Social Media Stalking - Keep Yourself Safe!

I read a chilling article today about a woman who was stalked by a fellow Foursquare user at a restaurant. While the situation is as creepy as it is unique, one thing that many social media users don't own up to is their own accountability in usage. I'm not saying sites like PleaseRobMe (the live Twitter/Foursquare site that announced users home departures) are at all justified in what they do; in fact, I think websites like that cross a major line that takes social media from something fostering open communication to a more fearful type of relationship. Regardless of how you use social media, I think there are four guidelines that everyone has to consider before making that Check-In, posting that Facebook Status or sending that Tweet.

1. What are my privacy settings like? My Facebook is locked up tighter than Fort Knox, and that's because the things I share on Facebook aren't meant for anyone's eyes but those of my friends and family. The best decision you can make before opening an account on any social media platform is planning what you do and do not want to share, which brings me to my next point...

2. Monitor what the news is saying about a platform. Most people know about the Facebook privacy issues that have been on everyone's lips recently, but there are still some users that had no idea. While it's easy to blame Facebook, you have to hold yourself somewhat accountable as well. Taking a moment to Google the platform and see what bloggers or news sites are saying about it is a step that you should take from time to time, regardless of what you're posting (personal or professional).

3. Self censor based on your own guidelines. I spoke earlier about Facebook being for personal use only... while it's tempting to add a co-worker to a personal-use account to share with them some photos, keep in mind your own professionalism. Do you really want your co-worker (or, if your co-worker has a nasty streak, your boss or other colleagues) to know how you feel about working late or what you did during your "sick day?" Now more than ever, social media tears down alibis for everything from work to divorces to a white lie to a friend. I'm not by any means endorsing lying. I'm just saying that by keeping home and friends on one platform and professional acquaintances on another, you'll be saving yourself from a lot of embarrassment, and helping avoid any dangerous situations.

4. When in doubt, Google yourself. As someone who routinely Googles herself to see how high her LinkedIn page is ranking, imagine my surprise last summer when I found that some ex-employees I had worked with at my parents' business were making threats on MySpace about my family and me. Obviously, lessons were learned by both parties that don't need any more discussion. However, the point is that while you may be embarrassed about typing your own name into a search engine, finding a threat to your safety and stopping it before it becomes an issue far outweighs the momentary discomfort.

While social media is fun and opens new doors in learning and communicating, there are always risks when using the platforms. By watching what you say, who you say it to, privacy agreements and monitoring your usage as well as others' usage of your name, you can keep the conversation going without worrying what the cost could be.

Social Media "Blunders" vs. Sins

I found BusinessWeek's Six Social Media Sins today, and while it's a good article with valid points, I think they overlook the fact that these aren't sins if you don't know what you're doing on Social Media; these are more uninformed blunders.

So to add on to what BusinessWeek started, I made a list of three "blunders" that many newbies to social media make when trying to effectively spread their message.

1. Mixing messages - A twitter account or Facebook updates should have a cohesive theme to the messages (and NOT just marketing messages, like BusinessWeek warns). But if you're talking about what you ate for breakfast without asking readers without relating it somehow to your tone, then it's confusing to the readers as to who is on the keyboard - or even if it's the same person.

2. You think that followers, fans or subscribers are the litmus test of success. If you're communicating and meeting the goals that you've set for yourself, it doesn't matter if you have ten followers or ten thousand. If you're using Twitter to reach journalists and you've successfully contacted several, then you've met your goal. It doesn't matter if you only have 20 or so followers.

3. You think the more platforms, the merrier without evaluating the communication potential. You might not need a Youtube account if you don't really have relevant videos. If you're working for a certain company, for example, having a Youtube channel of just your commercials is straight marketing, and not something that will foster communication. As the article says, social media is "about engagement in two-way conversation" - so just having a profile to be on that platform without something that will create a dialogue, is really just a waste of your time.

Are there any other sins or blunders you see new people or uninformed corporations make? What's the worst mistake you've made, and what lesson did you learn from it?

Don't Fight the Conversation! Brands on Social Media

This article by Brian Solis details that on average, one in three people are talking about brands on social media every week.

Now I don't love statistics because sometimes, they confuse me. But findings show that one in three people is seeking advice; one person is making a recommendation and finally, one person just has that brand on the tips of his fingers for discussion. That's pretty powerful stuff.

