Helping Your Organization Avoid its Demise

Yesterday was Sunday, and I could no longer stand the clutter in my office. So, I sorted and filed. Inevitably, I came across a number of items that called for some kind of action. One of these was the December, 2009, issue of Public Relations Tactics from PRSA

It had an article on Bob Garfield's November 11, 2009, speech at the the PRSA 2009 International Conference in San Diego. Garfield is an Advertising Age columnist and author of The Chaos Scenario. He made numerous great points, but the one that resonates most with me is:

Every institution that has formerly dictated from the top down must begin treating its constituencies not as the anonymous hoi polloi, but as genuine stakeholders and partners. ... In a connected world, they have far more sway over you than you have over them.

This paradigm shift takes me back to textbook public relations and the function's role in border spanning. As I read it in my early textbooks, border spanning meant knowing and understanding how external stakeholders felt about issues pertaining to the organization and preparing the organization to address these issues. Sometimes this was to happen through adapting or changing policy, but more often, through one-way communications.

As time went on, my professional work as a communicator and my MBA emphasis on management policy led me to believe the real role of border spanning is to align the organization with the wants and needs of its stakeholders. On behalf of those first texts I read and those that have come since, they probably meant what I came to understand. But in practice, which I saw working in PR agencies, there was much more communicating in an attempt to align outside stakeholders with what management already thought and wanted to do than there was policy change to adapt the organization to the wants and needs of its stakeholders.

I believe that in the organizations that have been lauded as having excellent PR functions, the latter happens at least as often as the former. But with the proper management mindset, one which seeks to understand the wants and needs of stakeholders in the first place, and orient the organization to meet those wants and needs, border spanning becomes keeping up with stakeholder wants and needs rather than discovering them. And with the organization oriented correctly in the first place, adapting becomes a less extreme activity. The right management mindset is what it is all about.

What I believe Mr. Garfield is saying is social media is creating a world where non-alignment not only is a disadvantage but ultimately is a prelude to failure.

I have spent 30 years in the PR business listening to senior managers say "What we really want is good press coverage" from PR. Now, the press is an increasingly smaller part of what we think of as media. Social media, which is becoming an increasingly larger and more influential part of this media, requires a conversation. A civil conversation requires respect and understanding between participants, and, since one of the participants is an organization and the other a stakeholder, organizations need to understand and listen to these stakeholders if they want good media, good relationships and, in the end, good business.

The best self-help book I ever read is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. In his chapter on how to be a good conversationalist, Mr. Carnegie says its simple. Just be a good listener. Since conversations seem to be the best way to manage social media, organizations need to become good (and I will add "responsive") listeners if they wish to succeed in the brave new ever-more transparent world.

Marketer Beware! WSJ Article on Social Media as a Research Tool

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article by By Huaxia Rui, Andrew Whinston and Elizabeth Winkler on how businesses can use Twitter to predict sales. You can read the article at http://tinyurl.com/yftyoqs.

They use the example of three movies on which they tracked Tweets. They imply a correlation between the number of positive Tweets and ticket sales for the movies and write:

"Social-media sites such as Twitter have made it increasingly easy to find out what consumers think and want without the limitations and bias associated with older market-research tools such as surveys and focus groups."

I agree with this statement. But I have a major reservation with it as well.

The only people whose opinions you hear on Twitter are those who Tweet. You don't even get all the people who are on Twitter, let alone all those who are not. The same is true for any other social medium. You only hear from those who speak about that topic through that social medium.

For some categories, such as movies, there may be a relationship between positive Tweets and ticket sales. This may also be true for other categories that have to do with how people spend their leisure time.

But aggregate information from people who Tweet on a given topic can really only give you reliable information on people who Tweet on that topic. If they are the entire stakeholder group you care about, you're golden. But more often than not, they will not be a representative sample of the population you wish to know about.

So, marketer beware!

Another Way To Use Media Evaluation For Planning

MetLife and Echo Research won the 2009 Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award for excellence in public relations measurement and evaluation. This award identifies great examples of research and measurement integrated into public relations practice. IPR publishes winners as case studies on the Institute's website (www.instituteforpr.org).
This entry, "The Media Reality Check: A New Approach to Content Analysis" is somewhat unlike past entries in that it used media analysis as a starting- rather than an end-point. You can find the entry at: http://www.instituteforpr.org/files/uploads/JFGRAMetLifeandEchoResearch.pdf.

CHALLENGE
MetLife believed its messages about Annuities, Long-Term Care Insurance and Life Insurance were not being accurately and completely reported. This concerned the company because it felt that without complete and accurate information, consumers were less able to make informed decisions about these products.

SOLUTION
To determine whether or not MetLife was correct in this perception, it commissioned Echo to analyze the "message accuracy" of MetLife coverage of these three topics. Echo assessed message accuracy by quantifing:

1. The accuracy of basic facts,
2. The number of misstatements
3. Omissions of basic facts

Echo calls this approach "The Media Reality Check." They limited the media analysis to a set of publications MetLife considers to be particularly influential.

METLIFE POSITION SUPPORTED
Echo found the overwhelming majority of articles on the three topics of interest omitted a number of basic facts and included a number of misstatements. For example, 94% of the articles they examined on life insurance had at least one error or omission in their reporting on the topic. And omissions of facts were present more than errors. While 32% of the articles contained a misstatement of fact, 88% omitted a basic fact.

SOLUTION BASED ON RESEARCH RESULTS
MetLife has communicated this information to editors and reporters who follow these topics for key media. In followup measurement studies, not only has MetLife's coverage gone up, but also the accuracy of reporting. To me, this is a great case, because it focuses on how an organization can use research and measurement not just to evaluate, but to understand and assess (and in this case even quantify) a situation and use this information to develop a solution. Congratulations to MetLife and Echo Research for an innovative use of research to manage a communications challenge.

