In light of the FTC changes to their guidelines, we have seen an uptick in client inquiries regarding advertising messages and questions about how to stay compliant. Mostly our clients in the medical arena and financial areas are unsure of what they can say especially when it comes to social media. The FTC will continue to send out warning letters to any company that violates the new guidelines. If changes requested are not made, then companies can expect to receive a fine from the regulators. LifeLock is just an example of how companies now have to change their advertising, marketing and social media policies in order to stay compliant. Our company continues to help navigate our clients towards compliant marketing and advertising. Understanding what the regulators are looking for is key.

But on the other hand, we certainly are a snitty bunch with overinflated egos and attitude problems.

Hang out on Twitter for a few hours after you’ve (thankfully) gained more than a few followers and you will begin to see the true community that drives this micro-blogging site and makes it truly hum.  It’s like an electronic high school really – with the differences in class and caste, and the behaviors and uses of Twitter vary with each subgroup. Oddly enough, most of the “social media experts” that write books on the subject (read: get paid to speak, not to actually have ever managed social media for a client) tend to spend most of their tweets sharing quotes and news stories.  The celebrities are split into two groups: ones that say really mundane things that we adore like reading People Magazine and the ones that attempt to use it as a platform for social change (yet don’t follow anyone back.) Most of the companies on Twitter are talking at you in a way that is basically an advertising bastardization of this social tool. The “professionals” seem to think that passing along news articles all day long is the sole use of Twitter – and sadly most of them are about 3 hour behind everyone else.  The MLM crowds spam you constantly and create one or two fake “real tweets” between spam to fool people. (Who? I’m not sure.)

And then there are the nerds.

The nerds (I use the term fondly,) are the ones that I believe are the real social wizards. They are the “social media experts” more so than the aforementioned authors. Many of them log more hours than anyone else on Twitter. A great many of them are doing valuable client work, creating the tools we use in social media every day, and forging this industry. They connect all hours of the day and handle multiple streams of consciousness and conversation at any given time while juggling work (we hope.) And they all consider themselves the rulers of Planet Twitter.  Often times, you see them fighting for title of king much like beauty queens – tearing everyone down in their path publicly (while acting under the guise of being “helpful”) in order to make themselves stand out and seem more crown worthy.

Pay attention. You’ll see tweets like “take your chatter to direct message” or “why are you telling me what you ate for breakfast?” You will find instances of people publicly ridiculing someone for not using a URL shortener, cursing, sharing promotions, and tweeting while drunk. And they aren’t just shouting their opinion, they are frequently adding to their beating words like “you can’t do that” or “you aren’t supposed to do that” or “you’re using Twitter wrong.”

The reality is that there isn’t really a wrong or right way to use Twitter. We all have our opinions on the subject. (I personally believe that if you aren’t having any two-way conversation on Twitter, then you aren’t being social and therefore likely not optimizing the tools power.)  But those that hang out the most control the reality – and they want you to know so. There’s no official rule book, use book, or directive from Twitter (like there is on Facebook with regard to Fan pages, etc.) telling you what to do with the tool. It’s the reason most major media still have no clue about the sub communities and what really happens with active Twitter users (yet they all have accounts now so they can talk at us – occasionally.)

I believe some of the angry banter is the cyber equivalent to heckling, and some of it is truly arrogant overstepping from some that somehow think there are official rules of engagement and that they are assigned to police the tool. I see a lot of it coming from people that in ‘real’ life would never speak up to anyone. I also see a lot of it come from people that in my own opinion aren’t very adept in social – on or offline. But at the end of the day – it’s the collective crowd of active users that do create and manage the community, which includes the bylaws and social etiquette rules. It’s the beauty of social media, really. But, the next time someone tells you that you’re using Twitter wrong, remind them that they aren’t the ruler of your world (or of Twitter) and to back off. (Or, shove them in a locker.)

There are a lot of boiler plate policies and procedures out there, but every company is it’s own customized entity.  To begin, you need to determine to what extent your company is participating in social media, both internally and externally and your key risk factors.  Some thoughts on typical key risk factors are reputation, financial, liability etc.  External participation is probably the easiest to see and evaluate and may give you the biggest bang for your buck so to say, because your external information is hopefully comprised of both employee correspondence and external evaluations such as financial analysts, newspapers, and customers.  I say hopefully, because if you are not finding employee correspondence, then either you aren’t looking hard enough or your employee demographics may not be prone to communications via social media and this could be a problem in itself.

Here are some easy steps to see what your external participation is:

Google your Company
Google your industry
Set up key word searches on Google on all sorts of media
Set up key word searches in Twitter
Go to sites like Yahoo Finance and read through the blog posts

Log as much information as you can over a period of time.  A good time do this if you are publically traded might be a quarter or year end, or a recent release of new products as well as time that there is a minimal amount of activity happening.

