Morgan McLintic on PR and Performance

Webinar - Crisis management in a social media landscape

I'd like to personally invite you to our free crisis management webinar on Friday February 12, 2010 at 9.00am PT. Click here for details and sign up. Hope you can make it.

Overcoming social media stage-fright

So, you're convinced of the benefits of social media. You've read the endless blog posts, emails, newsletters, case studies and even books about it. The theory is all there, but somehow, when it comes to actually drafting a post or recording a video, you just can't do it.

Don't worry - it's perfectly normal to be concerned whether what you have to say is interesting, up-to-date, or correct. Submitting our ideas to scrutiny ranks right there alongside public speaking for some. Fear of ridicule, vitriol or just plain obscurity is rational, understandable and frequent. Plus in 'meatspace' if you're a little shy until you get to know people, then why wouldn't you be reticent in sharing your views online?

Well guess what? Perhaps you're right. And yet millions of others have overcome this fear. Here are a few things to to help you overcome social media stage-fright:

Convincing yourself it's fine

1. You're more interesting than you think - when things are familiar, we tend to forget how interesting they are. Most people probably aren't exposed to all the fascinating experiences you have every day, so share them.

2. If you're not interesting, no-one will care - they'll just move on. There is lots of great content, so if yours turns out to be banal, the worst that will happen is you'll be ignored. You won't be vilified, you'll be overlooked. Wasted effort, perhaps dented pride, but no lasting damage.

3. Most people don't comment - only a small percentage of people say anything. Most of us are consumers not contributors.

4. Most commenters are people just like you - and so will say something rational, fair and helpful.

5. Some commenters are trolls - and will craptalk you regardless of whatever you said. Ignore them.

Minimizing the risk of failure

1. Start small - update your Status on your social network once a day. Just say what you are doing, even if it's a TV program you are watching or going to the gym.

2. Comment on someone else's post - this gives you a chance to air your views amid the comment stream where it's less prevalent and won't be indexed. Comment anonymously if you must, but get used to contributing and sharing your views.

3. Draft a few posts, but don't publish them - this will get you used to the writing style. It'll also help you compare with other relevant bloggers. Did they write about the same topics? Were your views aligned or constructively different?

4. Contribute to a multi-author blog - perhaps your company has one with a generic author title. For instance, my agency has a 'LEWIS Team' name for general updates and infrequent contributors. While I  strongly believe that an opinion worth having is one you'll put your name to, the security this provides will enable you to post and see the response without feeling exposed.

5. Select a safe topic - stick to something factual, such as a news-related post. Don't offer an opinion, just update your audience on something they might find relevant. And source the information. You can't go far wrong with this.

6. Publish and be damned - like that tricky email, at some point you just have to hit Send. Put your tin hat on, stuff the phone directory down your pants and put it out there. Chances are it'll fall on deaf ears. I'm sorry but awareness is earned so it's likely many people won't notice your golden prose. But some will. And then some more the next time. Be patient.

Building confidence

1. Publish, publish, publish - once you've got over the initial post, podcast or whatever stage-fright, just keep going.

2. Get back in the saddle - at some point you'll come a cropper. Just like your father said when you learned to ride a bike, dust yourself down and get back on quickly.

3. It never truly goes away - so get used to it. In fact, if you don't feel some angst when you publish, you're probably not pushing yourself enough. Take risks or be ignored.

I hope this helps. If not, please let me down gently ;)

Seven ways social media changes crisis management [video]

Social media is changing crisis management. Here we look at seven ways that's happening, for good and bad, right now.

The top 5 social media monitoring services [Poll results]

We recently ran a poll to find the most popular social media monitoring services in use today. Over 1,450 votes were cast (thanks!). The results are fascinating, not least because one of the most popular wasn't even on our radar, and the most high profile firms didn't attract the most votes. So here we go.

