3 Jul 2017
Remember – not all of us are born to be examples. Some of us are here as cautionary tales. And I am afraid that the self proclaimed example of MODERN PRESIDENCY is one of those cautionary tales.
Trump is like the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to demonstrating the importance of positive social and knowing how to use it to engage your audience in a way that enhances your brand and reputation, not destroy it.
So when you are putting together a social strategy that enhances your business objectives for the next financial year – ask yourself this….. “WWTD?” and do the opposite.
- Social media is a tool
If using it makes you look like one yourself it’s not because Facebook, or Twitter, (or whatever your platform of choice is) has done something wrong. It’s because you’re, um, a tool. That goes for both individuals and global brands.
- You set the tone for engagement
The tone of voice you use when engaging with people in the digital space is just as important as the tone of voice you use when you’re in a physical space. If you want people to talk to you respectfully, listen to you carefully and respond appropriately, you need to set those parameters by doing exactly those things.
- Think dialogue not monologue
Nobody likes somebody banging on about themselves or how great they are all the time unless they are able to take part in the conversation. Brands or people that just push, push, push are unlikely to be very popular, no matter how well known they are.
- Positive anything is better than negative somethings
It goes back to your Mum telling you that if you can’t say anything positive, don’t say anything at all. It’s one of the cornerstones of positive social – if the only way you think you can push you and/or your brand forward is by being horrible about others, you’ve probably got to rethink your business proposition.
- Structure before spontaneity
You can do whatever you want on your social platforms sure. But if the time you spend there is going to be effective, you need to know what it is you are trying to achieve. That means a plan and a content delivery team that knows what it is doing, and when. Spontaneous and time relevant posts are great when they are aligned with your overall proposition but random, off topic posts, delivered by unhinged employees don’t do great things for your reputation overall.
16 May 2017
Since I was little I always wanted to write, to communicate stories, not just fictional ones but ones that made sense of the world that I actually lived in.
Retrospectively, so many of those stories that I lived, weren’t enough. They didn’t satisfy the urge in me to connect in ways that reflected my internal values. I didn’t know I was developing a strong sense of social justice and a desire to be more actively involved in change.
I devoured other people’s stories. I could finish a book a day and think nothing of it. Some stories resonated with me. Sometimes aspirationally, sometimes inspirationally and sometimes fantastically. Other books left me cold.
I fell into marketing, brand and communications rather than choosing them but if the truth be told, they were a natural fit for my strengths. My problem in my earlier years is that I always tried to shape myself to fit into the places I thought I should be, rather than stretching tall and strong in the places I fitted.
All my jobs have allowed me to learn more about what I love and what I am good at. And the startling truth, it is the thing that I discarded as a career option all those years ago – the art of storytelling to help people connect with ideas or concepts – is what I am good at.
Storytelling is at the core of all successful communications – whether it’s a letter, an article, a newsletter, customer service or a successful marketing campaign. It’s in small talk and conversation. It’s the key to relevant training. It’s in branding. It’s in the people we recruit. It’s our connection with audience. It’s our customers perception of our business. It’s the way to inspire change. It’s the inspiration. It’s the education.
It is what fascinates me about social media. Personal social media is the chronicling of our daily stories, in just the same way as we used to write letters or keep journals. It widens our opportunities to connect with people with similar stories or interests. It is powerful. It can and does influence change. It allows us to connect to people in other countries, gain a deeper understanding of issues that interest us, intrigue us or enrage us.
Business social media has been one of the most disruptive events of the digital revolution. It has allowed the customer to drive innovation in companies. It demands businesses be proactive rather than reactive. It allows businesses to build a relationship with the customer that is not purely transactional. It allows for transparency. It challenges businesses to showcase their talent and expertise. It empowers customers to reach them when it’s convenient to them and to share their thoughts in their own words. It allows customers to demand excellence in customer service.
It has also allowed for people’s participation in social justice projects or a company’s corporate social responsibility activities to be given a greater focus. In the age of information, we can’t say we don’t know. Social good initiatives are creating change in the wider world while creating profits and employment across the globe.
Business and marketing objectives cannot exist separately to “the social media” any more. It is the front line for customer interaction and it needs to be conducted with the same commitment to excellence and transparency to which the rest of their business adheres
I also strongly recognise that to be an active citizen, one needs to understand the tenets of good digital citizenship and how they are now irrevocably linked. Real and on-line are no longer separate and have not been for a long while.
So in founding Elverson Social I wanted to be involved in social story telling. I want us to be a company that educates, inspires, and helps implement robust social media approaches that support business and personal objectives.
I want Elverson Social to be instrumental in changing the way businesses tell their stories because they understand the power it has to empower both their external and internal audiences. I want businesses to understand that their social story telling needs to be representative of all aspects of their business. I want people to understand the power of being positively social.
And for me individually, separate to my role as a business owner, I want to continue being proactive about positive social so that people understand the strength of social media in implementing social good in their personal and wider communities. I want people to embrace disruption with enthusiasm rather than scepticism. I want my daughters and their peers to grow up comfortable with the public aspect of their own stories while retaining an understanding of how active citizenship is not just a face-to-face concept.
