Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: social media

  • ABC Nightlife – killing email

    ABC Nightlife – killing email

    For the July 2013 Nightlife spot Tony Delroy and I be looking at email – reduce the volume of email we receive or should we abolish it altogether. Join us from 10pm, July 25 on ABC Local Radio across Australia.

    Should you have missed the spot, it’s available for download at the ABC Nightlife website and listener’s questions are answered on our follow up post.

    In the United States, the Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig claims he’s never sent an email in his life. While Bud is an older worker with plenty of staff to print out his electronic messages, many of us are looking for ways of getting out from under the daily deluge of messages.

    While executives of major sports may be able to get away without using email, most people working in modern organisations can’t. So different companies have introduced different ways of reducing the amount of email flowing around their organisations.

    French company Atos is moving to completely ban internal email with CEO Thierry Breton claiming he hasn’t sent an email since 2008. In Australia, Telstra head David Thodey is winning acclaim for his use of enterprise social media service Yammer.

    Tony and I will be looking at how all of us can reduce our email load with filters, social media and business collaboration tools. Some of the questions we’ll be covering include;

    On the topic of social media and collaboration tools, Salesforce claim some major business benefits from their Chatter app, including thirty one percent of users claiming few meetings which in itself is a major productivity improvement.

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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  • Driving change from the top

    Driving change from the top

    One of the hallmarks of the PC era was how  innovations in workplace technology tended to be driven by the middle ranks of organisations.

    The PC itself is an example, it’s adoption in the early 1990s was driven by company accountants, secretaries and salespeople who introduced the machines into their workplaces, usually in the face of management opposition.

    Many of the arguments against introducing PCs at the time are eerily similar to that against the Internet or social media over the next twenty years.

    Sometime in over the last few years that pattern changed and the adoption of new technologies started being driven by boards and executives.

    The turning point was the release of the Apple iPad which was enthusiastically adopted by executives and directors, suddenly, Bring Your Own Device policies were in fashion and the pattern of the c-suite driving change had been established.

    Now a similar problem is at work with social media, the story of David Thodey driving the use of Yammer in Telstra is one example where executives are leading the adoption of services in large companies.

    The lesson for those selling into the business market is to grab the imagination of senior executives and the board, with competitive pressures increasing on companies they may well be a receptive audience.

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  • Re-inventing management with social media

    Re-inventing management with social media

    Yesterday I went along to hear Telstra’s Paul Geason speak at the American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney.

    Geason, who is Group Managing Director for the company’s Enterprise and Government division, was speaking on some of the findings from Telstra’s Clever Australian program along with some of the technology trends he’s encountered in big business and public organisations.

    The bulk of Geason’s presentation I reported in an article for Comms Day, and much of his observations about enterprise technology trends wouldn’t surprise keen observers of the industry or regular readers of this blog.

    What did stand out though were his comments on how social media is changing management behaviour at Telstra where over 25,000 registered users of the company’s Yammer platform have direct access to the company’s CEO, David Thodey.

    Social media is just going crazy. Within Telstra now we have over 25,000 of our staff registered on Yammer. It has been a phenomenon. It’s playing this really interesting role of breaking down the hierarchy in our organisation.

    Which is not just because of the technology but it’s also got something to do with our CEO.

    He is on Yammer just about every single day of the week. There is not an issue that hits that site that he won’t pick up and direct to the right place to get it to the right place and have it dealt with.

    Our people love it, they would never have imagined they could get that level of access and input and intervention from the CEO.

    There’s a certain transparency that has come to our organisation that didn’t exist previously which is really great for the levels of engagement of our people and very challenging for us as leaders in having to deal with that level of visibility that was not there before.

    I think it’s really changing how organistations are operating.

    Paul Geason’s comments are a good example of changing management structures. Not only does it bring accountability to executives, it also means organisations can respond quickly to changing marketplaces – something covered in the Future of Teamwork presentation back in 2010.

    A few years ago, no-one would have thought of Telstra as being an open, collaborative organisation yet today it’s gone quite a way down the path to becoming one.

    The key though to this is having senior management buying into the process. Without that leadership many companies might be facing a tough future.

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  • Trolls never sleep – Social media and the twenty four hour business

    Trolls never sleep – Social media and the twenty four hour business

    One of the truths of social media is it gives idiots an opportunity to expose themselves for what they are.

