I became a big fan of Guy Kawasaki when I heard him speak at last year’s SXSW conference. I’ve followed him for quite a long time on Twitter quite simply because he tweets randomly interesting things! In my mantra for social media content of positioning yourself and your brands as ‘interesting, relevant and useful’ to your target audience, Guy Kawasaki mostly ticks the ‘interesting’ box as my own reason to follow him. Positioning himself that way meant that I had an existing good feeling towards the Guy Kawasaki brand, and therefore was enticed to attend his talk, where he then positioned himself as ‘relevant’ and ‘useful’, thus fulfilling all three of my must-haves for engagement, and meaning that as a consequence I will most definitely be investing in a copy of his new book when I return to the UK (and recommending it here too of course!)

Through his talk he outlined his ten top tips for how to be ‘enchanting’ in order to achieve the things that we want, or to ‘change the world’. In this post I will summarise what he said and challenge you to think, as you read on, about how these might apply to you both personally, professionally, and as an organisation. The key point underpinning all of this is that becoming enchanting to people is all about achieving their trust.

1. Achieve likability
This isn’t about faking likability, but showing genuine likability. For Kawasaki, this is the difference between someone who smiles just with their jaw and someone who smiles with their eyes. He recommends dressing appropriately for an audience (not trying to out-dress them which suggests you think you are better than them, or underdressing which suggests a degree of disdain for your audience) and mastering the perfect handshake. Map this to your organisation, I question how likable your front-facing staff can sometimes be. Do they smile with their eyes (or with their voice when they answer the phone), do they genuinely care?

2. Achieve trustworthiness
Trust others first. Amazon is a good example of company that places trust in their customers: you can return a kindle e-book up to 5 days after buying (a time frame in which most people could have already read the e-book). This means that their customers trust and feel loyal to them in return. In universities do we ever really trust our students? Kawasaki encourages us to think not in terms of how much we can take from a relationship but in terms of how much we can give. When we meet new people, make ‘yes’ your default position. I’m not sure that university structures allow us to do this, but perhaps they should. Let’s think, for example, of how universities engage with businesses. If we listened to their needs and just said ‘yes’ instead of starting out by saying ‘we can do this, this and this for you’ (the ‘take’ mentality even though it sounds like giving), then we might discover more creative ways in which to do business and establish a relationship of trust and mutual respect.

3. Get ready
In a business context, Kawasaki urges us to have great products – those that are deep (something really great – given that his background is in working for Apple, Kawasaki knows all about having great products!), those that are intelligent (“wow, what a clever product”), those that are complete (this is about everything, not just the product – the packaging, the aftercare, the purchasing experience), and that are empowering (for example, a mac isn’t just functional, it also makes you feel more creative) and elegant. And when it comes to marketing our products, make our communications short, sweet and swallowable (not something that the HE sector is particularly good at I’m afraid). He also encourages doing a ‘pre-morterm’ to pretend that your product has failed, brainstorm all the likely reasons why, and then eliminate them one by one.

4. Launch
Tell a story. Give it the human angle (see part 1 of today’s blog posts from SXSW on this very subject). Remember that these days nobodies are the new somebodies. Anyone can be an influencer for your brand and the success of your project so you need to be engaging with all of them, not just the editors of the big newspapers (though they remain important). Talk about your product in ways that people can understand. Don’t just focus on the score from the student satisfaction survey – put it into a story, make it real for them…

5. Overcome
Overcome resistance. Think about how you can provide social proof that your product is great and used by many (Kawasaki here used the example of the proliferation of white ear-buds when the iPod launched). Enchant all of the influencers along the way, not just the top bosses. For university decision making this therefore might not just be the student themselves and their parents, but it might also be grandparents or friends, or just someone they happen to listen to (and trust) online…

6. Endure
Don’t use or rely on money in order to ‘sell’ your product. If you pay someone commission or an affiliate fee for selling a product, people are less likely to trust them in this transaction. And invoke reciprocity: when someone says thank you, don’t say “you’re welcome”, say “I know you’d to the same for me”. And let them pay you back for things that you do for them: it makes them feel good and keeps the relationship of reciprocity going…

7. Present
Great enchanters know how to present. Customise the introduction to your audience. Sell your dream ie Steve Jobs pitches iPhones as a lifestyle item, not a sum of parts.

