The 3 Rules of Social Media Crisis Management

What would you do if you are a business who took a dive into the warm, inviting pool of social media for marketing reasons...

...and then found yourself in a crocodile-infested swamp during a feeding frenzy?

There are a couple of major brands who are in the news right now as the object of some serious brand-bashing in social channels.

It's a vicious reminder that while Twitter and Facebook are great tools for connecting with your customers, things can go horribly wrong for a brand in a hurry in those channels too.

Without getting into a discussion of whether these brands deserve to bear the brunt of public anger and mistrust or not, here are three simple rules to help any brand manage a crisis using social media.

3 Rules of Social Media Crisis Management

1. A brand cannot win an argument online. Ever. Don't bother trying--it comes across as defensive and makes things worse. Give facts and resources, not messaging.
2. Admit your mistakes, say you're sorry and show us what you are doing to fix the problem.
3. Repeat #1 and #2 as often as necessary.
   

That's it. What do you think? Anything you would add?

Facebook Wants You To Totally, Like...Like EVERYTHING!

Facebook wants to make the Internet a much more like-able place, and is announcing several changes around its "LIKE" button at its F8 developers conference this week.

1. Embedding the Like button on sites across the Internet
2. Displaying brand/community Pages that users have Liked on their personal Facebook profile page
3. Recommending new brands/community Pages for Facebook users to Like
4. Renaming the “Become a Fan” to “Like”

The moves are just further evidence of Facebook’s strategy to strengthen the connection between its members and marketers.

You Like Me..You REALLY Like Me!

Facebook’s introduction of a “Like” button that online publishers can add to their sites is the biggest news of all. The new button functions much like “Digg this” or "Tweet This," and will supplement Facebook Connect as a tool that enables Facebook users to share articles to their profile pages.

So why should Facebook users or marketers care?Two big reasons: 1) Activity Feed 2) Profile Page.

Unlike Digg, which allows you to anonymously recommend web content, the Facebook button will publicly identify your external “Likes” by displaying a note in your Activity Feed and on your personal profile page. Facebook will also add the list of brands and cause pages that you follow, or have “Liked” in your personal profile.

We Think You Will Also Like...

In fact, Facebook will go one step further and recommend Pages you might like, based on your current “Likes” and content you post to Facebook.

Update your status with a post that says you "can't wait to go to the John Mayer concert next week," and you will soon see "John Mayer" suggested as a Facebook Page you should 'like'.

Some privacy issues have already been raised over concerns that the “Like” button, distributed across the web, could be used to track individual user behavior, but Facebook insists that it will use the data ONLY to provide better advertising and marketing recommendations within the Facebook platform.

Reach Out And Touch Someone...Please

Ultimately, Facebook wants to better connect people with brands. Most studies show that peer-to-peer recommendations are highly influential in purchasing decisions, and displaying a list of brands and products that consumers 'like' on their personal profile page and activity feeds constitutes a public endorsement. So, getting a “seal of approval” on a personal profile page that gives the appearance of endorsing a brand really can pay off for marketers.

A Word (or two) of Caution

There's also level of trust involved here that both sides (Facebook and brands) have yet to fully earn. Facebook has made a number of missteps on privacy issuesthat has members feeling leery about what Facebook is doing with their data. And brands need to alter their normal behavior when on Facebook and not be too intrusive into what is, after all, a personal experience for the members.

Most people don't join Facebook to connect with brands--they join to connect with their real-world friends and family. As long as brands play nice and join--but don't try to dominate--the conversation, my take is that they will be welcome on the personal pages of Facebook members. It will be a delicate balance.

What are your thoughts? Is Facebook ruining the social experience for members by facilitating brand connections or just bringing the marketplace to where the people are?

Facebook Gets Brand-Friendlier

Facebook made a few moves last week to make themselves more friendly to brands and brand marketing, creating new Community Pages and luring members to connect with brands by renaming the ‘fan’ button.

These new policies are an open invitation from Facebook for businesses to become more active on the platform. While these are more evolutionary than revolutionary changes, brands should understand how Facebook is providing more opportunities for your business by:

• Renaming the Fan button on Pages to Like

• Creating new category: Community Pages

• Renaming Pages to Official Pages

Does It Really Matter If I ‘Fan’ or ‘Like’ a Brand?

Replacing the label 'Fan' for 'Like' is a subtle semantic change designed to dramatically increase the number of connections between people and brands, or total member reach.

From a social perspective, the difference between ‘fan’ and ‘like’ is the emotional connection to the brand—being a fan is a much deeper commitment and suggests a stronger sense of identity with the brand. “Like” is a much weaker connection, less discriminating and requires less of a commitment.

