- By Amie Pascoe, Director, BLUE Communications

The way that we communicate is fundamentally changing. As a society, our appetite for information and our expectations of being able to connect instantly with friends, colleagues and even strangers online around the world is constantly evolving. Each new device and platform that we are introduced to develops our desire to engage, which has clear implications for the brands that we encounter.

The proliferation of this information affects all global industries. But for shipping, a sector with an inherently traditional approach to life, our increasingly digitally integrated world and online communities are often seen as more of a threat than an opportunity. However, as a channel, digital and social network sites in particular offer an unparalleled way to connect with your stakeholders, whether they are the end-consumer, seafarers, customers, employees or industry influencers.

Shipping is not just about ships – emphasis is increasingly, and rightly, shifting to the human element of the industry. As social media is in essence what people use to communicate, shipping must develop its presence online accordingly. This element is particularly pertinent when dealing with seafarers – engaging with them as employees and stakeholders and creating information that is shareable across the platforms that they use. As employees play such a critical role in managing brand, this is fundamental to safeguarding not only reputation, but also to the continuing professionalisation of the industry.

Ensuring internet access across shipping fleets is critical to recruiting the next generation of seafarers, for whom social media and text communication are part of everyday life. A subject recently debated at CMA Shipping 2012, the unanimous conclusion was that it is unrealistic to expect young seafarers to go to sea for months with no contact with the outside world. Moreover, offering young seafarers’ access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as allowing them to catch up on sport and news, is not only an increasingly important welfare consideration, but can in turn also increase motivation and productivity.

Whilst it is still early days for shipping to comfortably adopt the digital channel, there are companies that are taking steps to integrate social media at the heart of their business to harness employee productivity for commercial benefit. Teekay, for example, has developed an internal network for its 7,000 workers to communicate with each other in open and closed forums, watch videos from senior management and flag stories that they ‘like’.

However, using social and digital media channels simply because they are now so omnipresent in our daily lives does not mean that they are necessarily the right medium for communicating with customers, or other key stakeholders. Moreover, the threat and negative impact on reputation when it goes wrong can significantly impact brand and therefore enterprise value. Issues inevitably arise in corporate life, but must be dealt with online appropriately in a way that protects and manages reputation. Post Costa Concordia, for example, Carnival’s CEO, a frequent Twitter user who “tweeted” up to 30 times a day, refrained from using the medium to communicate immediately after the disaster when, arguably, consistency of use and messaging would have better allayed the concerns of consumers, shareholders and other stakeholders.

Ultimately, effective communications is a two way process that centres around the development of relationships. It requires us to ‘listen’ as well as ‘talk’, and demands the dissemination of consistent and timely messages. For many companies, when approached strategically and aligned with communications objectives, social and digital media can prove to be an invaluable addition to the communications toolkit.

So if social networks are founded upon conversation, then why are so many marine companies still not encouraging online dialogue directly with their stakeholders? Resource is the first challenge – ensuring the swift responses needed requires trained people to monitor, listen and act appropriately. Another challenge is that the bigger the company, the less connected to the values espoused by the organisation its employees can be and the more diluted the message, which poses a risk to reputation. To combat this, you need to identify and embrace your business values, enshrine them in your corporate messaging and then make absolutely sure that everyone in the workforce understands them so that they are brought to life in day-to-day activity. This is what facilitates alignment across all communications channels and – critically – in all interactions with the organisation. The transparency that social media provides through unlimited access to information should motivate us all to create and work in ethically robust organisations that deliver great products and services that stand up to scrutiny.

Although the channels through which we communicate are evolving, the underlying approach to communications remains the same; ensuring that business strategy is distilled down through communications messages. From there strategic questions can be asked: how can communications work to support this and build (or repair) reputation in line with the values, positioning and tonality of the brand? Who are the most important stakeholders that need to be communicated with? What do we want to say to them, what are the messages? And finally what is the best way of reaching them and engaging?

Fundamentally, you have to understand what your messages are and to whom they are directed. Content comes first and the channel second. You don’t have to cover all platforms – the first step is to establish where the conversations in your sector and around your brand are largely taking place and make sure that you are there. The conversation has already begun, and the shipping industry must engage and prepare to join in if it is to protect and manage its reputation in the digital age.

Amie Pascoe, Director, BLUE Communications joined panelists James Tweed, managing director, Coracle, Karine Langlois, new media officer, IMO, Nick Brown, marine communications manager and Neil Wiese, Fairplay, to debate shipping and social and digital media. Follow #bluedebate and @BLUECOMMS on Twitter.

