Naturally, as a PR person, I’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to follow as many media outlets as I can. A huge portion of any public relations practitioner’s daily task is to monitor and review media, constantly taking its pulse, identifying trends, and, frankly, analyzing bias. That bias, incidentally, is endemic to the human condition, and can include not only the way in which an event or an announcement is covered locally, regionally, nationally, and globally, but also whether it is covered or not, when and where coverage appears (front page, section front page, above the fold, below the fold, left side, right side – all these factor into whether an article is going to be read or not, and by whom).

PR folk don’t just monitor their clients’ media coverage – they monitor their clients’ industries and socio-economic trends in general. That and the fact that they tend to be smart people with heightened literacy skills is how they can advise you that 2009 is probably not the best time to try to launch your luxury sedan and perhaps step up production of your serviceable, stalwart vehicles.

Conversely, of course, in the depths of a recession/depression, the need for escape from the brutal realities of foreclosures, repossessions and personal bankruptcies means that entertainment trends will often follow a very different course. Think Dynasty, which launched in 1981 and ran till 1989. Think about the fact that shoulder pads have recently made a comeback in women’s fashions, and that the term ‘bling’ was coined at time when property values in North America rose to ridiculous and unsustainably high levels before an inevitable crash. Who wore more bling than Alexis and Crystal Carrington? (I should mention I don’t consider myself any kind of economic expert at all – but when you’ve lived through two or more recessions in your lifetime, you start to figure out that what goes up usually comes down sooner or later.)

In 1981,  at the peak of an inflationary cycle that had lasted throughout the 1970s, some Canadian companies not renowned for either their generosity or their high profit margins were handing out standard annual increases of as much as 12 per cent to retain staff and – well – because they had to, because the price of everything rose and rose and rose. And then that bubble burst, and the 1981-1982 recession in this country was considered the deepest and longest recession of the Canadian economy since the Second World War. 

In precisely the same way traditional advertising media buyers look long and hard at readership demographics, PR practitioners need to focus their efforts to reach their clients’ stakeholders. Reaching those stakeholders through traditional media is still one of the ways to do this, although it’s not now – nor has it ever been – the only way to do so. Social media provides a cost-effective way to potentially reach a lot of those stakeholders as well. Unfortunately, it’s not a particularly time-effective way.

And that, I think, is where the problem arises and the crimes against Twitter begin to be committed by many mainstream media outlets (and some individual journalists) who’ve hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon.

The Nieman Journalism Lab and Kirk LaPointe of the Vancouver Sun are doing a fine job of monitoring the demise of traditional media (print in particular) and of suggesting and evaluating  potential new business models that might help newspapers survive. Not all of them are going to make it though: the last month has seen a 10% shrinkage of North American print publications. CanWest Global is trying to unload two British Columbia television states and has ceased its morning and mid-day news broadcasts. The Christian Science Monitor announced it’s going to cease publishing a print edition before the middle of 2009, and the New York Times is mulling printing papers three to four times a week rather than seven days a week. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is up for sale, and has been for a while.

But in the meantime, every traditional media outlet and its second cousin twice removed has hopped onto Twitter (the latest local entrant is talk radio station CKNW in early February 2009). And what are they doing? With some notable exceptions (and I’ll get to them in a minute), they’re treating Twitter like a broadcast medium. They’ve got their automated tweets all set up and they’re blasting out four to six news items at the same time every day. Whoosh – CBC’s tweets go out. Whoosh – the Georgia Straight sends out a blast. Whoosh – The Guardian does the same thing.  Then BBC News starts up – and BBC SciTech – and then BBC Health. And suddenly you’re scrambling to read 40 articles at once and have so many windows open you can’t count ‘em (or see them). And then they subside for another six to 24 hours and it all starts up again. It’s the virtual equivalent of copious projectile vomiting.

