A Term in Review - Communication

 This is the final blog post associated with my Leadership and Communication class for this term.  My intention is to not stop posting, but the frequency will be reduced to twice a month instead of once a week.  For today’s posting we look toward the future. The future of strategic communication is in the hands of those currently holding communication positions around the world and to those just embarking on their professional communication careers.  There are many questions about communication and what it’ll look like in two years, five years, etc.  I say it is up to us, those within communication jobs to make it our own.

I think that a communication background will become more vital as time progresses.  With just about every organization engaging on social media, trying to find ways to create messages that break through the clutter, staying engaged with audiences online and offline, a communication professional is needed more than ever.  For the simple fact that an organization needs a person on staff that can serve as counsel to the C-Suite regarding initiatives that involve the company communicating with an audience.

More than ever, marketing and communication have become more integrated.  In my experience, organizations are seeking employees who are willing to work cross-functionally to achieve common goals. This mean as more professionals will be expected to work with the marketing team, work with IT to collect and measure campaign effectiveness, and coordinate with sales to synchronize company wide messaging. Within my current employer, we are doing some of these very items in an effort to get out of the silo mentality and more of a holistic approach.

In the past nine weeks I examined what it takes to be a leader within the field of communication. Through it all, the underlying theme is a leader must have a vision. Rebecca Wriggle (2006) wrote “The most critical competency of every strategic leader is the ability to see the future. Leaders at the strategic level cannot move an organization to a future they cannot envision.”

Whether it’s an organization branding message, deciding how a brand is represented on social media to planning worst case crisis communication scenarios, the communication leader must aim for a goal and work backwards into that goal.  The two areas of leadership  communication that peeked my interest included crisis communication and internal communication.  Crisis communication from a leadership perspective included not missing out on an opportunity for change.  For example, change is one of the hardest tasks to accomplish, especially when things are going well and is difficult to justify a change. When an organization is in crisis mode due to an unforeseen situation, management is more receptive to change and being a leader that has vision to see past the immediate crisis and think about the future is extremely valuable.  “Only during emergency events does organizational leadership discover what does not work. Capturing stakeholder insights during an emergency enables the strategic leader to drive longterm direction and evaluate programs for their inherent risks and benefits,” (Tim Tinker, 2012).

Internal communication intrigued me because I feel it is one area at every organization that I’ve worked at that could use the most improvement.  Understanding how important it is to involve internal audiences within broader communication efforts has affected me to improve me own efforts to communicate more effectively within the walls of our own organization’s building.

I’ve enjoyed this term and will implement what I’ve learned to become a better professional strategic communicator. Thanks for reading and hope you’ll check in, from time to time.

Crisis Communication - The Best Offense is the Best Defense

This week many homes around the country celeb rated the Thanksgiving Day Holiday.  Families gathered to enjoy home cooked food, catch up with other family members, and probably spend  some money during the the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday.  Many stores opened on Thanksgiving Day offering special deals to those early bird shoppers, other stores decided to have traditional Black Friday shopping hours, opening early in the morning on Friday.  Thanks to smartphones and social media there are hundreds of videos of people going a little too far during their Black Friday shopping.  In many videos you see people scrambling for the “hot buys” and door busters. In a video this year, you see a woman snatching an item that a young child was holding during a Black Friday shopping spree. Imagine you’re a communication professional for one of those retailers and as your team monitors your social media presence a movement begins against Black Friday shopping. It starts with the video on YouTube and the comments quickly begin to mount. Then a hashtag on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is started and the conversation quickly builds with anti-Black Friday slogan.  Are you ready to handle a social media crisis?  Are your crisis communication and reputation management plans ready to dust off the shelves and put into effect?

Let’s look at a few ways to make sure you are prepared to handle a crisis communication situation.

