Conversation Agent

SxSWi: Brian Solis, Changing Role of PR

A couple of days ago I attended a speakers panel at SxSWi. The main question in the session was - are PR agencies a dying breed? In a world riddled with ADD, where TMI blogging and DIY reporting are the norm, are PR agencies still relevant?

FutureWorks principal Brian Solis framed the challenge: "Agencies have competition from places they never saw coming - interactive agencies, community management companies." It was a panel discussion, but I wanted to highlight Brian's thinking because he's been long doing work that matters for the future of PR.

It's true that the nature and place for press releases has changed. Today, you could issue a release that has not just news, but depth. With hyperlinks, images and captions (make sure you have those if you'd like editors to publish them), press releases can still have value for reporters as they do for your site's search engine optimization (SEO).

If it's also true that, as Brian said, as an agency they're not charging to write press releases or for media campaigns anymore, how are PR agencies going to make money? One of my thoughts is to help create the context for relationships with the media and third parties. 

The other thought I had was that agencies can help clients move from reactive - and yes, thinking of PR as just press releases is in some way reactive - to a more proactive stance. That would include the integration of many tools that allow for putting the "public" back in public relations. This is the title of Brian Solis latest book with Deirdre Breakenridge.

The Institute for Public Relations has run an analysis of the increasing impact of social and other new media on public relations. Not surprisingly, traditional news media receive higher scores than blogs and social media in terms of accuracy, credibility, telling the truth and being ethical. The results of the study highlight that there is considerable agreement suggesting blogs and social media have enhanced public relations practice.

Most (92% - up from 89% in 2008) of those surveyed think blogs and social media influence news coverage in the traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio and television) while 76 percent say the reverse also is true (up from 72% a year ago). There is very solid agreement (88% up from 84% in 2008) that blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous because they force organizations to respond more quickly to criticism.

We've been saying that the future of PR is participation for a while now, however there are now many concerns about that. What if the PR agency decides not to be transparent? Or what happens when a client wants the agency to "represent" him, to write in stead of him? 

A big question that still remains open is why do so many clients are so afraid of budgeting a social media strategy? And on the other side, why do PR practitioners have to characterize social media as little or low cost?

[photo courtesy of Richard Binhammer]

SxSWi: Kathy Sierra What Turns Your Brain On

To be fair, this was a panel with Kathy Sierra, Cliff Atkinson, Craig Ball, and Jared Goralnick, and each single member gave me insights. Sierra was the connecting element. A little while ago, I wrote a post about how to give a presentation and change the world. This discussion was more about what gets your attention, keeps it, and works with your brain.

Attention is Hard to Get

We kicked things off by talking about how hard it is to get everyone's attention. There's lots of content competing for our time. In this context, presentations that worked in the past don't work today. It's not just issues of design. With the technology now available to many, the bar continues to be raised higher and audiences have new expectations.

One of the sure ways to get attention is to engage your audience. To do that, you need to understand how things work. This is a research question. So research is the best place to begin.

There's no research that using templates is better than telling a story, for example. Because this is the way we've done it is not research. UC Santa Barbara Richard Mayer studies how people learn with the use of words and pictures in presentations. He found that there are three kinds of experiences:

1. no learning
2. fragmented learning <-- right now, we're stuck here
3. meaningful learning

To solve the problem we need to change the shape on our assumption on how people learn and move towards:

1. sensory and long term, unlimited to capacity
2. working memory - we can hold three to four chunks of information at any one time

We often have a lot of information we'd want to present our audience, but every step of the way we face the problem of limitation of the mind/working memory. We need to sync two channels into the brain - visual and auditory. We need to guide memory, signal what people should pay attention to.

Information design is not effective. We need to look at PowerPoint as a film strip with an audio-visual, thread: simplify the story and ease the way information passes through the eye of the needle.

What Turns Your Brain on

Our brains still think we're living in cave. Your mind wants to pay attention, but your brain is saying "this is so not life threatening!" We have this epic battle - the brain is a spam filter. Since we cannot consciously tune this spam filter, how does the brain know what to let through?

One of the main signals is chemistry - that which you feel. Legacy brain cares about things that are unusual, strange, things that stand out, are scary, exciting, innocent and might need help, joy (play = preparing for survival), faces, like to resolve things like mysteries (what's the story).

