My Social Media Policy

More and more companies are starting to utilize social media to help in marketing, public relations, and customer service.  How the companies choose to use these tools (social media) varies by each company and what they hope to achieve.  They need to have goals and a target in mind when they start so the company can plan a proper approach and strategy in the form of a social media policy.





Most companies now have a social media policy for their employees to follow
The policies allow for a company to maintain some control in order to keep their brand image strong and achieve the objectives it wants to achieve.  Understandable they do not want employees trashing the company or its consumers  For most companies what an employee does online can be seen as a representative of their employer, so what the employee tweets or says online some may view it as what the company tweets.  The social media policy doesn't need to be long or difficult to understand.  Just a way to educate the employees that even on their personal social media accounts they are representing the company and brand. That being said the employees should still be allowed to have an online social life without having to worry about what their employer will think or do.

For a corporate social media account the policy should be more complete with more restrictions and expectations.  Especially for an account that is managed by numerous employees it would be impossible for a manager to approve of each post if you want the account to be social and engaging.  Have basic ground rules and let employees be free as long as in line with those rules.

Be prepared for something to go wrong
Mistakes happen, whether it is a rogue post/tweet that was meant to be on a personal account accidentally on the company account or an account being hacked.  Have part of your policy be what to do when this happens and handle it appropriately. A great example of this is when someone from The American Red Cross twitter account tweeted about #gettingslizzered they handled it appropriately.  They did not fire the person responsible for that tweet, instead they acknowledged it addressing the concerns some people had with the tweet and came out better for doing so.

I use social media in a way that fits me
I do not currently have to follow any corporate social media policy but I still have a personal social media policy. Overtime my social media policy has evolved from what it was a year ago (How I Use Twitter) to now.  By now if I wanted to I could have over a thousand followers, but I am not on social media for the numbers (or a Klout score).  I have started following more people, and I admit it I am no longer reading every tweet.  But what I do use now is lists, I have numerous lists, some public some private.  It is a hierarchy much like my Google Plus circles some circles and lists I check once an hour others I check every few minutes when I am online and not doing something I feel is more important.  The lists allow me to manage my social media accounts better and achieve my own goals and get what I want out of each social media platform.

Part of my policy is how I represent myself
Unlike Shelby who chooses not to swear, I think it is okay to occasionally swear on your personal account, if you feel comfortable doing so.  What I want to be online on social media is the same as I am in real life.  I do swear on twitter like I do in real life, but when I do it is for a reason and I do not do it often.  But I won't swear on LinkedIn, just like I would not swear in a formal setting.  What I do a lot of is filtering I type out a tweet reread it and than delete it.  Even if the tweet would be well received by most with my sense of humor I would rather not have it out there and possibly offend someone. I have been debating whether I should continue to filter myself online but feel it is best to continue to do so.

Does your company have a plan to achieve its social media goals? 
Does your company have a social media policy for you to follow?
Do you have a personal social media policy?
Do you filter yourself online or in real life?


Photo Credit to Webtreats

Social Media Experiment Part 1

In an effort to get some comments and increase my interaction with my online community I will be posing a question across my social media accounts to see where I get the most interaction then I will share the results with you, my readers.

The most difficult part is coming up with a good question that will invoke a response to comment. I have known for a while what I want the question to be, just not how to word it. I choose this question because I never get the same answer, and it is hard for me to answer about myself. It can be my Achilles heel of job interviews, so your input and views would be highly appreciated.

The Question:

What adjectives would you use choose to describe me (Raymond)? Or what personal impression(s) do you have of me?

If you can give a reason to why you pick or feel that way, and I will be glad to give my opinion of you as well. If you never meet me that is fine since when I write I try to insert my persona into it. It's human nature to have an opinion on anything and everything and I want to hear it. When I write want to be honest, so if you do meet me in real life you will get the same guy who is writing this blog, or sending out those tweets, or posting stuff to LinkedIn. (Is that the correct verbage for LinkedIn?) I want to come across the same on all medians, well maybe more laid back on Twitter.

Thanks for your input

If you want me to give you my opinion of you feel free to ask it in the comments.

How I Use Twitter

A few months ago I posted 5 Easy Ways to get me to follow you (on Twitter). This is a sort of follow up to that post.

I connect with my followers

Twitter is a wonderful service that has allowed me to find many people who I now would consider friends. For me Twitter is a community, we have similar interests and I genuinely care about them and in most aspects what they are doing. Twitter and the people on Twitter continue to amaze me with their generosity with all the charity events going on like #saveteecycle.

