Social media authorship is mandatory for credibility as an advisor

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Tom Foremski strikes a nerve with his post, PR Firms that Don’t Blog Yet Offer New/Social Media Practices . Tom argues:

… I’ve always said that PR firms cannot claim to know anything about new/social media if they aren’t using it themselves.

One way to check out if a PR firm understands blogging, etc, is to see if they have a blog of their own. Many don’t, or if they do, they post very infrequently, and usually after meetings abut what they will blog about. Yet nearly every PR firm offers a new/social media practice to clients and claims that they understand this medium. This is BS imho.

I think that Tom is absolutely right. Usually, I keep my views to myself on this. But Tom’s post and the comments in response to it really hit home.

So, this is a one-time post about this topic. And before I start, please excuse me if this reads as self-congratulatory. It’s not meant to be.

But it is meant to be a challenge to all those companies that are out there peddling social media advice from the safe distance of observers. People who say "you don’t need to be active in social media to be able to advise on how to do it right."

So, to you folks, I say:

You can’t understand the process of creation unless you’ve created something

I’m a big believer that you need to be a creator of social media to truly understand it.

Social media is online communications in which people switch easily from being audience to author – without the need to know coding (thank you social software!)

How can you really understand social media if you restrict yourself to the audience role? You are really only watching one half of social media. You have to experience the work, agony and joy of creation to really know both sides of social media.

Go to next heading if you want to skip the Thornley Fallis story

Have we put our money, time and effort where my mouth is? You betcha we have. Not only me, but all the people I work with.

Back in ’04, we began experimenting with social media behind the firewall – with both a Wiki to replace our traditional intranet and a blog. (I started out with an MSN Spaces account restricted only to the people in my MSN friends list – social media on training wheels.)

In ’05, I came out in public with the Pro PR blog . Shortly after that, Terry Fallis along with David Jones (then a Thornley Fallis employee) launched the Inside PR podcast .

At the same time, we encouraged all of the people in the company to get involved in blogging (that was pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter). And as people began to post, we redeveloped the Thornley Fallis Website so that the most recent posts from each of our employee blogs are front and centre. In this way, we give visitors a chance to know our company through the thoughts of the people who work here, not through "brochureware".

Today, if people come to our Website, they can read the views and insights that our team shares each an every day through: Michael O’Connor Clarke’s Uninstalled , Michael Seaton’s The Client Side , Bob LeDrew’s FlackLife , John Sobol’s The Talking Shop and the collectively authored blogs of the women in our Toronto office, PRGirlz , the folks in our Ottawa office, Capital PR , and our 76design team, shift+control .

Last year, Terry Fallis self-published his novel, the Best Laid Plans, and promoted it by reading it in a podcast series on his blog. Not only did he explore a whole new model of publishing, but his novel was awarded the Leacock Award for Humour . (And now he has a traditional publishing deal which will see his novel published and hit bookstores in the autumn season. Way to go, Terry!)

We also created some apps – FriendsRoll and TopLinks – which we hope will help revitalize the blogroll and bring a greater sense of community to blogs.

And along the way, we’ve played with all the Shiny New Objects. We’ve learned which are simply really neat technology and which have real utility. And we actively participate and generate content in those that we find useful. Twitter, Facebook, Dopplr, del.icio.us and many more.

Oh yes. We also took our social media involvement back into the real world. We’ve helped to organize the Third Tuesday social media meetups to provide a place where we can meet in the real world with others who share our passions for social media.

Bottom Line: Social media authorship is the entry fee for social media credibility.

Where does that leave us? Well, when someone asks me a question about social media, I never have to preface my response with "They say…" or "They believe…" I can always say, "In my experience, I have discovered…" And that gives me real confidence that the advice I am providing is solid.

I listen to people who have never posted to a blog pronouncing their views and presenting themselves as experts in social media. And usually I politely keep my opinion to myself. But I’ll say it here. Very few of the people who aren’t active creators of social media really understand the nuances of the social media culture.

