What to do when social goes bad: The Lesson of HMV

It’s been a momentous day in the Twitterverse for HMV.  (For those of my US colleagues, who don’t know the brand, here’s a snapshot – from Wikipedia.. if you want more, click on the links).

HMV Group PLC is a British multinational entertainment retailing company with operations in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index. The first HMV branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company on Oxford Street in 1921, and the HMV name was also used for television and radio sets manufactured from the 1930s onwards.

HMVSite Down

Now I had to go to Wikipedia to tell you more about HMV, because the company was put into administration on January 15^th, as you can see from this is all I get at www.HMV.com

As if that isn’t bad enough, what took place on Twitter earlier today should give any senior management team cause for social cold sweats.  Normally it’s great for the brand when you’re live tweeting an event (like we did recently at #IBMConnect)

But I’m not sure anyone has tweeted their own sacking before.  That’s right.  Just before 130pm local time, HMV’s official and verified Twitter account sent out the following: “We’re tweeting live from HR where we’re all being fired! Exciting!! #hmvXFactorFiring“.

This tweet went viral with over 1,300 retweets in 30 minutes.

This tweet was followed by 7 others, which told the social world what was going on.

Posts such as: “There are over 60 of us being fired at once! Mass execution, of loyal employees who love the brand. #hmvXFactorFiring” and, “Sorry we’ve been quiet for so long. Under contract, we’ve been unable to say a word, or -more importantly – tell the truth #hmvXFactorFiring.” Went out.  And a little bit like car crash TV, we all watched.

Here’s the one that really consolidated for me the difference between those who “get” social and those who don’t.  “Just overheard our Marketing Director (he’s staying, folks) ask “How do I shut down Twitter?” #hmvXFactorFiring.”

It gets worse.  Several hours later the offending tweets disappeared from the @HMVtweets feed.

Not, though before you could pick them up on places like Topsy – the news and screenshots of the offending tweets have been trending through the Huffington Post, CBS and Business Week here in the US, and the story continues.

You can see more write ups of the story at Holtz Communications, TwoFourSeven and I found the news out  through superstar @rhappe tweeting it (follow her, she’s great for breaking news like this)

So what can you do to make sure that #hmvXfactorFiring doesn’t end up at your door?

• Social has GOT to be part of any crisis management communications plan.  Period.
• Make sure ownership of your Corporate Social Network Accounts is with a group that is part of the planning.
• Transparency is key.  If you spin, lie or cheat, you will be found out.
• Deleting content, while it might be necessary sometimes (racist commentary, profanity and the like that you do NOT want on your Twitter feed have no place staying there in order to be transparent) should be undertaken with caution.
• If you do delete content, make sure you have a record of it.  You can be sure that the rest of the world already does.
• Engage, understand the mood and the sentiment of the audience and go with it.  Empower the team responding to do just that.  Respond.

What else would you add to how you can deal with social in a crisis?

Content Can’t Take A Vacation (Or Even A Sick Day!) #TLTActiance

Today we bring you the first of a new series on the Actiance blog:  Thursday’s are “Thought Leader Thursdays”  (or #TLTActiance). I’ll preface this by saying that the content is entirely that of our thought leaders, who come from all over the world, the industry and from different areas of business.

Our inaugural blog comes from our good friend and colleague in the industry, April Rudin, who you may know from @TheRudinGroup. April writes and blogs extensively, in and around the financial services space. She’s well known for her blogging on @huffingtonpost and you’ll see her at most of the financial services events especially on the East Coast of the USA.

Enjoy the blog! Sarah Carter

One of the most frequent financial advisor/wealth manager miscues in social/digital marketing is the lack of a content calendar or a basic marketing plan.  It amazes me how the “planners have no plan” when it comes to new client acquisition or retention. Many people approach it almost impulsively, like opening up a Twitter account, without any clue about how to use it, what their messaging should be, or even an avatar/photo!  What’s more, this “play” or experimentation is happening on the most visible amplified platform possible:  the internet.

