Your ultimate web objective? Being ubiquitous

If there’s an issue that’s impacting your organisation around which you want to orchestrate a shift in opinion or behavioural change amongst a set of people large or small, it’s not enough to do the right thing and explain it effectively. Two factors play a part here:

  1. People don’t trust you. Trust in pretty much every sort of organisation is at rock bottom and falling, so people will need to hear it from others to buy into what you do and say.
  2. With regards to the web in particular, search. You can’t push your content, people will find what they want; such is the nature of the web – meaning that it’s quite likely that they’ll pick another site out of the thousands that show up in Google.

So what do you do about it? Beyond doing and saying “the right thing” (not so easy in itself) and a solid media relations set-up, you’ll need to become ubiquitous online. What does that mean? That your web tentacles reach far beyond your own web presence. Others communicating around your issue should be talking about you so that when people are on the aforementioned ‘other’ site on your issue that they’ve found on Google, you’re present too.

How do you make it happen? You’ll need to know who all the other players are on your issue and communicate with them in mind rather than hollering in a void. Reference their content or even feature them in person, comment on their content in your own output, and make sure you’re giving your input wherever you can on other platforms. Assuming – again – that your message is solid, people will take notice and will soon start talking about you, giving you the third-party credibility you crave (assuming they’re being nice!) and giving you airtime in other places where people might land.

Will it come easy? No, Rome wasn’t built in a day – it’ll be a slog, but you won’t regret it.

Letting people other than senior-president-director-chairman So&So represent your company

In my last post I wrote about having experts represent your company. Another thing worth mentioning along those same lines is having lesser mortals represent your company to the outside world. Many a client has recoiled in horror when I’ve suggested that someone other than really senior spokespeople could possibly be the face of the organisation.

I think that’s wrong on a lot of levels.

Sure, if you’re talking about hardcore regulatory stuff you’re embroiled in or apologising for something awful you’ve done, the more senior the better. It shows you care at the highest level of your organisation. But if it’s more fluffy stuff you’re talking about, why on earth not let the people who are responsible, know lots about it, or are really into it write or talk, whatever their position in the organisation? What’ll happen?!

Plus there are tangible benefits:

  • The old social media cliche: it gives a face to the organisation that goes beyond the CEO, and that makes the organisation appear more “real” and likeable – and even trustworthy. Would you trust someone closer to your age who is still making the grade and is telling you something interesting more than a slick spokesperson who has been around the block a thousand times? Quite possibly.
  • It shows the outside world that the company trusts its people. That in itself is a benefit: the organisation trusts its more junior people so much that it’s willing to let them front the company?! Impressive, they must be good.
  • The internal trust issue: show your more junior people that you think they’re important enough to be a face of the organisation and you’ll more likely keep them happy, motivated and loyal.

Use your experts

You’ve got a budget and you’re an ace, silver-tongued communicator. What’s the temptation? To tell the story yourself every time, with clever messaging and soundbites containing all your keywords oozing out of every pore.

It’s all very well, and there’s a place for this sort of output. However, I’d urge communicators to not lose sight of their best asset: internal experts. Unless it’s a purveyor of a basic good which is also utterly uncontroversial, your organisation will no doubt work on some pretty complex stuff. Within this realm of complexity, you’ll usually want to position yourself as a thought-leader; as an expert within your field.

It’s a shame then that the experts – the engineers, the scientists, the analysts, the designers et al. – are usually kept out of sight, while the comms people get to call the shots to the outside world. Instead, I’d really urge all communicators to harness this expertise by producing output that showcases experts (and not make it look too staged…) Not only will they know their stuff, they’ll often be more enthusiastic about the subject matter than you ever could be. Do so, and you’ll no doubt help your organisation come across as a more credible player.

Good communicators should spend most of their time feeling dissatisfied

Communication campaigns tend to have very ambitious objectives, usually involving a major shift in opinion or behaviour amongst a set of people – often a very large and diverse one at that. Success takes a long time and a lot of perseverance, you need to be smart, analytical and on the ball, you might need to partner with the right people and pray they don’t screw things up for you, your timing should be spot on, and you must have your share of good fortune.

That’s where the dissatisfaction comes in. You spend ages understanding the issues and the players involved, how they intertwine and how you might craft stories that people respond to, and ultimately executing your strategy. Bit by bit. Yet most of the bits along the way can seem like a waste of time because you know how many it’ll take to cause the seismic shifts you’re looking for.

