When I was about seven, my dad designed and built an awesome kids playset.  It was a towering wooden structure that took up half the side yard and had everything from swings to a sandbox to a fireman’s pole.  (A fireman’s pole! )

This was what I now recognize to be The Best Parenting Strategy Ever.  Not only did it keep us active and entertained—and outside!—but it meant that all the kids in the neighborhood came to us.  It meant that my parents always knew where we were and who we were hanging out with and could keep a close eye on us with minimal effort.

I am reminded of what I will now dub The Playset Strategy when I look at what some of our most progressive financial institutions are doing with social media.  They are making sure that they are building out their websites with the information and interactivity their customers want and need in order to make good financial decisions.  This may involve discussion boards, or customer ratings, or product reviews.  The most progressive companies leave these venues largely unmediated, which may involve actually hosting with their own technology comments that could be critical of their organization.  Why on earth would they do this?   It’s the Playset Strategy.  They’re making sure their customers stay home and invite their friends over instead of wandering off elsewhere for their needs.

This highlights a drastic shift in how we’re thinking about our customers.  When it comes to sales and customer service, the prevailing view in banking has been that our customers want to walk into a branch and have a conversation with a real person while they sip on our complimentary coffee.  All that’s left is to prove to the world that we are the only bank that REALLY offers good customer service (good luck with that—if you think that you are strong in this area, check out our work on brand differentiation and most companies’ chronic lack thereof).

The only catch—your customers are pretty much just using you for the free beverage.  One of our sister councils—the Council on Financial Competition—just completed a survey of customers across seven countries.  They found that one in three customers is making financial decisions based on information they’ve found through social media sources (aka, not your branch).  More and more of them are what the CFC has coined as “informational millionaires”—they’re coming into our branches having already made up their minds and are simply using our facility as a really nice checkout counter.

So we can either let them fish around online and through their own networks of friend and family recommendations, or we can put ourselves at the center of their information gathering universe by making ourselves useful in their quest.  Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Fact: You can’t make everyone happy. Fact: There will always be naysayers out there criticizing your company. But word-of-mouth bashing is a lot different than online criticism—and thanks to the power of social media and widespread Internet accessibility, “haters” can harshly and anonymously pick on your organization.

It would be futile to try to contain online criticism. This doesn’t, however, mean that you have to roll over while critics walk all over you. Leading communicators recognize that the best way to respond to criticisms is to be proactive and engaging. Your ultimate goal should be to smartly neutralize detractors and have productive conversations with potential supporters.

For example, let’s say you find a blog post or Tweets ranting about your company’s social responsibility track record. When crafting responses, keep in mind the following “5 Ts” of responding to online criticism: Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

It’s one thing for communicators to listen to people—and quite another to be able to do something about what you’re listening to. A good listener will ask the right questions and use a mix of tools to harvest important information. But a smart listener knows that it’s not enough to just take note; they recognize the best way to really understanding stakeholders’ wants and needs is to integrate the resulting data.

A disjointed approach to media monitoring causes many Communications teams to miss out on big opportunities to understand and then ultimately influence their stakeholders. But you can avoid this mistake by being a smart listener, too. Check out the examples set by these smart companies: Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

Did you have a chance to attend our webinar last week on social media monitoring?  During the webinar, we invited CEC members to join a discussion with Scott Stevener from Monsanto, Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting (formerly SVP at MasterCard), and Karin Kane from evolve24.  You may have recently seen guest blog posts from Scott and Linda on the CEC Insider.  Below, get the quick scoop from our third panelist, Karin, who manages client engagements at evolve24, a reputation management and monitoring firm.  And CEC Members: if you missed the webinar, you can access the replay here!

Rebecca (CEC): In brief, can you describe how your media monitoring is different from what most communicators use/receive?

Karin: We recognize that communicators can provide tremendous value across an organization when they measure, and share, the insights they can uncover from media.  Because of that, we focus on providing those insights.  We offer the widest selection of social media content, and provide very advanced analytics that allow our clients to measure social media in very distinct ways.  Along with the standard share of voice and sentiment metrics, we measure influence, credibility, reputation, emotion, and risk. These measurements make media monitoring relevant for communications and marketing teams, customer experience and customer service teams, HR, sales, operations and risk management. Read More »

Scott Stevener (Corporate Research Team Lead, Monsanto)

By Rebecca Canan

Have you ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test?  (If not, here’s a link to a free mini-version)  What personality type are you?

A couple years ago, we looked at various personality types and which are suited to which type of profession.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the combinations who were likely drawn to Communications included:

• ESFP (Extroverted Sensing, Aided by Feeling)
• ENFP (Extroverted Intuitive, Aided by Feeling)

One great excerpt about ESFPs: “ [Do] not generally enjoy the world of business, especially the corporate world…they often enjoy public relations.”  Or this one about ENFPs: “ Conventional business world is usually not appealing to ENFPs because they dislike excessive rules, regulations, or standard operating procedures.”