Here’s the odd thing though: most of the journalists on Twitter are writing how-to articles about it – not so much how to get more followers or Twitter etiquette (although some of them presume to do precisely that), but ‘benefits of Twitter’ articles. My question is, how could they possibly know what the benefits are, when most of them have completely and utterly missed the point of social media? Which is that it’s about exchanging information, not about blasting out broadcasting messages. The lethargy that may have been inferred from only one person in 1000 actually writing and mailing a letter to the editor doesn’t mean the other 999 don’t have opinions – and social media has enabled the expression of those opinions to an unprecedented degree. Except – newsflash – when you make it difficult for people to talk to you, they’re going to talk about you. And more often they’ll do so in unflattering terms than in flattering ones. Because if you knew anything about my field, public relations, and two of its specialties, community/stakeholder consultations and issues management,  you’d know how very important it is to empower people by giving them the opportunity to be heard. Often that’s all people really want. They don’t expect their opinions to influence large corporations’ strategies or government policy, but they do want to be validated by being listened to in a way that doesn’t smack of tokenism. As far as broadcast media is concerned: do you have any idea how many people shout at their radio and television stations? And then either turn them off or switch to another station when they hear broadcasters spouting idiocies?

Here’s another controversial thing I’m going to say: marketers who don’t really understand the range of public relations activities can just STFU about public relations people trying to ‘control the message’ and that era being over. Because I’m tired of hearing that nonsense from the very same folks who created lifestyle advertising and who know SFA about the range of public relations activities (email if you don’t know what those acronyms stand for). It wasn’t a PR person who invented the slogans, ‘Coke. It’s the Real Thing’ (what, the real killer combo of caffeine and sugar?) or ‘At Ford, Quality is Job One.’  Those were advertising/marketing folks. In the meantime, it was PR people, listening intently as always, who would have alerted GM to the fact that, um, people in the auto repair industry and in body shops across North America were sniggering that GM stood for ‘got money’ not General Motors as they watched an endless procession of GM cars come in time and time again for expensive repairs and body work.

It’s also not the marketers, the advertisers, or journalists who do crisis communications, and have to deal with the very real trauma of people struggling to do the right thing when disaster strikes, whether it’s a train derailment, a product recall, or an avalanche. If people didn’t need help in time of crisis, we wouldn’t have firefighters, ambulances, police cars equipped with sirens, Search and Rescue volunteers or standing armies, would we? In the feeding frenzy that ensues when media descend in a crisis, it’s the PR people who direct the dissemination of information to everyone who needs to know – and believe me, it’s not usually the general public who need to know first. It’s staff and their families and those trying to find out what’s happened to their loved ones. And they deserve to hear the news in a caring, individualized, and compassionate way that is targeted at them, not as part of the 6 o’clock news aimed at a broad demographic and designed to increase readership/viewership. If you’d like to get a flavour of the depth and breadth of public relations activities that are not marketing communications-focused (i.e. not about supporting marketing efforts or, I’ll confess, what those of us who aren’t really into marcomms describe a little snottily as ‘pushing product’), follow my former boss on Twitter, @boydneil, or start reading his blog, especially posts like this one, in which he tackles the issue of corporate reputation management and demolishes the idiotic utterances of people who know nothing about the subject but continue to prattle. Some people are even more articulate when they’re ‘exercised.’

Marcel Lebrun has a lovely post here about what actually constitutes listening, and he makes the point I was initially trying to make much more succinctly than I’ve done. Part of listening is responding. And if you’re a media outlet or a journalist crowing about how many followers you have while you’re following less than a tenth of those people, you’re talking at people, not conversing with them. You’re like the playground bully shouting everyone else down.

So – paragraphs ago I promised to talk about the good, not just the bad and the ugly. Here’s a list of mainstream media folk who are doing it right on Twitter – and doing right by the Twitterverse:

Mathew Ingram, former tech writer for the Globe and Mail, now the Globe’s new communities editor.

What he’s doing right: everything. He listens. He engages. He follows lots of people. He checks his @ messages and responds when appropriate. He passes on useful/helpful/interesting information he’s received from others (retweets, or RT in Twitspeak).  Could you please speak to the rest of the Globe and Mail folks and help turn the projectile vomiting into barely audible burps though? Thanks. @mathewingram

Alexis Madrigal, Wired Science writer and author of an amazing forthcoming book on the history of green technology.

What he’s doing right: everything. He listens. He responds. He says thank you. He’s actually quite extravagant in his praise. (That Tweet you sent about me made my year, Alex). @alexismadrigal

CKNW AM 980, local Vancouver talk radio station.