8. Use technology
Use technology as an enabler, not a barrier. Remove all technology barriers. Technology should enhance the experience and provide added value to your audience. If you use your social media presence to provide information, insights or assistance, then you will make yourself enchanting. Engage with people. Engage fast, and engage with many people (not just the ones you think are important). Engage often – social media is not the thing to do whenever everything else is done, it should be embedded in your ongoing communications.

9. Enchant up
Always enchant the people that you work for: if your boss wants you to do something, then drop everything else to do it. And prototype fast: if your boss asks you to deliver a powerpoint presentation for them to present from in 3 days time, send them a rough outline within an hour.
And always deliver bad news early and with solutions.

10. Enchant down
Enchant those who work for you. Above all else never ask anyone to do anything that you’re not prepared to do yourself. Enable them to master new skills, work autonomously, and give them a sense of purpose. Empower them.

I’ve barely done Guy Kawasaki’s talk any justice at all in this blog post. It’s very much a summary of the points he covered, and I’m sure nobody communicates these points better than he, so you might be better off buying the book.

I posted this over on HE Comms this morning and thought it worth sharing here too…

A question that I increasingly come up against now as I go out and run workshops for HEIs on social media strategy and implementation is how to monitor your online reputation. There are a number of free tools available to do this now, all with their limitations, and increasingly more and more subscription services that offer sophisticated solutions but again come with limitations. This morning I spotted a note on the CIM HE Marketing Group on LinkedIn informing members of a new service developed by ESISS that is specifically designed to monitor online reputation of HEIs. The service costs £3000 per year and they’re offering a two-week free trial.

The pricing is fairly competitive, I believe, with other paid-for services but at first glance of their description of the service I too would say it comes with its limitations. Firstly, their list of sites monitored sounds limited (Google Searches, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, Blogosphere, News Sites, Wikipedia, TheStudentRoom, WhatUni, RateMyProfessor, IRC/IRQ, Graduate
Jobs Forum and eBay). It may be the case, however, that they just don’t list everything on their marketing materials but if this is the complete list, it is fairly restricted. I also worry that the weekly summary reports will result in customers just relying on those for their updates and not making the effort to check updates more regularly. A lot of damage can be done online in the short space of 7 days, so monitoring really needs to be done daily. Finally, they also claim that the service ‘categorises the reputational risk automatically on behalf of the organisation’. This sounds to be to an attempt at automatic sentiment analysis, but as this Fresh Networks review of paid-for social media monitoring tools revealed, automatic sentiment analysis is not particularly reliable, and a human-approach is very much required too. There could be a danger of relying on such services that you’ll miss an emerging crisis, or an excellent opportunity because an automatic system has categorised it incorrectly.

Now, of course, I’m saying all of this without actually trialling the tool so I’m very interested to hear from anyone who is trialling it. The plus points for the tool are that it monitors some networks that are very specific to HE (thestudentroom, for example) that other monitoring sites may miss, it enables translations of mentions of your brand in foreign languages, and it does allow for some benchmarking too. I’m very much looking forward to hearing of others experiences of using this tool or others on the market.

I’m doing various bits of work at the moment for universities looking at social media and student recruitment opportunities, and helping them to develop strategies for using it effectively to engage with potential students. Through my research into trends in the use of social media amongst young people I came across this report published by Nielsen in the summer last year. It offers a great insight into teenage consumption of media, and squashes a few myths along the way. Check out the How Teens Use Media report here (pdf).

I’ve decided to give ‘Flock’ a try. It’s a browser developed by Mozilla that’s supposed to be revolutionising the way in which we use browsers, and makes them more sociable. In theory in looks good. It was easy to install and has familiar enough basic functions not to alienate me (yet!). However, I’m going through the motions of trying to set up all of my various blogs and social media profiles in it to explore it’s full functionality and that’s taking a bit of time and a bit of getting used to. I will persevere! This is my first attempt at posting a blog post directly through Flock to the PJC blog though. Fingers crossed (though if you’re reading it, it of course means it worked – so yay!)

