Where Should Social Media Sit in an Organization?

It's one of the original social media debates, but the question of which department ‘owns’ social media is one which few organisations have yet to completely resolve.

Most commonly it sits under the marketing and/or PR banner. Social media is seen as a logical extension of traditional marketing and PR activities – whether it’s supporting specific campaigns, product launches or broadcasting corporate messages. These teams probably created the brand guidelines and defined the organisation’s tone of voice, so are comfortable to take that engagement on to social media. They are aware of what communications are ‘safe’ to broadcast and how to respond to tricky questions or deflect potential gaffes.

But as social media gains a stronger foothold in companies, and its audience and influence expands, more departments – and some CEOs – have questioned where social media sits strategically.

So where should social media sit in an organisation?

The dangers of keeping social media management in any single team, means that its impact and results will be measured on that team’s objectives alone. So a successful Facebook competition could mean a boost for product sales; a dedicated customer service Twitter account could increase the number of customer queries solved; an effective recruitment drive on LinkedIn could cut recruitment costs. But single initiatives miss out the bigger picture.

Clearly the social media strategy should be owned by one person or one team. That could be a social media director who reports to the CEO, or the marketing team – inevitably this will differ according to the organisation and buy-in for social media at board level.

Regardless of whether your company has one person responsible for social media, or 10, social media needs to touch all departments – marketing, PR, HR, legal, IT, sales, customer service – in an organisation and to be aligned to its overall objectives.

So how do companies do that?

It’s a simple step to create a virtual social media team or task force from across the company, who are happy to help create and inform your strategy, and then go out and deliver it.

Making your organisation more social

The quickest way to do this is to see who in your organisation is already active on social media and identify potential social media ambassadors across different departments. There are various approaches to take with this, but a good starting point is: one by channel, the other by content.

Choosing by channel expertise

This could be people who are already active on a specific social media channel, such as your HR team on LinkedIn, for instance. Even if they just currently use the channel for recruitment, they could develop their expertise further by joining and posting to relevant LinkedIn Groups.

If your company produces videos or podcasts of your CEO’s latest speech, it’s likely that your PR team knows its way around YouTube. They could train some of your IT or sales team on the channel so they can post helpful ‘how-to’ videos about your products and services.

Choosing by content and department expertise

Maybe you have a star salesman who knows your product catalogue inside out. Can he or she produce a hints and tips blog or host a Twitter Q&A? Is one of your board members a regular speaker at industry events? If he or she is a charismatic communicator, get them to share their best ideas on social.

Do you have a customer service team who run social media channels dedicated to solving queries and handling complaints? These front line staff know the importance of a rapid response on social. They can help define your wider team’s SLAs.

Don’t forget your legal team either. Your lawyers will be hot on any potential reputation issues and can advise your social media team on policy, and help monitor your company’s online presence. You’ll need them on board in case your brand ever faces a social media storm.

Co-ordinating a response in a crisis

If a crisis does break across your social media channels, you will need a fast and tightly co-ordinated response across your organisation. Some of the potential scenarios to consider are as follows:

• PR and corporate comms – are there any damaging short- or long-term repercussions to the brand – locally and globally?
• Legal and finance – could the company’s share price be affected?
• HR – are you able to take back ownership of the company’s Twitter account if a rogue employee has hijacked it?
• Sales and marketing - do your teams need to cancel a campaign or product launch that may be insensitive and badly timed
• Customer services – will there be a higher volume of complaints across all your social media – including dedicated customer services channels?

However you choose to build your team and define your strategy, it’s clear that social media needs to sit across all departments in your organisation if your brand wants to communicate clearly, especially if or when a crisis hits.

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How to Set an Effective Marketing Budget for Social Media Promotion

Social media promotion is the future. Google continues to place more emphasis on social media as a means to increase your exposure in the search engines. Your marketing budget should always prioritise social media because let’s be honest, there are very few people without at least one account. Most of us have more than one. Here are some tips for setting a marketing budget.

