Thursday, January 28, 2016

Social Media: The Importance of Your Online Presence



This weekend I have the opportunity to deliver a presentation to the Alabama Business Education Association at its 2016 conference at Samford University. My presentation is titled “Social Media: The Importance of Your Online Presence” and is geared toward business educators and individuals who manage social media in education. The post below summarizes my presentation:

Social media has become an area of major focus for schools and school districts over the past two to four years. Essentially, the education world is catching up to business as some 78 percent of companies now report that they have dedicated social media teams (source). The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that more than 531,000 jobs now involve some level of social media management, and while it is difficult to track an exact number because there is no standardization of titles for social media workers, jobs that mention “social media” in the description have increased by 89 percent since 2012 (source).

This change is due in large part to changing perceptions on the value of social media. More than 1 in 4 Millennials say social media platforms are their primary source of news, rivaling television for the first time (source). 46 percent of Web users rely on social media when making a purchase online (source). Clearly, there is a trend here indicating that brands that are active on social media tend to be the most relevant brands.

None of this would be possible without the decision by Facebook in 2007 to launch what it then called “Fan Pages.” These pages were geared toward the most popular brands, celebrities, and media and allowed these companies to establish a public presence on social media. This move, however, leveled the playing field between brands and consumers: for the first time, two-way communication became a reality as brands and consumers utilized the same networks and tools for communication.

This has resulted in what I and others call the “social media multiplier effect:” the idea that public perception of a brand is amplified through chatter about said brand on social media. Posts on social networks are amplified through the process of viewing and sharing by multiple audiences: a user’s friends/followers and their friends/followers; media outlets including TV, radio, newspapers, websites, and blogs; and the brand itself as well as its allies and competitors.

This amplification can have dire consequences for companies that are not prepared to handle the multiplier effect, as was seen in the case of Domino’s Pizza. On Easter Sunday in April, 2009, two Domino’s employees posted a video to YouTube which showed them — shall we say, mishandling — food ingredients in the store. Within hours, the video had received more than one million views. One viewer that hadn’t seen the video yet: Domino’s. The company’s headquarters had no idea that the video existed for 24 hours after it was posted. It first learned of the video when it was contacted by a consumer watchdog news site.

Though Domino’s has since been lauded for its response, there were several initial problems with its response. First, the company appeared to have no social media strategy of any kind, as it had hired a social media team just one month earlier. It also had no presence on Twitter prior to the incident. The company issued to response until Wednesday, and its first response was only on its corporate website which drastically limited its audience. (source)

There were many lessons to be learned from this and the numerous other social media crises that have occurred to major brands over the past few years. This has led me to construct a list: what I call the “Habits of Social-Savvy People.” These are things that smart social media managers do, intentionally, every day, to maintain control over their presence on social media and ensure that their brand is represented fairly and effectively.

First, social-savvy people own their social presence. This means simply creating a profile on every major social network, even if you have no plans to immediately use each and every social network. Why do this? Because impersonators and Internet “trolls” are always on the lookout for opportunities to disparage or misrepresent a brand; this becomes an even greater issue during a crisis situation. Owning your brand’s name across the social media world means, simply, that someone else won’t get the chance. It also means posting with enough regularity to let people know that you're out there. I have seen so many brands create Twitter accounts and then do nothing with them; data backs this up (source). While there are arguments as to how often someone should post, my general guidance is that you should post enough so that your social media accounts are a top-of-mind priority for you every day.

Social-savvy people monitor their brands. This is absolutely essential for all brands, schools and organizations regardless of size. The ability to listen to what others other saying about your brand is critical to maintaining a grasp on perception of your brand. Google Alerts as well as TweetDeck and HootSuite are simple, free ways to get started.

Social-savvy people are ready to pivot. This means having a means of monitoring and providing a response to something on social media anytime, anywhere. I have never taken a day off from my job as a social media manager. Sure, I’ve been to the beach, and to family gatherings at the holidays, but I was not off the job on those days. Social networks don’t take a day off, so neither do I.

