The discussion kicked off with a question on whether “Social Business” is a reality today or if it’s a mere marketing construct. The panellists agreed – social business is indeed a reality and as social media becomes more integrated with the various parts of the business  it makes it both more challenging to handle and more relevant for the business as a whole. As Clelia Morales pointed out, the number of internal stakeholders that need to be involved is growing, but this also elevates the relevance of the communications function. Still, the degree to which social media is integrated into the core of the business varies largely among the brands represented by the panellists’ due to their different approaches and the level of experience they have with social media at this point.

It was interesting – and probably a bit surprising to some of us in the audience – to hear that the business leaders of all three companies have embraced social media without opening a ROI discussion from the beginning. Doing so opened up an opportunity to try different approaches and to learn from their own experience. When Vodafone first started their Spanish Facebook page a few years ago, it was just another channel for company news and the level of interaction was low. But as soon as they started to vary the content on the page, such as posting information other than news, or sharing news as an exclusive on Facebook, interaction improved significantly. Over time, Facebook and other social media channels have become more interesting for customers and thus more successful for Vodafone.

Asked about the challenges they are facing in their roles, the panellists provided a broad variety of answers from simple budget issues and metrics, to the problem of turning angry customers into happy ones, to more complex organisational challenges like difficulties in getting the buy-in from internal stakeholders in order to build a cross-functional team. Despite these challenges, they agreed that the experience gained through PR and social media engagement can be of great value to other business areas because the functions need to understand both the business and the customers and are ideal for telling a story around a product or service.

Of course, we also wanted to know how the panellists see the role PR agencies and consultants. They all valued the strategic input and consultancy only PR communication experts provide, as Christophe Rocca pointed out. Clelia Morales showed how she expects PR agencies to work: “Surprise me and be a step ahead.” A good lesson to take on board!

Video clips from the panel discussion will be viewable on a micro-site scheduled to go live shortly. This will also feature a brief video interview with our CEO Aedhmar Hynes providing her views on some of these discussion points. We will update this blog post with the URL once the site is up and running next week and also share the link on Facebook and Twitter.

1. Is social business a reality or a marketing construct?
2. What role do you see PR / communications playing in supporting the wider business’ social business efforts?
3. What are the major barriers companies are facing in their social business transitions and what advice can you offer?
4. Any pointers for talking to the C-suite about social business?

This is where you come in – tell us: What questions would you want to ask these folks if given the opportunity? We’ll be accepting questions up to and during the panel on the Text 100 Facebook Page… and we want to hear from you!

So get your brains buzzing and jump in to the conversation by stopping by our Facebook page and posting a reply to the update regarding the panel. Jeremy will do his best to get answers to as many questions shared as possible… and be sure to look for our video coverage after the event!

If it’s hard for him, it’s hard for anyone. And, of course, the still evolving media landscape bears witness to this fact. No need to rehash the lowlights of the last half decade in news, but the lack of a frontrunner for a sustainable business model for the news industry is evidence that more turmoil is still to come.

In thinking more about Scoble’s and others’ comments made during last week’s panel discussion on the future of communications (see initial post here), an underlying current throughout it all was the quest to add value for whatever audience you’re speaking with.

Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee acknowledged that what she was doing wasn’t much different from what newspaper columnists have traditionally done and Chris O’Brien of the San Jose Mercury News and the Next Newsroom Project acknowledged that the printed paper likely won’t be the core of what the Merc eventually becomes (he also made an interesting observation that the radio remains the place where Bay Area commuters consume most of their media yet radio is frequently omitted from these sorts of discussions).

On the hunt for value...

Remove the delivery vehicle (the paper, a blog, the radio, TV, etc) from the conversation and what remains of news is the information itself (which you could argue is as it should be). And with no barriers to entry and general information overload, the information needs to add value. Anything less and relevancy will wane, no matter who you write for.

Richard Brewer-Hay, principal blogger for eBay over at eBay Ink, said to me afterward he’s most intrigued how newer communications channels have enabled two-way dialogues (or even many-to-many) rather than the traditional one-to-many. That, he said, fundamentally changes the value proposition for journalists and audiences. This works great for Richard because he’s able to leverage his role into a true dialogue with eBay’s community. Letters to the editor just don’t cut it anymore. The letter to the editor presents a voice, but it’s a voice that isn’t replied back to and doesn’t spawn other conversations. It’s the tree falling in the forest and no one is quite sure if anyone else is around to hear it.

Post into any story and you’ve now contributed to a “live” conversation, and impacted the rest of what’s to come and can see how it all plays out. Likewise, fully formed conversations can get built up through many voices all riffing on whatever original content gets posted to the Internet.

But this doesn’t necessarily equate to value. Wading through a hundred comments on a story is rarely fruitful. I would rather have Seymour Hersh writing his stories for the print New Yorker in a 1-to-many conversation as there is absolutely no value I can add to his content. I am in listen-only mode when he’s talking.

Indeed, the construct of news doesn’t need to change. Journalists still need to be able do what they’ve always done best: Find the facts, find the viewpoints, and distill them down for the audience in a compelling manner. But a journalist who can’t add value beyond a press release essentially becomes commoditized by the press release itself.

Journalism today can be as biting as any time in the past, but the amount of information currently accessible and the number of viewpoints being thrown at us from experts and non-experts alike has had the effect of shortening our collective attention spans and reducing our tolerance for status-quo deliveries. The voices who have the greatest impact and can cut through the noise with impactful analysis – no matter whom they write for – will be the ones we seek out. Everyone else will just fade into the background as white noise.

Somewhat unfortunately, the tolerance for any slippage in this area will be minimal. If Robert Scoble is not adding value to the conversation, the collective public will banish him immediately and without remorse. Someone else will be ready and waiting to take his place, and we’ll be ready too. It’s a vicious turn, but it’s the world we live in currently. Here’s hoping that the people who deserve to be heard find their audiences and financially-viable platforms to support them.

Photo credit: Paul Keleher