How many times have you read something like this in a digital communications plan?

“One in three of our target audience is using Facebook. So, we recommend creating a Facebook page for this program.”

As social networks become more and more prevalent, we’re at the point now that almost every client brief appears to point, on its surface, to one of a few key networks. As a result, we’re seeing more and more programs based on “insights” like:

• Only eight per cent of Canadians in the target demographic are inactive in social media (according to Forrester)
• There are more Facebook accounts for Canadians aged 25-34 (according to Facebook’s ad creation tool) than there are Canadians in that age group
• We need to reach our target market in the place they inhabit.
• Therefore, we should create a Facebook page.

Right there, without any knowledge of the company, the product or the objectives and only minimal knowledge of the target audience, you’ve made a pretty standard case for a Facebook page. Trouble is, these insights are no longer particularly insightful. At this stage of the game, they’re akin to “2.6 million Canadians read the Globe and Mail. Therefore, we should do a traditional media campaign.”

This only leads to a plethora of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and the like – some of which are well targeted, but many of which are not. Let’s face it, most B2C clients are going to target people somewhere in the 18-55 age group. Using just a demographic rationale, you could propose similar social media campaigns for all of them.

I think it’s time to move beyond sheer demographics when we’re planning social media campaigns, and towards more sophisticated analysis. What about:

• What are the company’s business and communications objectives?
• What behaviour are you trying to motivate?
• What are the norms within the different social networks? Do they fit with what you’re trying to achieve?
• Would you be better served via mass reach, existing niche communities or your own hosted site?
• Do the company’s culture and existing policies lend themselves to social media engagement?
• What existing properties do we have that we could leverage?

Let’s move away from generic demographic analysis and towards more sophisticated, critical analysis. For sure, some people are already doing this, but I think we can work to raise the bar.

What do you think?

Is the term “social media” hurting strategic communicators in the digital space?

Before you tell me I’m crazy, stop and think for a second.

Plenty of people have wondered about the term before (Google “social media term” and you’ll find a 2007 post from Jeremiah Owyang on the topic) but I’m thinking of this from a slightly different angle.

Is the term “social media” leading clients to take the wrong approach to their online activities?

How many companies have you encountered taking a scorched earth approach to their social media activities? I’m not naive enough to think that two words would lead us to a silver bullet situation, but do these two current words adversely affect some companies’ approaches to online interaction? I’m not suggesting we change the term – I think it’s here to stay in the short- to mid-term, at least. However, perhaps identifying challenges can help us on the agency side to address them.

Consider the term for a second.

Social media.

What image does that conjure up? Videos with comments enabled? Text with sharing features enabled? Tweets of links to stories about you? These might fall into a definition of social media, but they’re not really two-way – not truly. What’s more, they do seem to embody the approach taken to social media by many organizations – public and private alike.

Suppose for a moment we drop “social media” as a term and adopt a much more simplified “online networking.” We’d be using a term that, inherently, implies two important characteristics:

• Two-way interaction. Networking is, at its core, a two-way interaction. You need to speak and to listen. Networking doesn’t involve broadcasting.
• Long-term. Networking involves relationships. Relationships take time to nurture.

Nothing rocket-science based here, right? This is stuff that’s preached all the time. However, if it’s that easy, why are companies still engaging in marketing activities that essentially consist of one-shot, one-way fire-and-forget promotions that do nothing to shift the needle in the long term?

Back to “online networking.” What changes if we use that term?

• YouTube: “Videos with comments” becomes Engaging people in a story, or enabling other people to tell your story as they see it
• Blog: “Text with sharing” becomes a genuine conversation, where you solicit and respond to feedback from your stakeholders
• Twitter: “Tweets of links to stories about you” becomes an opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with people

Changing a term won’t solve a widespread problem, and there’s much more to the issue than just a simple term (inter-discipline differences, for one, are another huge gap). I’m not suggesting we drop “social media” for “online networking.” However, if shifting the way you think can help – even slightly – to put you in the shoes of the people you work with, and that can help you to identify problems and solutions, then surely it’s worth it.

What do you think?

As you may know, I’ve recently begun a new job at a new agency (Edelman, for the record).

