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.

IMC in personal branding

A personal brand is a perception or emotion maintained by somebody other than you describing the total experience of having a relationship with you. Personal branding is the process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves by identifying and articulating their unique values and then leveraging it across multiple platforms with a consistent message and image to help achieve a specific goal.

Given the current advancement of social media, we have many choices of tools for selling ourselves to the potential employers; and on the other hand, employers have many different ways to approach us employing the same social media channels. So how to integratedly utilize various of social media tools becomes essential for the success of finding a job position or a good-fit employee.

We can refer to the definition of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) which advocates synergistic approach to achieving the objectives of a marketing campaign, through a well coordinated use of different promotional methods. As defined by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, IMC ". . . recognizes the value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion and combines them to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact. "

I found the following video useful for us to learn how to integrate our current social media sites and create an coordinated positive image, consistency of our online exposures.

Enjoy!

Personal Branding and Self-Marketing Sources

Personal branding and self-marketing are hot topics among my peers of graduate students these days, because we have all passed the comprehensive exams of the program and will graduate and enter into the job market in this May. So this week I am going to post some useful links of promoting personal branding. The sources are retrieved from http://www.quintcareers.com/career_branding.html by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D

Quintessential Careers Career Branding & Marketing Resources:

• Building Your Online Career Brand: Five Tools for Job-Seekers. Discusses five tools job-seekers should use to build and maintain an online career brand.
• Building Your Personal Brand: Tactics for Successful Career Branding. Discusses five branding tactics to take charge and build your personal brand.
• Career Branding: What's the Value of Your Personal Brand? A Quintessential Careers Quiz -- find the value of your personal brand image in maximizing your career brand for promotions and new jobs with this free quiz.
• Career Branding Tutorial -- designed to help you take your career to the next level... filled with (free) insights, tips, and tools to assist you in the creation or refinement of your career brand.
• Career Storytelling Tools for Job-Seekers -- where you will learn about the power of storytelling to propel your career to the next level, including free tips, tools, and more.
• A Dozen Things You Must Know About Communicating Your Career Brand. Learn strategies for communicating your brand.
• The Elevator Speech is the Swiss Army Knife of Job-Search Tools. Learn how to develop and use this key personal branding tool in your job-search. Includes samples.
• The Five-Step Plan for Creating Personal Mission Statements. Here's a five-step plan for creating a mission to enhance your career success.
• Integrating Assessments Into Your Personal and Career Branding. Shows you how you can use the details from career assessment results to build or strengthen your career branding efforts.
• Is "The Breakfast of Champions" in Your Resume? How can job-seekers stand out from the crowd of other job-seekers competing for the same job? By using proven marketing and branding techniques.
• Marketing is How You Show Others How You Can Help Them, Including Selling Yourself for Jobs and Promotions. Shows you how job-hunting is all about using marketing skills, including selling yourself in job interviews for job offers.
• SEO for Job-Seekers: 10 Tips for Building Your Brand and Being Found Online by Employers and Recruiters. Tips for sculpting and managing an online persona, personal brand, digital presence using proven search engine optimization (SEO) methods.
• Take Control of Your Personal Branding. Everyone has a brand. A personal brand is what you do consistently with effectiveness. Learn how to clearly review, define, build your personal brand.
• Using a Career Journal to Further Your Career Development and Empower Your Job-Search. Relates how whether you're a student searching for career direction or a job-seeker thinking of a job or career change, you can benefit from a journaling.
• Using Key Marketing Tools to Position Yourself on the Job Market. Discusses why job-seekers would be wise to take a few lessons from marketing and apply those rules to your job search.
• Using a Personal Mission Statement to Chart Your Career Course. This article takes job-seekers through the self-discovery process of creating your personal mission statement.
• Using a SWOT Analysis in Your Career Planning. Shows how a key strategic planning tool can be successfully applied to marketing yourself and advancing your career.

Other Quintessential Career Marketing Resources:

Career Porfolios:

• Career Portfolio Tools and Resources for Job-Seekers. One of the best ways to build and promote your brand is by creating both a traditional job-search portfolio, as well as an online version. Find the tools you need in this section of Quintessential Careers.

Career and Personal Branding Books:

• Career Branding, Personal Branding, and Career Storytelling Books for Job-Seekers and Entrepreneurs. The Quintessential Careers team has personally selected the best career branding books to help propel your career.