Here’s a little slidecast (31 mins 17 secs) that I’ve created for a couple of the Association of Colleges’ regional PR/marketing group meetings. Thought some of my blog readers might also find it interesting:

Earlier today I presented to the West Midlands PR and Marketing group of the Association of Colleges about social media. As regular readers of this blog know, I often present about this subject, but usually to university or business audiences. Presenting to colleges was particularly interesting. Typically I make the point that if an organisation chooses to do nothing else with social media, then they should at least listen to/watch what is being said about their brand online. That is just basic reputation monitoring and reputation management – the core business of the PR professional. However, I was appalled today to hear just how many PR and marketing professionals can’t access social media sites on their work computers because the college network blocks them.

Now, I understand all the arguements for e-safety, time-wasting, etc etc, but I really would urge anyone out there responsible for what PR and marketing officers can and can’t access at work to stop and think about the reputational impact of what others might be saying about your brand online. It is essential that college staff are able to monitor this, and reputational risks could be considerable if they can’t manage this because they can’t access those sites. So please, college principals and IT directors, let technology be the enabler that it is and break down these barriers that are preventing people from doing their job well!

Yesterday I delivered two workshops to a number of delegates at the EUPRIO annual conference in Averio, Portugal. My session was one of seven on the progamme, all running twice that morning. Across the two workshops I seem to have been joined by more than half the conference delegation. This staggered me but just goes to show that European university PR professionals are beginning to take social media more seriously and are keen to learn more.

One of the things I mentioned in the workshop was slideshare. In my usual style I have uploaded the slides to slideshare, and embedded them here for you to view at your leisure.

Please note that the images used in these slides are not for reproduction, but many are available for you to purchase and download inexpensively on istockphoto, another resource that I mentioned to the delegates.

I’m leading a workshop in Portugal next week at the EUPRIO annual conference on the theme of how social media is impacting on the role of the PR professional. The fact that I’m going to be using the conference facebook group to ask this question of delegates before the conference, and using twitter to ask the community there the same question goes some way to answering this question for me (or at least shows how I personally use social media to benefit me and my work).

I know my own thoughts on the question, and will share them along with some case studies at the conference. However, in the spirit of good preparation and sharing some useful insights, I’m keen to gather others’ thoughts on:

• how social and digital media has impacted on priorities of the PR professional




• has it impacted on the working hours or demands on your time?




• have you had to change your approach to press and media relations because of social media?




• has social media opened new opportunities for press and media relations?




• are you increasingly cutting the journalist out and communicating directly via online spaces?




• have you had to develop any new skills as a consequence of the rise in online and social media?

Look forward to hearing your contributions.

This is one of the hardest blog posts that I have composed. Writing this is part of my grieving process. But there is a serious message here of the value that social media really can bring to our lives, particularly in times of personal need or sorrow.

Yesterday one of my house rabbits very suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. He was only five years old and full of life until less than a day before he died. To many people who read this blog, and particularly those who know me personally, you’ll understand how heartbreaking this is for me. My house rabbits are my family. They live and run freely in my house. They keep me company in the office when I am working (the photo below is of Herbie helping me to decorate the Pickle Jar office back in 2007 when I set up the business). I feed them, care for them and play with them every day. I love them like children.

Herbie was a rescue rabbit. He had been dumped in a cardboard box at a rabbit rescue centre with no note to even tell what his name was. He was a lively chap, clearly still a baby, and we’re convinced that when we called in to visit the rescue centre four and a half years ago that he chose us. I think he knew he was on to a good thing – space to run around, fresh vegetables to eat every day, lots of hay, an abundance of toys, and two big sisters to keep him company.

On Wednesday evening we noticed he wasn’t his usual self. He didn’t come bounding over to the treat bowl, and just sat hunched up looking sad. So, on Thursday morning I booked him in to see the vet. I took him in that afternoon and she couldn’t see anything obviously wrong with him. The only problem was that his back teeth were looking a little long and could have been causing him discomfort. So, I left him there for the afternoon so they could put him under a general anaesthetic and file down his teeth. The vet called at 3.30 to say he was absolutely fine, had woken up, and that we could pick him up at 6.30. We arrived on time and sat waiting to be called through looking forward to seeing our boy and hoping that he’d just be looking forward to having his treats that night.

