If your company is maximizing its use of social media in its marketing and communications activities then you’ll have as many team members as possible contributing to the conversation. You’ll have more than one person blogging, tweeting, and as many of your staff and management will be using Facebook to draw positive attention to your company. Because of this, your customers will hopefully feel that they’ve formed a relationship with a team, a group of people, instead of just a logo.  I gave a presentation the other night where I suggested exactly this and some of the audience members voiced concern about consistency of their message or someone saying something crazy, and so on.  This is a valid concern, but because we now live in this day and age of social media it is less valid than it would have been a generation ago. The reason for this is related to brand control.

One of the reasons why companies were terrified about social media early on was that it shook the very foundations of brand control. Suddenly bloggers were out posting about how crappy the new A-brand microwave they bought was, or how poorly this new A-brand car handles, and next thing you know people are looking to blogs to inform their purchases and not the manufacturers or dealers who sell the items. The blogs were honest, frank and straightforward, and people liked that; brands didn’t.

Then of course brands wised up…

Some of them bribed bloggers or bought an army of their own, and some of them just got better at engaging their customer base. And to this day brand control remains the stuff of legends largely, brand monitoring, pragmatic and ongoing, is the next best thing. Because you can’t control what people say, particularly consumers who buy your product or service and have a bad experience. Just as importantly, if your company wants to tap into the true power of social media you can’t control what your team-or your employees say.

One of the great things about social media to me is that it has really forced a lot of companies to clean up their acts, externally and internally. If you treat your employees like crap they’ll write about it and they’ll chat about it online, if your product or service has declined in quality your customers will write about and they’ll chat about it online.  So the rule of thumb for companies in my opinion is now:

-treat  your employees well, educate them about your brand and vision, empower them to take ownership of your brand and be your ambassadors. Treat your customers well, educate them about your brand and vision, empower them to take ownership of your brand and be your ambassadors.

If you do this, then you shouldn’t have to worry about control, about consistency, or anything crazy being said. Something crazy is inevitably always said, replace “control” with monitor (and/or manage) and if your staff like you and your service/product then make sure they are given an opportunity to consistently voice how happy they are to be a member of your team! If your staff are well educated about what you are, what you want to be, the messages you want to convey, and they believe it, you shouldn’t have to worry about consistency. Don’t make them include branding words, or marketing language, don’t force them to be PR automatons, these are individuals with individual voices and perceptions so let their genuine individuality shine through. If they’re talking positively about your company with others through social media, then your marketing literature, your website and other communications vehicles can take care of your brand’s heavy lifting. The emotional buy-in of a positive interaction with your staff member will linger longer in a customer’s memory than some tag line or branding statement you make.  And if your customers can be equally as well educated about the things your staff are, then you’re on your way to assembling an army of PR specialists.

-treat  your employees well, educate them about your brand and vision, empower them to take ownership of your brand and be your ambassadors. Treat your customers well, educate them about your brand and vision, empower them to take ownership of your brand and be your ambassadors.

There’s a lot of buzz in Vancouver leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics. There have been Olympic court battles , wars of words, major developments going over budget , rumors of social activism, some questioning if there will there be a riot? The police have been  buying sonic crowd control devices, and the climax of it all of course…the gold medal men’s hockey game .
The one thing I’ve been most interested in seeing though (after the gold medal men’s hockey game of course) is how social media will have its journalistic coming out party this February. True North Media House (Dave Olsen in particular) forged a trail into VANOC and the public discourse around the Olympics by being very vocal about the role of blogging and other forms of social media during the games. It was their hard work and initial phone calling, e-mailing and blogging that got social media recognized for the first time as a credible “news” source for the Olympics, a first. But while True North may have opened the door, W2 has turned on the lights and got the party started.

