sentientbeing

New service - social media policy development

Roger Hislop — 2010-02-03T16:23:29+00:00

We've launched a packaged service called "Social Media Policy Development", as seen on BizCom. This is not something new to a number of Sentient's clients -- we've done a bunch of social media policies, strategies, workshops, call them what you will, over the last two or three years. These range from simple "how to use Twitter" or "why you shouldn't blog if you're had half a bottle of wine" to all-singing, all-dancing strategies + policies + resource allocations + hands on training.

But any number of South African corporates are looking at Social Media, and wondering what they should be doing. Our "policy development" service is designed to give them a roadmap, a plan of action, and some Golden Rules to work within.

This is how we position the service:

"Sentient’s Social Media Policy Development programme is a thought-provoking and thorough examination of a business and how it can navigate the online minefields of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and others."

Key topics that we examine when developing a policy:

audiences and channels: who are you talking to, and where are they online
monitoring and tracking techniques and standards*
who responds to what, when, and why
response times and escalation paths
best practices in the various SM channels
tone, language and content
organisational structures and allocation of responsibilities

Sentient has developed online policies and best practices for many clients over the years as part of broader communications strategies. These include digital business-to-business strategies for local enterprises, blogging and social media guidelines for a leading advertising agency, and Sentient led the online communications policy work for the ruling party during the 2009 national elections.

The core social media policy should be simple, outlining a few principles and defining a voice. The Internet changes so quickly that a cook-book approach becomes outdated within weeks or months. A policy should be short and sweet: Coca Cola’s policy is three pages long (see interview with Coke SM head here), as is Sun Microsystems (here). But behind this policy, a great deal of thinking needs to be done, as enormous brand damage can be done with a few clicks by an over-zealous individual (such as a junior at Habitat using Twitter hashtags on political crisis in Iran to build rank). Part of this thinking involves legal or HR implications, training requirements for those who want to be online ambassadors, monitoring and tracking, and more.

So there you have it. Have policy, will travel the corridors of social media. Bravely. Confidently. Correctly. Entertainingly.

* Check out Klout for establishing Twitter influence, it's pretty powerful.

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Hamster Wisdom

Roger Hislop — 2009-12-15T14:24:00+00:00

I really want a big screen TV. A big flat one. One of those new ones that have a bazillion to one dynamic contrast ratio, and sixty trillion ANSI lumens, with four HDMI ports and the ability to play video directly from a USB drive.

Right now I have a really crap TV. It’s big and bulky, with a tiny screen. The controls on the front don’t work, I had to pull the thing apart to disconnect them after an unfortunate incident involving Cape Town winter dampness and a weeping salt crystal lamp.

This is an old, tired, small, crap TV. I want a new, big, slim-line, awesome TV.

And I plan to continue to want this big screen TV for a long time to come.

It’s healthy to really want a cool new TV. It shows you’re a real guy. It’s not healthy to actually buy a cool new TV. Because once you’ve been to Game and selected your hi-def goodness, and got it home, and mounted the bracket on the wall, and hung it up, and connected all the cables, and played with the remote, what then?

You watch a couple of episodes of Dexter. You browse your media player (because you can finally read the file-names from across the room).

What then?

Then you start to think, “Hmm. The speakers sound a little thin and boomy. Maybe I should look at a new set.” You start to think, “A media tank that lets me pull torrents down via WiFi from the comfort of my couch. That would rock.”

It’s a hamster wheel. Every step you take takes you a step closer to the next step. You will never get there, because the only way to get there is to get off this hamster wheel to nowhere.

So I will not buy that big screen TV. But I will continue to want to. That’s healthy.

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Perfecting your PR campaign by jumping on the Social Media bandwagon

Tyrone van Heerden — 2009-11-30T10:27:02+00:00

We all know the impact that social media has had on the general public, not only from the way people communicate and network but also from the way they perceive a particular brand.

Although many communications professionals have acknowledged the importance of social media (some even claiming to be experts) they tend to focus on one specific medium- Twitter being a particular favourite at the moment.

Twitter is a great medium for certain brands as a support function but focusing all your attention solely on the one platform can be a waste of a PR’s efforts as it should be merely supporting other social media activities such as your blog, Facebook page, company profile on Linkedin, etc. Social media is of course all about interaction- captivating a community of interest and not playing with, but understanding and supporting their views- why not tap into these emotions and put a name behind your brand over multiple platforms?

For me, Adam Singer from Top Rank's Marketing blog put’s social media into perspective for PR pro’s by providing readers with three steps for effectively using social media for PR.

Although Singer acknowledges Twitter as being the social medium of choice for PR and Marketing pro’s he also shares the view that Twitter shouldn’t be one’s sole medium- “instead of putting all your mediums into just one basket or network, focus on owning your niche across web platforms,” he says.

