Blog 12: Organizations and Podcasting

While podcasting is still a relatively new concept for traditional organizations, leveraging on this technology can give organizations an edge over competitors. Organizations can use podcasts for company updates, product announcements, interviews with key people in the organization or to share information on just about any topic. What separates podcasting from other social media applications is that one can play a podcast while simultaneously doing other tasks. Podcasting allows organizations to enhance online visibility, reach out to different stakeholders, create an emotional connection with stakeholders and develop a loyal listener audience.

Even though podcasting is mainly a one way communication channel and is considered not conducive to engaging consumers in dialogue, it is still a very useful tool for sending information to diverse stakeholder groups. The key is for organizations is to create conversations with stakeholders and engage them. Using podcasting as part of the marketing mix and integrating it with other communication channels is the best way to promote a two way symmetrical dialogue. As a consumer, what would you look for in a podcast?

Blog 11: Monitoring the Pulse of the Organization - Relationship Building with Employees

Li and Bernoff highlight that for an organization, connecting to its employees is just as important as connecting to its customers. For top management, it is crucial to have an ear to the ground and get feedback on what works and what doesn’t for employees. One way to achieve this is through a company’s internal intranet site. This can be a one-stop shop avenue where employees retrieve corporate information, share their ideas and bookmarked articles, and blog. Avenue A/Razorfish’s Clark Kokich feels that such online and social media applications are “the virtual equivalent to management by walking around” (Li and Bernoff, 2008, p. 222).

For an organization, social media applications and collaboration tools like wikis are a promising avenue to cultivate two-way symmetrical relationships with employees. However, it is not easy getting employees to buy into the social media concept. Some employees, particularly mature workers may be apprehensive of new and social media technologies.

My career in Singapore has proven first hand that open and effective communication is the bedrock for establishing trust with employees and encouraging them to embrace new technologies. Despite staff-management dialogue sessions, social media remained a vague concept to the predominantly mature workforce, resulting in a largely apathetic attitude. Recognizing the key to transforming conventional mindsets lay in effectively communicating a nebulous concept, I undertook some research in social media to prepare myself for all kinds of questions. Our team sought to foster a culture of creativity and innovative thinking and established an effective channel of communication and trust, engendering employees to embrace the social media initiative and easing them into the transition process.

What are your thoughts about encouraging reluctant employees to embrace social technologies in the workplace? What is the best way to achieve this?

Blog 10: Positivity and Net etiquette – Why are these Important?

Waters (2010) emphasizes the need for positivity in an organization-public relationship. This means that the actions by either party should make the other party feel more content in the relationship. Positivity is key, not just for in-person relationships but also for on-line relationships. In fact, positivity and net protocol become even more crucial online since there is no face-to-face interaction. The lack of facial expressions, tone and human contact increase the likelihood of being misunderstood.

The first rule of net etiquette is to practice the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Organizations and employees should seek to be well-behaved, friendly, polite and likeable online. The more positive an experience the organization makes for its consumers, the greater the likelihood of enhancing customer relationships and building trust for the entity. Waters (2010) states: "Professionalism should drive your conduct online." Indeed, organizational and employee online behavior is a reflection of corporate identity.

It is challenging to constantly practice good net protocol, especially when organizations are trying to balance the needs and desires of customers with organizational goals.

Have you had any memorable and positive experiences engaging with organizations online? How about any poor experiences that changed your perceptions of an organization? Do share...I'm listening.

Blog 9 - My StarBucks Idea - Harnessing Customer Innovation

What is a successful organization? In three words, it is one which ‘embraces customer suggestions.’ Li and Bernoff refer to this as embracing the groundswell. Simply put, organizations should listen to customer conversations on online forums and integrate these suggestions into their products/services. The key for organizations is not just to listen, but also to create avenues for customers to talk, such as through private communities, and ratings and reviews sections on websites.

For organizations, harnessing customer innovation in product development processes is as easy as ABC:
A: Always encourage customers to talk on forums, and to rate and review your products and services.
B: Be sure to listen carefully to this conversation
C: Channel these ideas, compliments and complaints into enhancing your product/service and corporate brand.

Organizations and consumers should build a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship. After all, an organization needs feedback on improving its products and services and on developing new ones, and the consumer is eager to tell the organization exactly what they need or desire. Such collaboration is ideal.

