Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 30th, 2010

Sarah Hartshorn has a good post on Social Media Today that outlines 5 Steps To Create A Social Media Plan. If you are considering including social media in your communications plan, it’s worth a read.

AHA Take

In the past few months, in our Vancouver PR agency, we’ve had the opportunity to develop several social media plans for clients. And Sarah’s first point on picking your marketing objectives is where we always start – although we focus on identifying your communications objectives.

A few months back, we had a meeting with a client in Vancouver about their PR needs and social media was a big topic for them. When we asked what the communications objectives were, they weren’t quite sure at that point. And, in fact, were a little thrown off by the question in relation to social media. They were used to identifying objectives when it came to traditional communications initiatives, but they were approaching social media a little differently. It was more about jumping on the bandwagon, rather than about what they wanted to achieve.

We took them back a few steps, asked them to leave social media out of the picture for the moment and focused on what their overall communications objectives were. Once we had defined the objectives, we then began to delve into understanding who their target market is. Once we identified their target market, we broke that down into the components of how their target market would like to receive information and whether they were engaged in social media. After all, there isn’t any point in reaching out on social media to people who aren’t participating.

It turns out that the organization needed a range of communications vehicles to reach their target market. And, at this point, social media wasn’t at the top of the list of where the target market was engaging. This was changing, but not to the extent where social media would be one of the key elements of the initial communications outreach.

Social media is a valuable tool for communicators, but it has to be used strategically, in support of achieving your overall communications objectives. It is important to go back to the foundation of communications strategy and planning. Define the objectives, identify the stakeholders and understand within their environment, how they want to engage. Then as an organization, you can meet their needs and expectations for information and dialogue.

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on August 27th, 2010

The Era of the Virtual Agency

In today’s video, Ruth talks about how a virtual agency brings together the right people at the right time for the client.

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 25th, 2010

You may have seen the video of a woman in Britain who, for no apparent reason, picked up a friendly cat and put it in a garbage can. Links to this video were emailed all over the world, it was uploaded to Facebook and YouTube and the clip appeared on a range of broadcast news shows.

AHA TAKE

Apart from shaking our heads at the cruelty involved – the poor cat was stuck in the garbage for about 18 hours – and the seemingly randomness of this nasty act, there are a couple of things that a communicator can take away from this video.

1. If the wired in world are interested in something, they share it. Positive or negative, if it catches the attention of a few people, it gets sent on and on and on. I got this video sent to me five times yesterday from people all over the world – people that weren’t connected to each other, just to me. Think about the risk and the opportunity in this. It’s huge!

1. You never know when you are being videotaped. This mean act was caught on a home security tape. Clearly, the women didn’t realize it was there. Think about how many cell phones are now enabled with video. In fact, it’s our understanding that they don’t even make cell phones without at least a camera anymore. We’re all human and we do things that we wouldn’t want put up on YouTube. What does that mean for a CEO, senior executive or board member? You can’t publicly step out of line with an organization’s values and think that at some point, somewhere, it isn’t going to be discovered and, may be, uploaded to YouTube.

What do you think? What else can we learn from this video?

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 24th, 2010

I read (and reread) The New York Times article on crisis communications with interest. I want to repeat what I wrote yesterday – for anyone who works in communications, this article is worth a read.

AHA Take

I don’t agree with every expert quoted in the piece, but not agreeing is a good thing. It makes you step back and review why you think the way you do.

One of the experts in this article explains that sometimes, there is nothing you can do when a crisis hits except take your hits and get back to business; that sometimes you can’t get out in front of an issue or a crisis (I am paraphrasing here). He uses the Tiger Woods crisis as an example.

I disagree – specifically with the examples cited in this article. We wrote a blog post on Tiger Woods a while back and I still believe that had Tiger communicated more openly and admitted that he had affairs and explained what he was going to do about it, this crisis may have had a different outcome. Now, we’re still seeing women who claim they had an affair with Tiger come out of the woodwork.

While I agree that stepping up, admitting what happened truthfully and taking responsibility won’t necessarily absolve an executive, celebrity or anyone from what they did (and it shouldn’t), not taking responsibility can damage your brand further. There is a new level of expectation, of transparency and openness that isn’t going away that social media supports and expands. Every situation is different and should be approached that way. But, secrecy, dishonesty and outright lies will come back and damage you, sometimes worse than the original crisis.

One of the other key points that jumped out at me in this article is that what the CEO or senior executive thought they were communicating was not always what was received by the community they were speaking to. That’s one of the huge challenges – you know what you want to tell people and you share the information in a way that you think is appropriate, but human beings have a funny way of being…well, human. We want to hear what we want to hear, not necessarily what you want us to hear.

Having BP’s Tony Hayward in front during the current crisis might have looked great on paper, but anyone who has travelled to the Gulf knows what an incredibly unique culture that region has. Having a somewhat arrogant CEO with a British accent suit up and talk “at” people just wasn’t going to fly in that area. Even if Tony Hayward had the best intentions, his delivery was all wrong for the people of the Gulf Coast. It has its own culture and it seemed that no one took that into consideration. Add to the disconnect the fact that BP looked like it was downplaying how much oil was spilling into the Gulf, what it meant to the people there and the environment and, almost from day one, BP had it’s back against the wall.

At the end of the article, the point (and it’s a good one) is made that no matter what, you need to have a crisis plan in place. Especially in this day and age, it is a crucial component of an organization’s strategy.

