We saw pro-democracy protestors create spontaneous swarms of people through text messages during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. We saw Twitter leap to life during the aftermath of rigged elections in tiny Moldova. Now, Iran is having its turn using technology and social media tools to communicate amongst the political opposition. In a rather ironic article published in the New Republic, one NYU politics professor outlines the proper steps for authoritarian states to take in order to have the best success stealing elections and repressing the dissent of the youth … and one of these steps includes crushing any access to these important tools:
4) Technology–especially social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, but also more basic technology such as text messaging–is a friend of opposition forces attempting to combat electoral fraud, so do what you can to minimize its impact. One of the lessons from the Orange Revolution was how valuable text messaging could be as an organizing tool. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the early stories out of Iran was about how text messaging services (as well as Facebook) had been shut down, with Foreign Policy reporting that “the person coordinating the blackout, Iranians report, is the son of the Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.” Interestingly, CNN is now reporting that Twitter continued to play a role in the protests over the weekend, a topic I have written about here.
Twitter is sure getting a lot of media hype. Today Time magazine has something actually worth reading about this platform, which is a cut above the rest of the gushing adoration you’ll find out there. I agree with the journalist about the “surprising depth” that 140 characters can bring, and although I agree with the skeptics who think its marketing appeal is limited, it is a powerful communications tool for awareness campaigns.
And yet as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this “ambient awareness”: by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don’t think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.
The Wall Street Journal has posted a great video discussing the only slightly overblown Twitter phenomenon with the social media luminaries Biz Stone and Evan Williams.
I have written on this blog many times about the limits of social media. It is not a panacea, not a replacement for PR, and it is most certainly not a substitution for newspapers and traditional media. Yet the impossible promises keep on coming, and when businesses and campaigns are let down by the results, they can even feel cheated. That’s definitely the vibe picked up by Robert Strohmeyer over at PCWorld, writing (rather ironically) on the BizFeed blog:
Lately it seems I can’t go anywhere without running into a gaggle of social media consultants bloviating about the wonders of social network marketing. Sure, you’ve seen ‘em, too. Slick shake-and-bake “experts” promising to help you leverage the power of Twitter and Facebook to raise your profile and, inexplicably, boost your profits. But scratch the surface on most of these claims and they instantly crumble. Meanwhile, it seems the only people making any money in social media are the consultants themselves.
Russia sure has it fair share of problems to address - no democracy, no free press, and regular attacks on human rights lawyers and political prisoners - but on the other hand, its young President Dmitry Medvedev is surely one of the more technically savvy world leaders out there. Not only is he regularly video blogging (yes, I refuse to use the term vlogging - I believe we should all maintain a healthy intolerance for obnoxiously new words) from the Kremlin’s homepage, he also runs a blog at LiveJournal, which is sort of like cross between MySpace and Facebook, and is incredibly popular in Russia. Not only can just anybody become “friends” with the President, they can leave completely uncensored comments - which is remarkable transparency to me, and surprising for the president of a country where many of those who speak out risk their lives. What’s even better, is that somebody is actually reading these comments, and in a few cases they have taken action. Now that’s much better PR, Mr. Medvedev!
What surprised him was that the Kremlin responded — and quickly. Two days after his post, he learned that Medvedev was looking into the matter. Then Ryazan’s governor called a news conference.
“To be honest, I didn’t expect anything because there were a lot of comments” on the blog, Zubarev said Wednesday. “We were very pleased because the situation really is terrible.”
I haven’t had very many clients who have hired me to help them draft a social media policy for their company - meaning what employees are allowed and not allowed to do out there on the interwebs - but I do know that things can quickly get pretty absurd and draconian (I remember one NYC law firm whose strict rules in theory would even prevent an employee from using an online dating site). Most of my services relate to the creation of online content, not the suppression of it, but still this is an area which presents some major PR vulnerabilities for many groups.
For those who haven’t given the matter very much thought, here’s a recent piece from Mashable with some easy guidelines on things to keep in mind (although I don’t want to count how many blog articles I’ve read with a similar headline). If you are a little pressed for time, I’ll summarize. 1) You should have a policy, at the very least to cover your bases in terms of liability; 2) employees who blog/twitter/facebook etc. can be good for the brand - it earned Dell an extra million bucks, for example; 3) a good policy covers everybody, not just marketers; 4) you should train people how to use it; and lastly 5) you should do it now.
It’s not rocket science, but getting down to the brass tacks of what is acceptable conduct in these spaces and what is unacceptable can be pretty tough - especially if you want to avoid being perceived as a censor.
