Conversation Agent

PR 2.0 is Free

It really isn't, but it is freely distributed. That is the benefit of it when intended as communications to all stakeholders. Good PR comes at a cost - research, the experience of knowing what's important, the relationships we build to offer content that people want to make part of their lives. New media helps do the rest - it helps reinforce the publics' decision to pay attention to you and your business.

Will public relations continue to become more high profile in the year to come?

In its most basic definition, public relations is about helping organizations and individuals communicate with the people who are interested in them. Is this the new audience? It makes me uncomfortable to assume that audience means the people I want to talk with, unless I have done my part in attracting them by providing value and showing integrity of purpose.

The role of connectors used to be played chiefly by mainstream media journalists and editors. The reality today is that we have nearly enough time to execute our work. We find time and attention to read trusted sources - the new connectors - which are more and more fragmented. I think new media have changed the way we consume information - they are not just a new mode of transportation, so to speak.

Scoble and Israel wrote about three phases of the Web:

1. The age of Surf (e.g. Yahoo web directory)
2. The age of Search (e.g. Google)
3. The age of Syndication (e.g. RSS, Internet Explorer 7)

We are moving into the stage where syndication and aggregation are taking new forms. FriendFeed, for example, is being used as both, plus as a micro blogging tool. What we consume is still directly related to what we care about and value, but today we are less uniform mass, more individuals with preferred listening channels.

Yet, I do not think this conversation is about technology at all. Not for the recipients on this end of the conversation, not in the least. However, I still think that PR practitioners have a little way to go on making their end of the attention/time commitment work for them and their customers.

From where I sit, many still do not know how to use email effectively - never mind FriendFeed, or Twitter. How can the pitch become more an invitation for a deeper conversation instead of a shotgun approach? Could PR professionals begin to leverage technology to their advantage? For example by building efficient data bases and mining them efficiently?

Today's press coverage may be more about Google search ranking than media placements; success comes when we discuss issues and trends more than product placements. It was never about the analysis of press clippings; good public relations has always been about attitudinal research.

More conversation, less persuasion. PR 2.0 may move freely through media, it most certainly requires thoughtful preparation and consideration for it to be a benefit to both its creators and its intended recipients. Agree/disagree? What am I missing?

Memo to Obama: Remake the Bully Pulpit

When asked what advice would you give the new President by Reader's Digest, Michael D. McCurry responded "remake the bully pulpit". McCurry, who was White House press secretary between 1995 and 1998 says:

Nothing will help your presidency or threaten its success more than how well you communicate with the American people. The "bully pulpit" of the presidency (as Theodore Roosevelt called it) needs a remake for the 21st century because we are still using communication techniques that date back to the first President Roosevelt.

He then proceeds to offer the following advice, which is also great advice for companies:

(1) abolish the practice of holding a single televised daily press briefing by the White House press secretary - instead, the presidential press secretary needs to orchestrate a great symphony of public information. More data and facts need to get out the door. Less spin and "message control."

Try this in your organization as well - let the experts comment on what they know best, explain to employees and customers your product and services with simplicity and immediacy. Quarterly CEO web casts are great but in this day and age they need to be supplemented with a robust diet of what is going on in the marketplace.

When you orchestrate a symphony of information with data, facts, stories from the trenches, you help all stakeholders see what is going on and make better decisions as supporting actors for the business.

(2) make the White House more like the West Wing - actually he recommends reality shows as a thought. More transparency will restore trust in government.

When I talk about transparency in business, I get the look, you know, that look that says, yeah, in your dreams - our competitors will copy us. There is no way they can do it better than you can. Here's why:

If you go ahead and copy what your competitors are doing without seeing what is behind their strategy, part of which is cultural, you will bomb. Aside from the fact that we know that trying to be something you are not is not such a good idea, your prospects already have your competitor in mind when they think of solving that particular problem. Go read Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout, it's a classic, it's still not being done by most.

(3) make sure other agencies of government and the other branches on Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court get equal time - get the media to focus on other places where critical work is happening in the name of the American people.

This means having many more competent communicators across the organization. I'm liking this one a lot as well. It may also mean that as a leader, you will need to connect that information, provide context and perspective, illuminate the issues and point to the actions.

