Just social media crises, or crisis for social media as well?

twitter logo map 09 (Photo credit: The Next Web)

If you are a student of social media, its pleasure and pain points – by now you would be well aware of the ‘attacks’ or ‘hacks’ on the twitter accounts of prominent brands like @burgerking and @jeep.

You can read about the @bugerking part of the story here http://mashable.com/2013/02/18/burger-king-twitter-account-hacked  at @mashable

Online attacks of such nature are not completely surprising, given that the cyber world is getting to another place for brands to fight and fist it out. This is a world where every countries are resorting to cyber-warefare, so why blame the poor brands and their online army who try out the best to bring down competition. (Fact is, such attacks on brand online properties will only see an upswing now on).

Yet, what came as a huge surprise was 140-character powerhouse twitters statement after these attacks on the likes of @burgerking and @jeep.

In a statement published at twitter’s blog, users of the platform were advised on how to keep their passwords secure, and the kind of computers one should etc. You may see the statement here http://blog.twitter.com/2013/02/a-friendly-reminder-about-password.html

Given the un-swerving loyalty of millions of users and thousands of brands across the globe to its platform, @twitter could have done well in also stating facts about how such attacks happen at the first place, and more than that, what preventive measures it plans to have in place to protect its users.

In addressing any crisis, it’s useful to caution the stakeholders and help such situations/incidents from recurring.

But, another cardinal rule in crisis management/communication is to be forthcoming & clear as to what went wrong in specific cases – a simple statement of facts and events leading to a crisis, and added to that assurance that incidents of similar nature will not recur.

It’s about being loud and clear that everything needed to protect the ‘information integrity’ of users will be done.

As of this moment, @twitter has missed the opportunity to win this battle post the hack of accounts like @burgerking and @jeep

Brands are all geared to watch for and handle social media crisis, and battle them. But the question also is what if social media platforms themselves become crisis-points?

Related articles

• Jeep Twitter Account Hacked, Joins @BurgerKing in Recent Attacks (abcnews.go.com)
• More brands compromised on twitter – now it’s MTV / BET & it’s faked (adland.tv)
• Is Twitter On Its Way To Experiencing Its Own Social Media Crisis? (melissaagnes.com)
• Twitter Hack: What to do if your brand is hacked (and it doesn’t mean following @BurgerKing) (blogs.vancouversun.com)
• Why Your Social Media Crisis Response Plan Should Start Yesterday (radian6.com)

India is home to the pioneer in “newsjacking”… Who??

On test tube babies!

If you are in the public relations business, by now you must be familiar with “newsjacking”, more recently well articulated by David Meerman Scott (are you following him on twitter – you must do – @dmscott )

For those who are late, here’s how David defines newsjacking : “the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business. It creates a level playing field—literally anyone can newsjack—but, that new level favors players who are observant, quick to react, and skilled at communicating. It’s a powerful tool that can be used to throw an opponent or simply draft off the news momentum to further your own ends”.

By that, newsjacking is the easiest tool available in the arsenal of any right thinking public relations pro. And despite many downfalls and issues of ethics in what events ought and ought not to be “newsjacked”

You can read a load of stuff, all over the net, and in PR fora’ on recent uses of newsjacking, where it worked well and where it backfired.

Looking around, it realized on us that the pioneers of “newsjacking” are right here in India. You might be pleasantly surprised, but, in my view its as earyly as 1966 that and India company (offcourse with the help of their great agency) India might as well the home to “newsjacking”

Here, is a part of the story of Amul topical (courtesy : amul.com) Twitter handle – @amul_coop

On the Enron controversy!

“For 30 odd years the Utterly Butterly girl has managed to keep her fan following intact. So much so that the ads are now ready to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest running campaign ever. The ultimate compliment to the butter came when a British company launched a butter and called it Utterly Butterly, last year.

It all began in 1966 when Sylvester daCunha, then the managing director of the advertising agency, ASP, clinched the account for Amul butter. The butter, which had been launched in 1945, had a staid, boring image, primarily because the earlier advertising agency which was in charge of the account preferred to stick to routine, corporate ads.

In India, food was something one couldn’t afford to fool around with. It had been taken too seriously, for too long. Sylvester daCunha decided it was time for a change of image.

The year Sylvester daCunha took over the account, the country saw the birth of a campaign whose charm has endured fickle public opinion, gimmickry and all else.

