The EuroComm Blog 2008

by Yang-May Ooi

Last week the IABC’s EuroComm Conference 2008 took place in Barcelona, where I chaired the plenary panel discussion on social media. I was joined by co-panellists Giles Colborne of cxpartners, a web usability expert, and Marc Wright of simply-communicate.com, an internal communications specialist. We had a really good session, which was primarily the result of great comments and challenges from the 80 or so business communicators taking part in the session. I just want to focus here on one issue that emerged from the discussions, which I think reflects the main concern of businesses around social media: control.

When we asked the delegates what was preventing their businesses engaging in the social media, the main reason appeared to be an anxiety about losing control. If you have a blog or social network space, people can come and leave negative comments. If you allow your employees to use social media for internal communications, they could spread seeds of discontent internally. Social media tools also make it easier for staff to leak your internal discussions externally. If you offer spaces for user-generated content, you can lose control of the content and message.

But we also discussed how control is an illusion in the brave new world of social media. There could be people out there already expressing negative views about your business or brand on other social media spaces even if you don’t have a business presence on the blogosphere. Your staff are already able to sign up to Facebook or set up their own blogs at home, even if you block them at work. Leaks occur with email as easily as via any other internet or intranet tool. Someone could be filming you or any of your executives with their mobile phone camera even now, capturing your pratfall or offguard comment to be served up on YouTube for the world to see. Employers are doing internet searches of potential recruits as an add-on to the traditional ways of doing background checks - will they find that photo of you taken by a friend at your cousin’s wedding with someone’s knickers on your head?

For businesses who are worried about controlling the message about their product or services, the least you can do is monitor what the online is saying about you even if you decide never to engage in social media. And if you do engage with a blog or other social media tool, that can actually help enhance your reputation especially if you engage in an authentic way. The community you build around your blog will come to trust, respect and like you and loyalty can count for a great deal in times of crisis.

For individuals, the question is: will we always have to be “on” not just when we engage online but wherever we are because we never know when someone may capture us unawares on digital media? This is a much more challenging issue. It is impossible to be perfectly behaved all the time - that’s just a fact of being human. And perhaps we have to trust that people know that - and that in the long term, people seeing someone’s mistake displayed on YouTube will recognise that it’s just a very human momentary lapse, especially if there are other images of that person online that counter lapse. Perhaps in this early period of the mobile phone video, there’s a lot of press and publicity about this issue because it’s novel but that in the long term, there won’t be such a hoo-ha because there’ll be so many unremarkable human failings available to view online. Or perhaps we will all have to hire public relations consultants to help us with reputation management in the future, whether we are Britney Spears or just an ordinary non-celebrity…

We did not reach any solid conclusions during the discussion, only that this is one debate that is going to contine.

What are your thoughts?

Photo: of car wreck thanks to OpenSkyMedia from flickr.com (CCL)

You can download the slides from the Social Media Panel discussion on 04 Feb 2008 from the “box” below. You will also find in the “box” some other resources, including the e-version of the handout plus newsletters and an information sheet about CEO speeches on YouTube.

Or, if you prefer, you can also access the slides and resources by clicking on the following link -
http://www.box.net/shared/lsf9w8rok4

If you have any queries or would like us to email you the documents, please contact us using the Contact link above.

by Yang-May Ooi

Qik.com for live streaming from cell-phones and Seesmic.com for video conversations, will take social media to a whole new level. What are they? How do they work? And will 2008 be the Year of Video Conversations?

Click To Play

This was first posted on my blog ZenGuide.co.uk last week.

If you have difficulty viewing the video on this page, try the following alternative sites:

http://yangmayooi.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc

http://youtube.com/fusionview

by Ulrich Gartner

When flipping through a free newspaper on the tube in Stockholm yesterday, my attention got caught by a headline reading ‘Emailing will have disappeared by the end of this year’. Kids nowadays think that emails are just for business, and used by ‘old people’. They, instead, use websites, notice boards, and social platforms to communicate with each other.

I shared the story with some colleagues who have teenage children. We had a lively conversation which, at the end, confirmed that email is practically dead with the younger generation.