Categorize the information you are seeing into employee correspondence (financial, personal, liability, reputation) external evaluations using the same categories you used for your internal.  Each of your categories need to be evaluated on a risk basis of likelihood and impact.  Likelihood is to be defined as the probability that the event will occur and impact is the amount it would impact your risks financially, professionally, and the speed of onset.  As these increase so does your risk.

Ok, now that your eyes have glazed over with confusion, I will let you consider what I have written to absorb it all.  We’ll talk about internal social media analysis strategy soon, but I think we are off to a great start!

Here we are in the 21st century.  We monitor our trading, we monitor our friends, we get real time information (or as real time as we can), yet big brother is still trying to hold us back.  Why is it that so many of corporate america can’t seem to catch up to the trends?  Are they going to miss out on the best and brightest because of their hesitation?  Seems to me that every time a new technology starts to take roots the people who should be embracing it tend to dismiss or defend against why we shouldn’t have or use the new technology.  I know information directors that don’t have computers at home and believe it or not there are still executives that have all their email correspondence printed for them and they dictate or write the responses for their administrative assistance (I know, seems like a cliché from 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton).  Ok, so lets get down to brass knuckles, why is it that adaptation comes so easy to some and so hard to others?  It’s a risk perception whether it be personally or professionally.  People innately evaluate the cost benefit to themselves and or their company.  

On a personal level the risks are minimal to the population.  If I were to get hacked my identity might get stolen and I would be in a world of hurt, and may even face some public retribution, but overall the impact would be isolated. Even so, some people choose not to assume this risk and choose not to participate in social media which is an individual preference.  Now let’s talk about corporate risk.  Many people would argue that the number one risk associated to social media is reputation.  The thought is that if you allow your employees to access these sites, it could pose a reputational risk that you are unable to address.  Funny, when I write reviews about a company or service I receive it isn’t as though I work for that company, rather I received their service.  I would say that the inability to receive or view that feedback could lead to more negative connotations vs. the ability to receive that information and prepare an appropriate response.   Another difficulty to companies limiting their employees is the lack of control of those employees when away from the office.   This is why I argue that the number one risk associated to social media is ignoring it.  The lack of accepting social media as a successful form of communication could really hurt your company through lack of your participation in the conversation. And believe me, the conversation is already going.  

Another interesting standpoint to social media is the freedom of the information.  When people post public information, it is very difficult to remove it from every source possible on the internet.  This allows people and companies to view their information without any risk of invasion of privacy because most the sites with the exception of Facebook are open communities.  There are all sorts of tools that you can use to monitor traffic as it pertains to your company, brand, and even industry.  If you haven’t already started, just set up some google alerts to see what is being circulated about your company.    

Other risks associated to social media are the liability risks and enterprise security risk which each have their own subcategories such as personal information, financial information, legal liabilities, network risk etc.  These are the risks that any company has regardless of their stated participation level or acceptance of social media.  Someone somewhere in your employee population is participating, therefore your company is as well.  Guilty by association.  The best way to address these risks is to address the population with training and policy.  Note that training was first on my list because of the trust factor that seems to be imbedded with all users of the internet, people need to understand the risks associated — how many times have you clicked a link that you didn’t really know where it was going to send you?  Most employees don’t understand that clicking that link is risky business.

Show me the money! No, wait…’Give me followers or give me Internet marketing death’. No, no…’I just posted to say, ‘please buy now’ (set to Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called To Say I Love You).

With the every growing adoption of social media for business use as part of today’s corporate and marketing strategy, the objectives behind this move are often unclear, or even, follows after the fact.

With each organization, the motive and goal behind the use of social media and social networking tools varies from the ‘direct revenue’ and ‘engagement’ ends of the spectrum. Thus the dilemma around the return on investment versus return on influence.

The gazillion dollar question that came up during a recent Marketing Technology Summit in Phoenix – Is social media about creating new revenue or supporting influence/sentiment?

The Internet and the subsequent digitization of marketing analytics has made us greedy for numbers; we hone in on direct, measurable indicators of performance. Consequently, most organizations want to see and measure the success of social media and how it impacts sales. However, other marketers believe that social media is more about building sentiment within the online communities to help elevate brand awareness and engaging with their communities.

An official blog throwdown was issued to me, Mike Abrams and Chris Hewitt by by Cindy Kim. This blog throwdown will debate the following:

* Social media is about driving sales to achieve greater return on investment.
* Social media is about driving sentiment to achieve greater return on influence.

Team Influence | Abrams & Kim

Mike Abrams | Influence

I’m joyriding on the blog throw down issued between Cindy Kim Van Horne and Amanda Vega at the Marketing Technology Summit in Phoenix several weeks back.

The conference speakers kept coming back around to two key questions within social media. They are:

Is social media a great way to drive sales and achieve greater return on investment,
or
is social media a great way to drive sentiment to achieve greater return on influence.

I let the ladies know that I’m firmly in the camp of driving sentiment to grow influence. Before I launch into why, let’s take a look at each of these two key questions.

