Twitter Fortune 500

Is Twitter best for small business, big business, or for personal use? We’ll likely continue that debate, but new findings from the Society for New Communications Research (yes, there is such a thing!) as reported in the March 8 issue of PRnews found that Fortune 500 companies have takent to Twitter in a  big way.

According to the study:

• 35% of Fortune 500 companies have had an active Twitter account in the last year, with four of the top five corporations posting consistently.
• The most active industry using Twitter within the Fortune 500 companies was insurance - 13 companies actively tweet.
• Of the top 100 companies, 47 have active Twitter accounts, while the bottom 100 have 33.

Twarketing has a list of the Twitter accounts of Fortune 500 companies. Granted, they’re using the 2008 Fortune 500 list, and their post was originally posted in September of 2008, but it’s still a great resource.

The Types of People on Twitter

Inc. published online a guide to the types of people on Twitter, titled “8 Types of People that Belong on Twitter.” I attended a PRSA Leadership Rally this past summer, and discovered during the Keynote Address by Matthew Harrington, President and CEO of Edelman, U.S., that the younguns (can’t remember if this was high school or college students) told Harrington that “only thirty-year-olds are on Twitter!.” I can’t speak to the truth in the demographics of that, but Inc.’s article breaks up all of us Twitters into eight groups as follows:

1. The Personality - These are celebrities and others who are a brand unto themselves ala Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher.
2. The Guide - This group is made up of experts on a certain topic who are assigned to seek out and respond to questions related to the topic of their expertise.
3. The Brand Watchdog - Self-explanatory, really, but these are people working for a company; they respond personally and proactively to messages relating to their company or product.
4. The Customer Support Rep - A customer support rep who answers customers’ complaints, issues, and/or questions via phone calls, e-mails, as well as through Twitter.
5. The Publisher - Just as it sounds, this grouping is made up of those who feed info related to their topic of expertise and/or influence. They are usually relevant and consistent (or should be) with their tweets, though they may not be out first with the information.
6. The Promotion Channel - Spammers and e-commerce sites, along with contests, Twitter-only discount codes, and free giveaways make up this group.
7. The Conversationalist - Those who actively engage with their followers, truly connecting with them by tweeting several times a day, often conversing directly (or targeted to) a few individual people.
8. The Curious - I think of these via the older term of lurkers, for those making up this group simply listen without tweeting.

What type are you? Personally, I was a lurker (aka Curious) for a while, and am attempting to morph into a Conversationalist.

@LauraLaChapelle or @PRSA_MD

Jobs if you Love the Internet

And I always thought I spent alot of time online…

Turns out that is because of my job! CareerBuilder - as reported by CNN - has determined the top five jobs for people who love the internet, and three of those top five are public relations and/or marketing related.

Top 5 jobs for those who love the internet:

• Branding Consultant
• Public Relations Director
• Recruiter
• Social Media Consultant (can I say “duh”?)
• User Operations Analyst (and ditto)

Happy surfing!

Branding With Social Media

Your professional FaceBook page, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter account, and your professional blog - and any other social media outlet you utilize - should all have similar tone and a similar graphical ‘look’. You may be reaching different audiences, but YOU are the same. Yes, slight differences are allowed, even expected. But, overall, there should be a cohesive feeling - visitors should visit your FaceBook page and recognize it as your company’s.

Some Basic Tips

• Don’t use Twitter to tweet about your kids’ soccer practice if you also use it to tweet about your latest client. The same goes for FaceBook - if it’s a professional site, treat it as such. Don’t follow the path of this ‘wanker’.
• Don’t use the standard Twitter background - customize it to utilize your colors or, better yet, your actual design elements.
• Pick one item as your ‘core’, whether it’s your actual Web site or your blog, or anything else, and push to that from all your other areas.

Elementary, my dear Watson? Maybe. But we’ve all seen so many people do this wrong. A few who’ve gotten it right? McCormick & Co.’s Old Bay 70th Anniversary events. Black & Decker DeWalt Top 17 Finish Carpenters contest is another. They utilized various techniques cohesively, were fluid in their content and reactions, and attracted their core audience and then some.

To Blog or Not to Blog

That is the question. FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter - many have jumped on the bandwagon. Increasingly, many people feel compelled to publish a blog. But how do you know if a blog is right for your company or for your  product? How do you k now whether or not you should publish or post a blog?

Honestly, a blog is not right for everyone. Let’s be frank - it’s a waste of time for you and your blogger to be writing posts that no one looks at.

First, determine your audience - who will your blog be aimed at? Your current customers, or potential customers? Maybe both. Alternatively, maybe it’s an internal blog aimed at your employees. Maybe you have a different audience entirely.

Next, determine your niche. What will set you apart? People are busy - they need a reason to come to your blog, and to come back. What will make them sign up for your RSS feed? How will you stand out, what fresh content will you provide?

Another question to ask is how often will you post? Is a post needed hourly, daily, or weekly? Maybe you just need a few a month! It’s a fine line between inundating your audience and losing them because you don’t post often enough to be relevant.

Determine your tone. Professional, humorous, serious, informative, personal? There are many choices, and who you are writing to will determine it.