What advice would you add for remaking the "bully pulpit"?

Bonus link: Steve Rubel points us to Obama's lessons for PR professionals and marketers - I would add for all business leaders.

The Break up: PR and Media on News Embargoes

A news embargo is a request by a source that the information or news provided by that source not be published until a certain date or certain conditions have been met.

If the embargo is broken by reporting before then, the source retaliates by restricting access to further information to that journalist and publication, putting them at a disadvantage compared to other outlets.

Brian Solis has a very detailed post about the recent announcement by TechCrunch that it will no longer honor embargoes. In it, he states:

The problems are two-fold:

a) Unethical or opportunistic bloggers or reporters looking for an edge will break a story ahead of the agreed-upon embargo, even if only by one minute, in order to appear as if they got the scoop.

b) PR, continuing to use a broadcast methodology to pitch and place news, freely and foolishly wield embargoes as if they're simply "scheduled" times for a press release to cross a wire.

We talked about the importance of trust one short week ago. I would rather forgo links and the popularity contest to be deserving of your trust. That is my position.

Media on the Right

It would actually be nice if media got in touch with its feminine side.

Since I started publishing here, I have had the opportunity to honor a couple of news embargoes. I knew I could not possibly be the only site that would publish the news and respected the reasons why. In each case, I was given the opportunity to ask additional questions ahead of time, which allowed me to publish from a different point of view or angle. My consideration in formulating the questions is whether the information would be useful to my readers.

So here's a big tip to all those who send me press releases by email - your pitches are by and large not targeted to my audience. Sorry, but saying that what you've got would benefit my readers and then not backing up that statement with facts really does make you look unprofessional. And please do not tell me you're a long time reader of my blog or I will be tempted to test you and unmask you publicly.

If you want me to agree to holding a briefing with someone (maybe a CEO) without having background information in advance, you are dreaming. This is pure passion here at this blog. Nobody pays me to write and I invest that extra time I don't really have to provide value (readers will be judge of that).

Got it?

To go back to the announcement by Arrington at TechCrunch, he is saying that "The PR firm gets upset but they don’t stop working with the offending publication or writer." Well, that takes the wind out of the accountability sails, doesn't it? Then he continues by saying that "We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively."

I think exclusivity is not the point anymore. I think the point is reaching specific readers and listeners in specific ways. There is a time for every purpose in new media, including balancing immediacy with relevance, and a respectable PR strategist would know that.

PR on the Left

As in what's left to say that is news these days? For good public relations professionals plenty. To me it's an issue of quality over quantity. In case you are wondering, this will be the theme for the week at Conversation Agent.

In my day job part of my work is public relations and part of that is media relations. I am part of the source. My philosophy on embargoes is handle with care - make sure that they are truly valuable to the readers/listeners/customers of the journalist or reporter with whom we have built a relationship.

However, Steve Rubel wrote about it this summer, many who report the news like to uncover their stories unaided these days. That is the same expression we use in brand studies. Unaided awareness is your best form of recognition in the marketplace. It's pull in its purest form. Relationships matter again. This is not a trend, we're just remembering what we've always known.

The press release or announcement is the tip of the iceberg. It is merely the calling card to begin a conversation. Something new, hopefully. Something interesting - a story that has not been told.

Doug Firebough wrote about the 7 psychological A's of social media in a recent post - acknowledgment, attention,  being approved of, being appreciated, being acclaimed, feeling assured and being a part of. There are many lessons in there for PR professionals. I suspect that many of the pros are that way because they handle the conversation in such manner.

What is left for PR professionals is their willingness and passion to lead. There is not shortage of opportunities to do so with new media.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it

We really don't have to pick a side.

Louis Gray says that the best solution for embargo angst is to write something else. I couldn't agree more. As well, Ruth Seeley points us to Todd Sieling's slow blog manifesto. In her comment to Brian's post, she writes "personally, as a consumer, the allegiances I feel are to those outlets that can consistently be trusted to answer all the questions I have and provide background and perspective."

We can all look and feel smarter when we take the time to be thoughtful.