I felt this situation provided some deep insight into communications: A newspaper (declared dead a hundred times but still alive and kicking) predicting the irrelevance of what just recently was the latest gadget in communication (I was so proud when I got the email function on my mobile phone last year!). The story was so interesting that it created word-of-mouth (I told it to my colleagues), and subsequently drove some buzz around the office.

I believe this is exactly what communicators today have to deal with. You can’t just keep doing the stuff you’ve known so well for many years; but you can’t exclusively run after the latest trends either. After all, you’ll have to play different tunes to make a sound that people will listen to.

When I went home in the evening, I looked around in the underground and saw a lot of the kids, who supposedly think email is old news, reading– guess what: the good old newspaper. Exciting times for communicators, aren’t they? See you in Barcelona.

Ulrich Gartner (Sweden) is Vice President Communications Europe at AB Electrolux, a global leader in home appliances. Electrolux has worked intensively with social media over the past years. Most recently, Gartner’s in-house PR team has been honoured with an IRPA Golden World Award 2007 for the best e-PR campaign.

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Ulrich will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on:

Engage! Making Social Media an Integrated Part of a PR Campaign

Social media, still, are much too often used as a separate, even slightly disconnected communication channel for very specifi c target audiences. This session will show how they can, instead, become a truly integrated element of broader PR campaigns, delivering on a number of objectives ranging from consumer engagement to media coverage. Two case studies will be presented: Electrolux Design Lab, a global competition for design students, and Electrolux Kitchenstage, the world’s fi rst online reality show
in a kitchen. The session will discuss strategies, techniques used, results delivered, and learnings gained, with special emphasis on how traditional PR techniques and the use of social media were integrated in order to create maximum impact.

by Yang-May Ooi

24 hours after Heath Ledger’s death: how the bloggers have responded; prices for Heath Ledger memoribilia on eBay doubles

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This was first posted on my blog ZenGuide.co.uk on 23 Jan 2008.

If you have difficulty viewing the video on this page, try the following alternative sites:

http://yangmayooi.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc

http://youtube.com/fusionview

Some recent conversations I’ve had with executives and professioals has got me thinking: what’s in a name?

For many companies and businesses who have a natural affinity with innovation and early adaptation of new technology, a business blog is something they have embraced with enthusiasm. They see it as a great way to keep in touch with their clients and customers and to showcase their expertise. However, for other businesses still wondering if communicating online with their stakeholders in this way is something for them, the notion of a blog comes with a bundle of negative pre-conceptions - it’s for teenagers and loud-mouthed mavericks, it’s not a proper platform for serious business communications, it’s about trivial things like what I had for breakfast this morning.

Many busy professionals and senior-level executives have said to me that they don’t have time to read blogs. They aren’t interested in what someone had for breakfast. (What is it about things people have for breakfast that’s become this catch-phrase for blogging?) They’ve got too many emails to get through. What possible business value is there in spending their limited time reading a stranger’s blog?

When working with some clients, I’ve recommended that it may be an idea to re-think this interactive online thing that they are implementing. It’s just a tool that allows you to upload information quickly and easily in reverse date order - you can sort the information into categories and link to other information. What about defining it by what content or information you’re putting on it? If it’s a place where you are offering additional resources to your clients eg you are sharing your expertise for free online; or you are pointing them to other resources they can find on the web; or you are putting up your materials from a conference or workshop - why not refer to it as a Resource Centre? Or what about focusing on the objective of why you want this social media tool - is it to stimulate discussion and engage your stakeholders in conversation? Well, what about calling it a Discussion Space or Conversation Corner?

This simple re-thinking of what the tool is has opened up for my clients a whole range of possibilities which have excited them about the blog platform - a complete transformation from their previous scepticism and uncertainty. For the one setting up a Resource Centre, the creative juices started to flow and they brainstormed a long list of information, resources and articles they could post on their site. For the one creating a Discussion Space, they began to look for contributors to write articles with different views around one theme so that readers might be prompted to add to the discussion via the discussion responses facility (ie comments).

And for those coming to read or participate in such spaces, they are immediately entering an added value space that offers Resources and Discussion, rather than a potentially time-wasting personal diary thing called a blog.