Social-savvy people practice digital etiquette. This means reacting with compassion, writing in a natural/conversational tone, and double-checking messages and replies before hitting “Send.” With abuse on social media raising the question of which networks are sustainable (source), social media managers must remember to remain above the fray.

Social media managers fill your “trust bucket.” We should always seek to provide honest, timely information to our followers and never obfuscate the truth — something that the public sector in particular seems to grapple with. We cannot ignore negative feedback, either.

Finally, social-savvy users think mobile. Would it surprise you to learn that 47 percent of Facebook’s users in 2015 accessed the service only on mobile devices? It’s true (source), and it’s a number that only stands to increase. As a result, content that we push to social networks should be designed around a mobile device. For me, that means posts that are text-light and to the point, with embedded rich content (photos and videos) whenever possible.

Armed with these social-savvy strategies, the future looks promising for brands, schools and organizations on social media. Our job, for those of us in the educational sphere, is not only to impart these principles to students but to listen and work collaboratively with them as they lead the charge to a world that leans more on the power of social networks than ever before.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Communicating for a Mobile-Optimized Audience

A few days ago, I had a conversation with my grandfather-in-law about my blog topic for this week. 

"What's it's supposed to be about?" he asked. 

"Mobile technology," I replied. 

"Well," he said, "if I was going to write about mobile technology, I guess I would start out discussing the wheel."  

Isn't it interesting how the words we use and the meanings we ascribe to them change over time? The concept of mobile technology means something quite different today than it did just a few decades ago.  

Over the past year I have had the opportunity to participate in strategic planning in the school district where I manage communication and public relations. It has been so interesting during this period to see what a tremendous emphasis our community has placed not only on communication, but on the avenues through which we communicate. One of the specific action steps developed by those who participated in the planning was quite direct: develop a mobile app.  

The Web seems to have gone through a cycle over its brief life, starting primarily with text-only websites, growing to include richer and more robust content, and now moving back toward content that easily fits on a small screen. Research indicates that American adults spend more than half of their time interacting with digital media via a mobile device (source). Google now reports that an overwhelming majority of its searches are taking place on mobile devices (source). It only makes sense, then, that parents would want the same ease of access from their child's school as they already have with other essential services like search, navigation, and news. 

In a major way, the effort we have undertaken to design a mobile app for our school district is simply a process of consolidating many disparate services into a single hub. The best mobile apps always seem to have a way of doing that. The most popular iOS mobile app of all time, Facebook (source) has managed over the course of time to integrate nearly every feature of its website — status updates, photos, video, location-based data, groups, and search — so well into its app that nearly half of its users only access the service through a mobile device (source). This proliferation of mobile apps and the popularity of mobile platforms like Apple's iOS have led some commentators to wonder out loud if Apple would be better served combining its mobile operating system with its venerable desktop platform, OS X; CEO Tim Cook recently announced this was not in Apple's plans (source) but there will surely be many in the years to come who continue to clamor for a great mobile/desktop singularity.  

To have success in the mobile space, however, we must do more than just bring together services onto a mobile-optimized screen. All of us must commit ourselves to communicate in a mobile-optimized manner. Good execution in the mobile space must focus on more than design; companies and agencies must give end users a reason to download their apps in the first place and then ensure that users continue to reserve real estate on their mobile screens for these apps over time. It is — to the detriment of many app developers — incredibly easy to delete an app and all traces of its existence on an end user's device. We must continually provide content through the app that keeps our users from doing just that. 

What I have found, in practice, is that mobile-optimized communication most often involves more visual content than text-based content. I discovered a perfect example of this just a few weeks ago when I recorded and posted a video online of a student who returned to one of our elementary schools after being out for months with an illness: 



This video, in case you can't see it, is just sixty seconds long. There's barely any editing done at all; it's just a kid getting out of a car and hugging and high-fiving his friends. But in less than 24 hours, that sixty-second video was viewed more than twenty thousand times and "liked" by more than a thousand people. I received a note a few days later from the mother of the child at the center of the video: "[During a checkup] his nurse came into the room and said, 'You sound familiar.' Then it came to her that she had seen his return to school video. She said she just sat down and cried. I have no idea who she is."  