I like ice cream, for example. But I’m a fan of Blue Bell because I think it’s better than Ben and Jerry’s or Haagen Daaz. I still like Ben and Jerry's ice cream, but if I'm going to choose one to identify myself with, I'm going to tell my friends that I'm a 'fan' Blue Bell. Our fan loyalty is generally only given to one brand in a given category.

With the new label change, it's less of an emotional connection to say that I like Ben and Jerry's. And I like Haagen Daaz. And I like Blue Bell. The label on the 'join' button helps define my commitment to the brand.

Why Would Facebook Make This Change?

An internal memo from Facebook to its advertisers makes the case that people use the ‘like’ feature twice as much as the ‘fan’ feature. The name change is designed to get more people to connect with brands on Facebook.

While some might think that a brand would prefer a deeper connection that comes with attracting 'fans', the reality is that they don’t really care—it’s more about the numbers. Advertisers and marketers like BIG numbers and the numbers on most brand fan pages just aren’t large enough to justify big dollar investments yet.

Imagine, however, doubling your connections from 1 million fans to 2 million “likes” just by changing the label on a button. Sure it sounds better to say "we have 1 million fans", but if someone is going to give you big bucks to advertise on your platform, it's just as cool to say "2 million people like Brand X."

Even if the connections don't double immediately, any increase in activity comes from the result of very little effort and investment. Facebook's advertising and marketing revenue increases, and brands extend their reach just by changing the name on a button.

Smart move, Facebook.

The New Facebook Community Pages

What's a Community Page? It’s the newest classification of identity on Facebook bringing the total up to four: Profiles, Official Pages, Community Pages and Groups.

It’s getting a little confusing for users and brands, so here are the core differences between the pages:

• Profiles are for humans—plain, ordinary people doing ordinary people things

• Official Pages are for businesses, brands, and organizations. Musicians, artists, politicians and celebrities are included.
  

• Community Pages are for member causes and topics that no one really ‘owns’.
  

• Groups are a place for members to share professional interests or hobbies
  

Community pages are designed for users who want to bring attention to causes and topics of their choice, or to create ‘unofficial’ pages around brands or celebrities.

Causes highlight or promote actual causes with real-world consequences, like providing global disaster relief (500K fans), show support for gay marriage (660K fans) or protest the health care bill (1.2M fans).

Topics can be on any subject, but typically are a reflection of pop culture and entertaining memes, like “I Need a Vacation” (4.7M fans), “im just gonna rest my eyes while they text back....*next morning* dammit!!” (1.2M fans) or “I Stand In The Shower for An Hour Because I like Hot Water.” (1.1M fans)

Most topics are not really ‘owned’ by the creator of the page (ie: who owns the need for a vacation?), but owning the page gives certain privileges to a page admin, like the ability to email (or spam) all the fans of the page.

To reduce the spam threat, once a Community Page has passed a yet-to-be-defined number of fans, Facebook will convert the page to community ownership, like a wiki. The ability to email all fans of the page will be removed.

Official Pages are for businesses and brands on Facebook.

You must have the right to establish the page on behalf of the company/brand in order to create this type of page. So only Starbucks may own pages classified as Starbucks Official Pages. A fan may still create "Starbucks--The Best Coffee”, but this would now be classified as a “topic” and be categorized as a Community Page.

Artists, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, government agencies, politicians, movie stars and other celebrities will also use Official Pages. Fans of celebrities who want to create fan pages for their favorite artists would use the new Community Pages.

What Is Facebook Up To?

Quite simply, Facebook is trying to be more brand-friendly. By removing causes and topics from Pages and creating Community Pages, Facebook is doing some spring cleaning and making it easier for brands to be found.

If you were to search FB Pages for “Apple”, for example, NONE of the top 10 results in Pages would display the Cupertino-based computer maker. But you could find the topic “Apple turnover served over a hot, steaming child”, a business “An Apple A Day Depot” or the page for the Apple Valley PTA.

My hunch is that Official Pages will be weighted more heavily in search results and result in more click thrus to brand pages. Coupled with the semantic change to “liking” a brand, Facebook is clearly trying to increase traffic and build an ad platform that can meet or exceed television-like numbers for brands.

For all the advantages that online marketing offers, the gold standard for advertisers and marketers is still television. A very lowly-rated show on cable still garners more than a million viewers. There are around 300 Pages on Facebook that generate that type of attention, and most of those are of the "causes" and "topics" variety.

If Facebook wants to keep the marketing and advertising dollars flowing, they've got to get more traffic to brands any way they can. It's as simple as that.

What are your thoughts on Facebook’s new brand-friendly moves? Are these shrewd moves, adding to user confusion, or part of a massive selling-out by Facebook?

Stop the Snark!

Is Twitter turning us into a bunch of whiners?

I attend a fair number of conferences where I find Twitter to be a great tool for taking notes. I've stopped tweeting during most sessions to focus on listening and absorbing the content more deeply, because I know that many other people will be taking notes and someone is bound to tweet what I would have anyway.