For me, I enjoy reading blogs or discussion spaces or newsletter or whatever you call them, especially blogs by:

• industry experts eg high-profile marketing guru Seth Godin (whose blog is on The Times’ list of top 50 business blogs),

• trend watchers/ news breakers eg TechCrunch and Mashable

• writing and book lovers eg Bibliobibuli

• colleagues eg X-Culture by Silvia Cambie

• friends eg massage therapist Melanie Crowe

• other Asians/ Orientals eg British Born Chinese

I generally steer away from blogs by journalists and reporters like those on the Guardian or the BBC - though I do sometimes find it useful to go to those blogs as well. My reasoning is that I read or hear these paid writers’/ commentators’ views anyway via the news and traditional media channels. The joy of blogs is to hear the voices and encounter the thoughts of those who don’t necessarily already have a grand outlet like the premier news channels for sharing what they have to say. I like the democracy and clamour of the ordinary individual adding to the discussion. I keep them all on my blog aggregator and pick and choose a few to dip into over lunch or when I feel like being stimulated.

Yang-May Ooi (U.K.) is a committee member on the Board of IABC UK with the portfolio for Social Media and is the founder of
ZenGuide, a communications and social media consultancy ( www.zenguide.co.uk). Her writing and cross-cultural blog Fusion View (www.fusionview.co.uk) is read by over 8,000 unique visitors a month and has been featured on the BBC. Yang-May is currently co-authoring a book (with Silvia Cambié of Chanda Communications) on New Trends in International Public Relations, which is due to be published by Kogan Page in 2009.

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Yang-May will be chairing a panel discussion on social media at the EuroComm Conference. Details are as follows:

Creating Value through Online Communities

For both internal and external communications, social media tools like blogging, podcasting and forums offer businesses a powerful means of building networks and communities around their products, services and brands. But is it a matter of “Build it and they will come”? Or do you need a more strategic approach? And once your visitors come to your site, how do you engage them and
create value from these interactions?

In this session, you will explore:

• Planning and implementing online communities
• Leadership in community building
• Using live events to create ‘significant moments’
for your community
• Empty chat-rooms, online bores and
psychopaths: how to avoid them
• Creating “sticky” content
• Using video to build audiences
• The intersection of commerce and communities
– can/should you monetise your social media?
• Measuring and evaluating success.

Yang-May will be joined by panelists:

Marc Wright (U.K.) , the former Chairman of the International Visual Communication Association and a member of the board of IABC UK. After selling his agency MCA Live to WPP he launched www.simply-communicate.com – the knowledge site read by 15,000 internal communication professionals each month.

Giles Colborne (U.K.), President of the UK Usability Professionals’ Association from 2003-2007 and is managing director of cxpartners, a company specialising in designing user interfaces (www.cxpartners.co.uk ). A frequent guest speaker at conferences around the world, Giles writes on usability for Revolution magazine. Giles was also an editorial board member for
PAS78, the British Standards Institute’s guidance on making websites accessible for people with disabilities.

Photo: thanks to raisinsawdust on flickr.com

by Angie Macdonald

Social media is changing the way we do things and one of the issues involved is that of control. Control is slipping from corporates when it comes to promoting their products and from conference speakers and college lecturers, who are no longer regarded as the expert with the final say on the matter.

One example of this phenomenon is “back channelling”. In the social media context, this refers to people at conferences, or students, blogging and/or Twittering while listening to a speaker. It can also involve instant messaging or chatrooms and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels. This is the “back channel”, where the audience engage in a different conversation, separate from the speaker directly in front of them.

At some conferences, a screen is erected behind the speaker, on which the audience can post comments directly from their computers. The speaker, facing the audience, cannot see the comments appearing on the screen behind him or her. From what I’ve heard anecdotally, the comments which tend to appear are generally negative comments on the speaker’s clothes, or how bored people are, rather than comments that further the debate. It is the equivalent of heckling, only here it is virtual and silent.

I’m sure there are some highly skilled people who are able to multi-task and keep with the programme. But most people are unable to give two things the same amount of attention at the same time. If you are trying to listen, analyse, remember, write and follow the conversation all at the same time, something’s got to give. You just have to think about the dangers of driving while talking on a mobile phone to realise that multi-tasking has its limits.