Career and Personal Branding Websites:

• The Brand Called You. An article by business guru Tom Peters, published on FastCompany.com.
• Me Incorporated: Your Own Magnetic Brand. A nice overview of personal branding by Randall Frost on BrandChannel.com.
• Reach Communications Consultancy. A personal branding and performance coaching site that includes an innovative assessment, the 360°Reach Assessment, which helps you get the real story about how you are perceived by those around you.
• ResumeBucket.com -- a great personal branding site where job-seekers can upload up to 20 versions of your resume, which are then converted to Web pages, so that they are available online (each with a unique URL) 24/7 from anywhere in the world -- fully searchable (unless you want to keep it private) and edited with or without HTML tags. The site also includes a quick job-search feature using Indeed.com. No cost to job-seekers.

33 tips of Social Media and Digital Marketing Part 2

From the Engaging with Customers sessions

18. Build relationships with fire starters
19. Build community first, monetize later

(Social media community becomes the new brand intangible word of mouth assets in addition to traditional brand awareness, values and key stakeholder loyalties)
20. Offer value on Twitter, don’t self promote
21. Have passion and jump on every possible situation you can on the social Web
22. Build relationships with customers to create a memorable brand experience
23. Set goals, measure, and iterate

(Even the most flexible, adaptive, and natural looking social media site has to be strategically planned. The practitioners create a forum that attracts the consumers’ participation and promotes dialogues under the similar prescribed theme and rules. However, the best strategies of marketing are those accomplishing both brand’s and consumers’ goals, fulfill both brand’s and consumer’s needs, and reframing and unifying various interests under the same framework—the brand values.)
24. Social media guidelines for your company should be short and succinct

(Short and succinct means practitioners have much freedom to adapt their tactics according to the changing of market.)
25. Be organized internally to effectively manage social media externally

(keep communicate to the outside with the same voice, tone and manner, and standpoint)

From the Peer to Peer sessions

26. Blog about how your products/services fit into your customer’s lives
27. Humanize your blog

(Feature of humanity is always the first priority for social media practices)
28. Get your legal counsel talking to other companies that have successfully implemented social media
29. Have conversations with senior management to determine their appetite for social media

(A bottom-up educational popularization of social media marketing is useful to shift the mind of senior management members from traditional media tools to social media)
30. Provide your community something that is personally beneficial to them
31. Let your members decide how they want to use “their” community
32. In online video, be mindful of people’s time, attention and surroundings
33. Use trackable links to measure success

33 tips of Social Media and Digital Marketing Part 1

I just read an article by Jay Baer, who summarized from 2009 digital marketing mixer conference in Chicago 33 tips of Social Media and Digital Marketing. I’d like to share with you these points and some of my ideas in different font color following each points.

From the Marketing Must Knows sessions

1. Build credibility before you sell via social media
2. Allow open (but governed) access for employees to Twitter and blogging
3. Broadcast emails are not effective. Create relevancy and be helpful
4. Use your Facebook fan page to promote key content of your email newsletter
5. Join the right conversations and the right time
6. Think about your Web site’s “front page” as a collection of pages, not one home page
7. Improve search spending ROI by using down-funnel data
8. Invest in social media. It’s not free.

The key advantage of social media as the marketing tool is that it employs the person-centered communication format (i.e., accessibility, topic relevancy, interactivity). So it sets the high bar for social media practitioners (i.e., promoting credibility, investing time and money on social media, participation in dialogues of the consumers)

From the Integrating Marketing Programs sessions

9. Test the unusual
10. Clean up your landing pages
11. Keep your troops informed
12. Insert retweet buttons into PDF files

(That’s an evolutionary practice that leads to the change of traditional one-way author-reader relationships to highly interactive co-authoring relationship. Perhaps, the Amazon Kindle can considering such function since it has already been equipped with the PDF reading and Wikipedia posting functions.)
13. Remove gates in front of your content
14. Use your brand community for market research

15. Engage in online communities as a person first, as a marketer second

(The stress of humanity (e.g., user friendly interface, consumer-centered communication, personalized content) is another important feature of social media. The Social media practitioner should be highly involved into the online activities in order to keep updating their mind of such fast developing new media channels and co-opt it for marketing use.)
16. Use Google keyword tool to learn how customers describe your products/services

17. Optimize all your content for search

Use Podcast in Language Learning

I am thinking about ideas to promote the culture learning program in Confucius Institute at NC State these days. One successful case can be referenced to is CSLPod

It effectively employed podcasting to promote its Chinese teaching programs.

