Business Storytelling

What The [*&%$] Do I Blog About?

Last week my colleague Catharine offered insights on how to start measuring the impact of your company's social media program.  So, in the spirit of providing best practices for online business strategies, I thought I'd offer a few of my own tips on blogging.  After all, if your company wants to participate in social media, you should definitely have a blog.  Now I don't consider myself an expert blogger, and I don't even have my own blog, but that's the point -- you don't have to be a lifelong blogger to start a successful blog.  You just have to write about what you know, write often, and listen to your readers. 

Here are basic tips for those that are starting out:

1) Write about what you know:

Last week I read a great blog entry from client Harvest Power in which a member of the finance team wanted to give perspective on how the organic waste industry and public awareness of recycling organic waste is evolving.  She is transparent about the fact that she knows investing, but doesn't witness a whole lot of what her company does in the field.  So she stuck to what she knows -- simple examples of organic waste recycling from her day-to-day life.  She offered an excellent anecdote about a friend's company:

"She has a recycling bin of course (a generously over-sized one), but the only trash bin she gets is a tiny, soup can-sized bin that fits on her desk.  And recycling bins are at every corner and in every room, but trash bins are only in the kitchen.  And there’s no trash collection service, so every day she needs to empty her trash bin into the kitchen one."
 
The author told me that she didn't know what to write about, so she just wrote what was familiar to her.  And I think that is they key: if you write about your own interests, that enthusiasm will shine through in the blog, and your writing will naturally become more compelling.  Try it.
 

2) Invite others:

Don't let all the blogging fall on your shoulders.  Readers want to see conversation and activity, and hear other people's opinions too.  So two immediate suggestions include:

• Conduct interviews and post them on your blog (always great when you don't know what to write about).  You can talk to customers, luminaries, friends, anyone that has something interesting to say that is relevant to your business.  Here is an example from our own blog.
• Invite guest bloggers: if you don't have a blog idea, see if someone else in your company or circle of friends/colleagues does -- a fresh voice can always attract new readers.

The more people that inhabit your blog, the larger the conversation.  So go ahead: share, invite, co-author, collaborate.

Looking Ahead

I’ve become desensitized to social media statistics.  “Mind blowing” reports don’t really seem to faze me anymore, Twitter’s and Facebook’s growth has become a given and the more frequently marketers use the word “organic” (I’m guilty), the more I think of shopping at Whole Foods.  Reports on the proliferation and adoption of social media platforms have become part of my daily news intake.  Twitter has become my news feed and until the population of Facebook overtakes that of another country, I will continue to observe social media growth with little fanfare. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that these statistics aren’t groundbreaking.  It’s just that the escalation of social media usage has become somewhat predictable.  Facebook has 40% more users than six months ago, Twitter now has 75 million accounts and the average number of tweets per day is 27.3 million worldwide.  As we spend more and more time in front of screens each day, access the Web on our smartphones and converse through status updates, it seems inevitable that social media will eventually become a fundamental form of communication, even more so than it is now.

But at what point does this happen and how will it affect the public relations industry?  We work and strategize to decide if and how clients should enter the social sphere.  If the current growth persists will we eventually operate in an environment where our concern is no longer if and how companies should get involved but how and where they should?  When social media is an integral part of every marketing mix how will that change the conversation and the role that PR plays in it?

We're all pretty immature, here...

I've been thinking a lot about social media measurement lately - for a number of related reasons: social media is playing a bigger and bigger role in marketing every hour; I'm spending more of my time doing social media work for clients and they want things measured; and since I'm doing more of this type of work, I have a personal desire to know it's valuable.
 
Social media, social platforms, social marketing - whatever you call it, it's still evolving.  But it's not just the platforms, tools and their applications that are evolving; we're evolving too - in how we interact, how we think, how we understand the world around us.  And how do you measure evolution?  You can't, really, except in hindsight, because you don't always know where you're going.

Brian Solis has an interesting post on how quickly and how broadly the business world is changing - "The Evolution of Social Media and Business."

