Make friends with a teenager

Here are two misnomers about my 16-year-old niece and her almost 1200 Facebook friends:

• Teenagers are not interesting to our business.
• We don’t have anything relevant to say to that group.

A recent Nielsen Online survey indicates that the average Briton spends as much 70.5 hours a year on Facebook. And avid users, like my niece, spend three working weeks, updating their status, wishing friends a happy birthday, changing their profile picture and so on. If you’re not in the Facebook community, or only spend a couple minutes a day there, then who do you think is keeping up the 70.5-hour average?

My niece and all her friends are important to you and your business for at least one of four reasons:

• They are or will be your customers (or your customers’ customers)
• They will be your employees
• They will be your competitors’ customers
• They will be your competitors.

It might be upper management that decides which services or technologies to invest in, but it is my niece and her 1200 friends who are driving the demand and development of, for example IT, communications, and online commerce.

Imagine, if one 16-year-old has 1200 connections and each of her contacts has – and let’s be conservative here – say, 100 friends, then you have potential exposure to 120,000 people who are directly relevant to your business – three weeks a year.

You might want to make friends with my niece – but make sure your message is relevant.


Kris Walmsley


Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

a journalist learns a lesson in collaboration

I hate getting approval. Nothing grates on my inner newspaper reporter more than sending away my precious prose to get changed by the people I have interviewed.

I am the reporter. It is my job to get the story straight. So hands off!

This is the standard attitude, at least among American journalists. See the trouble a US Supreme Court justice got into for asking for approval from student journalists here.

(note to clients - I still send all my stories for approval. I really do. This is your communications strategy we are talking about, not hard news. And I keep all your changes. Just keep paying us. Please.)

But pleas for business aside, I am starting to see a Web 2.0 angle to approval, a move away from a journalist's arrogance to a more collaborative way of working.

I recently wrote a magazine article about a professor and her economic and political theories. I read article after article, watched videos, talked to her on Skype. I wrote the article, checked it, revised it. And sent it away for approval.

I got it back, and it was covered with red, and I realized something. I had gotten the theories wrong. Not really wrong, just subtly wrong, but wrong enough to be wrong, if you know what I mean.

Aside from saving myself some angry post-publication e-mails, I also liked getting the chance to see her changes and incorporate them into my larger structure; I liked the chance to further refine the story, hopefully to give it an extra depth.

And collaboration is at the center of Web 2.0, of media in general, with the comments on stories sometimes providing more news than the actual article, with links and pings and social network marketing and all that.

So maybe sending the next article out for approval will be a little less painful, maybe I will see it as a chance for improvement, a chance to learn.

Maybe.




Nathan Hegedus

Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

the art of the angry laundry room note

The most foreign place in Sweden – at least for many immigrants – is the laundry room. Yes, the laundry room. You might think it would be easy – book the laundry room, do your laundry, leave the room relatively clean.

No.

The Swedish laundry room is fraught with bewildering conflicts and Byzantine rules and customs. In a rather stoic (or repressed, depending on your point of view) country, the laundry room has become a place where passions are released, where it is acceptable to express anger.

But not directly. No, you do not express anger directly in a Swedish laundry room. You leave an angry note. Anonymously.

This is not the lament of a sunlight-deprived American immigrant either. The Nordic Museum here in Stockholm just opened an entire exhibition on the Swedish laundry room.

Now an angry anonymous note is not the ideal means of communication. It says a lot about life in a Swedish apartment building, a life of a few polite smiles, almost no words, but also no anger.

It also says something about a lack of resources – many laundry rooms are booked weeks in advance. You have your one shot at laundry for the week. No one better mess that up!

And you also take in and start to honor and live by the laundry room code. I have flashes of pretty intense anger now if there is lint left in the dryer or someone tries to steal my time.

Again, this is not good. Let us take it as a warning from our personal lives to our professional ones. We must communicate better than this. Do not let your company turn into a Swedish laundry room … so to speak.




Nathan Hegedus


Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

Does speling matter?

It wasn’t long ago that I expressed my dismay and disapproval of sloppy writing on Facebook, blogs, tweets and so on.

“Loosen up, Kris,” a colleague told me. “It’s a different media, with different conventions.”

The idea with social media is to shout out your message, quick and dirty as it may be. I’ve seen the light: grammar and spelling can be a straightjacket to expressive social media. Someone who seems to be light years from this revelation is the employer who did not hire a person because they had too many spelling errors on Facebook. It’s only a Facebook update, for crying out loud, not a job application! It’s ironic that the Facebook group Proper Spelling & Grammar has more than 5,200 fans.

Social media can be a marketing or professional networking tool, but it doesn’t have to be. And thereby, your writing on these channels should be correct, but doesn’t have to be. The important thing is that the point of your message isn’t lost due to poor language, exclusive acronyms or abbreviated garble. Besides, we’re talking about communication between people, and to err is human.

