Changeworksblog.com

OF COURSE you could have written that.  Everyone in business is expert at stringing words together on screen and paper, or so they think, if only they could find the time.  They know they can’t design the cover for the company’s sales brochure, update the logo, or build a new website.  These are mystical, creative vocations best left to experts.  But: writing?  Anybody can do that.

   Writing is the most undervalued of all communications skills.  It is the one to which least attention is paid – yet it is the most important.

   Believe it or not, professional writers have been trained.  Yes, they have latent talent.  In the case of yours truly, an English graduate, the preparation was in the hard-knocks arena of Fleet Street and then as a copywriter in exacting advertising agencies.  The process in the latter role would be to take a brief, research the subject and its objectives, come up with a string of headlines, narrow them down and then write the body copy.  The agency demand was for compression, precision, clarity, simplicity, rhythm and appropriate corporate style – grammatically potent, although not necessarily purist.

   This is starkly different from the writing that emerges from general business.  “I’d write it myself, but I’m far too busy,” and “Surely we have someone in-house who can write this, instead of paying for it?” are familiar-sounding remarks.  Undoubtedly, business managers spend chunks of their working days assembling words in the form of memos, reports and letters.  Secretly, they are likely to be proud of their prose and would be starkly horrified at any suggestion that their output might be written badly.  Nonetheless, to the professional eye, it is usually poor in terms of the assemblage of ideas and worse still in clarity of expression.

   Facets of writing professionally include being able to absorb – and to question – a brief, to define the most appropriate communications strategy, to create the concept, then to execute it in a tone which is compelling, precise, economical and true to the client’s corporate culture. 

   Always, the writer must transpose into the position of his or her readers, and to seem to be speaking their language.  Effective writing concentrates on those who buy the product or service, not those who make or sell it.

   This applies whether the writer is working on a total communications package or a single item.  Most certainly, it is not a task for part-timers, nor for those whose heads are filled with a plethora of other concerns.  It is not a job for the great untrained.

   You will not get through to an audience that is bored or restless.  Corporate communications programmes will never work at full power, nor deliver value for money, unless they are implemented by craftspeople who understand your corporate objectives and can help achieve them for you through the use of energetic, clear and digestible language.  Communications are not only about pretty pictures.

Part Three – Setting up your video shoot:

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

Part three of this blog series, offers useful tips on how to shoot your video so that it looks and sounds more professional. There is an extensive amount of production tips and advice out there. I am highlighting just some of the main ‘tips and tricks’ to give you an overview of the broad spectrum.

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Setting up your shoot:

• Steadiness Techniques: Get as close to your subject as you can without causing them distress. This will enable you to work at the wider angle end of your lens thus avoiding the instability caused when working on full zoom. However, avoid full wide angle as this is likely to distort your subject.

• Shot Sizes and Angles: When setting up your shot, keep in mind which shots will be edited together; two images shot from the same angle with the same sized subject, will cause a problem with visual continuity.

• Lighting: Video recording systems tend to have a weakness in their inability to cope with contrast and backlighting. A good test to apply for all shooting situations is the “squint test”. Screw your eyes up until they are just slits and you can just about see the subject. Look into the shadow areas. If you can still see detail in the shadow areas then all is OK. If not, you can use reflectors to reflect light back into the shadow areas.

• Sound: Get the microphone as close to the subject as possible. This could entail moving the camera closer to the subject. If this becomes a problem, look to using external microphones that can plug into your camera mic socket and monitor the sound with headphones.

• White balance: To get a more accurate white balance, best way to do this is to set your camera’s white balance to a manual setting. You can then place a white card/board in front of the camera, zoom in so it fills the viewfinder and press the white balance button to adjust the colour cast of the light.

Many organisations are unsure about whether online social media is an appropriate way for them to build their brand. As I mentioned in my previous blog, social media is not right for every brand and finding the right type of social media is critical to developing your brand successfully.  If you’re interested in developing your brand using interactive online ‘conversations’, then social media is right for you.

There are many benefits for using social media to develop brands online:

1. Low cost – Social media marketing is very appealing to organisations due to its low cost investment. The majority of social media sites are free to join so it only costs your time to build your brand effectively online.
2. Wide audience – Social media sites can reach a large audience, especially the major sites such as Facebook.  Social media is increasingly being used, with the majority of internet users becoming a member of a social media site. For example, Facebook now has over 200,000,000 active users (http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/). Social media sites used to be associated with the student community but it has now attracted a wide range of ages with different demographics. Niche social media sites have a huge potential due to their diverse audience.
3. Loyalty – Building a strong brand community online is likely to encourage brand loyalty among members due to the relationship building advantage. Consumers often affiliate with the brand and become part of the brand so they are more likely to trust the brand and recommend the brand to others.
4. Increased traffic – By developing online relationships with social media users, they are more likely to visit your website and increase the traffic to your website.
5. Immediate – Social media has the ability to share information almost instantly so consumers are always up to date with the latest news. Social media can help monitor any negative comments online, such as by using Google Alerts, in order to quickly respond and avoid the brand’s reputation from being tarnished. Social media helps to manage the reputation of your brand online to make sure the desired image is being created.
6. Increased awareness – Due to the increased popularity and reach of social media, consumers are increasingly becoming aware of brands and are using social media as an alternative to find out more about your brand compared to traditional methods.
7. Market Research – Social media can be used as a great way for collecting market research due to its potential to monitor a large audience in one place.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, social media is a great way to help build and develop brands online. However, finding the right type of social media is critical to developing your brand successfully.