I read all the tweets and click on the links

As @TheBrandBuilder tweeted: I no longer need an RSS reader. You guys are my meta filter. THIS is my RSS feed now. Which for me is very true, the individuals I follow keep me up to date with the latest and greatest blog posts, videos, and current events. I have recently unfollowed a significant amount of individuals, why would I do that? I like to read all of the tweets, I have the time and get not only enjoyment but value from them (well most of them). I was not getting what I wanted from some people I was following and the extra tweets in my timeline were making it difficult for me to keep up on everyone else's tweets. This is different from individuals I follow with now dormant accounts. I will not unfollow them, they are not posing any problems or clogging up my timeline. As well as the possibility they will come back and start tweeting again and I will be unaware of this for some time.

Others follow an army

I know some individuals following thousands of people on Twitter, nothing is wrong with that. They are not able to read or keep up on everyone's tweets but they do manage a lot more @ replies and mentions that they are able to read. I feel that these people will miss out on an awesome tweet or link. Most of the good tweets and links get retweeted anyway right, that is true but I would rather not take the chance of missing it, or being the person to RT it. Those that follow more than they can keep up with also are the ones using twitter clients to help keep up and get the important information. I use TweetDeck as my client but also use Clusterr. My previous post on Clusterr: Is the next step in Social Media Clusterr?

For me its about quality not quantity

I follow the people who provide me with entertainment, joy, and value. I don't need to follow everyone because it is popular or they are popular. I enjoy who I am following and do add others when we have a common interest or I enjoy what they tweet.

Which camp do you fall into, do you follow a few or a lot? Do you read or try to read everyones tweets or just look a few times a day? Anything else you would like to add?

Satire A Dangerous Slope: BP Case Study

This post has less to do with the actual BP Brand and more to do with the individual who created the fake account BPGlobalPR on Twitter.

What has BP done right so far?

In the disaster that is the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is a PR nightmare, BP has managed to do a few things correctly from a PR standpoint.

• Have paid for a google sponsored link that comes out on top for searches of BP Oil Spill with what BP is doing to fix the problem
• Going to their homepage auto redirects to a splash page where they show what BP is doing for a Gulf of Mexico response
• Created a twitter account of BP_America to help people speak out on the oil spill.

BP not managing or monitoring its brand.

While it is great that BP has made its brand and tried to take control of it, because if you don't someone else will. And someone else has done so, a twitter account BPGlobalPR made by someone who was upset with how BP was handing the oil spill situation. I am not the first to notice this account or how "real" BP hasn't or if it has I have yet to see anything about it. Some other bloggers have touched on this subject including Samir Balwan, John Taylor, and Mark Smith, and The Brand Builder himself Olivier Blanchard. I recommend once finished reading this blog that you read their incites on the situation. As for me this blog post is more on the Spoof/Satire point of view and what that individual is doing in response to the oil crisis.

Edit: According to Ad Age BP is aware of this account and the outrage that this person has towards the whole situation is understandable. Also looks like the account will not be taken down but might have to change slightly to make itself more clear that it is not a BP account.

Using Satire...for the good?

The fake and in my opinion hilarious twitter account of BPGlobalPR shows what social media and twitter is capable of. The fake account has over twice as many followers as the real account and many people on twitter do not recognize that it is a satirical account which devalues and damages BP and its brand. But with the over 10,000 twitter followers the individual behind the account is able to use the account and the followers to not only vent and point out how bad BP screwed up the situation but also do some good. What good could come from impersonating an actual brand. selling t-shirts. The fake account links to a site where you can get a "free" BP Cares t-shirt with $25.00 shipping. The good is the owner claims "All proceeds from these satirical shirts will be given to charities involved in cleaning, preserving, and rescuing the gulf and its animals.
We are printing shirts as quickly as possible, please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping." Now it would be great if that is true but by coming off as a fake account/impostor/con man it is hard for some people me included to believe that all proceeds will go to charity. Now they very well may which would be awesome and that individual who used Twitter to address their frustration at BP is doing plenty of good.

Edit: It looks like the proceeds will go to a charity of Healthy Gulf.

How is this a dangerous slope?

Where is the line that should not be crossed? Impersonating a brand and using their trademark and image is illegal. I am waiting to see what BP will do to the individual who made the account, and if other people who are upset with the situation also will create a satire account at BP or another companies expense.

Were you familiar with the fake BP account? What should be done to this account? What should BP and other companies do to make sure that this doesn't happen again or to them?

Is the next Evolution of Social Media Clusterr?

What is Clusterr?

