Summertime Sadness

Welcome to my last post for a while! I plan on taking the blog on a summer hiatus and hopefully will return in the Fall. Until then though, I wanted to wrap up these past few months and tie in everything we’ve talked about since March. We started off talking about how innovations spread within a social system. Then we talked about opinion leadership, social media, how we talk to internal and external groups, and how to develop strategies to target those various groups. We also talked about how leaders need to have a vision, be active in their communication endeavors at all times, particularly during crises, and how to measure the success of those endeavors. So what do all these things have in common? I think the big takeaway from the last few weeks (for me personally) has been that without true vision and leadership none of our best laid plans will come to full fruition. Sure there may be the fluke here and there but without a true guiding force behind our communication our organizations, companies, and clients will be at a loss. Having a good vision is valuable even if you aren’t in a leadership position. Thinking about where you want to be and what you hope to achieve in your own career is so important and maintaining that vision for our futures is vital to our individual successes as well as the future success of any organization we may be a part of. I plan on taking these skills I have learned, particularly in regards to vision and how to use that vision to develop strategies, and applying them to my job in higher education. I see very few women in leadership roles in my company and I would love to change that. I hope that through understanding concepts such as Diffusion of Innovations theory and opinion leadership I can begin to demonstrate leadership skills that will make my personal vision for my future a reality. I hope you enjoyed reading and learning with me over these past few months! It has certainly been an adventure and I hope to see you in the Fall! Have a great summer everybody!

The Value in Measurement

I’m going to start this week’s post off with a little story. In my undergraduate Communication Arts program, there was a capstone course that was available for just 10 students every Spring semester. It was a very big deal to be chosen.  I was lucky enough to be selected for that course in my final semester. It was simply titled “Public Relations Campaigns” and the entire class was centered on researching, writing, and developing a campaign for a local non-profit in the area. We worked hard the entire semester on understanding what our non-profit needed and what we could do to help. We conducted in depth interviews with all the people who worked for the non-profit, as well as held focus groups and submitted surveys to other non-profits in the area trying to understand what the market was like for non-profits in Escambia County, FL. Once we had researched and written the campaign, we knew we had to include ways to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. What good would it be to hand over this beautifully researched and crafted plan if nobody could figure out if it worked or not? That will always stick with me personally as a reason why we should always take time to go back and review what works and what doesn’t. Not only is it valuable to us as communicators, but also to the people we work for as well. I still utilize measurements of success in my job today. If I know I have a solid plan for reaching 75 students and I don’t make the goal how will I know which part of the plan needs tweaking and which don’t if I don’t take the time to go back and review the measurements of success I have put in place for myself? As the saying goes, “Don’t reinvent the wheel,” and that is certainly true for measuring and evaluating the success and failure of strategic communication campaigns.

The end results of any strategic communications plan or campaign are often used to demonstrate ROI for public relations clients or organizations. The term ROI, or return on investment, is often used throughout the business world. It’s an expression that’s used to show how much profit you actually gain from the efforts you expend. Public Relations has certainly borrowed the word and utilize it quite often to “indicate the results of [an] activity” (Return on Investment in public relations: A critique of concepts used by practitioners from communication and management sciences perspectives.)  It seems that the community of public relations practitioners and scholars can agree to disagree on the term. While practitioners tend to view the term as a sort of catch-all through the definition I provided above, most scholars seem to be of the mind that the term should be more thoroughly defined for Public Relations. Some argue that it should be about measuring objectives rather than investment, others that the term should stand for identifying which part of traditional ROI is influenced by PR.  However all can agree that it’s the “complex nature of public relations activity that challenges ROI…as it can be difficult to disaggregate public relations from other communication and business effects” (Return on investment in public relations.)  The matter of proving ROI for a public relations plan or campaign can either help or hurt us and our client or organization. Understanding how we can show our worth and knowing where we are winning and failing when we deliver a plan or campaign is vital to continuing not only our individual careers, but the profession itself.

Just like anything else, you have to prove something works in order have it be considered a success. Proving your point can be difficult though for strategic communicators. Our value is inherent for just about every type of organization in the world but yet only recently has the job market and prospects for strategic communicators begun to improve (In recovery: Recruiters say PR job market is improving.)  Showcasing our successes and understanding how to evaluate our plans or campaigns is key to maintaining this positive momentum. In this day and age everybody is concerned over online public image. Companies are finally seeing the value in building actual, tangible relationships with their customers not just merely targeting them, as they have done in marketing activities of the past. Recently public relations professionals have realized that they can quantify “this abstract notion of relationship management as a means of contributing to the success and well being of an organization, as well as organizational financial success” (Organizational Blogs and the Human Voice: Relational Strategies and Relational Outcomes.)  Taking the time to dissect the ins and outs of relationship building and applying those to our campaigns or plans can be crucial. And once the plan or campaign has been carefully drafted and carried out, how can we be sure it worked? There are various ways to measure the impact of digital campaigns today. Web traffic, referrals, social media shares, press release engagement, and outputs and outcomes are just a few of the variety of ways we can quantifiably and tangibly measure digital campaigns (5 ways to measure the impact of a digital PR campaign.)  There are also other desirable results we should keep in mind as we evaluate our campaigns and attempt to demonstrate our work’s ROI. Intangible results can be just as beneficial as tangible ones, like web traffic hits (Measuring ‘Intangibles’.) Customer satisfaction can’t be seen or touched but it can be measured and as such is a crucial intangible measurement that can translate to real ROI for a client or organization. What good does it do to focus on relationship building if we can’t show that that relationship building yielded real results? Measuring results are a huge part of what we do as strategic communicators and I think sometimes we can lose sight of why we need to do it. It may seem like it’s all about the bottom line for our organizations or clients but it’s also about demonstrating our work’s worth and showing why doing what we do is so important and valuable.

One last post to go before I take the blog on summer hiatus! I hope you have enjoyed these past few weeks as much as I have and I’ll “see” you soon!

O Captain! My Captain!

Unless you’ve been living under a social media-less rock the past few weeks you will have noticed that United Airlines is going through a bit of a rough patch. Communication failures, employees acting out, press making a laughing stock of you…needless to say they aren’t having the best time right now. I can’t help but feel bad for whoever is responsible for their public relations department. That poor soul is now responsible for taking a serious crisis, responding and addressing it while also dealing with smaller crises daily it seems. What started out as an awful enough crisis situation (a flight attendant and security guards are accused of dragging a passenger off a flight that was overbooked and it was all caught on video) has now been relegated to the cherry on top of a pretty horrendous sundae. A valuable 3 foot tall rabbit mysteriously passed away on one of their flights, a scorpion fell on a man from the overhead bin and bit him…you can’t make this stuff up and the media have been having an absolute field day with it (And then…a scorpion: United Airlines and how [not] to handle a crisis.)   And to make matters worse the CEO of United has come off worse for wear during this valuable time for his company. In a huge snafu it was discovered that while, publicly, he showed sympathy and empathy with the passenger and promised to do whatever it took to remedy the situation (This will never happen again” he stated live on ABC News Morning Show,) privately and internally to his employees he was singing a different tune. “"While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right” his internal memo read (United’s staff memo makes the internet even angrier.) The memo goes on to call the passenger “disruptive” and “belligerent,” which you can see in the video, the guy clearly didn’t start that way. This is a classic case of social media crisis management and why it’s so important for companies and organizations to have a plan for such times. But not only is the actual crisis communication plan and execution valuable and an absolute must for companies but so too is leadership and their response to a crisis. You can’t have a company attempting damage control while its leader is off in left field, creating more fires than they are putting out.