Ugh!  How can you avoid embarrassing “Social Media Hall of Shame?”  In this blog, I will discuss one aspect which is importance of on-going consistent and constant content.  While there are plenty of mistakes and faux pas to make, the easiest to avoid is the “content vacation.” To me, this is the most egregious “offense” and it discredits the firm/advisor to existing/potential clients in the worst way:  not following through with a plan. Here are a few examples. An advisor opens a Twitter account, begins following friends, or anyone, and has one solo tweet, something like “I am on Twitter now”. That was last January. The Twitter account has sat vacant since. Isn’t it suggesting that the advisor may behave that way with my assets?  Another example is the blog which is posted inconsistently, i.e. January, February, March August, November,  (you get the idea!).  The “Hall of Shame” blog topics are without any thread linking the blog to the firm or to each other, and, perhaps the blogs were part of a one-time newsletter which has never been repeated again.

Ugh! Ugh!  Developing a compelling content calendar can be very helpful in staying on track and on-time. To create an actionable, content calendar, you need to determine:  What is the content? Who is the audience?  Which platforms will be used?  And who is responsible for what?  Accountability is the key to creating a system, process for the positioning of your personal and firm’s brand on a regular basis in a way which leads back to you, your firm and new/more AUM.

I asked Kathleen Pritchard, Director and Head of Advisor Development for Legg-Mason about the importance of good, consistent content. Kathleen remarked, “While financial advisors may have limited time and resources, it’s the differentiated content which will attract and engage with your audience.”

Kathleen and I both agree that one way to create a compelling content process to include curating content from guest bloggers such as other trusted advisors is one way to “pepper” your blog with interesting stories tied to the calendar. An example would be to calendar a tax attorney to write a “year-end” blog. Inviting other third-party experts will also assist in your outreach as the contributor is likely to send your blog out within their own network as well. Repurposing the same content is another way to help and using evergreen content which is not time-sensitive can be useful in your calendar.

The brevity of this blog and the complexity of this important messaging are at odds. I have so much more to say but limited to 500 characters. Contact me.

April may be contacted via email at april@therudingroup.com or on Twitter @TheRudinGroup

Living Vicariously Through Hash Tags

Today’s post comes from Victor Gaxiola, Social Media Subject Matter Expert at Actiance.

This week representatives from Team Actiance have descended on Orlando, Florida to participate in Lotusphere- IBM Connect 2013, including Kailash Ambwani, Sarah Carter, and Cinthia Shields. Although I am not at the conference myself, I have had the privilege of experiencing it vicariously through them and their activities through their tweets and the IBM connect hash tag #IBMConnect. By monitoring the collective tweets of participants, I’ve been able to experience the sessions, parties, speakers and conversations that have been taking place.  (Although, enjoying a drink via Twitter is not the same experience).

This certainly isn’t the first time that I’ve used hash tags to experience events from afar. For the past three years I’ve lived vicariously through the participants tweeting from the South by Southwest conference in Austin. This year I finally get to participate in person and will be using hash tag #SXSW to share my observations and experience of the events surrounding the conference.  Since I have not been able to attend SXSW in person before, I feel a certain responsibility in sharing with those outside of the event who will be living the event vicariously through me and others-  much like I have in years past.

Amplification

For speakers and attendees the use of a conference hash tag serves additional purposes. For one they allow them to communicate their own thoughts and feelings of the conference in real time, and monitor how people are reacting and experiencing the event. Speakers and organizers also have the added benefit of having scribes in the audience that are eager to amplify the conversations and messages that are being shared by conference attendees to a much larger and wider audience that is monitoring the event online. As a result, speakers that are presenting on specific subject matter to room of attendees can easily multiply the number of listeners and participants by the viral sharing of information to every connection or follower that a person has in the audience through twitter. As a speaker I am never dissuaded or insulted when I see folks Tweeting away the information I am sharing. If the idea is to share information and ideas, then getting the message beyond the walls of the event only increases the number of people who receive the message. It may also serve the purpose of increasing my own fan base and opportunities for new connections. 100 people in the room tweeting to 100 followers adds up quickly, do the math.

