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Monthly Archives: July 2012
Managing Your Reputation on Twitter
Whether you are a brand or an individual, Twitter can be the death of your reputation. While Twitter is a place for sharing opinions, news, feelings, etc., it takes just one errant tweet to send your social world into a rumble.
Take for example Voula Papachristou, a member of Greece’s Olympic team. Because of a single offensive tweet, Papachristou has been suspended from the Olympics.
Last year, a Chrysler employee confused the Chrysler Twitter account with his own, tweeting profanities from the Chrysler account about Detroit traffic. The employee needless to say, gained national attention and was subsequently terminated.
Long story short, if you/your company engage in social media already, or are considering implementing a strategy or campaign, it is essential to have a brand reputation management strategy in place. Yes, even personal accounts should understand the importance of reputation management.
While there is a long list of considerations out there, following are some basic questions/concerns to keep in mind when planning your Twitter strategy.
- Know your audience.
- Determine a voice and personality for your brand.
- Identify what types of information your brand will tweet.
- Confirm what topics your brand may or may not respond to.
- If your brand/company has risks associated with the product or services, how you will you respond in X scenario? (i.e. plant closings, product recalls, etc.)
And what if your Twitter account were to experience a crisis? Do you have a crisis communication plan in place? Here are a couple of key considerations:
- Monitor your account often. You can use social media monitoring tools or Google alerts to help stay ahead of the game.
- Establish a chain of command. Who is the first contact to reach out to in a time of crisis? Maybe it’s an advisory board, maybe it’s just one person calling the shots. Make sure to designate and have accurate up-to-date contact information.
- Act quickly. Twitter moves at the speed of light. This does not mean tweet back the first thing that comes to mind, but quickly alert your chain of command for a decision making process. It did not look favorable when Papachristou took two days to respond to outrage about her Twitter mishap.
- Listen to what people are saying. Make sure you understand multiple perspectives. This will help in crafting the appropriate response method and response itself.
Remember, Twitter is a communications tool; use it wisely. If your reputation matters to you – and it should – create a social media strategy that will help build, maintain and protect your reputation.
Social Media Jedi Mind Tricks
Congratulations, you now have 100,000 followers or likes or subscribers or whatever. Now what?
If you are among the dozens of people worldwide who celebrated Social Media Day back on June 30th, you probably have an answer for that question. Alec J. Ross, senior advisor for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, celebrated the official third anniversary of SMD and he has the answer. Well, he has some thoughts.
“Social media gives voice to people who are historically disconnected from political processes,” says Ross (one can almost envision the billions of unemployed, undernourished and uneducated worldwide who are routinely tapping into their Facebook and Twitter accounts). He also says it has become increasingly relevant and powerful, and he credits social media for “hundreds” of important geopolitical changes around the world. “Social media is bringing real people to the table… to the old mahogany table,” he says.
And social media will only become bigger and stronger and more powerful in the years ahead… like the telegraph, no, like newspapers, no, like radio!
Alec Ross lives in the political world where hyperbole is the norm; and that’s fine. But let’s be realistic, like Alec Ross, social media is just a tool. It is a communications device for informing, educating, entertaining, engaging – and yes, abusing – people. SPOILER ALERT: Social media is not a God.
But congratulations on securing so many followers and likes and subscribers.
May the farce be with you.
So your company wants a blog…
Blogging is a long-term, committed relationship, not a date. In order to create a successful blog, you need to give yourself to your readers, and keep giving them reasons to come back.
Following are some high-level considerations to make before launching your blog.
User-Friendly Blog Design
Design your blog with your reader in mind. Take some time to look at blogs that you visit frequently. Why do you visit the site? What makes navigating through the site easy? Make your latest posts, company information and categories easy to find on the page.
Establish a Posting Frequency
Manage your reader’s expectations. Frequent posting helps readers understand the consistency of your blog, but do not over exert yourself. If your company only has time to post once per week, that is fine! It is better to post once a week than five times in one week and then not post for the next three weeks. Blog articles can also be scheduled for future posting. Consistency is key.
Publicize Your Blog
If you are going to write it, why not share it in as many places as possible? There are so many ways to gain exposure for your blog. Add a link to your blog in your email signature. Use company or personal social media channels to share posts regularly. Connect with other bloggers to share your posts or guest blog. The list goes on…
SEO and Internal Linking
Depending on the purpose of your blog, you may refer to products/services in your posts. To help with search engine optimization (SEO) as well as provide more information to your readers, hyperlink within your blog post to those products/services on your web site that you reference. This may not be something that happens regularly, and should not be forced. But, if the opportunity arises, incorporate a link or two.
Introduce Yourself
Blogging is about transparency. Let readers know who they are hearing from. This helps develop credibility. Consider an author bio/about us section on your blog with a short bio. However, keep security in mind. Do not put information such as personal phone numbers and addresses on your blog.
Have any questions about launching your blog? Leave a comment here or send me an email: Rachel@sweeneypr.com. We’re happy to help.
The Summer of Doing Everything.
Last month my niece (and favorite goddaughter Kerri) graduated from high school and announced that the summer of 2012 was going to be the Summer of Doing Everything.
I asked what she meant and she said, “everything.”
And maybe I am just projecting here, so please forgive me if my thoughts do not resonate, but it seems to me that everyone everywhere is in the mode of trying to do everything all the time. And the result is a hectic, chaotic frenzy of undirected energy, followed by fatigue and disappointment.
And it makes sense, because no one can do everything. No one. And yet we try. Yesterday afternoon I was in a client’s lobby waiting to be escorted to a meeting. For what seemed like an eternity I paced the lobby, as I had intentionally left my iPhone in the car so I would not be distracted by calls and texts and email alerts. And here I was – for all of 60 seconds – with nothing to do but pace. I was frantic. Surely I should be filling that void with some meaningful activity, like updating my Facebook status or composing a tweet.
I guess what I am saying – to myself, my niece and the world-at-large – is that the idea of doing everything is highly overrated. My advice: spend an hour in a hammock doing nothing. And if it feels good, stay there another hour.
Are Facebook Likes the Equivalent of Higgs Boson?
I am no scientist. Just ask my son the scientist.
And I am no Facebook advocate. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg.
Still, all the recent excitement over the God particle got me thinking how awesome it must be to be a scientist and to know with almost complete certainty that you’ve actually achieved something real. Think about it. Peter Higgs hypothesizes the existence of this particle, then PROVES it through experiments.
According to the LA times, two teams reported independent results that suggested the existence of a previously unseen subatomic particle with a mass of about 125 billion to 126 billion electron volts. Both groups got results at a “five sigma” level of confidence — the statistical requirement for declaring a scientific “discovery.”
“The chance that either of the two experiments had seen a fluke is less than three parts in 10 million,” said UC San Diego physicist Vivek Sharma, a former leader of one of the Higgs research groups. “There is no doubt that we have found something.”
No doubt. How awesome would it be to run a Facebook social media campaign, hypothesizing that it will achieve something, then look at your results (traffic, likes, talking about this, total reach) and be able to conclude with five sigma certainty that you actually achieved something.
That’s the problem with marketing. You can be strategic. You can apply a scientific approach. You can measure for and document results. But you will never ever get results with a sigma five level of confidence.
Face it (and if you wish, you can even Facebook it), at the end of the day, we are not scientists. And I can live with that. After all, it took Higgs nearly 50 years to prove his theory, and very few clients have the ability, desire or luxury to invest that kind of time to sell a product.
