UKNetMonitor

Some thoughts on Web 2.0 following a Demos seminar

Companies have clearly lost their ability to control the news agenda, their message set, and thus their reputation.  After 20 odd years in public affairs, these were the mantras by which reputation was managed.  Directly managing the outflows of information gave companies the ability to influence the buzz around them.  

New skills are now required – persuasion, competence, and trustworthiness will be essential to maintaining goodwill from all stakeholders, along with understanding, empathy and responsiveness – to generalise somewhat – these are all female traits that many of the “warrior” types who have succeeded in getting to the higher echelons of business will find difficult to come to terms with.

What does it mean for the way businesses behave?  Much vaunted transparency will have to mean more than just being “open”.  Transparency will require light to be shed on internal decision-making processes for their validity.  Corporate Communications professionals will need to throw away their command and control structures that allowed them to vet messages simply for reputational impact, in favour of structures that test messages by reviewing the credibility of the process by which they were arrived at.   So, no more “we can’t say that, let’s put it another way…”  No more, “who can we get to endorse this decision”, but “who did we talk to before actually deciding to do this?”  

A consequence of this is that corporate communications professionals must ensure they are embedded through the decision-making processes of a business, from top to bottom.  They can no longer be relied upon to do their jobs properly by being involved at the end of a process.

Interesting to note a BBC survey that shows how the public trusts blogs more than they trust television, newspapers or radio as sources of information:
Talking specifically of media, which form of media do you trust the most?

A. Newspapers
B. Radio
C. Television
D. News websites
E. Internet “blogs” or weblogs

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From this morning’s Guardian.

Amazing how whenever the mainstream media (MSM) talk about blogging they only see it in terms of how it will influence them. Not a word here about peer-to-peer influencers.

·Online pundits ‘influence businesses and opinion’·

Companies are falling foul of negative net buzz
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Tuesday April 18, 2006

The GuardianBloggers and internet pundits are exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although “active” web users make up only a small proportion of Europe’s online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.More than half of the internet users on the continent are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23% only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net – through messageboards, websites and blogs – are helping change the national conversation, say researchers.”We’re seeing this growing,” said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. “The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters.”Although unprompted contributors are generally younger and more vocal than the wider online population, they are increasingly important as opinion formers and trend-setters. Mr Smith says businesses, media organisations and advertisers reading blogs should be wary of making assumptions about their wider significance, but that their muscle cannot be ignored.”They’re not representative of the larger audience, but what they’re saying does matter,” he said. “It’s a good straw poll – a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can’t measure.”"That’s exactly right,” said Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids, which explores the explosion in web punditry. “Bloggers and blog-readers are ‘influentials’ – the minority that pays attention to events outside of political and news cycles. They also tend on average to be better off, better educated and, more importantly, employed.”There are now more than 35m blogs around the world, according to search engine Technorati. While most bloggers only write for small audiences, they can sometimes achieve wider fame or become the focus of consumer campaigns.Companies like McDonald’s, lock manufacturer Kryptonite and computer firm Dell have all fallen foul of internet buzz in recent years. Because search engines like Google can allow grassroots campaigns to become highly visible, industry insiders agree decisions can be shaped by a small number of activists.”It’s always been the case that vocal minorities are listened to by media organisations, brands, advertisers and marketers – normally because they’re thought to represent a wider swath of opinion,” said Tom Coates, a technologist with Yahoo! and prominent blogger.”TV and radio programmes are censored or pulled on the green-inked letters of a few hundred people, products removed from shelves because of less than 100 complaints.”On that basis, these figures start to sound like a pretty large number of people, and probably a much more representative sample than perhaps before.”Mr Reynolds admits the idea of small groups being able to pressurise wider decisions is nothing new, but those who ignore online buzz do so at their peril: “You can bury your head in the sand, but very quickly you’ll look like a very old-fashioned company.”

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The BBC are quoting Esther Dyson, founder of the influential newsletter Release 1.0. who says: “The biggest shift caused by the Internet is not the technology that people use. It’s how people interact with one another and with the institutions in their lives (also composed of people). And those organisations still think of us as “consumers”. Wrong, wrong, wrong! So Web 1.0!

1. According to a study by McKinsey, two thirds of the U.S. economy is influenced by word of mouth.
2. 50% of negative WOM happens because of a feeling of injustice on behalf on the value of the brand.
3. Blogs are indexed at a faster rate and will enter search results more quickly. Brands have an opportunity to leverage this to acquire more “shelf space” in the search results.
4. Just because journalists are not writing about an issue or event, doesn’t mean it’s not being talked about.

Using skilled people not just automated search engines UKNetMonitor maintains close watch across the web, blogs, and newsgroups, for mentions of client organisations helping them manage reputation at risk by identifying new issues, public concerns, and complaints. Being aware of what people are saying helps compliance with the OFR and provides a foundation for a meaningful dialogue with stakeholders.