Category: Communications

Left trumps right in EU web initiatives

The Party of European Socialists’ brave and seemingly successful foray into the world of Web 2.0 with the Yourspace blog remains by far the most impressive web initiative I’ve seen by any European party or political group. Why is it so good? It’s a platform aimed at galvanising active supporters, not one where party bigwigs can strut their stuff: it gives them space to write and engage, and promises them something concrete in return – a chance to influence the content of the PES manifesto for the 2009 European elections. Result? Very Obama’esque: excited, active supporters, eager and able to help spread the PES mantra (aided by Yourspace’s multiple outreach channels e.g. a YouTube channel and very active Facebook Group).

The Socialist Group in the European Parliament (PSE) have not been quite as daring, but they do have a section on their site entitled Interactive which contains posts by PSE members, a portal of blogs by PSE members who do not write on the site itself, a forum, and a so-called citizen’s room where people can submit their opinions. The tools are all relevant and I’m especially impressed by this one line from their terms and conditions (assuming it’s true): “The Socialist Group interactive pages are an area for free expression. Only views that are ethically and legally unacceptable are excluded”. However, the section has been hidden away and is not properly introduced. For it to really work, the PSE should make a real splash, sell it on their homepage and in all their other outgoing communications, and explain why they’re doing it e.g. we want to speak directly to you, we need to know where we stand with you, like out parent party, the PES, we want to promote your ideas and concerns, not our own; and so on.

The site of the EPP-ED (the centre-right political group of the European Parliament) is far more static and dull. They present positions, latest press releases and members (Zzzzzz), while the only remotely innovative feature is the online “TV” channel. I did a search on YouTube, where the EEP-ED also have a channel,which appears to show the exact same footage even though there is no link between it and their site. It’s not bad, but I have some objections:

  • Why have the channel in two places? Seems like totally pointless duplication.
  • It’s all one way. Comments are allowed on both channels, but the moderators are obviously very strict. The only comment on the YouTube channel homepage itself reads “Just wanted to say that you’re doing really good job there” while none of the videos I saw had any comments (even where there were 100s of views). Same on the other channel: I had to look really hard to find one video with a couple of comments.

This approach seems to reflect the French Presidential elections last year, when Sarkozy’s campaign site became little more than a video vault, while Segolene Royal’s approach was far more inclusive. Sure, he won the election, but as Obama’s triumph last month showed, an approach which embraces the web as a tool of engagement and mobilisation, rather than just another one-way broadcast medium where you show yourself in your best light, can work wonders. In an era where the electorate demands a voice, politicians need to show that they’re listening and care; and the best start is to provide a platform where you allow people to openly engage and then actually respond.

Is the left more open to new tools and politics of engagement because it fits their political philosophy? To some extent I do think they are more comfortable with open engagement with constituents, but the main reason why the left on both sides of the pond has been quicker to adopt new tools is clearly born out of need, seeing as the centre-right has held power in the US and most European countries (and thus the EP) for a number of years. It’s a political reality that incumbents are less innovative: their approach won, they’re in power, so why change? In addition, the Conservatives in the UK have a new website which embraces blogging, integration with social networks, online donation, and supporter mobilisation features to the same degree as the Obama campaign did in the US, so it’s not as if parties of the right don’t have it in them. Despite the need to find some better supporters to populate the Show your support page than the current weirdoes on display, it’s really quite an impressive showing.

Selling digital to clients in PA: highlighting consistencies rather than differences

I came across an old post by Brian Haven entitled All media is Social which struck a chord. In short, Brian writes that the web could just be viewed as an extension of traditional communications interactions like sharing, connecting and broadcasting, but with greater reach, accessibility and immediacy.

Not rocket science, but it made me realise that a post I wrote on how to sell digital to clients in Public Affairs in Brussels probably prioritises the wrong elements. My premise is largely that a) communicating online is different; and b) although the lobbying vs. comms balance remains fairly skewed in favour of the former, it’s becoming less so as public perception is becoming increasingly important, and in many areas, the web is the most effective place to campaign to try to influence it. I still think these points are entirely valid, but Brian’s post has made me think that the best sell to more traditional prospects really should be that the web can be an extension of old-school communications, or in other words, that online tools can massively improve the extent, reach and quality of existing initiatives by complementing them and acting as an integrator.

