The Millennials working in agencies – R U ready?

Research from over 200 global PR agencies by the University of Oregon shows interesting conclusions that Middle East agencies should take heed of. The Millennials (or Gen Y, Generation Me, The Net Generation, or Echo Boomers) can broadly be defined as those between the ages of 12 and 28 years – in short the younger members of our agency teams.

Gen Y is the most wanted & coddled generation in history. Howe & Strauss (authors known for their theories about a recurrent cycle of generations) summed Gen Y’s up neatly, “they are more numerous, more affluent, better educated, and more ethnically diverse. More important, they are beginning to manifest a wide array of positive social habits that older Americans no longer associate with youth, including a new focus on teamwork, achievement, modesty, and good conduct”.

Why are they like this? Most commonly brought up by helicopter parents (remaining closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not) with both parents working and more disposable income than previous generations, Gen Y has often been branded as having attention spans less than a goldfish and only being able to absorb information in very short chunks.

Having grown up with the Internet, it's also the first generation that's completely comfortable with technology. And their childhood passion for computer games means they like clear objectives, with a start and an accomplishable goal (games end), knowing exactly where they are at all times (i.e. how many points they have scored).

This is important as there are a lot of Gen Y – 70 million - almost three times the number of Generation X. So what does this mean for the managers in Middle East agencies? Well, if we understand what Millennials want, we can make our agencies run more efficiently. So here’s the top 10 ways to cultivate relationships with Millennials:

10 - Less politics & favouritism. Add more team building events - especially if you also have Baby Boomers in your team.
9 - Keep your promises as a manager. Gen Y has been brought up being given what they expected. If you disappoint they’ll walk.
8 - Understand mistakes. Gen Y sees no harm in making them so have realistic expectations and don’t view mistakes as failures (their parents didn’t).
7 – Give more autonomy & responsibility. But paradoxically don’t expect accountability.
6 - Allow & encourage innovation. Gen Y live for innovation.
5 - Listen, solicit opinions and recognise their influence. Gen Y like to give it and just as their parents did, they’ll expect you to listen to them.
4 - Provide training & opportunities for growth. Gen Y loves to learn.
3 - Prioritise employees’ needs and work out how to provide a work-life balance with home commute options.
2 - Provide fair compensation: based on achievement, workload, level of responsibility, market norms.
1 - Communicate! More regular, recognition, openness, honesty, instructions, feedback & defined roles.

Gen Y like to communicate, so speak to them… you could also email, Tweet, blog, connect over FaceBook and get LinkedIn… but whatever you do communicate.

Crisis Communication - proactive planning

Explained in 90 seconds:

LEAD & detractors

It's not exactly rocket science, but one simple method for getting online and embracing social media is LEAD (listen, experiment, apply, develop). This creates a simple road map that will help companies thrive in the online world’s environment of constant change.

We see a lot of work on attracting new advocates, but one thing that I am constantly asked about is how to work with detractors.

The most important thing in social is to address your detractors. Influencers are a combination of advocates and detractors but detractors are 4-8 times more likely to speak than an advocate (yeah, I made that stat up). Understand and disarm your detractors by talking to them.

But should all detractors be treated equally?

First up, we like to differentiate between 'branded' and 'unbranded' social noise makers. Waggener Edstrom define this very neatly... "Branded media has an associated value exchange with its name. Unbranded media has voice and influence, but the name does not (yet, perhaps) carry value by itself. Regardless of whether it’s branded or not, each voice carries weight and influence, from either the edge (unbranded) or the center (branded). And media can move between the two states: X, the gossip guy, started out as a nobody, while Z, who used to be influential, is rarely heard from anymore."

Then it's traditional (yes it still exists) PR methods that need to be implemented to actually make a difference.

Only the paranoid survive.

3 easy steps to extend your social media beyond Facebook & Twitter...

So you have a handle on Facebook and Twitter. You may even blog a little. Think you have it covered? Sorry – not even close. At NettResults we break social media sites out into three levels:

Tier 1: Register and engage
Del.icio.us
DocStoc
Business week's Business Exchange
FaceBook
Flickr
FriendFeed
LinkedIn
Scribd
SlideShare
StumbleUpon
Technorati
Twitter
YouTube (also Vimeo, Viddler, Revver & Yahoo video)

Tier 2: Set up branded profiles, use as warranted:
Digg
Google Groups
Windows Live Space
Yahoo Groups

Tier 3: Claim your name and monitor
Bedo
Brightkite
Friendster
Gather
Identi.ca
Imeem
Meetup
Multiply
MySpace
New York Times (TimesPeople, NewsWeek)
Ning
Orkut
Piscasa
Plurk
Spoke
Tribe.net

The hard way: go to each site and do what you have to do.
The easy way: call a reputable PR agency such as NettResults and that agency set up and engage social media sites for you.

Three Steps for Positive Crisis Communication when dealing with Online Social Media

In March, The Home Depot found themselves in a crisis situation due to a picture taken in-store and posted on a blog site. The company had done nothing wrong, and a good-natured employee had done something they thought was customer focused, but it turned out to hurt the company.

