Letters to the editor

Never light just a single candle, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2005

I continue to ruminate about the hold Facebook and Twitter have on our collective attention spans, and about social media in general, its importance and its relevance. With some time to explore newer aspects of Web 2.0, I'm thinking a lot about the value of social media.

After writing yesterday's post I went back to my email inbox and glanced at the daily CBC news aggregate I have sent to me and got lost for the better part of the day in the bizarre tale of a break-up between two people announced in a weird kind of way as an entry in the currently brand dominant online encyclopedia. (If you wonder why I'm being so cagey here, it's because I'm not going to dignify the woman involved - of whom I had never heard till yesterday - or her actions - which include the posting of instant messages and emails and the announcement that she is selling her ex-lover's leave-behinds on E-Bay - by mentioning her name or including tags that reference her, her former lover, or the online encyclopedia in question. If you want to know who and what I'm referring to, here's a Globe and Mail article on the subject: www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080304.wlbreakup04/BNStory/lifeMain/home).

Thinking about this fiasco and also thinking about advising potential clients who are usually too busy running their businesses to focus on these things, in my stubbornly analytical way I wanted to find a definition of social media I could use with clients to stress the value of adding a social media marketing and communications component to their public relations and communications plans.

No more than six years ago I disagreed with a colleague who told me she had a friend with a local catering business and wanted a web site. The colleague said her friend's business was growing, she had a Yellow Pages listing, and that she saw no point in her friend going to the trouble and expense of creating a web site. I disagreed for two reasons. First, in the days before the internet, I had had to arrange catering in remote locations throughout Northern Ontario, without the benefit of even phone books for the communities involved. The long distance operators became my best allies in this endeavour. I'd dial 1-area code-555-1212 and ask them to look up caterers in the Yellow Pages, get three names and numbers, and then get on the phone to the caterers, explain what I wanted, find out if they were available on the date required, discuss the menu, and take it from there. It worked beautifully. I organized at least a dozen parties by remote control and had only one frantic call back from a caterer when the number of guests suddenly quadrupled and she needed my authorization to bring in more food (and to exceed the original quote for the catering). In the relatively early days of the internet (still in the 20th Century), I also hired a Vancouver photographer (from Toronto) to photograph an event - based on a web search and a couple of emails. In retrospect I should perhaps have emailed someone in our Vancouver office and asked for a recommendation, but it turned out just fine - the guy I found was, and still is, one of Vancouver's top photographers and he did a far more than adequate job.

Having a web site now - unless you are lucky enough to have lived and worked in the same community for a long time and your business comes to you - i.e. you really have no need whatsoever to market your services and are being offered contracts by people who already know both you and the quality of your work - is a credibility issue. Without one, you're like someone without a business card. As part of your marketing collateral, a web site is the second most important tool in your arsenal, right after that business card. (I should take my own advice, huh? Don't bother me, I'm busy blogging here.)

Conversely, I was dismayed last summer to have a client tell me she had just signed yet another contract for a quarter-page Yellow Pages ad that was going to cost her $18,000 over the course of the year and represented the bulk of her marketing communications budget when she had no real marketing collateral and an iffy web site that needed a lot of work. The only time I use the actual Yellow Pages these days is during power outages. And the target demographic for her business is probably a lot like me.

So in trying to find an acceptable and useful definition of social media, I came across this post and its ensuing discussion: http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media/. And I don't disagree with any of it, although I'd like to refine the definition a little at some point.

I do, however, want to quibble with the importance of social media in terms of its usefulness and the resources devoted to it. In the same way that no media interview should consist merely of a recitation of key messages (with the notable exception of crisis communications, when those key messages should pretty much comprise the entire interview because dealing with the crisis is what really matters), no communications or public relations or marketing plan should consist solely of social media communications endeavours.

