Experimenting With Mobile Video

May 11, 2008 – 8:16 pm

Mobile video is growing in popularity. A few years ago we couldn’t imagine recording video from our phones; now, a growing number of services let regular people create videos at the touch of a button.

A little while back I got a new Blackberry Pearl so, for the first time, I had mobile video at my fingertips. My data plan doesn’t let me use services like Qik or Seesmic Mobile. However, I can still record them to my phone.

Driving back from a media event in Sudbury (about 400km north of Toronto) the other day, I stumbled upon a trail to Recollet Falls, within the French River provincial park. Ignoring the warning about sturdy footwear and the fact that I was wearing treadless work shoes, I followed the trail out to the falls. I didn’t see a single person for the entire 3km hike.

The “falls” didn’t really fall very far, but it felt so remote and peaceful, yet powerful, that I decided to whip out my Blackberry and record a couple of videos. Turns out, it’s a lot of fun!

I might get into this mobile video thing.

By Dave Fleet | Posted in video | Comments (1)

How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 3 - Environmental Scan

May 8, 2008 – 11:57 pm

This is the third in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan.

Over the next few weeks we’ll take detailed look at each of the sections in a communications plan. Each time I’ll give my perspective and ask what you think. My aim is for us to work together to fill the gaps in what we know. Hopefully we’ll all learn from each other.

Last time we took a look at setting the scene through the plan’s context. This time we’re moving on to your environmental scan.

Environmental Scan

Scanning the environment While your context section is about looking at what you’re doing and setting the scene, your environmental scan is about looking externally at what other people are doing and saying.

The environmental scan is more than just a media scan, although that is a major part of it. You need to go beyond just the media to look at the broader environment and how you fit into it.

If you’ve ever studied business, a PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis is a useful way to begin to wrap your head around things. Don’t stick rigidly to this format, though.

Here are a few things to consider:

  • What have your competitors done recently?
  • What have your competitors done in relation to this?
  • What’s the legislative context?
    • What are other jurisdictions doing? (This is especially important if this is a comm plan for within the public sector)
  • What has the mainstream media said about this?
    • Which outlets (and journalists) have written about this?
    • What tone did they take? Positive or negative?
  • What’s being said online?
    • Who are the influential writers online on this topic?
    • How have they approached the issue?
  • What economic factors come into play?
  • What (if any) upcoming events/special dates might relate to this?

Don’t fill this section with long-winded quotes from articles - summarize the gist of what they said. Page upon page of quotes doesn’t help anyone. Be brief and to the point.

What do you think?

What’s above is based on my experience, which is primarily in the public sector. What about the private sector? What about the agency side? Would you approach this differently?

How do you approach this part of your planning process?

Let me know in the comments.

The “Communications Plan” Series

This is the third in a series of posts on communications planning. To read more of the series, check out a summary of the posts so far or pick from the previous posts:

(photo credit: kusito)

By Dave Fleet | Posted in 101, communications planning | Comments (1)

How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 2 - Context

May 6, 2008 – 11:11 pm

Piles of researchThis is the second in a series of posts exploring how to create a good communications plan.

Over the next few weeks we’ll take detailed look at each of the sections in a communications plan. Each time I’ll give my perspective and ask what you think. My aim is for us to work together to fill the gaps in what we know. Hopefully we’ll all learn from each other.

Last time around we looked at the overall plan and its content. This time we’re getting down into the details.

Context

The first section of a communications plan I work on is the context. Why? Because it forces you to do two things:

  • Boil what’s going on down to a succinct summary
  • Focus on the topic on which you’re about to write a plan.

The “context” section of your plan focuses on setting the scene. This isn’t about details of an announcement - heck, you haven’t reached the part where you decide what your communications objectives or strategy will be yet. This is about the background to your initiative.

This should be a relatively easy part of your plan to write. If you know the subject this can pretty much write itself. If you don’t, you need to bring yourself up to speed. To write the context section, you need to know exactly what’s going on.

A side effect of doing this first is that you can’t launch into the other aspects of the plan without doing your background research.

