Sunday, May 9, 2010
Relationship Maintenance Strategies On Chinese Fortune 500 Company Websites May 7 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Scribd, the Textual Contents’ YouTube
I see the competition of Kindle and iPad stems from the division of stakeholders with textual thinking habit and those with visual thinking habit. In social media field, we can also see the such division of channels. Scribd acts as a textual contents’ YouTube is becoming more and more popular. This online platform enable people publish and discover documents on the web. Working like YouTube, Scribd hosts the library of uploaded texts instead of videos. The Scribd representative claim that people can find more information on their site than on Wikipedia—about 5 billion words versus 2 billion. Unlike blogs, the content on Scribd keeps its original textual format (font size, color, type and many other rich formats like pdf, docs, PowerPoint slides etc.) The site will automatically change those formats into flash file which enables the faster and easier reading experience.
It can be another important promotion tool for PR practitioners.
First, Scribd has tags for embedding documents onto the company’s website, or other social media site (e.g., blogs, Facebook, MySpace): the document can be embedded to those sites like an embedded video. This makes those sites with more varieties of contents that fulfill more stakeholders’ needs.
Second, we can create and track the online communities on Scribd. People can share and find new content by joining a Group on Scribd or start one of their own. The common interest brings people together who can participate in discussion threads.
Third, we can tract and evaluate the popularization of the content through browsing by what's popular—Most Viewed, Most Liked, and Most Discussed.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Changing PR Strategies for Social Media Channels-- A Case Study II
In summary, from the crisis communication perspective, I find several points worth mentioning during the current social media age:
Social media provide both opportunities and challenges to crisis management. It provids increased visibility and exposure of both positive and negative events of the company; it reaches customers/consumers directly; it provides ready-to-access online content for stakeholders; it owns uncontrollable bloggers who express their opinions; it, thus, change the new reporting system of previous dominated by traditional new media.
A dilemma of “The stakeholders perceive it as the crisis, then it is the crisis.” Due to power, legitimacy and willingness to confront differences, sometimes not all the stakeholders’ rights are equally emphasized. E.g., government cares only about its own country’s benefit, major media agenda setting and non-setting. But due to the raising power of social media channels, there is the increasing vocal of those ignored stakeholder (e.g., Indonesian fisherman claim their rights through their government, International law suit, etc). And these raising channels, if are not handled well, will worsen the crisis.
Information consistency does not solely mean speak in same voice, it also includes the integration and consensus of different media channels including traditional ones and social media channels which represent different stakeholder groups. E.g., Australia government can hold public hearing of oil flow rate with WWF, Geoscience, Greeens, PTTEP and all other economic and social groups, to work out a estimate plan to get the precise oil leaking rate as well as objective crisis evaluation.
Always being aware of the MUM effect and take multiple perspectives of stakeholders. The social or economic attachment to the organization may easily lead the members to take the perspective of organization when making sense the crisis. Taking a multiple perspectives of stakeholders and being open to different voices are two ways of dealing with MUM effect.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Changing PR Strategies for Social Media Channels-- A Case Study I
The practice of news reporting is changing due to the advancement of technology, and so is the crisis management (as well as the creation and delivery of news). This week I am going to share with you an unsuccessful case of corporate crisis management. In this case, the company solely focused on the relationship management with the traditional media sources. Those traditional resources chose to narrow their report of the crisis because of the crisis event happened far from their major audience and were lacking of relevancy with them. However, the overlooked social media channels with its strong technology support and multimedia reports expressed to the world such event and, to some extent, exposed the event in a more serious fashion.
On August 21, 2009, a Thai owned oil company PTTEP’s production well suffered a dramatic well-control accident. The accident occurred in an area known as the Montara Oil Field in the Timor Sea, more than 200km northwest of the Kimberley coastline, Australia. According to PTTEP, the well began pouring oil and gas into the Timor Sea at a rate of between 300 and 400 barrels a day, and three failed attempts have been made to plug the leaking well till Oct 22 (eight weeks) according to news.com.au, and a fourth attempt to plug the well has been delayed and will be made on Oct 28 according to Australia Network News, Oct 27, 2009.