The brain does not care about tablet PCs, it doesn't care about code. In essence, you talk to the brain, not to the mind.

Retention is Key

It has been observed that juror retention after 72 hours is 10% when just hearing, 20% when the information is visual, and 65% when it is both visual and auditory. Ball has been experimenting with time lines, icons, and visual anchors to achieve that mix.

PowerPoint is not just a linear presentation tool, it is possible to adapt a presentation to information with hyper links. One illustration of that is the "Ken Burns Effect". Your can make things come to life by using sounds and animation of individual objects. With detailed animated control, you can take people places - shrink audiences down to the physical media.

Focus on What the Person Wants to do

The biggest mistakes people make is an over reliance of the screen as speaker's notes. Instead, use them as visual cues/triggers. That, coupled with not presenting to the brain. Show the information like a brochure, a form and presentation the brain cares about, not like a manual, for example.

The key is not to focus information on the tool, but shift the focus on what the person wants to do.
Often, we don't remember how the brain works. The truth is that you can't hear and read text at the same time. If you're presenting like that, you're forcing the brain to make a choice.

To move from a piece of paper to film script, you need to be looking at the story by which you carry information to your audience. Does a listing technique compare to a story approach? When you want to show a collection of stuff it's reasonable to have a list. When you're seeking some other form of connection, you might rethink your strategy.

One of the first things you learn as a trainer is to seek a reaction. The second level is learning, and the third level is changing behavior. How can you present in such a way that you're getting an actual change of behavior?

How you view the audience and your role as a presenter make a difference. Everything is in service to this - can I help you make a better user of "x". That requires a shift from presenter's experience to user experience. Focus on the audience and how they're going to use the information.

In a connected world we're going to have a back channel concurrent to a presentation. Does that affect how people can use the information? A back channel is an opportunity to have feedback.

Does your slide have a pulse?

What happens between your ears while someone is presenting? When is it appropriate to use bullet points? Is there a time when they're ok? 

[image of Kathy Sierra from SxSWi courtesy of alexdelcarvalho]

SxSWi: Search and Social Network Converse

Last Saturday, former Forrester analyst Charlene Li, who is now with Altimeter Group, talked about how social networks will be "like air".

She predicts that the future will have search and networks converging to make everything we do more social, without the need for special places to go. This may still be a few years away, however.

Some examples she provided on how this would happen were custom searches on Amazon where you see only the reviews if people in your network and a personalized CPM for publications like the New York Times.

Would you be more likely to read something that someone you see as influential in your network is reading?

The problem with many of the social network activities today, including ads on Facebook, is that they require you, the user and profile owner, to do something explicitly. You need to select, or like, or share. What would happen if the preference or selection were made explicit by your search and navigation behavior? For example, finding people with similar interests at SxSWi before coming to the event.

To make social networks "like air", Li points to three essential components:

1. Identity - who you are
2. Contacts - what you know
3. Activities - what you do in the context of those activities

The two current standards that exist to being this relationship between search and networks are (1) Facebook Connect, which is still just a vehicle to bring people into Facebook but not the other way around and (2) the new Open Stack platform supported by supported by MySpace ID, Google FriendConnect, LinkedIn and the OpenSocial movement.

Why would everyone open up? Since most social activity happens outside the main networks, the simple answer is money.

Why would we put up with it? The money motive is going to be the trade off for social activity. We're still in the infancy of this movement or conversation between search and networks, and certainly privacy is a big concern. These are the early days as much as the Web was taking baby steps at the time Tim Bernes-Lee created the foundation of what we see today as the social web.

Given this premise and the possibility that social networks may become more transparent, Li recommended companies evaluate where social networks make sense:

1. Identify where social networks data and content can/should be integrated in the experience
2. Leverage existing identity and social graphs where your audience already is, e.g., Facebook Connect
3. Get your privacy and permission policies and processes aligned with an open strategy
4. Find your trust agents - "in Google I trust" or will it be Facebook?

The announcements made earlier in the day about Facebook Connect were certainly good news for moving into that direction. With the problem of having multiple sign-ins to different networks, another issue that is in the way of convergence between search and networks is that of multiple personalities.

Like many, I tend to keep my LinkedIn profile more for business and professional contacts, and other social networks for a more personal experience. Sorting these issues out is not going to be a walk in the park. The privacy concerns might even start being addressed by permission layers on the data in our social graph - "context makes content privacy easier, and social signals provide a shorthand for our mental map of relationships," said Li.

