reach Archives - Adapt Strategic Communications

June 1, 2016 . In Communications . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Fishing with content – 7 tips

1. Check tides and currents.

Like fish need food, we seek out content, pulling it off the net in all manner of formats with a variety of platforms and devices.Which content is accessible to us is determined by format-specific algorithms which moderate it’s flow across platforms and channels into different devices to be consumed by information-hungry ‘fish’ in all manner of situations.
Your content’s meaning needs to remain intact and ‘on the hook’ as it shape shifts across these different contexts. Re-structuring it for style-format conformity, prevents it from being misinterpreted -there are potentially disastrous consequences for reputation if you don’t.

2. Fishing is competitive – the scale is oceanic !

After identifying gaps in online content you can set about filling them in. Like baiting fish, your target audience needs to be able to seek out and detect your messages in oceans of competing content. If it’s bite-sized, the currents take it further across the oceans of online information. In small chunks it’s more readily analysed and prioritised by the search engines serving online information seekers. Small audiences will ‘school’ around your ‘bait’, selectively pulling it from all the ‘online’ sources available. It’s competitive fishing – remember, your audience’s only commonality is the online medium they share, they’re pelagic and their range is global.

3. Bait your hook with value.

Truth is, fishing is always easier with a fish-finder, that’s where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in. Search engines explore and identify content’s values using the semantic analysis of format-specific algorithms. Social values are at the heart of the opinion and commentary of social media networks. People connect or disconnect according to the degree to which a network’s core values are shared.The nature and relevance of your products, services and advice, and their delivery express core values and they’re reflected in the key search parameters your customers, clients and partners will use. So logically, the degree to which your message offers this ‘shared value’ or ‘mutual benefit’ determines your capacity to attract a relationship between your organisation, project or service and a suitable audience. Effectively expressing this value in online content determines your ability to attract the right audience for your organisation’s purpose. So whilst content is king in one sense, knowing your audience remains the key to creating relevant content.

In short, value is bait. Embed it in your content. It attracts the fish according to how well you understand what it is they need to know and where they will look for it. Know where they share value with your content. Use SEO, know and feed their information-seeking habits. Then you can try to hook them.

4. Use bait not burly.

You need to cast out wide, maximising the reach of your content to ‘hook’ the right fish.
Content simplicity broadens your message’s scope for achieving shared value as it flows across different formats and audience contexts. But online ‘mass’ reach sacrifices interactivity and dialogue for sharing and following.

‘One bait fits all fish’ communication styles appeal to a lowest common denominator and the attention-deficient and time-poor. Content served up in bite-sized pieces written for a 10-year-old reading age sweet spot requires less interpretation. Short messages with succinctly expressed value, stories and rich media are preferred bait. Memes and ‘7 habits of’ articles are short, sharp hooks which attract the fish and win out over in-depth, complex subjects and educational pieces. But they’re often incompletely digested as the average online attention span is only 8.25 seconds. A goldfish has a longer! So,whilst reductionism provides restrictive criteria for keenly crafting your fishing rig with sharp hooks of key messages, such generically-styled information often misses the audience altogether. More like burly than bait, it flows rapidly in currents of conforming content, only gaining the reader’s partial attention or message comprehension.

5. Avoid rubber worms and fish-kissers.

Smart fish learn to avoid the hard sell tactics of e-marketers with their ‘rubber worms’. Unsatisfied by freebies and whitepapers scattered in the water, they get upsold to online courses or e-books in which the first 10 pages are a tick box survey designed to position them as the needy subject of their future services. Time poor, attention-deficient fish partially consume this ‘infauxmation’. Just like the re-useable bait-infused rubber worm, the infauxmation catches the fish, but it’s then kissed and put back in the water. The fish feels used, the fish-kisser gets a bit of exposure, but the fish learn to avoid the bait.

6. Net BIG fish and find niche habitats.

Your online fish school in social media networks to share information and express opinion. Relationships of shared interest and value connect them. Share-ability is a key quality of the content, delivering reach, and driving them back to its original source. Coordinating or reporting events, profiling people, projects or organisations. Product, technology or service descriptions and stories of their application- in audio-visual formats. It’s all good bait to use in social platforms.

Each fish’s relationship quality and quantity – and each format’s algorithms determine reach as content flows between them. ‘Mass’ reach best achieved via ‘Big fish’ -key influencers and thought leaders, who champion and amplify content amongst their network connections. Hook them with your value. Unfortunately, most big fish are celebrities and politicians … not much ‘thought’ going on there. Fish in ‘niche habitats’ engage in richer, deeper interactions around common issues and causes. But be aware that as people rarely seek information which disconfirms their beliefs and values, so their information-seeking can result in a set of self-referential relationships between assumptions, meaning and belief-endorsing conclusions. Unchallenged perceptions tend to crystalize in these niche networks.
So target value-affiliates to advocate your content and increase message exposure.