The co-working space across from Woodward’s has already been busy with local artists, bloggers and media mavens as the leadup to the Olympics and the opening of the official W2 space across the street in the new Woodward’s Building gets closer and closer. The W2 2010 Media House has already been fielding Olympic inquiries from as far away as Japan and the Netherlands according to their site, but they’re not the only space in the DTES that will be open for bloggers during the games. Other co-working spaces are beginning to fill up slowly as well, including the Building Opportunities with Business office at 163 Pender and True North Media haven’t been counted out yet either, though W2 has clearly emerged as the dominant hub for social media during the Olympics. True North Media House currently has no major sponsor or venue, though that could all change quickly if the stars align. Or perhaps True North and W2 will find a way to work together. An opportunity like this only comes once, and it’s an opportunity to really showcase Vancouver’s talented pool of social media experts and bloggers. More information on W2 , and more information on True North Media House . More information at the Co-working space at BOB .

There’s a certain irony that physical space has become such a contentious and competitive issue for bloggers during the Olympics, but social media has yet to fully satisfy every social aspect of human interaction. Sometimes having a coffee and relaxing while throwing ideas back and forth, face to face, just can’t be beat. I’m excited to see this unfold. Like clusters of independent journalists of old, these co-working spaces will be buzzing with objective and uncensored observation during the games. Vancouver has become the testing ground for a new paradigm of journalistic social media, so let’s do this right.

So it’s that time of year again. Many of us have spent the last week eating too much turkey and shortbread, racking up credit card debt and testing our liver’s limits with delicious nog-based holiday libations. And so with the looming dawn of 2010, we may be thinking about a New Year’s Resolution to mitigate some of that damage.

Unfortunately, studies show that New Year’s Resolutions don’t really work for most of us. Though we start with the best of intentions, 25% of our resolutions are history within a week of making them. And only 12-22% of us actually stick with them for the year.

However, it seems that one way to help keep your resolve is to share your resolution with the world, say by tweeting about it, or putting it up on Facebook. Sure, if you send out constant Twitter updates about your big resolution you might annoy your friends and make them feel bad about themselves… but you might just actually stop smoking, reduce your Whopper intake, or quit your online porn habit.

According to Wikipedia, 12% of New Year’s resolvers meet their goals. But, that number increases to up to 22% among those who shared their goal with friends and family. Public shame, it seems, is a powerful motivator. So, given that statistic, it only makes sense that broadcasting your resolution to the world, via your favorite social media tool, will give you a much better shot at keeping on the straight and narrow path.

Of course, there’s one big problem with all this. Since social media has recently been declared, by some, unhealthily addictive, it’s probably not a bad idea to make a resolution to stop spending so much time heeding the siren’s call of Twitter and Facebook. And therein lies the Catch-22. My recommendation: forget big changes and just stick to small resolutions like, say, avoiding trans fats, or cutting down to one pack of cigarettes a day.

*****WARNING! Spoilers about the existence of Santa Claus ahead****

When I was a kid, and believed in Santa Claus, I always got predictably excited about Christmas. Yes, people told me that if I was naughty all year (and I was always naughty) I wouldn’t get that Big Wheel I wanted, but would instead receive nothing but a lump of coal and maybe some tube socks… But I didn’t actually believe it. I blithely assumed that, based on past years’ experience, I would actually get an awesome present or two, no matter how many bad grades, muddy clothes and stray animals I naughtily brought home in the months preceding Christmas.

But many of the kids of today may not share that same peace of mind as they bed down on Christmas Eve. They might actually be afraid of that whole Santa’s blacklist thing.

Or at least they will if their parents sign up for the “Parents Calling Santa” iPhone app. With this application, a parent can sign up to have Mr. Claus himself call up their kids. And, if that parent chooses, Santa can scare the living bejebus out of the kid by telling him or her that he was way too naughty this year, and won’t be getting any presents. Now, maybe I was a bit more naive than the kids of today, but if my eight year-old self had received a threatening phone-call from Angry ol’ St. Nick on the night before Christmas, I would have cried, crapped my pants or hid in my closet for a few days…or possibly all three simultaneously.