Here are a few things to think about when you think about the context for your initiative. Note that they have an internal focus:

  • What is the initiative about?
  • What related announcements have you made?
  • What are the timelines?
    • Is there an upcoming product launch/conference/deadline, etc?
    • Are there any notable milestones?
  • Who is involved?
    • Who within your organization has a stake in this?
    • What other organizations are a part of this?
      • Do you have partners in the initiative?
      • Note: This isn’t a stakeholder list - that comes later.

Over To You

You now have my thoughts on what to include in the first section of a communications plan. But what do you think about this?

What’s above is based on my experience, which is primarily in the public sector. What about the private sector? What about the agency side? Would you approach this differently?

Let me know in the comments.

The “Communications Plan” Series

This is the second in a series of posts on communications planning. To read more of the series, check out a summary of the posts so far or pick from the previous posts:

(photo credit: bookgrl)

By Dave Fleet | Posted in 101, communications planning | Comments (3)

Chapters Indigo Shows How To Handle A Product Recall

May 5, 2008 – 5:17 pm

I’ve written occasionally about companies that have messed-up their issues management, so it’s nice to write occasionally about a company that got it right.

I received an email from Canadian book retailer Chapters Indigo this afternoon. I’m part of the company’s iRewards loyalty program, so this is nothing new. Normally I delete the emails after a quick glance, but this one caught my eye:

It has been brought to our attention that our Mother’s Day Gift with Purchase Tote Bag has been associated with causing minor skin irritations in a few cases. Initial testing has revealed elements found in the manufacturing of these bags may cause these irritations.

The health and safety of our customers and staff are of the highest priority and we wish to avoid any possible risk. We ask those who have received the blue tote bag with a green lining as the Mother’s Day Gift with Purchase in-store only between April 30th and May 2nd to return the tote to any Chapters or Indigo store for a $20 gift card.

No other tote bags or products in our assortment are affected in any way by this voluntary recall.

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

The email links through to a page on the Chapters Indigo website with more information.

A few things I think Chapters Indigo got right:

  • They proactively put out a voluntary recall.
  • They contacted their most loyal customers to let them know.
  • They didn’t try to hide the recall - they put a notice of the recall on their homepage.
  • They provided more information for people that want it, and linked to their help desk for people who want even more.
  • They led with the most important message: “The health and safety of our customers and staff are of the highest priority.”
  • They generated goodwill by offering $20 gift cards in exchange for bags that were originally given away for free.

The only thing I think I would change is to provide a phone number if people wanted more information, rather than making them navigate the confusing ‘help desk’ web page.

Time will tell if Chapters Indigo has successfully kept this issue from escalating. Personally I think they’ve done a pretty good job so far.

What do you think? Did they do a good job?

By Dave Fleet | Posted in issues management | Comments (1)

Nine Inch Nails Continues To Shake-Up The Music Industry

May 5, 2008 – 12:28 am

Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows may have been a “one-off,” but Nine Inch Nails has gone and done it again. And again. And again.

nin Already this year, the band released their latest album, Ghosts, online in a variety of formats, invited fans to create visuals for the album and released another new song, Discipline, free on their website.

Now, ahead of the release of tickets for their upcoming tour, Nine Inch Nails has released another track, Echoplex, as a free download through music site iLike. You can listen to the track below.

Fans who were a little perturbed by the vocal-free Ghosts album, rest assured - these new tracks both include vocals, and in my humble opinion they’re awesome (I especially like Discipline).

Blabbermouth.net also reports that fans can expect a surprise on the band’s official site, NIN.com, on May 5.

I don’t know how long Nine Inch Nails will continue to push music out like this, how commercially viable it is for them or if less established bands will ever be able to make it work, but one thing’s for sure - I love what they’re doing.

This is the kind of shake-up the music industry needs.

Update: The “surprise” posted today is Nine Inch Nails’ next album - the slip. Unlike Ghosts, this is a full album in the band’s usual style. The album is available for free in four formats:

  • High-quality MP3s
  • FLAC lossless
  • M4A Apple lossless
  • High definition WAVE 24/96

Another point to note: the band is using Bit Torrent to distribute the FLAC and Apple lossless files.