7. Test the waters and land your haul.

Measuring your contents’ impact online …means probing the waters in which you’re fishing to measure indicators -sentiment ratios, idea impact, topic trends, conversation reach, advocacy, share of voice….and so on. This is time-consuming so firstly focus on co-creating value with your information seekers- use the right bait. Express your product or service within an emotional or lifestyle appeal, placing your values at the heart of your content. Present your unique value system to potential ‘value partners’. Avoid hard-sell online tactics or ‘fake bait’ but catch your fish using authentic voice, an original point of view and genuinely shared value. Happy fishing.

March 22, 2016 . In Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Cuddly appeal to complex ideas…

There’s great value in metaphors, analogy and symbolism.

As a corporate communicator, trainer and educator I’ve used them to bridge between what’s known and what isn’t, allowing people to associate a new idea with something they already understand. This is particularly useful when explaining scientific ideas or complexity. The more analogues you have to draw on, the more likely you’ll find an idea which links to existing understandings amongst people with diverse worldviews. Metaphors and symbols provide identifiable, unifying understandings amongst communities of diverse people.

They have particular value in biodiversity conservation efforts.

Because metaphors create coherent associations between ideas, they structure peoples understanding of the world helping them to learn. Metaphors and the symbols they carry can build crucial links between scientiﬁc knowledge, its complex ideas and the publics’ engagement in conservation action.

Biodiversity and ecosystems are complex ideas– relationships between key ideas, issues and impacts can be hard to conceptualize.Human impacts are influencing the rate of animal and plant extinctions to 10,000 times faster than would be expected naturally- it’s critical that people understand how to act to reduce this now. Habitat loss is probably the greatest threat to this loss of biodiversity. The Word Wildlife Fund states that it is identified as a main threat to 85% of all species described in the IUCN’s Red List (those species officially classified as “Threatened” and “Endangered”).

‘Flagship species’ are animals and plants important to our planet’s health and human survival, critical in the food chain, essential for habitat stabilization or regeneration, and key to overall ecosystem sustainability. In relation to human survival, ‘flagships’ may be the basis of a community’s health or livelihood, providing commercial or cultural value.

Science communicators use charismatic ‘flagship species’ to focus the efforts of awareness and fundraising activities for conservation work. They become symbolic metaphors -representing the rest of the ecosystem and signalling the need to conserve that species’ habitat and that of other species within it. People interpret ‘flagship species’ as being endowed with the values of maintaining ecosystem stability and balance, and by extension their extinction is seen as a signal of broader ecological collapse. Their appeal motivates interest and their threatened existence acts as a rallying call for protective action. The conservation effort undertaken on behalf of the ambassador beneﬁts others in the ecosystem.

Mammal-centric appeals …

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature’s Panda bear is an immediately recognisable corporate brand and symbolic of a global conservation ethos. The Koala bear’s current struggle for survival is directly attributable to habitat loss and the socio-political forces driving that loss. It’s a flagship species at the forefront of campaigns undertaken by the Wilderness Society and the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.

Some think that using large furry mammals to promote interest through emotional appeal could ultimately devalue less charismatic species not chosen to represent nature biodiversity in broad based campaigns. That mammal-centric, ‘cute and /or cuddly’ reductionist tactics simplify the message in exchange for broader emotional appeal and reach – inadequately reflecting the fact that the broader biodiversity is at risk. Environmental understanding and action would be constrained as would be the potential to build collective stewardship to influence broader species survival and habitat protection.

Engaging entry point’s for protective action…

Strategically-planned engagement campaigns consider the translation of conservation ideas from scientific to non-science contexts and public media, building understandings of the relationships between species, the impacts of habitat loss and overall ecosystem health. Effective campaigns don’t preference the survival of flagships over their ultimate goal of promoting broad scale ecosystem or biodiversity conservation through protective legislation, policy, and community action. Instead, the flagship species provide an appealing ‘entry point’ for people’s broader engagement and involvement in campaigns which shape their attitudes, understandings and behaviours in ways which can lead to protective action on key aspects of biodiversity protection. The true value of the flagship species doesn’t end with a donation, but invites people’s broader engagement in delivering effective conservation policy, legislation and action.

Nicola Wright is a communications professional who works with projects, programs, and organisations who deliver social and environmental value. ADAPT Strategic Communications custom-builds strategies to sustain your stakeholder engagement and achieve key performance objectives. Find her on www.adaptstrategic.com.au

March 11, 2016 . In Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Audience fragmentation – a matter of perspective.

