Social Media Best Practices: Corporate Charter, Governance, and Polices and Procedures

Social media is being quickly adopted by many large corporate companies, and some are diving in head first into the pool without properly analyzing their social media strategies and requirements, staff abilities, or the legalities of social media. The corporate landscape is littered with false starts, miss-steps, and missed opportunities, as some companies just open the floodgates and let each business unit independently develop multiple social media channels, and messaging standards ranging from professional to flat out juvenile. Unfortunately it’s not the professional messages that get all the attention, it’s the faux pas that become infamous, including spelling and grammar mistakes, flaming messages, poor branding, or indifference to customer issues.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, as there are cost effective ways to implement back social media governance rules, and there are some great on-line resources and examples, which can help you get started.

Like any traditional communication methodology, there are rules and governance put in place to prevent a wide range of messaging mistakes from ever seeing the light of day, and negatively affecting a companies brand. One of the key rules for any company getting into social media, or repairing the damage from a false start, is to pull back and centralize the governance of social media. Typically the governance of social media messaging, or PR and Marketing, is put into the hands of professional marketing and communication experts.

I have written social media charters, governance, and policies and procedures for two large Canadian companies, TVCogeco and MCAP Service Corp, and have worked closely with their executive teams to build a tangible social media charter. I have also written scaled back polices and procedures for smaller companies, and in my experience these policies and procedures are an important part of communication (PR), legal, and HR methodologies to reach out to the stake-holders. Policies and procedures are absolutely critical for regulated industries, and this management process should be centrally governed to start, and only when the organization is comfortable with their grasp of social media can they move to a more decentralized model, such as Hub and Spoke (see the diagram below).



But policies and procedures are just part of the overall social media corporate charter and governance that should be analyzed and put in place before a small, medium or large organization starts using social media channels for the PR and Marketing, sales, or customer feedback. A standard social media corporate charter would include detailed mandates for the following areas:
1) Corporate social media goals, strategies, and tactics (short, mid and long term), divided into primary and secondary
2) Social Media PR and Marketing strategies and tactics to leverage the corporate mandate
3) SWOT and identifying the target demographic
4) Executive and management support mandates
5) Staff and business unit involvement and feedback
6) SEO/SEM/SMM integrated methodologies
7) Measurements of Success and ROI (Cost reductions on PR and Marketing)
8) Social media analytics from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google
9) Social media models: Conversion, engagement, feedback, viral messaging, retention, collaboration, and sharing
10) Traffic and Distribution through syndication, links, email, key influencers, partners, and SEO/SEM
11) Social media advertising
12) Resources, daily maintenance and operations
13) Social media resources, education and training
14) Best practices, quick guides, and widgets, tools and services for managing social media
15) Continuous social media review and experimentation: Mobile integration, Foursquare, geo-location, real-time analytics, QR codes

Social media policies and procedures goes well beyond messaging governance, and should cover the following areas:
1) Define social media: Explain to your staff what constitutes social media
2) Define acceptable social media channels
3) Content ownership
4) Developing social media content, including workflow processes (helps avoid spelling, grammar and broken link issues)
5) Escalation process processes (disaster)
6) Roles and responsibilities
7) Privacy rights
8) Management of social media
9) Three R’s of Social Media Engagement
10) Social Media Engagement for Business Purposes
11) Rules for Employee Participation in Social Media
12) Disclaimers and Disclosures
13) Social Media Topics and Content (Acceptable and Taboo)
14) Deleting content
15) Suspending or Deleting a Users Account
16) Legal and HR audit processes
17) Monitor the Social Media Conversation

If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media strategies, and integrated Social Media PR and marketing campaigns, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com

Social Media Traffic, Quantity or Quality?

How important is high quality social media traffic? Over the past couple of years I have been involved in several Web 2.0 Social Media PR and Marketing campaigns, which have similarities to Web 1.0 campaigns. Traditional web marketing campaigns rely on a large number of people being funneled through a URL to view an ad or web page, to support a conversion model. The goal is that if enough people view the ad, or content, that this sheer traffic volume will translate into conversion (revenue, brand awareness, etc). Using industry standard analytics you then try to answer business questions, such as, did you sell more product or services during the campaign time-period, or is the target audience aware of our brand?