By Dave Fleet | Posted in miscellaneous | Comments (2)

How To Write A Good Communications Plan - Part 1 - An Overview

May 3, 2008 – 2:08 pm

Is there such a thing as an ideal communications plan template? What would it look like?

Blank page, before the writing begins I’ve spent most of the last few years surrounded by communications and marketing plans (comm plans, for short).

I studied them at university, proposing (what I thought were) reasoned solutions to other peoples’ problems. I then joined government and spent a lot of time reading other peoples’ quality assessments and edits on plans and learning from them - what worked, what didn’t work, where the common gaps were and what the essential information was.

Eventually I found myself in a position where I had the opportunity to provide input on comm plans myself. I even helped to develop training on communications planning. Nowadays I’m on the assembly line, writing plans and executing them.

This variety of positions has given me an interesting perspective on what a communications plan should look like. It’s very much clouded by my government experience though, so I’d love to hear from folks on the agency or corporate side (government folks please feel free to chime in too!).

This is the first in what will be a series of posts over time. This one focuses on the top-level overall content of a communications plan.

Together, over the coming weeks we’ll take a more detailed look at each of these sections in turn. At each step of the way I’ll give my perspective and ask what you think - what you agree with… what I’m missing… where I’m way off the mark. Hopefully we’ll all learn from each other.

Content of a Communications Plan

Let’s start by looking at the general sections of a comm plan. Here’s what I’ve used when planning a communications initiative, in roughly the order I approach them. Not all of them are always necessary - this is the broad list:

  • Context - what’s happened before? What’s the history?
  • Environmental Scan - what are the key factors that will affect your success?W hat is the media saying?
  • Stakeholders - your stakeholders and their expected reactions. How you will manage them?
  • Objectives - what do you want to achieve? (should be clear, relevant, measurable… use the SMART approach if you like)
  • Strategy - where are you going, and why?
  • Audiences - who are the key audiences?
  • Announcement - given the strategy, are you making an announcement? What are you announcing?
  • Messages - what are you saying about the announcement?
  • Tactics - how will you implement your strategy, both before, during and after the main announcement (assuming you have one)?
  • Issues - what problems may you have to overcome?
  • Budget - what will it cost?
  • Evaluation - how will you know if you’ve been successful?

So, what do you think? Have I missed areas? Are some irrelevant? In the right order?

What do you look at when you write a communications plan?

(photo credit: tomswift46)

By Dave Fleet | Posted in 101, communications planning | Comments (12)

Five Tools To Base Your Online Life Around

April 28, 2008 – 11:07 pm

I’ve written before about my social media life and the tools I use, but which of those are the most useful, and why?

Here are the five tools I base my online presence around, and why I think you should too.

Google Reader

ToolsI “subscribe” to several hundred blogs. Every day I go to one site - Google Reader - to read the new articles on those sites. It saves me hours It means I can read way more every day than I could by manually checking sites. That means I can learn more. I can even organize and prioritize the sites I subscribe to, so if I’m busy I know I’m likely to read the most relevant articles.

I probably spend more time using Google Reader than any other online tool.

Google Reader is an RSS reader. What Is RSS? Matt Mcdonald has a neat definition - RSS is “like an email subscription that goes to your reader instead of your email account.” I wrote a post giving an introduction to RSS a while back. Check it out if you want to learn more about RSS.

As Mitch Joel put it:

We used to have to go out and find stuff - news, sites, etc… RSS lets the web come to you.

Twitter

Twitter is my online water cooler. It’s the centre of my social media community. It’s a resource, a meeting place, a networking hub and more. It’s also the first thing I check in the morning. Before I even turn on my computer, I’ve usually had several conversations using Twitter via my blackberry.

How powerful is Twitter for me? When someone I know wanted to know the leading blogs in a certain area today, I asked my Twitter friends. Moments later, I had three blog names and one of my contacts had pointed me to someone who knew more.

A month or two ago when I heard, at 4:30pm on a Friday, that we needed a graphic designer for some last-minute work, I asked my Twitter friends if they knew anyone who might be able to help. A few minutes later I had three names, and a local PR agency contacted my by phone and email that evening to offer their services.