We've talked about marketing by context building. The solution for businesses looking to be found by and connect with customers and potential customers, as well as their networks, may look to get better not just at creating content worth sharing, but also provide a place where OpenID meets networks.

[Chalene Li]

SxSWi: Is Your Customer Service all Hat... and no Cattle?

Yesterday a large group of bloggers got together for a shopping experience at Allens Boots in Austin, TX. It was an event organized by Richard Binhammer and sponsored by Dell. Out of 300 RSVPs, the turn out was probably 100+ - and that during SxSWi, which is an event hard to leave for any length of time.

Richard called it the all hat... and no cattle.

I met Richard a couple of years ago when I wrote what was probably the first post that connected Dell's social media outreach with the company regaining its mojo. Here's how they did it to begin addressing customer issues:

a) On one side, the conversations were about Dell the company, products, business model, and corporate reputation – often drawing assistance from "subject matter experts"

b) They used a "swat" team of “the best and brightest” tech support folks to solve technical and customer service issues as they learned about them on the other.

Our get together was a lot of fun. Among the attendees were Becky Carroll of Customers Rock!, Connie Reece of Every Dot Connects, and Leigh Duncan-Durst of Livepath. These ladies are especially important to customer conversation. Cheekiness with friends aside, all hat... and no cattle can be a problem when it comes to customer service.

In a quick brainstorm with Becky we came up with a couple of examples:

• Organizations that are measuring the wrong things - i.e., how many calls are processed an hour vs. the results achieved for customers.

• The restaurant is beautiful and the food is great, but the service sucks. Has this ever happened to you?

• In B2B, it could be a promotion that oversells a poor product. There is an expectation created in the marketplace and the experience ends up not matching it. 

• Another example is those companies that fail to be transparent, thinking that it won't catch up to them - yet everyone knows what's going on and is talking about them. What would be a personal example of this for you?

To me customer conversation is an opportunity to get to the substance of what your business is about - or what it could become. The get together we had was not just fun, it was an extension of the work the Dell team has been doing to reach out to the community, meet its members, and have conversations with them.

Those conversations are coming back to the organization and affecting the business - probably not as fast as you'd like them to, but they are nonetheless. Involvement in social media has allowed Dell to go direct with customers, without concerns as to who is considered influential or A-lister - to them all customers are A-Listers. Today at Fast Company expert blog we talk about how to turn customers into fans.

[image courtesy of jaxpix]

SxSWi: We Media

A little over a year ago, I wrote a post about the future of we media. In it, I stated that  many of us are joining the ranks of main stream media with regular frequency. What began as a blog started to share information, learn, publicize our business and skills, has provided a bridge to the pages of known publications.

The conversation that ensured saw the participation of experienced journalist Bruno Giussani, with a very in depth comment that I'd like to share, slightly edited, here:

Thanks for the the reminder of the absurd way established media looked at blogs just 5 years ago. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. I actually wrote something that could fit right into your column back in 1997 already:

"The role of the journalist is changing into a more central figure, a mediator. He directs traffic, explores, becomes a facilitator of discussions. His new power will depend on his ability to animate a group of people, to develop methods and means to enliven the community, to organize information-gathering and use with the participation of the members of the community."

Truth is, we're in an era of hybridization of media, and that goes two-ways. Newspapers and magazines and broadcasters have been opening up to everything form blogging to crowdsourcing. Conversely, many blogs have become almost traditional media (in terms of business model and structure -- take Gawker, or DailyKos, or TalkingPointMemo: they have more flexibility and smaller overhead, but they're basically traditional publishers) and it's telling that of the three examples you mention, David and Steve work for communication firms and John is a consultant and speaker, i.e., they derive their paycheck from sources other than journalism. They do "journalism on the side", including their columns for AdAge etc.

Those are great additions to the conversation, but aren't necessarily great additions to journalism, in particular to the journalism that a democracy needs to function -- long reporting, researching, travelling, taking risks, exposing corruption and lies, going up against established powers, etc.

Sure, everybody can make a long list of examples of bloggers doing some of this work (from the Dan Rather story to the AG scandal to local happenings) and a similarly long list of established media with lots of resources screwing it up (NYT on Iraq, just to mention one). But still the key question remains: how will the necessary journalism be organized and be paid for in the future? The best journalism on TV today is either paid for by the public through mandatory fees (BBC) or paid for by philanthropic and corporate-social-responsibility money (Bill Moyers on PBS): is that the model of the future?

