Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

Tuesday: 12 April

It should come as no surprise to hear that Google, one of the most potent organisations in the world, has trust as one of its positioning lynchpins…yet in a (business) world still coming to terms with the fact that those defining a brand are more often its stakeholders than the brand itself, this is still close to being revolutionary, especially if it is being effectively put into action, rather than simply being pontificated on.

Lucinda Barlow, Google Australia and New Zealand’s Head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, put forward this premise at last year’s Frocomm’s New Media Summit. “We all work for and represent brands and brands are all about trust,” Lucinda said. “People have certain expectations of a brand and that’s what we have to portray.”

But are all brands about trust? I don’t think so. Australian Wheat Board? Rio Tinto? Westpac? Not exactly high-performing brands in the trust stakes.

Google are a fascinating entity in many ways, but their confluence of the dimensions of communication, products and societal centrality is one aspect of this. As a result of this it possesses an enormous amount of power:

• The power over people’s ability to access information (including information being organised in a manner customised to people’s varying ‘niche needs’)
• The power over people’s means of accessing information
• The power of influencing government and regulatory regimes.

In summary, this means the company is playing a significant role in shaping society itself.

The power of giving away control

Lucinda (@lucindabarlow) describes Google as having collaboration at its heart and giving up power to its stakeholders. What a breath of fresh air for a public relations professional!

“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Lucinda. “This means giving our users around the world access to the information they want, from the widest variety of sources, wherever they are.”

And it is interesting to note that, despite its competition being, “one click away,” Lucinda said Google’s policy is not to lock people into utilising the products it develops, but to, “allow customers to move their data out of Google’s services easily.

“We have a dedicated engineering team, working across all products, called the ‘Data Liberation Front’ to make this happen. To keep you coming back, we have to keep innovating to create great services that are important to people and change their lives.”

Making it easy to not use Google has a number of implications for a professional communicator:

• It gives more power to consumers to set the terms of the relationship. In fact, with products like Google Maps, consumers have the power to actually change the parameters of the product itself
• It is empowering the consumer to be a participant in the brand, not an observer
• The numerous listening and interactive posts it has in the online environment reflect the way its business model is profoundly influenced by its stakeholders’ knowledge, views and behaviour.

Analogous to this is the approach that Lucinda said Google takes to its stakeholder communication: “We need to be fast, responsive, open and transparent in our communication.”

Eavesdropping for insights

“There is a large and growing audience of people who actively listen to, distribute and publish their opinions online,” said Lucinda. “This gives real power to the vocal minority. According to Nielsen, in Australia 45% of people online publish their opinions specifically about products, services, and brands online and a massive 86% read them. It’s such an influential space.

“When you probe what the most trusted sources of information are, word of mouth comes out tops followed by online…because online is seen as a way to scale ‘word of mouth’ and tap into it en masse.

“And you’re not just about managing what gets said about your brand in order to effect sales directly. It’s also about consumer insight. It’s like being permanently tapped in to the world’s largest focus group. Our users decide what’s popular and what they want to watch. They talk about it. They debate with each other. Those comments are gold. Just ask United Airlines…”

Social responsibility

The power of Google means it has a more profound, socially pervasive social responsibility than most organisations. Its enormous global reach (i.e. all stratas of virtually all societies) make this more challenging for Google than most, as different societies and their various elements all have differing expectations of organisations.

As long as trust remains central to its business model, however, it has a reliable compass with which to steer itself. Communication, and public relations in particular, is the ideal mechanism to facilitate this journey occurring.

Thursday: 14 October

Part 3 of a 4 part series which uses Julia Gillard and the recent Federal Election to examine whether spin techniques developed for the 20^th century media model are now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century.

This post picks up from previous discussions on how a lack of trust virtually makes political communication ineffective. It examines how ‘controlling the message’ is the essence of 20th century spin and the big mistake being made by communicators is thinking this remains the core of 21st century spinning.

Could social media help build trust?

