Communicators must stay relevant in the digital era
Businesses of every configuration are evolving at an alarming rate and the phenomenon is changing the commercial environment just as fast. The breadth of these changes affects many companies, from the emergent role of social media to the morphing nature of content and the access through which corporate and product messages are delivered. In such a milieu, the challenges for communications professionals is to adapt to these changes as quickly as they occur, keeping customers, employees and other stakeholders engaged and motivated while adding an ever-expanding list of skills, tools and resources to their toolkits. In addition to the digitization of content, communicators must come to grips with a workplace that hosts four — soon to be five — generations, the need to quickly spot and act in response to issues, the truth that every employee is now a prospective communicator, and a wearing away of the wall between employees and other stakeholders.
Last week, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) brought Shel Holtz, an IABC Fellow and principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, to talk about the future of the communications profession and how one can stay relevant in the digital era. Holtz’s presentation was preceded by a talk on the Philippine digital landscape delivered by Donald Patrick Lim, managing director of MRM Worldwide. Here are a dozen pick-ups from the master class.
1. The converging trends in the digital world. There are three of them: the declining trust in traditional institutions, the ascent of word-of-mouth, and the eroding barriers to social media engagement. The era of destination websites is over, and more and more people in the era are moving to social sites. Seven of the top 10 websites are social networking sites: Facebook, YouTube, Blogspot, Baidu, Wikipedia, Twitter and Qq. The three others on the list are Google, Yahoo! and Live.com. There are now five billion mobile phone users in the world, 80 million or 1.6 percent of which are Filipinos.
2. Interruption marketing has become less effective. The old model of mass communications — where content was generated from a central source — has evolved into a new model where content is made available in many other access points other than your own site. Communicating in the digital world makes you engage and participate rather than just transmit; advocate, not merely broadcast; influence and persuade more than command and control; the tone is informal and conversational as opposed to formal and instructive; you build communities instead of merely “telling” your audience; you connect to people and build relationships, not institutions; you communicate in real time so you don’t work on deadline; you deal with powerful networks, not simply powerful media; and you create conversations with communities versus target audiences.
3. Thinking like a publisher is the rule of the day. Stop thinking like a marketer. Every company is a media company, and content is more than just marketing. It tells your company’s stories, answers questions, inspires, simplifies complex ideas, influences behavior, entertains, reinforces beliefs, puts up communities, inflames passions, manages expectations and builds or damages trust. In the digital era, collaboration, openness and the link culture are the rules of content. Media companies are adept at video, audio, print, graphics, infographics and media portals.
4. Familiarity with the two dimensions of media relations in the Internet age is critical. You need to have intimate knowledge of the net and the media, and direct-to-stakeholder communications. The 2011 annual report on American journalism released by Pew Research center reveals that every news platform has stalled or declined except the Web and newspaper newsrooms are 30 percent smaller than in 2000, while half of Americans get local news on a mobile device because of its deeper penetration. Story cycles are shorter and big stories online are not necessarily big stories offline. Over a 29-week period, for example, YouTube, blogs and Twitter shared the story only once (Iranian election unrest). Make no mistake: the traditional press is increasingly paying attention to social media. They quote, tweet, retweet, tag and untag.
5. News reporters will contact a source not by phone but by Facebook. As a source, you need to get found in Facebook. There are tricks to do that — publish compelling stories about your company, know what people are talking about and join in the conversations, find what the reporters are looking for and asking about, and when you find them, follow and engage them by responding to their queries and pointing them to interesting stories.
6. The traditional press release moves to social media news release (SMNR) and engages more people. The SMNR concept was initiated with a journalist’s blog, the template of which was introduced by Todd Defren. It is a traditional news release that migrates to online territory and adapts itself to the scene. The SMNR aims to have others tell your story, accommodate online capabilities, augment (not replace) traditional press releases, and have it picked up on the web, not over the wire. The SMN, says renowned blogger Brian Solis, “should contain everything necessary to share and discover a story in a way that is complementary to your original intent.” The core elements of the SMNR include your core facts, multimedia implements (images, video, audio and animation), quotable quotes, research aids (tags and bookmarks), boilerplates and links to sharing sites. You can produce a SMNR by yourself using any publishing platform on the web, through dedicated SMNR services or via traditional wire services like MarketWire.
7. It’s not information. It’s filter failure. New communications skills and roles are needed in the digital setting. Content is the currency of the social web. It’s what you search for. It is what makes your web click, and pushes people to share, comment, subscribe, donate, follow or buy from you. But creating valuable, compelling content can be quite a challenge for many entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations. So, if you think you’re not quite ready for that particular challenge, you should start thinking about content curation. Which means that out of all the content you find on the social web, you pass on the most valuable stuff to your network. Marketing expert Rohit Bhargava defines a content curator as someone who continually finds groups, organizes and hires the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online.
8. Community management is all about people and how you move them. It requires connections, relationships, discussions, alignment, support and voices. A dedicated person must be assigned to do it — posting clear community guidelines, establishing clear goals, introducing yourself, developing a conversation strategy, asking questions, giving more than you get, and recognizing and cultivating loyal, active participants. If you are a community manager you have to be somebody calm, professional, don’t give air to trolls, admit mistakes and know how to apologize.
9. Welcome to the “good enough” video era. In February of this year, 170 million American Internet users watched 170 million hours of video over five billion viewing sessions for an average of 13.6 hours per user. It is predicted that video will increase for 30 percent of the Internet traffic to 90 percent by 2013. YouTube alone gets more than two billion viewers per day; 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute, with average person usage of 15 minutes per day. Mind you, the video quality need not be glossy and loaded with production values. You only need “good enough” video to be able to hit the numbers. A minute of video is said to be worth 1.8 million words.
10. Hiring the right communicator is key. On top of the writing and multimedia skills, the wired communicator knows how to engage, is adaptable, interacts with leadership, talks the management’s talk, introduces the business side of social media, aligns digital media to company goals, and finds an existing executive advocate.
11. Outputs, outtakes and outcomes. These are the three things to measure. You need to know what to monitor and why you monitor. The digital communicator understands sentiments and demographics, and perhaps psychographics. He knows what he is looking for — social mentions, pickups of social content, increased traffic and sales, opportunities for customer service outreach, competitive intelligence, new markets and new trends.
12. What’s coming? Augmented reality, quick response codes and location-based services, among others — all aimed at engaging people in a fast, fun-filled, convenient way.
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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
