Category Archives for Strategy

How do I shut down Twitter?

The mere question rings alarm bells.

Moreso when reports out of the recent HMV experience suggest they were the words of HMV’s marketing director as HMV’s official twitter account was hijacked by disgruntled staff.

I’m no lawyer, but there is a reason internal communications are structured and handled differently than its external counterpart. There are legal, political and economic repercussions for businesses, hence why corporate messages are often ‘crafted’ and ‘approved’.

Now before you get all indignant about ethics and freedom of speech, it is timely to remember these are common, respected practices and behaviours of business men and women (of all ages) within the global business community.

However, for the rest of corporate Australia (and elsewhere) now is not the time to look down your nose at HMV management or their disgruntled staff and keen tweeters (I’m sure HR and engaged lawyers will cover that debate sufficiently).

It is however, time for management the world over to do an audit of strategic web-based marketing communications operations, focusing on process, procedures and governance.

Not sure where to start?

1.Start by acknowledging a title doesn’t determine superior knowledge. While it should reflect experience, in the constantly evolving world of ICT communication (embodying web-based, digital and social communications) a few conferences, or campaigns, an expert, it does not you make. (Not sure why, but Yoda seemed appropriate all of a sudden). Most companies are placing juniors in charge of digital communications (web and social media). I cringe every time a first or second year student seeks guidance for a job interview in social media which starts with: ‘how do I use it for business’ only to tell me the following week they are now the social media manager!

The savvy traditional marketing communications ‘experts’ (a term I cringe at whenever I hear it) are ‘dipping their toe in’, and playing it safe by applying the age old ‘suck and see method’ based on hunches, recommendations and gut instinct. When in doubt, this is a sensible, albeit soon to be dated approach (especially, if they’re outsourcing it!). More on that later…

2. Ask yourself, do I know who we (brand/ business) are?
That’s right, take it back to basics and ask yourself point blank, do I know who we (brand/ business/ team) are? You’d be stunned by how many successful business practitioners (and their staff) have NO IDEA how to answer this question comprehensively and succinctly.
If you’ve just discovered you’re one of them, then you have you’re opening question to your senior management team brainstorm right there.

3. Where are your team members in the great cycle that posits their professional life with your business/brand life cycle. Are they complimentary? Where are the gaps? Opportunities for growth? How and where can you best provide the necessary supports to lift your team as individuals as well as, a well-oiled marcomms machine to support your business…?

4. If you’re one of the few who answered question #2 with relative ease, then congratulations. You’re off to a great start. As the lead executive, ask yourself how you communicate down through your team, department, business and across key target markets and media. Be sure to identify the key points of variations within those communications, your teams’ response (as individuals and a group) and where they may be improved upon.

This step takes time, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you’ve realised you’re moving a littler slower all of a sudden…

As senior leaders, this is actually our FIRST real step in the process. It’s the one that exposes whether we have the entrepreneurial mindset that enables agility in strategic thinking and multi-channel campaign design. Thinking that drives market-leading specialists. It also enables clear aims, researched objectives and practical processes to be successfully married to the prerequisite sense and intrinsic response.

This is skill that in acquisition, is challenging and demanding in the most honest of ways. Don’t worry, if it doesn’t come straight away. It’s a skill that develops overtime.

A process that enables you as a professional to reflect on how you can better contribute to the success of your team and your business through applying thought leadership to management practice. A process that does not include (at any time) the question: How do I shut down anything.

Why? Because you saw the potential problem before it had the chance to arise.

IBRC Conference: Social Media Risk Melbourne, Australia

Future Social Government, Canberra, Australia

The last time I spoke about sport and social media, Black Caviar provided the living breathing example of how great sports brands can tweet.

Today, Quade Cooper’s weekend tweets provided a great example of twi-versations that occur during an employer/ employee divide.

Noone likes an unhappy workplace, however, two tweets can say a lot about a person and a company.

While ‘toxic’ may be an apt description of any organisational approach that uses traditional media management methodologies to ‘manage’ it’s new media relations…

The reality is, social technologies require a socialised approach to communications.

Irrespective of whether the organisation is using them or not,the employee is, and in Cooper’s case, actually leveraging the technology the way it was intended.

Could this be the ‘nudge’ Australian Rugby needs to finally heed the call and develop a comprehensive governance framework (think widely distributed social media guidelines, policy and contracts) for their employees both on and off the pitch around social technologies..? Let’s hope so.

Why? Because if Quade Cooper leaves rugby, he’ll also take over 580,000 Twitter ‘followers’ with him, and that’s just stating the bleeding obvious. #FoodForThought

Cybermedicine Symposia

Following an invitation from Clinical director and obstetrician to the rugby stars, Dr Vijay Roach, I recently presented a lecture on social media and medicine at the Northern Clinical School, Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney Australia.

Here are a copy of the slides presented


As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me, should you have any questions.

