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Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News

Issue # 3 - 2012

SOCIAL MEDIA While this issue is mainly devoted to Social Media, the first article is an interesting blog by Prof. Van Dyke. He noted emerging convergence between PR and journalism. Since I am the one who introduced him to Kimbo coffee, I take part of the credit for his positive approach… During the past summer, PR/PA pages included an increasing number of discussions on Social Media. In selecting what to post here, I focused my attention on the related development of military policy and on how to measure effects. Media tips also refer to social media.

I found also of interest – again for the military – an innovative but quite complex and preliminary approach about how social media can be applied in military Command & Control. The closing article provides confirmation, from a psychologist point of view, of the basic advice we all provide when preparing someone to deliver a speech. I found this as good reassurance that – PR/PA not being a science – we are not too far from it.

These and other issues can be debated at our discussion page http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/groups/197500116950819/

The editor

In this issue:

An Unlikely Convergence:

Journalism & Public Relations?

. p. 2

What Are The Symptoms of a

Social Media Driven Crisis?

p. 4

DOD's new policy 'likes' social

media, but with caveats p. 5

Essential media tips:

- 5 Tips for Blending PR &

Social Media Effectively p. 9

- 4 Key Steps to PR Measurement

Success p.11

Social Media in Command &

Control p.13

Can Charisma Be Taught? p.18

International Public & Corporate

Communications

FOREWORD

This newsletter is aimed at providing Public Affairs practitioners with a short selection of recently published stories, papers, etc. which may be useful to remain abreast of new trends or to stimulate a debate on the opinion expressed by the authors. External sources are linked and any copyright remains with the authors.

edited by ComIPI http://www.comipi.it/indexEng.html

cartoon by Scott Hampson - Creative Commons

Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported Licence

The iVolution of man

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An Unlikely Convergence: Journalism and Public Relations? September 9, 2012 By Mark Van Dyke http://markvandykenewsroom.blogspot.it/2012/09/an-unlikely-convergence-journalism-and.html I am sitting at my dining room table, enjoying my daily ritual: a post-lunch “digestivo.” I became partial to a good digestivo when I was a U.S. Navy public affairs officer, based at a NATO military headquarters in Naples, Italy, serving as a senior NATO spokesperson. After lunch, before going back to work, I would usually stop off at the coffee bar next to my office to have an espresso with my Italian friends. Now, my digestivo is a home-brewed double shot of authentic Italian espresso (Kimbo, an Italian roast that “represents the Neapolitan coffee culture”). My Italian friends explained that a shot of espresso after lunch helped grease the digestive system. I knew better, though. Decades of experience in the public relations profession had taught me to recognize a good “line” when I heard one. You see, Italians don’t swill down their coffee like many people in other coffee cultures. They actually use a cup of coffee as a reason to slow down, take a break from the fast pace of work, and enjoy the company of friends – a wonderful relationship management tool. (Strange, though. I find the espresso does have the added benefit moving the digestive system, in fact, like clockwork!) Suddenly, while glancing through the main section of the Sunday edition of The New York Times, a column about the no-man’s land between newspaper readers and writers interrupts my reverie. I am reading and re-reading “My Turn in Between the Readers and Writers” (September 9, 2012, p. 11) by Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times public editor, only five days into her new job.

As I read the column, I’m doing a double take. Ms. Sullivan, a former editor, reporter,

Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times

and columnist for The Buffalo News, is explaining how she intends to operate in her job. And the points she is making about operating as an editor and journalist nearly match the exact points that I teach my communication students at Marist College (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) about operating as a public relations professional. Given the long history of animosity between writers that were once known for “yellow journalism” and public relations “flaks” that could spin any story, I am wondering what is going on here. I left my full-time public relations career in 2000 to pursue my teaching career. Have the journalism and public relations career fields converged that much since I took up residence in the “ivory tower” of higher education? Perhaps not, or at least let’s hope the two fields have not converged. Healthy skepticism among journalists and public relations professionals helps keep everyone honest, which benefits the audiences of our respective communication efforts. No, I believe the similarities between Ms. Sullivan’s profile of a good editor and my understanding of what makes up a good public relations professional have simply evolved. Consider, for example, Ms. Sullivan’s first objective: “Put readers first.” Absolutely. Since Ben Franklin and other Revolutionary War writers, editors, and publishers, journalists have served their readers a literal “marketplace of ideas” in the United States. And in public

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relations, the work of professionals like Ivy Ledbetter Lee in the early 1900s paved the way for recognizing the importance of publics. Lee was among the first public relations counselors to urge respect for public interests as well as organizational interests. His counsel to powerful business leaders like John D. Rockefeller proved very effective in forming good relations between organizations and publics. Decades of research studies in public relations since the 1900s have proven Lee right. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, public relations scholars like Dr. Linda Childers Hon and Dr. James E. Grunig discovered that the value of good public relations does not come down to simply making money for an organization. Instead, the value of public relations can be defined in terms of the quality of relationships between an organization and its many publics (see Hon & Grunig, 1999, Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in Public Relations). Also, long gone are the days when journalists “set the agenda” for readers and listeners. Today, social media trends generated by readers and listeners drive what editors choose to lead the news. Now, publics set the agenda. And even the slickest public relations tactician can no longer rely on spin as a tactic, with so many audience-generated news sources standing by to check facts. We must remain centered on our audiences and their stakes (e.g., needs, interests, and concerns). Second, Ms. Sullivan expressed her intent to “encourage conversation.” For many years, journalists and public relations professionals alike have competed with each other to get their respective points across to intended audiences. They often communicate these points with each other’s help; however, at times they go around each other to avoid having intended messages filtered or manipulated. In reality, the “story” always ends up being more accurate and newsworthy when journalists and public relations professionals cooperate. Journalists need a few news subsidies and well-placed sources to report news accurately. And any self-respecting public relations practitioner will admit to needing reliable journalists to provide “third-party” credibility.

