If you weren’t comfortable with comments to begin with, the initial response may be to delete comments–but this is a recipe for social media disaster.  It garners very negative publicity and often spreads to the broader media—a sort of “anti” case study showing what not to do. Companies caught deleting Facebook comments (often called “whitewashing”) are regarded as out of touch with their fans and as misusing or even abusing social media by trying to manipulate the conversation.  The strong negative reaction to this practice actually has the complete opposite of the desired effect, damaging the offending organization’s reputation, as shown in these examples:

• PR firm Burton-Marsteller caught in the middle of “Googlegate” became the focus of the story itself when it began deleting negative comments from its Facebook page.
• When Netflix deleted negative comments about their unpopular price hike, users reposted their complaints and began adding to their comments that apparently Netflix didn’t care about or want to hear from its customers at all, since it also lacked an e-mail address or mailing address to which to send complaints.

On the other hand, companies that keep negative comments up actually enjoy an enhanced reputation.  When criticism is legitimate and the company responds respectfully, it increases credibility and positive reputation.  These companies are perceived as being open to discussion and as engaging with their fans; they “get” social media and understand they’re part of a conversation, and this creates trust—a holy grail of marketing.

If you’re still uncomfortable with comments, you can consider a closed Facebook Group instead of a fan page.  This is a viable option for some, but it’s important to consider your objectives and the focus of your Facebook presence, and we don’t recommend it for the vast majority of businesses.  Groups are best suited for a cause or affinity, where there’s an ongoing need for information and communication.  If your objective is awareness rather than ongoing engagement, a group is probably not the right tactic.

If you choose to have a closed group (one where users must ask to be added), you’re making it harder to connect: the more hurdles you put in front of a user, the less likely they are to complete an action.  Even once a member is approved for a group, you don’t have any better control over what they chose to post than you do on a fan page—they’re still going to say what they like, and it will still be visible. It’s not providing greater control over comments–just reducing reach by making it more difficult to find and connect.

There are a few other challenges with groups—they don’t support apps, and for many companies an app is a key part of their Facebook engagement.  Groups also lack the tracking and engagement statistics available for fan pages, and they’re less visible to search engines.

Facebook is just one element of a social mediasphere that changes every day—not just the technology, which advances at a blinding rate—but the rules, etiquette, and ways communities engage and interact.  Knowing what approach fits your needs and what not to do is half the battle.  Do you have a strategy for how you manage your Facebook page and other social media platforms?

With so many people using LinkedIn as a business research tool as well as for networking, it’s only natural to leverage the platform as a marketing tool;  LinkedIn has developed a wide range of tools for this purpose.  Your business probably has a LinkedIn profile page, whether you’ve created one or not.  To jumpstart the effort and provide information to users about companies and organizations, LinkedIn automatically generated company profiles and descriptions based on information provided by LinkedIn members in their profiles.  (So, your first order of business is to take a look at your profile and make sure it accurately reflects what you want to say about your company!)

In addition to your (free) company profile, you can add information on products and services, social media links, videos, images, and external URLs, as well as contact information for specific individuals within your organization (this is all free as well).  You can also post job opportunities to LinkedIn, though there’s a fee for this service (or, you can post the job opportunity to your LinkedIn status and to groups you’re participating in for no additional cost—LinkedIn doesn’t mind this and in fact encourages it).

Let’s take a minute to look at LinkedIn as a recruiting tool.  One of the biggest challenges recruiters face is identifying passive candidates—those who are currently employed and not actively seeking a new position.  Research shows these candidates to be highly productive employees, and so successfully identifying and recruiting them generates a big return on investment.  (I can personally attest to LinkedIn as a great tool for identifying passive candidates—Sanger & Eby found me on LinkedIn and recruited me for what has turned out to be my dream job).

Are people looking at your company profile on LinkedIn?  In a word, yes.  According to a 2010 JobVite survey, 62% of job candidates visit company social media profile pages, and 55% conduct searches for company information on social media sites—including LinkedIn—so it’s well worth the investment of your time and resources to ensure your company profile does you justice.

Career Pages is a terrific tool for highlighting open positions in your organization, and companies with strong recruiting needs are starting to use it.  You can create up to five separate pages focused on different areas of recruiting—technology, marketing, creative, strategy—whatever your job categories are—and users will see the specific page and opportunities best matching their background (so if you’re recruiting strategists and I visit your company page, I’ll see job opportunities related to strategy; if a designer visits the company page, she’ll see design-focused opportunities).