In Young and Flowers (2012) analysis of the 2009 Domino’s Pizza social media crisis where two employees defaced several sandwiches and pizza, they site the power of YouTube, “Burgess and  Green  (2009)  explain  that  YouTube  users  engage  with  this medium  “as  if  it  is  a  space  specifically  designed  for  them  and  that  should therefore  serve  their  own  particular  interests”  (p.  vii).  This can have enormous  positive  or  negative  impacts  for  organizations  involved  in  crisis management,  including  but  not  limited  to  the  inability  of  boundary spanners  to  monitor  the  vastness  of  this  space;  malicious  users  who  might create  a crisis; and  the leveraging capabilities of  this platform  to enhance a brand  during  a  crisis.  Meaning that YouTube has the power to create a crisis and, when used appropriately, manage a brands reputation during the crisis. 

Similarly, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) used a similar approach during the outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus. Though the crisis was not created through social media, the CDC utilized the medium to communicate to the general public to warn and educate about the spread of the virus (Walton, Seitz, Ragsdale, 2012).

What any good strategic communicator should tell you is the need, better yet, requirement, of creating a crisis communication plan as the first step. Neil Chapman, who worked with BP during their gulf spill, said in a YouTube interview that the oil and gas industry is continually holding crisis drills to ensure all levels of the company are prepared for the inevitable crisis. And for those reading who think a crisis will not happen to their company, you are mistaken. It is only a matter of time. I don’t mean to be cliché, but it’s not if, it’s when. You cannot plan for every single crisis situation, but to create a plan with clear communication lines, understanding who is making the decisions during the crisis, who is the spokesperson, are there multiple? In the case of the BP spill, Chapman explains that all the talking points went out to every single employee, because reporters were coming up to employees on the beaches during the clean up process and asking questions on the spot. Instead of limiting them to canned responses and referring back to a communications professional, BP utilized its employees to reinforce the message of what the company was doing to fix the problem that was created.

As social media and mobile technology continues to engulf the majority of adults, planning to respond to a crisis born on social media requires planning as well and the leadership to guide the process.   

In Wooten and James (2008) analysis of linking crisis communication and leadership they share the important of planning as a precursor to responding to a crisis situation, “As business environments change and grow increasingly complex, it is particularly important that leaders develop a set of skills that will help them prevent and effectively respond to crisis and other strategic issues (Garcia, 2006; Mitroff, 2005).”

In an article in The Wall Street Journal by former CEO of Medtronic, Bill George, he describes several lessons on how to be a leader during a crisis. In his sixth lesson, George says to “Never waste a good crisis.” He suggests that when things are going well within a business it is much harder to usher in change.  A crisis allows a leader to bring about change, with the added benefit that the implementation process is generally faster during a crisis.    

Analyzing the situation when a crisis breaks is important, to verify if the crisis is legitimate is key to determine if crisis protocol needs to be implemented. As in Domino’s Pizza crisis, when the YouTube video sprang up, restaurant officials waited 24 hours before responding. The reason was to evaluate if the video was real. They went through the evaluation process with two objective watchdog groups who helped confirm the situation and bring it Domino’s attention (Walton, Seitz and Ragsdale, 2012). To me, in the social media age we live in, stakeholders demand a quick response to situations. There is a fine line that has to be walked when evaluating a crisis and responding. The question is do you loose valuable response time while evaluating a crisis. Working with your crisis communication leadership team, you will need to make the best decision for the current situation.

So with a little more knowledge about crisis communication, will you work with your organization to create a plan to prepare?  

Delivering Your Message in a Digital World

Message placement and delivery options within have grown tremendously over the last several years with the increase in online advertising. And according to an All Thing Digital article from 2013, Google’s Senior Vice President and chief business officer Nikesh Arora, predicts that “over 50 percent of advertising goes online in the next five years.”  CNET stated that within the first six months of 2012 Google generated $20.8 billion in ad revenue, compared to the entire U.S. print media which generated $19.2 billion. Additionally, according to Ad Age, U.S. digital advertising revenue grew by 19 percent to $27.5 billion in the first six months of this year. The way advertisers, marketers and we as strategic communicators deliver and place our messages requires us to think more strategically in how we execute the task.

Traditional advertising includes print, radio, and television. While what is called nontraditional, although it is becoming more and more “traditional” as it becomes standard practice, emerging media such as display ads, search engine marketing, location-based advertising and more are being utilized. Advertisers are becoming more pull oriented than push.

