by Rob Cottingham | Aug 27, 2009 | Social Media, Social Signal
It can happen so quickly: a few misplaced tweets, an ill-considered blog post, and suddenly an organization is at the center of an online firestorm. They’re called spammers and liars, and tagged with the Hashtag o’ Doom, #FAIL. And the worst thing of all is they had no idea what was happening.
Where, oh where, did it all go so wrong?
Probably somewhere around the moment they decided to outsource their social media marketing.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with outsourcing per se. Organizations often have limited time and staff resources, and don’t yet know the online terrain; recognizing that you aren’t going to be able to keep up with conversations, and taking measures to increase your capacity, is actually a positive step.
But you need to do a lot more than just hand over the keys (and usernames, and passwords) to an agency, and let them run wild. You need to know they won’t trash damage your good name by doing things like spamming Twitter conversations about the Iranian elections.
How do you know if you’re dealing with a responsible firm that will respect the communities you’re engaging with – and protect your reputation?
- Know who you’re dealing with, and who will be managing your social media presence. Do an online search – both a traditional web search, and a social media search using tools like Technorati. What’s the reputation of the company and the individuals involved?
- Check for the level of personal experience the people have who will staff your presence. Do they participate actively in social media, with a blog, Flickr account or YouTube channel? Are they currently engaged in the communities you want reach? How do they act online personally as well as professionally?
- Talk with them: in person if possible, by video (or audio, if you’re visually impaired) otherwise. Get a sense of their personalities, and your own sense of their trustworthiness.
- Ask them about their track record and the tools and approaches they use. Ask for references from past engagements, and follow up with those clients. Find out whether the company stuck to the straight and narrow, or took some ethical shortcuts.
- Ask them what they plan to do, and how. What you’re looking for here isn’t a strait-jacket – you don’t need to know exactly how many times they’ll post to Twitter and the exact minute they’ll do it – but the ethical compass guiding their approach.
Here are the red flags:
- They take a cavalier attitude toward disclosure, offering to pretend to be staff members or even specific people within your organization.
- They plan to pay people to “seed content”, link to you or blog about you.
- They’re vague or evasive about their tactics. (They may tell you that it’s proprietary information; remind them that it’s your reputation on the line when their “secret sauce” turns into egg on your face.)
- They brush off ethical questions, telling you that less-than-honest tactics are the way the game is played.
- They have no real social media presence of their own – which is a sign they lack both accountability and direct knowledge of the field.
- They want to operate completely on their own, without regular contact or reporting to you.
And if you do decide to outsource, here’s one more thing to look for: a commitment to building your own capacity for social media engagement. The greatest value you may get from your outsourcing contract may well be your organization’s growing understanding of social media… and ability to engage on its own with your audience.
by Rob Cottingham | Aug 6, 2009 | Social Media, Social Signal
It happened again today. Every time an online service like Twitter or Facebook hits a roadbump, or stops working altogether, there’s an outcry of protest from its users. Then, just as quickly, comes the backlash: “How dare you complain about a FREE service?”
At one level, I understand the thinking: there is an army of developers, sysadmins, designers, administrators and other great people who work hard to conceive, create and maintain the web apps. And behind that, a lot of money is being invested.
On the other hand, there’s another kind of investment being made in these services, and that’s the time and content that you and I put into participating: the photos we post to Flickr, the videos we share on YouTube, the hours we pour into Facebook – and the millions of observations, complaints, links, updates, insights, jokes, memes and random stuff we tweet on Twitter.
That effort doesn’t just represent an opportunity cost on your part (you could be spending that time working out on your Wii, for example) – it represents value to the owners of the web service you’re using. Facebook’s business model involves delivering highly-targeted eyeballs to advertisers, as does YouTube’s. And while nobody’s quite sure what Twitter’s business model is, it isn’t philanthropy.
Look at it this way. If Twitter was nothing more than its hardware and software, does anyone seriously think people would be bouncing around multi-hundred-dollar valuation estimates?
The implicit bargain between social application provider and user is this: they’ll provide these amazing tools whenever and wherever you want them, and you’ll provide the content, conversations and relationships that create value and help them realize a return on their investment: financially or (in the case of reflected-glory marketing) in brand equity.
