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Tomorrows World: Best Practice for Corporate Apps

tomorrows-worldTomorrow’s World was the BBC’s flagship science programme for decades, and – as I remember it – always predicted an exciting future. One of the 1979 editions included a prototype for a cordless telephone… others included an item on the office of the future, and on the first home computer terminal.

Here we are in that future, and yes, we have mobile phones and ‘home computers’. (No robots in my office yet though).

And the rate of change seems to be accelerating. Not only do we have mobile phones, we are increasingly using them to do what ‘home computers’ were designed for – and more. We didn’t have access to the internet on our phones in the 1970’s, you know… but now almost 40% of time spent online is spent using a mobile device and 17% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices.

Naturally, this has – or should have – an effect on your digital strategy. Given the prevalence of the personal computer over the last few years, corporate comms professionals have naturally been using the corporate website, together with email and other outreach options. But given the rate of change, in particular that towards mobile, what approach should you take now?

Communicate Magazine will be hosting an afternoon conference – Best Practice: Corporate Apps – to discuss just this. There’s a great line-up of speakers discussing case studies, thoughts on strategy, and views on the future, together with the chance to network, and a debate.

It will be on October 10, in the Barbican Centre, London. Do come if you can (find out more). It should be both interesting and useful; I’m particularly looking forward to the session on The New Best Practice. Naturally, there’s a hashtag – #BPCA13 – so if you really can’t make it, you can follow online.

I bet the tweetstream around the Tomorrow’s World episodes would have been interesting…

Filling the House: Guaranteeing Good Event Attendance

crowd students at recruitment event
It’s tough to walk through any university campus without spotting at least some flyer, poster or even a live event demonstrating how competitive the graduate job market is at the moment. Though this isn’t ideal for the student population, it’s great news for companies; selecting top talent is obviously much easier if you’ve got a large pool to choose from and there’s definitely a self-perpetuating atmosphere of stiff competition surrounding the big recruiters.

However, until the recruitment process actually starts, the stories are little more than hearsay for students. Gauging how tough getting that job really is only starts to happen when students start to attend recruitment events and to really get a feel for the market. So, if you want to generate a competitive buzz around your business, your events need to be filled to the brim with top students…

Use Every Channel to Advertise

Even in our electronic world, the effect of a cleverly designed poster is still massive, but it’s easily forgotten. You need to back up what’s already been seem with emails, bulletins and your own social media. The Facebook event is quite possibly the most powerful reminder out there and will trigger wavering attendees into action.

Do be careful not to over-advertise, however; it’s a fine line between making your event publicised and becoming a nuisance. Constantly driving for attendees via University bulletins or through societies could also seem like you’re struggling to make the numbers.

Go Exclusive

Though most events do have some limitations on numbers, presentations, dinners and lectures are usually a case of the more; the merrier. However, a free-for-all approach won’t necessarily guarantee you good numbers; an exclusive system can work much better.

Limiting your event to ticket holders only is a good way of ensuring numbers are high. You don’t even need to operate a formal, paper ticket system. A guest list which requires an online-sign in needs little more than an iPad on the night, but remember it’s worth keeping some guest spaces available.

Exploiting Word-of-Mouth

It’s an old marketeers cliche that the ‘word-of-mouth’ is still the best tool out there, but it’s wrong to assume people will talk by themselves; give them something to shout about! Encouraging guests to bring along talented friends or incentivising Facebook attendees to invite others is a good start if it’s backed up with a good reward!

Finally, it’s worth remembering your best bet for guaranteeing good attendance is to hold a top-quality, innovative event. No amount of marketing can beat organising something that people really want to attend!

Online Newsroom Essentials: Press Releases

shape-upEver remember handing out a bulging folder packed with all your company’s details, press releases, and bios, called a ‘press kit’? Well the good news is, no-one has to lug around those heavy folders any more.

The Digital Switchover

Since the digital age is upon us, press kits as we know them have changed immensely, moving into an online format now known as a ‘newsroom’. The beauty of this new format is that, not only can you file as much as you want in there and it will never get any heavier, but you can also keep it organised and updated with the click of a mouse, and it is the most efficient and simple way for press to get as much info as they need on your company.

It sounds like a dream come true for both PR and companies alike; however it hasn’t quite gone as planned. Without the physical boundaries you would assume the online newsrooms would be overflowing with useful content, but instead many companies are still neglecting to maintain their newsrooms, leaving them sparse and far from the resource they should be.

How does your newsroom shape up?

The following article is the second in a series which aims to highlight areas in which a newsroom should be optimised in order for it to be useful and interesting to your journalist contacts, with some examples of excellent newsroom best practices from some of the world’s largest corporate websites to demonstrate how online newsrooms should function.