On the long tail of Chris Anderson's known piece on blocking PR people, Gina Trapani has put together a wiki of PR companies that spam bloggers. I think the important part, the one that the term embargo does not cover but implies, is one of personal ethics and standards. It is from that place that, with respect and professionalism, we can begin to have a true conversation about the future of PR and media.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Are You Preparing for the Future?

Steve Rubel points out an article by Mike Elgan on how media companies have only themselves to blame. I found this statement in Mike's article to be especially relevant to the current business discussion:

Newspapers hawked their future in order to invest in the past. Those acquisitions were all about buying up antiquated companies who viewed their industry as a machine that converted trees into money, rather than as creator of content.

Every company that has been in business for a while is being dragged kicking and screaming into this new digital age. Digital is a new way of thinking about business, not just a delivery mechanism.

This is not a conversation about content, although your content matters. Nor it is about digitalization of business, you may be in an industry that does not lend itself to being digital - I cannot think of digital food, for example, or homes.

It's about the future, your future, which you may have seen coming for several years now without doing much to prepare for it. Newspapers thought they were in the print business, they focused on the medium business when they are in fact in the content business. Content is portable and relevant now more than ever.

Managing Risk is to Relationship Building

When I was in risk management consulting we stated that our product was a relationship - that was the focus of our business, and we did a number of things to honor that. Many of those things involved risk mapping, captive insurance management, reinsurance treaties, and they involved introductions to other companies that were a better fit for what clients were looking for.

The tools at our disposal were many, the model was to respect and grow relationships. That was one of the winning propositions (we've been talking about value propositions lately) that allowed us to peer around corners and win clients over the Goliaths of the day. Our model was portable and scalable and adaptable to newer media and tools.

Like Context is to Telecom Companies

Take telecoms as another example. If they think they are in the phone service and connectivity business, building and maintaining pipes and networks, they have lost to many free or near free tools like Skype, for example. So if they do not wish to be a commodity, these companies need to realize that they are in the context building business.

The iPhone was the true eye-opener in that respect. Not just a smart phone, but a delivery mechanism that created context for content, communications, services and yes, commercial transactions (iTunes) to be performed.

Preparing for the Future

Print media is learning this lesson the hard way - enormous losses, layoffs, and bankruptcy filings.

The financial industry is learning its lesson as well from the laws of probability - according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, small probability events carry large impacts, and (at the same time) these small probability events are more difficult to compute from past data itself [...] past Black Swans do not predict future Black Swans in socio-economic life.

We may not be able to predict the future. Yet, we need to prepare for it. Preparation starts with a solid grounding in the understanding of what business we're really in.

What does this mean to you?

1. Peel back the medium and figure out the "what" you deliver and where the digital opportunity for that resides. Then figure out how to make the what an experience that nobody else provides.
2. Be ready to challenge your assumptions when it comes to inferring the future from the past. The laws of probability are in favor of taking the leap onto a new model when extrapolating from current observable trends.

Preparing for the future needs to take into consideration how your products and services are being used by your customers and what that means for your business model. What business are you in?

Change the Conversation, Change the Game

It doesn't matter where you see yourself fit in the hierarchy or, if you're lucky, the ecosystem. Public relations, marketing, social media communications - we're all in the business of understanding each other and what we want and need and by doing that transforming what is now into what is next.

This is the time of the year when we begin to look back at the predictions for 2008 and put a stake in the ground for trends we see for 2009. Stakes are good, they allow us to focus on what we commit to. However, I would suggest that the process for how you will achieve what you want to achieve (your strategy) is an even smarter travel companion - you get better mileage.

As part of the process, we need to challenge some assumptions.

• Business as usual will not work - do you have a new plan? How does this new plan address the dialogue between employees and customers, for example? How does your plan address the dignity of work and the respect for individuals?

• It's not about you, it's about "us" - call it what makes you comfortable, this means two ways to be: one listening, the other giving. Imagine what would happen if we all did that - everyone would be getting without ever taking. When you're kind, you become one of a kind.

• Value and brand are in the purpose and meaning business - talking about value props (perhaps they are props) and messaging the brand are futile if you do not have a purpose and do not give meaning to the words by being a living example. The same goes for all the other highly leveraged words.

