directly to many of the guidelines for how to design corporate websites that are usable for journalists and deliver the desired PR impact. Most of the PR sections of sites we've studied fail to support journalists in their quest for the facts, information, and contacts they can use to write stories about companies and their products. If journalists can't find what they're looking for on a website, they might not include that company in their story. Journalists repeatedly said that poor website usability could reduce or completely eliminate their press coverage of a company.
ā¦internal communication ā¦.is in danger of becoming an overused and corrupted tool of the command-and-control leadership style. Many internal communicators find themselves to be little more than post hoc sense makers running behind their bosses trying to craft coherent messages. Source: The underlying discipline which influences the practice of employee communication needs to shift from mass marketing to individual and collective learning. (p.11) ā¦Such a shift will require a complete rewrite of the way organizations communicate and engage with leaders and employees. (p.12)The CEO: The Chief Engagement Officer - turning hierarchy upside down to drive performanceBy John Smythe, Gower, The lines between internal and external are blurring fast - today your employees are as much your spokespeople as your CEO. Let's face it, they are often more trusted, more credible and more accessible. We need to face up to this reality. Lots of little voices are louder than one big voice.
BCG study; interview with over 90 senior HR executives, executives outside HR and board members of large corporations in 11 focus countries.Employee engagement: focus on motivation and accountabilitiesEmployees will respond to challenges if their leaders are honest, direct and empathetic about difficultiesCreate excitement about opportunitiesLeadership capabilities: equip leaders for stormy weathersToughest crisis of their careerE.g. Philips, the Dutch electronics giant, is preparing communications packs for its leadersCredit Suisse is holding coaching seminars for leaders on crisisChange management: adopt a systematic, cascading approachChange requires sustained and rigorous program management & clear agendaNeed clear metrics and accountabilities; Track process ā communicate success and course corrections to create confidence in the futureStructured, rapid communications process throughout organization to communicate mandates & goalsCommunications: Talk the walkExecutives need to communicate as bluntly, clearly and frequently as possibleShow links between rhetoric and actionOpen-door policyActive listening
Overall intranets are getting far more support from organizations. From increased budgets to larger teams that report directly to the CEO, upper management is realizing just how important a tool the intranet is and is finally giving it its due. Team size is growing by 12% per year, and platforms are becoming integrated, with a strong showing for SharePoint.Personalization and CustomizationAs many of this year's winners show, intranet personalization is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The leading application of personalization is to provide each employee with news updates focused on their job role and personal interests. If intranets show everyone everything, information overload ensues and people either ignore the news area or squander their time reading irrelevant stories.
Itās a business case: Accenture showed that theyāre getting 25$ ROI on every 1$ spent on their intranet in time savings alone! Source: Return on Intelligence study / Dow JonesMashups:Internal business dataExternal newsCollaboration & communication tools (wikis, forums, FAQs)Workflow integrationDo you have social media policies for staff?
Example Caterpillar: saving 8 hrs every week in compiling customized internal newsletterCredible informationHistoric archiveAccess to full articlesCompliant with copyright and licensing lawsāā¦makes the process more efficient and provides the ability to sort the knowledge gold from the information noiseā
If you're preparing to participate in the Social Web, you need these ideas your mind. First, that with a common ID developing, the social experience is about to get a lot more frictionless. And second, that not just social networks, but every brand site will become social -- whether you include these features, or visitors bring them along.So what should you do to prepare? First, get started with you social applications now, or you will be completely overmatched as social technology gets woven into the fabric of the Internet. And beyond that, focus more on finding your fans, since they and their friends and friends of friends will be your most important asset in this new world.Todayās social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them ā transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.The Five Eras of the Social Web:
Whatās interesting isnāt this vision for the future, but what it holds in store for brands, as a result, companies should prepare by: Donāt Hesitate: These changes are coming at a rapid pace, and weāre in three of these eras by end of year. Brands should prepare by factoring in these eras into their near term plans. Donāt be left behind and let competitors connect with your community before you do. Prepare For Transparency: Ā People will be able to surf the web with their friends, as a result you must have a plan. Ā Prepare for every webpage and product to be reviewed by your customers and seen by prospects āeven if you choose not to participate. Ā Connect with Advocates: Focus on customer advocates, they will sway over prospects, and could defend against detractors. Their opinion is trusted more than yours, and when the power shifts to community, and they start to define what products should be, they become more important than ever. Evolve your Enterprise Systems: Your enterprise systems will need to connect to the social web. Social networks and their partners are quickly becoming a source of customer information and lead generation beyond your CRM system. Ā CMS systems will need to inherit social features āpressure your vendors to offer this, or find a community platform. Shatter your Corporate Website: In the most radical future, content will come to consumers ārather than them chasing itā prepare to fragment your corporate website and let it distribute to the social web. Let the most important information go and spread to communities where they exist; fish where the fish are.
Step 1: Google your Company or Business name These days the term google has become an accepted dictionary word. Thus, if someone googles your name and finds nasty things written about you, your credibility could be destroyed in an instant.Ā It doesnāt even matter who made the comment, the potential for harm is huge as it sets off wrong perceptions in the readerās mind.\"Google is no longer just a search engine; it's a reputation engine,\" says
Time for the commercial: Dow Jones is Happy to HelpTools to monitor, to track, alert, analyze and measureContent, Technology and human expertise
Markets are conversations People trust their peers more than the pressThe boundary between Marketing and PR becomes more and more blur. Traditionally marketing is about controlled messages while PR is about relationships.
HONG KONGĀ āĀ Who is the \"iPhone Girl\"?Pictures of an Asian factory worker found on a new iPhone sold to a British customer have generated keen discussion on the Internet about her identity ā and her fate.The three pictures, posted on the Apple discussion Web site MacRumors.com, show a young Asian woman working on what appears to be an assembly line for iPhones.Dressed in a pink striped outfit and hat and wearing white gloves with yellow fingertips, the young woman now known on the Web as the \"iPhone Girl\" is shown smiling and making victory signs as she poses next to an iPhone.The MacRumors.com user who posted the photos last week, identified as only \"markm49uk\" from Kingston-upon-Hull, England, said in a posting that one of the pictures showed up on a new 3G iPhone when the iTunes program was launched.\"It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun. Has anyone else found this?\" the posting said.The posting received more than 360 responses on MacRumors.com, with readers commenting and speculating about the woman's age, looks and working conditions ā and whether the pictures had gotten her into trouble with her managers.\"She is so fired,\" a reader identified as \"PredatoryWasp86\" said.\"That's nice that at least they have some fun in the drab of assembling technology,\" another reader, \"BrownManUPS,\" said.\"She looks about 12 or 13 to me! I don't think Stevo is going to be impressed at all. It looks a little bit too much like child labor,\" \"sibruk\" wrote, referring to Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs.News reports say the woman may work at a factory run by an Apple contractor, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen.Calls to Foxconn spokesman Edmund Ding went unanswered Wednesday. Ding also didn't immediately respond to an e-mail from The Associated Press seeking comment.But the South China Morning Post on Wednesday quoted another Foxconn spokesman, Liu Kun, as confirming that the young woman in the pictures works for Foxconn.Liu said workers testing the device took the pictures and may have forgotten to delete them, the Post reported.Dubbing the mystery worker \"China's prettiest factory girl,\" China's Southern Metropolitan Daily on Tuesday quoted an unidentified Foxconn official as saying the woman was not fired.Apple publicist Jill Tan said the company had no comment.