eCommunications for global organisations

Digital advocacy – aligned with online campaigning more broadly – has been effective on issues that capture the public imagination for quite a while, largely because the web works extremely well as a grassroots mobilisation tool. From whale hunting to GMOs, pressure groups and concerned citizens have used a variety of online tools to express anger, spread the word and mobilise likeminded people. I’d argue that, were Greenpeace to announce a big-time campaign tomorrow on banning mink farming in Europe, it could be web-centred, with offline elements operating around it. Meaning that Greenpeace would be able to engage and mobilise enough people using primarily online channels to certainly reach (although probably not influence) relevant policy-makers.

However, the vast majority of advocacy issues don’t capture the public imagination. Nobody knows about them; the media doesn’t care. Until a short time ago, these were the sort of issues where advocacy was done off the radar i.e. primarily with stakeholders and policy-makers sitting down face to face. There’d be no large-scale media campaign or the like in support because it wouldn’t have been worth the effort seeing as all stakeholders were a phone-call away.

Now, I’d argue that digital advocacy is nearing the real deal for niche issues as well. Meaning what? That the web is ubiquitous enough – even in public policy land (view Fleishman’s EP Digital Trends or Edelman’s Capital Staffers’ index if in doubt) – to work as a direct advocacy tool.

In practice, I mean that if you plan and execute the online element of your campaign well, you can safely assume that you’ll reach relevant policy-makers directly, as well as engage and/or mobilise the aforementioned stakeholders that are just a phone-call away, using primarily online channels. By no means does that mean that traditional advocacy or media relations are a dying breed, but they can now be supported, enhanced and sped up no end. Exciting times ahead.

(This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog)

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(This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog)

Four words I’ve ruthlessly hijacked from a pamphlet I read this week. Four words which neatly explain a significant part of why the way in which organisations operate and communicate is so drastically different now compared to just a few years ago.

How? Power, influence and impact are not necessarily derived from how far up the proverbial food chain you are, but increasingly by how good your network is. The two are often aligned, but often not; someone can build and influence a network without having climbed too far up the traditional ladder. Meaning that the blogger who builds up a huge readership can be as relevant as a mainstream publication; or that the smart lowly employee who engages with the right people online can have as much of an impact on perceptions of his employer as the CEO.

What does this mean for organisations? It’s both a threat and an opportunity. A threat in that it’s harder to keep control if everyone has a megaphone. At the same time, it’s a stunning opportunity. An organisation’s combined talents are far more likely to be shared and harnessed in a world of networks; while an individual’s talent is far more likely to be exposed. Result? Potentially, a more creative, innovative and ultimately successful organisation.

And for the people tasked with communicating on behalf of organisations? Gone are the days of rigid messaging and press conferences. Added to the mix is harnessing the best of what the internal networks have to offer by handing them the mic. Don’t just use your CEO or Comms Director to represent you: use the intern, the engineer, or (even better) the guy who doesn’t actually work for you but loves what you do. Whoever has the best story to tell, frankly. But for communicators, networks go much farther than that. Whatever your sector or issue is, there’ll be a network of people engaging about it online in some way, and you’ll need to make sure you’re listening to what they’re saying and responding to it. That’s how you keep on the ball and avoid communicating in a void; and it’s how you try to make sure you’re engaging with the people who matter even if they’re not in the higher echelons of some hierarchy.

(This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog)

If there’s an issue that’s impacting your organisation around which you want to orchestrate a shift in opinion or behavioural change amongst a set of people large or small, it’s not enough to do the right thing and explain it effectively. Two factors play a part here:

1. People don’t trust you. Trust in pretty much every sort of organisation is at rock bottom and falling, so people will need to hear it from others to buy into what you do and say.

2. With regards to the web in particular, search. You can’t push your content, people will find what they want; such is the nature of the web – meaning that it’s quite likely that they’ll pick another site out of the thousands that show up in Google.

So what do you do about it? Beyond doing and saying “the right thing” (not so easy in itself) and a solid media relations set-up, you’ll need to become ubiquitous online. What does that mean? That your web tentacles reach far beyond your own web presence. Others communicating around your issue should be talking about you so that when people are on the aforementioned ‘other’ site on your issue that they’ve found on Google, you’re present too.

