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Convincing the C-Suite to Engage in Social Media

A week from today, I will be the featured speaker on a national PRSA Teleseminar "Winning Over the Executive Suite: A practical guide to social media campaigns" on September 9 at 3:00 p.m. ET.

I will address how to convince the C-level suite to surrender some control and begin to engage social media. This teleseminar will provide concrete recommendations and case studies highlighting practical initiatives any company can implement to begin to engage social media and secure executive buy-in.

Participants will learn:

• Seven tips for securing buy-in from senior management. (Note: I actually give more)
• The five most common pitfalls companies make when first starting to engage social media.
• Suggestions and recommendations for effective, quantifiable ways to begin conversational public relations.
• Real world examples of the good, the bad and the ugly.

There is still time to register here. I have been told my presentation is a must listen event. Even if you can't make it to the call, PRSA is keeping it archived for two weeks.

I will also be speaking on September 11 at the PRSA Northeast District Conference on the topic of Social Media ethics. If you are near Buffalo, it is shaping up to be a great full-day conference, and I hope to see many people there.

Posted by Mark McClennan on September 2, 2008 at 4:50 PM
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Tongue-in-cheek marketing from the neighborhood realtors

Blogs are a delightful creation, but so many bloggers are a tad big prickly ... evidently looking for ways to skewer someone just a little more effectively than the blogger they just read. We all know this. Maybe it's the next Olympic sport--lobbing insults via blogs. Feel the burn.

It makes me look for multiple meanings in otherwise mundane stuff that I read. Do I "get" what the writer's trying to say? Do I want to?

Into this larger context drops a postcard from our local Coldwell Banker realtor, sent to "postal patrons." There's a nice photo of a meadow on the front. [My town has an abundance of trees. Deer like the woods and ticks like the deer. It's a problem because much of the town seems to get Lyme disease each year.]

The realtors write, "Through the years, we have become aware of the tick population which has led to the discovery of a tool which removes them. This handy gizmo is called 'Ticked-off.' If you would like one, call either of us. The supply is limited, so call soon for your free tick remover. Happy Summer!"

First I rolled my eyes (bad habit), and then I thought ... well, we do have a tick problem. Then I thought a second longer and figured that this is actually a brilliant attempt to turn people off to the town and list their houses with this realtor. Now I don't really care what motivated this post card campaign, but am mystified by my own inability to take at face value what I read and to stop questioning the agenda of the writers.

For this, I don't thank graduate education, living in a "liberal" state or any of the traditional guilty parties. For this, I thank too much time spent with blogs.

Posted by Laura Kempke on August 13, 2008 at 9:20 PM
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Facebook or Phacebook?

Word today from TechCrunch's Duncan Riley that a successful phishing scam targeting Facebook users is on the loose. Unfortunately, this type of thing is only going to increase in prevalence as more and more people aggregate and connect using social networks, Twitter and other new media vehicles. Not to mention that many folks make their profile information public on the networks, meaning a phish doesn't have to get that much data to know more about you than they should.

This also raises the question about the blurring line between social applications for personal and professional use. I Twitter, I Facebook and I Link In, all for both profesional and personal reasons. Does this mean that these are all legitimate applications for professional use and should not be monitored by security and IT? Or does it mean that companies should restrict access using web filtering technology and other security/resource management measures to ensure no lines are crossed?

I for one think that the business value outweighs the risk in most instances---especially in a relationship-driven profession like PR--but not all companies will agree with that. They will be concerned that the sheer volume of new social applications and the integration and mash up of them, will eventually result in a major privacy or security breach that internal IT cannot manage.

It also raises the question of with whom does the responsibility lie? Should Facebook, Twitter and others provide some baseline security measures to fight phishing or should it be the corporation's repsonsibility to police their people and a consumer's to protect themselves? Is Facebook a public pond (swim at your own risk)? Where is the legal liability?

Thankfully, I feel as though we are still in the early adopter phase of Twitter, Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites and resources, so many of the users have some level of technical/security savvy. Maybe the near-term return on phishes for identity thieves, deviants and hackers will be so low, that they will continue focusing on traditional email phishing and botnets. In any event, this is great fodder for next week's RSA conference where experts like ScanSafe, 8e6, Breach Security, Qualys, CORE Security, Cloudmark and others will gather to tackle the topic of web applications and security.

Want to meet with me at RSA or find out what I'll be doing there? Check out my status on Facebook or Twitter. But if it says I am asking you for personal or profile information, don't believe it for a second.

Posted by Jason Morris on March 27, 2008 at 1:14 PM
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Common Sense: Yes, You Have a Permanent Record

In school, my mother always cautioned me to be responsible and study hard or any infractions would go on my "permanent record." I had visions of a metal vault in a big building where files on everything I did, from getting in a fight with my best friend to my less than stellar performance in Mr. Corr's Spanish class, would dog me through college, my job search and the rest of my life.