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 23rd, 2010

The New York Times has an excellent in-depth article focused on crisis communications. For anyone in communications and PR, it’s worth a read. It’s long – 5,200 words – and it’s interesting. That The New York Times would produce an article this long says something about the importance and value of this topic and, of course, the flat out interest in it.

Get a coffee or tea and settle in. It will take you some time to read this, but it is worth the read.

I will weigh in tomorrow on what we think of the advice given in the article and how we, at our Vancouver PR agency, approach crisis communications.

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on August 20th, 2010

In today’s AHA Flip Cam Friday video, Ruth talks about communication. It’s more about what your audience hears, than what you say.

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 18th, 2010

Kevin Barenblat has a great piece on how to choose a social media partner on Imediaconnection.com.  He outlines 10 questions to ask if you are considering working with a consultant or agency for your social media outreach. It’s a good article and worth reading if you are considering bringing on social media assistance.

AHA Take

I think that we, at AHA, bring an interesting perspective and specific expertise to our approach to the social media initiatives that we develop for clients. We are a PR agency, not social media marketers, and we view the world from a different perspective. While we work to achieve the campaign goals and objectives, our approach is one that is public relations founded, rather than with a marketing focus. That means that we are also cognizant of any potential risk that might be associated with an organization participating in social media and have the skills and ability to help mitigate and manage that risk in respect to communication.

Social media has blurred the lines between marketing, PR/communications and operations. It provides an opportunity for collaboration throughout your organization. And there are incredible opportunities as well as potential risk attached, so you want to make sure that you are strategic about how your organization uses social media.

One of the questions that Kevin recommends asking is: How will you measure ROI? Measurement is a challenge that communicators have faced for years. Back in the day, we used to measure media clips. Even though that didn’t really showcase the value, it was one of the few tools that we, as PR people, had.  The world has changed drastically and providing editorial/advertising value doesn’t work anymore. It’s important, we believe, to understand what your objectives are and to define how you will measure return on investment (and success) relevant to your objectives. Social media demands that you put the information into context and not just take numbers and minutes on your website, it includes engagement, connection and the development of relationships. It can be measured and it should be – regularly. If you aren’t monitoring, measuring and analyzing how people are engaging with your organization through social media and what value that brings on a regular basis, you can’t refine, adjust and improve. Measurement is important.

What questions do you ask potential social media partners?

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 17th, 2010

There is a very interesting post on Ragan.com. They ask whether an intern at your organization could – and should – be charged with handling social media. That is a really good question, and one that sparked a great deal of discussion at our Vancouver PR agency.

AHA Take

This is a subject that I feel quite strongly about. I don’t think an intern should run your social media, but I do believe that interns and other junior staffers can – and should – participate in your social media initiatives. We often encourage clients to create reverse-mentoring opportunities where a junior or intern works with a more senior staffer and helps them to navigate the online world. This way, the junior person learns from the senior person and vice versa.

Even with a strong strategic communications plan that includes social media, for the most part, an intern or junior staffer doesn’t have the wisdom, experience or the training to manage your online communications. I think that sometimes we think “social media” and have visions of young “20-somethings” in our heads and we forget that social media is just another avenue of communication.

The Ragan piece puts forward a very solid point, one that we often discuss with clients. Would you let an intern speak to media or write your organization’s newsletter without guidance and supervision? Would you let this person be the voice of your organization in other platforms? If you wouldn’t, handing off social media to an intern just doesn’t make sense.

One of the key points that we discussed here at AHA is that there is a perception that social media is free and therefore, it often falls down the food chain of communications efforts. We, at AHA, disagree. Social media is one of the strongest communications tools that many organizations have today. It is crucial that how you participate in social media is seen as a key component of your overall communications strategy, not just some little exercise you hand off to an intern.

It is definitely an interesting debate.

We would love to know what you think.

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on August 13th, 2010

In today’s AHA Flip Cam Friday video, Ruth talks about what to do if there are negative conversations about your organization on social media sites.

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 11th, 2010

There was a great piece online last week at theglobemail.com that gave five tips to Air Canada about how they may have better handled a PR issue that happened recently. While the piece is focused on an incident with the airline, there is wealth of knowledge in here for any organization. It’s worth a read.

From what we understand, a young boy who is fighting a terminal illness travelled to New York City recently to live out one of his life wishes. At some point during his travels, with Air Canada, his wheelchair – which is a necessity for this young fellow – was damaged. His aunt tweeted about it, which, given the situation, touched many people and created some buzz online. The thing of it is, while it turns out that Air Canada was working on the situation, they weren’t communicating this to anyone – including the people discussing it on Twitter.

AHA Take

I am not sure whether Air Canada didn’t know the conversations were happening or decided that they weren’t important enough to respond to. Either way, their silence hurt them. Air Canada doesn’t have the best brand reputation and this incident, which was about a sick little boy and a dream trip for him, didn’t help much.

We are always cautious about criticizing how an organization handles things because you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. In this case, I think that’s part of the challenge. The public  (which are made up of a large group of people who travel on airplanes) feels that too much goes on behind closed doors with Air Canada. We feel like Air Canada doesn’t respect us or care enough to communicate with us. It wouldn’t have taken very much effort to get online and explain that they were on this. They could have explained easily that they were fixing the wheelchair AND were going to provide this young boy and his family with some additional perks to make up for the inconvenience and challenges they faced because of this incident. But they didn’t.

The young boy now has his chair back and is excited that he’ll be taking his cousins to Disney World, another wish of his, as Air Canada has offered to take them.

It’s a shame that Air Canada didn’t take the time to tweet or announce that they were doing the right thing. It would have been a lot easier than taking yet another hit to their organizational reputation.