Through the community that we built over at HE Comms (the online social network for HE marketing and communications professionals), we're going to be running our very first workshop bringing together people from across the HE sector. Usually we'd run these in-house, but we thought we'd open it up. The workshop will take place at Scarman House, University of Warwick, Coventry on Thursday 3 June (10am-4pm). Fees for members of the HE Comms social network start from £150 + VAT (£175 + VAT for non-members) for the full-day workshop, including all refreshments throughout the day and a three-course lunch. Bargain, if I do say so myself! Places are limited to 20 people so book early to avoid disappointment (and get the early-bird rates). Proceeds from this first workshop will also be going to the charity for whom I'm running the London Marathon this year. Hope to see some of you there.
Further information can be viewed on the flyer here, and you can book online here.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Thursday, 8 April 2010
"Useful. Interesting. Relevant." Putting the audience first and finding the middle ground.
"Useful, interesting and relevant"
Those three little words have very much become my mantra over the past couple of years since I started being asked widely to talk with organisations about social media and how they can integrate it into their marketing-communications activities.
It's now more widely accepted and understood that in order to successfully engage with target audiences through social media organisations need to:
Accepting and understanding these three things gets you a fair way to beginning to think about integrating social media into any communications or engagement strategy that you may have (I err away from the term 'marketing strategy' here as I don't really believe social media is about marketing, but is instead about communication and engagement). However, the next step is really to think about the audience (and remember that you're dealing with an audience of individuals, not a homogenous group of faceless and nameless drones). Any social media engagement strategy must first understand what it is that the target audience wants and needs, and the kinds of things that they find useful, interesting and relevant. Then the organisation needs to consider what it wants or needs to say to that audience - what the message is. A successful social media engagement strategy will then find the middle ground - something that the organisation can offer that the audience wants, needs, or finds interesting, relevant or useful, but also something that resonates with the messages or the objectives of the communications campaign. I've represented this in the following image:
Those three little words have very much become my mantra over the past couple of years since I started being asked widely to talk with organisations about social media and how they can integrate it into their marketing-communications activities.
It's now more widely accepted and understood that in order to successfully engage with target audiences through social media organisations need to:
- accept that social media is about individuals communicating with other individuals
- understand that social media is all about conversation, not push messaging
- appreciate that all social media spaces are conversations, with every network unique to every participant, and not an advertising platform.
Accepting and understanding these three things gets you a fair way to beginning to think about integrating social media into any communications or engagement strategy that you may have (I err away from the term 'marketing strategy' here as I don't really believe social media is about marketing, but is instead about communication and engagement). However, the next step is really to think about the audience (and remember that you're dealing with an audience of individuals, not a homogenous group of faceless and nameless drones). Any social media engagement strategy must first understand what it is that the target audience wants and needs, and the kinds of things that they find useful, interesting and relevant. Then the organisation needs to consider what it wants or needs to say to that audience - what the message is. A successful social media engagement strategy will then find the middle ground - something that the organisation can offer that the audience wants, needs, or finds interesting, relevant or useful, but also something that resonates with the messages or the objectives of the communications campaign. I've represented this in the following image:
[caption id="attachment_324" align="aligncenter" width="561" caption="Finding the middle ground is the holy grail of the corporate social media engagement strategy"]
Monday, 5 April 2010
Chairing a couple of good events for education PR folk
At the beginning of this year I took over from Emma Leech as Chair of the CIPR's Education and Skills sector group. In April we'll be holding a couple of events that I think will interest some of the readers of this blog, so I thought I'd share some info about them here (I'm chairing both events):
On the evening of Wednesday 14 April we'll be hooking up PROs from the education and skills sector with relevant journalists at our 'Speed Meet a Journalist' event. We'll kick off with a discussion with the journalist and then allow plenty of time for networking. This event takes place at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Then on Wednesday 21 April we're heading up to the University of Nottingham for a Creating Video Podcasts Masterclass. This will be a full day of training with lots of practical hints and tips from the award-winning team at Nottingham.
For further information about both events, you can view the latest Group newsletter here (issued to members of the CIPR Education and Skills Sector Group). I hope to see some of you at the events.
On the evening of Wednesday 14 April we'll be hooking up PROs from the education and skills sector with relevant journalists at our 'Speed Meet a Journalist' event. We'll kick off with a discussion with the journalist and then allow plenty of time for networking. This event takes place at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Then on Wednesday 21 April we're heading up to the University of Nottingham for a Creating Video Podcasts Masterclass. This will be a full day of training with lots of practical hints and tips from the award-winning team at Nottingham.
For further information about both events, you can view the latest Group newsletter here (issued to members of the CIPR Education and Skills Sector Group). I hope to see some of you at the events.
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