Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Saving Fairfax

    Saving Fairfax

    “The writer and art critic was one of the great ex-patriots of Australia and he put our country on the map.”

    One typo illustrates all that is wrong with Australia’s two oldest newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning, who are both part of the Fairfax stable.

    It’s particularly disappointing that one of the leading newspapers in the city of Hughes’ birth could have such a dumb typo, but adding to the insult is the paper’s underwhelming and disappointing coverage as compared to the New York Times, the paper of his adopted home town.

    Hughes was one of many in his generation left Australia because of the lack of opportunity. Fellow expatriate (note the spelling) Clive James said he could have never have developed his writing skills without the sharp editing his copy was subjected to at London’s newspapers. That is as true today as it was in 1960.

    Poor editing lies at the core of Fairfax’s problems, not just in silly typos but also with inappropriate stories like leading with a shop assistant’s Facebook profile or the hysterical regurgitation of spin doctor’s talking points.

    This isn’t to pick on Roy Masters and Asher Moses, both are capable of great work — Asher’s Digital Dreamers series profiling Australian technology expatriates (that word again) was excellent work and when Roy doesn’t get sucked into the petty ego wars that dominate Sydney’s Rugby League community his sports writing can match the world’s best.

    Both Roy and Asher, along with every other journalist at Fairfax, are let down by poor editors who don’t have the balls to tell them when work isn’t up to standard, let alone pick up dumb typos.

    If Fairfax is to survive, it requires strong and good editors that are prepared to hold their writers accountable and back them when the going gets tough. Right now Fairfax lacks those leaders.

    That lack of leadership extends throughout the organisation’s management and board. Fairfax’s management lacks people committed to delivering a great product or capable of grappling with the challenges of making online journalism pay.

    Making online journalism pay is more than just having one-way Twitter accounts, plastering your site with ads or irritating your users with auto playing video clips. Web strategist Jim Stewart dissects how these tactics aren’t working for Fairfax.

    Whoever figures out how to make money from online journalism will be the Randolph Hearst of the 21st Century, currently it’s safe to say there are no budding Hearsts or Murdochs among the comfortable ranks of Fairfax’s management.

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  • Chasing away the astroturfers

    Chasing away the astroturfers

    Yesterday we heard the collective gnashing of teeth as social media experts, lawyers and business owners complained about the Australian Advertising Standards Board’s ruling that companies are responsible for comments on their Facebook pages.

    The ASB ruling (PDF file) was a response to complaints that comments on Diageo’s Smirnoff Vodka page breached various industry codes of conducts and encouraged under age drinking.

    While the board found the complaints weren’t justified – something that most of the hysterical commentators overlooked – the ruling contained one paragraph that upset the social media experts and delighted the lawyers.

    The Board considered that the Facebook site of an advertiser is a marketing communication tool over which the advertiser has a reasonable degree of control and could be considered to draw the attention of a segment of the public to a product in a manner calculated to promote or oppose directly or indirectly that product. The Board determined that the provisions of the Code apply to an advertiser’s Facebook page. As a Facebook page can be used to engage with customers, the Board further considered that the Code applies to the content generated by the advertisers as well as material or comments posted by users or friends.

    The key phrase in that paragraph is “over which the advertiser has a reasonable degree of control”. Obviously someone posting on Twitter, their blog or someone else’s website is beyond the control of the advertiser.

    With Facebook comments, the onus is on businesses to make sure there is nothing illegal appearing on their streams and any misconceptions or false statements are answered.

    In many ways, this is common sense. Do you, as a manager or business owner, want your brands tarnished by idiots posting offensive or illegal content? Sensible businesses have already been dealing with this by deleting the really obnoxious stuff and politely replying to the more outrageous claims by Facebook friends.

    What’s more important with both the ASB ruling and the Allergy Pathways case the ruling relies upon make it clear that ‘astroturfing’ on social media sites won’t be tolerated.

    Astroturfing is the PR practice of creating fake groups that appear to support a cause or product. A group paid for by an interested party appears to grow naturally out of community interest or concern – a fake grassroots group so to speak and hence the word ‘Astroturf’ which is a brand of artificial grass.

    Organisations like property developers and mining companies have been setting up Facebook pages and websites that appear to be community groups supporting their projects and many smaller business have been inducing friends, relatives or contractors to post false testimonials. In the run up to major elections in 2012 and 13 we’re seeing many of these fake groups setup to push various political agendas.

    For a few consulting groups, astroturfing has become a nice line of business and those of us on the fringe of the social media community have been watching the development of ‘online advocacy services’ with interest.

    While no-one has claimed Allergy Pathways or Diageo were posting fake testimonials on their own Facebook pages, the rulings in both cases are a warning that the courts and regulators are prepared to deal with those getting clever with social media.

    For honest businesses this ruling is a non-issue, it’s timely reminder though that web and social media site are not ‘set and forget’ but need to be regularly checked, valid customer comments replied to and inappropriate content removed.

    The ASB ruling reaffirms what sensible social media experts have been advising all along, and that’s good news for them and their clients.

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  • Reliving the Hong Kong Handover syndrome

    Reliving the Hong Kong Handover syndrome

    After Margaret Thatcher 1984 agreement to hand Hong Kong over the People’s Republic of China, the hoteliers of the British Colony sent out the message “book now, or pay dearly for rooms at the time of the handover.”

    It became perceived wisdom that the territory would be booked out for years in advance and any rooms available would cost a fortune. So people made other plans.

    As a result, Hong Kong’s hotel occupancy rate during the handover was only 45%. The “buy now or you’ll miss out” message backfired as people decided they’d rather miss out.

    In the second week of the London 2012 Olympics the same thing is happening – the regular tourist trade has been scared away and even the locals who haven’t left town are staying home to avoid the transport and other hassles.