A second caveat is: while all you write applies perfectly to the US media landscape, it doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the world, where media habits, market structures, and roles are different. In many African countries, the best journalism today is often done by bloggers -- because they have a space for freedom that newspapers don't (it's easier to shut down a printing plant: read the difficulties Andrew Mwenda encountered trying to print his newspaper).

In Europe, newspapers' and magazines' sites dominate the online space and conversation (with the possible exception of Italy, where Beppe Grillo has emerged as a major political force, mostly because television news has turned into irrelevant political banter and most newspapers are going the same way).

In his last post (for a while), Bruno stated he was suspending his blog, because "after more than three years and more than 1000 posts, I no longer find blogging a satisfactory instrument for organizing my thoughts, keeping track of ideas, trends and interesting novelties, and engaging in a conversation with readers and friends."

Interestingly, my response to his comment read (slightly edited to fit this context):

This line in your 1997 article was particularly stimulating to my thought process:

"By redefining the way we think and write, this new structure redefines all of our culture. I agree with New York sociologist Neil Postman that

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop."

We are probably starting to think liquid as PR and social media consultant Geoff Livingston defined it. You ended with:

"So as a journalist what I believe our first and most urgent task ahead is to create the appropriate language to describe - thus to understand - the digital revolution. Recognizing that it is not only about microprocessors and fiber optic cable, but above all about brains connecting to other brains, about collective intelligence. A human, political and cultural endeavor."

If you think about where you are today vs. where you started from when you began publishing content, you will probably find that you've moved up the hierarchy of needs to self-esteem and, potentially, self-actualization. The new technologies at our disposal have altered the structure of our interests.

The things we think with alter what we can do. Today at SxSWi people are recording podcasts, videos and taking notes to document the event. Potentially, there will be outcomes, things will happen as a result of contributions to the community. Even if you're on Twitter reading the reports and following the links to blog posts, you still have the opportunity to participate in the event and news.

We might be media, but - and it's a big one - we are not journalists. I'm a classically trained linguist with a passion for learning and making ideas happen and deep experience in marketing communications. I took journalism classes, and I probably am a good addition to the conversation. However, I'm not the kind of journalist Bruno describes.

Who is going to pick up the tab for that kind of journalism? That remains very much the open question at the other end of the "paid to write" spectrum. Why it matters should be quite transparent. Or maybe it isn't. What's your take? 

[image: I met Amy Jo Kim at the Fast Company Community @ Work event]

SxSWi Panel on Brand Manners

No need to check the schedule, SxSWi did not select our panel this time around. But the topic is about to tip. The idea for the panel was that brands need to start behaving themselves, just like the rest of us. Now that the relationship between brand and customer has been turned inside out, there’s no other choice.

But what is the new social contract?

Are you glad to have certain brands in your life? I think we can all identify with a story or two from brands that hit our sweet spot and why. And conversely, are the brands that are in your life happy to be there? This might indeed be quite interesting to explore.

The Top Ten Questions This Panel Would have Addressed Are:

1. Are brands true members of society?
2. Do/can the rules of society apply to brands?
3. Is there a universal set of rules for brands to follow?
4. What are the consequences for ignoring or breaking the rules?
5. Would this theoretical rule book constitute a new model for brands to follow?
6. Can we as citizens use these rules to hold back the encroachment of intrusive marketing?
7. What are the rewards for brands that “behave”.
8. Is it every brand for itself, and to hell with the rules?
9. How far can the rules apply, beyond digital marketing, to the entire behavior of brands?
10. Who will win? The rude or the polite?

What's interesting is that just last week, when I published the post on the new Forrester report on sponsored conversations, several people reached out to me to discuss the matter in more depth. And we also had a pretty good discussion on the same post at Social Media Today.

If you ever doubted that the same content in different contexts would fare differently, go ahead and read the comments here and there.

I also wrote a follow up post on brand behavior in social media. In the closing of that post, I stated: 2009 is the year when this conversation becomes mainstream, I promise. Trust is based upon behavior, and so is reputation - and they are both the new currency for brands.