You’ll remember a few weeks back we talked about leadership and vison. We also talked a little bit about management functions and how those functions differ from true leadership roles. A leader in a crisis is invaluable. Throughout history various accounts of leaders standing up during times of extreme stress have been recorded. “During the Great Fire of London in 1666, King Charles II ‘joined the firefighters…handling spade and bucket’” attempting to help put out the great blaze with help from his subjects (Communicating throughout Katrina: Competing and Complementary Conceptual Lenses on Crisis Communication.)  Crises can help or significantly hurt leaders in the long run. While cities, companies, and organizations can heal or recover over time, sometimes reputations cannot. An example of a crisis significantly damaging someone’s reputation is President George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina. Not only was he “distracted with other issues when Katrina struck” he also allowed the Bush administration to form a “blaming strategy” to “take heat off the federal failures over Katrina” (Communicating throughout Katrina: Competing and Complementary Conceptual Lenses on Crisis Communication.)  He placed blame on local officials rather than stepping up and acknowledging that key departments needed to help those in Katrina’s wake were ill equipped and had serious communication problems between them before the crisis even began. Any good leader should be prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of their company or organization. In a crisis, “if there are sacrifices to be made – and there will be – then the leaders should step up and make the greatest sacrifices themselves” (Leadership in a Crisis – How to be a leader.)  Leadership in a crisis situation is defined as a “collective and dynamic” process and it “requires perception and sense-making skills by leaders in order for them to determine appropriate courses of action” (Linking Crisis Management and Leadership Competencies: the Role of Human Resource Department.) When you are responsible for an organization, especially as its core leader, you have to be ready to take responsibility even if you think your organization has done nothing wrong. As FDR once said “The buck stops here.” Leaders in today’s world have to be ready for anything and be prepared that a crisis can – and usually does – get worse before it gets better.  In order to be prepared for that event, when and if it comes, it helps to have a leader with a realistic vision. Again, I spoke about vision in a post a few weeks back. To me, part of having vision is being able to see not only the best of times for your organization or company but also the worst. You have to be realistic and acknowledge the reality of the times we live in. Anyone, anywhere can be caught on video or in a picture doing something that may hurt their organization. A good leader with a solid, realistic vison of the future of their organization will be able to see those possible threats and let his team in charge of developing a crisis communication plan know what they see. Without a leader willing to “go down with the ship” how can employees be expected to do the same when the time comes? When crisis hits, you have to trust in your Captain and know that they have not only their best interests in mind, but even more so the organizations.

I hope you guys enjoyed this week’s post and I’ll see you guys next week! Only a couple more weeks left, and then I will be taking the blog on a summer hiatus! Hope you all have a pleasant week!

False Advertising?

Have you ever been watching something and noticed that something seemed a bit…off? Something as seemingly innocent as the main character drinking a beer at a bar, but you notice that the label is a little too nicely lit…that label is a little too noticeable? This character may have gone to this bar in every episode for 3 seasons, has been ordering or been handed a beer every single time, but up until now you never knew the exact brand they were drinking. Now all of a sudden you can clearly see the Bud Light logo and the character even mentions the brand by name in passing several times in the scene. What’s your first thought? If you’re anything like me it’s usually “Wonder how much they paid for that?” As marketers and strategic communicators we typically are responsible for promoting our organizations (be it a client, brand, etc.) How we go about doing this though is a big topic for discussion, especially in today’s “viral” happy market. Everybody is looking for the next big thing…that next big marketing strategy that’s going to make your brand/client stand out, that will appeal to consumers based off authentic acts and likeability. But how do we get there without abusing that inherent trust from the public? And as consumers ourselves should we be a bit more cynical about what we see in our newsfeeds and TV screens when it comes to advertising?

If you have a tweenager (yes that’s a legitimate term) or are like me, and sometimes enjoy reveling in seeing “what the kids are up to,” you may have heard the term “Youtuber.” I’ve mentioned them briefly before here on the blog (shoutout to Caroline Hirons.) The typical Youtuber is usually aged between 18-32 years of age. They make videos for a living and post them to YouTube. Thus the name “youtuber.” Most of these creators have been doing this for almost a decade. The idea of having a channel and posting regular videos first became popular in 2009, with a lot of popular bloggers taking to the platform and utilizing it as an extension of their blogs. Now roughly 80% of Internet users in the US access YouTube in some capacity each year (The Demographics of YouTube.) There are all kinds of categories to choose from to watch: music and news, beauty and lifestyle, gaming and hunting. All types of channels are present on the platform making sure to appeal to just about everyone. Brands and other organizations didn’t turn a blind eye to this. Rather than just inserting ads before certain videos, much like TV ad buys, they saw an opportunity. These channels rack up million and millions of views monthly.  The audience for each channel listens and values what the creator of that channel has to say. And so advertisers started paying them to promote certain products and as the old saying goes “it all hit the fan.”

We all know about product placement (see my beer example from earlier.) Product placement is defined as a “combination of advertising and publicity designed to influence the audience by unobtrusively inserting branded products in entertainment programs such that the view is unlikely to be aware of the persuasive intent” (When Product Placement goes Wrong.)  While TV shows like Seinfeld and Frasier experimented with different methods of product placement in the 1990s, YouTube has taken it to an entirely different level in the 2010s.  Youtubers are appealing for both audiences and marketers because they are authentic. These people don’t have agents or people telling them want to say. There are no directors or script writers. It’s usually just some person in their bedroom showing you the latest clothes purchase they made or showing you how to cheat this certain level of a video game.  Brands were quick to understand that buy sending these content creators certain products to try they would likely get that product exposed to a wider audience for much less expense. It was a much bigger bang for their buck, if you will. Cue the FTC. In 2014 they made it clear that content creators could be in violation of FTC laws if they failed to disclose that they were solicited by brands to promote products (Youtubers in breach of FTC if they fail to disclose sponsorships.) This has made Youtubers now be required to put #ad, or the ever dreaded #spon, on just about every video they make now. There are some people who think this is good and others who think this is ridiculously out of line. Most days if you scroll through the trending page of YouTube, a little over half will have the dreaded #ad. A lot of advertisers and creators alike think this is “a move that could make the posts seem less authentic, reducing their impact” (FTC to crack down on paid celebrity posts.) 