The Amul girl who lends herself so completely to Amul butter, created as a rival to the Polson butter girl. This one was sexy, village belle, clothed in a tantalising choli all but covering her upper regions. “Eustace Fernandez (the art director) and I decided that we needed a girl who would worm her way into a housewife’s heart. And who better than a little girl?” says Sylvester daCunha. And so it came about that the famous Amul Moppet was born”

In a sense, even unknowingly, the Amul moppet has been ever since 1966, been only using the  concept of newsjacking in the best possible way, on issues that confront the people of this country – issues which were breaking news…

Right time to newsjack?!

If you chose to look at the graph by David on when you should newjack, and compare it with what Amul has been doing almost on a daily basis since the birth of the Amul moppet, what else would you call the Amul topical but newsjacking in its truest sense.

And even better, Amul has been newsjacking using traditional media (call it brick and mortar), decades before all this internet thing happened!

So, who else but our own Amul as pioneers of newsjacking? Surely, David Meerman Scott would agree, hopefully.

What are the like examples of newsjacking you can think off?

And lastly, is “newsjacking” in your things to do in 2013??

 

Related articles

• BEST Amul advertisements in 2012 (rediff.com)
• Newsjacking: 6 Tips to Help Your Branded Content Use the News (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
• Newsjacking (slideshare.net)
• Newsjacking: You’re Doing It Wrong (iacquire.com)

In public relations measurement, keep ‘context’, as a mantra!

Veracity with Tenacity: VVV Public Relations Firm Offers Guerrilla Marketing Revelations & White Hat Black PR To Take Down Corrupt Corporations With Truth (Photo credit: watchingfrogsboil)

How many times has someone walked up to your organization with this as a pitch – hey, look, you are working with xyzee agency, and I see that you are not getting optimal coverage across platforms : and to seemingly substantiate the claim presents the easy tool in the PR weaponry – the competitive news track?

The tendency of any management or internal communications team is to jump at the prospect of having more column cms’ and more clipping and mentions in prime time television media! At the quest of measurement of PR, the crucial parameter – context – is given a miss.

Stories about your organization or about your product, services or people, are not the media’s making… they are always your making – what PR does is to amplify the talking points, at the appropriate time, in the right context. And when the mention or coverage is apt enough, that is a winning communication that some pointless ‘friendly journo’ spiel on your product, which most in your target audience will attach little value to.

Both in the practice of PR (which now effectively is trans-media story telling), and in PR outcome measurement, CONTEXT is the thing to look for. Keep asking, if the media or social-mention of your brand or people, is in the right context in the right form/media.

Good to remember this – one column inch in the right place may be more relevant for your communications program, which a ten plus column inches in a media that does not anyway matter.

So, when someone comes in with a pitch which only speaks the language of quantity (measurement), ask you, whether it will impact to the power of context.

Remember, context is the most relevant and powerful PR measure mantra!

Related articles

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• 7 Silly Mistakes to Stop Making in Your PR Pitches (hubspot.com)
• How the Evolution of PR Mingles With Content Marketing (hubspot.com)

Social media – Is there a crisis brewing somewhere out there?

#bdi Social Reputation Management Conference NYC March 2010 (Photo credit: ShashiBellamkonda)

Its become sort of fanciful or on the other extreme paranoia to keep chanting about an impending social media crisis, for the organization. To be ready to handle any social media crisis that will dent the reputation is now widely discussed and advised all over.

Yet, sometimes, it is not being prepared to handle of face such an event or online burst that is wanting – rather, it’s the vision or wherewithal to see a cropping up social media crisis for the organization and the ability to act post that, which is an impediment to effective crisis management.

So, what are some of the signs of a social media reputation hit, brewing in out there?!

• Is there any unusual buzz around your brand (product, service, or people within your team) in the online space? Do you see some strange mentions about any of these, which has not been noticed earlier? This is something which is a pointer that you must take cognizance of the social media buzz, and probe to what may have triggered this. Yes, there is a possibility that this could be positive buzz. But, the cardinal rule in social media reputation management is this – unusual buzz tends to be more inclined on the negative side. A service issue, or a misdemeanor by someone in your global team is more likely to generate a discussion or post, that something good.
• Has there been an event that has occurred somewhere, where you foresee a lot of buzz? Could be a part failure or lack of retail-end availability of your offering. Or just anything like that. Its imperative that you watch out the social media buzz in that region with alacrity. When you know that there could a negative buzz coming in, its easy to deploy the necessary people and tools, and take up and address queries, and have a social-response hierarchy in place – effectively dousing the negative buzz, before it flames your reputation.
• Has someone in your senior team, be it even your CEO or someone in the top echelons of the organization erred in the manner in which some issue has been communicated to the media, or even in an one of one interview, which has been quoted out of context, and is beginning to set a negative reputation spiral? Good reputation managers, backed by their real-time experience can see the coming in such situations. In such cases, it’s easy to be prepared with an effective response, and even post it to all media, and in all social destinations, and then also handle individual queries on a case by case basis, as the situation or kind of media demands.