Taken from The Clusterr Blog: “Here is a very brief synopsis of what Clusterr is:

Clusterr solves the information overload inherent to social media streams. The application parses the users Twitter timeline looking for Tweets that contain links. Clusterr resolves the short URLs, identifies and categorizes the media behind those URLs and then organizes & sorts the content in “Clusterrs” by type: Videos, Pictures, Web Sites and Music. Each piece of media is presented visually using a thumbnail image.

Clusterrs can be viewed chronologically or by popularity of content (number of tweets including the same media URL). Users can consume the media directly in Clusterr, as well as use Clusterr to share the content (through tweeting or re-tweeting) or by saving the media into a Custom Clusterr and then sharing that cluster with their friends. Additionally, Clusterr functions as a Twitter client, allowing users to send tweets with or without media directly from the web site.

We started Clusterr on the web, however our simple yet effective design was created specifically with cross platform applications in mind. Currently Clusterr is in development for the world wide web (Currently in Private Beta). We have also just begun cross platform development for smaller and larger screens. Cluster is the brain child of Kevin Pereira (Host and Executive Producer of G4′s Attack of the Show and Women of the Web) and Joshua Krane (Co-Founder of G4tv and formerly G4′s SVP of New Media and Interactive) and was designed and built lovingly in Los Angeles.”

What does that mean?

Clusterr takes the hassle out of your social media and twitter streams. Instead of having hundreds of links that will redirect you to another website Clusterr provides a way to view this additional information in one place without the need to click on each link. With Clusterr you can easily view all media files buried in your twitter time line, this includes videos, pictures, web sites, and music. Clusterr is similar to TweetDeck. TweetDeck has the ability to have pop ups for digital media, whether it is a picture from yfrog, twitpic, or another place or a video from youtube that when clicked on overlays it on top of your twitter stream. Unlike TweetDeck Clusterr has all the media on one screen where it is easy to view and access.

To simplify this here is a short demo video of Clusterr showing what it does and can do. I am unable to embed the video despite my best efforts.

Clusterr is not a replacement for twitter or twitter clients, yet.

Currently Clusterr doesn’t contain a feed, but maybe it will in the future? But what it is capable of doing is resolving all the links that are included in each tweet to something that is manageable. By using Clusterr I no longer need to click on every other tweet since there is a link it will show me what that link is.

An evolution? The Future?

This is not the big thing for social media, but rather it is another tool to better utilize the current social media. Clusterr makes managing your twitter feed easier similar to HootSuite and TweetDeck. But it doesn’t replace them, not yet at least. Being a beta version a final verdict can’t be stated yet but here are some add ons to Clusterr I would like to see in the future/ full version.

• Integrate with Facebook and other social media streams to be an all in one place
• Allow to tweet and update profile/status from the site
• Include a feed with the rest of the tweets not just ones with links - Now included
• Have a better preview of what Clusterr is, screen shots and a sample video
• Faster uploads, not waiting an hour from time tweeted to seen
  

I will continue to use TweetDeck because I have my columns all set up and most links and items will pop up on screen without a redirect with one click. Clusterr has a lot of possibility depending on the social media integration in the future.

Edit: Update on Clusterr

Wonderful customer service, tweeted a problem and got a response in very little time, and the response was helpful. You are also now able to tweet from Clusterr which is a major plus, still can't see a time stamp or delete seen items. Clusterr has been very helpful in saving time and allowing me to read more tweets and see more content.

Addition Edit (8/12/2010):

Clusterr has been continually updating and adding numerous features including some that I have suggested in this post. I am still loyal to TweetDeck because that is what I am now use to, but I have been logging in and checking out Clusterr almost everyday and like how it is developing and where it is going.

Are you interested in trying out Clusterr? What do you see as the next evolution in Social Media? What would you like to see added to Clusterr to make you want to use it?

5 Easy Ways to get me to follow you on Social Media (Twitter)

My followers on Twitter have been steadily increasing, mostly with spam bots and people I have no interest in following or don't know. That and my twitter time line (Twitstream) is pretty full especially when I get to it at lunch break. Usually I don't have time to read all the posts but I do click on a few of the people I follow to see what they posted. A few that I always read include Coalesce, FitMke, Tom Snyder (triveraguy), and Jim Raffel. The reason why I check these 4 before any others is they tweet great content and links about Marketing and Social Media and for Fit Milwaukee they offer great tips for running. They pertain to me and my interests and are not cluttered with a bunch of Foursquare check ins or blip songs. This list is also great suggestions for Follow Friday.