For those of you on Facebook, check out the new Fan Page, Master of Towing Vessels Association, started by gCaptain.com Forum Super Moderator, Doug Pine. Become a Fan

The Master of Towing Vessels Association represents the interests of U.S. Coast Guard licensed masters, mates and pilots of towing vessels (Oceans, Near Coastal, Great Lakes/Inland & Western Rivers), with a focus on safety issues.

While you’re there, be sure to check out gCaptain.coms’ Fan Page, gCaptain.com – A Maritime Blog About Ships, and the gCaptain group as well.

Here at gCaptain, we have relied primarily on search engine optimization (SEO), regularly updating the blog, word-of-mouth and some great partnerships to grow the site. So far, it has worked really well for us. We are now receiving over 100,000 unique visitors monthly and growing at a rapid pace. Furthermore, having done this with little to no marketing budget is something we are very proud of. But most all the low hanging fruit has been picked and now that we are doing this full time, we are ready to take it up a notch…sort of.

We have been exploring and participation in the use of social networking sites (see where to find us below) since they first started appearing on the web. At the same time we feel that we have barely tapped into the true viral marketing potential of many of them. That being said, we are going to start putting a lot of time and energy into using social networking sites to share content, recruit and retain visitors and further build the gCaptain brand.

But before we expend all this energy, we want to know… What are you and your peers using?

gCaptain on the Web

We invite you to join gCaptain on our favorite social media sites at the links below.  You can also leave links to your group or profile in the comments section.

LinkedIn

Twitter

Facebook:

• gCaptain – Group
  
• gCaptain – A Maritime Blog – About Ships – Page
• gCaptain.com’s Maritime Forum – Page

FriendFeed

Flickr

Links to gCaptain Articles:

Twitter Tag

Facebook Tag

Flickr Tag

Whether it’s a source for an article, helping a forum member find a job or answering questions from the press, here at gCaptain we spend a considerable amount of time locating and contacting experts within the maritime industry. Sometimes this is difficult. Part of the reason we were able to launch Unofficial Networks, our web building and search engine optimization group, is that we noticed very few maritime companies are easy to find on Google. With the recent popularity of social media we found that sometimes it’s easier to located people on networking sites. Facebook is one option but for locating decision makers in specific companies our first stop is always LinkedIn.

LinkedIn FAQ Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The Groups

The best feature of LinkedIn are the groups. While not having nearly as many active participants as our forum, the linkedin groups do contain interesting and well thought discussions. That is if you know which ones to join.

Maritime Executive

The most popular and highest quality group for industry discussion is The Maritime Executive group. Run by the same people who bring us the free MAREX Newsletter, this group is a meeting ground for shipping executives and industry insiders.

Merchant Mariner

More interested in driving ships than sitting behind a desk? Then the Merchant Mariner group should be your first choice. While the discussions are not fresh with the latest content you will still find the occasional rumor and scuttlebutt not to mention jobs not listed on anywhere else on the web. One note… you must have worked aboard a ship to participate.

Super-Yacht Owner

Ok it only has three members but having “Super-Yacht Owner” on your LinkedIn portfolio is a status symbol few people can afford. Join it today just be sure not to hold your breath waiting for acceptance.

Maritime Network/Group

Maybe it’s because this is the first ever guide to the nautical side of Linked In but most people lack imagination and end up joining the group with largest subscriber list. If you are looking for the highest quantity of posts then visit the Maritime Network and Maritime Group.

gCaptain Group

Ok, so we are behind on the stats. Maybe it’s because most of our readers prefer the forum or maybe the reason is we don’t spend enough time there ourselves? Whatever the reason, help promote your favorite site by joining the gCaptain group.

Many More…

If you are still hunting for a group that serves your taste then be sure to visit my profile for a more complete listing. Alternativly you could just perform a group search. Your choice!

Q&A

Another popular feature on LinkedIn is Questions and Answers. The problem we have is that maritime specific questions receive better response when asked within a group. That being said… for general questions, the feature is excellent.

Jobs & Conferences

While we are big fans of LinkedIn, some features leave much to be desired. For upcoming conferences spend your time at MaritimeTradeShows.com and for jobs… well you’re going to need to call a headhunter (try Faststream!) or wait for us to put the final touches on gCaptain’s new job board.

This badge shows the latest Twitter‘s from all know United States Coast Guard personnel and bloggers, enjoy! The list was taken from our last blog post: The USCG Joins Twitter

Today we noticed a new follower on our Twitter page: uscoastguard

Ok, so many of our readers are asking; What’s Twitter and why doesn’t gCaptain mention it more often? The answer to both questions is; Twitter is the most complicated and simplest to use messaging tool on the net.

