Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses.

How Do You Keep Mass Influencers Engaged? An Example from TripAdvisor

Online behaviour and usability.

Corona, much easier way of building iPhone applications?

Waxy has an amazing history of media pieces on tech being used for crime. The latest Please Rob Me website is just this iteration’s version of “telephone to tell burglars when you’re not at home”.

The U.S. Military is now saying ok to troops using social networks.

Creative
There are only so many flash mobs, viral videos, blogger launches, hashtag polluting tweets and phototagging campaigns you can take and that can be cloned and redone again and again before people become sick of them and starting generating negative sentiment towards them. Do a Princess Bride night, do a Tweasure hunt.

Consistent
Update your Facebook Page on a regular occassion. Update your blog. Respond to questions and replies. Be around on Twitter and if you are interacting, answer questions even if they make you uncomfortable. Don’t selectively answer positive questions or broadcast out happy clappy stuff while people are tweeting you and having issues with your service.

Constructive
Add to a conversation. Earned media. If you know the answer to something, share it, share your experiences and insight. If you are worried about giving away knowledge and your IP, just how empty is your playbook? A few blog posts, tweets or Facebook updates shouldn’t make the smallest of impact on your body of earned knowledge. If it does, worry more about why, not about hiding it away.

Community-minded
Do stuff to make the overall community better. Do you necessarily need to wait to be asked? The more you partake, the more you are part of the community and the more you’re respected and loved.

Use case studies
Case studies are stories. We like stories. We put ourselves in stories, we make things up and wrap them around the words in the case studies. Telling a good story is important for any product/brand but having someone retell that story and add their own personal bit of magic to it is more powerful.

The above are a bit like the “Be” Tweet I sent out months ago on how to use Twitter well: Be useful , Be interesting, Be first , Be around, Be supportive

Martina.

Steph.

Marc.

Jennifer.

JBBC.

Dena.

Another way to measure website traffic in Ireland. IrelandMetrix top sites.

Interesting how larger firms are now stopping analysts with big “microbrands” from using them. Blog and Twitter only on company space.

How Del taco uses Facebook to market itself.

Video: Should everyone get involved in social media?

for using Twitter and other social media to take on what he calls Newark, New Jersey’s “reputational problems.” … Booker points out the eye-catching fact that his reach on Twitter is some multiple of the number of people who actually live in Newark.

Social media and plumbers? Really? Yes.

8 guides to use social networks for business.

Good metrics to track social media campaigns.

So running someone else’s Twitter account. Should you?

What’s data worth?

Online Marketing Plan template from Toddle.

Pivotal talks face to face promotions.

If you’re into Foursquare. Foursquare X looks er mega.

Social business in 2010.

And on that. How to become a smarter social business person.

The 5 Reasons You’re Failing In Social Media

During the week we read of the Boards.ie hack and how they reacted to it and did it quickly. I was asked to give some input (it was quite minor) on how to communicate to their members and the general public. I was hugely impressed that they had given themselves a very short deadline to go public about it and to inform as many as they could and backed their announcement up with an FAQ. It was a near perfect example of crisis communications.

Online PR and communications needs to be handled differently in some regards. The audience online is different but being online also means search rankings and findability are crucial. Do a Google search for “Irish Pork” and 13 months later all you read is bad news:

Click here for bigger pic.

How to react to a crisis using online communications tools

You’re already listening, right?

Firstly and it might be obvious but all organisations should be at minimum be listening to what people are saying about them online. Tools like Google Alerts, Twitter search, Boardtracker etc. should be in daily use. Ideally though an organisation should be in various communities so they know about any crisis before an alert pops up to let them know a volume of outraged messages. This could be official presences there or their staff using these spaces for personal use. See! It pays to have staff using these places.

Call in experts

When a crisis happens and is public or is going to be made public then you need to call in experts. This helps you reduce the workload when dealing with this, calms you down a bit, gives you perspectives you haven’t spotted perhaps cos you’re bricking it but it also adds credibility. Boards.ie for example called on Brian Honan for advice, being a well-known computer security expert.

All hands on with staff

Don’t let the staff know by some formal email or have them learn of this via an external source. Bring them together, fully inform them about what’s happening and get their take. Tell them your response plans and see if they can help. Ensure though that they will not go gung ho and reply without prior approval. It will sometimes be best to have your staff be the ones to reply if they are respected members of some online communities.

Go public ASAP, create a response page

A public response should be as rapid and transparent as possible. Create a page on your website for the crisis. If an online storm is happening or is expected to happen then you need to create a central and trusted source of information. Don’t let the main source of news on this crisis be some place totally out of your control. This first response could be as simple as “We’re responding” but it’s a reponse. If you have more detailed information put it on this page. Relay on the page that this will be the central place for all updates, more updates are on the way and ask people to reference this page as the source of information. Let people know that you will answer all questions and this page will be the place where they get answered first but you will get around to answering questions in other places too.

Inform the world of your reponse and continuing responses

Inform the press, bloggers, Twitterers, Facebook Fans of your response page and ask them to reference this to everyone. Ask them to link to it. Ask your staff to link to the response page using their Facebook, Twitter accounts but direct people to an agreed company rep to get answers from or else have they relay information requests in to the crisis team. Brief some news organisations in advance of a widely sent press release so they can be ready to interview you as soon as this breaks. Use language that makes you look competent, assuring and in control.

Keep listening and react to incorrect information first

After getting the public announce out the gap start looking around. See what people are saying. Respond to incorrect or totally false information at the source and on your reponse page. Sometimes the person making the false claims might not let you respond which is why your page can react to it.

