I keep seeing it again and again. And it really hurts.

I am talking about fellow communicators who feel passionate about social media and use them with gusto in their private life.

At work, however, they face an uphill struggle… Sometimes it’s the IT department…sometimes it’s their senior executives. These seem to think that social networking sites and blogs are something only their kids use…  to play around…

I will be helping MScom, the executive master program of the University of Lugano, to conduct a dialogue online in preparation for their May conference on “Navigating the Social Media Jungle: Strategies for Corporate Communications”.

We will be discussing the challenges that communicators encounter in introducing social media into their organisation. We will also look into the lessons corporations can learn from the way in which NGOs have been using the interactive web.
Join our conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

Winter has arrived in London. At this time of the year, I am always on a desperate lookout for things to cheer me up.

And the review of our book in this month’s issue of Communication World has done just that:
“If writing about it makes it so, then authors Silvia Cambié and Yang-May Ooi have reordered the paradigm of strategic communication for the 21st century with their book International Communication Strategy. And not a moment too soon.”

We got another positive review from the US. The verdict in the influential Library Journal was:

“This book is highly recommended to public relations professionals looking to optimize their communications in today’s competitive business environment”.
I love it. May be…. I won’t be getting any winter blues after all.

I remember a time when word of mouth used to be this highly esoteric thing everybody feared and nobody could really describe.

Not any longer.

According to this new version of the “Did you know” video, social media is the connection between word of mouth and real money.

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertising!

In the future we will no longer search for products and services…. they will find us through social media, similarly to what is already happening to news.

And if you still have doubts about the power of online word of mouth… check out this wisdom from the # 1 internet content creator in the world (China!).

Our spirit cannot travel as fast as our body. That’s how someone explained jet lag to me.

I just got back from San Francisco and my spirit is all over the place. Although I have been desperately trying to tie it to the cup of Ghirardelli coffee on my desk, my mind keeps replaying many of the conversations I heard last week in California.

One bit keeps coming back again and again.

Sir Ken Robinson, the innovation expert, was talking at IABC’s conference about the ability of human beings to learn foreign languages.

His take is pretty much that if you don’t learn a foreign language at an early age, your chance to be able to do it in your 20s is slim.

What a sad and elitist view…

And this coming from an otherwise inspiring speaker.

If Sir Ken is right, this would mean that only those children who have the fortune to travel or live abroad or grow up in a multicultural household, will be able to speak other languages and function in a multicultural setting.

Luckily, this is not how the world of tomorrow is likely to turn out.

China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world. I believe not all the Chinese who are studying English today have learned it from their parents or by travelling abroad.

The ability to develop a passion for communicating with other cultures and learning foreign languages is not a prerogative of the more fortunate and has never been.

Take the example of Billy Wilder who grew up in Austria-Hungary speaking German, had to escape first to France and then to America in the 1930s, learned French and English in his 20s and went on to write the screenplay of what is considered an icon of American film making.

Thank God for “Some Like It Hot”!

It is June and it’s time to leave for San Francisco again.

At the end of the week, I will be attending IABC’s international executive board meeting.

I am thrilled that my friend Mark Schumann is taking over as chairman. Mark has a great sense of humour. And we will probably need it in the years to come…

One of the issues we are discussing in California is the direction in which the communication profession is going and where it will be in 10 years from now.

At the moment, it feels like walking through a maze at a summer fair. You can only go forward. You can’t turn back. There is nothing to go back to.

Journalism, as we used to know it, is no more.

And the power of social media is chipping away at corporate communication’s old command-and-control culture.

The more I work with organisations to introduce Web 2.0, the more I realise that it is mostly about relinquishing fear. I believe communicators can play a major role in removing resistance and developing what Kevin Roberts calls “emotional connectivity”.

Now and again, I still meet people convinced that blogging and Twitter are only used for weirdoes who want to upload their frustrations on the internet.

So, it was refreshing to read an interview with Queen Rania of Jordan in which she calls social media “a catalyst for the advancement of everyone’s rights…It’s where people can find and fight for a cause, global or local, popular of specialised, even when there are hundreds of miles between them.”

Who needs to know how to exit the maze?! I just love the “attraction economy”.

Have we reached the bottom yet?

I just got back from a very bewildered America where everybody is asking the same question.

It certainly feels as if a dragon had eaten our old world. A new one is emerging at the horizon…we can’t quite figure out how it looks like, but we know it’s there…it’s really happening.