This leads me back to my ethical dilemma I stated earlier…is this an abuse of the public’s trust or should we have been expecting this all along? In Your Ad Here, the author talks about the inherent untrustworthiness types of marketing like this without really saying it. “It cannot be denied that requiring disclosure introduces an element of awkwardness – a stilted sponsorship caveat – into everyday interaction.”  The jury is still out on how much this has effected Youtubers and their ability to be authentic marketers to their audiences. Some Youtubers have been outspoken that if they work with a brand it’s because they genuinely like them not just because they’re getting paid. But that grey area continues to get hazier. As strategic communicators we have to be willing to see both sides of the coin. Both points of view of both the consumer and the organization are valid but bringing both points together in an ethical, non-misleading way is key. Strategic communicators are already fighting off the PR “spin doctor” role and the new means and ways of marketing and product placement only make it that much trickier to navigate.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s post! I enjoyed writing it! Hopefully I will see you guys back here next Sunday! Have a great week!

To Lead or not to Lead-that is the Question

Last week I talked a lot about the organization I work for and how important internal communications can and should be. This week I want to keep that topic going and add a bit more to it. As you’ll recall, I work in higher education, specifically in enrollment management and admissions.  I deal with an external audience daily (students, their family members, their employers, etc.) and recently have been getting adjusted to a new type of internal audience within my organization. If you want to know more about that experience, click here for last week’s post.  Within this internal audience I have noticed that there are some people who work in my organization who are clearly leaders in their departments. They are respected, their opinions are valued. These are the people who you go to when you need advice or help on an issue. They are invaluable members of the team and I, personally, am very grateful to them. Without them, I would not feel as confident with this new internal audience as I have been. But what makes a good leader? Who are these people and what makes them tick? And most importantly, how can we become a good leader ourselves?

According to some folks, a good leader is all about “being forward looking…[this] is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from non-leaders” (To Lead, Create a Shared Vision.)  I would tend to agree. Leaders are those people who are able to see the “big picture.” These are the visionaries, the ones who can see the finish line before we even know we’re in the race. A quick Google search of “best leaders in America” shows some interesting results.  You have some obvious contenders like Oprah and Bill Gates, but then there are some you might not have ever heard of, like Jeff Bezos and Mohamed Nasheed. What makes a good leader is ultimately this: do they have the ability to not only envision the future but get other people to envision with them? A leader is by definition “the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country.” And you can’t lead without followers. You have to have people buy in with you in order to lead effectively and to achieve that “big picture.” Yet this is also what leaders struggle with the most. “The data tell us that what leaders struggle with most is communicating an image of the future that draws others in - that speaks to what others see and feel” (To Lead, Create a Shared Vision.)  The best way to connect with people and to get people to buy in with you is to connect with them in the here and now – and you go about doing that through communication. It all comes full circle.

Communication is vital to all aspects of organizational life. Literally everything hinges on it. Without good communication outside or inside your organization, your organization will not thrive as well as it could or should.  This concept is vital. “Arguably more so than resources, policies, or organizational structure, our success or failure boils down to the individuals who lead us and their ability to communicate” (Strategic Leader as Strategic Communicator.)  Good leaders are expert communicators. They are able to tell stories, to relay their passion for whatever dream or goal they have in mind and relay it so well that others want to help them achieve that dream. An example that comes to mind for this is Former President Obama. He was able to articulate his passion and belief in his hope for the future of America. He was able to turn that unified dream of his into a rallying cry of “Yes we can” that lasted for two terms. Even if you don’t agree with him on policy, party, etc. you can’t deny that the man is an expert communicator. Being able to communicate is so crucial for any leader’s success. You have to be able to “educate, inspire, and build advocacy” (Strategic Leader as Strategic Communicator) for your “big picture” within your organization.

We all deal with leaders on a daily basis. Be they our co-workers, bosses, president of your Home Owners Association, or that one mom at PTA, leaders are everywhere. They must be because they are vital to furthering our world into the future. Without leaders where would this world be? Would we have put a man on the moon? Would Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream be a reality? In my organization, the biggest leader in my department is a co-worker. She has been with the company for decades, loves what she does, and does it well. When any of us are feeling down or having a bad day, she is right there to remind us what we are doing this all for – the students. She is a constant pillar of strength for all of us, and we could not look up to her more. Yet she is an admissions counselor by trade, just like me. She doesn’t have a fancy title, a corner office, or a higher salary. She is not a manager, nor is she over anybody. She is the same level hierarchally as the rest of us in the department and yet she is a leader. Too often leadership is confused for management. Management is not leadership, though the two must happen together to truly make any organization great. Management tends to focus on the more day-to-day aspects, the nitty gritty of running an organization – these aren’t the “big picture” people. Too often I think we see organizations who are “over-managed and under-led” (Management is [still] not leadership.)  By focusing on communication, and really harnessing it, we all have the potential in us to be great leaders. We may not all have the charisma of Oprah or the brains of Bill Gates but we all do have the capacity for becoming great communicators – communicators who can tell stories, educate our peers, inspire passion in others to help us achieve whatever “big picture” result we want. What a world we live in, knowing that that’s a possibility for all of us.

Thanks so much for sticking this one out with me! See you all next week!

Internally Yours

In case I haven’t talked about it before, allow me a few moments to give you a little synopsis of my working life. I work for a state university here in Alabama and have done for over 5 years now. I originally started out working in what we call “satellite locations,” smaller locations outside the state of Alabama that housed 4-7 employees and facilitated online learning at the university for students located near the satellite locations. I handled everything from recruitment, to admissions, from testing to graduation. Anything a student who was, say, 3 hours away from the main campus, needed from the university I was their girl. I worked for two different satellite locations with similar operations up until last November. That’s when my now fiancé and I moved to Alabama for his job and I was transferred to our main campus. My job functions are still very much the same. I still help students navigate from recruitment stage, through admissions. But now I don’t have to also focus on graduation and retention. I have an office located in my administration building that handles that. I don’t have to come up with creative flyers for my recruitment events. I have a dedicated department that is able to do that for me now. It’s been quite an adjustment, going from working with the same 4-7 people day in, day out, to working in a building with literally hundreds of employees working on different aspects of student management every day, aspects that before I had handled myself. It’s tested my communication skills and allowed me to see how even though I have worked at this same university for 5 years, I had no idea just how different it is between the out-of-state locations and what goes on at the campus. This week, I wanted to talk a little bit about communication itself, particularly internal communication. I’ve noticed over the last 6 months that I depend on it more and more to get my daily tasks done and have learned so much about different strategies to improve it, if and when the need arises.