In doing so, I moved to an agency that represents competitors of past clients.

While I’ve taken this in my stride, several people have now raised questions about confidentiality with me – enough that I think it’s worth addressing at a broader level.

As an ‘agency guy’ you’re privy to all sorts of plans, strategies and future-focused documents that your clients trust you to keep confidential. Other companies would love to get their hands on those documents, or even to just learn the general plans of their competition. A lot is riding on the integrity of everyone who comes into contact with those plans.

At the same time, it’s completely normal for people who move to a new job to find themselves at a company either competing with their previous employer, or servicing a competitor. As I’ve written before, PR is a small world, and the odds are reasonable that the situation could arise.

I completely understand how any company could be anxious about someone leaving when they’ve seen to high-level plans – whether it’s a company employee or an agency team member. However, I’d make several points to those who are concerned:

• Companies typically ask new employees to sign confidentiality agreements. Those agreements usually stand beyond the end of an employee’s work at those companies.
• Companies trust the integrity of people to handle their plans while they work for them. That trust shouldn’t disappear as soon as a person moves on.
• Your primary asset in the public relations business is your integrity and reputation. Lose that, and you’ve got little left.

For me, this last point is critical.

I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t unscrupulous people out there who violate the trust of their ex-employers (hell, some people do it while they still work for companies). For me, though, I’ll categorically state that my reputation is worth way more to me than one or two quick wins.

In a business where one indiscretion can lost you a reputation that took a decade to build, your career will benefit much more if you play the long-term game and respect the confidentiality of your clients long after you cease working with them.

Have you encountered confidentiality questions when you’ve changed jobs? How have you addressed them?

(Image: Shutterstock)

“In too many cases, the “best practices” espoused by digital agencies are less about “serving the community” and more about driving a rush of new fans, without much thought re: how to keep those fans engaged on a LONG-TERM basis.” — Todd Defren

As corporate spending on social media-based communication continues to rise, I’m beginning to worry that many brands are inadvertently adopting a ’scorched earth’ approach to their online activities.

What do I mean by scorched earth?

When an army advances using a scorched earth approach, it destroys everything behind it as it advances. So, while it gains territory, little remains of the territory it captures. Similarly, many companies are at risk of this when they focus purely on customer acquisition while neglecting engaging their existing fans.

One-shot social media accounts and short-term campaigns-focused approaches may eventually build a fan-base, but unless that is paired with activities aimed at engaging those fans, you’ll lose them. Worse, you’ll not only lose them at the time but you’ll also have to work that much harder to win those people back next time.

This is understandable to an extent, especially in a campaign-focused setup – retention plans aren’t as “glamorous” as new customer-acquisitions. As a result, it’s tempting for marketers to focus their dollars on the latter. You’ve seen this approach – the Twitter account that’s shut down after a month; the big-bang launch that’s forgotten by the next week; the multiple campaign-focused Facebook pages that the company launches and shuts down every year.

Agencies (and savvy corporate communicators) need to resist the urge to take this approach. It can be particularly difficult for agencies, where the client brief may not extend to long-term engagement, but good agencies should give clients the advice they need to hear whether they expect that advice or not. Make sure you dedicate sufficient resources to retaining your fans.

So, next time you’re creating a social media plan, stop and think: are you creating social media scorched earth, or are you engaging for the long term?

Have you seen this pattern, in your organization or with clients?

(Image: Steve Lacy)

The last few years have been wonderful for me, both personally and professionally. I’ve lived happily with my girlfriend, Caralin, for several years now, and I’ve enjoyed a rewarding career that has so far brought me more opportunities than I could have possibly hoped for.

Today, I’m happy to announce the next step in both of those areas of my life.

Moving on professionally

I’ve spent the last two years of my career at Thornley Fallis Communications, joining the company as a Senior Consultant in 2008 and being promoted first to Account Director and subsequently to Vice President.

Over this time years I’ve worked with some incredible people on great projects for wonderful  clients. I’ve also been fortunate to become friends outside work with people like Terry Fallis, Joe Thornley, Eric Portelance, Jeremy Wright, Andrea Pietkiewicz, Jennifer Gordon and more, which makes this next part a little bittersweet.

