Video Clip of the Month: Fast & Easy Story Curation

May 1, 2011 by

UPDATE: About 45 minutes after posting this article, I (like a million other people around the world) learned via Twitter that Osama bin Laden had been killed. That was about 45 minutes ahead of President Obama’s official announcement. Compare The New York Times’ writeup on how the news leaked out with Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Storify version to get a feel for the curation tool’s ability to provide context in an entertaining way and help readers make sense out of a social media information flood.

My May 2011 video clip of the month is a demo of Storify, a new online tool to turn what people post on social media into compelling stories. With Storify, you drag and drop the best content from Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites to make a single, dynamic narrative that you can embed almost anywhere.

Storify, which opened to the public this week after months of limited availability during a private beta period, solves a problem facing all social media users today. Information overload? No. In the words of technologist Clay Shirkey: “There is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure.” Storify is filter success.

The tool is ideal for live-blogging during significant events to help your readers make sense out of the avalanche of information. Here are some examples of Storify in action:

For now, Storify remains a free service, but its founders are considering charging for advertising and the use of the site by brands. Levi’s and Samsung, for example, have already used it for marketing campaigns.

You can check out Storify in the video below. If you’re still wanting more, view this 20-minute interview of its founders, the runner up for video clip of the month.

What do you think about Storify? Is it a friend of journalism? Or does it pose a threat? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

State Department Abandons Cold War Mindset!

April 26, 2011 by

I was greatly relieved to learn the U.S. Department of State is recalibrating its public diplomacy efforts toward social media and finally abandoning its Cold War mindset. As part of these efforts, America.gov, an ambitious public diplomacy portal launched during the Bush years, has been shut down. According to The Hill:

A message on the front page of America.gov informs visitors that, as of March 31, the site is not being updated and will be archived. A notice directs visitors seeking information on U.S. foreign policy to the U.S. embassy and consulate websites or to State.gov.

The manpower once devoted to the site, provided through the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), is being redirected toward the department’s “social media assets,” which use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. IIP Deputy Assistant Secretary Duncan MacInnes called it a shift to a “more proactive” Web engagement strategy.

Although MacInnes said the department’s official site of record, State.gov, would still serve as a resource, a “static website” like America.gov is no longer the best way to promote understanding of policy.

America.gov didn’t even make sense when it was launched on Jan. 15, 2008. It belonged in the enduringly stable propaganda environment of the Cold War when the United States needed to shine a bright light of free-flowing information into tyrannical and closed societies. The United States’ main adversary, al-Qaeda, has been thriving in the Information Age’s environment of free and open global information flows (e.g., satellite television, Internet, and mobile) outside of state control for more than a decade.

Simply put, you would use a state communications channel to offset propaganda from a state communications channel, networks to fight networks, and free-flowing ideas to counter balance free-flowing ideas. Thankfully, the role of social media in empowering Revolution 2.0 “validated” State’s shift in strategy, following a major review that took place from September to January of this year. According to The Hill:

“It was a moment of revelation for many people,” [MacInness] said. “The government is not particularly entrepreneurial as an organization, generally, but we need to be because things change every year, every six months. We will continually look for new ways to get things out.”

With State tumbling at StateDept.tumblr.com on April 4, just a few weeks after Tumblr was added to Apps.gov, it’s clear this new entrepreneurial attitude is getting things done as well. It will be fascinating to watch how these efforts progress!

Do you think America.gov was a good model on launch? Please feel free to challenge my analysis in the comments section.

Filed Under: Communications, Relief & Development Tagged With: , , , ,

Social Media & Measurement: Elusive But Not New

April 23, 2011 by

Microsoft Director of Corporate Communications for Citizenship Tom Murphy recently wrote a thought-provoking blog post on how social media is clearly important but not the end of public relations and marketing as we know it.

“We should all embrace social media where it is useful, makes sense and has a practical use, but the baby needs to remain safely in the bath,” he wrote.

I am completely with him about embracing and mobilizing social media to support your communications objectives only where it makes sense. As I wrote last week, many seem to be mindlessly copying tactics rather than creating innovative and integrated communications strategies incorporating social media. His writeup on social media research, however, gave me pause:

“You need to check with the patent office on some of your inventions

Just to be clear. Just because you’ve just thought of something doesn’t actually mean that other people haven’t thought of it before you, or that thousands of people haven’t been working on it for forty years before your epiphany.

Research and the importance of understanding your audience is a great example. I hear people talking about like it’s something brand new. Folks, companies have been using customer research for decades. Yes, there are new channels and habits to be measured, but you didn’t invent the importance of research. Sorry.

I agree whole-heartedly that measuring social media isn’t much different than measuring other public relations and marketing activities. The classic three levels of measurement importance/difficulty, made famous by Walter K. Lindenmann, PhD, apply to cyberspace:

  • Basic-level outputs measuring message transmission (i.e., the amount of media stories generated, number of views or comments, likelihood of having reached the specified target audience, etc.)
  • Intermediate-level outgrowths measuring message reception (i.e., whether the specified target audience paid attention to, understood, and received the intended message)
  • Advanced-level outcomes measuring attitude and behavior change (i.e., whether members of the specified target audience changed their minds or took an action after receiving the intended message).

Measuring outputs has always been easy (and somewhat meaningless in terms of ROI) just as measuring outgrowths and outcomes has always been hard—and expensive. Only well-funded institutions traditionally have had the money for focus groups, before and after polls, ethnographics, perceptual mapping, etc. Even when they did, finding the right quantifiable indicators has always been elusive. After all:

  • How do you measure the damage prevented from advising management against a politically, culturally, or socially incorrect decision?
  • How do you measure the impact of building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders?
  • How do you measure the impact of a crisis communications plan that successfully controls damage?