In an article published in the New York Times, David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan is quoted as saying, “Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes.” In the same article, René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, when describing the ‘cognitive powerhouse’ that is the human brain, says “…a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once.”

What usually happens, is that by the time the blogger or Twitterer has finished writing or texting a particular thought, the speaker has moved on, the information that has been imparted in the interim is hazy, and the thread of the argument has been lost. This creates a knowledge gap which can result in misunderstanding, which in turn can lead to miscommunication.

Now, it’s fine if one individual has misunderstood. But what happens when that individual has published their misunderstood information online and millions of people around the world read it and get the wrong end of the stick? What are the repercussions? Where is the value in that communication?

Don’t get me wrong, I can see that there are advantages to back-channelling. It can be an inclusive behaviour too and means that those unable to attend a conference in person can follow what’s happening by reading updated blogs or receiving Tweets on their mobile phones.

It can also be a way to open up and encourage discussion and debate around a topic. So rather than information being delivered from one so-called expert in a top-down fashion, everybody who knows something or who has an opinion can join in and conference goers have an opportunity to learn from their peers. In that way, learning can become a more democratic process - a knowledge exchange offering instant feedback and reflection.

The danger is that in the process you may have to listen to people who think they are right, when they may be wrong, or people who love the sight of their words in print and subject everyone to their opinions whenever they can. As in the real world, sometimes conversations are inane, occasionally they are a waste of time.

We live in an age where children are being medicated for Attention Deficit Disorder and adults put their lack of success in life down to the fact that they were never diagnosed with ADD in school, and yet, here we are as adults, actively engaging in attention deficit behaviour. Not only that, but rather than being in the moment and giving it all our attention, we are taking a step back to observe and comment on what is occurring, analysing it as it is happening, rather than experiencing it.

There is no doubt that technology is changing social behaviour, communication and relationships. In spite of the advantages, I still think that in today’s attention-seeking world, perhaps the highest form of regard we can offer anyone, is to give them our full-blown attention.

I’m not sure if there’s going to be a screen for a back-channel at the EuroComm conference, but it will be interesting to hear what you think.

Photo: thanks to jean djinni on flickr.com (CCL)

by Yang-May Ooi

The speed of communications is ever increasing, especially now that online messages can be zipping round the world virally via digital word of mouth in the time it takes you to type an email message or blog post.

Now that anyone can be pundit or citizen journalist who has a mobile phone, camera, laptop or just an opinion and access to the internet, anyone out there can share their views or stories about you in moments. Equally, anyone can express an opinion or a view or tell a story without deliberating over it or checking the factual basis for it - and indeed, online social media encourages that rapid action and reaction because of the ease of uploading content easily, cheaply and quickly.

For those whose every move makes news - like high profile politicans, world leaders, celebrities and the like - this trend is becoming a huge challenge. How do you control misinformation or misinterpretation of your actions and words in this rapid response world?

Taking legal action or sending out cease and desist letters can make you the “heavy” in the drama, causing more damage than good. Legal processes can also take time - and through that very process could keep the issue in the news more than you would like.

Hilllary Clinton’s campaign has come up with a clever way to deal with misinformation about her and her campaign for the US presidency, reports The New York Times. She has “introduced a Web site dedicated exclusively to the instantaneous rebuttal of charges or news reports it deems offensive or wrong”, called Fact Hub.

On the Fact Hub, Clinton’s team painstakingly sets the record straight wherever she has been misinterpreted or where others have got their facts wrong about her statements and actions. For example, it corrects Barack Obama with an statement headed Obama Misrepresents Hillary’s Views On Social Security and there is a rebuttal of a claim that Clinton and her team did not leave a tip at a diner where they had a meal (which is the subject of the New York Times article I just mentioned).

It looks like the website uses a blogging platform and includes an RSS feed so you can subscribe to it to receive the latest updates - another example of innovative ways to use blogging technology and blogging without calling it a blog.

For those of us of less grand profiles, it is still useful to keep an eye on what is being said about you online and to consider carefully how you would respond to any erroneous claims being made about you or your business. I am curious to know what processes you are using to monitor what is being said about you on the online grapevine at the moment and what plans you have in place to deal with any erroneous claims about you or your business. Please add a comment or email me using the Contact form above.

