1
For whatever reason – not enough food with the wine at dinner, a coup d’état in the brain where the amygdala seizes control, or just a moment of weakness – someone in a position of prominence and authority posts a Dumb Tweet.
Continue reading
When you want solid advice on social media, backed up by years of experience with both non-profits and businesses, you go to JD Lasica.
And so did I, for a half-hour conversation that touched on everything from why letting your audience see your slides in advance may not be a bad idea, to how speaking and community-building go hand-in-hand.
Listen to JD, then explore these links for some terrific resources:
With this episode, we flip the mic (metaphorically) and talk with someone who’s a lot more used to writing speeches than delivering them. That’s not to say Ian Griffin isn’t at home behind a podium; he’s an accomplished speaker and a skilled communicator.
If you’re in the tech industry, you’ve probably heard his words; Ian has worked in executive communications at Cisco, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. He’s also incredibly generous with his time and expertise, as many Silicon Valley communicators who’ve attended one of his presentations can tell you.
In this interview, he asks why we put so much effort into creating a speech, and then fail to do that little extra bit that can help it reach far more people… and he offers lots of ideas for what that little extra bit can be.
From the moment I thought up the Social Speech Podcast, David Eaves was at the top of my list of people I wanted to talk to. He’s a good friend, and a provocative thinker and writer on some of the issues that matter to me most – like the open web and open government.
And he’s a terrific speaker, travelling around the world to address audiences on five continents (Australia and Antarctica, that’s your cue) about topics as diverse as negotiating, collaboration, conflict management, social media, open government and open data. As you’ll hear in this episode, Dave has thought a great deal about what makes for a great, productive speech – one that doesn’t just get a solid audience response, but also achieves a larger goal. And you’ll hear about how his blog is a crucial resource for his speeches, and how yours can help you deliver a more powerful presentation the next time you’re on stage.
Some links:
If you’re involved in public speaking – as someone who delivers speeches and presentations, or as an executive communications practitioner, or as an event organizer – then this is for you.
Over the next several weeks, I’m going to share conversations I’m having with some of the smartest people I know about public speaking and social media: how connected audiences are transforming the world of presentations, and how some forward-thinking speakers are making the most of it.
I’m calling it the Social Speech Podcast. You can find the feed here and soon on iTunes. Here’s the introductory episode; the first interview will go live next week.
But please – don’t let my schedule hold you up. Give this intro a listen, and if you have thoughts about the Social Speech (I’ve posted some of mine here) then please share them in the comments. Or email your text or audio comment (up to 25 MB) to rob@socialsignal.com.
Thanks – and I’ll look forward to hearing from you!
The official Oscar nominations are out, and there’s a movie up for best picture that has a lot to say about social media and the online communications revolution sweeping the world.
The Social Network? Hell, no. I’m talking about The King’s Speech.
Set mostly in the years leading up to the Second World War, The King’s Speech deals with the extraordinary relationship between speech therapist Lionel Logue and Albert, Duke of York. Albert has a persistent stammer, an affliction that might have gone largely unremarked in past generations. But this is the era of radio, and when he ascends (a little relucantly) to the throne as King George VI, he must deliver an address to a nation suffering from grave fear and doubt.
(Spoiler alert: If you have some knowledge of history, you are probably assuming his address was at least good enough to avoid demoralizing the nation and forcing Britain’s capitulation to the Nazis. And you are correct. Also, you were probably a little surprised by the ending of Inglorious Basterds.)
This is the story of a friendship that crosses some very deep divides of class and colonialism. But it’s also a story of entrenched institutions confronting the transformational changes brought about thanks to technological innovation.
The Social Network was fascinating, engrossing and entertaining… but it had surprisingly little to say about Facebook or the larger social media revolution, and how they affect our daily lives. Instead, the movie was more about sacrificing friendships for the sake of a larger business vision.
While The Social Network contented itself with (a version of) the story of Mark Zuckerberg, The King’s Speech touched on the changing relationship between the public and those in power, who have had a long time to become used to deciding when, where and how any communication will take place between them.
That’s a timely theme for anyone watching the past day’s events unfold in Tunisia and Egypt — or, for the matter, the past decade’s events in much of the rest of the world.
A version of this post appeared on ReadWriteWeb and Noise to Signal.
Ever feel like you’re working for a firm called Weneda Communications?
You know what I mean. You have an endless stream of people knocking on your office door and saying, “Hey, Weneda Facebook Page.” Or “Weneda blog.” Or “Weneda YouTube channel.”
(At least Weneda has changed with the times. A few years ago, it would have been “Weneda leaflet” or “Weneda newspaper ad.”)
Thing about Weneda Communications is, they’re great at production. They know how to crank it out. They’re just not terribly strong on why.
At Weneda, they don’t think much about strategy. They go from problem to tactic in a single step:
“People are criticizing our customer service record.” “Weneda podcast.”
“Nobody knows about this issue.” “Weneda Twitter feed.”
“There’s a crazed elephant stampeding down the hallway towards us.” “Weneda web app.”
What they don’t do is ask a few intermediate questions, like “Who do we want to reach?” “What do we want to motivate them to do?” or “Exactly how did you get past security?”
Without those questions, there’s no real way to measure success… except, inevitably, to notice that the problem seems to still be around, just as bad as ever.
It’s rarely easy to be the one who puts a stick in the spokes at Weneda… but it has to be done. Someone has to say “Hold on. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture.”
In other words, before Weneda vehicle – whether it’s a leaflet or a mobile app – Weneda Strategy. And Weneda Plan.
Two back-to-back stories on Wired’s Danger Room may well presage a change in the way organizations approach social media.
Unfollowed: Pentagon Deletes Social Media Office:
At a time when Facebook has 500 million users and Twitter is closing in on 200 million, the Pentagon no longer has a single person guiding its communications shop on how to use social media to get the military’s message out. Gone are communication pro Price Floyd and technology exec Sumit Agarwal, the two men brought in during the past two years to get the Pentagon comfortable with online interaction in the 21st century.
Tweet Away, Troops: Pentagon Won’t Ban Social Media
As Danger Room reported yesterday, the Pentagon’s gotten rid of its social-media office [....] And the 2009-era policy that enshrined military access to social media — the result of a hard-fought internal struggle — expires on March 1.
[...] But [Pentagon spokesman Bryan] Whitman says that by March 1, what’ll be gone is the bureaucratic format for the policy (.pdf), to be replaced by a more permanent one — not the substance. [....] The policy will still give military members access to social media.
Some bureaucratic shifts may occur, but in terms of substance, “we’re not anticipating any changes,” Whitman says, as social-media use is “the way a predominantly young force communicates.”
Now, organizations often put the best possible face on internal developments, and it’s not hard to imagine the Pentagon really is dialing back its social media engagement.
But here’s the other possibility: that social media are now so ubiquitous, and so far-reaching, that it no longer makes sense to segregate them from other communications functions. The ability to post to a Facebook page or handle a blog comment is now just as fundamental to the work of an organizational communicator as the ability to bang out a pithy, effective news release. (If not more so.)
That’s the case made by assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Douglas Wilson in the first Danger Room post:
Wilson says using social media ought to be the responsibility of the approximately 100 people he oversees. “I was increasingly concerned our approach to social media was a stovepiped professional area,” he tells Danger Room.
“It’s important for people in press operations, community and public outreach and communications and planning to be able to know how to use and access Facebook, Twitter and the other social media tools, rather than just have a single unit or single person do nothing but social media.”
Of course, if the permanent policy ends up clamping down on military social media activity, and the Pentagon pulls back from its own engagement online, this will all ring a little hollow. But I’ll be surprised if that happens.