Old spin controlled the government-citizen relationship by managing what went into the media, thus shaping the environment in which people made political choices.

The new media landscape, however, provides government the opportunity to cut out the media and talk to the citizen directly. This ‘voter-centred social networking’ was fundamental to Obama’s ability to win office.

The ‘corruption of communication’ encouraged these new forms of communication. Social media is defined as ‘media for social interaction’ and sees the creation and exchange of user-generated content, allowing citizen voices to be heard. By its very nature, it represents a greater equality in communication mediums, as opposed to mainstream media.

By choosing to engage in this space, government can be seen to be respecting the nature of the space, that every voice can be heard, and most definitively, that you don’t control it.  This inspires an authenticity that can also inspire trust.

From a purely strategic perspective, spinners should at least understand that social media offers a very effective way of more directly connecting with and influencing the constituency as well as building consensus through government-to-people, people-to-government and even people-to-people communication.

It may just be that a side effect to this 21^st century campaigning is that it also provides an opportunity for politicians to gain back the most valuable of political capital, trust. And, perhaps success in the new media space, may encourage new success as well as rejuvenated techniques in the traditional media space.

Social media in the 21^st century - what spin was for the 20^th century

Using social media in political campaigning is the most obvious sign spin is evolving to fit the media market of the 21^st century. Obama used these tools to help him win office, Clinton didn’t and lost.

Having taken that on board the Secretary of State is now such an advocate she is referred to as the “godmother of 21^st century statecraft”, the program at the forefront of the Administration’s moves to experiment with and adopt new ways to interact with the public including YouTube and text messaging.

See the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking about 21st century statecraft on YouTube here.

Gaining control means losing control

Maybe the ‘real Julia’ gets it, through her apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the midst of the recent election and her acknowledgment then, that “…people are right to worry that modern campaigning is too managed and too tightly scripted”.

Perhaps she also understands “the 21^st century is a really terrible time to be a control freak”, wise words spoken by Jared Cohen in the NY Times article Digital Diplomacy. Cohen along with Alec Ross heads up 21^st century statecraft.

Finally, I’ll finish with these wise words in the same NY Times article, where Clay Shirky, a New York University professor says on the issue of whether or not politicians should engage in social media: “the loss of control you fear is already in the past. You do not actually control the message, and if you believe you control the message, it merely means you no longer understand what is going on.”

The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk adverse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

Ruci Fixter

Friday: 18 September

LISTEN TO ONLINE CONVERSATIONS

• Conduct a conversation audit - Analyse who is talking about you, your competitor, your issues and find out what is ‘hot’ now and likely to remain popular for a reasonable amount of time

DETERMINE KEY CHANNELS

• Find out where your audience is talking online and which of these places are most important to your campaign
• Develop a presence in these digital environments - you don’t have to invest huge amounts of money into web design I the content/purpose of the site is strong enough (content and purpose should be first priority, design: second)
• Choose tools to use in these environments that are appropriate to your campaign

CREATE AN EDITORIAL CONTENT STRATEGY

• Develop a forward focussed editorial strategy - this needs to be relatively fluid to account for the interest and issues you receive throughout your digital campaign but it should include the key messages and specific activities of interest to maintain consistently interesting and purposeful content.
• Tools can be used to schedule the publishing/tweeting of content (such as peoplebrowsr) but these tools should be used with caution
• Aggregated information from quality sources can also be used to bolster the content but should not be solely relied upon
• Content should be driven by the brand where possible

DO SOMETHING INTERESTING!

• You need to provide readers with something - whether it be you taking them on a journey, giving away prizes, recognition, a laugh etc
• Make sure that you have integrated tools into your content that will allow the user to easily virally spread your content
• Invest time to make sure the offering is a genuinely attractive, interesting and (relatively) sustainable one for the reader
• The content needs to feel unscripted, fresh, organic, instant and creative - not ‘suit language’ or marketing mubo-jumbo (bloggers and social networkers will not read this let alone spread it virally & it could be used against your brand by networkers who are keen to shoot down ‘corporates behaving badly’!)