Here are just three illustrations that give the reputation manager or social media commander a feel of what could be coming in, and how it must be handled effectively to ward off an evil strike at the reputation base of the organization.

Logically, these can be extended to more permutations and combinations across geographies and various social destinations to serve as reputation hit forecasts.

Related articles

• Designing a Social Media Policy That Actually Works in a Crisis (cksyme.org)
• A List of Do NOTs to Include Within Your Social Media Crisis Plan (melissaagnes.com)
• Putting Social Media to Work: An HBR.org Insight Center (blogs.hbr.org)
• CKSyme.org – 5 Elements To Have In Place Before A Crisis Hits (cksyme.org)
• A #CustomerExperience Everyone Will “Like”! (avaya.com)

Wild ‘out-sourcing’ of “reputation”, or ‘owned’ engagement?

English: Reputation management graphic that breaks down the elements of reputation management and how they fit together. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This might sound banal, but this is a harsh reality that can be re-stated a hundred times – the advent of social media, and its proliferation in our lives, has completely morphed the face of contemporary public relations!

Earlier on, even a couple of years back, we communication professionals worked in our own silos, even cutting off from the ground realities of the organization and the media landscape out there! It was a closed world, and the PR folk determined what can be and must be communicated to the rest of the world – and the tools like media briefings and press conferences came in handy in this one sided communication! Even better, PR enjoyed the luxury of entertaining and enjoying the luxury of selective coverage with ‘cultivated’  media (in my opinion, that’s a huge fail – there is nothing like cultivated media – you only get as much mention as your content-worthiness!)

With the arrival of the social world, those small joys are dead and gone! It’s a democracy of communication both within and outside the organization – the people in your company, and those in the outside world are more informed, and in no time, by the power of social.

You may shy away from conversation; and you may think you do so for the right reasons! Even as you do that, the tools of the social world are making sure that somewhere out there, there are a hundred other voices cooking up a storm in your reputation tea-cup!  If you are not pro-active in informing first, and creating engagement islets with all your stakeholders, then your reputation management is being unwittingly outsourced by you to the entire world!

If you are in today’s public relations business and doing something akin to the above, you must be crazy. And not that, at stake is your own reputation?! Saner communication professionals will never do that!

Step forward, communicate first and right, and willingly engage…    when you do that, you own the engagement, or if not own, you are well in control of your reputation!

Own the engagement, and never ever outsource reputation management – willingly or unwillingly!

Related articles

• Virtual Image: A Closer Look (naseemspeaks.wordpress.com)
• Social Media Crisis Management For the Skeptical Corporates: 4 Essential Steps (melissaagnes.com)
• How The Best Brands Create The Best Reputation Online (veribo.com)
• ONLINE REPUTATION UPDATE: Reputation Management Companies Offer Essential Services to Global Community (prweb.com)

On the ‘when’ or ‘why’ of news-jacking!?

News Anchor (Photo credit: ed100)

Well, this sounds so familiar by now – news jacking, as an armor in your public relations strategy is here to stay. And not just stay – the only way you will be able to make a significant value addition to your brand is to use news-jack. That will happen if your are real-time new-jacking ready!

By now there is also a raging debate on the merits and de-merits of news-jacking.  The answer to that debate is this – you must news-jack at the right time, in the right place, in the right context. There are no two ways about it.

This earlier post in this blog also dwelved on whether brands must news-jack piggyback on a major disaster like Super-storm Sandy.  There are a handful of global brands that jumped into the news-jacking bandwagon in the aftermath of Sandy.

This post is a nice illustration of how some brands really reaped the windfall gains of news jacking in a positive brand-lift context.