This competition between journalists and public relations professionals over controlling the story simply clouded the vision of what communication professionals should have been doing: having two-way conversations with audiences, or listening to what mattered to audiences as well as transmitting self-important messages. Yes, Ms. Sullivan is right. Journalists and public relations experts both should work to create “a village square for discussions” and “invited other voices in.” That’s the way to communicate in this era of exploding social media: focus on listening and using what you hear to address audience needs as well as organizational needs. Cooperating, communicating collaboratively, and building mutually-beneficial, long-term relationships with audiences do lead to success. The public relations field is now moving in that direction, finally. Only recently, the Public Relations Society of America, the world’s largest organization of public relations professionals, updated its definition of public relations, based on suggestions by thousands of members. The new definition espouses the principles described above: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics” (see What is Public Relations?). Third, Ms. Sullivan advocated in her column the need “to promote transparency and understanding.” Again, I couldn’t agree more. Public relations practitioners now understand the value of providing strategic publics with information they need. Just before I retired from the Navy after nearly 30 years on active duty, I helped to lead the public information efforts behind NATO’s operations to implement provisions of the 1995 international peace agreement that ended nearly three years of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Like Ms. Sullivan’s goals, the goal of our public information program was quite simple: “gaining and maintaining broad [public] understanding for the mission.” Also, very much like Ivy Lee’s efforts more than 80 years before, we based our public relations plan on three principles: “a proactive public information policy; a free and open media access policy; and complete, accurate, and

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timely reporting” (see Siegel, 1998, Target Bosnia). Perhaps the fields of journalism and public relations are converging. Or maybe this is simply the result of an evolution in the communication field driven by consumer use of advanced technology and the effects of game-changing social media. In any case, I am all for it; and I admire Margaret Sullivan’s approach to her new job with The New York Times. I hope she succeeds. Now, back to my digestivo, which makes me wonder, “Could the Italians have it right after all?” Might the explosion of espresso bars around the world have some positive effect on journalists and public relations professionals who continue to meet over a cup of coffee, and then find time to slow down and form good relationships? Mark A. Van Dyke is an associate professor in the School of Communication and the Arts at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

What Are The Symptoms of a Social Media Driven Crisis? By Melissa Agnes http://crisismanagementbook.com/crisis-communication/what-are-the-symptoms-of-a-social-media-driven-crisis

We’ve seen it countless times. Whether based on truth or falsehoods, the public picks up on a story, a situation, a statement and comments on it, tweets it, shares it and next thing you know, you’re in the midst of a social media driven crisis that has you feeling overwhelmed, stressed and attacked.

Sometimes you get lucky and have the opportunity to catch it coming and/or plan for it in advance. Oreo had this per-calculated opportunity when they decided to release their cookie image to Facebook, showing the

world that they support gay pride. But often it’s the tell-tale signs that hit you fast and hard. That’s why it’s so crucially important for you to both understand the symptoms of a social media driven crisis, as well as to have your crisis communications plan developed and ready to go at the first sign of these symptoms.

So what are the symptoms? What should you be looking for and how?

The easiest symptom to detect is:

Negativity + Virality

If you notice a growing number of negative posts, comments and/or tweets circulating about your company or organization, whether on Twitter, Facebook, your blog or elsewhere, then this is the first sure-fire sign that there’s an issue that needs your immediate attention.

We’ve seen this countless times with tweets the likes of: #boycottChickFilA, #NBCfails, #tamu, and even more recently with: #legitimateRape, #ToddAkin and #Progressive.

There’s nothing faster than viral.

The speed at which a crisis can escalate on social media can be overwhelming. Within mere minutes of a simple mistake, you can watch your brand be scrutinized, criticized and attacked online. It’s for this reason that 24/7 social media monitoring is a must-do, no matter your organization’s size, reach or social media activity.

But monitoring is only half the battle. Once a threat is detected by your monitors, engagement and response are the only ways to begin to resolve it. The longer you wait to engage and respond, the harder it will be for your organization to regain control of the situation.

But how can you be sure which post, comment or tweet is severe enough to potentially go viral and develop into a crisis? What are the red flags?

We’ve all experienced negative criticism on our social channels and blogs. Though it’s typical for people to complain and voice their opinions, not every single complaint results in a social media

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attack or crisis situation. So how can your monitors be sure to identify the real potential crises, before they begin to go viral?

If we look at the recent Progressive crisis, all it took was one blog post to go viral and put some massive heat on Progressive Insurance, so much so that they were blogged about, tweeted about, scrutinized, judged and massively attacked online. Though this was not the first time someone blogged or tweeted about their grievances with Progressive, it was the time that it resulted in a social media driven crisis. So what were the symptoms?

Matt Fisher’s post had both a huge emotional aspect and a moral factor that the world could identify with; not to mention an intriguing and share-able blog post title!

These were the red flags that Progressive should have instantly picked up on and properly and sympathetically addressed and responded to.

So as not every grievance, complaint or negative blog post will result in a full on crisis, there are specific red flags that your monitors should be trained to identify and bring to your attention.

The following are some questions that will help identify these red flags:

>What is the emotional impact of the situation?

> What and whose morals and ethics may be on the wrong side of the fence, and how might the public react to it?

> What is the potential reach of the story? (Though this can sometimes be deceiving)

> How intriguing, catchy and share-able is the post, video, image and/or tweet?

> Can a quick and sympathetic response help calm the situation?

So, as I’ve said, monitoring is half the battle.

Once a threat is detected, your monitors need to be able to assess the situation and determine which is a potential threat, and when your social media crisis communications plan needs to be put into motion.

Bio:

Melissa Agnes is a social media crisis manager and consultant. She keeps a daily blog on the subject over at MelissaAgnes.com, is a co-host of The Crisis Show and the creator of The Social Media Crisis Academy, an online training course aimed at helping small to medium sized businesses and PR professionals develop strategic social media crisis communications plans.