My concern in the South African market is that a lot of PR’s don’t realise how easy it is to send a message across multiple platforms targeting different communities by the click of one button. Singer say’s, “There is very little value in being a brand or a person who is popular in network X or Y.”

PR people need to stay committed to their social media plans explains Singer. “Push through the dip. In other words, outlast others who aren’t as serious or committed as you are.”

By staying consistent on your social media platforms, you going to stand out amongst the clutter on the web, creating a community who respects your insight and see’s a value in your views.

Singer appeals to PR people not to forget the role of SEO in your social media activities and to find the link between PR, social media and SEO. He makes a great point by explaining that if you participate in the social web with the goal of PR, you’re going to inspire attention for your brand. In turn, attention on the web equals to links, which can boost referral traffic and improving the general SEO of the particular brand.

I feel that South African PR’s are slowly coming to terms with the role that social media plays in building a brand. One can just look at social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, and can see the increase of visibility of South African brands and products daily. To me, it’s up to the PR’s to make sure that these brands are placed on the correct mediums, that they have continuous interaction with the network of people on the mediums, and that they build a reputation for the brand that will beat the clutter of it’s competitors on the web and attract a reputation of them being the better brand than that of their competitors.

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Don’t Cry Over Bilked Milk

Roger Hislop — 2009-10-01T14:45:57+00:00

Nestlé is having a torrid time. It’s the kind of story every news journalist loves. Global multinational! Profits at the expense of the poor! Grace Mugabe! Chocolate! As a PR person, I can even envy a little the PR people that are having to deal with it – it’s like being the SWAT team newbie who finally gets to put his hard-won skills to the test. Corporate communications crisis! Brand image at risk! Snowballing negative coverage! Chocolate!

As it unfolds, it’s attracting its fair share of hand-wringing, finger-wagging, horrified hissing, angry denunciation and just as angry rebuttal.

It’s also absolutely lovely to see a multinational organisation shatter into national stereotypes:

Swiss Government: Has the letter of the law been broken? No? OK, no problem.
“Nestlé confirmed that no individuals or companies in Switzerland were in any way involved in the relevant transactions... Therefore, no further investigations are planned at the moment.”

Nestlé Zimbabwe: Think of the children! Oh, the humanity!
“Had Nestlé decided to close down its operations in Zimbabwe, the company would have triggered further food shortages and hundreds of job losses among its employees and milk suppliers in an already very difficult situation.”

Nestlé Switzerland: Ve did nothink wrong, and even if ve did, you can’t touch us.
“We are not obliged to comply with the (European Union) sanctions because our headquarters were in Switzerland and we have not broken any Swiss laws.”

Nestlé South Africa: We stand up like a man and take it on the chin.
“We do not have any kind of business relationship with Nestlé Zimbabwe.”

Afriforum set up a protest site, nestlebloodmilk.com. Nestle SA was once again steadfast in its principled position: “We have not received formal notification of the campaign.”

UPDATE 1/10/09 -- Nestle SA suddenly seems to be talking for Nestle Zim after all ... it announced at a press conference that it will stop buying from Auntie Grace, because while implicitely supporting a murdering despot is OK, a consumer boycott is not.

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Glossy Women’s Magazines. Where Feminism Goes to Die

Roger Hislop — 2009-09-25T12:47:46+00:00

Why are mass-market women's magazines in South Africa so uniformly awful? With a few exceptions, it's just dross, dross and more dross. I'm a bloke, so maybe I'm not qualified to comment. So I checked with female friends and colleagues: professional, successful women, some with kids, some without. All despair. They pick up a women's mag occasionally, more from a fading habit than because the expect anything special.

Glamour. Cosmopolitan. Awful. Awful. Awful. Tedious. Repetitive. Synthetic flavouring and non-nutritive sweetener.

Fairlady. Femina. Marie Claire. Little better. More pretentious, with more "serious issues" handled in the same lightweight, bite-size chunks, referencing the work of so-called topic specialists that are at best dial-a-quotes, the journalism equivalent of Heinz two-minute chicken noodles.

I pick up the international versions of these titles sometimes, and while they're hardly Vanity Fair, there is at least a sense of journalism, of editorship, of respect for the reader (that being said, they vary wildly - maybe I just struck it lucky).

The women's mags take fluff, and dumb it down even more. It's a monthly compendium of regurgitated pap. Flat tummy now! Better sex in five steps! What your lover never told you that would blow his mind! Stand up to your boss!

A litany of trivial, senseless nonsense. The editors are saying in 45-point sans serif font on every cover: "SA women? You are pointless, helpless and hapless, and even though you know you will never be Charlize Theron, Maria Ramos or Wendy Luhabe, the neediness and inadequacy that suffuses your needy and inadequate being is catnip for our advertisers."