Newsroom Essential: Press Releases

Unlike the days of the physical press kit when you needed to be wary of how much paper you were using and had the physical boundaries of the folder, you don’t need to be stringent when it comes to the press releases. Yes, you should still be conscious that you aren’t letting the best and most attractive releases get hidden under less relevant ones, but you don’t need to limit yourself to only putting out only the most important news.

Offering up a range of press releases about what your company has been involved in and any changes you have made might not always make headlines, but it still gives press contacts background information on your company’s development. There may come a time when a major advance happens within your business that has been the result of many smaller changes, and the press releases give a backlog of information on the smaller events leading to the main finale.

So to enable journalists to look at both new and old press releases at their own leisure, archives within categories (if applicable) are a great way to keep the older news out of the spotlight but make it easily searchable and accessible when needed. As most journalists will most likely be looking to your press releases for information on recent events, then do keep up to date press releases in a more prominent position, but make it clear there is the option to view older ones if they wish.

coca-cola-press-releases-sCoca-Cola are a fine example of an excellent system for finding press releases, whether it be by particular keywords and topics, or by date, they make it really easy for you to pinpoint what you need and even offer you some inspiration in the form of their ‘top news’ category.

Don’t get bogged down in the ‘traditional’ press release format either. Online press releases both require and allow you to be a little more creative. Offering both HTML and printer friendly versions of press releases online is a must, but there is also the option to get more creative with the format. Social media releases are a popular alternative to the traditional press release, and can include images, videos, links and more, meaning they are fast growing in popularity among media communities.

Like this article? Read the first article in this series, Online Newsroom Essentials: Media Contacts and keep an eye out for the next article in the series on including media coverage.

Online Newsroom Essentials: Media Contacts

newsGone are the days when actual physical folders called ‘press kits’ were handed to journalists by PR people, jammed full of a company’s recent press releases, bios for management teams, fact sheets, case studies, and other press related information on the company.

Instead, press kits have been streamlined and digitised, much to the pleasure of all in the news industry, making them easily accessible, searchable, environmentally friendly and comparatively lightweight.

From Page to Webpage

The modern day press kit is now referred to as the ‘online newsroom’, typically found in the press section of any corporate website. Despite the new preferred format, online newsrooms often do not match up to the traditional press kit in terms of optimisation. They don’t often have much more information than a measly list of press release PDFs and the odd links to news coverage.

When the digitisation of press kits should really have given much more room to expand the information offered without the physical size and weight boundaries of paper and folders, it would seem in reality the online newsroom only led to corporate press kits becoming somewhat lazy and incomplete.

How does your newsroom shape up?

The following article is the first in a series, which aims to highlight all the areas in which a newsroom should be optimised in order for it to be useful and interesting to your journalist contacts, with some examples of excellent newsrooms from some of the world’s largest corporate websites, to demonstrate how online newsrooms should function.  

Newsroom Essential: Media Contact Details

Unlike when physical press kits were literally handed to journalists by the PR or media contact for a company, when a journalist enters a company’s online newsroom, they most likely have no idea who the contact is regarding media enquiries. They may find everything they need from the press releases, fact sheets, company articles, etc that the online newsroom contains, but in the majority of cases a press contact will need to be dealt with in order to arrange interviews, gain statements, or be sought out for future reference.

tullow-oil-media-contactsYou don’t need to list your whole PR team’s names and details, just the person who you want to deal directly with all media enquiries; typically the Head of Media Relations or someone in a similar job role. And be sure to offer different ways to contact them, including phone, email, and even social media and Skype. Be sure to keep this up to date, as it often occurs that a person leaves and the company doesn’t get round to changing their details in the newsroom for months, sometimes even years!

One company that stood out for me as having a good press contacts page was Tullow Oil Plc. They didn’t include any social media profiles, but they did include just the one main media contact and his name, telephone and fax numbers, and an email address for him.

Unfortunately, even large corporations can get it wrong on such simple things. As a journalist, I would like to be able to go straight to the contact details of the person I need to contact for media enquiries, whereas often large companies offer only a switchboard number, which I must then call and speak to 2 or 3 people before finding the person I am after. In other cases, companies often think that is helpful to give details of every PR and media team member, meaning I have to work out for myself who the correct contact is.

Journalists are on tight deadlines for stories and so having the information available quickly and easily makes their jobs much easier.

 

The Financial Theory of Corporations Versus Social Responsibility

tibetan-yak
When it comes to social responsibility, corporations are in a tough spot. Traditional financial theory holds that corporations exist in order to maximize profits for shareholders. To the extent they divert corporate resources to fund social or environmental causes unrelated to their business, it represents a transfer of wealth from shareholders to a different constituency.  Further, it is a transfer of wealth over which shareholders – the owners of the company –  have little or no say. This is troublesome because corporations do not exist to redistribute wealth.  To the extent that any institution exists to redistribute wealth, that role goes to governments.

