Open communications is essential in a time of change, tech giant EMC finds
One of the big technology industry stories currently is the merger of Dell and data storage giant EMC, which at seventy billion dollars will be the biggest merger in the tech industry’s history.
With fifty thousand employees managing such a change presents a challenge for EMC’s managers and something noticeable attending the company’s EMC World conference in Las Vegas this week is how upbeat almost all the staffers about the impending merger.
In an interview with David Goulden, the CEO of EMC’s Infrastructure division, which is the company’s core business, I asked him how they were keeping staff morale up in the face of changes that will almost certainly cost jobs.
“Change creates uncertainty,” says Goulden. “One thing I’ve learned from this is you cannot over-communicate and that’s true internally and it’s true with our customers. We’ve put an incredible amount of effort in communications so our teams are engaged to go and speak to their customers.”
As change is now a constant in all industries Goulden’s lesson should be noted by all managers and business leaders – clear, honest and open communications with employees and customers is essential in keeping the trust of the markets and workforce.
The old model of restricting information and hoping no-one finds out is increasingly harder to sustain and from a business point of view unprofitable in the medium term as well.
Paul travelled to Las Vegas as a guest of EMC and Netsuite.
How will public relations people will deal with the post-journalist media landscape?
For years I resisted attending the Tech Leaders conference, formerly Kickstart, as I felt a bit of an imposter being invited to attend as a journalist. As a consequence I missed the peak days of the event.
In the ‘good old days’ dozens of journalists, most in the employ of profitable media companies, would fly to a Queensland resort to wine, dine and debauch themselves as PR agencies who were picking up the tab would try to introduce their clients and pitch to the group of hungover scribes.
Funding these events was relatively straightforward, public relations agencies and their clients were happy to pay substantial sums for access to journalists. In the golden days of technology journalism, large IT supplements were full of lucrative advertising for jobs and products.
That river of advertising gold has long dried up and in the technology industry that shift has been exacerbated by the collapse in IT industry margins which has further hurt advertising budgets.
As the industry has faded so too have the numbers of media professionals, many journalists have either moved into PR roles themselves or are now desperate freelancers.
The industry shift to freelancers has been problematic for the organisers as the remaining staff journalists are chronically time poor so can’t lightly take a day away from the desk and the independent reporters don’t offer direct access into trade journals and general news outlets.
Events like Tech Leaders are giving the PR industry a glimpse of the journalist free media landscape of the near future where the traditional pitching to outlets in the hope of being published is effectively obsolete. Looking at the numbers at Tech Leaders, it’s clear that world is not far off.
The question everyone in the industry has to ask is ‘how do people perceive I add value?’ For many, including myself, the answer is ‘we don’t’.
In an age where there is an almost unlimited supply of information and commentary, journalists and PR people have to find a new way to convince the market they add value.
Social media influencer campaigns are too focused on happy, positive messages and that is their fatal weakness.
“If you have anything negative to say, please don’t use the hashtag” implored the organiser to her stable of ‘influencers’ ahead of a recent social media campaign.
Like everyone in the PR, marketing and advertising industries, that organiser was desperately keeping a shiny patina on their clients’ brands at a time where they are one tweet away from disaster in today’s world of message obsessed management.
With influencer programs those risks are magnified as marketers co-opt amateurs to promote their clients in return for access and freebies*. Those unpaid posters on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook may be happy to give a positive view to everything but their fans may not be so kind.
Given their clients’ aversion to risk, it’s not unusual to see marketers setting out terms to ‘influencers’ demanding the brand has the right to vet posts – as one telco requested to this site last year – or outright prohibiting anything negative being said about their client.
Happy Shiny People
Perversely, selecting happy shiny people to promote brands on social media while suppressing critical thinking could actually create distrust of brands argues communications consultant Joanne Jacobs who states “this distrust is causedby campaigns of undifferentiated positivity and uncritical thinking.”
A good example of this potential damage is a recent influencer campaign by Chinese telecommunications Huawei where a group of influencers were flown to the 2016 Mobile World Congress to post about their experiences with the brand.
The Facebook post below shows the influencers enjoying the vendor’s hospitality but it also illustrates the lack of diversity in the group, something that was quickly called out in the comments.