Here are three simple practical examples where you can take a traditional PA tactic and improve or extend it using online tools:

  1. If you host an event, your pre and post event activity should be co-ordinated via the web, enabling you both to attract more attendees and keep the event relevant for longer than its actual duration. How? Before the event, promote it online as well as via your traditional offline channels; add a viral element to the event webpage or site to encourage people to forward it to people they know; engage attendees before the event via a survey or introduction video. After the event, show the presentations in webinar format (PowerPoint plus audio) on the event webpage or site; show video interviews with attendees; and again, include a viral element encouraging users to forward material so that people who missed it can see it or so that people who were there have a better record of it.
  2. To optimise your media relations, use a variety of web tools to make sure you’re providing journalists with the best possible material. If it can help improve a story, provide them with top-tier material in video or audio format (especially interviews) perhaps in a social media release. And as well as providing your own material, assimilate the best material available on the relevant subject matter available elsewhere on the web by hyperlinking to it via your online press page. Also, make it easy for journalists to be updated in near-real time by allowing them to subscribe to updates via RSS (or even Twitter).
  3. In addition to monitoring traditional news sources, use a dedicated social media monitoring service like Attentio (or even just some free services) to make sure you’re tracking everything that’s being written about the product, organisation, company etc. in question.

Ideally, once you’ve won them over by strengthening the reach and impact of their existing initiatives with simple tactics like these, you can begin to introduce more daring web initiatives (not for the sake of it of course: only if they fit into your broader strategy and you’re convinced they’ll work!)

Communicating the entire supply chain

This interesting point was raised at a meeting I recently attended: when people don’t think or know about the parts of a supply chain that come between between producer and end-user (or at least between producer and end-user but one in the case of retailers, as they are often in the public eye), this can be detrimental to the producer because all responsibility regarding their good or service falls onto them. What’s more, pressure groups understand this very well and are likely to always point the finger of blame at producers even when they know that fault lies elsewhere, because in campaigning terms, castigating the big boys works.

In some cases, the supply chain is pretty apparent, and responsibility is shared. Take for instance the automotive industry. The supply chain is manufacturer -> dealer -> buyer. In addition, at each part of the supply chain, regulations apply which everyone knows about. Governments play an important role in setting rules for manufacturers, dealers and drivers, meaning that manufacturers make safe cars, dealers don’t sell to anyone without a license or under 18 (or whatever), and drivers are expected to abide by the rules of the road. So if there’s an accident involving a BMW, most people would not blame BMW, but, say, a speed limit being too high or a driver being imprudent. With pharmaceuticals, everyone again knows the basic supply chain: pharma -> pharmacy -> end-user (via doctor’s prescription). Again, the rules are set in stone: governments set stringent standards, doctors are meant to know what to prescribe, and pharmacists know everything there is to know about the products. If someone takes 100 aspirins, nobody says it’s Bayer’s fault.

In some cases, however, the supply chain is more blurred, and the regulations governing it are not common knowledge. Take one industry which one of my clients represents, that of plant protection (pesticides). The supply chain is producer -> vendor -> farmer -> end-user. However, nobody really knows about the vendors, and farmers are thought of as purveyors of food, not pesticides.

Result? If consumers, say, should read that high levels of residues were found in apples somewhere, or that someone has been exposed to pesticides on a farm to the detriment of their health, most bypass the rest of the supply chain and think producers are to blame. Think what you want about pesticides in principle, but in these two hypotheses, producers can not be blamed. Perhaps it’s the vendor’s fault, as they usually don’t have the relative expertise of, for instance, pharmacists, and might not sell the right product; or perhaps the farmer is to blame, which is quite likely, considering that in many countries they aren’t required to be trained in using pesticides properly.

In terms of communications, what does this mean? That if you’re the producer and you’re taking a lot of stick for things involving your product or service that are occurring at some other point in the supply chain, your communications should highlight the entire supply chain:

  • At the basest level, it’ll make people understand that you’re not solely responsible for everything that takes place involving your product or service.
  • Once they’re in the limelight too, it’ll make other parts of the supply chain act more responsibly.

And most importantly, producers should also strongly and genuinely support the most stringent of standards for all parts of the supply chain, including themselves. Even better, they should actually help other parts of the supply chain abide by them. Why? Mainly because it’s the right thing to do. What’s more, if something does indeed go wrong that’s not your fault, you won’t be considered solely responsible, and might even be viewed as part of the solution for preventing it from happening again.

Free social media monitoring tools

When it comes to social media, everyone rightly talks about the importance of listening. The web is teeming with conversations about everything you can think of – and quite probably even your company, organisation, candidate, issue or brand –  and being fully aware and up to speed will help you shape your communications so that it responds to the trends, interests and concerns topping people’s agendas at any given moment. Luckily, you can now monitor most of what’s going on in social media with a vast array of free tools. Here’s a sample.

