Force For Good Communications

Social media key to professional outreach

At the end of my last post, I asked, "How do you identify VIP influencers among social media? and How do you cultivate a relationship with them?"

Kris Schindler, managing partner at Start Thinking, provides this well-thought-out response:

If you know who the VIPs are, search for them on Twitter.

If VIPs you currently have a relationship with are on Linked In, connect with them.

At conferences and business meetings, when someone says something interesting, see if they are on Twitter and if so, follow them.

Have to miss a professional meeting? If the speaker or panelists interest you, look for and follow them on Twitterand contact them after their presentation to see if the presentation was recorded or if it's on SlideShare.

Read an insightful article online or in print? See if the author has an online presence–blog or Twitter.

When you meet and connect with someone at a conference or business meeting, connect with them on LinkedIn.

When you find the people you are following on Twitter are interesting, see who they are following.

People using social media are putting themselves "out there." If you have a relevant response to their posts, let your voice be heard. Almost all social media outlets have controls for privacy settings. If someone doesn't want feedback form people they don't know, they'll adjust those settings accordingly.

Make it easy for people to follow YOU by including links to your online outlets in your e-mail signature. People are putting their Twitter handles on their business cards now too.

If you aren't getting what you need/want from your online circle of friends, join another clique.

Now, same questions but applied to using social media to spread buzz or news about a product or event.  Let's pick that up with the next post.

-  Jon Harmon

Media relations is a relationship business; how to keep it real with the 'new media'

The rise of new media is both a blessing and a curse to the corporate communicator.

A blessing in providing a direct channel, unfiltered by cynical (or even antagonistic) journalists; a curse in the proliferation of so many diffuse channels to the market.

Media relations is a relationship business. Successful PR people know the handful of journalists most important to their companies and industries. They know what the key journalists' interests are, what their pet peeves are and they have forged at least some level of rapport with them. It's relatively easy to identify your VIP media, those with the biggest circulation numbers among your target audiences plus those who have an out-sized influence on the thinking of other media.

Bloggers, those using Twitter or Facebook, etc. will likely have much, much smaller numbers. But scoring a hit among an influential inside a social media conversation that's spot on to your product or service can be more important than a positive mention in a large-circulation newspaper. It's not just how many people you reach, it's who you reach and in what context.

It also depends if you are trying to create awareness for a new brand (go for the highest number of potential customers) or are trying to advance favorable consideration or address a concern about your company or product (look to help shape the most in-depth conversations relevant to your objective).

So how do you find your most important social media influentials? And how do you cultivate a relationship with them?

More on my next post.

- Jon Harmon

Avoiding a choice between the lesser of two evils; communicating 'in the gray'

We like things simple. Black and white. But few issues that matter are so cut and dry.

Successful issue management often calls for the difficult task of communicating "in the gray."

In a corporate environment, we too often clam up in the midst of uncertain times. Lawyers caution against comment and risk-adverse leaders are all-too happy to take the advice to the extreme. A skillful leader will win trust and boost the confidence -- of employees, investors and other stakeholders -- by providing some measure of the challenges being faced and the relative prospects for success in the future. Avoiding hollow promises or insincere platitudes, the leader gives stakeholders a sense of just how serious the issue is and his/her relative confidence in a positive resolution, emphasizing what needs to be done immediately to move the ball forward. Constituents understand and forgive the lack of specifics if the leader has built up good will in the past with candid and accurate communication.

That's what it means to communicate "in the gray."

Media relations in such an environment can be even trickier. The mass media gravitate to simple "archetypes" or story lines. When a villain is readily apparent, media will naturally assume the competing person (or idea) is virtuous.

Life is often more complex than that. World events in the news show the difficulty of choosing between the ready-made alternatives:

• The recent election in Iran was almost certainly rigged. Peaceful protesters there call for international support against a repressive regime. But the Obama Administration has rightly been cautious in its response, even in its somewhat more vocal condemnations more than a week after the election, not wanting to provide credence to accusations of U.S. interference in Iranian affairs. Nuance is seldom cheered, and Obama continues to draw criticism for not taking a harder stance. Further complicating the issue is the unhappy choice between the two top candidates. Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is clearly an enemy of peace and freedom, but the leading opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi is no true reformer -- despite the inclination for many in the Western media to brand him a "moderate." Obama has wisely steered away from showing any support for Moussavi.
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• Strangely, the Obama Administration has shown no such reluctance to choose sides in another messy conflict, decrying the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya from power in Honduras. But Zelaya's actions that led up to his ouster -- moving to alter the country's constitution to increase his power and to strangle any opposition -- disqualify him for membership in the archetype of duly-elected Democratic leaders overthrown by a revolutionary coup d'etat. In fact, the Honduras Supreme Court had ordered the military to remove Zelaya for his unlawful actions. 

Corporate life can be messy, too. Constituents who find one course of action particularly unappealing will seek a quick and simple alternative. When there is no easy solution, no clear-cut winning move, don't fall into the trap of endorsing the lesser of two evils. Treat your constituents as adults. Talk about the unpleasant situation without promising an easy fix. Often that means the company itself must act as a game-changer to rise above the flawed choices that appear to be the only alternatives.

- Jon Harmon