Congratulations to Fianna Fail on their new website
. Engaging with Joe Rospars (the web2.0 man behind Preisdent Obama’s campaign) was the right call. Fianna Fail, as the party in government, needs to use all tools at their disposal to get their message across – to persuade all of us to sign up for the tough medicine required. The site references their presence in Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.
Web 2.0 has changed the rules. The traditional engagement with the PR agency – formal and slow – does not work in an environment where the corporate and and the customer may already be interacting via blogs, bebo, facebook, whatever. And if the corporate is not part of this well perhaps the consumers are dialoging about the corporate using Twitter.
Yet getting th PR right is no less important. But the process needs to be facilitated and managed in a different way.
Neil O'Gorman's piece in the Sunday Business Post today addresses the issue.
Today's Irish Times includes detailed reference to 'Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom' – book by Soumitra Dutta and Matthew Fraser of INSEAD. It's another piece calling Irish business to action in terms of availing of web 2.0 technology. Companies have lots of employees who are used to using Facebook, Twitter, etc in collaborating in their daily lives – surely it is time to exploit the very real opportunities in Irish corporates? We all know the benefits and necessity of collaborating – be it family events, school projects, playing team sports, organising school runs. There is no argument about the merits of collaborating in the workplace – both internally and externally. We now have technologies which make all of this a great deal easier. And we have lots of people who want to use them.
The web site associated with the book is an excellent working example of the use of these technologies – incorporating the use of traditional brochure type avertising, a blog for publishing views of the authors (and inviting comment) and a wiki to encourage collaboration with interested parties across the globe.