I just came across this blog post saying that 74% of employees think Social Media can hurt your companies reputation.


That is the absolutely wrong question to ask.

You should be asking how can social media improve the company's reputation AND build our employees brands!

Social media is a powerful tool and big companies need to stop looking at it from the negative perspective. Social Media on the web is no different (ok, there is one BIG difference) than going down to the pub and talking about your day at work. You can whine about your boss or share your excitement about your new project. The people you are talking to at the pub will now form opinions about your company based on what this employee says. For better or for worse. The only real difference is that Social Media is global and instant.

Keep your employees happy and engaged and teach them how to use social media wisely. That is the only recipe for success.

        

Twitter is different things to different people. You can treat Twitter as a huge real time chat room and just jump in and have great conversations. You can use Twitter to promote yourself and your business. And it's in the business arena that I'm seeing some of the most interesting Twitter interactions. Here are two stories:

Black & White Cookie Company
@dzinermom and I were chatting about the deliciousness of New York City's Black and White Cookies versus Utica's Half Moon Cookies. Its the same kind of cookie but one has icing while the other has frosting creating a very different sugar rush experience.
The Black & White Cookie Company re-tweeted our conversation about proposing a swap!

@BWCookieCompany RT @dzinermom: @amynowacoski I could go for a genuine NY black and white cookie - mmmm.... we should arrange a swap - LOL!

They must have a standing search for "black and white cookies" and re-tweet comments of the delightful treats (I'd like to see them kick it up a notch and engage more with Twitter users, but its a good start!)

Emma Email Marketing
@lindsaydoyle had asked for recommendations for an email marketing company and I offered up Emma.

@lindsaydoyle check out http://www.myemma.com/. Heard these guys talk, they were great

Not five minutes later I got this tweet:

@emmaemail @amynowacoski Hey Amy, saw your mention of Emma and just wanted to say thanks for the kind words. Curious - where'd you hear us talk?

We proceeded to have a great little chat about Steve Turney and Jim Hitch whom I had heard speak about email marketing.

Now these are just a small handful of tweets out of the ocean of Twitter that may seem insignificant. However, they did accomplish two things. I was charmed enough by the interaction that I am now following both @BWCookieCompany and @emmaemail. But more importantly, they have both created a fan and supporter. Should I ever have a need for mail-order black and white cookies or an email marketing service, I have a contact at the ready. I will also be more apt to recommend these companies to my personal network should the need arise.

        

Today, Oprah will begin using Twitter. She'll have Ashton Kutcher on her show to discuss the medium. This bring up a whole bunch of questions for me:

Is this is beginning of the end of Twitter?
There seems to be a trend - once an entity goes mainstream (and you can't get more mainstream than Oprah), the thought-leaders, the cool kids move on to a different arena, they hunt for something edgier. Will this happen to Twitter? Will Twitter be so bogged down with the potential millions of new users that will flock to Twitter because Oprah says so, that Twitter will cease to function. Twitter goes over capacity even on good days, Oprah's minions have the potential to break Twitter and break it good.

How is Twitter going to make money?
Twitter has no revenue stream currently. Oprah's magic wand has made a lot of people a lot of money. Look at her book club and how its vaulted unknown authors into the stratosphere. With no way of making money in the present, what does that mean for Twitter? What does the Twitter of tomorrow look like?

Why follow celebrities on Twitter?
I've look at Ashton Kutcher's Twitter stream and there is not a single tweet that is of value to me. Same with Shaq, and so far, even Oprah leaves me cold. Why do people follow celebrities? What value do they add to your life or is it pure voyeurism. Do we really care what they say?

There are many many more questions this brings up. Share them here and let's figure it out!

        

I've been looking at how different people are using social media in their communication strategies and I've come to realize there are three main element that are necessary for success - Content creation, connecting to your followers and engaging with them.

Create

Social media is really about creating and sharing content. You create tweets people look forward to reading. Blogs that are chock full of good opinions or great content. Without creating value through content all you're doing is talking to yourself.

Connect

The whole point of social media is to generate a following. You want people to follow you and think you are a rock star. But that is just level of connection. You want people to connect with your message, connect with your passions and become passionate about you. You want followers to become fans and then become your supporters. Another level of connection is to connect your followers with other people you feel they can grow connections with. You need to be the conduit by which other people are inspired by. Kim Werker summed it up brilliantly on Twitter: @kpwerker Epiphany: Screw self promotion. Promote others. End of story. Pass it on.