Regardless of what you do with your company profile, keep in mind that as with other social media platforms, it’s important to first define your objectives and build a strategy to ensure you achieve them (and we can help you with that). Also, many of the advanced tools on LinkedIn are highly customizable, including the capability to add design elements to the template-based layout.   (Yes, we can help you with that, too!)

To see a great implementation of Career Pages, take a look at Macy’s company profile, and click on the Careers tab (and by the way, they’re hiring!)

How are you using LinkedIn to build your business?  Tell us about it!

There’s little question about the need for companies to participate in social media at this point, as it’s fundamentally changed the conversation. We all know that people are talking about our companies and brands online whether we like it or not, and that if we’re not owning or at least influencing the conversation, someone else is—and we may not like the results.  Add to that the fact search engines are indexing Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles, driving increased search engine visibility for companies using social media, and it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t be part of the conversation.  The question now is how and when to participate, on what platforms, and in what voice: in other words, your social media strategy.

So how do you go about creating a strategy?  The first thing to understand is what your organization wants to accomplish through social media.  Do you want to attract more customers and increase sales? Raise awareness about a product or service?  Promote your expertise on a specific topic?  Recruit potential employees?  Enhance customer service? Clearly state your objectives and use them as the foundation for your strategy. 

Macy’s is an excellent example of using social media to recruit effectively; for its executive recruiting team, they have a rich, well-rounded presence on LinkedIn, including an active LinkedIn group and extensive connections.  To target the college market, they’re leveraging Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to great advantage.  There’s not a huge amount of crossover between the two targets, and so the strategies and approaches are very different, though equally effective for their purpose.

Once you’ve figured out the objectives, you’ll need to determine which social media platforms make the most sense for helping you meet these goals; for example, if you’re recruiting new employees, LinkedIn is a natural platform.  For customer service enhancement, Twitter might be the right way to go (Best Buy and Zappo’s are excellent examples of this).   If you’re selling a product directly to consumers, a Facebook presence with an e-commerce component might make the most sense.  The point is, the platforms you’ll utilize need to fit with your objectives. 

What will your messaging be? And in what voice?  Social media is a conversation, not a lecture, so the voice is different—and it’s important to ensure it’s strategic, and on target with the platform.  If you’re a conservative financial institution, you don’t want your “voice” to include things like “LOL” and “OMG.”  Oscar de la Renta has decided to designate a carefully chosen employee and let her be the voice of the company, interjecting personality, energy, and fun into the mix and making the company seem smarter, edgier, and more engaging.  That’s not the right approach for every company, but for Oscar de la Renta, it’s strategic. And smart.

Determining how you’ll measure your success is critical.  While many companies use quantity of fans as a success metric, in reality, merely attracting fans is not enough.  Your success metrics must be based on your objectives, and they must be measurable, showing how they’re contributing directly to achievement of the stated objectives.  This is what builds the business case and lays the groundwork for maintaining and extending your social media presence in a way that truly builds your business.

I recently read a blog post arguing that you don’t need a social media strategy, and that strategy can in fact stifle your participation in social media.  The writer makes some salient points, and just as with anything else, it’s important to find the balance in how you interact in this arena.   But frankly, some potential interactions SHOULD be stifled, and having a strategy helps you know which ones to pursue and which ones to leave alone.  A long time ago, Laurence J. Peter said “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.”  That’s more true today than it ever was.   And it perfectly captures why you need a social media strategy to guide your online presence. 
So, what’s your take on having a social media strategy? And what’s your organization doing? Do you need a social media strategy, or not?

If you’re like millions of other Internet users who engage in those activities, chances are pretty good that you’re exposing a lot of personal information to more than just your online friends.

There has been a lot of backlash in the media lately about Facebook repeatedly updating and changing its privacy policy and default privacy settings, exposing additional user information to both their marketing partners and search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

For GenXers (like me) and many folks of older generations, the concept of privacy is something we consider sacred. Making your weekend escapades public and spouting off controversial statements for everyone to see and hear is typically not something we would have done before the advent of the World Wide Web and social networking.

So, why do so many of the younger generation do it now? (And get off my lawn while you’re at it!)

Is the concept of privacy outdated to them? Do they not realize that the things they post now can come back to haunt them later in life or when entering the job force? Or does it just not matter as much?