For brands like J.C. Penney, who are realizing now they need to tap into this market and meet their customers where they meet. By meeting that one person in three, they can reach the other two.

How long until every company is required to have a Twitter? I'm giving it six months. For the critics saying Twitter is temporary, I'm curious to see where the platform will evolve from here.

Know Your Medium (Or At Least Put a Leash on Your Spokespeople)

The Attorney General of Utah announced the approval of a death sentence on Twitter yesterday, drawing shock and disapproval from the Twitter community. I agree with the general consensus that this was an inappropriate place, and the response to it less than professional.

To reply to people's concerns about the comment with a "flippant" and then aggressive manner, shows not only an inconsistency in tone, but that the Attorney General is either tweeting while emotionally unstable (which is not recommended) or someone else is tweeting for him (which is a lapse in tone for the communicators).

At this point, the Attorney General should apologize to his followers and to the families of everyone involved in the case. To announce such an important decision on a trivial medium was inconsiderate to the families of the victims. His PR team needs to jump on this situation and handle it to control his credibility as well as smooth over community relations, both online and offline.

#NSAC Goes To Orlando

This week, teams from all over the United States will bring their comprehensive campaigns for State Farm to the National Student Advertising Competition national championship, in Orlando, Fla.
The #ChapmanPRA group will be presenting our #FEELfree campaign on Friday. We're excited, optimistic and eager to see what our creative counterparts from all over will be bringing to the table.
I hope State Farm looks at their current campaign and uses the millions of research impressions and new ideas that we present to create a campaign that resonates with their target demographic.

Check out Tom Arthur's portfolio to see our commercial and our book. Wish us luck!

(thanks to Kayla Glass for her photo!)

BPGlobalPR Revealed...

From a PR standpoint, this guy is a nightmare.

A few points that particularly caught my eye, for the "too long; didn't read" crowd...

"The point is, FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing. You can spend all sorts of time and money trying to manufacture public opinion, but ultimately, that’s up to the public, now isn’t it?"


My response to that? Look at Tylenol. Look at Apple. Look at the millions of businesses worldwide who have encountered issues and bounced back through the management of their brand. The fact is, the public believes what it wants to believe. It forms these beliefs by how the company acts in public. These actions are controlled through PR. He says forget your brand; I say, your brand is EVERYTHING.

"Don’t let people forget what has happened here. Don’t let the prolonged nature of this tragedy numb you to its severity. Re-branding doesn’t work if we don’t let it, so let’s hold BP’s feet to the fire... Right now, PR is all about brand protection. All I’m suggesting is that we use that energy to work on human progression. Until then, I guess we’ve still got jokes."

Using Twitter to make jokes about the BP oil spill is helping to create a lighthearted look at the oil spill that is obviously very important to this man. He should maybe re-evaluate the tone he's giving the disaster by joking and making it a laughable situation.

I wonder where both @BPGlobalPR and @BP_America are going to go from here?

@BPGlobalPR vs. @BP_America: Not a Fair Fight

Since 10 a.m. this morning, almost 30,000 Twitter users have jumped on the @BPGlobalPR bandwagon, giving the comical feed almost nine times the users that the real BP Twitter account, @BP_America, has. Personally, I saw the fake Twitter for the first time this morning on The Daily What. I can only imagine the other arenas in which @BPGlobalPR's link has been spread.
The @BPGlobalPR account has been live since May 19, barely a week. Since that time, it has accrued over 46,000 followers and has been listed 1,200 times. These are impressive numbers for a humor feed. My surprise is that BP has let this go on for a week.
Yes, it's fairly apparent that the account is a fake. But the bio reads, "This page exists to get BP's message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!" The name of the page is "BP Public Relations." The logo and fonts associated with BP have been modified but are still recognizable. The damage that this account could help bestow upon BP's already critical situation is massive. Yet BP has taken no action. Why not?
Well, it seems that BP's PR team has something more important to worry about: the oil spill.
Rather than fighting the internet bully, they're focused on distributing information to the public. This fake account is one element of the crisis that the PR team is letting slide, and for good reason: the bogus BP's aim, to sell "BP Cares" t-shirts, benefits the gulf through clean-up funds; buzz has drawn more traffic to BP's own Twitter feed, adding almost 400 followers in just under an hour. This fake account may actually be helping BP's reputation in the long run.
This makes me wonder if other companies in crisis have handled fake Twitter accounts in a similar manner, or have they spent time and energy in putting the faker in his place? Does anyone know of any examples?