To summarize – in only 64 characters: Your message is the main thing; everything else is just details.


Check out these other social media writing resources:
How Twitter makes you a better writer
Translate text messages from plain English to mobile phone lingo



Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

Myten om att nå alla

"Hur många använder egentligen sociala medier?" kommer frågan ibland när jag är ute och pratar i ämnet, ofta från någon som är tveksam till dem. Funderingen verkar komma från en i vår värld vanlig myt, den att det finns kanaler som når alla mottagare. Det gör det inte och det har det aldrig gjort. Om vi verkligen vill nå alla mottagare måste vi använda en mix av olika kanaler.

Dave Briggs tar upp den här myten i perspektivet offentlig förvaltning och gör en bra poäng av att de traditionella kanaler t.ex kommuner och förvaltning använder (möten, trycksaker och annonser) inte heller de når alla.

Där sociala medier verkligen kan fylla en roll, inte minst för offentlig verksamhet, är att just sida vid sida med traditionella kanaler se till att informationen når ännu fler. I forum där målgrupperna redan finns (oavsett om det är Facebook eller World of Warcraft). Och samtidigt skapa möjligheter till dialog på ett sätt som annars bara finns i det personliga mötet.

/Pontus

Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

The Blues goes social media

Trots rubrikspråket blir det här på svenska, även om det ska handla om en jänkare som spelar jänkar-musik (mest) på jänkar-gitarrer (oftast). För ikväll spelar Bob Brozman i Västerås, och har du minsta intresse för musikalisk underhållning som går utanför ramarna så se till att ta dig dit.

Brozman är en drygt 50-årig gitarrman från New York som reser världen runt och predikar The Blues i dess mest uppsluppna och vida mening, han samlar influenser - och instrument - från världens mest avlägsna utposter och resultatet blir lite som gamla fina SVT-programmet HAJK: Helfestligt, allmänbildande, jätteintressant och kunskapsorienterat. Dessutom svänger det nåt grymt - inte minst med tanke på att mannen är helt solo på scenen i två och en halv timme tillsammans med en samling blanka stränginstrument.

Brozman är ett levande bevis på att det går att överleva som musiker också i nedladdningens tidevarv. Han turnerar flitigt och säljer sina skivor och dvd:er i samband med konserterna - självklart - men dessutom ordnar han workshops för hugade gitarrister (japp - jag skulle vilja vara med på en), och är agent för två tillverkare av stränginstrument.

Det som gör att han platsar på den här bloggen är en annan aspekt av den nya tiden - Bob Brozman har inte bara en Facebook-profil, han uppdaterar den också och använder mediet för att hålla kontakt med sina fans, ge råd inför gitarrinköp osv

När Brozman klivit av planet i Trondheim härom veckan loggade han in för att kolla kommentarerna till sin show på Fasching i Stockholm kvällen innan. Bluesen är en musikform med uråldriga rötter - med ambassadörer som Mr Brozman lär den leva länge än.


/Andreas

Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

What's your brand?

We often talk about corporate brands and share of voice, but not enough people think about their personal brand. Your personal brand is made up of all of the noise you make and is made about you online. It could be Google searches, Facebook updates or the Twitter categories people put you in.

If you run your own company, you already know this. Or, you should. But for those of us that are employed it’s worth thinking about the impact (positive and negative) that our brand has on our employer.

In 10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010, Dan Schawbel, analyzes trends that affect anyone interested in a new job, a raise or a snapshot of how their brand is perceived.

1. Transparency across the web from social networks to search engines and back
2. More people understanding their brand
3. The new employment contract
4. Your voice becomes stronger than your resume
5. People being forced to take niches
6. Video becomes a brand-standard
7. Monetization through branding becomes clear
8. Social media being used more for career development
9. More people working for free to build brand equity
10. Online identities becoming as routine as employer drug tests

/Aimée

Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

lessons in media mashups from capt. james t. kirk

Let, us all pay homage to William Shatner - not because he is camp, or funny, or a deceptively good actor. Well, yes, let us admire him for all that but also for a talent for cultural mashups, for his ability to keep moving the Shatner brand forward, so to speak, for almost 50 years.

I am quite sure there are plenty of entertainers in their late 70s schooled in both the last vestiges of vaudeville and classical theater who could pull off a faux poetry reading of an inane Twitter account on late night TV.

But only Star Trek hero and famed overactor Shatner gets that call. This has gotten much play in the past week but is worth reposting. Here is Shatner reading supposed tweets from Levi Johnston, the ex-boyfriend of the daughter of former US vice presidential candidate turned media hound Sarah Palin. He is also the father of Palin's grandchild.



It turned out to be a fake Twitter account, and NBC officially took the clip down, though it is obviously still floating around their system.

So Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien brought Shatner back the next day to read "real" Levi Johnston quotes.



This is funny. The schtick was even funnier over the summer when Shatner did dramatic readings of Sarah Palin's rambling resignation speech and then her Twitter account.