Tempering enthusiasm for and commitment to social media with the realism of one who knows the pace of organizational change, one of the clients I've been working with has said insightfully, "We'll crawl before we walk, walk before we jog, jog before we sprint."

I think this parallel to human development is an apt metaphor for social media measurement because it indicates different thresholds of accomplishments for different stages of an evolution.  With an infant or toddler, each word, each step, each new motor skill is a major accomplishment.  Even if your goal was for your child to be an Olympic miler, you wouldn't use quarter-mile splits as a yardstick from the get-go.
 

Pay Up with Facebook

At some point in the next few weeks, Facebook will roll-out a credits currency for games, aiming to double revenue by giving social game users the ability to “Pay With Facebook” to buy virtual goods.  According to the Business Insider article, “Revealed! Facebook's Plan To Double Its Revenues,” Facebook will charge developers about 30% per transaction for the service, an amount some experts believe has the ability to exceed the company’s ad revenues. 

For most, this seems like an obvious decision for Facebook, and a chance for the company to take back its rightful share of game revenues.  In 2009, there was no doubt about the success of social gaming.  Even this year the U.S. virtual goods revenue is expected to hit $1.6B with social gaming startups accounting for $835 million of the total.  It's no wonder that Facebook, the company that provides the gaming platform and access to 350 million+ users, is seeing dollar signs.

If a German B2B Toilet Manufacturer Can Get A Million YouTube Hits…

So can you!  That was my favorite sound bite from a presentation I went to last week with at Harvard Business School with David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing and PR, and Tim Washer, the head of social media productions for IBM.  Both of these guys have impressive bios, so I won’t attempt to recap every minute of the two-hour event.  Instead, I’ll boil it down to my four favorite quotations.  You've already seen number one.

2. "On the Web, you are what you publish" – David Meerman Scott

Marketing is all about attention, and you have to earn it.  This is a shift from the traditional methods of getting attention: buying ads, pitching journalists, and selling.  All of these still have a place, but earning attention means publishing, which many companies aren’t used to.  One great tip was that vendors should create "secondary offers," that follow something of value that’s free.  For example, instead of requiring an e-mail address before sharing a white paper, companies should think about providing the first white paper for free and offering a second paper at the end, once contact details are given.

3. “Social media is for stories not brochures." – Tim Washer 

In social media, good stories often trump precise messaging and targeting. For example, the best viral videos may not be the most on message; it's okay to be creative and out there.   

4. “Be like the Grateful Dead” – David Meerman Scott

One of the reasons the Grateful Dead were so successful was that they allowed people to record their concerts.  No other band would do this, and they were wildly successful in selling out concerts while everyone focused on records.  Success in social media requires that you relinquish control – or, perhaps more accurately, stop trying to control – your message, and your content.  For most companies, this is the hardest part.  

David suggested a new way of thinking about social media, that I think helps ease this fear.  When we talk about traditional PR, we talk about campaigns.  The word “campaign” is a war metaphor. You have one shot; you win or lose.  For social media, a better analogy is VC investing.  VCs invest in a large number of start-ups, knowing that most will fail.  The payoff comes when a few do okay and one has a killer exit.  The companies that are successful with social media are the ones who are willing to fail.  You can ask 20 people to twitter, create six videos, and put up eight e-books.  They won't all be blockbusters, and some of them will probably fail miserably, but one or two big successes can pay off. 

Oh yeah, and the German B2B toilet manufacturer?  Here’s the "Say no to dirt" video:



Contributed by Catharine Morgan.  Follow her @c_morgan

“Get the door, it’s…Candor?”

Last April, the PR and marketing folks at Domino’s Pizza were forced into overdrive when a YouTube video surfaced of a few employees doing some decidedly unhygienic things to food they were preparing. In an article on the ensuing PR crisis, New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford noted that the company’s reputation among its core consumers went from positive to negative in just a matter of days. Domino’s initiated an aggressive PR and social media strategy to address the fallout, including a video apology of sorts from its CEO and the creation of a Twitter account to address consumers’ questions about the issue. Still, the damage was done and suffice it to say that the video, and Domino’s reaction to it, became a much studied topic among PR students and practitioners alike.

