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The Future of Social Media: Here, There & Everywhere

  By Roger Friedensen | May 10, 2012 - 4:59 pm | Uncategorized
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“Breathe, breathe in the air,
Don’t be afraid to care.”
– Pink Floyd 

Twitter: The Beta Version

“I believe that in the future, social media will be like air – it will be anywhere and everywhere we want and need it to be.” – Charlene Li, one of the most influential voices in technology, in The Washington Times.

Assuming we take this analogy at face(book) value, we seem to be evolving into a society – or, perhaps more accurately, species – that cannot live without social media. There is no doubt there will be cynics, curmudgeons and just plain cranky-ites among us will consider that assessment heresy, but the fact of the matter is this: we are a tribal species, we know we are a tribal species and we like being a tribal species. Anything that helps us strengthen our ties to fellow members of the tribe, be it smoke signals, secret handshakes, handwritten letters, telephones or Pinterest is going to survive. It will evolve, of course (witness the changes we’ve seen in the telephone over the past 100 years), but the fact is communications channels that help us connect will survive because they help US survive.

My advice to individuals and tribes of individuals (you know, like a Fortune 500 company, local dry cleaners or a marketing public relations firm..): take a deep breath and jump into the grown-up end of the pool for fun – and profit.

The SEC Gets Social

  By Roger Friedensen | May 29, 2010 - 2:14 pm | Uncategorized
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“After two days in the desert sun, my skin began to turn red,
After three days in the desert fun, I was looking at a riverbed.”
– America

The proverbial horse designed by committee

That Twitter is a very real and very serious communication channel for businesses seeking to connect with customers is not news to most folks these days.  That Twitter is now being used by the government agency that rides herd on the investment community, on the other hand, might well be a surprise.

In this post from SmartBlog on Social Media, Emily Molitor reports on how the SEC — yep, that SEC — has developed a fairly sophisticated social media strategy comprising Twitter feeds, YouTube, a mobile site and an investor-specific microsite.  Mark Story, the SEC’s new media director, notes that the agency has three Twitter feeds that target specific audiences: news media, investors and job seekers.  That’s smart.  And it’s a smart move that other companies — including those the SEC monitors — should adopt.

We see a two-fold lesson here.  First, anyone who doubts the utility and business value of Twitter and other social media tools for B2B as well as B2C communications is either not paying attention or just plain stubborn (bet you know someone like that).  Second, when an organization whose job revolves around regulations and investors can find use for not only one but three Twitter accounts, it’s time for all Luddites to pull their collective heads out of the sand and recognize that the camel train is just about ready to leave them behind. Unless, of course, they enjoy sucking sand.

Inflexibility is rarely a viable business strategy, especially when it comes to communications.

 

The Lawyers are Coming, the Lawyers are Coming

  By Roger Friedensen | April 26, 2010 - 2:23 pm | Uncategorized
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“Beware of the sharks that swim on the land.”
– Jimmy Buffet

Oh the shark bites with his teeth bared, and he keeps them pearly white.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that insurers have begun to sell liability policies to businesses for lawsuits arising from social media initiatives.  Is this something with which consulting firms and their clients should be concerned?

Witness this passage from the article:

In the meantime, companies need to think about protecting themselves from potentially devastating lawsuits, said Edward Klaris, an expert in media law who teaches at Columbia University.

“Any company that is involved in social media may well want to get traditional errors and omissions insurance, and they would not have had to do so in the past,” said Klaris.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this to become part of general liability coverage (if it ever does) as well as how long until public relations, marketing, advertising and social media firms seek such coverage on a broad scale.

We’d be interested in hearing how many of you who manage agencies have purchased such coverage or have begun to include specific language in your contracts regarding social media.  Are lawsuits arising from social media campaigns significantly different than from traditional media, marketing or advertising campaigns?  We’re not sure it’s absolutely necessary as most master agreements and liability policies cover issues related to work product, but insurance companies tend more often than not to be ahead of the curve on such matters (especially when it comes to future forecasting), and they rarely make bad bets.

Either way, this is something every organization — be they consultants or not — should begin to study.

Building Trust Today

  By Roger Friedensen | April 3, 2010 - 2:34 pm | Uncategorized
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“It’s a matter of trust.”
– Billy Joel

He'll be back

I really, really like this post from @mashable (Greg Ferenstein) about how to build trust in the world of social media.   As the article accurately points out, the rules — while certainly related to the non-digital world — are somewhat different in the Web 2.0 world (gosh, is anybody still using that term?).  The videos from Gov. Schwarzeneggar (thanking Twitterers) and Domino’s CEO (apologizing for the YouTube fiasco) are perfect examples of the article’s main thrust regarding authenticity, credibility and effectiveness.Ferenstein draws on the work of Professor Judy Olson, an expert in the psychology of trust, and applies lessons from that research to today’s digital conversation landscape.  Read this section of his article with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in mind and see what bubbles to the surface:

People are willing to pass judgment, with or without good information. Where examples of one’s competence or reputation are lacking, people will construct whole profiles of another’s personality from what little information is available.

And, as Ferenstein points out, the keys to credibility in today’s communication environment are not far from our grasp:

Few, if any, educational institutes teach the art of proper digital communication. Most of us have simply made up an impromptu strategy and crossed our fingers in the hopes that disaster doesn’t strike. With a bit of help from our friends in the fields of psychology and information technology, we can apply the age-old intuitions of face-to-face conversation to whatever advances in technology come our way. [emphasis added]

When public relations is practiced correctly, it is an amalgam of communication theory, marketing, business, economics, psychology, political science, sociology, literature, history, science and a host of other disciplines.  Well-read practitioners who are students of human behavior and psychology hold the keys to the social media kingdom in their hands if they give themselves permission to let go of biases and stereotypes.

For anyone in the public relations business — especially the crisis communications field — this article is a must-read and one worth pondering.

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Whip it, Whip it Good

  By Roger Friedensen | April 2, 2010 - 2:37 pm | Uncategorized
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“When the whip comes down.”
– The Rolling Stones

Whoa, Nelly...

Question:  In 2010, how many buggy whip manufacturers were there in the Fortune 500 list?  How about the Fortune 1000 list?  Heck, I’ll spot you another 1,000 and bet my Beatles collection you can’t find one there either.  Why?  Because buggy whip manufacturers knew that things like Twitter and Facebook were just silly fads that would soon wear out their welcome.  And besides, those new companies were only for teenagers and other such unrefined persons.

Okay, that might not be exactly what they said, but the end result was the same.  Those captains of industry refused to recognize or respond to the massive shifts in consumers’ needs, desires and behaviors that swirled around them.  For whatever reason – whether they were blind, scared and just too set in their ways – they refused to believe that Hank Ford’s Tin Lizzy might just catch on with folks.

We may shake our heads in wonder at their naivete today, but might we – or our clients – be guilty of the same thing?  I vote yes.  We need only look as far as our laptops and iPhones for confirmation.

Quite frankly, any company that serves consumers and doesn’t believe it needs to monitor and provide customer service through channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and others deserve what they get.  In 2008, such a perspective may have been understandable.  In 2010 with the very public and very painful lessons we’ve seen, such a perspective is unbelievable (and unfair to its employees, shareholders and customers).  Attached below is a great post I came across in Business Week that explains this better than I ever could.  Take three minutes and give this a spin; it will be time well-spent, I can assure you.

Oh and one more thing.  Split Enz, a 1980s band out of New Zealand, once sang: “History never repeats, I tell myself before I go to sleep.”  I wonder what the buggy whip titans 100 years ago told themselves at bedtime.