Working in higher education, and in management functions within higher education, I can tell you firsthand how important communication is in day to day operations. Without good internal and external communications you lose out on a lot of valuable time. Communication is at the heart of what we do but too often I think we can all get bogged down in the external and lose sight of the internal. Internal is proven to be just as important as external communication, particularly in crisis situations. You have to let your employees know what’s going on often times before the public knows so they can be prepared. But if you don’t have a good foundation for facilitating internal communication you can’t do that effectively.  Having good strategies in place to facilitate internal communication is a key component to ensuring you don’t get bogged down in office “politics” when the time comes to really get down to business. So let’s dive in to some tactics that can help you and yours when and if the time ever comes when you have to re-evaluate how you are communicating within your organization.

First things first…what is your company culture? I think a lot of us when we hear the words “company culture” think about Silicon Valley. Facebook and Google in particular are notorious for their inspiring company cultures (Facebook vs. Google.) They focus not only on the work but on the people they employ- one big aspect of this that you’ll notice is that they trust their employees. They have some of the most amazing benefits packages in the world and everybody knows once you get a job with them you don’t ever leave. These companies have fostered and maintained a company culture that is “a climate of openness that encourages the free flow of communication and information in all directions” (Promoting Internal Communication.) If you have an organization who is secretive, who only tells certain employees what’s going on and expects it to filter down to everybody else, that is not a very open culture. My university is sometimes guilty of this. Certain employees will hear something in a meeting and then the next thing you know that statement has filtered down until it doesn’t even resemble the true statement anymore. Instances like this create panic amongst employees and often lead to poor decisions. Having good systems in place during the training and hiring portions of an employee’s tenure will ensure that good communication and open company culture are promoted. You want people to know right off the bat what their getting themselves into and who and wear to go for correct information.

Secondly, you want to make sure everybody has a chance to be heard. Feedback is a great way to do this at the managerial level. Asking for the type of feedback you want or expect and scheduling specific times when employees can voice that feedback is critical for any organization’s internal audience (Communication and Leadership.) It allows that open company culture to thrive and continue to grow. It also let’s your employees feel like they are valuable members of the organization. Dysfunctional communication is a killer for any organization or company. And as with all things it “occurs the most as the number of people involved grows” (Recognizing Dysfunctional Communications.)  This is something I have been adjusting to in my new location. There are so many more people to interact with daily than there ever were before. I find myself asking “Is this ok?” a lot more than I ever have before. I am still learning what everybody does and asking for feedback about how I am interacting with them and if I am helping or hindering their work has been invaluable. It has helped me strengthen my communication skills and has hopefully helped my coworkers just as much as it has myself.

Last but not least, once you have achieved a good internal communication system or level, you want to maintain it. Constant observation is crucial for maintaining a positive company culture and a positive internal communication experience (Promoting Internal Communication.) Identifying any sticking point that may have occurred recently is a good place to start. Is somebody unhappy at work and self-sabotaging their projects? Is there a system that isn’t working for your company that you thought was working just fine? This has happened to my university in recent months.  A simple process we thought was helping admissions was actually hindering it. Luckily our higher ups were able to recognize that we had a problem and have since been able to re-work the process in a manner that works for all parties involved. Like everything, evaluation is needed and shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly when it comes to communication.

I have really taken these three processes to heart in regards to internal communication and I hope they help you as much as they have me. Have a great week and I’ll see you next Sunday!

Big Fish, Big Pond

Public relations always sounded pretty simple to me in my Freshmen year of college. “It’s just talking to people about your company or organization”, I said. It’s basically just a lot of press release writing and maybe giving a couple of interviews or two a week. No big deal, I thought. By my senior year, I was interning with a county Economic Development office and had no idea what I was about to find myself in. About halfway through my internship, scandal hit. Our Director was facing accusations that she had mishandled and gotten rid of very important documents regarding a local land deal that would prove to have very large implications for the county and its Economic Development. I’m not going to go into details for privacy reasons, but let’s just say she no longer works for the county or anywhere in Economic Development. It was a huge ordeal not only for us as an organization but also for me personally as I had never experienced a crisis like this before. Suddenly I went from writing pretty frivolous press releases and blog posts to typing out transcripts of taped local talk radio interviews with people who were saying pretty negative things about us in the press. These transcripts I later found out were used in the subsequent court case as well as in response interviews given by our Public Relations Director. That experience taught me just how quickly you can go from “OK” to “Oh No” in an organization. And it all started with a negative article in the paper.

I hope you enjoyed that little anecdote because it helps me segue way into our topic this week: Public Relations. I personally majored in Communications/PR in my undergraduate and so I know a few things about how PR works. I also work in a very outreach heavy, Public Relations-esque capacity for my job now.   I recruit and deal directly with Enrollment for a higher education institution. Dealing with students, their families, and their various issues as well as dealing with the general public and their inquiries has made me a much more patient and attentive person. 

One of my campus’s big selling points that makes my job pretty easy: nature trails!

I have also been in charge of certain aspects of social media for my organization before. That job was one of the more stressful if you can believe it. Being responsible for representing my organization was a big task and one that I did not take lightly. I was always aware, and still am, of what is going on with my organization not just internally but outside as well. What did people do before Google Alerts?! I am hyper aware of how my organization is being represented out there in the "big pond" and I think most people with Public Relations backgrounds are. It’s a big piece of the puzzle to making sure that your organization runs smoothly, and is able to maintain itself if crisis hits.

While my organization has been lucky in that we have had no major scandals directly impact us in recent memory, others are not so lucky and need the help of established pros when the time comes. Public Relations is a steadily growing industry. From 2008 to 2009 it increased in revenue by a combined 7% (Why journalists don’t make the best PR pros.)  Public relations practitioners are crucial members of any organization. These are the people who help you not only when your “down and out” but when you’re on top too, to make sure the “down and out” doesn’t stick around forever.  In today’s tech heavy world, that means more and more PR practitioners find themselves on social media almost constantly. All it takes is one blog post, video, or tweet to make a nightmare for your organization. Take SeaWorld for instance. Once the critical documentary Blackfish hit, you were hard pressed to find anything positive about SeaWorld for years to come. They are still feeling the effects well over four years later and have instituted heavy change to maintain what little credibility they have left (Anatomy of “The Blackfish Effect.”) The Blackfish Effect is a lesson to any and all organizations. It might as well be a “how-to” on effectively taking down an organization with a viral campaign. There is truly no protection from social media, no matter how big or small you are. But there are ways to handle your organization’s position and presence on social media so you are ready when and if the time comes.

