How To Make An Impact With Social Media (And Avoid Disaster)

This article originally appeared at American Express OpenForum

Simply put, social media needs to be built into marketing and consumer engagement pushes, and has to be part of any successful company's future plans. But to catch up and truly capitalize on the craze, you need a strategy.

In a recent Smartblog on Social Media poll, more than 77 percent of respondents reported their companies don't have any sort of formalized social media training process, while fewer than 20 percent said they did.

Charging employees with contributing content on social media platforms without addressing a few important considerations could waste a lot of time -- and tweets.

Here are some ways to make sure you, and your workers, are smart about social media:

1. Familiarize employees with the basics

Obvious? Yes. But it's the most important. This goes beyond directing employees to various social media sites or giving brief overviews of each. Instead, you should share your understanding of social media's functions, in general and specific to the platforms you're using. Make sure everyone has the same expertise, perhaps through a tutorial, and is prepared to use the sites.

2. Set the tone

Consistency is crucial when it comes to the messages you transmit to the public. If you have multiple people posting to Twitter or Facebook accounts, your followers and fans shouldn't be able to tell. Decide on a tone for your content and make sure each person with access to your social media accounts knows how to cultivate that standard voice. Also make sure to set parameters for what can be shared—if you want to keep it serious, be serious about banning funny links. If you'd like to keep it fun and light, make sure your employees know how to write with flair.

3. Know ways to maximize your impact

Social media is more than logging into your account and posting. There are ways to expand your reach and widen your audience, giving you a chance to boost business using free online tools—and who can complain about that? There are analytics programs you can integrate to your efforts, but for now, let's stay simple. Use hashtags—the words and phrases you see on Twitter with a pound sign ahead of them. Your tweets will appear in feeds alongside the other tweets with that hashtag. It's a great way to reach people who follow news in your industry, for example #marketing or #smallbusiness. Also, don't be shy about interacting with other users. If there are businesses you'd like to partner or share strategies with, find them and engage. The same doubly goes for consumers and clients. The bottom line: Make your presence known.

4. Discuss social media disasters

From Weinergate to Aflac, Twitter has brought both companies and individuals down a few notches. Remember that social media packs a punch—misusing it can erode the public's confidence in your company and their perception of who you are. Even though you might think it could never happen to you, it's important your employees understand the power they wield with social media, and why it's vital to stay appropriate online. Also make sure your employees know how to respond in case of a PR disaster or other snafu, when your customers will be counting on social media for updates.

5. Develop protocol

Know who's in charge of posting what, and when. It's the surest way to prevent double-posts and maintain streamlined professionalism in the Twittersphere and on Facebook. Maybe you divide posting duties by day or topic, but whatever the method, make sure everyone is clued in and understands.

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Here Are This Week's Winners And Losers In Media

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Welcome back.

The fall season kicked into full swing this week and along with it a bunch of new television shows. 

The good news is, so far there are more winners than not. 

That actually goes for media in general....plenty of people had a good week, and nobody had a really terrible one.  Unless you are a celebrity who likes to store naked pictures on themselves on their cell phone. 

And then there's Anderson Cooper's new show.  Oh my.

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Twitter Wants To Be (And Will Be) The Next Big Media Company

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Yesterday Twitter announced some big numbers. The important ones:

100 million active users (i.e. who log in once a month), and 50 million daily logged in users.40% of active users don't tweet.Twitter is focused on advertising as its business model. They do data licensing deals and the like, but they're focused on advertising as their huge business.

What this all works out to: Twitter wants to be (and will be) the next big media company.

Twitter is basically TV at this point: unlike social networks, most people are here to follow brands, entertainers and events they like, not interact with their friends (although they also do that, but it increasingly seems to be secondary), and will increasingly do so with commercial interruption. 

Is that vision realistic? In a word, yes. 

