The value of feedback

Many businesses in Greece have incorporated social media in their communication strategy but there are still others that due to the fear of bad reputation or negative feedback keep denying to evolve.

Feedback, according to a social media survey conducted on behalf of PRWeek, MS&L and CA Walker, is the number one business use of social media, while second comes the consumer understanding and the competitive landscape and third the relationship building with the key influencers.

Feedback is directly associated to the two way communication, both asymmetric and symmetric. As Grunig and Hunt supported, the feedback of a two way asymmetric communication is used in order a business to adapt more persuasive communication strategies, while the feedback as a product of a two way symmetric communication aims to alert the position of both organization and publics on an issue. The second approach leads to the Public Relations Excellence.

Its up to every business’s decision therefore, to choose the easier way of asymmetric two way communication or the challenging symmetric one, that will transform it to a business that truly cares about its customers and makes any effort to provide them the best.

Noise pollution by... robo calls

As stated at badpitch.blogspot.com, studies show that noise pollution works. Voters receive hundreds of messages via post, SMS and robo calls, as politicians make every effort to make known their candidacy and gain people’s support.

In Greece the use of computer delivered pre-recorded messages, is not widely spread, as still it is expected a more personalised approach by the politicians. But in U.S. the use of robo call has turned into major social problem during pre-election periods. U.S. legislation does not allow the use of robo calls for telemarketing purposes, but exempts political parties and politicians as they are considered a separate category.

Although there are many displeased citizens that receive numerous calls, this method is still used because it is evaluated as effective. Robo calls are helpful in introducing a candidate or a famous supporter of him/ her out there ,while it costs just few pennies per call. The problem is currently so extensive that an advocacy group (http://www.stoppoliticalcalls.org/) with over 200.000 members emerged. This non profit organisation collects the contact details of people who do not wish to receive robo calls and sends them to all political parties, candidates and political action committees.

Although it is a great initiative, I believe that candidates by themselves are the ones that have to put an end in this techno-harassment. If they do not respect the voters how they can count on them for their vote?
A politician that would follow an explicit anti-robo calls campaign would have many chances to be a winner!

The freedom of social media

After reading The First Amendment of Social Media: Freedom of Tweet which was posted at http://www.briansolis.com/ , I though a lot of the definition of democracy and the right of free expression.

Nowadays an increasing number of businesses adopts the social media in their PR strategy. They are aware that Facebook, Twitter or any other form of social medium, may contribute to their brand awareness, promote their goals or, save their reputation during a crisis. Pr professionals are employed to strategically decide, with much responsibility, about every single info provided, in an effort to successfully communicate their message and build well established, long term relations with their key stakeholders.

But in the case of individuals, things are becoming a bit more complicated. People, communicate through social networking without an a priori thinking about the consequences of what they write and as a result many times they face serious law charges.

For me this is absolutely acceptable. Regardless of the communication medium, each one of us has to be responsible about his/her actions. Its really fantastic this new emerging opportunity towards the very public genre of expression, but we have to realize that as soon as we are the responders in this communication process, there are receivers too, that may, directly or indirectly, be affected by our words.

"Harvesting" emotions

A few days ago, I read a very interesting post on events managers blog about the efforts of two companies, Aralia Systems and Machine Vision Lab for the development of a tool which will “harvest emotions”. Although the aim of this technology will be the monitoring of cinema audience reactions to films and adverts, it may be applied in other areas as well, such as the event evaluation.

Events cost huge amount of money to companies, while there is much concern about the effectiveness of their performance evaluation. The most common used method is the completion of feedback forms by the attendants, but practice shows that this approach doesn’t provide reliable info.

Some more sophisticated methods that have been also developed in an effort to assess event success, include calculations such as expense to revenue ration (E:R) or Activity Based Metrics (number of visitors, number of sales appointments confirmed etc.).

Its obvious therefore, that the development of a software that will be capable of reporting the reactions of an event’s participants, would be the ultimate tool for having a precise picture of the event's success or not.

But in the name of business profit do we have the right to penetrate in the deeper thoughts and feelings of people? Which level of profit can justify such an action? What about the personal freedom? Its not enough people to be informed that they will participate in such programs in order event organisers to have their consent. Legislation owes to protect citizens from initiatives that will put in danger unquestionable rights that generations have frighten for.