For the Huawei influencers who had spent the previous week gushing about the vendor’s products and events this was an opportunity to provide leadership on the lack of diversity in the tech and telco industries..
Instead the critics – some of whom had more influential online audiences than the ‘influencers’ – were dismissed with the passive aggressive accusation of being ‘negative’, the cardinal sin of social media marketing.
For Huawei, there was a real risk their happy shiny influencers clumsy attempts to protect the brand would damage for the company and it was unsurprising the company’s professional PR managers stepped in to defuse the situation which in the hands of amateur ‘brand ambassadors’ threatened to become a self inflicted disaster.
Brittle brands of happiness
Huawei’s experience illustrates a key problem with the happy shiny influencer campaigns in their brittleness when faced with genuine criticism. The happy consumerist gleefully liking Instagram photos of shoes or hamburgers will quickly abandon the product should the brand be perceived as acting dishonestly or unethically.
For those influencers who’ve tied themselves too closely to brands, such a scandal could find their own names tarnished and their hard won audiences and reputation deserting them.
In an age of conversation where critical voices can be heard, the nice shiny facades can easily collapse. The days when the tobacco industry or brands like Coca-Cola could drown out critical voices simply by the weight of their advertising campaigns are long gone.
Struggles with a fragmented media
The struggles for the PR and marketing industries in dealing with today’s fragmented world are not to be underestimated – the old models of broadcast advertising and engaging with journalists and celebrities have lost their effectiveness and the industry is grappling with what works with the new channels.
In a building a brand that will last in today’s media landscape, pandering to shallow thinking consumerists is at best going to be a short term fix. To succeed, building a believable trustworthy name that tolerates dissent, allows complaints and acknowledges informed criticism is much more important and exponentially more valuable.
Shallow thinking and shiny people might have worked for Coca-Cola selling to young baby boomers in 1965 but fifty years later things the critics and deeper thinkers have a voice to. Co-opting those voices will only strengthen the brand.
*Disclaimer: This writer has been on a number of influencer programs and received various degrees of corporate largess including a Huawei smartphone.
Will actuaries become the most valued profession in the PR industry? Some think so.
One of the truisms of modern industry is we’re going to need more workers with data skills. Could it be actuaries will be the profession of the information age.
Much of the focus around how companies will deal with an information rich age come down to the need for ‘data scientists’, those with a combination of statistical, analytical and coding skills will be required to coax insights out of complex and rapidly changing data sets.
That boring old actuaries – one particularly cruel joke is atuaries are accountants who failed the personality test – could be the hottest profession in the sexy PR industry is quite a delicious scenario.
Should that turn out to be the case though, it won’t just be the PR industry chasing actuaries, almost every industry is going to demanding the same set of skills.
In a strange way it could be the staid professions of today that are the exciting jobs of tomorrow, we’ll reserve judgement on the actuaries though.
What does a startup do when it’s faced with a PR crisis?
What does a startup do when it’s faced with a PR crisis? Recently Australia witnessed a spectacular example of what not to do when Sociabl, a startup that promised to connect users with celebrities, flamed out spectacularly.
The app and its two young founders had plenty of coverage and all looked good until one of them, Brandon Reynolds, appeared on prime time evening show A Current Affair to spruik the service.
Unfortunately for Brandon he was interviewed by one of the celebrities listed by his app and the host, singer and presenter David Campbell, had never heard of the service.
To compound the problem Brandon then wrote a defiant Medium post – later removed – accusing the program of slandering him and posting a pile of correspondence with the various celebrities’ agents.
Earlier this week I was invited to join a panel consisting of a journalist, a startup founder and a lawyer who also runs a startup along with myself we looked at how a startup can avoid a Sociabl like disaster. The lessons from it were clear.
Stop digging
Rule one in crisis management is when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop making it deeper.
Brandon clearly missed that memo and his defiant post that accused the journalists and the network of defaming him only antagonised them. What’s worse, the attempt to throw the celebrities’ agents under the bus was only going to take him and his business partners into a new world of pain.
So when things are looking bad, stopping and taking a deep breath is the first thing to do. The absolute wrong action is lashing out publicly at media, advisors or business partners.