For a few reasons:

Twitter won't stop growing. Twitter had 400 million unique visitors to just Twitter.com last month. Twitter active users are up 80% from the beginning of the year which, given how big Twitter already is, is astounding. It seems that Twitter is both adding new users and making existing users more active. Given Twitter's network effect, there is no reason to believe that growth won't continue.Twitter is an amazing broadcast medium. The power of live, microchunked content is amazing. As we saw during events like the death of Osama Bin Laden, Twitter is often both the fastest and most entertaining and interesting way to follow live events. People can follow exactly the people and brands they're interested in. To anyone with a phone, Twitter is your world in your pocket.   

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Here Are This Summer's Biggest Winners And Losers In Media

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Summer 2011 is officially finished -- taking with it one of the busiest hot-weather news cycles in recent memory.

And where there's constant news, there's a heap of winners and losers.

Sometimes -- ahem, Piers Morgan -- someone who looks destined to be a summer loser comes out way ahead.

Other times -- in Rupe and Wendi's case -- you find a big loser and a big winner under one roof.

Now that's what we call a crazy summer.

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French Startup Media Company FrenchWeb Raises Almost $1 Million From French Entrepreneurs

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FrenchWeb, a blog and mini-media empire focused on the fast-growing world of French startups, just raised an angel round of almost $1 million from 17 French web entrepreneurs. 

Founded only in 2010, FrenchWeb says it had 270,000 Google Analytics unique visitors in June. The site, which started out as a simple series of video interviews, often breaks news and has quickly become a must-read resource for French startup folks, and this investment just speaks to how well the French startup ecosystem is doing. 

As far as we know, no plans from founder Richard Menneveux to raise his own venture fund. 

Don't Miss These 12 Super-Hot French Startups ?

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Microsoft Finally Admits Windows Media Center Is A Dud (MSFT)

Microsoft has admitted that people just don't use the Media Center interface in Windows all that much.

Media Center gives people a special remote-controllable interface for watching TV and video, listening to music, and viewing photos.

It was introduced as a special version of Windows XP almost a decade ago, and later put into the high-end versions of Vista and Windows 7. PC makers sold a lot of copies of Windows with Media Center, and it has a devoted and vocal fan base.

But toward the end of today's post on the Building Windows 8 blog, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky shot down comments from Media Center enthusiasts who claimed that lots of people use it.

In fact, only 6% of Windows users ever open Media Center, and most just look at it for a minute or two. As Sinofsky wrote:

Our opt-in usage telemetry shows that in July, Windows Media Center was launched by 6% of Windows 7 users globally with the heaviest usage in Russia, Mexico, and Brazil (frequency and time). However, most people are just looking around; only one quarter (25% of 6%) of these people used it for more than 10 minutes per session (individual averages), and in 59% of Media Center sessions (by these 6% of users) we see almost no activity (less than a minute or two of usage). TV was the most common scenario we observed, and not surprisingly, traditional media (DVD and CD) are less common (and declining over time) than streaming and file-based content. By comparison, Media Player (66% of Windows users in July) and IE (88%) are popular rendering engines for all types of media content, including an increased volume of "premium" and streaming content.

Sinofsky insisted that Microsoft is still committed to Media Center, and it will be released in Windows 8 in some form. But it won't be in the early test versions -- including the build that Microsoft is showing off at its BUILD developers conference later this month.

In the same post, Sinofsky also addressed the feedback Microsoft has gotten about some parts of the Windows 8 interface, like the Windows Explorer, and said that the company is already making some changes based on that feedback.

Whether or not you agree with all the design choices Microsoft is making, this blog is proving to be a very interesting spotlight into how Microsoft works.

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Here Are The Media Industry Figures Who Dominated Vanity Fair's New Establishment List

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The Vanity Fair New Establishment list has come out, and this year, it's heavily dominated by media figures like Lady Gaga.

(And, we promise, some people with more traditional roles in journalism, Hollywood and music.)

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European Social Media Powerhouse Wikio Changes Name And Focus, Raises Big Round

  x You have successfully emailed the post. Wikio Group, the European social media powerhouse, has a big announcement this morning. It's changing its name and focus and is raising almost $25 million. 

