Presenting social media in context

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of participating in an online event that involved delivering a one-hour presentation that Finnish entrepreneur and communicator Andrea Vascellari recorded for use as part of his firm’s Open Innocell project.

Open Innocell, is a project iTive started to work on in the beginning of 2008. During last year we helped 12 regions around Finland to share their best practices and develop their organizations with the help of social media and web 2.0 tools. The project included a series of online events focusing on different aspects of social media communication and new online tools. In 2009 we had the chance to add this series two new events. The first one of the two was recorded today together with Neville Hobson.

(Click here or on the screenshot above to launch the presentation video in your browser in a new tab or window. Note: it runs a little over 1 hour.)

The presentation continues a theme I’ve been focusing on a great deal over the past twelve months as a way to help business people (especially communicators) look at social media in the context of the broader changes in society, people’s behaviours and overall shifts in trust happening all around us.

It’s a theme that also forms the basis for the weekly Bond-i webinars I present, currently taking place most Tuesday mornings UK time through the end of March, as well as a series of training workshops I’m developing with the CIPR that will take place in London during this year.

That foundation presents a good chance of understanding the role social media can play as part of the overall communication mix as the most compelling and effective method to connect people in the organization with other people: to provide the framework for actual engagement.

In the presentation, I refer to the Edelman 2009 Trust Barometer, the most recent and credible publicly-available research on consumer attitudes to trust in organizations. I also include some examples of what a number of well-known organizations in the US and Europe are doing with social media, ranging across tools and channels like Twitter to social media newsrooms.

Specific organizations I talk about include Dell, McNeil (the Motrin kerfuffle), Nokia, Electrolux, Scania (you’ll no doubt note the Nordic focus with those three companies) and GM Europe.

Finally, the presentation concludes with three tips (how to listen, learn, engage) that I believe almost anyone can execute in their organizations with little major effort but huge potential return.

Actually, that first statement isn’t necessarily true – it does require a major effort if you’re still at the stage of jumping the first mindset-change hurdle in re-thinking your approach on how to engage effectively with people online.

So I hope you find the video of the presentation interesting at least and useful at best. I’d welcome any comments or suggestions you might have.

(Tech note: the online app we used to present and record was Adobe Acrobat Connect. Pretty good even though my experience was that it only worked if I launched the connecter URL in Internet Explorer, a browser I don’t use.)

Finally, thanks again to Andrea and to Saara Laaksonen, iTive’s marketing manager. It was a pleasure working with you both and I’m looking forward to continuing our collaboration in the next stage of this project.

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