Whether it could be a sting of customer complaints on Twitter, a clutch of employees blowing off steam on Facebook on a Friday afternoon, or someone posting company video on YouTube – organizations are increasingly finding themselves in a crisis due to the avalanche of online social media sites. And don’t even get me started on the Dominoes Pizza YouTube debacle.

The threat comes from two groups of people – the harmful insider and the pissed-off outsider.

So what, if anything, should a company do to protect itself in online social media?

1 – Be prepared. First and foremost, this means paying attention to the conversation in places such as YouTube & Twitter, and where possible social media sites such as Facebook. Have people who understand the capabilities and etiquette of the forums.

2 – Don’t overreact. Hyperbole’s the stock-in-trade online. Not every action deserves a company response.

3 – Get in the game. When it’s time to respond, use the medium where the offense took place. Provide value with new information, and be sincere.

This is just the beginning...

Why being a PR professional is like cutting hair

Yes, it's true, to be a good PR professional you can learn a lot from good hairdressers...

Middle East press releases and their use

The latest research about the media and PR in the Middle East by Media Source makes interesting reading.

The bad or good news – depending on your point of view - is that there are more press releases filling journalists’ inboxes than two years ago. The Arabic and English language media are more closely aligned than previously, particularly in the 0 – 20 and 21 – 40 categories but there is growth across the 41 + categories. This is not really surprising given the enormous growth we’ve seen in the number of new agencies in the region through 2007 and 2008.

Interesting reading for the PR industry – there may be more releases around but more of them are being used. Whereas ‘none’ or ‘less than 10 percent’ stood at 55 percent across all respondents in 2007, this figure has dropped by 11 points to stand at 44 percent. Use of releases has increased markedly among the Arabic language press with 41 percent of them claiming to use a quarter or more of all the releases they receive. Virtually every agency resists the tag ‘press release factory’ but should they, in fact, play up their skill in generating this humble communication tool?

Is Iran the birthplace of citizen reporting?

Whether you watch traditional media or get your news online, it is only thanks to citizen reporters that we knew what was going on during the June riots in Iran.

Ahmadenijad’s forces were doing all they could to shut down social media communication channels; Facebook and YouTube have both been blocked in Tehran. But Twitter was widely used to get the news and images out to the rest of the world (once the mobile network was working).

And for those that don’t follow Twitter, it didn’t really matter – television broadcasting will never be the same again. Fox News was the first one to set aside regular programming and only focus on the photographs and tweets coming into studios. For some hours, it was the only major network broadcasting bring the sights and sounds up people protesting on the streets of Tehran and other cities across Iran. It gave Fox an immediate competitive edge with an audience spike as Americans tuned in to keep up with the events.

Fox News chose to go global, while CNN and MSNBC stuck with their usual programming, broadcasting continuous coverage of the escalating political crisis and chaos in the streets with vivid photos and messages from protestors. Eventually, the other stations caught on and changed from the usual programming to focus on Iran events.

Twitter has broken through press censorship in Iran. It’s allowing reports from citizens that would have been suppressed to be exposed to a wide audience. Obviously we have to be cautious in how we react to the information. We must never take everything on face value and ensure that we aren’t being duped by someone manipulating anonymity. However, with the users claiming to be Iranian giving updates with consistent stories, we can perhaps assume that most of these people are offering legitimate and authentic views from Iran. On top of anecdotal stories we’re getting a stream of pictures and videos of scenes on the streets.

Twitter can be a powerful tool.

Too much talking?

An interesting phenomena is going on - and Time has just picked it up.

All the news is bad. News from the Economy is depressing, 'Britain's Got Talent' is accused with treating contestants badly, 'Jon & Kate, Plus 8' is imploding with cheating and child labor, Brown is being asked to resign, jets falling out of the sky, a man in CA got sentenced to death for starting a fire, Pakistan mosque bomb just killed dozens, China landslide just buried 60 people... I could go on.

At the same time - there is a never ending hunger for us all to get and share the news. In the past few weeks the amount of Tweeting has grown substantially.

As Time puts it - The weather reports keep announcing that the sky is falling, but here we are — millions of us — sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one another.

Thoughts?

How to get great media coverage… don’t send a press release

Those learned soles in PR agencies have forever been touting the advantages to colleagues and clients of NOT sending press releases.

In their research, HubSpot estimated nearly 50,000 press releases are issued every month. Roughly one every 12 seconds. So on to the big question: is it worth it?

Do press releases generate publicity? That really depends on your definition of publicity. If publicity for you is any website that publishes your release, then releases are very effective. If on the other hand you consider mainstream news media to be your target, you’re probably not going to have much luck with press releases.

Do journalists read releases? According to the PRWeek/PR Newswire 2009 Media Survey, 38% of journalists look at opt-in press releases from commercial newswires when researching topics and writing stories, and 27% search the websites of commercial newswire services.

But are press releases the most effective way to generate publicity? The short answer is no. According to the 2009 Media Survey, 90% of journalists prefer email pitches over every other media. If email is the top way that journalists like to receive information, then a press release isn’t the best way to get their attention. True, a release could be excellent supplemental information to use in supplement to an email, but it should replace your pitch. A well-crafted and brief pitch letter sent via email can be far more effective at getting a journalist’s attention.