What Tom’s writeup didn’t address is the fact that social media is making traditional measurement even harder to do. According to a recent article in Advertising Age, social media listening is not only replacing some survey research but also lowering its quality by changing consumer behavior and expectations. The article features an interview with Joan Lewis, a top research executive from Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G), likely the world’s biggest research buyer:

“[Ms. Lewis] said P&G will continue to do survey research for years, even though she expects it to become less important,” the article read.

‘When we’re doing it, we need to do it well,’ she said. ‘It’s really been easy for people to take the idea that the world is changing as an excuse to do really poor work. And there’s no excuse.'”

Moreover, social media listening is a lot cheaper than many traditional research methods. This means nonprofits and small institutions, previously shut out of strategic communications, can now afford it. No, these practitioners didn’t invent research and the importance of understanding your audience. Their epiphanies, however, are making measuring outgrowths and outcomes less elusive—a critical and timely contribution to an age-old problem and one creating a whole new world of opportunity for all, not just the Microsofts of the world.

What do you think about measurement past, present,or future?

Filed Under: Communications Tagged With: , , , ,

Future Is in Creating Strategies, Not Copying Tactics

April 18, 2011 by

How not to react to social media is found in a famous exchange between Alice and the Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don’t know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.”

It might seem obvious that you must know where you’re going to get anywhere. But because social media is a disruptive technology shift, it is leaving some wandering aimlessly creating noise and others euphorically promising unicorns. A common mistake is failing to draw the distinction between developing strategy and copying tactics.

Hammering out a coherant communications strategy is hard word. But only after a clear strategy is developed is it possible to determine how your communications mix (i.e., public relations, advertising, promotion, and direct marketing) will work together to achieve your communications objectives. Only then can specific tasks and message delivery systems be assigned to each of these disciplines so that their combined efforts are mutually reinforcing and inspire important audiences at opportune times.

Social media is not a magic bullet that enables you to ignore timeless communications principles. It is a tactic or message delivery system, not a strategy. Copying any tactic without a strategy is a waste of time, a recipe for activity without accomplishments. (Sure, copying social media tactics may have worked when social media was in its infancy and the element of surprise was on early adopters’ side. But audiences, like bacteria or opposing football teams, eventually become immune to tactics.)

In the words of Geoff Livingston, whose blog posts are famous for applying timeless strategic principles to social media and Web 2.0 communications:

“Let’s hope that amateur hour is over, and that unknowledgeable social media communicators go the way of the dodo bird. Unfortunately, while some will be forced to shutter their doors, the real answer lies in educating the marketplace and upcoming professionals about the basic fundamentals and ethics of communications.”

Of course, communications dinosaurs who underestimate social media will become extinct too. The future is in creating innovative and integrated communications strategies reflecting the wonder of the Web 2.0 “real-time” shift. Another Lewis Carroll novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, contains a memorable dialog illustrating the way today’s communicators must adapt:

“`Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’

‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’”

Do you think social media is a magic bullet changing all the rules of communications? If you disagree with my analysis, challenge me.

Filed Under: Communications, Strategy Tagged With: , , ,

HOW TO: 10 Ways to Engage ‘Luddites’ in Social Media

April 10, 2011 by

As more organizations decide to open up and join the Web 2.0 interaction revolution, some will flounder or even fail at it. Why? You need to get enough of your organization on board to really scale. Problems are inevitable if you can’t inspire the technophobic “luddites” within your organization (Late Majority and Laggards on the Rogers Adoption Curve) to adapt.

Distributing social media policies, mandating use of wikis or collaborative planning software, etc. will only get you so far with that group. Luddites will only take part when they see social media use as a social norm, believe they can handle it, and think its benefits outweight its risks.

Here’s 10 ways to engage your organization’s luddites in social media:

1. Make sure your organization’s leaders adopt social media first. If your senior leadership starts sending out messages with social media, your staff members will get the obvious message they need to use it too to respond to (or at the very least read) those messages.

2. Recruit energetic champions. Identify people in your organization who are open to social media and have influence. Recruit them to champion social media adoption and help respond to luddites’ questions and concerns.

3. Introduce social media through a tech savvy unit. If your organization has a particulary innovative and tech savvy recruiting, public outreach, customer service, etc. unit, introduce social media through that unit. Then after social media has reached critical mass within it, roll it out organization-wide.

4. Roll out with hands-on activities for new users. Road shows, lunch-and-learns, and other live presentations are a great way to roll out the new social tools to your whole organization, leveraging the positive peer influence and success of your pioneering unit (see number three above). Make sure people bring laptops to the training events so their hands (not your trainers) are on the keyboards.

5. Shape perceptions about social media. Ensure your communications about social media address more than its benefits. What luddite staff members really need to know is how to overcome the barriers they perceive to change and the steps they can take to improve their skills (and how your organization will support them). This communication needs to imply that adoption is inevitable and that the critical mass has already occurred or will occur soon.

7. Respond to criticisms from luddites. Some of your luddites may become determined detractors. You need to quickly understand and address their concerns to squelch them before they poison the well.

8. Practice behind a firewall. If some of your staff members have stage fright about using social media publicly, allow them to practice in private. They could, for example, begin listening and tweeting on Twitter using a protected account and go public a few weeks later when they (or their managers) are comfortable.

9. Use friendly reminders. Include a prompt about using social media on your Intranet home page to make it easy for staff members to remember how, when, and what to do. Or send out a daily or weekly email containing blog, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter mentions about your organization (and perhaps the competition). Seeing conversations are happening with or without them will interest them in having a say and illustrate the risks of being left behind.

10. Reward staff members for communicating. Create incentives, such as contests, prizes, and encouragement from senior leadership.

What do you think? How are you getting your organization’s luddites on board? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Filed Under: Communications, How to Tagged With: , , , ,