How do you make it happen? You’ll need to know who all the other players are on your issue and communicate with them in mind rather than hollering in a void. Reference their content or even feature them in person, comment on their content in your own output, and make sure you’re giving your input wherever you can on other platforms. Assuming – again – that your message is solid, people will take notice and will soon start talking about you, giving you the third-party credibility you crave (assuming they’re being nice!) and giving you airtime in other places where people might land.

Will it come easy? No, Rome wasn’t built in a day – it’ll be a slog, but you won’t regret it.

Here’s a very short internal presentation I did at ZN recently showing how I think the PA/Corp Comms agency model will develop in Brussels, as well as some thoughts on how ZN can become the “agency of the future” (sorry, I’ve blacked out three of the slides that outline the latter.)

Any thoughts?

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog

An eFluential is an online influential (or influencer) i.e. someone who matters online, someone people read and respect, and who can drive and influence an issue’s trajectory online.

For obvious reasons, communicators are often eager to identify eFluentials within their sector or issue. That’s all very well. Unfortunately, plenty of communicators then think it’s OK to pester them, assuming that of course they’ll be willing to spread a story and use their networks to promote anything from a take on an issue to a product launch. Think again. It barely works with traditional media, even less so online.

So as a communicator, what should you do? First, do identify these people. That’s not a crime. How? The basic tools work: look up keywords (brand, issue, legislation, organisation etc.) on Twitter search and Google blog search. Don’t forget blogrolls: finding bloggers via other bloggers works well. You can be even more sly. Look up your keywords on delicious, flickr, digg, reddit and check out if someone is tagging lots of good quality material. Google their names and see if they write blogs or where else they turn up (LinkedIn perhaps?)

OK so what do you now? DO NOT spam these people. Follow them, see what they have to say, learn from them, use them to gain an understanding of what’s driving your issue online. Then, if you’re really keen to build relationships with them, start engaging in their space e.g. go on Twitter or start blogging (or rather, advise your client to do so) and provide interesting and insightful material that they too will be interested in - and only then try to hook up with them. If they share your interests and you build a mutually beneficial relationship, they might, just might, refer to you at some point, follow you on Twitter or put you in their blogroll (but only because they really want to.) If at any point, however, it becomes clear that you’re trying to plug a product or promote a position, you’ll lose all credibility and you’ll need to start from scratch. Be warned.

As a side-note, I’d highlight that eInfluentials are not necessarily the people with most followers on Twitter or whose blogs are most read in your sector: “pitching social media creators who are influential but who are not really customer evangelists for a brand are the wrong people to target” (from a post by John Cass.) This is relevant for issues as well. If you’re engaging in online advocacy and want to, say, build relationships with bloggers in the hope that they might help you spread the word, focus on those who really share your interests and are most likely to join forces with you: if they have a huge following but only ever write about certain elements of your sector/issue which don’t involve you, that’ll remain the case no matter how many scoops you throw at them. Remember, online isn’t like traditional media. Getting an article in the FT will always be more valuable than getting a far better one into a small trade publication. Online, that’s not always the case. Via search, people can find anything that is relevant, while good quality content even on a low-profile site or blog can spread like wildfire if it captures the imagination.

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

I think I should start blogging. Twitter looks interesting. Think a Facebook fanpage will work wonders. Videos on YouTube are just up our alley. And so on. These are the kinds of things going through the minds of plenty of communicators at any sort of organisation in Brussels (and elsewhere for that matter) who work on issues and policy areas in which they want to exert some influence. And for good reason. The tools are cheap and cheerful, they’ve been proved to work, they fit an age of public relations in which engagement and humility are the order of the day, and what’s more, they’re fun.

However, as enticing as the tools may seem and as easy as you may think it will be to just try, test and see, I’d stress that rather than dive in and use the tools from the off, it’s imperative to have a long-term online engagement plan and to take a step-by-step approach that will help maximise the potential of your efforts.