SOCIAL MEDIA DRIVES SALES

You tweet, blog, connect with clients and suppliers via social media. Your network grows, more people know about your service and you are able to deliver great product information to potential clients, fast! Not only that, but man oh man, this social media stuff is cheap right? No….well..mostly no. You certainly can leverage social media purely for transactional value. The cost of using twitter, facebook, ning.com, linkedin, friendfeed is worth the price, but your price isn’t in software costs, its in time spent building relationships and loyalty. In order to sell, you need a large audience connected to you, then you need them to listen to your sales pitch, lastly you need them to make a purchase.

In the pure sales model, the return on investment is what….say it with me now…sales. Of course. You must get sales, revenue, moolah in order to quantify the value of your time spent building the network in the first place. Once the sale is made, you’re golden, on to the next client and hope that one comes back to purchase again. As long as people are buying, your valuable time is well used. But…what happens if for some reason people stop buying. Either your pricing is no longer market competitive, or your quality slips, or the economy drops and orders are no longer coming in. If social media is no longer “paying off” in terms of direct sales, then a smart manager would expect you to stop spending time…rather wasting time…doing that social media thing with reduced results.

Social media…isn’t simply a sales engine. That’s reducing it down to a single component. Social media is much more rich and robust for just sales.

SOCIAL MEDIA DRIVES SENTIMENT/INFLUENCE

You tweet, blog, connect with clients and suppliers via social media. Your network grows, more people know about your service and you are …oh wait, we just did this. Your network of social media connections grows, people are aware of you…awareness…aye there’s the good stuff. Having an audience of people who are set to listen to you, to share your thoughts with their networks, to carry your message on to other networks is a very powerful situation. What’s that old saying “a bird in the hand if greater than two in the bush?” Really? What if the birds in the bush have the locations of several other bushes with lots more birds very willing to tweet your message and find even more birds in other bushes. Hmmm…sorry birdy, I’m gonna need to get to know your buddies here.

Yes, sales are good…sales are required for business to function. Sales is the input, service/product delivery is the output…happy customers all around…repeat process until tired.

But as any good sales training will tell you…”people love to buy, but hate to be sold.” By creating a sphere of influence and positive awareness and sentiment for your product, you are increasing the number of people who WANT to buy from you. By increasing the pool of people who WANT to buy from you, you are increasing the number of people who actually will. On top of that, I believe you drive a much more loyal customer base because you took the time to give first, to foster the relationship first rather than ask quickly for the sale and move on.

SOUNDS SOFT and SQUISHY…WE WANT METRICS

Yes, yes of course. If we aren’t going to use sales as the direct measurement of our social media efforts, we still need to measure something. Here are some simple ideas without having to implement a bunch of software to track metrics.

1. Establish a baseline of how many followers you have in your network, your newsletter, RSS feeds, etc…
2. Track the change to your followers week by week. Increase or decrease
3. Track how many people link to you or re-tweet or repost a blog item you wrote.
4. Track the impact of announcing a new blog post via twitter. How many people responded within the first 10-30 minutes. How many people responded after a day or so.
5. Track how many calls you received in response to something you wrote online.
6. Compare the changes in your followers with the traffic to your blog, website, youtube, podcasts, etc… You want to eventually see a direct relationship between these two. As one goes up so does the other.
7. Track how many times you released something into your network…a new video, podcast, blog post, etc…you want to ensure you are not reducing the time spent releasing new content over time.
8. Track how many social media requests for help came in versus phone calls or emails. Moving requests to the social network can potentially reduce the time to respond and increase sentiment to your quality of service.
9. Lastly, summarize all of this on a monthly basis (at least) to see how your social network is growing in relation to real interaction with clients. Your interactions should increase as should your publishing efforts.

In the end…the great news is…if you are growing your network, your sentiment is increasingly positive, your influence becomes strong, you will be seen as a relationship builder..a connector. People absolutely LOVe doing business and purchasing from people they trust and have great relationships with.

BAM…there’s my offering.

Cindy Kim | Influence

George Beckenstein of Digital Media and Social Marketing Strategist recently wrote an interesting post on how business used to be conducted. He noted that anyone you did business with lived in your immediate community. There was no such thing as advertising, marketing channels and brands. You did business with people you knew. It was not an “information economy,” and nothing was mass produced. It was a Trust Economy. In a Trust Economy, your market is your community or network. Trust is mandatory, and influence is king.

Recently, I was at a marketing event where I engaged in a heated discussion about social media with a senior account rep from a local marketing agency. I asked her why they were one of the few agencies not engaged in social media. Her response: “We don’t do social media because there is no ROI.” She also mentioned that it was more appropriate for B2C not B2B. Ironically, we are one of their clients and happen to be B2B, not to mention heavily into social media. -I said social media is not always about ROI – it should be first and foremost about sentiment and driving influence, which could eventually lead to ROI.

