Where exactly does the smartest, most progressive thinking in Corporate Communications come from?  The ivory tower of some big F500 headquarters? Some ivy-covered hall of academia?

Turns out some of the most progressive Comms ideas I’ve heard in the last year were first developed…in the underground rock & roll scene. Wendy Harman got her start in “communications” promoting local bands in Washington, DC—before she was hired by the American Red Cross as their first-ever Social Media Manager. (You may have seen Evelyn’s post last week about the Red Cross’ extraordinary response to the crisis in Haiti.) And among these progressive communications ideas is…how to create strategic results using social media outlets like Twitter.

So…to the question at hand.  Twitter. Channel, or not?

If your first reaction is, “Yeah, of course it’s a channel”…you’re certainly not wrong (and that’s definitely what I would have said). But after listening to new media pioneers like Wendy, I’m not sure “channel” is the right answer.

What I’m finally starting to see (and I hope you are, too) is that if we communicators are thinking about Twitter as a channel, what we’re inevitably doing (whether we know it or not) is immediately strategizing about how to use it. And in our minds, using a channel = shoving our message into some pipeline, so it can be broadcast out the back end to the rest of the world.  Like we do with press releases.  And websites. And pretty much everything.

But in a recent discussion with CEC, Wendy said, “We really oughta be thinking about Twitter differently than other channels. Instead of constantly thinking about what messages we can push out, we oughta be spending at least as much time thinking about what we can pull in.”

And there it is.

That subtle little twist—perfectly articulated—is the difference, it seems, between “where we’ve been” in Comms and “where we’re going.”

In today’s “networked” environment, in order to stay a step ahead of audience behavior changes and to maximize the potential of our communication strategy, we’ve got to guard against our instinctive impulse to constantly be pushing all the time.

Increasingly, stakeholders are most responsive to messaging that is perceived as real/authentic/organic (as opposed to phony/corporate)—meaning, it wasn’t something we in Comms created and “sprayed” onto the audience.

Harman says, “You can’t create a plan to make something go viral.”  That does not, however, mean we are forced into a totally passive position as sideline observers, hoping (praying) that things go our way.  She says, “What we really need to concentrate on is constantly creating value by offering information and ideas that people will want to pass along and communicate with others.”

That concept is exactly what we’re working on right now at CEC for our upcoming executive retreat series, “Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment.” We’re seeing some really interesting new ideas as well as concrete examples of companies all around the world that are achieving extraordinary strategic results.

Not just by using Twitter. But by “channeling” their Comms efforts in a way that doesn’t feel quite so…pushy.

How about YOU?  Are you starting to optimize your Comms strategy more toward pull than push?