Wikio is a rollup of social media properties by Pierre Chappaz, who previously sold price comparison engine Kelkoo to Yahoo for over $400 million.

The company started out as a Digg-like aggregator but it seems that, as in the US, the aggregator model never broke past a niche appeal to bloggers and tech early adopters. Wikio also acquired Overblog, a popular free blogging service, and announced a plan to start a Demand Media-like product.

Now Wikio is changing its name to Ebuzzing, the social media marketing company it bought and which brought in the lion's share of its business. Ebuzzing brings together brands and bloggers for advertising and promotions. It seems that Wikio (now Ebuzzing) is turning itself into a social media advertising network. 

The pivot was probably at least partially brought on by Google's search algorithm revamp, which cut Wikio's traffic in half.

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7 Deadly Sins Of Social Media

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Steph Parker is a PR & social media professional working in Philadelphia.

Social media’s been a great tool for marketing, networking, and sharing information. This relatively new technology has truly revolutionized the way businesses, brands, and communities interact with one another. When used right, it starts engaging discussions. It informs people of the latest developments. It helps businesses compete in this global economy. When used incorrectly, it’s an incredibly inefficient use of resources, simply put.

See if you’re committing any of the digital “sins” from this list, and learn how to fix them!

1. Assault

Are you constantly sending out tweets? Is your Facebook wall covered with links, photos, and your latest Foursquare check-ins? Just as much as you dislike being bombed with status updates, your followers do, too. If you’ve found a great link, or have important news to share, prioritize. Pick which updates are most important to your networks, and then create a schedule in which to post them. Unless you’re a newswire or a “broadcaster” who has big social influence in the digital world, hold off on constantly sending posts. Your networks will be more apt to listen to what you have to say if you aren’t constantly doing the talking.

2. Neglect

While you can’t monopolize your networks’ newsfeeds, you can’t disappear from them, either. Remember the quiet kid in class? The few times she raised her hand, the teacher usually didn’t notice because it was such a rarity. That same principle applies. You don’t need to become a social butterfly and initiate every single discussion, but participating to some capacity is key. If people visit your page and notice that it’s bare or outdated, they’ll pass on by without looking back. Take a page out of Assault’s book and try outlining a schedule of posts if you have trouble talking on the fly.

3. Obscurity

There are lots of cool things on the Internet. However, if you’re trying to build credibility as a marketing genius, posting an abundance of links to funny cat videos won’t help you (no matter how cute they are). People should be able to get a sense of what you’re an authority on when they visit your page, and read your posts. If you’re the CEO at a PR firm who has a love of music, include your interest somewhere in your bio. Share a link to a new song you like, or a concert you’re seeing from time to time, but don’t let that lead the conversation. Your main mission is to showcase how much experience and knowledge you have in your industry. Follow the classic 80/20 dieting rule: adhere to the plan 80% of the time, and indulge 20%.

4. Detachment

Remember how our last example involved a CEO highlighting an interest in music? That’s just one of the many ways you can incorporate a little of your personality into your messages. If you have a sarcastic streak, make your next tweet about SEO witty (if you find a way). It’s easy to hide behind a computer screen and let the web do most of the work, but people want to talk to other people, not robots on auto-pilot. No matter how informative or important your post is, remember to be approachable. More often than not, people are guided by the same principles they follow in real life for befriending someone online.

5. Inconsistency

As you read earlier, social media is great for getting conversations going. While you should be contributing, don’t simply pose a question to your network, and then disregard the responses you get. If someone makes a thoughtful point, respond to it. Re-post it and elaborate on it. Take the topic to a new level. Some of the most valuable information out there is found when people come together to express their points of view. One of the key things to remember is that social media is social; the more people talk about something, the more of an impact it has. The more you perpetuate the discussion and make intelligent contributions, the more respect you’ll command from your audience.

