Category: Social Media

We’d like a little bit of digital please

The starting point for digital in Public Affairs, and other disciplines no doubt, will often be very tentative: “we’d like a little bit of digital please.” In practice, it may mean no clear strategy, a single channel, one junior person within an organisation given part-time responsibility for it, limited or no input from experienced practitioners and no measurement. Essentially, experimenting to see how it works.

In theory, I agree in taking baby steps and seeing how it works as it’s a good way of getting people started when they might otherwise never do so, but the fact of the matter is, doing it small means it probably won’t work.

Set up Twitter but tweet infrequently, set up a LinkedIn Group and expect external members to do all the work, have a new site but don’t promote it, have a new site but don’t update it, produce one great piece of content but don’t follow up, do one channel when your audience is on three, monitor social media but don’t respond? These are all examples of doing it small.

Would you get an intern to write a position paper in a day? Organise an event but not get good speakers? Build a coalition but never meet? Monitor political developments but ignore one of the institutions? Probably not.

Doing digital with no clear strategy – i.e. no reason other than “we should be doing this” – and no real resource commitment is essentially the same thing as any of the examples above, and thus a waste of time if not a ticking time-bomb.

Having said all that, I’d still recommend it as a means of at least getting people started, but insisting strongly on the following: “this is just a start, don’t expect much, to reap the rewards you should be doing more.”

Being overly tactical can go unnoticed in Public Affairs

Interesting thought emanating from a recent conversation: Public Affairs is probably the communications discipline that more than any other is tactic-centric. Meaning that in PA, you can propose all manner of tactics without much research or strategy, and people might not notice.

Why?

This may sound trite, but it’s probably because Public Affairs can sound clever even when overly tactical, while in other disciplines, that’s not so much the case. If you’re selling cereal and you state “let’s set up a Facebook page” without having done your homework other than knowing your target demographic is on Facebook, you’ll rightly be told off.

However, if you’re trying to defend a cereal manufacturer’s ingredient from regulation and you know the institutions’ calendar inside out and who sits in the relevant committees, simply putting together a set of meetings sounds more clever than “let’s do Facebook” although it really isn’t.

Clearly, I’m over-simplifying to prove a point – Public Affairs servicing usually involves far more than a meeting programme – but you get the gist.

Paid media (advertising) in Public Affairs

Although it can be extremely effective at driving traffic and raising awareness of one’s activity, we often scoff at advertising in Public Affairs, usually for one of more of these reasons:

  • We know our audiences so why advertise?
  • Advertising is not targeted enough
  • Advertising is too expensive and we can’t control what we spend
  • Advertising can sell detergent but our clever audiences would never fall for advertising

Each is tosh:

  • We hardly ever know everyone in our target audience anymore:  as the scope of Public Affairs becomes increasingly broad, so does the set of people we need to reach and convince.
  • As uncomfortable as it may make some people, advertising can be very targeted. In particular, online advertising, which allows one to target via variables such as where people live or what sector they work in, as long as they themselves have provided the information (e.g. Facebook or LinkedIn ads) or what they look up online (e.g. Google AdWords).
  • No, it’s not necessarily expensive. Many people’s advertising paradigm is TV, which obviously is very expensive. But delivering a thousand clicks to a website via a social network can be dirt cheap. And you need only pay per click and can cap spending.
  • “Our clever audiences never fall for advertising.” Again, this is the TV paradigm. In online advertising, as well as much offline advertising, you’re not trying to drip-feed your brand to unknowing consumers who will soon worship it: you’re only trying to drive someone somewhere else, where yes, perhaps you may try to convince them of something or other.

In one visual: online support for an issues management programme

If you’re working on an issue in which you represent one side of the debate, you’ll need to present that view online. Why? We’ve been over this before, but in short, people who matter will be looking you up online and if you’re nowhere, they’ll read up on the competition, not you.

So you’ll need to have an online presence, it will need to be fed with content, you’ll need to promote it via online marketing and other tactics, and you’ll need to engage on other platforms where your audiences may be active (social media in particular.) Neatly summarised in this visual (I hope!)