It’s probably not a crisis
There is no doubt Sociabl’s debacle was a crisis, but it’s an outlier and a situation that few startups or any businesses will find themselves. In most cases what appears to be a crisis is just a minor hiccup that looks like a big problem because you’re too close to it.
Most startup founders and small business owners are working hard, under stress and deeply emotionally engaged in their business. It’s understandable to over-react to what is often a minor, or even imagined, crisis.
By stopping digging, or panicking, and taking that deep breath you have the opportunity to get things into perspective. It’s also the opportunity to take advice.
Talk to your friends
One of the first things any new business should set up is an advisory board or panel. Helping with a crisis is exactly what those advisors are for. Talk to them and get their wisdom, usually they’ll bring some perspective and more experienced friends will know how to manage a crisis (if it exists).
An important aspect of asking for advice is actually taking what’s offered. One way of burning bridges with friends and trusted advisors is to ignore their advice after asking for it.
If you have investors then talk to them, particularly if they have seats on your board. They’ll want to know about the crisis anyway and if they’re experienced may well be the best people to help.
Get professional help
For early stage startups this tip isn’t much use as good PR and crisis communications professionals quite rightly charge a lot of money for their services.
If you do have raised substantial money however, then a good PR agency should be one of the first professional services engaged with the funds. Sociabl claimed to have raised $210,000 which probably wasn’t enough to get a good one.
Had Sociable engaged a competent and professional PR firm, it’s likely they would have avoided the disaster on A Current Affair.
Rally the fans
If you have loyal customers, user or supporters then a crisis is the time to get them onside by engaging honestly on the web, through email and on social media. Be honest, be open and be quick to reply.
If you have made a genuine mistake then it’s likely your fans will support you as long as you come clean. All bets are off however if you’re ripping those loyal supporter off.
Have a plan
Early in your business do a risk analysis to identify where things could go wrong and have a plan to deal with known risks. Hopefully you’ll never use it but it’s handy to have when something foreseeable happens.
Don’t be a fraud (of any size)
“We’re not a major fraud” will go down as one of the greatest lines of the current startup mania and one that Brandon Reynolds will struggle to live down for many decades.
At this stage I should point out I don’t believe Reynolds and Sociabl were a fraud of any size – he and his team simply didn’t understand how the world of celebrity engagement and the media work.
The key lesson is don’t be dishonest. Only make claims you can justify and promises you can deliver. Hell hath no fury like customers, investors or journalists who believe they have been misled.
For those raising money through crowd sourcing this is an important point as overstated claims and missed delivery dates will not only cause a crisis but see loyal supporters desert you.
More importantly, a crisis brought on by dishonesty may get the attention of the authorities if you’ve breached consumer law with your customers or securities regulations with your investors. Don’t be evil is a good philosophy for a young business.
In summary, the best advice for a startup in avoiding a crisis is not to put get in the position where you might find yourself in one however sometimes things are outside your control, when they do take a deep breath and talk to your friends.
The PR industry needs to better understand and use data analytics to stay relevant says AirPR’s Rebekah Iliff
The Public Relations industry has been mismeasured and undervalued, believes Rebekah Iliff, the Chief Strategy Officer of PR analytics company AirPR.
San Francisco based AirPR is an analytics company founded in 2011 on technology tracking the performance of PR campaigns. Despite being relatively young, the business counts among its customers Fortune 1000 companies such as Rackspace, Experian and the New York Stock Exchange.
Analysing stories
The idea behind AirPR is by analysing the responses to stories, be they articles in mainstream media sites, social media posts or the client’s own content, PR people are able to get a much better insight into what is working in the marketplace.
“You can no longer just throw out a PR campaign and say ‘oh, we got 200 million impressions.’ No CEO is going to buy that,” says Iliff. “You’re going to have to have deep data that you can dive into and then report the things that are going to work.”
Part of the reason PR is failing, Iliff believes, is because practitioners are only making decisions on ten to twenty per cent of the data they have. To make the most of the information they have available involves a rethink on how companies get their message out to the community.
Shifting PR thinking
“We’re trying to shift people from thinking about PR in a linear fashion to get into thinking about it in a networked fashion. A really good PR strategy or narrative looks like a spider web, there’s all these things connected to each other.”
Making those connections is creating a new set of demands on the PR industry as new tools and communications methods evolve.