How can we tell? By reading the signs

I was amazed last week to hear the key note speaker at a meeting use words like “compassion”, “moral beauty” and talking about the importance of forming relationships and engaging the minds of those who work with us.

If you had used this kind of language 5 years ago in a presentation, the audience would have rolled their eyes and thrown complimentary mints at you.

We are certainly witnessing an epochal shift.

February has always been special to me.

Because of my birthday and Chinese New Year.

I went to a Chinese New Year dinner over the weekend and I will be going to another one tonight… provided I can make it to central London.

It has been snowing since last night…the heaviest snow fall in 20 years apparently.

London looks pretty… a whole new experience…a dream made of cotton…

Nevertheless, I can’t wait to leave for Florida on Wednesday.

I am attending IABC’s Leadership Institute in Orlando.

My colleague Natasha, the editor of IABC’s CW magazine, and I are giving a presentation on the use of knowledge sharing as a tool for growing the membership of an association.

We have collected case studies from a number of IABC chapters. We will talk about linking social networking to a chapter’s knowledge base. We will also share our experience with commissioning articles and working with authors.

You have to be very creative these days to get through to members.

Research by Forrester shows that the most trusted information source is “Email from people you know” (77%) and not “print newspapers” (46%) or “email from a company or brand” (28%).
“Company blogs” are scoring even lower (16%)…

Every time I enter the Moscow metro something tells me I’m home.

Fascinating… the kind of messages our mind broadcasts. It must be the fact that Prague has the same kind of subway.

I was in the Russian capital on Tuesday and, to my great delight, the moment I entered the metro, my system started telling me “You’re home, Silvia. We are taking care of you. The trains and stations must be familiar to you.”

So, I could switch off and dedicate myself to my favourite occupation while I travel: deciphering people’s thoughts.

I stood there looking at the faces of the passengers on the train imagining their hopes and tribulations.

It was my third time in Moscow. I love the food and I love the warmth of the people.

I was delighted to visit the board of IABC Russia. It is a great team. They are organising a great conference in February on communication practices in the BRIC countries.

I took the metro back at night and… the feeling was there again: the lure of the Moscow metro.

Photos: thanks to Elena Vasiltsova

CSR starts at home.

This was the main message of my presentation at IABC’s conference in Denver in September.

Before you start publicising a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program outside your company, you have to get your employees on board.

I am always looking for concrete examples of this.

I got one the other week when I heard Lord Bilimoria talk at the Worshipful Company of Marketors.

The founder of Cobra Beer said that companies have to move behind cliché terms and live CSR like a brand.

It is all about the way how an organisation deals with people. How do you let innovation happen in a company? Are you creating an environment where people are encouraged to come up with new ideas?

In his speech, Lord Bilimoria singled out each member of his management team. He told their stories and spoke at length about their different contributions.

You don’t often see this in presentations. Usually management is thanked in bulk.

This is a concrete example of CSR in motion.

I don’t do mornings.

It takes me a long time to get going in the morning. So I have a number of mantras I chant under the shower.

“I live an enchanted life” is one of them.

Last week I saw it come true during my trip to the US.

I had a series of enchanted moments that made my stay in California and Colorado very special and took away the stress of the past month.

One day, I entered my hotel room in Denver while the maid was cleaning it. The book on my night table, Three Cups of Tea, the incredibly moving story of Greg Mortenson’s work, caught her eye.

“What’s your name?” she asked and added “mine is Ida”.

There was this light in her eyes. Was it because we care about the same things?

The next morning, I was the only passenger on the shuttle bus back to the airport. The driver, Samuel from Ethiopia, bought me coffee and talked to me about spirituality.

And of course, I had a great time giving a presentation on Corporate Social Responsibility at IABC’s Southern Region conference.

I was delighted to see that CSR, a real passion of mine, is drawing so much interest. I am particularly happy that the people in my session were so interested in the case study I presented about Grameen and Danone.

Given how fond I am of Prof. Yunus, I can talk non-stop about Grameen.

At the end of my trip, I spent a couple of days in Napa with my friend’s daughter, Lana.

The day before I left we made a card for my mum and drew a rainbow on it.

And guess what…I woke up the next day, went outside and there it was…this enormous rainbow…the biggest Lana and I have ever seen.

I do live an enchanted life.