Now on to the ways for me to follow you and to get my attention

1. Follow me first- This is a basic start, but just because you are following me doesn't mean I will follow you back. I follow about 1/3 of the people who follow me mainly because I don't have time to read thousands of tweets. I also only check my followers once a week to see if I have any new followers.
2. Have a logical reason to be following me- If you are following me you should be doing so for a reason.
   A. Are in my geographic location (Milwaukee or Appleton, Wisconsin).
   B. Have a common interest whether it is video games, sports, G4, Olivia Munn (OMFG), or some other commonality.
   C. Like my awesome, witty, hilarious tweets. Which I am sorry have been lacking a lot as of late.
   D. Or most importantly are in the marketing or a similar industry.
   
3. Don't have half your tweets be from apps- I had a hard time wording this but in lament's terms don't have most of your feed be filled with foursquare check ins or similar programs (gowalla) and to a much lesser extent songs from Blip or what video you rated on youtube. Now don't get me wrong its fine to use these apps and post where you are or what you are listening to I just don't want that to be all you do or tweet about.
   
4. Have quality tweets in your timeline- This goes back to point 3 but if you are a new follow the last 20 or so of your tweets determines if I am going to follow you back. Comical tweets are great for a follow but tweets that have information and something I can learn from is best. Have a reason for me to follow you.
   
5. Have a conversation with me- Reply to one of my tweets let me know you are following me and reading what I tweet. Let me know that you exist, this is one of the main ways I follow you.

Do you have any other ways or rules for following someone? Do you agree with this list? Do you follow me on twitter? Do you have someone who I should be following?

Interactivity in Ads

Ads need to attract but more importantly be relevant
While waiting for some games to load an ad will pop up and more frequently I am seeing that these ads are trying to have me do something whether its move my mouse or click on something and I still ignore it like any other ad. Or on Hulu when I am offered a choice of which commercial I want to see, or if I want one long commercial to start or smaller ones throughout. I rarely care which option I take. Why?? Because like most commercials I have no need or interest in the product and the ad doesn't relate to me. They remind me of the spam banners that flash you are the 500000th visitor and have won something click here now. Or the shoot the ducks, which celebrity is this.... and while it does attract my attention I know better then to bother and click on it. The few ads I bother to click on are relevant to the topic that I am reading on or have an interest too. They also offer me something whether it is a discount or additional information.

The few commercials I pay attention to on TV are... hmm let me think... none I either change the channel or do something else like catch up on twitter. There are some commercials I enjoy, for instance the Old Spice "I'm on a horse" commercial. The commercials are entertaining first and foremost, they rarely make me go that extra step from being informed of the product to wanting the product and almost never to the final step of purchasing the product. Most commercials for things that interest me I will see somewhere else, usually online. These commercials are usual previews for video games, movies, and television shows which are available online for when I want to watch them.

Instance of interactivity in a relevant ad

The new Iron Man 2 trailer is embedded below is the main reason for this post. I hope that you either read through or skipped to this part. I saw this ad posted on Scifi wire which I read because I follow their twitter feed. This is a great use of interactivity it provides the user (me) addition information and an enhanced experience which makes me more interested in the product (Iron Man 2). This is a good way to increase interest while attracting attention. I prefer getting more information rather then just moving a mouse or clicking somewhere to continue an ad, boring. This allows the user to take control of their experience and can do as much or as little as they want. This can be used in many other ads to provide the user a unique experience and the ability to get more information.

I may add to this at a later date or make another more detailed and better laid out blog in the future. This was a quick type and post.

Would you like to see more ads like this? Will this type of ad be short lived? Will the interactivity become ignored like many ads are? Any other comments?

A wonderful use of twitter

The American Cancer Society or one of their subgroups has a well working macro on Twitter, which many business should follow the example of. Instead of going out and searching for a business or even the business finding new customers, but having a macro searching out and finding a person who tweeted a set value of words.

I received this tweet from @bdayshoutout:
@Spiffster Happy birthday! Join the movement for more birthdays for all. Check us out at http://bit.ly/6eUv3h #bdayshoutout

In reply to this tweet
I ♥ my friends for all the happy birthday wishes Thanks

Not only does this require little effort but has great effects and can be used by business when someone is searching for a place to shop or somewhere to go out to eat.

Why do I think this is great?
Simple it was not one of those random spam @replies but rather it was sent specifically to me and others who met the macro criteria and while there is sure to be a margin of error and send to some of the wrong individuals for the most part it hits the intended audience who would be looking for advice or assistance.
Although a macro by itself would not suffice for businesses, they also have to engage and interact with the customers but something as simple as this would be a great start. For some great examples of using Twitter for business follow these 3 successful businesses on twitter, @blatzliquor , @streetzapizza , and @ajbombers

Do you agree that this is a good use of twitter? Do you think other businesses should use a macro to find new customers?