Blogs and microblogs

Google Blog Search and Technorati are the standard dedicated blog search engines. I prefer Google because  it tends to find more items, especially when searching for more obscure things. For more detail and graphs, I’d recommend Blogpulse and Trendpedia. Graphs don’t just look nice: having an illustrated timeline is useful to see if buzz has grown regularly since the launch of a campaign or if there’s a spike in activity around a launch or event etc. Serph should in theory be really useful because it takes into account social networking and social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg, but I’ve not found it to be great. Premise is good though so maybe it’s just a question of time.

Microblogging is on the increase and Twitter is the platform of choice for most. Search tweets using Twitter Search, Tweet Scan, and Tweetag (had not heard of this one until this morning when James pointed it out – thanks). The advanced search on Twitter Search is especially useful as it allows you to search for people as well as search items and to narrow down location and time.

Forums, comments and groups

Search engines struggle with forums, so these dedicated forum search tools are very useful: Boardreader and Forum Discussion. Search engines struggle even more with comments than they do with forums, so Backtype, which scours comments, can be a very handy tool indeed. They’re a bit out of fashion now, but Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups still have an enormous number of daily users, so a search on both is always worthwhile, although most search findings are useless to be honest.

Search items

Google Trends shows how popular any given search term is. The measurement is not that precise, as it’s a percentage of total search traffic on Google, but nonetheless useful to see if more or fewer people have been searching for the term in question over a given period of time.

Not strictly social media monitoring

Digg, which allows users to rate webpages, is still going strong. It’s handy way of finding top stories, although less useful when looking for detail about more obscure items. Yahoo have launched Yahoo Buzz, which is a lot like Digg but not as good, so not an alternative yet, but it’s still in beta, so worth checking out at a later date. Both tools can be used for any webpage, not just social media.

It’s often quite useful to find out what sort of traffic is going to your site (or any other site of interest for that matter). Quantcast,  Compete, and Alexa help to give you some idea of what amount and type of traffic is going to any given site (although in-depth and additional services are not free, except for some on Quantcast).

Any others?

If anyone can think of a tool I’ve missed, please do let me know. Thanks.

A case for building your own social network

It’s often noted that replicating online tools that are mainstream and already perform the functions you need, just for the sake of having something with your own logo on it, is a mistake. In most cases, I’d agree. With social networks in particular, considering the number of existing tools with scores of users – LinkedIn, Facebook, Orkut, hi5, Bebo and so on – if you are looking to create a community, why would you want to create something new? Most networks fail, ROI is hard to measure (you have a load of members – so what?), and as mentioned, existing tools usually have all the functionalities you could ever want (and can even be used easily and cheaply).

All valid points. However, sometimes there’s a case for an organisation, movement, group, party etc. setting up a tailor-made social network:

  1. If you want your network to perform a specific function.
  2. Most pertinently, when the people who might use it – call it your fan-base or stakeholders or whatever – are numerous, enthusiastic and active, and actually would like a social network that caters for them and them alone.

The success of the US President-elect’s network – my.barackobama.com – confirms both points. The specific functions it performed were a) raising money for the candidate, and b) allowing supporters to mobilise great numbers of people in a very organised manner. And with regards to the second point, I think it goes without saying that Obama supporters were plentiful enough and fired up.

A less conspicuous case-study I’d cite, also from across the pond, is Firefighter Nation, the firefighters’ network, which has 26,000 very active members that are avidly using all the functionalities on the site (e.g. all thirteen forum topics had been active in the last 24 hours when I checked). So why is it working? Primarily because of a very strong dose of point 2 cited above: there are lots of firefighters in the US, they are very passionate about their profession, they have a very strong sense of camaraderie, and they want their own space where they can meet others like them and share their unique experiences. A Facebook group could probably do all the same things, but it just would not feel as special; it would not be a unique platform for them alone.

So the lesson is: if you’re thinking of setting up a network for philatelists or fans of tiddlywinks, use an existing platform (and don’t hold your breath). If you’re interested in something that can really get lots of people fired up (politics, saving wildlife, football) or, say, represent a very active political group or faction, then your own social network could work, if executed and promoted well. And if you really do fancy giving it a go, I’d recommend starting on Ning, which is the platform Firefighter Nation is built on – it’s brilliant, and what’s more, it’s free.

