It's Open - Social Media Strategy Consultancy

The US Navy is developing an open social media policy. Charlene Li, who wrote the best-selling social media book,  Groundswell, was one of 16 bloggers invited on board the USS Nimitz.

You can read about her experiences here.

And here are some extracts from Commander Charlie Brown about why they are opening up to bloggers:

Why is the Navy inviting all these bloggers on the ship?

‘We wish we could bring every tax payer out to see what the Navy does, but we can’t. So we try to bring out folks who have the ability to share the experience with a wider audience. And for us, this group of bloggers…that was a perfect group to do that.’

How are you going to measure the success of the embark?

‘Our goal was to bring folks out who don’t necessarily have a familiarity with what naval aviation does. It’s your Navy, it’s your aircraft carriers, so we want to show you what we’re doing with those. So by having you folks coming and joining us, I think it’s already a success.’

Are you a little bit nervous about what we are going to write?

‘Only a few of you! You’re going to have open access. You’ll be able to talk to whomever you like, and see whatever you want to see, and I think you’ll get a lot out of it.’

The architects of this social media  policy are very smart. By choosing Charlene Li, they chose a leading influential blogger with an extensive network. We are part of that network and we too are blogging now about the US Navy. This just shows in a small way how you can gain influence by treating your company as a platform and being useful to the network that surrounds you.

The actions of the US Navy could be applied by organisations to bloggers. Why not invite bloggers to product launches or to meet and visit people in interesting areas of your business?

Blogger relations programmes are something that we are working on with clients. But it can be difficult for organisations who are reluctant to open up.

PR people working for large organisations should refer to the ClueTrain Manifesto for guidance when wondering how best to respond to comments about them on blogs or social networks.

The Cluetrain Manifesto points out:

Markets are conversations

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice

Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived

The internet is enabling converations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media

In all interactions, speak with a human voice, and be honest when admitting your mistakes. And remember, as Jeff Jarvis points out in his book What Would Google Do?, that everything you say is searchable.

We have been seeing a lot recently how social media is contributing to politics, for instance with Barack Obama making good use of Facebook and YouTube. Twitter too has been making an impact, especially in fluid and fast moving events such as elections. For instance in Moldova in April young voters opposed to the government used it to organise demonstrations and rallies to protest the result.

We are now seeing that on a much larger scale in Iran, and it will be fascinating to see to what extent social media helps to swell opposition to the controversial election results at the weekend.

We know that Facebook has played an important role in the challengers’ campaigns, if only by the fact that the hardline interior ministry briefly blocked it in the weeks before the vote. The Moussavi campaign used it to organise supporters, plan gathering and garner support, and was vastly more successful than the incumbent President Ahmadinejad in that respect. At the weekend Moussavi’s Facebook page was used to organise street protests and keep followers abreast of developments – it was the first to reveal that he had been effectively put under house arrest.

Texting services have been blocked, but Twitter is providing a stream of updates. Video clips of street protests are appearing on YouTube and pictures on Flckr, while scores of blogs are providing the detail. By contrast, CNN and other ‘old media’ outlets seemed to have been left far behind, taking a day or two to get to grips with the story.

It’s reasonably easy for the authorities to block mobile services, which apparently are none too reliable in Iran at the best of times. But it’s a harder proposition to block the Internet. Censors are hard at work filtering Facebook and Twitter, but there are ways round this, and there may come a time when they will just shut the Internet down altogether. As long as it can be used to co-ordinate protests they may not have a choice. At least then we will know how serious opposition to the regime is getting.

Time Magazine has devoted a cover story to the influence of Twitter. There is an interesting piece about how Twitter is going to affect business. How
it is going to help to build brands, etc.

We run Twitter strategy workshops and can help companies understand Twitter and how to use all the various applications.

Thought readers of our blog would be interested to have some background on the key social media activities we are working on for our clients:

Media Blog: we are helping a leading global organisation to create and launch a media blog so they can join conversations with journalists and other key onstituencies. We are helping to develop the editorial policy; we will be providing training to the media team and we are going to be developing a blogger outreach/contact programme to help raise aware of the new blog.

Twitter Strategy briefing: we are preparing a Twitter briefing for the media relations team of a leading global organisation. This is designed to explain how other companies are using Twitter; the results of using Twitter and how it can be used to engage with journalists/ report financial communications/distribute news and provide coverage on live events. We are also going to be explaining how you can build relevant followers for your Twitter channels.

Social Media audit: we are carrying out a social media audit for a global technology company to enable them to see what conversations are going on around their products and services on different sites, forums, blogs and on Twitter in different countries around the world. We are using a leading technology commentator to help us assess and analyse the results. We will then be making recommendations on how the company responds to these findings.

Blogging guidelines:  we are developing blogging guidelines for a leading global technology company so the marketing team can engage with blogs successfully in order to participate in relevant conversations and share information and news about their latest products and services and issues in the marketplace.

Hope to be able to disclose the names and showcase the public social media work we are doing through the blog in due course.