While there can be a long debate on the when and how of new jacking as a PR tool, brands must look at news jacking if it has the following impact for them-

• Will it show the brand, products and services in good light, in the context of the event?
• Does the consumer see the brand has something beneficial to offer – either by way of information or services, or tangible/intangible product benefit?
• Will news jacking in the given situation serve brand-lift in the short and long term?
• Will news jacking stand the test of ethics in business and also stand any legal test, that may come to the fore by any stakeholders?
• Would all the stakeholders in the product/service be happy with the technique used to news.

As a PR professional, and an avid news jacker, ask yourself these quick questions when you embark in your next news jacking sojourn!

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Agility ‘myopia’ – will your social media plan ever help?

Social Media Cafe (Photo credit: Cristiano Betta)

Organizations’ round the world are slowly adopting to the brutal embrace of the social media.  The word brutal might sound crude, yet, that is only to signify the powerful impact the medium has on how contemporary business is done, and how customers across every business are gathering real-time information of your products, services and people!

As a matter of fact, it will not be an exaggeration to say that your customer knows better than you, or your product/service or people, more that you; not just that, the customer gets to know it faster that you.

Once the customer gets to know – by virtue of your brick and mortar touch points – they could be your product performance, your people response, or your service credential, he gets online and shares this knowledge to the world – by a blog, a podcast, a tweet or a face-book post…  any tool that comes in handy to him at the click of a mouse.

Speed or call it ‘agility’, is the mantra. And your organization being ready to embrace the power of social also means that you are willing to engage in conversations real-time, round the clock, and round the year!

Most organizations miss this point – they have a social media plan, yet, the system is steeped in old world bureaucracy – the social team, or the team that is meant to respond real-time is a victim to the rigor of seeking approvals from the higher ups – who are completely myopic to the power of agility in social media. When the need is to swiftly respond, they engage in internal debates on the how and when, and sometimes the tangible benefits/losses and the ‘budgetary’ impact of the actions to be taken.

Little do these agility-myopic people realize that there is a negative spiral out there swallowing the reputation of the organization, one bite a second (or is it faster?!). In this age and world of 24/7 social, your hard-built reputation is at stake, every minute you are embroiled in useless bureaucracy!

Social media is not for the agility myopic – if your organization has a well made social play-book, yet does not have the culture of agility or is not willing to swiftly embrace the ‘agility culture’, then there is one way out – throw the social play book in the dustbin, and get back to business as usual.

May sound rude, yet, that’s the harsh reality – the social space is NOT for those with agility myopia!

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Social media.. do you need a specialist?

Image via CrunchBase

Although the word social media is being used in a broad sense, the question is more in the context of the 140 character powerhouse of information, Twitter!

Globally, and closer home too, celebrities and the common man alike have taken to tweeting as not just a habit, but a must do. The same can be extended to posts and views across the social space.

In the case of celebrities, even just a few tweets gets them thousands of followers. Along with that comes loads of scrutiny both by the media, and their followers/critics.

Celebrities use their status sometimes to a great advantage; at the same time, some of them tend to shoot them in their own legs by their over enthusiasm, and also in their bit of recklessness or call it packed emotions. In a nation of a billion views on any topic in the universe that is India, such reckless tweets land the celebrities into controversies, and at times land them in litigation.

There are a whole bunch of celebrities who use ghost tweeters, with their views on issues be known, and the actual time and line of tweeting is decided by the tweeter who happens to be a specialist in communication. In such cases, the specialist adds in a sense of context, and takes care to see that the sensitivities are not hurt, in issues of import.

Such specialized intervention and management ought to be seen in the light of the power of social to amplify, interpret, at times misinterpret what is said – all this in the speed of light (or call in the speed of the net!)

While there can be questions on whether such a tendency to specialist manage or agency manage social media is right, ethical, and stands for authenticity, there can be no doubt that when there is so much rapt attention to every single tweet and word in the tweet uttered (or feed/post in any social post), a specialist intervention in managing such social media could be handy.

As communications outreach professional, what are your thoughts to share?

Related articles

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• How to Get the Most from Your Social Media Manager (socialmediatoday.com)
• Growth of a Social Media Team (blogsouthwest.com)
• Social media wills (news4jax.com)

Is Social ‘brand lift’ your target?

Social is all about engagement, and conversations.  The singular objective of any sane social media strategy is to foster engagement and create an ongoing stream of conversations, around your product, services, people – all encompassing to your brand!