Twitter Walls

To encourage participation, conference organizers are aware of the importance of displaying and promoting the hash tag of the event to attendees as it is happening. At the Janney Montgomery Scott Elite FA Conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, the conference experimented with a Twitter wall in their Genius Lounge that was displaying tweets using the #Elite13 hash tag.  Having the hash tag and accompanying tweets scroll in plain view of conference participants provided an additional incentive to participate- and likely drove social behavior. I think everyone likes to see their name in lights- even on a Twitter wall at a conference.   People would actually stand in front of the wall and tweet, waiting for it to display on the screen in front of them.

#Elite13 Wall

Trending Topics

To find out what the most current and trending topics are in the country or specific geographic region you can go directly to twitter and look at trending topics to see what conversations are currently taking place. In addition there are a number of different tools online that will provide you a glimpse of the most popular hash tags that are available. Trendsmap allows you to see local trending hashtags on a map of the country that allows you to zoom in on specific regions and cities. It’s fun to look at too.  Another site which is fun is Twubs that serves as a directory of popular hashtags. Participants can plug in multiple hash tags and participate in the conversations. Finally, my favorite hash tag tool is TweetChat. By logging into TweetChat using my Twitter credentials, I can participate in any conversation by adding the hash tag and then following along. The bonus, is that any tweet, or re-tweet from the site will automatically add the hash tag to the post.

Two Screens

Additional validation for the power of hash tags has been validated by their use by networks to promote televisions shows and sporting events.   These days a hash tag can easily be found as a program begins or is mentioned as part of the broadcast.  Network programmers and marketers know that with the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, the idea of entertainment being digested via two screens is becoming more prevalent.   I myself have begun to experience this more and more and the act of watching television has become less passive and more active as I participate in the conversations surrounding the unfolding events on TV.   This was especially true with sporting events, and we in the Bay Area have been lucky with the performance of our San Francisco Giants, and now the Superbowl bound 49ers.  I anticipate that this year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans will set a new record of online participation via tweets around the events of the game.

So although I’m not participating at the IBM Connect 2013 in person this year, Team Actiance is on the scene using hashtag #IBMConnect and sharing with us the people they are meeting, the events they are attending, and more importantly the things they are learning that help us all.

Belbey Blogs: Before you go social, check with Uncle Sam

Today’s post is a collaboration between Richie Etwaru, Director, UBS and Joanna Belbey, Social Media and Compliance Specialist, Actiance

It’s difficult to debate the value of installing enterprise social networks.

Richie Etwaru, a futurist and avid speaker, covered the current state, business value, and future thinking needed around the construct of what he phrases the #ENTSOCNET (an internal enterprise social network). Mr. Etwaru titled the piece Solving for building backlash of Enterprise Social Networks and covers the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd generation of the #ENTSOCNET. Installing an internal social network, driving, adoption and extracting business value as Mr. Etwaru describes, is complicated and difficult work. Leaders must ensure that said complicated and difficult work is being done under the auspices of regulatory guidelines.

There are regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and legal requirements organizations must address before deploying social. There however, is an impedance mismatch and some amount of misinterpretation between what the regulators consider enterprise social media, and what leaders in the enterprise consider to be enterprise social media. The spirit of the regulations suggest that whether an enterprise in installing an internal social network (what Mr. Etwaru describes as the #ENTSOCNET) for its employees only, or leveraging external social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter; all communications, messages, inboxes, comments, endorsements, DMs, tweets retweets etc. are governed under the regulations.

What Regulators want

More than 2 years ago, regulators of the securities industries began to issue guidance on how to use social media. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and others view social media, whether it’s external or internal, as just another form of business communications, such as email or instant messages. They remind us that it’s the content that is determinative, not the platform. Regulators also expect that firms demonstrate that they are supervising, or reviewing, a pre-defined portion of these communications. Other more general legislation may also apply such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the data breach notification laws (PCI, DSS).