DELIVER ON EXPECTATIONS

• If you set up expectations that you are there to listen, then you need to continue listening and responding in a timely matter
• Quite a large amount of time is required to build strong relationships
• Try to make it clear if the campaign is only a short term campaign… don’t let it die unexpectedly
• Maintain consistent updates across all channels to give readers a reason to come back to your site

Annabey

Thursday: 17 September

There are about a million reasons why your organisation should be engaging online these days… Here are five that come to my mind - let me know if you have any to add!

Online engagement is another communication channel an organisation can use to reach large numbers of people, instantly

Online engagement can be targeted to and reach specific audiences (and you can establish and connect to key influencers)

Online engagement can be useful for communicating detailed or technical information (whereas normal TV, print or digital ads cannot convey such a level of detailed information)

It forms an invaluable platform for further/future campaigns - You never know when you might need a few people ‘on your side’ online (get your positive messages out where crises often break first!)

Public third party endorsements add to your brand’s reputation and appeal

Annabey

Tuesday: 08 September

I asked myself a few questions this afternoon (I’m not crazy I swear)….

Let me know what you think.. I’d be interested to know what answers come out of my questions in blue (at the bottom)!

1.      How can businesses use new technologies to engage with their stakeholders?

• find out where (online) people are talking about issues that affect your business, your brand or your competitors
• using these social media and digital communications/communities as another channel to listen and respond to their stakeholder

this includes:

- adapting through taking criticism head on;
- encouraging cultivation of open communities by respecting communities and opinions; and
- working with stakeholders to improve their business by encouraging innovation and new ideas.

2.      What are the benefits of using digital technologies versus analogue to engage with stakeholders?

• immediacy
• relatively cost effective
• can be targeted to specific stakeholders
• the internet and information on the web is widely accessible to stakeholders
• authenticity of feedback - businesses are now able to hear what is being said about them or issues which affect them from a source other than media (which can represent a skewed view)
• provides a forum for open conversation and accountability for the business - as a result it can develop and enhance the organisations brand awareness, trust and personality

3.      How can businesses develop social networks online?

• cannot ‘develop’ a social network as they are organic - a business can only encourage cultivation and engage
• cultivation and engagement in social networks requires large amount of time investment by the organisation - also requires internal employee buy-in and commitment

4.      What’s the best way to use blogs to develop stakeholder relationships? What sort of content should you include in blog posts?

• listen and monitor online conversations extensively before engaging online - online communities have their own culture and appropriate language etc - misinterpretation of these nuances can cause more damage to a brand than not engaging at all
• blogs can be used to enhance a brand/person’s position as a thought leader in their field
• engaging with relevant bloggers (like engagement with social networking community members) can enhance the organisations awareness, accountability,  personality and trust
• key bloggers should only be approached with relevant information and only after the business has a sound understanding of the blogger and their previous work (same as a journalist)
• a blog can be used by an organisation for a number of reasons and depending on the purpose, all types of content can be included - from interesting, quirky information to industry news and facts - all posts should encourage interaction and feedback from the reader and should be relatively short and interesting (provide something new, inform or entertain the reader)
• self-promoting blogs are rarely interesting, entertaining or informative
• there is no point using digital technology for the sake of it - it should compliment wider business strategy

5.      Is it better to manage your blog/website yourself or outsource this?

• it is crucial the business has internal buy in (the desire and drive to engage online) it is therefore crucial the owner of the blog/website contributes to, at a minimum, the drafting and final approval of content being published
• there is nothing wrong with outsourcing your website/blog maintenance, hosting, content development and design as long as the site content and online engagement strategy is maintained with at least a collaborative input approach

Now a couple of questions for you to think about:

• Do you have an online engagement strategy for your business?

• Have you got an online crisis plan?

• Do you know what your stakeholders are saying about you and your competitor’s businesses?

- Annabey