Changing nature of media production and consumption in sport

As I revisit stumblings by high profile Australian athletes around the micro-blogging social media platform Twitter for the purposes of my current research, I look with fresh eyes at the Faggot Tweet: Sponsors Speak scandal of last year.

Refreshingly, my position on the relevance of context and content remains unchanged. If anything, I would further jump up and down on my strategic communicators tool box with the intention of seeing more support given to our elite athletes in navigating the new media channels.

In order for this to happen however, it’s the administrators and communications professionals who need to stop, listen and learn from the tech team.

It’s the marketing communications leaders who need to patiently stumble through diciphering the tech team’s codes and ‘geek jargon’, just as they have had to endure our homage to the acronym for the past 20 years.

People and business fundamentals haven’t changed, technologies have.

With technology, new communications platforms have been consumed by information-hungry individuals and groups as the nature of association and information gathering has become more social. By this, I mean a global sharing process.

Not surprisingly, this change in the production and consumption of information now brings new, global and dynamic communications channels into the structured and controlled environment of corporate entities.

This embedded disconnect does not have to be detrimental to the evolving relationship between corporate, team and individual brands, it just requires an entirely new approach which permits key players to not always get it right.

Stumbling isn’t a problem for those businesses with strong key stakeholder engagement and support.

So maybe the evolution towards transparency of communications through technology and the inherent nature of the new communications environment in the business of international sport, is more reflective of the health of key partner relationships than anything to actually do with sport performance.

While this is a sentence I never thought I’d write, it is undeniable, that when it comes to intra-organisational social media engagement in sport, the UFC is streaks ahead of the professional sporting pack.

Social Media: Hype or Communications Revolution?

No matter who I am speaking with, everyone wants to know about social media and how to best use it for their business.

The most frightening thing for me is the inflexibility from business owners and senior management teams. Used to throwing money at marketing and sales activities, this group of learned corporates expect this new media channel to fit within the existing consumer consumption paradigm. But it doesn’t.

Now, I could lie to any corporate waving a cheque in my direction and tell them that social media is where they need to be and that I can brand them up to Koo-ee… if I was that way inclined, but I’m not.

Quite possibly to my fiscal detriment I tell them THEY need to shift current practices, THEY need to engage personally, because social media is tactile and it’s about THEM. And in doing so, they need to be ready for anything. But very few are ready to hear the truth of best practice in social media.

The most common reaction I get is the age-old blank, silent ‘you have no idea what you’re talking about, I can’t possibly do that’ look of horror. They’re the ones you can’t help – yet. But rest assured, they’ll come knocking in about 6 – 12 months (maybe less) wanting to take the plunge and for you to hold their hand. That’s a good thing, they’ve had the critical shift in mindset: from observation to a considered willingness moving towards participation.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that nearly half of the Australian population do not know life without a mobile telephone…so for them, social media is about as strenuous a jump now, as what Atari to VCR was in the 80′s.

Mobile telephony and consumer communications are ubiquitous. What was once achieved with a full-page ad in the sunday papers, now needs to be re-purposed for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry just to ensure the target consumers have the chance (not guaranteed distribution) of engaging with your diligently crafted creative. Then in order to get positive Word Of Mouth (which SM does not guarantee), you need to Tweet, facebook, myspace, blog, retweet and Digg, in the interests of starting (or hopefully continuing) the desired brand and business conversation.

Marketing and Communications practices need to change in order to maximise the potential of new media technologies. It’s a bit like driving a car with stability control switched off because you already know how to drive; or outsourcing your call centre without conducting product training or considering systems management processes. It just kind of exists without adding tangible and measurable value intrinsically to your brand and your business.

Ceding control is confronting. It’s against every marketing and sales principle worth engaging. That was of course, until the arrival of social media capability.

Knowing if, when and how to cede control is the key to getting cut through within the savvy new media consumer sphere.

So is Social Media hype or part of a Communications Revolution? Neither, merely part of the evolution of 21st century communications.

A quick video to explain…

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10032646&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Social Media from Phil Guest on Vimeo.

Marketing and Comms fundamentals haven’t changed, platform tactics have.

Be open, honest and consistent.

Plan for the worst, so you’ll be at your best.

Have an answer for the question you hope no one will ask… It will no doubt be one of the first asked.

If you don’t know, find someone who does. Don’t bluff, you’re online. You’ve got time.

HOW TO: Avoid a Social Media Disaster

>Twitter 101

>There are many secrets to Twitter but the only chance of understanding them is by ‘doing’.

Someone can ‘point’ you in the right direction across the various sites, show you ‘how to’ and explain the ‘lingo’, but like anything in life you have to get your hands dirty in order to really understand.

Could you image booking spots on TV without ever seeing a TVC?

Social media is just another comms platform. The choice of when, where and how you engage should be based on what you are trying to achieve, not because everyone else is doing it.