    

“The exercise of “push” media addresses audiences comparatively imperiously, while “pull” media strategically accords liberty and complies with the interactive choice that ensues” (Serazio, 2010).  The shift that is occurring in today’s marketing and advertising world is the change from push media, which represents a TV ad where the message and product is almost forced upon an individual, to pull media where companies are taking great measures to engage in pull advertising.

The idea is harnessing word-of-mouth-marketing and consumer generated content to a company’s advantage. If a message is shared peer-to-peer, rather than the company itself, there is a greater chance for action from the individual. An example of this includes seeing a newspaper ad for a new restaurant. You might see that ad 10 times over two weeks and it never really triggered any response from you. Now let’s say a co-worker starts talking about that same restaurant and share a positive experience they had at the restaurant.  Now, there’s a greater chance you will try out that business because you trust your co-worker more than a paid advertisement.

Now what if I told you that co-worker was paid by that restaurant to do what its print ads could not. Provide a positive story about the business and generate interest and ultimately business through word-of-mouth-marketing. In the technologically driven society we live in, more and more companies are experimenting with orchestrating organic business or product mentions. “Thus, once more, “discovery” comes to the forefront as a conceptual model for marketing management, supposedly legitimating a scenario whereby the consumer draws out information without feeling like has been forced upon her – a regime of engagement reliant upon creating an environment for a “pull” mechanism while still “pushing” in an underhanded, even passive-aggressive way” (Serazio, 2010, pg. 236).  Meaning, it is the natural progression of an everyday conversation that leads to the promotion of the restaurant, not because you want to hear an ad, but about real life.  Traditional (TV, print, radio) ads automatically make individuals defensive because a message being placed in front of them that may not have any relevance to their interest. The pull mechanism in this instance is the unsolicited advice from a co-worker. Moreover, a Forrester Research study found that 70 percent of consumer are strongly affected by customer review and ratings when making a decision to purchase a product of service.

In my experience I’ve heard and seen marketing agencies integrate consumer-generated content into their campaigns for the reasons listed above, higher message saturation.  When an ad campaign invites you to share your experiences or take a picture with your favorite soft drink next to landmarks in your city or town, companies will then turn to use those images as a way to reinforce their brand.  Companies are very selective about which content they use during a user generated campaign. They want to make sure the image used reflects their brand and its target market.

Trending advertising delivery methods include location-based advertising, contextual and behavior targeting.  Location-based advertising is where an individual receives specific ads depending on their location. An example includes receiving sale information about clothes when you walk past a retail store in a shopping mall. Contextual advertising is where your message will be delivered on a website and through mobile apps that have the same type of content relevant to your audience. For example, I placed an ad for a private religious school that was delivered on religious news websites. The reasoning behind this approach is there is a greater chance a website visitor will interact with the ad if they find the ad relevant to the content they are viewing. Behavioral advertising the process of tracking your activity online and discovering the places you visit and interaction. You may have seen this when you were shopping for clothes, digital camera or computer/tablet. You may have just been researching products, but did not purchase. Now you have an ad for that product following you around for a few days reminding you of that product or service, that is behavioral targeting.

For strategic communicators, we have to find ways to deliver our company’s message effectively. It’s more than just a news release and trying to get media coverage. That is a small part of the equation. Delivering a message could mean paid advertising, as well as earned media. It could mean creating a user generated content campaign to engage with an audience. Modern technology is wonderful, because we can now reach so many people, but we can also be very strategic in reaching specific audiences. It has also made the work of strategic communicators more complex, requiring flexibility.

Tracking your message is often overlooked, but any good communication professional should be evaluating their strategy. Through digital advertising efforts, we can better track an individual through the sales funnel or buying process, thanks to reporting from digital ads. One of the greatest benefits of digital advertising is its ability to, almost in real-time, see the progress of an individual interacting with an ad. The key is reviewing the data and analyzing it to better understand your potential customer. I didn’t want to close this post without mentioning tracking, because it is an important part of evaluating a strategy. 

Oh Where, O Where, Have Our Leaders Gone?