6. Disconnection

Engage in a variety of networks and services, and give people multiple ways to connect with you! You probably wouldn’t shop at a store that only had one type of shirt and one type of pants, right? You’d rather have a few racks of clothing to browse through to get a better sense of the store. This same idea is true for using social networking sites. The more types of services you use, the better represented you are online. You can use a site like Last.fm to connect over music preferences, while using a bookmarking site like Digg to share your favorite news stories. Your credibility won’t become muddled as long as you remember the specific objective of each service, and post with a purpose.

7. Quantitativeness

It’s not all about the numbers. Sure, to a point you should keep your follower count (and Klout score) in mind, but it shouldn’t be the top source of motivation for your posts. Whether you’re in the PR industry or not, the real motivation for posting should be building relationships with new audiences, and maintaining relationships with old ones. Social media ROI is significant, but only if you weigh qualitative aspects more heavily. It’s easy to “Like” a Facebook page, and it’s just as easy to hide it from sight. You’re still quantifiable as a fan, but qualitatively you’re not actively engaged or listening. See the difference?
Social media is a lot like dating: you don’t want to appear disinterested, but you don’t want to come on too strong, either. If you make calculated moves at the right times, let your personality shine, and focus more on the conversation than the end-result, you’ll build a strong, healthy relationship with your networks.

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WikiLeaks Steps Up Release Of US Cables, Saying It's Disappointed By Lack Of Media Coverage

WIKILEAKS HAS STEPPED up the publication of its cache of over 250,000 United States diplomatic cables – publishing over 130,000 messages in the past few days, without the assistance of its ‘media partners’.

Marking nine months since it began the publication of the cables, the site said it had published over half of its total trove of 251,287 messages – expressing disappointment at how media coverage of the cables had trailed off.

“Despite the amount of material yet to be reported on, mainstream media organisations in Europe and the United States have slowed their rate of publishing Cablegate-derived stories,” a WikiLeaks statement read.

“This has led to the misperception in Europe and the US that WikiLeaks has been less active in recent months. In fact, WikiLeaks has stepped up its activity, establishing new partnerships on each continent with local media organisations”.

The statement added that the decision to accelerate the publication of the cables was taken in accordance with its policy of maximising the coverage and impact of its material.

The site, which originally began publishing the cables with four media partners, including the Guardian, has since established links with 90 partners worldwide including the Irish Independent, which published stories on Irish-related cables in May and June.

The Guardian itself, despite being one of the original partners, has not published a Cablegate-themed story since late May, and is known to have fallen out with WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange over its coverage of the cables.

The new batch of cables has proven controversial in its own right, with WikiLeaks coming under scrutiny for its decision to publish the new cables in an unredacted form which exposes the names of diplomatic sources.

While WikiLeaks’ cables had previously blocked out the names of such sources, whose comments and conversations often formed the bulk of messages sent within the US diplomatic network, the recent cables have left the names intact for public view.

The Los Angeles Times quoted the president of Human Rights First, a non-profit organisation, which said it was “deeply concerned” at the move to reveal the names of diplomatic sources, who may now “face reprisals by oppressive governments”.

Australia’s attorney-general Robert McClelland also criticised WikiLeaks for publishing a cable containing the uncensored names of a number of terror suspects.

The BBC quoted McClelland as saying the publication of the 23 names, all of whom were believed to be linked to Yemeni terrorist groups, “could compromise Australia’s national security, or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats”.

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It Is Amazing How Many Ways Steve Jobs Changed Media

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During Steve Jobs' run as head of Apple, the creations of his company impacted a huge number of industries.

Perhaps the most affected, however, was the media world.

From the rise of the personal computer through the iPad, Apple's white devices popped up everywhere and changed the face of the media landscape.

More often than not, they led the way and others were forced to follow.

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First direct's five steps to getting started with social media

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Posted 18 August 2011 11:56am by Graham Charlton with 2 comments

In a series of three posts, I've been talking to key figures at first direct about how the bank has integrated social media across its marketing efforts.

