“I’ve heard it said, and believe strongly, that if you’re the most interesting person in the room, you need to find a new room. We all need places where we don’t have a chance in hell of believing our own PR, where we’re surrounded by people with bigger ideas, different ideas, and stories grander than our imaginations. It’s these people that make us believe it’s possible to do more, be more, to stretch our hearts and our thinking beyond the bounds of our comfort or familiarity.”
– David duChemin
Depuis un peu plus de deux ans, je suis la personne la plus intéressante dans la salle. Ma salle étant un bureau à domicile sur 8 acres dans les Laurentides. Heureusement, je me suis entourée de collaborateurs tout aussi intéressants et de clients en or avec des projets qui me permettent de m’exercer intellectuellement tout en m’amusant. Le bonheur, quoi.
Ceci dit, quand l’opportunité se présente de se baigner à nouveau dans un environnement stimulant, et de côtoyer des personnes encore plus intéressantes que soi, comment refuser?
Aujourd’hui, je me joins à l’équipe du Bureau de la ville intelligente et numérique de la Ville de Montréal. J’avais eu le plaisir de travailler avec Stéphane Goyette et son équipe cet automne et hiver et il faut croire que nous avons tous envie de poursuivre notre agréable collaboration.
J’ai aussi envie de travailler à fond un dossier qui m’intéresse beaucoup, personnellement et professionnellement: la ville intelligente. J’aurai l’occasion de développer la stratégie des communications numériques du projet et de collaborer avec des partenaires stimulants, tant à l’interne qu’à l’externe.
Je garde ma maison à la campagne, mais me prends un pied-à-terre à Montréal. J’en profiterai pour me baigner à nouveau dans cette ville que j’aime tant et qui n’a jamais été loin de mon cœur. Avis aux intéressés: j’ai l’intention de dévorer tous les mets exotiques et la culture qu’on ne trouve pas à chaque coin de rue à Sainte-Adèle. À chaque région, ses plaisirs.
Vous m’avez manqué, chers amis. Profitons-en pour renouer connaissance lors d’un prochain 5 à 7 ou en tête à tête.
Nouvelle réalité, nouvelle culture, nouveaux défis. Bref, c’est un nouveau monde qui s’ouvre à moi. Et comme j’aime bien les nouveaux mondes …
On ne me fouettera jamais pour avoir écrit ce texte. Raif Badawi, lui, a été condamné à 1000 coups de fouet et 10 ans prison pour avoir blogué. Badawi est emprisonné en Arabie saoudite depuis le 17 juin 2012 pour ses propos. Le jour de mon anniversaire. Je suis née libre dans un pays démocratique. Raif Badawi, lui, est moins chanceux. J’y tiens à cette liberté et à cette démocratie. C’est donc avec une pensée pour celui qui subira une deuxième séance de 50 coups de fouet que j’écris ce billet.
Je suis spécialiste des médias sociaux et je gagne ma vie à conseiller les entreprises qui veulent … ou qui se sentent obligées … de bloguer ou d’ouvrir des pages Facebook et des comptes Twitter pour rejoindre leurs publics cibles.
Mais je suis surtout passionnée des médias sociaux pour tout ça peut impliquer pour la société et pour la démocratie. Ces outils nous offrent des possibilités d’échanges et une portée des propos qui étaient inimaginables il y a à peine quelques années. Certains s’en servent pour le bien. D’autre pour le mal. Il s’agit d’une réalité très humaine. L’outil en est pour rien; c’est à nous d’assumer nos choix.
Comment choisissons-nous de profiter de ces tribunes? Quels messages souhaitons-nous véhiculer?
Si je blogue moins souvent depuis quelques mois, c’est que je passe beaucoup de temps à accompagner des entreprises vers une plus grande ouverture envers la communication bidirectionnelle que représentent les réseaux sociaux. Parmi celles-ci, des entreprises minières et leurs regroupements. Comment la petite-fille d’un mineur dont la famille tremblait à chaque fois que la Mine Noranda sonnait l’alarme et qui est plutôt Greenpeace réussit à travailler avec des entreprises qui n’ont pas toujours pattes blanches? En refusant de faire du spin et en croyant que vaut mieux amener ces entreprises sur la place publique où ils feront face aux questions du public que de courir la chance que d’autres que moi les encouragent à tourner le dos au dialogue. Car chacun a le droit de s’exprimer, qu’on soit d’accord avec lui ou non. Nous n’avons qu’à répliquer.
