Why I'm Not A Huge Fan of Social Dashboards

Guess what?

Organisations had communications functions BEFORE social media. 

The way that some people talk about the moon landings they are experiencing in this ‘whole new world’ of social media I really do wonder what the hell they are doing that I’m missing. 

I’ve worked pretty much 50/50 across marketing and communications my whole working life and one thing I don’t do is sit in front of a dashboard all day looking at metrics. 

I’ve assessed many different social media dashboard type products for various companies and always seem to come to the same conclusion: “this one is good at this thing, not so good at that thing. I probably wouldn’t really use it.” 

Many of the systems being peddled have been rushed out by agencies desperate to lock in retainers with their marketing clients. The ‘reveal’ sessions are seen as a way to pitch social into a company and trigger further consulting work through regular reporting and talking a load of nonsense about ROI.  They are not designed as tools for the practitioner on the shop floor. 

It seems to be a shared sentiment across people that I know and respect in the industry.  They aren’t ‘dashboard’ sort of folk. Good communicators are generally ‘people’ people and they like to look humans in the eye and discuss ideas.  They will pull a big piece of data for a specific project but, day-to-day, most people understand the news and media landscape and have an instinct for issues. 

There are other human beings that work where I work and usually I have meetings with them and try to understand what they’re trying to do and where I can help. I write briefs for agencies, approve things, write communications and talk on the phone.  

Yes I look at research and media monitors much in the same way I always have. Standard issue for a marcomms function. No great giant leaps for mankind over here I’m afraid. 

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Who Owns Your Social Media Identity?

I seem to be pretty much on my own with this one and I'm not sure why. 

People all seem to be comfortable with the idea of having a work email account and a personal email account.  

So why are social media accounts any different?

If you are on company equipment, on company time, using company infrastructure; then clearly it is easier to define a ‘work account’. If you are mucking around talking to your mates about lolcats then do that on your personal account. Same as email.  The ‘work account’ then becomes and online asset that is the property of the employer. If @DaphneTalksBudgies leaves the pet shop then the account can be changed to @CherylTalksBudgies and the community that the pet shop has invested resource in can continue. 

Instead, we seem to see this horrid hybrid of “I’m Captain Awesome In Charge at Some Epic Company ---views are my own and not my employer’s.”

People then proceed to talk about hot topics in their industry (often on company time and equipment) and then try to pretend that a token “views expressed are my own” will wash their hands of any responsibility. 

As a communications panda trained in the ‘old way’ of having defined company spokespeople who are trained and briefed as experts on specific topics I find this ridiculous.

To me, that would be like Paul Reynolds having a spray about telco deregulation on Twitter and then trying to claim that it had no relation to his job at Telecom. You can’t shape shift like that. 

One of the few social media policies that I have seen take this matter seriously is the news organisation Reuters. Employees are encouraged to have a clearly defined work social media account that follows a company standard and remains the property of the company. The account is approved by the person’s manager for work use so it’s all out in the open. Personal accounts are left well alone, same as a personal Gmail account. 

I’m very conscious of what I send through my work email account and readily switch to my personal account if I’m ever in any doubt.  As our maturity around social tools as professional work spaces develops, hopefully more people will start to adopt this approach. 

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Qantas Luxury: What I Would Have Done

Last night I jotted down some thoughts as the Qantas Airways #qantasluxury crisis churned away online. 

I can see exactly how #qantasluxury happened. 

The executive team at Qantas would have been churning out BAU (business as usual) messages to rally the troops in light of the negative media they have been receiving around flight groundings and union standoffs.

So, BAU they did. 

Marketing person fires up the Twitter with her brief to position Qantas as a full-service, flagship brand up against price-fighter Jetstar. 

Giving away free merch on Twitter generally works very well for big brands and you get good, positive engagement results. 

So, marketing person rummaged around in the corporate swag cupboard (I have one myself) and bundled some gear to throw on Twitter as a wee promo. 

All very unremarkable and very common business practises. BAU. 

So where did it go wrong?

Qantas is not trading under BAU and it’s naive to think that they are.  People don’t forget the weeks of negative coverage. It’s the national carrier. It employs heaps of people. It is a very high-touch, high-engagement brand and business. 

Qantas misread the sentiment and the generally higher educated and politically aware, news savvy people that are on Twitter gave it back to them. 

I’ve been involved in a number of crisis comms situations (mainly offline in traditional media) and the difference between a train wreck and a ‘whew I can’t believe we got away with that’ is often the ability of the comms manager to step back and not panic. 

Only someone who has been on the frontline can relate to that sickening feeling you get when your phone rings at 6pm on a Friday night and your project is going to be front-page news in the weekend papers for all the wrong reasons. 

What I would have done

First port of call for me would have been to the CEO.  The ‘Houston-we have a problem’ moment that drains all the blood from your soul. 

Second, I would call/email the entire executive team and tell them not to comment to media. This would include legal and possibly an external public relations firm if you have one too for investor relations. 

