Too many businesses are just “doing” social without training… or worse… without a strategy.

We’re on a mission to sort that out for 2012, the first step is a week of training courses open to anyone:

The Get Social in 2012 training week is the 23rd – 27th January 2012 at the RT Media offices in Wimborne

• MONDAY 23rd: Introduction to Social Media
• TUESDAY 24th: I’m on LinkedIn, But…
• WEDNESDAY 25th: Twitter 101
• THURSDAY 26th: Facebook for Business
• FRIDAY 27th: Better Blogging

All sessions are 9:00 for a 9:30 start, finishing at 12:30.

Please contact Corli or Luke at RT Media on 01202 888192 or email Luke to book your place.

For more details, see Get Social in 2012

Extra super 2012 BONUS :: To help you on your journey here are 3 links I think are essential reading for 2012 (don’t forget all the things I bookmark as interesting can be found be clicking the delicious icon up there top right!)

1. Facebook makes up 52.1 percent of all sharing on the web in 2011
2. The psychology of social commerce explains why and how people shop together
3. Sony says choosing the right social network is critical, we agree!

Here are my slides:

I spoke about Brand and Reputation Management, Social Media Amplification and adding the magic to your event.

And, as a good summary here is an interview I did afterwards to WinkBall.

1. The flash flooding
2. The tragic loss of a red arrow at the airshow

We’ve also seen what has been dubbed as the “Schrodinger’s dictator” (conflicting reports of Gadaffi being alive and dead), which in a similar way closer to home also occurred with the red arrows pilot: some saying he was rescued alive by dog walkers, whilst others that he died on scene.

Add to this the false reports of riots doing the rounds on social networks and I felt a blog post was in order.

My thoughts in no particular order on when to RT / FWD or re-post:

1. Please THINK before you post – it’s to easy to get caught up in the “first, first, first!” online culture.
2. Forwarding unconfirmed rumors can become self-fulfilling (as I’m sure was partly the case with some riots around the UK). I saw (and due to past involvement in radio, started receiving phone calls!) a growth in rumors that the McDonalds in Bournemouth was on fire… having walked past it only 5 minutes earlier, I was quick to point out it most definitely was not to those asking me and subsequently onto twitter & Facebook.
   In the case of the pilot, whilst mainstream media was careful to state the situation of the pilot was unclear, many were saying he was alive – while I’m generally an optimist, imagine what his wife would of been going through if she’d been anxiously scouring the web for news…
3. Consider the reliability of your sources – having a large number of followers does not necessarily make you either a reliable, or authoritative source – exhibit A: @queen_uk – a lot of people were RT’ing a post from a twitter account with a following in the ten of thousands, a quick look at it’s history made it clear it was a barely reliable (or literate!) source.
4. Rule 32 of the internet: “Pics? or it didn’t happen” – if someone states something as fact, challenge them to provide proof, if in doubt don’t re-post or clearly label it as unconfirmed/unreliable.
5. Use NSFW if the item you are forwarding is Not Safe For Work! (As a rule of thumb, if I wouldn’t share it with my mother, it’s NSFW).
6. Remember not everyone loves: LOLcats / motivational saying / Jokes…

What would you add to the list?

Twitter spam is nothing new, nor are rogue apps that promise followers and tweet on your behalf… but recently I’ve spotted an odd new trend, what I’m calling the “tweet n delete” twitter spam.

I spotted similar looking spam messages on a couple of accounts recently, when I went to view the accounts to warn the owners on the first 2, there were no messages listed, so I assumed the offending spam issue was resolved….

When I saw one from a friend of mine, I replied to him to suggest he check his authorized apps and he replied he hadn’t sent anything, I checked his feed and sure enough there was no spam… then the following day, there was another one from his account – this time I took a screenshot and checked his feed to find it was no longer listed.

<<<<< screen shot of the twitzend spam

vvvvv Screen capture of the feed for that time

He was keen not to be sending spam, so sent me his login details – as expected I found the rogue app listed (slightly in disguise) – A quick check of the link from the spam message (tinyurl translated to twitzend.info) confirmed it was the app in question and I removed it.

Forgetting the fact it’s a waste of time to fake bulk up your following numbers, beware authorizing websites to update your twitter feed.

If you do see a friends account tweeting anything odd, that’s then not listed in their stream when they/you check later, suggest they go to twitter.com, login, select settings (top right) and applications tab to see what is listed and remove ones they don’t need or recognize.

Thanks to @darylhales, club manager extraordinaire, for letting me login to his account to get to the bottom of this one.

We have a series of Public Courses during May, at our Bournemouth training centre, that will help provide you with the right skills and techniques to fully utilise these services to the maximum potential.

• I’m on LinkedIn, but…
  Wednesday Morning, 11th May, 2011
• Twitter marketing
  Wednesday Afternoon, 11th May, 2011
• Facebook for business
  Wednesday Morning, 18th May, 2011
• Business blogging
  Wednesday Afternoon, 18th May, 2011

Places will be limited, so to book your place or to find out further information on any of our courses and secure an early bird discount, visit our ‘Course Dates‘ page at socialtech.biz, or contact myself, Danny on 01202 798098.