Si vous croyez en la liberté d’expression, signez dès maintenant la pétition d’Amnestie internationale demandant la libération de Raif Badawi. Allez encore plus loin et appuyez les OSBL comme Équitas – Centre international d’éducation aux droits humains.
La première phrase de ce billet est tirée d’une initiative lancée par Pascal Henrard et Savignac qui bloguent pour Huffington Post Québec.
I may have surprised students in my first Current Trends in Digital Communications class at McGill on Thursday night by talking about the ancient Romans, but I wouldn’t have surprised anyone who knows me. My tribe gets me. And, apparently, Tom Standage is a member of that tribe.
Did you know…
Romans may have been the first to retweet?
Or that Romans specialized in sharing content with their networks?
Don’t believe me? Check out these quotes and this presentation about Tom Standage’s book Writing on the Wall.
“You say my letter has been widely published: well I don’t care. Indeed I myself allowed several people to take a copy of it.”
“I sent you on March 24 a copy of Balbus’s letter to me and of Caesar’s letter to him”
– Cicero to Atticus
Like Standage, I’ve always believed that social media has ancient roots and responds to a fundamental human need. Technology didn’t suddenly make us more sociable … we were always sociable. It didn’t create our thirst to share knowledge and connect with one another. We were always looking for that connection. It just made it easier for us to do it with a large group of people from around the world, many of whom we will never actually meet offline.
Now broadcast media? THAT’s the aberration.
So the next time someone tells you social media is for kids and is ruining civilisation, you’ll know what to answer. The Romans did it!
When it comes to social media, small business owners tend to start with what they know. With half the Canadian population and 169 million Americans using the platform, it’s not surprising that North American small business owners tend to turn to Facebook when they decide it’s time for their brand to make its first foray into the social media space. But what about Twitter? The microblogging platform, where posts are limited to 140 characters and conversation streams are built around #hashtags, has its own charms.
There are great reasons for investing your small business marketing time and energy into Twitter.
………………………………….
.
Builds reputations: companies and brands who engage on Twitter and truly become part of their niche communities can gain a very interesting level of visibility within their target group. If your focus is selling purple sparkly unicorns, you can tap into the purple sparky unicorn lovers’ community on Twitter and engage directly with its members. It’s an efficient way to build your visibility and reputation in order to reach a market of potential customers.
Learning curve: Twitter provides insight on how your customers are responding to your products and services. Consumers have voiced their opinions about brands for centuries. The difference today is that those opinions and conversations can be tracked and analyzed through social media. Twitter is particularly suited for this, as 99% of accounts are open, and their content public. Whether or not you and your brand are active on Twitter, turning your attention to what is being said on the platform is an excellent way to keep on top of what’s being said about you, your competitors and your industry.
Access to influencers: Tools which let you scan Twitter bios to identify users interested in your niche are invaluable to building your network. You niche’s influencers will quickly rise to the top, as they are quoted through retweets. Even more than Facebook or many other social networks, Twitter gives you access to influencers. After all, even the Pope and the American President tweet. As do that doctor specialized in that illness you’re interested in, that history professor specializing in a field of study you’re passionate about or that mommy blogger you’d kill to get to test drive your product. Twitter lets you engage with these people – whether or not they reply all comes down to how charming you are or how successful you are at piquing their interest. Social networks can only open doors for you, after all. The rest is down to you.
A customer service powerhorse: Companies like American Airlines, Jet Blue, KLM, Virgin and Rogers have all understood the potential of Twitter as a customer service platform, and are investing heavily to ensure that they respond to customer questions in a timely fashion that will ensure that they surprise, delight and most importantly retain their existing clients, while impressing potential ones. Free and premium monitoring tools help customer service departments manage the social flow, capturing those opportunities quickly and efficiently. Premium services like In The Chat, Hootsuite and CoTweet provide dashboards that help you drill down to relevant content and engage directly with clients who need your online support.