But I'm starting to notice a trend that is bothering me--Twitter is becoming a cynical, snarky place at conferences. Unhappy that the panel isn't meeting your expectations? Bored? Then tweet to the world how bored and smart you are by cleverly insulting the invited guests!

If you were to look at a sample of the tweets from an interview with Twitter's Evan Williams at SXSW, for example, you'd think the event was an unmitigated disaster. The backchannel was FULL of snarky comments like:

• Phillyberg @ev checked his watch 45 mins into #mondaykeynote. trust me, we were all checking too.
  
  
• mikestopforth selling the rights to my screenplay "Sloppy Moderator and the Revenge of the Back Channel", aka "#Mondaykeynote"
  
  
• @zuno: Should have kept the #mondaykeynote to 140 characters
  
  
• @RT mikeminer: Every time the moderator says "let me talk for a minute about. . ." a baby angel dies in heaven.

The Truth? You Can't Handle The Truth.

But looking at the entire session, you'd be surprised to discover that MOST of the people actually liked the topic and took away some good nuggets. I'm in that camp--I found Evan to be thoughtful and articulate and I learned something. It wasn't GREAT, but it wasn't horrible either.

The problem, of course, is perception and how quickly a negative perception travels across the internet and how difficult it is to correct something that is false. You get articles like this one that paint a very distorted picture of the actual event.

I was there. Most of the audience did NOT 'rip' into the keynote. In conversations I had in the halls, people were ambivalent, but I didn't hear anyone 'rip' into the event. Maybe there is a difference between what people say out loud versus what the voices in their head say, I don't know. And of course, I didn't talk with everyone who saw the keynote either.

I'm a fan of freedom of expression. And if folks are unhappy with a panel or a presentation, Twitter is a great way to give instant feedback that is valuable.

Has Twitter Jumped the Snark?

It seems that snark is becoming our preferred means of expressing ourselves and it feels rude, disrespectful and contributes to a general decline in our civility.

In my opinion, snark distorts the actual event in the guise of 'reporting' and is just plain rude. It's the equivalent of someone giving a negative review about a movie that you are enjoying WHILE the movie is still playing.


Here's a new radical notion: Every thought does not have to be shared in public.

The Twitter crowd is becoming the digerati equivalent of an infant crying in public--sure, the baby is unhappy and is expressing itself, but does everyone else really need to listen to the baby cry because it is hungry, tired, needs to be burped or just wants attention?

Towards A Kinder Gentler Twitter

I know it's a really old-fashioned notion, but my mom used to tell me "if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all." I think that's still good advice.

We all have the option to simply tweet "not finding this session useful" and leave. Doing so contributes to the public record of the event and displays your personal expression without putting anyone down personally. It contributes to a civil discourse where one freely expresses their opinion without putting any lasting negativity into the conversation.

What are your thoughts? Do you think that we're becoming snarkier? Is this a good thing?

Do You Believe in Omens?

ON YOUR MARK...

I have to confess that I am not a planner.

I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy, who enjoys spontaneity, diving into the unknown and the thrill of surfing controlled chaos.

So imagine my surprise when it came time for me to travel to Austin for SXSW and I find myself planning the day of my trip down to the hour, complete with a checklist of tasks to accomplish before I go.

GET SET...

Feed the cats and change the litter box? Check. Laundry done? Check. Dishes done? Check. Gather all the video equipment, buy clip-on mics, get extra tapes and don’t forget a tripod. Check, check, check and check.

The plan called to start packing and running last-minute errands at noon and to cease all activity at 2 for a flight leaving at 4. This gives me plenty of time to get to the airport 15 minutes away, park close to the terminal, and check email and relax, instead of my usual habit of running thru the concourse to be the last person who boards the airplane just before they shut the gate.

I’m packed, ready to go and the bag is waiting to be strapped to the motorcycle at 2. So far, so good.

Now, there’s a reason I always take my motorcycle to the airport—I get in and out of any traffic quickly, and always manage to score free parking. Bikes fit in places that the evil people who charge for parking don’t quite account for and I take advantage of those spaces. Since I’ll be gone for a week, taking the motorcycle will save me around $150 in parking fees.

I grab my helmet, feel inside for the keys and head out the door.

AND...

Wait.

No keys.

No keys?

My keys are always inside the helmet. ALWAYS. That’s where they live. I frequently play hide-and-seek with my wallet, keys and things like that, so it’s not time to panic yet. My only chance of winning this game is to ALWAYS put my keys in my motorcycle helmet. It’s a habit. I turn off the motorcycle, take off my helmet, take the keys from the ignition and toss them into the helmet. Each. And. Every. Time.

If the keys aren’t in the helmet, then where are they? I check my motorcycle jacket. Nope. The shelf where all the other keys live. Nope. Various pants pockets. Nope. I look in the bedroom, the office, the truck, and the bag I packed. Nope, nope, nope and nope.