During the question period following Rob Cottingham's presentation at Northern Voice 08, Blogger 911: Crisis communications and the social web, an audience member suggested that, in a crisis, stakeholders should all be directed to a single web site that is being regularly updated. This is just so wrong. What makes a crisis so very challenging is the need to communicate with all stakeholders in the way they want to be communicated with. In the same way some people like to pay cash and actually count out the bills when making a transaction, others prefer to use their debit cards or pay online, while others still get an almost visceral thrill from writing a cheque, putting the stamp on the envelope, and then walking to the mailbox with it. You have to communicate with people in the way that is meaningful and appropriate to them.

If I picked up the phone and called a company during a crisis that involved me or someone I cared deeply about, I might appreciate being told that there was detailed information available on the company's web site or blog. But in the same way that corporate and social etiquette has generally contended that in most cases, the appropriate response to an email is an email and to a phone call is a phone call, if I am calling for information, I expect to be given information over the phone. I don't mind being referred to a web site that will provide me with a more detailed response, but I do expect my efforts at communication to be reciprocated politely and I don't want to feel that I'm being brushed off or that the person providing customer service is impatient with me. If I take the time to write a letter and send it by snail mail, ditto. Even though my email signature includes my phone number, I don't really expect - or want - someone to call me in response to my email. Unless my email says, 'call me.'

During a focus group on internal communications several years ago I had a forceful demonstration of exactly this point. We had two men who were demographically identical in the group: same age, same sex, same level in the organization, same earnings, same ethnic backgrounds. One of them loathed and despised email and announced that he'd returned his modem and cancelled his home internet service - he was having enough trouble keeping up with the barrage of emails he received at work. The other said that, frustrated with trying to reach his daughter on a shared phone in her university residence, he had been communicating her with mostly via MSN Messenger and email.

For once there is an actual connection between the photo that illustrates this post and its subject matter. The photo, as originally posted on flickr, is titled, 'Never light just a single candle.' One of the examples of good crisis communications utlizing social media cited by Rob Cottingham (who is the president of Social Signal (www.socialsignal.com) was the video JetBlue Airways' founder and CEO David Neeleman posted on youtube after nearly half JetBlue's New York flights were delayed or cancelled on Valentine's Day 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r_PIg7EAUw

I'm not going to debate the merits of the messaging or its delivery right now. I would point out though, that the series of press releases posted on the JetBlue web site, beginning with the one linked below and posted on an almost-daily basis until the day after the video was posted (February 19, 2007), contain information not conveyed in the video, such as the refunds customers were being offered (unless I missed it in three viewings, but I'm pretty sure I didn't), and refer to 'our promise to you' rather than to the 'customer's bill of rights' that was the company's official response to the crisis. http://investor.jetblue.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=131045&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=963450&highlight=

My point is that the video is great, the press releases are great, letters and phone calls to customers are great, setting up a toll-free line so people can get an explanation of what happened and why and what you're doing to ensure it doesn't happen again is great, letters, emails and phone calls to customers are great, newspaper ads are great, radio, TV and print interviews are great. And you can't neglect a single one of those things, because if you do, you will be perceived as having not having made the attempt to communicate, which is the first step in making it right.

I have no idea who JetBlue's primary demographic is, but I'm willing to bet the first-born child I don't have that not all its customers would be mollified by any one of the available communications vehicles mentioned above.

Before the internet existed, it was generally accepted that for every one letter to the editor received by a newspaper, there were a thousand people who felt the same way but weren't sufficiently exercised about the subject to actually pick up a pen or roll a piece of paper into the typewriter or pick up their dictaphone and have their secretaries type a letter for them. Because of the perceived volume of opinion behind a single letter to the editor, they were taken seriously - very seriously.

I am not so sure the same can be said of an often anonymous posting on a blog or bulletin board. From the blogs I've read and the debates that sometimes ensue in the comment streams, there are a lot of opinions out there, and few people share precisely the same one. And I seriously doubt that a single blog comment represents the kind of groundswell of opinion implied by one letter to the editor.

And so, while it's safe to assume that it is possible to communicate with all your stakeholders when it's really necessary to do so, it is never safe to assume that one form of communication will reach - or please - everyone. Consistency of messaging is of paramount importance. Diversity in the manner in which you communicate an entirely consistent message is equally important - and ever changing.