As strategic communicators we need to be aware of how to handle our position and presence on social media. The big things that I think any strategic communicator should be aware of when handling their organization’s social media platforms are branding, engagement, and learning (Managing Yourself: What’s Your Personal Social Media Strategy?)   Building the personal brand of your organization is crucial. It helps you tell the story about who you are, why you do what you do, and how you do it. It’s the thing that makes you different from all the other fish in the sea and what keeps your audience loyal year and year. Engaging on social media is another huge factor. The whole point of social media is engagement. We want to talk to people rapidly and simultaneously and when we post to an organization we expect a response fairly immediately. PR practitioners have to be aware that whoever is responsible for engagement of their organization’s social media platforms has to be on call 24/7/365. Social media never takes a day off. Learning is another key tenant to managing your organization’s social presence. You can’t just talk to people and expect them not to talk back. Being open to learning about your audience or customers, really hearing what they have to say, and taking those lessons back to the powers that be is a great way to utilize social media to further your organization. It will also serve you well should crisis ever hit. Understanding how your customer thinks and expects to be talked to online is a great indicator of how they expect to be treated and talked to in the real world. It allows you insight PR practitioners have never had access to prior to the invention of the Internet and an opportunity we should never take for granted. Being able to talk to your audience or customers and take responsibility to fix the situation is key to handling a crisis, big or small, and we now have the capability to do all that in seconds through social media. Understanding that your brand, how you engage and learn with them, will all serve you and your organization well should your own personal Blackfish ever occur.

Hoe you guys liked this week’s post! See you next Sunday!

Sources:

Managing Yourself: What's Your Personal Social Media Strategy? 
Nach: Dutta, Soumitra, Harvard Business Review, 00178012, Nov2010, Bd./Jhrg. 88, Ausgabe 11

Caroline made me do it

Everybody has that one friend. They are usually the person who knows all about anything remotely new immediately. This is the person you ask before you buy anything electronic or gadget related for example. They always know what’s the most up-to-date product on the market and more than likely have some experience utilizing it in their day-to-day life because they waited in line the day it came out so they could be one of the first to try it. Some would call these people “hipsters.” Hipsters are those who knew about that new thing before it was cool to know about said new thing. Technically hipsters shy away from mainstream culture and trends, but in doing so, they often end up dictating culture and trends. An example is “distressed” denim (jeans with holes in them.) This style was made popular because hipsters shunned mass department stores and favored thrifting clothes, which were in various states of disrepair or “distress.” The look became popular and viola – now you know how American Eagle and Hollister came up with holey jeans! Hipsters are just a form of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are defined as “a person whose opinions about something such as a product or issue have a big influence on the opinions of others” (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/opinion-leader.) They come in all shapes and sizes. The guy that works at the Apple Genius Bar who showed you how awesome Apple Music actually is is technically an opinion leader. Your local barista who made you try that coffee drink you didn’t think you would like but now love is an opinion leader. If they influenced you to try, buy, or in general change your mind about something, they are considered an opinion leader. But how do these opinion leaders operate in today’s social media saturated world?

I’m going to give you an example of an opinion leader that I utilize quite frequently to demonstrate how opinion leaders utilize social media. I am big into skincare. I’m the girl who doesn’t think twice about dropping $85 on an ounce of serum in the name of good skin. I’ve been a follower of Caroline Hirons for just over three years now (check out her blog here.) She’s a big deal in beauty land. She’s a 40-something mom of four, who worked retail for years and is now a trained facialist and makeup artist. She has a blog and YouTube channel which amass millions upon millions upon millions of views each year. She’s witty, but down to earth. She’s no nonsense when it comes to product reviews and she’s built an almost cult following. When she recommends a product, it’s almost guaranteed to sell out within the week, if not the day. It’s been dubbed “the Caroline effect” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-3344840/I-m-beauty-s-answer-Delia.html.) She has an amazing instinct for knowing what women want out of a product and she goes out of her way to make sure the reviews she writes are thorough, honest, and always enjoyable to read. Caroline is an avid social media user. When she posts a new review on her blog or a new YouTube video with her current skincare favorites (my personal favorite videos) she makes sure to let her followers know. She posts an Instagram story about it, a photo or video snippet to Instagram, tweets out the link, and boom! Thousands of women immediately have a new favorite product. Caroline’s background in the industry (she’s a trained facialist, has worked with dozens upon dozens of brands, and has industry cred) allow her to be a trusted opinion leader, as does her overall personal narrative. Personal narratives go a long way in making opinion leaders. Personal or “character” narratives are defined as “enduring personal stories or accounts that we may understand as being related to particular expressed character types” (Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities.) Caroline’s character narrative is that of a guru, helping guide us all to the land of good skin, while maintaining her wit and charm as a working mom.   It establishes a connection with her and allows us, as her readers/followers, to understand her not only just as a product reviewer but as a friend, somebody you would want to grab a drink with. People trust their friends, and I trust Caroline Hirons to a fault.

Sorry to wax poetic up there, but my devotion to Caroline Hirons is a great example of opinion leadership and how it can impact the market. The “Caroline effect” I mentioned above? That effect is what companies who get reviewed by Caroline come to expect. It means your products are about to fly off the shelves and your profits are going to soar. It’s a very, very good thing. It’s also fairly cheap marketing. By having somebody like Caroline, who has already done the work of cultivating a captive audience, utilize your product, you as a company can capitalize on the after effects. Opinion leaders like Caroline are partaking in a form of Word-of-Mouth communication. For more than half a century it’s been maintained that Word-of-Mouth affects the majority of all purchase decisions (Networked Narratives.) People like Caroline just do it online now versus in person. The advent of social media has changed the way in which most of us partake in Word-of-Mouth interactions. Now instead of calling that hipster friend of yours to discuss whether or not you should buy into the hype of the newest iPhone (what are we on now? 7? 8?) you can just browse online for your favorite tech blogger or scroll through your YouTube subscription box until you find that one channel with the Genius Bar guy you love to watch on weekends. Trust is being formed online with people like Caroline Hirons every day. There’s a reason why YouTube beauty gurus are able to afford $1 million houses (Zoella anybody?) Consumers trust their opinions and brands know that. Utilizing these online, social media opinion leaders can only help brands and their marketers. Is there a potential for blow-back? Sure. But at the end of the day, isn’t any press good press?

I hope you all enjoyed my take on opinion leaders and social media. See you next week for another post!

Source:

Kozinets, Robert V., et al. "Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities." Journal of Marketing 74 (2010): 71-89.

Guess who's back?!

Remember how I said I might not be updating as frequently as I used to last week? Surprise! I’m still going to be posting here once a week on http://paigewester.blogspot.com/ for a little while longer! If you’re new to my neck of the Internet woods you can go read a little about me on my About Me page or go read my first post titled “I am not throwing away my shot” (which, yes, is a Hamilton reference.) If you remember, this blog started out as a way for me to work through different types of emerging media that are available and how we, as strategic communicators, can utilize them to their full potential. I would now like to take the blog and turn it around a little bit. I would like to focus these next few weeks on Leadership and Media Strategies and how we can utilize these strategies in our day-to-day lives as strategic communicators for various organizations.