As of this week, I’ve joined Edelman’s Toronto team as Vice President of Digital.

Edelman

Firstly, I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time at TFC. I love the people there and I’m immensely grateful for the many, many opportunities to grow that I experienced while at the agency.

So why the move?

For me, the decision came down to two opportunities:

• An opportunity to work on a bigger scale;
• An opportunity to learn from the industry’s best.

Scale: Edelman is the world’s largest independent PR firm, with over 3,300 employees in 52 countries. They work with some of the world’s biggest companies, spanning industry and geographic boundaries, and the digital work they do is cutting-edge. To say that I’m excited about joining a team of this scale, with the client roster they have and with the resources and opportunities that a company like this brings, would be an understatement.

Learning: Over the last few years, Edelman has systematically hired some of the best people in the digital communications field. Whether it’s the great team in Toronto and across Canada, or international thought leaders like Steve Rubel, David Armano, Phil Gomes and Rick Murray, the best people in the industry work here and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to learn from them. This – the quality of people – is the primary reason I decided to make the move. It’s an exciting time in digital, and Edelman has positioned itself right at the head of the field. I’m delighted to join this team.

I’m getting married!

As some of you may know, Caralin and I recently headed down to Peru on vacation. While we were there, we did a five-day trek to Machu Picchu. On the second day we climbed a mountain pass between two glaciers which peaked at about 4,600m (about 15,000 feet) above sea level. At the top of the pass, I proposed to Caralin and for some reason (altitude sickness??) she said yes!

Needless to say, I couldn’t be happier – I’m grinning from ear to ear right now. As things stand, we’re aiming to hold the wedding next summer.

There you have it. Change, change and a little more change.

To my ex-colleagues, a sincere and heart-felt “thank you.”

To my new colleagues at Edelman, who have already welcomed me so warmly, I’m beyond excited to work with you all.

To my new fiancée, you’re amazing and I love you.

It’s an exciting time for me. The last few years have been beyond amazing, and it looks like the next few could be even better.

Onward!

The annual ritual is upon us – the submissions for next year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) are posted and the voting process has begun.

(Actually, it began a little while back but – you may have noticed the silence recently – I was away on vacation)

This year I’ve thrown my hat in the ring and submitted a SXSW 2011 panel proposal with Scott Stratten (UnMarketing), Chris Barger (General Motors) and Sarah White (HRM Direct) entitled Personalities, Policies & Problems: Companies and Employees 2.0.

The combination of immediacy and near-universal adoption of social media tools in many countries can lead to a communications and HR nightmare if processes and policies aren’t thought-out in advance. Our panel will focus on the internal corporate implications of social media adoption within companies from a variety of perspectives: PR agency, corporate communications and HR. In particular, we’ll consider:

1. What is the best way to structure social media within a company?
2. What internal policies do companies need to reduce risk when implementing social media?
3. Do companies have a right to censor employees’ online activities when not at work?
4. Should companies block Facebook, Twitter etc in the workplace?
5. What role can and should social media play in recruiting?

If you like the sound of the panel, you can vote it up at the SXSW Panel Picker site.

While you’re over there, here are a few other great entries to check out:

• Why PR’s Future May Not Look Like PR (David Armano)
• Spin Doctors: PR Best Practices for Social Media (Nicole Ravlin and Sarah Evans)
• Naked Dating: Finding Love in 140 Characters or Less (Jeremy Wright
• The Legal Ramifications of Saying “I’m Sorry” (Paula Berg)
• The Networking Conundrum (Christine Perkett)
• Who’s Following Me? Privacy & Social Media (Craig Daitch)
• How Brands Respond to Facebook Attacks (Bryan Person)
• Trust and Control – The Future of Privacy Online (Colin McKay)

What do you think? What are your favourite submissions?

(Voting for the panels ends this Friday, August 27)

When approaching clients on objectives to begin social media, agencies focus on three overarching areas: consumer trust, brand engagement and transparency. Is this the approach of all agencies? No, but it can be a starting point to figure out specific end goals. Transparency can come in a few forms: the form of humanizing the brand; the form of understanding the consumer and responding; or the form of disclosing sensitive information.

But, what happens when you can’t be transparent?