Read more…

I’m always writing about aggreration and aggregators i.e. “a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing (Wikipedia)”

Aggregation can be extremely valuable in two respects in particular:

• As a learning tool: you’re being fed content from a wide array of sources - issue, market, sector or personal interest news - constantly and with little effort; great for keeping on top of developments
• As part of your content strategy: add third party content to your own sites, enriching your content without actually producing any yourself and increasing credibility via third-party association

At ZN, we’ve created what we call “issues dashboards” on energy, food and environment, bringing in feeds from a number of sources as well as via keywords from search engines. Here they are:

• Environment
• Food
• Energy

If you have other sources to recommend please let us know.

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

There’s too much fragmentation going on in Brussels. First there’s internal fragmentation of communications within organisations. Marketing are doing this, product guys doing that, issue specialists saying X, PR saying Y. Surely companies need to be better integrated. In particular, marketing and PA especially need to be telling the same story far more. Why? Because selling to consumers and legislators is a lot more similar than it was a few years ago. Marketing back then would have said: we’re cheaper and/or we’re better. PA would have said: we’re providing jobs and innovation. Now? They’re still saying that, but they’re both also saying “our company is a model citizen because of X, Y, and Z” and in this respect, there needs to be a lot more collaboration.

Beyond that, there’s what I’d call external fragmentation on issues, which is totally different, but is still about fragmentation, so I’ll put it in the same post. Call me lazy. What do I mean? That when looking at an issue for a client or prospect, everyone is always struck by the mess: multiple players at national level and pan-European level, public and private entities, associations and pressure groups, old media and bloggers. Even within the Commission say, DGs can have totally different priorities on an issue. People are talking about pharma this week: it’s now largely under DG Enterprise, but DG Sanco want it because surely Pharma is about health, they say. Whatever the outcome, fact of the matter is that their approach would be quite different.

In communications terms, what this fragmentation of players results is in turn a fragmentation of content and story which frankly makes an issue appear far more complex than you as an organisation want it to be. It’s hard to thrive within complexity because your story is one of a thousand; legislators might not have the time, the nous nor the willingness to really understand it well.

So what should you do about it? You create your own story that is tangible and relatively easy to digest of course. In addition, and more importantly, you should be the one player that makes sense of the fragmented landscape, and you can do it online. How? You become your issue’s portal by aggregating and hyperlinking content from all stakeholders in one online HQ available on your site - whether they’re private, public, competitors, pressure groups, media or bloggers.

What’s the point?

• You’re doing people a favour by making things easier. They’ll appreciate it.
• Making things easier will also enable people to understand your take on an issue more clearly, as well as understand it within the context of other stakeholders.
• The base assumption is that your argument is valid and that most of the content you bring in backs up your story. Assuming that’s the case, the outside content you bring in will give you the 3rd party credibility you crave.
• Becoming the focal point for web content will enable you to own the discussion online, naturally making you a key stakeholder rather than just one of many. Search comes into it too. By becoming an online hub, others will link to you and you’ll get better a search ranking on your key issues.
• You’ll showcase both sides of the argument (again, assuming your side is strong) and thus prove that you’re a fair and open player.
• You’ll have taken step one of the the four-step approach to online engagement. I’ll be building on this in the coming weeks, so watch this space.

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

The answer to “why blog?” really does depend on who is asking it. A young budding poet might want to show the world his or her mastery of alliterative verse while a tech geek might want to engage in a global community that spends its time developing a certain kind of code.

Here’s a few of my answers to the “why blog?” question to companies, associations, pressure groups or even individuals operating in Brussels and trying to show their take on issues that affect them and which they want to influence.

Authority and expertise

As with any type of communications, blogging is a platform to showcase your side of the story and your expertise, and again, as with any type of communications, if you have a good story, solid arguments, and you communicate effectively, you become engaged in a debate that you may very well influence and indeed shift.

However, in this respect, blogging does not really differ from an article or a position paper. What makes blogging different? It’s the format, and what that entails for the type of content you can publish, the frequency with which you can publish, and how it allows you to engage with your readership

The format: post length

Although you do want to adopt an editorial approach so as to ensure some consistency, posts can be whatever you want them to be. Five lines referring to an article elsewhere online or a far longer opinion piece. This really does expand your options when communicating, as you’re not restricted by the length and format that memos, press releases or position papers are expected to have. What’s more, you don’t have to rely so much on journalists and whatever their twist on your story might be.

