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MEDIA RELATIONS 2.0 AND THE ART OF E-MAILING IT IN

MEDIA RELATIONS 2.0 AND THE ART OF E-MAILING IT IN

Next time you open your paper or surf the news online, count the number of times that stories concerning the Harper government carry e-mailed comments attributed to government or party spokespersons. Then count the number of times that such comments do not come with the e-mail qualifier.

I counted at least half a dozen news stories last week alone where a government spokesperson provided comment by way of e-mailed media lines. If you add Twitter to the mix, the majority of official replies to direct queries or emerging stories now come in digital format.

Live, on the record (or even on background) conversations between a reporter and a media relations officer or spokesperson are now the exception. E-mailing replies to media queries has become the standard operating procedure in federal media relations shops across the country.

Much has been said about the current government’s centralized message-control that would spur this robotic approach to media relations. What’s worrisome is that the practice is becoming more prevalent in other organizations, private and nonprofit alike.

Whenever an organization is now pressed by a reporter on a fast-breaking story with problematic undertones, the default response is to e-mail talking points that more often than not have only a vague familial connection to the questions being asked or the issue.

This is one of the subtle unintended consequences of the rise of digital communications: the convergence of enabling technology (digital messaging), long-standing suspicion (and fear) of the media, and dwindling resources and growing time-pressures in traditional newsrooms–call it media relations 2.0.

So, what does media relations 2.0 mean for corporate communications?

Deflecting or bridging are well known media relations techniques, and there was a time when media lines were crafted to help spokespeople deflect and bridge their way to a particular corporate take on an issue.

The difference is that in the past, these lines were used as part of the two-way dynamic of interviews and question and answer sessions that tested their validity and often overtook them. In media relations 2.0, talking points have become take-it-or-leave propositions.

But just because organizations are getting away with this, and everybody seems to be doing it, doesn’t make it a good communication practice.

For one thing, this new approach to media relations only contributes to suspicion and mistrust on both sides of the hack and flack divide.

It is a sign of an organization that can’t see the strategic forest for the tactical trees when talking points grudgingly inserted by reporters like non-sequiturs in news stories are viewed as more valuable than developing relations of trust with those same journalists.

Basically, in the media relations 2.0 paradigm, marking each and every story with unadulterated corporate DNA is more important than ensuring you have the reputational capital to carry the day when an e-mailed or Tweeted reply just won’t be enough.

Media relations 2.0 is also fundamentally unimaginative and reactive.

At its core is a mistrust of the mainstream media and a lack of understanding of its role and importance in framing public perceptions, and more fundamentally, of how it works.

As a result, great corporate stories remain untold or are poorly told, or are told by someone else.

The upside is that unlike the old-fashioned media relations I engaged in as a government flack in the late 90s, media relations 2.0 is safe–there’s no danger of being misquoted or losing control of an interview.  The problem is, it’s like  standing on the sidelines at your high school formal: you didn’t get turned down, but neither did you dance.

 

GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY REQUIRES PRINCIPLES TO INSPIRE, NOT RULES TO TRIP OVER

GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY REQUIRES PRINCIPLES TO INSPIRE, NOT RULES TO TRIP OVER

It is the nature of social media that content, good or bad, can be shared and viewed almost instantaneously. This is what makes it such a powerful communications and marketing tool. It is also what makes it potentially very damaging to reputations, brands and bottom lines.

The real time nature of digital communications makes responsive damage control very tricky. Just  ask United Airlines who in 2009 got caught in the  social media turbulence created by a disgruntled passenger, Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his now iconic video United Breaks Guitars, and was unable to respond effectively.   The airline saw the value of its shares tumble by almost $ 200 million and its reputation take a hit it is only now recovering from.  

But managing external hits to one’s online reputation will be the topic of a future blog, today I want to look at one way organizations can protect themselves from self-inflicted online damage: social media policies.

In theory, it’s simple; most organizations have policies governing just about every aspect of corporate and employee behaviour. From the size of their cubicle, to what they can wear at work, to the type of car they can rent on company business, policies spell out what employees can and cannot do. So, why not policies telling them what they can and cannot do on social media?

In fact,  more and more organizations are adopting precisely those kinds of policies. The problem is that many of them miss the mark.

Effective social media policies should allow the emergence of brand ambassadors within an organization while setting boundaries that facilitate engagement by providing a knowledge safety net for staff and others.

The difficulty in implementing effective social media policies lies in the very essence of social interaction: spontaneity. Throw up a wall around what people can say or do online, and you limit spontaneity and genuine interaction.

This may not be a problem (and in fact may be seen as a good thing) for a company that sees social media as something that should be managed and controlled. But for organizations that recognize the potential of employee and associate online engagement, developing policies that do what they’re supposed to do is a priority.

A few months ago, while developing a social media policy for a client, I stumbled on a great–if somewhat dated–social media policy database that provides examples of the best and the worst policies around.

I found the best policies to be the ones that eschewed highly prescriptive language and focused on four things: trust, clear principles, common sense and simple rules.

Like most corporate policies, rules governing corporate social media use cannot cover every contingency or situation. The best policy is one that rests on clear principles that empower and guide the exercise of discretion by staff and others, while providing clear direction in critical areas.

Policies that are too stringent will only serve to discourage online interaction or render it stilted and lacking in spontaneity. At the end of the day, how can an organization expect its employees to become effective brand ambassadors if  social media policy is so prescriptive they feel like they need to consult a lawyer before they tweet?