PR 101

This is part two of social media firm DemingHill’s blog on why executives hate social media. For more information on DemingHill, click on their name.

It’s high time that a C-level individual engaged in social media, and – once and for all –created a high-level overview and synopsis, crystallizing all of the strategic benefits and critical value streams, and distilling them into a language that speaks to executives everywhere in our native tongue – bottom line stakeholder value. So here you go. I’ve done the work for you. What follows is an “Executive Summary” of my findings.

Social Media Value #1:  Unfiltered Feedback

As you already know, some of the scarcest (rarest) yet most valuable information a CEO can obtain is honest, unfiltered feedback. Think about it. You interact all day with managers, employees, and handlers working to keep the boss happy and therefore keep their job. Sure, being surrounded by “Yes men” can be more comfortable, but it can also insulate you from the stark realities of your business. If done correctly, social media enables CEO’s to hear raw, candid feedback from real people – people who aren’t afraid of being fired because they CAN’T be fired. The truth is, leaders with their ego in check are already fully aware that they work for the customer – the customer is his boss – so if the customer doesn’t like dropped calls on their iPhone or the sauce on their Domino’s pizza, it’s their job to make it better.

Now, every customer is not always right (or wrong), but if 850 out of 1000 user comments say tthe new Sketcher’s Sport shoe caused them to sprain their ankle, then something needs to be fixed – and fast! CoolCleveland’s Founder Thomas Mulready is a perfect example of a CEO with this customer orientation. After emailing out his weekly eMagazine for 7 years, he decided that it needed to be updated, and set about introducing a new format with much fanfare. In doing so, he also did something revolutionary – he asked all 90,000 of his readers for feedback on what they thought of the new style – and boy did they reply with scores of comments submitted over the span of a few days. But then he did something else revolutionary – he actually listened, modifying and improving the new site to reflect reader tastes and preferences. Yes, it takes humility (“Who are these people to give me feedback?  I invented this product! Don’t they know they can just click the links?) but the end result is an engaged audience who now feel genuinely empowered to provide even more feedback, emboldened by the knowledge that their comments actually impact (and can improve) the end product.

Social Media Value #2:  Authenticity

Hand-in-hand with the unfiltered feedback above is the ability to leverage social media to authentically communicate with your employees, partners, customers (and non-customers), investors, and media, directly engaging all of your brand ambassadors efficiently and economically. Rather than layers of staff, spokespeople, and sterile press releases, social media now offers an elegant and effective medium for disseminating information either “straight from the heart” or “straight from the horses’ mouth” depending on your preferred idiom. Dan Gilbert’s recent LeBron James “rant” would qualify as both, capturing the owners’ anger, frustration, and competitive resolve just moments after James’ announced his departure. As you’ve probably noticed, nobody can tell the company story and embody the company brand like the CEO (think Steve Jobs) and by offering the ability to immediately and directly engage stakeholders – whether on a typical day, during a product launch, and/or especially during a time of crisis – social media provides an invaluable medium for maximizing brand value and minimizing potential brand degradation. Social media helps firms “keep it real” but couches it in a positive brand-reinforcing context.

Social Media Value #3: Six Sigma (Low Cost)

In case you were wondering, executives LOVE things like Six Sigma because:

1. It reminds us of our Greek fraternity days in college.

2. The other soccer dad’s don’t understand Value Stream Mapping.

3. Six Sigma and lean processes are all about speed and cost sacvings, two of our favorite topics.

By its very architecture, social media is positioned to leverage firms’ Six Sigma orientation by expediting interactions, exchanges, customer service, feedback loops, product launches, marketing, and advertising, and enabling it at a fraction of the cost of traditional media, to a much more targeted audience, and in a far more nuanced and contextual value exchange. Social media options allow your message distribution format to evolve from shotgun to sniper, from billboard to message board, and from broadcast to narrowcast.  Plus, it takes your marketing posture from a one-way, blanketing, bullhorn approach to a more intimate, just-in-time interaction; offering the opportunity for a more detailed, valuable and more profitable conversation and connection with your audience (and you don’t need a Black Belt to do it).

