I’ve got a few new corporate communications, PR and social media speaking engagements coming up over the next few months. I’ll also shortly be announcing dates for a series of two day online PR and corporate communications strategy master classes to be held in London in early July, Mumbai (India) in late July and Houston (Texas) in mid August. I’ve also got dates for social media master classes in Brussels in May and June. Contact me if you’re interested in attending any of these master classes and I can tell you how to register.

CIPR Thought Leaders | Can ‘corporate media’ support serious journalism. Can it win a Pulitzer?
Wednesday 8 May 2013, London

I’m speaking alongside Tom Foremski at a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Thought Leader expert briefing that asks (and tries to answer) provocative questions such as what’s the role of corporate media, will the the rise of corporate media serve society or hinder it, can corporate media become the new funding model for serious journalism and can corporate media win a Pulitzer?

Master class on Online PR
22 May 2013, Tbilisi, Georgia

In May I’m a guest of Marketing House Georgia and will deliver a one day Online PR master class in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. The course is designed for Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors and Heads of:

Corporate Communications, Public Relations, Corporate Affairs, External Communications, Public Affairs, Government Relations, Internal Communications, Stakeholder Relations, Investor and Analyst Relations

I’ll also be delivering a second one day online reputation management course for CEOs and senior government officials.

Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference
19-21 June 2013, London

The Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference is a three day conference and series of master class workshops featuring speakers from the BBC, Microsoft, Amazon, Edelman and Trans-Arabian Creative Communications (TRACCS). I’m delivering a keynote presentation about ‘Global online communications: how to tackle the global vs. local challenge’ on Friday, June 21.

CIPR Annual Social Media Conference
11 July, London

The annual social media conference of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations will be based on the contents of the forthcoming Share This Too book. I’m chairing a Professional Practice Panel on ‘Putting the social into CSR’ and will be joined by two prominent experts on corporates social responsibility who will present short case studies and answer questions.

New research shows that digital communications is the top skills gap amongst PR professionals. The research was conducted by PR Academy amongst its past and present students and 52% of respondents identified digital comms as the top skills gap, followed by strategic planning (46%) and measurement (44%).

This isn’t surprising as the much bigger and more authoritative  European Communication Monitor 2012 showed similar results as there is a large gap between the perceived importance of social media and actual rate of implementation. My experience of counselling and training private sector and government clients throughout Europe indicate that a lack of knowledge and skills is one of the biggest reasons why we don’t see more digital communications and social media use at a corporate level.

Which is all good news for me and should continue to generate a healthy demand for my digital corporate communications, online PR and social media training.

Next week’s World Communications Forum in Davos has PR and corporate communications speakers and delegates from dozens of different countries so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where visitors to my public relations blog come from.

Not surprisingly for an English language blog most are from the UK and USA. However, there are also a healthy number of visitors from India, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. Some of the more unusual countries with a reasonable number of visitors are Mongolia, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine and the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Everywhere in the Middle East is represented except Yemen. South America has a few gaps with no visitors from Bolivia or Uruguay or indeed most countries in Central America and the Caribbean. There are also some gaps in Africa and Central Asia.

Some of these visitors come from search and Twitter, but I think a good number are also as a result of people that I’ve done digital corporate communications training or online PR training for. In the last 18 months alone I’ve done PR training or corporate communications consultancy for PR professionals from Bahrain, Belgium, France, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Netherlands, Poland, Qatar, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, UAE and UK and hopefully I’ve projects coming up with corporate communications professionals from Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Switzerland, Ukraine and USA. The PR training is a mix of work I do directly with clients, which include both in-house PR teams and PR agencies, and work I do through third party training and conference companies. The PR consultancy work is all direct with in-house corporate communications teams.

In December I took part in a fascinating panel debate on ‘Defining ethics for today’s communicators’ at the European Association of Communication Directors‘ forum in Amsterdam. It was facilitated by Mike Cooper, editor-in-chief of the Holland Herald and the other panellists were Andre Manning, the vice president and global head of external communications at Royal Philips; Nicole Gorfer, the head of communications at Roche Pharma AG Germany; and Professor Rosa Chun, Chair of Global Leadership and Responsibility at University College Dublin.