Diffusion of Innovations theory. Did you just die a little on the inside, because I know I did the first time I read that phrase. Diffusion of Innovations theory is actually pretty interesting though if you give it a chance and can be one of the most useful theories for us as strategic communicators. It effects just about everything in our lives, from technology we use to the food we eat. Plus, it’s a great jump off point for us with this new blog direction! Diffusion of Innovations theory is based off work by Dr. Everett Rogers. Originally published in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations (1995,) the theory itself offers three valuable insights: what qualities make an innovation spread, the importance of peer-peer conversations and peer networks, and understanding the needs of different user segments (A Summary of Diffusion of Innovations.)  So let’s break down the theory and what this all means for us.

Diffusion is defined as “the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” (Diffusion of Innovations.)  Essentially diffusion is how things like new advances in technology, etc. are trickled down into mainstream society. There are four main components found within this diffusion definition provided by Rogers: innovation, communication channels, time, and social system. All these elements culminate to form the Innovation-Decision Process (Detailed Review of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Educational Technology-Related Studies Based on Rogers’ Theory.)  The Innovation-Decision Process is a five step one: 1) knowledge 2) persuasion 3) decision 4) implementation and 5) confirmation. Each of these steps in the process is also accompanied by five characteristics of innovations: 1) relative advantage 2) compatibility 3) complexity 4) trialability and 5) observability. Since I just listed two lists I’m not going to bore you with the intricate details of each one. For the most part they are fairly self-explanatory but if you are interested in going in depth about any of these concepts I highly suggest checking out any of the readings listed above.

The main focus that I want to talk about concerns the Innovation-Decision Process and those who embark on this process. First up are the innovators. These are the visionaries, the dreamers. The innovators “often lavish great time, energy and creativity on developing new ideas and gadgets. And they love to talk about them.” To me, the innovators are the Steve Jobs types. Next you have the early adopters. These are the people who are always “on the lookout for a strategic leap forward in their lives or businesses and are quick to make connections between clever innovations and personal needs.” AKA Hipsters. These are the people who knew about stuff before it was cool to know about them. After the early adopters you have the early majority-the rest of us who are “pragmatists, comfortable with moderately progressive ideas, but won’t act without solid proof of benefits.” Between the two “early” categories you have almost half of the population who participate in a given Innovation-Decision Process. Now let’s move on to the other half.   The late majority “are conservative pragmatists who hate risk and uncomfortable with your new idea.” These are the people who take a lot of work to adopt any kind of new anything. The want to fit in though, so eventually they’ll come on board. Last but not least are the laggards. What a nice name right? These are those guys who “hold out to the bitter end” (A Summary of Diffusion of Innovations.) These are those who may never get on board with your new innovation no matter how hard you work to impress them. Each type of “personality” is different and not everybody is the same personality for each innovation they may encounter in their lives. The important thing is that each personality will exist somewhere in the process and we have to be aware of who they are and what they want in order to get our innovations off the ground.

Now that I have metaphorically talked your ear off about Diffusion of Innovations and the very basics of the theory, how do we apply it and all it encompasses to our jobs as strategic communicators? The biggest, and in my opinion most obvious, takeaway is how important peer-to-peer communications and peer networks are to the development of innovations (see the personality types listed in the above paragraph.)  Without the early adopters and innovators talking with their peers and family members, some of the most innovative stuff to ever happen might not have gone mainstream (think of the iPhone, Facebook, etc. Those spread because people who were first to use them told their friends about them and so on and so forth until everybody now utilizes these two innovations.) It re-establishes the fact that even though we are now officially in the digital age, more “traditional” forms of communication are still the most useful. Talking with others is still the best way to distribute ideas and to invoke change. Thing about your organization that you work for. Do the best innovations come from a memo telling you what to do or do they happen more organically? I know in my personal experience, my company recently transitioned to a new CRM system. While we were all put through the same basic training, after about a month you could clearly see who the early adopters were and how they were helping the early majority, late majority, and laggards understand and utilize this new technology to its fullest potential. Each innovation is different but the personalities who help the innovators achieve the Innovation-Decision Process rarely change.

Hopefully you were able to find something useful in all that! I hope you enjoy the new direction the blog is heading and stick around for the next few weeks to learn even more with me! Have a great week everybody!

Auf Wiedersehen

These past nine weeks have been quite an adventure. I (and I hope you too) have learned so much about emerging media. From social media and networking to how technology affects children growing up today, we’ve dived into it all. My favorite topic I think was crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, and politics. It all tied in so well with what is currently happening in the United States political arena right now. Without citizen journalists would we have known about the impact the Women’s March was going to have? Would we have understood how desperate the situation at Standing Rock was getting? The answer isn’t a black and white “no,” but it’s also not a firm “yes” either.  I think the future of technology, the future of the web, lies in the people who utilize it.  The press is relying more and more on citizen journalists in the wake of their current predicament with the new administration. For the first time ever, people are getting direct, day-to-day updates from the President via Twitter. People are writing more and more about how they feel, how they wish to help, and encouraging others to help as well. As with most things, the power lies with the people and with more data being uploaded every day the web will only improve with time. I personally can’t wait to see what happens next in media.

But, sadly, my journey into emerging media and what that all means for us as professional strategic communicators has come to an end with this post. I have decided to take this project and switch gears for a while. As a result this blog won’t be updated as frequently as it once was but it’ll still be around, don’t worry! I hope you stop by again soon and see where this next journey takes me. Until next time!

A Blessing and a Curse: Children and Technology

This week all of my readings focused on children and technology. How does it affect them? How can we better utilize technology with our kids but also keep them safe? How do kids view technology in their own lives? A lot of research has been done over the past decade or so to dig into this relationship that exists between our kids and their technology. One of the reasons scholars see this as an important area for research is because children are very susceptible to outside influences (mainly friends but sometimes others whom they meet online) and most children are not knowledgeable enough to distinguish between a friend or somebody out to hurt them online. They aren’t properly equipped to deal with maliciousness delivered through technology and this raises a lot of questions for adults and parents alike on how to keep kids safe. There are a ton of benefits to raising kids with technology. A great example that I think about is one of my four year old nephew’s toys. He is learning how to creatively problem solve with this really cool toy called the Code-a-pillar.

 It's essentially a caterpillar made up of removable segments that tell the toy where to go. Some segments make it go forward, others to the left or right. The child arranges and rearranges the segments making the caterpillar's path change each time to move about the room in any way they want to. They can even make it go around obstacles like my little nephew does! These toys are dependent on technology and yet they're teaching him some valuable skills.  Now this same nephew also knows how to navigate YouTube on my phone to find his favorite Halloween movie about Curious George. There’s definitely an act of balance that has to take place with kids and their technology and for the most part this balance is fairly easy to achieve…until that child turns about 12 or 13 and discovers the fun that is social media.

