CorporatePR

Delivering the New PR in Edinburgh

Yesterday I joined Neville, Stuart, Tom, Philip and Chris Rushton of the University of Sunderland in Edinburgh for our fourth edition of Delivering the New PR.  As usual, it went very well (and as always, thanks to our event coordinator, Nicky!).  I really appreciated the liveliness of our audience this go around.  Good questions and lots of energy!  Maybe it was the fresh, Scottish air.  Unfortunately, I didn't get much of a chance to look around the area.  I'll have to go back for a real tourist visit.

I was happy to hear my fellow speakers start to dig into issues of power, relationships and the social effects of technology.  I emphasized those things again in my presentation, which focused on network building as the primary occupation for people in communications disciplines.  I also began noodling on reputation.  I am trying to put together a list of the components of reputation.  As I started thinking about it (and talking to some others about it at the event) it became clear that it is a rather fuzzy word.  I am going to work on unpacking it, and putting it together with my notions of identity and role in the digital/online world.  If you have any thoughts or sources on this, please let me know!

Blog: Person, Place or Role?

Back in February 2001, Barry Wellman of the University of Toronto wrote an article entitled, "Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Personalized Networking.  You can find a copy here.  I just re-read the article, and found it extremely valuable. I highly recommend it.

One of the the things it got me thinking about is this.  Is a blog (as an example of social media) a place, a person or a role?  Let me explain.

As you know, I believe the task of public relations today is network building, or nurturing and expanding the growing web of connections of organizational stakeholders (customers, employees, investors, media, analysts, competitors, etc.).  I also believe that the primary activity that all of us who participate somehow in the social media landscape are pursuing--be it through blogging, commenting on blogs, posting photos on Flickr, adding comments to YouTube videos, even participating in the old-style bulletin boards--is the creation of our digital identities.

So, let's take the example of blogs and compare a blog to a website to get a better sense of what I am asking here.  A blog is written by either a single author or a group of authors.  Regardless of whether it is singular or a group effort, the blog itself expresses a certain identity of its writer(s) based on its topics.  Throughout the multiple posts over time, the identity of the author(s) becomes more and more clear.  So, in a sense, you could say that a blog (particularly a single-author blog) represents a person more than a place.  A website by contrast -- particularly corporate websites -- is clearly a place you visit to get information.  This is one of the reasons we blog evangelists encourage companies to blog -- people like to connect with people, not some abstract corporate entity.

But it is certainly a little strange to say that a blog is a person, because in most cases, it only reflects certain roles that a person is playing, be it a professional role in the case of business blogging, a political role for pundit blogs, a family role for mommy blogs, and so on.  And it is even more strange to say that a thing is a person.  However, any type of technology one uses in communications certainly puts a barrier between a person and the one or more others he/she is communicating with.  And even straight up in-person conversations only really operate at the role level, vs. at some (perhaps mythical) whole-person level.  So perhaps my question isn't so strange.

I think you can safely say that a blog is a role (in the perhaps awkward language I am using here).  To be more precise, it is a tool for performing a role.  As we know, however, as technology tools become so ingrained and familiar in our everyday existence, they cease to be noticed. I don't think of my eyeglasses as a technological tool that mediates between me and the world, but that is, in fact, what they are.  Using them (used to them), I am a cyborg.  Can I say the same about a blog?  Has it become so ingrained a tool for me that it is encompassed inside my very identity?  Not yet, I'd say for me.  But it is certainly possible it could become so. I notice I think in terms of blog posts now (and have for at least a couple of years).  I might be getting a little off track here, but asking the question, is a blog a role, may not be as awkward as it initially sounds.

Wellman wrote on p. 22-23 of his article (referenced above): 

"Online communication also extends the reach of networks, allowing more ties to be maintained and fostering specialized relationships in networks.  People are increasingly known and related to only in terms of particular aspects of their persona: role-to-role instead of person-to-person, much less person-in-group."

If we think about blogs and other social media as role-playing tools, I think it provides us with some interesting food for thought.  For one, classic demographic descriptions start to become problematic.  We need to know psychographic traits instead.  We need to understand what roles people are playing when and respond appropriately (which, as we know, is a skill sorely needed online).  It has significant ramifications for our network building activities, which need to focus on roles vs. people.  And it helps us to avoid falling into utopian/dystopian traps of "technology saves the world/technology destroys the world" statements, as we know roles, while important, aren't the whole story when it comes to personal identity.