This leads me to this blog throw down with Amanda Vega, founder and CEO of Vega Consulting; Mike Abrams, VP of Business Development for TBD Consulting; and Chris Hewitt, senior director of marketing operations at Lumension. Amanda once tweeted to me that whenever her clients come to her about social media, their main driving factor is ROI (return on investment).

Social media by no stretch of the imagination has become an important part of a business’ overall corporate strategy. While many companies may understand the importance of social media, some are misguided in the notion that social media is about directly driving leads and increasing sales. This is understandable given how businesses today face greater economic pressures to perform and show quantifiable metrics to validate their investment. Adding social media to the marketing mix is no exception.

Figuring out ROI on social media continues to be a hotly debated topic. I am a firm believer that social media is a critical asset to a company in terms of building a brand, monitoring customer attitudes, gathering ongoing business intelligence and growing your influence. However, using social media to drive sales shouldn’t be the main focus of engaging in the first place. It’s nice to get those results, but we need to set the right priorities when it comes to using social networking tools. In a world where businesses no longer have control over what people are saying about their brand, products or services, social media gives us the opportunity to quietly monitor and listen to the conversations. If we choose, we can even engage with the broader community and participate in conversations around our brands in hopes of providing a positive brand experience. Why? More than being focused on driving sales as the main motivator, influence is king. Influence drives trust. Trust can lead to powerful Word of Mouth. Powerful WOM could lead to sales and deeper engagement.

There is no question that social media can be a dynamic tool. However, an organization cannot be successful in social media without building brand awareness and engagement first. Without establishing this all-important foundation, one cannot be successful in social media or drive sales. The whole point of social media is the ability to participate in a conversation that’s taking place around your brand or your industry. A company cannot build a social media strategy simply to drive sales without first building trust within its community. This takes a lot of effort in building sentiment, not to mention a lot of time. Once you’ve established trust around your brand, then the community will take the next steps to listen to what you have to say, follow your conversations and get to know your brand.

@tdhurst said to me: “Social media is always about sales.” True – most companies want you to justify their investment, but it’s up to the social media experts to educate them on what the purpose of social media is and what the overall objective is for that company. This way, you can better align corporate objectives with social media strategy.

I had the opportunity to listen to @GuyKawasaki at the recent BOLO 2009 event where he demonstrated different levels of social media successes – monitor, watch, sell, support and engage. Companies such as Starbucks use social media to monitor what people are saying about their latest promotion and their brand while others such as Dell and Kogi use social media to sell their goods. Another good example is Comcast, which uses the platform to provide customer support direct. While major brands like Dell and Starbucks may have the luxury to choose what type of engagement they want to have with the community, it’s still about understanding and measuring brand awareness and driving positive brand engagement before pushing promos. If you don’t have these in place, when it comes to driving sales, you’re SOL.

Let’s face it, whether it’s social media, marketing campaigns or PR, if you don’t have brand awareness, brand trust and positive brand engagement to drive influence, your results would be the same – lackluster interest in your company and products. Social media is another medium where you get the privilege to first monitor and listen to the overall sentiment around your brand before you look to integrate other objectives, such as driving sales.

Team Revenue | Hewitt & Vega

Chris Hewitt | Revenue

Social media: influence or revenue? A question of growing popularity and heated debate, with compelling arguments for both sides.

For me, social media success, as a component of a marketing strategy, is best measured by its ability to generate revenue.

I know…it sounds a bit cold…maybe I’ve been lapping up a little too much of the ‘ROMI’ Kool-aid. I once thought, however, that social media was different. I thought social media had a ‘higher purpose’; to enlighten each and every one of us in marketing to create something better and to triumphantly carry forth a new era of a ’softer sell’…making the world a better place.

The reality is however, that our marketing efforts carry a serious responsibility to generate real results. We are accountable to our Board, boss, teams, and colleagues; that responsibility becomes even more serious for small businesses and individuals when those key stakeholders are ourselves and our families.

The key to generating direct revenue is relevance and value; social media is another tool for us to take the right message and bring it to the right audience.

Almost every message has a relevant audience. This is especially true in our highly customizable, highly portable digital word; a trend Chris Anderson highlighted in his book The Long Tail. Do you find those multi-level marketing Tweets annoying; blocking and ignoring the follows from Twitter users that can make you $300 a day for doing nothing? Well it’s not that their message is wrong…it’s just that they reached the wrong audience.

This is why social media is such a powerful tool for generating revenue; people have segmented themselves. It is now our responsibility to reach them with the right message, offer, etc. and constructively engage them in dialog. There is no reason why we cannot tie our efforts directly to revenue generation.

Additionally, we have to consider the fact that ’social media’, as an Internet marketing strategy, is in its infancy. And while many of us social media ‘insiders’ are being to ask hard questions about sustainability and business value, the vast majority of the population is still wondering how these tools, this whole concept, really applies to their life/job/goal. As a result, it’s easy to lean on metrics like ‘influence’.