One-Time and Constant

You’ll always have some constant costs which you have to cover year after year. Things like custom skins will be one-time expenses. Rather than simply coming up with a number for your budget, you should split your budget into one-time and regular expenses. This will help you plan for the long-term instead of just the duration of your current budget.

Expand Outwards

Your social media promotion should focus more on just Facebook. A lot of businesses make the mistake of planning a budget for Facebook and nothing else. Look at this resource from The Partnership Group. It shows, out of a possible 10, the number of retailers on Facebook was given a 6.9, yet the number of retailers on Pinterest was a 9.3. Further research indicated 70 per cent of consumers from these websites click through to a retailer’s website.

This data shows you have to do more with your budget than just cover your current expenses. Create an additional column for experimentation. This part of the budget focuses on expansion and other social media outlets. It shouldn’t make up the core of your budget, but it should make up a significant portion.

Original Content

You must consider how much original content you intend on creating. Original content is essential for establishing your brand and you can spend as much or as little on it as you want. It doesn’t include Facebook adverts or any such things. It applies to things like videos and blogging which will go on your various social media channels.

Take into account any equipment you might have to buy. Also, you shouldn’t discount labour costs. Small businesses often forget to factor in the price of having people operating cameras and appearing in original content.

To properly estimate this, consider setting a price for how much you’ll charge. Make sure you never go over this amount. If your chosen person doesn’t accept this price look elsewhere.

What You Have vs. What You Expect to Have

Set your social media promotion budget based on what you already have. You should have the money in the bank all ready to go. Promotion is a very volatile industry and anything can change at any time. One change to Google’s algorithms could make your social media efforts obsolete overnight.

Paying for promotion based on what you might earn is dangerous. You’re spending money you aren’t sure you’ll have yet. If something changes throughout the year, you might be forced to start taking out loans or completely reworking your budget and strategy.

Four Budgets

A single budget isn’t accurate enough. You should consider a single budget as a predictor. Create a social media budget for the four quarters of the year. Feel free to use the financial year if it suits you. This can better account for unexpected growth, an increase in revenue, and changing needs and requirements.

It doesn’t have to be more work. Simply go through the year and decide what you intend to do. During busy periods you might want to increase the amount you invest in social media promotion. At the end of the last budget, add the figures together to create your total yearly budget.

The benefit of this is you can experiment with social media. It doesn’t take long to work out if a technique isn’t working. For example, you might find Facebook adverts don’t bring in enough people to make the cost worthwhile. Your automated Twitter bot might be failing you. By using this budgeting method making changes won’t ruin your annual social media budget.

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LinkedIn Groups Updated to Fight Promotional Posts

Have you been trying to share your blog posts or links to articles within LinkedIn Groups and finding that they aren’t showing up?

Recently LinkedIn eliminated RSS feeds from groups as a way to help group managers control the volume of posts coming in as discussions as well as to control spam. But the effort didn’t stop there. I’ve recently investigated what has changed regarding posting to LinkedIn Groups.

LinkedIn Groups Have a New “Discussion Posts” Algorithm

As a LinkedIn Group manager myself, I was puzzled about what was going on. All of a sudden there were numerous discussions showing up under the “Promotions” tab in my group of over 3000 financial advisor members. In the past, I had always been reviewing my group discussion posts manually before approving them, or marking them as “promotional”! Now, this work was being done for me?

Welcome to LinkedIn’s new algorithm to filter out promotional posts. LinkedIn has begun to filter group discussion posts to determine if they are promotional or not. LinkedIn has told me that they are filtering out posts by keywords that have any sort of promotional context, but they wouldn’t give me specifics other than telling me that words like “sale” and “promotion” were part of the algorithm. LinkedIn also told me that I can’t control which keywords to filter for.

When I reviewed the most recent posts to my group appearing under the Promotions tab, every single one of them contained a link, and most of them were clearly self-promotional. In other words, these folks weren’t interested in starting a true discussion with group members, they were interested in posting links to their own blog posts, products, and services.