So what do you think?  I am just sounding this out now, using my blog as public notebook as I have in the past, so I do apologize if this seems a bit half-baked.  But I think there is indeed something important here.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Goodwill Online: A Key Factor for Persuasion

As I continue to flesh out my network framework for communications, one of the areas I am digging into is one's online reputation or authority and how that is a factor in persuading people to take action (buying a product, telling someone about it, and so on).  In my research I came across the report, "To Tell or Not to Tell" about word of mouth marketing by Dr. Walter Carl of Northeastern University.  While interesting in and of itself (disclosing you are an agent for a WOM campaign has no effect on the outcome of the conversation), it also pointed me to another article, "Goodwill: A Reexamination of the Construct and its Measurement" by James C. McCroskey and Jason T. Teven. While incredibly technical, it did provide me with some interesting food for thought.

Studies have shown that a key factor for persuasion is "the image of the source in the minds of receivers."  Some of you will recognize this as Aristotle's "ethos".  A (much) later study by the Yale Group identified this as "source credibility".  McCroskey & Teven's article stated that there are three generally accepted dimensions to ethos/source credibility:  competence (qualification, expertness, intelligence, authoritativeness), trustworthiness (character, sagacity, safety, honesty) and goodwill/intent toward receiver.  (The authors call this last one the missing dimension as it was ignored over time due to lack of measurability, which this paper's argument is designed to overcome.  Assuming you agree with their analysis, we'll believe that it does exist as a third dimension.)

The important thing about goodwill is that it is a "means of opening communication channels more widely" and is a significant factor in believability/likeability overall.  This means that it is an important factor for persuasion.  There are three elements of goodwill:  understanding ("When we see someone exhibiting behaviors which tell us they understand our concerns, we feel closer to them."); empathy ("This involves behaviors indicating that one person not only understands the other's views but accepts them as valid views, even if he or she does not agree with those views.") and responsiveness ("Responsiveness is judged by how quickly one person reacts to the communication of another, how attentive they are to the other, and the degree to which they appear to listen to the other.  We tend to see people who behave responsively toward us as caring about us.").

So, what does this means for persuasive communication using participatory tools?

The first two factors of persuasion, competence and trustworthiness, are arguably covered adequately by traditional marketing/communications techniques and tools.  However, brochures, ads and press releases are not tools for handling the third factor: goodwill.  The latter is handled much better via participatory tools like blogs and wikis, because built into those tools are mechanisms for communicating understanding, empathy and responsiveness.

So, are participatory tools then the missing link for persuasive communications?  It would seem so.  Used in conjunction with traditional tools, they can quite possibly increase the persuasive impact of your campaigns.  And let's remember, these new tools can also support the first two factors: competence and trustworthiness.

Network Building Metaphor Works Well

I have been using the idea of network building as the primary activity of communications professionals today in a variety of articles and presentations over the past few months, and it continues to be well received.  I have added a category to this blog called "Network Building" and will be adding to it more thinking and posts as I move along.  I added a few posts I have written in other places to this blog, in this category today to make sure they are all in one place.

I had the distinct pleasure of being able to debate my ideas with a great group of people last week in Sunderland, UK, when I travelled north to the Making the News conference, organized by fellow blogger and SNCR member, Philip Young.  I flew in to the Newcastle airport direct from Paris, where I was met by Chris Rushton (head of PR and journalism at the University of Sunderland) bearing a sign with my name on it!  Our plane was almost a hour late, putting us there directly at rush hour.  We managed to pass the time sitting in traffic discussing Chris' latest research and the wild and wacky world of participatory communications. 

Blogs: Foundational Tools for Network Building

I wrote the following article for Global PR Blog Week 2.0.

There has been much written about blogs since Global PR Blog Week 1.0 as they pertain to public relations: their attributes, their strengths/weaknesses, their power to persuade and their risks, to name a few subjects (check out the New PR Wiki for a plethora of links and resources). What I’d like to do here is to look at blogs a bit differently: to discuss how they are foundational tools for network building.