A little bit of an industry secret ‘return on influence’ is the kind of nebulous metric that we, as marketers, cozy up to at night; our comfortable, loving teddy bear that lets us know we returned value today. Me? Sure I have a Teddy. Hey, don’t judge, the late 90s were especially rough…I may have wound up on a few email ‘blacklists’, angered email recipients around the word, and generated little to no direct revenue, but Teddy and I always shared in the success of our ‘impressions’ and ‘open rates’.

All stuffed animal metaphors aside, ‘influence’ is a valid measurement of marketing activity…and, in certain circumstances, success. I believe, however, that the actionable nature of social media requires us to apply hard metrics to our efforts and track them back to dollars. We can’t accurately track the influence of a well planned and authentic charity on an organization’s revenue. We can, however, track our links, activity, referrers, etc. in our social media efforts.

So yes, for now, focus hard on using social media to drive revenue. Let’s get back to our roots of sales and marketing; create dial with your message and leverage social media to find the appropriate audience. Track your efforts (’cash for clicks’ and ‘clicks to cash’), continue to enhance your message, and return value. In doing so, maybe you will use social media to make the world a better place…well…maybe for your happy, newly acquired customers anyway.

Amanda Vega | Revenue

For corporations, social media is about “show me the money”

There is little doubt now that social media is a necessary piece of any corporate marketing mix. As practitioners in the space for many years now, the importance of social media has been a conversation we have daily with clients and colleagues alike. The bigger question these days seems to be “how do we monetize social media?” In this blog throw down between three industry trenchers, we are discussing different points of view and answers to this same question. My take on the question: social media is about the money more than anything else.

Of course it goes without saying that there is value in social media that goes far beyond revenue. Brand extension, reputation management, connecting with your clients in a real way, and the immense on-the-spot market research you gain when actually engaging in social media (beyond having a Facebook fan page, people…) are incredible and should certainly be assigned a value. And we can all argue that extension of reach and visibility drives profitability – at least in theory. But that’s just not enough.

When we are sitting in front of the decision maker at a client who has to answer to his or her boss, or worse, a board of directors, the only thing that matters is whether or not you can assign actual monetary gain to the engagement. Businesses are responsible for generating profit, period.

Our social media management engagements simply have to be tied to a revenue stream – one way or another. And all of the fluff explanations about branding are of no interest to the stockholders or the CEO. They may say so in nice little PR snippets, but when you peel away the onion, it’s about the money. So how do you tie social media to revenue? There are a few things to consider.

1. You can tie your efforts into trackable things like custom URLs, coupons, and actions such as submittals of receipts from purchase for prize. This ties directly into sales.
2. You can use social media to drive people into stores. And more importantly, if you are product who is at the hands of a distributor or chain, you can use the reports on reach you gain in social media to vie for better shelf space or position in the stores – which drives sales.
3. The proper use of real social media can cut market research prices way more than half – which decreases your overall spending – allowing for more profit margin.
4. If you engage real zealots for your brand on a daily basis you can create the same (or better) reach and frequency than most ad campaigns which cost far more that engaged social media…adding to the bottom line and ROI measures.
5. Social media doesn’t have the same costly fees associated with it that changing a print campaign or TV ad does if your message is failing – and as a bonus, they don’t require as much in terms of revenue to test or create the original messages to begin with.

At the end of the day, you can monetize social media. It’s not as hard as you may think – actually social media is more trackable than most traditional media. And while the added benefits of social media (brand extension, share of voice, etc.) are important, they are not the MOST important – at least not to the CEO, or our paying clients. If I can’t associate an ROI with real numbers, then they aren’t going to buy. At all.

There has long been controversy about Nestle. The issues started in the 70’s with boycotts surrounding their formula and products for various reasons.  And while boycotts are not new, they are particularly interesting and additionally fueled now with the increasingly widespread use and acceptance of social media.

In recent weeks, Nestle has found themselves in an all out war (although in some cases seemingly a one sided battle) with one of the most potent and well-trained armies in the world: the angry mom blogger. Nestle like many other companies made the decision to jump on the social media bandwagon. And like many of the brands we have come to know and love, they went about it wrong – and really not so socially. What ensued from what many would say was a good intended start is now a reputation and brand issue that goes far beyond what their internal teams and agencies can possibly fix at this point. And sorry, it’s not going away.

