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As we enter a new decade undoubtedly full of hyped trends, disruptive platforms and outrageous applications, we asked our experts to tell us their predictions:

What’s your take on the trends in 2010?

You may recall images flashing around the world in 2006 that showed laptops bursting into flames.  These dangerous fires were caused by faulty batteries.  However, few people appreciate that Sony was not identified as the supplier of these batteries until Dell Computer named it in a post on the company’s corporate blog.  Dell’s post generated 1.5 million web links in only nine days.  Sony’s share price fell 18% in seven very short weeks and was eventually forced to issue a profit warning.  This experience shows how one company’s efforts to protect its brand online harmed another company’s brand. 

Is the future of branding as we know it under threat?  Is it possible to build a brand online - or is online brand building simply a defensive strategy?  Does loyalty matter anymore?  Text 100 is bringing together a panel of Europe’s leading brand owners to debate these questions and more.  If you’re in London on Tuesday, January 19, please join us at the Paramount Private Members Club on Level 31 of Centre Point Tower (New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1DD) at 6.30pm.  You’ll hear from:

• Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic and special adviser to Sir Richard Branson
• Brian O’Shaughnessy, Head of global communications, Skype
• Vijay Solanki, Senior Director of digital marketing, Research In Motion (RIM, creators of the Blackberry)
• Cristina Hoole, Marketing and PR Director Europe, LinkedIn
• Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text 100 (acting as host and chair)

One suggestion we’ve offered repeatedly over the past year is to use more video as part of your PR and social media efforts. There’s no disputing that we’re visual people and “seeing is believing.” Adding more video posts to your corporate blog is one way to breathe new life into your blog in 2010, boost the “shareability” of your content and hopefully improve brand perception.

But don’t just take our word for it. Jeanette Gibson and John Earnhardt from Cisco’s PR team (disclosure: Cisco is a Text 100 client) recently caught up with JD Lasica of the SocialMedia.biz blog to talk about how Cisco uses video. Earnhardt says:

“The return on investment for using video is a no-brainer. If you factor in the cost of the camcorders and training time, the ROI is 4 cents per video view and dropping. The real hurdle is just starting [the process]: getting the camera, teaching people how to get the video up on the Web. The real message is just to go out there and do it.”

Watch Alyssa Weir, a Textie in Rochester, share her thoughts on why video is a great PR tool as well as some of her favorite video blog examples. Lastly, don’t get bogged down with developing an overly-polished video strategy or waiting on professional production. As Earnhardt suggests, just get out there and start experimenting!

The world is looking to Copenhagen where the UN climate conference 2009 is currently taking place. At Text 100 we advise many clients on CSR and social media communications and have therefore been very interested in considering the communications landscape surrounding the conference this year. We want to find out how Web 2.0 and especially the rise of social media has revolutionized the way politicians are communicating their positions, how NGOs are trying to influence the discussions and how COP15 is bringing climate experts to the “blog table” to offer insights into the climate discussion. It is very interesting to take a look behind the scenes and understand how many different stakeholders can stay up to date every minute of  the day.

Prior to the start of COP15 we created an international Text 100 COP15 team with the objective of monitoring the social web including blogs, Twitter, social networks, online forums, YouTube, Flickr etc. and analyzing what we found. The team started its work with the COP15 pre-conference in Barcelona, on 2^nd November. After six busy weeks we have observed the following, topline trends.  We will be pulling together a thorough analysis of our findings in early January.

• NGOs, politicians and journalists are important users of social media today. Interestingly, companies and  industry associations do not seem to be  exploiting the potential of social media.
• Twitter and blogs are the social media tools used most. An interesting example is the twitter wall of Greenpeace on 5th December in Berlin: Greenpeace put a big screen in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate. At the end of the day, it received 15,000 tweets with the hashtag #savetheclimate. There were people in Germany sending messages to Angela Merkel and what she should focus on. One can see this twitter wall also in the Greenpeace GreenAction blog: http://twitterwall.greenaction.de/. 
•  NGOs leverage social media to inform their members and followers about current activities, to call for action and to report about progress made in Copenhagen. A good example is WWF Climate Blog. 
• Interestingly, social media is mainly used as an information channel. In many cases there aren’t a lot of comments and dialogue that show a vivid discussion about the climate conference. However, a positive example in terms of interaction and dialogue is the Climate Thinkers Blog of the Danish government which invites some of the world’s most renowned climate thinkers to participate in a virtual global climate debate. 
• Prior to the conference, topics discussed in social media were about expectations, attendees and results, as well as practical questions about how to travel to Copenhagen, how to find a hotel etc. With the start of the conference we can see a big shift in the discussion. Now it is more about climate content such as negotiation progress, positions and opinions of different parties as well as news-worthy activities of NGOs.

