get the culture right & the tweets will look after themselves

The Twitter Effect

Martin Thomas @crowdsurfing

A Market Matures

o From gimmicks to game changers

o From technological hype to organisational & cultural change

Gartner H

ype Cycle

Which media owner has larger audience than all these combined?

The Twitter Effect?

Increased Client ConfidenceWhich of these have you implemented in past year?*

* PR Week Communications Directors Survey (July 2011)

Compelling Case Studies

o “It doesn’t take much to exceed customer service expectations on Twitter they are pleasantly surprised we are listening”

o “Nobody calls a call centre with positive feedback but they do on Twitter”Martha Roberts Royal Mail

How Twitter is forcing institutions to meet cultural & organisational challenges of a real time world

A Hyper-Speed Culture

o Speed & responsiveness“The trouble with McDonald’s is it’s too bloody slow”

Instant access, instant response, instant gratification “living life through shortcuts” MTV

Acceleration of News Agenda

1952Lynmouth

flood disaster

1952Lynmouth

flood disaster

1988Piper Alpha explosion

1988Piper Alpha explosion

May 2008Sichuan

Earthquake

May 2008Sichuan

Earthquake

Jan 2009Hudson River plane crash

Jan 2009Hudson River plane crash

2 days 1 hour 30 minutes

Real Time

Real Time+

Spring 2011Live blogging during Arab

Spring

Spring 2011Live blogging during Arab

Spring

Crisis Management in Real Time

Service Innovations Heightened Expectationso Speed & responsiveness

Real Time Customer Service

o Taking responsibility for customer service beyond a department

o 2,000+ employees, following guidelines not rules

“Authentic honest, conversational, be

yourself, show respect, expect respect. The goal is to help not be creepy”

“

The Real Twitter Effect

o Driving new behaviours & expectations Dramatizing institutions’ structural, operational

& cultural weaknesses

Connected Consumer meets Disconnected CorporationConnected Consumer meets Disconnected Corporation

“Digital communications is a destabilizing force in a bureaucratic environment. And I am sitting right in the middle of a bureaucratic environment.’”Senior corporate communications director

“We’re not set up for this shit”UK CEO

Why Many Institutions Struggle

o Not configured to work in real time, in terms of speed or resources

10 minutes10 minutes60 minutes60 minutes

* Critical response time for responding to negative comments

Thriving by Loosening Up

o Operational & cultural traits of successful organisations

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

Tight Thinkers Need Not Apply

o Organisations & people that struggle with this new worldHierarchicalBureaucraticProcess orientedDistrustful

“the approval time for each Tweet, by the time it had gone through compliance and tone of voice, used to be 10 days”

1. Trusting

o Bedrock of strong internal cultureo Allows shared responsibility & real time

decision making

The best company rulebook ever written?

Nordstrom Revisited

“Prescriptive rules have the effect of infantilising staff & make it harder for them to adapt to different situations. This goes as much for digital communications as for selling socks … Like the Nordstrom handbook we’re trusting staff to follow the spirit, not just the letter, of our guidelines”Meg Pickard, writing about The Guardian’s new social media guidelines, November 2010

How to Build an Empire

“Presumed Competence”

Accepting, Anticipating & Even Leveraging Mistakes

Which doesn’t mean having to tolerate flagrant abuses

2. Open

o Transparency & honesty non negotiable

Capable of transforming reputations

Openness is …

o Being transparento Engaging critics & embracing criticism o Encouraging real conversations with people

inside & outside the organisation

Openness is … Non Negotiable

Social Media is No Respecter of Secrets

3. Agile

o Ability to improvise & operate in close to real time & to act on real time information

4. Informal

o Being willing to show a human face

Informal Access

O2 Twinterviews with senior management 500+ new followers every time

Authenticity More Important Than Production Values

5. Collaborative

o Tapping into spirit of collective self expression

o Leveraging people’s willingness to shape service & product offers

Numbers are Compelling

o 70% 70% of companies regularly create value through use of web-based communities

o Using customer communities to solve customer problems costs 10% 10% of traditional call centres

* McKinsey 2010

The Power of Communities

Create Content

Solve Problems

Collaborate

Contribute Ideas

The Power of Communities

Mutualisation: Collaborating with readers and communities to better understand, explore or reflect situations, topics, perspectives or experiences

Thriving by Loosening Up

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

@crowdsurfing

Get your organisation & culture right … & the tweets will look after

themselves