Leadership is about vision, getting people to buy into that vision and empowering others to execute the vision, according to an article by John Kotter in the Harvard Business Review.  Often times leadership is mistaken as management, but management is more about the process and operations of a business. Leaders are needed to help move organizations forward. They set paths for visions that are challenging, and they should be, according to a Forbes.com article.

Recently I was able to catch up with a former classmate of mine who has been living overseas for a number of years.  He is currently working on his Ph.D. in accounting at a university in New Zealand. His research is geared more toward how social effects accounting has on business (I’m simplifying his research significantly, so please forgive me if you’re reading this friend), but his vision about sharing this information leads me to see him as a leader.  His biggest question is about how to share his research in a timely fashion, but questions whether the traditional media model is going by the wayside, including peer reviewed journals. His vision includes a multifaceted approach to sharing scholarly research through digital mediums, while still satisfying requirements for being a published academic.

What makes my friend a leader is that he sees the future of peer reviewed journals and wants to find a way to keep the industry relevant. He asked me if he should take a communication or public relations class to help him get a better sense of the industry. I told him that he is already a leader by having a vision of a problem and a potential way to fix it.

The amount of time leaders spend setting the vision is low. According to a Harvard Business Review article, researchers say that leaders spend only about 3% of their time setting vision and enlistment. This means we need to produce and train leaders and potential leaders the importance of spending time to create vision to aspire to.

To me, strategic communication is the practice of setting a vision and getting others to follow and achieve the common the goals. As a professional communicator, in order to distinguish myself as a leader means that I have provide a strategic vision. Currently, I’m working on redoing my organizations advertising messaging. Part of my directive for my advertising agency include creating messaging that can be recycled or slightly altered to ensure the ads have a long shelf life.

Our last set of ads ran for three years and so due to expense and message alignment, my goal is to keep the new set of fresh ads for the next three years. Part of the change of messaging includes evaluating the current competition and finding what will make our organization stand out amongst the crowd.

Hopefully, by creating a vision of where we want to be with our organization within the next five years will help position our communication efforts for the better. This includes a vision for my organization’s internal communication efforts. Currently, we do not have the ability to communicate with all teachers and staff at various private schools within the system. A vision that I have, and the rest of my office, includes using technology to reach our internal audience of teachers. My vision is within two years we will have the ability to reach all teachers without any stipulations. My goal is to increase communication with our internal audiences to help create conversations and hear feedback that can be used to improve campuses for the better. Opening up bottom up communication, listening, and implementing specific feedback will build and reinforce trust with this audience.

We need more leaders in our world to continue to progress not only organizations and businesses, but move humanity forward. There’s a great quote from the 1995 movie The American President about leadership. Check it out at the clip below to hear the quote.

The absence of leadership forces companies to living project-to-project with no greater vision. Let’s make concentrated efforts to create vision for our organizations, and ourselves to lead us to the future.

Internal Communication - Don't forget your employees

Internal communication is an aspect communications that many businesses fail to execute appropriately.  The focus for management most often is external audiences to ensure customers and outside stakeholders are informed about organization products or services. I propose an organization should focus on their internal audience as research shows that a better informed internal group helps to achieve company goals in the long run.  Additionally, Shein (1994) found effective communication between individuals builds a strong organization culture. Establishing positive patterns in internal and external communication can result in reducing dysfunctionalism within an organization (Parson, 2012). So what are some ways you can implement some changes to help improve internal communication.

Open up company communication
Encourage communication across the the entire company to help open up ideas and increase trust within the company. In Korea, a division of LG setup an internal Twitter-like system where messages could be sent to other employees, questions could be asked and answered.  Although some within management were concerned it would turn into a gossip mill, in the end it helped increase communication between its employees. Not all companies will have ability to create its own Twitter-like micro-blogging platform, but there are free alternatives available, depending on the size of your business.

Check out programs like Instant Messenger, Google’s Hangouts, and iMessage which are some of the more popular programs. The idea is get employees talking. Long gone are the days of employees working in silos. Cross functional communication leads to more successful teams contributing to increasing horizontal communication. Google has done a great job listening to employees and fostering ideas that have helped to company grow exponentially. Ideas including Gmail, Google Talk, AdSense and others were created by listening to ideas Google’s employees had.