• It's not just the words, it's how you say them - meaning comes also from intention. Maybe it starts as a checklist of things to do, when you say it to yourself as if you meant it, soon it starts taking on those connotations.

• Promises are running on empty - make fewer and make them count. Clarity is the most undervalued asset a business has. It's amazing how powerful it is in aligning everyone behind purpose in the creation of meaning. 

John C. Bogle said it better in his new book, Enough, these are the titles to the chapters [hat tip Tom Peters]:

"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
"Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"

To which I add what could be chapters in my own book:

Too many meetings, not enough meetings of the minds.
Too many barriers, not enough entries.
Too many people (who have to buy in), not enough diversity (of ideas).
Too many numbers, not enough real contribution.
Too many games, not enough of them game changing.
Too much concentration (of power), not enough conversation.
Too much control, not enough connection.

Conversation leads to connection. It allows you to understand issues and to change business processes before the business itself has moved away from what used to be successful and is no longer. Maybe your customers are not online, in that case you should pick up the phone. Social media may be the modern version of the telephone but it has single-handedly (through many media, actually) challenged the underlying assumptions of the way things were.

What I think has not hit home, yet, is that if you are in the (fill in the blank) marketing, public relations, social media communications business, you are in the changing the conversation business. And changing the conversation is game changing.

Are You Getting Engaged?

When was it not a good idea to talk with your customers as if your business depended on it? How is it ever possible to go a whole day without being of service to someone? Why would you not share tips, advice, and learning with your team? Where exactly was it deemed acceptable to base your conduct on anything but honesty and ethics?

We end up having incredible discussions around tools, with little time left over to talk about the reason why we use them - to connect.

Social media is about building relationships - starting with your customers, business partners, influencers and their networks, communities of practice, fans and critics, etc. It's not like the shotgun approach to marketing, it's like the focused, appropriate conversation with those who wish to talk with you. In some cases they already are telling you what you want to know, if you are listening.

Are you getting engaged? In this sense, we give what we get, and we get what we give.

[image of the blogosphere circa 2007, courtesy of Matthew Hurst]

Who is the Social Media Marketer of the Year?

When I launched Conversation Agent back in the summer of 2006, I had a pretty simple concept. My observation was that the line between marketing and public relations would be blurring considerably with greater adoption of social media. The idea that brands should start learning good manners, show personality, and behave is now starting to take hold.

In other words, marketers would have to become better communicators, skilled at one to one relationships, just like their colleagues in public relations.

I must have worked in a recession for the better part of my career as I cannot recall a time when I was responsible for one and not the other. At some point I even came to define myself as a professional operating at the intersection of marketing and PR - where the people and ideas are.

Fast forward to today and you now have practitioners involved in social media and community who come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds and skill sets.

The most common so far in what I have encountered are: interactive or digital marketing, digital media, corporate communications. As I stated before, I think public relations professionals are well poised to work very well with social media. They are more acquainted with the idea of personal outreach.

Everyone can use some help with conversation.

It's not all talk anymore. Social media is becoming part of our language and behavior - as customers first, as professionals a close second. The terminology may or will change, the dynamics remain. It's extreme personalization driving it - listening, having a voice, making a difference to the final results.

With all of this in mind, if it doesn't hurt too much, I think it would be interesting to propose how I would do a list from which to nominate the Social Media Marketer of the Year.

This is no Nobel Prize, which took  place a couple of months ago with Medicine and Physics opening up the honors. This selection would not be quite as rigorous as those, and hopefully not as contentious or mysterious as that of the Prize for Literature. It might sit somewhere in between. The world is smaller now - global professionals and women (did you know that only 5% won the Prize?) should be on the list.

Each single list I have seen online has been created and maintained by an individual.

Because this is social media, and I am after all the Conversation Agent, if I were to do this, I would hand pick a panel of judges to join me in the collection of metrics and evaluation of the professionals in the running. Together, we'd choose metrics that are less open to personal judgment. Although what would social media be without opinion?

Potentially metrics like:

REACH: Based on Quantcast. This requires participating sites to place the code. They wouldn't be competitive without it, anyway. Alexa is okay at detecting traffic surges in sites which already have a fair amount of traffic. But it's awful -- really awful -- at ranking niche sites. So it would be useless for our purposes.