DOD's new policy 'likes' social media, but with caveats By Amber Corrin Aug 14, 2012 http://fcw.com/Articles/2012/08/15/FEAT-Inside-DOD-social-media-policy.aspx?goback=.gmp_816587.gde_816587_member_147064264&Page=6

For all its benefits and the enjoyment it brings to the people who use it, social media has a dark side. When it comes to military users, one slip — such as an inadvertent mention of a deployment timing or location — can endanger lives. But given its intrinsically open nature and constantly changing boundaries, how can the Defense Department effectively manage social media? Pentagon officials at the highest levels recognize the importance of social media for communicating with the public and collaborating within the department, as well as providing troops access to their loved ones even when they are stationed thousands of miles away. But leaders know they must weigh those advantages against the sensitive security needs inherent to military operations. To strike a balance, DOD officials are focusing on regulating, not restricting, social media use. Currently, DOD’s social media policy is governed by a directive-type memorandum (DTM) from 2010 — a two-page document that superficially outlines the rules and responsibilities those under Pentagon jurisdiction must follow in their use of social media. That policy will change in the coming

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months as the department prepares to issue more permanent and detailed DOD instructions that will expand the existing guidance. “Because the DTM was the first ever, it was galvanizing for the department to work its way through the potential rules around social media use at DOD,” said Rob Carey, DOD’s deputy CIO. “As you can imagine, with a very structured, hierarchical organization such as ours, we were dealing with ‘How do I use this thing?’” The DTM was meant to be a quick set of guidelines governing activities in the social media space. It was set to expire July 15 but will remain in effect until the new policy comes out. Even now, two years after its release, the department is still determining just how to use the still-developing and sometimes unwieldy tool. With a rapidly evolving capability like social media, a hot new trend can catch fire and fizzle within a matter of weeks, so it’s difficult to issue hard-and-fast rules. “The underlying effort of the DTM was to work toward breaking down some of the silos of keeping information together, allowing a broader perspective of options out there and seeing what we could gain,” said Jack Holt, who helped write the DTM while serving as senior strategist for emerging media at DOD; he is now director of policy analysis at Blue Ridge Information Systems. “It was partly about communicating with the American public and understanding what else we can do within the medium and how it can work behind the firewall as well.” Where the DTM laid the groundwork by establishing definitions, responsibilities and the importance of information sharing, the new guidelines incorporate a more thorough and detailed look at social media, at least as it exists today, Carey told FCW in a preview of the new policy. Two areas will receive particular emphasis: making sure the rules are clear and making sure security is adequately covered. Both areas will be clarified when DOD unveils the policy in the coming months, but according to Carey, the exact release date is still to be determined. “It’s currently at the legal sufficiency review;

the lawyers look at the final version one more time and determine what to address,” Carey said. “Right now there’s no date set. I can only say to stand by.” Clearing the fog of Facebook Social media has permeated the lives of most Americans, but for the military, it’s a relatively new capability, and rules for its use haven’t always been well understood. One prominent misconception is that the use of dot-mil e-mail addresses on social media is forbidden. That simply isn’t true, Carey said. What matters is how a social media account associated with a dot-mil address is used. The key designation is whether or not someone is officially conducting job-related business. “The secretary of the Navy, the commander of European Command, the defense secretary — they use social media [for an official] purpose,” Carey said. “The account that is set up is an official account, so dot-mil e-mail addresses are used to support official presences. If you’re using Facebook or any of the others for social purposes — and there’s nothing wrong with that, consistent with all the other [operations security] guidelines we have in place — you should use some other e-mail address.” No social network sites are universally banned from military use, but there are certain circumstances in which the use of one or another might be temporarily suspended. For instance, after the tsunami struck Japan last year, access to YouTube was shut down on some military networks to free up the bandwidth needed to coordinate disaster response efforts. The new policy will address those issues and some newer ones that have begun to crop up around the downloading of information, such as the growing and evolving use of advertising, endorsements, image alteration and gaming, Carey said. The elephant in the room Perhaps the biggest issue in the military’s use of social media is security. And one of the biggest problems with security is that the traditional, bureaucratic approach isn’t flexible enough to keep up with the rapidly changing social media landscape. “The issue is not social media; it’s new software techniques that need various degrees of safeguards,” said Paul Strassmann, distinguished professor of information sciences at George Mason University’s Volgenau School of Engineering and

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former director of defense information at DOD. “It’s a new set of applications…and whether I’m in Kabul or Mogadishu or any other place, I need to be able to communicate. [Existing systems can be] too onerous, difficult, expensive and hard to execute. So what people do is work around using social media. Social media is a big bootlegging operation. It breaks down the structure.” Carey believes that the new policy, combined with existing training and education, are enough to combat much of the threat that social media potentially poses. The two main concerns are cybersecurity and information security, he said. Although social media receives the same cybersecurity treatment as any other form of DOD desktop activity — including perimeter defense, firewalls and other traditional measures — information security hinges on the training and education that are mandatory for all defense personnel, both military and civilian. At the heart of information security is operations security, which in turn might be the pinnacle of social media security concerns. “A lot of social media policies try to address the breadth [of concerns] not to scare people to death but to let them understand this is not the same thing as having a conversation in your living room or over a cup of coffee with a friend,” said Laurie Schive, outreach director at the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. There are plenty of stories about military families inadvertently revealing too much information online about a service member’s location or a geotagged photo getting publicly posted, for example. “It’s just like someone saying it at a crowded bus stop, just the media has changed,” Carey said. “The problem with the Internet is that it’s viral to those friends. It can be a social media issue, but the first problem is that information shouldn’t have gotten there.” Are the current efforts in training and education enough to counter security worries? Although Carey expressed confidence in existing programs, most would agree that there’s always room for improvement, even beyond military

applications. “There are a lot of things we give lip service to that before weren’t a big deal but today they are,” Holt said. “Especially for DOD and social media, they need to be addressed in basic training and for new civilian employees. But this is also something that needs to be addressed even in children. We should train kids to be on and off the Internet the same way we train [them] to cross the road — and probably at the same time.” Young or old, good cyber habits should include understanding the potential dangers of bogus URLs, bad links and malicious attachments. Inside the federal government, preparedness rises to another level. “It’s not just [operations security], it’s proper decorum,” Holt said. “After all, it is publishing. When you put something on the Internet, you’re still liable for defamation and things that, before ubiquitous publishing, only journalists, public affairs people, and those producing products and content for mass distribution had to consider. It’s a different story now.” Filling in the gaps Although DOD has unique security requirements, the concept of operations security and the protection of internal information have implications at other agencies, where officials are also grappling with social media use. Some agencies are collaborating on the best approaches to social media — for example, via interagency working groups and by sharing information through websites such as HowTo.gov. Despite the differences in their missions, most organizations have a number of issues in common. “We not only have to read tea leaves of where technology is going to go in the next five to 10 years, it takes a lot to revise federal policies, so it has to be evergreen,” said one government official who is familiar with federal social media strategies and agreed to speak on background. “It also has to provide for a range of operations [because] there’s not going to be one toolset that works for every department or component.” DOD’s goal for the new policy is that it will be broad and flexible enough to fill in the gaps that have emerged as social media has evolved and governance has taken shape. The task will be ongoing and it won’t be easy, but social media has become too powerful as an information and strategic messaging platform to be dismissed, Carey said.