Engage

So you got great content, links fly out of your mouse. You've got followers and fans. Now what? Engage and be engaging. Ask questions, solve problems, comment, pat backs, get involved. Social media is social after all. If you're just blowing out posts talking about how awesome you are, that gets boring. Picture yourself as the host of a fabulous party and its your job to keep it interesting.

        

I had the distinct pleasure of being part of Rick Short’s Marketing Communications team at Indium Corporation. Rick is a giant ball of quirk and the definition of an “out of the box” thinker and probably the best boss I ever had. Rick is a B2B Marcom leader in the industry because he has a passion for the company, he has a passion for his craft, and he has a passion for his people.

I learned bucketfuls at my time at Indium. Two main points have stuck with me and I use with my clients every day:

“Begin at the End”

This is a phrase Rick starts every marcom meeting with:

"Close your eyes and imagine it is two weeks AFTER your project concluded. You are at a party - for you. You are being congratulated for an excellent accomplishment. You see a plaque with your name on it, you just received a bonus, and there's talk of a promotion. Wow! You certainly made a difference. Can you please describe EXACTLY what was accomplished, such that this celebration makes sense?"

You can’t accomplish something if you don’t know what it is you are accomplishing. Our project managers sometimes had “art project syndrome”. They’d come to us, insisting they needed a new trade magazine ad and they’d pull out crayons and glitter and glue sticks and get all messy creating an ad. Rick would redirect their focus back to their goal, get them to begin at the end, and often we’d discover that an ad was not the way to achieve their goal. The lesson here is before you start any project, define your goal, what is needed to achieve that goal and then evaluate your tools. Then you can play with the glitter and glue sticks.

“No, we don’t HAVE to”

Growing out of this “begin at the end” idea, Rick will evaluate the tools at his disposal and question their effectiveness. He canceled a line of ads in one publication based on ROI metrics. When deciding his yearly budget and reviewing his placement, he didn’t sign contracts because he “had” to because the company had always ran ads there. If the ad program was not effective and was not having the desired results and did not meet our goals, that’s something you must question. You don’t “have” to do anything, especially if the reason is that historically your company “always” did it. Using basic marcom rules,  look at your goals and decide if your project will accomplish your goals regardless of the historic element. He looked at the company’s trade show schedule and budget and questioned if trade shows are where he should be spending money. Are there better vehicles to accomplish well defined goals? Is it better to scale back your participation or not participate at all? Rick does not “have” to do anything just because the company has always done it.

That is bold. Rick Short is bold.

Follow Rick Short's blog and he’ll take you on a great adventure through good B2B Marcom practices. Oh and yeah, his “Four P’s” are a good read for any blogger out there!

(Rick, thanks for the mentoring and the milkshakes!)

        

As I've discussed before, I was fairly resistant to the whole Twitter idea. It still has its pros and cons. You need to evaluate if this tool can help you achieve your goals and if is worth your investment. Twitter is a media darling right now, so there's this mad push to "get on Twitter". But before you even jump in there, you need to understand the medium.

"If you don't understand it, Don't use it"

I recently attended a workshop with the Fair Media Council given by Dominick Miserandino of the Celebrity Cafe where Miserandino stressed the importance of understanding a new technology tool before putting it to use. I cannot stress the importance of this concept. I see some horrible Twitter usage out there that is not only ineffective but detrimental to your brand. There are good, better and best ways to use Twitter.

Good

@digitimecapsule
Sherri Morris tweets about her digital pregnancy time capsule to record all aspects of pregnancy and birth. She has strong messages ("My Pregnancy Digi Time Capsule-The Maternity Gift that Gives! Buy One and Help a Newborn In Need http://tinyurl.com/c8vetc"). She's active and her Twitter account information is prominent on her blog and website. The trouble is she tweets the same 20 or so messages every day. Follow her for one day and you have read everything she has to offer. She doesn't interact with other Twitter users, and does not participate in conversation. She uses Twitter as an free advertising feed. That's not necessarily bad, but it is not using Twitter to its fullest potential.