Some companies are wondering  where and how they start with social media and who should take responsibility for this new field.  In our experience it is best to begin with briefings looking at the implications social media has for your business and examples of how other companies are using social media. Or alternatively a social media audit can be useful so you can start to see what conversations are taking place online about your business.

Another good starting point is guidelines for staff on how to use social media. This helps to raise awareness in the business of the risks and opportunities presented by social media.

Then it is a good idea to start with a small project: either a blog or a Twitter channel so that you are beginning to open up conversations with your key audiences.

Typically social  media initiatives  are taken by the media/PR/marketing departments as they are usually first to realise how the world of communications is changing and their remit enables them to adopt new methods of communications to build relations with key audiences. However it is a fact that social media touches all aspects of a business including customer relations, internal communications and HR. What we are seeing is that the initiators of social media in the business are acting as bridges to other departments and gradually the organisation is becoming more aware and involved.

The risks of doing nothing in relation to social media are high.  The key audiences of most organisations are now using social media to distribute news and opinions about those organisations. So if you are not even listening to what is being said about you through social media, you are going to be left behind; you could miss important developments or your more nimble competitors could pick up on issues you are not even aware of.

Just spoken with a friendly journalist at Campaign magazine called Alasdair Reid. He wrote a piece about Twitter and advertising and quoted some large ad agencies who said you could not advertise on Twitter. But we know you can!

Just take a look at Featured Users, which is a Twitter application ad network. You will see that you can buy impressions in order to promote your profile on Twitter applications.  You can also advertise on Monitter, which aggregates real time Twitter conversations on certain topics.

Alasdair encouraged me to contact Ian Darby, who is the media editor of Campaign, with a letter for publication on the subject. I wrote to Ian who replied quickly and said he would pass my letter onto the editor. Let’s see if it gets published! Does Campaign have space for the views of small social media consultancies?

In the meantime, if there are any brands or organisations who are interested in advertising on Twitter, please get in touch! We’ll cost you a fraction of what the large agencies quoted in Campaign charge you, and we’ll be open about what exactly is possible on Twitter.

We have a range of Twitter services that we thought readers of our blog could be interested in. This is our first version and it could change as this is a dynamic space:

Twitter Briefings To help you understand more about Twitter; case studies; examples of the results you can gain through Twitter; and how you can monitor and track trends and particular audience groups and categories of information through Twitter. We can show you how Twitter can be used in different ways from customer offers and customer service to breaking news stories.

Engaging with journalists and analysts through Twitter We can help you identify and follow key journalists in your sectors who are using twitter; and enable you to follow analysts so you can use twitter to build relations with them.

Supporting brands through Twitter We can help you identify individuals who might be interested in receiving information about your brands through Twitter channels and  we can help you build followings among the relevant individuals

Twitter advertising The first opportunities to advertise on Twitter are starting to emerge on popular Twitter applications. We can explain to you more about these opportunities and help you manage campaigns on a pilot basis in this new field.

Tracking Twitter trends and conversations We can help you track Twitter trends and conversations relevant to your business and help you respond to those conversations

Live Twitter support We can help you organise live Twitter coverage of events and help you run Q&As through Twitter.

If there is anything you would like to know about Twitter, or if there is a service not covered in the list above which you would like, please give us a try. We would love to help. We believe in helping organisations to open up to key audiences in order to help them improve relationships with key constituencies.

If you want to see categories of Twitter channels, then go to
http://twellow.com. It organises twitterers by topics and is very useful for companies/organisations who want to get a sense of the conversations going on around particular topics. It’s the yellow pages of Twitter.

Also if you are interested to see who are the top Twitterers, go here.

And finally, President Obama is one of the world’s leading Twitterers.
Whereas George Bush was a traditional media president, Obama is a digital president. It’s interesting to see how Obama’s speech on the Middle East was covered by bloggers, Twitterers and Facebook. He clearly understands the role that social media has to play in shaping public opinion.

What do you do if you see comments about your company on blogs? Our answer to that question is that first of all you need to have a blogging strategy in place which includes  a blogger outreach programme, ie what is the purpose of you joining in blogging conversations?

As part of the process of putting together a blogger outreach programme, you need to have an understanding of which blogs are talking about you, and you also need a good understanding of the culture of blogs and blogging etiquette.  You don’t want to immediately dive in and start posting comments  on  a blog until you are familiar with its style and you are convinced that it is worth commenting on. You would not contribute a letter to a newspaper before ensuring that you were familiar with the style and contents of the newspaper and its readership.

The key point when you comment on blogs is that you must be open about who you are and try to be useful. Try to add value through your comment. Maybe post a link. Try to keep the conversation going. Or you simply might want to politely correct a mistake.

The best way of overcoming your  fear of social media is to start using social media tools yourself. And in my experience, people respond well if you post comments on their blogs. Providing you are relevant, polite and respectful to them. If you are still nervous about it, you might wish to run your suggested response past a colleague or advisor before posting it to get their views.