Over the past year I have become increasingly convinced that the primary function of corporate communications/public relations today is network building. By that I mean that all of our strategies and tactics need to be focused on building, extending and nurturing the entire universe of connections (by which I mean people) possible for an organization. You could argue, of course, that this has always been the function of communications, and you’d be right – to a point. When we identified our key audiences and decided upon the strategies and tactics to use to influence them, we were indeed nurturing a network, but a decidedly lopsided one in which all of the power resided with the organization (at least in its own “mind�?) and the audiences existed to passively consume the information we provided them with. Now, I don’t want to endlessly parse this portrait of traditional command/control communications here. Rather, I want to explore how blogs, in particular, and participatory communications tools in general, can be powerful tools for building more complex and more effective networks.

More on Network Building

Here are some more thoughts I have written on the concept of network building, adapted from Blogging Planet.

Networks Matter...

Determining the business benefit of blogs, wikis, RSS and other new communication channels requires a clear understanding of the nature and value of links and connections.

Simply put, the more links one can facilitate among your audience and then generate from that audience to your organization, the more value you will accrue from this web of connections. Put another way, it is the medium -- the network you build -- that matters, not the message -- the content.

The traditional practices of marketing, public relations, advertising, investor relations, community relations, employee relations and crisis management have all been driven by the production of polished content.

The question of content is one of the major barriers to adoption for blogging and other new communications tools, as people ask:

• What shall I write about?
• What can't I write about?
• What are others writing about my company?
• How can I stop them?

We believe that this focus on content is preventing people from seeing the more important issue: the value derived through the creation, maintenance and use of a powerful network of ongoing conversations amongst the widest possible audience, all leading in one form or another back to your organization.

Pure content is losing its importance as a driver of business value.

As new tools such as blogs enable everyone to become a publisher, the resulting glut of information drives down the value of content from any individual source. Furthermore, it is easy for any organization's message to become lost in this sea of information.

What's important is how content links to other content: Within the organization or elsewhere. For example, as more content becomes more linked to your organization, the likelihood of higher search engine ranking increases. Higher search engine ranking is one of the most important ways in which your content gains greater customer credibility and helps build greater trust in you.

Building the networks of connections organizations need...

...requires a deliberate weakening of traditional boundaries within and outside of businesses, encouraging exchange of ideas and information in a multidirectional fashion among the widest possible range of constituencies: employees, partners, customers, suppliers, investors, communities, and so on.

The key to success is scale: the more links the better.

Collaboration Requires Contribution

Here's another article I posted on Blogging Planet.

Collaboration Requires Contribution

One of our ten tools for network building is participation/collaboration.  I like to think about this in terms of community and the building of social capital. Both the development of communities and social capital requires reciprocity - the willingness to both take AND give -- to contribute.

Before your organization decides to enter the blogosphere in order to enhance its network building efforts, it has to answer this important question: What do we have to offer to the communities we want to join/build?

If your answer is only "information about our company and products" then you need to head back to the drawing board.

Ten Tools for Network Building

I am reposting here some content I had written for Blogging Planet, so it can all be found in one place.  I just spoke on this subject last Friday at the University of Sunderland in the UK at their Making the News conference, and, one again, it was well received (according to the evaluations).  I think the network metaphor works very well for describing the participatory communications environment.

Ten Tools for Network Building

In our focus on network building, we take "content" to be one tool among many. Of course, that begs the question, what are the other tools? Here is a list, not perfect yet, but I think a good start (in no particular order of importance):

• Technology (trackbacks, RSS, tags, etc.)
• Knowledge (who is influential, who is trusted, who is controversial, etc.)
• Online social skills (ability to approach other people in appropriate ways)
• Participation/Collaboration (via comments, trackbacks, email, etc.)
• Reputation/Trust (what you have now, what is developed over time)
• Politics (an opinion or stated position)
• Permeable organizational boundaries
• Time management
• Flexibility (ability to make changes in all of the above as needed)

Of course, you could say that these items aren't all "tools," but rather "attributes." However, each of these items can be used strategically - used for effect. Therefore, treating each as a tool gives it power or agency. This is important, because by taking each into consideration overtly, vs. as an afterthought, or masked by some other focus, you can easily harness the ability each has to transform your network-building activities.

By focusing simply on content, you will see only a small piece of the puzzle and lose the full value of the effectiveness the other tools can have.