Confessions of a Journalist: um, that’s not a story.

April 30, 2012 by 4 Comments

Last week I begin a series of posts called “Confessions of a Journalist.” Every week, I reveal some of my so-called deep, dark journalist secrets from my last few years of experience as a tech/startup blogger in France and Europe.

Last week, I confessed why I may not read a press release. This week I’ll go one step further and tell you what actually makes something compelling enough for me to write about it.

From here, you all look the same.

If you’ve ever gone to more than a couple of networking events in your life, you’ll definitely know what I’m talking about. You meet tons of incredibly talented people, who all work with amazing companies – from influential investment funds to life-changing startups. But over time, they all begin to blur together. Put a bunch of revolutionary people and ideas in the same room and you may eventually see no more than a crowd. Well, that’s more or less what happens once you’re being pitched “amazing” startup ideas 24-7. And that’s what happens in any industry; for the most part, everything starts to sound more or less the same.

“Once upon a time…”

I quickly discovered that entrepreneurs may actually be sitting on a fabulous story but not even know it. One example that comes to mind is from French startup MadMagz. Simply talking about a platform where people can make magazines didn’t really make me jump for joy. But then I found out one of the first users of the product was a 9 year old boy who had used the platform to print these adorable magazines. I was sold.

After I published the story, it was picked up by other publications throughout France as well – and it naturally highlighted how great the product was if a 9 year old boy could use it so easily. (Then again, this story seems less impressive now that toddlers are happily flipping through iPad applications.)

One great way to know what makes a story is to talk to people OUTSIDE of your industry. See what they react to and what they find interesting. Also, look at what else people are talking about and see if you can make your topic relevant.

“A dog made a website with our product.”

After the MadMagz story was published, some entrepreneurs thought that this type of story was a definite win with me – and they went on to pitch me all kinds of nonsense. At some point, I was even pitched a story about a dog that made websites. Puhlease. Make sure that if you’re going to craft a story, it’s based on (some form of) the truth. That said, if you actually do have a product that allows pets to make websites – please contact me…

In addition, it may seem like there are some pieces of information that always make the news no matter what; companies raising funding, the launch of a new product, etc. However, this definitely isn’t the case.

The truth about “non stories.”

It’s true – there may be times when you pitch a journalist a story and they come back and tell you “it’s not a story.” Actually, what they could also mean is “it’s not their story.”

I was actually reminded of this recently when talking with former Mashable Editor, Ben Parr. I mentioned a story to him that was easily picked up by French publications – but he insisted very strongly that it wasn’t a story. Turns out it just wasn’t a Mashable story. There are tons of different publications out there – a lot of the time, it’s just about making sure you’re pitching to the right people.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been contacted to write about the launch of a non-innovative iPhone app for a truck company, a mattress company, a coffee company and more, simply because the PR team figured an iPhone app meant I of course had to be interested. For me, it was definitely not a story. Then again, for an app review site or a site about trucks, mattresses or coffee, maybe it was a story.

Not sure what journalists at a particular publication actually want to write about? Just ask them – via email, Twitter, Linkedin, Quora, etc. For example, here are some TechCrunch writers revealing what startups need to do to get covered.

What about the end?

The one thing that every single journalist – no matter what industry – will be looking for, is the “so what” at the end of the story. It’s the moral of the story, the reason why people should care, the lesson to be learned. You need to make it very clear why the topic matters to them and their audience. For example, a startup building the most ridiculously hi-tech product may never get coverage if they can’t demonstrate to a journalist how their product is going to impact the lives of many people.

Here is a conclusion I found in an article in Fast Company about the data that proves that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Why should people care? Because eating breakfast can make them healthy and thinner – and here are the stats to prove it.

In many cases, this “so what” part of a story should actually come in your introduction when you are pitching a story. If I can’t immediately understand why something is important, I’m never going to write about it…

If you have additional thoughts or questions on what makes a good story, feel free to comment below.

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Confessions of a Journalist: do you think I actually read your press release?

April 19, 2012 by 4 Comments

This post is the first of a new series I am going to write about my experience as a journalist/blogger. I’ve written and continue to contribute to numerous publications – TechCrunch, Business Insider, the Telegraph, the Kernel, Betakit and more – and  I cover primarily tech startups. That said,  these tips are definitely relevant for all industries as journalism is going through a massive evolution with the development of new technology platforms.