Listening is a very important part of internal communications in, and data about listening proves that. Kline (2008) said of the 70 percent of time we are awake, we spend 45 percent of that time listening. So nearly half of the time individuals are awake, we are engaged in listening.  Effective listening is harder then it sounds, but with technologies available in today’s modern business world, it is easier to listen to your employees.

Increasing vertical communication, communication between managers and employees, is also important to create transparency, harness the wisdom of the crowd and track employee suggestions, according to a Fast Company article.  Management can increase communication through emails, newsletters, meetings, memos and more.

Measure your results
As with any undertaking within business, you have to prove success of a program. Be sure to measure results of your internal communication efforts. So how do you accomplish this and show management your efforts as a strategic communicator are worth it?

Measure employee satisfaction. Survey your employees to obtain quantitive data to learn how happy they are in the their job. Ideally, if you can survey before you start your internal communication efforts to get your baseline reading, then survey again after a few months, hopefully you will see an increase in happiness.

Review your retention rate of employees. If you have less turnover, then that helps the organization’s bottomline and means employees are more happy to stay. Lastly, work with you finance and HR team to analyze sales and employee production, all of which should increase with improved internal communications.

A strong message begins from within
For professional communicators, we often have to share information with the media and other external audiences.  Communicating a message that is consistent, especially about a certain topic or situation supports a united front mentality and helps to reinforce the message you want to send to the public. Often though, internal audiences are left off the talking points list and if a reporters gets to an employee, the worst thing that can happen is to have them say, “I have no idea, they don’t tell us anything about what’s going on.” Informing your employees on the latest company news prior to, or at the same time as the public is the first step to cultivating one of your most powerful assets.

An example of this is a crisis situation where a college football rivalry came to a tipping point when one crazed fan from the University of Alabama poisoned a set of  trees in a sacred spot on the Auburn University campus. The trees had been part of a long tradition at the school and were just as sacred as Bevo in Texas or Boomer and Sooner in Oklahoma. Throughout the crisis, which drew national media attention, both universities looked to reduce the chances of further violence, inform their stakeholders, including students, faculty and staff (internal audience), alumni and the general public (Waters 2012). As part of the communication plan, all staff members speaking with the media were provided similar talking points so that no matter if they were football coach, athletic director, dean of students or the president of the university, the message was clear and consistent across the board. The information presented to the universities’ internal audience was so that all were well informed of the ongoing situation and acknowledged that students had the power to reduce chances of retaliation. By the end of the crisis, both universities were able to deflect blame of the incidence, the crazed fan was not tied to  Alabama in any way, and there was a joint effort to continue a competitive, yet civil, rivalry.

Leadership sets the example
So what’s the next step after your company has encouraged communication both horizontally and vertically and has listened to employees.  Now it’s up to your leadership to bring it home. Staff in the upper echelons of the company need to act on what they preach to employees. As you have opened up the gates to suggestions and new ideas, leadership should review all the information and support managers and supervisors as they look to implement the increase in internal communication. Internal communication is very much a collaborative effort. It is not just a top down web, the web of communication should be in every direction to support internal communication, which hopefully will result in a positive organizational culture.

Thought Leaders and Creating Centers of Influence.

In the world of communication, public relations professionals work to share information with designated publics and within that hope to change the publics perception. The hardest thing to change is behavior and according to Kim (2007) opinion leaders have a higher chance to bring about behavior change in someone than mass media, which focuses on public perception.  How is this relevant for us strategic communicators?  It means we have to incorporate how to cultivate and share the thoughts of opinion leaders with our audience. 

Social media is an opportunity to place thought leaders on a global stage and to build relationships.  There are YouTube stars that have made a name for themselves by becoming opinion leaders in their fields or just for having an opinion in general. 

For businesses looking to influence change to sway individuals to purchase their product or use their service, opinion leaders can help be advocates on behalf of the organization without thhe noise coming from the organization.  The first step for a communication professional is to identify either an already established thought leader or create one.  The benefits of an established opinion leader is the fact the person has strong follower base and sees the individual as a source of trusted information.  People rely on trusted sources for information on products, events and services. An established though leader is 

So how hard is to create an opinion leader?  Not as hard as you think. 