Social Media Value #4:  Balancing Transparency AND Privacy

The only thing worse than not using social media tools is using them in the wrong way. Your firm could very easily invest time and money on social media, and then end up spending even more time and money doing damage control because you did it wrong the first time – talk about a lose-lose situation. With social media, there’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” to do things – so if you’re going to do it, do it right. Remember, anywhere-anytime-anyone social media channels must be handled as the “nuclear options” that they are, with the capability to destroy your brand value in a single Twitter, email, or YouTube video that goes viral.

With great power comes great responsibility, and a healthy respect for the global reach and impact of social media must emanate directly from the CEO, who knows better than anyone that the same programs allowing firms to connect and influence the marketplace can also be turned against you to alienate them. And just as social media can provide the market with a transparent window into the soul of your company, it can also showcase you at your worst, doing more harm than good.  Let’s face it, your firm is already dabbling in social media as it is – so you might as well manage your risk and liability by codifying corporate expectations, establishing specific ground rules, and educating your stakeholders regarding proper use of these seemingly innocent yet powerful tools.

Social Media Value #5: Supporting Statistics

Executives rely on market research to support and substantiate any designated course of action, and devour facts, stats, and data-points like shrimp at a wedding reception. Summarized below are a few statistics buttressing the explosion of this social media trend, and detailing how Corporate America is leveraging it to realize significant revenue and market share growth going forward.

• In the last 7 years, Internet usage has increased 70 percent a year. Spending for digital advertising this year will be more than $25 billion and surpass print advertising spending (forever)

• Lenovo has experienced a 20 percent reduction in activity to their call center since they launched their community website for customers
• Blendtec quintupled sales with its “Will it Blend” series on YouTube
• Only 18 percent of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• Naked Pizza set a one-day sales record using social media: 68 percent of their sales and 85 percent of their new customers came via Twitter.
• Software company Genius.com reports 24 percent of social media leads convert to sales opportunities,
• Dell has already made over $7 million in sales via Twitter.
• Thirty-seven percent of Generation Y heard about the Ford Fiesta via social media before its launch in the US and currently 25 percent of Ford’s marketing budget is spent on digital/social media.
• Seventy-one percent of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40 percent.
• A recent Wetpaint/Altimeter Group study found companies that widely engage in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit.

(Sources for Statistics: meyersreport.com, lenovosocial.com, George Wright, Blendtec, Mashable.com, econsultancy.com, businessweek.com )

Getting Your Board On Board

Lest we forget, even the Boss has a Boss – they’re called the Board of Directors – and these are the people that recruit and hire CEO’s for the purpose of serving as a charismatic and visionary leader of their organization. And so I urge you, don’t disappoint them when it comes to leveraging social media within your organization. The “Bang for the Buck” value proposition is too compelling to ignore, and the fact is – your competitors are already entering this arena and establishing new service baseline norms and minimum threshold expectations – so standing still amounts to losing ground and therefore is not an option. What you need is a plan.

Do I still hate social media?  No, but I’m only going to embrace it on the “executive terms” that have served me so well to this point in my career and they are, “If you’re going to do something, go all in and do it right.”  From now on, all social media, social marketing, and social networking will be discussed in the context – not of a campaign (which starts and ends) – but as part of an ongoing, strategic, and systematic dialog with our stakeholders and marketplace.

Executives have the focus and vision to road map strategies playing out three, five, and 10 years into the future. But, we’re also “plodders” and are comfortable with short, measured, consistent steps – day in and day out – as long as we know that they are aligned with reaching a desired goal. When we discuss your social media strategy, the focus will be on consistency and sustainability over the long haul. Remember, executives don’t have the ego needs, risk profiles, or the time to be on the bleeding edge, or even the cutting edge. We just want it to work.

