{"id":8,"date":"2009-05-06T10:04:03","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T14:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/creativefusion.ca\/?p=8"},"modified":"2009-05-07T15:57:43","modified_gmt":"2009-05-07T19:57:43","slug":"media-training-in-the-social-media-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativefusion.ca\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Your Media Spokesperson? We All Are Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mashable had a great post today\u00a0<\/a>about organizations needing to have social media policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is applicable not only to how employees use social media tools like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook but also how they respond to questions put to them by bloggers,\u00a0citizen journalists or even their friends with Twitter accounts.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the past, I\u00a0have been the one who needed to enforce\u00a0organizational policy on “all calls must go to media relations.” (A policy not everyone\u00a0is always\u00a0thrilled about, but which\u00a0in a large organization has several benefits.\u00a0These include\u00a0keeping everyone updated with current information and not having several people respond to the same call thereby wasting scarce resources.)<\/p>\n

Now as a communications consultant, I need to help clients understand that with social media the rules have changed–we’re no longer waiting by the phone for\u00a0media calls\u00a0or an occasional e-mail query. It’s all media all the time. As Shel\u00a0Holtz\u00a0says in this presentation on crisis communications<\/a>, anyone with a cell phone these days could be a “photojournalist,” (without perhaps the contextualizing skills of a trained, professional journalist).\u00a0 Staff need to be informed and trained how to respond to people who are eager to “twitter” the latest news on your organization.\u00a0Policies help to make their role clearer.<\/p>\n

Not that this is a totally new phenomenon.\u00a0Even back when there was only\u00a0traditional media, company employees frequently presented at\u00a0conferences where media was present. When the\u00a0presenters were questioned during or after the talks, they could not just refer the media\u00a0to the official spokesperson back at head office.\u00a0They would speak to their area of expertise but knew what bigger questions they could not answer accurately and authoritatively.<\/p>\n

Social media\u00a0opens up these opportunities for public discourse that much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A recent example of how this was handled effectively was\u00a0when there were rumours spreading online\u00a0about a controversial vote\u00a0<\/a>to take place at Mountain Equipment Co-op’s annual general meeting\u00a0in\u00a0Canada. I called to find out the facts\u00a0and was expecting\u00a0to be put on hold\u00a0and referred to the company spokesperson. Instead the customer service reps\u00a0provided\u00a0me with the\u00a0information I was looking for, and when they didn’t know the answer to\u00a0a question, they\u00a0put\u00a0me\u00a0on hold briefly, went and\u00a0found out and gave\u00a0it to me straight. I was impressed with how well the company\u00a0equipped their front-liners with the information and the freedom the staff had been given (or taken perhaps?) to be candid and up-front with callers.\u00a0Good job MEC.<\/p>\n

What do you think?\u00a0 Have\u00a0 you trained your staff on how to deal\u00a0with social\u00a0media? Have you revised your old media policies?\u00a0\u00a0Any hard learned lessons you’d like to share? \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mashable had a great post today\u00a0about organizations needing to have social media policies.\u00a0 This is applicable not only to how employees use social media tools like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook but also how they respond to questions put to them by bloggers,\u00a0citizen journalists or even their friends with Twitter accounts. In\u00a0the past, I\u00a0have been the…Continue reading Who’s Your Media Spokesperson? We All Are Now<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,6],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-media-training","tag-social-media"],"yoast_head":"\nWho's Your Media Spokesperson? 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