Free report: PR at war – opinion explosion at social media summit
By Craig on Jul 14, 2010 in Blog guests & critiques, interviews, Digital communication, Marketing, Public relations, Strategic communication | View Comments
Trust, crowds (utilisation of, communicating to, segmenting of…), integration (or not) of social media and corporate websites, the death of ‘networked’ communication, content generation issues and the challenges of change within social media were some of the primary themes that were either explicitly stated at the 2010 Frocomm New Media Summit, bubbled under its surface or were notable not for their articulation, but by their surprising absence…
For your free report looking into and analysing the 2010 Frocomm New Media Summit, download the FROCOMM New Media Summit 2010_Report. And don’t forget to share it with your colleagues, peers and friends; RT about it; and get your contacts to subscribe to this blog.
Articles in the report feature content formulated in four different ways:
- Reports on summit presentations by speakers
- Interviews with speakers post-summit
- Analysis by Ruci Fixter and myself
- The integration of perspectives and content from other professional communicators, business people and bloggers.
The summit was a gathering of some leading minds of the Australian public relations and social media industries, as well as a large and enthusiastically interactive audience. There was an interesting balance of presentations that took a helicopter strategic view, along with those that were more hands on/tactically-based, with both leavened by plenty of case studies.
But perhaps the most notable message that comes out of gatherings like this is: don’t sit there and vacillate; get in and get your hands dirty; expertise comes with experience, not the endless pondering of ramifications.
Of course, the way we as communication professionals act should depend on evidence-based market research. We should consider all the options and seek to apply best practice methodologies.
But social media is still evolving at a rapid rate. Each strategy and its tactical dimensions need to be customised to the business outcome sought, to the relevant target audiences and to the issue/product/service at hand.
At the end of the day, your communication activity may be the first of its kind. So whilst you can listen and learn and formulate, the best answer to your social media dilemma may just be to do. But don’t dive in thinking you are going to kill it from the start.
Strive to become the expert. But, as many speakers stated or implied, humility and adaptability are valuable. Pack them in your baggage.
Trust your public relations
The notion of trust was elemental to many of the presentations at the summit. That is because trust is what social media is deified as helping generate (if not accelerate). Trust, of course, helps generate positive word of mouth, the holy grail of marketers:
- free endorsement of products, services and organisations
- the viral, no charge (well, sort of…) snowball effect (and especially when exercised through social media)
- extrapolation into increased sales/profits.
Social media platforms, as Brendon Hughes recently wrote, “have changed our definition of friend’.” The interesting question that Brendon posed was: “Is social media making trust weaker or stronger?” His feeling is that social media is not delivering as broad a degree of trust as marketers might like to think.
Social media, corporate website or trad media?
The question of where the greatest influence on consumers will emanate from in coming years was not asked at the summit. This surprised me. Options I put on the table to some of the speakers included:
- Social media sources
- Corporate websites
- Traditional (in both ‘hard’ and digital format) media.
Of course, it isn’t an either/or zero-sum game. Shades of grey are permitted!
But as I discuss in a series of posts from my blog that are included in this report, PR needs to work harder at website communication opportunities. Strategic communication, especially those elements with a digital bent, should be wary about putting all their tactical eggs in the social media basket. The corporate website has an opportunity to:
- provide engaging, useful and credible information to stakeholders
- rank higher in web searches because of this content, intelligent backlinking strategies and appropriate technical IT support
- act as a hub for social media activity.
This thinking has been reinforced, according to Andrew Hughes of Reprise Media, because Google changes means brands need to focus more on content and one of the best ways to do this is, “publish as much relevant content on your own website…”
PR: experts in content generation?
Content. What a hassle. What an opportunity!
But…if you don’t got it, you don’t got nothing to say. It’s the elephant in the room.
Generating content valued by your target audiences takes time and a lot of it. Think of all the social media platforms to feed. Recycling and customisation will work to a degree, but this won’t entirely sate the beast. So where are the resources coming from?
And who can’t love the switch that Matthew Gain pulled on summit attendees, saying we need to think like journos when creating content for our organisations, not like PR pros. This is a favourite topic of David Meerman Scott, the king advocate of corporate website communication.
Behind content are two further themes: creativity and viral. All three work together. A major challenge with social media is getting consumers to advocate the content. For it to go viral. This might occur because it is fun, because it is creative, because it is relevant to consumers’ lifestyles or because it exhibits thought leadership.
Thought leadership works if it:
- provides POD
- adds value to target audiences’ lifestyles
- is relevant to the organisation or brand that is promulgating it.
Networked communication is dead; long live the niche
Dan Ilic said it at the summit. Seth Godin has said it in the context of micro magazines. And Mike ‘Zappy’ Zapolin said it at a recent conference: niche is winning the war. Broadcast, big reach media networks are dead.
But this notion of big-reach communication being almost dead, whether it is in the context of media outlets, social media or other forms of communication, seems to me to be just a tad precious.
PR and marketing folk love reaching as many eyeballs as possible. So do clients and CEOs. (It makes for impressive reading in monthly reports, after all.) And I bet it is likely that a lot of direct mail is undertaken based on stats that underline that though there is a lot of waste, so is there sufficient ROI to keep on cutting down forests.
A very big challenge in going niche, in being very targeted and customised, is the ROI. Smaller audiences should mean, in theory, smaller investment (unless this audience is the influencer on a wider group). But easier said than done.
So whilst I love the notion, I’m not so sure some of the talk on this topic isn’t just a little specious. I fully expect there to be further debate on this topic, with warring tribes fully armed with rationales and statistics supporting their views.
Social media summit summary
The change that is occurring in the social media/new media/digital communication/traditional (on and offline versions) environment is intense. In the time it has taken to produce this report, here is a minuscule selection of some of the topics and issues that have arisen:
- Doubts over Twitter’s efficacy for tactical/sales generating communication
- MySpace regaining momentum through Facebook’s perceived privacy failings
- The relentless ascent up the social media mountain of Foursquare
- Apple’s patenting of a Facebook/iPhone app.Who has time to keep up? Can we pay someone to filter this information for us? Social media is forcing the PR professional pay a heavy price for staying on the ball.
In regard to the summit, only a few of its themes have been flagged here. The rest are in the articles featured in the report. Download the report for free, share it around, RT it, get your contacts to subscribe to this blog.
And please let Glen Frost from Frocomm and I know what you think about the content and how we can provide more useful resources for you in the future to help you do your job as a professional communicator.
So, your call to action!
- Download your free FROCOMM New Media Summit 2010_Report
- Share it with your colleagues, peers and friends
- RT about it and get your contacts to subscribe to this blog.
Posts based on the report will be featured on this blog and on Blueblog in coming weeks. All comments, questions, observations and violent disagreements are welcome!
PS: I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite! PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!
PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!
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