Cybervetting and all that

I'm having an interesting dig in the digital dirt to put together a piece on NetReps, cyber-vetting and all that, and it has got me to thinking about my own cyber presence. I obviously blog, but my footprint's also all over my Facebook profile, My LinkedIn profile and, as of today, my ViaDeo profile (though I can't find it at the moment!).

I'm also listed on the CiB freelance directory, the CIoJ's directory and in one or two others that are only on paper. Somewhere in cyberspace, old versions of my cv are sitting on Monster, at the IABC and one one or two other sites - and all probably say slightly different things.

Now for me that's not a problem. I run my own business and I'm not looking for another job. but what if I was? Is my footprint consistent? Are there flaws in my NetRep that might exclude me from that perfect job or do the inconsistencies in my online presence raise any questions in recruiters' minds? On the other hand, is cyber-me so exciting that search specialists might just check me out to see if I'm interested in prospective roles?

Before today, I hadn't really given it much thought....perhaps now I should devote a few minutes to eliminating any prospective web-negativity.....or maybe not.

More hits, fewer comments

More people ae hitting this site, but comments seem to have dried up completely since I started moderating them (to stop people selling dodgy web services in Toronto, Christmas gifts in China or viagra from wherever). However, when I track my outclicks, I quite often see the infuriating trail that shows someone has started to make a comment, and then not carried through with it.

Anyway, I've taken away the moderation or now to see if it makes any difference.

So, let me know what you think......about anything!!

Fall at their feet

Crowded House know how to give a good concert. It's a dozen years of more since I last saw Neil Finn, Nick Seymour and the gang perform at the Apollo in Oxford and give one of the best performances I've ever witnessed. They took a 10 year hiatus between 96 and 06, during which drummer, Paul Hester, died and the sum of the remaining parts never quite lived up to the whole.

I saw Neil perform with his band, and Neil and brother Tim graced the Oxford stage too, but I never really thought I'd see Crowded House together again...until last night.

Jac and I were back on my home territory: back to Wembley and the recently-revamped Wembley Arena . It's still a barn of a place, cold until the audience warms it up and we were a good 50 yards back from the stage, despite having floor seating. But at least the acoustics are about a million times better than before the revamp. At about 8.30pm, four middle aged men took the stage and lit up my year.

The band aren't all about greatest hits, though they've had enough of the and they were liberally sprinkled in among strong new material. But the big difference between Crowded House and many other bands I've seen is the way they connect with their crowd and make a concert for 10,000 people appear intimate and personal - they have a great way of turning a building the size of an aircraft hangar into a small room. The concert is all about banter and involvement - and, in celebration of Nick Seymour's birthday they were even taking requests as they played up to Wembley's infamous curfew last night.

They left the stage last night just before 11pm. YouTube and dodgy phone recordings can only give a flavour of a band on top form live - and there's nothing up yet from last night's Wembley experience.

The only downsides? Overpriced merchandising and over zealous stewarding. But that's just being picky. We had a great night out.

I'm sipping coffee from my Crowded House 'char' mug this morning and enjoying the band's extremely rewarding back collection once again.

Recognising business value - not the best use of a comma in a built-up area

Once again it's awards season and I'm frustrated as ever by the internal communications industry's abiding fascination with recognising publications - in whatever form they're produced - rather than their business impact.

Whether it's CiB, IABC or any of the other industry award bodies, we're too often judged in a beauty parade on the look and feel of our publications rather than on how they achieve business success and what value they bring to the organisation they represent. That's horribly skewed thinking.

External publications exist to generate sales and turn a nice profit. Therefore, they need to look good and read well to stand out from the competition. They need to understand their audience implicitly and appeal to whatever the instinct is that generates a purchasing decision.

Internal communication is different - for one thing, readers don't pay for that magazine or intranet - and many choose to ignore the content foisted on them. We can't judge these publications in the same terms.

Shouldn't we be looking instead at their objectives within a corporate business strategy and how well they've delivered on those objectives? Wouldn't it be great to be the communicator who could stand up and say 'My communication won an award because we could show how it contributed to my organisation's success.' It's absolutely about understanding the readership and connecting with them - but to a business end, and that's not all about looking sleek and glossy.