Most of the posts under the Promotions tab contain the words “I”, “me” or “my”.

Are LinkedIn Groups that you Belong to Affected?

Unless LinkedIn Group Managers are paying attention to their settings, this is going to be a default setting. Group managers can update their settings to decide how to categorize posts to the group manually by checking the box under Group settings that says:  Allow only moderators and managers to move discussions to the Promotions area

LinkedIn Group Managers can manually filter new discussion posts

Chances are that most the groups you belong to won’t choose to manually control the filtering of new posts to the group. Why? It’s just too much work, especially for larger groups! Frankly, I’m relieved to see this new feature as a group manager because it makes my job easier. The downside is I’m sure that some quality content that group members could benefit from will get missed. Algorithms aren’t perfect.

How to Share Links to LinkedIn Groups Now

Whether you are sharing your own helpful blog posts (notice I said helpful) or trying to point your fellow LinkedIn Group members to other reputable online content (notice I said reputable), you need to do so in a way that is not self-promotional! You’re going to need to share your content to LinkedIn Groups in a way that is thoughtful and strategic.

There are still tools available that allow you to share posts and links to LinkedIn Groups such as Hootsuite and Buffer (this is a referral link to Buffer). In my opinion Buffer does a much better job of this by pulling in an image with the link (see image below). Hootsuite needs to work on this.

LinkedIn Group Post Using the Buffer App

You can also still share to LinkedIn Groups from a status update on your profile.

However, using any of these methods above will not guarantee that your posts that contain links are going to get visibility within LinkedIn Groups.

Your best bet is to post your update manually to each of your LinkedIn Groups, and include a question that will genuinely engage other members in a discussion. Doesn’t seem practical? Then focus on really making an impact in only a handful of groups rather than trying to be involved in up to 50 groups, which is the limit for how many LinkedIn will allow you to join.

Another best practice in posting links to LinkedIn Groups is to leave out the words “I”, “Me”, and “My”. These posts to LinkedIn Groups will most likely land you in the promotions category where no one will see your update.

Lastly, consider starting a LinkedIn Group discussion by asking a question or sharing a value message rather than posting a link. Leave the link out when initiating discussions and instead point group members to reputable content links as a part of ongoing discussions.

Chances are if you were getting any blog traffic or visibility from posting your links in multiple LinkedIn Groups without really intending to initiate discussions, it was not high quality traffic. You’re much better off posting to LinkedIn Groups in the way in which they were originally intended to be utilized…as discussion forums.

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Why Banks Are Missing Out on Social Media

Nate Dogg and Warren G weren't talking about financial compliance when they sang "Regulate", but that same title could easily apply here. Though banks are starting to use social media to create a competitive advantage and as a way to build their customer base, they are facing stringent policies and regulations that govern their communication activities. First, let’s look at a few ways in which financial institutes are using different social networks successfully and innovatively without subjecting themselves to FINRA and other compliance activites that apply to sales and marketing activities.

Facebook:

Banks and other financial institutions are using Facebook to listen and to serve their customer base, as well as to make announcements.  

Twitter:

Banks and finance institutes are using twitter to share, listen, ask, and respond to their customers especially in the customer service realm. Another great usage would be to demonstrate thought-leadership and know-how.

 

LinkedIn:

The Finance industry is the 2^nd most active industry on LinkedIn. Typical usage cases involve networking, recruiting employees, spreading company culture, and to build relationships.

 

Foursquare:

Allowing check-ins to branch locations is the key area of use by banks. This allows the banks to give public shout-outs to returning customers. Some banks have even been using Foursquare to verify a client's location as a measure to prevent bank fraud.

 

 

Although it's obvious that social media can pay great dividends to banks and brokers, these financial institutions must tread lightly when integrating social media with sales and marketing efforts. A carefully crafted plan and strategy that adheres to FINRA and SEC standards and regulations is needed. All conversations and anything considered sales/marketing material must be recorded and archived in a manner that does not allow changes or edits in the event of e-discovery or audits for example. There are several other rules that govern messages that may be considered sales and marketing. To understand how financial institutes can reap social media rewards and how regulations like FINRA apply, I have put together a presentation that discusses this below via 10 easy-to-digest concepts and implementation tips.

