Joseph Thornley, CEO of Thornley Fallis and 76design, the Chair of the Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms and a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research was the keynote speaker. Joe helped to put the vastness of it all into some perspective.
In the spirit of Twitter, I've decided to summarize a few of the key points from Joe's discussion in 140 characters or less:
- Social media is an online connection between audience and author using social software
- Social media is used to find others who have something in common
- Television news provides one-way communication - social media provides two-way
- YOU are no-longer invisible. Read 'Groundswell' by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
- Social media is revolutionary. We no longer need to search out reporters
- Professional communicators can create organizational messages giving organizations their own voices
- Be accountable
- Companies, organizations, governments lose by not engaging. People will talk about you, even if you're not there
- Do it right. Social media relies on a culture of generosity - trust is the currency
- Trust is earned through transparency, authority, reliability, and generosity
- Organizations should strive to transform their cultures to one of participating through persuasion
Finally, when deciding how to include social media into the communications mix, Joe recommended defining your objectives:
- Know what you want to achieve
- Listen - find your community. What do they care about? What do they think?
- Interact - where your community prefers.
- Demonstrate you understand the culture of generosity
- Measure - to understand what is going on. No single measure for social media exists because of the different objectives. http://www.postrank.com/ can get you started.
Check out Joe's blog at http://www.propr.ca/ (that's "Pro PR," as he points out, not "Proper" as the non-communications types tend to use).
No comments:
Post a Comment