1) Identify your thought leader. 

This could someone on your staff team. Maybe it’s a long-time loyal customer who’s been a great word-of-mouth (WOM) marketer for your company.  A lot of times, the CEO wants to the be the opinion leader. For small businesses this can be tough because that means it’s one more hat for them to wear. While it is possible, it can be time consuming, taking them away from other parts of running the business. 

2) Craft your message.

So you’ve selected your opinion leader, now you have to find a message to share.  Encourage your new opinion leader to be genuine. Work with them so the message and vision of this new role is clear and works for both parties.  Also, just because the message you want to send means it’s the message that is important to the audience. Do you what you can to listen prior to beginning your message building. Establish your message and don’t toot your horn too much.  The most well crafted messages connect people with information and not the marketing spiel. . 

3) Share your opinion leader.

OK, now you’re ready to share your opinion leader with the world.  Like I mentioned earlier, social media is a great platform for your send your message with others and create opportunities to connect like-minded individuals with your new thought leader.  Be sure to cover the basics though, remember to utilize your company’s website, blog, newsletters and employees. With platforms like YouTube, you can tag your opinion leader’s message with keywords you want search engines like Google to pick up on and hopefully result in favorable position during a search.  Connecting with other that have the same values and even opinions is very helpful. In the social media world this equates to having a close circle of friends who share the same taste in movies or music. The collection of like-minded people helps to reinforce your opinion leader’s clout. 

I had a client, which I may have mentioned before in previous postings, that sold hand sanitizing towelettes. Marketed as better than liquid sanitizers, convincing others the product was relevant in industries such as food service was a challenge. After many brainstorm sessions, our team came up with having a well-known chef make a TV appearance on a local TV morning show for a cooking segment.  It was nearly summer and the timing was perfect to pitch a “how to keep you and your food safe during summer cookouts” story.  The team identified a chef who was willing to help us out and had used the product previously.  The segment was wonderful and accomplished its mission of using a trusted thought leader within the food service industry to share how our client’s product was relevant to the general public.  The reason I believe it was a success was because we connected the audience with information in a non-intrusive manner. The audience received relevant tips about food handling safety during the summer heat and ways to keep your hands clean between handling different meats, and while at locations outside of your home with close access to sinks. Our client’s product was the next best alternative to soap and water.  It was such a subtle plug for the company’s product that people didn’t realize the whole purpose of the segment was to plug the product. 

That’s how I see opinion leaders being utilized by strategic communicators.  Though provoking, while connecting people with information so they can make up their own minds. Time and time again, I see and hear how WOM marketing is still the most effective tool in a professional communicators/marketers arsenal. Opinion leaders are a great option to reinforce WOM marketing and be a trusted source for the public. 

Introduction and Adoption of Innovation

So I’m restarting my blog again to coincide with my new class, Leadership and Media Strategies at Troy University as part of my graduate degree program. I began my blog nine weeks ago for a previous class and posted on topics relating to strategic communication.  It was fun sharing relevant content with the world, or at least whoever found my blog, and enjoyed reading others on the same subject.  I look forward to you reading my weekly blog postings, The Digital Expanse, and joining me as re-engage readers about strategic communication topics that are relevant in today’s world.  

For the new readers, let me re-introduce myself. I have been blessed to have worked in the marketing communication industry for the last six years. I’ve worked in a small boutique event marketing agency, a regional marketing firm, in-house at an engineering firm and now in the nonprofit sector.  From writing news releases, to media relations, event planning and marketing, marketing communications, ad buying and strategic planning, I’ve had experience at all levels.  It’s been a fun ride, and working at a marketing/public relations (PR) agencies, helped me to get a lot of experience in a short period of time.  Part of the benefits of agency work is that you get to work on a variety of clients, which challenges you to become an expert quickly.    