This does not mean that corporations should not be concerned with the environment or the social context in which they operate. Rather, it means that corporations should be paying careful attention to those issues where they can have an impact and where the cost of ignoring them will have a detrimental effect on the company’s future prospects, image or share price.  Spending money to make a difference in environmental and social issues that are part of how they operate is an acceptable corporate expenditure.  Spending money to fund the chairman’s pet charity to save the Tibetan yak is usually not, unless you are in the business of mountain expeditions.

How does all of this fit into investor relations?  In my twenty-five years of talking to investors, it has been rare that major institutional investors raise these types of issues.  Institutional investors focus on your company’s future prospects, back-tested against your current performance.   Unless your company’s future prospects are being impacted by environmental or social issues, most investors don’t seem to care.  There are a few socially responsible investment firms, but I’ve never really seen them have much more than a gadfly effect.

So does this mean corporations should just ignore the issue?  You probably can, but I would hope not.  Your company is probably doing things that you can point to as responsible corporate citizenship. Most companies are constantly testing ways to save money by eliminating waste and inefficiencies.  The best of these ideas often result in both costs savings and benefits for the environment.  For example, every social activist’s favorite target, Wal-Mart, has done many such things. Here’s an illustration from the book The Wal-Mart Effect, by Charles Fishman: in the 1990s, Wal-Mart came to the conclusion that there was no need for deodorants to come in a separate box.  The cardboard box added cost, took up shelf space and required trees to be cut down to make the cardboard.  Yet the box didn’t add anything to the customer experience and surrounded what was already a perfectly good container.  So Wal-Mart worked with manufacturers to get rid of the boxes.  As a result, the product cost less to produce, some of which was passed along to consumers, and the environment benefited because the demand to cut down trees for cardboard was reduced.  (One can only hope that they are working on the same thing with respect to blister packs.)

Good companies undertake these types of projects all the time. A good investor relations practice is to make a list of all the projects your company does to eliminate waste and inefficiencies or to make the work environment safer.  The next time you’re questioned about your company’s commitment to the environment or social causes, pull out your list and discuss it along with the comment “Look, we can’t be all things to all people – our resources, just like everyone else’s, are limited. But we do choose to try and change things for the better where we can have an impact.”  Better yet, be proactive and talk about these things as part of your regular communications.

I am not enough of a Pollyanna to think that this will mollify activist investors with a militant agenda, but you’re not going to make them happy anyway.  The objective here is to have a well-reasoned response that shows you are influencing things to benefit your customers and the environment in which you operate.  And, like Wal-Mart, you probably shouldn’t expect to receive too much credit for what you do.  After all, as Kermit the frog said, “It’s not easy being green”.

 

Do You Trust Your Social Media?

students-mobile
Students are burdened with a lot of stereotypes and though some of them are most definitely true, many of them are just myths. Aside from the obvious, students are well known for being one of the brightest, most tech-savvy groups in society. Any lecture theatre in the UK will be full of tablets, ultra-thin laptops and, yes, plenty of smartphones all online, almost all connected simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook and multiple e-mail accounts, collectively downloading more information than was being downloaded from the lecturer.

It was surprising, then, to see the results of a survey conducted by a top student forum, The Student Room, that claimed that students don’t find university social media particularly trustworthy or especially useful when compared to emails, meetings or university newsletters. Given that the average university is planning to increase spending on social media by 60%, it’s a worrying thought and it’s a problem for all those looking to attract attention to recruitment by social media.

A part of the difficulty is that undergraduates, as do all of us, consume social media at a remarkable rate. The smartphone allows us to flick through maybe two hundred Twitter updates in less than thirty seconds and there’s almost no possibility of saving or flagging a particular tweet for later: it demands our attention and it wants it now! This ever-changing environment makes it extremely hard to relate what we see and consume online to an actual real-world process.

We also know how easy it is to update a social media account; it takes about ten seconds and one individual. As opposed to a thoughtful, composed email that has most likely been checked by other members of your recruitment department, it’s too easy to assume that information posted on social networking sites is due to be updated and amended at a laster date or, worse, just inaccurate.

Because of this, we struggle to treat important information exclusively posted on social media sites with the seriousness it deserves. Whether that’s a call for applications or the announcement of an office open day, we consume it and we forget about it almost immediately. It’s no surprise that even students, the great experts of social media in our generation, are struggling to trust what goes up on social media sites.

Of course, there’s no need for this to be a limitation to your social media use. So long as your feeds link to permanent, official and accurate corporate web capital with, preferably, an RSS subscription for updates, you can ensure that social media is just another way of getting to the final message, without being a goal in itself. This takes away the content from your transient Twitter feed and confidently sets it in web-based stone, there to be checked, used and revised for as long as it’s needed.