Much of the discussion focused on the importance of ethical codes of conduct for communications professionals. From the audience Philippe Borremans, chief social media officer and CSR coordinator at Van Marcke Group, asked how many of those in the room had signed the Code of Athens (PDF). Not a lot was the answer. Although personally I don’t believe that means people don’t subscribe to it. My own hand stayed down as I haven’t signed the Code of Athens, mainly because I had no idea you needed to. If Phillipe had asked if I was aware of it and abided by its principles then I could have given an unequivocal yes.

Many of the principles of the Code of Athens has since been incorporated into the codes of conducts of many of the world’s professional public relations and corporate communications organisations.  I joined the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in 1988 when I was still a communications student (although it hadn’t yet achieved chartered status) and have abided by its professional code of conduct throughout my entire career.

One of the points that I made was that codes of conduct were pointless unless they were enforced with sufficient vigour. Despite the existence of codes PR and communications people still have a dubious reputation and are constantly maligned in the media with phrases like “PR spin” common parlance. The danger for ethical public relations and communications professionals is that we are too often confused with the often far more high profile unethical communicators and publicists.

We must demonstrate that membership of professional bodies means something. This means rigorously enforcing codes of conduct and sanctions against those who transgress them. At the moment we still have professional PR organisations whose members appear to transgress yet ‘internal investigations’ clear them of wrong doing. The processes need to be far more transparent. The UK PRCA’s investigations into potential malpractice by Bell Pottinger simply reported that “there was no credible evidence of wrong-doing”. The actual report (Word) was slightly more critical, but couldn’t be termed an in-depth investigation.

However, stricter enforcement isn’t the whole answer as most of the ‘PR’ practitioners engaging in unethical behaviour are the 80% who aren’t members of a professional organisation. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations needs to be more vigorous in promoting chartered status and help clients and employers understand that the benefits of employing a PR professional who is a member of a chartered institute are the same as employing a chartered accountant rather than a bookkeeper.

In a recent PRmoment article the CIPR’s director of policy and communications Phil Morgan said:

“The CIPR’s Royal Charter recognises that professional standards in public relations are in the public interest. The status of public relations depends on gaining respect for the quality of the work we deliver and for the integrity with which it is carried out. Vital to this is the accountability provided through codes of conduct such as the one that all CIPR members make a commitment to when they join.

“Ethics within such codes are expressed in general terms – honesty, integrity, transparency, confidence and competence. These concepts need to be applied in a rapidly changing world and both professionals and the public need access to resources that keep them relevant. In key areas, especially digital and social, where the profession is changing continuously and expectations around disclosure and transparency are increasing, everyone needs access to best practice and resources that explains the central ethical concepts in terms of their day-to-day work.”

During the EACD debate I also made the point that indications from the UK were that unless the public relations profession put its own house in order then government might step in and do it by regulation. The Leveson Inquiry and subsequent report into press standards shows that there is appetite for statutory regulation. Likewise the public affairs and lobbying profession is facing statutory legislation to force it to publish a proper register of clients. In both instances it is because the industries have failed to provide adequate self-regulation.

Today unethical behaviour is more likely to be exposed

Another issue that I raised is that today there is a new dimension to ethics. If we believe that public relations is about reputation then fundamentally it must be about behaviour. There has always been a divide between what is right and wrong, although where that divide lies is always open for debate and indeed might change in different circumstances. What is different today is that in the past you had a greater chance of ‘getting away’ with bad behaviour. There was a limited number of people scrutinising you and even more limited number capable of exposing your bad behaviour. Bluntly you had a chance of getting away with it.

The rise of social media and citizen journalism mean that companies and organisations are under far greater scrutiny than they ever have been. Every customer, every employee, every member of the community has the power to record what they see and to publish it in an instant. Your media statements can be analysed by experts – be they bloggers, academics, campaigners or enthusiasts – who will identify every error and have the capacity to expose your ‘spin’.

So even if you don’t subscribe to the notion of doing the ‘right’ thing because it is right you need to behave better, just because you’ll get caught and be exposed if you don’t.

Some of the panel discussion also focused on the difference between personal/professional ethics and corporate ethics. In the same PRmoment article Professor Tom Watson of Bournemouth University gives examples of how personal professional ethics in public relations are frequently violated:

“Every year, a few students coming back from placements with stories of how their PR employers had misled clients, asked them to write fake customer reviews on websites, switched account teams after winning pitches, charge high for untrained internship staff and falsified evaluation data.“

He adds:

“The route to ethical public relations lies primarily in the honesty and moral compass of individuals, especially those who are leaders and managers of PR operations; not in a heavier, quasi-judicial system.”