Photo: thanks to sskennel from flickr.com (CCL)

by Silvia Cambie

I wrote a while ago in my blog about my attempts to explain the virtues of communication to a US immigration officer. Our profession tends to be misunderstood.

But it’s not always that bad.

Actually, to quote Austin Powers (I know it’s childish, but I love him…), these are very groovy times to be in communications.

Top management is finally waking up to the idea that corporate communication is important. They know that what they need from us is strategic advice, not colourful brochures… And the reasons why they are waking up are

* Intangible assets (customer loyalty, brand equity, reputation, etc.) are becoming more and more important. They are difficult to imitate by competitors and investors look at them before deciding whether or not to put money into a company. Communicators are the masterminds behind reputation and brand recognition.

* Publics are becoming increasingly difficult to convince. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer , 44% of the people interviewed in nine EU countries trust conversations with friends and peers while only 33% (!) trust articles in newspapers.

* Gen Y. Seventy-five million young people born between 1977 and 1998 are slowly appearing on the corporate radar screen. They might be working as interns at the moment, but they are definitely the board faces of 2020. They have grown up on participatory sites like YouTube and MySpace. They are not as loyal to a company as their parents used to be. They will not accept sanitized corporate speak. In order to recruit and retain them, corporations will need top-notch internal communications

* New channels of global communications are being opened up by social media tools, bringing different cultures across the world together instantaneously. Culture is no longer about the culture of nations, it is created by networks of people coming together in new groupings and tribes. In this new environment, it is essential to pay attention to communication.

At EuroComm 2008 we will be discussing these topics and more.

I look forward to seeing you in Barcelona!

Silvia Cambié is the Chair of EuroComm 2008 and the director of Chanda Communications, a London-based consultancy specialised in reputation management and social media. She also serves as director on IABC’s International Executive Board.

Photo: thanks to Silvia Cambie

by Yang-May Ooi

Not so long ago, when you organised a conference - especially an international one - it was a matter of course that you’d have a conference website to act as a portal for conference information, queries, accommodation and registration. Having a presence like that on the web has become a given. You don’t even question it.

Having a conference blog is a relatively new idea that’s probably only really taken hold during the last year to 18 months, with US conferences leading the way. Silvia Cambie and I spoke about “the conference website and blog” in one breath from the start as we talked about all the things we had to do to organise the EuroComm conference in Barcelona. We were comfortable with the idea of having a blog because we’re both bloggers.

Getting comfortable with an idea. It’s a key factor, I think, in whether or not a concept or a tool actually gets used by the wider world beyond the first adaptors. We just have to think back to the early 1990s, just 10-15 years ago, when businesses were trying to assess whether it was worth investing in word processors and computers. I remember joining a law firm in that time when the secretaries were still using electric typewriters and were stressing out whenever I asked them to make a change to the text of a document - because it meant pretty much typing the whole thing out again. Now, word processing is a necessity - and legal documents have unfortunately ballooned to hundreds of pages in some cases….

Back then, Tim Berners-Lee had only just invented the World Wide Web and hyperlinks so it would be another few years before businesses would get comfortable with the idea that a business website was a good thing to have. In 1995, the law firm I was working for did not have a website yet. In 1998, it seemed a daring thing for me as an individual to acquire my own URL domain name and have a website for my novels - only the biggest names in writing had websites back then. Now you can pick one up for under £10 a year and parents are even buying domain names for their children in the way that they would reserve a place for their kids at the best schools the moment the little darlings are born.

While talking to many business people and communications professionals, I’ve had a sense that there is still a residual uncertainty and even resistance to engaging in social media for business purposes. But overall, I am also seeing more and more businesses and enterprises start to use interactive online tools, even if it a small step like signing up to Facebook. My sense is that before long, the idea of social media will become more comfortable in people’s minds and it will become ubiquitous to have at least a blog alongside business websites - if nothing else, used as a way to add updates of company news.

What do you think? Do you think blogs will never work for some businesses? Or do you think that blogs are “so fifteen minutes ago”? Please add a comment and share your views.

Photo: thanks to ~aidan from flickr.com under Creative Commons Licence