If you did a Google search for "GM Bailout" during 2009 when rumors were swirling that the U.S. might force the once-mighty automaker into bankruptcy, you would have gotten two million hits. 2 million. To put it in perspective, in 2000, when the dot com bubble was bursting, you would have found slightly more than two hundred references online to "dot com bubble." That's how explosively our media world has changed.
Put yourselves in the shoes of GM's vice president for global communications. That's two million media press reports, blogs, press releases, YouTube videos, financial analysis, academic reports, tweets and other media "stuff " with which you would have to deal. Think about it. How would you carry it out? How would you counter?
Obviously, the correct strategy is not to mimic the one that GM selected. With the emergence of the light speed world, GM struggled to adapt. It continued to manage its communications with an eye toward control rather than leveraging the tools of social marketing and social networks. It provided selective press interviews; it sent reassuring letters to shareholders; it made an unsuccessful appeal to Washington for help. If GM had been prepared to lead at virtual speed, it could have recruited hundreds of thousands of current and former customers and shareholders to fight its cause in Washington. But it was not. For years, there was a lapse in preparation.
In a light speed world, your organization needs to lead the conversation, because that's how you build trust with customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, regulators and all the other people who care about you and your organization. You accomplish that by structuring your message box, embarking on new media, and sharing in so many public forums that your voice is the one being heard by many people.
What do I refer to when I say "mobilize new media"? Depending your ability grasp the media's resourcefulness and prospects, every media module can be your friend or your enemy. The power is there for you to mobilize, whether you use social marketing, web sites, email blasts, blogs, e-newsletters, or tweets. The lines between "new media" and "old media" are blurring. Newspapers and magazines are investing as much energy and resources into interactive media as they are into traditional ink and paper. As every form of media pushes to be more interactive, searchable, and convertable, the lines may vanish altogether.
With intellectual manipulation, you can recruit tens of thousands of people to your movement. One notion to implore with the revolution is that the innovate media are within your reach. Having to persuade an editor or reporter that your message is appealing is irrelevant now. Through the Internet, you can connect to millions of people. If you use your website to communicate your vision, then you're mobilizing the media. A way to leverage new media is to transmit consistent e-newsletters to your clients, shareholder, and employees. If you are taking advantage of social marketing to outreach to groups of customers and prospective customers, then you're assertively bring about the media. If you're combining social networks with text messaging to lobby Congress, you're in the game. If you're sharing your expert views via blogs and tweets, you're mobilizing the media. To summarize, stimulating the media rests on the ability to mobilize the variable means of media to establish the conversation and build relationships with diverse groups in respects to building trust, encouraging participation and ultimately propelling your goals.
To build a high-performing organization it takes more than a solid new media plan. Leading at Light Speed is an essential leadership book describing in detail 10 quantum leaps your organization must take to build trust, spark innovation, and create organizational excellence.
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