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“Some of the tools that we use to frame this discussion will not exist in a few years, and there will be new ones out there in their places,” Carey said. “We have to set a broad context. Implementation is targeted around the as-is, not the what’s-to-be, and that means you have to be careful about it.” Social media missteps Defense Department officials hope their soon-to-be-released social media policy can help service members avoid the kinds of incidents detailed below. The appropriation of Adm. Stavridis’ identity Adm. James Stavridis, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, is often held up as a prime example of military social media done well. Stavridis is famous for his use of Facebook and Twitter to interact with the international public, and he does it all himself. But his prominent social media use made headlines of a different sort earlier this year when hackers created a fake Facebook profile pretending to be Stavridis and reportedly managed to befriend other NATO officials and glean some personal information. The U.K.’s Telegraph reported that Chinese hackers were behind the social engineering tactic, but like most cyber incidents, attribution is difficult. DOD officials downplay the dangers of that kind of ploy but note that it’s yet another reason for thorough and routine training and education. “The social engineering aspect of social media is just another point of awareness that anyone, including senior leaders, need to manage and diligently monitor,” said Rob Carey, DOD’s deputy CIO. “Once an anomaly has been detected, we contact the specific sites — Facebook, Twitter, etc. — and they remove them.” Marine dismissed for Obama-bashing on Facebook A fierce free-speech debate was sparked in April when Marine Sgt. Gary Stein faced disciplinary action — and later, a less-than-honorable discharge — for posting remarks criticizing President Barack Obama and launching an Armed Forces Tea Party page on Facebook. Stein drew the attention of Marine Corps

officials after he wrote that he would not take “unlawful orders from Obama,” among other remarks. The comments went against a military policy, dating back to the Civil War, that limits service members’ free speech, including criticism of the commander-in-chief. Stein is reportedly fighting the dismissal in court. Geotagging slip backfires big time Today’s high-tech smart phones and other mobile devices include features that can come in handy but also pose huge risks. Software that tracks location is a big one, including the ability to geotag items such as photos uploaded to social networks. The dangers were exposed in 2007 when Army soldiers snapped and uploaded photos of a new fleet of helicopters arriving at a base in Iraq. According to the Army, adversaries were able to access the pictures and, more importantly, the geo-location information that was embedded in them. Using that data, they were able to determine the exact location of the AH-64 Apache helicopters and launch a mortar attack that destroyed four of them. Indian, British and Israeli service members leak confidential data online Social media mistakes are not limited to the United States; a number of other countries have suffered from similar blunders. The Times of India reported in January that a group of four Indian naval officers were caught leaking confidential information, such as the location of warships, via social networks. Back in 2010, 10 employees of the British Ministry of Defense faced disciplinary action after they were found to have leaked sensitive information via social media sites, including Twitter, 16 times in the course of 18 months. That same year, an Israel Defense Forces soldier posted information on Facebook that detailed the time and place of an upcoming raid on the Palestinian territories, as well as the name of the combat unit involved. According to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, the soldier’s friends reported the status update to Facebook, leading to the soldier being relieved of combat duty and the raid being called off. About the Author Amber Corrin is a staff writer covering defense and national security for Federal Computer Week.

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5 Tips for Blending PR & Social Media Effectively

by dmcalister • September 12, 2012 http://blog.myprgenie.com/5-tips-for-blending-pr-social-media-effectively/

Recently, MyPRGenie looked at the convergence between PR and social media. We find that the most successful companies in both tend to follow a few simple guidelines. We put some of those into our recent white paper, Social Media is the New PR, but this list of five tips for effectively combining PR and social media covers the basics. Scott Hampson’s cartoon is funny, but it’s not true. It’s true that social media doesn’t (yet) have hard and fast rules. But there are definitely guidelines — they just change rapidly, sometimes in surprising ways. The truth is that what works today in social media may not work tomorrow – and it almost certainly won’t work next year. Social media evolves and changes quickly, so a marketer who wants to be effective needs to base strategy and tactics on solid public relations lessons. Don’t Be Pushy They call it “earned media” – and one of the first things you’ll learn in social media marketing is that you have to win the right to be heard. At its heart, social media engagement is a kind of conversation and participation is the

required currency. If all you do is “push” your own content – without ever retweeting, responding to, or commenting on other people’s thoughts and content – you’ll quickly find that you don’t get the results you’d get if you were a more, well, social participant. One of the most examples of being too pushy arrive in those messages we all get when we follow or like someone, and immediately get an email that contains some variation of “Thanks for following. Visit my website for …. (promotional offer). And don’t forget to follow us on (another social media site), too!” One of the lessons we all learn quickly in social media is that traditional forms of marketing don’t translate directly to social media. New communications channels and marketing tools require new rules, different tactics. In her book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, best-selling author and social media guru Shama Kabani talks about the idea of generosity and sharing in social media. She isn’t talking about online fundraising and crowd-sourcing to raise money (although both those ideas work). Shama is talking about the basic fact that social media communications is two-way street. Sharing other people’s ideas, being friendly, approachable, and positive are among the traits that set a social media master like Shama apart from other marketers online. Deliver Content People Want Sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? But a lot of marketers act as if they have no idea that the power base has shifted from the days when Don Draper and the “Mad Men” controlled the media. Back then, they told us all the wonderful things that their client’s products would do for us – and we listened, because we had no choice. Today’s consumers have the power to block most marketing messages – and they aren’t going to give that power away. So if you want to use social media and digital marketing to reach an audience, the most important thing is to deliver well-written, informative and entertaining content in all its forms. Blog posts, tweets, status updates,

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videos, podcasts, photographs, infographics, webinars, white papers – and dozens of other kinds of information. New content matters – Google and Bing love frequently updated content, and nothing else has the power to move people like great content. Content really is king. If you doubt me, take a look at actor and social activist George Takei’s Facebook page, or at the way content marketing masters like J.K. Rowling and Peter Jackson control the flow of information about their new “products”. Remember What Your Mother Said Can anyone honest say that they didn’t hear at least one of these three behavior rules from their mother?

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

“People don’t get upset because you lie to them. They get upset because they can never trust you again.”