What CKNW’s doing right: They got onto Twitter and searched for folk to follow. There was some nonsense being tweeted about their unfollowing people and following them again and unfollowing them and following them to build their number of followers. I saw no evidence of this – nor did it make sense to me. They started to follow me, I followed ‘em back – we haven’t fallen out of love yet, despite a tweet or two I’ve sent out about my disdain for talk radio.

The fact that I’m a public broadcasting, Globe and Mail, Jane Austen-adoring intellectual snob who’s never made it through to the end of a single talk radio show doesn’t matter. Some of my clients need to reach CKNW’s audience (some of their shows have had the highest audience reach in the entire province of British Columbia), and I don’t allow my personal taste to adversely affect my work on behalf of clients. (And I do listen to the segments when my clients are on talk radio. And to as much of it as I can bear.)

Within days of establishing a Twitter presence, CKNW did a Twitpoll asking people how they wanted to be communicated with. You can’t kiss a radio station, can you. Pity. And then they took the advice of the folks who responded. ‘You have spoken – 74% of you want a Tweet of our show lineup with brief description & link to show page. Done!’ 

Right now, CKNW is following 2000 people – and being followed by only about 1161. Way to go, CKNW. Not only that, but when I sent them an @CKNW message today in response to an item they’d tweeted, they replied and we – gasp – had a conversation! Also doing some really neat things regarding breaking news, namely alerting folks to breaking stories and asking for information/updates/photos to be tweeted to them. Like this one:  ’Vandals have targeted the 2010 Olympic countdown clock in Downtown Vancouver. If you are in the area Tweet @cknw and send photos.’ One teeny tiny suggestion for improvement: let us know who’s doing the actual tweeting, who the humans behind the typing fingers are. @cknw

Granville Magazine Online, ‘Sustainable city living magazine and website. Tweets by digital editor Hilary Henegar.’

What Granville Magazine Online’s doing right: everything. I joked with Hilary the other day that I was so delighted with the way she was managing Granville’s social media strategy that I was going to create an award just for her. Here’s your Roofie, Hilary. You’re genuine, you’re attentive, you’re a very real person, and you’re someone I look forward to meeting and to working with on behalf of clients. Hilary does all the right things: doesn’t just blast out links to Granville articles, she tweets and retweets items of interest, pays attention to her followers, asks questions, even responds to blog post comments via Twitter (as well as on the posts themselves). I warn you though Hilary that I’m a bad influence and will try to persuade you that this giving up coffee thing is just plain silly. @granvillemagazine

CBC3, the online arm of the radio network.

What CBC 3 is doing right:  They’re not very active on Twitter, but they’re paying attention. When I had trouble listening to a podcast, they were very responsive, suggested what the problem might be, and have earned my gratitude for so doing. I’d like to give the rest of the CBC the same review, but I’m afraid that despite seminars on social media CBC’s conducted for its staff both in Vancouver and Toronto, for the most part they’re not getting it. One of the main motivations for this post was the Tweet sent out by Nora @SparkCBC (you know, the show that’s about ‘technology, trends, and fresh ideas’) towards the end of today’s Twitter demo for Toronto CBC-ers: “Wondering if Twitter is just full of marketing people and PR people.” Well gee, I guess you’d have the answer to that question if your follower:following ratio was a little better than 1232:151. Or if you ever read or responded to your @ messages. Would you like me to introduce you to the science community on Twitter? Help yourself to some of the folks I follow/am followed by.

Oh and by the way, I’m totally shocked to discover that CBC’s online web presence has outsourced its comment monitoring and moderation – it does explain a lot though. While I faithfully read my CBC news emails twice a day, I can’t often bear to read the comments. Usually when nasty and stupid comments are posted other commenters will do a pile-on, but that isn’t exactly what should be happening – and I’ve seen a lot of truly insensitive remarks on a variety of issues, not just the one linked to above. I won’t be the first to point out that you are Canada’s publicly funded news source – well – the lawyers will sort that one out and something will be learned from the exercise. @CBCRadio3