What this all means

In short, whether internal or external, firms need to ensure that all business communications (or “business as such”) are captured, archived, supervised and made easily e-discoverable. There is nothing new here as this has been an evolution. First paper, then email, instant messages, now both internal and external social media, firms continue to be challenged to capture, retain and review a portion of all business records in whatever form they appear. As a first step, firms may use their existing email and instant message retention policies as a framework to develop policies for internal and external social media. Governing said policies is a separate and pronounced challenge.

Governance is key

Firms are increasingly committed to comprehensive corporate governance to avoid scandal and to comply with regulations. The development of sound policies and procedures before deployment is key, given the vast amount of data stored in most collaboration environments and the free ranging conversations among employees, contractors and even clients that can ensue, policies must be defined.

Specifically policies should address: records management (retention, litigation readiness, privacy), information management (making sure that records are tamper proof, and easily accessible), data deposition (disposal of data) and conflict management.  Where possible, firms should automate policies with technology to protect their intellectual property, prevent the creation and distribution of inappropriate content and provide an audit trail of all activity to ensure accountability.

It’s a serious legal matter

When learning of pending litigation, firms must be able to preserve all records  (“legal hold” or “ligation holds”) that may relate to legal action against the company, including records of social activity. According to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures (FRCP), firms must meet discovery requests for paper as well as electronic documents (spreadsheets, slide decks), emails, posts, and conversations across social media in a timely fashion. Therefore, firms need plans and the means to retain and produce such data upon request. Email was new and difficult, social is not yet understood, complex and mindboggling.

Social, not my grandma’s email

Social media, due to its nature, adds complexity to these requirements as interactions occur over time. For example, a blog starts with an initial post, then readers may add comments, or change their minds and revise and delete their comments and the original author may respond. These interactions could go on for months in some cases. Firms should have the ability to produce all of these threads of posts, comments and replies “in context” to give meaning to the conversations. By providing context, firms may reduce litigation costs by reducing the number of hours required by attorneys to sort through records to determine the sequence of events and the true essence of the conversations. Preserving context requires intelligent software solutions.

What now

Enterprise-wide “social business” tools were designed to facilitate collaboration, not necessarily to meet the legal and compliance requirements of regulated firms or public corporations. They offer basic functionality to capture and archive communications, but not the reporting, contextual view of information, nor granular policy setting that may be desired. Firms are therefore advised that before deploying enterprise wide collaboration tools, they look to third party vendors to ensure their compliance requirements are met.

Collaboration, no pun intended

I reached out to Mr. Etwaru (whom I met a few years ago at a conference in NYC) and shared this perspective. His response is below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Joanna,

            Your thoughts are spot on. From the regulators (who are doing a great job) point of view social, email, chat, etc. all carry similar risk and hence are metaphorically bucketed from a guidance standpoint. In the enterprise however, the risk with social is multiples higher for a multitude of reasons. One reason is employees learned of social in their personal lives where regulations are by and large absent. Hence, when using social in the enterprise (or in a commercial manner) employees (fallible as we are) tend to assume the same “free range” comes with social. The policy, governance and education you suggested is paramount, I could not agree more.

That being said …

However daunting all of this may be, the biggest risk is not using internal social media to break down silos and to unleash the intellectual power of the enterprise while driving innovation.

BTW, love your diagram, I can help you make it pretty

Hope this helps,

-R

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Diagram above rendered by Mr. Etwaru,

-Joanna

Belbey Blogs: Visiting the Taj Mahal #TravelTuesday

No matter what anyone tells you, you are never prepared for the Taj Mahal.  We’ve all seen pictures of it of course. And we’ve heard the romantic story of how Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was so grief-stricken at the death of his third wife, he spent 22 years building a monument to her memory. But, what’s it like to visit?

First of all, it’s crowded. Lots of hustle-bustle getting tickets and walking through various lines and checkpoints, then suddenly, you are amidst a sea of people all crowded into a dark hallway.

Look up and there it is!

Beautiful.

Then, everyone takes turns taking the classic “Couple Standing in Front of the Taj Mahal” shot.

Then a walk along a reflecting pond with stunning details.