“It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” Mom was right, especially in the context of social media. Nothing will ruin your reputation in social media faster than misrepresenting yourself, treating other people badly, or delivering false information. Many, many companies have learned the hard way that creating a fake persona to post online reviews may be easy – but it’s very, very costly when you get caught. And even more have learned that mistreating your customers, employees, or even competitors can destroy years of painstaking and costly brand building. Need some reminders? How about United Breaks Guitars, Facebook’s Terms of Service Changes, or Kenneth Cole’s Twitter disaster during the Egyptian uprising? The most important thing to remember in social media marketing is that if you want people to trust you, you have to treat them with respect – and that includes responding to negative posts or customer inquiries instead of just deleting anything except your own specials and promotions. More

importantly, it means avoiding treating others with disrespect. One way to build mutual trust and respect is to use your photo as an avatar and your name as your handle. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have an identity tied to your brand. A number of the most effective social media marketers use their full name for their personal social media, and a short version with their brand name for company messages. For example, you might use @janedoe for personal tweets, but @WidgetMakerJane for marketing messages. A side benefit of that strategy is that it makes it clear and easy to tell who owns what. This is important as the number of lawsuits filed by employers against former employees over social media continues to increase. Avoid Magpie Marketing New social media sites seem to crop up every week or so, and even the best multi -channel scheduling applications can’t keep up with them all. Some marketers are like magpies, moving from one shiny new marketing tactic to the next. It’s nearly impossible to maintain an active presence on every social network. Luckily, most brands don’t need to try. For some brands, Pinterest is vital – for others, it’s just another chore that probably won’t add to the bottom line. And that’s true for nearly every social media site. The key is to be on the social media sites where your customers are. How do you know that? Well, you could always ask. At MyPRGenie, we survey our customers and the media regularly. And there are a number of services that will profile your target audience for you – often for only a few cents per name. These emerging tools deliver the kind of essential campaign intelligence that turn an ordinary social media marketer into a management’s latest superhero, capable of delivering measurable bottom-line results in record time. We can’t afford to forget that social media is just one more communications channel — it can’t replace spending and activity in PR, advertising, web, SEO, email, or other forms of traditional marketing. Combining traditional communications tools with social

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media is far more effective than using any communications channel by itself. Also, all of the basic rules of marketing still apply. One basic rule of marketing that’s easy to forget in the rapid -fire world of social media is that marketing communications is a marathon — not a sprint. Drive-by posters make the common mistake of pushing content…and then sprinting on to the next message, group, or communications channel, without stopping to engage with the people who responded to their original message. Test Messages, Channels & Tools What works in social media today may not work tomorrow, and it’s nearly certain that it won’t work a year from now. So test your messages, your communications channels, your press release distribution lists, your copywriting strategy, landing pages, link shortener, writing style, and the tools you use to deliver your message. Run A/B tests frequently. Social media and PR are not free. Each consumes the most irreplaceable resource of all: time. But the costs are reasonable, and the rapid response allows plenty of room for experimentation. One trick make testing easy and quick is to write the social media messages at the same time you create new press releases, web content, landing pages or campaigns. Go ahead and write a series of tweets, social media bookmark site abstracts (these are the forms you fill out on LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon and other sites to describe the link you’re posting), a press release, and a blog post on the same topic. If you have a white paper, PDF, infographic or other piece of collateral on the same topic, so much the better. Cross-link, and cross-promote. Don’t forget the supporting marketing materials (emails, newsletter article, landing page, etc.). Once the content is written, it’s simple to schedule it, distribute it, and compare the results across multiple communications channels, different times and days, and different audiences.

If you act on the information you gain from your tests, your results will get better. Just keep testing, and keep tweaking your tactics. Cartoon credit: The amazing Australian cartoonist Scott Hampson created this image, which he made available under a Creative Commons license on his website.

4 Key Steps to PR Measurement Success July 23rd, 2012 by David Rockland http://www.culpwrit.com/2012/07/23/4-key-steps-to-pr-measurement-success/

By now, many people in PR have heard of the Barcelona Principles adopted two years ago as the basic fundamental “truths” about PR measurement. While these set a foundation for measurement, there have been a number of events and activities since then that have progressed the Principles to make them more actionable. One occurred June 13-15 in Dublin, where the 4th annual European Measurement Summit took place with over 200 delegates from 30 countries. In Dublin, the delegates to the Summit agreed on the top priorities that anyone working in PR need needs to know when it comes to demonstrating the value of public relations. The purpose behind this is a global education program, based on the Barcelona Principles, but more specific in terms of the skills, abilities and knowledge levels anybody working in PR should have. In many ways, it came down to basics. If you work in PR, the most important things you need to know how to do in terms of measurement are: 1) Be able to connect what you do to the client’s or organization’s business. If you can’t describe how what you do drives business or organizational performance, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. And, you need to be able to say it in the language of the business or organization you are working with.

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2) Know the difference among the three types of metrics used for the evaluation of PR performance – outputs (both traditional and social media results), outcomes (how audiences change as a result), and business results (sales, employee engagement, stock purchase, etc.). 3) If you can’t write proper communications goals for your work, find a new profession. A PR practitioner should be able to express who you are trying to reach, what about them you want to change, how much is the expected result, and by when you expect those results to occur. Without those clear goals, you really can’t measure effectively. 4) Leave the measurement to the measurement pros. Things like research transparency, survey design, and the details of market mix modeling, should be left to the researcher. However, a PR practitioner should know what they are, and know how to ask for them. And, anyone who is still simply counting clips and impressions, versus how good they are, should probably have their PRSA membership revoked. What was also interesting about the discussion in Dublin was a pretty clear sense that “if you can’t run with the big dogs, you should stay on the porch.” In other words, too often we meekly ask whether we can measure the results or demonstrate the value of what we do. Instead, the delegates said that we need to insist that measurement — both the results and what they mean going forward — should just naturally be part of any PR program. In a great presentation by Booz/Allen/Hamilton on original research they’ve done on the PR field, it couldn’t be clearer that we need to either go big or go home. In other words, if you want to be thought of as PR professional and not a PR flack, you insist upon having measurement of communications and business results as part of anything you do. The trouble in Dublin, however, was when it came to agreeing on what are the key next steps to roll out a global education program focused on the PR practitioner and measurement. There were some good ideas presented and voted on. In fact, PRSA’s Christina Darnowski talked about the need to add a measurement education

component to every major PR conference rather than the measurement and the PR pros meet separately. In fact, PRSA is adding an entire measurement symposium to its international conference this fall; a great first step in the right direction. The dilemma for PR professionals is that we often feel undervalued. This was not solved in Dublin. But, I think we made some progress about how to make sure anybody getting a degree in PR, starting in the field, or leading a large PR function or company can express the value of what we do and take steps toward demonstrating it. And blogs like Culpwrit play a key role in helping educate our profession about making sure we can express the value of our work in ways that are meaningful and measurable. This guest post by David Rockland, PhD., is adapted from his July 2012 column “Ask Doc Rock” in PRSA Tactics. David is Partner and CEO of Ketchum Pleon Change and he heads Ketchum’s global research network.