Well, I don't know about you. I will be at SxSWi and have been known to be pretty good at moderating and facilitating conversations (I'm better in person, you'll need to trust me on that). If this interests you, and you want to gather a panel of participants at a local coffee shop, this may be a good starting point for a discussion.

Let me throw in one more question for good measure. I think many marketers (Ok, people like me) are prepared to engage in real -- two-way -- brand communication. But are the brands ready? In other words, what happens to the business behind the brand?

Marketing Fluff

Do you remember which ones were your favorite books in school? Were there any? Kidding aside, were they the ones filled with facts?

Was there a particular subject matter that interested you? What was it about it that grabbed - and retained - your attention? Was it the writing? Perhaps the visuals?

Now think back at the material you actually used. You didn't simply read it, you wrote in the margins, you used pieces of paper or post it notes to mark specific parts so you could refer back to them later.

Take a look at your product or company brochures - what is the next thing you're going to do when you produce a new one?

The reason why so much marketing communications materials sucks - and I'm in the business, so I may say so - is that they ware not that compelling. Is it for lack of story? Maybe the dots are not connected as to why someone, anyone should care. A determination is made as to audience, what should be in it, etc. Yet the exercise, if you will, doesn't go far enough.

What is someone really going to learn from reading this? How are they going to use it? Most importantly, how are they going to feel? Are not part of the consideration. It's hard enough making those priorities for online user experience, isn't it? Then there's the committee thing - reviews upon reviews, agreements reached, getting everyone on the same page - except for the page is, well, not that moving.

Often the culprit for less than compelling material, what we call with a highly technical term - marketing fluff - is the lack of personality. Even when there's good narrative or story there, there is no point of view. And without a point of view, there is little, no make that "no" point. Without a point of view, what you have is, well, marketing fluff.

Point of view has not changed because of social media. It has not evolved, and blossomed all of a sudden. It was not invented through sharing more information, resources, tips of connections online or off line. Point of view has always been there, part of the human desire to put things on the record.

When Dante Alighieri wrote the Inferno - and the rest of the (Divine) Comedy - he was not inventing a new way of being human. He wrote the opus in a language that nobody had thought fit to write high level stuff in before - the Florentine dialect. He did that beautifully, weaving in the stories of his time - philosophy, theology, politics, the arts, astronomy and more on top of them.

He did it artfully, by employing allegory and the terza rima, an hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables) structure, with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, etc. That in itself was a feat.

Those are not the reasons why his work is enduring, as compelling as they may seem. His words resonate because he wrote it in the first person. This is my journey, he wrote, and it goes through all of these situations.

You follow him through the adventure - and you see with his eyes, feel what you would feel in his place. Who would you put in that special place in Inferno? Exactly. Another writer I had the pleasure of meeting in the first person was Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written that way.

Why the examples, why do you care? Because when a work is written to speak to us directly, when it has personality, when it connects with us emotionally - it is remembered, and used. That's why. Much of what resonates with social media is the ability to have an exchange and a dialogue with someone who has a point of view.

We speak of listening a lot - and that is good. Part of listening is also the ability to talk and write your side of the conversation so that it demonstrates you have heard. We bypass the marketing fluff. The opposite of fluff is not lots of hard data. The opposite of fluff is a decision. It's standing for something and communicating your point of view - however long or short it takes.

The connection is your feedback.

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

How to Create an Action Plan

In this TED talk [18:08"], Ed Ulbrich, the digital-effects guru from Digital Domain, explains the Oscar-winning technology that allowed his team to digitally create the older versions of Brad Pitt's face for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Incidentally, I loved Brad Pitt's performance, especially the hour or so in the movie when it was embedded in the animated head. Once you view the talk and see how it was created, you will want to go see the movie. Promise.

This video is an amazing example of tenacity, innovation, and problem solving. The type of execution that led to the final product made me think about the difference between traditional marketing communications and where marketing communications needs to be next. 

The old ways would mean the option of applying heavier makeup - let's rewrite the brochure, sell sheet, press release. The new ways are about taking out what is in excess, just like Michelangelo did with a block of marble - agility and expressiveness of content are essential. The new ways are also about understanding what expression to apply when - this system can recreate facial images at a resolution of 200,000 pixels.

Just like Digital Domain did, in order to create an action plan for your business, you need to:

(1.) Admit you have a problem

Having a methodology is a great first step. Especially if you're trying to break new ground. It will be tested by reality. As Ulbrich says, it's not just the special effects or the technology, it's how they contribute to serving your business. You need to believe in your vision to persist to the final product.