Effective social media advertising requires a different approach, since raw numbers can be meaningless, and can skew or distort the analytics, and return a false positive. For example, if your conversion model is designed to build a fan base in Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which in turn is routed to your web site to generate traffic, you may discover that even though your fan and traffic numbers have increased, this did not result in additional sales of your services or products, or conversion of the traffic. This is a result of relying on traffic volume to overcome a poorly executed traffic and distribution plan, which was not properly filtered through a targeted and geo-located demographic traffic sourcing model. Or possibly, weak business models, which do not encourage or motivate your audience to go the “Next Step”, through incentive promotions, such as, contests or coupons.

Web 2.0 Social Media PR and Marketing campaigns require high quality traffic, not quantity, which will have a positive impact on your business goals and measurements of success, resulting in a great ROI, and supports your conversion models. In order to improve the probability of success of your Web 2.0 Social Media PR and Marketing campaign, and develop high quality traffic, you will need to establish your business goals, and answer one question: What are you trying to achieve?

Business goals, which support high quality social media traffic:
1) Conversion: Encouraging your fans to do something. Contact you, sign-up for a services, purchase a product, or join a conversation?
2) Revenue: Did your social media campaign add to the bottom line, and do your analytic models clearly indicate this? For example, when you run a social media campaign for one week, your promoted product or service revenue increases by 5% to 10%.
3) Targeted crowd sourcing: Finding and validating your geo-located demographic traffic sources. This is gold standard to continuous quality traffic growth.
4) Engagement: Illicit feedback from your fans and followers. Did they comment, rate, share, or Like your content?
5) Awareness: Promote your brand and products. Do fans recognize your brand and read your PR articles? Do they share and Like your content?
6) Retention: Increase the length of a visit, and number of visits and page views. Did you increase the page views and fan visit time? What was the bounce rate? How often do fans return?
7) Key Influencers: Gather influential fans and followers who can help spread your message. Did you gather any influencers or partners who are sharing your message?
8) Viral Sharing: Encourage your fans to virally your content. Did your fans share your content? How much and with who? What motivates them to share?
9) Content and Message: Well written quality content and messages with proper SEO will support all the previous business goals.

Your Web 2.0 strategies and tactics, which drive quality social media traffic, should stem from your business goals, and should be supported with viable tactics and measurements of success. Building high quality social media traffic and the associated supporting business strategies and goals can take months, and is something every company should strive for, constantly maintain, and invest in. But, this effort is worthwhile, and should not be dismissed for mass volume traffic solutions, which deliver the traffic, but not the results. As well, exploring new social media technology to help improve connecting and engaging with the target audience.

If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media business models, and Web 2.0 PR and Marketing strategies, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com

Should Employees have Personal Social Media Brands?

This question was asked on the Sticky Branding LinkedIn group, which I am a member. Great question. And here is my response:

In my experience helping a range of profit and non-profit companies with their Web 2।0 initiatives, personal branding is quickly becoming a norm for some companies as it helps put a human touch on the communication। Most companies, though, opt out for a nameless “corporate avatar” to represent the company interests on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc। This still enables the company to have representation, but with a buffer, and allows multiple people to respond depending on the communication required. Others let the C-level executives Tweet and interact with the social media crowd.

Policies and procedures (best practices), have to be established if staff are to post on Twitter and Facebook, and I have seen people fired for saying the wrong thing. Other dangers include, staff losing themselves in the social media channels and not getting their primary jobs done. I have also seen this, and it can be a huge time killer, and quite frankly annoying when you have to work with these individuals, who are constantly distracted by their wide range of Twitter and Facebook channels. Some companies are absolutely terrified with social media, by regulatory and legal, but also because they do not think it fits with their corporate strategy, and are essentially transfixed like the proverbial deer in the headlights.

These days, it can be an advantage to have your own personal business brand on-line, as you can show the potential employer that you clearly understand crowd sourcing, as long as the conversations are meaningful. But employers should not confuse size of Twitter and Facebook following with value. Social media messaging is about quality, not quantity, and bragging to a potential employer that you are a social media expert, without understanding their needs, or having proven success under your belt, may lead to a lot of eye rolling.