Social media is the big bad in the world of technology for both children and their parents. In some households, it’s a nightly source of arguing and bickering. “Don’t Snapchat at the table!” is something I’ve heard shouted quite often by parents while out to dinner. It keeps them connected but at what cost? Most parents view cellphones and the myriad apps that come with them as both a blessing and a curse. A 2008 study of 60 families with young people aged 11-17 and their parents revealed that both children and parents “regardless of geographical location (urban or rural) – considered that mobile phones were a benefit to young people, and helped to keep them safe.” (The Role of Mobile Phones in Family Communication.) In the event of any type of emergency, cell phones and certain apps are useful and vital to have. Apps like SafeTrek (https://www.safetrekapp.com/) are designed to help anybody feel safe by opening and holding down your finger on the app screen. If you lift up your finger and don’t enter your security pin it will automatically notify police of your location and send a type of “distress signal.” I used a similar version of this app when I was in undergrad and I always felt so much better for having it. This proves the “blessing” part of phones and technology being ever present in kid’s lives. It allows parents to feel connected to their kids when they can’t be there.

Now on to the “curse” bit. Technology is a huge distraction in everyday life, not just for children but adults as well. The average American devotes more than ten hours to screen time a day and that number threatens to grow (http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/.) With all that time looking at a screen and being focused on social media, kids are focused more and more on maintaining those social profiles and making sure they fit in. Adolescence is already a fraught time. You have mood swings, you’re conflicted about risky behaviors you or your friends may be experiencing, and fights with parental figures is an almost constant. Online can be a form of escape for many kids during this time. Empirical evidence has even suggested that “self-disclosure through online communication can enhance the quality” of friendships children can have with each other(Coming of Age Online: The Developmental Underpinnings of Girls’ Blogs.) In a lot of cases, it can seem like social media is all about the “me” factor for youths but in actuality it’s much more about the “we.” In Sonia Livingstone’s article Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation she states that “social networking is about ‘me’ in the sense that it reveals the self embedded in the peer group, as known to and represented by others, rather than the private ‘I’.”  Basically it’s more about the group mentality and “fitting in” than it is about standing out and that group mentality can have some pretty harsh consequences.

As we all know, either from experience or from watching others, kids can be mean to each other. It’s yet another part of adolescence and growing up.  Cyberbullying is a huge part of children’s lives and experiences on social media. Nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online and 1 in 4 has had it happen more than once (https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-cyber-bullying.) Kids know this is happening, and some participate in it just because their friends are and they don’t want to be next. It’s a very serious issue and one that needs a lot more time and attention paid to it before we can really begin to solve it. It’s a huge “curse” of being online as an adolescent. However, happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light (if you got that this was a Harry Potter reference, ten points to your house!) A point of light in all this cyberbullying darkness is that technology is allowing kids to discuss serious issues with their parents or parental figures through technology. There has been a huge uptick in kids communicating with parents via text or social media messenger apps about serious topics like cyberbullying. Many LGBTQ+ children broach coming out to their parents first by bringing it up via text or social media, and even teen pregnancy has been known to be brought to parents attention via text (The Role of Mobile Phones in Family Communication.) Technology has allowed children to feel comfortable enough to communicate with just about anybody, but that also includes the people who care about and love them the most: their parents.

I don’t have children yet, but I found this week’s reading to be very informational and I will definitely remember it as I move forward with my own family someday. Only one more week left before we take the blog in a different direction. See you guys then!

Sources:

Livingstone, Sonia. “Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy, and self-expression.” New Media and Society, Vol. 10, Issue 3, 2008, 393-411.

Davis, Katie. “Coming of age online: The developmental underpinnings of girls' blogs.” Journal of Adolescent Research, Vol. 25, Issue 1, 2010, 145-171.

Devitt, Kevin & Roker, Debi. “The role of mobile phones in family communication.” Children & Society, Vol. 23, Issue 3, 2009, 189–202.

YouTube Taught Me

Branding. It’s a huge part of everyday life and you may not even realize it. Say you are walking down the aisles at Publix one day and realize you’re out of mouthwash at home. Which brand do you buy? Do you stick with Listerine because of its reputation with dentists or do you stick with the good old generic brand because it says “comparable to” Listerine? All of us are different but almost all of us use branding in some way, shape or form to formulate our opinions on things.  Branding has been categorized as “the process of creating value through the provision of a compelling and consistent offer and customer experience that will satisfy customers and keep them coming back” (i-Branding: developing the internet as a branding tool.) But this definition excludes a growing segment of branding that has been proliferated due to the rise of social media. That segment would be Personal Branding. Do you have a blog? If so, how many followers do you have? What about Facebook or Twitter and your number of followers on those platforms? YOU are a brand to those people. When they think of a spunky or sassy individual maybe they think of you because you’re always posting funny commentary on your day to day interactions with people. Personal branding is a vital part of life in today’s digital, social media obsessed world and we all have to learn how to create, manage, and cultivate our brands properly. 

An incredible example of personal branding would be the rise of the Youtuber. I was recently helping out at an elementary school and I asked one of the little boys I was helping what he wanted to be when he grew up. I was expecting the basics…astronaut, firefighter, policemen. But no…he said he wanted to be a Youtuber! The word Youtuber seems like it would be hard to find a proper definition for but nope: it’s easily searchable on the Oxford online living dictionary. Oxford defines the term as “A frequent user of the video-sharing website YouTube, especially someone who produces and appears in videos on the site” (Oxford Living Dictionary.) There are all kinds of Youtubers to appeal to every type of viewer. There are beauty “gurus” who specialize in makeup and hair tutorials. There are lifestyle Youtubers who cover things on their channels such as home décor, fashion, and the latest trends. There are gamers who film themselves playing video games for other people to watch (how meta is that?!) There are even family vloggers who film weekly videos about their families lives in the span of a day or week (my personal favorite of these has got to be The Michalaks!) There’s a Youtube channel and Youtuber behind it for just about everybody.  And these channel curators are making major money off these channels by harnessing the power of their own personal brands.

While many of the top Youtubers do make money off Youtube via Googles AdSense advertising many other popular YouTubers leverage their online notoriety to partner with brands (e.g. Bethany Mota's partnership with Aeropostale) or to become or launch brands themselves (e.g. Michelle Phan's Ipsy). (How top Youtubers Launch their own brands.) Through lucrative book deals, podcasts, and in some cases even movie deals (Camp Takota and Dirty 30 are both movies that were written, executive produced, and star Youtubers,) these creators have forged a new path to fame and notoriety without the help of traditional media. Most Youtubers pride themselves on being authentic, on delivering only content that their viewers want to watch. This strategy of branding themselves as authorities on whatever they create has served these Youtubers well. They have all managed to take their personal brand – the reputation and image that you intentionally create- and make it into a successful business (Fundamentals of Personal Branding.) Youtubers have also figured out that careful strategy of leveraging social media platforms to attain greater influencing power. Most beauty “gurus” on Youtube for instance all started out with blogs. Those blogs grew to YouTube tutorials, which grew into brand endorsements and sponsorships, which in some cases has grown to having their own beauty ranges. Zoella in particular is a big phenomenon in this realm. A survey of 13-18 year olds recently showed that “YouTubers were judged to be more engaging, extraordinary and relatable than mainstream stars, who were rated as being smarter and more reliable” (Why are YouTube Stars so Popular?) These trends show that the phenomenon of the Youtuber is not going away any time soon.