I could have easily written a press release or an article about that student instead of making a video. But would it have had the same impact? Would that child's nurse, who by the very nature of her job does not have the time or the access to a desktop computer to view that video, have ever known about his story and been moved to tears if we had not created this video and shared it through a mobile platform? No way. 

When I am finished working with our team on the development of our mobile app in a few short weeks, it will include streams of news and rich content from each of our schools, an aggregated social media feed that pulls in school-specific posts, push notifications for emergencies or reminders, school calendars and GPS-enabled maps to each of our campuses. I am thrilled about the possibilities for us in this space. 

But perhaps more exciting is what a mobile app means for the future of two-way communication in our school system. Government organizations are notoriously challenged in this space, and many local agencies and public school systems struggle with the perception that they are not "open" or "transparent" enough because there are no easy ways to communicate with those in power. This is an area where we hope to become leaders by way of our mobile app. Ours will feature in-app communication with school and district administrators that allows the sharing of messages, photos and other information instantly. The app will include a built-in translation tool, allowing any of the content within the app to be translated into sixty different languages with the tap of a button — a wonderful development for families who might not speak English as their primary language. We are also building in a bullying reporting "tip line" within the app, through which instances of bullying, harassment and student endangerment can be shared — anonymously — with school leaders. We are excited for what this means for our students, the atmosphere of our schools, and the bridges this has the potential to build with our community and new families in the years ahead.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Cronkite and Convergence

On February 27, 1968, CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite delivered a special broadcast on the Vietnam War. The broadcast followed a profound embarrassment for Americans and the South Vietnamese in the Tet Offensive, a surprise operation carried out by the Viet Cong and members of the North Vietnamese army. With Americans still reeling from the shocking reality that the war in Vietnam was not going as well as the Johnson administration had led people to believe, Cronkite, who had just returned from seeing the destruction for himself, ended his telecast with these words:

“To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion … But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” (Source)

Legend has it that after the conclusion of the broadcast, President Lyndon B. Johnson turned to his aides in the White House and said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” (Source) While the authenticity of this quote has been disputed (Source), the impact of Cronkite’s influence as a reporter and a voice to millions of Americans has never been called into question.

For nearly twenty years, Walter Cronkite was the face of the news. Cronkite, the anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, was a familiar personality that appeared on millions of Americans’ television screens with startling regularity every night for years. His deep voice and unmistakable, even tone captured the attention of more than ten million viewers near the end of his career (Source). He was so respected and revered that he was sometimes referred to as “the most trusted man in America” (Source).

Cronkite had the duty during his career of delivering to Americans some of the biggest stories that our nation has ever recorded: the assassination of President Kennedy, the first steps of men on the moon, the resignation of President Nixon and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. It would be the aspiration of most reporters today to cover just one story of this magnitude in their entire careers. Cronkite did it many times over, inextricably linking his voice and his newscasts to the events themselves. When children learn about American history in the mid-twentieth century, they often learn it through the lens of the world provided by Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News.

This concept — the idea that one man, one television program could hold so much power over the reporting of a news story and the narrative Americans would hear from it — is unheard of today. Through the forces of media convergence, news in the 21st century is owned by no one.

Media convergence, in a nutshell, is the melding together of once disparate and distinct media entities. Through the use of modern technology, such as a free and open Internet and wireless networks that have expanded to cover entire communities and cities, the media have grown exponentially beyond the bounds of one man and one network. Mobile data systems enable a person to receive, on demand, any information that is desired on the device most convenient to the recipient. Today, through media convergence, the news is anywhere we are.

Most of these changes are very good. The changing media landscape, enabled by convergence, allows for news to be disseminated through a variety of means at a faster pace than the world has ever seen. It also empowers the public with greater personal choice. In one recent survey, more than 75 percent of respondents said it was easier than ever to know what’s happening in the world (Source). This access means there is not only greater sharing of information but a greater sharing of divergent viewpoints as well.