(2.) Break the problem down

It's easier to solve a problem when you can break it down into manageable steps. At the same time, all of these steps need to belong to a system for the final product to be coherent, to work towards your objectives.

(3.) Identify what's between the markers

UIbrich talks about needing the information that was between the markers. To do that, he completely moved away from the technology of the day. What's between the markers are the subtleties and nuances of the conversation. All of the expressions, exchanges, and experiences the status quo is not satisfying anymore.

(4.) Walk away from standards

The fact that where we are today was invented should be an incentive to step back and think about what other ways there are to solve your problem. Focus on the problem to solve, and not on the tools and you may be surprised on what you can find or invent. You may look at what other industries are doing to solve a problem similar to yours.

(5.) Use a technology stew

Content marketing is much closer to public relations today, for example. The idea is to create your own proprietary platform on which to integrate all the various pieces so that they work together. Could there be a marketing action coding system (M.A.C.S.) that activates your business? Technology also means leveraging your data points smartly.

(6.) Sandblast the edges

Keep testing under real life conditions. Ulbrich states that one thing the technology could not get was the intent of the actor.

It took 155 people two years to complete the project. This is something to think about when you're setting objectives to plan strategies around for your business. What's your digital domain answer? What are the components of your action plan? How will you go about gathering the information that is between the markers?

Micro Interactions in PR

The differences between marketing, advertising, PR, and branding are now blurred with the adoption of social media. According to the definition of social media found in Wikipedia:

Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.

Social media uses the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs,wikis, podcasts,pictures, and video.

So whether your business is engaging in one form or another of the communications mix, each of the vignettes used here to illustrate the various components of the mix could stand some revising.

I could say this is your marketing, this is your marketing on social media, and so on. Each of these activities gives you the opportunity to make your content available in more places not just for distribution alone, but for co-creation as well.

You can share it both on your site, or on other user-driven sites - YouTube (videos); Flickr (photographs and images); Digg (focused on news), Slideshare (presentations); Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed (networking); Delicious (bookmarking).

If I were to add just one button to indicate the addition of social media in each activity as illustrated here, I would label them as follows:

1. Marketing + Social Media >> exclusive special offer to the users of this site button. For example, Dell's exclusive offers on Twitter. Scale comes when you build the network, direct response in all senses for the offer.

2. Public Relations + Social Media >> button for monitoring and building dialogue about you. If you're smart and get to know the people in the room - and they get to know you - this happens when you are not even present. And it can be the more powerful because of it. For example, Micro PR on Twitter serves as a communications bridge for media and bloggers when they need help from PR.

3. Advertising + Social Media >> button for sharing with peers. Now you have recognition and mind share among people in a network and not push down. User recommendations, referral traffic, and community support are the new word of mouth (WOM, or word of mouse). How many of you have shared a clever ad with someone else? How about sharing an actual moment in the ad? How about the incredible T-Mobile flash mob spots?

4. Branding + Social Media >> button for providing impressions from experiences of the customer base. This is more about the action people take because they want to be associated with your purpose. See IKEA Hacker - people are actually asking Jules, the nome de plume for the blog, for advice on products. The great thing about this for IKEA is that he actually drives people to the company's newsletter and catalogue. Not to mention the fact that he is deeply passionate about the brand and its products.

I know you're smiling, given the content of the vignettes. All of the components of this mix are about micro interactions, but I believe that public relations is the discipline that gets to the single interactions, the relationships, more closely.

PR is about the details, the stuff your public cares about. It's about you building and constantly renewing relationships with people (not just the media) to increase the goodwill towards your organization. Ever since the recent Presidential election, many companies have woken up to the fact that yes, it can be done - engagement and relationships can be ignited. Even when scale is a question.

Social media is the latest communication technology, the additional button that allows you to extend and share content further - either by allowing your community to spread it for you, or by inviting it to co-create it with you. But building a dialogue with the community, building relationships have always been part of the work of public relations professionals.

When you ask - what social media sites should I target? The answer is who are you trying to connect with, and where are they? Identify and know your audience and then communicate with them where they are.

If you're looking to begin the conversation, you still need to know that what you're going to say is credible, relevant, and resonant to these audiences. Then there's the part where you stay consistent in every interaction. What is the one impression you'd want everyone to take with them?