Topic 1: The beloved press release.

Now, I picked a bit of a provocative title for this article on purpose. But PR and comms departments, please calm down – I DO read your press releases. Well, that is, if they are good.

What makes a good press release, you ask?

Any PR or comms expert is very familiar with a press release – an official written communication statement that is sent to the media in order to announce or share a piece of information. Most of the time, companies send out press releases to announce “official” news – the launch of a new product, new funding, an acquisition, etc.

Press releases also vary greatly from one industry to another. In tech, press releases tend to be 1-2 pages max, a little more neutral in tone with less visuals and more text. But go look at press releases from more visual industries – like fashion or cosmetics – and you’ll discover a variety of tones, colours, photos and very little text. For example, here’s a very eye-catching press release from bath & body brand Soap and Glory:

If you want to see an example of a more sober press release, take a look at Ebay’s press room. Honestly, neither of these styles is necessarily better than the other – they are actually both relevant for their audience.

Good press releases will of course feature a catchy title (I cannot stress the importance of titles enough as I often receive hundreds of emails a day that look more or less the same) and relevant information for the particular topic. Some journalists will actually publish more or less exactly what you send in the press release. But many journalists will (hopefully) want more; in fact, they’ll want to publish something exclusive that you’re not offering to everyone in your standard communication – so be sure to save some good bits of info for the journalists you really want to develop good relationships with.

News beyond the release.

Even though many traditional PR and comms teams may still hold on tight to their beloved press releases, journalists are actually excited in finding news through other means – and there are tons of terrific social platforms that they turn to in order to do so. Some of these I mentioned in an earlier post about some of the new social platforms companies should really be paying attention to: Pinterest, Quora and Instagram. But naturally, the list is much longer and often includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and more. These different platforms are now considered viable and verified sources for news, so Facebook status updates, Tweets, Quora answers and Foursquare checkins can all be used in lieu of quotes in articles.

For example, here is an article in People Magazine about actress Melissa Joan Hart. Notice that the evidence in the article is a direct link to her Tweet…

Journalists love this type of thing because it looks like they’ve done some good fact-checking and they can use quotes direct from the source. PR and comms teams should think about leveraging different platforms when communicating to journalists and supplementing press releases with Tweets, Quora answers, Foursquare checkins and more. Or, ditch the press release and send this stuff in lieu – in some cases, a very powerful Tweet can be enough for a story…

Oh, careful, everyone can see.

That said, don’t forget that social platforms are public and that everyone can see. Therefore, the information published on these platforms lose their exclusivity if the journalist doesn’t publish quickly and if multiple sources pick up on the info. So be sure to manage what you publish and what you give to journalists – and always include something exclusive if you can.

No, press releases are not dead.

It may be natural to want to draw the conclusion that press releases are losing their relevancy – but they are very clearly NOT dead. They’re simply going through a bit of metamorphosis with the evolution of the social web. But we need to recognize that communication habits are changing as are the ways in which journalists and bloggers receive and relay info as well.

Some quick things to avoid…

In the past, I have seen some companies do all kinds of no-nos with press releases. For example, one company used to send along a press release every month to announce a “new” product feature. It quickly became evident that the features were rather trivial and that this was simply a poor communications tactic. Overtime, I stopped reading the releases.

Another thing to be sure of is that you send the press release in the right language (the language that the journalist will be publishing in) and the right format. If there are elements (photos, videos, links) that the journalist may want to incorporate into their article, be sure to send them as part of the original email (there are now different products that let you build dynamic and multi-media press kits, including Augure). Do not send large attachments as they can get stuck or also annoy the journalist – in fact, the journalist will probably contact you to get the elements they need if they are interested.

Now, if there are other journalists, PR or comm experts out there that would like to share additional tips and tricks, feel free to chime in.

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3 new social platforms your company should be paying attention to

February 21, 2012 by 4 Comments

Back in 2004 when Facebook first launched, there was no reason for companies to pay any attention. The platform was only open to a select number of American university students and nobody really thought of “poking” as having any real business value. It couldn’t be much better than a big, college chat room…could it?

