I recently attended a Webinar entitled "How to Leverage Blogs, Podcasts & Other New Media To Boost Market Share and Mind Share", co-sponsored by PRNewsOnline and Cymfony. The moderator was Cymfony CMO, Jim Nail (of Influence 2.0 fame) and the speakers were three pros in this area:
- Steve Wilson, Senior Director, Global Web Communications at McDonald's
- Robert Scoble, VP Media Development, Podtech.net
- Steve Cody, President of Peppercom (also president of Counselors Academy)
These were my big takeaways ...
Steve Cody:
- PR, as a discipline, is best positioned to use social media. Used to talking *with* customers.
- Blogs can be a good crisis response tool. [me: I agree whole-heartedly with this. Get your legal folks engaged ahead of time, but set up a blog to deal with crisis response. Typically, in large organizations, there are multiple steps in taking content live to a website, even when there is an easy-to-use CMS in place; a blog can eliminate some of those steps and put control in the hands of PR/Corp Comm people when they need it. Also, if it is an environmental or site-specific incident, they can post remotely with a mobile device. Excellent idea.]
- Don't overreact to criticism in the blogosphere. Most of the time it will be a David vs Goliath scenario and you (as BigCo) can't win.
- Be clear on the benefit and purpose of the content you publish on your blog. "If I didn't work for the company, would I care?" (Christopher Barger, IBM)
- If PR firms are going to recommend social media to their clients, they should know what its like to do it. Cody himself has a blog and a podcast. [me: another great point. Too many agencies and firms are jumping on the bandwagon without having tried to practice what they preach.
Mitch Joel actually calls High Road Communications on this.High Road recently announced their new Social Media division. One Degree had a few things to say about the naming of their division. But, to me, a more interesting issue is one that Mitch Joel (unintentionally) raised in the comments of the post. He asked their senior VP, Justin Creally (who had left a previous comment in the One Degree post) for links to High Road's blogs, podcasts and other contributions to social media. So far, no response.]
Robert Scoble:
- Pitching bloggers on stories requires that you know their context. Don't pitch a tech blogger about reviewing a movie. Know the bloggers first!
Steve Wilson
- Why blog? It fills a gap in other communication channels to the 18 to 40's .. a gap left by TV/print/radio.
- If your company wants to publically blog, engage your legal team early. They can help you with risk management as well as with any regulatory issues, particularly those dealing with financial reporting.
- How is the McDonald's CSR blog doing? We get about 20K visitors a month, but, perhaps more importantly, about 200 blogs comment regularly on what is going on at the CSR blog. Incredibly valuable learning and interaction.
- McDonald's is also video podcasting. Way better than a 60-second commercial. Though it is also important to keep track of our commercials and commercials our customers have created on Flickr, YouTube, etc. It's great to see how they interact with the brand.
All in all, a really informative webinar. I'm so impressed with what McDonald's is doing. Internal blogging (including their CEO), the CSR blog, their Olympic Champion Crew blog, their podcasts. That they are trying all of these channels to expand their conversations with their different customers and stakeholders. Clearly, they have come a long way from 1994 when Josh Quittner, intrepid journalist, registered mcdonalds.com.
I''m lovin' it!
Update: My characterization of Mitch's intent by his comment on One Degree has been edited per his comment on this post.