Online media, blogs and 24 hour cable news have all contributed to drastically compressed news cycles over the past few years. Now, new tools that give people ways to broadcast updates in real time or near real time are threatening to further quicken the pace of communications, challenging PR pros like never before.
This will force us to sharpen our skills and tools when it comes to measurement and monitoring. Not all chatter is created equal. How do we know if the chatter about our brand is idle, or if it will stick and spread virally? Gone will be leisurely planning cycles and reactive campaigns that stretch out over days.
E.g., there was lots of coverage of the disastrous Sarah Lacy interview of Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg at the South by Southwest conference last month (see Audience Atwitter… on the Muckety blog). The sidebar to the news was the role of the mob formerly known as the audience that twittered their dissatisfaction in real time. This part of the story crept into the headlines and colored coverage of the main topic.
Peter Blackshaw of ClickZ wrote a nice piece several weeks ago on the subject (Customer Service Meets “Lord of the Twitters”):
Tools like Twitter remove virtually all barriers to saying a
product, call-center rep, or whatever trips you up sucks. If you feel
it, release it!
Your mobile device is just as good, if not more cathartic, than your
computer. Just say it! Write before you think! Don’t wait, not even for
a second. Oh, and don’t waste time with fluff. You have 140 characters
to work with, period!
If you’re on the receiving end of such feedback, it’s hard to
dismiss or ignore…
Also, Matt Dickman had a good post on the topic just yesterday on the Techno//Marketer blog. He wrote about the challenge and offers some excellent advice:
Search engines are indexing content within minutes, micromedia outlets
like Twitter are delivering messages real time and blogging allows mass
communication to happen with very few barriers. Rumors and leaks will
never go away, but companies now have the tools to be the first to
provide key, relevant information…
..Here are a couple of ways that I can see companies adopting new
technologies to communicate more quickly and more accurately in the
future (and some are already doing this today):
- Sales force empowered by micromedia. Go beyond names
like Twitter and Jaiku to the core technology behind those services.
Imagine a company that has a private version of Twitter to communicate
in real time with their sales force. Price changes roll out in seconds,
questions are answered quickly and customer service follow up is prompt. - Internal
communications blog. Some companies are using internal-only blogs, but
more will definitely start. This is a great way to create a two-way
dialog and communicate information and changes quickly and
transparently. Once information is in the open, everybody feels like
they’re on the same page. - Targeted blogs. Companies
will start creating blogs that are focused on key audiences (investors,
customers, employees) and communicate to each in a more open and rapid
manner.