By the time YouTube and Twitter launched within the next few years, Facebook was already well on its way to becoming the dominant social platform and businesses were beginning to tune in. The company had launched interest “like” pages in 2007 and redesigned them for business purposes in 2009. Nobody dared to question the business value of Facebook as it launched its famous “Like” button on April 22, 2010.

But while businesses undoubtedly grasp the value of Facebook, there is still a lot of reticence to join other social platforms – potentially because none have become as powerful as Facebook with its 800 million users. Even platforms like Twitter – which has managed to topple governments around the world – still struggles to convince companies of its business value.

Still, just because a social platform doesn’t have 800 million users doesn’t mean that it can’t dramatically change the way you do business. Innovative cross-platform social strategies can often result in an increase in user acquisition and retention. So here are 3 new platforms you should be paying attention to, if you haven’t already.

1. Quora

Founded in 2009 by a handful of former Facebook founders, Quora is the social web’s answer to Yahoo Answers. This social Q&A site may not seem that different from the rest – but the company’s original user acquisition strategy encouraged well-known professionals to use the platform as early adopters. Therefore, you can find questions and answer by people like Sun Microsystems co-founder and former CEO Vinod Khosla, amongst others.

But what does this mean for business? This platform can do everything from help you recruit talent to help you establish relationships with potential clients – primarily by demonstrating your expertise. It’s a little less fun than poking and retweeting, but then again, it’s far more professional. By clearly demonstrating your expertise in relevant topics, your answers will begin to make their way to the forefront. This, in turn, should help you (and your business) gain exposure. Don’t believe me? Just read how HelpJuice leveraged Quora for customer acquisition.

It can also be used as a more indirect customer service channel. If you notice that a particular question that is related to your business or sector is accumulating a lot of followers, then it’s probably worth paying attention to. Mashable’s Heather Whaling notes the example of Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom, who leveraged the platform do openly answer questions about his company.

To find out more on how building a Quora presence can be beneficial to your business (and how to do it!), check out this article from Inc. Magazine.

2. Instagram

The company crowned as Apple’s best mobile app in 2011 is far more than your average photo sharing app. Tons of brands – from Starbucks to Burberry to MTV – have discovered the beauty of this app, which focuses on providing good quality photo content rather than pushing products and services down people’s throats.

As with many social platforms, experts encourage Instagram users to post consistently, frequently and to engage followers and users. But what makes Instagram different from the other social platforms is the visual element. This means companies can present content in a fun and creative way – and chances are it will look amazing, too. Even if your product is not visual, chances are you can come up with a related theme that will make having an Instagram account worthwhile.

Instagram itself published some resources for brands to see how they could leverage the platform – including my favorite idea: flash mobs! But if you’re curious for more info on why companies like General Electric (check out some of their featured photos here) and Puma are flocking to Instagram and what kind of content they’re creating, read this.

3. Pinterest

The latest social platform to take over digital headlines is Pinterest. This virtual pinboard platform allows people to organize and share their interests from all over the web in a visual way.  And once again, companies haven’t failed to notice the business potential in Pinterest either.

Companies like Birchbox, Whole Foods and Scholastic have developed beautiful display boards that help to visually communicate their domain of expertise. As one article put it, Pinterest is “visual story telling for brands” that helps to create brand awareness. Brands can use it to communicate about their domain of expertise as well as their company culture, corporate social responsibility and more. In addition, “pinning” good content from the right location can help you drive traffic to your site or other social media properties. Check out this article for a few tips on how to use Pinterest for business – and if you’re still not convinced, check out this fabulous presentation by Nurun’s Gregory Pouy.

Obviously there are tons of other noteworthy social platforms out there too. But these are 3 that are really beginning to make their way to the top. In the next few weeks, we’ll be including more in-depth analysis and tips on how to properly leverage these platforms – and a few others.

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How La Redoute turned crisis management into clever social marketing

February 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

The naked man in the picture on La Redoute's websiteFor a major online retailer, what can be worse than finding out from the Internet that one of the photographs in your online catalog shows a naked man next to young children wearing your clothes?