Now, most of us understand that these are still early days, and sites will have the occasional hiccup. But when repeated or lengthy outages seriously impair our access to tools, people and content – especially when those outages come without an explanation – then our patience rightly wears thin.
So if you’re a user on a social web site, do cut them some slack (especially during a denial-of-service attack)… but don’t feel you have to apologize for feeling irritated over repeated fail whales and error messages.
And if you’re running a social web site that’s running a mild fever or fending off a cough, thank your users for their patience, explain what’s happening… and do what it takes to get back up and running.
by Rob Cottingham | Aug 2, 2009 | Social Media, Social Signal
Twitter‘s no different than any other hot social-thing-of-the-moment: if you’re just getting into it, you’ll find lots of people out there with advice on how to use it (including us).
But not all of it is couched as advice or recommendations. Many of those voices are framing their suggestions as directives… even iron-clad laws. One blog post warns that disregarding its suggestions amounts to “Twitter crimes”.
May it please the court, I submit to you that many of those charged with Twitter crimes should be acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt – not just over their guilt, but over whether these should be crimes at all.
Here are four charges that the prosecution (in all its forms) is levelling… along with rebuttals from the defence.
1. The charge: Being followed without following back
The prosecution’s case: If you don’t follow back nearly everyone who follows you, you’re being hostile, standoffish and rude.
The defence rebuttal: My learned colleague has mistaken an arbitrary convention for legislation… and an artificial numerical parity for justice.
Okay, let me drop the flowery language. Just because someone is interested in what you’re saying doesn’t mean you feel the same way. And we all have different ways of listening on Twitter: some of us follow thousands upon thousands of people, segment them into groups and dip in and out of a lot of conversations; others decide they’ll focus their attention closely on a few conversations instead. Who’s to say going broader is better than going deeper?
2. The charge: Linking your RSS feed to your Twitter feed
The prosecution’s case: Twitter is for conversations, not broadcasting. Shovelling your content onto the web is just obnoxious.
The defence rebuttal: Your honour, if I follow Environment Canada’s weather feed on Twitter, it’s not so I can gripe about our recent hot spell; it’s because I want to know what the weather’s going to be like. The prosecution is making a classic mistake of thinking tools can only be used for the purpose for which they were originally created. For many people, Twitter isn’t just a conversational forum – it’s also becoming their alternative to an RSS reader. The defence is prepared to call witnesses from Social Signal who will testify that their most retweeted posts are often the ones tweeted automatically from their blogs.
3. The charge: Responding to celebrities
The prosecution’s case: If you reply to celebrities, you’ll look ridiculous… because what famous person is going to pay attention to you?
The defence rebuttal: My learned colleague from the prosecution wants to have it both ways. Apparently this is supposed to be a conversational medium… yet some are more worthy of conversation than others? Your honour, I am by no means a celebrity, yet I have had pleasant exchanges with them on Twitter. (Of course, most of my conversational salvos have gone unheeded… but that’s to be expected when you’re trying to catch the attention of someone following tens of thousands of people at once.) One of the great strengths of social media is its ability to flatten hierarchies – and fame is at least as vulnerable to that flattening as any other pecking order.
Incidentally, your honour, it often doesn’t matter whether the celebrity sees a response or not. My friends do, and it can spark a conversation among us that goes off in a whole different direction.
One last point: we have one set of prosecutors telling celebrities to follow everyone who follows them because that’s somehow conversational, and another set telling us not to engage in conversation with those same celebrities. The defence is preparing a motion to dismiss both counts on the grounds of whatever the Latin is for “get your acts together, people.”
4. The charge: Asking people to retweet you.
The prosecution’s case: If your tweet is worth repeating, people will do it on their own. Asking them to is just gauche.
The defence rebuttal: Your honour, my client understands that when she is asking people to retweet something, she’s asking for a favour. She’s asking them to spread the word – something we often do in other fields.
And the court will notice she is not deluging her friends with these requests; instead, she makes them judiciously, and repays her friends in kind.
Finally, she understands that these are requests, not demands. She asks politely, and only when she has something of value to share that she especially wants passed around.
In summation
It’s up to you, the jury. Should these in fact be crimes – the punishment being merciless unfollowing? Or should these and other laws be struck from the books? Render your verdict in the comments below.
The defence rests.