Social media is about interaction and dialogue and the conversations your audience have about your brand. It is extremely important you choose a social media site which your audience use and has the key features that you require.  Choosing the most popular social media site may be ineffective if it doesn’t include the features which you need. Also, not every brand is a conversation starter so social media may not be for everyone.

The key things to consider when choosing which social media sites are right for you are:

• Target Audience – It is important to find out which social media sites your target audience use.  By researching the user’s demographics in their profiles on different social media sites, you can find out which social media to target to reach your specific demographic.

If your brand is in a specialist industry it is important to choose a social media site aimed at that niche market as it will help build high quality relationships with the relevant audience.  For example, if you want to develop you restaurant online a popular social media site you may choose to use is: http://www.fohboh.com/

• Choosing relevant content – Make sure your content is relevant to your target audience by looking at the content on the social media sites which your audience use.  If your content is interesting and relevant to your audience they are more likely to join your online brand community.

• Your objectives – Find out what features different social media sites offer and whether they will meet your objectives. If your main objective is to network, you may want to choose a social media site that allows you to send messages and share links with other users and create groups. As social media is used to interact and develop conversations, it is important that this is a key objective.

These important considerations will help you decide which social media site is appropriate to build your brand. Ideally, choose a general social media aimed at a large audience to increase your brand awareness but also focus on a niche site to help build your brand and relationships.

Viral Change is not Tsunami change

Have you been through significant structural change recently? Or implemented new IT systems perhaps? Have you undergone a number of clever strategic initiatives yet something is still stuck?  People aren’t quite doing what they need to?  The culture isn’t where you would like it to be?  Many of the best organisations we work with suffer from a blame culture where fear of failure and silo mentality is rife.  Others see a lack of ownership and an attitude of ‘it’s not my responsibility’.  And many are frustrated with the wasted time in meetings and not being productive and of course, the time it takes to make effective decisions and get things done.

If you are 80 per cent of where you should be – is that good enough? Of course not. That extra 20 per cent (like Pareto said) is difference between ‘also ran’ and blue oceans. Yet traditional management or change management programmes won’t get you there. But Viral Change TM will.

Viral Change is Not a Change Management Programme

Despite having ‘change’ in its title, Viral Change is not a ‘change management programme’. You may be familiar with most organisational change programmes: mechanistic, big, driven from the top, expensive, a big set of complex actions with lots of ‘push’ corporate style internal communications. Well guess what? It doesn’t work.  

‘It’s the old problem of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic! Superficially, one can create the impression of making a lot of changes; but at the base level, nothing of significance may have really changed.’       Morgan, 1993

Remember what Gandhi said: “We need to become the change we want to see in the world.”  It is people who change other people: not processes, not systems, certainly not Village Hall corporate comms meetings! As a spokesperson at Pfizer told Dr Leandro Herrero, pioneer of Viral Change, “Change only happens when people see those around them changing” .

Creating Tipping Points

Viral Change is butterfly change (my words) – in that, like the butterfly effect, small changes at individual level end up having a far-reaching, ripple effect on the larger system. In Viral Change a small set of behaviours is spread, imitated, endorsed by a small network of people and this spreads new ways quickly through influential peer to peer .  The overall effect is sustainable changes created mainly by the internal ‘infection’ of success, and the achievement of tipping points.

Instead of focusing on processes and what is visible and manageable (the traditional linear, left brain approach), Viral Change recognises that the most important ways that change needs to occur cannot be controlled.  This is because an organisation is not a machine, it is a collection of individual human beings: a living system.  And living systems cannot be controlled like machines, not for long-term well being anyway, but rather have to be disturbed with impulses that will cause the system to react and make choices about what to do.

Living Systems Need Disruptions to Initiate Choice

Ever come across the concept of ‘self organising systems’?  Rather than change being driven from the top down, individuals and their individual actions create big change in the system.  This way the system is self organising.  Watch how these starlings roost – it looks like chaos but small behaviours lead to massive system change:

Small impulses in these massive flocks of birds, are interpreted and acted upon by the system and, out of what looks like chaos, a single impluse (ie ‘roost’) initiates massive change that tips the whole system into roost. Viral Change approach directs meaningful impulses into the system to influence large and sustainable changes.  We’ll talk more about those impulses in our next post.

Please comment and contribute to this discussion by posting your own thoughts and comments!

Other posts you might enjoy:

• How to implement Viral Change TM
• Interview with Dr Leandro Herrero about Viral Change TM
• Cultural Change is behavioural change