That’s the situation French brand La Redoute was faced with a few weeks ago, when they used a photograph of kids running on the beach to sell a new T-shirt model. It wasn’t long before site visitors using the zoom feature on the page discovered a naked man in the water just behind the group of young models. Definitely not the kind of associations that sort of business is after.

Obviously, this spread like wildfire on Twitter and Facebook, which more than whiffs of #epicfail tags attached to it.

Turning a reputation threat to your advantage

The brand needed to react and quickly. But initial response wasn’t overwhelming. A few apologies were written and the offending pictures removed, not that quickly.

However, as with every crisis, when the damage is done, it’s done, there’s no undoing, Ctrl+Z or MIB flash memory eraser. Crisis management in these situations is not about undoing but about rebound and moving on.

And this was performed brilliantly with the following video (in French).

Why is this so good ?

  • It acknowledges the issue openly and then more. While most companies responsible for a mistake usually try to minimise it or their responsibility, the message in this video not only recognizes the issue but gives examples of more mistakes in the catalog. However amusing and minimal the example given, this sends out a very open and positive message.
  • It says I’m sorry. “Again, we are very sorry for …”
  • It describes the plan in very accurate terms. “… We have placed whole teams on this. They have scanned the whole catalog and found more problems …”
  • It opens up dialogue for the future. “… But we know there are probably more mistakes left in there. We are asking you for help …” Active participation of the public totally eliminates what antagonism may have built up in the first stages of the crisis.
  • It uses crowdsourcing. There’s effectively no better way to iron out all the niggles than to unleash the unlimited power of the Internet on it. With literally thousands of visitors eager to be the first to find new blunders, the chances of there being any left in a few days absolutely minimal. For free.
  • It rewards intelligently. “… Since a naked man is responsible for this, we will reward anyone who firsts reports a boo boo by dressing him/her up from head to toes …” While many CSR programs are plagued by iffy greenwashing feelings for being totally unrelated to the social or environmental damage caused by the company, La Redoute’s initiative is spot on. The sell clothes. Their clothing adds caused an image problem. It is through closing they will make it better.
  • It’s a fantastic marketing operation. While some buyers may have been put off by the initial blooper, the video, that has now been watched over 150.000 times, is likely to get thousands of people scan through the whole catalog in search of something out-of-place. How many will actually buy, I wonder.

It may not be over, though. Initial crisis response is all about re-establishing dialogue and laying out the plan ahead. So far, so good. But the faulty company then has to walk the path. In this case, the video is so clever that some will inevitably feel it was all done in purpose. The way La Redoute addresses these worries will probably key to the complete resolution of this minor hick-up. If they make to much of a show out of it, it could flare out of up-to-now benign proportions.

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5 must-have steps in every monitoring plan

January 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

Media monitoring on a smartphone

Media monitoring on a smartphone

Monitoring is an essential part of any PR and reputation management campaign management, but is often considered from the sole point of view of extracting information from the Internet, whereas a successful plan involves and requires many other steps.

In my previous post, I described monitoring as trying to a listen to a conversation happening 20 feet away in a crowded bar. This is the information extraction part often referred to, but what good is it if the conversation stays in your head as a string a words, not communicated to anyone or analyzed or used to take action ?

Here are 5 steps that define a useful media monitoring plan from the definition phase to the decisional aspects.

 

Defining entities

Cutting through the billions of conversations going on each day implies restricting both the subjects you’re interested in as accurately as possible and limiting the sources to the most useful ones. defining entities is the first part.

Most competitive monitoring plans will focus on brand names, products or services and company executives. That in itself can be quite a hurdle. I monitor the news for Augure (which means “omen” in French) and you wouldn’t believe the stuff that comes in from World of Warcraft, ancient mysteries forums, church organ players and death metalheads if I’m not careful in my keyword selection. Oh my … ;)

WOW Augure !

Once you have defined your keywords and potential namesakes or other pitfalls, advanced monitoring platforms use semantic analysis to extract the correct information using context in the article. This filters out most if not all of the noise without missing important data.

Defining sources

Where does your audience hang out? Are your stakeholders most vocal on Facebook or in blogs? Is offline coverage important to your success?