The vet called us in. No Herbie. She had some bad news. As they were getting him ready for us to bring him home he collapsed. I didn’t realise at first that she was saying he had died, but the news soon dawned on me. His teeth weren’t the problem afterall, but we think some form of organ failure. He died very suddenly. We spent 20 minutes saying our farewells to the little fella, and headed home with an empty carry case in floods of tears. I haven’t really stopped crying since.

The point of writing this post though is two-fold. Firstly, being able to publicly express my grief in this way is helpful to me. It gives me a place to record my thoughts and pour out my heart as I sit in an otherwise silent office. Secondly, though, is to make a point about social media. Despite our constant tears, both Nathan and I almost immediately tweeted about what had happened. We felt moved to update our facebook status, and we were able to chat to some understanding friends via instant messenger. Talking on the phone has been too hard, but at least typing is manageable. Losing a pet is not like losing a family member. There isn’t really a system of people phoning each other people to share the news. That just isn’t how it’s done. But social media has given us a platform from which to share our grief and to receive back an enormous ‘virtual’ hug (we’ve had some real ones too of course, including with Scotch and Macy – our other two rabbits).

Social media comes under so much criticism for revealing so much about our lives in a public forum, and for voyeurism. Yet lately I have seen several friends share sad news through social media platforms and receive an overwhelming response. There are times when that sense of community, albeit a virtual community in some cases, is really needed. Right now, I’m no good for going outside and seeing lots of people, but through the power of social media, text messaging and instant messaging, lots of people have been able to come to me and offer their support. Nathan even had a tweet from the Times Higher Education – from someone he’s never even met – offering their sympathies.

This is one of those times when, through all the concerns and negative press, social media has really come into its own.

It’s been far too long since my last blog post. I spend so much of my time preaching to people about blogging and the need to do it regularly, that I really must practice what I preach. However, I’ve got so many exciting projects on the go at the moment for various clients that it’s all a bit crazy. Here’s something to share though…

Around mid-March, so really very recently, a 4IP funding iPhone app was launched – AudioBoo, developed by BestBefore media. Described by some as ‘audio twitter’, AudioBoo enables you through a simple iPhone app to record a short burst of audio, attach a photo, tag it, and pretty much instantly have it online with the photo, audio file, and the location of the recording marked on a google map (thanks to the power of GPS). You can set it up so that every new ‘Boo’ you post is tweeted about through your twitter account, and you can also embed the file into another web page using the emded code provided. Very very simple and easy.

I came across it for the first time at an event I was involved with for Becta, who were supporting a DIUS event hosted by Channel 4. The guys from BestBefore did a live demonstration of the technology, which worked seamlessly. So, in true flattery, I decided to copy their exercise at a social media training session I was running last week. Worked perfectly, and certainly got the creative juices of my ‘trainees’ flowing, particularly thinking about potential for gathering customer feedback and quick testimonials. From a personal point of view, I know it’s also going to be great for gathering quick soundbites at events (from delegates and speakers) and I might also use it to help gather some anecdotes for some research I’m conducting for the CIPR Education and Skills sector group at the moment too.

The guys at 4IP have been blogging about some of the uses they’ve seen for it. And that’s one of the things that so staggering about this. BestBefore and 4IP could see the potential for this technology, but they really had no idea how people would use it. I can’t see it replacing Twitter because, let’s face it, who wants to have to trawl through audio clips of each of the individuals they follow (I find it hard enough just keep up with written tweets), but the real gem of this story is how the technology has bee pushed out, and the community out there have decided how to use it rather than being told what it’s for. This is a great example of how social media is actually all about the content, and not about the technology. The technology just makes it happen, but it’s the content that really drives it and encourages interest.

For a little taste, here’s me just mucking around with it:

And here’s the link to the actual AudioBoo page so you can see the photo and map too.