Social Media Reading - 061609

Social Media Policies

• Tweet and Sour? Newspapers Set New Rules for Social Networking - Basically, if you're a journalist, you are always representing the paper you work for when you post online. Whether you work for the small Charlotte Observer in North Carolina or the Washington Post.
• 21 Community Foundations that Tweet - Includes Baltimore Community Foundation's Twitter policy
  

  "be timely
  spark conversation
  NOT present BCF or a fellow organization in a negative light
  be relevant to BCF’s constituency, pertaining specifically to BCF’s: path, donors, grantees, initiatives, or the philanthropic field"

What I Learned from Blog Potomac - And I Wasn't Even There

Blog Potomac was held on June 12, 2009 in Falls Church, Virginia. It was a one day social media marketing event. I followed along via Twitter and then read the full hashtag transcript from What the Hashtag. All profits from the event were donated to DC Central Kitchen (@dcck) - a non-profit that trains folks in culinary skills to help get them jobs.

Speakers:

• @shel - Shel Holtz
• @digitalsista - Shireen
  
• @scottmonty - Scott Monty (Ford Motor Co.)
  
• @lizstrauss - Liz Strauss
• @ambercadabra & @technosailor - Personal branding
• @shashib - Shashi Bellamkonda - Social media from Network Solutions
  

Blogs and Live Blogging

• Live blogging by Metro Star Systems
• Ten Best Ideas from Blog Potomac
  
• Live Blog of Shel Holtz by @storyassistant
• Live Blog of Scott Monty 1
  
• Live Blog of Scott Monty 2
• @technosailor followup to personal branding session
  

The common theme of the event seemed to be that building relationships, connecting with others and listening were the most important parts of social media. Many of the speakers also stressed that the tools and the products are not that important. Those are going to change.

Your brand: One of the main points that several people brought up is that conversations about your brand are already happening online, and you just need to find a way to be a part of them.

One person can't do it all:

• It's important that social media doesn't get siloed within one department in the organization. Scott Monty from Ford is hoping to get 1% of Ford's 200k employees involved in promoting the Ford brand online.
  
• It's also important to let others involved in your brand take an active role online. You don't need to respond to every negative post. Sometimes the community will do it for you.
  
• You also need to take the time to unplug. You can't work 24/7.
• Put the policies and procedures in place and empower others.
  

Crisis Communications: Twitter and other online tools are the best way to respond to a crisis for your organization. However, you must already be established to be authentic.

Interesting Links:

• Edelman Trust Barometer
• Harvard Twitter Study
• The Ford Story
• Case Study on Ford's Integrated PR
  

Social Media Reading - 061409

• Using Social Media in Your Nonprofit - Overcoming Objections - I hear #5 most often - People will attack us online with negative critique. The organization that I work for has been bitten in the past with very negative critique. In fact, blog posts still persist that are highly negative of the organization. - Great ideas for comebacks on some of the things you might hear from your executive staff.
• Engaging Major Donors Online - Two main ideas: 1) don't be afraid to ask for larger amounts, especially if you can customize the ask to a previous gift and 2) customize part of your web site to cultivate major donors - including inviting them to be involved, submit content, etc.
• How Big is Your Farm - Great analogy between farming and marketing. In farming, if you only have the money to buy a few bags of seed, you don't spread it out over several acres. You choose wisely about where to plant. With all the online marketing tools and web sites, it's easy to be tempted to spread out your spend over 10-15 sites instead of choosing one (or a few) and winning.
• 3 Inspiring Social Media Case Studies - With a targetted approach, Network Solutions dropped their negative comments ratio from 58% to 18% - mostly by participating in blogs, forums and twitter.
• Not Everyone is Excited about Facebook Vanity URLs - I understand Marshall's concern about digital identity. I was one of the first people to register my name on Friday evening. I had it locked up within the first minute. But, I have no plans to send people to that URL or to limit myself to Facebook being my only means of expression online. To me, it's just a cool thing to have. And now, if I want to send a friend to my Facebook page, it's much easier than it used to be.

Tips and Tricks:

• What the Hashtag?! - Can't say enough about how much I love this site and it's ability to aggregate all of the tweets to a specific hashtag. The transcript feature is probably the best part about it.
• iGoogle - Step by Step Instructions from Carrie Lewis (HSUS) on how to set up an iGoogle page to effective track your brand online
• Change.org Non-profit Accounts Explained
• Tweet Grid - Web-based Twitter Search Dahsboard - Haven't tried this yet. Going to try it out this week.
• #Fail - Twisig.com - I tried this over the weekend. In theory, it creates a "signature" file of your latest tweet that is automatically updated. Two problems I ran into: a) the box isn't big enough for a 140 character tweet and was overlapping information and b) all of a sudden earlier today, they said my twitter account didn't exist