Better

@mvolpe
Mike Volpe is an inbound marketing genius with Hubspot. His tweets are authentic and on target. He actively promotes Hubspot and Hubspot.TV as well as his own personal brand. He engages his followers by replying to "@ replies" and direct messages in a timely manner with thoughtful responses. Follow Mike and you will learn how to rock Twitter (and no Mike, I'm not saying this just because I want you to hire me)

Best

@SavvyAuntie
Melanie Notkin of SavvyAuntie.com and Mike Volpe are on the same page. She provides great content to her followers. She promotes herself and her brand with authenticity and without being obnoxious. What makes Melanie a rock star is that she actively cultivates a community. She partners with her fans and followers to build relationships organically and grow conversation. She recently worked with Disney to promote the release of the Pinocchio Blu-Ray launch to complete smashing success by involving her community with passion and excitement. (Oh and Melanie, did you see my comment to Mike?)

        

I've been on a two week experiment with Twitter. I've grown over 300 followers organically and I have a Twitter Grade of 96.3. And I have some definite opinions on the use of Twitter and its ramifications.

Pleasure vs. Business

Using Twitter as a communication and promotion tool for your business is very different than using Twitter just for fun but it is a fine line, and you need to understand what your goal and purpose is in using this medium. If you're using Twitter to communicate with friends, see what other people are doing and just have a neat way to kill a little bit of time, have at it, go nuts and enjoy, and ignore the rest of this conversation. If you are using Twitter as an integrated function of a wider marketing communication plan, stop right now and think of why you are using it and what you hope to accomplish. Define a goal, create a strategy. If you are on Twitter because it is "the place to be" or "everyone else is doing it", you need to go back to square one.

Twitter is Just a Tool

Twitter is just a tool, the new shiny tool, but a tool nonetheless. You need to evaluate if that tool is the appropriate way to reach your target audience and the appropriate way to spread your message. Use the right tool for the right job. Twitter may not be the right tool for you. Your time may be spent better elsewhere. However in saying that, I do highly recommend that you keep an eye on Twitter. People could be talking about you and you don't want to miss out on that conversation.

ROI of Twitter

Twitter is a free service, but there is an investment of time and energy. What you need to evaluate is if the return on your time investment is valuable to you. Are the connections you can make and the conversations you can grow worth spending the hours necessary to organically cultivate an audience and conversation stream? If you answer yes, formulate a plan, decide what you want to talk about and where you want to drive traffic.

Twitter is a Stream

To use Twitter effectively, you need to understand how it works. Twitter is a non-treaded multi-directional conversation or a stream of flowing information. Think of Twitter as a stream. You can sit on the banks and watch the stream flow by carrying plants and animal life, debris, branches. Then you jump in and interact with the stream, talk to the fishes, admire the plants. Then you must wade out and the stream will keep flowing with out you. And that's ok. You can jump in anytime you want.

Use the Right Twitter Tool

If you are implementing Twitter as a tool in your marketing communications arsenal, the skip the website interface. Accessing your Twitter stream via the Twitter website is like managing your accounting on sticky notes. It is not the best tool for the job. Once you acquire more than say 100 followers it is virtually impossible to track those conversation streams on a flat scrolling screen. There are twitter applications out there that allow you to filter, sort and search your conversations. I am currently using TweetDeck but a quick Google search will turn up many many more.

Twitter is a Narcissists Wetdream

A web service that is based on the singular question of "what are YOU doing" is egomaniacs dream come true. You can talk endlessly about who you are and what you do. So do thousands of other people. And there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. Some of the Twitter Elite have built a cult of personality. People want to know what they are thinking, however the true elite get that Twitter is about authenticity and relationship building. People do want to know what they are doing, but they in turn want to know what others are doing. Twitter is about interaction. If you are going to post 20 times a day "Visit my blog. Visit my blog. Visit my blog. Visit my blog.", you're results will be sparse. A better strategy is to engage people, build a following of people with similar interests, swim in the stream and don't pimp yourself too hard.

        

I just had a meeting this morning with a non profit discussing marketing and social media and the world wide web in general. There seems to be this general trend of all out fear when it comes to using the internet for marketing in the non profit world. The sentiment is "OMG what if "they" say horrible things?" or "We can't control what's being said". And they're right. You can't control what other people (the good-intentioned people and the crazy people) are saying. But like it or not people ARE talking about  you.

If you are not at the VERY least listening, you are not in control of your message and you are at the mercy of the Average Joe and his modem. Join the conversation and you have a hand in crafting the image of your organization. Ignore the conversation and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Another sentiment I hear often is that managing social media and internet activities takes too much time and effort. I couldn't disagree more. You have the time to open the mail the postman brings. You have the time to field phone calls from the public. Social media and the internet is no different. Yes, it takes time to read email and answer messages, but these are just tools, just like the mail and the phone are tools.