CSLPod is located in Beiiing, the capital of China. They teach practical, real live Chinese to all level of students at physical classroom settings. On February 8th, 2007, CSLPod published its first Podcast. And now they have more than 700 podcasts and transcriptions offering lessons at three levels: elementary, intermediate and advanced. Through podcasting, their Chinese Language learners increased from those studying and working in Beijing to all over the world of more than 100 countries. Their podcasts are downloaded 100,000 times or more monthly.

Their success is not a coincidence.

First, they select the right media—podcasting. One of the most advantages of podcast in promote the culture program is to help people learning Chinese as the second language. Podcast is based on one-way communication and audio format, which is perfect for practicing Chinese listening skills, especially for the entry level students, who needs to spend a large amount of time to get used to the pronunciation and tonality of Chinese.

Second, podcasting release learners from fixed classrooms and class time. They can download the contents and listen to them with them wherever they go and whenever they like. It creates a good language learning atmosphere.

Third, the success of podcasting, in large part, relies on its contents and ideas. When you log into the CSL’s podcasting host website, you can see that CSLPod provides new lessons every weekday providing most fresh, useful, interesting Chinese phrases and sentences covering business, travel, sports, medicine, shopping, entertainment and other fields of daily life.

Fourth, integrate the podcasting with other communication channels: website, printing media such as books, email interaction etc, CSLPod overcomes the disadvantage of podcasting: one-way communication lacking of interaction, linear style inconvenient to control the playing of the contents.

I will go on researching this case, and figure out best mix of social media for Confucius Institute to use. If you have any ideas, welcome to drop a line here, let’s have a brainstorming!

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + . . . + 1 = 1

Today, I want to talk about how Ford innovatively uses video postings from hundreds of the consumers and makes them into a popular Vlogging of Fiesta.

First, Ford utilizes video as the format of its message communicating to the outside world. Unlike those text blogs, Video extends the power of the blogosphere for organizations and visual impact of the message being promoted. Also, video can help generate additional web traffic and interest for Ford, compared with traditional print ads, PR advertorials, website banners and text links.

Second, abandons the traditional one-way media promotion, Ford chooses social media as its powerful social networking generator. It selects 100 “agents” to participate in Fiesta Movement, who are social media experts with huge following in a wide variety of social media sites. The networks are including thousands of MySpace fans, YouTube subscribers, Facebook friends and followers on Twitter. Their firsthand Fiesta experiences of these agents can reach out the public and makes the audience number increasing in geometric progression.

Third, the smartest tactic is that Fiesta Movement hosts the YouTube Channel, and special website to promote those Fiesta experience video posts from agents. All these sites are with the same interface design, color and graphic tone and manner. Although different agents may come out with different videos presenting various lifestyles, such method integrated those isolated, individual attitudes, beliefs, hobbies, lifestyles into one message: Fiesta is social, energetic and popular, and it suits for all kinds of young spirits. I see this video channel as a Fiesta Vlogging rather than video post contest, there is not a single Vlogger who produces all the video contents, but everybody is the producer of the video contents; there is not a single style that represents Fiesta, but everybody is representative of Fiesta. However, when we sum up all these isolated ones, we get a big one—the Fiesta, a Vlogger who understands everybody’s needs, echoes everybody’s attitudes, and produces videos suits everybody’s taste and entertains them.

Here comes the equation: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + . . . + 1 = 1

Ford "Fiesta Movement" Social Media Campaign

I want to start this week’s blog with the quote of Connie Fontaine (Ford’s Brand Content and Alliances Manager):

“These agents are ready for adventure and eager to spread the word with their friends, fans and followers. They’re going to take our Fiestas on missions across the country and share how much fun they are having.”

It describes the experience of Fiesta Movement, a successful Ford Fiesta launch campaign which integrates PR + Advertising under the social media umbrella. Ford innovatively develops the way to integrate social media sources (YouTube video posting, Flickr photo tagging, facebook communities and twitter groups) and creates a platform, through this event, gathering consumers’ firsthand car ownership experiences and maximizing their impact. You can see more detail about this campaign in the following Web accounts:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/fiestamovement
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiestamovement
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Fiesta-Movement/73386615309
Twitter: http://twitter.com/fordfiesta

From Document to Application, My Social Bookmarking Experience

In the past few days, I was playing around with del.icio.us, a popular social bookmarking system. I would like to share some of my experiences and thoughts here.