Although compared with Exxon Valdez oil spill case, the leaking and polluting scale is much smaller in Montara case, several new features of this crisis in organization responses, stakeholder involvement, media coverage, and information strategy indicate that the crisis is going worse (for the leaking perhaps, but the organization is for sure).Urgent crisis management measures should be taken in order not to make this “small scale” crisis as notorious as Exxon Valdez case.
Stakeholder Analysis: Out-of-Sight Out-of-Mind Syndrome is Brewing a Crisis Storm
Australia government and PTTEP Company: complacent to the issue
Power: both sides have the power (the former authorized the latter the right of offshore drill); Legitimacy: it has been questioned by Senator Brown: “West Atlas spill [this Montara spill] should force a reassessment of the proposed Gorgon gas project [another ongoing seadrill project] off the Pilbara coast,” given the current uncontrollable situation of Montara spill;Willingness to confront: since the leaking site is off the coast of Darwin, off the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and the area is also with scarce previous studies of marine life and with no baseline survey of the vulnerability of adjacent ecosystems or marine wildlife by the company or its predecessors, Australia government “is showing signs of complacency over the seriousness of the oil slick and the issues it might pose for marine life.” (Greg Hunt)
Traditional Media vs. Social Media: Different degree of passion in reporting
Agenda setting role of media is apparent when comparing this case with Exxon Valdez spill. The out-of-sight out-of-mind syndrome appears in the major western media community, when dealing with Motara spill crisis. I have searched the news about Motara leak/PTTEP/Timor Sear spill in CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and NBC news site, there are very few reports about the crisis. Most of these sites just quote some of the PTTEP newsletter or government statement. On the contrary, the new social media channels show more interests to this crisis, and report it through multimedia tools: Al Jazeera post an interview of WWF on Timor oil spill on Oct 24, 2009 on Youtube; guardian.co.uk hosts a online photo site monitoring the leaking. Australia Network news provides audio form of interview online. But in general, since the lacking of focus by major media community, Montara leak crisis is not listed into the public agenda. So it, to some degree, worsened the out-of-sight syndrome and makes the crisis signals more hidden until it blasts out some day.
Friday, April 9, 2010
YouTube Channels for Universities #3
Based on previous analysis of university YouTube Channels, the following are my Top 10 YouTube suggestions for the organizations considering using the YouTube channels:
1. To theme the graphic design of the channels and make the whole tone and manner integrated with the organization’s main webpage, e.g., same layout, background color and patterns, font type and font sizes.
2. Create and get full use of YouTube video playlists featuring high-ranking videos compatible with the organization’s brand image, values and goals. For example, create playlists containing five videos (including one made by the organization) that are related to the organization’s industry or brand value. This will help drive traffic to the channel.
3. Associate the organization’s YouTube Channel with established YouTube channels related to business or industry.
4. Tag the videos with keywords and proper names, and add descriptions to each video. The most important word to be included in the tags is the word “video.” So, the tag can follow the format “(fill-in-the-blank) video.” For example, if you have produced a video about public relations, tag your video “public relations video.” Moreover, tag the video with the name of the organization all the time.
5. To favorite a few, related, high-quality videos to put video content on the organization’s channel. The videos being “favorited” are often well-produced and present the messages, values and goals in line with the organizations. So, at a glance, they look like video content of the organization.
6. Comment on videos and channels. Comment something nice on others’ channels and leave a link to the organization’s own channel. When getting the comment from others, respond to them in different ways, for example, use the video response to attract more attention from audiences.
7. Use closed-captioning for videos and activate the instant-on function to drive the traffic. In addition, make full use the annotations embedded in video playing, adding some comments during the video here and there to remind the viewers to click the organization’s link.
8. Use more interactive blocks for content. The enhanced channels provide more “Side Boxes” and “Branding Boxes” to subscribe viewers with comments.