INFLUENCE: Based on RSS count. RSS shows that readers are committed to a site. If FeedBurner stats are public, we would look at those. Otherwise we'd have to go with Google Reader stats. These represent only part of a site's RSS base, but they're the biggest, and can be looked up. Everyone could be on a level playing field.

CONVERSATION: Because I am the Conversation Agent. We'd total the number of comments on each ranked site (by hand) for one week out of the month-long survey period. Think of it as sweeps week. Which week is a close secret. Comments left at other sites would also count and be included, whenever possible. I realize this would be tricky.

CONSISTENCY: Nobody ranks this. The panel counts the total number of days in which someone posts during the month. We would also look at the quality of the posts written.

INNOVATION: The secret sauce metric, but it'd be based on a panel, not one person. Everyone ranks each site, based on originality: How often are they leading topics, not following? What they say isn't as important as being fresh and vibrant -- stepping out of the echo chamber. Analysis and solid content would trump newsy posts.

OVERALL: A sum of the above, which should also yield a nice ROI (return on involvement and influence; the investment of time, attention and care).

Who would have thought we'd come up with an Italian word? From the Jim Collins laboratory:

A Hedgehog (riccio) Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial.

This list would not be open to everyone. You must be nominated by your peers to be ranked. If I were to publish a list, this is how I'd go about it.

[image of Sonic the Hedgehog, Wikipedia]

Why Alltop is a Great Idea

The short version of it is - Google provides you with a pile of search results, Alltop gives you all the top news as selected by all the folks who write the top sites on the Web. Aggregation without aggravation, or a starting point for your exploration journey on a number of topics. This is how the portal is described on the site.

The methodology they use to find and add sites is by community. They added green and humor categories, too - we need both!

I'll come clean with you, Conversation Agent was chosen for the following categories - egos (along Mark Cuban, Lawrence Lessig and Dave Taylor), marketing, customer service, and content marketing. Thank you, readers, colleagues and friends. Thank you, Alltop!

After being a long time admirer and acquaintance (it takes more than a few emails to say you know someone who knows thousands of people, doesn't it?), I had the pleasure of meeting Guy Kawasaki face-to-face at the recent Blog Council event in San Jose, CA.

[photo courtesy of Blog Council]

Many of us have been online long enough to have our own blogs (no, I do not think blogs are going away), be on Twitter, have mastered LinkedIn, are re-friending long lost school buddies on Facebook and have these massive threads on the value of FriendFeed on FF itself. Our RSS readers are a well researched collection of information and we probably met many of the people we read in person. We analyze, slice, dice and aggregate online metrics with the ease of Web metrics gurus - or something like that.

I know what you're thinking, we are still in the minority, even though 73% of Americans and 64% of Europeans are online (source: Forrester). An increase in adoption means not only that more people are potentially reaching up on the participation ladder, it also means that there is more out there to discover. Mon dieu, how do you find all that content? How do you make sense of it by category? It took me three years to build a good stream of content that is useful and inspiring, and I keep adjusting.

You can begin with Alltop and personalize from there - make the portal your own. I ran a quick survey asking what people liked about Alltop on Twitter, here are some of the answers:

  Access to a bigger audience for less known bloggers, diversity of topics, makes research easy, it's simple and clean to navigate, it's a niche aggregator - and it gives Guy Kawasaki something to do. This is probably as good a mix of opinions as you're going to get about it. There's even some feedback about the Twitter feed.

It may not be perfect, but it can save you a ton of time and help you jump start your reading and learning. I know where to go when researching a completely new topic. What would you do to improve the experience? What new category would you add?

The Light Before the Storm

This week we're discussing community-driven or -centered conversations - we talked about customer discussions as newsletters and brand as movement that brings customers forward on a journey, where collaboration and opportunity are not only key words, they are promises fulfilled.

I have now moderated a total of four sessions on engaging detractors - last one being this past Saturday at BarCamp Philadelphia - and I'm quite certain we'd find more material to discuss each new time. The way we left it on Saturday is that there are some people who are just cranky and determined to be contrarian - there is little you may be able to do for them, they will not accept your actions.

