I just sat down with Nick Kempenski and we had an interesting conversation about media and specifically social media. We were looking at the future of public relations and how social media will play a role. We came up with 3 main points. The idea of this was to talk about what companies need to do to stay alive in the coming 10 years.
1. Metrics are irrelevant
-Quality of the experience over the quantity. A perfect example of this is Gary Vaynerchuck. He could care less how many people come to his site… but he cares about the experience they have. What Gary understands is that a conversation and or dialogue is worth way more than these magical unquiue hits we get on our websites. Yes, it’s nice to see where we are at, but it doesn’t mean squat is relation to where company’s need to be measuring their metrics in the coming years.
Perhaps a source of measurement could be how many posts does your blog have? How many real conversations do you have going on Twitter? How many of those have you/ your company replied to?
2. It’s NOT public relations
It’s customer service dummy. First, companies will get onto Twitter and all these other social media platforms thinking they can change the world with their message. EVERYONE has a message. Boring. This will slowly fade into We WILL see a reactionary type of businesses that have to mend to customers responses in a fast manner. Take for example Frank Eliason with Comcast using Twitter @comcastcares. They provide a level of service we will see everywhere. Watch what Frank is doing. This is gold. See what he is doing? Customer Service.
3. Transparency is KING!
CEO’s no longer will get away with not knowing what a product does or is on the front line. They will need to be ready to talk to the public. If they don’t they will be done.
Everyone in a company needs to know and care about the product/ company or else it’s going to be a huge disconnect that customers will and can see right through.
This leads us to, it’s not PR, it’s HR. Human Resources need to get in the middle of this new social media thing and sort it out. Executives need to get on board with what HR teaches them. Or else….
Closing thoughts…
We will see a new revolution of the business world that had NEVER before touched the earth in the coming years. Hold on.
For those that know me, they know I like to dig my cleats out around this time of the year for softball. For those that really know me, know I love stats. A few buddies of mine used to call me Statman back in jr. High and High school. I was always an avid sports card collector. I’ve got a few jewels that are collecting dust in my cases. That’s ok because they’re supposed to. Anyways, I always read the back of the cards and remembered the stats of players. This was before the internet so stats weren’t that easy to get. I knew a lot of stats and still do. So that brings me to my point…