OK. That’s the end of my rant. What do you think?

Third Tuesday Presents a Cross-Canada Blast of Social Media in June

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Third Tuesday, Canada’s social media meetups, will close out the 2007-8 with a great line-up of speakers at June events in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, New Brunswick and Ottawa.

If you are in or near Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Moncton or Ottawa, I hope that you will come out and join the discussion. You’ll meet some interesting people who are exploring the potential of social media to share, connect, build communities and organize collective action.

Finally, as we reach the end of this year’s Third Tuesday social media speakers series, I’d like to offer thanks to the people and organizations who brought this concept to communities across Canada:

Shel Holtz will be at Third Tuesday Montreal

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If you can make it to Montréal on Monday night, plan to take in Shel Holtz’s session at Third Tuesday Montreal .

Shel is co-host with Neville Hobson of the For Immediate Release podcast and blogs at A Shel of My Former Self (his PR blog) and Road Weary (his travel blog).

He is one of the most widely followed commentators on the intersection of social media and public relations. Over time, he has been one of my primary sources for news and commentary about new developments in social media. In fact, the list of the TopLinks blogs that I have linked to most often when writing posts in my own blog shows that I have linked to Shel, Neville and the FIR podcast more often than any other source other than Shel Israel .

If you want to hear one of the best speakers on social media, consider making the trip to Montreal to take in Shel. I’m planning to make the trip myself. So, I hope to see you there. And if you read this blog and see me at the event, please say hi.

The new face of public relations

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If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I believe that social media is a game changer for public relations.

It forces public relations people to come out from behind the curtain. No longer can we be the "unnamed source" who talks "on background."

We now are in a world in which the traditional news cycle has been replaced by a constant flow of breaking news and immediate commentary. We must start to monitor conversations well before we ever wish to enter them in order to find where people are talking, listen to what they are talking about, identify the new influencers, and understand their point of view.

And then, when we have done this, we join the conversations where they are occurring. This helps us to build credibility and trust among those who are already engaged in the issues of importance to us.

And all of that occurs before the words "corporate blog" are ever spoken.

Social media demands transparency and authenticity. That means that we must be front and centre as individuals when we are playing the role of spokesperson for our organization. If you want an example of what I’m talking about, take a look at RichardatDell . Richard Binhammer has been one of Dell’s most high profile people in the blogosphere since mid-2006. He is part of the conversation through his personal blog , direct outreach to bloggers , Twitter and real world presentations . And he does this with transparency and authenticity. The corporate spokesperson becomes a real person – and our trust increases because of this.

And that’s the template for the new PR practitioner.

And I’m not alone in my view. It was encouraging to read other industry leaders underline the importance of social media during a recent roundtable discussion organized by PR Week (April 14, 2008, p.12). A couple of statements that caught my attention:

"Traditional PR is getting completely redefined. I won’t say it’s dying, but I think people need to get with what’s on the cutting edge, in terms of building communities and starting conversations – as opposed to that traditional one-way dialogue." Karen Kahn, Vice President, Global Communications, Sun Microsystems.

"The bigger evolution in our job is not learning about social media and digital. It’s about changing from a [text] storyteller to a visual storyteller. I think as PR pros we always related to the written word, and these new Web 2.0 applications relate to being more visual…" Luca Penati, Managing Director of the global tech practice, Ogilvy PR.

Things to think about when you’re planning your own career and growth path.

UPDATE: Shel Israel posted this video interview with Richard Binhammer on Global Neighbourhoods TV shortly after I posted. It’s worth looking at for an illustration of the "up front" PR person. There’s very little (if any) "corporate speak" on Richard’s side. Just a PR person speaking in plain language about what he believes about his company.

The Roundtable on Social Media Measurement and Metrics continues at Third Tuesday Toronto

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Roundtable on Social Media Measurement and MetricsHow do I measure the effects of social media on me and my organization?

At every conference I attend, most speakers present examples of the “successful” use of social media by individuals or companies. Most of these success stories are primarily anecdotal. Measurable results that can be compared to benchmarks and across other cases are much harder to come by.

