ZN

As always, the ZN’s team of Hyperthinkers have been hard at work. Their heads becoming so hot with ideas that it would blind an infrared camera and boil the kettle from a distance. Here’s a look at some of the things they’ve been up to:

Animal Testing Perspectives – Animal testing is a controversial issue and one that is difficult for the general public to fully grasp.

That’s why the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), together with ZN, created a space that could help people understand the nuances surrounding the issues – including the link between research and health/healthcare benefits – and where an honest and balanced debate could take place.

The website has two sub campaigns. The first relates to new EU rules that will require scientists to publish research summaries online. It aims to bring more transparency by asking what information people want to see. Have a look at research studies in plain words.

The second has to do with the increasing pressure to end animal research in Europe. If no more animals would be tested on in Europe, what would the ramifications of this policy be? Would animal testing become a major industry elsewhere? For this reason, Animal Testing Perspectives is launching a page to discuss all the potential side effects. To find out more, visit Shall it stay or shall it go?

James Elles – James Elles is a member of the European Parliament. He is a member of the Parliament’s Budget committee and substitutes for many others. He is also the founder and chair of the Transatlantic Policy Network and co-founder of the European Internet Foundation. Now that you’ve seen his resume, we can agree that “government elite” is a pretty accurate description. So why is ZN involved with an EU politician?

In addition to providing communication strategies for companies and associations, we also provide services for… people! We recently gave Mr. Elles’ site a makeover and made him more accessible to the people. Take a look at  http://www.jameselles.com.

IABC – If you are in the business of communications, you will be familiar with the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). No? Well, it is really big network that helps “practitioners” (people in the biz) connect and share knowledge.

It currently has 16,000 members, and guess who chairs the Europe and Middle East region? Our very own Chief Hyperthinker, Philip Weiss! In an effort to give IABC Europe a facelift, we gave its website a good do-over too! You can see the result on europe.iabc.com.

If you would like to know more about IABC, Phil wrote about his experiences and the benefits of joining the association on his hyperthinker.eu blog.

ZN is currently working on many other exciting projects, so stay tuned for more news!

We all love telling stories. It’s how we pass on wisdom, wit and gossip, it’s how we build relationships, and it’s how we influence one another. It’s an intensely social activity.

Yet, in an online world dominated by social media, so many corporate websites are narrative-free zones. No stories, no storytellers, nothing. Just the usual information about products or services, and maybe a few press releases or a stuffy old annual report written by committee.

Why not inject a little life? Tone is everything when communicating, especially when you’re trying to reach outside your organisation to connect with the public.

Some simple changes can help turn your website (and, by extension, your organisation), into a more human, living hub. Read more

Today I was at a conference called Euroconference 2011 which is an annual event organised by Kellen Europe that is aimed at informing European associations on trends and changes in their industry.  I was hosting a workshop on Social Media, which was titled ‘What is the real value of Social Media – Goldmine or Minefield’.

Got some great questions about how to overcome resistance in association and find the right way to allocate resources to be able to make a social media campaign work.  Also had an interesting discussion about nuclear energy and Nestlé. Read more

Last week, at the instigation of IABC and with some help from ZN, we organized another session of what is now becoming a regular Brussels get-together to talk about social media and the EU.  To get the discussion started, we asked for the contribution of three panellists including Joe Litobarski (Blogactiv, @eurogoblin), Ian Andersen (EU Commission @antusheng) and Steffen Moller (Fleishman-Hillard, @steffenmoller).  My job was to moderate and attempt to stimulate the discussion.  After a relatively slow start, we got off to a very interesting discussion on the role that social media could play in “Saving the EU from itself”.  To spice things up, Steffen and Joe were asked to take a position for and against the motion – I’m not sure who actually ended up defending what point of view.

Soon after this the discussion shifted the the culture and attitude of the EU commission, with frustration expressed by people in and out of the institution about the challenges involved in getting good social media output – let alone good communication – to come out of the institutions.

However, hearing Ian Andersen describe his own experience with a focused, well organised and apparently effective Facebook campaign to recruit interpreters, it seems as the EU has some good stories to tell (or as described by @kosmopolit, “Islands of excellence“).  The debate was followed by some twitter chatter and a few blog pieces, including one by Gellis.

Steffen shared some of the findings from the EP trends survey he’s been involved with, which continued to show how important not only social media but the web as whole is for politicians in getting information and starting to engage. Social networks are now used extensively by 69% of MEPs – up from 31% last year.  This and other trends confirm the importance of the web as an information and communication tool in the EU political landscape.

The key question that was raised about the EU institution’s ability to communicate effectively was whether the culture and structure of the EU are able to take advantage of these new communication tools, or whether they present the real challenge in preventing the organisation from putting its message across before even being able to engage.  There was an almost unanimous feeling that there was a serious problem within the institutions about how communication roles are approached, causing some serious flaws in the way certain campaigns are handled.  What was refreshing, however, was how open those in the room were willing to be about recognising that something needed to change.  Stating that Web2EU can help in this might be a little optimistic, but every little step in the right direction must be a good thing.