 

 

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This Week in Social Media: Facebook and Free Speech, Mobile Apps and New Privacy Rules

On tap this week: the top three concerns in data security, Delta’s privacy policy earns the airline a lawsuit, YouTube avoids a takedown notice for “Innocence of Muslims,” the FTC smells a rat and prosecutes illegal browser sniffing practices, and an Illinois village deletes comments from its Facebook page, setting off a First Amendment discussion. 

The week that was...

Concerned about data security? You should be

If you’re not really, really worried about data security by now, you might want to start. There are three areas you need to be concerned with, according to technology lawyer Robert Brownstone of Fenwick & West:

• Disgruntled employees who intentionally leak information,
• Well-intended employees who unintentionally make disclosures, and
• Data theft, loss or hacking.

Delta’s probably not flying high today

After sending out warning letters in late October to 100 companies and mobile app developers, telling them to make their privacy policies conform to the California Online Privacy Protection Act, the state’s attorney general made good on her pledge to prosecute business that fail to comply. Earlier this week, AG Kamala Harris sued Delta Airlines for violating the law. From law firm Ifrah Law:

“The California AG alleges that the Fly Delta [mobile] app lacks a privacy policy, despite the fact that Delta’s app collects substantial amounts of personal information, including full names, telephone numbers, email addresses, photographs, and geo-locations. According to the complaint, ‘Users of the Fly Delta application do not know what personally identifiable information Delta collects about them, how Delta uses that information, or to whom that information is shared, disclosed, or sold.’ The AG asserts that Delta’s conduct violates the Online Privacy Protection Act and California’s Unfair Competition Law.”

“Keep climbing”? Keep your head down is more likely… (Ifrah Law)

Something smells funny when I visit these websites

The Federal Trade Commission recently announced a proposed settlement with an online advertising company and an affiliated website that failed to disclose their online data collection practices. Epic Marketplace and its affiliate Epic Media Group, according to the FTC, said one thing in their privacy policy, but did another, writes communications attorney Bob Scott at Davis Wright Tremaine:

“Epic said in its privacy policy that it would collect information about consumers’ visits to sites only within the Epic’s advertising network, alleged to consist of 45,000 sites. Yet in practice, the cookies received from these sites by consumers’ computers would run a script to determine whether the consumer had visited other web sites outside Epic’s network. Epic was able to update and track the results to obtain further details and to send targeted ads based on the consumer’s browsing history. Consumers would have no way to know Epic’s software actively searched the browser’s history.”

It’s the first time the FTC has taken action against an online company over a “browser sniffing” practice. Clearly Epic put its nose where it didn’t belong (Davis Wright Tremaine) 

“Innocence of Muslims” video stays up

The film may be highly offensive, sparking violent – and deadly – protests around the world, but online video provider YouTube did not violate actress Cindy Lee Garcia’s purported copyright on her “audio-visual dramatic performance” in the anti-Islamic film “Innocence of Muslims” when it hosted the film on its website. Garcia sought an injunction to force YouTube to take down the film, but her request was denied by a federal judge, writes Jenevieve Maerker of law firm Foley Hoag:

“The Court pointed out that ‘the nature of [Garcia’s asserted] copyright interest is unclear,’ given that the film is a ‘unitary whole’ and she did not claim to have joint authorship or joint copyright ownership of the film. Nevertheless, the Court ultimately sidestepped the issue of copyrightability and determined that ‘[e]ven if this copyright interest were cognizable and proven, by operation of law Garcia necessarily (if impliedly) would have granted the Film’s author a license to distribute her performance as a contribution incorporated into the indivisible whole of the Film.’”

In plain English: Garcia probably didn’t have any copyright over the film, and even if she did, she’d essentially given the film’s author the right to use it as he saw fit. Either way, YouTube is off the hook, and the film stays up.

