How to Get the Support of the Public – PRs in Brisbane Airport

PRs stands for Public Relations and is nothing more than a tool for getting the support of others by means of good works well publicized.

Public Relations as its best!. Photo credits: Zebra Public Relations Ltd.

I think that this is a really interesting topic, is how you make other people get to know the good things that you have done and therefore get them to help you with future project that you have in mind. This is a basic skill that an individual or company would have to develop if they want to keep in business. This applies to everything in life, for example how do you convince a girl or boy to be your girlfriend or boyfriend, well showing appealing and hopefully true things about you! That’s the whole business of PRs: “Good works, well publicized”.

Brisbane Airport Corporation have some resources that could be well used in this direction through social media:

• The Airport Ambassadors are a group of volunteers that have the will to help the visitors of the Brisbane Airport with questions that they may have and directions that they could need about how to do some things in the precinct. The Ambassadors are wandering in the international terminal and they run the Visitors Information Centre at the domestic terminal. They have a natural tendency to spread the knowledge that they have about the airport and their workings. This is what is called a Maven: “somebody who is willing and eager to share their knowledge”. They could be taught how to use properly Facebook and Twitter and could respond swiftly to questions that may arise in the public. And not only that, but they could be proactive in posting in public wikis or blogs how to do specific procedures that they have found are the more asked by visitors, i.e. Q&A. In this way the visitors and customers would be delighted about the swift responses to their issues and they will get a better impression of the Airport.

The Airport Ambassadors. Photo credits: Brisbane Airport Corporation

• The Brisbane Airport has a program of free Tours that increase the awareness of the community of all the things that happen in a day-to-day basis in the Airport. This awareness definitely leads to a sense of engagement. I searched for some of these tour videos on the web a nothing came out. It would be a great idea to make a video about that, with a really popular and amusing public figure, who could help to create a funny and informal footage for posting it through the social media channels. The purpose is to get the video viral and innovative ideas are a great way to do this, i.e. check this amazing video of the American band OK Go and see the number of views that it has: 37 million+! If BAC creates a viral and educative video, the image of the airport would be enhanced in the community and the numbers of followers in social media would go through the roof!

PRs nowadays are closely connected with social media and the word could be spread to the extent that the outputs could be viral and appealing to the general public.

Wikis for Creation of Community – Brisbane Airport

Wiki, what a funny word: it has rhythm, it has rhyme! Wiki, wiki wiki! When I first heared it, I wouldn’t imagine the importance that it has nowadays for the smooth flow of information. Wikipedia, the biggest ans most popular encyclopaedia and is a wiki.

Wikipedia Logo. Photo credits: The Independent

So, what’s a wiki anyway?

Is a website where multiple people could collaborate to produce documents that all of them could read, looks simple but powerful. Check out this video a for simple explanation.

Wikis could be used from a small number of friends arranging a holyday to multinational companies that would like to use it as a repository for their processes as explained by Dicky Chiu in his blog.

Let’s focus in a specific application that I am interested in: the interlacing relations between employees of a company.

Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) is the organization that has the lease over the Brisbane Airport for 49 years; this lease was granted by the Australian government for 1.4 billion dollars.

Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the Brisbane Airport, I’m going to state some facts:

• It has an extension of 2700 hectaers, roughly a square with sides of 5 km.
• BAC is responsible for maintenance and bulding of infrastructure, such as sewers, water, roads and power and communications in the precinct.
• The Airport accomodates over 420 businesses that service in different industries that range from freight and aircraft handling to leisure and retail.
• All this businesses employ more than 19,000 people.

Brisbane Airport. Photo credits: Novotel Brisbane Airport

But the surprising fact is that BAC has only 300 hundred employees to handle this monster! So each of the employees is a valuable assett and BAC has to treat them like that. What better way to create a great work environment to strengthen the bonds in the work force community.