Here are my slides from the event, the rest are on housing.org.uk

The discussion was especially interesting, some good questions and I carried on some of the conversations through lunch.

I feel we covered the brief well, with only 15 mins the goal was to encourage people to start thinking about some of the issues and not to try and comprehensively cover all legislation etc

+ sorry to those that had to stand at the back!

This was partly inspired by the upcoming (now live) changes to the ASA Cap Code:

“From 1 March, marketing communications on companies’ own websites and in other third party space under their control, such as Facebook and Twitter, will have to adhere to the non-broadcast advertising rules as set out in the CAP Code.” (Source: ASA)

A (massively) simplified version of the code would be: ensure that all your communications are legal, decent, honest and true.

We asked 4 questions:

1. Do you use Facebook or twitter? (yes/no)
2. Have you ever written about the company you work for on Facebook or Twitter? (yes/no)
3. Has your company given you any guidance on what you can/can’t write on Facebook or Twitter? (yes/no/don’t know)
4. Have you ever heard of the new ASA standards / CAP code? (yes/no)

Full details and responses to the survey in our press release on Pressitt.

The two key findings that stood out for me were:

1. Half of all employees have admitted to writing about the company they work for on a social media website, such as Facebook and Twitter (49%)
2. A staggering three quarters of those who have written about their company online either did not know of, or had no guidance from their employers regarding what they could or couldn’t write (75%)

Think about that for a minute, the implications that 1/2 of your staff are writing about your business online on social networks… and it’s not just the expanded ASA remit that needs to be considered, regulation such as the FSA could also apply to your business.

Liz Willingham, from Liz Lean PR summarises it better than me:

“The results of our survey highlight the importance of good communication from the top down. As ambassadors of your brand, employees need to be made aware and given comprehensive guidance on how to conduct themselves in all situations to protect the overall reputation of the company.”

We’re looking to put on an event for our clients after Easter, in the mean time if you’d like any guidance please do drop either of us a line.

If you want some interesting views from leading experts on the new ASA Cap code changes I strongly recommend this eConsultancy post.

Can we please stop saying “twitter beats news agencies with x y z story” its nonsensical, twitter is a PLATFORM, news agencies are a business.

The fact that it “beat” news agencies to report the story, misses the point – do we/did we ever say mobiles “beat” news agencies to the story when the first on the spot report is called in from a mobile? No, of course not.

So why do we feel the need to do this with twitter?

I’m a twitter fan as much as the next agency guy, and yes I’ve used the Hudson river plane photo as a good example of the immediacy and viral power of twitter but it’s another tool that can be used by the news agencies, not a competitor.

What’s the right mix for status updates (or tweets)?

I’d summarise it as the following:

• Frequency
• Relevance
• Personality
• Purpose
• Consistency

All of these are underpinned by the central question you should ask yourself – what do the people following me, who subscribe to these updates expect?

I sometimes see status updates, used for two different things, when really they should use two streams or types of resource.

A good example of this was the event that prompted the discussion, a bar in Bournemouth began posting every record played, as it happened.

• Some people loved it.
• Some people hated it so much they sent abusive messages to the bar.
• Most people were either indifferent, or switched off without saying anything.

Then the bar apologised… and the usual war of words/trolls began, but it was this bit that stood out for me:

A: “If you don’t like the updates unfollow”

B: “I want updates, just not a flood of them!”

A valued follower, taking the time to say “less updates” – I wish I could look back, or measure how many people either unfollowed or hid updates from this bar – it’d be very interesting numbers.

Anyway, the moral for me is – horses for courses – there is a place for the track-listing high frequency type updates, but maybe it wasn’t the same as the general stream – is that true for your business?

Listen to what your customers/users/followers tell you, with an eye on the quiet many – in the case above, the silent majority and the smallest minority that commented negatively were the voices that needed to be heard and not those of the vocal supporters (who interestingly mostly came round to the 2 stream idea, after I proposed it).

Have consistency with how/when/why you tweet/blog/update – occasional changes (like if you’re at a conference) can be accepted, of course.

It used to be that the status updates on LinkedIN were actually quite useful, to see what people were up to, get a snapshot of what they are/were working on… but alas no more.

Given the option to link a twitter account to LinkedIN (good) most people have chosen to send ALL tweets to LinkedIN (bad) rather than use the selective “#in” option which only sends selected tweets to LinkedIN (good).

The result?

The status updates are all RT’s (the twitter version of forwards) and off topic, no where near as useful as it used to be.

To me, it devalues the activity stream quite a bit – which is kind of a pity as the other things on there are still great – Q+A, groups, events…

Have you noticed this too, or is it just my network of people?

Please, if you link twitter and Facebook together use the selective updates function – make sure your messages are “fit for purpose”, does everything you tweet, really need to be on LinkedIN?

Select “edit my profile”, then click on the “edit” link next to your twitter username and select the option highlighted below.

Next time you want to send something to LinkedIn just include “#in” in your message.

Thanking you in advance… Luke.

———

Luke Williams on LinkedIN – I run 1/2 day LinkedIN courses in London and Bournemouth if you’d like to make more of this great business platform.