Facebook and the First Amendment: a work in progress?

Does deleting Facebook comments violate the First Amendment right to free speech? What if the comments are on the page of a public entity? It’s not a rhetorical question: while monitoring an Illinois town’s Facebook page, a village trustee deleted some items and comments from the page. A community member brought an action under the state’s Open Meetings Act, seeking remedies for the village’s “action of censorship on a ‘supposed’ public site.” The state’s attorney general found that the village did not violate the Act, but left an important question unresolved, writes Jackie Wernz of law firm Franczek Radelet:

“The community member also argued that the village’s actions violated his First Amendment free speech rights. But the Illinois Attorney General does not have jurisdiction over First Amendment claims, and so quickly disposed of the claim because it did not address the OMA. The Attorney General thus did not address the merits of the First Amendment claim, so the question remains whether deleting comments is a constitutional violation.”

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10 Tips for Online Crisis Coordination

Think of several crises that may befall your organization: a leaked YouTube video of an off the cuff comment made by your CEO, a racist comment made by a member of your staff to a client or customer, a product defect that injured or poisoned a consumer, or an ill advised post that went viral (see KitchenAid post). In any of these cases the response would be different based on the specific issue, the seriousness of the claim, or the staff members involved.

Here are 10 tips to help you through an online crisis when time counts and coordination of your message is key:

Smooth Approval Process

In a social media crisis you must have a smooth approval process for posting information. Depending on the structure of your organization you may have a multi-tiered process. Organizations with multiple locations and duplicate sub-departments may either choose to empower local staff members to make final decisions or await a strategy from headquarters. A lengthy system of checks and balances may make you feel safe however the minutes that turn to hours reviewing a single post can make your organization appear confused or in the midst of a cover up.

Raise a Flag

At the first hint of an online issue the designated crisis coordinator should be alerted. This staff member will then decide the severity of the issue and alert key staff members if need be. Be sure to cast a wide net to those who interact with the media or may encounter questions regarding this news. You never want your senior management to be caught unaware. I am frequently the crisis coordinator, since I oversee internal and external communications, allowing my organizations to feel comfortable with a process centralized by a trained spokesperson that underwent crisis training.

The Manual

To prevent an internal crisis within your process you need to have a manual dictating various scenarios. Who do you contact if the crisis coordinator was “hit by a bus”? What happens if the CEO is unavailable for a statement? How does your call center coordinate responses with your social media team? These inevitable questions need to be considered and planned for as far in advance as possible.

Move Quickly

Once a crisis coordinator has been alerted he or she can ensure that all key members of your staff as well as outside consultants are aware of the situation and begin to formulate a strategy and response. As a crisis coordinator I frequently use email only for consensus data at this point and begin having office discussions or call a quick meeting/teleconference. This helps the process move quickly and keeps everyone in the loop.

Strategy

The staff member who originally raised the issue may be eager to post a response. In some cases you may decide that a response is necessary to let the public know that you are aware of the issue and to thank all involved for bringing it to your attention. In other cases you may wish to wait until you know a few more facts and post a response. In my experience I have found that an initial response thanking the poster works well. If you wait too long before your first post you may appear uncaring or out of touch.

Stay Positive

Many crises are elevated when an organization becomes defensive. Even if a person is attacking you I find that it is best to treat that person, publicly at least, as if they are being helpful in bringing a concern to your attention. Keep the dialogue positive. The crisis coordinator should have the authority to post an immediate response requesting further information before jumping in too early with a coordinated statement.

Stay Nimble

As additional information comes to light, draft appropriate responses and decide if you should spread your response to other media. Is a press conference necessary? Do you notify the board of directors? Depending of the crisis you may need to elevate the scope of the discussion to offer clarity to the general public before rumors begin to spread.