Some of these changes present serious challenges, however. With media sources now utilizing instantaneous, digital forms of communication such as Twitter and YouTube, colleges and universities who train reporters must now weigh the value of teaching courses in communications tools that are continuously changing and far more simplistic than the cameras and editing bays of the established media. Further, a focus on accuracy in reporting must become an even greater emphasis than it already was. In the age of Cronkite and the evening newscast as one of the only sources an American had for news, corrections rarely occurred. In this present age of mountains of data available freely on the Web, social media and mobile technology now enables the media to share news so quickly and haphazardly that corrections are often a foregone necessity rather than a rarity.

Not only are the tools of a reporter changing; the lines between the media and the public have also become blurred. If the tools and communication channels used by reporters are the same ones that average Americans use on a daily basis, what is to stop citizens from taking on the role of journalists themselves? As we will see in a couple of weeks, this is a reality that is already having tremendous consequences — good and bad — on the industry. It changes the definition of who a “reporter” is as well as the requirements to be employed as one. To some in power and positions of authority, it calls into question the need for reporters at all. In the past, it was understood that any good issue-based news story would include three voices: a proponent’s voice, an opponent’s voice, and the voice of the reporter. But if the proponents and opponents of an issue both have websites and social media profiles that function the same way, where does the reporter’s voice fit? Is it even necessary to have the reporter’s voice among a public empowered to access these viewpoints themselves without waiting for an evening newscast or a morning paper?

In this age of media convergence, it will be interesting to consider who the next “Walter Cronkite” could be. Will it be someone who rises to fame and trust through the ranks of social media or digital communication? Will it be someone who is among the first to harness the power of some new avenue of news reporting that has not yet been invented? Or, will there ever be another Cronkite in a world where convergence creates more voices — and more noise — than ever?

Friday, January 8, 2016

The Lowly Newspaper

What brings you here today? I would suggest that you are here, dear reader, because you have chosen to use the Internet as a source of information, opinionated thought, and entertainment. You are here because you are not reading a newspaper. You are here because there is something within your mind that says the unsolicited thoughts of a person you might never have met are somehow more interesting or valued than those in a publication you pay for that lands on your doorstep each morning (or, in the case of an increasing number of newspapers, on occasion).

Does that mean that newspapers are dying? Not necessarily. There are numerous ways that pundits like to try to quantify the death of traditional media such as newspapers. A few observations:
  • 53 percent of digital news consumers access Web-native sources (such as Huffington Post, Yahoo! News, Drudge Report and others) for information. Only 43 percent use the more traditional sources for digital news, though in-depth reporting is still desired from these outlets (Source)
  • Newspaper advertising has dropped more than 50 percent since 2005, though other media outlets have not been immune from the decline (Source)
  • Fewer than one in ten Millennials read newspapers on a daily basis, preferring instead to obtain information and news from digital/online platforms (Source)
While these are all valid and concerning figures — there is no denying that this is an industry in a state of flux — they do not speak to the success or failure of newspapers on a local level. They do not speak to the efforts that your own community’s publications may be attempting to increase readership or create value for readers of all ages and socioeconomic groups. They can only speak from a thirty-thousand-foot view of the industry as a whole. They cannot speak to the tremendous opportunity for innovation that lies before local news outlets.

As technology consultant Alan Mutter notes: “Any serious effort on the part of publishers to migrate to digital publishing requires an understanding of the Digital Natives … who grew up in front of all kinds of screens” (Source: http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-digital-natives-dont-like-newspapers.html). Some local and small-market newspapers, recognizing that they may be the only source of news in their communities, are working to gain an understanding of those Digital Natives and place a footprint in their world.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to serve as an intern for a local newspaper in Alabama with a Sunday circulation of about 20,000. I came into the experience as a Digital Native myself, someone that venture capitalist Mary Meeker would describe as “asset-light:” highly mobile, never subscribing to the newspaper, acclimated to digital trends. Sure, I had just finished coursework for an undergraduate degree in print journalism, but I came into my internship completely green behind the ears. I had never completed any work for a newspaper or publication of any kind. I had only worked briefly for one season as a softball team correspondent for my relatively small university’s newspaper.