I could go on and on about the value I get from Twitter. I’m still figuring out how it can be used best by businesses but for me personally, it’s incredibly valuable. I also track mentions of me in Twitter using Tweetscan (I subscribe to them in Google Reader).

del.icio.us

If you haven’t come across del.icio.us before, here’s another great description from Matt Mcdonald:

[delicious] let’s (sic) you attach keywords called “tags” to sites. Like putting post-its in a magazine.

I recently wrote about six ways to make life easier with del.icio.us:

  • Let other people do your surfing for you (by subscribing - in Google Reader - to see what your contacts save)
  • Queue up blog topics
  • Use it as a search engine
  • Track coverage of you/your organization/your clients (again, in Google Reader)
  • Track topics (guess where)
  • Provide a resource for others

Of course, that’s on top of using it as a place to save articles for future reference.

If I find an article interesting, it gets saved here.

iGoogle

iGoogle is my base; the hub for my online presence. iGoogle lets you customize your Google homepage to include whatever you want. I choose to have it link me into the most important of my Google services, and to see them at a glance:

It puts all of these services at my fingertips, and lets me see them all at a glance. In my workplace we’re limited to an old version of Internet Explorer; iGoogle is my alternative to Firefox’s tabbed interface. I don’t use this tool as much as I used to, as I find ways to work around my technology limitations at work, but it’s still an important one for me.

Blog search engines

Blog search engines let me keep tabs on what people are writing about my organization, its programs, its leaders and our stakeholders. It keeps me on top of what’s going on outside the three-and-a-half walls of my cubicle. It also lets me know when someone mentions me or something I’ve written.

This is the only entry I’ve left as a category of tools, rather than a specific one. Why? Because I don’t think there’s a standout tool for this any more.

Technorati used to be the standout tool, but not any more. I use it in combination with Google Blog Search and BlogPulse to make sure I don’t miss anything.

What about you?

These are by no means the only tools I use, but these are central ones for me… well, those and Google search. What about you? Which tools do you find the most valuable?

(photo credit: tashland)

By Dave Fleet | Posted in 301, social media, tools | Comments (9)

Toronto Transit Commission Strike: A PR Disaster

April 26, 2008 – 8:29 am

TTC Headquarters closed Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) workers walked off the job at midnight last night after rejecting a tentative agreement with the city.

It goes without saying that transit strikes are tough on everyone. However, you do need some level of public support. Setting aside the issues being negotiated, the Amalgamated Transit Union has turned this into a PR disaster.

The union reneged on its promise to give Toronto residents 48 hours notice before striking. Instead the subways, streetcars and buses were taken out of service at midnight after an announcement at 11:23pm; 37 minutes before the strike began.

As the Globe and Mail reported:

A visibly angry [Mayor David] Miller said he had demanded in a phone conversation with union leader Bob Kinnear that he give 48 hours notice, but Mr. Kinnear refused.

The decision to go on strike without notice put many people in a difficult position - people who were out on a Friday night were stranded miles from home, while others were unable to get to work on Saturday. Some people were stranded mid-trip and the media pounced on their stories.

Here are a couple of seemingly obvious points that the union would do well to learn from:

  • If you make a promise - for example, to 48 hours notice before a strike - keep that promise
  • If you break your promise, don’t blame your customers. From the union’s press release:

“We have assessed the situation and decided that we will not expose our members to the dangers of assaults from angry and irrational members of the public,” said Bob Kinnear, ATU Local 113 President.

Update (8:50am): How has the public reacted? Let’s take a quick look at Twitter (via Tweetscan):

ttc-tweets

Can the union regain the public’s trust after this move?

(Photo credit: jbcurio)

By Dave Fleet | Posted in public relations | Comments (3)

Case Study: Using Social Media On A Small Scale To Raise Money For Charity

April 23, 2008 – 10:48 pm

I’m a fanatical runner. I’m not particularly talented, but my dedication to my training enabled me to qualify for the 2008 Boston Marathon on April 21, 2008.

The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon and one of the world’s most prestigious road racing events. Besides the Olympic trials and the Olympic marathons, Boston is the only major American marathon that requires a qualifying time.

Exactly two months before the race I announced that I would use social media and the Boston Marathon to raise money for cancer research.