If that’s not scary enough, parents can also use send their kids a custom video of Santa talking to their kid. Like the iPhone app, this website also offers special customization options for kids who have been naughty. Parents can have Santa mention the present they would have gotten, if they hadn’t been so bad. A multiple choice drop-down provides a list of possible naughty transgressions that have offended Santa, including everything from spending too much time on Facebook, to talking with his/her mouth full.

There’s not much time left before Christmas morning, so if there are any parents out there with kids to scare, you better hurry. Though if your family is anything like mine, you don’t need clever websites or iPhone apps to scare the wee ones – Uncle Lou, a santa suit and 15 rum n’ nogs should more than do the trick.

A strong marketing campaign can get people through your door, on to your website or on to your high speed commuter train in the case of Eurostar, but your service while they are there is just as much a part of your marketing as any creative work you do (or contract out) leading up to that moment. Eurostar failed miserably to address this aspect of their marketing when their fleet underwent a significant failure involving five trains in the Chunnel. (For you North Americans unfamiliar with this term it’s like a huge underground drug tunnel you’d find from Mexico to Texas or from  BC to Washington State only for normal people and trains). The failure earlier today left thousands wondering exactly what was happening and as passengers and their loved ones waiting in London became increasingly unimpressed with the lack of communication from  Eurostar, they began to twitter up a storm. Like trapped killer bees just itching to burst out of the hive the stranded passengers railed against the transportation company while quite surprisingly the PR team at Eurostar were oddly silent. Eurostar is recognized as having a slick PR and Marketing track record so one would imagine that they would have been able to deal with this ad hoc pretty well. Not the case.

This may be a classic example of when great PR and Marketing depends on a perfect set of circumstances and when confronted with a monkey wrench in the machine it all falls apart. Marketing is service, service is PR, when you are a service provider they are the holy trinity of your brand and company culture. The business culture of your company needs to back up the gloss and sweet talk with appropriate communication and attention to your most valuable asset- THE CUSTOMER. I am shocked and appalled that Eurostar could drop the ball so badly with this and I am pleased as punch to see that social media once again has put a massive company and its public relations machine on its heels when its service failed to live up to its marketing. I have stressed this so many times, service is where you knock it out of the park after marketing and PR tee it up for you. Eurostar needs to take a long hard look at what has happened here and seriously address the bumbling response it gave to the crisis, because their competitors are likely drooling like Hyenas right now.  The company has apparently withdrawn its existing marketing campaign and is reassessing how to move forward in 2010.  Best of luck Eurostar, while you might have withdrawn your marketing strategy but I would wager to say the problem lies in your communications and your service itself. Incorporating your service and your company culture into your marketing plans may serve you well moving forward.  It’s OK for machines to break down once in a while, people understand that, but a communications breakdown is much harder to forgive.

It has been a banner year for social media. We can all pat ourselves on the back knowing that we generated an obscene amount of tweets, status updates, comments on status updates, event pages, we got totally linked in and really explored the boundaries of what we could do with this thing. And we’ve made all sorts of social media predictions for 2010 based on the upwards trend and all of which (every single last one) will come true because we know exactly what is going on without a doubt; we have absolute surety…except for one thing maybe.

Social media may be getting in the way of your search results. Bots (and most humans) tend to think that what’s newest is best. In reality exactly what you’re looking for is what’s best, while many times being duped by the top ranked results on a page has been coined “Google gullibility“. I search the internet for a living (I use RSS feeds and I have subscriptions but I still go out digging in the dirt for exactly what I’m looking for) and I can say honestly that a lot of my searches place me square in the middle of some pedantic conversations that have nothing to do with what I’m looking for except that a keyword appears in the text.

Twitter feeds appearing in Google and  and Bing represent to me a cluttering of search engine space. It’s about quality, when people have mistakenly accepted that it’s about quantity. Because of this I search mostly news sites now, which unfortunately bypasses a lot of otherwise awesome things that might appear in a regular search.  But this may only be a temporary traffic problem, the highway might clear up again in the very near future. Right now it’s about real time search, in the very near future it will be about semantic search engines.

For more information on those go here. For more information about what the people in the photo above are laughing at go here.

The internet was shaken to its core this week by the news that popular singer and girlfriend-puncher Chris Brown will no longer be using Twitter. Despite the terrible blow dealt by his absence on the popular social media site, Twitter shows no signs of shutting down their operation. In fact, they just released a list of their top-trending topics in 2009, revealing that, yes, people use the site for things other than reading tweets from Chris Brown.

The list of top Twitter trends is broken up into six categories: News Events, People, Movies, TV Shows, Sports, Technology and Hash Tags. Interestingly, they didn’t reveal actual numbers of tweets sent about each topic, but merely where it ranked on a top 10 list for each category. That’s probably good though, as we’d most likely all be embarrassed if we learned that, say, Adam Lambert prompted 50 or 100 times more tweets than something more traditionally discussion-worthy, like swine flu.

Speaking of H1N1, it showed up twice on the top 10 list for News Events, though it was surpassed by news about the Iranian elections. We can attribute a lot of that Twitter traffic to the fact that election protestors in that country were using the site as their main source of organization and communication. Incidentally, that fact may be the reason that Twitter, along with an Iranian pro-reformer site, were hacked yesterday by a group calling themselves “Iranian Cyber Army“.

In the People category of top-trending topics, the list was topped by Michael Jackson, with Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert rounding out the top three. And there, comfortably in the #5 spot? Chris Brown. Though given his behavior in the past year, it’s unlikely he’s in the top 10 because of his own fascinating tweets. So we can all hope that, somehow, Twitter can soldier on without him.

Let’s play a little guessing game. We’ll start with an easy one – The founder of which groundbreaking social networking site turned down a $30 million acquisition offer by Google in 2006, an amount that, if paid in shares, would be worth approximately $1 billion today? Okay, now another one – Which social networking site has become a punchline due to the face it more or less invented the genre, then got its butt kicked by a bunch of imitators? And, lastly, a trickier one – which social networking site has over 115 million registered users and is still one of the top 100 global websites based on traffic?

Of course the answer to all those questions is Friendster. Everyone’s first social networking site, Friendster’s meteoric rise and even faster fall is the stuff of legend, and jokes. But much to the surprise of many, I’m sure, the site still gets over 61 million unique visitors a month and is among the most visited sites on the planet. And that’s probably why Friendster just sold for $100 million dollars, to Malaysia’s MOL Global.

Those numbers, and that payday, raise an interesting question. Who the hell uses that site? If nobody you know still rocks a Friendster account, it’s just because you live on the wrong continent. The top 4 countries accessing Friendster are: the Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea. Yep, apparently Friendster has enjoyed a massive resurgence in Asia, mainly among teenagers.

Oh, and one last question for the guessing game – What’s the 5th country on that list? The United States. Which means that somewhere in the vicinity of a million Americans are still hooked on Friendster. But can you imagine what’ll happen when those folks discover MySpace? It’s going to blow their minds.

The Cluetrain Manifesto turned 10 this year. For those of you who missed it in 1999, I suggest you get yourself acquainted with its principles – it is far more relevant today than it was when it was published. The manifesto was a statement of 95 theses that would define the future of commerce. While some companies have moved closer to accepting these theses as their new reality, most are still living in the old world of commerce (and are doing so at their own peril).

The first point in the Cluetrain Manifesto encompasses all of the others. It is so important you should read it over and over again until it truly sinks in.

Markets Are Conversations

Note that it doesn’t say “markets will become conversations” or “markets should be conversations”. They always were, and always will be. Whether it is in the form of an Indian bazaar or an Amazon web server, every transaction is a conversation between buyer and seller. Mass Media has served to obscure this fact over the last few hundred years, but consumers have always found ways to coordinate themselves. Whether it is with the Better Business Bureau, or coworkers at the water-cooler, customers will always try and coordinate themselves to make decisions in a market.