I can confidently predict that every month for the next 100 years there will be a new “Must Have” application, portal or community that one of your employees will discover, and then try to convince you that your company will implode if you don’t immediately join, link, or Retweet. In five years, all but three of these ideas will probably be forgotten.  During our meeting, we will discuss how to frame out an enterprise-wide social media strategy, predicated on the foundation of proven tools and that have stood the test of time and offer “Best-In-Class” results, so that you will be empowered to handle these conversations proactively in the context of a larger road map, rather than reacting to these weekly ambushes in a dismissive defensive way. Remember, our goal for social media is not a lark, but a lifestyle and work-shopping a strategy which builds on stable, scalable tools, yet also affords the flexibility to address unprecedented “Black Swan” technology developments, provides you with a welcome buffer from being whipsawed by a weekly website.  Between the two of us, we’ll finally take that reliable “80/20 Rule” and apply it to social media, and then spend time focusing on the 80 percent of stakeholder value that can be extracted with 20% of the effort (while knowingly and purposefully ignoring the remaining 20 percent of value which takes up 80 percent of the effort).

The Bottom Line

In the Forward of Geoffrey Moore’s bestseller “Crossing the Chasm” Regis McKenna writes:

“Fundamentally, marketing must refocus away from selling product and toward creating relationships. Customers don’t like to be ‘owned’ if that implies lack of choice or freedom. But they do like to be ‘owned’ if what that means is a vendor taking ongoing responsibility for the success of their joint ventures.  Ownership in this sense means an abiding commitment and a strong sense of mutuality in the development of the marketplace. When customers encounter this kind of ownership, they tend to become fanatically loyal to their supplier, which in turns builds a stable economic base for profitability and growth.”

While there will always be a “me” in media – social media, social marketing, and social networking tools were designed to work best as a conduit for enabling information exchange, establishing a dialog, and creating a two-way conversation with your audience. At the end of the day, social media is simply about creating and maintaining relationships – and even and executive can do that.

Irina Sharma carried her passport everywhere during the first days of a public relations campaign for Durex condoms. The campaign had been planned and implemented by Sharma’s agency – the Dubai-based eKadaa PR. She was being cautious. It is possible that the Emirate of Dubai would decide she had crossed a line and would deport her. She wanted to be ready if she was hustled onto an airplane.

I had coffee with Sharma last week in the Milwaukee Hilton Hotel. I wanted to talk to her because I am convinced she, and public relations professionals like her, are the future of global public relations. Those of us who practice in the Western world – and think how we do things will work everywhere – should heed the lessons Sharma can teach us.

Sharma founded eKadaa PR in 2003. She went into public relations after a career in broadcasting. That broadcasting career included a stint as an intern with Howard Stern. eKadaa is a full-service public relations agency whose current clients include Lufthansa German Airlines, German National Tourist Board, Canon, National Geographic, Clinique, Crocs, Swarovski, Technogym and many more.

Sharma was in Milwaukee due to the efforts of Ann Knabe, an instructor in communications and public relations at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. Knabe is an accomplished public relations practitioner in her own right. When she is not teaching at Whitewater, she is a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Air Force Reserve where she handles public affairs. Knabe has served as a public affairs officer for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the war court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and most recently in the Pentagon. She also holds the prestigious Accredited in Public Relations designation from the Public Relations Society of America.

Knabe met Sharma when she traveled to Dubai in May to study public relations there.

Irina Sharma (left) and Ann Knabe spoke to at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater about global public relations.

Dubai’s diverse, international makeup is ideal for global business and is “absolutely open to the U.S. and its business and practices,” Knabe told the Milwaukee Business Journal. “To many Arabs, Americans come off as a culture of ‘know-it-alls. But continued efforts on education can help change that perception.”

Why do I think Sharma, and those like her, are the future of public relations? Because to use New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s metaphor, the world is flat and getting flatter. Global communication and global business are now almost instantaneous.

