How can municipalities, villages and other communities create and maintain a positive public image and how should you react to social media attacks? Answers to these and many other communication challenges are available at a unique lecture held the week after Midsummer.
Professor Vilma Luoma-ahon in my opinion, we need to start thinking about public image through so-called unbreakable communication.
- The principle of unfragility is that communication starts to be thought of according to the target. What information does the villager need? When does he want it? Expectations play a key role, because the internet is full of useless information. You can't control your image and your own reputation, but you can make a good reputation possible with the right kind of expectation management. Unbreakability does not mean perfection, but also enables mistakes to be made, because trust grows when mistakes are corrected.
The online environment is often merciless when it comes to communication between villages and municipalities: individuals can easily attack, but defense is often difficult. In addition, the digital environment preserves, digs and remembers previous cases, and in the era of artificial intelligence, they may be modified to make them even more interesting. A sufficiently loud and visible critic starts to seem like the voice of the majority, even if the majority of the audience does not take a position one way or the other. In an online environment, experiences are transmitted, colored and spread quite easily, and sometimes surprising audiences also come along.
- The trust of the villagers makes the organization sustainable, and therefore a new kind of listening and understanding of the digital environment is now needed.
Vilma Luoma-aho is a professor of communication management and vice dean at the University of Jyväskylä School of Economics, and an internationally popular speaker. Luoma-aho condenses the complex changes into an understandable form, and he has published several scientific and practical works related to stakeholders and intangible capital both in Finland and internationally. Vilma was the first Finn to receive an invitation to the Arthur W. Page Society of global top 500 brand communication directors, whose board she has been on since 2022. She is currently writing a textbook on digital communication for the international market, and she has just published an anthology in Finnish, "Tekoäläkäs Viestintä", which is freely available online.
- My research focuses on finding out how organizations such as villages and cities can succeed in their communication in digital environments. When there are many different needs and pressures, the importance of intangible factors – trust, reputation, social capital – increases: only the trust of individuals and groups in the organization enables it to function in the future.
A free lecture open to all will be held at the new village hall in Alajärvi Luoma-aho on Tuesday, June 25. at 6 p.m. Remote participation is also possible. Pre-registration is requested by Midsummer at the address bit.ly/vilma2024 or by phone 0400 239 359.
The evening is organized by the village of Luoma-aho in cooperation with the Future village 2.0 project of the South Ostrobothnia Leader groups.