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Thanks very much for reading. If you have questions you'd like me to address, or other topics you'd like me to write about, please let me know.

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I work with organizations going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program, etc.) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong, or confusing, messages. After working with me, my clients have a clear understanding of what their messages should be. I also provide them recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.

I also work as a PR and communications research director for hire for agencies and other organizations.

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The Institute for Public Relations, (IPR) is dedicated to the "science beneath the art" of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you're there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.

Best wishes,

Forrest

Forrest W. Anderson
Founding Member
Institute for Public Relations
Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation

Article on Demos and Recovering from Recession

The following article is an interesting analysis of the potential effect of current demographics on recovery from the recession. It's a great example of how communications people should be thinking as they do their work. If Mr. MacKinley is correct, it represents a specific challenge most communicators need to think about overcoming as they support their clients.

Regardless, thinking about what is going on in the world is a critical part of what we do, because what goes on affects our stakeholders and audiences.

http://tinyurl.com/kruoww

Automated vs. Human Media Monitoring

Check out this discussion of automated vs. human media monitoring: http://tiny.cc/Dt6YP

Questions To Ask Before Diving Into Social Media

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And now to this month's article...

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Social media holds great promise But if you want it to be an effective part of your communications, I suggest you ask yourself a few questions first.

1. With whom does your organization want to communicate?
2. Why does it want to communicate with them; what does it want them to know or do?
3. Do the people with whom the organization wants to communicate use social media?
4. If so, does a substantial percentage of them use it?
5. How much do they use it?
6. How do they use it?
7. Which forms do they use?
8. Is the kind of communication your organization wants to do appropriate for social media?
9. What social media forms or specific venues would be most appropriate for your organization?
10. How do we monitor what relates to us and our social media efforts?
11. How can we determine the impact our social media programs have had on our target audiences?

There probably are more questions, but these are the ones that jump to mind. Much of my business is helping people figure out which questions they need answers to and then helping them find those answers. So, I'm going to talk about how to find the answers to some of these questions.

The first two -- "With whom does your organization want to communicate?" and "Why does it want to communicate with them; what does it want them to know or do?" -- are the basic questions we need to ask before any formal communications activity. The answers should come from the person or people commissioning the communication -- usually management.

The next set of questions is:

3. Do the people with whom the organization wants to communicate use social media?
4. If so, does a substantial percentage of them use it?
5. How much do they use it?
6. How do they use it?
7. Which forms do they use?

These are questions you can answer by doing a survey of your target audience. In the best of all worlds, you would do this survey by telephone. That way you would not be making the assumption your target audience is online. However, if you are willing to make that assumption, which is usually a fair one these days, you can do the survey online. This likely will be much less expensive than doing it by phone.

8. Is the kind of communication your organization wants to do appropriate for social media? This is a judgment call. There is much speculation about how social media works, and social media means a number of things to different people. What you need to do is think about the communications strategy you think will help you achieve your communications objective. For example, if building a community of like-minded individuals will help you achieve your goal, some form of social media probably will work for you. If you want to send a one way message, social media probably is not the best medium.

9. What social media forms or specific venues would be most appropriate for your organization? This is a judgment call that can be informed. What is most appropriate has to do with what you are trying to achieve, as I discussed under question 8. However, you also could have, in the survey of your target audience you did to answer questions three through seven, a multiple choice question asking which specific social medium might be most appropriate for a communication like yours.

10. How do we monitor what relates to us and our social media efforts? If you care about only a specific set of social media (e.g. a specific set of blogs) you can do this yourself by simply subscribing or visiting them regularly. If you wish to be more comprehensive, there now are a number of companies that provide social media monitoring services including Radian6, BurrellesLuce, Buzzmetrics and a number of free monitoring tools (see this article).

11. How can we determine the impact our social media programs have had on our target audiences? This depends on how you answered the first questions I posed: "With whom does your organization want to communicate?" and "Why does it want to communicate with them; what does it want them to know or do?"

If you know who the members of your target audience are and what you want them to know or do as a result of the social media program, then measuring the effectiveness of the program is as simple as finding out how many know what you wanted them to know or how many did what you wanted them to do.

One of the key challenges in this kind of exercise is you need benchmarks to be able to see if there has been a change. If you wanted the target audience to know something as a result of the program, you could have asked questions to get at awareness in the initial survey we discussed above. That would give you a "before" benchmark.

If you wanted them to do something, you will need to figure out how many did it as a result of exposure to the social media. In some cases this might be easy. For example, if you want them to check out a website, you might create a link in the social media you are using and a special landing page on the website. Then you could count the number of people who went to the landing page. But your actual measurement will depend on the behavior you are trying to induce.

Look Before You Leap
As I said above, social media is full of promise, and it is very tempting to try it out. But if you want it to be an effective part of your organization's communications program, you need to exercise the same discipline planning for social media that you would for any other program.

# # #

Thanks very much for reading. If you have questions you'd like me to address, or other topics you'd like me to write about, please let me know.

# # #

I work with organizations going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program, etc.) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong, or confusing, messages. After working with me, my clients have a clear understanding of what their messages should be. I also provide them recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.

I also work as a PR and communications research director for hire for agencies and other organizations.

# # #

The Institute for Public Relations, (IPR) is dedicated to the "science beneath the art" of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you're there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.

Best wishes,

Forrest

Forrest W. Anderson
Founding Member
Institute for Public Relations
Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation