HOW TO AVOID BECOMING A DINOSAUR…

Or What Every Leader Should Know About

Social Media

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Executive Summary

Revolutions are misleading. Seldom are they about a single event. Instead, they are more about a series of events with each triggered by its predecessor. The social media revolution is no different.

Making sense of the social media revolution is hard because the revolution seems piecemeal to many people. It only seems to make sense in hindsight because the new tools are being picked up and used by challenger brands almost experimentally. At any stage, there’s a lot of work in progress. Whensomething works, it’s not unsurprising that people keep quiet about it, but it catches on nevertheless. In every respect, it conforms to Everett Roger’s famous Adoption Curve of Innovation, later developed into the theory of market evolution.

The Social Media Revolution

Let’s start our journey with Google - the Alpha and

mega of the Internet. In the beginning, there was search.

One of the very first things people needed when the

Internet started to gain popularity was a way of finding

information. Eventually, Google emerged as the search

leader because the engine found things quickly through

a simple interface that it maintains today. This type of

search worked well until the growth of Internet users

dictated using more sophisticated methods. It became

clear that people would congregate in groups around

shared experiences such as videos and music. Search,

though, had moved on. It was now looking for something

that told you more about the groups people connected

in. This is where Facebook came in because it could

suggest the products these groups used and allow you

to advertise to them. This use of tailored ads created the

phenomenon of ”Social Search.” A similar sort of service,

LinkedIn, grew up at the same time for the business world

to help people who wanted to use social networking in

a commercial context. Layered on top of these social

networks were micro-blogging services like Twitter. These

networks can be linked to Facebook, LinkedIn, and

Yammer, a sort of corporate Twitter.

Speed versus Truth

Although Twitter appears to be an odd-one out, the sheer

speed of Twitter is worth a special mention. Whereas

Google updates every 90 minutes, Twitter cycles in 45

seconds, which means that news travels exceptionally fast.

Such speed has a profound impact on the amount of truth

we have in our news.

The relationship was always an inverse one with faster

speeds indicating less truth. Twitter made the inverse

Twitterers

Bloggers

Journalists

Accountants

Lawyers

Historians

Time

Spee

d

Media is less concernedwith fact, more with a

‘good’ story eg the fall of Arthur Andersen,

climate change, WMD, etc

The command of ‘now’

Begins

by Chris LewisChief Executive Officer, LEWIS PR

Follow on twitter @largeburrito

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relationship steeper. Now, we routinely see stories circulating

that turn out later to be completely untrue, which can create

fear, uncertainty, and immediate ‘certainties’. Think Lehman

Brothers or WMD or Arthur Andersen. In the latter case,

it was comprehensively shown that the firm did not shred

documents for its client, Enron, but by the time the traditional

system of justice - the law - caught up, it was too late. This

has profound consequences for the make-up of boards.

Our two greatest protectors of shareholder values are the

General Counsel and CFO. Social media can profoundly

affect value and perception (truth) in the time it takes counsel

to put pen to paper. Yet social media responsibility remains

suborned deep in the bowels of the corporation.

Mobile Applications and the Future of Social Media

Just when corporate professionals thought you understood

social media, mobile arrived with software like Foursquare

(a geo-tagged twitter service) to bring a new dimension to

connecting with others. Now we have the phenomenon of

Mobile, Social, Search. Companies are just beginning to

develop propositions to address the blending of these

three concepts.

Clearly, there’s been a land grab going on in social media.

When Google was unable to agree to a deal with Facebook,

it meant that it wouldn’t have access to its Social graph.

Google executives responded by creating their own social

service - Google Plus. Although this has not been widely

taken up yet, companies that use it can affect their SEO

disproportionately because Google designed it that way.

They also decided that they would no longer take the stream

of social data from Twitter, rendering the micro-blogging

platform an inefficient way of improving organic SEO.

So now we have an overall picture. All of these media are

reflexive. They can be linked and feed off each other.

The net result is that like homesteaders in the Wild West,

brands, companies, people, institutions, and ideas are

surrounded sometimes by quite a hostile audience. The only

difference is that there is no Seventh Cavalry. So in summary,

a rosette of social channels has grown up to surround

brands which, taken collectively, can also affect the web’s

ability to locate those brands.

Reputation Management and Social Media

Now let’s pause for an experiment. Take your name, your

organization, or your favourite charity and Google it. Of the

first fifty returns, how many have originated from you? Is it

more than half? If so, you’re in good shape. You still control

your brand. If it’s less than half, someone else is controlling

your brand. If searchers can’t find your material, then by

definition they find someone else’s information about

your brand.

Let’s be clear – these channels will be used, so you’d better

be sure it’s you that’s using them. Brand journalism is not

going away, and the demand for fast-moving and short-

lived but high-quality digital assets is only going to grow.

Some of these assets will belong to you. Some will belong

to others. These brand journalists will become curators of

these assets. Obviously, this content will need to interpret

the brand creatively and support it. This was recognized

early by the phrase ‘Content is King’. If this is true, then

its Queen will be imperative. More than half of the social

content that circulates is comment on news events. So the

Creative and Imperative will need to work closely together.

If we accept that one of the defining characteristics of

leaders is their ability to understand what will be, then

leaders have responsibilities here. You can try to understand

the future on issues, but it’s confusing. It’s better to try and

understand a point of view, which is essential for getting

the right tone, style and channel for recruitment as well as

community engagement. “Getting it right” can save massive

amounts of costs as well. Generation C is one of the easiest

and cheapest to communicate with ever.

To get your message out, whether it is to attract future

customers, find employees, or lure stakeholders, you have

to use their channels of communication. In any case, the

right social media can increase the surface area of contact

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that people have with their leader. Importantly, this is not

invested in one person but an entire group of leaders. For

this reason, then, social media needs policy, procedures,

and planning. Get this right and you give your team

the confidence to use the channels. Get it wrong and it

becomes a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

CEO Responsibility with Social Media

As a CEO, you may now be saying, “well, I can leave all this

to marketing.” You can, of course, but there’s something

else. The ability to triage these imperative creative assets

gives you the ability to assess a conversation and hence,

the mood. Tools likes Radian 6 and Sysomos allow you

to gauge what people are talking about online. Think of

it like being at a dinner party where you’d like to join in

the conversation but need to listen before you start. This

understanding allows CEOs to do two things: 1) to use an

audit trail as to the precise timing of an action and 2) to be

able to assess what a competitor is doing.

The ability to look over the other side of the hill to provides

the opportunity for greater situational fluency or the

‘Command of Now.’ In military terms, first it was hills, then

balloons, then aircraft, then satellites that allowed the

commander to see further. Now social media can provide

new intelligence about what people are thinking.

Companies also have the option to float ideas with their

communities and to involve them actively in research. In the

jargon of social media, this type of social media focus group

is called ‘crowd sourcing.’ This type of diurnal engagement

can be useful when trying to address customers’

real concerns.

Learning to Leverage Social Media

Think of the early days of the arrival of the personal

computer. The use of guidelines, security, and policy was

what turned an initially chaotic technology into the corporate

essential it became. Social media will do to communications

what the personal computer did to data processing.

An entire generation needed to learn how to use the

personal computer to be successful, but many failed.

The boardroom generation grew up on this technology

but in some cases is even more luddite than the general

population. Leadership can’t afford this self-indulgence but

instead should keep challenging itself. One of the easiest

ways to demonstrate complacency is by choosing outdated

methods of communication.

The use of social media for communication can lead to

some odd effects. When a company begins to use social

media, the leadership team can be seen and heard much

more clearly and in real-time, which is in some ways akin to

tearing away the shower curtain. It can precipitate the rapid

covering of sensitive areas. Equally, it can also encourage

an over-exaggerated sense of pride, where leaders start to

hog the limelight and primp and pose. Either is undesirable

because the challenge is to use social media in a way that

feels natural for your company.

Twitterers

Bloggers

Journalists

Accountants

Lawyers

HistoriansTime

Spee

d

Media is less concerned

with fact, more with a

‘good’ story eg the fall

of Arthur Andersen,

climate change,

WMD, etc

The command of ‘now’

Social Media in the Workplace

Leveraging social media can send powerful messages,

however. A CEO that decides to present casually dressed is

saying it’s OK to dress like me. The use of social media can

send the message that it’s OK to be informal. Judging what

tone the organization has and importantly should have in

the future is the CEO’s job. Telling employees that you want

the company to be dynamic and innovative in a round robin

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email won’t work. It’s a show, not a tell. If you want people

to listen to your updates, record them and then distribute

on corporate social media systems like Yammer. You can

also use groups on LinkedIn, hang outs on Google Plus, and

YouTube for messages you want to go external.

A warning here! Some companies feel so threatened by the

loss of control that they have tried to ban social media from

the office. These executives are worried about the sheer

time suck it causes on their staff and can take the form of

device confiscation at reception or tracking and recording

what people say. Sure enough, these methods stop social

media use during work time, but they increase it dramatically

elsewhere and sometimes with unpleasant consequences

for the brand. I’ve heard social media be referred to a sense

of entitlement by older generations. It is. They’re quite right.

Generation C is entitled to your trust. Judge them on their

output not their methods. Supply them with the content to be

brand evangelists.

This new generation is one where text and reading are less

important than knowledge of how to convey a message.

They are growing up multilingual in an environment where the

languages are video, graphics, and short bursts of truncated

text. In one respect, though, they are similar to every other

generation. They do not always make the right decisions

about what is appropriate behaviour. In fairness, when some

employers monitor social media, before and after interview,

the boundaries can become blurred.

This blurring is where well thought out planning and

procedures can make a big difference. ALL of your

employees are potential brand advocates. As a young

colleague told me, “control is so very Twentieth century.”

The problem is, of course, that most of us in business at the

current time are a bit Twentieth Century.

The procedures are never more important than when a social

media firestorm breaks out. You cannot allow policy and

judgment to be dictated solely by those who understand the

medium. That’s why YOU have to understand. Think of the

three R’s – systems have to be Ready 24/7. They have to be

Rehearsed with regular fire drills. They also have to be Reliant

on a team of people organized into a chain of command.

Role Assignment in Social Media

One of the questions often asked about this type of

marketing engagement is who is doing this role in the

traditional establishment. Within marketing outreach, the

function that normally engages with outside audience every

day of the week and twice on Sunday is the PR department.

Especially so when dealing with a crisis. Many times an overly

sensitive company has put out a statement on a problem only

to find they didn’t have one – until they put out the statement.

Perhaps if BP had used that type of listening technique it

would have seen the brand adhesion that the Transocean rig

fire was having.

Social media can be a vital tool in allowing the CEO to use

their best judgment with information from the company’s

customers. The ‘J-word’ is, after all, the only thing senior

leaders have. It’s critical to investors, shareholders, staff,

customers and peers. Most of the time senior leaders have

been exposed for poor judgment, it relates to a misjudgment

or misreading of mood, which applies as much to Tony

Hayward at BP as it does to Dick Fuld at Lehmans. The

recession adds poignancy to the messages that leadership

emanates. Frequent, unfortunate juxtapositions, such as

hefty senior bonuses alongside group redundancies, bring

this issue to the fore. The need for joined up communications

has never been greater. This is as true personally as it is

corporately. In recession, the wealthy and powerful need to

tread sensitively. At present, it’s like the senior people are

sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Social media showers 1,000

sparks a year on it. They need to spot which spark can set

off the gunpowder. You cannot have the presence of positivity

in communications, without first ensuring the absence

of negativity.

Using Social Media to Brand a Company

It’s not all about the shield. Social media can be an effective

sword as well. Leadership has never been under as much

scrutiny as it is now. Some elements of the generation

coming through see their leaders as having damaged the

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economy, their retirement, the planet, their trust, and their

prospects for the future. Groups like the Occupy Movement

are themselves a social media phenomenon. They also

provide an insight into understanding a mindset that wants

less consumption, more sustainability, and more quality.

Make no mistake if you thought there was a generation

gap in the Sixties, this one is a chasm. The youngest

generation of adults has long turned its back on email as a

communication medium; instead this generation is the child

of social media. They are quite possibly the most connected

young group ever in the history of mankind.

If we accept that one of the defining characteristics of

leaders is their ability to understand what will be, then

leaders have responsibilities here. You can try to understand

the future on issues, but it’s confusing. It’s better to try and

understand a point of view, which is essential for getting

the right tone, style and channel for recruitment as well as

community engagement. “Getting it right” can save massive

amounts of costs as well. Generation C is one of the easiest

and cheapest to communicate with ever.

To get your message out, whether it is to attract future

customers, find employees, or lure stakeholders, you have

to use their channels of communication. In any case, the

right social media can increase the surface area of contact

that people have with their leader. Importantly, this is not

invested in one person but an entire group of leaders. For

this reason, then, social media needs policy, procedures,

and planning. Get this right and you give your team

the confidence to use the channels. Get it wrong and it

becomes a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Handling Social Media Crises

The very nature of social media means that leaders will

be caught in a crisis at some point because social media

produces a natural tendency toward providing a ‘crisis du

jour,’ which can result from events or from dialogue that

develops. A constant consideration is with whom to engage

and when. The systems need to be able to differentiate

between those with influence and those with less.

Because of this propensity toward creating firestorms from

simple statements, the first stage of every company’s social

media monitoring should be to determine what to do in the

event of a problem escalating. Most problems, if spotted

early enough, will be dealt with at low levels. Part of this

work is science and requires looking back at comparable

historic traffic. The first part of the planning process is to

work out which words and issues you want to track. Then

you’re able to work out what a routine level of mentions is.

The first sign of crisis is when a brand goes out of limits,

which also is where science gives way to art. Only you will

know what issues you want your brand associated with and

those you do not. In any case, this should be known to the

people running your SEO policy.

Social media will never replace the above-the-line brand

building that sustained advertising brings. But then rapidly

deployed airborne troops never do the job of an armored

brigade. They have different purposes. The latter is powerful

but takes time and planning to assemble. The gestation

period involved sometimes means that the market the

advertising was to address has changed or moved. Social

media’s job is to hold and defend a position. Getting there

with 10% of your force immediately is better than arriving

too late with 100%.

The concept of being able to exploit fleeting markets is an

important one. The cycle time now between innovation and

obsolescence is shorter than it’s ever been. To wait for the

advertising resources to craft a campaign, deploy, and

measure the results can sometimes result is missing first

mover advantage. If you multiply this into all markets

globally, it’s now dangerous to address opportunities

sequentially. They need to be done in parallel.

For this reason, social media is synonymous with

international operations. Don’t kid yourself that this is only

about English speaking markets either. Graphics and video

travel further faster than text in non-English speaking areas.

Remember Generation C is either unwilling or unable to

read tracts of text, as we’ve discussed above.

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Facing the Learning Curve of Social Media

One of the great barriers to older people getting involved

in social media is that they feel out of their depth. Or

sometimes they make judgments about social media

before they know what it can do. All I can say is that if

you’ve stopped feeling silly, then you’ve stopped learning.

Conscious incompetence is a vital stage that encompasses

all learning. You can’t avoid it.

Others will say the technology is all about kids. Well, yes,

do you remember those kids who invented PCs? They went

from bedroom to boardroom in twenty years. These kids will

do that in ten. In any case, the average Twitter and LinkedIn

user is their mid-30s.

Of course, in a business context – and especially a

recession – there tends to be a focus on the short-term

and ROI. People may say, “I just don’t get Facebook and

Twitter.” These people may not understand how to monetise

the networks, but would you try to monetise handlebars

and a wheel? No, you need to see how they fit together

and get a bigger picture. Yet all around are significant

beneficiaries of changing habits (e.g. Amazon).

What is clear is that social media is going Corporate. A

recent survey showed as high as 94 percent of corporations

using social media with 85 percent saying that it’s given

their business more exposure.

Visit an information graphic on the topic here:

http://bit.ly/OQHgfN

First Steps in Implementing Social Media

Perhaps one of the biggest questions of all is how

companies can implement social media because the

landscape looks so all encompassing. The answer to this

dilemma is simple. Look at systems that can be overlaid to

start. Yammer is a good example. Most organizations don’t

rely upon it alone to get out message, however. They use it

in conjunction with other tools.

These tools become basic building blocks. For instance,

forward-thinking hotels ask guests to tweet to a hash tag

so they can monitor comments. An unhappy guest normally

lets people know on Twitter within an hour of the problem.

Pick up the problem in this golden hour, and you’re likely to

be effective and turn it into a positive point of referral. Try

to address it after several hours and complaints and…well,

good luck.

Social media is about culture and not cost. It is cheap and

quick to implement. The cost comes in applying corporate

standards and procedures around it. In any case, its

justification can be had from savings made in above-the-

line brand building. In a fully integrated campaign the Paid,

Earned and Owned media start to overlap with massive

impacts on organic SEO. These are just the

quantitative effects.

When this comes together, something magical happens.

Media starts to synergize and you get momentum from the

audience you’re addressing. This branding is a bit like the

way a good rock band puts on a show. The more it puts

into its audience, the more it gets reflected and the more

the performance is elevated. It’s no accident that rock stars

perform for a crowd. When people are looking, it matters.

Just like your children want you to see and applaud when

they’re giving their best.

The qualitative effects on a culture that feels that it is

encouraged to refer ideas can be transformative. Let’s

be clear. When senior people pick up and use social media,

they risk ridicule. When senior people don’t pick up and use

social media, they risk ridicule.

None of the above stops people believing they’ll never get

it. Like all new things, if you think you’re a dinosaur and you

refuse to make the effort, then you probably are. I’ve seen the

way social media has developed in the corporation over the

last ten years. It isn’t the Permian Mass Extinction boundary

that some people portray. Social media networks are still

evolving. If social media were the car, it would be 1930. The

revolution is not even halfway through. There remain huge

opportunities to create smaller global propositions that can

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LEWIS PR is a global PR and digital

communications agency. In addition to traditional

media and analyst relations, LEWIS specialises

in social media, digital marketing and creative

services. It works with companies to implement

integrated communications programs on an

international scale. LEWIS works with leading and

emerging brands across multiple sectors, including

automotive, consumer, government, healthcare,

insurance, legal, non-profit, technology and

telecom. LEWIS has more than 24 wholly-owned

offices across the US, EMEA and Asia Pacific, with

regional headquarters in London, San Francisco

and Singapore.

Chris Lewis is Chief Executive Officer, at a global PR

firm. He is a former journalist and speechwriter. He

is author of The Unemployables, a profile a 40 high

achievers. http://amzn.to/gRJOIT. He is a Freeman

of the City of London, but sadly, remains trapped in

his own office.

Contact us:

www.lewispr.com

http://blog.lewispr.com

content@lewispr.com

address multiple markets if Social Media is used effectively.

Leaders can be more visible. A greater proportion of

resource can be customer facing.

This is where you come in. Just because something can

be done, it doesn’t necessarily mean it should be done.

The knowledge of what has gone before, is essential

to arriving at what could be. Too often have evangelists

promoted the solution without any understanding of the

problem. You know what can and should be improved.

That’s why you need to understand and use it yourself.

There is an experimental element of this. Not everything you

do will work. That should not strike fear into you because

Social Media is by its natural an ephemeral media. If you’re

consistent over time, the ephemera can build into an

enduring brand support.

Summary

Too many people worry about social media ‘getting away

from them.’ They worry that a piece of embarrassing

comment will be cached forever. It’s unlikely that this will

keep coming back to haunt you, because if the momentum

is maintained, the following material will replace it.

Companies are still reorganizing for social media because

many are unsure whether social media is marketing, human

resources, or public relations’ responsibility. In actual fact, it’s

a meta discipline. Just like the onset of IT, everyone will grow

to use it. That’s why the leadership needs to embrace and

radiate it.

Like many changes for the business community, often the

challenges get noticed rather than the opportunities.

Sometimes the arguments against change are made simply

to preserve the status quo. What we like about some brands

is that they don’t change, but advancing the way they

communicate is a different matter. The biggest danger is that

brands believe themselves to be communicating when they

use the channels they have always used. Without evolution,

they can find in an echo chamber progressively more over

Website:

Blog:

Email:

time. These brand marketers assume everyone can hear

because they can hear. Social media allows you access to

greater collaboration if you want it, and even the illusion of

this collaboration can be helpful. Broadening the audience

through more diverse channels can only help widen the

understanding and trust your audiences have in you, your

organisation and your brand.