Hmm, sound at all familiar?  Maybe like you or your team members?

Now, this isn’t to say that we can’t come up with processes, rules, and data-driven approaches…it’s just not what we prefer to do.  It’s more natural to go on instinct, gut feel, or our inherent creativity.   That said, many of our business partners demand more data and analytics when it comes to our Communications activities and our value to the organization.  Wouldn’t it be great if someone could teach us how to apply data in a smarter way within Communications?  And tell us a story about how it’s actually worked?

Please join us on August 12th for a conversation with Scott Stevener, Corporate Research Team Lead at Monsanto.  Read More »

Linda Locke (Principal at Reputare Consulting, formely SVP at MasterCard)

By Rebecca Canan

As I’ve talked about in a previous blog post, it seems there is no limit to the amount of information that people are willing to share on social networking sites.  We are swimming drowning in a sea of data — people are talking candidly about almost everything; their words are being documented publicly on the Web for anyone to see.  How can we leverage all that audience insight in a scalable and smart way to help our reputations?   How can we take an “outside-in” approach to incorporate what stakeholders are saying (and reading) into our own internal reputation management?

We’ll be exploring that BIG question at an upcoming August 12th webinar with Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting – formerly SVP at MasterCard.  We’ll also be joined by Scott Stevener from Monsanto and Karin Kane from Evolve24.  During the session, we’ll show CEC members how they can take advantage of the tools and technologies now available – not only for traditional media monitoring, but also for social media monitoring – and apply them in a way that proactively manages their company’s reputation.  Sound lofty?  Maybe.  Sound impossible?  It’s definitely not. Read More »

May was a big month here at the CEC – we wrapped up our biggest research initiative of the year and presented it for the first time at our headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

For me, the most memorable moment in discussion came during a segment on media monitoring.  This topic can seem quite mechanical – the sort of thing you’d assign to a mid-level person on your team.  But the discussion in Arlington really brought home for me just how strategic it needs to be.

Most of the comms executives participating in the discussion described what I can only characterize as a disjointed approach: one tool for traditional media, another for blogs, another for twitter, and so on.  For a few, responsibility for each type of monitoring (traditional vs. social) even resides in separate groups or departments.  Now, a few folks did describe more integrated systems.  But even in those cases, typical reporting is channel by channel, perhaps with some overall statistics on company mentions, tonality, and/or share of voice.

Does any of this describe your department’s approach? Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

If you’re like me, you regularly get hit with social media newsletters, blog posts, and expert proclamations that all declare they’ve found the definitive new social media search engine or analytics tool (e.g., ”13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools!”).  However, when I begin playing around with these “essential” tools, I’m often disappointed either because (1) they miss too much or (2) they pick up too much.  This prompts me to ask, “Which free tools are actually worth the time???”  Based on conversations with (often frustrated) communicators and CEC’s research, I’ve assessed some of the popular search tools available and provided a quick review of what they can—or can’t—give you.

As context, here are the basic criteria I used when reviewing a monitoring tool:

• Is it actually free? (If the answer is “no”, it didn’t make my list.  This happened with a couple tools like Jodange and Filtrbox.)
• How relevant are the results?
• How timely are the results?
• How comprehensive are the results?
• Is the interface easy to use and interpret?

In addition to the popular tools that I reviewed in the table below, I came across these other fun tools: Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

“Even though I have a social media monitoring agency, I do most of my listening through free, channel-specific tools anyway.  My agency just doesn’t have the capabilities I didn’t know I needed.”

“I signed up with Radian6 when it was the popular thing to do, but now I’m frustrated by all the spam that gets through. ”

“We’re looking at signing on with Alterian SM2, but I have no idea if it’s the right choice or if I’m missing another vendor that would be better???”

These quotes from your peers provide a glimpse into the confusion and frustration that a lot of communicators experience when it comes to social media monitoring firms.  As I’ve mentioned in earlier blog posts, I’ve been trying my best to understand how you can listen to stakeholder conversations in a meaningful way.  Based on my interim thinking, I’m dedicating this post to helping you navigate through your social media vendor options.  Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

As part of our 2010 research initiative, Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment, I’ve been thinking a lot about media monitoring.  After all, it brings a science to communicators’ efforts to develop messages that resonate with audiences—not to mention flow through their social networks.

In my recent chats with (smarty) CEC members, I’ve heard the name Katie Paine crop up quite a few times.  In case you don’t know her, she’s the CEO of KDPaine & Partners LLC and a PR measurement expert.  So, I thought I’d get Katie’s direct perspective on some of the questions that members—and we at CEC—are asking.

Rebecca, CEC: Communicators are often overwhelmed by the number of monitoring vendors out there, all lauding their services.  Then, when they finally select a service, it’s hard to make sense of all the data.  Is there an easy answer?  What’s been your experience in working with vendors?

Katie, KD Paine: My experience has been that many vendors “sell the dream”; that is, you think you’re going to sign-up and instantly receive all the data and intelligence that you need.  The reality is that it’s hard work. Read More »