If you would like to hear more about social media usage at COP15 please listen to the Englisch radio show of Deutsche Welle or read the related article on their Web site.

We’ll know tomorrow whether Operation Chokehold–the online mob movement that’s rallying to take down the AT&T wireless network–makes good on its threat. As of today, all we can say for sure is that social media’s potential for fostering dialogue is vast; and so is its capacity for stifling it. And in any case, it’s hard to converse when your fingers are around each others’ vocal chords.

This all started with Dan Lyons writing a satirical post on his “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” blog. Like all great inciters, the “fake Steve” fanned the flames of his devoted followers frustrations and proposed the modern-day, virtual version of everyone taking to the streets, torches in hand, to kill the evil network ogre.

Now, though, it seems the real Dan Lyons is inceasingly anxious about the monster he’s created.  “I’m not sure we can stop this thing,” he now writes.

Thing is, mobs have always had a tendency to take on a life of their own (Hmm, what’s the expression…mob mentality…that’s it!). They also tend to burn innocent people at the stake (and without declaring AT&T innocent, this article in the Sunday New York Times is worth a read), and take out a lot of bystanders (in this case, all the people who would really prefer the AT&T network keep working, thankyou-very-much.)

So maybe it’s a good time to re-fresh ourselves on a few fundamentals of communication (not to mention civility). Things like, know your audience.  Make a reasoned argument. Refrain from ad hominem attacks.  Listen. And here’s a zinger: think before you speak (or write, blog, or tweet.)

It makes you reconsider that little, seemingly innocuous word on everyone’s Twitter page: follow.  I have news for you, chokeholders: it wasn’t meant to be taken so literally.  This world is full of people who are a little too willing to follow silly ideas without thinking.  Don’t be one of them.

Maybe Twitter should change that button to “talk to me,” and then we can all try to get back to the fundamental aspiration: constructive dialogue.

Carolina Noguera Binstadt’s recent post about former GM CEO Fritz Henderson’s daughter’s profanity-laced tirade on GM’s Facebook fan page got me thinking about the importance of social media strategy in crisis communications planning.

While GM likely planned ahead to monitor the flurry of discussion in social media to have a pulse on brand sentiment about this change in leadership and may have even outlined their approach to respond or not respond to top-tier business blogs or comments on the Fast Lane blog, it’s unlikely that they anticipated that a family member’s reaction would captivate social media users and blog headlines. Even more troubling is that this post creates a potential perception problem by suggesting that GM was not being truthful when it announced the resignation and instead fired Henderson after only an eight-month tenure.

Beyond being a great case study for making sure that social media is part of your crisis communications planning process, the incident also underscores the need for a systematic approach to evaluating how your situation will play out, what social media flare ups could occur and the appropriate response.

A useful process that comes to mind here is mind mapping. According to Wikipedia, a mind map is a “diagram used to represent ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged around a central keyword or situation. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and aid in problem solving or decision making. Mindjet, a Text 100 client, makes excellent tools for mind mapping and visual thinking.

By creating a mind map for your crisis communications situation, you can easily evaluate the divergent paths social media could take. For example, the ROUGH start to a mind map for a plant closing could look like this (click on image for a larger view):

By visualizing the crisis, the stakeholders impacted, the initial social media reaction, your strategy and the potential reaction to your response, it’s easy to see where there might be gaps that need to be better addressed.

I’d love your thoughts on this. Do you incorporate social media strategy as part of your crisis communications plans? If so, what is your process? What tools have you found helpful?

It is all over the web, the post from the daughter of former GM CEO, Fritz Henderson, probably traveled faster than the news late Tuesday that he was resigning. This highlights the public’s obsession with the way social media is shaping the communications industry and the diminishing control the communications functions seems to have on how, when and which information gets to the public eye.

That aside, much of the conversations on Twitter and blogs are on the failure of GM to respond to Sarah Henderson’s post.  The question is should they? Will this post really have an effect on the brand reputation and purchasing decisions of consumers like you or I to buy a GM car? Perhaps a few people, close friends of Sarah and the family that naturally see the events as unfair - Hey! if anyone in my family ever gets fired, my natural tendency will be to protect and stand by the ones I love, I just don’t think I would do it over Facebook, but that is me.  Sarah did, and that raises questions to how a company such as GM, with significant challenges ahead, should react to this type of post/situation.