Statements

Operating multiple locations, your coordinated effort should require each location to post similar alerts tailored to their local audiences. However, as you coordinate your responses you should not use form statements that have been kept on file. All it takes is one investigative post to highlight that you responded the same way a few months ago when a separate crisis occurred. Remember that this is a social interaction and personalization can mean the difference between appearing caring or unconcerned. Need I say it: Appearances are everything in a crisis.

Review

It is vital to review the events of each crisis. What worked and what broke down? Was there an event that was not accounted for in your manual? When was the issue solved and when did it get away from the response team? This is when accountability takes center stage and every staff member involved needs to be debriefed.

Update

Now that you know what went well and where you failed, you need to update your manual. In fact you may need to remove a strategy rather than just adding to your response procedures. Once you have a new finalized version be sure to circulate it among your crisis response team and ask them to disregard prior manuals.

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3 Shocking Social Media… Ahem… Errors of Judgement

Your company has just dropped a huge clanger. Your logo’s blasted across every news outlet and you’re getting torn to shreds on twitter. That’s when people always say the same thing. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

That may have been true in the past. When getting your brand into the public eye was an expensive and complicated exercise. With the advent of social media, every brand uses their own online channel to access loyal customers and gain new ones. You can now create your own publicity, and make it all positive, so the old truism starts to lose its power.

Social media has also created more opportunity for large community debate, and widespread criticism. Mistakes on social media tend to be picked up more quickly and attacked more ferociously than mainstream media gaffes. That should mean that brands, in total control of their own accounts, should be really careful about what they say. Which makes it all the more shocking when they’re not.

KitchenAid and Obama’s Dead Grandma

The inspiration for this list, and an absolutely shocking piece of bad taste tweeting. During this week’s US Presidential debate @KitchenAidUSA, KitchenAid’s official Twitter account tweeted a ‘joke’ about President Obama’s dead grandmother. The ‘joke’ implied that the US President’s grandmother had known his administration would be bad so she died just days before his election.

Just take a moment to think about that. Let the disgusting sentiment just wash over you. The ‘joke’ was so juvenile, so insensitive; it’s still hard to believe it actually happened. That a huge brand, with over 25,000 twitter followers, allowed it to happen during the most tweeted about event in the US is mind-boggling. KitchenAid deleted the tweet pretty quickly, but tweets don’t just disappear when you delete them. There’s always someone who can reproduce it. They have worked hard to limit the damage since, but they’ve already had a huge amount of negative press. All for a bad joke. About a dead woman.

Progressive Insurance and Bad PR Bots

Speaking of damage limitation, Progressive Insurance in the US found that managing bad PR through social media can be littered with pitfalls. The insurance company had received a lot of negative comments after a blog post by Comedian Matt Fisher. The post titled “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer in Court”, created a huge online response. The story is too long and complicated to detail here; this article covers it fairly well.

Progressive’s social media mistake came in their response to the negativity. When people vented their outrage at the post on Progressive’s official Twitter account, they received a reply out lining the company’s regret over the situation. The response was carefully written, clearly legally vetted and was sent as a response to every single tweet. Word for word each tweet received the same response.

This attempt at PR management only served to create more outrage. The company was responding to accusations of insensitivity, with more insensitivity. As much as this is a lesson on how not to manage negative PR, it also shows that it’s not just non-PR trained tweeters that make mistakes. When you market through social media, you do so on the basis that you’re really in the conversation. You can’t opt out of direct conversation when the topic gets difficult.

Wilcoxson’s Ice Cream

The scary thing about this story is how innocuous it could have been. A Muslim customer contacted the Facebook page of Wilcoxson’s Ice Cream, to ask what flavors of their ice cream contained gelatin. The customer was trying to obey religious beliefs and avoid eating pork gelatin, but wanted to find out which flavors they could still have. This was a loyal customer who, despite having found a reason to stop using the product, wanted to remain loyal.

The response, a statement that they didn’t deliver to Pakistan, caused much online outrage and accusations of racism towards the company. The owner has since claimed that he saw an icon that said the comment was from Pakistan and just responded without reading the whole comment. That reasoning might explain away the racism element, but it’s still an ideal example of a social media error.