    For businesses using social media idiots posting stupid or offensive content on the company’s site or Facebook page can do a lot of damage to their brand and reputation.

    This is the problem Australian airline Qantas faced last week when some fool posted a pornographic image to one of the company’s promotions pages.

    As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, the father of an eight year old reported an inappropriate post to the airline after his son found the image while visiting the Qantas Wallabies page. He was allegedly told by the company’s social media staff “there was nothing we can do about it.”

    The father points out correctly that both the airline and Facebook are 24 hour operations so claiming a post that is put up at midnight – one assumes Eastern Australian time – is out of hours seems to be disingenuous.

    Until recently, businesses had given social media responsibilities over to the intern or the youngest person in the office. While organisations like Qantas have moved on from that, they largely leave these tasks with the marketing department.

    While marketing is a valid place for social media responsibility – it’s probably the most obvious area to establish a return on the functions – it leaves organisations vulnerable to out of hours customer service and public relations problems.

    Social media doesn’t knock off at 5pm and spend the evening a bar like the marketing department, it’s on all the time and customers are using it to complain about problems while twits and trolls are gleefully posting things to embarrass businesses.

    For those businesses who do operate on a 24 hour basis, and probably all big corporations, it’s no longer good enough for the social media team to just operate during office hours.

    Smaller businesses have a different problem – most don’t have the resources to keep a 24 hour watch on their Facebook page but the effects of a social media disaster could be proportionally far greater – so they shouldn’t be overlooking regular checks on what people have posted to their business sites.

    What’s happening in social media is part of a broader trend in the global economy that’s been going on for thirty years as the pace of business has accelerated. It’s something that all managers, entrepreneurs and company owners need to understand.

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  • Doing social media right

    Doing social media right

    After last week’s Associated Press hack and the stock exchange fallout, regulators are struggling with implications of social media and informed markets.

    In a speech delivered last week the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s Deputy Chair Belinda Gibson and Commissioner John Price gave some refreshing commonsense views on how businesses should handle public information.

    The continuous disclosure advice given by Price and Gibson is aimed at meeting the requirements of Australian corporate law, but it’s actually good social media advice.

    • Having delegations in place for who has authority to speak on behalf of the company – whether in response to an ASX ‘price query’ or ‘aware’ letter, or when they become aware of information that needs to be released to the market, perhaps in response to speculation.
    • Ensuring that there is a designated contact person to liaise with the ASX, who has the requisite organisational knowledge and is contactable by ASX.
    • Have a clear rapid response plan and ensure all board members and senior executives are fully appraised of it. Give it a practice run every so often – a stress test of sorts.
    • Have a plan for when you will consider a trading halt appropriate.
    • Have a ‘Request for trading halt’ letter template ready for use.
    • Have guidelines for determining what is ‘material’ information for disclosure, tailored to your company.
    • Prepare a draft announcement where you are doing a deal that will
    • likely require an announcement at some time, and a stop-gap one in case of a leak

    Having a nominated contact person with requisite organisational knowledge is possibly the most important point for any organisation.

    Even if you think social media is just people posting what they had for lunch or sharing cute cat pictures, it isn’t going away and those Twitter feeds and Facebook pages are now considered official communications channels.

    The intern running your social media is now your company’s official spokesperson. Are you comfortable with this?

    A good example of where this can go wrong is the Australian Prime Minister’s Press Office where an immature staff member has been put in charge of posting messages. The results aren’t pretty.

    prime-ministers-office-twitter-feed

    The funny thing is the Prime Minister’s office would never dream of some dill getting up and saying this sort of thing on her behalf, yet allows an inexperienced, loose cannon put this sort of material in writing on the public internet.

    Here’s Twenty Rules for Politicians using the Internet.

    On a more mature level, the ASIC executives also have some good advice on writing for social media.

    Don’t assume that the reader is sophisticated or leave readers to read between the lines. Companies need to highlight key information and tell it plainly.
    While the ASIC speech is aimed at the specific problems of complying with company law and listing requirements, it’s a worthwhile guide for any organisation needing to manage its online presence.
    Don’t be like the Prime Minister’s office, understand that an organisation’s social media presence is an official channel and treat it with the respect it deserves.

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