The agency / client dynamic is one that varies, dependent on the brand. Agencies can be completely different than in-house PR. Some utilize their agency as a partner; while others utilize their agency as a tool. The difference lies in the fact that there is trust and disclosure with a partner, and often times, they are brought into high level discussions.

Think of your own Twitter stream. Think of what you do behind the scenes at work. Is that knowledge the same as the impression you relay on social mediums? Brands operate in the same way. There are instances and circumstances where their hands are tied. It’s not just public relations involved in social media, but the C-Suite, Legal team, customer service and more. All groups have opinions, regulations and people to answer to.

Those circumstances are never relayed, with only the facts conveyed. In crisis communications exercises in journalism school, we were taught to share only important and straight to the point facts with the public. Why, then, do we throw stones at companies and critique their responses? Should we further investigate the how of the situation, instead of jumping to the ‘Why’ so quickly?

Agencies have the double edge sword – they have pressure from their own higher-ups to execute the scenario correctly, while also answering to a client. In this world where consumers want brands to be as open as possible, it’s quite true that expectations can be set too high when an actual business comes into play. When an actual crisis happens, many tend to focus on one key area without exploring others.

Is there a point where you step back and realize the client has to make the decision, and go with it? Or do you continue to bridge your case? Is it fair to throw stones when we don’t know the situation?

Let’s discuss.

Photo credit: W Promote

This guest post was written by Lauren Fernandez, Agency Community Manager for Radian6. She blogs at LAF, is on Twitter @cubanalaf and has an insane love for the Green Bay Packers.

When I think of examples of companies known for successful adoption of social media tools, a few names always come to mind – Dell, Radian6, Freshbooks… and Zappos.

(On a related note, all of those companies have gained a reputation for good service via social media – a topic for a future post, perhaps…)

So, when a colleague remarked that she was enjoying a book that charted the course of Zappos so far, I promptly added it to my 2010 reading list.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose traces the story of CEO Tony Hsieh from his childhood through to the present day, in his own words. While the book isn’t an autobiography per se, the majority of the book tells a chronological tale beginning with tales of how Hsieh managed to avoid practicing four musical instruments every day (he would play tape recordings of himself practicing) and ending with the acquisition of Zappos by Amazon in mid-2009.

More than a simple tale, though, Delivering Happiness is full of useful business tips and insights. A few that stood out to me:

• The company employs a ‘pipeline’ system to career management, clearly structured so that any employee has the opportunity to become a senior leader within seven years of joining the company.
• Zappos requires that employees complete specific courses in order to be promoted to certain levels, creating a clear path to advancement.
• The company has implemented a “skill sets” system, with a small bump in pay associated with improving each of the skill sets. Pay rises are thus tied to skills growth.
• An idea for recommending good business books led to the Zappos library with over a hundred books, some of which became required reading for employees.
• The company launched a monthly newsletter named “Ask Anything,” in which employees could do exactly that, to create transparency around the business for employees.
• The levels to which Zappos empowers employees to focus on customer service would terrify a lot of the more staid, bureaucratic companies out there. There are no call centre scripts, and reps are permitted to do things such as upgrade customers’ shipping requests for free as part of regular business.

These are just a few of the nuggets hidden within Hsieh’s story. To make things even better, the book is written in a very informal, easy-to-consume style, and is made all the more personal by Hsieh’s frequent admission of his own mistakes. I think it was primarily due to this that I plowed through Delivering Happiness in just over a week.

It’s not all roses, of course. While it’s one of the most revealing parts of the book, the section on Zappos’ core values comes across as a little self-aggrandizing. The book also seems a little top-level from some perspectives, as it fails to draw a conclusive line between the firms’s growth and its customer service focus (Hsieh himself admits that growth only took off when the selection of shoes increased, not when the customer service focus began). It feels like there’s more to be heard there, and the “other side” (that of the prior board of directors) is only given lip service.

Still, these are minor gripes about a thoroughly engaging book. As I mentioned, I tore through it in short order and will probably do so again fairly soon. Overall, Delivering Happiness is a fascinating tale of the first chapter in the life of Zappos, and demonstrates a focus on employees, culture and customer service to which we should all aspire.

Highly recommended.