If you have been open and honest with the community, and remain positive and productive, the community might intervene at some point to address the situation and animosity created by the detractor. Which puts you squarely in the midst of community relations - an aspect of public relations - and in the communicator's seat.

Crisis on Social Media

Brian Solis beat me to the punch with a very complete and useful post on reinventing crisis communications for the social web. In it, he highlights how a crisis often does not happen overnight. In fact, in most cases it builds from small issues, complaints, even questions that go unanswered. As Brian points out:

[...] More often than not, we miss the very things that provide insight into a future response simply because we're not conditioned or trained to proactively discover and diffuse threats or negative experiences. [...]

[... ] In the era of the Social Web, a story, and the ensuing public recruitment, rallying, and support, can rapidly spread unlike any crisis wildfire witnessed or experienced in previous generations. [...]

In most instances, the people who initiate a negative conversation about your product or service (or even your advertising practices/message) do not do it with the intent to hurt you. They do it because they are frustrated or upset about poor service or a defective product and they already tried going through the normal channels.

Storms Before the Light

Chances are you were not listening. Not on purpose or out of malice, sometimes out of procedure - you are in a place where your people serve your process instead of the other way around. Or maybe you were listening but not participating, like in the case of Comcast with the sleeping tech video. It's important you join that conversation at the time it happens, find a way to take action and get resolution. This is a business conversation that involves business decisions.

In some instances, the negative talk is about issues. An example of that is what Coca-Cola and other companies and brands faced with the sponsorship of the 2008 Olympic Games in China. The WSJ blog covered the protest and response. The red in the promotional theme for the games can also be the red of a Coke can. It's hard to think straight when on the defensive. Issues are important, they are what tell us apart from other species, they engage us in higher causes. This is a conversation around values.

In the Exxon-Valdez case, a product problem spilled over to a conversation around issues - the environment. In J&J's Tylenol case, a product hazard was handled by connecting with the company core values - as an issue to be taken seriously. As evident in the Wikipedia page about Tylenol linked above, information on the situation may be missing, or stories about the case may already be coloring public perception. You (the company representative) need to complete the picture by participating.

What I'm doing here with these examples is drawing out the differences between the two different situations - the business decision and the issue/value. Try and put yourself in the shoes of the communicators who need to address one, and then those who need to address the other. Today they may be one and the same, too. At various points in my career I was walking in those shoes and it can be a very challenging human experience - with or without Web 2.0.

Think about what Dell faced and what the company was able to do.

It did not Happen in one Day

A company's culture will be the single determinant of its responsiveness and ability to address concerns  whether they be business problems or accidents. That is built over time. You can train a good team, retain a great crisis communications firm. The culture piece helps tremendously with how you come across when you respond. 

Peter Sandman, an expert in risk communication who sees himself as an extension agent - a popularizer and integrator - defines risk as hazard + outrage.

He notes that communicators use scare tactics to persuade people to do something - use condoms, quit smoking, test your home for radon - on one hand, and need to employ ways to calm them down when they get scared on the other - they do not believe the expert when he says that hazard is not serious, for example. Both activities are called risk communication: alerting people and reassuring them.

The truth is that most of the time we are quite apathetic of risks, but can ignite in outrage when the perception of the hazard moves us. If you ski, you know that you could break a leg (hazard). Because you do it voluntarily, you do not think about it that way - you assume the risk.

One of the examples Sandman gives in his work is the very Exxon-Valdez spill. The Exxon pavilion at Disney World's Epcot Center had a show on Exxon's record of environmental protection, and not a word about Valdez. As a result, perfect strangers were murmuring to each other about Exxon's gall in ignoring Valdez. Nothing the company could have said about the accident would have been as damaging as ignoring it.

Let there be a lesson in there for us. Even when the storm hits before the lightning, building and placing value on an ongoing dialogue with the community can help navigate the uncharted waters of a crisis. Credibility springs from three main characteristics (in addition to having a track record): expertise, altruism, and homophily. In other words - I believe you to the extent that you seem to know what you are doing, to care about my welfare, and to be like me, says Sandman.

