The nature of the cyberbeast

This weekend the British national newspapers were full of reviews of Barack Obama’s first 100 hours in office. Debate over his ability to continue his use of the web as proactively as he did during his campaign formed a large part. The Guardian on Saturday, reminded us how Obama, “used the web to inform, beg, organise and, crucially, create a sense of community among supporters”.

His campaign moved from intensive email communication to potential supporters and the media through to a dedicated website (Change.gov) within days of his election, eventually transitioning into Whitehouse.gov. The site is a mix of information, YouTube videos, as well as comments and questions from those involved or wanting to participate in the new administration. The new President understands the power of the Internet to communicate and engage with billions of people and used this powerful resource to his advantage.

Understanding the tools available – email, websites, social networking and Twitter to name but a few – is just one step towards understanding the true nature of the online beast. Making the web work effectively for you requires more attention. The power of the web is immense - this “cyberbeast” has to be given constant attention and respect just like any animal with human contact.

Once engaged online, it is important not to slow down the communication with what can be an ever-growing audience. It is vital to maintain the dialogue and ensure responses are given to questions and requests. Otherwise momentum, trust and reputation can be lost and a once supportive audience can turn very quickly into a negative force.

News of the BarackBerry – a highly secure Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) specially designed for President Obama – enabling the dubbed “e-mailer-in-chief” to keep digitally in-touch 24 x 7 is an indication that he is set to continue his online strategy.

Although we can’t all have industry leaders develop our own personal technology, we can learn from Mr Obama and his team in terms of taming the cyberbeast. Listen to your audience, engage using the tools available and continue to communicate.

Communicating hope: Lincoln, Obama and the Hudson river miracle

If you are a Daily Mail reader you will see that today is Blue Monday, and as such will be the most depressing day in history. However if you are currently based in Washington DC, living on the adrenalin of hope being whipped up by the Obama-fest currently going on, I suspect that depression is not getting a look in. And nor should it. Tomorrow will mark a spine-tingling day in history – one that must be treasured and enjoyed.

Today is Martin Luther King Day marking the anniversary of his “I have a dream” speech – full of hope looking towards a brave new world. And this theme of hope is very much the theme of Obama’s presidential campaign, and along with the Lincoln story, looks set to provide the foundations for tomorrow’s historic speech.

In Thomas L Friedman’s fabulous new book ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ he talks about the devastating impact that 9/11 had on the American psyche. Under the Bush regime, the ‘War on Terror’ response turned the country inwards, barbed wire was thrown up around borders and embassies, and even the metaphorical home-birds of hope, peace and creativity no longer flew in the U.S. airspace. I shouted at the radio when I heard Bush’s farewell speech last week. Perhaps unsurprisingly it’s theme was one of justification of his actions. The low point was when Bush leveraged the concrete boots of fear by saying that there hasn’t been a terrorist outrange on U.S. soil for 7 years. It seemed such an inappropriate reminder at such a hopeful time.

One of Freidman’s main messages in this book is a rallying cry to the American people’s inherent and historic creative nature, urging them to rediscover this strength once more and demonstrate to the world its positive power. He urges America to use its tradition of innovation to tackle the world’s biggest challenges – climate change, globalization, and population growth.

With spectacular timing – one that couldn’t have ever been manufactured – last week’s U.S. Airways miraculous landing on the Hudson river may well be just what the country needs to kick-start this healing process. And for the events to unfold in New York – the scene of such hideous trauma and scaring meted out by despotic terrorists in planes, perhaps the healing process might progress further. This miracle almost underlines Obama’s coming, and validates his message of hope.

So I too join America’s feeling of hope that something better is round the corner for America and the world. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, may Obama bring America and the world a "government of the people - by the people - for the people".

Is online reaching boiling point?

Claims made by Alex Wissner-Gross in The Sunday Times article, “Google and you’ll damage the planet” have created considerable debate. My personal favourite being the question posed by the green thing blog: “could people in England live longest without cups of tea or Google searches?”

My average day includes both kettle boiling and online searching – at work and home – so these articles hit me hard. I won’t be giving up my cups of tea any time soon and I don’t see trips to the library to do research fitting into my working day. But I do care about the future of our planet. So what’s the answer?