But that was last April and now Domino’s has moved on to a new PR/advertising strategy; namely, admitting that its products are pretty unappetizing. In a ubiquitous TV commercial, both high ranking executives and hourly employees discuss the company’s decision to “face our critics and reinvent our pizza from the crust up.” The ad features scathing comments from consumers ranging the gamut from “Worst Excuse for Pizza I ever had,” to “Domino’s pizza crust to me is like cardboard.” It concludes with company employees reiterating that they are facing this criticism head on, launching the “Pizza Turnaround” and promising to do better. This absolute candor, while incredibly refreshing from a consumer perspective, is a bit surprising when examined through the lens of our industry.

In a Washington Post article on the campaign, industry executives suggest there are some major risks associated with issuing a mea culpa as an advertising strategy. For example, by accepting that their pizza is awful isn’t Domino’s effectively admitting that they’ve lied to consumers in previous campaigns that boasted better ingredients than their competitors? And, by publicly promising to make a much better pizza, Domino’s is holding itself accountable. If consumers aren’t swayed by the addition of new spices and improved crust, they will most certainly let the company know. And then what?

Why the Law and Facebook Aren’t Friends

The insatiable urge to use social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, comes from the excitement and novelty of connecting with people we might otherwise not know, but it also begs the question: where is our common sense?

It’s a loaded question, I know, but the time has come to demand more from people and ask them to start using their brains instead of just their keyboards.

What finally brought me to this conclusion was the unbelievable story I heard about jurors becoming Facebook buddies while a trial was still underway. I heard about it from a coworker, who ended up forwarding me Adam Ostrow’s Mashable post, “Jurors Becoming Facebook Friends = Grounds For Appeal?”

The story goes a little like this: Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon was on trial for embezzlement – she was accused of stealing gift cards intended for needy children – and was later convicted on December 2nd.  The Facebook issue was raised – after the verdict was declared, of course – when Dixon’s attorneys became “suspicious” about the jurors’ online activities and started looking into whether or not these individuals were contacting each other outside the courtroom.

The Baltimore Sun article explains that the lawyers discovered about half of the jurors had become Facebook pals. In direct violation of the judge's orders, they also found out that these friendships were made during the trial and the jurors had participated in ‘prohibited communications’ with each other (and outsiders) throughout the process.

The interactions were pretty absurd; jurors wrote on each others’ walls, had comments talking openly about the trial with outsiders, and a couple even met for Thanksgiving dinner! Yes, it’s touching that former strangers could establish friendships online and even share the holidays together, but it’s the wrong circumstance.

Think people. Sometimes you don’t need to post everything for everyone to see. Even if you only have a dozen friends or you're new to Facebook, you should know enough to realize that it's not ok to blab about the details of a trial. Ever. The jurors’ Facebook activities were definitely out of line, but this convoluted situation does (at the very least) raise some important questions:

• How did the defense lawyers gain access to the jurors’ Facebook pages in the first place?
• Can this trial be considered fair if the jurors lose their privacy and personal freedom in the process?
• Were the jurors knowingly violating the judge’s orders or has Facebook become so ingrained in their lives that they didn’t realize the consequences of their actions?
• Does this really establish ‘just cause’ for an appeal?

This case will definitely set a precedent for upcoming juror selection and trial proceedings, there’s no doubt about that. It is also a firm reminder to all of us that we need to step back and think about what we’re posting, sharing or tweeting. And, sometimes it’s just not ok to share.

-Contributed by Gretchen Doores  You can follow her on Twitter: @canadiangal84

Read The Baltimore Sun article, “Juror contact in '06 with Dixon, witness could cause mistrial” for more information on the ensuing juror controversy.

On Our Way to a More See-Through World

In PR we talk a lot about transparency: when pitching reporters make it clear who you represent and why you are writing.  In fact, transparency has become one of my golden rules these days in general, and I think it's something that needs greater priority in the world at large.  For example (in no particular order of importance or relevance to one another): the Bernie Madoff scandal, food fraud, and most recently, the Hadley Climate Center saga.  The Hadley Climate Center saga is really what inspired this post. 