Digital principles from the US presidential campaign applied to our far smaller pond

My colleague from Fleishman-Hillard in Washington DC, Bill Black, was in Brussels a couple of weeks ago to host an event on the use of digital in the US presidential campaign. Good thing that Obama was triumphant, given that the presentation centred on extolling the phenomenal development of the digital element of his campaign since the last election. It’s getting less air-time given that it’s so 2008, but certainly, the campaign’s use of data in particular is truly ground-breaking.

I was asked to round off the presentation with a couple of brief insights on how the principles of the campaign could be applied to Brussels. Slightly tricky given the considerable differences in scale, critical mass, funding and the fact that we had people with drastically different communications needs in the room (political parties through to embassies and perm reps through to corporates).

Nonetheless, there were 3 points in Bill’s presentation which are unquestionably applicable to Brussels, which I summarised as follows:

Using data

Data can also extremely valuable to a Brussels crowd, albeit usually for a different reason. In the US campaign, as with most large campaigns, the prime purpose of mining data is to understand audiences so as to better target them. In Brussels, in most instances, we know our audiences pretty well, or they’re so small that we can find out about them using more cost effective means (a survey or even just asking them directly). However, exploring and breaking down data can pay great dividends in another way, namely building stronger argumentation.

In short, if you represent the interests of an organisation, country, party, region etc. you can use data collected through various means online to understand the views of people in relevant constituencies, and where relevant, align your position so that it reflects these same views, thus strengthening your case significantly. Too often in Brussels, argumentation is based on assumption, or what you’d like people to hear, or it’s too basic to actually matter. In the private sector, how many organisation, for instance, prattle on about the number of people they employ or the percentage of European GDP they account for?

Instead, imagine you’ve used data to determine – hypothetically – that there are 3,000 people in constituency X who have voiced support for you or are likely to support your position, proven through data indicating what these people have said, published, read and shared. I’m sure some people concerned with privacy will shudder, but there’s sure no better argument winner. In addition, analysing a broader set of stakeholders through data can help identify influencers beyond traditional stakeholder groups.

Smarter about content

Old news no doubt but still worth emphasising: with the mass of information being published, being more personal, conversational and publishing material in a variety of attractive, relevant and concise content types is essential if you wish to break through the clutter. This as ever remains a message worth repeating in Brussels, where we remain enthralled by the highly cerebral, overly detailed report or paper as the sole publication type worth thinking about.

Getting senior people involved in social

Again, hardly rocket science, but an interesting insight from the election. The likes of Axelrod were far more involved in social media this time around than in 2008, and this resulted in more stuff being shared and spread. To be frank, although social media lowers the barrier to entry to communications, often allowing people who are smart and interesting yet not high in the food chain to gain an audience, the fact remains that high-profile people usually carry more immediate clout when engaged in communications. This is a valuable lesson to the organisations in Brussels, both public and private, who farm off social media to the intern or even a 3rd party, when ideally, the figureheads of an organisation should at least be somewhat involved.

Digital is always relevant in Public Affairs

I start off a number of presentations on digital PA with this image, slyly trying to pre-empt the inevitable i.e. PA professionals who have made one (if not both) the following assumptions:

  1. Digital is a mass-market, spray and pray medium
  2. Knowing your audience makes it easy to reach them

In truth, digital is not a spray and pray medium, by any stretch: it can be highly targeted. Think targeted social advertising leading to content specific to a niche audience. And having every audience member’s email address or phone number won’t help if they’re Googling you rather than picking up the phone or reading your emails.

Social media fatigue in Brussels

Not long ago, Brussels was wildly excited about the potential of social media, from two perspectives:

  1. Social media = EU saviour: proponents of the EU construct believed that social media could help bridge the divide between member states and Brussels, connect citizens and the institutions, and generally make the EU more visible, democratic and transparent.
  2. Social media = Public Affairs tool extraordinaire: organisations operating in policy-land believed they had a wealth of new options at their disposal, whether they were looking to reach out to policy-makers, build coalitions, or generally raise visibility and momentum around issues that mattered to them.

In both respects, we’re experiencing social media fatigue, as even the most ardent enthusiasts are appreciating that social media is no silver bullet without the right building blocks. Meaning what?