The middleman and the benefit of being small

I was in Italy last weekend and met a chap who is a wine distributor and a middleman par excellance. He purchases wine direct from producers and sells it on to other, bigger distributors, who then sell it to foreign distributors, who then distribute to another distributor (or perhaps directly to retailers). That’s an awful lot of middlemen. Similarly, on a small project we’re currently working on for a client, we’re the middleman, working with two other agencies to produce some relatively simple deliverables. So between the client and a simple deliverable are not one but three agencies.

Is that a problem? No. The term middleman has always had shady connotations, but it shouldn’t anymore. We need middlemen! It’s a global market-place, as well as a complex, ever-changing one at that, and frankly you can’t know it all. Look at agencies. The best agencies nowadays – the ones that are truly cutting-edge and innovative – are often relatively small, because they are more flexible. They can adapt to fundamental changes faster, smart individuals tend to have more leeway, and senior people spend more time on clients than in management meetings. Most of all, smaller agencies have less of a tendency than big agencies to think they can do it all: they can usually mobilise a network of partners, freelancers or other agencies that have the expertise required to handle any given situation, while big agencies try to mould their own resources to match what’s required.

When does it usually go wrong for small agencies? When they get big and stop acting small. When do big agencies produce their best work? When they act small (and luckily, plenty of them do).

Wikipedia? Yes, it's important

wikipediaContaining well over two and a half million articles in English alone, written and updated by anyone with access to the web, Wikipedia is an amazing resource. It’s also the eighth most visited site on the web, and many people’s first port of call when looking for information on something or anything.

For this reason, I often recommend that clients check the Wikipedia entries relevant to them to make sure the content is objective and fact-based, as it should be (note: I’d never recommend amending an entry so that it is overly supportive of a client’s position, brand etc – 1) it goes against the spirit of Wikipedia, which is to be a balanced and fact-based source of information, and as an avid user, I want everyone to abide by that spirit, otherwise it’d stop working; and 2) content which is not objective or well-referenced is simply removed by other users, so there’s no point).

Many times, clients don’t think it’s important. An article in a trade publication read by 10 people is, but a site with tens of millions of visitors every day isn’t. Go figure. However, I recently discovered a site which gives stats for every wikipedia entry, and since clients have started understanding the numbers at stake, they’re seeing Wikipedia in a different light.

Just take any current controversial topic and you can see just how many people landed on the relevant page on Wikipedia in any given month. Some sample stats for October to whet the appetite:

  • Sarah Palin: 2,489,570 visits
  • GMOs (article: genetically modified organism): 37,400 visits
  • Pesticides: 24,040 visits
  • Artificial flavouring (article: flavor): 13,100 visits
  • Sub-prime lending: 183,900 visits

Is Twitter creepy?!

Following up on my recent post on Microblogging in Europe, here’s something I hadn’t thought about.

I just read this article on Business Week, which  refers to how one person found it a little creepy when he posted a tweet referring to a company and then received a message from this same company the next day. Europeans tend in general to be more concerned about privacy then Americans, so companies that want to engage on Twitter in Europe should perhaps be a little more careful about interacting than their American counterparts? Sure, if someone is on Twitter, they want to engage you might say. Perhaps with regular members of the community rather than companies though – at least in some cases?

I think the best approach would be for companies in Europe to spend a little more time listening and assessing before jumping straight into the deep-end.

Some thoughts on President Obama

The unprecedented dominance of the airwaves and column inches (what’s the web equivalent?) by the new US President-Elect over the last few months has led some people to complain of Obama-fatigue. Nonetheless, here are some points which I think have stood out.

1. I wrote about the dumbing down of US politics recently, but it’s been great to see that Obama’s cerebral style has been welcomed rather than scorned, especially since September. Once the financial crisis took off and people grew increasingly concerned about jobs, mortgages and pensions, they were far more comfortable with Obama than McCain’s rather more gung-ho and instinctive approach. Plenty of Obama voters obviously preferred Bush in 2004, given the swing, but the Iraq war or the war on terror, the main issues in 2004, were perhaps harder to relate to than voters’ own financial well-being. And when the latter was at stake, clever trumped cowboy. That’s somewhat comforting. A successful Obama presidency would hopefully convince more people that cerebral is best across the board.

UPDATE: Good column on this same issue on the New York Times website.

2. Obama’s ability to learn on the job and skilfully respond to criticism has been impressive. His response to the two prevailing criticisms – that he lacked experience and that he couldn’t back fantastic oratory with real substance – was to: 1) study all major portfolios in such depth that he could rival old hands like McCain and Hillary Clinton on the finer details of policy; and 2) choose in Joe Biden a running mate that could make up for this perceived Achilles heal.

