By Evelyn Ostrovsky 

Did you know that Celine Dion is the youngest of 14 children?
Did you know that Justin Bieber likes white toast more than wheat?
Did you know your stakeholders don’t care about the same things you do?

If the CEC had a MTV Diary episode (motto: “You think you know…but you have no idea”), you’d probably be surprised by the look inside our yearly quantitative findings.

As most of you are aware of by now (being loyal readers of the CEC Insider), we’re in the middle of our biggest research initiative of the year, taking a look at how some the smartest communicators are Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment.  Alongside our 100s of conversations with CEC members, industry experts, academics, journalists, and vendors, we’re also analyzing hard data about what drives stakeholder support of companies.

First, it won’t come as a surprise to Comms that people are more likely to support organizations that seem to share their interests and values. And on that front, most communicators are confident that they know what their stakeholders care about—a belief that doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. (I mean, that’s our job, right?)
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By Rebecca Canan

Over the last year or so, we at CEC have seen social media participation become far more common among member companies.  That said, we’ve also noticed a tendency of communicators to jump on social media opportunities without applying much strategic discipline—that is, they weren’t matching up social media’s unique capabilities with their business needs, audience behaviors, and industry dynamics.  In response, CEC developed a social media diagnostic that helps members pinpoint their best opportunities for social media use.

As part of this diagnostic, we ask a few benchmarking questions of participants: for example, how many people work on social media at your company?  What channels are you using?  How confident are you in the value of your efforts?   We’re pleased to share the top-line data from our 60+ participants thus far:

I was surprised by a few things in this data set: Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

Nearly every day, I get to talk to members about CEC’s major research initiative for 2010, and over the course of the past couple months, this has summed up to A LOT of conversations!  I’m asking them about external stakeholder outreach…how the media landscape is changing…how this is tangibly affecting their teams.  Really rich and interesting conversations.  THEN, the conversation turns to media monitoring.  It goes something like this:

Rebecca: So, how do you monitor conversations about your company? How much do you spend?  How do you USE the information?

CEC Member: [Yawn.]  [Then rattles off responses like a robot.]

Now, I’ve got nothing against robots (er, total tangent and perhaps inappropriate, but I actually think robots are HILARIOUS).  That said, I sense that members waste a lot of money on robotic “going through the motions” in this area. To them, monitoring is simply a part of the Communications function.  A box to check off.  Something that has to get done and does not necessarily require much reflection.  It may be the obsessive analytic in me, but I think that (1) communicators typically lack a deliberate and integrated objective for monitoring and that (2) they don’t use the information spit out of their monitoring machines.  Alas! Read More »