Social media ≠ EU saviour

The EU is dull: it remains uninteresting to many because it’s distant and deals with issues that most people don’t care about. Tax, education and healthcare are more interesting than REACH and fish.

The constitution debacle and now Eurozone has dealt a massive reputational blow: the fact that EU enthusiasts often seem to not care much invariably fuels accusations of it being elitist and undemocratic.

Leadership and communications: many leaders and others responsible for communicating Brussels to the world frequently struggle to articulate its significance without coming across as – again – elitist, pompous and/or uninteresting (some, not all!)

The piñata effect: given that the EU leadership and those responsible for communications don’t articulate their activities and raison d’etre especially well, they’re an easy target for national level politicians, media and others wanting to pin the blame for everything – rightly or wrongly – on Brussels.

Language: last but not least, we may now have channels that allow for instant, barrier-free communications, but we don’t all understand each other.

Conclusion in short: the building blocks aren’t right i.e. if we don’t have the right people saying interesting and relevant things, to the right people, at the right time, in the right tone, who cares if we have shiny social media channels at our disposal?

NB: Mathew has written about EU communication and social media in far more detail and quality than I have here – have a look at his blog if you’re interested in this topic (although he’s stopped blogging for now).  

Social media ≠ Public Affairs tool extraordinaire

Organisations often aren’t allowed to say anything interesting: when talking to policy audiences, or audiences that are affected by policy, it helps to be permitted to talk about policy. Sometimes the lawyers, or company and/or industry culture won’t allow it.

Public affairs functions within organisations often have no strategic communications capability: they operate in a policy silo, blissfully unaware of the fact that communications (on or offline) can actually be pretty effective when done well. Net result: limited use of data, analysis and measurement, and thus poorly targeted and ineffective output.

Structure and resources: linked to the previous point, organisations may think communications is fab but simply don’t have the right organisational structure, people or outside support to conduct it well.

Organisations sometimes really don’t have anything interesting to say: sometimes there’s a lull when no particular dossiers affect an organisation and they have nothing remotely interesting to say that would interest policy audiences (NB: this is only the case with utterly uncontroversial industries, of which there are only a few e.g. if the Financial Services industry had nothing on going at the moment – utterly hypothetical of course – they’d still have lots to do to mend their reputation and thus to communicate).

Conclusion in short: again, although some digital PA is very good, the building blocks often aren’t right  i.e. as above, if we don’t have the right people saying interesting and relevant things, to the right people, at the right time, in the right tone, who cares if we have shiny social media channels at our disposal?

Dodgy to amazing: where do Brussels communicators lie?

I recently helped a client develop a framework that defines multiple phases of development in digital comms, broadly and in specific disciplines (e.g. content marketing, social media or search, for instance). The thinking is that it’ll show where the organisation currently lies and where it ultimately wants to get to – a very useful exercise indeed.

For my own amusement (I’m that sad) I’ve drawn up a simple (and slightly sardonic) grid for communications and communicators in Brussels

NB: I treat comms and policy work – i.e. traditional advocacy – as separate activities given that it’s usually how they’re approached in Brussels. The pedant in me would say advocacy is just one channel in an organisation’s communications suite.

  Dodgy Half decent Good Amazing
Mind-set Comms is for idiots who don’t get policy We understand the value of comms in informing traditional policy audiences We appreciate the value of comms in shifting the pin in Brussels and beyond, which in turn can affect policy-land Comms will be as important – often more important –  than traditional advocacy, if it isn’t so already
Brussels bubble Nothing matters outside Brussels Sometimes stuff outside matters, but we tend to ignore it Stuff outside matters, and we work actively with people at national level We make no distinction between Brussels and national level interests when necessary
Structure for communications No structure (or the intern does it all) Mid-level comms manager and limited support Senior level comms manager and good support Senior level comms manager fully integrated in organisation’s leadership
Channel strategy Comms = press releases to the entire Brussels press corp Mainly owned and earned media (e.g. events, website, newsletters, media relations that isn’t spray and pray) Full array of channels (paid, earned, shared and owned media) i.e. include more marketing and social media Full array of channels, part of a single overarching strategy, fully integrated
Integration with traditional advocacy There’s policy work, then separately from that we’ll do a press release when we host an event We have our basic positions available publicly but don’t update regularly We regularly communicate around our policy work in all comms channels Policy work and comms are fully aligned
Targeting “Decision makers and the general public” i.e. no idea who we’re talking to and why We have given serious thought to who we’re talking to and why but don’t have data We did some initial analysis (polling, focus groups, interviews) to understand our audience We did initial analysis and do ongoing tracking based on specific KPIs to make sure our comms is always relevant
Content production What’s content? Regular content updates, but ad hoc and limited senior level input Regular scheduled content updates, some senior input Very regular scheduled content. Senior expertise apparent in all content items
Measurement Huh? Basic KPIs for core activities measured manually or with basic tools e.g. media coverage, event attendance, website hits – but tracking without consequences KPIs for an array of activities and use data to inform future comms activity KPIs for an array of activities and use data to inform comms activity AND overall strategy

