Social Media

AHA - Intern

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.

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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.

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There is a great blog post on edudemic.com that showcases some interesting facts and stats about how people use social media. It’s definitely worth a read.

AHA Take

We often receive calls from potential clients where the person calling is concerned that their organization is late to the social media party.  I think that more organizations than most of us realize are still working out how social media fits into their overall communications strategy. It may seem like yours is the only organization out there that isn’t engaged in social media, but that isn’t the case. I believe that how much an organization moves into and how proactively you use social media depends on several things, including how it can fit into your communication strategy, how it will support the core business/organizational objectives, the target market or community that you would like to connect with, and the ability to effectively resource the area of social media.

Whether an organization is proactive online or not, I believe it is crucial to understand what is being said about your industry/area of business, about your organization, your competitors and the people in your business. We’ve heard for years that the best conversation skill you can have is the ability to listen. Well, that goes double for social media.

Check out the stats and facts in the edudemic.com blog post, they give a good snapshot of how people are using social networks to connect. And odds are good that somewhere out there, they’re discussing your organization in some way.

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Love it or hate it, you have to admit, Facebook has created a global online community that offers huge opportunity (and equal risk) for many brands. Recently, Facebook launched a PR on Facebook page that provides some great information on how to use Facebook to connect with your stakeholders, consumers and community.

This is an excellent resource if you are interested in finding out if Facebook would be of value for your organization. And if it is of value, there is lots here that can help you to engage on Facebook.

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