New Media: Transforming
Organizational Communications
Maurene Caplan Grey
Research Fellow & Advisory Board Member,
Society for New Communications Research

New Media Challenges
How will new media effect your organization?

What impact will new media have on inter-personal

and group communication?
What types of e-newsletter, intranet and corporate

Web site changes should you plan for?
What \"best practices\" should you follow when

collaborating with new media stakeholders?

The Power of Hype and Sensibility
Our competitors have a How many blogs does it
blog. take to create blog-glut?
Viral marketing reaches Will our target audience
a larger audience than respond to viral
traditional marketing. marketing?
Innovation! Accountability

Characteristics of New Media
Experimental

Esoteric

Organic growth

Grassroots adoption

Beta

Atypical

Counter-culture

Cottage industries

Web 2.0

Human-powered


Organic Content Community of Content
Communities
Content lives in…
Server cache

Desktop cache

Handheld device cache

Kiosk cache

Shared Web files

Shared local drives

With no federation
across communities

The Affects of New Media On Your
Organization
Grassroots adoption “Them” and “Us”
 
Mushrooming Communities closed to new
 
communities media neophytes
Business process Organic; unsanctioned
 
integration
Point products; operational
Birth of new cottage 

complexity
industry
Training; re-architecting
Hybrid architectures 

models
develop, e.g., tags within
a taxonomy

The House That That Never Got Built

Communication and Financial Performance
An internal communications culture that aligns
to the business strategy results in
 29.5% increase in market value
 26% total return to shareholders (1998 to 2002)
 Employee turnover rates below or significantly below
those of their industry peers
Connecting Organizational Communication to Financial Performance — 2003/2004
Communication ROI Study, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, 2004

Positive Effects of New Media on
Communication
Interest-specific “open” communities

Technology-specific “open” communities

Implicit trust within the community

Explicit trust between individual members

Feeling of connectedness


New Media Challenges
Consumer and corporate users adopt new media

technologies and communities of choice.
Specialized communities of communities develop.

Do you speak or ?

Some people will adapt to new media technologies

and communities in order to participate.
Some people won’t adapt.

“I know more social networks than people”


“Technoculture”
60 Second Ideas
Vidcast
GoogleMaps
Mashup
IBM ShortCut #1: Beating Spyware
Podcast

Back to Basics: Who is Your Audience?
Identify consumer and corporate user segments.

Identify lifestyles and ethnographic culture in

addition to traditional demographics.
Identify desired business returns:

Idea creation

Self-service community

Morale improvement


Listen to Your Customers and
Corporate Users
Sincerity, sincerity, sincerity … “say what you mean

and mean what you say.”
All senders and recipients are co-producers of the

communication’s message.
Consider how different media will appeal to different

people. For example:
Configure blogs and e-newsletters to allow both RSS and
–
email syndication.
Configure group calendars to allow both RSS and iCAL
–
syndication.
Innovate … Use podcasts for distance learning.
–

Match the Media to the Message
Interactive New Media
Traditional
One-to-One Active Participation
One-to-Many
Many-to-Many Nurturing Communities
Newspapers
Magazines
Newspapers Wikis, Blogs,
TV
Magazines Vidcasts, Podcasts
Forums
TV
Comments
Readers Co-creators
Commentators
Passive
Audience
Source: Adapted from a chart by Jim Faris, Management Information Group

Building a Business Justification
Improve Worsen
Communication Business Value Communication
Timeliness Reduced time to market Delays
  
Comprehension Error reduction Confusion
  
Enthusiasm Employee retention Complacency
  
Collaboration Higher quality of service Worker silos
  
Innovation Market leadership Stagnation
  

Include All Stakeholders
RSS can be the vector for malicious code

Lowered productivity

 The most prevalent time for English-language blog posts is
between the hours of 10a and 2p U.S. PT (Technorati)
Legal challenges

 Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders
 Latest Jailing of Journalist Sending A Message to Bloggers?
User education; will spawn advanced education

Can feed collaboration, but is not collaboration in itself


Communication has emerged as a necessary object of
attention in the 20th century, not because it’s new, but
because it’s that portion of the social organism now
undergoing elephantiasis.
Marshall McLuhan (1969, Counterblast)

Best Practices and Recommendations
The media is the message.

Build creditability and trust by delivering information that your users care about.

Deliver the message though the media types that resonates with your users.

There is no absolute on the effectiveness of a participatory communications model.

Don’t expect everyone to “get it.”

Expect cultural attitudes to morph.

Beware of “corporate-speak.”

Dry run your new media powered message with a trusted focus group.

Engage a new media specialist

The specialist should not be an evangelist, rather have a keen sense of aligning

technology, human communications, corporate culture, competitive landscape and
business goals.

For Your Reading Pleasure
When is a link not a link? Communication + Technology Insider July

2006. “With some very narrow exceptions, any content that is freely
accessible on the Web is fair game for a link.”
New PR Wiki. Started by Constantin Basturea. A repository of

information about how the PR practice is changing.
PR and Marketing Podcasts Directory. OMPL compilation of topic-

relevant podcasts.
Mashups: The new breed of Web app, An introduction to mashups.

Media Specialists Must Grasp Consumer-Generated Media . “…too

many advertising and media specialists are jumping in head-first
with little appreciation or respect for this new world, which is
fundamentally different.”