Total votes - 1468

1. Viral Heat - 511 votes (35%)

2. ListenLogic - 265 votes (18%)

3. Biz360 - 204 votes (14%)

4= Radian6 - 121 votes (8%)

4= Filtrbox - 121 votes (8%)

Viral Heat emerged as the clear winner with over a third of the votes cast. ListenLogic came an impressive second despite the disadvantage of not being on the list. I'll stick my hand up and say this is a new service to me (sorry guys) but obviously one which companies should evaluate when selecting their paid monitoring platform. It was interesting to me that high profile Radian6 was not more popular and that Scout Labs was unplaced. In fact, Sysomos is worthy of mention securing 101 votes, again despite the fact it was unlisted. Congratulations too to Filtrbox for making the top 5, alongside Radian6.

So what can we conclude from this? First, judging by the scale and range of response, there is a lot of interest in the monitoring space and the field is hotly contended. Second, the traditional services you might have used a few years ago to search for news like Factiva, Vocus or Lexis-Nexis are not being deployed here. Third, we should check out winner Viral Heat, but there is a long list of services which others comfortably use - in fact 25 were named in the Other category.

I think this is a good thing for brands - the competition will encourage innovation and lower prices. For instance, no single service can be used yet on a global basis, so there is huge opportunity for each of these companies. Thanks once again to all who voted and shared their opinion, and well done to all those in the top 5.

Navigating a crisis in a social media landscape [Slides/Flowchart]

At the Social Media World Forum earlier this week, Lucy Allen and I ran a workshop about crisis communications. It's called 'Red Alert - Navigating a crisis in a social media landscape'. As the title suggests it looks at how social media has changed very nature of the crises which impact a company, and what this means from an issues management perspective.

Red Alert - Navigating a Crisis in a Social Media landscape

View more documents from Morgan McLintic .

Essentially we believe:

• There are two types of crisis - event-based crises (like a chemical factory explosion) and information-based crises (like a negative blog post, inaccurate statistic, or damaging opinion). Most companies are likely to face the second, informational type of crisis, whereas traditional issues management is aimed at countering the classic something-bad-has-happened crisis. So there's a gap which this approach aims to fill.

• Preparation is important - which means mapping out the likely crises across the axes of likelihood and impact, getting your messaging straight etc. But it also means opening up the channels of communication (blog, Twitter) which you'll rely on when a crisis breaks now (not during).

• Whether to respond or not is key - but how do you decide? We offer a workflow (see below) to help you. It's based on the excellent framework from the USAF Public Affairs Agency Blog Response Guidelines but moves it forward to cope with other channels and situations based on our experience.

• How you should respond - OK so we're going to respond, but how and what should you actually say? We offer some factors to consider, as well as some Dos and Donts.

I hope you find this a useful and practical framework for your crisis communications. We'd love to hear your feedback, or any lessons you've learned in the trenches so we can continue to build on this. Please feel free to share the response workflow or this slide deck. We have poster-sized copies of the workflow if that's useful, just let us know and we'll pass one along.

LEWIS - Blog Response Workflow Nov 2009

Social media measurement - overview [video]

The how to measure six core areas of social media, the metrics to record and how to track them. All for free and in less than three minutes.

Social media measurement - basic metrics

Social media is easy to measure. That’s one of the most compelling factorsof online behavior – it’s trackable and comparable. And for marketers that means we can combine the creative right-brained activities with the logical left. We can fly by instruments, not just gut reaction. And we can demonstrate progress. That’s not the same as Return on Investment, but for many companies, it's more feedback than they have on other areas of the business. Measurement helps us learn what’s working, do more of it and do it better.

So what should you be tracking as a minimum? Here are five dials you should have on your social media flightdeck:

• Blog – traffic over time, comment numbers over time, posts, comments per post, inbound links, RSS subscribers
  The goal here is to track your reach and basic level of engagement. You can get the traffic and comment numbers from your blog platform. Feedburner will enable you to get the number of RSS subscribers. Technorati's Authority index tracks the number of inbound links (although they've removed Watchlists as a service it seems).

• Commenting – number of comments you make, number of different blogs commented on
  The goal here is to track your level of interaction with the community and its reach. You can do this easily manually, although commenting systems like Disqus and Typepad Profile do keep track of them. It's just that different blogs use different systems.
  