9. Use interactive banners linking viewers directly to the organization’s website and creating seamless integration of brand. Banners can also be mapped enable direct links to different pages.
10. Put other social media icons in the YouTube channel and interlink the channel to those social networks in order to increase popularity and integrate the social media resources.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
YouTube Channels for Universities #2
My analysis will mainly focus on several highlights of the best channel (i.e., from UniversityPennsylvania) as well as some pitfalls from other channels in order to show how well YouTube channels can help these universities pursuing the goal of teaching, research and service.
The UniversityPennsylvania channel is a very well-developed institution channel with clear brand promoting strategies.
- First, when first log in to their site, it makes you feel that you just open another web page of its school website. Because there are highly integrated channel background colors (navy blue with watermarks of the school building picture), format, font type and size.
- Second, the Instant-on introductory video quickly catches your attention with closed-captioning that makes messages from the video clearer. Only two of the ten observed channels activate the closed-captioning function.
- Third, the channel uses the Interactive Banners linking viewers directly to the school main website and creating seamless integration of the school images and messages. Moreover, the channel adds four small icons at the top right corner of the site which represent “About Penn,” “Admissions,” “Academics,” “Research” respectively, and each icon is mapped enable direct links to relevant pages of the school website. Similarly, UHuston channel uses the interactive banners at top right of the site but they link audiences to its three separated YouTube sub-channels—“courses,” “multimedia,” and “departments.” Such embeddedness of webpage elements to the YouTube channel is an important successful experience of channel design, which offered online audience familiar feeling between YouTube channels and official sites. The interactive banners play the important bridge roles between YouTube channel and the school, and well reflect the strategic goals of the school to promote teaching, research and service.
- Fourth, the interlink icons are provided between YouTube channels and other social media sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr). This is the unique feature of UniversityPennsylvania channel. In doing so, the university channel creates its own social networks and gets full use of other social media channels to increase its traffic.
- Fifth, in order to better promote the teaching goals, the videos being uploaded on university channels are supported with unlimited play time and up to 20 Gigabyte (three hours of video). This allows the schools to broadcast lectures, classes and speeches. This is the most unique feature and advantage of university channel over other private or corporate YouTube channels—they share with the world the schools’ strong academic resources, which, in turn, attract more students to the channels. Most of the ten channels I observed have uploaded such academic videos ranging from 25 minutes to 2 hours and 28 minutes.
- The sixth, which is the area, I think, UniversityPennsylvania needs to improve, is the use of playlist. Specifically, some channels (e.g., texastech and Arizona), although with fewer uploaded videos produced by themselves, build playlists with the mixed videos of their own and those from external sources as supplement. Those external videos are mostly featuring high-ranking videos compatible with the schools’ strategy. Texastech categorizes its playlist into eight classes, for example “Academics and Research,” “Campus Life,” “The Texas Tech Vietnam Center,” and “Texas Tech University Celtic.” The videos within each class are from a large variety of sources, but under the same theme. Through this smart use of the playlist, Texastech’s total upload view ranks the first among all ten channels.
- Seventh, in order to promote the school’s desire of serving the local community, some universities directly embed local TV news in their YouTube channels broadcasting their social event or community activities. For example, UniversityofVirginia post a NBC news report of a local high school student volunteering to support the using of google fiber in the school community region. It is very smart to post a non-university produced and seemingly non-university business report on the school’s channel. Because it expresses, implicitly, the university’s support to the adoption of new technology which echoes the voices of local community as well as the demands of a large amount of high-school students who will also be the potential university recruits. Such video posts not only strengthen the social tie of the university and the local community, but also enhance the university’s reputation among high school students—the potential customers of the university.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
YouTube Channels for Universities #1
http://www.youtube.com/user/OhioStateUniversity
http://www.youtube.com/user/UnivPennsylvania
http://www.youtube.com/user/Arizona
http://www.youtube.com/user/UOregon
http://www.youtube.com/user/texastech
http://www.youtube.com/user/UniversityofVirginia
http://www.youtube.com/user/UHouston
http://www.youtube.com/user/CornellUniversity