According to the Wall Street Journal and other sources, the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain was hacked last week and thousands of sensitive documents, including emails from climate scientists dating back a decade, were posted online.  The aftermath: the emails and documents that were leaked indicate that scientists may be "manipulating computer climate modeling data and research reports to support the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming." See full article here from Environmental Leader.

So what does this teach us? Well, some may argue that the most important lesson here is that we need to be more careful with sensitive data and continue to tighten security to prevent cyber crime.  However, another lesson to consider is the transparency challenge.  Whether we're talking about climate change data, food nutrition labels, or information on financial investments, industries across the board lack standard systems and procedures for documenting their calculations and transactions.  Let's zero in on the climate issue.  As carbon counting and energy efficiency tracking continues, businesses need to be accountable for the improvements they claim to make, scientists need to demonstrate the sources of their calculation, and consumers, investors and other stakeholders need to know how to interpret the data and where to find it.
 
Solving the transparency challenge is a tall order, but if more organizations start to talk about it and demonstrate how they support their claims, perhaps industries as a whole can start to make progress.  What practices have you come across for improving transparency and accountability that seem to be working? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 
 
Contributed by Susan Wise.  Follow her @swise

Message Meets Media

My travels through social media expose me to a myriad of interesting online items, whether cute, useful, or weird.  But sometimes they bring to my attention shining examples of cleverness that warrant discussion.

Boone Oakley is an independent advertising agency based in Charlotte, NC.  They’ve done work for major brands such as Ruby Tuesday and HBO, but what they haven’t done is created a Web site as most people would think of one.  The agency is active in social media, but their official site is on YouTube.  It’s a string of simple animated videos telling the story of Boone Oakley, and not only is the execution perfect, but the message is clear and strong.

In addition to building awareness for the small agency, Boone Oakley achieves two major goals with their unique “Web site.”  First, they differentiate themselves from other agencies and essentially render their competitors’ sites generic.  More importantly, they illustrate their capabilities, both intellectual and technological, by doing, rather than showing.

The agency could have had a simple page with samples of their work, but now that page itself is an advertisement for Boone Oakley.  The entire string of videos is a piece of work, rather than just a place to find information, and it takes full advantage of the medium.  The videos' producers have a deep understanding of video’s ability to engage, and it even brings to mind a client that is doing something similar, VisibleGains.  VisibleGains, like Boone Oakley, understands video and uses it to build relationships with sales prospects.  Boone Oakley has already landed two clients due to their unique homepage.

Although this is an advertising example, it pertains to PR as well.  As the media landscape changes, creative thinkers stand the best chance of promoting their message, not just through what they say but how they’re saying it.  Promoting brands, building relationships, and generating conversations are activities that require a skillful weave of creativity, messaging, and media expertise.  Boone Oakley’s convergence of media and message is a lesson that marketers shouldn’t soon forget.

Contributed by Jim Fay.  Follow him @JGF3.

Follow all Greenough team members on Twitter by clicking here.

The Rise of the Social User, IT Beware

It’s time to face facts. Employees are tech savvy, mobile and social. New technologies and platforms, from Twitter to iPhone apps, have created a fundamental shift in behavior and culture, which has tipped the scale in favor of the end user. How? It’s simple. Thanks to social networks and mobile apps, end users can now circumnavigate their IT systems and access alternative means of communication and information that are difficult (if not impossible) to control.

Yes, IT can still manage or deny access to certain applications and monitor activity on their systems, but they can’t cover everything. And this rapid change in behavior has created some tension between IT management and employees; employees protest harsh restrictions on their ability to access or share information, while employers bemoan the increased risk to company assets and confidential information.

It’s a struggle for both sides and Patrick Thibodeau of Computerworld explains this power shift in his latest article, "Top 10 IT management trends for the next five years."  In the article, he outlines important new technologies and trends in IT, saying, “The top trends affecting technology infrastructure over the next five years can be summed up as largely a list representing where IT and users are battling for control over technology.”