'Barcelona Principles':

1. importance of goal setting and

measurement

2. measuring the effect of outcomes is

preferred to measuring outputs

3. the effect on business results can and

should be measured where possible

4. media measurement requires quality as

well as quantity

5. Advertising Value Equivalents are not a

value of public relations

6. social media can and should be

measured

7. transparency and replicability are

paramount to sound measurement.

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Social Media in Command & Control: An extended framework By Peter Jongejan, Tim Grant Netherlands Defence Academy http://www.iscramlive.org/ISCRAM2012/proceedings/275.pdf

ABSTRACT Our research is aimed at investigating whether social media has a role to play in military Command & Control. Since social media is peer-to-peer, it could facilitate Network-Enabled Capabilities. A useful theoretical development is Reuter, Marx, and Pipek’s (2011) proposal of a two-by-two matrix for social software infrastructure. Their framework assumes one-way communication and monolithic organizations. However, to operate in a real-time, dynamic environment, crisis management organizations must close the decision-making loop. Moreover, they must be structured into an action part that handles the crisis on-site, and a control part that monitors and directs operations in real time. The purpose of this work-in-progress paper is to present our extension of Reuter et al’s framework. The paper outlines Reuter et al’s framework, summarises the basic theory of Command & Control, describes how we extended Reuter et al’s framework, and outlines further research. INTRODUCTION Much of scientific research on social media has been empirical and descriptive, i.e. it is focused on studying how citizens use social media “in the field”. Around 2010, articles began to appear on the use of social media messages by commercial and public organizations, e.g. for marketing purposes or to broadcast a warning to the public in a defined area. The initial reaction of many organizations has been to see social media as a threat. Early adopters, however, realized that positive gains could be made using social media proactively. Marketeers, in particular, have taken to social media with enthusiasm, not only to monitor their target groups, but also to influence them. It is in this context that researchers,

such as Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) and Kietzmann et al (2011), are currently developing theory for the organizational use of social media. By contrast, theoretical concepts about the use of social media for emergency management are in their infancy. As in the wider organizational community, some emergency management and military organizations (e.g. US Marines) immediately banned the use of social media. Studies have now tempered the initial fears about employees violating information security (Brand, 2010). Military and emergency management organisations are starting to approach social media proactively. Clearly, it is the right moment to investigate the formal use of social media within emergency management processes. In this paper we report on the initial results of our research aimed at investigating the use of social media technology within the military Command & Control (C2) process. These results are likely to be applicable also to civil crisis and emergency management. In military doctrine, the C2 process (supported by a C2 system) is defined as “the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission” (US DoD, 2011). Some researchers have concluded that the peer-to-peer nature of social media cannot be reconciled with the top-down, directive nature of C2 systems. For example, Palen & Liu (2007, p. 727) state that “command-and-control models do not easily adapt to the expanding data-generating and -seeking activities by the public”. We believe that their conclusion was premature precisely because it applied just to members of the public. Recently, Reuter, Marx, and Pipek’s (2011) proposed a two-by-two matrix for the social software infrastructure supporting communication between citizens and organizations. We contend that if this framework is extended with cybernetic ideas about control systems then social media can be applied to C2

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systems. The purpose of this paper is to present our extension of Reuter et al’s (2011) framework, incorporating basic ideas from C2 theory. This paper consists of five sections. After an introductory section, section 2 summarises Reuter et al’s framework, and section 3 outlines relevant basic ideas of C2 theory. Section 4 combines Reuter et al’s framework with C2 theory, showing how the resulting extension could be applied to a hypothetical, but realistic humanitarian crisis. Finally, section 5 draws conclusions and identifies areas for further research. REUTER ET AL’S (2011) FRAMEWORK Since Reuter et al’s (2011) theoretical contribution is central to the work reported here, we describe it in more detail. A review of the military C2 and equivalent emergency management literature (Jongejan & Grant, 2011) has not disclosed another framework specific to social media that could have been used as our starting point. Reuter et al (2011) discuss how the professional actors involved in crisis management and the affected citizens can communicate and collaborate using social media. They define their term ‘social software’, identifying four types: wikis (e.g.

Figure 1. Communication matrix for social software infrastructure (Reuter et al, 2011, Fig 5).

Wikipedia), blogs / microblogs (e.g. Twitter),

social networks (e.g. Facebook), and social sharing / collaborative keywording systems

(e.g. Flickr and YouTube). Then they examine two case studies, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of social software in crisis management. Finally, they propose a concept for using citizens in crisis management with a social software infrastructure and a communication matrix. It is this last part of their paper that is relevant to our research. The goal of Reuter et al’s (2011) research is to recommend the creation of an infrastructure that integrates information from the different online communities and helps the official crisis management by providing and receiving information. Citizen-generated information could be integrated by monitoring social software with crisis tags, aggregating and validating the information against organization-generated information, and archiving relevant material for analysis and training. New activities enabled by social software would be the broadcasting of information from organizations to citizens, recommending crisis tags, requesting information from citizens, and supporting information brokers. Reuter et al propose the two-by-two matrix shown in Figure 1 as the basis for the social software infrastructure for communication between organizations and citizens. In quadrant (a), citizen-generated content is integrated with and validated against the recipient organization’s own information, assisted where possible by the use of crisis tags previously provided to citizens by the organization. In quadrant (b), organizations broadcast information to inform, warn, and communicate with citizens, either as individuals or as groups. This would include the provision of crisis tags for citizens’ use. Quadrant (c) represents peer-to-peer communication between citizens, as employed in a crisis to provide self-help within (emergent) communities of interest. Communication in quadrant (d) supports information sharing between organizations for crisis management purposes. BASIC C2 THEORY Reuter et al’s (2011) framework models an organization as an atomic entity. However, all organizations have significant internal structure. Typically, three elements can be distinguished in

