P.Y.O.P (Protect Your Online Privacy)

With the "buzz" in Google Buzz being more of an outcry on privacy violations, I thought I should look into the topic of social media and privacy.

Beginning with Facebook, social media has has had to walk a prickly line between enabling content sharing and respecting users' privacy. Even as we share more and more with each other, there are still a lot of us users, who prefer to have control over who can gain access to things such as Friend Lists, Wall Posts and Comments. I am definitely one of them.

A recent class discussion alerted me to the fact that the security and privacy I had been naive enough to take for granted on Facebook, were not as secure as I had imagined. At the very least, it is worth looking into the privacy policy of any social media application that you use; the equivalent of reading the fine print.

Here is a useful list of ten privacy settings every Facebook user should know, published by the website, All Facebook.

Moving Communications Forward (while looking good)...

On February 25, 2010, I attended the IABC presentation, Communications in a 2.0 World, featuring speaker Steve Crescenzo. Steve was billed a top-rated speaker, whose YouTube interviews conveyed a confident and knowledgeable professional. I have to add ‘humorous’ to that description.

I took a chance on IABC’s endorsement, and took the subway to Sutton Place Hotel on that cold and snowy night. I was not disappointed. Steve was entertaining, informative and refreshingly honest. The topic of his 1.5 hr presentation was how to spice up internal communications. He pretty much laid down the law in saying that either internal communicators catch the interactive, participative communications boat, or risk losing their audiences. I have captured the main points below.

7 Tips for improving online content:
1. Follow the 3-30-3-30 rule
3 seconds – write a great headline (one that tells the reader what the article is about)
30 seconds – if the reader is hooked by the headline, they will tackle the summary paragraph
3 minutes – if a reader cares about the topic, they will read the story
30 minutes – a really interested reader will read and watch more about the topic, rate the content, post comments etc.
As a communicator, your job is to provide content for all these levels of readers and make it compelling enough for people to get to the 30-minutes stage.

2. Showcase your personal talents – and help the org meet its goals. Social media demands personalities. Communicators can do their own podcasts (featuring CEO interviews, managers etc) and showcase their personalities.

3. Come down from 30,000 feel (high-level perspective)
Most leaders should not blog, as they do not have a personalized writing style. If you must get a leader to write, force them to get specific by giving concrete examples of what they mean.

4. Put people in every story
Corporate Communications used to be about 3 P’s – Policy, Program and Procedures. Add “people” to that. Make sure that all content includes multimedia and people.

5. Report from the field whenever possible – ex. Molson at the Olympics

6. Make your content about the audience
2.0 is about the conversation and the audience should feel like they’re being heard. Otherwise, don’t do social media at all.

7. Become a talent scout – Find the creative voices in your organization and make them heard.

When Ads don't add up

I am a visual person so I really appreciate a good advertising campaign. I define a good campaign as one that ties a strong message to humour or wit. Which brings me to a campaign that, as far as I’m concerned, completely misses the mark. And that would be Centennial College’s four-poster series of advertisements that can be found in subways (and possibly elsewhere).

Each poster features a picture of a teenager doing typical teenage things – scarfing down food, bumming on a couch, making a face with a hanging-out tongue and plugged into an smartphone/mp3 gizmo. The messages on these posters imply that there is great potential to be found in all these individuals, even if on the surface they look very clueless.

I can imagine that it’s getting tougher and tougher to stand out among Ontario’s homogeneous colleges. But I strongly feel that this campaign’s meaning gets lost under the in-your-face images and captions. It is too caricatured for high school grads, and too childish for more mature students like me. All I could do was shake my head at these posters. Yes, I understand that Centennial is trying to emphasize inclusiveness, diversity and different perspectives as one of its values. But there is certainly is subtler and more elegant way of indicating that, is there not?

But perhaps in this crowded marketplace, we have become so desensitized to marketing, and marketing has becoming so manipulative of us, that brazen, attention-seeking advertisements is the only way we can communicate with each other.

John Mayer needs some PR help

I sympathize with John Mayer’s publicist.