Those of us who are passionate about new technology will jump in quickly to try it out, learning as we go. And in the process we will adopt the best way of utilising that technology that we can.

The launch of Twitter - a free resource to communicate with a vast number of people (friends, celebrities, experts in an immeasurable number of fields, etc.) was therefore bound to cause a splash.

Increasingly, the tool has been adopted by people updating their ‘followers’ on their every action. This can only be using up resources that could be better spent. Not everyone is interested in our kettle boiling status.

The true value of Twitter as I see it is as an amazing information sharing tool – where else can we tap into the thoughts and knowledge of industry leaders such as Robert Scoble?

Being more targeted in our communications and thoughtful about the way we use technology, we can all do our bit towards a sustainable planet. Being passionate about new things is to be encouraged, but acknowledging the implications is important.

Twitter allows instant short messaging – let’s keep to the point and share valuable tips. Who knows – the future to sustainable living could be a tweet away!

Battle of the bongo drums continues

As far back as 2006, the BBC was debating the battle between online news sites and newspapers. News-junkies were reporting to be turning increasingly to the Net for their daily fix of world events, and papers consequently beginning to feel the pinch.

In the media landscape of 2006 there was space for every one with enough money and expectations flowing around for newspapers and the online world to enjoy the spoils together. But, at the start of 2009 things are looking slightly less comfortable. Roy Greenslade is predicting that newspaper sales will decline further during 2009 and, what’s more, he says the closure of one paper will not benefit another: rather the resulting readers will vanish off into cyberspace.

The recent use of social media by Israelis following the Gaza conflict has lent it more credibility as a source of news. Although citizen journalism has to be sifted and weighed, it has the benefit of being immediate and thereby satisfying the global community’s need for information.

What makes it so powerful is its ability to connect people that are searching for the same things – niche news that might not sell newspapers will find a forum on the Internet. Using Alexa rankings and other popularity measurement tools we can find out which news sites are visited most and this is perhaps an indication of how credible they are.

But even if an online news website is ranked low, small news sites can flourish because of their low running costs. In this way “cat news from around the world” which has an Alexa ranking of 419,061, can co-exist with BBC weather which has an Alexa ranking of 46. In a depressed economy some media outlets may find that their only future lies online.

New Year Resolutions for 2009 Must Mean Business

We’re only a few days into 2009 and many New Year resolutions have already been broken or put on hold.

Many of us set ourselves personal goals for this year, with getting fit and healthy rating highly in the post Christmas detox. The government is adopting a marketing approach to help us stick to these goals in 2009 – spending £275m on the Change4Life campaign. Keeping fit and healthy should also be the government’s advice to the business community this year with the current economic downturn set to continue. Many companies are focusing on becoming lean organisations – shedding staff and trimming extras. However, these are often short-term activities which are forgotten and relaxed over time.

Surely keeping service levels high is key for all businesses to retain clients and have a healthy 2009. Jeremy Clarkson provides some strong advice for high-street retailers in his comment in The Sunday Times. However, B2B and B2C companies need to also shape up their service provisions with online forming part of everyone’s 2009 business workout. Service needs to be efficient and effective from the moment a customer makes contact – via any touchpoint.

Increasingly, a company’s Website is the main point of contact with customers. The success of this approach has led to recent announcements by the NHS asking patients to rate and review their GP service on the NHS website. Ben Bradshaw, health minister, told the Guardian that he “wants the site to do for healthcare what Amazon has done for the book trade and Trip Advisor for the travel industry”.

These companies have proven the value of proactively asking customers for their feedback, but only as long as this input is listened to and acted upon to improve their products and services. The Web offers an amazing marketing tool, but it also has its dangers as individual’s thoughts and opinions can be shared within minutes with a global audience.

Positively managing reputations is crucial, not only to achieve success but also to survive. Failure to listen to customer feedback can be devastating to a company’s reputation and extremely hard to recover from. Offering excellent customer service is therefore vital.

With the start of the New Year, it’s a good time to exercise those customer service skills and get active listening to customers – face-to-face as well as online. It’s the first step to effectively managing your reputation with an ever present and energetic audience.