…And here I thought I was the only one. A column from Mark Penn of Burson Marsteller published in the Wall Street Journal points out that 1.7 million Americans are earning their living from blogging, which makes our country “the most noisily opinionated nation on earth.” Even though this is my livelihood I am talking about here, I can’t help but feel like all this hype has got to come crashing down at some point.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as “spokesbloggers” — paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around — but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The Los Angeles Times has an interesting social media article running today … it contains the usual going-through-the-motions garbage that most of us already know about, but there is also an interesting issue arising of not only whether or not major brands have established their presence on social media platforms like Twitter, but also how well they are using it … meaning that during a PR crisis, your team had better be responding to other users IMMEDIATELY (read more about the Dominos experience on WSJ). This brings up the issue of response times in social media, requiring the clunky and unwieldy large corporations to streamline their approval process of what gets published on these sites. Given how long it has taken (at least in my experience) to get a large company to approve a simple press release, I am going to go ahead and predict that many brands are going to experience a painful and embarrassing adjustment period.
Last week, Domino’s was handed a PR nightmare when a video showed up online showing two employees laughing as they prepared food in a deliberately unsanitary way.
The video quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
Domino’s initial instinct was to try to dispose of the situation quietly by responding only to concerned consumers who had already seen the video, rather than risk broadening its exposure by making a public statement.
But chatter about the problem spilled over into Twitter, whose expansive micro-messaging network is becoming an online circulatory system for news, pumping information between media organs, consumers and businesses themselves.
We all think social media is great. More and more people use it, and if a company/organization doesn’t establish their presence, they can look “out of touch.” But does it pay off? There are some dark clouds out there hanging over social media’s actual return on investment (ROI) - and even though in my position as a social media consultant who should want to make you think otherwise - it’s important to be aware that investing in a social media campaign doesn’t always boost sales for consumer products.
Today I came across this report, “The ROI on Social Media Marketing,” prepared by Aberdeen Group that looks into the matter. Even though the results of the study are positive, the jury is still out on ROI, and there is certainly a mismatch between the growth in investment in social media campaigns vs. the strength of data we have seen on their results. (That said, for the kind of social media that I do - usually issues-driven advocacy and awareness campaigns - I am less concerned in my work whether my target audience is making different purchasing decisions).
Take for example, this quote from BtoB magazine:
“Most people seem to be doing it on faith,” said Paul Gillin, principal of Paul Gillin Communications and a BtoB columnist. “There have been some measurements of social media. The most popular ones are uplift in brand awareness and cost-cutting in areas such as research.”
However, he said, “I can’t see any indication of revenue growth measurements that people are using. The perception now is that the ROI on social media is good, if only because the “I’ part of the equation is so small.”
We’re in an economic crisis. I hold my own theories about what caused it and how to get out of it, but this isn’t the place for that. What we do know is happening is that there are quite a lot of companies, both private and public, who will find themselves being the bearer of bad news, whether that is layoffs, quarterly financial reports, or revisions to projections - basically anything that cause the stock price to plummet or simply spread pessimism and lack of confidence among your business partners.
Whenever there is bad news to report, public relations of course gets involved, through its sister sector of so-called “investor relations.” (You get to charge much higher rates if you are willing to assume some liability). If the classic maxim of 2008 holds true - that social media has “revolutionized” public relations - then one would imagine that all these companies reporting their disastrous financials would find themselves in a moment of important change. That’s the jist of this interesting article from the Financial Times, which even has some examples of someone using Twitter to give live updates from the shareholders conference.
Social media are changing the way companies handle investor relations and corporate disclosure, offering the potential for more transparency, but also raising questions about legal compliance. (…)
But as more corporate information is shared through blogs and services such as Facebook and Twitter, the drive for transparency can collide with laws that regulate financial disclosures. Dell’s vice-president of investor relations, Lynn A. Tyson, said she was initially reluctant to start Dell Shares. “One of the challenges on the blogosphere is disclosure,” she said. “How do you comply with all the disclosure requirements in an environment that could potentially create more risk?”
We saw pro-democracy protestors create spontaneous swarms of people through text messages during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. We saw Twitter leap to life during the aftermath of rigged elections in tiny Moldova. Now, Iran is having its turn using technology and social media tools to communicate amongst the political opposition. In a rather ironic article published in the New Republic, one NYU politics professor outlines the proper steps for authoritarian states to take in order to have the best success stealing elections and repressing the dissent of the youth … and one of these steps includes crushing any access to these important tools:
Twitter is sure getting a lot of media hype. Today 
Russia sure has it fair share of problems to address - no democracy, no free press, and regular attacks on human rights lawyers and political prisoners - but on the other hand, its young President Dmitry Medvedev is surely one of the more technically savvy world leaders out there. Not only is he regularly video blogging (yes, I refuse to use the term vlogging - I believe we should all maintain a healthy intolerance for obnoxiously new words) from the Kremlin’s homepage, he also runs a blog at LiveJournal, which is sort of like cross between MySpace and Facebook, and is incredibly popular in Russia. Not only can just anybody become “friends” with the President, they can leave completely uncensored comments - which is remarkable transparency to me, and surprising for the president of a country where many of those who speak out risk their lives. What’s even better, is that somebody is actually reading these comments, and in a few cases they have taken action. Now that’s much better PR, Mr. Medvedev!
The Los Angeles Times