As a social advocate – both media and justice, as a writer, a blogger and most basically, as a human, I want to tell stories. I want to keeping training and mentoring. I want to be a positive force in a world preoccupied with the negative. I want to remain me. Not a game player – but a slightly unpolished, irreverent and outspoken individual who has strong opinions, strong beliefs and even fact checks occasionally.
So there it is. That’s why I do what I do.
I love it.
15 Mar 2017
It’s a mystery to me why schools are bothering to teach children about the benefits and dangers of social media when the majority of schools are not modelling positive, proactive social behaviours on their own platforms.
A lot of school social platforms are run by parents, with no input from schools. There is no strategy, no risk management guidelines, no policies, no governance, no permissions put in place. Quite a number of them do little to promote the school and focus on promoting local businesses and other random activities.
This is not to denigrate the efforts of the parents involved. Not at all. However, no matter how good your intentions, it is hard to kick goals when you don’t know where the goalposts are.
It’s a very easy thing to fix. Implementing a strategy and governance system that incorporates all the above can be done in a remarkably short period of time. And without sacrificing the goodwill of the parents involved.
A properly implemented social approach allows schools to showcase their brand, their students, their curriculum, their achievements and their community involvement. It also allows schools to interact and communicate about other less ‘curriculum based’ things which matter to the school community. It allows for parents and families to see what is going on and to share it among their networks as well.
I recently worked with a faith based girls school, who were keen to put in clear parameters for their social approach. They wanted to be able to celebrate their students, but in a manner which they reflected their expectations of their students online behaviours.
They now have in place a social approach which allows them to run their platforms, still fully supported by parents and volunteers. However, they have an overall structure in which the school retains control of the social assets and is now run in a way that supports their overall objectives for each year.
What’s improved?
Overall it’s been a very positive experience! The school has seen
- An uptake in parental knowledge about school activities
- Increased attendance at community events they hold
- An increase in their fundraising
- A greater knowledge among the students about what their fellow students are doing.
Since they implemented it last year, they have also been audited randomly by KPMG. The audit found that out of all the schools they reviewed, this school was the only one with established protocols around strategy, privacy, assets, governance, risk management, content creation and community management. They also found that their social platforms were properly aligned with their more traditional communication methods and their website, ensuring that the opportunities for fluid, timely communication between the school management and the school community were greatly enhanced.
Not bad at all for a school that ‘wanted to sort out their Facebook and stuff.’
The great thing about a properly implemented social approach is that you don’t need to worry about the statistically slim chance of people being negative on your platforms. This is because you already have all the procedures in place to manage it in an appropriate, considered manner that solves the problem even before it starts.
With children today being digital natives, it makes sense for schools to up-skill themselves to stay abreast of the opportunity that living in a digital age affords them.
Which is to create an online community that is truly reflective of their offline community.
Because truth is, they should be one and the same in 2017.
25 Oct 2016
“The time has come," the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings.”
So Lewis Carroll wrote back in the 1800s. I’d like to amend it slightly to the following
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and queens–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And what ‘in real life’ means.”
It happens that sometimes people write things on their social media platforms that you don’t agree with. It happens sometimes that people say things you don’t agree with. It happens sometimes that people say things that are true but are appropriated inappropriately and people get all het up about it unnecessarily.
My favourite example of this is the anti-halal movement being upset to find out that Vegemite is halal friendly. “It’s un-Australian”, they roared. “The Muslims are taking over”, they griped. Since Vegemite is a yeast based product and has nothing to do with meat, of course it’s halal friendly. It’s just that they note it on the bottle so they can sell it to people who are Muslim. Which is roughly 25% of the world’s population so from a marketing perspective it makes good sense to talk about the universal nature of our favourite spread. What is un-Australian is a bunch of people getting on social media and hammering a brand without any understanding of what they are opposing, how the retail market works or being able to spell correctly.
In a recent stoush online, the world imploded about use of the word ‘queen’ and a writer who is vehemently anti-bullying inadvertently set off her followers on an incredibly vicious session of mass online bullying. You see a lot of this mob mentality in the feminist space, anything to do with social justice, equality or even this year, when a brand changed their biscuit recipe.
People need to understand that there is no difference between real life and online anymore. Your behaviour online is as representative of you as the way you speak to a person in the street. The behaviour you are modelling online is the behaviour your children will mimic in their own online interactions. The horrible things you say to a customer representative you interact with online are as real as if you said them to a person in a shop front.
Brands need to front up to this actuality as well. You can’t aspire to be a transformative, customer focussed company in all your interactions except those online. You can’t just delete what you don’t like any more than you can just walk away from a customer making a complaint in your actual shop. The ambassadors you choose to represent your product or service need to be reflective of your brand personality in their own online communications. Your employees need to be networking online as well as face-to-face.
Digital interactions are still human interactions.
It really is this simple – online IS real life.
14 Sep 2016
Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to go to space.
Once upon a time there was a little boy who liked to draw pictures.
Once upon a time there was a woman who didn’t want a VPL under her white trousers.
Once upon a time there were two men who wanted to make money and change the world.