Think about this mashup. You have an aged dramatic TV actor reading a Twitter account of a 19-year-old in the style of the 1960s as well as in the most ancient of literary forms (poetry) - and all on the Tonight Show, a fading but still influential cultural institution in the US.

And they did not roll Shatner out of the mothballs for this either. At the age of 78, he is the star of his own video blogs, currently on YouTube, as well as his own interview show. He does campy yet hip commercials for Priceline.com. He is winning acting awards. He creates more buzz by not appearing in the new Star Trek movie than he would have by slipping into that uniform one more time.

Now I am fairly sure that Shatner did not come up with the Twitter readings or the commercial concept or the vlogs. But he either has really good people or he has an uncanny ability to know when to say yes. Probably both.

He has much to teach us - how to play to our strengths while moving in new directions, how to mix media and formats without diluting our "brand," how to survive in a world where nothing is like it was just 20 years ago.

And to do it all to the beat of a bongo drum.




Nathan Hegedus

Because first impressions last

Lindsay Holmwood moved to Sweden and started working at CJG a month ago. Previously, she was an editor on the Asia Desk for The Associated Press in Bangkok, Thailand.

Is this a joke? You’re giving me six weeks of vacation, subsidized massages, a free phone, free computer, flex time to take an afternoon off, and money toward a gym membership? Would it be inappropriate to squeal right now? Yeah ok, I’ll be cool.

Oh America, how wrong you have it. Sweden is the land of opportunity and personal freedom, a place where the government and your employer make you feel as if you are swaddled in warm flannel, whilst sitting on a plush divan and being handfed Swiss chocolates. Ok, mild exaggeration. But the fact still remains that the perks of living in Sweden easily astound a 27-year-old American who paid higher taxes in New York City and could only boast of garbage collection as the biggest benefit.


But listen Sweden, don’t blush and turn away with a coy smile with all of this flattery. You’re kind of a freak too. Banana-flavored caviar in a tube, hard bread that more closely resembles cardboard, and inhabitants with an ability to drink that exceeds college frat boys and frightens a hepatologist (that’s a liver doctor in case you’re still drunk). Sure every country has its quirks. After working in Thailand for 15 months, I’ve pretty much seen it all. But you let your freak flag fly with the best of them. And there is one particular occasion I’ve experienced when you let it allll hang out.

The Swedish business conference.

To anyone who doesn’t live in Sweden, this looks like a typo. Surely a business conference is a time for meetings, brainstorming, putting your best foot forward and showing you are a leader. Oh … it’s not. It’s about what? Dolphin shows? You’re shitting me …

To an American whose biggest office perk in the past was birthday cake for Bob in sports, you are out of your gourd to spend all that money to make us all feel like contestants on the Amazing Race, let us giggle like 3rd graders watching Flipper and drink our body weight in red wine (I, of course, am not talking about myself. I, of impeccable behavior and early bedtimes, was referring to the other lushes). Unless that was all a ploy to bring us closer together as a group, unite us behind a new vision, and send us back to work energized and motivated.

Jaha, I see.

Sneaky guys, sneaky.




Lindsay


Foto: Jon Åslund

Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

Don't forget the 5 Ws and H

The first thing you should know about journalism - or the journalistic method, as we call it for our corporate communications - is the 5 Ws and a H.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

I did not even get taught this in journalism school because the professors assumed we knew that every story should answer all these questions.

Sadly, this lesson often does not translate to the business world. It is not that people do not know the basics. They usually do. It is more that writers get lost in a swirl of slogans and catchwords, of corporate values and corporate politics.

I led a news writing workshop a few weeks ago. The participants all had their 5 Ws and a H down perfectly (at least on "straight news" exercises).

Then we took out a couple of internal news articles, and I asked them to highlight the 5 Ws and the H.

Confusion, laughter, a little anger, much resentment and suspicion.

For while the articles stayed on corporate message, they were impossible to follow. A couple of them were impossible to understand. What was the news? Was it there? Or there? Or nowhere?

What was the managment trying to hide?

There is plenty of space for marketing messages and instilling corporate values. There must also be a space for communicating information clearly and simply in a way that people understand and do not resent. You build trust by being straight with people.

And that starts with the basics. With who, what, where, when, why and how.

How many of your articles cover all of them?




Nathan Hegedus


Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation

Dooce readers, listen up

Anyone who follows Dooce knows that she was fired for her blog, that she was hospitalized for depression after the birth of her first daughter and that her dog is on the crazy side of energetic. Heather Armstrong, the actual person behind Dooce, has built up more than one of the most popular personal blog in the world. She has built a brand.

Her next endeavor is taking her blog to a new level. She has created a community for her readers to interact with each other. Dooce is no longer a platform for Heather-to-many and many-to-Heather conversations, but is embracing the idea that followers of Dooce are likely to have something in common with each other.

/Aimée








Andra bloggar om: kommunikation, företagskommunikation