Everything on social media is in the public eye. You can’t afford to post anything without fully understanding the context. If you do, you run the risk of really negative PR. And like this company, losing your Facebook page.

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. They say that as long as you’re in the public eye you can gain from it. But, considering how swift and passionate social media outrage can be, there’s certainly such thing as bad social media publicity.

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Social Media Content Violates FTC Regulations

Your Social Media Marketing tactics may be in violation of Advertising Standards designed to protect consumers from unwanted solicitation, deceptive ad practices, and inappropriate content.  With the growth of Mobile and Social Web, we are seeing a shift in the way Advertising Standards are viewing branded content.  Is your strategy and Social Media Marketing policy adapting as well?  Here’s what you need to know before it’s too late.      

What is branded content?  Branded content is any content around the Web that is posted by or leads to your brand.  For now, I’d just like to focus on social content.  Hashtags, Pins, @Mentions, +Mentions and the like are becoming common ways to reach consumers in the digital age.  Unfortunately, somewhere in the shuffle, these new marketing techniques started to become viewed as unwanted solicitation and deceptive ad practices.  Why?  Because some brands have abused this new method of marketing and although they didn't all out ruin it, they did stir the pot and cause negative attention. 

What were they thinking?  Brand outreach via social media is simple, it’s accessible and it’s Internet ‘content’ so it’s not regulated…right?  Wrong.  Reaching out to consumers who are publicly discussing brands, products, and services is no different than the cold calling or spam emailing tactics of the past.  Done correctly, it’s a very powerful advertising medium, but going full speed ahead without proper planning can have you dead in the water pretty quick.  The digital shift is leading to new Advertising Standards that brands must adhere to in order to minimize risk. 

How do brands avoid a future of social media exile?  Proceed with extreme caution.  Add disclaimers, support claims, be transparent and consistently educate yourself along with anyone acting as your brand voice.  Your social media posts, blog posts, and any other online interactions initiated by you or consumers can be considered advertising and as such needs to adhere to all rules and regulations. 

Are Fortune 500 companies exempt?  Absolutely not.  You probably heard about Nike’s #makeitcount promotion being banned by ASA due to the tweets of two football players.  Nike’s defense was that said tweets were “obviously identifiable advertising”, but the ASA disagreed.   If your brand is transparent, you are much less likely to be accused of deceptive ad practices.    

How can you be sure you’re transparent enough?  In the words of the FTC, to be transparent, you must label the link, don’t be subtle, don’t be coy, & make it obvious.  Adding hashtags to your marketing such as #AD and #SPON may suffice for now, but having a contingency plan will ensure you protect your assets from a deceptive ad practices lawsuit as the FTC is actively pursuing revisions to the original “Dot Com Disclosures” published in 2000.

How can I ensure compliance?  Disclose, educate and make it obvious that your content is advertising.  CMP.LY offers full disclosure landing pages for promotions, paid spokespersons, affiliate links, rules terms and many more.  If you don’t have room in your budget for their service, revisit your internet marketing strategy and consider building in disclosure landing pages with custom URLs to ensure all of your Web-based marketing is transparent and compliant.  This is especially important throughout Social Media.  Nike’s example is just the beginning of an Advertising Standard shift that will affect businesses both small and large. 

What sparked this post?  I inadvertently ‘hijacked’ a Twitter chat by mentioning another Twitter chat in a post.  Both chats were industry specific and owned by separate entities.  They weren’t in competition, but promoting anything in one of them was strictly prohibited unless the other chat was a sponsor.  Honest mistake?  Yes. Learning experience? Definitely.    

What is Hijacking?  Hijacking is becoming more common throughout Twitter chats.  While your intentions may not have been to upset the balance, an inadvertent violation in your content could prove damaging to your online reputation and in some cases wind up with you having to defend yourself in court.  Before jumping into any Social Media Marketing venture, be sure to review both Advertising Standards AND chat rules.    

