Social media means opportunity for public relations practitioners

December 12, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

I frequently am asked the question, “Where does social media belong – with advertising or public relations?” My answer invariably is that it resides with those people who have the imagination and intelligence to explore and understand social media’s potential.

Some of those people may come from advertising backgrounds, some from public relations, some from journalism, some from technology, some from other places. My own social media community reflects this blend. My feedreader includes social media opinion leaders who started out in advertising, public relations, journalism, design, marketing, government, and other diverse places. Their backgrounds are disparate. But they all share in common an intellectual curiosity and willingness to take risks.

Having said this, I do feel that social media presents an unprecedented opportunity for public relations practitioners who embrace it.

The driving force of social media is people’s desire to connect with others. Public relations’ focus on conversation and relationships attunes PR practitioners to social media and its potential for community building and long term relationships between organizations and communities of interest.

Social media require skills that public relations practitioners have – listening, analysis, clear writing and speaking and, above all, a sensitivity to the interests and needs of the community. Defining and understanding the interests and predispositions of “target audiences” has long been a mainstay of public relations.We should be able to master the shift in perspective from “audience” to “community of interest” and from mediated communication to conversational communications.

The new realm of public relations is in defining and understanding communities of interest. Who are they? What brings them together? How can you contribute? What do you have that they might value, want and appreciate? What is their culture? This requires the skills we’ve always had – to listen, to frame content in a way that is meaningful and responds to the interests of the person at the other end of the line; to communicate clearly; to respect others’ time and attention.

The rewards will be great for PR pros who embrace social media.

We will expand the scope of our practice, escaping the shackles of media relations by joining and contributing to communities of interest, without intermediaries, in our own voices. Let me say that again – in our own voices. No ghost writing wanted.

We will gain attention from key decision makers looking for strategic insight about what these new media mean for their organizations.The need for authenticity presents the opportunity to build a practice on the provision of solid strategic advice to forward looking clients who see the potential but seek expert guidance. No arms and legs work here.

Of course, we must do it right. Success in social media will come only if we open ourselves to new possibilities and explore them with energy and patience. And above all, if public relations professionals are to fully realize the potential that social media has for our practice, we must be open about sharing our experience and knowledge with one another.

The advantage of proprietary information is ephemeral in a world of open sourcing and peer creation. The successful practitioner will realize that we all rise on a common tide of understanding and expertise.

The true winners will be those who are seen to give more than they receive, who truly understand the gift economy and the culture of generosity. Success in social media starts with this understanding.

Cross posted on the blog of the Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms

UPDATE: Brendan Hodgson carries these thoughts further. It’s not just about “joining and contributing to communities of interest, but knowing the “hearts and minds” of those audiences we need to reach.”

Joe's Social Media Bookshelf

December 10, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

I subscribe to over 350 blog feeds. These are my window on the world for the news of the day and the current leading edge thinking on social media, public relations, marketing and technology.

This daily reading gives me bite sized chunks of information. But I still turn to books for the broader context and depth that only a longer form study of a topic can provide.

I’ve read some great books. And I’ve read some not-so-good books. To help you make the best of your reading time, here are my recommendations for your social media bookshelf.

Top Shelf

The Cluetrain Manifesto

This book was ahead of its time. It’s authors, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searles and David Weinberger, laid out the vision for the Read/Write Web at a time when the ability to code html was essential for anyone wanting to enter the conversation. I would recommend this as a primary resource for anyone wanting to understand the spirit of social media. And if you read it, you’ll be able to participate in a conversation when someone is referred to as “clueful.”

Naked Conversations

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble‘s book celebrated and documented the popularization of blogging as a vehicle for online conversations among people with shared interests. The book captured the spirit of the blogosphere and lays out the essentials of good blogging. Transparency, authenticity, authority. The examples in this book are classics (e.g. Kryptonite locks, the English Tailor). The principles they illustrate are timeless.

The Long Tail

This book started as an article by Wired Magazine‘s Editor in Chief, Chris Anderson. Anderson explores the notion that the unlimited storage and global reach of the Internet make it possible for businesses to be built on a different model than the hit-driven model of the Hollywood studios and old line music labels. The Long Tail suggests that online businesses based on selling small quantities of a large number of products (witness iTunes, Amazon) can be just as lucrative as the blockbuster-driven businesses that are dependent upon massive sales of just a few titles. The same new economies apply to ideas as well as products. This realization comforts bloggers who set out to write about niches that will never have mass appeal, but will find a specialized audience.

The World is Flat

Thomas Friedman explores the potential for the ubiquitous Internet to transcend geography and transform the global economy. My children are no longer in competition with the kids in their school or city. They now can look forward to a life in which they compete and share with people on the other side of the globe. Sweeping changes for North Americans and Europeans who have taken for granted an economic order that emerged in the mid-fifties.

Wikinomics

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams bundle up several themes from The World is Flat, Naked Conversations and Cluetrain and demonstrate how they are rippling through corporations. They illustrate how savvy organizations are opening themselves to outside ideas and incorporating notions such as peer creation and open source in order to accelerate innovation and increase their competitiveness.