So here’s my free my open plea to Nestle: don’t run scared: embrace and PROPERLY use social media for both short and long term consumer management and interaction. And please call in qualified professionals to get you through this crisis. In the interim, here’s my pro-bono counsel:

1. Listen first. When engaging in social media, the first important step is to listen to the conversations. This does not mean just reading Google alerts and tweets about your brand, but instead listening to everything being said about your topics of interest and expertise across multiple mediums and tools.  Your goal is to take a honest look at sentiment and the active participants whom you may want to engage with for some time and begin to formulate (or tailor your existing marketing messaging around) an honest set of dialog with parameters for engagement around your topics.  A note on this: do NOT just listen to influencers. In social media, it’s about way more than “influencers.”
2. Create a master content document.  If you have taken an honest look at the conversations surrounding your brand, industry, and offerings, then you can take the most common conversations that are occurring – good and bad – and formulate, along with your marketing, PR, and IR team. (You can include your attorneys if you must, but be careful of getting to litigious in nature – this is real conversation, not debate.) If Nestle would have done this simple step, they would have already had in place the realities of the boycotts, formula issues, sugar hater sentiment, and the like and would have been prepared to IMMEDIATELY respond with their commentary rather than days later (like the SVP Scott Remy did.)  Sometimes in social media, the immediacy of response is the most important part – so be prepared with real conversation, good and bad. And this should happen 24/7 (more on that later.)
3. Create a solid, integrated social media plan.  A social media plan is really just an extension of your other efforts. Focus less on the technology, and more on the goals of the company. If Nestle’s goals are to extend brand, increase sales, and raise positive sentiment, then their plan should be tailored to just that. It seems though that the only “plan” was to jump into social media blindly and without a plan or assignment of duties. We bring in multiple teams from corporate, communications, and customer service for our clients, as well as experts in the industry. If you are publicly traded, like Nestle, then you should also bring in your investor relations expert and a compliance expert to navigate the laws for these entities. A big part of your plan should also include the parameters of how long, when, and when you are NOT going to respond to something. It is OK not to indulge people in banter that is mindless and has no merit. It is not OK to ignore a series of real complaints. There are sadly times you need to escalate something legally (defamation, illegal RTs, trademark issues and the like.) Put these parameters in your plan so the team knows how to respond.
4. Get a team on board and train them. For many of our clients there are not enough content writers or hours in the day to manage the deluge of social media. And while the tendency for most companies, like Nestle, is to put the SVP of Marketing on the front line, this is not possible unless you are going to actually change their job description and allocation of hours to manage the conversations. Typically, to do social media correctly, you need a team of 5 or more. For Nestle, our approach would have been a model of both internal and external participants.  A note here – the invitation to the bloggers could have been valuable in this instance. When they brought them out to talk AT them (under the guise of talking WITH them) they could have found existing Nestle advocates and offered them positions, much like we do for clients.  Ideally, you find people who are already immersed, already brand zealots, and already great writers. And you man the team 24/7.
5. Set up your profiles and publishing hub for reach. This is where most people start – selecting the tools. And that’s partially why they fail. At first, it doesn’t serve a company well to determine whether Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or CafeMom is the right TOOL. When you’ve listened carefully, you will find where your “influencers” are – and those shouldn’t be the most popular bloggers only, it should be wherever your customers live, period.  Only then can you determine what profiles you should create, etc. and how you should optimize them for the most reach.  One of Nestle’s failures was that they set up just one profile. While the tendency to do this makes sense, you are missing the niche conversations and the coverage.
6. Start talking, about everything. Social media is just like going to a party. You don’t talk to people at a party just about yourself and your interests. Instead, you build relationships through conversation of like interest.  So the team at Nestle should have had a team of people talking. Not talking just about Nestle, but talking about what moms, dads, kids, and chocolate lovers talk about.  You will find natural ways to insert your brand and your messaging (much like the appropriate time to tell someone at a party what you do/sell for a living.) And building those true relationships is how you gain a robust following, and great results.  The Nestle team talks about themselves too much. Take the conversation to something bigger.
7. Constantly monitor, respond, and interact. Use tools that are out there for monitoring – Google Alerts, Radian6, Collective Intellect, Sentiment Metrics, weblogs, etc.  Pay attention, DAILY to what’s going on. And if a conversation sparks – good or bad – jump in. Nestle and other big brands are infamous for taking too long to respond. Talk now. You’ve got your content document to guide you. When in doubt, be real and honest. If you don’t know something, respond as such and find an answer.
8. Embrace the lovers, and the haters. When a group of zealots get on a roll, listen to them and consider engaging them further. Sometimes your best voice is the loudest. If you are going to do an invitation to truly get to know your new audience – like Nestle did with their invitations, make sure it’s well-rounded, and that you are following the new FTC guidelines.  Inviting only top bloggers or “influencers” like Nestle did is ridiculous.  It contributes to the celebrity worship our country is too full of already.  Giving access to only these type of events promotes the close-mindedness that we should get AWAY from and why social media is as strong as it is (gives the little guy a voice.) Remember, access is currency – use it. Inviting excited mommy bloggers is usually no more honest than paying celebs to endorse you – pay attention to the newlaws here.  And think to yourself, how many of these “influencers” ever write negative reviews?

Know when to shut up.