And finally, Darren Waters, the BBC Technology News web site editor, deserves a special mention. His follower:following ratio isn’t all that great, 2208:470, but that’s his business. He checks his @ messages and responds to them, he consults his followers (Question: how would you like BBC News to engage with Twitter? Answers in a Tweet please?) – the man even says thank you (Thankyou everyone for all your comments about using Twitter at BBC News. I’ve pulled together some thoughts for the bosses.). Oh and his birthday is February 3. And he’s not fussed – cake or cookies. But he’s mad keen about rugby and his support for Wales verges on the pleasantly rabid. His presence on Twitter is refreshing. I particularly liked it when he accused another British (non BBC of course) journalist of breaking an embargo. And to his everlasting credit, I have never once seen him tweet about the number of followers he has (yes I’m talking about you, @rory147). Perhaps it’s because Darren knows that editing, like public relations, is one of the helping professions. @darrenwaters

Note: Twitter follower/following numbers accurate as of 9PM PST Thursday, February 12. Posted tweets were cut and pasted from Twitter streams. I’m not even going to get into the fight between the PR person and the former National Post reporter that ensued this week. This is, for the most part, a PG-rated web site.

While I don’t think I’m still legally bound by the confidentiality agreement I signed more than a decade ago, you’ll have to forgive me for not naming names here, because I do still feel ethically bound not to refer to the client by name.

This company’s stock has always been referred to as ‘cyclical.’ Naturally the backlash when its share price has experienced downturns has always made the news and provoked much bitterness amongst its shareholders. I would love to read a true corporate bio of this entity at some point – perhaps I should write it.

But my point is this: we were hired during one of the stock downturn periods to help manage a major announcement regarding a shift in the company’s business model that would see it embrace a very different, late 20th Century model.

As a major Canadian employer that had recently completed the purchase of another conglomerate, the company also needed restructuring, and to define the business it was actually in. Was it R&D? Was it manufacturing? Was it repair? It couldn’t be all of those things to all of those people. After buying a company twice its own size, there were inevitable redundancies and a real need to take a look at all its business processes.

So we were hired to manage the process of co-ordinating and communicating the news of the new business model the company had decided to adopt. Here are some of the things we looked at:

• employee communications – ensuring all employees received the news that some facilities were to be sold or closed and layoffs were going to occur, and that they received this news from their managers, not from a press release
• stakeholder communications – since they were operating in several different countries, several communities within some of those countries were going to be negatively impacted by the news, although others were going to see the creation of new facilities. There were many time zones involved. Stakeholders included local, regional and national governments, as well as shareholders.
• media relations – ensuring that spokespersons were available in each of the locations to meet the demand for not only national and international media requests, but to allow local media the opportunity to have its questions answered as well. We studied the communities in which bad news was going to be announced, and the economic impact plant closure or sale would have on those communities. Spokespersons needed to be briefed, rehearsed, and supported so they had the facts straight.

The preparation for this announcement lasted seven weeks, and I’m pretty sure I worked close to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for those seven weeks. At least half our time as consultants was spent on developing an employee communications package to help managers answer all the questions employees might have, at a time that was bound to be highly emotional when they learned that colleagues were going to be laid off.

We drew in colleagues from our global network who were experts in areas we’d never visited or knew only as tourists, because we needed their expertise. We couldn’t possibly know the subtleties of how each community would react.

All this work was necessary, not to ensure the company’s stock price didn’t take a hit, but because it was the right thing to do. Treating your employees and your stakeholders even handedly and giving them the respect they’re due can make all the difference when you’re trying to remain an employer of choice. Keeping your staff informed of your business model, strategy, and corporate objectives is pretty high on the list of things you need to do to achieve those objectives. Making sure outplacement counselling is available, and making sure your employees don’t find out they’ve just been laid off by hearing it on the news is crucial to properly managing a corporation.

So it’s hard for me to read an article like this one about the amount of money spent by local governments on ‘publicity’ in the UK. 2007 population estimates that nearly 61 million people live in the UK, so it’s just over twice Canada’s size in that regard. In terms of land mass though, we’re talking about a lot of people crowded into a very small area compared with the wide-open spaces we’re used to outside Canada’s two dozen or so major urban areas.

Let’s look at the numbers in a way the Taxpayers Alliance (who produced the report) probably don’t want us to. £450 million pounds and 61 million people works out (unless I’m doing something terribly wrong with the math), to very little more than £7  per person per year.

