Saying it’s just you and me here is a popular television comedy gag, “hey you can tell me your secret, it’s just between us,” and the TV host takes a sidelong glance at the national audience, showing they know they’re asking the secret to be shared with what might as well be the world.
That’s how we counsel our clients to think of every media interview. Visualize an audience. Imagine the interview as a live radio broadcast, or a moderated panel discussion in an auditorium. In the audience are your competitors, regulators, customers, investors and other stakeholders. You are not speaking to the reporter who is asking you the questions per se. You are also speaking to that larger audience out there.
This will help you focus and diminish the tendency to want to confide in the reporter with things that may come back to haunt you if placed in the context of an article.
This frankly can be a service to the reporter too because they won’t end up with something you’ll complain about later claiming it was off the record, or that you’re going to try to chase them down in a panic to retract because you thought it was obvious that what you said wasn’t for print.
Remember, the reporter’s job is not to protect your reputation, but to get the news out with the greatest accuracy achievable. So if you said it during an interview, it’s fair game.
Of course speaking to the larger audience isn’t a license to resort to platitudes or generalities that don’t do the reporter or you much good. If you were indeed making a presentation or participating in a panel with your stakeholders, you would want what you have to say to be meaningful and you want to be frank and as transparent as regulations allow.
Now there will be things you would like to share with the reporter that may in fact be valuable for the accuracy of their story, but that you may feel will unnecessarily hurt you if they appear in quotes next to your name. Make note of them and share them with the PR professional working with you. That person can find a way to share them with the reporter and let them decide the merit and the process for getting them out if they are indeed valuable to their story.
Be careful with this however, trying to get a reporter to write things that you aren’t willing to stand behind with your name is a good way to alienate a journalist.
Social Media
Your company is already on social media, you just don’t know it yet…
Pondering whether your company should be using social media?
You already are, you just don’t know it yet.
Throughout your organization people are on Facebook, Twitter or they’re blogging about the company on their own sites. Your sales force is on café pharma anonymously posting comments about your upcoming marketing strategy.
Some of this is harmless. Some of it is brilliant, like the sales rep in Connecticut who is making videos of himself explaining your product and posting them on YouTube so potential customers can find him online. He’s driving revenue with it.
Another portion of users in your organization represent a serious breach of security and are giving a smart competitor an advantage.
Companies are coming to terms with this in unique ways, and it doesn’t always mean clamping down.
Online shoe retailer Zappos.com Inc., of Henderson, Nevada, has more than 450 employees using Twitter to communicate with one another on topics ranging from politics to marketing plans. They have begun offering classes to teach basics like how to follow a friend’s updates to advanced topics like using third-party services.
GE has a Tweet Squad that helps employees get up to speed with using social media.
What to do.
A social media policy is the right place to start.
IBM for instance has developed an evolving social media policy that gives employees best practices on the assumption you’re not going to be able to stop them from using social media anyway.
You will recall in a previous post we mentioned your legal department losing their cool when you started a company Twitter.
The process of setting up the social media policy can help avoid this blowup. Include your legal counsel and regulatory officers. Together you can establish a framework for the company to proactively use these tools in a way that isn’t overburdened by a stiff approval process that erases many of the virtues of social media’s spontaneity, speed and responsiveness to the market. But on the other hand you should end up with a structure that allows you to avoid doing stupid things online.
A well crafted policy not only tells employees what they shouldn’t be doing online, but can also frame up best practices and can serve as a roadmap for harnessing some of the good ideas already being used by the rank and file.
We recommend all our clients have a policy, and most do or are working with us on developing one.
There are three scenarios a comprehensive social computing policy needs to address.
The first is when employees maintain personal blogs, tweet, or post information about themselves on Wikis, message boards, e-mail groups, Facebook or other social forums online and may occasionally reference information relevant to their work at the company.
The second is when employees who maintain personal blogs, tweet, etc., specifically to profess their professional interests and therefore feature their work at the company prominently.
The third is employees who maintain official corporate blogs, or maintain personal/professional blogs described in scenario two, that are actively encouraged by the company and for which the company makes publishing resources available.
If you account for all of these and are clear with your organization about the benefits of helping the company tell its story online, and are transparent about the penalties for missteps, you can achieve some amazing results.
Social Media
For business, Twittering is a waste of time unless built around face-to-face communications
Like most social media, Twitter is a trap. It’s easy to spend a lot of time on it thinking you’re getting a message out.
At the end of the day you have nothing to show for it but a follower list of indefinite value and screaming fits from the legal and regulatory departments over some of the messages you sent out.
Read what we had to say recently in PRWeek and you’ll get the idea of what to do to make it worth your while.
The takeaway is, be a broadcaster second, and a listener first. Put smart content up, but more importantly pay attention to who notices, decide if you would like to get to know them better and then dispense with social media altogether and meet them over coffee. If you don’t do it face-to-face, at least get one-on-one.
No matter how charming the guru you’ve hired, social media messages from a company or their agent do not win hearts, minds or dollars. The word of an objective and credible observer - like a traditional media journalist - does. Use social media to find and get to know those people and get into close quarters with them without a screen between the two of you so you can tell your story.
Now about those screaming fits your smart content elicited from legal and regulatory, stay tuned, more on that soon.
Social Media
Twitter offers key engagement with target audiences
Technique
Nicole Zerillo, May 15, 2009
Twitter has quickly become a baseline tactic for PR initiatives seeking to engage audiences in online conversation. It can be a good tool to connect with company stakeholders, including media.
In addition, Twitter can be an excellent tool to try out different brand strategies to reach specific consumers, says Nancy Martira, senior interactive strategist at Ketchum.
The firm has tried several types of Twitter initiatives for its client Skinny Cow to generate awareness for the brand, including a coupon giveaway targeted at Martira’s followers, which are largely mom bloggers, and then her followers’ followers.
“It’s of relatively small cost,” Martira says. “It’s not like launching a national broadcast campaign, but if you succeed it has the opportunity to really ripple.”
Chris Gale, VP of EVC Group, notes that Twitter is an excellent source to create opportunities for face-to-face relationships and deepen connections with already interested media.
For example, EVC Group aids it client Comarco, a mobile power source maker, on Twitter as its IR AOR. When it noticed a key publication for the company, Wireless Week, Tweeting about Targus Group, it let the outlet know of Comarco’s new exclusive distribution deal with Targus, and an article resulted.
“Comarco is a turnaround company, and because they’re small, sometimes it can be difficult to get news out about their successes,” Gale says. “[The Wireless Week story] helped lay out what Comarco’s achieved.”
Some companies also use the site as an additional customer service function, responding to consumer complaints and requests. Examples include @comcastcares and @BofA_help. That type of promise to a consumer, however, carries a significant commitment, so a brand must decide whether or not it is the right step for it.
Olympus Imaging America at @GetOlympus, for example, notes that the company’s Twitter page does not handle service requests. However, Michael Bourne, VP and account director at Mullen, which handles the account, says he uses monitoring tools Techrigy and Twitterholic to help him decide to jump into conversations that involve the brand.
“That gives me the ability to know who is talking about us, competitive products, or subjects important to the brand,” says Bourne. “In terms of their influence factor, I can decide if I want to engage.”
Frequent updates and following news alerts can waste time for a PR professional managing a brand on Twitter, Gale adds.
“The point is… not to preoccupy yourself with putting out content or the number of people following you,” he says.
- Do
• Utilize Twitter to build relationships with target demos and key media
• Check out what competitors are doing in the space - Don’t
• Respond to every brand mention or criticism
• Provide more quantity than quality updates