    For London, the Olympics have backfired.

    This is what is always missed when cities or governments make bids for big events, they displace existing trade and the benefits, if any, are short lived.

    At least the Olympics do attract millions of visitors and the eyes of the world are on the host city for two weeks.

    Far worst are the pointless heads of government meetings that pop up with monotonous regularity, for a few days of fleeting notoriety a city is locked down and its citizen corralled as Presidents and Prime Ministers meet to discuss something that will be forgotten in weeks.

    The Sydney APEC meeting of 2007 was case in point, nothing was achieved for the weeks of disruption to normal business except for the spectacle of the so called leaders of the Asia Pacific region scuttling between hotels like frightened cockroaches in their armour plated motorcades.

    Governments around the world keep falling for the myth that these major events generate some sort of economic benefits when it’s clear to the population who aren’t invited to the VIP cocktails parties that their money isn’t being well spent.

    For businesses, the lesson is not to make too many “buy now or miss out” claims. If customers take you at your word then you may find your shop is half empty, just as Hong Kong did in 1997.

     

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  • Making business accessible

    Making business accessible

    Internet payments giant Paypal yesterday released a survey showing how businesses with a website grow faster than those without an online presence.

    There’s surprise to anyone paying attention that a business website is essential, but what happens if a business’ site isn’t accessible to those with impaired eyesight or a disability?

    We tend not to think about accessibility issues when building websites and that oversight might be hurting the effectiveness of our online marketing efforts.

    Access iQ was launched two weeks about by Media Access Australia, a not for profit organisation that works to improve disabled access to the media which was formed out of the sale of the Australian Caption Centre in 2005.

    Federal Disability Commissioner Graeme Innes pointed out at the Access iQ launch that accessibly makes life easier for everyone – making shopping centres and footpaths easier for wheelchairs to navigate also made those places more accessible for parents with prams, the elderly and able bodied people. Everybody, particularly the shopkeepers, won by making things easier for everybody.

    What’s true in the physical world has even more effect online, as the features which accessibility programs use are the same ones the all important search engines use when ranking websites.

    Titles, headings and metadata – the descriptions of the site, pages and images built into websites – are important as they let search engines and accessibility programs understand what a site is actually about.

    Getting your metadata right is a basic part of Search Engine Optimization and it’s key to having an accessible website as well.

    A good tool for checking how well metadata is being used on your website is the Australian diagnostic site BuiltWith, whose free service gives you a basic report on how a page is using SEO best practices.

    While how well a site uses headings and metadata is important, its also important that the site works properly. Problems with a website’s design make it run slower and can affect how it works in some browsers. So minimising design errors on a page matters as well.

    The best tool for checking a website’s underlying code is the W3C’s Markup Validation Service. This checks your site is complying with web standards and picks up an errors that might have crept into the design. Eliminating as many errors as possible means the site runs quicker while improving the SEO and accessiblity aspects.

    For checking accessiblity issues, the Web Accessibility Evaluation tool (WAVE), shows you where problems might lie in your site and steps through each part of a page highlighting potential issues.

    While a web site’s code isn’t something business managers and owners should spend a lot of time worrying about, the accessibility and SEO does matter so it’s good practice to use these tools to check how your site is performing.

    Once you’ve run these tests, sit down with your website developer and see where you can improve. The more accessible a web site is, the more it will help your customers.

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  • Outsourcing the service economy

    Outsourcing the service economy

    Through the 1970s and 80s we accepted manufacturing industries moving jobs offshore because those jobs were done by working class, blue collar workers and the future lay in white collar, middle class service industries.

    As a consequence of moving manufacturing offshore, the US, British and Australian economies became more service based. The thought in the 1980s was that while goods could be made in Taiwan, the ‘knowledge industries’ couldn’t be.

    Then the Internet came along.

    A panel on The Future of Outsourcing convened by the Indian Institute of Technologies Association of Australia last night discussed some of these issues.

    Now the service industries are being offshored, at first it was the low skilled service jobs like call centres but it didn’t take long for higher value work – such as paralegal, medical transcription and of course IT services – to follow.

    The belief that white collar jobs couldn’t be taken over by cheaper foreign labour has been proved wrong.

    It isn’t just those working in the call centres or IT departments of telcos and big banks that are being affected, those small businesses in support industries like secretarial services or design are finding their clients are moving offshore too.

    What’s interesting with all of this is how long the executive classes can resist being outsourced. Indian and Chinese managers work for harder for less than their US, British or Australian colleagues and in many cases are better educated.

    One can only wonder how long the partners of major consulting business can hold the line as well, these guys – the vast majority are men – have done very nicely charging first world rates while increasingly paying developing world rates.

    Already Indian outsourcing companies, including at least two sitting on that Sydney panel, have set up their own consulting arms that cut out the expensive middle men. Without the overheads flashy offices and big packages for entitled partners, they’ll have a pretty competitive offering.

    While we can cry for the high paid management consultants and executives who are increasingly threatened by these changes, the Anglo-Saxon economies have a real problem as service industries move offshore.

    In Australia, the Bureau of Statistic’s 100 Years of Change in Australian Industry tracks how the nation’s industries have changed – in the 1950s Australian manufacturing peaked just shy of 30% of the workforce, by 2000 it had shrunk to 11% while service industries were doubled from around 25% to 50% of the economy.

    While it’s unlikely we’d see the service sector workforce shrink by 2/3rd over the next fifty years, there’s a good chance incomes will fall in these industries unless we start to invest in education and skills which allow Australia to stake a place in the global economy.

    One of the key takeaways from the Future of Outsourcing event was that this change is happening regardless of what we think is a fair wage for our work. It’s something our government and business leaders need to start considering.

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