Is there someone who can communicate about your product or service with that consistency and knowledge? That is your spokesperson(s). The number of channels through which that conversation happens - directly and indirectly, with you or about you - today has multiplied.

Every time you share a piece of content, which may well be the new way to give your supporters a platform for their use, you have the opportunity to engage in a micro interaction. Because relationships have always been at the root of PR efforts, I believe it is much easier for a company to test these concepts there first. Especially if your organization is in B2B.

The differences between marketing, advertising, PR, and branding are now blurred with the adoption of social media. The democratization of information has injected real people in all of them. You've gone from one-to-many to many-to-many. Enjoy, it can still be all about you, if you make it about them.

[micro interaction is a term David Armano championed. Image courtesy of Ads of the World]

The Better Business Experience for your Customers, Prospects and Partners

Axel Schultze got my attention over at Social Media Today. We were discussing the Forrester report on  sponsored conversations and as comment to my post he quoted his post "Not the Internet but the business model killed industrial media."

Of course, if he were a reader of my blog, he would know that I've written about that here in my Sunday series on new media and mainstream media.

Which goes to show that even though we're having these conversations on content and may make instant friends online, we do not really know each other or the whole of how we think and operate until we take the time to talk, listen, experience, and maintain a dialogue.

That is valid for companies as well. And although businesses constantly talk about scale and critical mass, they very much win or lose in the marketplace on the basis of single relationships. We're customers one at a time. Try telling that customer on the phone with you that you treat thousands of people that way, and see what happens.

In a post that addresses the topic of Recession 2.0 Axel shares observations on the current economic situation. As a linguist, I find his title interesting:

We call an economic melt down “Recession”, when we don’t know the origin of the situation. We call a Recession a “Depression” if we failed to find the reason and continue the way we did in the past

There is little of the usual in business today, and I'm increasingly intrigued by the fact that many an organization still thinks it can optimize and contract its way to greatness. The social web has changed not just the way we consume news - it has also changed how we want to contribute to creating that experience and the expectation we have of the companies that are in the business of delivering it.

To create a better business experience for your customers, prospects and partners, you need to (building on Axel's points):

(1.) Re-architect your every impression

Although it is the first impression that is often the only impression a customer will get of your service, every interaction counts. Impressions are the currency in social interaction, the equivalent of ad exposure and a much better metric with engagement.

• Put your best people on customers - “I don’t want to talk to a sales rep, I’m not ready to buy,” a customer told me on the phone. This is what happens as a result of compensation tied exclusively to a sale made and not a long-term account or customer relationship. There are experts in an organization we are willing to talk with because we know they will put forth an informed opinion and advice without trying to sell us something we don’t want right now. Ironically, we may end up buying as a result.

• Talk with customers differently - You speak the language of efficiency and scarcity, your customers think in terms of collaboration and story - most likely their story/experience with you and other providers. You hear what they say as a problem, when you could be listening for the opportunity it comes with. An ad can be the tipping point.

(2.) Rethink your product / service / pricing model

This is where re-engineering will come in handy, not when you're going to have layoffs to preserve the core. At that point, your business is already in a coma and will be on life support until someone comes along and pulls the plug. I've long believed that a business needs to stay calibrated and aligned with market demands, thus rendering drastic measures unnecessary.

• Reinvent the customer relationship - Today it's our responsibility to start rebuilding and refocusing, not just to do more with less, but to really get a sense of exactly what makes a difference. Making meaning with our customers is one way to growth. Part of it depends on our product and services - are they innovative, do they keep up with the needs/wants, do they help customers in substantial ways? 

• Amazon's secret to online dominance - It's in the many micro-interactions that we have throughout the site that we end up spending time and eventually money. Amazon has price transparency and helps you choose more products by presenting the information in a certain way.

(3.) Redefine your corporate values

I like the suggestion of managing and measuring customer experience by tangible activities in the ecosystem. Do you elevate your customers to the role of advisers? Today at Fast Company expert blog we discuss how to build the tangible activities that make customer contact the relationship sport it should be.

Those who want to put on a white lab coat and analyze customers in a vacuum, perhaps, aren't interested in having a frank conversation with a customer who thinks your ad sucks, it doesn't speak to them, and you don't get it. That would be a lost opportunity.

Value in the marketplace is determined by your customers. Do they think you're relevant and trustworthy?