Thoughts welcomed.

PA professionals: picking the right “influential” people

A Public Affairs staple, as with all fields of communications, is to seek out “influential” people who support your side of the story and are willing to say so. This gives you and your side of the story credibility, so the logic goes.

So who is usually sought out as “influential” in PA? Often, the academic (or scientist) for clearly these are highly credible folk: smart, independent and presumably not profit driven. Again, sounds logical, you’d think, and what’s more, the Trust Barometer tells us academics are amongst the most trusted people out there.

Yet as anyone working on issues in Brussels can confirm, you can have scores of cuddly, bearded academics on your side, without the tide changing on your issue.

Why not? Could one reason be that we’re applying rational thinking to an irrational process? You ask someone who they trust: the CEO, the academic, an NGO, someone like you… You’re given time to think, and you’ll provide the rational answer: clearly, I trust academics.

Yet we don’t make decisions rationally, we do so emotionally. Our gut tells us how it is. In a meeting I recently attended, a clever man said that 95% of decisions are “emotional” not rational. Let’s be conservative and cut that down to 80% for the purposes of my little illustration here:

In summary:

  • Academics and scientists appeal to our rational being, which reflects perhaps 20% of decisions.
  • Who could influence emotional decision making? Perhaps a regular Joe like me with a clear link to the issue at hand, ideally an emotional link (I work in industry X which people are trying to shut down; my child suffered at the hands of substance Y). A celeb? Not any celeb, but a well-known person with a less than spurious connection to a cause (OK hardly Brussels fare, but remember Joanna Lumley and the Gurkhas, legitimised by the fact that her father had been in a Gurkha regiment?) Or a community and/or business  leader who, again, might not be just like me or be a celeb, but has taken an issue on board with real fervour.
  • What do these type of influencers have in common? In short, they approach an issue from the heart, not in a cold-blooded analytical fashion, and are thus more likely to influence emotional decision-making.
  • And journalists? Clearly influencers, but they’re hard to place – it depends on the individual, the publication and their approach on the day, so I’ve placed them on the threshold.

Online habits vary: social technographics applied to Brussels

Forrester’s Social Technographics Profile Tool is superb; take a look if you haven’t previously. In short, it breaks down social users into different categories, ranging from inactives (don’t use social) to creators (produce and publish stuff). The figures can be broken down further by demographic variables (age, sex and location) which makes it useful reading for marketers and communicators. Looking to reach German men in their 30s? Focus on content more than engagement, given that they read lots but don’t like to share and interact. Italians? Go for engagement and even user generated material, cos they love the stuff.

What if we applied a similar model to Brussels, with the following variables:

  • Sex
  • Age
  • Nationality
  • Sector/area of expertise (health, financial services, tech, environment, trade etc.)
  • Organisation (Commission, Parliament, Council, Perm Rep, in-house, NGO, agency, trade association etc.)

What would we likely learn? No doubt there’s extremes: a southern European male, aged 45-55, specialised in financial services and working in the institutions would likely be an inactive (although there’ll certainly be exceptions). Meanwhile, a young Swede working at an agency on tech issues would probably be at the other end of the spectrum.

But what about the less obvious middle ground? A 40 year old Hungarian working on trade issues at their perm rep? OK the critical mass of data to get that specific would probably be lacking, but as a basic indicator, I think it’d be fascinating nonetheless.