Then taking off our shoes. Then lines.

And more lines.

And more lines.

White marble everywhere. It’s breathtaking of course, with stunning architectural details.

We’ve all seen those too.

But the part that no one ever tells you, is that everyone is so happy!

And playful.

The Taj Mahal is more than a monument, it’s a living celebration.

In Shah Jahan’s words:

Should guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator’s glory.

Confessions of an IBM Connect Virgin

Today’s post comes from Andy Holmes, Business Development Director at Actiance.

I wrote this blog last week.  It’s going live as I head into my first full day (after business development day), and my first ever OGS.

So having worked in IT for longer than I dare to say, I’m now finding myself in the position of attending IBM Connect for the first time. Actually my first IBM event of any kind!

Borne from ignorance I always viewed the IBM world as one of white shirts and blue suits, but having spent 6 months working with IBM and their collaboration teams and Connections customers it’s clear that IBM has actually become.. dare I say it…..quite cool really.

In my first Connect event I’m going to look forward to a number of things:

• It’s going to help me learn more about their culture but much more about how I can work with the IBM teams.
• Having worked on successful Actiance projects with IBM I could see the vision and what they are aiming to achieve.
• Bringing people together to share knowledge, work more efficiently together and break down the lack of understanding and connect people in work.
• I’m expecting to learn and understand much more about IBM’s vision for the social workplace and how I can support more projects and partnerships, armed with more relationships and better insight.
• I’m expecting to meet dozens of people from around Europe and finally put faces to names and be part of their team. Especially with the UK team who will mainly have drinks in their hand.
• What’s most exciting is the knowledge that my company can help business partners sell Connections. Our compliance, logging and governance tool for Connections means really helps customers develop their social strategy safe in the knowledge that compliance and legal team are satisfied, the data that’s created is can be retrieved and is secure. So the message from me in Orlando is safe and compliant social collaboration from Actiance. Anything else is well, a bit Mickey Mouse….

I’m still a little shell shocked.    But it’s in a great way.  As my colleague, Sarah Carter (#IBMConnect folks probably know her better as @SarahActiance) says.. IBM Connect, and the Lotus/ICS event is not merely a show, its not merely a conference.  This is a coming together of a community.   What we’re seeing this week shows us how to take that collaborative working and making it 24-7, 365, taking all those great conversations we have in 5 days in Orlando and continuing them throughout the year.

Belbey Blogs: New Guidance on Using Social Media at Retail Banks

This week, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) released “Social Media: Consumer Compliance Risk Management Guidance.  The FFIEC is asking for comments within sixty days.  You can download the 31-page document here.

Its release has created quite a stir within the banking industry.  A comprehensive article appeared on TheFinancialBrand.com, “Regulatory Shocker on Social Media in Banking Coming Soon” that summarizes the guidance quite nicely.

But . . . what’s so shocking?

We’ve been having the same conversations in the securities industry for three years.  And in those three years, firms have learned that there are three major areas of risk that need to be mitigated before deploying social media:

• Security:  your IT department needs to prevent your firm’s proprietary and client information from being leaked out either inadvertently or maliciously from the enterprise.  They also need to ramp up malware protection.  That’s because social media users are susceptible to incoming threats as they view themselves as part of a tribe and tend to click on any link sent by a “friend.”
• Compliance and Governance:  your legal and compliance departments already know that there are thousands of rules and regulations that govern the communications and advertising of publicly held corporations, firms in general, and bank specifically.  Take the securities industry as an example – the banking regulators aren’t issuing new rules and regulations around social media.  Social media is viewed as just another form of written communications.  Your compliance department is therefore challenged to interpret existing rules as they apply to social media and to develop and enforce firm policies.
• Enablement:  your executive team is concerned about productivity and the bottom line.  Now that every employee can be the face of the business, you either have a powerful marketing tool or your worst nightmare.  Employees will need to be trained on how to use social media effectively to meet the firm’s goals, such as nurturing existing clients, attracting new business, recruiting, and brand awareness.