Having looked at how first direct made the case for social media in the first post, first direct’s head of brand Natalie Cowen presents five steps for getting started with social media... 

At first direct we're now roughly two years into our social media development strategy. We were one of the first financial brands in the UK to really take social media seriously and I think it's fair to say that, had we known two years ago everything we know now, we would have been able to move a lot quicker.

Ultimately, we'd have started seeing the benefits to the organisation sooner.

Our engagement in social media has changed our business for the better and this post is about some of the challenges we faced, the mistakes we made and, where we found solutions, some of those as well.

For us this was about matching our ambitions in the space with our capacity to deliver on these. We soon acknowledged that whilst it was the right thing to do to "think big" our initial steps would have to be quite small and manageable.

Amanda talked in the last post about how to build a case for social media internally and this is a crucial part of getting any organisation into the right place before you take any steps at all.

There needs to be an understanding within the organisation that this is something we want to do and that's partly making a strong case and partly showing people the correlation between some small manageable first steps and a big, exciting vision. 

When we started out we wanted to use social media primarily as a tool to help us revitalise the brand and make it feel more human and approachable.

We knew we had customer service that we could safely shout about and we knew that our customers could be great ambassadors for the brand if we could engage them in the right way.

Therefore, what we had was a set of goals and a very clear set of assets. Social media would then be about how we linked up the two and all our measurement objectives were about making the link very clear.

In every organisation there are people for whom social media represents a risk rather than an opportunity.

To start with, there's an almost complete lack of case law so legal departments are understandably nervous around it. In the financial services sector we operate in a highly regulated environment so there were issues with compliance as well.

However, as we got to grips with these, it became clear that the vast majority of these objections were either conceptual i.e. details of what were actually doing hadn't been considered, or they were objections to very specific details.

Either way, engaging in specific details allowed us to either allay fears or find ways round specific detailed objections.

For a lot of people social media comes with a lot of preconceptions and it doesn't help that it often gets wrapped up in acronyms and pseudo science.

The truth is, social media is a tool box for communication and for the vast majority of people there is at least one aspect of their day to day professional life that could be made more efficient or effective if it was done using a "social" tool.

Once people see that social media is all about making life easier and better it's much easier to shift some of those pre-conceptions.

No matter how well prepared you are, no matter how well researched and well read you are, it takes time to build up a strategy that will deliver real value to the business.

Use this time to experiment and find the things that work for you, work out what about them worked and build it into the strategy as you go forward.

Econsultancy's Social Media and Online PR Report, produced in association with bigmouthmedia, is the most comprehensive study of its kind around the strategies, tactics and websites companies are using to harness social media for marketing, sales, customer service and other business objectives.

The research, based on a survey of more than 800 companies, benchmarks budgets, resourcing, measurement and barriers to success ... plus much more.

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Social media costs businesses $65k a year. Or does it?

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Posted 16 August 2011 17:13pm by Chris Lake with 8 comments

WebTitan has built a tool that has estimated that allowing your staff to use social media would cost the average company $65k a year, according to a report on Silicon Republic.

But is this really the case? And aren’t there plenty of benefits to be had from allowing your staff to use social media in the workplace?

The tool is based on the notion that staff might spend 20 minutes a day on social networking sites. It then looks at the average salary and performs a rudimentary calculation. Obviously it was created to help sell WebTitan’s filtering software, which will block access to the likes of Facebook. But as far as I’m concerned, that isn’t a wise thing to do for a number of reasons. 

The idea that social networking always costs businesses money is entirely wrong. Econsultancy has definitely benefited from allowing staff to freely access social media platforms, and we encourage new employees to develop their own presence on sites such as Twitter.

Here’s why I think firms need to adopt a laissez-faire approach to the use of social media in the workplace…

Transforming organisational culture remains a hell of a challenge for many firms, especially the bigger ones. In a job ad I wrote recently I specifically stated that candidates should not want or need to be micromanaged. Forward-thinking companies don’t hire people to monitor their every move. They hire brainy people who are able to exceed expectations. Staff should be trusted to do their best for the company. If an employee spends hours using social media to comment on videos of kittens then surely that person isn’t right for the organisation? 