Finally, decide who will write your blog. Will you use someone in-house, or find a freelancer? Do you need someone who is familiar with SEO techniques (yes, even for blog postings)? Or do you just need someone with a fresh writing style, or someone who, frankly, has the time to do it?

Don’t feel bad if you decide not to pursue a blog - it’s not right for everyone. But if you do choose to blog, be sure to plan it out beforehand to ensure you’re on the path to successful posting.

10 Questions to Ask when Developing Social Media Strategy

Simply slapping together a FaceBook page, LinkedIn site, and a Twitter account does not a social media strategy make. Per Dr. Sean Carton’s article in InView!, following are ten questions to ask yourself when developing a social media strategy.

1. What are we trying to accomplish?
2. Why social media?
3. What kind of social media will best help us achieve our goals?
4. Are we prepared to let go control of our brand?
5. What will we do to encourage participation? What are you planning on doing to drive people to your social media presence?
6. Who will maintain our social media presence?
7. Do we have the resource to keep this up, or will this be a short campaign?
8. How does engaging users via social meda integrate into our overall marketing/communications strategy?
9. How do we measure success?
10. What will we do less of if we’re spending resources on social media?

All important questions, and all need to be answered when putting together your social media strategy plan.

Twitter and PR

Jeff Davis, a recent speaker at the 2009 Chesapeake Conference, is somewhat of a local expert on social media and, specifically, how to use it for public relations and marketing. He has nicely uploaded the Twitter and PR Resources that he used in his presentation onto his blog and Web site, Sawmill Marketing.

Another great tool is their Sawmill Guide to Baltimore Media on Twitter - an invaluable resource.

2009 Chesapeake Conference

The 2009 Chesapeake Conference and Best in Maryland Awards on Tuesday, October 6 was a great day of learning, networking, connecting, and planning. It was a jam-packed day of multiple same-time sessions, covering topics including Twitter and PR, How to Get Big Agency Results from a Small Shop, Defending Corporate Reputation in the Age of Social Media, and Networking with New Media, among many others.

A keynote speech by Sandy Hillman of Sandy Hillman Communications started the day off - sessions by Jeff Davis, David Warschawski, Dave Imre and his panel, Bill Atkinson, Peggy Hoffman, and Dave Harrison, among others, followed. At lunch, the Best in Maryland Awards were announced and given out - congratulations to all the winners, incluging Best in Show winner Sandy Hillman Communications for their work on the 39th Annual World Series of Poker.

Overall, attendees had glowing feedback - some even calling it “the best conference I’ve been to since 1999!”. Many others raved about the Learning Journal given out instead of the usual binder and bag. The day was packed with learning and networking opportunities - including the happy hour after the sessions were over.

There were a few reporters in attandance for the Speed Pitching sessions, including Liz Farmer (who brought a photographer!) from The Daily Record.

Want to attend the Conference after the fact? Follow up on via the Conference’s Twitter stream under #Chessie09.

Social Media Guidelines

We’ve all heard about the companies whose social media policies reek of Big Brother - no blogging, tweeting, posting, e-mailing about the companies, its clients, or its products. The most recent induction into this group is ESPN.

ESPN recently established new social media guidelines, outlining that their employees are banned from discussing anything related to ESPN or sports on any social network. While companies do need to be aware of the legal risks their social-media-involved employees invite, broad-sweeping policies like ESPN’s are more often than not considered detrimental.

Banning employees from talking about ESPN or sports is harmful for employee moral and it hinders employee professional growth. Looking at the bigger picture, restrictive social guidelines hinder the company from benefiting from all that social media has to offer. They can’t use it to promote themselves or their product, develop relationships, or invite feedback or ideas.

While putting social media guidelines in place is a necessity today, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of these tools when determining how strict those guidelines should be.

Legal Risks of Social Media

The Twittering of President Obama’s off-the-record comments regarding Kanye West’s performance at the VMAs may hit home to many of us the unforeseen ramifications of the Big Brother, 360-degree ramifications of the social media world we live in.

It’s time we adress some of the legal risks of social media.

Employees’ Tweets and posts about your company, your product(s), your clients, and your employees. That’s right - even if you’re unaware of what they’re saying, or even of whether they’re saying anything at all, your company may be held liable. Let’s say you send samples of your product to your ad agency, or friends, and ask them to send messages out to all their contacts about how great it is. Well, their e-mails and social-networking messages may be subject to the federal law regarding sending unsolicited commercial e-mail.  

Free swag to bloggers and the like. Yes, it’s an awesome idea (and time-honored) to send free swag to people with the wherewithal to then proclaim about the goodness of said product to their readership. However, bloggers and other social media users need to follow the rules as well - the FTC requires that they disclose the free swag.

Not telling the truth. Just as making up testimonials is not only morally wrong but also illegal, so is making up positive reviews, posts, blogs, and the like and attributing them to fake customers. In fact, per the FTC, it’s illegal for an employee to endorse its own company’s product on a message board without disclosing that he/she works for the company.

Now, you don’t want to go off the deep end and ban your employees from using ALL social media to talk about your company, employees, or clients ALL the time. Rather, you need to take some control. A solution? A social media policy. Not only does it begin to address this gray area, but it also could give you some legal legs to stand on.