In the latest of a series of practical and helpful resources for marketers, Altimeter Group has released a free report entitled The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing.

The report, based on input from 34 industry vendors and consulting agencies, outlines – you guessed it – eight criteria for determining the success of Facebook pages from companies’ perspectives, and in doing so provides a useful set of general guidelines for marketers managing or launching Pages.

The report also uses those criteria to evaluate the success of the Facebook pages for 30 well-known brands.

Some key findings:

• Most of the brands examined did a good job of branding their pages and keeping them updated. However, making them pretty and posting content isn’t always enough.
• The brands generally did poorly at setting users’ expectations, engaging in two-way dialogue, encouraging peer-to-peer interactions, fostering word-of-mouth and providing calls to action.
• Most brands neglect to set expectations through guidelines, commenting policies etc. Strangely, Nestle still hasn’t learned its lesson.
• Most brands hide the identities of the team interacting on Facebook, lowering the “authenticity” of interactions. Brands under fire online fared worst for this.
• Brands still tend to talk at people, not with them.
• Few brands deliver direct calls-to-action to fans, thus missing out on opportunities for conversion.

The report also delivers a few recommendations for Facebook page administrators:

• Put aside your read-only playbook and tap into two-way social marketing
• Bolster your Facebook pages with applications from third parties
• Connect the Facebook experience with existing efforts, like your corporate website
• Measure and analyze based on business goals – not by fans or “likes”
• Reduce risk: Use the success criteria to analyze your efforts over time

There are a few holes in the report, including a couple of dubious conclusions – I hardly think that not explicitly encouraging peer-to-peer interactions counts as “muzzling” your fans, for example – and a sample size of five per industry is far from sufficient to draw conclusions about entire verticals. Overall, however, Altimeter has released a useful resource for marketers with success criteria, best practices and the case studies for which we are all clamouring nowadays. For those reasons alone, I highly recommend that any communicators using Facebook to reach their audiences download and read this report.

Check out the report, and let’s add to it – what are your best practices?

Liam Fitzpatrick wrote a  controversial post earlier this month, saying that he thought writing skills are over-rated for communicators:

“To be honest I don’t think being a good writer matters – I’ve met plenty of great comms people who couldn’t write to save their lives and I know a few fantastic writers who I’d never trust to give communications advice.”

Shel Holtz,  David Murray and Reuben Bronee took Fitzpatrick to task, leading to two follow-up posts where he clarified and reasserted his view that other skills are more important for professional communicators. As Shel wrote:

I would never hire someone to manage communication who can’t write, nor would I hire anyone into a front-line communication job who couldn’t tell a story in words.”

This back-and-forth (which continued in the comments on those posts) got me thinking over the last few days.

So, what’s my take?

Writing is CRITICAL

Writing is an absolutely central skill for communicators. From my perspective, this applies from entry-level communicators right through to senior, experienced professionals. Frankly, it’s an important skill in many jobs  - many people outside the communications function need to communicate their ideas simply and persuasively – but for communicators, it’s critical.

At the entry level, there are few skill deficiencies that will hold you back more surely than good writing. Later on, while the type of writing you undertake may change as you rise through the ranks (more reports and proposals, and fewer news releases, for example), the importance remains throughout. What’s more, at a senior level you need to be able to review other peoples’ writing and help them to improve. That’s hard to do if your own writing skills are lacking.

Other skills are critical, too

If you’ve ever studied management theory, you may be familiar with Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory – essentially, it states that certain factors (“hygiene factors”) need to be present in jobs for people to be motivated, without actually motivating people themselves. So, without a good salary (for example) people will be de-motivated; however a good salary won’t actually motivate people more – it just needs to be present to allow other motivators to work.

Good writing skills are the equivalent of a “hygiene factor” in communicators’ careers. Without them, people are much less likely to succeed. However, they don’t make a successful communicator by themselves – there are many other important skills that are required – strategic planning, time management, inter-personal communications, math (sorry – it’s true), media relations and others come to mind, for example.

So, my perspective can be boiled down to this:

Writing is an essential skill for communicators. However, they also require skills far above and beyond this to be truly successful in the long term.

What do you think? Where does writing rank on your list of communications skills?