Starbucks is an excellent example of an organization that has tapped into community ideas through social media and made customers an integral part of their innovation. Starbucks received over 17,000 coffee ideas in the first year of the launch of its online forum, "My StarBucks Idea." To date, the company has received 20,627 ideas just about coffee and expresso drinks. The site is overflowing with ideas - in fact, just 6 minutes ago, a customer posted this: “Please offer ‘truvia’, a natural calorie-free sweetner.”

To effectively tap onto customer suggestions, Starbucks has organized its site into ‘Product ideas,’ ‘Experience ideas’ and ‘Involvement ideas’ with the last category referring to corporate social responsibility and community involvement. Importantly, the coffee giant tells customers what has been done with their ideas by placing a tick next to “Under Review”, “Reviewed”, “Coming Soon,” and “Launched.”

Do check out their site and share your thoughts on what they did well and what they could do better to engage their customers. http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/

Blog 8: Photo Sharing - A Strategic Activity for Advancing Stakeholder Relations

The term ‘photo sharing’ has taken on a new definition over the last half century. From circulating a thick, dusty photo album to family and friends visiting your home, photo sharing has transformed into an online activity where personal and organizational photos are instantly uploaded, viewed and shared with just about anyone across the globe.

As PR practitioners, we need to understand that online photo sharing is more than just about circulating organizational pictures on the net. It can in fact be a strategic activity to build relationships with our stakeholders.

PR practitioners should seek to promote a participatory culture and encourage stakeholders to get involved in their organization. One way to do this is by encouraging them to take photos about the company and sharing it online on sites such as Flickr. This not only serves to highlight the organization’s achievements and special events, but also gives the photographers a sense of ownership towards the organization. Additionally, organizations can use the photos taken by the public in their newsletters, corporate brochures, websites and annual reports. This sends out the message that the organization values public involvement and support.

PR Practitioners should constantly monitor online sites to see what photos, if any, are being uploaded about the organization. Such data will provide insights about public perceptions about the organization and can prove valuable in crisis and issues management.

Photo sharing also allows PR Practitioners to disseminate images to key audiences, which they can in turn share with their family and friends. A newsworthy image is likely to be shared and the more it is shared, the greater the exposure the organization receives. It seems to me that strategic photo sharing is indeed advantageous for organizations and PR Practitioners. Thoughts anyone?

Blog 7: CNN and Twitter Journalism

I woke up with one of those inquisitive moods and decided to put on my researcher’s cap …for a brief five minutes. The question at hand: The content of CNN’s breaking news tweets over the past three days (10 Feb, 10.39am to 13 Feb, 10.39am). Pardon my excessive preciseness with the up-to-the-minute timings...but that's in essence what Twitter is about: up-to-the-minute, real-time updates!

The answer: Of the 40 tweets, the most frequent topics were:
- President Clinton’s heart procedure (8 Tweets)
- Olympics Opening Ceremony and Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili who died from an Olympics practice crash (8 Tweets)
- Weather related major airport closings and flight delays (6 Tweets)

The point of this simple experiment? A new era of reporting has arrived - Twitter journalism. Within a decade, the news industry has witnesses a radical transition from traditional journalism (newspapers, radio and television broadcasts), to web journalism (online newspapers and web newscasts) to Twitter journalism. Twitter, a popular microblogging service has caught on as a hip, efficient and inexpensive avenue for news organizations to disseminate news and connect with a new generation of net-savvy audiences. Waters (2010) defined microblogging as multi-media blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia (single pictures, short audio/video clips) to be viewed by a restricted group or anyone.

From national media organizations like CNN to local news entities like North Carolina’s Wilmington Star-News - everyone’s using Twitter. Why? Twitter's speed and brevity make it an ideal medium for disseminating breaking news. For instance, news of the recent Haiti earthquake was splashed all over Twitter within minutes of the disaster. Indeed, Twitter allows news organizations to provide up-to-the-minute, real-time updates on political, economic, social and human happenings around the globe.

While this interactive medium gives busy readers instant access to constantly changing news, several news organizations have not yet been able to effectively engage audiences as an active participant (not just a spectator) in the ongoing conversation. Twitter presents certain challenges, especially with its 140 character restriction and several news organizations are persistent on practicing a one-way public information model, a one-way press agentry model or a two-way asymmetrical model. What can organizations do to effectively utilize Twitter to engage audiences in a two-way conversation? Join me in this conversation. Thoughts anyone?