As strategic communication professionals, we can take these lessons from Youtubers and apply them to our organizations. It’s about so much more than maintaining the company blog anymore. Blogs can allow us to control the message being presented to the public about our organizations, in much the same way our media buys and marketing items can. However, these are not enough anymore. We have to be compelling and own our content (we need to be THE experts,) be consistent in our usage of and posting to social media and above all be streamlined. Everything has to flow (much like Youtubers progressions from blogs to the video platform) and the more it flows the more appealing our organizations brand becomes. We can’t depend on a Facebook like anymore to guarantee that somebody out there is talking about us. We have to strategize, make other brands come to us, and make our demographics work for us not against us. If we know our target audience is primarily women aged 25-34 then we can personalize our marketing efforts. Personalization allows us to “precisely and cost effectively target segments and develop more one-to-one relationships” (iBranding.) This is one of the most powerful aspects of the internet and social media. Everything can be personalized to suit somebody’s specific tastes. Our brands need to find their niche much like Youtubers have. The more we appeal to those niche markets the better off our brands will be. We won’t be everybody’s cup of tea that’s for sure. We need to make our communications with those people who DO like us count and personalizing our communications is a great way to start.

Thanks for checking out the blog this week! Only two more entries to go regarding Emerging Media before we change gears. Stay tuned!

The Comfort Zone

I’m not going to lie to you, dear reader. This week was a challenge for me. My readings focused on politics, crowdsourcing and the global impact of emerging media. These readings forced me to come out of my comfort zone in regards to readings about political commentary. It made me realize that I had made that most common of mistakes…I had unfollowed, unfriended, and curated my social media news feeds until I was in a “bubble” of like-minded individuals with no outside opinions allowed. I’m grateful for this week’s readings because at points it made me realize just how damaging that “bubble” can be, and how it’s important that we maintain a healthy perspective, especially when it comes to politics. This week’s post touches on the topic but only lightly and I hope you too gain some perspective as well from my take on how 2016 changed not only the political landscape but the media landscape as well, and how we can try and do better in the future for ourselves and our organizations by recognizing change as its happening through emerging media.

It’s common knowledge in most higher education circles that the tools and platforms used to communicate news and other important information is changing almost daily along with the public's media consumption habits.  To quote a professor of mine, “Teaching about these changes is difficult. In fact, most, if not all, journalism and communication textbooks are out-of-date the moment they are printed because of the speed of advancements in the world of digital media.” This past year was one of challenges for the traditional media, one where the ever changing habits of the public’s media consumption was one of the biggest stars of the 2016 presidential election. Traditional media’s perception, credibility, and trustworthiness have all been called into serious question by over half the country. But how did we get here? Why did the traditional media get it so wrong in 2016 and why didn’t they see this coming? 

Donald Trump’s campaign was able to pull off something that nobody thought they could do. Every poll in the country by most established news outlets had him losing the general election at varying points throughout 2016 by up to 80%. Donald Trump was the end result of years of action by online communities who had gotten more than fed up with the status quo. They were tired of not seeing their voices, concerns, and stories in the traditional media. So they took to the Web, to write and read blogs, to create their own news sites (a la Breitbart News) and to discuss things that they saw missing in the traditional media coverage. In Digital Democracy: Reimagining Pathways to Political Participation, the authors stated that their research pointed towards the fact that “blog readers are involved in a range of participatory activities, both online and offline, and that these two spheres are highly complementary and mutual supportive.” This suggests that a virtual and real world combination of activism is emerging to create a truly digital democracy on both sides of the aisle.

The disparity between this group of actively engaged users and the group who were actively engaged users for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, could not have been wider. Democratic nominee supporters were with traditional media, often sighting the stories most often published as for the greater good (ex. Marriage equality in 2015, Islamaphobia discussion over terrorist threat discussions, and so on.) Hillary Clinton’s camp got it wrong but so did almost all of the established mainstream media. They didn’t ignore what was happening online on sites such as Brietbart News but they didn’t fully engage in it. They didn’t take the time to understand just how pervasive sites such as Brietbart were getting. They didn’t invest in trying to understand the messages these groups were sending and the support they were receiving. Instead they ignored it completely or underreported it and as such, they allowed the biggest change in political history to occur.

Donald Trump’s political career could easily be defined in his use of social media, particularly Twitter. Never in the country’s history has a president been so free and willing to communicate with the public through such a personal messaging tool. Many experts would say that this is what gave him the election. He was not afraid to break hardwired political rules. A few examples of these rules are below, taken from How the political rules changed in 2016, written by AEI.

• ·         Celebrities don’t count.
• ·         Polling and big data don’t automatically generate the right moves
• ·         Outrageous statements aren’t disqualifying.

That last one is yuge. A study back in 2011 found that the “digital divide for social media users is wider between the haves and have-nots than it is between young and old” (So much for digital democracy: New study finds elite viewpoints dominate online content.) Simply put, politically incorrect, working class were (and are) underrepresented on the Internet. Their messages were being ignored by the mainstream and Donald Trump saw that. He was able to take those politically incorrect feelings and give them a physical mouthpiece. And the mainstream media took him at his word. They saw Donald Trump throughout his campaign as someone who was worthy of being taken seriously but not literally, while his supporters saw it the other way around.

So what does all this mean for us as strategic communicators? For me the biggest lesson in learning about the 2016 election was the idea of complacency. We all have a tendency to get in our own bubbles, or comfort zones. Clearly, traditional media were prepared for the old political guard’s way of doing things when the country was ready for a stiff departure from that. They didn’t take the time to see and acknowledge things from that metaphorical “other person’s” point of view. We as a society clearly were caught up in our own typical every-4-year political cycle and failed to notice it crumbling around us. As communicators, we have to be aware of changes happening around us and organizations, even if that change is not one we like or approve of. That change can be online or offline, a new product or tool, or a person running for political office. We have to be willing to take a step back and see it from another perspective before the lack of perspective drowns us.

As I said in my intro this week, I was pushed out of comfort zone reading and writing this week. But I am so glad I was, because it really brought together for me why Donald Trump is now our president and how we can take the lessons currently being learned by the traditional media and apply it to our own work and lives. Thanks for stopping by and see you guys again next week!