Unfortunately, not everyone can represent the companies best interests in a public facing social media channel, and the damage that can be unleashed can result in a wide range of headaches. Most staff are used to instant messaging, communicating with their close friends on Twitter and Facebook, but do not have a formal education or experience in PR, marketing, journalism, or communications, and as such, are not well suited to represent a company on any social media channel. Personally, I think corporate social media should be left in the hands of sales and marketing, public relations, and HR, as they are best suited to deal with outbound customer communications, which may impact the company.

Now having said that, I do believe that deploying private social media channels for staff to collaborate and interact, is critical to foster new ideas, and improve processes and communication. I have seen this process in action at TVCogeco, and it worked very well for their station staff and volunteers. As well, I am helping several clients set up private and public social media channels for pharmacists, and for the Government of Ontario for professional collaboration, which will be strictly regulated, not only by corporate policy, but by government regulations. Private social media networks seem to be a viable trend with private and government organizations, and will allow individuals to foster their own personal brand in a controlled social media setting.

Typically, what I have found most effective with social media messaging for staff, is that the corporations and staff understand the following:

1. Legal and social implications of corporate social media messaging
2. Policies and procedures and best practices, follow the 3 R’s for all staff social media communication with the customer: Respect, Representation, and Responsibility
3. Have a dedicated F/T or P/T body in place, who has the proven experience and education to take the lead and manage social media messaging
4. All the staff, indirectly and directly, involved in social media are trained properly in social media concepts and governance, and have a series of quick guides for them (daily messaging, Twitter guide, Facebook guide, etc)
5. The social media models deployed should support corporate strategies and goals, have ROI and measurements of success
6. Develop a strategy and tactics plan for staff who will represent themselves personally on corporate social media channels
7. Start slow, with a few social media models, which support the corporate strategies and goals, prove them, then expand at a reasonable pace, experiment, modify, and maintain. Do not try an boil the ocean with social media models
8. Establish measurements of success and gather the relevant social analytics
9. Document everything for future use and analysis
10. Expect some failure and have mitigation
    

If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media channels, and integrated Web 2.0 PR and marketing, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com

Keeping Social Media Real Simple

Keeping Social Media Real Simple

Some of my clients are getting overwhelmed with the range of social media models and channels, which are available to help them engage with their target audience, and drive traffic and revenue, as each channel fights for market space and claims to be the ideal social medium. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, DIGG, Delicious, Blogs, Foursquare, YouTube, and the ever expanding universe of channels, categories of tools and services, and analytic tools, of which there are way too many to mention.

See a glimpse of the social media universe here: http://bit.ly/bVrqyE

and here: http://bit.ly/cQg20z

300 channels and counting, and so many different categories and uses. Scary isn’t it?

In this case, the social medium is not a very good message, it is a confusing mess, as clearly you cannot use all of these social media channels and methodologies and expect anything that remotely resembles success. I tell my clients to step back from the social media fray, analyze and pick a few popular channels, which support their strategies and goals, and leave the rest until their KPI’s or measurements of success are achieved. Only when they are comfortable with the results should they move ahead and pick a few more social media channels and models to deploy. The deployment should be done in measured steps, do not follow the hype, and above all, trust your analysis and strategy.

What many new media marketers, and social media mavens forget, is that most business people are maxed out in the current economic environment, barely have time to get the job at hand done, let alone think about the latest social media craze, or new Facebook or Twitter feature. They are traditionalists who understand conventional marketing concepts and values, and all they care about is reach and exposure to improve the the ROI for their content, product, or service they offer.

Over the last several years, I have developed a series of guidelines to help me quickly explain the benefits of social media to my clients:

1. Although tempting, do not inundate your client with your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogging and LinkedIn prowess
2. Start simple and show a couple of tangible examples of social media (i.e. Mr. Obama’s Facebook site, which effectively connects him with his stakeholders)
3. Forget the social media jargon, leave that for L8R, discuss social media in traditional marketing terms (ROI, KPI’s, reach, analysis, strategy, etc)
4. Start with the most popular and proven social media channels to get the biggest bang for the buck
5. Show demographic usage of the most popular social media channels (i.e. 5.5 million Facebook users in Ontario, Canada. Big WOW factor, and WOW is not World of Warcraft, WOW = wow)
6. Define the measurements of success, ROI, and KPI’s should be attached to all social media models
7. Develop a simple plan for deploying social media channels and models, with integrated traditional media, which support your clients current business strategies and goals
8. Be respectful of the client resources required to help analyze, deploy and maintain social media PR and Marketing
9. Like traditional media, explain that social media requires continuous experimentation, maintenance and modification, new campaigns, new channels, etc
10. Analytics will prove whether a social media channel is successful or a waste of time, but you can run small quick tests to test a model
    

Following these guidelines will help you manage your social media initiatives and keep the various participating teams in check to ensure your social media projects do not spin out of control and turn into a time vampires.

