Changing Nature and Pace of Communications

Strategies for the changing nature and pace of communicationsFrank X Shaw (@FXShaw), Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications, Microsoft

Trends impacting communications:

• Tech trends – personal computing, cloud computing, social computing.
• Consumer trends – multi device world, your stuff – everywhere, social networking
• Marketing trends – Social media marketing, multi channel marketing, video, Interactivity

Nature and pace of communications has changed in the following ways:

• Publishing explosion – Technology tools make it easier and faster than ever for everyone to publish.
• Influencers are dynamic – Microsoft now watches and develops relationships with blogging influencers. They are literally scouting the up and coming influencers on industry blogs.
• Direct storytelling drives action– You can now tell your story as a brand without having to go through anyone else. Microsoft created a News Center to tell their story directly. Internally, they created a news center (includes social features) – it has 5 million page views/month and reachs about 85% of employee base on a monthly basis. They also utilize their corporate Facebook page and have learned, images and tone is everything. People engage most frequently with images. Tone has to be light, some humor, invites conversation, and there’s almost no selling.
• Engaging invites attention – Before engaging, Microsoft asks the following questions.
  
  • Do you have the right resources to engage or respond?
    It’s not cheap. You need a dedicated resource to engage. An example: Smoked by Windows Phone – It has a lower cost as a campaign, but it requires a dedicated resource.  They’ve invested in resources because it has great ROI.
  • Does engaging align to your goals?
    Engagement should support a goal. Example: Microsoft Lost Decade – respond, but didn’t want to draw attention to source article, so they responded on TechCrunch article.
  • What is the value you can deliver or contribute?
    On internal surveys, they discovered that external press coverage is one of their most influential things which impacts their employees’ view of the company. Now, when they run a story from the media on their News Central site about the company, they run an accompanying article to tell employees their point of view and give them message points for responding. This clearly adds value to their employees view of company. Externally, goals have clearly defined marketing goals and are usually part of a larger campaign.
  • Will you shift the conversation in your favor?
    Anticipate debate and issues, and share your company’s point of view to help shift the conversation. After a conversation emerges, always discuss whether or not to engage in the conversation. Then when you decide to, track the conversation.
  • Does the risk out weigh the reward?
    If results are going to be negative, what is the impact? Think about it from a short term vs long term – if there’s long-term gain, that will be the focus. Also examine legal/shareholder responsibility and potential impact. Brand, customer, and employee implications need to be reviewed. Finally, personal/professional reputation is examined.