Should GM address Sarah? Or should the company let it go and let the noise diminish overtime?  Is a statement about family members being off limits the right statement? And was it really the daughter of Fritz Henderson the person who posted the Facebook update? Which brings a whole other set of questions as to validity, credibility and influence of social media platforms, but I will leave that for another post…

Yes, it brings up questions about the decisions made at GM and it brings about important issues as to how to best deal with disagreements that were not intended to become public in the way they have. I say focus on the important stuff; after all there have and will always be disagreements, retractors and angry people. The difference now is that those have a louder voice that can travel fast and through many vehicles, but do they have more influence as they would’ve have otherwise? i.e. at the lunch cafeteria in school?  How would you have responded?

It’s a common scenario: you’ve put a lot of time and effort into the strategy and design of a corporate blog and you’ve built a strong pipeline of content that’s posted frequently. More than six weeks (or longer) have passed, and while you’re seeing some comments, you’re not sure the blog is worth the resources you’re putting into it. Is it too soon to quit? How do you know if your corporate blog is successful?

It’s easy to make the assumption that your blog is failing when you’re receiving few comments. But don’t forget, Forrester classifies social media users into six “profiles” based on their behaviors online, and the vast majority fall into the “spectator profile,” where they are consuming social media content, but not yet commenting or creating their own content.

This data tells us measuring the number of comments may not be the best metric for determining the success of your blog. Don’t assume no one is reading your blog just because there isn’t a steady stream of comments. It could simply mean you could have more readers who fall into the spectators’ profile.

Still unsure whether you should continue to blog? Before you throw in the towel:

Revisit your goals

What were your objectives when you built your blogging strategy? It probably wasn’t to get a boatload of comments. For example:

• Was it to start a conversation with potential customers? Look beyond the comments. Are sales and marketing teams sharing posts with their prospects and having subsequent discussions via e-mail or in person?
• Was it to drive traffic to other corporate Web sites or content? Look at your site’s Web analytics. How much traffic is being driven from the blog?
• Was it to establish your executive or company as a thought leader on a specific topic? Look for message resonance. Are other blogs or media linking to your posts or including your commentary? Is sales or marketing receiving more customer inquiries on this specific issue?

Remember: the numbers are just part of the story

While Google Analytics data for your blog is just one element you should consider, there are some key figures to weigh more heavily in your decision:

• Is there steady growth? While overall visitor numbers are important, track your traffic over time and look for steady improvements. Steady growth is obviously an indication of your blog building a readership.
• Who’s reading? By taking a close look at IP data for your visitors, you may be able to get a better picture of who’s reading your blog. For example, the majority of readers are from a specific region or country that is important to your business or the blog is being read by someone at a specific prospect’s location.
• Are people coming back? When looking at traffic numbers, unique visitors is usually the first place your eye is drawn, but don’t overlook returning visitors. How many people like the content enough to come back? Map that to their IP address and you have an even better picture of who finds your blog appealing.
• What posts are getting the most traffic? Data on the posts that are getting the most readers should be used as a tool to create future content. What about this post made it the most read? Was it multimedia post? Did it have more links to relevant content? Was it about a controversial topic?
• What keywords are driving people to the blog? This data helps you understand how people are finding your blog. If the majority of people are coming to your blog because they searched for health care reform as opposed to digital records management, be sure you’re creating more content focused on the larger reform topic or strategically using that keyword to keep people coming back.

Analyze your content/activities

After a refresher on your goals, spend some time looking at your posts, SEO and promotional activities to ensure your execution matches your intent:

• Have all your posts been about company news or products? If you wanted to create a platform for thought leadership, you may want to adjust your approach and see if you get a stronger response.
• Have you used SEO tactics in your posts? Strategic placement of keywords, metatags and links make your content more discoverable and help point readers to specific sites.

Don’t forget to promote it

Unfortunately the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy doesn’t apply to blogging. To generate awareness of your blog you should be putting just as much effort into promoting it as you are building your pipeline of content.

For each post you write, try to incorporate links to posts from other relevant and influential bloggers. They will see your posts in their trackbacks and will likely investigate your blog further and possibly link to it - making their readership aware of your blog. Also, be sure to identify other posts on your topic where you can make an interesting comment linking back to your blog for more on your perspective. Lastly, don’t forget the power of making your network on other social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, familiar with your blog. By teasing your posts in status updates on your Fan Page or tweets from your corporate account, you are putting the link to your blog in the hands of people you know are interested in your perspective. Facebook and Twitter also serve as an excellent platform for link sharing.