God help SA women if these magazines are really a pfenster on their lives. More like a raphaeling for bankruptcy.

There are a couple of mags that are trying. Destiny tries to give the professional, intelligent woman something that talks to the real life she leads, rather than the stereotype-smothered vanilla Twinkie of a life that editors of the rest of the women's mags project onto their readers. For good or ill, though, Destiny has zoomed in on the urban black career-women living in Jo'burg. We need more.

There is a massive market opportunity in women's mag publishing for something a little smarter, a little less addicted to taking the safe, easy editorial option, and a lot more readable.

The glossy women's mags don't have features, they have compendia of soundbites and fact files loosely organised around the tepid opinions of the month's tame psychologist/style consultant/life coach. These magazines don't have points of view, they have top tips. The only principled stand they take is a grovelling adoration of luxury brands. They don't contain information, they polish turds.

I can forgive creative work many things (and a popular magazine is, at it's essence, a creative exercise, not intellectual) - bitchiness, bias, bitterness...

But I can't forgive them for being stupid, and I can't forgive them for being dull.

More than anything else, I'd like to see a few of the many talented, smart, informed, no-bullshit women journalists get together, pull in a couple of good men (to keep the womenfolk from straying back to make-up secrets and vacuous dissection of relationships), and veer off the well-trodden trail of current convention to produce the women's magazine that South African women deserve.

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Accidental Truthiness

Roger Hislop — 2009-09-11T12:10:18+00:00

“Opposing Yet Unified”.

One of the taglines on the promo game Website for Dan Brown’s new book, “The Lost Symbol”.

My first reaction? Noooooooo, nooooooo, no more of Dan Brown’s abysmal psuedo-factual tripe! Second reaction? What the hell does that even mean? Bricked Yet Slippery. Manifest Yet Lemon-Scented. Artful Yet Spastic.

"Opposing Yet Unfied" turns out it’s a cryptic description of the Yin/Yang sign in this “guess the esoteric symbol” game. Which is actually just a little bit addictive, even though you know it’s a complete waste of time.

Which is Dan Brown’s novels to a T. Addictive Yet Awful.

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Poker is the new golf

Sarah Rice — 2009-09-03T14:47:28+00:00

Sitting in a client office’s last week I heard one of the sales-droids seduce a prospective customer into a game of poker.

There was a discussion about whether it was for money (deep masculine laugher), whether any women were playing – turns out this was a (chortle, chortle) night-with-boys game and (much hilarity) what kind of whisky would be on offer.

“What the hell…?” I was thinking. “What is this? A bromance?” And it suddenly dawned on me. Poker is the new golf.

And y’know, It makes sense. Its perfect for those who want to ‘build relationships’ with people they work with, but aren’t high enough up the corporate hierarchy to take a Friday off to ‘network’.

Poker has a lot going for it. You don’t need daylight, you don’t need to buy any expensive kit, you don’t need to know that much to play and have fun and you aren’t limited to a foursome. Add a bit of competition, some Patron (the new Jagermeister) and I think we have the makings of the credit-crunch networking dream.

Poker has an edgy-glam feel. You get the feeling there are passwords, smoky-eyed girls, endless shots of hard liquor (yes – when playing poker everyone uses the word liquor), sweaty losers and calm collected winners.

For not much money/ matchsticks you can make friends and influence people. All the while discussing that big job…

I guess this all means one thing - its time to trade up to a better set of clubs.

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The Language of the Recession

Sarah Rice — 2009-08-11T10:52:53+00:00

Language tells us a lot about where people are at with their thinking. Corp-speak, best known for it obfuscation, can also reveal. Here is Sentient’s In and Out word list for mid-2009

OUT	IN
Innovative: using new words to talk about old concepts	Pragmatic: same old stuff, but now we don’t have to dress it up in new clothes
Smart: we’ve put some young guys with funky hair cuts into the meetings so it feels edgy	Wise: we finally get to the take the young guys out of our meetings
Out the box thinking: lets have a wild idea and then throw money at the problem till we can claim success	Prudent: no wild ideas. Just good, hard working solutions that come in on-budget
People centric: we have to be, or they will leave for a better paying job elsewhere	Profit centric: we have to be, or we will go out of business. The good news is that we don’t have to pander to the whims of young gun employees with funky hair cuts

Personally? I am relieved this bling-bling-gel-laden-funky-hairdo-check-out-my-trainers-they-cost-more-than-your-car way of communicating has been replaced by the bring-your-own-shopping-bag-wash-the-jam-jars-buy-in-bulk-fiscal-conservative-ness of our grandparent’s generation.

I never have to use the word innovative in a press release ever again. It’s a bit more real now. It’s all about getting the job done and getting paid for it.