Everything is Miscellaneous

Cluetrain co-author David Weinberger makes a second appearance on my bookshelf with this exploration of a new way of organizing information that has been made possible by the combination of digitization of information with powerful search engines. Weinberger points out that tradtional organizing schemes such as the Dewey Decimal System are rooted in the physical world’s requirement that each object must be in only one place. The place assigned to each object or piece of information reflects the social and cultural perspective of the schema’s author. Meaning and context are shaped and limited by decisions taken by that author. Digitization and search engines instead enable individuals and groups of individuals to assign meaning and order to information as we need it. The same information can have different meaning for different people depending on their context and reference points. This gives rise to tools like del.icio.us and the concept of folksonomies. Individuals sorting, categorizing and sharing information in multiple ways as they need it. A powerful concept.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

David Meerman Scott has written my current favourite practical book for applying social media concepts to communication and marketing. This book is chock of hands-on advice that will help online communicators transform their static sites through a focus on great content and social media fundamentals.

Second shelf down

Other great reads that occupy space on my social media bookshelf include Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, along with Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. Each is a good read that provides insight into the sociology that underpins social media.

On Deck

New books about social media are published every month. My next read will be Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston. (The only problem is that it’s tough to get in Canada. Chapters doesn’t even list it and Amazon lists it as out of stock. Hnnh. Was it ever in stock?) Once I’ve read it, I’ll decide whether to add it to this list.

Update

Chris Thilk has published his own list of the books he turns to for inspiration and support. His list reminded me of Joseph Jaffe’s Life After the 30 Second Spot. I also keep this one on my top shelf.

Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone, offers his own list. Guess which book is his first choice?

Andrew Careaga compiled a list of his readers’ recommendations for books which deal with the intersection of public relations and social media.
Your Turn

Do you agree with my assessment of these books? What other books are you reading that you’d recommend I add to my social media bookshelf?

We have passed the tipping point for social media in corporate Canada

December 7, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

I believe that we have ~~reached~~ passed a tipping point for social media in corporate Canada. Social media has gone from being something about which a small group of evangelists proselytized to something which a broad range of companies are incorporating in their communication, marketing, stakeholder relations and community outreach programs.

This really came home to me when I chaired the Canadian Institute’s Social Media Conference in Toronto earlier this week. The presentations at this year’s event were different from the presentations at last year’s event in one important way. Last year, the conference program was dominated by speakers who were making the case for why corporations and organizations should embrace social media. This year, every speaker on the program talked about case studies of programs that they had run.

We heard from representatives of ScotiaBank, Cognos, Dell, BMW Canada, BMO Financial Group, IBM Canada, Microsoft Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Yahoo!, Iotum, Tucows and the Art Gallery of Ontario. All have used social media in the past year. All have successes with real results that have been measured against clearly stated goals.

Canada is not alone in this. The Society for New Communications Research‘s Symposium and Awards Gala, held in Boston, the day after the Canadian Institute’s conference, handed out dozens of awards for social media programs that had demonstrated excellence in the past year. And the symposium attendees heard a lineup of companies like Coca-Cola, Dell and GM present their social media successes.

Real examples of real successes in social media by corporations, organizations, not for profits and even government.

Truly, in one year, we went from social media as something of unrealized potential to social media as an essential element of any corporate communication, marketing and community outreach program.

RichardAtDell is at Third Tuesday

November 26, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Richard Binhammer, RichardatDell, will be speaking at the Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto social media gatherings on December 3 and 4.

Hear from one of Dell’s key social media architects

Dell is a prime case study of a company that took its lumps through social media. In the summer of 2006, the company was hit by two social media crises: Jeff Jarvis’ Dell Hell meme over his unhappiness with the company’s support service followed by exploding batteries on YouTube

Dell also is a prime example of a company that adopted social media as part of the response to its problems. The company launched Direct to Dell, a blog where real employees talk about Dell’s products and services and answer questions and issues raised by people in comments or in posts on their own blogs. It has buttressed that with a program of blogger relations, reaching out to bloggers to get to know them and become part of their community. It also has launched Dell IdeaStorm, a site that allows consumers to make suggestions to Dell and then enables the community to vote for or against these suggestions.

Richard Binhammer has been at the centre of Dell’s social media efforts from the outset. A key member of the Dell blogger outreach program, his comments, signed as RichardAtDell, appear across a broad range of blogs dealing with computing and social media. Recently, he stepped out front, launching his own blog, where he writes about corporate communications and social media relations.

Richard will be on hand at both Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto to share the personal perspective he gained as one of the key players behind Dell’s drive to learn about and adopt social media best practices.

A Personal Connection

I’m especially looking forward to these event because I have a personal connection to Richard. I’m one of the bloggers that RichardAtDell reached out to as part of Dell’s blogger relations program.

Richard first made contact with me when I posted about a presentation that Robert Scoble made at a conference in September 2006. Within a couple hours of my post, I received a comment from RichardAtDell. That was the first of many comments, posts, shared links and emails that Richard exchanged with me about social media.