An award based on a measure of true, tangible and measurable business value would be far for powerful to me than simply to have picked up a fairly meaningless certificate in a beauty parade.

Shocked and stunned by labour arrogance

The other night, I was driving home from London, listening to Peter Allen interviewing Diane Hayter from the Labour Party's National Executive on BBC FiveLive.

In the first of several similar interviews I've heard since the Party's general secretary resigned over the latest sleaze allegations to hit Westminster politics, Hayter played a straight bat to Allen's questioning, completely denying any knowledge of wrong-doing by the party in accepting major donations passed through third parties. Her smarm was matched only by the power of her insincerity.

I was incensed. I'm still incensed. In fact I'm outraged at the gall of the woman in her arrogance at taking the public for granted. First that we're gullible enough to believe the political crock of shit that she and her colleagues are spouting; and second that she and her colleagues think it's enough to hang one junior party official out to satisfy the media witch hunt.

Hayter's defence of the indefensible turned a clear lens on the Westminster bubble. Somehow those on the inside have lost the ability to treat the rest of us as thinking adults, and have completely lost the plot on the fact that they are supposed to represent the best of the nation.

What Hayter and co. are amply demonstrating now is the craven nature of political power. Labour's in, and will do all it can to remain in. that means expediency. That means, in a system where we have no state funding for political parties, and all operate at huge financial deficit, accepting the readies from shady figures such as David Abrahams and covering their tracks as much as possible.

Politics aren't clean and never have been - and now Westminster seems much more a punch and judy show than ever before. But what really stinks is the sanctimony of the likes of Diane Hayter . she's truly swan like. Her head may be making the right noises above water-level, but down below the surface she's pedaling through the mire. And you know what? It's starting to stick.

Of course, Labour could have avoided this by talking honestly, admitting their failings and making quick reparations. But, as ever, a political establishment has attempted to pass the buck. We see it in business with great regularity - and here it is again emerging in public life. Wake up Westminster - we don't believe you.

So where would you put party politics at the moment on the scale of honesty-at-work? in my book, probably just below estate agents.

Netreps, Facebook and succumbing to the compulsive

Okay, so I'm following the herd. I've succumbed to the inevitable and created a Facebook profile. Being a 40-something, it feels rather like Friends Reunited rather than some cutting edge networking tool, but I guess it's very much a case of what you make it.

My reason for entering the world of Gen Y was, of course, professional. For the next issue of one of the mags I write for, I've been asked to pen a feature on 'Netreps' and the impact social networking is having on employers - both as they trawl for talent, and when they get to see another, sometimes altogether shadier, side of their star talent.

I don't think social networking has really defined its place in the hierarchy of business relationships yet - it still sits separate from the complexity of relationship demanded in any organisation. But that'll change as more and more people create a slightly heightened version of themselves online - and employers see a little more of their employees' lives beyond the 9-5.

Maybe it'll all level out and the social networking sites will become little more than a high-level business card/CV. But maybe not. I guess I'll find out rather more as I delve into some of the current thought over the next couple of weeks.

Very interested in hearing other views though - as all too few lurkers have commented at all on here recently. Sorry the postings have been a bit dull, but work and study around the MA have rather taken over.

Close to home is best

When it comes to strategic communication, I've always believed that organisations that drive the communication themselves are far more likely to achieve the best results.

While external agencies and consultancies can offer great ideas, great process and sometimes even extra legs in making whatever change is necessary happen, they're far less likely to make change stick by imposing solutions from the outside.

This seems to be borne out in the latest CiB Strategy Awards. Almost all have gone to in-house teams: the people who are closest to the issues their organisations face. I work regularly on change programmes, but always strive to hand the real running of such projects in-house as soon as possible. I know how I can influence and affect change - but my presence as an external supplier will never be as powerful as the buy-in and delivery from managers who will have to live with the changes long after I've moved on.

Don't panic.....they're not so different after all

Last night I had the pleasure of facilitating part of a BBC 'Yoof' event in Southampton. A group of 16-21 year olds came together and, as well as touring the Corporation's HQ in the South and having a play on a BBC Technology Bus, fed back their views on TV, radio and the internet, sharing their feelings about everything from sport and drama to whether Radio 1 is getting better or worse.

