Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lets figure the ROI of transparency and authenticity in social media

When the Red Cross made a mistake and tweeted something on the @Redcross account that was meant for another (benefits and challenges jof using multi tasking tools) They reacted according to a plan that understood something like this might happen someday.



Thanks for showing us what transparency, authenticity looks like in social media. We hear about acknowledging mistakes but more companies need to see what that looks like in practice.



Funny, you should track the ROI for the mistake by noting the number of Comments on this blog post (96), the number RT helping you correct, the surge in mentions of @redcross, and the related surge in blood donations and dogfish beer sold across the county during the same time. If you do that I can use that in all my social media presentation as an example of "when" not "if" something goes wrong in social media, the right action and the ROI that any company can really buy into.



AND I am going to donate some tweets and real blood to @redcross to help out here and in NZ for the earthquake.

Amplify’d from redcrosschat.org

We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake:

In the meantime we found so many of you to be sympathetic and understanding.  While we’re a 130 year old humanitarian organization, we’re also made of up human beings. Thanks for not only getting that but for turning our faux pas into something good.

You immediately embraced this mix-up and many of you have pledged donations to the Red Cross:

See more at redcrosschat.org
 

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Tales of the Bike Commuter: Episode 7: Just Coffee


 
NCP Model at work. This video is a great example of the NCP Model of the  Social Media Academy  by Wendy Soucie Consulting LLC
NCP stands for Network, Contribute, Participation. I connected with these wonderful people at Bike Wisconsin. I share with them several presentations to help their Wisconsin Tour Directors better understand how to use social media.  Giving presentations and posting online is one of the things I do to contribute value back to the social ecosystem.  
BikeWisconsin  (Eric Schramm and Mark Evans) in turn became more engaged and active on social media. They contributed back to their social ecosystem with this very fun blog with video pictures and text on bike commuting. I commented on the blog and asked questions and offered some suggestions. 
Bike Wisconsin shared the content back on this video which mentions me again.  I am enjoying sharing their succcess and fun blog back with my network. 
NCP Model works!
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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest Pt 2 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo. http://bit.ly/fiRO4U

Latest recap for Social Media Breakfast Madison

Doug Tangwall of End Result Marketing puts us all to shame in writing this recap of the Feb SMB Madison event. If you have some questions about creating eye catching headlines and sub heads, Tangwall is a knowledgable local resource for writing, reearch, whitepapers, and nurture marketing which uses educational content to build business relationships.

Kovi rides tandem with social passion and product research | Recap February 2011

Guest post by SMB member Doug Tangwall of End Result Marketing

Kovi provides Consumer Validation and Product Research Services | Madison WI

This week Robb Zbierski, director of manufacturer relations for Kovi —a consumer validation and product research company based in Madison, Wisconsin—shared his company’s business model and strategies with members of our local Social Media Breakfast-Madison.



A Bicycle Built for Two


Now in its second year of business, Zbierski says Kovi’s founder, Patrick M. Walters, chose bicycles as the initial focus of its research “because it is a passion-pursuit industry that was missing opportunities to connect customers and manufacturers.” He says, “Bicycle enthusiasts want the latest and greatest…want to be on the inside. [We discovered] there is a huge appetite to be part of the product design process.” So much so that Kovi now has a team of members each paying as much as $3,500 per year to participate in the company’s research studies.

Read more at www.socialmediabreakfast.com
 

Social ecosystems for the Auto Industry.

When doing social media assessments, the numbers do matter. The NCP Model of the Social Media Academy indicates that without a network, what you do on social media won't matter. For the top auto industry companies, this should be a large network don't you think?



The visuals shared here from Mashable, may make it more understandable. Note that recently both Ford and Volvo had job postings for social media community managers.

Amplify’d from mashable.com

Every industry these days is trying to figure out how to employ social media, but the auto category is being especially scrutinized. The segment is known for its glitzy TV ads and deep pockets, but social media is a field where money will only drive you so far. The big gains seem to come from out-thinking opponents, not outspending them.

So how are the big automakers doing in this new arena? As this infographic shows, there have been some triumphs, some missteps, and a lot of learning.

Because of the large size of this infographic, we’ve broken it up into multiple smaller parts. You can view the full graphic here.

See more at mashable.com
 

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Are we gender neutral on social media sites?