“The PR professionals of the future who are be best placed to be successful will be the ones who take an interest in the analytics, who understand how to talk about so they can improve the storytelling.”
Stopping the pitching
In Iliff’s view part of the PR industry’s problems lie with how new entrants are taught is how to pitch to journalists, rather than to evaluate what works for their clients. “The second someone comes into an agency on a green level they should be bought into the analytics conversation and be taught how to measure it.”
“Instead they are taught ‘your job is to create storylines and pitch to journalists’, which by the way ninety percent of what you pitch no-one’s going to return because it’s irrelevant.” She says.
“Journalists give you credibility and they’re a third party endorsement but they can’t tell the story the way you want to tell it. There’s a disconnect between the role of journalist is, the role of the journalist is not to sell to your customers, the role of the journalist is to tell the story from an objective viewpoint that puts you in the context of where you fit in the industry. I don’t think people get that.”
“You should be writing the story, following it through and understanding the metrics around it so you can go back and create a better story. It’s like that connective tissue between parts of PR instead of siloing.”
Breaking the data silos
The siloing of the analytics functions of PR and marketing remains a problem for the industry as well, Iliff stays and her advice to communications professionals entering the fields is to understand the data aspects.
“Get a Google Analytics certification, it’s very simple to do,” she states. “Take a couple of Coursera courses on basic statistics and how to analyse data – what’s the difference between prescriptive, descriptive and predictive data – very simple things that if you know how to talk about so you can have a discussion with the engineers.”
As the media industry evolves as it becomes even harder to pitch to fewer journalists working for a shrinking number of traditional outlets, Iliff thinks the future for the PR industry is with making its own content.
Focusing on owned media
“I think in the next five years a lot of things will change because of a couple of things, one is that we have access to data so owned media programs will become stronger for the people who are focusing on it and it will become a huge component in driving leads and sales. So people will stop spending so much time pitching.”
“Things like owned media will be used in a more comprehensive and compelling manner to offset a lot of the things that aren’t working on the earned marketing side.”
“My hope is that brands just hire an internal storyteller like Dell has done and Adobe has done and HP to tell you the story and connect with their customers. That’s the closest point between A and B.”
Taking PR seriously
Ultimately Iliff believes PRs will be taken more seriously in business is if they show they can use the data they have to show companies how to more effectively communicate.
“The only way you’re going to get a seat at the table, the only way you’re going to be taken seriously, is if you have data and you have the most relevant data.”
With data analytics reshaping most industries, it’s hard to see how the PR sector can resist those fundamental changes. How public relations practitioners apply that knowledge to their work is going to be key to their relevance in the business of the future.
Blown away by the internet, Meltwater founder Jørn Lyseggen planned to build the world’s smallest software company. Fate had different plans
“The next day I quit my job. I remember walking home that night and thinking I felt incredibly privileged to be living right at this point and I was going to see how the internet would unfold.”
Jørn Lyseggen, the founder and CEO of media monitoring service Meltwater, was describing his first encounter with Netscape 2.0 in 1995 while working on artificial intelligence at the Norwegian Computer Centre.
Today, Meltwater has 1,100 employees in 41 cities across 21 counties and Jørn spoke to Decoding the New Economy in the company’s San Francisco head office last week.
Having quit his job as a researcher, Jørn became what he describes as ‘an Internet evangelist’ in the early days of the Norwegian web and founded a series of online businesses including Norway’s first web mall.
The fourth business Jørn set up was Meltwater which they originally operated out of a shed in a disused shipyard, Shack 15. “We got free office space from one of my former clients,” he recalls. The old customer also gave them 25 old computers which they patched together to become the company’s first server farm.
Building the world’s smallest software company
“Our aspiration originally was to create the world’s smallest software company,” recalls Jørn. “We wanted to be four engineers creating the most sophisticated technology in our industry then we would sign up resellers then sit back and watch our revenue go through the roof.”
At the time media monitoring was largely made up of clipping services that would hire armies of contractor to physically cut and paste newspaper articles.
“What we wanted to do was build software that could keep track of everything that was published online,” Jørn explains. “When news started to come onto the internet then you could start to analysie it automatically. We thought there would be a better way to do this with algorithms and software.”