Listening to the social world

Listening to a social world

The natural temptation, in order not to miss anything important is to monitor the whole universe. And this leads to numbers games about the number of sources being monitored. But that’s meaningless and dangerous:

  • First because as soon as you have the technology to monitor a blogging platform such as wordpress, you can monitor over 50 million sources. Hook-on to Facebook and that’s 700 million, no 800, no 900 no … Numbers are meaningless. Far more important is to identify those that are influential in your industry, extract clean information from them (no adverts, no spam) and be able to add more as and when necessary.
  • Secondly because you will not be able to digest the result of too large a reading list. My photography-minded friend and Augure Product Manager Caroline set up one of our feeds to monitor the news about a new camera on social media. Like her, I doubt that you will enjoy seeing thousands of messages pile up every hour (unless what you want is a statistical dashboard), even on-topic ones ;) So be specific about what you need to include. By default, we suggest packs to our customers and it is always easy to build from that.

Homogeneizing

Forum messages and offline have very different structures. Mixing offline sources with online media requires some technical work in order to present readable and interpretable results. As a simple example: in your monitoring results, would you rather see tweets with shortened links or the article hiding behind the link ?

Analyzing

What is your goal with that monitoring? Are you interested in the share of blog coverage of a product you have just launched or is real-time sentiment analysis of a developing crisis more important to you?

Publication click-through statistics

Too often, analytics are an afterthought of monitoring plans. But defining the dashboard you need prior to anything else is important to determine what information your monitoring and/or qualification software/teams need to provide you with? Tone, volume, size, images, number of views, ranking, influence levels … ?

Sharing and collaborating

As social networks have changed public relations forever, companies have had to adapt by becoming more social themselves. Stakeholder engagement is no longer the exclusive responsibility of a few staff members in the PR team and more and more employees are becoming brand ambassadors after being trained and receiving proper engagement guidelines.

Media monitoring feeds view on a smartphone and an iPad

Media Monitoring On The Go

As will be discussed in the final installment of this series, monitoring is essential for successful engagement and its results should be share with anyone taking part in discussions on behalf of the organization.

Depending on the recipient, sharing may take the form of an analytic report, a webzine to read in the tube or a formal press review and reputation dashboard. Whatever the form taken, sharing is an essential and often overlooked part of success.

Now that you have the 5 steps in hand, how do you use your monitoring to enhance your social engagement ?

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Raising the bar for online monitoring

January 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

Picture yourself at the pub after work with that cool pint in one hand and your mates all around you discussing the day’s events: That incredible piece of fielding by Kiwi 12th man Bevan Small, the dreaded copying machine that’s down again, the new memo from IT and how idiotic it is to have made Greedo shoot first in the Blu-Ray edition in spite of fan protest.

Tables all around are the same and the whole room is alive with the hum of multiple conversations and points of view on various topics, everyone joining in regardless of background or expertise.

The hum of simultaneous conversations

But you’ve hooked onto a specific exchange going on a few meters away about a specific case you’re working on. After struggling several minutes to piece together the few words you have been able to isolate from the background drone, you realize your eavesdropping led you on to a different subject that you initially thought and you jump back in to your pal’s discussion with a hasty”… of course Han shot first! There’s no way Greedo could have missed at that range otherwise. Lucas is a self-righteous twerp!”.

From digital data to engagement information

Monitoring online and social media can be a very similar experience to this. The bar analogy isn’t just for fun, because social media engagement recommendations start exactly like this : “imagine yourself in a bar full of conversations. Listen to the conversations, add meaningful comments whenever possible. Provide information and entertainment and make a name for yourself in the community”.

Augure's anline and social monitoring dashboard

And, as I will describe in part 3 of this series, monitoring is not only for reporting, but a tremendous help to guide your engagement:

  • Who is discussing your brand and who is having the greatest influence in the conversation ?
  • How is your engagement campaign doing ? Which are the most responsive media and which terms are getting the most amplification ?
  • What is the global impact of engagement on the company’s top line and reputation ?

So, where do you start ?