The message would be “don’t comment. Act dumb. Say you haven’t seen the #qantasluxury hashtag and you’re not the person that talks on those things.” Put everything through to the comms manager who can protect people and buy time. That’s what they are there for. 

Third, I would order everyone out of the pool on and offline. 

All social media accounts are to stop publishing including personal accounts. Go dark. (note: this is very controversial and I have never been able to convince any company to do it. However, I see public domain comment by employees online as a risk in a crisis situation). 

An email/ yammer to all staff with an equal measure of “it’s under control” and “if you talk to media we’ll bloody fire you.” Serious. I’ve had these chats before. 

Be aware that, especially when you are in a change management process like Qantas, disgruntled employees may forward the messages to media so write for the public domain. 

Fourth, I would call an analyst to start mining the data across on and offline media. 

I certainly would not be talking to anyone without seeing a top-line level of sentiment activity. Remember-when you are trending at number one on Twitter Australia your job is containment. Trying to send clever “hey guys thanks for entering” tweets is like trying to put out a bushfire with a garden hose. What topics can you provide clarification on? What arguments will you never win? Is it targeted at the CEO, unions, service, food, groundings, offshoring? I was very surprised to see mainstream news outlets publishing comments from interviews with Qantas people in the middle of the event. Far too knee-jerk. 

Fifth, I would assess the data and come up with a written statement. The recent Telecom “abstain” statement is an excellent example of this working well. The tone is “whoops we messed up, we tried to be funny but we weren’t.” It’s a big step back. Don’t try and be tricky. Comments suggesting that ‘any publicity is good publicity’ are absolutely ridiculous, lazy and unsophisticated. Bad media ruins brands in the same way that good media makes brands. 

With emotions running high, bad decisions can be made out of ego, blame, and sheer panic. 

Good crisis responses whether you get caught in a rip at the beach or responding to a natural disaster require planning, systems, trust and leadership. 

That’s what I would have done. 

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Cookie Monster Explains #occupy

Anyway, here's a burst of Cookie truth that should be copy-and-pasted everywhere all across the Internet. Today, we are all Cookie Monsters!

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system -- your friends on Wall Street -- and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy -- knowing full well that what could and would happen -- putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

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Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific Corporate Social Media Study 2011

<div style="width:477px" id="__ss_9867062"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px">Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific Corporate Social Media Study 2011</strong> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more documents from Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific </div> </div>

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Apple Brand Architecture

Excerpt from Richard McManus post

Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985 in a failed leadership battle with the CEO at the time, John Sculley. In 1997, he returned to Apple and one of my favorite Jobs stories comes from that time. On his return, he reduced Apple's bloated computer product range from about 40 to just 4. This passage, set in an internal meeting, describes how he did it:

He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. "Here's what we need," he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote "Consumer" and "Pro"; he labeled the two rows "Desktop" and "Portable." Their job, he said, was to make four great products, one for each quadrant.

via @readwriteweb

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Social Media Is Nearly Dead And I've Got My Mojo Back

I’m back.  Didn’t last long did it?

There are a couple of reasons.
 
First of all, when I wrote my previous post I guess I was pretty fatigued by the whole thing.  I had spent so much time with companies and individuals writing up strategy documents, training, planning and they just weren’t getting it.  The decision to go back in-house after eight or so years as an independent was a biggie. I knew it would inevitably mean I had to colour inside the lines and be more careful about what I said.

I guess I thought it would just be easier to shut the whole thing down. One less thing to worry about.

I was wrong.

Having a voice and giving others a voice is fundamental to who I am as a person.

It is fundamental to my faith. It is fundamental to my political ideas. It is the most powerful agent for social change as we’ve seen recently in the Middle East with dictators falling and the peasants taking back the keys to the palace via mobile phone.
People around the world and around the corner here in Auckland are occupying what is rightfully theirs. People are being encouraged to speak up and demand accountability and respect for all human beings. Suckers like me that were taught macroeconomics at university by right-wing professors bought the lie that it would all just ‘trickle down’.

I read this article about two weeks ago and magically, I got my mojo back.

I realised that I am very lucky to be alive at this point in history and that the changes going on around me personally, globally and spiritually are not to be feared. I realised I need to lift my eyes away from guru spats and rubbish like ‘gamification’ and think about what my Big Boss is doing up in the iCloud.  He’s giving people a voice.

Change is in the wind. Social media as a concept is dying. People whose thinking I admire such as Kiwi Andy Lark (Dell and now Commonwealth Bank of Australia) are all heading back to safe harbour to regroup and prepare for battle.  Brian Solis has announced the end of social media 1.0 in his latest book. It’s going to be a wild ride and I have no idea what is going to happen next.

So I’m going to draw a little line --------------------and everything before it was me and everything after it is still me just with a bit of “views expressed are my own and not those of my employer” etc etc. You know the drill.

God wants all of us to have a voice. Me included.

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