Professor Watson is right we should be able to rely on “the honesty and moral compass of individuals”, but we can’t make the assumption that it will always automatically kick in. There needs to be far greater emphasis in PR education and training on teaching the fundamentals of ethics and illustrated with practical examples and ‘moral maze’ type exercises. This should start with PR undergraduate and post graduate courses, but also be part of the membership induction when someone first joins a professional body like the CIPR. Philippe’s idea of signing the Code of Athens is a good one and perhaps we should look at getting new members to physically sign the CIPR code of conduct.

The debate about public relations ethics isn’t going to go away and I believe will continue to increase in importance and is an issue that the PR profession needs to take far more seriously.

Neville Hobson has an interesting post on the latest iteration of TweetDeck. Like Neville I was an original TweetDeck fan, in fact we were probably both amongst the first to use it after Ian Dodsworth launched it.

When Twitter acquired TweetDeck and re-launched it I continued to use the original Adobe Air version for a while. However, that could not continue as I do a lot of training PR and corporate communications professionals on how they should integrate social media into their communications strategy and how to use it effectively on day-to-day basis. For the training I just could not justify recommending a tool that did not exist any more.

The problem was – and still is – that there is no alternative. The original TweetDeck remains the best social media management client I’ve used. I’m currently using HootSuite and have also used MetroTwit (which is now the app that Neville now uses), however neither are quite right.

The features I’d want in my ‘perfect’ Twitter program are:

• Cross platform – I’m PC based, but ideally for my PR training I need an app that Mac users can also use. In business and government (where I do most of my training) Macs are a distinct minority, but one that I’d like to provide for.
• Multiple network – Not just Twitter, but also Facebook, LinkedIn and eventually Google+ when Google sorts out the API. Other networks such as FourSquare, Tumblr etc are nice, but less important.
• Multiple accounts – This is the obvious place to put the freemium model to work. Two of each type of account for free and a subscription model to pay for extra accounts.
• Resizable columns – Column and font size are both very much personal preference and mine is for small and narrow to fit the maximum possible on the screen without needing to scroll.
• Maximum use of landscape – To see as many columns as possible I prefer control icons to be at the top/bottom of the window.
• Bity link shortening – I use my sbpr.co vanity URL for link shortening and need to be able to continue using this automatically. With Hootsuite I have to manually shorten links using a Chrome extension rather than relying on the Owly shortening service. A bonus, but not essential would be integrating the Bitly stats into the program.
• Translation – This was one of the fantastic features of the old TweetDeck. I don’t want to tweet in other languages, but I do follow a lot of people who tweet in their own language and English. A ‘rough and ready’ translation is enough for me to stay connected.
• Scheduling – Either manually or through integration with a service like Buffer.
• List management – Seeing how many are on a list, de-duping (making it easier to sort contacts onto different lists) etc.
• Columns – Options to include tweets I’ve sent, retweets, mentions, favourites, DMs in/out, recent follows, recent unfollows etc
• Conversation threads – see all the @replies and option to see retweets.
• Filters – Filtering options on columns like the old TweetDeck.
• Preview – Quick preview of profiles and links, videos, photos etc.
• Photo uploading – I’m fairly relaxed about which service, but some people aren’t so probably best to offer options.
• Reweet and reply options – Settings to choose old style/new style, include hashtags, reply all etc
• Profiles – Display follower numbers under avatar and potentially ‘influence’ scores (I know all the caveats and my preference would be for Kred and PeerIndex not Klout). Also show if it is a protected and/or verified account. Show if you are following an account and if they are following you and from which of the accounts you’ve got set up. Plus being able to see timeline and @mentions

Quite possible I’ve missed something that I think is essential off this list.

What else do you think is essential?

What client/app/program is the best and which do you think comes closest to providing my list of essential features?

I spent most of today providing online crisis communications training for the head of corporate communications for an overseas government regulatory authority. Coincidentally, one of the topics we covered was its Wikipedia page which is incomplete and out of date. It isn’t a commercial company and is notable enough to warrant an entry.

The reason it is so important to improve the page is that on a variety of search terms it is the highest ranking page after the official websites of the organisation.