However, during the last three years, we’ve learned that all these risks can be mitigated by strong corporate polices, backed up with technology and training.

So far, so good.  Nothing new here.  Or is there?  In addition to what we’ve already seen from other regulators, the FFIEC specifically also calls for:

• Creation of policies to address negative feedback or customer complaints, even if a financial firm chooses not to actively engage in social media.
• Monitoring to protect the firm’s brand identity
• Due diligence and oversight for third-party vendors that firms may hire in connection with social media

And the one that I find most interesting:

• Processes and reporting to demonstrate how social media “contributes to the strategic goals of the institution.”

In other words, the FFIEC recommends that firms measure the ROI of social media.

It will be interesting to see the reaction that FFIEC gets from the industry.  I just hope that the banking industry can use some of the key learnings from the securities industry to streamline the processes to reap the benefits of “getting social.”

For more details on how to deploy social media within retail banking, you can also check out Belbey Blogs: Upcoming Guidance for the Use of Social Media for Retail Banking from FFIEC.

We’ve Seen the Future and It is Now

Recently a customer in the financial sector told us they no longer had to justify the ROI of social media as a pre-requisite for using it for business; that debate was over. This is amazing considering just two years ago our financial institution customers were deciding if a) social media had any business value at all, and b) if Compliance would even allow its use.

In 2011 and 2012, organizations moved from discussing why and how they should use social to witnessing information workers use it in their daily business.  In 2013 we will see enterprises start to integrate social into their business processes.

Forward leaning companies recognize that social is a way of doing business, not a distinct activity or channel of communication. As such, social capabilities and practices need to be integrated into your enterprise systems – from CRM and content management to ERP and compliance.  A customer or prospect responds to a post made on LinkedIn, it should be noted in their CRM record – automatically.  A Financial Advisor sharing an interesting research article with their network should be able to do so right from the content management system-automatically. A fan makes a comment or product suggestion on your Facebook page? It should appear in your customer service or product management systems- automatically.

Gartner predicts that by 2015, the 20% of enterprises that employ social media beyond marketing will lead their industries in revenue growth.  A study conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research found that by the year 2015, Generation Y spending will approach $2.5 trillion – and in 2018, the annual income of Gen Y-ers will surpass $3 trillion.

If you plan to do business with them, be social!

I’m looking forward to this year, as we are primed to help organizations unleash social business with a strong line-up of new products and services. In addition to extending and enhancing our technology platform, we are investing in experts to assist companies integrate our platform into their enterprise systems to successfully impact business processes.  The days of social being used as a single point solution by a few on their lunch breaks are truly over.

Many analyst firms are releasing numbers on expected growth and spending for social software, collaboration and IM platforms in 2013. Besides the challenge of social scale complexity, there are other trends that we at Actiance predict, notably around BYOD, compliance and more.

You can read more about these predictions here .

In future blogs I’ll share with you insights about the blurring of the line between personal and professional use of social, as well as content, compliance and distribution. Till then.

Without mobile where would you be?

I’m on a train as I write this. From Montreal to Quebec and @via_rail is taking the strain as I head north. At the same time, my mum and I are messaging each other in real time on Facebook, I’m iMessaging a colleague, tweeting and also checking my email.

Every now and then I stop and think how much technology has adapted to,our mobile life and how lost we’d be without it. Certainly the lithium Batteries might be awning all lithium battery devic on planes, following a series of fires, caused a moments thought. I can’t take my cell phone or my laptop with me?? Wow, the providers of collaboration platforms will be rubbing their hands in glee if this one spreads. I can’t imagine that. I can’t even check my laptop or cell phone… That’s going one further than the travel restrictions after 911.

Mobile access to technology that we see for both our personal, and our professional lives has become ubiquitous. Who, for example watched, hero Felix Bumgartner’s Space Jump historic jump from space? My sister in law was visiting at the time. We don’t have a TV here in the USA, so we were watching on the Internet, from laptops. Until we decided that we needed to get a move on and head out – we wanted to catch the tide as we were planning an afternoon sailing in the bay.

