The Presidential election in Iran certainly caused unprecedented focus on social media as the main means of circumventing the authorities’ clampdown on traditional news media’s election coverage.
People in Iran were using Twitter in particular to communicate with their friends after the authorities had closed down Facebook and cellphone networks.
“Twitter is particularly resilient to censorship because it has so many ways for its posts to originate – from a phone, a Web browser or specialized applications – and so many outlets for those posts to appear,” according to Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School quoted in The New York Times on 16 June.
As Twitter is topical, I have included a couple of Twitter items in this issue of Cutting Edge PR e-News.
The use of social media continues to advance as a communication tool, but not as fast as some commentators would like. Various articles in the PR media deride the slow take-up by PR practitioners of social media such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. But the issue is not simple. Employing social media such as blogging is labor-intensive and therefore labor-costly. The use of social media needs to be justified in terms of cost effectiveness against the alternatives. It is certainly justified as one of the channels when communicating with certain younger target audiences, but not other demographics, although this appears to be changing. Recent figures showed older people starting to increase their take-up of Twitter.
Interestingly, I read a blog post last week in which the writer emphasized that social media such as blogs and wikis don’t fit Professor James Grunig’s ideal of symmetric two-way communication. This is the opposite of what many people think. Often the blogger has the last word, and also reserves the right to edit or delete posts that he or she thinks are unsuitable. Wiki ‘owners’ can do similar. Same with the ‘comments’ section in websites or online newspapers, which invite reader comments, but only those they deem acceptable. This is not symmetric.
How to dip a toe into social media campaigns
If you haven’t got your head much into social media releases and campaigns yet, here are a couple of items that will help you.
1. This article is on the basics of a social media campaign: http://guerrilla-viral-marketing.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_start_a_social_media_campaign
2. This free web service “allows anyone to create an online press release (also known as a Social Media Release, or SMR). PRX Builder is a simple wizard that walks you through each step. Write your content, insert links, add images and video; everything you need is right here." Go to: http://www.prxbuilder.com/x2
Monitoring the social media
We are all aware of Google search, but many don’t know that Google also runs a free “Google Alert” service, which monitors and reports on the keywords and search terms it finds and indexes in the online media. You can get daily, weekly or monthly alerts relating to keywords found in blogs, images, video, groups, etc.
You can get Google to send you an alert on almost anything such as a company name, a person's name or a brand name. Very useful! I use it myself, getting a daily summary of online media coverage of the term “public relations” and also of my name. Get it to report on mentions of your own name!
You can find out how to access this at http://www.alertrank.com/google-alerts-getting-started.html.
Google also provides a service in which it ranks the relative importance of the source of such terms - such as a blog - and can run a full analytic program on it. This helps you to judge the degree of influence of a blog etc, and decide the most suitable type of response. But it costs - not sure how much.
In addition, crisis management expert, Jonathan Bernstein (www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com), mentions other monitoring tools he uses. These tools are proliferating so fast it is not easy to keep up with all the new ones:
-
CustomScoop (www.customscoop.com). One of the better ones.
-
Pipl (www.pipl.com) and Zabasearch (www.zabasearch). Useful search engines for information about individuals. Some of the information is free, some costs.
-
TweetBeep (www.tweetbeep.com). The Twitter equivalent of Google Alerts.
-
TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com). Allows you to track Tweets by
individual or subject, with quick links for sending your own Tweets.
-
TweetTag (www.tweettag.com). Search what's been on Twitter over the
past 24 hours.
-
Twoogle (http://twoogle.browsys.com). New service lets you search Google and Twitter at the same time.
-
WhosTalkin.com (http://www.whostalkin.com). A social media search engine that tracks many blogs, major news portals, social networking sites, images and forums.
The ten biggest weaknesses of poor leaders
Recent US research into the 360-degree feedback relating to 11,000 leaders enabled a comparison between the traits and behaviors of the worst leaders and the best leaders. (360-feedback is when a person is assessed by people above and below them plus their colleagues – very comprehensive.) The researchers then found the biggest differences between the best and the worst performers, and highlighted the top ten areas of difference. The standout traits and behaviors of the worst 10% of leaders:
1. Lack energy and enthusiasm
2. Accept their own mediocre performance
3. Lack clear vision and direction
4. Exhibit poor judgment
5. Don’t collaborate
6. Don’t follow the standards they require of others
7. Resist new ideas
8. Don’t learn from mistakes
9. Lack interpersonal skills
10. Fail to develop others
Organizational leaders – CEOs and senior managers – are not perfect. In my experience, most have some weaknesses readily apparent to others. The bad traits in the above list usually are known – or perceived – throughout the organization.
As professional communicators, we have to decide how we deal with this. What can we do? Sometimes we can ignore those weak traits, other times we have to work around them. If the perceptions are inaccurate, we can communicate to counteract them.
But what if the negative perceptions are true and are a significant problem affecting morale? Do we confront the person tactfully and run the risk of ‘shoot the messenger,’ do we try to get HR to help or do we ignore the problem and struggle to make our messages credible? We could try keeping it impersonal by using the results of a communication survey to highlight the issue to the person concerned - or get HR to do it. What else can we do? I would be interested in your suggestions. Email me at kimharrison@cuttingedgepr.com.
Until next time,
|