But every country has different rules and mores that need to be respected. Campaigns have to be tailored to fit those rules. The problem is that in many societies, the rules are unwritten. These may be countries that have deep broadband penetration and whose residents wear Nikes, but there are still lines that cannot be crossed. You can complain about how unfair that is, or how backward the society may seem. Tough. It’s their playing field and they get to decide how the game is played.

“For instance, Saudis don’t feel comfortable talking to women,” Sharma explained. “In Dubai, I can wear a dress that exposes my shoulders. But, if I go 20 minutes away to Sharjah, I have to cover up.”

The Durex campaign was done without mentioning sex because that’s taboo in the local culture. Sharma explained at all times the cultural, traditional and religious values were respected. The campaign focused on HIV-AIDS prevention and education. I suspect that many Western account executives would insist on somehow including sex. The mantra for many is sex sells. From what I gather, mentioning sex in many cultures can get you deported. In some countries it can get you jailed.

The culture mores in the Middle East are very different than what most Westerners are used to. While Dubai is a cosmopolitan, international city of expatriates from all over the world, the United Arab Emirates is an Islamic country. Sharma knew she had to walk carefully along the mountain ridge in publicizing an item in such a culture.

“I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be,” Sharma said.

That Sharma was able to lead an English company along the ridge also without stumbling speaks to her abilities – and is a key point we in the West need to learn. The key to any public relations is knowing your audience. As I said, we in the West say we understand that. Too often, we look at the world and see ourselves. We think what works in Peoria will work Abu Dhabi or Kuala Lumpur or even Dublin. As Sharma will tell you, that isn’t so.

“You cannot just cut and paste a campaign,” Sharma explained.

The reason I think is that many Americans have problems understanding this is because we often suffer from the malady known as culturus blinderus. I am always amazed by Americans who don’t speak a second language (Spanish, in case you are wondering), don’t make an effort to learn the cultural mores of the area in which they are traveling ,and are mystified why when they ask for pepperoni in Italy, they get little peppers, instead of sausage (Quite tasty, actually).

Irina Sharma is the kind of public relations person who knows these things. (Well, I am not sure about the pepperoni thing. I didn’t ask) She is also the kind of public relations person that is going to eat an American agency’s lunch when it comes to doing business outside of North America. Perhaps inside North America too, when it comes to representing overseas companies in the United States.

Smart marketing U.S. marketing people should be watching and learning from Irina Sharma and those like her. She and those like her are the future of global public relations.

NOTE TO MY READERS: If you are interested in a free, introductory course on social media, email me. Myself and five  other social media acolytes are doing the second round of a our Social Media Book Club on Blog Talk Radio We are giving away an EBook written by social media guru Simon U. Ford. Ford sold several thousand of the books for $47. However, we have permission to give it away for a limited time.We also will be holding a series of four virtual “book clubs” to go over the book. Between the book and the four of us, you will receive a comprehensive overview of social media. Because we want to provide the best possible training, there are only be 50 spots available for the book club. For more information, go to the Social Boomers site. The first show will be Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 8 pm CDT (GMT -6). The URL is bit.ly/Y253H.

If you would like a copy of the book, email jjcole54 at gmail.com. It is helpful to have.

The online classified advertising service Craigslist has been in the news a lot lately. None of those stories are the kinds of clippings that will be posted on the company bulletin board as morale builders. Accusations that people are using Craigslist as a high tech brothel, stories of a murderer who found his victims via the service, and the latest story: a woman raped because her husband solicited the assault on Craigslist.

If there were ever a situation that cried for a proactive crisis communications strategy, this would be the one. Yet, I have yet to see any evidence that Craigslist has one. Rather, the company seems to be responding on an ad hoc basis. That’s not a good idea and in the long run, it could hurt the company.

As a note, I use Craigslist sometimes. It is a very handy site for finding all kinds of things. I like it.