Panic.

AND...

45 minutes later, I still can’t find the keys and I REALLY have to leave. I hop in the truck, speed to the airport, park 2 miles away in the nether land that is long-term parking, wait nervously for 10 minutes for the next shuttle bus to take me to the terminal, stand in line to check my bag, and then start running thru the concourse to be the last person who boards the airplane just before they shut the gate.

sigh.

So far, my missing keys are costing me $150 for airport parking and potentially another $175 to replace the key ring. (BMW keys are expensive to replace) The cost of an airport shuttle? $20.

GO!

I’m hoping that this isn’t an omen of things to come…you know, that the rest of the SXSW trip is going to be like this. Is this an omen, or just my universe self-correcting itself to my normal behavior?

What do you think? Do you believe in omens?

The Real Time Web--The Future Is NOW.

Do you remember when you were a kid and would dream what the fantastic future would hold? What was it you wished for? Flying cars? Holodecks? Time travel? Being able to be teletransported like on Star Trek?

I'm guessing that for most of us, our wildest dreams didn't include having access to all of the world's information RIGHT NOW.

But that's what we're getting. Are you ready for it?

The Real Time Web

I recently attended the fascinating ReadWriteWeb summit on the development of the Real Time Web, where the general consensus is that the future is NOW. Literally. Your future will be comprised of instant updates on breaking news, your kid's homework assignments, traffic conditions, weather, stocks,sports scores and play-by-play, what your friends ate for lunch, political developments, and much, much more, all sent auto magically to the electronic device of your choice.

You can know everything happening everywhere all at the same time.

Twitter is a good example of the real time web in action, albeit just one facet. It's an amazing source of thoughts, information, news, mundane happenings and the buzz of the hive. Now you can know when protesters are being shot as it happens in Iran, what a congressman is thinking while the President is talking, get pictures the instant an airplane lands in the Hudson River and follow real-time discussion and presentations in a conference that you couldn't attend in person.

You can also know the moment that Miley Cyrus decides that she is tired of Twitter and quits it, what Shaquile O'Neal is doing this afternoon or see video of a balloon NOT containing a child making its way across Colorado.

Do You Have The Need To Know?

It's heady stuff, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I really need to know everything going on in the world RIGHT NOW. I asked conference organizer Marshall Kirkpatrick a few questions about how this will affect the 'average' internet user, and he was gracious enough to respond in this video.

I'm curious though--can you think of when you NEED to know information RIGHT NOW? Are we overloading ourselves with too much information?

From my point of view, while having some information in real time is useful, it's rarely vital. And there's the problem of filtering--how to determine which information is important and which is trivial.

With the real time web, Neda is given the same importance as balloon boy, because it's the trending topic and what everyone is talking about. And that's just not right. I think that the constant flow of information trivializes all of it, because one bit of news is replaced by another in just a few minutes.

What about you? Is the real time web useful in your life? Is a real time web what you want your future to be--or would you really rather have that flying car?


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What Do You Do Every Day Anyway?

I recently gave my team a challenge to develop 'elevator pitches'--short, 45 second introductions of themselves and our company. I suggested 3 scenarios where having something prepared that rolls naturally and easily off the tongue would come in handy:

1. At a conference of peers, and you get the inevitable questions-- "what do you do?" and "who do you work for?"
2. In either a business or social situation where you meet someone who might be a potential client and you want to introduce yourself in a personal yet professional way.
3. When your non-tech family and friends ask you "what exactly do you do for a living?"

As community managers, that third scenario is often the most difficult to describe, because there really isn't an off-line job that mirrors what a CM does.

Well, I'd like to give a shameless plug to @rhappe of The Community Roundtable who has written what I consider to be the best description of the many functions of a Community Manager.

She's done a brilliant job describing the role and I'm not going to recap her work here--I highly recommend you click on the link and check it out. I don't really have anything to add to her concise description.

Now, I still have to figure out how to put her wonderful CM description into 45 seconds or less so my Dad can understand what I do for a living, but that's another matter.

Rachel poses an interesting question on the topic--how do you prioritize your time as a CM? With so many different aspects to the job, how do you go about managing your day?

And that's what I'm curious to know too. I'm probably not very good at time management, because I find myself working on a Sunday afternoon, trying to catch up to work that I didn't get to during the week. I can get so wrapped up in doing daily maintenance tasks for my clients that I don't always get to the bigger, long term initiatives that will ultimately benefit both the client and my company more.

So here is my question for you, dear readers: How much of your day is taken up with 'mundane' tasks, and how do you carve time out for the bigger projects? I can find myself so occupied with responding to daily emails, looking at metrics and reports, surfing through clients communities etc, that I don't feel like I actually got anything done.

Do you have a system? How do you spend your day?