Wikis are just great to achieve that end! What about a Wiki categorised by hobbies where all the employees could enter information about their leisure activities and share them with their peers. The employees would get to know who are the people in the company that they could hang out with to share their interests, several clubs could be formed out of that such as: bands, cooking, photography, fishing and running groups, amongst others. This interaction promoted through a social media tool would create strong emotional links that are essential to the smooth operation of such a relatively small but important bunch. An example of that is how Atlassian uses their own wiki product Confluence to achieve these social activities in the enterprise, as Sherif Mansour (Technical Product Manager at Atlassian) says in the Digital Orgs interview (21:55).

Wikis are relevant for any group activity, where everybody could input and feed from the general output. Of course, media policies are important to keep the activity under certain control, but as said by Sherif Mansour in the previous interview, people tend to behave well when they know that they are identifiable and that they are writing for the whole group.

Wikis have a great deal of applications, this is just one, but the sky is the limit!

References:

BAC – Our Company

BAC – People and Culture

The Power of Microblogging at Airports

In my opinion the Brisbane Airport is a great subject to study in regards to Social Media, mainly because is the third airport in Australia, it has a great number of stakeholders and also because is located in the Australia TradeCoast – the second source of employment in the Brisbane area after Brisbane City.

Brisbane Airport. Photo credits by Brisbane Airport Corporation

Some of the main stakeholders involved with the Airport are government, airlines, passengers, employees, retail shops and transport system (to and from the airport). All of them have their own interests and challenges:

• Airlines lend air transportation services to passengers in a streamlined and profitable manner. Adjusting to satisfaction standards of customers to keep them happy and make them loyal.
• Passengers would like to travel in a timely, economical and comfortably way.
• Employees want to keep their job to get a regular salary, lend the service to public efficiently to keep their customers happy and be in an attractive workplace that would keep them interested in their job.
• Retail shops are interested in making profits selling their products, be in a pleasant environment that would attract customers and have some market research about the passengers’ purchasing trends.
• Transport system would like to create profits from the transportation of passengers and companions from and to the airport and transport quickly (without jams or delays).

To create an effective way of dealing with instant communication from/to the Brisbane Airport, BCA (Brisbane Airport Corporation) have implemented a Twitter account that is a paramount tool to broadcast information to a great number of people and to connect emotionally with users and other stakeholders. Several applications come to mind and other ones are already implemented by the Social Media department of BCA:

• Airport could receive informal complaints about their services and solve the issue or at least give an explanation. Also help requests are made and handled through Tweets:

• Information about flights timetabling and delays could be broadcasted.
• Airlines could tweet through the Airport account recently available accommodations in their flights.
• Airlines could use the Airport account for announcing discounts on tickets, making the airport account attractive to the Twitter user.
• BCA informs the community of new policies and decisions, explaining the reasons for the changes and letting the community express their views; which creates valuable feedback for the airport administration:

• Issues relating transport to/from the airport could be communicated:

• Public interest announcements:

• Airport receiving and acknowledging good feedback for their services:

All of these applications and many more that are being used and that could be found create a smoother communication with all the people interested in the Airport and make the public feel more engaged and emotionally involved with such an important public service as the airport is for Brisbane.

Social Media Legal Setbacks for Punk Label

In one of my past posts I wrote about an indie record label called Epitaph based on Los Angeles, led by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, which has been one of the successful indie labels in the punk industry.

Bad Religion – Photo Credits: The Humanist

Their business and focus is continuously changing as for most of the agents in music industry, but they are mainly engage in: signing up new artists, supporting the recording of albums, design of visual art, publicity and advertising for bands products and tours and the distribution of their music, videos and other media. For internal communication, storage and collaboration they use a Social Media tool called Socialtext  which is explained extensively in a previous post, but for external communication they use: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and RSS – Tumblr, that is where the fans are!