Are all chat rules the same?  Some chat rules may be more rigid than others and you will be doing your company or your client a great injustice by assuming there is a standard.   Don’t get shut out, suspended or sued simply because you didn't do your due diligence and research chat specific policies prior to jumping into the conversation.  I've seen chats that encourage promotion during specified times prior to the chat and, now, chats that completely forbid any type of promotion from all but sponsors. 

Are you guilty?  I was called to the table simply because I didn't fully read the rules of a Twitter chat, but what I discovered didn't just stop there.  I and many of my colleagues are guilty of not fully disclosing “advertisements” in pin descriptions, Twitter interactions, Facebook posts and more.  Hours of re-strategizing followed and I’m confident that all of the posts I create from now on will be compliant.  Hopefully yours will as well. 

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Finally! New Facebook Page Administrator Roles!

Two weeks after launching the terrible Facebook Page app for the iPhone, Facebook is launching another new feature which promises to be much better for companies utilzing Facebook pages for business development – five new different administrative roles for Facebook Pages.  These roles include Manager, Content Creator, Moderator, Advertiser and Insight Analyst.  Page administrators are rejoicing all across the globe as this has been a long awaited functionality of Facebook.  Previously, each administrator had the same degree of control.   We created the below table to briefly explain each new role within Facebook page administration. Enjoy!

  

All in all, these five new page administrator roles are a welcome addition to the Facebook suite of business tools.  Having many administrators with the same roles was always a touchy subject and allowed all levels of management to have the same clearances.  This will definitely appeal to advertisers from every industry.

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Facebook’s Plans for the World Wide Web

When you’re the world’s largest social network you find it difficult to let defeat slow you down. Facebook may be autocratic in the way it deals with its membership base and it may want to own the web and all its content but it is also the place where everyone goes to hangout online with their friends and it just keeps on growing. 

The curious purchase of Instagram for which Facebook paid a billion makes even less sense now with Facebook rolling out its own version of it, in apparent direct competition, unless of course, we consider the timing.

Instagram was purchased just weeks after it was made open to Android users. It provided Facebook with a plan for mobile in its pre-IPO days and it stopped a rival from gaining a surge of new members. Then with the deal yet to be inked it brought out its own app called Camera in effect competing with itself. 

Now you might think that dropping $1 billion on the table just to deny a competitor a measly 33 million members might be a steep price to pay, but not if you plan to fight that competitor at his own game and this is something Facebook might just be starting to think about. I am talking, of course, about search. Whatever you might be doing in social media and marketing search is at the heart of the web because it is how we navigate the web. 

The problem is that search is a complex business. Creating a search engine that works well is truly expensive, as Microsoft has found out, and requires the ability to not just index information fast but also assess it properly. In case you have not noticed, in the Facebook environment, Facebook search sucks. It works worse than a third wheel on a bicycle and when it provides results from outside Facebook it has to rely on BING anyway. 

Now a Facebook/BING deal is not out of the question, Industry rumours have it that it’s something that has been talked about for some time. A hint that these rumours may be based on truth is given by the very recent interest Facebook has expressed in buying Opera. 

Armed with a browser of its own, a search that works and the ever increasing depth of its social graph, Facebook could provide an alternative to search which could also help it make more money from its ad network. Should that happen we will truly have a universe populated by behemoths: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Amazon, each competing for our data and our custom. More than that however we will also have the era of the two webs. The Open Web, where Google is king and the closed, Facebook web where data can come in but can never go out. At that point marketing, complex enough as it is, will become even more complicated. 

While all this sounds like a smoothly created grand plan for total web domination it is anything but. Facebook has been struggling with itself for a long time and I have frequently catalogued its errors in articles here. For a concise overview of just what has gone wrong you should check out Prasant Naidu’s piece on How Facebook is Killing Itself.  

Having gone public the social network is now under pressure to evolve and succeed. Whether it manages to do just that, or will do what it has done to date which is pull itself in all directions at once remains to be seen. Clearly the year head is going to get even more interesting. 

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