Blog 6: Vlog – VListen and VTalk to Our Audience

Vlogging is here and it’s the next big thing! From personal vlogs to corporate vlogs…everyone’s vlogging. Vlogging personalities like Philip DeFranco and Blendtec’s Tom Dickson are famous (or infamous!) and everyone’s watching them. I’d like to put the spotlight on a lesser known organization like the Ecuadorian Rainforest which has been a regular part of the vlogging scene for over a year. In my eyes, the Ecuadorian Rainforest vlog is an excellent example of how organizations can effectively employ the vlog medium for building relationships with stakeholders.

Great tips from the Ecuadorian Rainforest vlog:
(1) Opening: Video opening with organizational logo and subtitles stating the speaker’s name, designation and location help establish the context of the video. The viewer immediately knows who the video is from and who the speaker is.

(2) Speaker: Choosing the right company spokesperson is key. The speaker’s designation (VP, Ecuadorian Rainforest) conveys credibility and source legitimacy, and the audience knows he's qualified to speak on the organization's behalf. The speaker has a confident personality, is comfortable in front of the camera and is able to engage viewers.

(3) Content: The speaker aptly links back to the last vlog by updating viewers on what has transpired since then. This establishes continuity for regular viewers and allows the company to highlight achievements (speaker states that they just finished a successful show where their fruits garnered a lot of interest).
- Corporate vlogs should be a way to connect to customers and build relationships. The speaker conveys his organization’s excitement to work closely with clients. (We’re very eager to work with not just our existing clients but with new clients we made during the show)
- Vlogs should be in real time. The speaker is about to leave for a show and invites viewers to visit the company booth. He entices viewers by briefly sharing about the products at the show.

(4) Ending: Successful vlogs have a regular audience. The speaker gives the audience a sneak preview of the next vlog and in doing so encourages them to tune again.
- Thanking customers and supporters for making a show successful is a great way of nurturing relationships with stakeholders. (It is also a subtle hint to viewers that we have achieved our goals!)
- Directing viewers to the corporate website by stating that the May sales are on is a sure way of drawing visitors to your home page.
- Ending with "See you next week" invites viewers to stay tuned!

Sometimes the best vlogs are short, simple and concise! What are some other characteristics of excellent vlogs? Thoughts anyone? : )

Blog 5: What Drives You? Integrating Social Media into the Car Business.

Reading about the Mini Cooper’s successful social media campaign in Li and Bernoff (2008) and the Ford Motor Company’s social media engagement strategy in Communication World (Jan/Feb 2010) instilled in me a drive - a drive to follow in the tracks of these marketing geniuses who have mastered the art of social media! Time to step on the pedal! Alright, enough of this car analogy…onto more serious business.

We’ve all read about the Mini Cooper case study; let’s bring you up to speed with the Ford case study. Ford realized it needed to change how it talked to its customers. In July 2009, Ford invited 60 prominent women bloggers from the BlogHer network to be a part of the Ford experience in Chicago. These women created an instant buzz by posting their test drive experience on their blogs. Check out some of these blogs at TheFordStory.com

In another initiative, after identifying key online influencers in the North American market, Ford created programs to engage its publics through Facebook, Twitter and corporate blogs. For instance, Ford invited 40 bloggers to swap their cars for a Ford Flex, Ford Fusion or Lincoln MKS to drive on their spring vacations. Ford hoped these drivers would post their stories and share their honest opinions about the cars on their blogs. Throughout this program, Ford ensured transparency to enable readers to decide for themselves the credibility of the blogs. Some of these blogs can be found at TheFordStory.com

Ford also published its "Rules for Social Media Engagement"at TheFordStory.com These are specific guidelines on how Ford would practice ethical and effective online engagement. These rules echo Li and Bernoff's (2008) advice to "listen to" and "talk with" the groundswell. Simply put, listening carefully to what customers are saying online about your brand can generate valuable insights to enhance product quality and publicity efforts. Talking (not shouting) with customers and engaging them in conversation builds trust, credibility and an effective relationship between an organization and its stakeholders.

Ford’s social media engagement strategy was a great success, bringing much publicity for the company. With technology rapidly changing the motoring experience, it makes me wonder what automakers have in mind for the future. What might customer engagement be like in the future? What’s next? Automobiles that are fitted with Facebook, Twitter and Blog technologies? Certainly adds a new dimension to how social media is being integrated into the car business. Thoughts anyone? I'm listening. Let's talk!