The simple fact is that the pervasiveness of social networking has somehow made it acceptable to trade our privacy and personal information away for luxury of being connected to other people. I personally disagree with this philosophy, but for those kids and teens who have never known a world without the Web, it’s a different story. The fact that the Web enables anyone to self-publish is a double-edged sword.

Facebook and other social networking sites may be “free,” but there is nothing truly free about them. In exchange for you giving out information about your interests, hobbies, job and games and friends, they let you use their site to connect with your friends. They use your personal information to sell ads targeted directly to you. Facebook’s default privacy settings expose a lot of personal information to search engines and even to Facebook visitors who are not logged in. Their own privacy policy is quite clear:

Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, just like your name, profile picture, and connections.  Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations. Such information may also be associated with you, including your name and profile picture, even outside of Facebook, such as on public search engines and when you visit other sites on the internet.  The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete “everyone” content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook.

This disturbing trend continues unabated all across the Web at sites like Spokeo, which collects information about people all over the world based on their location and other highly personal data (like address, phone number, home value and credit score) and allows anyone to view a good amount of that information free of charge.

It was shocking enough to me (a fairly jaded Internet veteran) that when I viewed my own Spokeo profile, I immediately filled out the form to have my information removed from the site. A lot of it was dead-on, but there was some info that was just dead-wrong. I won’t deny I looked up few people myself while I was there, though.

So, how can you protect yourself and your children from this invasion of privacy? First and foremost, you can simply choose not to participate. Don’t set up a Facebook profile or MySpace page. Don’t give out any revealing personal information to any Web site or use the Internet for banking or communications.

The problem is that not all of us who are privacy-conscious want to be Luddites. In this era of instant communication, live blogging, YouTube, smartphones and all of the other cool stuff the Internet allows us to do, staying disconnected is probably not an option.

The Web is no different from going into a bad neighborhood – you have to watch your back and make sure you are protected. Unfortunately, there are no Internet Police, but there are some things you can do to prevent your personal information from leaking on to the Internet.

1. Read the Privacy Policy. I know that it is paragraph after paragraph of legalese and it’s really dry stuff, but it literally tells you how the site will use your personal information. If you disagree with site’s privacy practices, don’t sign up.
2. Get familiar with the privacy settings on the site you’re using and set them to a level that makes you comfortable. For example, I lock down my Facebook page and make very little available to non-friends. You can see my picture and my name and that’s about it.
3. Log out of the site and attempt to access your page to see what information is publicly accessible. Adjust your privacy settings to prevent any personal information from being exposed.
4. Learn your rights and how companies use your information.
5. Sign up for a credit-monitoring service if you do any online shopping. Consider using a pre-paid debit card for online purchases, as it will help protect you from identity theft and credit card fraud.
6. For parents, make your kids give you their passwords and make sure you are friends with them so you can monitor their online activities. Make it a condition of being allowed to use the Internet.
7. Actually monitor your child’s online activities. Whether that means using a NetNanny/ CyberSitter-like filtering or monitoring solution or just popping in and keeping an eye on what they’re doing, it’s your responsibility to make sure that they are safe online. It’s no different than vetting their friends or making sure they aren’t watching inappropriate television shows.
8. Educate your children on what privacy means and how something they post online is basically the equivalent of hanging a giant sign on your door proclaiming the same thing. The Canadian government has an excellent parent & child resource site that contains relevant information for US citizens, too: http://youthprivacy.ca/en/index.html.

In short, there is no way to totally protect yourself online. It’s just like the real world – you need to be conscious of your surroundings and take the appropriate steps to protect yourself and those you love.

I’d love to hear some of the ways you protect your privacy online in the comments.

How many of these tweets and/or Facebook updates have you seen from the people in your social media network? Tens? Hundreds? If you’re like me, you see these updates all the time. Whether at work, school, a restaurant or a bar, people are now sharing the details of where they go via Foursquare, one of the hottest new location-based social networking tools.

Simply explained, Foursquare lets you “check-in” at different places and share your location with your friends. As you check-in around town, you earn points, and if you accumulate enough points by visiting a venue often, you can become “Mayor” of that venue. Your check-ins can be shared via Twitter, Facebook and the Foursquare app, which is available for iPhone, Droid, Blackberry and Palm. Your check-ins are only shared with friends, who are people you approve to follow you.

So who cares where I go and what I do? All of my friends of course, and not surprisingly, the businesses I frequent. With over a half a million users as of March, 2010, companies are increasingly interested in Foursquare as a way to reward repeat visitors through discounts and incentives.