Ask your target audience/readers

Consider going straight to your target to get their opinion on the progress of your blog. This insight can help you tailor your approach if you decide to continue or help you understand why it may be time to quit blogging:

• Publish a post on your blog that asks your readers for their feedback. What do they like about the site? What do they want to see more or less of? What are some of their other favorite blogs?
• Outreach to someone you’re targeting who might not have seen the blog before. What do they think? Do they find it interesting, entertaining or useful?

Before you quit, I recommend applying some of the insight you learned in your analysis for another month. Ideally, you will have a stronger set of metrics to benchmark against and will see a marked improvement in the progress toward the goals you established when you started blogging.

This exercise will ensure you don’t make a hasty decision to shut down your blog. However, a corporate blog even with the best execution is not going to be the solution for every PR challenge. Know that it’s ok to move on if you continue to find that this tactic is not helping you meet your objective or your priorities or resources change.

Have you thought about abandoning your corporate blog? What did you do? What was the deciding factor?

If your reaction to the headline was, “what on earth does Web analytics have to do with my job?” you probably weren’t alone. Web analytics might be thought of as the realm of SEO pros and online marketing teams, but it can be an incredibly valuable tool for PR teams too. In fact, Web analytics can give you insight into the value of PR and the types of business outcomes it helps drive in a way that hasn’t been possible without expensive primary research. In much the same way, online advertising has revolutionized how advertisers can measure and optimize outcomes, PR can leverage exactly the same tools and techniques. As communications becomes increasingly more digital, it also becomes increasingly important to measure actual user behavior and optimize campaigns to get the best outcomes.

Here are some examples of questions that Web analytics can help you answer:

• Is our corporate Twitter account driving traffic to the right Web pages?
• Are our press releases or social media releases being cited by journalists and bloggers, and if so, do they drive traffic to our corporate site?
• Is Key Message A more effective at driving sales than Key Message B?
• Should we invest more resources in social or traditional media?
• Where do we find the audiences most likely to respond to our campaigns?

While some of these questions require advanced analysis and statistics, there are many straightforward questions you can ask your internal Web analytics team for data on:

• For starters, get some data on what unpaid sites drive the most traffic to your Web site. Unpaid traffic includes any Web sites that provide a link to you for which you have not paid (i.e., not ads or paid search). Many of these sites are influential publications that publish content about your brand, so you should know who is most effective at driving awareness and demand.
• Next, ask questions about what the traffic that these sites refer looks like. Do they tend to sign up for information or buy things on the Web site (or to put in Web analytics speak: “how well do they convert?”). Where are they located geographically? What keywords did they use to find the information, if any (this is great input into determining how you should write copy about your company)?
• Then you may want to do some benchmarking. How does earned media compare to paid media? How does Twitter compare to blogs?

Your internal Web analytics team should be able to provide you some of these reports out of the system or provide you or your analyst of choice access to the application. You can also talk to your agency or research vendor who can help answer your questions on how to get started. We frequently get asked by clients to do this and also help answer complex questions such as: what messaging results in more sales? Where are the untapped audiences with the most potential? Which audience segments should you target with various messages to get optimal business outcomes? There are many ways you can use the data to give you campaign insights, and if you combine it with other data sources, the possibilities are vast.

For more information on the subject of how to get started using Web analytics for PR, you should also take a look at this presentation, which Context Analytic’s Seth Duncan gave at IPR’s Measurement Summit recently:

David Ogilvy’s tips on how to be a great advertising client have been working their way around the Internet.  They are so simple, yet so profound, I thought it worth a quick adaptation for PR clients.  To wit:

How To Be A Good Client:

1. Emancipate your agency from fear.
2. Select the right agency in the first place.
3. Brief your agency very thoroughly indeed.
4. Do not compete with your agency in the creative area.
5. Coddle the goose who lays the golden egg. (provide enough time and resources to do the job well.)
6. Don’t strain your advertising public relations through too many layers.
7. Make sure your agency makes a profit.
8. Don’t haggle with your agency.
9. Be candid and encourage candor.
10. Set high standards.
11. Test everything.
12. Hurry. (Profit is a function of time.)
13. Don’t waste time on problem babies (Back your successes and abandon your losses.)
14. Tolerate genius.
15. Don’t under spend. (The surest way to overspend on advertising public relations is not to spend enough to do the job properly.)

~David Ogilvy in Confessions of an Advertising Man

That was easy.  Thanks, David.