For those of you that follow me on Twitter you know that I don’t shy away from personal opinion, banter, or heated conversation. I actually enjoy open dialog in person or online.  Yesterday, I posted something to the effect of whether or not I should post pictures to Facebook from a recent charity event I attended at the Playboy Mansion.  I was actually not even thinking of posting the pics (or at least the ones with the girls that were naked, but painted) but wanted to strike up the conversation – and bring more attention to the charity. This tweet of course brought up tons of response (“yes please” was the majority of responses) – good and bad. And as you hope REAL social media does – it instigated other thoughtful conversations that spread like rapid fire. This one post turned into conversations about modesty, teen promiscuity, being naked in general, liberal versus conservative views on nudity and porn, and of course breastfeeding.

Yes, breastfeeding.

Amidst all of the really colorful and interesting banter about the other topics there was a sudden deluge of commentary and tweets hammering at me and my followers about breastfeeding and some misguided thinking that I somehow didn’t support breastfeeding because I tweeted, and I quote “Sorry guys. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to publicly post pictures of naked breasts. I don’t want to expose anyone underage.”

And these weren’t tweets asking me to clarify, asking for clarification on my position, or even asking why I felt some way about breastfeeding (which I said NOTHING about.) It was puzzling to me, so I of course bantered back with my true opinion (I’m all for breastfeeding, but would appreciate some modesty when done in public) as well as questions to them about where they were coming from since their jabs didn’t even make sense given what I had said. Suddenly, a conversation where I was being cautious about nudity and young minds turned into, and I quote, “you are murdering mothers and young children with your body issues.”

Hmm…interesting. I wasn’t aware I had “body issues” except for being a tad (ok, @fuzionfitness) a bit overweight.

There were 87 tweets coming from 3 very angry “lactivists” (their word, not mine) in a course of 2 hours. None of them related to the original topic, and most of them ignored my responses about my position and the fact that they weren’t following me, so they were clearly not following the conversation (technically, they couldn’t be.) And all of this was fine and good, if not a waste of time, really.  I was really more floored that their angry outbursts and accusations were diminishing their true cause – they are extremists – and this is typical of extremists on any issue (thank goodness most people are truly moderate at the core.) And I was really angry when I dug into their tweets (again, they won’t follow you back – they only follow their brethren) and found that this behavior is basically this groups MO. I read through numerous instances where these tweeters are going after people with a vengeance- just from the very mention of the word “breast.”

And that’s what they do. They comb for posts with keywords and then jump in randomly, assuming your being negative about THEIR topic (likely using a sentiment search tool to help them so they don’t actually have to READ conversations or be open to REAL chatter) and then attack – in droves.

And most of all – what concerned me most was what I found when digging. One of these individuals had posted this to their followers: “RT @amandavega women that breastfeed should be caned” WHICH I NEVER SAID.

I was SHOCKED. I would never say anything like this. Not even close. But apparently, people do this sort of thing all the time. They post and us “RT @insertpersonhere bad message/defamatory comment/lie” and spread false information. Now for me, I’m lucky that I’m on top of my social media presence pretty readily and can monitor for things like this relatively easy. I’m also very zealous with our team and our clients about defamation, trademark and the like to protect reputation and have the position that we will unabashedly take legal action if something like this isn’t removed immediately for us our our clients.  (BE CLEAR HERE: I don’t condone removal of bad stuff like “amandavega is a bitch” or “tdhurst is a douchebag” – both real posts. I only believe and react to true legal issues like defamation or insight of illegal activity.)

But for most, this would be difficult for the average person, or the brand on Twitter. And it got me thinking about what we need to do to better protect our clients and their brands. As I did some digging today, I found instances where someone had said that “RT@majorcerealbrand we are going to put arsenic in our food starting oct 1” and also a tweet “RT @majorretailbrand we are pulling BRAND A off our shelves so buy BRAND B” – both of which are our clients. So clearly, this happens all the time, and because of a glitch with tracking software, and the fact that they at times misspell the brand name or miss the tweet name  because they use the description on the screen instead of the real twitter name, can be missed.

So a word to the wise, make sure you do at least check out angry banter and dig – just in case they are misquoting you or worse. And use tools like Tweetdeck or Tweetie and Google Alerts to monitor your brand. You never know when someone is going to kill your brand or spread lies through a simple fake retweet. Stay tuned for more updates on how individuals and companies can respond to Twitter bullies and Extremists in the coming days.

God save the boobs, and please breastfeed (just not completely naked in public.)

Let’s take first class seats on an airline. Now, it’s pretty common knowledge (I think) that domestic airlines do NOT provide as amazing of an experience that the international carriers do. Talk about Asian carriers, and you’re not even in the same ballpark. They just get it more.  However; I’m not sure even a seasoned business traveler realizes how much disparity there are among the domestic carriers in their offerings and experience.  Everyone knows that I’m a HUGE Continental fan (and no, they don’t pay me although I’m begging a lady who works for them that mentioned on Twitter that they were looking for social media – CALL US….please!)  And the past few weeks observations has made that even more so.  Here’s some things that Continental first class DOES offer that others do not. Specifically, I am speaking about Continental versus Delta/Northwest, and USAir – because that’s who I’ve traveled for the last month or so.  (I’d only travel my favorite airline if they offered routes from Phx to say LA without a stop via Houston!)