The best laid plans
It turned out however the plans to have a small software company didn’t work out. “We poured our heart into our technology for the first year and then we got really excited when we signed up two really respected resellers in the Norwegian market.
“They presented to 1500 companies, which is a really big number in Norway, and the results were devastating with 1499 ‘no’s and one maybe.”
For Meltwater’s founders it was a time for re-evaluating the idea. “That was a pivotal point in the company as we had to ask ‘is this a business?’. What we realised was that we were too focused on the technology and what clients are really worried about at the end of the day are the pain points.”
“Once we did that switch we started to get business and then we grew very quickly so instead of being the smallest software company in the world we set out to become the biggest in our industry.”
Going global
From there the spread across Northern Europe and the UK, “every time you start up in a new country it’s like starting a new company.” Jørn ruminates. Strangely it was Germany that proved to be the most difficult to break into. “It’s counterintuitive, you’d think the shared culture would make it easy for a Norwegian company. It wasn’t.”
The big move though was the United States, on the basis that any company with global aspirations has to be in the world’s biggest market. “Norway is a small country, we used to joke there are bus stops in New York with a bigger population than Norway.”
Jørn was surprised to find the US was an easy market to break into than the United Kingdom or Germany, “I love their open mindedness and the welcoming factor of the US culture,” he smiles.
“They are very open minded in the US, it’s a strength in their culture. In the US if you present something interesting to them they’ll accept it. The flip side is if they are open minded to you then they’ll be open minded to your competitors.”
Hiring as a key factor
Choosing the right people is the key to business success Jørn believes, with local hires being essential when expanding into foreign markets, “You need some local credibility.”
More importantly though is the importance of getting the right people early in the life of a startup business, “It’s all about culture.” He states, “make the first five to ten people the base for your platform.”
Having the right people also made it easier for his management team to delegate as executives focused on the international expansion. “We’ve got really smart young people working here, they don’t miss me when I’m not around,” he smiles.
Romanticising startups
“Back in the day it was considered you started a company because you couldn’t get a job,” Jørn laughs. “I’m the first to encourage entrepreneurship but it worries me when it becomes trendy.”
“It’s important that entrepreneurship doesn’t become too romanticised. Because it’s really hard work and most startups fail and most people have to work for years while barely getting by financially and it’s high stress”
“I never saw myself as a business person,” Jørn remembers. “I had a healthy scepticism to the commercial world, that’s why I became a research scientist because I thought it was a better use of my time.”
Becoming an entrepreneur
However the revelation of Netscape 2.0 changed all that, “it really blew my mind,” he grins as he recalls how he decided “the best way to be part of this was to be in my own business.”
Building your own business though is not an easy process and there’s tough decisions to be made. Jørn though believes that the hardest times running your own business are not when cash is tight but when the tough decisions have to be made, “sometimes you have to make calles that are challenging.”
For Jørn, he only sees more exciting times ahead as the internet evolves, “social is still in its early stage. A lot of companies struggle and worry that they haven’t figured it out, but the truth is most people haven’t figured it out.”
Paul travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Oracle
Social media influencer programs are challenging the ethics and pockets of PR and bloggers
So after five years about posting about food, travel, tech, fashion or reverse cycle widgets you’ve being listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the most influential voices in the field.
Now every morning in your inbox is another pitch from an agency offering you freebies and access in return for posting about their clients products, some are great while others are strange.
Welcome to the world of Influencer Programs, a strange hybrid bought about by rise of social media and the collapse of printed news. As overwhelmed salaried journalists at established media outlets have less time to deal with hundreds of PR people desperately trying to get their attention, those with decent social media followings start to look attractive.
The influencer theory
A key part of the PRs strategy in engaging with social media outlets are the influencer programs, where the agencies trawl Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the other services to find those with large followings and then try to induce them into promoting their clients’ products.
These influencer programs are not anything new, while today we associate them with Kim Kardashian and Will.I.Am, in the 18th Century Josiah Wedgwood publicised his sales to the royal courts of Europe to generate sales for his earthenware and a hundred years later Mark Twain endorsed cigars in journals across America.
So congratulations on being the modern Mark Twain, now you have to decide if you want to play with Fat Fee Media and be part of their influencer programs.