Before having my del.icio.us account, I used bookmark quite often. It was a feature of my Internet Explorer called favorite. When I worked full time in advertising agency, I had the folders according to different client I served, which include the industry information or competitor PR/adverting news: Intel, GM, VW, Bank etc. Sometimes, I needed to backup them in a USB flash drive so I could take it with me. When I bought a new laptop, or changed the work place and computer, I could quickly install those folders and use them. It was really helpful and time saving, because it accumulated all my previous online searching history and kept them safe and well organized. This looks like I create for myself a drawer of personal documents so I can refer to them anytime in future.

However, using del.icio.us, the social bookmarking experience, changed my view of bookmark as documents. Now I think that it plays more powerful role in my information seeking, and functions like a dynamic, self-learning application rather than static document. It is an application, because I don’t need to backup it in my USB flash driver, it can be applied in any computer, in any system or search engine. All I have to do is log in to my account in del.icio.us on a computer with internet access. Second, tags make my internet experiences more social, and enable me to refer thousands of others’ experiences which make my information seeking task easier, more efficient and accurate. I really like using tags which provide a vast amount of user-generated annotations and reflect mine as well as other millions of users’ interests. The creating and sharing of these tags makes previously dead document (web address) in my favorite folder alive and growing. They become a social community including tags (the source indication), users, and information sources. Moreover, tags, as some sort of data, speak. They tell you the trends of the topics, the amount of users, and popularity.

How about other social media tools? Aren’t they shifting our life from the document era to the application age (traditional text webpage to imbedded social media features e.g., the video gadget at the right hand side of this blog)? From solitude to community (e.g., writing personal diary to reality life show on twitter and facebook)? From being influenced by media to exert influence through media (e.g., blogs, podcast make your idea public and powerful).

Learning by Doing, Learning by Sharing

My first experience of blogging, which found an echo of my mind, is from the movie Julie and Julia.

Learning by Doing. In the story, Julie, turns to her 30s (me too), is at loose ends feeling nothing is sure (some sort unsure of my future facing the graduation in May) except when she is cooking: “you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick, it’s such a comfort.” (Also, what I am quite sure about is my interest in social media and advertising). In attempting to revitalize her marriage, restore her ambition, and save her soul, Julie decides to learn how to cook by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 days (Learning by doing, that’s why I decided to learn social media by blogging. I also set a deadline, the period of the following 5 months before I go back to China).

Learning by Sharing. Another important purpose, and benefit, of Julie’s blogging is as she says: “people are reading it, I am sure.” Sharing gives Julie’s project the meaning and cures her uncertainty and frustration of the life. Sharing makes her feel that she is not alone, and such feeling motivates her during those low tide periods. Sharing brings readers’ ideas, critiques, supports, and advices. What's more important, sharing creates a forum for dialogues of those people sharing the common interests, characters, and beliefs. Instead of Julie’s strong proclamation: “I have thoughts, I can write a book,” I would argue that people have thoughts which inspire mine, and we together can make difference.

I think, these are the two major features of social media such as blogs. Doing means you really create the content by yourself, and you are the initiate author; sharing means you are never alone: you have readers out there and you are also the reader of their comments, and you, together with your readers, are creating something new.

In this blog: Social Media Ideas and Critiques, I will post my reflection of the readings and lectures in my social media and PR class base on my past work experiences and current social media cases. The topics may cover current popular events, advertising and PR campaigns, academic and professional research, communication theory, or the practices of public relations. It can be a brainstorming session for a non-profit organization PR program, a harsh critique of some misdeed using social media, a literature review and synthesis of relevant studies, and online print ad and TV commercial show. There will be two new postings each week with regular responses to the comments.

Julie ends her blogging project by saying that "back exactly where we started--just Eric and me, three cats and Buffy...sitting on a couch in the outer boroughs, eating, with Julia chortling alongside us...." I wish that in the end of mine, I can confidently say that “back exactly where I started—my computer, social media books and class notes…sitting in front of my desk, editing blogs, responding comments with some music from Niccolo Paganini, but with more friends known from the blogs, and full brilliant ideas can’t wait to be carried out, and excitement of bring my learning back to China, and more…”

Let's get started, Bon appétit!