presentation to nhs graduate trainee communicators 'practical issues in social media

Practical Issues in Social Media

Ben CottonLeeds Business School

What is social media?

Kaplan and Haenlein, (2007): "a group of Internet-based applications that build on theideological and technological foundations of web 2.0, andthat allow the creation and exchange of User GeneratedContent”.

Hazleton, Harrison-Rexrode and Kennan (2007): “social media can include, but is not limited to, email,instant messaging, online groups, blogs, internet socialnetworks and cell phones”.

What are the characteristics?Mayfield (2008):

• Participation

• Openness

• Conversation

• Community

• Connectedness

The major playersBrown (2009):

• Bebo

• Blogger

• Delicious

• Digg

• Facebook

• Flickr

• Friendster

• Last FM

• Linked In

• MySpace

• Photobucket

• Twitter

• Wordpress

• Youtube

And a few more…

Benefits of Social Media

• Lower cost, but not free

• Reach a large audience, quickly

• Can communicate directly with audience

• Social Media can remove traditional channels from the communication process

Pitfalls of Social Media

• Skills/knowledge gap

• Lack of understanding of etiquette

• Loss of control

• Can cause reputational damage

Good & Bad

• Often public, immediate and permanent

• Viral nature

• It is now, popular and growing…zeitgeist

When Social Media goes wrong!

Case study: Microsoft

• Microsoft Astroturfing on Wikipedia

• Paid bloggers to edit ‘inaccuracies’ on its Wikipedia entry

• Against Wikipedia rules

• Publicly criticised

• Unethical, lack of disclosure

• Habitat spamming the Iranian election on Twitter

Case study: Habitat

Case study: Habitat

• Thornton’s Manager offended the town he moved to

Case study: Thornton’s employee

• GMPTE brandjacked on Twitter

Case study: GMPTE

When Social Media goes well!

• Barnet Council uses its Facebook page as a forum

Social Media in the public sector

• NHS Salford used Twitterto inform patients of which hospital services were available

• Essex and Kirklees councils created a Gritter Twitter account

• Reports faster than news agencies

Social Media in the public sector

Social Media Guidelines

• Do you have them?

• Do employees know about them?

• Who wrote them?

• Are they available?

What do you think?

• Social Media will change the face of Public Relations?

• Social Media is just another communications tool?

The good old press release

Die Press Release! Die! Die! Die!

• In Feb 2006 Tom Foremski blogged about traditional press release

• Challenged PR industry to come up with something new

Social Media Release

Tom Foremski (2006):

“Press releases are nearly useless. They

typically start with a tremendous amount of

top-spin, they contain pat on-the-back

phrases and meaningless quotes. Often they

will contain quotes from C-level executives

praising their customer focus. They often

contain praise from analysts, (who are almost

always paid or have a customer relationship.)

And so on...”

Social Media Release Template

• In May 2006 Todd Defren came up with a template for the SMR

Traditional

Press Release

Social Media Release

vs.

Traditional Elements

• Headline

• Core facts

• Approved quotes

• Boiler plate

• Contact details

Navigation• Hyperlinks in text• Links to previous coverage• Links to FAQ

Social Media Elements

Multimedia• Video• Audio• Images

Social Media• Social Bookmarking• RSS feeds• Technorati tags• In bound links• Comment with organisation

Who are they for?

• Journalists

• Bloggers

• Consumers

• Bloggers the new journalists?

How to pitch to bloggers

• Still much debate…

• Bloggers don’t like being pitched to – nor do journalists

• Email, phone, meet, comment on blog, follow on Twitter

• Read the blog rules to see if there are guidelines

• Establish a relationship first, then approach

Other considerations

• May get shown as a bad example

• Embargoes may not be respected

• Can be time consuming

• More work than a traditional press release e.g. you need video, audio, images, social media etc

Examples

• ITV - FA Cup Final

• Bright One Communications – Unique partnership project seeks illustrative talent to collaborate on exciting youth project

What are the benefits?

• Enriched with multimedia

• Optimized for search

• Optimized for conversation

• Optimized for sharing

Social Media ReleaseConclusions• They look nice, but they still need to be newsworthy

• They are not a substitute for relationships – the usual rules apply

• Research in PR Week showed journalists prefer SMR, still need to be targeted

• If it’s unsolicited…it is still spam!

Recommended Blogs• Steve Rubel.com

• Brian Solis.com

• Neville Hobson.com

• Ste Davies.com

• PR Squared by Todd Defren

• Mashable

• Wolftstar

Any questions?

Q&A

Contact details

contact@ben-cotton.comwww.twitter.com/bencottonwww.socialwebthing.comwww.linkedin.com/in/bencotton

End

Thank you