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emergency management and military organizations. A policy element – often closely linked to political decision making – sets the strategic goals. A control element acts to achieve those goals by gathering and assessing information from and giving instructions to the organization’s action element., i.e. the element responsible for acting in the crisis area. The organization is embedded in an environment containing the general public (and other objects). Citizens involved in the crisis interact directly with the organization’s action element. We focus on the control and action elements, with policy being effectively fixed during a crisis. In systems theory (van Bertalanffy, 1968) – of which control theory is a specialization – a process exhibits behaviour by continuously exchanging inputs and outputs with its environment. In control theory (Ashby, 1956), a goal-oriented process can be split into two sub-processes: a Controlling Process (CP) and a Process Under Control (PUC). For the purposes of this paper, we map the control element of emergency management and military organisations with the CP, i.e. the commander and control team, and the action element with the PUC, i.e. his/her assigned and attached forces. Objectives are the goals set by the policy element (not shown).

Figure 2. Relation between Controlling Process, Process Under Control, and Environment.

Control theory distinguishes open- and closed-loop control and direct and supervisory control (Sheridan, 1992). Figure 2 depicts a closed-loop control system. Information flows from the environment, through the PUC where it is sensed and assessed, to the CP as observations, is compared with the objectives in the CP and transformed into commands to the PUC, which are then converted into output actions on the environment. The environment responds to these outputs by changing its state, which can again be sensed by the PUC. The loop from Environment to PUC and back is the direct control loop, and from PUC to CP and back is the supervisory control loop. To date, social media have played no role in closing these control loops (Jongejan & Grant, 2011). EXTENDING THE FRAMEWORK We refined Reuter et al’s (2011) framework by incorporating the C2 process, splitting organizations into two parts: CP and PUC. The result is the three-by-three matrix shown in Table 1 [at end of text]. Reuter et al’s quadrant (c) remains the same, because citizen-to-citizen communications are unaffected by splitting the organization. We mark the citizens-to-CP and CP-to-citizens cells in Table 1 as “Not applicable” (“N/A”), because there is generally no direct communication from citizen to CP or vice versa1. We can now add the remaining three quadrants. On behalf of the organization, the PUC Integrates, Aggregates, and Validates Citizen-generated content – quadrant (a) – and also communicates to citizens – quadrant (b). When multiple organizations form a coalition, they collaborate or deconflict at CP-to-CP level2: quadrant (d). On-site, there may be communication PUC-to-PUC, e.g. to ensure that ambulances do not drive over the firefighter’s water supply pipes. This on-site communication can be interpreted in several ways. It can be interpreted as inter-organizational coordination, regarding the medical and fire services as separate organizations.

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Alternatively, if the medical and fire services are regarded as two parts of the same organizational entity (i.e. the emergency services), then this can be viewed as self-synchronization internal to that entity. We term this Intra-organizational coordination to reflect the parallels with Reuter et al’s Inter-organizational coordination. Applying social media to the three-by-three matrix (Table 1), the following picture emerges: Integration, Aggregation and Validation of Citizen-Generated Content represents the use of social media by citizens to provide inputs to the organization. Such inputs should be received by a call centre (c.f. handling of 911 calls) which integrates the validated and aggregated information with the organization’s own information before it is passed to the CP. The call centre is part of the PUC.

Citizen Communications represents the use of social media by the organization to inform citizens in the crisis area. By analogy with marketing, this should be done by a team specialized in communicating with the public, based on CP-generated commands. Such a team is part of the PUC.

Self-Help Communities represents the use of social media by citizens to communicate with other citizens in the environment. This is essentially unchanged by how the organization is structured.

Inter-Organizational Crisis Management is a more complex case. Where two organizations are regarded as separate, then this is inter-organizational communication. By contrast, if they are regarded as parts of a coalition, then communication is intra-organizational. Communication can be PUC-to-PUC, as happens on-site, or CP-to-CP, as in cooperative planning. Moreover, it can range from collaboration to deconfliction (“if you keep to the east of the river, we’ll keep to the west”). This will be the subject of further research. Observations and Instructions were not identified by Reuter et al (2011). The refined framework leaves unanswered a number of implementation decisions. Firstly, it

does not indicate to which of the control loops – direct, supervisory, or both – social media should be applied. This could be dependent on the organizational boundaries. The nature of the environment may also make it impossible to employ social media. For example, the supporting infrastructure (mobile phone reception or the availability of electrical power) might have been destroyed, or the citizens might be too poor to afford social media and the associated hardware devices. Secondly, the refined framework does not stipulate exactly what social media technology is suitable. One could envisage a design choice between one- or two-way communication (e.g. email versus chat), between broadcast or pointcast (e.g. webpage versus Facebook), and between synchronous or asynchronous communication (e.g. telephone versus voicemail). CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH Social media has become a serious element in disaster response and political uprisings. The scientific research on the public use of social media in crisis situations has been largely empirical and descriptive. By contrast, theoretical insights are in their infancy. One theoretical development has been Reuter et al’s (2011) framework for a social software infrastructure that helps official crisis management by integrating information from different online communities. Our research is aimed at investigating whether social media has a role to play in military Command & Control (C2). To operate in a real-time, dynamic environment, crisis management organizations must close the control loop. Moreover, they must divide the organisation into an action part – the Process Under Control (PUC) – and a control part – the Controlling Process (CP). We have extended the Reuter et al’s (2011) framework by splitting the Organization into two parts – PUC and CP – so turning their two-by-two matrix into three-by-three.

