New media require a new level of diligence

New media
require a new level of diligence

By KAREN BLOTNICKY
Small Business
Nova Scotia, Halifax
theChronicalherald.ca
June 22nd, 2008

TECHNOLOGY has greatly enhanced business communications.

Whether your business is large or small, tremendous savings are to be had by simply using creative technologies to communicate with internal and external stakeholders.

For example, you can meet with colleagues anywhere in the world by using simple applications like private chat rooms or you can use more advanced software, like GoToMeeting, to get real-time communications with full audio and video support.

It is possible to collaborate on documents for free using platforms like Googleworks.com. Meeting face to face may become passe as the cost of travel skyrockets and as staff learn to take full advantage of the functionality of software that is only a click away.

New media will continue to revolutionize the face of business. New media, consisting of social networks and information vehicles, will continue to make life more affordable for small- and medium-sized enterprises, while making communications management even more challenging.

New media consist of both social networks and information-sharing systems that operate through the Internet or wireless technologies.

Information-based media include e-mail, podcasts, Wikis (like Wikipedia), and blogs or online forums. Social networking media include such popular applications as Facebook, MySpace and LiveJournal.

YouTube involves aspects of both social networking and information sharing.

A key advantage of new media is that they can be used to easily communicate with many different kinds of stakeholders: everyone from employees and partners through to customers and competitors.

Other advantages of new media are that they are so widely used and easily accessible.

An important part of communications management has always been the ability to target communications carefully to specific recipients. This is easy to manage with some media, such as print and direct mail, but much tougher to manage with mass media (like newspapers, billboards, radio, and television) and nearly impossible to manage well with most new media.

This brings a special challenge to those who wish to employ new media to promote their business. A special degree of diligence is required to do it well. For example, this writer received a confidential e-mail this week that was not meant for her. Shortly after that, an e-mail was sent from her firm to a client that was meant for another party.

How did this happen? Part of the efficiency of e-mail, one of the new media, is its ease of use. If you simply key in the first few letters of the recipient’s name, the software will fill the rest in for you.

In both of the e-mail incidents, the intended recipient had the same first name as the person who actually ended up receiving the e-mail. An embarrassing oversight for sure, and one that could cause harm if vital information landed in the wrong hands.

Then there is the example in 2006 when Costco became embroiled in a controversy over seal oil capsules at its St. John’s store.

Costco continually denied the role that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had played in the retailer’s decision to pull the item from the shelves, arguing instead that it was for purely financial reasons.

This did not play well in Newfoundland and Labrador, where Premier Danny Williams launched a high-profile and adversarial campaign to get seal oil capsules back on Costco’s shelves.

Imagine the embarrassment caused when Costco’s own e-mail to Sea Shepherd, agreeing to pull the seal oil capsules, was promptly posted on the society’s website for everyone to see.

In less than a month, Costco had put seal oil capsules back on the shelves in St. John’s, had managed to frustrate the people in that good province, had frustrated the conservationists on the international stage and had nothing to show for it, except that they don’t pay close enough attention to their own e-mails!

Another important element of new media is the speed with which it moves. Messages are forwarded in real time, often to millions of people.

This is may be an advantage when communicating with the market, but it isn’t an advantage when the message is negative, such as an anti-image blog or website. Every major retailer has its detractors, many of whom like to post their complaints on the international stage. Only a year ago, a lonely tire in a tree hung beside Highway 102 near the Bedford exit. One day, the tire mysteriously disappeared. High school students launched a Facebook site about the tire. This site was followed by another Facebook site. That site resulted in a story in The Chronicle Herald about the tire in the tree.

In less than two weeks, over 6,000 people had joined one of the two Facebook sites, and students had been interviewed at least four times by local radio stations, and then finally by CBC Radio One’s Sounds Like Canada.

Clearly, new media have legs and they run very quickly.

New media is a boon to modern business, but it can also become a bust if it isn’t used correctly and monitored closely. Due diligence is required.

Karen Blotnicky is president of TMC "The Marketing Clinic" and a professor at Mount Saint Vincent University. ( kblotnicky@herald.ca)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1063483.html

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