3. At a time when Americans are feeling vulnerable about their economic plight, are more eager to reach out to the world, and are waking up to the threat of climate change (there’s been a shift – thanks Al Gore – drill baby drill was perverse), Obama represents a case of right place and right time. Americans are feeling less confident than they have for decades, and the message of each man to himself espoused by the Republicans can’t work as well at a time when the American Dream seems a little more distant to most and government help suddenly doesn’t look so bad. People want to feel safe and cared for, and Obama is deemed the better man for that role, due in equal measure to his personal biography and platform. We should not forget that McCain’s story is pretty inspirational too, but it represents the brasher, more confident America which many citizens have rejected for now.

4. How must Al-Qaeda be feeling right now? Or Ahmedinijad? I suspect they’re really annoyed. Their number one recruitment officer is coming to the end of his term and Americans have chosen to replace him with someone called Hussein. It’ll be a lot harder to denounce the great Satan now.

5. What was the McCain campaign thinking? Easy to say in hindsight perhaps, but his selling points were experience and being a moderate Republican. He surrendered both by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. And when he ran into trouble, his campaign went dirty, which given that Obama was running on a platform of hope and positive change was always going to backfire. He’s tarnished his legacy. A shame really.

6. Much has been said of how the Obama campaign mastered the web. The fact that three million people donated online, helping to make his campaign the best funded of all time, meant that money was no object. Having an endless supply of cash was obviously pretty handy, but what’s perhaps even more salient is that the Obama campaign was funded by citizens. Parties, corporations and corporate interest groups are usually candidates’ main donors, and these will at some point expect payback in some shape or form. How will citizens expect payback from Obama? By fulfilling his campaign promises. This is of course no guarantee that he can or will, but it’s a good starting point.

What’s been most revolutionary has been the campaign’s ability to use the web to not just inform people, but to mobilise them. Building up massive followings on various public social networking platforms has kept people informed and excited, and enabled them to easily spread information and urge their friends and acquaintances to join the conversation or register to vote and so on – the viral effect at play. Even more important was my.barackobama.com, which became an offline facilitator for people wanting to help in some way – make calls, arrange meets, knock on doors, put up placards and so on. It’s somewhat ironic, but the ability to mobilise people offline was arguably the most important element of Obama’s online campaign: sort of a return to a bygone age when citizens would congregate to debate, organise, and delegate in support of their preferred candidate. The web has shown itself to be the enabler and integrator that has resurrected this phenomenon. So much for people being politically apathetic – it was a question of time or the means (and let’s not forget: an inspirational candidate).

6. A bit of a tangent, but Obama’s success made me think of Italy’s political plight. After eight years of George Bush, Americans conveyed their disapproval by ditching his party and embracing a candidate whose policies, biography and style could not be more different. Democracy at play. In Italy, five years of ecomomic decline, gaffes, and a whole lot of time spent keeping himself out of legal trouble did not prevent Silvio Berlusconi from being re-elected earlier this year for a third time.

Now that I’ve put my impartial hat back on, another thought is the use of history in creating a political narrative that people can relate to or feel pride in. What really struck me was how Obama’s message of hope and change in his speeches is often relayed in connection with elements of US heritage, from the founding fathers, to the pioneers who ventured west, to Martin Luther King and so on.

Why do Italian politicians never evoke memories of our past and eloquently mould these into soundbites that inspire and encourage? It’s not as if there’s no material. What about evoking the spirit of Renaissance Florence: the small city-state which was a bastion of progressivism while the rest of Europe was just about emerging from the Dark Ages, producing philosophical movements, artists and writers that still define Western civilisation as we know it? Or the heroic tale of a mad adventurer, Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose thousand men beat the odds to conquer the Kingdom of the two Sicilies and help unify Italy? Or of how the country, ravaged by Fascism and the war, impoverished and agrarian, picked itself up by its bootstraps and underwent a true economic miracle in little more than two decades?

Sure, Florence and Garibaldi were a long time ago, and the economic miracle was arguably the result of the Marshall Plan and some very dubious machinations by the Christian-Democrats, but so what? It’s not the details but the notion of legacy that matters, however vague: instilling a sense of belonging and pride; that we should aim high, be brave, work hard, and aspire to be brilliant and humble in equal measure, because we owe it to those who came before us. Who knows. Someone might do it once Berlusconi is out of the picture. Around about 2018 then!