This places social media at a distinct disadvantage in the C-suite, where executives are used to being presented with Web analytics, market data, conversion data and other metrics that show them that progress was made against an objective. In the absence of some types of replicable and comparable measurements and metrics, how can the case be made that there are benefits to social media that justify any risk and expense of adopting them?

Third Tuesday TorontoThis month`s Third Tuesday Toronto has a panel of measurement experts who will lead us in a discussion of how we can move beyond social media as a faith-based initiative to measure its effects and contributions to the achievement of organizational objectives.

Leading our panelists will be Katie Paine, President of KD Paine and Partners and author of Measuring Public Relationships. Joining Katie will be Marshall Sponder, the Chair of the Web Analytics Association`s Community and Social Media committee, and Marcel Lebrun, President of Radian6.

Our panelists will be arriving at Third Tuesday straight from the Roundtable on Social Media Measurement and Metrics. So, this will extend the conversation beyond the roundtable into the broader social media community in Toronto. And we`ll be recording this session so that we can pick up quotes and snippets of the discussion for inclusion in the White Paper that we will be writing following the Roundtable.

So, if you’re interested in a good discussion with some smart people who know a lot about measurement and, like us, are looking for ways to measure the impact of social media, sign up to attend Third Tuesday Toronto.

As always, this event will be free to anyone who wants to participate. Thanks to CNW Group who have sponsored us throughout the year and wherever Third Tuesdays are held. You keep the community in social media.

Social Media Measurement Roundtable

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We’re just one week away from the Roundtable on Social Media Measurement and Metrics .

We’ve assembled a great group of participants who represent measurement experts, developers of social media metrics applications, corporate communicators and marketers and social media thought leaders. (I’ll publish a list of the participants in a separate post.)

We’ll be picking up the discussion from the previous roundtables that yielded the Tracking the Influence of Conversations and Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media White Papers.

It is our intention to produce a White Paper that advances the discussion begun in these previous roundtables and White Papers.

For my part, I’m hoping that we be able to develop suggested guidelines for a social media measurement dashboard. As a minimum, we could suggest what components should be part of the ideal social media measurement dashboard and how should each should be weighted. Of course, this will vary by specific objectives and context. So, I think a good start would be to produce two model dashboards for two common scenarios:

  • a dashboard that could be applied to social influence marketing and
  • a dashboard to measure community building and engagement.

What do you think? If we produce this, would it be a useful next step? Are there other things we should be aiming for?

Other related posts by Roundtable participants :

Katie Paine on the concept of Engagement in Social Media

Customer service is the new marketing

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Freshbooks lives in the open wilds of social media. The officers and employees blog and use twitter. Customers respond in kind. So far, all has been good. But what happens when a disgruntled customer attacks?

Michael McDerment argues that by being transparent and proactively communicating with people, a company like Freshbooks builds up a reservoir of good will that causes most people to hold their fire when the company trips up.

Saul Colt tries to handle the situations in which people are angry. His approach: “First rule, you can never win one of these arguments. So treat people with the utmost class and respect. Never get into a shouting match. Kill these people with kindness. If they have a problem, try to work it out in the most level headed way. Never ignore people. I try to answer any blog post we can find, even if it’s a ‘hey we love you’ post. … We really believe that customer service is the new marketing.”

Saul provides an example of how Freshbooks dealt with an actual disgruntled customer. Watch the video to get the complete story.

Final note. This is the last of the series of posts with videos of Freshbooks’ appearance at Third Tuesday Toronto . I hope that you found them interesting and informative.

Other clips with Freshbooks’ Michael McDerment and Saul Colt :

A Fresh(books) approach to social media by Dave Fleet

Building a Winning Team

Your next great business idea may be staring you in the face

Freshbooks: Don’t talk about the product. Talk about what it means to people

Freshbook Execs listen and respond to customers

Online media deliver results. But traditional media still add legitimacy

There’s no shortcut past setting realistic expectations

You have to trust people

You have to trust people

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It should be apparent from the series of posts about Michael McDerment ’s and Saul Colt ’s session at Third Tuesday that Freshbooks is a very social media savvy organization.