Every single successful business person has a story. Inevitably that story becomes part of the brand that they develop. It is their personalities, their drive, their vision, their definitions of success that shape the company as it grows from an idea to a reality.
And no matter how big that company grows, it is the story that lies at the success of all customer engagement.
People don’t just love Virgin because it’s big. They love it because it’s brash, it’s bold, it’s fun. Virgin’s brand champions feel part of something global, something forward thinking, something relevant.
People love Disney because it’s creative. It’s out of the box. It’s traditional and yet contemporary. It appeals to individuals. It appeals to families. It is commercial but strangely magical.
People love Spanx because it makes them feel good. It appeals to super models and model superintendents. It can be a closely guarded secret or flashed to Oprah’s audience. It’s big.
People love Who Gives a Crap? because they can buy toilet paper and fund water aid projects in developing countries all by ordering toilet paper and tissues to be delivered to their door whenever they need it. It’s edgy. It’s doing good. It wipes bottoms.
How do we know the stories of brands? Because they share them. Sometimes they blog about them. Sometimes they share a customer review. Sometimes they do an advertising campaign. Sometimes it’s word of mouth. Sometimes it’s a media release. Sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes it’s recognising employees. Sometimes it’s social good. Sometimes it’s negative feedback. Sometimes it’s an event. Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes its insight. Sometimes it’s competition.
Every single business has a story – each year is a story. Each month a chapter. Each employee or customer a character. Each product or service a device that keeps readers interested. Each new development a plot twist.
You just need to plan it out. Write the plot. Sketch out how it unfolds. Is it going to have a sequel or are you just aiming at selling the rights to make a film. The story sits alongside your business objectives as seamlessly as your trousers fit over Spanx.
The only question left is how are you telling your story?
23 Aug 2016
source: Pixabay
I love a good hashtag. I am even a fan of using hashtags incorrectly just to make a point or to annoy people who have a very strong sense of appropriate hashtag etiquette. But if you wander through the history of hashtags you can find yourself losing hours and hours and hours seeing how one hashtag has been used by millions of people in vastly different ways.
Hashtags came back into the spotlight during the Olympics because Rio took branding to ridiculous new heights and got cranky with any brand using the ‘official’ hashtag that wasn’t an ‘official’ sponsor. Which was perhaps at odds with the more egalitarian origins of the Olympic games but entirely aligned with the current politicised, branding juggernaut that the event is today.
But ultimately, a hashtag is always going to be public property. I know that globally there is movement around ownership of hashtags and trademarks and all the very serious stuff, and probably, because the world is like that, it will gain some momentum and become a thing. But you’re never going to get popular or build positive brand equity if you start beating down on people having the same conversations as you.
And that’s all a hashtag is. It’s an indicator of what the conversation is about.
There are of course some epic fails when it comes to hashtags. Years from now when nobody even remembers the show “Britain’s got Talent” and Simon Cowell’s jeans have risen so high he wears shoulder pads to keep from suffocating, people will remember the brilliantly bad #susanalbumparty used by her PR company to launch her first album.
There is no part of me that can fathom how that went out. Was there not a single person in that entire company that attended primary school? Putting the word bum in anything is hilarious enough but putting it between anal and party was asking for trouble no shy Scot needs.
Other hashtags are okay to look at, but can be hijacked very quickly. Victorian Taxis learned this the hard way last year when they asked the public to use #YourTaxis to share their stories of using taxis. It took mere moments for it to descend into an ever widening circle of hell for their PR agency who had clearly not thought through their risk management strategy. The hashtag was used by people all over Australia to unleash their frustrations and share some pretty harrowing tales.
We are pretty sure the PR team over at Uber though were drinking champagne and putting the feed on the big screen. They could not have dreamed up such a successful pro-Uber campaign in a thousand years. And best of all – it cost them nothing. Other negatively hijacked hashtags include #McDStories, #QantasLuxury, #NowThatcherIsDead, #goalface and #cosbymemes.
source: Pixabay
But lots of awesome things happen because of hashtags too. #illridewithyou enabled every day Australian’s to show some solidarity with their Muslim neighbours following the Sydney siege when racists were being, well racist. Other hashtags which continue to inspire and to connect people are #refugeeswelcome, #blacklivesmatter, #bringbackourgirls, #everydaysexism and #lovewins.
For a brand, a hashtag is very similar to naming a child.
- You have to find one you like.
- You have to find one that reflects you and your personality.
- You have to see how it will age and whether there is any likelihood that people can make jokes about poo, sex or rude words when they see it written down or said out loud.
- You need to check out who else is using it to see if that is an association you are comfortable with (teachers often find this part of the process very hard)
- Then you have to look at if from other people’s point of view – Ralph is a cool name, yes. But it is also slang for ‘vomit’ in Australia. Your maiden name might have been Cosby but in light of what we now know about the Huxtable family – is it the right time to be using it? If you’ve looked at the pros and cons of that name/hashtag and you’re happy with the strategies you’ve devised to handle any negativity in the future. Well…
- Give birth.
And to end with – because it never stops being funny – I give you #hashtags
Hashtags