It’s probably the ability to publish short posts that’s most novel. In the past, say someone published a report that backs up your side of the story, but you’d just sent a press release (or didn’t think it really warranted one), it would be really difficult for you to inform your audience of the report. With a blog though, you write a short post with a link leading to it, no questions asked.

The format: immediacy

Linked to this is the immediacy of blogging. Crisis? Communicate as soon as you’ve sorted out your strategy to deal with it. Your opposition has published something that you strongly disagree with or distorts the truth? Get your take out within minutes rather than days.

The format: the “real” you

Perhaps most importantly though, is how you can communicate in a blog (if you know what you’re doing!) You can drop the corporate speak. A typo doesn’t make you appear incompetent. You can ask questions if you like. Result? Blogging makes the blogger appear less detached, or more human if you will (the “human” factor is the biggest cliché in social media, but it’s true - read a post by Tom Watson MP and ask yourself if your impression of the man is the same as it would be if you were reading a quote in a paper). This is really important in an age where people are expected to be open, honest and transparent.

The format: engagement

Strongly linked to the above point is interaction, or engagement. If you blog as you’re meant to, people will be able to comment on your content and ask questions. This stokes fear in many traditionalists: “but we’ll get inundated with negative comments and people will realise that we’re not that popular!” Wake up. They know you’re not popular already (if that’s the case), and allowing people to voice their opinions, developing relationships with them and actually answering their questions is a fantastic opportunity, not a threat.

Reach the press

Under no circumstance am I saying that press relations and getting your stories published in traditional media is not important. It is important, but even in this respect too, blogging matters, as journalists increasingly look to blogs when researching stories and looking out for opinions and soundbites. Just google journalists+blogs (or even journalists+twitter) and you’ll see what I mean. Think a journalists that might write about you will only read your press release when you’ve got a good blog with plenty of top-tier material? Think again.

SEO

Dull but important. A blog is great for SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, meaning you’ll appear fairly high in google search rankings if you do a few things right. Does this matter? YES. +90% of people surf via google and never look beyond the first page of search results. Appearing there is absolutely paramount.

Further reading

Here are a few good old and new eBooks and posts on blogging best practice and blogger relations:

• 9 Things To Think About When Planning An Executive Blog
• Brian Solis’ The Art and Science of Blogger relations
• Pro-blogger’s guide to corporate blogging
• Chris Brogan’s best advice about blogging
• The business value of blogging

If you’re keen on seeing how other organisations blog, have a look at the Fortune 500 blogging wiki:

• The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

GlaxoSmithKline have pledged to cut prices of their pharmaceutical products in poor countries, to pump profits back into medical care, and to share details of patented products. This is an amazing development, but frankly, it’s bizarre that no pharma company has done anything like this before.

So why have GSK done it?

1. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that maybe they’ve done it in part because it’s the right thing to do.
2. In the long-run, it might very well be commercially rewarding. When most people think pharma, they think profit-driven behemoths. What a waste, given that it would be so easy for pharma to develop a positive image of itself. After all, it has played a large part in developing the standard of life we all take for granted; it’s an industry that cures diseases, prolongs life expectancy and saves lives. Who else can claim that? By being the first to make this sort of pledge in their industry, GSK are carving out a position for themselves as the “nice guy” of pharma that may very well stick for decades, even once the others have caught up. In an age where people expect companies to be ethical and to give something back, this will mean that plenty of people will pick GSK over their competitors when purchasing a product or making an investment.
3. As mentioned in the Guardian article linked to above, the open-source approach would likely improve R&D by allowing the best minds to work on products simultaneously no matter where they work, rather than keeping everything in-house. It’s worked in the software industry, why couldn’t it do so elsewhere? So others might have access to GSK’s trade secrets, but GSK will improve their products and as the “nice guy” of pharma will be most consumers’ brand of choice.

Hats off to GSK, and let’s hope other pharma companies follow suit immediately rather than trying to fight it off for as long as possible. They’d only be postponing the inevitable.