I have worked on local, regional and international communication initiatives. Some of my most rewarding experiences included working with a medical nonprofit group helping to figure out the most newsworthy research topics to create news releases. The challenging part was finding a balance between making the news easily digestible for mainstream news outlets and trade publications.  I also ran local and regional communications for several of the U.S. Army All-American Bowls, a high school all-star football game.  I’ll tell you that of everything I have done within this industry, one of the most difficult was successfully media training 90+ 17 and 18 year old student-athletes.  

As of late, my interest has been finding ways strategic communication can create change.  Maybe it’s because I fall under the millennial generation, and generally, my generation is more about being satisfied with the work we do versus monetary satisfaction. I think that communication and the technology available to us allows for a more rapid adoption of change across the board.   The public almost demands swift action when a perceived injustice occurs.  Twitter and other social media channels seem to be the methods of choice for the general public to seek for change.  Another method that has gained traction is the online petition. Anyone can create a petition for anything and ask for “signatures.” I think professional communicators have the power to shape and change, not only our industry, but how others see the world.   

Rogers’ (1995) Diffusion of Innovation theory suggests there multiple levels of adoption of a new innovation. Often referred during the adoption of new technology, there are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and the laggards.  Robinson (2009) says that opinion leaders are the way to reach audiences to help trigger the adoption of an innovation, say for example wearable technology like smartwatches. 

Diffusion of innovation is important to strategic communicators as it reminds us that every audience and/or age group requires a different message before full adoption.  The idea of opinion leaders plays more true in today’s Web 2.0 world where individuals seek peer-to-peer approval before purchasing a product or service.  I am a walking example of this idea. Currently, I am considering purchasing a smartwatch, specifically one made by a company called Pebble.  For the last two weeks I have been scouring YouTube (the world’s second largest search engine) and tech review websites trying to soak in as much impartial information I can about the product, so I can make an informed decision on my own. I have combed through the reviews on Amazon and BestBuy.com to get real-world review information about the product.  I’m still not convinced about the product, but I think the bigger internal questions I’m facing right now is if wearable technology has a long future.  After large companies like Apple and Google have jumped into the smartwatch fray there is s general lack of direction about what the device should/could be. If you’re looking at Roger’s adoption curve I would say we are in early to mid stages of the early majority right now. The late majority is still seeing the risk of the smartwatch technology as a fad and not a technology that will  remain 10 or 20 years from now. 

Let’s learn from Rogers’ model and become better communicators. The first step is becoming better listeners. 

 

Closing out with marketing communication

My COM 6630 class is in its final week so this will be my last post associated with my Strategic Communication and Emerging Media class. I am taking another class next term that will require more blog postings, so I will be back to posting in about two to three weeks.  By the end of December I’ll be halfway through the program and that much closer to earning my Masters in Strategic Communication from Troy University.

My last posting will focus on marketing communications (MARCOMM) or integrated marketing communications, because I feel that’s where the profession is currently at or heading.  Integrated marketing communications is the act of intentionally blending online and offline tool and tactics around a single marketing strategy, according to Forbes.com.  Strategic communication professionals already think in broader terms, so it’s natural for these individuals to easily fill the role of integrated MARCOMM.

Businesses are moving in this direction where there is a blending of the marketing and communication departments. At the very least, the two departments are talking more with the broader understanding that both elements contribute to the bottom line.  Sending a consistent message across all internal and external marketing and communication channels will build better brand awareness, and lead to greater opportunities for stakeholders to be informed.

So how does a company blend the departments or activities to achieve integrated MARCOMM?  For one, it’s easier said than done, like most things. Two, it requires C-level folks to understand its value, again easier said than done.

What kind of skillset is required to fill the role of a MARCOMM professional?

• A professional needs to have an understanding of how their communication efforts affect the bottom line.
• They need to have an understanding of how to use technology to distribute messages across multiple channels.
• Communication skills are a must, including delivering a concise multi-layered message that reach specific audiences.
• Adaptable, to stay current on latest social media trends to communicate with the public.
• Strategic, in the sense that everything is related back to an overall master plan to achieve desired objectives.

With a handful of key skills, businesses can incorporate the right person to lead their integrated MARCOMM efforts in the 21^st Century.  All of which is critical in today’s fractured media world, where it is more important than ever to be consistent and persistent.

