Comments on: Ottawa communicators meet to discuss social media

By: Keelan Green

Keelan Green — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:50:55 +0000

I thought this was a really good session and the discussion could have gone on much longer. I hope the CPRS will host a part two in the new year that continues the conversation but also touches on podcasts and vcasts, etc. Also, by then, people will have had a few months using Internet Explorer 7 and the orange RSS icon.

By: Joseph Thornley

Joseph Thornley — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:48:47 +0000

Hi Cindy,
You make a good point. And in my experience it’s not just elderly people who retain a preference for face to face meetings. One of the more interesting things I’ve discovered about bloggers is their eagerness to meet one another in person. Again and again, I hear bloggers I meet remark that, while they feel they know me from my writing, they still crave a personal meeting to develop a real relationship. Virtual relationships are strong, but not perfect.

You are also right that every good commuications program should use a range of communications vehicles to match the content, context and audience.

Thanks for your comments. They illustrate the power of blogging as a tool for discovery and education.

By: Cindy Bickerton

Cindy Bickerton — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:06:14 +0000

Hi again Joe: Please let me clarify as I believe we are not on opposite sides of the fence.

Simply, there are elderly folks who will always want to chat in person, head into an office to speak with staff, etc. Social media is powerful and gaining ‘market share’, if you will, in the mix of what we do. I was simply commenting that a roster of vehicles will always be needed to communicate. To think otherwise is unwise… from this desk at least.

Cindy

By: Joseph Thornley

Joseph Thornley — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 03:38:20 +0000

Hi Cindy,
I can’t really agree that “many will never use it.” I think that the simplicity of RSS feeds (users don’t need to think about them any more than they think about the html the website is built with) combined with its compelling functionality (communication delivered to my browser to read when I want to read it) will make social media the norm within a short period of time. The change will be as sweeping as the change brought about by google.
But whichever of us is right, it will be fascinating to watch the changing patterns of adoption over the coming months.

By: Cindy Bickerton

Cindy Bickerton — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 01:56:58 +0000

To CPRS and the three presenters – thank you for a thought-provoking session. As with the introduction of electronic service delivery be the feds back in the 90s, we need to embrace this newest of communications streams while acknowledging the fact that many will never use it and therefore, we need to simply add it to our bag of tricks when developing strategic plans.

I want to know if anyone can point me to the organizers of the November conference for federal communicators. I’d greatly appreciate that.

Kind regards all around,
Cindy

By: Rob Henderson

Rob Henderson — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:05:08 +0000

Thanks for the post and the participation in the session, Joe. I was pleased to be there and even more to see how engaged the audience was. John’s reply above is great – the one thought that stuck with me after the session ended was Ian’s comment that Social Media NEEDS communicators to provide the content and to engage in the community dialogue. More than ever, that thought is starting to hit home – communicators need to be an integral part of this dynamic new medium. While it can be viewed as a real threat to some, I think ultimately, communicators will embrace it as yet another new and exciting way to persuade and get their messages across – it’s a real opportunity for so many. Thanks again!

By: Ian Ketcheson

Ian Ketcheson — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:15:32 +0000

Great post, Joe. It was a great session, and I hope that folks got a lot out of it and take up the challenge of participation within their organizations.

Nice to see such enthusiasm in the room.

Cheers.

By: Danielle Cote

Danielle Cote — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 20:10:48 +0000

Mr. Thornley,

Thank you for a great summary of the CPRS professional development session. Today’s panel on social media was informative, very nsightful and a little scary at the same time. As a consultant to non-profit health organizations, I’m both a little weary of this new phenomenon and excited about its potential at the same time. As a PR consultant who counsel’s senior management on PR programs, I still think we have to be mindful of how this very powerful tool may fit in the organization’s overall strategic and communications plan. Yet, I sense that social media, and in particular blogs, reminds me ot the introduction of Web sites. Most organizations felt remiss by not having their own. Only later did we figure out exactly how to use the medium to its full potential. Hopefully those of us who work in PR/communications will do our homework first, then dive in with both eyes open.

By: Joseph Thornley

Joseph Thornley — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:34:46 +0000

Hi John,

Thanks for the smart comment. You are absolutely right about the power of telling stories and the use of social media by individuals to “tell their stories.”

I wish that I had thought to say that in my presentation.

By: John Sobol

John Sobol — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:20:04 +0000

Hi Joe, I was at the talk and thought it was excellent. Someone asked near the end of the discussion “why anyone would care about a zillion blogs consisting of banal comments about what someone had for breakfast or watched on TV”. It’s a common and therefore important question that has -I think – an even more important answer.

The answer has to do with the title of the talk, which was given as: “Knowing What You Don’t Know”. This title points to a vital aspect of social media, which is that telling stories enables us to ‘know what we DO know’. When people describe their mundane activities in blogs they are doing much more than egotistically trying to promote themselves. In fact, that’s not the main thing they are doing at all. The main thing they are doing is finding out about themselves – or another way of putting it is that they are creating their identities. If you transparently articulate something about yourself in print and in public then you gain a very clear sense of who you are in the process, and of what matters to you, and why. It’s not banal, it’s actually very empowering.

And this is extremely relevant in professional contexts as well, especially for corporations and communities that are plagued by the fact that ‘they do not know what they know’. By encouraging the use of social media, by encouraging employees to transparently share their experiences (on an intranet or on the web) they are also facilitating a massive knowledge-generation and knowledge-sharing exercise. Social media actually enables the creation of a ‘knowedge culture’ that is responsive, democratic and very very productive. (That’s why open source software development advances at a far quicker rate than proprietary tools.) In the networked age, sharing is a far more efficient means of ensuring sustainability than isolationism.

It’s a scary message for top-down organizations that have built their reputations and success using a hierarchical knowledge culture, but it’s increasingly apparent that, in business, if you don’t ‘know what you know’, then you had better find out. And social media is the key.

john