Any strategy that drives up the engagement levels of your brand (or call it engagement of people with your brand), does in all certainty add to the overall marketing goals of your organization.

To rephrase, the singular intent of the strategy of any organization in social media space must be, to borrow a term from Jon Steinberg , to endeavor ‘social brand lift’.

How does Jon define ‘social brand lift?

He says, in one of his posts – “Social Brand Lift occurs when content that is candid, interesting, though provoking and shareable lands in the hands of the people most interested in discovering it”

In the case of your organization, or brand, the targeted brand lift must lead to an increase in a favorable perception towards the product or service. So, the goal of every single component of the social media plan is to make sure brand lift happens.

Brand lift happens when there is a purposeful engagement by the visitors to your site, followers across the various platforms your organization is in, and in the manner in which every query or concern in respect of your product, service, or even people issues is answered.

Social brand lift also happens only when compelling content is in place in all your social touch points – which are veritable goldmines that must be aimed at a great engagement with your target world.

To endeavor a social brand lift, is the baby step your social media strategy/execution takes, in building stronger and favorable brand perceptions for your organization.

Revisit your social plans now. Have you made sure that each of its components aims at a brand lift?

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Social Media… Who wants to be a champion?

ESA/ESOC goes Social Media _10 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Circa 2012, social media has well indeed arrived in full force, and there is no way that you or your organization can continue to look away or turn a blind eye to. Unless offcourse, you suffer from a monumental myopia to what value a social presence can mean for you, your company and its brands.

This has propelled the need for social media champions in these organizations, big and small, to wake up to the need for someone who can lead and spearhead the social media initiatives’ – welcome the social media “executive champion”.

But wait, there are some key facts (factors) you must weigh before you are prompted to take the plunge to usher in your organization and brand to the whole new ‘social’ world – the world of likes, fans, followers, re-tweets and so on.

Behind all the buzz and socmed jargon like above, there is a whole lot of ‘back-end’ preparedness that is really needed before you take the first step.

So, what are some of those ‘musts’ if you need to be a social media champion for your organization or brand?

• Does the organization, which wants you to be a social media proponent (okay, champion), cede all the authority in you, to facilitate the creation/execution of a long term social media plan? And along with the authority, does it also trust you with all the resources that would be needed to put the social media face in place?
• More importantly, do you think you possess the relevant knowledge and bouquet of skills which will be needed to eventually make the social media plan a workable, and to some extent measurable (the board always loves to ask – where are the results to see) one? Social media is a dynamo and keeps evolving by the minute, in some nook and corner of this animal called internet – one can never be ready with all the know-how, but must be willing to look around for emerging trends, and what works and what does not – across the globe, across platforms: are you willing to be always on that learning curve?
• Do you have the ability and agility to sell a ‘vision’ (social media vision) to your internal customers – your big bosses, the CEO, the board, and the stakeholders? And to do that, you must have the insight and prowess as to how, where, why and when of the social media plan. Do you?
• Social is free is the biggest assumption, out there – which is patently false. This premise leads to too much internal strife once the plan is kick started – yes, platforms may be free, but the team in your organization which will work in delivering the social media plan will have to be paid – and paid well at that. Social media calls for tremendous long term investments in time and money – and once the organization decides to make that investment, then it’s obvious that they want to measure the results as well. So, right at the word go, you must have the wisdom and vision to decide the goals on social media, the investments, and how the final or intermittent measurement will be done. Do you have the ability to do that?
• Can you seamlessly work hand in hand with all the cross functional leadership of your company – be it with HR, marketing, finance, supply chain and the board/CXO of the organization, with the larger interest of a successful and workable social media presence? This will need the ability to possess the leadership skills and ‘moral’ authority to counsel, in case there happens to  be teething issues – which will be almost always there.
• You are the social media champion – more of the driving force behind the scenes. There will be a host of people, who will be executing these plans from the front, on the ground – these will be a group of social media savvy professionals, who will need all the support needed; and also the counsel and intervention when there are goof-ups and crises due to errors of judgment. In the social media world, there is nothing like a perfect plan or even near perfect execution- some unexpected tweet or post or comment, unintended may be, will erupt in a big way – it’s your sagely presence and ability to lead in crises that will be the day saver. Think you are that kind of a person who will not wilt under pressure?

Thinking of some or all of the above even when you want or are wanted to don the mantle of a ‘social media champion’ will be the baby steps in your success out there.

So, ready to champion ‘social’??

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