Getting effective message reach in the transition to Web 3.0 is a communication challenge of the developed world as both audiences and messages are fragmented across multiple channels, platforms and digital devices and traditional media selections.

In pre-web days of few broadcast channels, assumptions were that everyone went to work after reading the national or local daily, returning at night to watch the 6 o’clock TV news. Audience reach was broad and assured- either the newspaper, radio or TV would deliver your intact message with maximum reach and message penetration.

The Web 1.0 mindset assumed ‘information-seekers’ would catch up online with whatever was missed on TV or in the papers. Add Web 2.0 social media platforms as primary news sources, the fact of ambient news and mobile access and the once broad-cast, cohesive, targeted and scheduled has become narrowcast, re-mixed, noisy and ‘ambient’.

A few months ago, as this struggle continued in the developing world, I worked on an engagement project in the Pacific Islands- gaining a fresh perspective on the nature of fragmentation.

The Solomon Islands is closer to Brisbane than Perth or Darwin and yet, like many decentralized, remote communities, it faces ongoing communications challenges. Over its hundreds of islands spanning tens of thousands of kilometres, people tackle failures of basic infrastructure – transport, water, sewage and electricity -every day. The deficit in access to and reach of basic traditional communications infrastructure – including internet and digital is just one more layer of disadvantage in a globalised world. A disadvantage shared with 54% of earth’s 7.4 Billion population, who don’t use the internet.

‘Sharing culture’ and ‘social media’, old context, new meaning …

The Solomon Islands daily newspaper’s limited 5,000-copy print run maximises audience reach using people power. Each copy is recycled by initial purchasers –‘shared’ and reread by many as it re-distributes to outer islands. Across 350 islands more than 5,000 villages speak in over 80 languages- language diversity and low levels of literacy further challenges efforts of reach and inclusion. Phone access is about 95% in Honiara, but outer islanders rely on communal access or phone ‘sharing’. Barriers to television ownership include the lack of reception, power supply and its cost. Radio is too expensive for most and half of the people in the capital have computer access –a rarity in the provinces.

Australia’s greatest divide is digital – between remote, rural communities and key urban, policy-making centres. The Northern Territory has the country’s lowest personal device ownership compared with the ACT- the highest. According to the Sensis Social Media Report 2015, Australians on average, own three internet-enabled devices. Laptops and smartphones are most popular. Tablets and desktops are common, internet enabled TVs or an iPod touch less so. By age, smartphones are common in the under 50s, desktops popular with the over 30s -particularly men, and the over 65’s strongly prefer desktops to all devices. Over 40s are as comfortable with print media as with digital, the over 55s still watch TV and the over 65’s love newspapers.

Internet – stratified access, visibility and participation across social scales.

Even collectively, social media doesn’t offer us an inclusive public sphere amongst the digitally connected. Numerous isolated ‘issue’ groups fragment the possibilities of collective, participative deliberation bringing new perspective to the continued value of national broadcast media and participative engagement practices.

Strategic engagement planning seeks to understand stakeholder preferences for engagement across interpersonal, traditional and digital media – mindful of the scales and fault lines of fragmentation existing due to unequal access and channel choice within our own communities, across the nation and globally.

Social media takes on its original meaning in disadvantaged communities.

Effective strategic communication exploits all available opportunities for engagement, considering fully social, economic and cultural contexts. Strategic engagement planning considers audiences attitudes, understandings and the most effective channels, message emphasis, and intensity to use with them. Where digital media can’t deliver community engagement, channels may be interpersonal – relying on people as intermediaries to reach specific groups and participatory processes. Traditional media and digital can only be used according to local resources and access.

But, as in the developed world, this requires understandings of societal norms, customs and behaviours and access to key influencers, gatekeepers and message mediators within those cultures. Getting this right involves research, consultation and planning using engagement savvy – the social more critical than technology in building co-operative relationships.

Age, literacy, disability, location or disadvantage can all affect access to communications which connects people to information, support and economic potential. In Island Nations as in Australia, you can’t ensure you get the right message to the right people at the right time, when access to basic communication infrastructure and channels is lacking. Inclusive strategic engagement planning makes no assumptions about equality of access and message reach, its research identifies those with whom you need to communicate and how to reach them.

reach

Fishing with content – 7 tips

Cuddly appeal to complex ideas…

Audience fragmentation – a matter of perspective.

Formulae for a social media addict’s reign…

Emergent sense when engaging in complex systems

Are we there yet ?… signposts to effective engagement

Get the ‘thumbs up’ from stakeholder engagement…

7 results of effective project engagement