My lack of traditional print journalism knowledge served as a conundrum for the newspaper’s editors. How does a newspaper with decades of experience in a tangible, printed realm, provide an opportunity for an intern whose own habits fly in the face of the journalistic institution they had built? My arrival caused the newspaper to consider its own need to innovate.

After a couple of weeks of consideration, we agreed upon a unique solution. My role would involve the development of a digital presence for the company to make the news relevant for younger minds with shorter attention spans. Our vision was capturing the attention of innovators and early adopters by making an old form of media relevant through the use of more modern methods of communication. We utilized two channels in our approach. First, I developed Twitter content for the newspaper. We did more than tweet links to printed stories, though. We elected to engage our community and invite them to share with us what was important to them. We encouraged users to send us pictures and answer discussion questions we posted. We asked for reaction to stories and for followers to send us news tips through social media.

We also decided to attempt something more ambitious, something only one other newspaper in the nation was doing at the time. We created a news webcast titled “Midday Update” and posted it at the top of our website before lunch each day. I wrote, anchored, and edited the webcast each day. Our goal was simple: Take the morning’s important stories and squeeze them into a ninety-second video. By giving viewers the day’s need-to-know information in a fast format, we created an additional touch point with our community and provided the more casual website visitors with a reason to dive deeper into the stories on our website.

By the end of my internship, our experiments into digital media had proven to be a hit. Midday Update was viewed more than two thousand times a day and gained a substantial following on social media. Capturing the equivalent of ten percent of the newspaper’s entire subscriber base in just a few months indicated to us that we were making significant headway in reaching Digital Natives and those “asset-light” individuals who may have never had significant interaction or interest in a newspaper. We shared the video via Facebook and Twitter, which resulted in additional views, likes, and comments. The webcast was so successful that the newspaper managed to sell advertising placement at the beginning of the video.

Sadly, the newspaper’s experiment into video ceased after I left because no one had the time or the ability to produce a video quickly. The newspaper’s Twitter and Facebook accounts remain the most-followed media source within its community to this day. Clearly, pushing the newspaper’s printed content into the digital realm was a gamble that has paid off and kept its name relevant among young people.

So, are newspapers dying? I would suggest that they are at a crossroads of two choices, both of which come with significant consequences. They can choose to remain the same and face the slow march into irrelevance as Digital Natives enter the workforce and turn away from a medium that most view as archaic. Or, they can choose to become a digital medium, remain relevant, but face the challenge of learning how to report the news with a leaner staff and a leaner budget. Ultimately, this choice also requires the industry to let go of itself for its own betterment.

“In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself,” Deepak Chopra once said. Perhaps in the letting go that must come in the years ahead, the once-great newspaper will be great again.

Introduction and Welcome


There comes a point in every good communicator’s life when he must write a blog. After all, the blog is a new standard of communication — a method of sharing stories, ideas, and even complete nonsense with the world at large. It is my expectation that this blog will be filled with more ideas than nonsense; that’s subject to change, however.

I am Whit McGhee, a strategic communication graduate student and practitioner in central Alabama. My pursuit of a master’s degree in the field I love is the reason this blog was created. Today, I have the privilege of representing one of Alabama’s largest public school systems as its communication and public relations specialist. Each day, I come to work with the opportunity to share the good news, accomplishments, and challenges of our schools, students, and families. This position has led to a fair amount of on-the-job training in crisis communications and media exposure for me over the past couple of years. But those moments did not defeat me — they inspired me. It is the trials that arose from those challenging days on the job that led me to pursue an advanced degree in communication.

Within the next few months, Lord willing, I will finish my degree program. Each week along my journey, I’ll have the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the changing field of strategic communication and emerging media. I’ll discuss topics such as media convergence, citizen journalism, branding and online reputation, and social networking. There should be no shortage of issues to talk about in the weeks ahead.

You’ll find my blog here, at http://whitmcghee.blogspot.com. If you’d like to see my bio or examples of previous communication work I’ve completed, head over to my website, http://www.whitmchgee.com.

Regards,
WM