Last winter, I invited Richard and his colleague, Lionel Menchaca, the principal force behind Direct to Dell, to visit Canada to speak to Third Tuesday. Lionel made it to Toronto for Third Tuesday and the Mesh Conference. However, the first game of the Senators first Stanley Cup Playoff appearance was scheduled for the same night as his planned Ottawa appearance. Anyone who knows Canada knows that you don’t compete with Stanley Cup fever in a hockey town. So, we had to cancel the Ottawa session.

However, when we cancelled the Third Tuesday Ottawa event, Richard was generous enough to indicate that he’d still make the trip at another date. Next week, he’s making good on this promise – appearing not only at Third Tuesday Ottawa, but also Third Tuesday Toronto and the Canadian Institute’s Conference on Social Media. On top of that, he’ll speak to a combined CPRS/IABC Ottawa luncheon while he’s here. That’s a lot of work for one person over just three days. But that’s also the way that Richard has approached social media. An all-in commitment.

So, if you’re near Ottawa or Toronto Monday and Tuesday, don’t miss this chance to meet and talk with RichardAtDell. Sign up to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or to attend Third Tuesday Toronto.

Disclosure

My company, Thornley Fallis, has been using Dell computers since the company was founded in 1995. Today, we have Dell desktops, notebooks, servers, printers, and LCD projectors. I even bought a Dell LCD television for my family at Christmas last year. Dell’s 24 hour support lines have has always been there for me when I needed help. So, when Dell offered Thornley Fallis a chance to compete for an assignment with Dell Canada this past summer, we jumped at it. And I’m happy to say that we won the competition. So, now I work for Dell. That’s why I haven’t mentioned Dell in any posts for several months. But with Richard’s trip to Canada, I needed to post about his appearance at Third Tuesday. So, I thought I’d provide some of the background along with this disclosure. I hope that this meets an acceptable standard of transparency.

Thanks to our sponsors

And thank you again CNW Group for sponsoring these events. Your support lets us focus on programming great events without an admission fee.

Related Posts:

Jeremiah Owyang and Geoff Livingston chronicle Dell’s social media saga

Jeff Jarvis updates the Dell story for Business Week. See also his original draft of the story.

Third Tuesday group on Facebook

Happy Thanksgiving Day from Ottawa, Canada

November 22, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

First snow at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa I want to wish all my American friends Happy Thanksgiving.

And today you have one more thing to celebrate. That you didn’t have to commute to work this morning through 15 centimetres of snow like we did in Ottawa.

Of course, we’ll be able to ski in a couple weeks. Just something to think about when I invite you to speak at a Third Tuesday!

First snow - No more soccer this year Have a great, happy and warm holiday.

Gadzooks. ProPR is two years old!

November 16, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

The first post on ProPR was dated two years ago today.

Here’s what I wrote in that first post:

Through this blog, I hope to have a voice in the discussion surrounding new developments in public relations, communications and marketing.

At my firm, we encourage people to develop to their maximum potential.

Thought leadership is an important goal for all professionals. With this blog, I hope to stimulate others to think about these issues and advance their own thinking.

Comments are an important means of contributing to the discussion. I encourage any who read this blog to offer their comments on my entries.

I’m still comfortable with that statement of purpose after two years. So, I think I’ll keep going.

And to you, my community, THANK YOU for reading, subscribing and, most of all commenting. Your comments are what really makes writing ProPR worthwhile.

Colin McKay looks behind the curtain of government blogging

November 13, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Third Tuesday Ottawa has a speaker this month who’s been there, done that, and is finding ever better ways to do it.

Colin McKay has been one of Canada’s blogging pioneers since he started posting to Canuckflack in 2003. Since then, he has built a loyal following of readers who count on Colin’s eclectic interests to take them on a voyage of discovery through the profound, the whimsical and the offbeat. His inventive posts have driven Canuckflack to #65 on the AdAge Power 150 – the highest rated Canadian blog authored by a single person.

Earlier this year, Colin set up a new blog, SoSaidTheOrganization, to provide him with a space where he could post primarily about “how government organizations communicate and integrate social media.”

With all this experience, it’s not surprising that Colin is the moving force behind what is currently the state of the art Canadian government blog for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Colin has demonstrated that a government blog can deal with issues of real consequence and stimulate broader debate in mainstream media as well as the blogosphere in a way that enhances trust in the blogging government institution.

If this isn’t enough to make this event a must-attend for you, I’ll give the final word about Colin to Colin himself. The About section of Canuckflack leads off with the following:

Supremely disappointed that he was neither raised by beavers nor moose, Colin McKay never heard his name being called during the closing “mirror” segment of Romper Room. An owner of Generation “X” in first run hardcover, he feels uncomfortable saying things like “for shizzle” and “peeps.” He’s old enough to remember when advertisers only wanted your cold hard cash, and had no aspirations to move in, become friends with your cat and get invited to Thanksgiving dinner.

How can you resist spending an evening with the author of that passage?

If you’re in Ottawa on November 19, plan to attend Third Tuesday. You’ll meet some smart people and have a chance to talk about the latest developments in social media in Canada. Guaranteed.