The augure webzine displaying monitoring results for the iPhone 4s

Augure's webzine displaying monitoring results for "Apple"


Going from the millions of digital voices found in blogs, comments, Facebook, online media, Twitter and forums to a clean and useable output that resembles the picture above implies a series of challenges that are described in the next post:

  • Define who you want to listen to. In the bar, you cannot choose to eliminate a table or add others. In social monitoring project, you can.
  • Define what you want to listen for. Sir Isaac Newton’s view of an apple isn’t the same as Steve Jobs’ was. Trust me, we know. We have clients with fruit names and we are called Augure (which means omen, in French). So we know a lot about disambiguation.
  • Define what you want to measure. Are you launching a product and interested in share of discussion or is sentiment relative to a recent crisis more prominent in your mind ?

I will go deeper into these aspects in the next two posts. Stay tuned !

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Saving a Brand with Social Media

January 6, 2012 by 6 Comments

What happens to your Brand’s reputation when the public finds your products underwhelming and how do you recover from such a situation ?

This is what Xavier DES HORTS, Communications and CSR Manager for Nokia France explains in our 4th installment of our Reputation Decision Makers WebTV series.

Nokia are currently launching their Lumia 800 smartphone that faces the important task of restoring the brand’s image with the public after a period during which the Finnish brand was not as active as others on this market.

In this video, Mr DES HORTS describes how the whole company’s communication organisation was radically changed in order to adapt to new challenges and new publics. In the introduction, he states:

Before, we were mainly talking to the large media. Now, we are engaging with every fan, journalist and blogger.

The important takeaways from the new organisation and the launch are very interesting:

  • All employees were trained internally for engagement guidelines and social media risk
  • Employees that wish to can be brand ambassadors, actively engaging bloggers and the public after being specifically trained
  • Twitter and other social media, such as FourSquare play a major role in getting the word out to journalists, correcting false rumours on the Internet long before they transform into bad coverage and relay news from the Finland mothership

According to Mr DES HORTS, the key and bond to this social media strategy is to think as a media, to plan an editorial strategy for social media publication.

A sign that social media has been successfully integrated into Nokia’s communications strategy is the ability to launch a new product using a cross channel engagement campaign starting with a PR event with targeted influencial journalists, followed by a temporary space for consumers, fans and bloggers to borrow many samples of the Lumia 800 and finishing with an advertising campaign. All this with the support of numerous in-house ambassadors, which shows that social media is not being addressed as a separate channel but that Nokia itself has become a social company.

And that probably holds the greatest promise for success.

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Why your brand image could be crippling your corporate reputation

October 14, 2011 by 5 Comments

It has been argued that corporate reputation is an aggregate of the company’s image over long periods but that’s not entirely true. And confusing image with reputation could in fact lead to a degradation of the latter.

It’s all relative

Let me explain.

Building brand image is trying to establish strong, favourable and unique associations with the brand in the consumer’s mind. When you think of Nike, the swoosh – Athena’s wings – comes to mind. So do the slogan “Just do it” and associations with high performing athletes.

Nike's swoosh

Corporate Reputation, on the other hand is the sum of perceptions by all stakeholder groups relative to their reputation drivers. World wide surveys such as Edelman’s Trust Barometer reveal what these reputation drivers are, year after year, at the country level.

But for a corporation, these can – and do – change with geography and stakeholder types. Consumers might or might not be happy with product quality. NGOs may still have memories of underaged labour or environmental misconduct. Partners may appreciate doing business with the company. Employees may love internal training and salaries but dislike work conditions …

  • One is about changing mindsets, the other about listening.
  • One is about selling products, the other about enabling business.
  • One is short-term, the other lasts for years. Years ago, Nike signed onto the Global Compact in an attempt to promote an environmentally and socially responsible image but negative associations still linger ten years on.

Social Media should not be (exclusively) a branding channel

Nowhere is stakeholder monitoring (and engagement) more important than in corporate reputation management. In order to find the reputation drivers and issues relative to them, there simply is no alternative to listen and engage.

Reputation barometers such as the Reputation Institute’s are vast surveys asking stakeholders what matter most to them. PR guidelines such as those published by the IPR and AMEC are constantly pushing towards primary reasearch because it is an area that has demonstrated the ability to provide actionable insights and meaningful information.

social media activity types for large french companies

Click the image to access our study (in French)

And yet, social media, the one area where organisations can engage directly with their public is very rarely used to question visitors and discuss social or environmental issues. It does happen, but more often social media is being used to promote brand image, run community-boosting contests or games and develop entertainment programs.

