Communications Training with Kinsale Communications (pt. 2)

New Media

Hey, so that was fun. Steve brought up Facebook to demonstrate how important it was for Communications and by the time he did, I had this blog post up and on our FB wall. He went to the wall and then the post and the whole room went ‘cool!’ (and they thought I was just all distracted with my typing)

Ok, now back to the info he’s feeding us.

He’s really gung ho on social media now. Why? Because it’s a huge new forum to catch ears and eyes. Here, let’s lay out some numbers…

Facebook

• 400 Millions users
• 200M log in every day!
• 3.5M update their status daily
• 3B photos are uploaded/month
• 5M links per week uploaded
• 3.5M new events created every month
• 1.5M local businesses on FB
• 2M people/day become fans of pages
• 5.3B total fans of pages now on FB

Power of Earned Media – Cause Companies/Policymakers are Sensitive to Public Notice

So…. Steve really encourages us to use New Media because there’s huge opportunities here for to splash your message, and people/groups/companies are very sensitive to public discussion of their work/product. He gave a great example from his time with Daschle. Years ago, Daschle woke him up at midnight, saying they needed to redo their media now because they were getting killed. Our guy Steve hadn’t seen that at all, so woke up the local guy at midnight too to ask, what is happening? The local guy said “there’s nothing bad in the media, what happened was one buddy of Daschle cornered him about one letter to the editor in a tiny rag near here, and that’s what’s upsetting him.” It was a good example. Steve pointed out that here was a seasoned veteran of Congress, that just got derailed by one small letter to an editor in a tiny town. Yah, good point, that is a great way to leverage power.

I had a recent example myself the other day… I’d spend hours on the phone trying to get a problem fixed with my cell provider. And in the middle, I Tweeted about how aggravating it was. Suddenly, the company was Tweeting me back, asking if it was fixed, what could they do? I was still on phone… so I said… just wait. But then it really struck me, I got off the phone with my TA person promising to call me back tomorrow to check to make sure all was well… she never did, but the Twitter company rep was sure nuf, tweeting me the next day, was all well? It really was a lesson that when I just said something in a public venue, the company responded in a totally different manner than when I said the same on the phone line to them. Hmm, interesting.

Wups, gotta run. The folk on the other side of the room are making me laugh…. I hear them saying louder and louder “Tweet, TWEET, TWEET.” What? “We’re Tweeting you.” Oh, well I’m blogging. Ok, so let me post this and run to Twitter. Ta all. More later. Question b4 then, who’s the best spokesperson for almost any issue?