I also get a sense there is fear about letting your employees run wild on the internet. If you send your employees out to comment on blogs, you can't control everything they say. Face facts, you can't control what they say anyway. If you are allowing your employees to pick up the phone or attend conferences in your organizations name, you trust them enough to interface with the public then you must trust them enough to interact on the web. The internet is no different than a receptionist desk or the telephone, it is simply a new communication vehicle. If your employees are happy, and excited, and passionate about what they do, that enthusiasm will carry over on to the internet and social media. If everyone hates working for you, then you should not let them even touch a telephone or talk to a single customer because that sentiment will carry through also.

The simple fact is that if you do not have a strong internet presence, your organization will find it more and more difficult to survive and thrive in the coming years. The teenagers of today are the Vice Presidents or tomorrow. They are growing up in a world where they cannot function without Google. Their daily lives involve Facebook and other social media outlets. If they cannot find you and engage with you on the web, you simply do not exist in their world.

So take a deep breath, jump in. The social media world is not that scary.

        

The US Fund for UNICEF does it again. Another Gold Star for effective calls to action. I've already discussed how this fantastic organization uses effective website design to channel their visitors to take action, but check out the Fieldnotes Blog to learn how to effectively convert readers to action.

In each and every post on the blog, they integrate a call-to -ction with fluidity and grace. You'll often see bloggers slap on a cut-and-paste tag at the end of the post along the lines of "click here to buy". Yeah, you do want to get people to buy but overt ads that give you no connection to the content is a turn-off. The Fieldnotes authors compel you with a moving image, compel you with a moving story, and compel you to act with effective links.

Read the Fieldnotes blog, not just for the compelling stories of children in need but to learn how to do the call-to-action the RIGHT way.

        

I talk a lot about design - web design, product design. You can have the best message. You can have the best product. You can have the best service. And it could all fall apart with your website design.

If you look at the history of communication tools, culture and the physics of how we consume media are critical. We are coming out of the "Newspaper Age". For the past century, our main way of communication was dictated by the newspaper. Design and marketing, in many respects, revolved around that vehicle. You'll hear people talk about things like "above the fold". That is where the most important information and the pricys ads are. Consuming newspapers has indoctrinated our culture with other design elements like the notion that a serifed font (Times New Roman) is much more "official" and "Important" looking than a san serifed font.

Some of this has carried over into the digital world. You'll still hear designers talk about "above the scroll" or having your most important information on that first central box of screen before you have to scroll down. But because websites are much more flexible and involve color, you can do so much more. And that's where a lot of people get into trouble.

If you are a for profit, not for profit or just a simple fun goofy website, you want your visitors to DO something when they get to your page. You want them to purchase something. You want them to learn something. To accomplish this, you need to guide your visitor to what you want them to see. This is how pop-up madness first began. People figured that if you threw open a new window, that didn't go away until you made it, you'd grab attention and get people to do what you wanted them to. This of course back fired and resulted in pop-up blocker software. Using smart design and a good grasp of color theory, you can guide your visitors to do what you want them to do without pop up or dancing bears or other nonsense.

US Fund for UNICEF

The US UNICEF site is hands down the one of the best designed websites. You open up the page and you are greeted by a vibrant and BRIEF slideshow of pictures that pertain to compelling content on their site. The blue and white color theme is inviting and calming and inline with their branding practices.


And boom, right off center, there are three orange boxes.

Go back to kindergarten and you'll remember that orange and blue are opposites on the color wheel and provide high contrast. The dead center of any visual work can act like a dead zone. Your eyes expect something to be in the dead center. Just like with the "above the fold notion", our eyes go for the bulls eye and looks the important stuff. You're eyes also expect symmetry. When you can disrupt the normal pattern your eyes want to go you, you attract attention to the disruption. A good designer can do that with out you ever realizing there's a disruption. So you have these off center high-contrast orange boxes just screaming for your attention. UNICEF wants you to come to their site and learn about Dafur and discover their programs, read their blog, but what they really want you to do is to DONATE, SHOP and VOLUNTEER. The reason d'etre of this entire website is to get you to click those three buttons. As a marketer, that is your singular goal - to get people to click those buttons.

So if its time to redesign your website, think about what it is that you want visitors to ultimately do. If you want people to purchase or contact, utilize smart design to make it easy for them to accomplish your goal.