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The text below is from a post by leading PR practitioner Shel Holtz. In it he highlights the importance of embracing the new ’social web’ (also known as ‘Web 2.0′).
This whole social computing phenomenon is gradually, glacially changing the face of communications, covering the spectrum of advertising, marketing, and public relations, along with all their sub-classes (like investor relations and employee communications). Steve Rubel reported yesterday on a Forrester report on social computing that reached this conclusion:
“To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.”
Acknowledging that here in Australia we normally pick up something 2-3 years after it appears in the US, then we ought to be thinking about how any Australian business is going to start to engage in the new dialogue. There are already companies here in Australia that are doing so.
Also, Stuart Bruce cites a recent speech by Rupert Murdoch who said, amongst many things, “Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors.” Meaning that no longer do the owners of a brand have the sole rights to publish material about that brand — everyone can be a publisher now, not just the geeks who can build websites (which was ‘Web 1.0′).
As corporate communication shifts its locus of control from the company to the people affected by the company — the shareholders, the customers, the employees, the media, inter alia — it is time to discuss the implications for your company and how you can take a lead position in not only your industry but in your country.
Taking a leaf from Stuart’s moleskine, if you want to discuss this further please don’t hesitate to contact me, or the other leading ‘Social Media’ consultant in this country, Trevor Cook (who lives in Sydney) at the Jackson Wells Morris PR agency.
Lee
p.s. as Heidi Miller says in a recent post
“people are always more interested in what they have to say than in what you have to say. Blogging provides a forum in which people can say what they have to say instead of listening to some “sage on the stage.” Personally, I’d much rather join in a discussion than listen to a lecture.”
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