Not only does CEO Michael McDerment blog, but at least five other employees also blog. And there will likely be more.

So the obvious question: What will you do if one of your employees messes up and gives out a company secret or does something to hurt the company? Do you try to curb your employees’ blogging?

Michael McDermont: “It comes back to hiring. You’ve got to find people with shared values. And at the end of the day you have to trust people. … That’s the best you can do.”

It strikes me that this is a problem for large organizations which, by their nature, lose the ability to ensure fit between employees and company culture. But having acknowledged that, for organizations that still are of a size where this is practical, McDerment focuses on exactly the right place – management’s hiring decisions and attitudes.

Other clips with Freshbooks’ Michael McDerment and Saul Colt :

A Fresh(books) approach to social media by Dave Fleet

Building a Winning Team

Your next great business idea may be staring you in the face

Freshbooks: Don’t talk about the product. Talk about what it means to people

Freshbook Execs listen and respond to customers

Online media deliver results. But traditional media still add legitimacy

There’s no shortcut past setting realistic expectations

Join us at Third Tuesday Ottawa – on a Monday

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If you are in Ottawa this Monday, May 5, join us at Third Tuesday Ottawa .

This month’s topic is The Shiny New Object Syndrome. We’ve assembled a panel of Colin McKay , Ryan Anderson and Brendan Hodgson to lead a discussion of which social media tools are most useful and which are just code looking for a reason to be.

Of course, the best part of Third Tuesday is the discussion. And that includes you. So, be ready to share your thoughts on which tools are most useful and which just don’t make sense to you. It should be a great conversation and an even better one if you participate. So, plan to join us Monday. You’ll meet some interesting people.

As always, special thanks to our sponsors, CNW Group . CNW has supported us through this entire season – and their contribution has enabled us to keep Third Tuesdays as free events for the social media community.

Freshbooks: Online delivers the results, but traditional media still bring legitimacy

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The essence of the Third Tuesday gatherings are the exploration of social media capacity to build communities of interest. That can be communities that are driven by individuals. It can also be communities that grow around a company or a service.

Freshbooks is a company that has seen a sense of community grow among its users and around it. So, it’s not surprising that several of the questions from the audience to Freshbooks Michael McDerment and Saul Colt related to how they view traditional and new communications channels.

“From day one, we’ve paid for advertising,” says Freshbooks founder Michael McDerment. “Google pay per click, search engine optimization, we baked that into our marketing efforts. That’s our foundation. … Gradually, we started networking and eventually we brought on PR.”

McDerment says that most of the value of Freshbooks’ investments in PR have come from social media. Yes, they’ve been in traditional media such as the Globe and Mail, Profit Magazine, the National Post – and they expect to be in more of this. However, states McDerment, “We see more impact from a blog post than we do from the Globe and Mail.”

Saul Colt adds: “Traditional media goes a long way toward legitimizing your brand. But our core customer base is living online. … This is where a lot of our success has come from. At the same time, while I consider it “ego advertising”, features in magazines are so important for so many reasons. Besides the warm feeling you get when you buy the magazine with yourself in it, it just legitimizes everything. Because there are tons of people who aren’t in the [online] places we’re in, but could be great for us to know and be top of mind.”

McDerment agrees, “Traditional media helps us to reach other markets.” And he notes that while a blog post may have more direct impact on Freshbooks business, appearances in traditional mainstream media still matters to most people. They think, “You were in that magazine? You must be so successful.”

Other posts about Freshbooks’ Michael McDerment and Saul Colt at Third Tuesday Toronto :

A Fresh(books) approach to social media by Dave Fleet

Building a Winning Team

Your next great business idea may be staring you in the face

Freshbooks: Don’t talk about the product. Talk about what it means to people

Freshbook Execs listen and respond to customers