See what questions are being asked, don’t wait for them to come to you. Answer as many of the questions as you can on your response page first. Then go out to where they are being asked, answer them there but always link back to your page which you will point out answers that question and many others. An unanswered question is a dangerous thing. Make sure the void is filled by you and not someone speculating.

Has the horse bolted?

If news broke and now the controversy is being called something you don’t like such as “Disgusting Dominos People” or Eurostarfail then use that term and even put it in your page title. Don’t ignore it. If that’s how the conversation is going and it becomes the most used phrase for the crisis then get in there and fight for your right to reply. People will Google that phrase and you want to be found to it so you can give your side. Dominos did that with their CEO responding to those awful videos by replying in his own video, with the same wording as the original videos and he did it in the same space where it happened – YouTube. Stupidly now, Dominos pulled their video and instead the original videos can be found again. Leave it up!

Don’t stop

Remember that the web will remember forever. As Dominos should have remembered. For a while you need to keep going even if tiring and be on top of it all. Like Arnold Vinick in the West Wing when a nuclear powerplant has a meltdown and he holds a press conference and keeps answering questions until the press gets tired and go home. The story ends at that news cycle.

Aftermath

Going back and looking at the results for Irish Pork:

You can see that the first few results. Even without clicking through people will have a negative sentiment from the headlines and the snippets. So use traditional PR to send out good news after the event. Use the same phrases so that the more recent news that appears on the websites of these news organisations will push down the older news. See what other online spaces are still

The Asshole rule

There’s always going to be one. No matter how harmless the crisis is, some people will use it to attack your organisation or sometimes you get used as a proxy for a grudge over someone else. If people put something up on a website and they do not give you a right of reply then reply on your own space and reply in other spaces too. That way if people find a negative post they’ll see references in other spaces around it where your take is expressed.

Communications guidelines or a comms philosophy is better than a set of rules in my view because the wannbe lawyers will try and argue every word of a ruleset. It’s much hard to argue with a cloud or something as fluffy as “please don’t do anything that makes people unhappy”. These guidelines that are created by a company should be a group activity, not written by one person and enforced. The group (generally) will be more switched on than one person. If your staff contribute to this it also means they know what this is about and don’t get surprised with a new memo dictating what this is.

If there is only one thing to remember:
Everything that can be copied or pasted or photographed with a mobile is one step from being seen by the whole world. This goes for internal and external communications.

Companies that take part in a conversation (even when they get dragged in) will be far better than companies that refuse to take part. With online being a core part of every life, both business and personal, every mention of you in a conversation can be found and can be added to. Both positive and negative opinions can spread and build more.

A few truths:

• People will talk about you online.
• People will talk about you online and sometimes this will be negative. This is ok.
• No matter who you are and no matter if you are a living saint, someone will say a negative thing about you or your company.
• Conversations cannot be stopped and should not be. Those who try to stop them will actually end up adding the wrong type of energy to the conversations and create further ones.
• Everyone, including you, has a right of reply. Sometimes it might not be where you want to place it but you still ought to exercise that right.
• A staff that are schooled in communicating is better than a staff that are told they can’t communicate.
• Good external communications can only happen with good internal communications.

Communications Guidelines for online interactions:

When either representing the company or when in a personal capacity and talking about the business area:

0. Don’t be alone
Point out the conversation to others in the company if you are at work. They may also be looking at the same content and about to respond. Others may also have a different and reaction to the piece. Other opinions from within your organisation should be welcomed.

1. When interacting, be upfront.
State who you are from the start. Use your real name in full or at least first name. State you are from your organisation. State what area you work in or what your role is if this is needed. Making up names, pretending to not be from your organisation can be seen as dishonest (it is!) and even when you think you are doing good and your intentions are good it can be used against you and your organisation. Also, your IP address is probably going to be logged and can be traced back.

2. Respect the right to give an opinion.
Some people might be over-the-top hostile to your company and even you. Respect their right to have an opinion and to share it. You might not like their viewpoint and disagree with it but having an open mind when it comes to opinions makes you a better communicator. You can disagree and still be respectful. Always remember you are not just reply to someone but replying to someone in front of potential dozens or hundreds of others.

3. Be helpful.
Try and provide as much information as you and the organisation are able to give. If there is information you can’t provide, say so. Support all points by linking to information sources, both your organisation’s sources and others.

4. Be positive.
Joing discussions about competitors or adding to a thread that is not constructive doesn’t help your organisation and the community in general. Try and make every interaction one that provides value. Standing on its own, does this blog post, blog comment, forum thread, Twitter reply represent your organisation well? Does it typify your organisation’s Spirit? Positivity is also infectious and is reciprocated. If people add an opinion to a blog post, Twitter message or forum thread you started, thank them since they’ve taken time out to contribute and help.

5. Be concise
This might sound like the opposite to providing as much information as you can (No. 3) but it is not. Depending on the interaction, it might be a case of correcting incorrect information or giving the take of your organisation. In hostile environments, nitpickers will examine every word you use. Get to the point quickly, provide the information in the first few sentences to ensure clarity. In a world of speed reading and scanning, if you can provide information in the first 3 lines compared to the first 30, the scanners and those who take their time will read you more.

6. Be playful
These are guidelines, not rules, not laws. Over time as you interact your language and style may change. Find what works for you.

7. Give feedback
Make these guidelines ones that adapt to the world. Give internal and external feedback. Revisit them on a regular basis.

Social media people in Ireland on Twitter. At least according to their bios.

Google allowing businesses to post context sensitive promotions on Google search results. Lovely idea.

Nike iPhone App takes colours from your photos and then designs a shoe with them.

Duarte’s blog posts are always insightful. When given an excel file full of numbers, how do you present it? Here they show you.