Be a Retweet Ninja!

Looking at my feed today alone, I noticed that I've been retweeting articles like a Twitter Ninja in the night.
I'm wondering... is this helpful, or obnoxious?

Here's the deal when it comes to Retweets.

1. You should share but with reason.
If you're only re-tweeting the link but not saying why you found it helpful, you're just putting another random string of characters out into the universe.

2. Add a hashtag if there isn't one!
If you find a great article for PR that doesn't already contain a #PR, add it! How many more people will see that article because of your addition?

3. Pair it up with something else.
Facebook's on everyone's lips today, but there are so many viewpoints that it's hard to get them all straight. If you find two good articles for different sides of the Facebook debacle, post them together! Bit.Ly should be your BFF for this.

By treating your Retweets to some personalization, you're adding credibility (proof you're not a bot) to a blogger you support, and you're making a name for yourself as someone who's thoughtful and contributes to a hashtag community. That makes everyone happy.

5 Ways To Reduce Social Media Distractions

Oh Mashable, how you speak to me.

"“Insecurity work” is the stuff we do that has no intended outcome, does not move the ball forward in any way, and is quick enough that you can do it multiple times a day without realizing. But nonetheless, it puts us at ease.

The first step in reducing insecurity work is becoming self-aware. Recognize what you do in your everyday life that is, in fact, insecurity work. The second step is to establish some guidelines and rituals for yourself that provide more discipline, such as restricting all insecurity work to a specified 30 minute block every day. The third step, if applicable to you, is to delegate the task of checking on this data to a less insecure colleague who can review it periodically and report any concerns."
http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/reduce-social-media-distractions/

I'm definitely going to start trying this. I find that obsessively checking my email, my Facebook, and my Twitter only stress me out more, or make me aggravated that no one has responded yet to the message I just sent. I think I'll set myself a goal of only checking my personal Facebook and Twitter account three times per day (morning, afternoon, night) and my work email and Twitter as needed. Here's my goal, hopefully I'll stick to it. I am rebelling against social media addiction!

Promoted Tweets: We knew it was eventual & A few thoughts on Facebook

Yesterday, promoted Tweets launched on Twitter results. For those of you not familiar with Twitter, Twitter's "promoted tweets," or paid sponsored tweets, are now showing up in searches.

I'm sad to see that the self-motivational aspect of Twitter go, which depended on how much you could get retweeted, how many followers you could get, and how you interacted with them; that was what determined your success or failure, not your ability to pay to show up in search results.

Along with Twitter's new homepage, I see a profitable future for Twitter, one that involves more and more advertising dollars. It's hard to say if the original appeals of Twitter - one on one communication and the building of an online community - will prevail over the new advertising dollars. That's up to the Tweeple (yeah, that physically hurt me to type... won't do that again).

In other social media news, I read an article yesterday about Facebook users preferring to "like" something rather than become a fan of it. The psychology of those terms is very interesting to me, and given the extensive research I've done into the 18 - 25-year-old demographic, stems from a specific group of users. Because psychographic research repeatedly shows that Millenials prefer not to be subverted, I understand fully why the terminology of "liking" something sounds more pro-active, giving psychological satisfaction while maintaining a supportive relationship of a product or company. It seems like being a "fan" could count you as one of many, lessening the ability for the Millenial to be an individual. That's just what I've read into it, anyway.

A change I've waited for and still not seen on Facebook is, the dislike button. I remember groups springing up with the launch of the Like button, calling for a dislike button. There are the obvious PR problems of negativity that it could present, but this seems to be a classic case of The Customer is Always Right. If Facebook users want a dislike button, they're going to keep creating groups and sending emails until they get one, or they'll move onto a new platform that offers a better way for them to interact with their peers. I'm still waiting to see when it will happen, and the obligatory Facebook status updates as soon as it does. Failbooking.com and Lamebook.com will appreciate the new material.

"10 Twitter Tips for Nonprofit Organizations"

At my current internship at a local nonprofit, I'm working on using Twitter to get publicity for a specific event. Starting out, it's been daunting - looking at less than ten followers and having trouble getting retweeted or communicating with the people that can help my cause. This article by Heather Mansfield for Change.Org has given me some really helpful tips and hopefully I'll be able to get the message out even further!

http://nonprofits.change.org/blog/view/10_twitter_tips_for_nonprofit_organizations