Children and their use of technology

Children play a huge role in the lives of a families, and marketers and strategic communicators now value the teenage age group due to their purchase power and influence.  A few questions arise with this age group such as, what’s the best way to communicate with teenagers, and a more fundamental question; what ways can parents limit the use of technology so it doesn’t overwhelm a child.

According to CBS News 9 out of 10 American teenagers use social media. The same article cited a 2014 survey by Piper Jaffray, an investment and asset management bank and firm, which found that 76% of surveyed teenagers cited Instagram as the most popular social media site. Instagram focuses on photo driven social media with limited words and a strong emphasis on hashtags. Twitter was second most popular at 59% followed by Facebook at 45% and 22% say they use Pinterest.

Most notable was the popularity of Facebook, or more like a decline, from the Spring of 2014 to Fall 2014 where the social media giant saw a decline in popularity of 27% by teenagers.

For strategic communicators, and marketers for that matter, finding ways to get messages to the coveted teenage age group is tough, to say the least. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of trending social media channels. What’s popular today may not be popular six months from now, hence the drop in Facebook usage of teenagers.

Finding the right message also takes some strategizing. It all goes back to remembering your target audience. What resonates with Baby Boomer probably won’t work well with Millennials or Generation Z.

Privacy is a big issue with young adults using technology tools such as blogs and social media.  A study by Sonia Livingstone at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK noted that young adults between the ages of 13 and 16 noted that utilize technology, specifically social media almost daily. But the one thing they are concerned about was privacy. The subjects in the study knew they had to protect themselves from outside predators through the help of privacy settings, but admitted they did not fully understand how to use or change the privacy settings.

This brings up a great question about how we as a society and as parents should do to ensure our children are protected as they navigate the digital expanse.  As with anything, moderation should be the keyword used by parents and experts. Much like trying to stay healthy and eating right, consuming alcohol, etc., doing so in moderation limits potential negative effects. So for technology, parents need to the watchful hawk monitoring their child’s online access and time. Furthermore, frank conversations need to take place where parents try to communicate that not everything on the internet is accurate. Starting those conversations early so children understand that to make an informed decision takes gathering information from a variety of credible resources and making a determination thereafter. Words that are easier to type then to place in action.

My DS who is a toddler is right at the center of being engaged in technology. As a parent I’m petrified on how to handle this phase. What’s the best way to introduce technology like a cell phone and tablet computers? And you see it almost every day while out and about. Children in restaurants with tablets playing a game or watching a show or movie to keep them occupied. Trying to define the line of when and where to allow children to use the available technology is becoming harder and harder, because it is everywhere.

I would make the case that if children are NOT introduced to technology, while their mind still has elasticity, the child may be behind when he/she enters a school setting where technology is seen as a learning tool in almost every classroom.

So my wife and I are thinking about purchasing a tablet for my son for Christmas. Amazon has recently come out with a small tablet designed specifically for children. What’s very attractive about the product is the ability to set time limits on screen time, what apps the child can access and removing the ability to purchase apps or additional items all together while in “kid mode.” It’s nice to see companies begin to understand the need to encourage how much time a child is exposed to technology. Because of Amazon’s ability to understand what parents want, I anticipate this tablet to be a very good seller.

I am amazed that our toddler almost instinctively knows how to use a cell phone or tablet. I imagine it is because he learns by observing and if he sees his parents using the devices, then it must mean it’s OK for him to use as well. Even when he first got a hold of one our cell phones by accident he intuitively knows to swipe left and right. Since we how have several generations who have been around for the technology revolution, are our children beginning to be prewired to be successful and even “survive” by using technology?

 I close out today’s posting with some final thoughts about technology and children. With so many apps, games, websites and other communication technologies, it is only going to get more difficult to protect our children. It’s up to us parents to find ways to inform our children and monitor their access, not to invade their privacy, but to protect them from outside forces. Let’s communicate with our kids, maybe even create an app or tech tool that will keep them safe while they’re online. Bottom line is parents are the first teachers, let’s not waste that opportunity.