AHA

Our friend and colleague Della Smith of Della’s Q Workshops gave an excellent presentation last night for the Canadian Public Relations Society. In the presentation, Della discussed how a communicator can (and should) integrate social media into the communications plan for their organization.

Della and I have developed an interactive workshop for organizations that addresses the challenge that communicators face: How do you integrate social media into your communications plan? This workshop is unique because it takes participants through the planning process and, at the end, they walk away with a first draft of a communications plan that supports their organization’s overall objectives. It’s a working session that educates, informs and creates an end result that will be used. It provides the opportunity to put social media where it belongs, as a part of the overall communications strategy – as a tool.

Della’s approach last night was focused on strategy and, even though Della and I spend lots of time discussing this area, I found the session very valuable. From my experience speaking with clients and other communications professionals, there is a misperception around social media and its role.

We are often asked to develop a social media strategy for clients. In my opinion, you can’t develop a social media strategy. You need to develop a communications strategy that includes a social media component. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, video, podcast, blogs – whatever you use, it’s a tool. Just like a newsletter, town hall meeting, event or news release. All tools or tactics need to support your overall strategy.

The online world has given us more options and more opportunity. The pace, response time and language may have changed, but at the core of everything we do as communicators is strategy.

Read more

Some of you will be excited, others will be freaked out. Have a look at the video called Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh). It’s an update to the first video that received nearly 1.9 million views on YouTube.

The information that stuck with me most is: “The ROI of social media is your business will still exist in five years.”

Some of the stats are truly mind-boggling and definitely worth a few minutes of your time. It will definitely get you thinking!

Read more

Stats Canada recently released new information on how many people in Canada use the Internet on a regular basis. The Vancouver Sun has an overview on it here.

According to Stats Canada, in 2009 usage jumped up to 80% (or 21.7 million Canadians) up from 73% in 2007. The increase shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone.

Read more

The New York Times has a good article about an incident involving Boeing. It’s worth a read.

When I began reading the article and saw that Boeing had responded to a small child who had taken the time to send them his ideas for a new plane with a “legalled” up form letter, I was appalled. And even though they have recently jumped on to Twitter, their response to feedback on the microblogging site still seemed old paradigm big business. (We have a process here on top of the mountain!)

However, it turns out that Boeing gets it. They saw an opportunity to connect and to improve their public relations through this incident and they did it. Good for them. And if a large corporation with layers and layers of administration, legal and bureaucracy can step away from their ivory tower long enough to realize that they are dealing with human beings – in this case little human beings – then any organization can too.

What would your organization do if it was called out like this on Twitter? How would you respond?

Read more

There seems to be a trend happening that is quite interesting. It certainly created some engaging discussion at the AHA office. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit beside the VP of Social Media for a large PR firm. I have a passing acquaintance with this woman and we got to talking about the demands of our jobs and how our roles have changed because of social media. She surprised me by saying that at the end of the month, she was turning in her BlackBerry and was going back to a cell phone. One that would be turned off at 6 p.m. and back on at 8 a.m. – just business hours. Keep in mind, this is the VP of social media.

Another friend approached me to ask about Facebook protocol and etiquette. It turns out he took a look at his Facebook “friends” and realized that, for the most part, they were friends of friends or acquaintances that really don’t impact his life very much. He was trying to figure out how to “unfriend” people, going so far as thinking about deleting his page and starting a new secret page just for people that he wants to stay in touch with.

I have another friend who entered the Facebook world cautiously. He doesn’t use his real name on Facebook, he keeps his friends to a small number because the only way you really know he is on Facebook is if he emails you and explains that his “alias” wants to friend you and it’s really him.

Read more