The land of the free
Most of the time the initial approach from the nice folks at Fat Fee will try to get you to work for free in exchange for a shiny laptop, a free feed or even an overseas trip to The World Reverse Cycle Widgets conference.
That might work for you, if you have a full time job and the food blog or fashion Instagram feed is a hobby then this exactly what the influencer programs were originally designed around although there might be some quirks there
Should the blog be a business, or you take the distinctly unfashionable attitude that your time as a creative content creator is actually worth something that Fat Fee Media should pay for, then things get messy.
People die of exposure
The first response for payment from the nice folk at Fat Fee Media is that working with their client will be wonderful exposure for you.
In some respects this is probably true, however the reason Fat Fee Media has come to you is because their clients need exposure more than you do. Just the fact you’ve been listed as an ‘influencer’ shows you have credibility on the interwebs.
One of the traps many of us with consulting businesses on the side is the belief that doing a favour for BigCorp will open future paid opportunities. Sadly, the truth is somewhat different.
Pay the writer
“It’s the amateurs who make it tough for the professionals” says Harlen Ellison in his wonderful Pay The Writer rant. “By what logic do you call me and ask me to work for nothing.”
Ellison’s point is well made and those working for free are marked down as amateurs by the large agencies. Be under no illusion, when the paid consulting, speaking or writing gigs become available, the folks giving away stuff for free on the influencer programs won’t be getting them.
While Samsung’s behaviour was extreme, it’s by no means unusual. It’s common in these programs’ agreements to have ‘exclusivity’ or ‘no disparagement’ clauses.
The exclusivity clauses are particularly pernicious because they limit the scope of your writing and could even lock you out of future paid work in the industry you cover.
Controlling the copy
Another weird, but common, part of the PR control freakery in influencer programs is the determination to vet everything so only Nice Things are said about their clients.
This never ends well as the agency and its client spend the next six weeks rewriting your work. Inevitably the results look like something published in the Ministry of Public Works house newsletter.
Even if your blog or Instagram feed is just a hobby resist any request from agencies to pre-vet your copy. If they insist, send them your advertising rate card and tell them to hire a copywriter.
You can’t say bad things
The ‘non-disparagement’ clauses are equally pernicious. One of the curiosities of the social media world is that corporates are horribly risk averse.
As a consequence they don’t want the possibility of bloggers or the Twitterati saying nasty things about them and the non-disparagement clause becomes part of almost any agreement.
These clauses are usually far ranging, not only do they stipulate a blogger can’t say something less than glowing in a post but they also restrict any social media commentary on that business.
A recent agreement I was presented on behalf of one of the world’s biggest banks required me to say I wouldn’t say anything nasty about them. This is a curious way of shutting people up but one can’t blame them if it can be done cheaply for the cost of a meal or conference invite.
Happy shiny people
Ultimately the social media and digital media worlds are about happy and shiny. Given they are largely controlled by large corporations, this isn’t surprising and much of the attitude that you shouldn’t say bad things online comes down to how food, fashion and travel bloggers have regurgitated nice things rather than been genuine critics.
To be fair to the new breed of online writers, the dumbing down of travel and food writing was well underway in the mainstream media before the arrival of the internet. One could argue that mastheads devaluing their brand with puff pieces was one of the reasons alternative online media, particularly in food blogging, became so successful so fast.
A broken model
In truth, the whole social media engagement industry is broken, it depends on poor measurements and old school marketers applying 1960s Mad Men broadcasting methods to an industry that’s diffuse and diverse.
Over time, new more effective models will develop but the for the moment this is the way business is done as we wait for the new David Sarnoff.
Ultimately for influencers the question is whether you’ll keep your own respect and that of your audience. Just don’t expect the corporates and their agencies to respect you in the morning.
Uber has made a lot of mistakes in its latest PR mishap, other businesses can learn from them.
The debacle of Uber’s management proposing to threaten journalists drags on and is becoming a classic case of what not to do during a public relations crisis as the company and its supporters continue to make matter worse for themselves.
What’s notable about the hole Uber finds itself in is that it didn’t need to be there; a bit of maturity and commonsense, not to mention knowing when to shut up, would have helped avoid this self inflicted wound to the business.
Much of the damage done by the story could have been avoided by following a few simple steps.