Is that what you’re feeling? Good sign. Why? Because you’re not losing site of the bigger picture. Ticking a box doesn’t really satisfy you, only winning your campaign will. Weak communicators often think each piece of output, or a nod and a wink from the boss, are results in themselves. Not so, and these sort of communicators will often lose sight of the big picture, produce disjointed output, and will most likely have a failed campaign on their conscience come the end. Good communicators know that reaching their objectives (if not all, at least most…) constitutes real success, nothing else.

Avoiding the temptation to do it all

The web offers infinite publication space on multiple platforms at zero cost other than time. Result? Busy organisations communicating everything anyone does a thousand times, just because they can.

Most of the time it’s a mistake caused by two instincts:

  1. The belief that – surely – plenty of people, somewhere, will pick up your material and be interested, given that there are millions of people surfing all the time.
  2. Thinking that because Mr. Hotshot X is considered very clever indeed in your organisation or HQ spent a lot of time and effort on a great launch, obviously everyone else will love them/it too.

The truth? The fact that it’s easy to surf will make it harder to push your material, not easier, because there’s a hell of a lot of competition and consequently, people will find something else which they like better unless you have a good story and communicate it well. Remember, the web is SEARCH – not headline – based.

Meaning that you MUST put yourself in your target’s shoes. Imagine you’re them and think: “what do I like, what will make me laugh, what do I want to learn today, what will engage me, what are my values, how finely honed is my bullshit metre?”

Do that well, and you’ll realise that when your target goes online, he/she probably won’t be interested in finding your highly-polished CTO talking about the launch party and what your product will mean for 6 million eager customers. What he/she will really want is material – whether produced by you or someone else – that has real people (maybe your CTO, probably someone else) giving clear, engaging and honest answers to questions that concern them or others in their community directly.

Doers vs strategists

Doers think strategists are all talk and no action. Strategists claim doers don’t think things through and complete tasks just for the sake of getting stuff done.

Who is right? Both and neither. Truth of the matter is strategy and execution are both part of the same parcel and should be in symbiosis, not competition.

So step 1: strategists, get off your high-horse; doers, step back for a minute and think about what it is you’re really trying to do. Step 2: appreciate that you both have an equally important role to play and accept the other. Step 3: strategise, plan and execute a killer campaign.

Good communications? Ask yourself what you’d think

I get “helpful” suggestions on the job every day: make the interviewee stand in front of our logo, let’s get the CEO to say a word – that’ll impress them, make sure you add key message X to everything, that doesn’t follow our colour guidelines, we need a better jingle, can you think of a good soundbite? And so on.

Will this sort of thing make a difference? Will it make your communication more effective? Will it make people like you more? Will it mean you sell more? Will it lead to behavioural change that will shift your issue the way you want it to over time?  Probably not.

So what should be your first litmus test? Simply – how would I react..? Or – what would I think..?

Don’t even put yourself in the shoes of a member of the general public, a civil servant, a journalist or whoever it is you’re trying to convince. Just imagine – if I had nothing to do with these people – what would I think? Would I be more impressed if there was a giant logo in the background? (Answer will probably be: Nope, I’d probably be less impressed.) Would I be impressed if I was hearing the CEO? (Does that not just depend on what they say and how they say it?) Would I care if the colour on the blog doesn’t match the brochure? (Couldn’t care less.)

Is this not just common sense? Yes, but common sense is often in short supply when it comes to communications. First, people within organisations live that organisation every day and inevitably end up reflecting internal thinking in their outgoing comms. It’s only natural. You’re impressed by the CEO but sometimes it’s hard to remember that others often couldn’t care less. Second, it’s old-school comms still ruling the roost. Very structured, hierarchical, controlled, rule-based communications shaped by conventions that have been proven not to matter or to even be detrimental, like the convention that states that showing your logo everywhere will mean people will remember that it’s you or that the CEO carries more clout than a lowly engineer (even if the latter is much more interesting.) Yeah, whatever. People are looking for openness, honesty and quality, so the less you stage things and follow outdated rules, the more likely you’ll be able to offer them that.

Don't bother with a big online launch: build a story instead

celebration_festivals_lollaI was recently asked to come up with some ideas to attract attendees and to generally “raise awareness” of an event using just online channels. My recommendation? If you’ve only got three months to make sure the right people know about your event, use other channels.