For Epitaph and overall for record labels the legal risks involved in their operations are:

• Loss of confidential information: The record label plans with each of the artists when to release the album or items related. That depends in many factors such as, when the artists area planning to tour certain area, when is best to target a particular market and their related radio stations. The time for the release is critical. The fact that confidential information could be leaked untimely, i.e. a featured single, is a major setback for all the plans. The Social Media Policy (SMP) have to address this issue with workers to let them know the importance of keeping the information away from the public until is time to release it.
• Breach of copyright: In the setup of Social Media, it is so easy to infringe copyrights. If an employee uploads illegitimately a song and share it with their friends just to show off is infringing the copyrights of the composers, recording artists and the production company, i.e. is distributing the artistic work without the permission of the author, which usually means without paying them. The SMP has to be clear in that regard, the products of Epitaph and their artists are their songs, videos, visual arts, etc. and any unauthorized publication is a breach in copyright, in other words a theft of copyrights.
• False statements: Social Media is a way to connect with fans and is easy, is real-time! Anything that is posted is there straightaway! This means that the communication has to be thought out, not just simply write whatever comes to mind, because if that is the way to operate a lot of mistakes would have to be corrected and most serious the fans could be misled, e.g. to try to catch the band at the wrong time in the wrong music shop for autographs, which definitely leads to lower the reputation of the band and record label. SMP would have to make that clear to employees in communication positions.

Now, I get the concern and reluctance of some companies to be into Social Media, as the one that Yvonne Tang showed in her post about Singapore Airlines. I think that this is a virgin territory and that the law is being made as the fast pace Social Media effects are happening. However, with a good Social Media Strategy and Social Media Policy that would establish the rules of the game, Social Networking for companies would be more legal-safe and they could reap the benefits of Web 2.0.

🙂

Pros and Cons of Indie Record Labels Using Social Media

What is a music record label? How can they incorporate Social Media tools to enhance their productivity? And what risks have to be taken into account to implement the system?

Record labels have been one of the most changing business models in the last couple of decades. In the last century, record labels were devoted to find and developing talent, record albums and singles and market and distribute the final product. But now, most of musicians with relative low-budget could create a studio and record an album, that’s not the critical part of the process. Also, distribution is not a problem; iTunes is there for anybody that has songs and could pay $ 35 dollars to be included in their virtual shelves. The critical problem now is: How to stand out in an ocean of music products that are on the market.

That’s why the record labels had to re-invent themselves to cater for increasing knowledgeable musicians that have all the resources to apply the Do-It-Yourself approach to the business. Record labels have to focus in how to work efficiently to make that their customers (bands) receive attention from the public and the media and could achieve a competitive advantage to get a share of the market. Epitaph Records is an indie record label that has risen up to the challenge servicing bands in the punk arena such as: Bad Religion and The Offspring.

Epitapth Logo (Taken from Wikipedia)

They are based in LA and have branches in Europe, Canada and Australia. In the ever-changing landscape of music industry, they have to implement a dynamic tool that would provide functionalities that could harness the enterprise collective intelligence and memory; for them Socialtext was the Social Media tool that help them to get the work done, together!

Socialtext is an integrated platform that includes elements of social media such as: microblogging, rss, wiki, broadcasting and social networking profiles.

Brett Gurewitz, guitarist and songwriter for Bad Religion and CEO of Epitaph Records explains: “If you think of our organization as a mind, Socialtext is our memory centre”. Following, there is a list of pros and cons of this implementation:

Pros (according to Epitaph Case Study):

• All-in-one: Socialtext Dashboard is a customized homepage for each employee, presenting a glance of all what they need to know in the company.

• Social networking: This is an impressive tool for the staff to get connected; even if Epitaph Records is based in LA it has branches in Canada, Europe and Australia and there are a significant number of employees scattered around the world that could help each other if they could connect. Socialtext People is a functionality that allows creating profiles with important information such as, interests and current projects; any employee could follow any other who is interesting to their objectives and likes; so the first employee would be well-informed about the other employee’s publications such as, blogs, wikis and updates.