Converts into sales: staying focused on the objective and using tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to segment accounts of interest is a strategic way to speak directly to influencers and your customer base in a way that will resonate with them. Provide people with useful content and advice, demonstrate your abilities and build your credibility and they will come to you when they want to buy a purple sparkly unicorn, or whatever product or service you’re selling.
« But 74% of online adults use Facebook and only 19% use Twitter! » *
It doesn’t matter if 100% of online adults use Facebook if you can’t reach them. As a small business owner, your goal is to move beyond your own network to influence people in other networks. This is the only way your brand will gain traction. Some industries may naturally do well on Facebook, if only because of the kind of relevant content they can create. For most small businesses however, the reality is that unless you’re willing to invest ad dollars into Facebook, you’ll be putting a lot of time and energy into a platform that doesn’t belong to you and that won’t deliver a good ROI because of the way it is designed.
Twitter, coupled with your blog, gets you and your content in front of influencers who can make a difference to your business. Twitter users tend to be more directly engaged in niche subjects which interest them, and use the platform purposefully. Reach them, and you’re speaking to someone you can convert into a customer.
That’s the why. In my next blog post, I’ll go over the how.
* source : Pew Research Internet Project
Are you a Quebec businessperson? Have you been following the Delilah-in-the-Parc affair, and wondering how you can be sure your page on Facebook meets Office de la langue française du Québec requirements? Or do you just want to be sure you’re catering to both your francophone and anglophone customers in the best and most efficient way possible? You’ve come to the right place. This blog post provides you with a step-by-step guide to help you navigate Quebec’s linguistical waters when you’re on Facebook. It’s easy. All you have to do is take avantage of Facebook’s language targetting capabilities when posting your content. Problem solved.
This step-by-step guide is available on Slideshare here:
A little background:
Last Thursday, English language media across Canada exploded with the news that a small clothing boutique owner in Chelsey Quebec had received a letter from Quebec’s French language office stipulating that her largely English language Facebook page had to provide content in French. The store owner seemed flustered, stating in interviews that she had always conformed to language regulations but didn’t see how she could make it work on Facebook. After all, posting in French, then in English, would mess up her page, bilingual posts were unmanageable … and how on earth could they expect her to control the font size? Spokespersons for l’OLFQ stated that they had responded to a complaint, were entering into new territory with social media and definitely wanted to ensure that French was used online as well as off by businesses operating in Quebec.
A tempest in a teapot. Why? Because Facebook provides a simple solution that satisfies l’OLFQ. How do I know? I asked. And after some explatation of Facebook features and a little back and forth, l’OLFQ confirmed.
L’OLFQ publishes its guidelines for business owners online, in a document called « Bonnes pratiques linguistiques dans les entreprises. » Clause 4.4 speaks to social networks. Unfortunately, the clause isn’t particularly clear, and only provides some examples, not directives. It appears to offer the following French-only case study as an example of best practice:
Au Québec la Financière Sun Life (…) a d’ailleurs créé, pour l’entreprise et ses propriétés, des pages Facebook et Twitter purement québécoises, et exclusivement en français, afin de créer un dialogue vivant.
I wrote to l’OLFQ requesting clarification. That correspondence is available here. To sum it all up, l’OLFQ agrees that if Facebook page managers use Facebook’s language targetting functionality in the way brands like Fido do, they meet Quebec’s language requirements. This means that French content will display when the user has his or her Facebook settings set to French, and English content will display when the user has his or her Facebook settings set to English.
L’OLFQ does not hold businesses responsible for the conversations their Facebook fans may have on their page … meaning they don’t need to ensure that discussion is being held in French only … they only need to ensure that the content they themselves publish is available in French. Which then allows a business to also provide that same content in English.
Check out my Step-by-Step guide to OLFQ compliance on Facebook for all the details.
Do you feel more confident in your OLFQ compliance now?