I have used LinkedIn for about 7 years. I have always felt that it had a neutral feel to it. I stumbled upon this infographic that gave me a new perspective across several social media sites on how they sway male or female. Are there any surprises? I was surprised on Digg at 64% male. Stumbledupon was not listed and it made me wonder about that site. My guess is that it is even more heavily weighted towards males.



Do you see any surprises based on where you spend your time in the social ecosystem?


Thursday, February 17, 2011

Pay attention to new research in your social business

I have been interviewing a variety of companies actively engaged with social media - all who pay attention to the response of their activity in a variety of spaces. I think its good to know that too frequent messages is a common and the highest percentage reasons for quiting brands. I think we should include individuals as brands as well. If you excuse for not using social media is that it takes too much time - slow down and be more selective about your posting and reduce the volume. Your followers might like you more.

Amplify’d from www.clickz.com

Why Consumers Quit Brands on Facebook, Twitter, E-mail

Facebook:

- company authored too many posts (44 percent);

- their wall became glutted with marketing (43 percent);

- messages were repetitive and boring (38 percent);

- posts were overly promotional (24 percent);

- content was irrelevant from the start (19 percent).

Twitter:

- messages were repetitive and boring (52 percent);

- tweet stream became inundated with marketing (41 percent);

- company tweeted too frequently (39 percent);

- tweets were overly promotional (21 percent);

- content was irrelevant from the start (15 percent).

E-mail:

- messages sent too frequently (54 percent);

- content became repetitive and boring (49 percent);

- too many e-mails were being sent by the brand (47 percent);

- messages were irrelevant from the start (25 percent);

- subscribed purely to get a one-time offer (22 percent).

Read more at www.clickz.com
 

Sunday, February 13, 2011

A guide to social media campaigns against Scott Walker's agenda for Wisconsin public unions - Isthmus | The Daily Page

A guide to social media campaigns against Scott Walker's agenda for Wisconsin public unions - Isthmus | The Daily Page

If you are trying to follow the variety of pages and commentary, this might help. FaceBook was alive today with various calls to action for letters to representatives, candlelight vigils, commenting action, and FaceBook update status posts. Please share any interesting uses that your ran across.

Friday, February 11, 2011

You have been deactivated - your friend Facebook

Facebook logoImage via Wikipedia


Annie Rubens and I know each other through the Social Media Breakfast Madison meetings.  We had several presentations on Facebook and she came to me with a problem on her page. In fact, the problem was that it wasn't a FB page, it was setup as a profile and Facebook was preparing to deactivate her organization's Facebook presence.  We did a lot of talking, suggesting and brainstorming on different approaches to the situation. Annie wrote up her case study and I get to share it with you so you can learn what not to do.  - Wendy

You’ve been Deactivated
[This post is a guest post by Annie Rubens,  WBA Director of Communications, Wisconsin Builders ]

A message such as this is not a good way to start your day!

I received this rather abrupt post from Facebook (FB) the other day when trying to log in to administer our Wisconsin Builders Association (WBA) page. I was locked out, with no access to change our page or tell our hard-earned 289 fans to go to a different page. It was working so sweet! We had engaged fans, active sharing, our blog posts feeding to it, photos, events and now we had nothing. So this is how a screeching halt feels!

I received multiple robo emails saying essentially, you broke the rules, so you are SOL. “We noticed that the profile held under this email address is being used to maintain a Facebook presence for a brand, business, group, or organization. Facebook profiles are intended to represent individuals only, and it is a violation of Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to use Profiles to represent any other entities.”

I replied to three different robo emails with the biggest puppy dog-eyed-sincere-it-was-an-honest-mistake message with equal doses of desperation and promise to abide by their rules. I also scoured the FB discussion board and posted a question asking what happens if a person is deactivated with a legit business.

After multiple conversations with other experts, I was told to just plain accept it, I’ll never hear from Facebook and I’ll never regain access to the page. Google searches confirmed this has happened to 1,000s of other users with equal lack of neither a response nor a solution from FB. During the next few hours I felt grief, stress, anger and helplessness flood through me as I tried to accept the loss of months of work.

But you know what, Facebook was absolutely right. I did break their rules, and I’m writing to tell you what happened and how to avoid it happening to you as many people with social media administrators for their business may be at the same risk.

Early on in my strategy for our page, I strongly felt our use of these tools needed to remain professional to promote the association and not have anything to do with me personally. With that in mind, I created the person “Wis Builder” to be the person that our page was linked to. This is a common workaround that many businesses or social media administrators use to start a page from. However, this is clearly against their rules, so think again if you use a fake name as a person.

