Cutting through the ‘vapour ware’ of social media

Last Wednesday saw LEWIS London host its second digital dinner – a session where we invite a mixture of clients, journalists, bloggers and PR people to share their thoughts and views on all things digital.

The dinner was particularly exquisite and the discussion offered plenty of food for thought. Fitting that as the Telegraph ran a piece on London being the social media capital of the world, the group discussion took on a different approach to the usual conversations that come with talking about social media such as “Will Twitter replace email?” and “What’s the best social network to sign up to?”

It appears that as a consequence of the avalanche of slides, tweets, LinkedIn groups, blogs etc about social media, there is a growing concern that much of what is said amounts to ‘vapour ware’ (the corporate way of saying hot air).

The last eighteen months have seen such an explosion in what people hear about social media, it is easy to forget that its adoption is still relatively low in the vast majority of businesses out there. By and large companies are still unsure about how social media will actually help them over and above just having 1,000 followers on Twitter or a Facebook fanpage. While there are currently hundreds of PR firms offering to help companies talk the social media talk, judging by the discussion many are fed up of hearing the talk and now want to start walking the walk.

(This post also appears on the LEWIS 360 blog)

Social media isn’t about the tech

Last week I had the privilege of chairing a discussion on what social media means to businesses with my Bristol-based colleages.

Now usually such discussions tend to focus on Twitter and Facebook – and we did discuss both in earnest. However, this time conversation turned into more of a philosophical, and at times ethical, dimension on how people communicate. (Well aside from the fridge twitter talk. Thanks to Marc Cooper of the Bristol Evening Post for remembering this bit).

Although there was some sceptism on what the future holds for the likes of Twitter, a point we all agreed on was that irrespective of the technology, people will always be interested in knowing what others are up to and people will always want to tell others what they’re up to. In my opinion, this is why a Twitter-esq service will always be around even if the technology that facilitates it changes.

Ethics in PR?

I was asked to take part in a survey yesterday by the guys at Parker, Wayne and Kent about PR ethics. Another of my ‘topics of interest’.

Ethics in professions such as law, medicine and engineering are understandably taken very seriously. But in the case of PR perhaps not serious enough. When you hear of cases such as the unsubtle Zoe Griffin, it does make you wonder.

140 characters – what’s the worst that could happen?

At a recent event organised by my agency (LEWIS Social Media summit) I got into a debate with a client and a colleague about whether it was right for a company to trust its agency to run its Twitter stream.

On one hand, my colleague didn’t feel this was right and the agency was overstepping the mark.

“It would be a logistical nightmare having to get tweets approved,” he argued.

Taking another stance, my client didn’t think it was in the spirit of Twitter for a PR agency to take this role.

I’m a bit uncertain about this one. I speak to journalists, analysts and other influencers all the time explaining to them what my clients do and stand for in my own words (of course this will largely incorporate the client’s messaging and principles).

I agree in the case of an official statement being made, it should be the official spokesperson for the company speaking, tweeting, blogging or providing the comment.

But for casual industry observations, can a PR person really do that much damage with 140 characters at their disposal?

If they can, maybe they’re the wrong agency.

Companies using social media – another tool or a state of mind?

Following on from a debate I was reading from Wadds into how do you measure PR and a question Silky asked me about the difference between digital PR and social media, it got me thinking.

There seems to be a consensus that PR needs to have better ways of evaluating and measuring (there’s an EU summit on it) itself and social media affords the perfect opportunity to do this. My colleague Morgan made the point that the we are converging with advertising in this respect.

But a wider issue in my mind is how clients view social media. About six months ago, I would have said that many viewed social media (or digital PR) as an extension to their existing PR channels. Now however I’ve started to noticed clients wanting support in building  communties. And I did even tell them to use that phrase!

I think the more social media tools become widespread and mature, we’ll see clients really wanting to engage with a community rather than just ‘punt’ a message to them.

If it does nothing at all, social media will at least force companies to think of people as people and speak to them rather than talk at them.

About time

Well I finally decided it was time to set up a blog.

Hopefully this will be more of a fruitful exercise than when I last tried blogging about five years ago. That ended pretty quickly after I went through the rigmarole of setting up one only to realise I didn’t have a lot to say.

A lot of time has passed since then. I’m older and wiser, and the older I get the more I have to rant about. Most of my rants/pearls of wisdom will probably center around PR, corporate communications, technology and the media. There’ll probably be a bit of sport thrown in for good measure.

Wish me luck