The truth is, there now really is a permanent record, and every company and individual has one. What's worse, these records aren't written on paper and stored in a musty vault--they're graven in digital bits and available for everyone to see.

We talked about this at PodCamp 2 - Boston this past weekend. It was a gathering of hundreds of social media experts, public relations practitioners, bloggers, podcasters and videographers to discuss the future of communications and marketing.

The term that was used was a person's (or company's) "digital footprint." It's important to remember that everything we do is recorded, tracked and accessible. Everything anyone says about your company--be it an employee, a competitor, a happy customer or a disgruntled customer--becomes part of the footprint. And unlike footprints in the sand, these digital footprints will not be washed away. They may become fainter, but they are always there for people to see.

I am writing to remind people about this and provide a few steps they can take.

1)     Keep track of your footprint. Just like you monitor your bank account and credit report, monitor what is being said about you and your competitors. If you do not have Google Alerts set up for every term of interest to you, set them up today. They are easy to use and free. Don't let others define you.

2)     Provide employees with blogging and commenting guidelines. You do not want employees saying something on behalf of the company, or that gets associated with the company, that will dog you for years.

3)     Think before you post. The line between personal life and professional is more blurred than ever before and will get even blurrier. Eventually Google Image search will get Facebook photos. Everything you write and post online impacts your personal brand. Be smart.

4)     Make your digital footprint work for you. Just like the first day of college, you have a chance to remake yourself in whatever image you want. If you want to be an expert on a topic, start commenting on it. You can build and shape your footprint.

In conclusion, your mother was right. There really is a permanent record on you and your company. Take control of it.

Posted by Mark McClennan on October 29, 2007 at 8:49 AM
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Tech Blogging Event

I'm tired of going to events in which someone stands up and says "So, can you tell me what exactly defines a blog?"

Yes, this is an important question for someone just coming to the table, but many of us are well beyond that and the discussion is now about more high-level topics, such as "how are the current crop of blogs affecting coverage?" and "how can bloggers, reporters and PR people work together?"

That's what last night's great event at the Cambridge Innovation Center was all about. Scott Kirsner put together a great group of panelists, including Bijan Sabet, venture capitalist at Spark Capital; Barbara Heffner of CHEN PR; Don Dodge, director of business development at Microsoft;  Jimmy Guterman, editor of Release 2.0 and blogger at O'Reilly Radar; Scott Kirsner, who writes the Boston Globe "Innovation Economy" column; and Nabeel Hyatt, CEO of Conduit Labs. Both Schwartz Communications and CHEN PR sponsored the event, as well as Morse Barnes-Brown & Pendleton and the Cambridge Innovation Center.

The panel was just a start, as I was charged with running around the room to bring in discussion from others attending the event. Dan Bricklin has a few pictures as well as the full podcast up, so rather than me running through the whole thing, go and have a listen.

Discussion items included:

• Why do you blog?
• What is your most popular post?
• How addicted are you to statistics?
• Where do journalistic ethics come into play?
• What does blogging do for your business?
• How do you maintain an authentic voice?
• How do people who cannot write well engage in this environment?
• What role do edited blogs (like this one) have both in the corporation and in the blogosphere in general?
• Can you do a "news" announcement only through social media?

Don Dodge shared great pieces of advice--both of which I violated on my various blogs--that he received from Robert Scoble.

First: include your own name in the name of the blog. Of my personal blogs only two have any part of my name involved, the Tanoblog and Tanophoto. And second: include your picture. While my picture is on my Schwartz bio, it is not on my Media Metamorphosis page, which may be why Paul Gillin didn't include my name in his roundup of the event.

I also enjoyed the discussion on edited blogs, in which Nabeel noted how the corporate blog at Conduit is, in fact, edited. The point is to have a common voice and to acknowledge that the company must come first, in this context. But also it's because there are people within the organization who have great thoughts when they're standing at the whiteboard, but do not have the ability to express themselves in writing. In this case the editing process is not about sanitizing the content, but about saying to those who are more self-conscious, "hey, we've got your back."

I found the ethics discussion to be among the most interesting and will be writing more on that later. But let me just share this from Don Dodge on conflict of interest: "No conflict, no interest."

On a personal note, I got a chance to meet David Laubner, who writes the excellent 93South blog, one I've been reading for some time.

In all, a great discussion of some of the primary issues facing modern tech journalism. I'm sure there will be more discussion on the various Boston-based tech blogs, but the podcast is probably the most complete recounting of the event. Though, not everyone identified themselves before speaking, so it sometimes be tough to follow.  

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on October 24, 2007 at 12:34 PM
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