Those who want to take part in these discussions and help change things for the better should join us next time.  And even if we see the debate going around in circles a little, perhaps this repetition will help to equip those who want more open communication, more transparency and to make their case a little stronger.

The social network that was created last summer for IABC (the International Association of Business Communicators) is one of the best ways for communicators in a corporate environment to experience ‘social media’ and online communities first hand.  We are using a ning platform (a site that allows you to build your own ‘facebook’) and enables members to share information, videos, presentation and discuss a range of topics. It is also very practical to organise events and keep your network aware of recent news.  Those interested in discovering more about this should join: http://be-iabc.ning.com/ or watch the video where I discussed the kind of conversations that take place there.

Here’s a short video of me – explaining a bit the IABC ning in one of our ZN events.

(This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog)

If there’s an issue that’s impacting your organisation around which you want to orchestrate a shift in opinion or behavioural change amongst a set of people large or small, it’s not enough to do the right thing and explain it effectively. Two factors play a part here:

1. People don’t trust you. Trust in pretty much every sort of organisation is at rock bottom and falling, so people will need to hear it from others to buy into what you do and say.

2. With regards to the web in particular, search. You can’t push your content, people will find what they want; such is the nature of the web – meaning that it’s quite likely that they’ll pick another site out of the thousands that show up in Google.

So what do you do about it? Beyond doing and saying “the right thing” (not so easy in itself) and a solid media relations set-up, you’ll need to become ubiquitous online. What does that mean? That your web tentacles reach far beyond your own web presence. Others communicating around your issue should be talking about you so that when people are on the aforementioned ‘other’ site on your issue that they’ve found on Google, you’re present too.

How do you make it happen? You’ll need to know who all the other players are on your issue and communicate with them in mind rather than hollering in a void. Reference their content or even feature them in person, comment on their content in your own output, and make sure you’re giving your input wherever you can on other platforms. Assuming – again – that your message is solid, people will take notice and will soon start talking about you, giving you the third-party credibility you crave (assuming they’re being nice!) and giving you airtime in other places where people might land.

Will it come easy? No, Rome wasn’t built in a day – it’ll be a slog, but you won’t regret it.

An eFluential is an online influential (or influencer) i.e. someone who matters online, someone people read and respect, and who can drive and influence an issue’s trajectory online.

For obvious reasons, communicators are often eager to identify eFluentials within their sector or issue. That’s all very well. Unfortunately, plenty of communicators then think it’s OK to pester them, assuming that of course they’ll be willing to spread a story and use their networks to promote anything from a take on an issue to a product launch. Think again. It barely works with traditional media, even less so online.

So as a communicator, what should you do? First, do identify these people. That’s not a crime. How? The basic tools work: look up keywords (brand, issue, legislation, organisation etc.) on Twitter search and Google blog search. Don’t forget blogrolls: finding bloggers via other bloggers works well. You can be even more sly. Look up your keywords on delicious, flickr, digg, reddit and check out if someone is tagging lots of good quality material. Google their names and see if they write blogs or where else they turn up (LinkedIn perhaps?)

OK so what do you now? DO NOT spam these people. Follow them, see what they have to say, learn from them, use them to gain an understanding of what’s driving your issue online. Then, if you’re really keen to build relationships with them, start engaging in their space e.g. go on Twitter or start blogging (or rather, advise your client to do so) and provide interesting and insightful material that they too will be interested in – and only then try to hook up with them. If they share your interests and you build a mutually beneficial relationship, they might, just might, refer to you at some point, follow you on Twitter or put you in their blogroll (but only because they really want to.) If at any point, however, it becomes clear that you’re trying to plug a product or promote a position, you’ll lose all credibility and you’ll need to start from scratch. Be warned.

As a side-note, I’d highlight that eInfluentials are not necessarily the people with most followers on Twitter or whose blogs are most read in your sector: “pitching social media creators who are influential but who are not really customer evangelists for a brand are the wrong people to target” (from a post by John Cass.) This is relevant for issues as well. If you’re engaging in online advocacy and want to, say, build relationships with bloggers in the hope that they might help you spread the word, focus on those who really share your interests and are most likely to join forces with you: if they have a huge following but only ever write about certain elements of your sector/issue which don’t involve you, that’ll remain the case no matter how many scoops you throw at them. Remember, online isn’t like traditional media. Getting an article in the FT will always be more valuable than getting a far better one into a small trade publication. Online, that’s not always the case. Via search, people can find anything that is relevant, while good quality content even on a low-profile site or blog can spread like wildfire if it captures the imagination.

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

I think I should start blogging. Twitter looks interesting. Think a Facebook fanpage will work wonders. Videos on YouTube are just up our alley. And so on. These are the kinds of things going through the minds of plenty of communicators at any sort of organisation in Brussels (and elsewhere for that matter) who work on issues and policy areas in which they want to exert some influence. And for good reason. The tools are cheap and cheerful, they’ve been proved to work, they fit an age of public relations in which engagement and humility are the order of the day, and what’s more, they’re fun.