Stop digging
One of life’s key rules is when you find yourself in a hole then the first step to getting out is to stop digging. When the critics are loud, shut up and take a breather. Instead of exacerbating problems, step back, have a think and, if necessary, get some professional help.
Have some perspective
The most fundamental attribute for managers and owners is not to take criticism too seriously; there are always critics and letting them consume your daily lives is counterproductive and ultimately destructive as Richard Nixon would attest.
Usually in business the critics aren’t diminishing you as a person, in most cases they are making observations about your company’s economic model or its actions in the marketplace. If you’re taking criticism too personally, it might be time for a holiday.
Just because someone is criticising you, it doesn’t mean they are in the pay of your competitors or part of the socialist-masonic-jewish-illumaniti conspiracy to get you, they may actually your best friends and even have a point.
Your business priorities
How do these criticisms affect your ambitions for your business? If Sarah Lacy thinks you’re a bunch of misogynist scumballs, does it matter? Often the critics don’t matter to your business as they are a different group to your customers, investors or staff.
Is there merit?
A key question when confronted with criticism should be ‘is there merit to this?’ Before threatening to smear or sue those pointing out your business’ shortcoming it’s good to have a look to see if the critics do have a point about what you’re doing wrong.
Fix the problem
Should it turn out the critics do have a problem, then fix it. Should it turn out your business has a toxic bro’ culture then fire a few of the toxic bros and hire some people with the backbone to fix the problem.
Be open about things
If the criticisms are legitimate, then acknowledge them and be open about how you’re going to fix them. Some critics won’t be satisfied but that’s part of life, you won’t keep everyone happy.
For those critics who will be happy, admitting you’ve made mistakes and are working on fixing the problems will win more fans and supporters. People love a bit of humility and it probably doesn’t hurt for managers to be a bit humble.
On the other hand, it might be that some of your critics do genuinely hate you, are in the pay of your competitors or part of the Illuminati conspiracy. In which case, use facts and stand your ground. In the battle for public opinion, having the facts on your side always gives you the advantage.
Personally attacking your critics though is always a mistake and, as Nixon found, smearing them turns out to be a mistake. Life is too short and time in running a growing business too scarce to be consumed by hate. Get over it and move on.
Get professional help
In Uber’s case it appears their managers have been frantically calling their buddies to help out — this hasn’t helped and has probably exacerbated an already heated environment. A good professional PR adviser or reputation management company will know how to at least ease the pressure if not completely defuse the situation.
Regardless of how good the PR adviser are though, ultimately a business’ good name comes from its management and how the company behaves. This where Uber has to take more care as it becomes a global giant.
Charts as the thinking person’s cat video says Kevin Delaney, co-founder of news site Quartz, as he recommends keeping stories short and snappy
“Charts are our version of cat videos” says Kevin Delaney, co-founder of the Quartz news website, in an interview with Richard Edelman, president and CEO of the Edelman PR Agency.
Keep stories short and snappy or long and in-depth with Delany seeing 500 to 800 words as being a ‘dead zone’ for online stories. Interestingly, Edelman’s piece comes in at 760 words.
In future, I’ll be keeping blog posts either very short or extremely long on this site.
How the pundits turned against Google glass is a lesson in tech media management
Media hype is normal in the tech industry, it’s common for a new product to receive swooning coverage in its early days but when the press falls out of love with a device, it can be a harsh breakup.
Google Glass is suffering one of those harsh breakups with with writers and bloggers who were formerly gushing over the product now being publicly unimpressed with the product.
Gruber also points out another similarity between Google Glass and Microsoft’s attempts at a tablet computer. Each company’s staff were reluctant to use them.
When your own employees don’t use or support your product, the problem is with the product, not the employees.
The eating your own dog food mantra cuts both ways; if your own staff find your products unattractive, then you can’t expect customers to warm to them.
In some ways it’s ironic that Google are receiving press scorn as the company plays the tech media like a violin with privileged insiders getting early access to products create an aura of exclusivity.
Glass was a classic example of this with a small group of tech journalists getting access to the product, unfortunately those insiders are turning out to be less than impressed.
Even if it turns out the Google Glass is a failure, it will have been one of the company’s brave moon shots and no doubt what they’ve learned in usablity and mobile data will be very useful to other parts of the business.
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.