The pop guitarist has, little by little, shown himself to be quite tasteless, frequently mouthing off his sexual exploits to the press. This comes as quite a shock to the “smooth crooner” image he projects as a musician. His latest outburst involved making comments on his sex life with ex-girlfriend Jessica Simpson. As a fan, I am horrified (because really, JM, I thought you were better than that). As a PR student, I think he desperately needs some PR management.

The recent turn of events in the John Mayer universe has made a good case for first, why every celebrity needs the services of a good publicist, and second, why he should darn well take the advice of said publicist.

The guy’s got the talent and the looks but he could use some lessons in being discreet. He needs to scale back on the TMI and re-focus the attention on his career. If I were his publicist, this would be my advice to him:
1.Don’t say the first thing that comes into your head (or third, or fourth)
2.Don’t reveal details about your love life. The market is saturated right now.
3.Be tactful about which media you choose to feature you (if you’re reaching out to Playboy, you know what you’re headed for)
4.Provide the media with boundaries before sitting down for an interview

Here’s a list of things I learned from PR disasters

Bad publicity is just bad publicity. Tiger Woods sits front and centre in this category. The once-untouchable golf great has seen his public image dragged through the mud since his numerous extramarital affairs were brought to light in 2009. As a result of his public humiliation, many of Tiger’s lucrative endorsement contracts with big companies have been cancelled. The parade of affairs have thrown qualities associated with Tiger – excellence, commitment, skill – into a dubious light.

Taking responsibility for your actions is the way to go. Carmaker Toyota has been taking up prime newspaper space of late due to its widespread car recalls. For a brand long associated with quality and efficiency, this situation is likely to be new territory for the company. However, Toyota sent a top American executive to be interviewed on the Today Show, acknowledging the scope of the crisis as well as keeping consumers informed.

Everyone is your audience. Toronto’s besieged transit system learned this lesson the hard way, after two employees were caught on camera taking some downtime away from their jobs. The impromptu images were widely circulated, causing much embarrassment for the TTC and unleashing a firestorm of criticism from Torontonians. Apparently, in today’s digital world, everyone is your audience.

Social media will magnify weaknesses. When I watched TTC chairman Adam Giambrone’s YouTube video announcing his candidacy for mayorship via a “Rocky” sequence, I thought he looked ridiculous. His performance was lackluster and the production was poor. I don’t think he impressed very many voters with that and what’s worse; it did a good job of showcasing his youth (also frequently associated with inexperience). Goes to show you that social media PR is not for everyone.

Charity gone Viral

We are all aware that social media is transforming the way we communicate with each other. Since the Haitian earthquake, we are witnessing how social media can effectively raise awareness about an issue. Right now Twitter is..um, atwitter with Haiti “hash tags” and with users’ urges to donate to the stricken country. Facebook too, has many links to relief organizations, as do blogs. As a result of this accessibility, donations to the Haiti cause have skyrocketed like never before.

Looking back, we can see how Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the blogosphere really led the march to raise funds for Haiti (ha! not a total waste of time after all). Social media mobilized resources even faster than celebrity-studded fundraisers. By the time Canada launched its fundraiser telethon, I had already donated to the cause. Countless other organizations, including Centennial College, had already donated to Haiti relief by the time the fundraiser was broadcast.

Such lightening speed fund-raising could never have been imagined right after 9/11. Tweets and blogs from journalists and relief workers in Haiti really captured the emotion from the ground without any filters or editing. The fact that they also did it in real time kept it urgent. Add to that impromptu clips from Haiti captured on cell phones and posted on YouTube for millions of viewers to watch. That’s the stuff that really moves people.

Social media alone is not enough to move people to do the right thing, however. You also need some kind of mechanism to attract people to donate. Fortunately, donation methods have gone digital through text message and online donation, making it easier than ever for people to contribute just with a couple of keystrokes. I myself donated through the Red Cross’ website.

There is no question that social media can give credence to an issue and position it in the forefront of peoples’ minds. That’s what it’s there for. And if it can help out a part of the world that really really needs help, then I’m happy to be plugged into it. It'll be interesting to where social media takes us next.