If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media channels, and integrated Web 2.0 PR and marketing, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com

Great Article by Odessa for the Drug Abuse YAC site

What if my parents do drugs?
By Odessa on August 1, 2010

Parents play a huge role in the proper development of a child’s life, they help guide their children in the right direction, and act as the role model for their children. Because of the significant influence a parent has on their children, the parent’s behavior and habits tend to be passed on to their children because their children believe this is normal and acceptable behavior. As a result, if a parent uses drugs recreationally, the likelihood of their children using drugs in the future is increased.

Although every child has an option and choice to use drugs, the fact that their parents use drugs gives them the impression that it is okay to do drugs as well, especially when it is the only family environment they know. Although this circumstance looks bad, children always have the opportunity to improve the situation by hanging out with friends who have a strong family support system, and by taking part in extra curricular activities, they can avoid the pressure and influence of their parents poor decisions.

To read more, go here: What if my parents do drugs?

Successful Social Media Strategies

Over the past six months I have been analyzing, developing, deploying, and helping maintain integrated Web 2.0 PR and Marketing campaigns for several B2B and B2C clients, ranging from local television, IT recruitment, non-profit, and regulatory. For some of these clients it was the their first attempt at deploying social media models, but for most, they had already deployed their social media plan and now they were trying to improve and refine their Web 2.0 strategy.

TVCogeco integrated social media channels: Portal community, Facebook, and Twitter


These projects had several common themes. First, a requirement for the analysis and integration of the strategical business goals with the Web 2.0 strategies. Second, the B2B and B2C clients all wanted to use social media channels to increase traffic and distribution, to extend their brand and message, and drive traffic back to a community portal. And lastly, they wanted to deploy processes, polices and procedures, and operational guidance, to help maintain their social media strategies.

Too often companies explore social media through baptism by fire, trying to deploy social media channels, models, and concepts without doing the proper analysis and ROI study. This initial effort can be compromised with insufficient resources to manage the social media analysis and deployment, and integrated PR and marketing, resulting in poor branding, messaging, traffic, abandoned social media channels, and the impression that social media is not yet ready for prime time. Or worse, discouraging staff and leaving them with the impression that the company does not take social media seriously.

Part of my job with each client was to find their social media balance between resources, business strategies and goals, processes and operations, and integration with their existing web community, technologies (RSS, SMS, rich media, immersive media), tools and services (forums, comments, ratings), and traditional media (print, radio, TV). In other words, I help companies find and deploy their social media recipe for success. Of course there are other variables involved in the social media analysis, but these were the critical items.

Social media is a powerful PR and marketing tool when deployed properly, and there are over 280 channels and usually limited corporate resources to mange the messaging, so you have to pick your channels carefully to achieve a reasonable ROI. As well, social media concepts are changing rapidly with new ideas and channels appearing on a monthly, if not weekly basis, so you constantly have to be plugged into the new media info stream to monitor these emerging concepts.

Council on Drug Abuse integrated social media channels: Portal community, Facebook, and Twitter


But it doesn't have to be complex to implement social media models, and here are 10 steps you can take to speed up the process of analyzing, developing, and integrating social media into your PR and marketing plan. This involves following some proven processes, measuring the result, and maintaining the social media PR and marketing over an extended period of time to gather useful analytics. In turn, this will justify the effort and clearly illustrate which social media channels/models are returning the biggest bang for the buck. As well, social media does not have to be an expensive endeavor as you can stick with the big four proven channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn), and analyze and deploy them one at a time, before you explore the complete range of integrated social media channels and models.