However, as enticing as the tools may seem and as easy as you may think it will be to just try, test and see, I’d stress that rather than dive in and use the tools from the off, it’s imperative to have a long-term online engagement plan and to take a step-by-step approach that will help maximise the potential of your efforts.

Read more…

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Another ‘plain english’ video that gives you a great simplified idea on how to do some PR on the web.  Part of the collection of youtube ‘plain english’ videos this gives you a quick introduction to how the web can be used to spread the message online.

This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog.

Microblogging. Think a platform where you can publish a sentence from your PC or mobile phone in a few seconds; or think Facebook with status updates and nothing else. The use of microblogging services like Twitter for professional purposes have not taken off in Europe and yet they’re all the rage across the pond – could it be that we’re just late adopters in Europe, and that this will change once millions of people have signed up to Twitter and the like, or is it that it simply couldn’t work here?

So how is it being used in the US? I’m not going to analyse in depth, but a few of the uses are:

• As with other forms of social media, simply to listen. Using, say, tweetscan, companies are taking note of what people are saying about them, as are politicians.
• After having listened, interaction may be next, following the adage of open, honest, one-to-one communications which customers now expect. If people are writing stuff about them, companies are actually writing back. Or they can ask questions, or generally express an interest and be seen to engage.
• Providing news, like updates on product releases, events, special offers, or just anything people might be interested in. JetBlue do this. As does the Obama campaign, regularly updating people on campaign events via Twitter.
• Customer service. Some companies are actually keeping track of what’s being said about them, and when someone complains or needs some information about a product or service, the company responds on Twitter. Comcast are at the forefront of using Twitter for customer care.

But why are companies (or campaigns, as in the case of Obama) using Twitter? What’s wrong with just using email or other channels? Again, not an in-depth analysis, but the main reasons are:

• It’s another place where people are having conversations, and knowing what people are saying may be valuable, as a company (or organisation, politician, whatever) may want to take note and even do something about it!
• The medium as a message matters i.e. the type of conversation one can have. Messages are short and informal, obviously written by a person without scores of senior communications type people wondering whether the message fits the corporate mantra, meaning you’re personalising the way you communicate. Result? If done well, showing people you’re a decent human-being rather than a corporate puppet, that you’ve got soul, and it’ll help to build relationships.
• It’s just handy: it being quick and easy simply means it’s suited for providing quick updates to people.

For more in-depth analyses of the uses of Twitter, I’d recommend these three posts from Ogilvy’s excellent 360° Digital Influence blog: Twitter for customer relations, Twitter for crisis communications, and Twitter for corporate reputation management.

As to the central question: will microblogging for business or other professional purposes remain limited in Europe because of inherent barriers, or is it just a question of time? Assuming Twitter and the like do take off and there’ll be millions of daily users in a couple of years, some barriers one could think of might be that the language factor makes it difficult to track conversations in multiple countries, so is it really worth it? Or that Europeans are more reserved and don’t regard their roles as consumers as seriously as Americans. Will they really complain about a product, or sing its praises, on Twitter?

I think both points can safely be dismissed. So what if a conversation is not pan-European? The quality or importance of an online conversation is not just defined by how many millions of people are following it, but by the nature of its content and engagement. A company can learn a lot from following online conversations even if there aren’t huge numbers of people involved. And engaging, or providing updates to valued customers or supporters, can be extremely precious in building relationships, even if the numbers are small. Similarly, so what if Europeans tend to be a bit more reserved when it comes to letting off steam in social media? Again, it’s not the number of people, or how vociferous they might be when discussing, say, a brand, but what they’re saying that matters. In addition, I’d say that Europeans’ obsession with mobile phones could play a part here. Being able to update ones own Twitter by mobile phone after having been to an interesting place or seeing something out of the ordinary, or simply to carry on following a conversation when away from the PC, would entice quite a few people.

Plus, moving away from marketing and into a Brussels context, I can see a viable use for a microblogging platform as a near-instant monitoring tool. Dedicated monitoring providers and consultancies are paid a fortune to follow legislative issues that impact their clients, but the monitoring reports are usually sent via email the next day. Basic updates at crucial times, say during a plenary debate at the European Parliament or a key event, can be given via a microblogging platform so that people are updated in near-real time. Via a plug-in, these updates could be made to appear on a website or blog as well as the relevant twitter page, so you would not even need to send people somewhere new, just say: “check out the live updates on our site”. Live-blogging is not far removed from this, but that implies slightly longer entries and requires a laptop, whereas microblogging/monitoring could even be done from a mobile phone.

And will any MEPs or MEP hopefuls take a leaf out of Obama’s book and try to Twitter their way into constituents’ hearts in the upcoming campaigns?! It’d probably be a waste of time to send regular updates given the low profile of European elections (no I’m not contradicting myself: updates don’t mean you’re engaging in a conversation and should only be provided with a significant number of followers). But I would advise them to follow what people are saying in social media in general, including Twitter, and the blogosphere in particular. There won’t be much, but some of it could make interesting reading. And if they really want to start an online conversation, I’d recommend they resort to traditional blogging, but I’ll save that for another post.