1. A newer fleet of planes.  I’ve heard the CEO of Continental talk about the youngest fleet of jets in his video on the plane, but it didn’t resonate until today.  A younger jet means less delays mechanically (like our hour long one today,) a much cleaner plane (the overhead bins in this old plane are disgustingly dirty,) a nice bathroom, and certainly more leg room – even in first class – substantially so.
2. Bigger planes – which are always better. USAir has way too many little planes for my taste. The same goes with the partners of Delta/Northwest where they try to sneak you onto a DC-10 plane for a 4 hour flight. If there’s only 3 seats in a row – then there’s not real first class. You’ve wasted your money, completely. And they should be ashamed.
3. Food is still served in first class, of course, but also in coach class on Continental. I think it’s absurd for an airline to even dare ask for $1200+ for a plane ticket in first class and NOT serve food. That completely diminishes one of the MAIN perks of first class.
4. The seats themselves. The older planes, and the ones run by Northwest especially are old scratchy cloth seats with really small arm rests, no entertainment or plug ins (more below on that) and are truly uncomfortable. Continental 1st class seats are leather.
5. Entertainment. Okay, so I’m still trying to figure out exactly which of Continental’s planes have the directTV in them. I know my 4:45 out of EWR or PHX typcially does – but I have yet to figure out which ones the other way do.  They should all be upgraded by the end of the year (so they say) but, still….I’ve never had an entertainment center, movie, or a plug on a USAir first class seat, and nor on Northwest. Now, on Delta, prior to merger, I could have sworn there was indeed some planes with these amenities.
6. Early boarding. Now, this could be different by airport, but USAir specifically allows kids on before first class. No bueno. (Don’t even get me started on why it’s ok for kids to scream on a plane, but I can’t be belligerent..and I have to sedate my dog, but you don’t have to sedate kids…) First class passengers should get on first, period.
7. Attitudes.  Finally – Continental attendants seem to still understand the concept of first class. Snotty or not, I should be made to feel like I bought the best seat in the house and treated as such. My paying 10 times the cost of everyone else which keeps the airlines afloat in many cases does indeed entitle me to a bit of extra effort. I should feel special. You should take my coat and ask if I’d like a bottle of water before departure. And keep asking.

So, I would venture to say that most aren’t aware of the differences in the nuances…so perhaps they are traveling first class on USAir or Delta (who btw used to be known for the BEST platinum member program in the nation) and have no idea what they are missing. Is that good or bad for business? With social media and PR being so easily accessible, you’d figure that our gap for comparison of products and services would broaden and make for more stringent competition through sheer volume of shared information. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. In businesses that are so big they have rights that small business never will (no bailout coming to a $5M company – sorry) they do get to decrease service and offerings while in some cases raising prices, and there’s no real consequence.

So before you think all first class is the same…do some research. Maybe it’s time for us to start interviewing airlines and make them earn our first class dollars…

Linda VandeVrede - Photo by Adam Nollmeyer, Phoenix Photographer

The following is a guest post from PR Consultant & Author, Linda VandeVrede

On most days I am really fascinated by public relations. There are a few things, however, that always seem to get under my skin and ruin the moment when I come across them. I call them my personal PR pet peeves.

1. Magazine websites with no helpful contact information at all. Women’s consumer magazines are the absolute worst. Many of these publications are based in New York City. Now I’m originally from the East Coast, and I still find their switchboard people incredibly rude.
2. Expensive directories with out-of-date information. These often sell for anywhere from $500 – $1500.  Whether you buy the print or online version, usually the great majority of contact information is completely wrong. You can’t trust them for accuracy. How many times have you called a contact in one of these directories, only to have them completely irritated that they are even listed?
3. People who call press releases a “PR,” as in, “Can you write a PR for me?”  PR means public relations.  It’s a field, not a document. ‘Nuff said.
4. Male executives I overhear saying, “I’ll get my PR girl to do that.” That’s when I want to put my hands on my hips and do my own Foghorn Leghorn impression:  “Boy, I say boy….”
5. Writing copy that has to have an approval list a mile long. Folks, we’re not creating the Magna Carta. The worst approval cycle was at a publicly held company I worked with that, honest-to-goodness, had a review list that included 11 people in two different states and two different timezones. Many times I wouldn’t get the information to write the material announcement until late in the afternoon. Eleven people have 11 different opinions about how copy should be written. Sometimes I think the only thing they didn’t change was the spelling of my name.

I probably have more than five peeves, but for some reason these are the ones that really steam up my reading glasses.