The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in the time before blogs were called “blogs”, when a Face Book was printed and given to college freshmen, and when Google was an unheard-of research project from Stanford. Today, online markets look far more conversational than they did then. Remember: the dominant model for eCommerce in the ’90s was the catalogue. The catalogue itself was born in a time before the telephone, where transactions had to be completed by mail and products took months to arrive. The catalogue model is useless in a world where communication is dirt cheap and instantaneous.

Today, we are getting closer to a world that accepts the ubiquity (and cheapness) of communication, but we are not there yet. Companies have figured out how to harness some of these new tools to talk more directly with consumers. You can see this in the thousands of brands who maintain active Twitter accounts, or keep honest and open company blogs. You can see this in the live chat feature that you can open up on popular retailer’s websites, or the GetSatisfaction forums that streamline customer service. Corporations have found their voice on the web, but I would argue that consumers are actually further behind.

The modern consumer still does not know how much power they wield in 2009. They have had tastes of it: like when American Airlines created the Airline Passenger’s Bill Of Rights because of a campaign from one irate passenger, or when Facebook had to reverse an unpopular change to their terms of service. It is just hard to understand that this kind of collective action will soon be the norm.

We are only at the beginning of this shift. Doc Searls, one of the authors of the manifesto, has spent the last ten years working on a framework to understand these new empowered consumers. It is called Vendor Relationship Management, and it is worth taking a look at. VRM is the inverse of CRM (Customer Relationship Management). It is how purchasing decisions are made when the balance of power shifts in the customers favour. Instead of companies dividing markets by demographics, or geography, consumers will divide providers based on what they can offer. Don’t like the terms of your cell phone plan? Send out a request for proposals to other cell-phone companies and let them compete for your business.

The key to understanding this new world is that customers are no longer alone. Prior to the Internet, there was no reliable way for an ordinary person to complain to an audience of thousands without going through a gatekeeper. Reporters had to be wooed, editors had to consent, advertisers had to be consulted, before a story could be published to the masses. Now, anyone can access thousands of people through just 2 degrees of separation in their Facebook network. Anyone can be a threat to a brand. That means that everyone has more power.

In this new world of amplified word of mouth, companies must learn to listen better than they have been. Customers can be more of an asset, or a threat, than ever before. What they cannot be is ignored. It is too easy for them to join together, now. The communication is too fast. The organization is too easy. The power is too cheap.

Remember, markets are conversations. Conversations are not monologues. If you can’t give your customers what they are looking for, they will join together and find someone who can.

Check in tomorrow for some interesting software that can help you coordinate this listening. Even better: shoot us an email, or give us a call, and tell us about your market’s communication problems. We certainly know how to listen…and we might just be able to help.

If any of your FBBFs (Facebook Best Friends) from the New York area recently disappeared from the social networking site, you can stop wondering why. They were a sex offender. Well, it’s also possible they just decided they have better things to do than spend all their time on Facebook. Either way, you’re better off without them.

Thousands of registered sex offenders from New York state were just given the boot from Facebook and MySpace. It’s the result of a new law that recently came into being. The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (aka e-STOP), requires the state’s 30,000 or so registered sex offenders to inform the state of their home, email and social networking addresses.

Those who set up new social network accounts, or continue to use existing ones, without disclosing their info to the government face new felony charges if caught. Despite that threat, only 27% of those 30,000 provided authorities with an email address. And only 10% revealed a Facebook or MySpace account. According to a government spokesman, those 22,000ish sex offenders who didn’t divulge that information are either in jail, homeless, don’t have internet access or “chose not to respond”. It’s that last possibility that raises a few alarm bells.

But the e-STOP law did succeed in rounding up the accounts of 3,533 registered sex offenders, and having Facebook and MySpace terminate them. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, sex offenders prefer Facebook over MySpace by almost a two to one margin. There was no immediate indication how many were using Friendster.