• Instant information: Socialtext Signals is the microblogging service of the suite. This element helps the employees to get to know the important projects, accomplishments, updates of the different members; staying on top of what the other people is doing and therefore collaborate or comment when is relevant; also, as everybody in the company would have a general idea of what the others are doing, this could prevent duplication of work. If an employee has a question, this one could be posed through Socialtext Signals so that any leads to solve the problem could be provided by the community. Click to see the Socialtext signals video.

• A central place for sharing ideas: The blog functionality would create a place for sharing and developing ideas in the community. RSS feeds exist for maintaining informed the subscribed contacts. Epitaph Records have a blog system called: “Great Ideas Blog”, where employees are encouraged to write their ideas and suggestions. Also, there is another blog system named: “Interesting Read Blog” where links to different references from relevant topics are posted.

• Process templates: Epitaph has developed several templates regarding diverse processes in the company which are in the Socialtext system, these items provide a standardized system for following procedures and in case that any of these processes would have to be improved, the templates are changed and the staff would have the revised template straight away.

Cons:  

• Incorrect subscription brings un-relevant information: If the employees don’t subscribe to the right blogs or follow the right contacts, they could end up with a dashboard of useless information that instead of helping them would create hurdles in their efficiency.

• Posting of un-significant information: The system is as good as the information put into it. If the employees fill the system with inadequate information, then it would be useless and the employees’ adoption index would slip to the ground. This could be solved with good education about the system and policies related.

Overall, this is a great tool for effective communication in an enterprise and if is ordely deployed the system would be the information and collaboration hub of the organization; quoting Gurewitz: “The Memory”.

As you can see I am into music business and I am interested on how Enterprise 2.0 has been implemented by successful companies in the sector, I’ll keep researching about this and if you are interested in this topic follow me!

Cheers,

Jacques Kerguelen Blog

Smart Use of Reverbnation (Enterprise 2.0 for Musicians)

Web 2.0 is about communicate and putting in contact people. The expansion of our networks is critical to fulfil our goals, a lot of times is who you know and how you deal with that relationship the critical aspect to achieve the things that you want.

Photo taken from Mindbridge

Besides my interest in Enterprise 2.0, I am a musician and music manager on the make. For musicians or their supporters (booking agents or managers) is critical to establish a relation with the proper contacts that could hire them for shows and events, such as weddings or corporate gatherings. How to create a network where musicians and bands could develop and strengthen links with their potential customers or go-betweens?

For most of musicians, their original music is their preferred way to go; but a few make a living out of it. The weddings and corporate events though, where they play cover music, are the mine of their living. In these, the bands are critical elements in the provision of entertainment to a specific crowd. In the case of weddings there are other key elements such as: caterers, wedding dress makers, venues, cake manufacturers, etc.

Gig booking is an art: A good way to get gigs is to work with referees in the industry, which means if a band performs well in a reception and creates a great relationship with a caterer it is likely that this person would suggest their future customers to get the band for their wedding reception. This applies also for other key contacts in the function. Referees are one of the most effective ways to become part of the product chain and get work!

So, we need a social website that could showcase bands and would allow them to create and show relationships with contacts in the social event industry. In each of the bands’ pages, music would be made available as well as live videos. The contacts (members of the supply chain, past customers or guests to events) would be able to rate the bands that they have had the chance to know, according to their skill, public engagement, timeliness, etc. With this information, any prospect would be able to become a member of this social media a check out the bands around and see their description, rates and comments and would be able to make a booking with the most adequate band.

Reberbnation has most of the features that I would like to have for this Social Website: It has a page for each band where they could have music, live videos, band reviews, comments, etc. Also, when a person is signing up, it has the chance to do it as an artist, fan or venue giving different functionalities to each of them. The rating functionality is not in this page though, and I mean by rating the stars that could show the reputation of an entity (as is usual in eBay). As a venue, any person is able to check the bands in their whereabouts, what kind of music they play, how they sound on stage and the comments of different people.

I think that this a good way to create work relationships between the musos and the industry, after all, in addition to who you are and what you can do, the who you know factor is critical to get the dough!

Jacques