Objectives

Reaching the top of Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon The objective for this was simple:

  • Raise $3,000 for the world-class Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, based in Toronto (a somewhat arbitrary goal)
  • Raise awareness of my fundraising effort using social media, to see if these tactics would work for a promotional effort

Tactics

I threw my PR knowledge largely out the window for this effort. I’d decided up-front that I would use entirely online tactics to see how effective they could be.

The tools I chose to use:

When I announced the initiative, this blog had 278 subscribers. My running site had very few. I had around 500 Twitter followers (Twitterholic’s stats only go back to March 1) and my Utterz account had just a few subscribers.

I wrote seven posts on my PR blog:

I wrote three posts on my running blog:

I also wrote dozens of Twitter messages over the two months, updating people on my progress and providing information on how to donate. Lastly, I recorded frequent posts through Utterz. The posts were a mix of video, audio, text and pictures about my training for the race. I posted all of the recordings to my running site - along with the route maps from my runs, these 31 posts formed the ongoing record of my training through this effort.

Results

Output

While my running blog continued to receive negligible traffic, several posts to my PR blog received more:

  • Using Social Media To Support Cancer Research - 643 views
  • Another Social Media Miracle? - 285 views
  • Auction - 217 views

Over these two months, this blog grew to over 500 subscribers. How much of that is due to this fundraising effort, I can’t say. I’m pretty sure it didn’t hurt, though. Meanwhile, my running blog subscribers remained relatively static, while my Twitter contacts grew to roughly 825.

My announcement of the fundraising effort also spawned a mini-fundraiser with Keith Burtis and Tommy Vallier, who generously volunteered their time and effort to set up an online auction to raise additional funds.

The effort generated some healthy interest on Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter’s historical search is far from comprehensive, but you can see some recent posts here (for now).

Outcome

  • Raised $2,315 for Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation
  • I can trace 59% of the donations to people who only (or primarily) know me through my online presence
  • Oh, and I finished the marathon in 3:18:30


Success or Failure?

Looking strictly at the original objectives:

  • I failed to meet my original target of $3,000, but given that this was very arbitrary, I’m very happy with the money raised
  • Given the traffic to my site and the buzz generated on Twitter, I think the second objective was successfully achieved

This was a very small-scale effort, with zero budget and only occasional bursts of online activity. Was it a success? I’ll leave that to your judgement.

What do you think?

By Dave Fleet | Posted in case studies, social media | Comments (7)

Deliciously Revealing Bookmarks

April 16, 2008 – 8:45 pm

Del.icio.us is an awesome tool, plain and simple. It lets you easily access your bookmarks from any computer, take advantage of other peoples’ reading and even track topics over time. I’ve written before about six great ways to make your life easier with del.icio.us.

Today, though, I’m warning you to be careful what you bookmark. Your bookmarks can reveal a lot about you.

You should already know that pretty much everything you do online leaves a footprint that can reflect on you for years to come. Your bookmarks are no different.

The sites you save can reveal a pattern.

I can tell you, for example, that one of my contacts recently saved a lot of links to sites about photo collages. Another got very interested in social media measurement recently. Another is into fantasy baseball.

That’s pretty harmless stuff. I’m sure they don’t mind that I know that, just as I don’t mind that they know (from my del.icio.us bookmarks) that I checked out GroupTweet yesterday and a post on American Airlines’ crisis blog the day before.

Be careful with your links

del.icio.us has a 'do not share' optionWhat about more private stuff?

How about the person that got very interested in a particular company all of a sudden?

Did it signal an upcoming career change? Personally I wouldn’t want my boss seeing that. Perhaps they’re for an upcoming pitch for new business? Nice way to inform competitors that the company may be looking.

Here’s a tip: Del.icio.us has a “do not share” option. If you’re saving links that you’d rather other people not see, use it. Your link will then just be saved for you, away from prying eyes.

This doesn’t change the fact that del.icio.us is an extremely useful tool. It is still at its most powerful when you share links with others.

However, this serves as a reminder to be careful with everything you do online. That includes bookmarks.

By Dave Fleet | Posted in 201, social bookmarking | Comments (5)