Wonderful. Now, if we could just prove the prudence of pragmatic PR… then I would be onto something truly innovative…

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The (tag) cloud above Zuma's head

Andre Fourie — 2009-06-03T13:42:41+00:00

Newly-elected President Jacob Zuma delivered his first State of the Nation address this morning in Cape Town. It was a long speech that focused on addressing shortcomings in delivery, the fight against crime and the importance of a proper, effective education system.

If you, like me, lack both the time and the inclination to read through and decipher the speech, have a look at the tag cloud we've created of the entire address using Wordle. The full speech can be found here on the Government website.

Looking at the tag cloud, it seems that Zuma's most pressing priorities are 'development', 'economic' and 'ensure', which tells me that the government intends on tackling social problems such as crime and poverty as well as macro-issues such as the global economic recession by subjecting his ministers to constant performance reviews to ensure delivery and progress.

The speech was very positive, a little feel-good to be honest, and with all the immediate challenges facing our country only time will tell if he was being realistic or foolishly optimistic.

That said, I can't help but feel: "So far so good, Mr Zuma."

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Make Profit Not War

Roger Hislop — 2009-05-21T12:47:57+00:00

We have a new Telecommunications Minister. We have a new man heading up the department tasked with ensuring that South African individuals and businesses communicate with each other freely and cheaply. The ministry that chooses the councillors that staff the regulator that sets sensible policies timeously, in an environment conducive to growth and development, of businesses and of local expertise.

In some dream world.

Instead, we have got a man with no history in telecoms that was instrumental in pushing through the highly irregular acquisition of billions in weapons in a secretive process. He takes a job almost defined by an acrimonious relationship between government and industry, and a regulator that alternates between clumsy nose-poking-into-things-it-should-leave-to-the-market and timid vacillation.

But that’s South African politics, and South African telecoms. Nothing new there.

By far the greater concern is that he is a military mind. A mind that could wreak havoc not only on the growth of our telecoms industry, but on our freedoms and privacies.

The military mind is bred on a diet of paranoia and is obsessed with control. Which is fine and good when it comes to defence, security and war. It’s not fine and good when it comes to the right of legitimate businesses and law-abiding citizens to go about their business.

What is the actual Rand cost of a small handful of criminals using cellphones to manage their henchmen, versus the actual Rand benefit of millions of South Africans growing the economy and earning money? Think RICA. What is the actual risk of a crazy terrorist doing something unspeakable to innocents versus the actual reality of millions of us living in relative peace and security? Think PATRIOT Act.

Security against vague threats must be balanced against the vastly more important right to earn a living, grow your business, engage in any lawful activity you choose without onerous regulation or sweeping violations of your privacy.

The creep of Orwellian policies are a very real danger for us in South Africa. In two of the safest countries in the world, zealous control-obsessed politicians are not only telling consenting adults what is or is not good for them, they are also constructing a massive, all-powerful system to monitor what they do.

In the UK, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has an obsession to not only control the Internet, but also sneak back-door regulations through to create a surveillance society. If you have any doubts as to how far the UK government wants to take it, a key programme is called “Mastering the Internet".

After massive protest, she backed off from plans to create an all-knowing government database of every Internet mouse-click, only to reintroduce it as a requirement for ISPs to do it instead.

And then we have the Great Australian Firewall, the “someone think of the children” filter that will keep Australians safe from paedophiles, child porn… and well, whatever gets added to the secret blacklist by unknown censors. The plan was recently scuttled by political opposition, but comms minister Stephen Conroy is anything if not persistent. It will be back.

So we return to our new Minister. To the military mind, security is the ultimate objective. Gathering intelligence is the highest priority, and assuming the worst the best-case scenario. Throw in vague ominous rumblings about terrorism and child abuse, and rationalising more government controls becomes overwhelming.

Which will bring more of a twinkle to the eyes of a military man – grappling with the complex and subtle intricacies of spectrum sharing and Net neutrality and local loop unbundling, or fiddling with the Regulation of Interception of Communications laws? Supporting new telecoms entrepreneurs, or ploughing resources into attempts register all SA’s mobile users?

Siphiwe Nyanda is only days into the job, so speculation is premature – but it’s vital that the telecoms industry, telecoms consumers and business groups start lobbying the ministry now to make sure our new political leaders understand that telecoms thrives only in a free market – free of interference, free of onerous legislation, free of censorship, free of paranoia and obsession with security.

Please, Comrade Minister, leave behind the interventionist habits of your predecessors, whose policies hurt both business and the poor, cost us billions in infrastructure investments that were never made, and ten years of Internet development. Leave behind the military mind, and the mindset that suits the waging of war. Embrace telecoms positivism – that a growing economy, cheap communications and gainful employment will do more to reduce crime and poverty than any number of regulations.

Leave the paranoia and military mindset to the Minister of State Security and Minister of Police and Minister of Defence. That’s their job. It’s no longer yours.

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