Cultivating trust is essential. What is the cost to businesses that do not trust their staff? I’d love to see some data on staff satisfaction and retention rates, with hands-off companies compared to those that impose lock-down rules. Restricting access to social media (and other) websites might actually cost you money due to a higher-than-it-might-be staff turnover rate. 

When I started to use Twitter my status updates were almost entirely related to my profession. But my Twitter account is very much a personal account and as time has elapsed I have broadened the scope of my tweets, to reflect a wider range of interests. 

This is good and bad, I guess, and is why I wanted Twitter to introduce the kind of filters that Google has created with Google+ (Circles). The point is, I’m not simply retweeting the @econsultancy Twitter feed, and because of this, my followers have also widened in scope. The reach I have is not purely linked to my role at Econsultancy. So when I share Econsultancy links they’re being pushed in front of new people who might not otherwise have been tuning in. This is one way in which we have raised awareness of our brand.

I’m not a big fan of outsourcing your social media tasks. There should be ownership and participation within the business, as I believe that your employees are pretty much your greatest asset when it comes to communicating with people (via social media platforms or any other channel). 

Questions directed at Econsultancy are answered by individuals, and not just from the @econsultancy Twitter account. This is a far more personal approach and helps people to build new connections.

What better way is there of training up your staff in the art of social media than to allow them to play around with their own Twitter account? Maybe you think it doesn’t matter, but if you’ve bought into the idea that social media might be beneficial to your business then why not encourage staff to jump in? 

Think about it: would you really want novice managing your brand’s Twitter account? Isn’t it better for them to mess around with a personal account first? When I joined Econsultancy I set up a blog, partly because I wanted to, but also because I wanted a platform for experimentation. It helped me to learn, and it ensured that I made no killer mistakes on the Econsultancy website!

I suggest that you undertake some social media training for employees. It may seem like common sense to you but not everybody is up to speed, and your brand may require different guidelines to ours. We're currently compiling a kind of house stylesheet for Twitter, much in the same way that we have one for our blog. It is intended for internal use but we may share it. We already have a very simple social media policy, and there's a more in-depth Twitter best practice guide to check out (the latter is subscriber access).

Who takes an hour for lunch these days? Who doesn’t come in early or work late when required? How many of us check and respond to work-related emails in our leisure time? Who charges their employer for this kind of thing?

I believe in a big picture approach to social media measurement, though you can also look at the detail if it helps. What’s missing is a framework for measuring the impact on the brand. This is something I’m keen to develop. Such a framework will be anchored around comparisons and correlations over time, using data from multiple channels (rather like measuring a TV ad campaign, only far more accurate!). 

Measurement approaches may be a curve ball. Rather than wondering about what social media might cost your business, you should be thinking about the costs of having a dictatorial organisational culture. I believe that your staff can play an important role in creating a bigger social media footprint, and as such you should encourage them to develop their own presence on platforms like Twitter. They will love you for it, and your brand should benefit in the long run. Staff that abuse the system were probably bad hires in the first place. Those that you can trust will become the best brand ambassadors that you can imagine.

What do you think? Is social media a cost, or an opportunity?

The Twitter for Business report is aimed at companies and individuals who are thinking of joining Twitter and want to find out more about the social platform, as well as people who are currently using Twitter and want a deeper understanding of best practice.

The 90-page document covers best practice tactics, including statistics and case studies, as well as practical tips on getting started with Twitter and how to engage with your followers. It also includes the findings of consumer research conducted by Econsultancy using Toluna QuickSurveys.

By reading our best practice guidelines, we’ll help you to get the most value from the social platform by understanding Twitter etiquette and avoiding common Twitter mistakes.

Chris Lake is Director of Innovation at Econsultancy, an entrepreneur and a long-term internet fiend. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin.

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