Detractors Happen

When I talk about writing online and sharing thoughts with a human voice, many business owners ask me what they should do about detractors. This is their single most pressing concern after that of finding the time to write thoughtful and valuable information. When I posed the question on Twitter before our session, Marc Meyer responded - don't underestimate the power, the resolve, and the focus of the detractor- the single minded sense of purpose amazed me.

Detractors happen, you may not be able to do anything about them directly. The human reaction might be to get very upset about them, which will take you nowhere. The Christian thing might be to try and be compassionate - wish we were so evolved! Think about your community instead. Take care of them. Talk to the people who want to talk with you.

Community is Built (or Joined)

My point, what I'd like you to remember is that community can be built, just like a team, just like a company culture. They are within your reach - not your control. Big difference. Even with all the monitoring and measured responses, the determining factor in your success is that you are a known entity, have a track record for participating, and are real.

While you can handle ihateyourcompany.com this way (WSJ via Brian Solis), your best chance to a dialogue with the community is to have a community in the first place. If your brand already has a community of fans or evangelists, find it and consider joining it.

If you think you don't, and many of us are probably in that category, consider that your employees are your first community. Chances are that if you ask them, they will tell you that they have been collaborating for years - and many are passionate about your business. That is gold, encourage them.

When you think about building a community, be careful in how you think about the people in it. They can be allies and evangelists, but they are not *your* assets to spend. A community owns itself, as do your customers.

Your company may be too big to fail, in that case people are smart enough to want to help you help yourself - their livelihood and that of their physical communities depend on you. There is an opportunity here to begin a dialogue with the community you serve, directly and indirectly.

Perception is reality. If you are in the risk business like AIG (linked above), you already know that. Talk, especially in times of crisis, is important. Language changes our brain and occasionally it can also change our mind.

[image by .craig]

Your Logo is a Symbol, Your Product Can Be a Social Object

On Monday I received an interesting package at work. It was actually three packages that seemed to be orchestrated to be delivered at different times - they all came together. Steve Rubel had reached out to me to ask permission to have the package delivered on behalf of Edelman's client, PepsiCo. By then, I had already read Seth's post, which has my full agreement. Yes, your brand is not your logo - the logo is a symbol...

... which can be a sign to indicate a story. Now, that is much more interesting to think about. When I saw the cans, I immediately thought about the gentleman from Colorado Springs who is the President of a Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. and with whom I discussed social media on a flight to the last Blog Council meeting in Chicago. See how vividly we remember people and stories?

The interesting part of this outreach initiative is the room PepsiCo. opened on FriendFeed Monday. The move made me use my brand new Flickr account to download the photos I took with my iPhone in my office. At the time when I took this screen shot on Monday evening, there were 109 members in the room and the PepsiCo. team was beginning to warm up a little. I know, the thought of warm soda! But, hey, warm works in social media.

Admittedly, I was excited for the team. I do know what it's like to represent a large business. Many of the rules become self-imposed in the beginning as well. Welcome to social media, PepsiCo. team. Bart Casabona writes:

“As you now know, Pepsi has a new brand identity, which is the first step in a multi-year, multi-pronged company wide transformation, that’s deeply rooted in reconnecting with influencers, youth and pop culture. I’m interested to know what your initial direction is for Pepsi as it reinvents itself.”

Let's not talk about Pepsi so much. It may be the guest of honor, but the people in that room, who have come as guests, are far more interesting. How does Pepsi connect with their stories? How is Pepsi a social object? From Hugh:

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that "node" in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.

I know it's really hard to shift mindset from the product to the reason, but the reason is really what matters. The FriendFeed room might become more interesting if we invited the people in it to bring friends who have a special story about Pepsi. Focus on the people, and think of the new can/logo as the reason - the tangible reason for being together. That is where your execution can really take off as a positive experience in the conversation. Social networks form around social objects, as Hugh says, not the other way around.

Who has stories with soda in it? I'll go first. When I was growing up (in Italy), we were allowed to drink soda only at parties, so a sip of carbonated drinks felt really special to us kids. Seth had it exactly right - your brand is not your logo. Part of your brand is the stories it evokes in the minds of the people who have reason to come together because of it. Uncover the stories, make it about them, not you. That's how you re-connect.