That being said, the way Craigslist reacts to stories of people committing murders by placing ads on their site or scammers finding victims through the site, is in my opinion, just plain wrong. All it does is attract grand standing politicians who want to make a name for themselves. What it could do is eventually attract some bulldog of a trial lawyer who sees deep pockets. Yeah, that lawyer might eventually lose the case, but think of the negative publicity, and the money Craigslist will spend defending itself.

Now obviously any site that has over 50 million unique visitors each month is going to attract some strange people. No question about that. Remember, until 2008 pornographic sites dominated the Internet. It took social media usages to knock porn off of the mountaintop.

It’s not Craigslist’s fault these people show up at their doorstep. However, the San Francisco-based website could be a whole lot more proactive when that fringe element uses the website to pull off a crime.

‘What makes Craigslist susceptible to crime is the perceived anonymity of the site; Trench Reynolds told the North Carolina-based News & Observer. Reynolds runs CraigsCrimeList, a site dedicated to tracking crime believed to be spawned by Craigslist

Reynolds said the most common crime connected to Craigslist is fraud or scams, with robbery second. Rapes have been connected to Craigslist solicitations, he said.

Craigslist does cooperate with authorities when it is alerted that someone has used the service to commit a crime.

Craigslist is also just coming off a battle where were several state attorneys general forced the company the curtail its erotic ad section. I suspect it is feeling more than a little bruised and battered.

Still, I cringed when I read the following statement from Craigslist spokesperson Susan MacTavish Best in the Columbus Dispatch: “she questioned whether it is standard practice for reporters to call, for instance, General Motors every time someone is injured in connection with a GM vehicle.”

Well, yeah they do when it shown that some action by General Motors or another auto company contributed to the accident. Any company that manufactures a product can tell you that.

Making a statement like that is not the way to handle a crisis. For that’s what this is from Craigslist – a crisis. So, I think rather than react every time some idiot uses the service for criminal purposes, the service should come up with a plan to prevent such things from happening.

What would I do is:

• No anonymous ads, period. If you read this blog regularly, you know I worked for newspapers for over two decades. No one could ever place an anonymous ad in a newspaper. The paper might agree not to use a name, but it always knew everything about the person placing the ad: name, address, phone number, bank information, etc. True papers got fooled sometimes, but it was rare. All it takes right now to post on Craigslist and reply to ads is an e-mail address.
• No personals period. Leave those to the alternative press and the dating sites. It seems people placing personal ads commit a lot of the crimes. To me, Craigslist is on-line sales forum, not a lonely-hearts site.
• Develop someway to review the ads. According to Craigslist’s website, it has 28 employees. I cannot imagine another web company, say Google, running with only 28 employees. Yeah, I know the whole privacy argument and most times I agree with it. But, there has to be some way to screen for the wackos and the weirdoes. I cannot believe there isn’t a search algorithm that could flag potentially dangerous ads for review by a staff member.
• Have a much better response when something does happen. A flack such Best should never be making a comment about a company. And I say that as a flack myself. Good public relations should leave no fingerprints. Either CEO Jim Buckmaster or founder Craig Newmark should be doing the talking.
• As I wrote in an earlier blog about crisis communications, just saying “our heart goes out to the victim” isn’t enough. If I were Newmark or Buckmaster,  I would sent up a fund to pay for the bills of victim’s who were the victims of a criminal using Craigslist. I know Craiglist’s attorneys will argue that is essentially admitting liability. I don’t think it is, and besides, it protects the brand platform. Or make contributions to victim’s rights funds, or over rewards for catching people who use Craigslist to commit crimes. Do something to show some empathy.

Now, I want to know what you think. I struggled with this blog. I am usually a First Amendment absolutist. I think nothing should be censored. However, the marketplace doesn’t agree. Companies have gone out of business for less. So again, let me know what you think.

I post this blog every Monday. If you have questions you would like me to answer, please email me. I am always looking for topics and input. My email address is in the next paragraph.

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My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.

Email me at jjcole54@gmail.com