the ever curious PR guy

Algorithms in communications and public relations

Think of communications as algorithms, a collection of proven plans or instructions to help get you from point A to point B.

Say your organization is having an image problem around a specific issue. You hire a professional communicator or public relations expert to come up with an "algorithm" -- a plan, a solution, an idea --  that takes specific variables and formulas as given realities and then goes to work.

It used to be that the notion of an algorithm was around speed and efficiency to get around a mathematical task or problem. Like, say, sorting numbers in a particular order in less than a nanosecond, like this sorting algorithm at work:

So, look at our world today, and the digitization of our "social" life (think Facebook, Google, etc.). No longer is digital helping us crunch the numbers, it is now an intermediary between our own selves. 

As our social lives continue to depend more and more on machines run by algorithms, how are the algorithms assuming what you and I are all about? How are the machines figuring out how we need to be communicated to or with? What biases do they think we have and prefer? How do they help us, or not help us, unlearn biases? What is the overall purpose of specific "social" algorithms?

I don't know the answer, but this video made me think of that.

 

New York Times tool visualizes news article links and influence

via nytlabs.com

Watch the video HERE describing project "Cascade" from the New York Times' R&D team.

Energy thought leaders: Stay away from Twitter

If you want to educate and convert people.

Based on Pew and U.S. Census data, eight percent of U.S. internet users ages 18 and older use Twitter. To put it in perspective: There are 308.7 million people in the country. About 76 percent of these are 18 years of age and older, thus about 234.6 million. Of this subgroup, 74 percent are internet users 18 years and up, which amounts to 173.6 million. Keep doing the math, and the 8 percent who are using Twitter comes up to 13.9 million. And, if you focus on the roughly half of Twitter users who actually use the service regularly, you come up with 7 million Americans ages 18 and older who use Twitter. 

But, my challenge is not all about numbers. After all, any audience big or small is an audience if it suits your objectives.

The challenge is that Twitter is basically designed for your biggest fans. Think of people as basically having positive, negative or neutral attitudes toward your issue, with the vast majority making up the neutral space (don't care, don't know, haven't heard, etc). Your Twitter following as a thought leader in energy consists of your "positives" who follow you to validate their point of view and the "negatives" who follow you or use your Tweets to validate their negative point of view about you.

The neutrals are hardly in Twitter. And, when they do give it a chance and join, most are alienated by the 140 character-or-less soundbites from the positive and negative followers. This is not the ideal space one needs to educate and cross bridges in the highly politicized issues of energy and climate. Any energy development in the world, like, say, President Obama's recent speech on energy, will be taken by Twitter fans and thought leaders and twisted to their cause. There is no truth in Twitter as far as what one sees on the stream of Tweets, everything is relative.

So, go ahead and use Twitter if you'd like to keep the fans excited, but think hard about how you are also reaching out to the neutrals and making them feel like your issue is not just another cause celebre to feel apathetic about.

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