“Hungrier, less complacent and more willing to embrace new media” for business.
That’s just one view why the US’s fastest-growing private companies - The Inc.500 - are giving the Fortune 500 a beating in terms of social media uptake, including use of blogs, online video and podcasting.
Comparing last year with this, 11.6% of the Fortune 500 have a public blog against 39% of the Inc.500. Only 3.6% more of the largest US corporations joined the blogosphere in the period, while 20% of private firms signed up. Now, nearly half (44%) of the Inc.500 companies reckon social media is “very important” to their marketing/business strategy - up nearly 20% on last year.
So, what’s bugging the bigger beasts in the forest about social media? And if this is the case in the States, where does that leave the biggest UK companies? The topic surfaced at this week’s Social Media Cafe launch (#smc_mcr) in Manchester, where it was agreed that large businesses tend to baulk at what they see as the uncontrollable world of social media.
Craig McGinty, with typical candour, told the assembled bloggers and social media-ites at the #smc_mcr: “It needs someone with the cahunas to get things going. But that means taking small steps, dipping their toe in and using a small team which can begin to feel comfortable with it.”
This suggests that despite the fears among gatekeepers, lawyers, compliance departments and whatnot within the larger organisations, the communications world is moving that way and companies run the risk of being left behind.
“Good evening comrades!” Sadly, this wasn’t the way Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, greeted viewers to his inaugural vodcast this week.
Hosted on the Kremlin website, the video address (as the site calls it) shows the leader at his desk saying “Hello dear friends”, which I suppose extends to anyone who isn’t thinking of attempting self-government in the Russian Federation.
Well done Medvedev for seeing a value in new media, though his efforts still lag far behind those of Barack Obama’s online presence but probably on a par with Downing Street’s.
But finding new ways to talk to people is nothing new for politicians. In the 30s and 40s, US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his famous “Fireside Chats”, a series of 30 radio broadcasts to the nation between 1933 and 1944, to explain major events and rally support for the Government’s plans in another time of economic meltdown. During a similar period, Adolf Hitler, employed film maker, Leni Riefenstahl, to produce propoganda for far more sinister purposes.
Whether it be Fidel Castro’s regulation four-hour speeches or Tony Blair’s “Big Conversation”, positioned as the biggest public consultation ever but mocked for being rather the biggest “monologue”, politics needs to find new ways to connect.
Will the Russian president’s foray into vodcasts take the chill off the Great Bear? We might have some trouble getting them to share the analytics.
I’ve spent the last few years envisaging an application that would allow me to know what my journalist contacts were up to, minute-by-minute. I’ve thought about a messenger-based system that would allow me to drop a quick note to them to see if it’s a convenient time to chat about a possible news angle on behalf of my client because there’s nothing worse than calling when they’re on deadline.
Well it’s arrived and it’s growing in popularity. If Facebook is the new Second Life, then Twitter is the new Facebook. It’s the tool us PRs have been waiting for.
For those of you who haven’t come across Twitter, I encourage you to watch this video courtesy of Commoncraft.
Exploring Twitter from a PR perspective has been interesting and has shown initial potential but it needs to be accepted by the masses to make it truely useful. Here are my thoughts on potential future uses of Twitter for PRs:
- Online Research: Drawing on a pool of social media enthusiasts (why else would they have Twitter accounts?) has turned Twitter into a great resource for research. Answers to questions are incredibly quick and offer great insight into areas you might not be familiar with. Working on adventure sports for one of my clients, I had to wade through media databases and avoid the much-hyped but low traffic websites. After requested help on Twitter, within minutes I had reached a community of adventure sports enthusiats who offered guidance on forums where extreme sports fans actually interact. Thanks everyone!
- Contacts: I wonder how many journalists out there would sign up for Twitter if they knew it would put an end to calls and emails from PRs at inappropriate times? Well only 27 so far following a search for “UK” and “journalist”. They’re obviously all too shy to put on their real profession. If newsdesks had Twitter at their disposal, the relationship between hacks and flacks could change dramatically. From instant updates like “Don’t bother me. I’m on deadline!” through to “Looking for urgent case study about….” journalists should be using Twitter as a tool to interact with PRs. If newsdesks are evolving into 24-hour bodies, maybe it’s time for their journalists to move away from resources like ResponseSource to a more immediate communication tool.
- Driver to website or blog: Driving interested audiences to a particular website is a regular occurance on the application. Most of the people I follow are comentators in the social media field and so links on Twitter to new posts on their blog make it easy for me to make a snap judgement on whether I’m interested in the topic or not. As previously noted, Gordon Brown, or rather Number 10, uses Twitter to publicise the PM’s current activities and highlights press releases from their press office. I have no doubt I’m one of the first to read these releases and I like to think journalists are using this as a resource to follow the PMs movements.
- Listen to the conversation: Using tools such as Tweetscan, PRs can search for who is talking about their brand and in what context. (Thanks for that one Jon!)
It wouldn’t surprise me if companies with busy press offices set up their own Twitter feeds to announce press releases, but don’t bank on having masses of followers. Brands with a strong online following and dedicated brand advocates, such as Apple, will benefit highly from this but it will be interesting to see which companies experiment with this tool as it gains popularity online and with mainstream media.
I agree with James Horton that the key to Twitter for PRs is to experiment - the same philosophy behind any new media tool - but don’t forget that this is a community. Don’t see this solely as a resource. Ultimately, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out.