No problem. As my husband drove, I watched the proceedings on my iPhone and the relies watched in the back seat of the car on the iPad as we drove to the marina.

There’s also news today that Bank of America is adding 10,000 mobile users a day. Wow. Time and money stand still for no one!!

Today happens to be a vacation for me, but my use of mobile continues, as the applications, the tools that I use in my professional and personal life morph into one, the devices that I carry for the business meetings I’ll be at later in the week, become my communications tools for catching up with the family, for checking out the hotel in Quebec and planning where I might eat a late lunch, or sharing the photos’s from the train and comparing my experiences with Via Rail and Amtrak (Amtrak increased my Klout by using my Amtrak from the California Zephyr on their Facebook page!!).

What would I miss the most if I didn’t have mobile? I think I’d miss the “share” – and that’s not just me sharing, it’s others sharing too.. I’d not see the updates from fellow travelers, or be getting real time suggestions as to what to see and do.

What about you? What would you miss the most if your mobile access was curtailed?

Avoid the Social Ghost Town: Five Tips

I’m presenting one of Actiance’s regular education webinars this morning, my topic is personal brand and how you can use social to build and maintain it.  I’m checking my slides, working through my commentary and I get to my section on establishing a brand presence.  The final bullet point on this slide is “No Ghost Town Here” and that makes me think that that’s actually one of the most important points about building a brand on social.

You’ve got to be consistent.  What point is there in building a community, building a brand and then letting it fall fallow, go to waste and have no content?  Building a brand is HARD WORK.  It takes a heck of a lot of time, commitment and often a lot of money.  Building a brand that is engaged and engaging is harder. And it takes serious commitment to maintain.  If you’re not serious about that, then I question that you’re serious about the rest of your life/business.

By the time you read this, I’ll no doubt have delivered my webinar (its 0900 pacific and you can register here, if you do perchance read this in time), but fear not dear reader, we’ll be recording the session, and as with all our educational webinars, we run them live at a minimum every two weeks, so you can listen to the dulcet tones of one of the Subject Matter Experts here at Actiance, and ask us questions live on air!

However, I’m taking this opportunity to share some tips on how to avoid your brand becoming the social ghost town:

1. Commit.  You can’t be half committed to social.  you’re either in, or you’re not.  So either commit the time, or don’t.  Be realistic about your commitment.  If you’re only going to share content once a month, then, really, Twitter probably isn’t the place for you.  Actually if you’re not going to engage with your friends, followers and connections, then consider if social is the right space for your brand at all.. if you want to lurk, you can do that anonymously.
2. Have a plan.  I know I should start this with strategy, but lets assume you have that.  Now get tactical and look at what you’re going to share, how you’re going to engage and with what.
3. Sort your content out.  Content is hard work.  So you need to look up to bullet point one, and then build content into that.  And this isn’t as hard as it first looks.  Every business has content.  Fair enough it might not be in 140 characters of less, but you’ve definitely get content, and face it with 140 characters, you’re cutting it down, not adding to it!
4. Associate your brand.  You know the values that you want your brand to have (whether your brand is a personal or a corporate brand), so associate it with like brands – re tweet, re purpose, share blogs, follow news feeds.   If you ask yourself the question “should I retweet this?”, then the answer is NO.  Associate your brand ONLY with those that will reflect well on you.
5. Crowdsource:  Work through my list.  If you associate your brand effectively you will find other good content.  Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the thousand other networks out there let you collectively share content, so look for what’s popular, what resonates with your network and your aspirations and work that crowd (baby).
6. Darn it, I said five in the subject right?  ok this is the bonus point.  And to my mind its often forgotten and missed in our desire to see our Klout score go up and our Kred extend… LISTEN.  (sorry, don’t mean to shout.. but sometimes, over all the noise, on social listening, and THEN engaging is the most important thing we can do.

What did I miss?  What’s your tip for ensuring your brand doesn’t become a social ghost town?

PS:  My graphic today comes from Bodie State Park, California – a ghost town apart from the park rangers, and well worth the trip, its a superb state park with some great stories!