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Table 1. Extended framework for social media infrastructure In addition, we close the direct loop between citizens and PUC and the supervisory control loop between PUC and CP. We add Observations (PUC-to-CP), Instructions (CP-to-PUC), and On-site or Self-synchronisation (PUC-to-PUC) to Reuter et al’s four categories. On-site or Self-synchronisation can be seen as an intra-organisational variant of Reuter et al’s Inter-organisation category. In further research we intend to validate the extended framework by applying it to a realistic example of humanitarian crisis management, such as transporting food to Darfur. Compared with the state-of-the-art social media employed in responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, integrating social media into the supervisory control loop would make it possible to close the control loop, to monitor task execution, to generate alerts, to enable self-synchronisation, and to maintain an event log for After Action Review. This paper’s contribution has been to show how social media could be applied in C2 to close the control loop. Its key limitations are that it is purely theoretical and gives no guidance on implementation. In particular, it does not indicate whether social media should be applied to the supervisory control loop, the direct control loop, or both. Nor does it stipulate exactly what social media

(PUC=Process Under Control ; CP= Controlling Process )

technology is suitable. The extended framework has not yet been evaluated by expert practitioners nor tested by implementing it, let alone using it in training exercises or in the field. Further research is needed to overcome these limitations. We intend to start by prototyping the extended framework incollaboration with expert practitioners. REFERENCES 1. Ashby, W.R. (1956) Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Methuen. 2. Bertalanffy, L. von. (1968) General Systems Theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York: George Braziller. 3. Brand, M. (2010) Eigen Vuur: Waarom het Pentagon user generated media van militairen wantrouwt en waarom de noodzaak voor dit wantrouwen ter discussie staat. [In Dutch: Own Fire: Why the Pentagon distrusted user generated media from military personnel and why the need for this distrust is being debated.] Masters thesis, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 4. Jongejan, P.A. & Grant, T.J. (2011) A Refined Framework for Crisis Management Communication via Social Media. Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG 2011) working conference, December 2011, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 5. Kaplan, A.M. & Haenlein, M. (2010) Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and

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Opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68. 6. Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., & Silvestre, B.S. (2011) Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. Business Horizons, 54, 241-251. 7. Palen, L. & Liu, S.B. (2007) Citizen communications in crisis: anticipating a future of ICT-supported public participation. Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2007) conference, San Jose, California. 8. Reuter, C., Marx, A., & Pipek, V. (2011) Social Software as an Infrastructure for Crisis Management: A case study about current practice and potential usage. 8th international conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management (ISCRAM 2011), May 2011, Lisbon, Portugal, paper 113. 9. Sheridan, T.B. (1992) Telerobotics, Automation, and Human Supervisory Control. Cambridge: MIT Press. 10. US DoD. (2011) Dictionary of Military Terms and Abbreviations. Joint Publication 1-02, US Department of Defense, Washington DC.

Notes: 1 An exception, if the geography allows, could be where the CP can communicate directly to the public. For example, the control room of a railway station or an airport may have the facility to instruct passengers by loudspeaker to evacuate the building in case of fire. However, a danger is that the CP may not be sited so that controllers can observe that the instruction has been correctly understood and acted upon. 2 Intuitively, it seems desirable for inter-organizational communications to run horizontally, e.g. from one element (policy, control, or action) of one organization to the corresponding element of the other. In practice, this intuitive principle is violated. For example, in a civil-military coalition a military organization with its top-down hierarchy may cooperate with a civil organization in which decisions are made primarily in the field.

Proceedings of the 9th International ISCRAM Conference – Vancouver, Canada, April 2012 L. Rothkrantz, J. Ristvej and Z. Franco, eds.

Can Charisma Be Taught?

by Mark van Vugt Top 10 tips to be a more effective leader. Published on May 5, 2012 by Mark van Vugt, Ph.D. in Naturally Selected http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/naturally-selected/201205/can-charisma-be-taught

If you want to be effective as manager, politician, parent or coach it helps to have a little bit of that X-factor leadership quality, charisma. In a previous blog I suggested that charisma is the oldest and most effective form of leadership because it is based on an intimate, personalized interaction style. Charismatic leaders appeared in our ancestral environment whenever there was a need to quickly mobilize the masses for some common cause like a war or natural disaster. Through signaling their ability to unite a large crowd and motivate them to go the proverbial extra mile for their group, they obtain charismatic powers. Think Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. This all seems a bit remote from the world of business and education but even there a little bit of charisma can go a long way. So do you have what it takes? If not don’t worry because you can train it. It seems there is nothing mysterious about charisma after all. Charismatic leadership can actually be taught. Recent research conducted by a team of scientists led by John Antonakis from the University Lausanne Business School, shows that training managers a specific set of charismatic leadership tactics improves their charisma, and thus, their effectiveness as leaders. In a first study they randomly assigned a sample of managers from a large Swiss company to either a charismatic training course or no course. The training consisted of a lecture on the principles of charismatic leadership (including watching scenes from movies like Dead Poets Society), a presentation, and a feedback report. Both before the training and three months after, these managers were assessed by their co-workers (who did not know that their managers had received the

19

charisma training).Their charisma significantly improved after the course.

In a second study the researchers videotaped the speeches of a group of MBA students before and after the charisma training, and these speeches were rated on charismatic content by independent assessors. Again, the training significantly improved the students’ charisma and perceived effectiveness as leaders. So, what skills were being trained? The researchers came up with a long list of Charismatic Leadership Tactics (CLTs). In case you want to develop your personal charisma, here are the most important CLTs and what I regard to be their primary function. (1) Use metaphors (e.g.,"We brought our competitors to their knees “, “We must change course”) Function: Metaphors are excellent in showing off how smart you are (2) Use stories and anecdotes Function: Personal stories are the best remembered parts of a speech (3) Display moral conviction (e.g., “This is the right thing to do”) Function: To show your honesty and integrity as a leader (4) Stress collective sentiments ("We will be stronger") Function: This shows the audience that you are concerned about their welfare not your own (5) Set high expectations for yourself and your followers Function: It takes someone and something special to solve this crisis (6) Communicate confidence Function: Explain why they should follow you and not someone else (7) Use rhetorical questions like “Why should you hear about this from me” Function: Make your vision theirs (8) Body gestures like raising your arms, putting up your thumbs, or inflating your chest

Function: This make you look bigger, better, and more important (9) Facial expressions (e.g., smiling, nodding, looking calm) Function: Audiences copy these facial expressions unconsciously (mimicry) and this makes them feel better (10) Keep an animated voice tone Function: To keep your audience captivated throughout your speech Before you go out there, you might want to practice these charismatic skills in the mirror or in front of your beloved ones. How do you know you have improved your charisma? If you can persuade your children to eat their vegetables or go to bed without complaining! Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2011). Can Charisma be Taught? Tests of Two Interventions. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10, 374-396.

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