Big splash launches usually don’t work well online: if you’re hosting an event (or have just published something groundbreaking or are or launching a campaign for that matter) and you pretty much know who your stakeholders are (always the case if it’s a niche policy area, as in my example) just use old-school methods like phone-calls, emails and leveraging your networks. If you’re trying to attract a slightly longer list of stakeholders, by all means, advertise a bit too, but don’t expect too much from the web. Sure, promote it on your site, blog and whatever else, but don’t think that a web campaign will do wonders in the short-term.

So what could you do online instead?

First, do use your website as a reference for the event in the run-up to build some momentum e.g. create some hype about speakers by showcasing video footage of previous speeches or incorporate some interactive feature like, say, post your own question for one of the panels at the event. The scope here however is not attract to attendees who don’t know about your event, but rather, to convince people who aren’t sure it’ll be worth it.

Second, and more importantly, build a story around your issue in the long-term, not just in the run-up to an event: instead, make the event one part of your online story, and try to make your web presence the focal point of your issue online. If you manage to make your issue and your web activity one and the same online – i.e. anyone looking up your issue online will in some way find your content – it’ll be a more powerful tool in the long-run than any event could ever be.

What does that mean in practice though? In short (very short), I’d say you need to:

  1. Produce a stream of top-notch content which is a) based on a storyline you know will resonate with your target audiences (if you’re not sure what that is, conduct a poll, but don’t just use key messages the CEO likes); and b) which aims to clarify and simplify a complex landscape for people who might not be totally clued up on the issue.
  2. Don’t pretend you’re the only one out there – harness other people’s content and bring it together on your site – it’ll be their stuff, but you’ll be the one who has brought it together and created a one-stop shop on your issue.
  3. Creative campaigning. Content is king, but do something (online or offline) once in a while that’s a little out of the ordinary – provoke, shock, raise your voice, tell a personal story, involve your community in an unusual way. If done well, it’ll make people take notice of your excellent content a little more and help spread the word.
  4. Don’t forget the boring stuff which makes up some of the basics of eMarketing, in particular search engine optimisation and search engine advertising (i.e. Google AdWords) to help people find your content.

Image source.

Wonder why it's so easy for a politician to go from nutty fringe to moderate?

Quick thought. I was recently speaking to someone who works for a fairly outspoken politician (to say the least) who said that the politician in question is currently considering whether to communicate in a slightly more mellow manner so as to attract a different type of voter.

It’s startling how thin the line between “moderate” and “nutty fringe” can be: unless you actually are a nutty fringe politician, whether you’re seen as one or the other is largely down to how you communicate. But what’s really odd is how we as constituents are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and gloss over the past once the switch has been made. I’ll admit that I fit into that category: in 1994, Gianfranco Fini said Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the 20 century; now he’s changed his tone and is a reasonable centrist who speaks some sense amongst the throng of crude and worthless populists that make up the Italian ruling majority – and I believe him.

What a great benefit to politicians looking to make the grade though. Whether of the left or of the right, they can cause a stir amongst “party bases” by stating their position in the most outlandish terms possible, then repackage themselves as a more moderate force once they have a following and a media presence  (i.e. saying the same things just in a more conciliatory tone and with less gesticulation.) Hey presto, they attract a different breed of supporter virtually from one day to the next! Wish it were that easy for the rest of us.

Explaining an issue from a target's perspective, not yours

scratching_headA problem that often arises when an expert needs to explain an issue to their target – be it a policy-maker, influencer or a member of the general public – is that the expert develops their approach from their own perspective, rather than that of the target. Policy-makers are asked to make decisions based on a ten-minute minute meeting, or more likely, ten-minute briefings based on research conducted in twenty minutes by their assistants, and yet experts come at them with key messages and the like thought up by a room-full of know-it-alls.

It’s far more effective to work backwards and start from the target’s perspective. Ask yourself, first, what are the basics that my target doesn’t understand, and second, what questions are they most likely to have. If you don’t know, conduct a poll amongst friends and colleagues who don’t know your issue and ask them what their layman’s perspective is. Only once you’ve dealt with that, start imparting your expertise.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t often happen in Brussels: it’s where the policy-buff and communicator conflict I often write about comes into play. At company, association and especially agency level, most of the people tasked with communicating an issue are into the policy bit – which is fine (and necessary) – but they’re not really into the communications bit. Result? In the end, output that is probably very good, but doesn’t do a jot to win over the target of their communications because it hasn’t explained the basics before veering into high-brow.

Image source.