Foursquare has developed a set of business tools that allow business to create four different types of incentive offers: Mayor Specials, Frequency Specials, Check-in Specials and Wildcards. The goal is to get repeat visits, engage customers and make it lucrative for you to “check-in” and share your location with your social network. Foursquare provides real-time venue stats so companies can see if an offer is generating new and repeat visits, as well as mentions on Facebook and Twitter.

Think local businesses around the country (and globe) aren’t testing the Foursquare waters? Think again. In Cincinnati, where Sanger & Eby is based, plenty are:

• Bakery Sugar Cupcakery rewarded my friend @redrabbit with a free cupcake for visiting and checking in
• Blackfinn American Saloon offers free cover on certain days when you check in
• Grinders Coffee rewards you with $1.00 off every fifth check-in
• Taste of Belgium, a waffle shop in Findlay market, recently posted that specials via Foursquare would be coming soon

Nationally, brands like Starbucks ($1 off Frappucinos for Mayors) and Carrabas (show you’re the Mayor and enjoy a complimentary dessert with entrée purchase) are getting on the bandwagon too. Know of any other Cincinnati businesses that are using Foursquare? National? Who do you think should be actively promoting business on Foursquare?

According to twitter.com, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Twitter is a “micro-blog”. Like a blog, Twitter allows you to create an online journal or diary and share it with the world. However, unlike a blog, Twitter only allows entries/thoughts that are less than 140 characters. This limitation demands short updates and quick thoughts. This allows users to share experiences through Twitter much faster and more frequently than is conventionally done through a blog.

Why are we using Twitter at Sanger & Eby?

Well, just like the definition above stats, we want to share what we’re doing here at Sanger & Eby. We believe that we have a great story to tell, and want to have a running dialogue with you – our friend. We’ll be sharing stories right here on our blog as well, of course, but Twitter will allow us to quickly record and publish smaller experiences.

Also, we understand the you live in a busy world – if you follow our Twitter feed, you’ll be able to very quickly get a feel for recent happenings here at Sanger & Eby. If you have time to learn more, then you can read the blog!

Finally, we are always striving to stay in touch with the latest Internet trends, and what better way to showcase this expertise than by putting it to use ourselves!

Twitter Fun

Many celebrities, including Ashton Kutcher (@APlusK), Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstronG), Shaquille O’Neal (@The_Real_Shaq) and even Cincinnati’s Chad Johnson / Ochocinco (@OGOchoCinco) to name a few, are using Twitter to talk directly to their fans. And not just one-way communication, either. I follow the @The_Real_Shaq and @OGOchoCinco Twitter pages. They regularly post dozens of Tweets a day, which are nearly completely filled with replies to people who have sent messages to them directly. I’m not the biggest fan of Chad, but I have a lot of respect for how engaging he is with his fans.

More Information

Of course, this is just an introduction. There’s a lot more than meets the eye at first glance with Twitter. A few examples: using Twitter via mobile phone SMS messages, learning about breaking news – many events hit Twitter before mainstream media, and even chatting directly with your favorite celebrity, as highlighted above.

If you want to learn more about Twitter, here are a few links that may be helpful:

Twitter.com/

What is Twitter? Twitter Basics

How to Set Up a Twitter Account

Why Use Twitter?

How to follow Sanger & Eby on Twitter:

1. Create a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/signup
2. Visit the @SangerEby Twitter page: http://twitter.com/sangereby
3. Click the Follow button.

That’s it! Now, when you’re logged in to twitter.com, our updates will be included on your home page!

This all to point out that while we make great connections via the computer, there is an untapped source of human contact so very close yet we ignore it. It’s easy to be too busy, too distant and too involved in ourselves.

The same holds true with our most treasured asset in the business… our clients. Remember them, those folks who value our talent, trust our guidance and then pays for it? And, for the most part, the reason we continue doing business with them is that we really do like and respect them. Think back to the first work you created with them. A relationship started and then continued to grow… because we fed and watered it (and not with a mouse.)

We all understand that e-mail and phone conversations cannot replace those face-to-face contacts that strengthen relationships, but it becomes too easy to rely on the former. Remember that there is a competitor trying to get in to see your client — in person and often. That should be the catalyst, that should start the change.

Get out. Continue to build and strengthen your in-person network. You never know who you might find down the street.