Every Company Is A Media Company

Social Media Is A Relentless Task Master: How and Why To Gain Control

by Vanessa DiMauro

Social Media is a relentless taskmaster. Once you begin participating in a social media marketing or thought leadership effort, it is hard to stop posting -- even for a moment. It is a cognitive treadmill with no obvious stop button.  At least, that’s what so many have been told.

However, sometimes we must pause to regain control -- to buy time to think, to write with quality and assess the impact of what we have to say -- before we actually say it. There are certainly plenty of examples where someone should have stopped to think before sending. Recently a couple of public figures made serious errors when using social media: BP’s CEO Tony Hayward decrying on twitter that he too is tired of the oil spill problem and wants his life back and Sarah Palin’s Facebook blowout blaming environmentalists’ demands for safe offshore drilling as the root of the oil spill crisis. Perhaps Palin’s comments, while misguided at best, do give us, the reader, a deeper insight into her true point of view. However, each made a significant mistake; damaging stock prices and investor relations and taking serious heat in the media, each with a single keystroke. While they gave us some deeper insights into their points of view, we have to wonder: why did they do it?

How to Use Twitter to Understand Brand Perception

By Don Bulmer

For many executives, when it comes to understanding basic stakeholder perception and sentiment towards a company's product or corporate brand in the social web, Twitter is a great and safe place to start. 

People who 'tweet' want to be listened to, they want to be heard.  As such, Twitter is a perfect platform for people to channel their emotions, thoughts, experiences and ideas.

There are a number of free Twitter applications available that allow you to run an infinite number of Twitter queries at the same time - such as TweetDeck. 

As an example, you can start by running the following queries, side-by-side:

• Love [insert your company/product name]
• Hate [insert your company/product name]

This is a safe and easy way to understand the sentiment of people toward your company (brand, products and services) - at the extremes.  You can also conduct the same with your competitors as a comparison or benchmark. 

If you want to take things one step further you can 'engage' with and thank customers who support and love your products/services - by responding to tweets.  Perhaps ask a few questions while at it: "What do you like best about x products?" "How can we improve your experience?"

Design Thinking for Developing Innovative Communication Strategies

By Don Bulmer

 

I have drawn great inspiration from concepts of design thinking over the last four years as a basis to create and implement innovative communication and influence programs. 

After a recent conversation with a member of my team at SAP - Carly Cooper - I am further inspired to delve more deeply into the realm of design thinking as I feel that it represents one of the best frameworks for marketing and communication professionals to understand as they adjust to the current socioeconomic trends transforming business - as a result of social media.

The unstated ideas and principles of design thinking have been in practice for centuries and have served as the basis for many technology and business model innovations.

Companies like Apple, Dell, Proctor & Gamble and recent upstarts like Better Place and Salesforce.com have famously validated these principles to create significant game changing business models and innovations that in many ways have redefined the landscape of their respective industries.

The team at IDEO have formalized these concepts over the last decade with frameworks that have been refined, debated and discussed among an impressive group of thought leaders, practitioners and innovators.

Hasso Plattner a co-founder of SAP has become a patron of design thinking through his great efforts to sponsor the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

What is Design Thinking?

Wikipedia defines design thinking as:

Edelman hires FT journalist, preaches media publishing to big clients

By Tom Foremski

Thanks to everyone for pointing me to this article at The Independent, the UK newspaper:

PR stunt or the new journalism?: The titans of public relations are going direct to viewers and readers - Press, Media - The Independent

...Sambrook is convinced that Edelman's clients must take their message directly to the consumer. "The mantra is that every company has to be a media company in their own right, telling their own stories not just through websites but through branded entertainment, video, iPad and mobile applications," he says.