What?

gCaptain has been a member of Twitter since May of 2007 and we even promoted it’s use as an emergency beacon back in January (note: can find out profile page HERE ) but this simple to use site is difficult to wrap your head around so we have not been good at marketing (or even updating) or profile page. This all changed recently after we listened to the advice of maritime tweeter Peter Mello and took the following steps:

• Installed a desktop client (our favorite is TweetDeck).
• Jumped into the conversation.
• Visited search.twitter.com and entered a few maritime phrases.
• Friended other maritme tweeters (more info below)
• Viewed the following video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Now updates about my life may not be of great interest to you so we set up two profiles. JohnKonrad is my personal twitter profile and gCaptain is the profile for all things maritime. On our gCaptain account we keep the information related to the maritime world providing breaking news and information that relates to shipping.

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Twitter Is Old News – Enter Friendfeed

Twitter has a number of problems. First it suffers from frequent outages and second it lacks advanced features. The future is FriendFeed as it aggregates news and information from various sources around the web.

The best way to understand FreindFeed is to dive right in, browse around and join a few rooms. Here are the important links:

Maritime Rooms

• Maritime News (great news service!)
  
• Coast Guard
• Offshore Oil
• PirateShips
• Maritime Academy News
• Maritime Jobs

An our two newest rooms, USCG-Links & Maritime Video. Be sure to Join the room to post interesting links from around the web.

Maritime Interests

• gCaptain

So who should I follow?

gCaptain has put together a list of maritime related people we follow on twitter to get you started (full list can be found HERE). Please feel free to add yourself or recommend someone by leaving a comment to this post below.

Image by mfilej

Maritime Twitters:

• gCaptain

• Pinoy_Maritime
• MariTalk
• Marine Buzz
• seafever

Mariners That Tweet:

• John Konrad
• cconover

Maritime Industry Twitters:

• Peter Mello
• Richard Rodriguez
• MaritimeJobs
• goldenshellback
• OilRig
  

Coast Guard & US Government Tweets:

• USCoastGuard
• Amver
• uscgd13

• 	GovTwit You are now following GovTwit remove
  	USCGNewEngland

• uscgd5pao
• USCG
• TSABlogTeam
• NOAAOceanToday
• DHSJournal
• femainfocus
• HomelandSecurit
• cgchealy
• BarackObama

Cost Guards Unofficial:

• CoastieChris
• Ryan_F_Owens
• CoastGuardNews
• FakeThadAllen
• USCGCOMRELTony
• rlabrec
• pastinson
• CGBlog
• medicjm

Boaters We Follow

• theboaters
• madmariner
• BenEllison
• TimFlan

twitter Experts (who happen to be mariners)

• ChrisCree

Groups

• Maritime Group

gCaptain friend and Head Designer over at Digg.com, Daniel Burka, bumped up our number of friend request for the social networking / messaging site Pownce.com. Invites will go to the first 25 readers who submit comments below.

What is pownce? The New York Times tells us;

JUST now, the hottest startup in Silicon Valley — minutely examined by bloggers, panted after by investors — is Pownce, but only a chosen few can try out its Web site.

Kevin Rose, the co-founder and chief architect of Digg, a hugely popular news site, announced in late June the introduction of Pownce, a social-networking service that combines messaging with file-sharing. Mr. Rose immediately endowed his latest venture with some mystique by declaring that, for the time being, only those with invitations would be permitted to test his new site.

Within days, invitations were selling on eBay for as much as $10. Mr. Rose has declined all requests to be interviewed about the service, including my own. But as a consolation, he sent me a coveted invitation. I enjoyed the rare thrill of cyberhipness — and got to experiment with the site.

You can also send your friends links, invitations to events, or files like photos, music or videos. Of course, you can already do that on a multitude of file-sharing Web sites. It is the combination of private messaging and file-sharing that makes Pownce so novel.

Om Malik, the author of the technology blog GigaOm, is an enthusiast. “I love it and use it constantly, ” he said in a message sent to me on Pownce. “I like it because it lets me share a lot of different things with the networks of people I really care about.”

Read the full NYTimes article titled “A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope” then comment below for your invitation.

Pownce Profiles of Interest:

• Captain John Konrad’s Pownce Profile
• Unofficial Network’s CoFounder Timothy K
  
• Sea Fever’s Peter M
• Top Digger MrBabyMan – Andrew S
  
• Pownce Designer Daniel Burka

Related Link:

• gCaptain on Digg.com
• gCaptain’s Maritime Facebook Group