What wouldn’t I give to have my local government spend that kind of vast sum communicating with me annually, so I have some advance warning of what roads they’re going to dig up to install new sewer mains, build (or close) facilities like swimming pools and skating rinks, initiatives relating to affordable housing in my area, and the reasons why liquor licenses have been approved or denied in certain locations, traffic calming measures and the installation of new stop lights at dangerous intersections, the fact that I can now pay my parking tickets or my municipal taxes online instead of searching for an envelope, buying a stamp, hunting for a mailbox and then paying the bank for the privilege of writing a cheque? To whom should I make my cheque payable – or do you take debit?

And of course, the news is being presented as outrageous given the fact that we’re experiencing a global recession. Interesting, because the figures reported are for 2007, and no one thought anyone was in a recession then. Here’s the call to action from the Taxpayers’ Alliance:

“It is incredibly disappointing that, despite the economic downturn and the loss of millions in Icelandic Banks, local authorities are still spending nearly half a billion pounds a year on publicity. Whilst we salute the 217 councils who have cut spending on publicity, the 225 councils who have increased spending should hang their heads in shame. In the middle of a recession, councils need to cut back on propaganda and spin doctors and deliver savings to taxpayers,” said Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Uh huh. And perhaps if watchdog organizations weren’t so busy supposedly reporting the ‘facts’ without putting them into any kind of real perspective, local councils wouldn’t have to spend quite so much time, effort and money trying to explain the glaringly obvious.

Much is made in the report of the fact that council taxes have doubled in the last decade. I’d love to know how much property values have increased over that same decade. If you know, leave me a comment below.

I was thinking the other day that if journalists write the first drafts of our his/herstories, social media is recording our social history in unprecedentedly rich detail (assuming we’re able to avoid a global holocaust scenario that returns us to pre-industrial times).

And a few months ago, in talking to Darren Frew of Nanotech BC, we discussed the need for nanotechnology to do better than both the nuclear and genetically modified foods sector in communicating the risks and benefits of the innovations on offer.

I’m glad to see Street Science is out there doing just that. So far I’ve listened to the nanotech and nuclear power segments. I was amazed to discover two-in-one shampoos contain nanotechnology – already knew about the sunscreens. And it was hard not to smile in sympathy with Dr. Ion when confronted by the sheer misinformation still held to be true by members of the great unwashed general public.

(For some odd reason I had to download RealAudio to listen to this; not sure why Windows MediaPlayer wasn’t up to the job.)

Update: I first read of this program on Richard Jones’ blog and shamelessly omitted to mention him till Andrew Maynard reminded me it wasn’t my own discovery. Mea maxima culpa.

Although the blogosphere zeitgeist is Opinions ‘R’ Us (I sometimes think my next blog should be called ‘No Thought Left Unexpressed’), I will confess that I felt rather guilty when he told me that several folks at Vancity had seen my post over the weekend and that there had been some internal debate about it. I never meant to make you work on your days off, people, nor was I hoping to see (or hear) of any heads rolling. I’m merely a fan of The Tudors, I don’t actually think I’m Henry VIII.

What was truly refreshing about the conversation was that it was not a mea culpa on Bill’s part, but rather that it was an exchange of information and viewpoints and an acknowledgement that despite our best efforts, we cannot always either provide – or receive – a customer service experience that works for both parties, no matter how hard we try.

I was very impressed by the openness of the conversation, by Bill’s active listening skills, and I was delighted to hear that the points I’d identified were of concern to the organization and that my blog post had brought them to the forefront of internal discussions, that Vancity is looking for solutions, and that their approach to finding those solutions includes seeking input not only from their existing customers but from potential customers as well.

In the same way that people who don’t vote don’t really have any right to criticize the government they were too apathetic to elect, when you’re asked, as a member of a community or stakeholder group, to engage in a dialogue, you need to take advantage of that opportunity. Things may well not change as a result of your expressing your opinion – you can’t please all of the people any of the time. But the promise of this new century is the incredible richness and variety of opportunities to listen widely, to learn continually, to be heard by an unprecedented number of people, and to act quickly to right wrongs (or smooth ruffled feathers).

Full marks to Vancity and to Bill Corbett. I’m not a member yet. But I’m not ruling it out in the future any more, after one unfortunate experience. In fact, I have a lot of confidence, based on the things Bill told me they were debating on how to make banking with Vancity easier, more accessible, and more targeted to its different customer groups, that the issues I raised in my previous post will be addressed.

So – thanks for listening. I feel validated as a person, a blogger and as an entrepreneur.