We were all geared up for a generation stating they never watch TV; that they get their news via the internet and spend all their time on Facebook and YouTube. While a couple had uploaded content to YouTube, and most had profiles on the Facebook or Bebo (or both!), the way they accessed their media was reassuringly familiar to those of us aged 40+ in the room.

Most loved the BBC's dramas and used BBC for their news. Very many still watched TV with their parents and nearly all woke up to the dulcet(?!) tones of Chris Moyles. They still watched TV according to the published schedules. Almost none had downloaded podcasts and not a single one had downloaded content to a mobile phone.

No doubt they'll all be adopting new ways of accessing and interacting with the media in the future, but for now, Generation Y is nothing like as geeky as the magicians of social media would have us believe.

Hearty frustration

There have been two lively threads running on the CiB's freelance forum - one of the most useful resources for communicators in the UK. The first concerns the pretty dreadful standards - or, indeed, complete lack of punctuation prevalent among both school kids and new entrants to the world of work; while the second explores the polarities of 'the best communication for corporates'.

Now my position on the first debate is that English is dynamic and that we can't afford to be too stuffy in the way it's used today. The rules change as the generations change and our role as communicators is to ensure we reach the right audiences in a way that's relevant to them.

Personally, I hate sloppy punctuation; I hate txt-spk and lazy English. But I'm not stuck in a time warp. We can still write good English that connects with all ages - and be grammatical too. And perhaps, as professional communicators, the standards we set for grammar and punctuation may just be taken up by some of the non-professional-communicators who operate in every organisation today.

On the second debate, I get heartily fed up with people who jump either into the print or the electronic camps. Both print and electronic channels are a means to an end. Surely communication is what organisations make of it? That means finding the best ways to create dialogue with audiences that enable them to do their job better and feel better about doing it. Too often these CiB debates get hung up on the tools and provide a lot of heat but little light on how best we can make the right connections.

Print and electronic both have their place - as does face-to-face. The magic is finding the right blend.

One size doesn't fit all

I really enjoy delivering training. Actually, I enjoy the whole process of assessing a need; building a programme that addresses that need and then working through that programme with people who will really benefit from it.

It's something I do from time to time in house with clients, and also through CiB. In fact, the next O2O course is set to run on November 21. Of course CiB is a not for profit - its courses are, in the main excellent, but they're inexpensive: generally coming in at under £300 per delegate for the day. The downside is that I don't earn a lot from those days - but I think they give me a certain civic sense of having put something back in to my profession.

But sometimes I'm a wee bit gobsmacked when I see what other providers charge.....especially when I'm left wondering how much they're tailoring the offering - or not - for their local audiences. Marc Wright from Simply Communicate dropped me a note recently inviting me to take part in the Advanced Writing and Editing Seminar he's running in conjunction with one of the chaps from Ragan. On the surface it looks a good deal - a tad under £1,200 for a two day workshop delivered by two participants.

But two things struck me. First: Marc informed me that 'Written communication is pretty lackluster at 90 percent of companies ....' - okay, a sweeping statement, but do I want to go on a writing course in London where the provider can't spell lacklustre? It smacks of a bit of lazy marketing: taking an American promo piece and just cutting and pasting it in.

Second: Marc informed me that this was the course for me if......

• You’re new to corporate communications; this seminar will give you the tools to succeed
  
• You’re a veteran communicator; AWE will give you new ideas, recharge your batteries, fix some bad habits and get you out of a rut
  
• You’re struggling with communication of any kind; AWE is the place to get some real answers!

So, it's something for everyone......which, from my experience, means a poor compromise for anyone. I've got 20 years plus in the business, and don't want to be spending my time going slowly over the basics with rookie writers. And if I was a newbie, I'd want to work with my peers, not the seasoned to cynicals looking to recharge their batteries.

The best training I've had has always been bespoke or tailored for a particular audience. O2O is definitely for experienced professionals and if any newbies came my way I'd point them to something more basic. Courses like AWE leave me cold: I get the feeling that they're about cramming as many delegates in as possible to maximise the return. With comms training, one size doesn't fit all and heightens the risk of pleasing no-one.