One of the robo emails allowed me the opportunity to do a “Disabled Account Appeal” and prove that I indeed was the person with that name, even allowing you to send in a scan of identification. While I’m sure “Wis Builder” is a good driver given the opportunity, she certainly does not have a driver’s license to prove it! So if you use a fake name, you can run into another wall that is avoidable if you don’t go that route.

So at this point I had no access to the page, no way to know who our 289 fans were and no way to update them to tell them this page was now inactive as the page was not set up to allow posts to the wall. The depressing possibility seemed to exist that there would be two WBA pages out there, and no way to stop new people from “Liking” the inactive page.

Lesson #1: Use a real person for the foundation of your page. 

The other opportunity I would have had for a solution to regain access was if there was an alternative administrator to the page. This is a very easy step and one that would have quickly resolved the situation. Go to “see all” next to your Fans box and next to each person is a “Make Admin” button. Of course, choose carefully and have an understanding with that person if they will be doing active posting or not so you have consistency with your page message strategy.

Lesson #2: Designate more than one person to have administrative rights to your page.

The same rule of thumb applies to any of your Linked In groups. Designate one owner, but have multiple “managers” who can then take over ownership if there is a change in the staff who run the page.

After finding a sense of resolve to just deal with the situation and rebuild the page, I got to work creating my personal page that I would use as a foundation for a new WBA page. With sadness I happened to notice a new email in the folder designated for FB messages, as I figured it was just another robo message saying my goose was cooked. Nevertheless, I looked, and I swear a chorus of angels started singing with the miracle of an actual reply from a person at Facebook!

“After reviewing the situation, we have temporarily reactivated this account. To avoid being disabled in the future, please make the necessary changes to comply with our policy.” I let out the loudest WHOOPEE you can imagine!

“If this account is used solely to maintain a Page, please add your separate, personal profile as an admin for that Page, and delete the account under this email address. If this is a shared account created to permit multiple employees to maintain a Page, please keep in mind that Pages may have multiple admins. Page admins' personal information is not published to fans, just as admins do not gain access to fans' personal information.”

Are you kidding me? They even included links to the relevant help pages! It took me all of 5 seconds to get in and quickly designate 3 other WBA employees as administrators! Feeling like I was working against an unknown timeframe of access, I also downloaded of the profile information, another thing I never paid any attention to. 

“Unfortunately, Facebook does not allow you to merge accounts. You need to copy your profile content (e.g. photos, notes, etc.) and add it manually to your more active account. You can easily do this by downloading your information from Facebook. This will save any information that only exists on your Facebook to a file on your computer.”

Lesson #3 Download your profile and save it to your computer.

To download your information from Facebook, follow the instructions in the Help Center: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18830

Once I had that download, I did not shed a single tear as I said goodbye Wis Builder! With a huge sense of relief, I deactivated that account and shook my head in disbelief at my good fortune for a chance to make it right and retain our page. I did send an email reply to the wonderful soul who did reply to me expressing my sincere gratitude. You can imagine my surprise when I not only heard back from a real person via email, but my post to the help center received a reply as well!

“Question: Personal account disabled that was associated with legit Business Page. How get access back to page?”
Last Reply: If that profile was the only administrator, then the page will be automatically deleted within 14 days of the deletion of the profile.If not, have another administrator make you an administrator on your new profile.

Lesson #4: Pages do expire with people.

Knowing this was helpful as it solved the worry that I would have two WBA pages alive, with only access to one. If I did nothing else but deactivate Wis Builder, I now know the page would have eventually been deleted as well.

The last safeguard I put in place was to add additional emails to the account. Go to Account settings>emails to add an email address. This helps assure if an employee ties a page to their personal account that they will still have the opportunity to retain their personal account if they leave the business and move administrative rights to someone else. This is the best arrangement for both the person and the business. If a change happens down the road the transition is seamless and access is retained by the business to their page. It comes to mind in this list of lessons because I know of more than one situation when an employee who managed all the social media moved onto another position and the business is the one who suffers at the lack of access.

Lesson #5 add alternative emails

So this is a post about lessons, redemption and second chances. If you are a business owner who has designated an employee or contracted with someone else to manage your pages, make sure some of these safeguards are put into place. If you are a social media professional who manages pages for businesses, you may consider adding some of these safeguards as part of your service and page set-up strategy.

Do you have a FaceBook story like this?




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