Like many people around the globe, I am watching the post-election unrest in Iran with great interest. One of the most fascinating aspects of these reports: They’re not coming from reporters.
While officials have allegedly cancelled the credentials of many journalists who are visitors to their country, they have failed to stop the export of information. Individuals, working through blogs and social networks, are organizing protests, sharing information, and publishing eyewitness accounts… in real time, world-wide. In this uncontrolled, unfiltered media space, I'm sure some of this reporting is accurate, some of it is not, and some of it is probably outright propoganda. The New York Times had a great story about this people-to-people information exchange in Monday’s edition. It was followed by an article on Tuesday about how the U.S. State Department is doing what they can to help Twitter and other social networking sites stay up and running (click here to see that follow-up story).
It is not my intent to begin covering international affairs at this site. But it is my intent to consider how those affairs are being covered. Remember the days when a company would privately craft a press release, and embargo the distribution of that information until a certain date and time?
Those days are over. Information seeks to be known… and in the age of social networking, it will be.
Implications: Just because News Corp announced a significant layoff of its MySpace workforce this week doesn’t mean social networking is in its death throes. On the contrary, the size of the audiences (or more accurately, the number of participants) involved with MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and other SN sites continues to grow. (The challenge for most of these companies continues to be figuring out how to monetize that critical mass.)
By now, most companies have begun to explore—or at least consider—how to best harness the power of social networking as a marketing resource. (Recently, I heard Rich Godwin of Google deliver a speech about how the Obama campaign leveraged Web 2.0 as an important set of tools in last year’s presidential election… and how marketers could/should be doing the same.)
But has your company conducted any kind of a risk assessment, with regard to the potential damage that could be caused by an uncontrolled viral campaign? One authored by an angry customer, or a disgruntled employee? Walk through you store, factory, dealership, restaurant or firm… asking yourself this question: “What if anyone could know about anything we do here?”
- Is there anything with your walls that you would not want someone to photograph with their mobile phone camera, and then post online? (Examples might include a crude poster hanging in an employee cubicle, or a dirty food preparation area.)
- Have you thought about how your company would respond to the unintended release of sensitive information, or even the distribution of misinformation?
- Have you provided customers with a way of lodging a complaint within your organization—a system that strives to satisfy their issue or at least makes them feel “heard”—so they feel less compelled to take their issue elsewhere?
I’m not telling you that marketers should operate their companies in a manner that makes them virtually transparent.
I’m telling you that ship has sailed.
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