• Twitter – Followers, tweets, RTs, @replies, link clicks
  The goal here is to track your level of interaction, how your audience is expanding and the reaction of that audience. Twitter gives you all this info, so it's simple to measure. The URL shorteners will show you the number of clicks on the links you share.
  

• Facebook Fan Page – views, number of Fans, posts, total interactions
  The goal here is to see how your Page is being received. Facebook gives you a good dashboard which will show you this info. The Insights section will tell you about your Fan base and traction. There is a lot of good stuff in there.
  

• Podcast – subscribers over time, episodes, comments, comments per episode
  The goal here is to assess the take up and enagement of your podcast. If you set up a dedicated feed, then Feedburner can tell you the number of subscribers. Comments (written/audio) tend to be lower for podcasts than text-based blogs.
  

• Video – views over time, number of videos, comments, subscribers, embeds
  The goal here is to see which videos work best, and what the viewership/reaction is. YouTube has a good Insights tool which will show the views per video, comments and the embeds. Again there are some good demographics in here too.
  

Obviously, you can track a lot more data than this, but this should give you a good overview. Most blogging, podcasting and video services have their own free analytics behind them. The aim is to set some benchmarks and to move forward from there. Which channels does your audience use the most? What types of content do they respond to and share the most? What’s the best time to post the content? By looking at the data, these trends will start to emerge.

There are many methodologies for social media measurement. No two companies evaluate in the same way since they all have different channels, audiences, resources and levels of engagement. The trick is to get a system which fits with the communications culture of the business and gives the right instrument data to make decisions and to prove progress. Once you have that, you can link it to commercial impact and then compare it to investment.

In the first instance, the metrics above should be quick to set up and quick to manage.

Creating a monitoring system with free tools [video]

You can set up an alert system to monitor blogs, comments, Twitter, the Web, video and tags for free. Here's how in two minutes. More details here.

Monitoring - alerts are free, but context costs

Listening is the first step towards social media engagement - and thankfully it's generally free. If you haven't already, you should set up Google Alerts for not just your company, but your products, your key spokespeople, your competitors and the main trends you want to be associated with. By adjusting the frequency of these Alerts you won't get deluged, and can save them for analysis later.

You should also create an RSS feed for your favorite searches in Google BlogSearch. IceRocket is another good source for blog monitoring.

You can monitor Twitter for the same keywords (company, product, competitor, spokespeople, trends) either by saving a search term on the Web version, or by creating an RSS feed of the results at Search Twitter (formerly Summize) and putting it into your reader. Personally, for my main persistent searches, I create columns for them in Tweetdeck so I can review them at a glance. This doesn't scale if you have multiple terms, but it's great for a rapid scan.

You can also monitor what is being said about your company in blog comments using BackType.

So now you've covered the Web, blogs, Twitter and blog comments. You could add tag searches to that in  Delicious if you wanted, and a search on YouTube to cover the descriptions/titles of videos. With the exception of forums or subscription sites, you're in pretty good shape at this point in terms of knowing what's being said.

The next challenge is getting some context to this wealth of information, and then turning it into something actionable. For many companies, if the volume of alerts is low enough, you can do that manually. For larger brands, there are several services which can help here - but context costs. Take a look at Radian 6 or ScoutLabs (or Biz360, BuzzLogic, MeltWater Buzz, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, Vocus even). They all operate on a monthly subscription basis. Have in mind about $500 per month for an entry level service.

If you sign up for a paid service, you'll start to get some historic trend analysis, competitive benchmarks, drill down info about the source of comments, rate of proliferation, associated trends, tag clouds and various other graphing tools. Most will also pull all that alerting information into a central flightdeck for ease of use. If you are serious about monitoring and response, you'll probably find one of these services saves you time and gives insight which you couldn't otherwise get.

The social media monitoring space is rapidly evolving, and no service covers all the channels for all geographies. The good news is that costs are falling and the free services are becoming increasingly rich. Regardless of the tools you use, the most important thing is to set up your system, refine it and then determine your engagement plan.

Choosing the best approach to media embargoes [video]

So what's the best approach to take towards media embargoes? Here are a few thoughts (in 90 seconds).