10 Step Social Media Set-Up Guide:
1) Establish a social media strategy, with defined goals, tactics, and measurements of success, and clearly define what are you trying to achieve with social media (SEO/SEM/SMM, Traffic and Distribution, Feedback, Engagement, Conversion, Retention, Viral, Key Influencers, target audience, etc)
2) Ensure that the social media strategies support the corporate goals (SWOT, ROI, target audience, traditional PR and marketing, sales, branding, analytics, etc)
3) Pick no more than 3 or 4 social media channels for your PR and Marketing campaign (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, DIGG, blogs, etc)
4) Integrate your social media campaign tactics with your traditional campaign, and integrate the social media channels (automated and manual systems, Google Adsense, Facebook ads, email blasts, etc)
5) Deploy your integrated social media campaign in clearly defined stages, and tactics, to help with analysis. Find and engage with your audience, listen to what your audience is saying, respond to their concerns, and provide quality content and value
6) Assign an internal social media leader who will take charge and assist with the training and knowledge transfer
7) Document your social media processes (messaging structure, viral messaging, channel usage, brand standards, best practices, policies and procedures, guidance, operations)
8) Establish short, medium and long term goals, and define your measurements of success, and analytics/metrics (PR/Marketing, traffic and distribution, revenue, awareness, reach, engagement, etc)
9) Maintain your social media campaign throughout the year, and use social media tools and services (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, blogs, forums RSS, SMS, email) to help manage the messaging, format, and processes
10) Review weekly/monthly social media analytics (Google analytics, Facebook Insight, Twitter Analyzer) to confirm your measurements of success, and continually improve your SM strategy and models

And of course, no social media guide would be complete without a list of great resource sites:
1) Mashable: http://www.mashable.com
2) SEO Chicks: http://www.seo-chicks.com
3) Social Media Examiner http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
4) Twitter Tips: http://www.twitip.com"
5) Twitter Tools: http://http://www.oneforty.com" and http://http://www.twitdom.com"
6) Think Geek: http://http://www.thinkgeek.com"

This is a compressed Social Media Strategy Set-Up Guide, and the details are missing, but it will get you started on the path to successfully integrating social media channels into your existing PR and Marketing plan. If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media channels, and integrated Web 2.0 PR and marketing, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com

Biking in Cuba

I had a great vacation in Cuba, which included a lot of biking on the Varadero strip and across to Matanzas. The roads in Varaderno are fantastic, very well maintained, with no pot holes and the topography is very flat, which is good for my out of shape winter legs.

In the past I have biked in Jibacoa where the roads are a lot more scenic and hilly, but are in terrible shape. Essentially the roads around Jibacoa are full of pot holes, deep ruts, broken pavement, and some hills are slick with oil from burst car crank cases. My average per km speed in Jibacoa was 31km/hr due to the road conditions, and I could not really get into an aero position due to the bumpy ride.

This trip the weather was also pretty good in the 18°C to 24°C range, but the winds were pretty high some days with a sustained 50km/hr side breeze. Good thing I brought along my wire front wheel. For the most part though, I rode my 3-blade carbon Nimbles and they performed very well.



Due to the direct sun, being so close to the equator, I drank a lot of electrolytes enhanced with sodium, which is highly recommended as you can quickly suffer from dehydration. Also, I learned a hard lesson with spare tubulars, which I typically only carry one. On my second ride I flated out within 10km due to a direct rock strike on my Conti Podium 19mm front tire. I then decided to extend my ride through the town of Varadero and when I turned around to head back to the resort I must have hit some glass, as the back tire deflated pretty fast and with that wonderful "Pffffft" sound.

Having no spare left, I walked over to a traffic cop who politely called a cab for me. For my last two rides I carried two spares, and of course did not flat out again.

The Cubans are indifferent to tourist cyclists, and stay out of the way, but occasionally they would stand to close to the road as they were trying to hail a ride from passing vehicles, and I would have to swerve out of the way.

My rides varied in distance from 40km to 65 km with and average speed of 35km/hr, which is not bad for my winter legs. Here is a shot of me getting ready to leave for another ride.

And here are some shots from my ride to Matanzas, which is a ocean side ride all the way into Matanzas with gently sweeping roads and a fantastic view of the ocean. Traffic is very light on the highway, which has cars flying by at speeds between 50km/hr to 120km/hr, and for the most part they give you a wide berth.

The turn around point about 10km from Matanzas:


The return ride passes through a toll booth with a rather picturesque view of the ocean.


And a great shot of a the crashing waves.