We have just released a study showing how France’s largest corporations are using social media. After recent surveys revealed how much social activity was being devoted by the public to these companies and their boards, we evaluated how these companies were responding.

We measured their presence on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube, their publication frequency, the variety of activities on these networks and community engagement. You can read the complete analysis on our website by clicking on the picture above, but here are three takeaways:

  • Companies tweet about 100x less than their public
  • Only 8% of social activity is devoted to bilateral engagement
  • Community engagement is non-existent for 70% of companies

Marketing and PR could share ownership of social media

In her book No Logo, writer Naomi Klein noted: “In many ways branding is the Achilles heel of the corporate world. The more these companies shift to being all about brand meaning and brand image, the more vulnerable they are to attacks on image.” That was a decade ago. But it remains as true today and nowhere is it more in evidence than on social media.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that a Facebook page dealing only with the company’s environmental programs would remain quite empty and would not sell many products. But a combined effort between marketing and communications teams would likely be profitable to both. Organisations that have gathered large communities could listen to them more actively and combine reputation management with brand building. Just do it!

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Should crumbling French banks defend their market value on social media?

September 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

As I write this post, stock prices of the major French banks are up 6% or more. But in the previous six weeks, their market valuation dropped more than 50% and the yo-yo is likely not over. This brutal fall may remind us of late 2008, but the two situations are in fact quite different :

  • In 2008, French and international banks held vast amounts of toxic subprime assets. And the crisis was largely due to the fact that the amounts held by individual banks were unknown, so that the bankruptcy of one could cause the fall of others in its wake.
  • Today, the threat comes from loans to highly indebted states that may be unable to repay them. The volume of these loans is well-known for French banks and their impact on their solvency in a worst case scenario is insufficient to cause a failure (BNP’s exposure to Greek bankruptcy apparently represents less than 1% of its trade commitments).

a bearish bank market valuation chart

The dramatic fall in share prices (which reflect expected future dividends) may then, at least in part, be due to the cacophony of rumors and conflicting views of different stakeholders and its perception by shareholders:

  • According to their leaders and the governor of the Banque de France, there is no doubt that the major French banks are strong enough to face any outcome of the ongoing Greek crisis.
  • Jacques Attali, the OECD and Christine Lagarde seem more worried about how immense the global loans these banks have committed to and highlight the risks of other sovereign debts, the new director of the IMF insisting on the need for swift and massive re-capitalization of European banks.
  • Other bankers (on the other side of the Channel) raise the possibility of a temporary shelter in the form of at-least-partial nationalization.
  • Others still, could be fanning the embers of distrust from the other side of the Atlantic in the hope of low-cost investment in the event of a worsening of the European crisis.
  • Businesses and the public are complaining about not being able to borrow. Yet, granting more loans would be inconsistent with a recapitalization policy.
  • The image of banking institutions with a portion of the public and the media is still linked to the extremely high salaries and bonuses of executives and traders and risk-taking bordering on the antisocial.

On social networks, our three leading banks deal variably with the current crisis:

  • Societe Générale discuss it on Twitter, mostly through CEO Frédéric Oudéa’s media coverage, but also by responding directly to some journalists and bloggers. On Facebook, it’s all about Rugby.
  • Similar tone for BNP Paribas, who are also active on Twitter feed, engaging directly with business leaders about credit, denying rumors and spreading word of their press coverage newspaper articles conveying. And still nothing on Facebook.
  • At Crédit Agricole, Twitter and Facebook are dedicated to the management of the client – bank relationship. No information related to the current crisis is provided.

The three banks are active on social networks and appear to be maintaining a real dialogue with their communities. The crisis is partially addressed in two of them on Twitter, but only in a reactive fashion (responding to rumors, forwarding press articles). One can imagine a pro-active evangelism on the subject could serve their interests, but perhaps the public online would accuse them of not being neutral and prefers to find this information in third-party publications.

Still, the reputation of French banks still suffering the adverse effects of the 2008 crisis and the variety of views of all the stakeholders, regardless of their level of expertise, does nothing to put it back on track. In this context, disclosure of banks is too discreet. While it is sure that each institution has a clear strategy and values of its own to deal with this new episode of doubt, nothing is done to communicate them in clear terms to the general public on social networks.

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