Archive for October, 2008

First, I want to thank everyone for such a great conversation with my post “Who are you? And why should I follow you?” Looks like I wasn’t the only that gets either amused or frustrated by what is experienced on social networks.

Not having any guidelines to follow when I first started on joining social networks, I learned the below etiquette from people experienced in social media who guided me and from continuing to follow just good, common sense off-line business etiquette.

If Emily Post and Miss Manners were involved in all these social networking sites with us, I wonder if they would agree with the below etiquette tips…and what we’d learn from them.

People use social networks for different reasons and this is my personal etiquette list. Feel to let me know if you think this is an appropriate list, what you’d add, what you’d question and what you’d change.

Be real
This seems simple, right? Be who you are, let your personality shine through. But, the funny thing about being on-line is that the first reaction is to hide behind monikers, avatars, etc. And with the stellar security of the Internet, who wouldn’t consider it? It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there…findable, in public, permanently. As well, there have been more than enough posts on personal brand management to make those in the corporate world leery of being real on-line, which is also understandable. However, the more real you are, the more people will trust your presence. If you are engaging in social networks to personally or professionally network or engage with potentials customers or clients, the benefit of being real outweighs not doing so.

Be nice
This one is simple. Just be nice. Most people are inherently nice and if they aren’t being nice to you, well you can just unfollow/unfriend them. It’s not worth getting into snark wars…remember you are on-line and your comments are public (unless you choose for them not to be) and permanent. As well, comments found outside the context in which they were made can be misunderstood and misconstrued. So before engaging someone, even if they are attaching you, ask yourself, “is it worth it?” Most likely, it’s not.

Be respectful
We might not always agree with how people use social networks, what they say, how they handle themselves or what they share. But we should always be respectful of each other.

Listen then talk
When joining a social network, sometimes it helps to sit back, listen and learn. All networks have a culture and it makes sense to understand the culture before you dive in. The good thing is because you pick and choose who you follow/friend, you already have a sense of what the culture will be and how to join in-at the right time.

Give then take
Provide value to your community; let them know they can count on you for good information, genuine conversation, insights, sharing, fun, humor, etc.  Once you have earned their trust and respect, and then ask for what you need. Handle on-line relationships just like you would with new off-line friends, business acquaintances, etc.

Try to be consistent
When you join a social network, people get used to your presence. When you aren’t there it’s obvious. Everyone gets busy and social networks can be time consuming. Before you join a bunch of them, make sure you have the time to be involved.

Apologize when you make a mistake
We all make mistakes. If you state something publically that is wrong, admit to the mistake and move on to something else.

Say thank you
If someone spreads information you have shared, posts a comment on your blog, refers you, adds you to their blog roll, etc., say thank you. Let people know that you appreciate their time to do so.

Don’t broadcast
You can tell the broadcasters a mile away. They use social networks to broadcast about their companies, their posts, their daily activities. They never interact or respond back or interact. Conversation is key to social media and broadcasting, in my opinion, is just traditional one-way marketing using on-line tools.

Don’t stalk
Everyone gets excited about joining social networks. But, it’s a little bit aggressive to track down someone in every social network they belong to and follow/friend them. Take the time to get to know the person and then follow them where it makes sense.

It’s not a numbers game
The benefit of social media and social networking tools are the connections, conversations and engagements they provide. How can you really connect with 5,000 followers/friends? I would think it would be a challenge.

Don’t publicly or privately unfollow/unfriend
If there is someone in your social network that you no longer want to follow/friend, just quietly unfollow/unfriend them. It’s okay. And it happens all the time. It is natural that you may find there are people who just don’t work for you. What’s the point of embarrassing the person by publicly unfollowing/unfriending them?

Below are some insights from other social media folks. If you have any links to share, please do! We are all still learning.

• Considering Social Network Etiquette
• Etiquette in the Age of Social Media
• Etiquette For A Social Media World
• Miss Manners We Need You
• Rob’s Rules of Social Media Etiquette
• OMG! I’m adding followers faster on FF than I did on Twitter! Amazing!

[Photo: iStock]

Even More Goodness! Related Posts:

• Saturday Morning Reads: Do Marketers Need to Become Social Psychologists?
• The Social Media Unpanel
• Who owns your Twitter or Facebook Connections?
• The Four Faces of Social Media

Today is Blog Action Day and this year’s focus is on global poverty but as I said in my earlier post, I’d like to keep the focus at home. Did you know that 58.5%, of all Americans will spend at least one year beneath the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75?

And today, over half of the 37 million Americans living in poverty today are women.

It’s important that we, as bloggers, help those without a voice to find the assistance they need to improve their lives one step at a time.  As part of Blog Action Day, it was important to me to share with you a way to do that.

Dress for Success helps women around the globe on a daily basis find the inspiration they need to achieve their goals for success in their careers and life.

The mission of Dress for Success is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

Since 1997, Dress for Success has served almost 450,000 women around the world. Each year [they] reach more than 40,000 women in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

To find out how Dress for Success reaches and helps so many women, I interviewed Suzanne Elliott who is the Executive Vice President of Resource Development & Strategic Marketing.

Other than providing suits, which Dress for Success is well-known for, how else do you help women?

We start by providing disadvantaged women with professional attire and a critical boost of confidence when they are getting back into the workforce, but that’s just the beginning of our programs that help women achieve economic independence. After women land a job, they are invited to participate in our employment retention and career development programs, including the Professional Women’s Group (our professional development and networking association for newly-working women), Career Center (which provides resume editing, mock interviews, online skills training and more), career fairs, mentoring and more. More than 75% of women who join our Professional Women’s Group are still employed after one year, and 62% receive raises or promotions.

With so many affiliates globally, how do you help them to stay on target for branding and marketing themselves to create the awareness required for continuous donation support?

Our worldwide affiliate relations department provides ongoing support to all of our affiliates so they can serve women in their local communities. We offer tools, resources, templates and branding guidelines to assist affiliates with marketing. We also spearhead national and international marketing campaigns that provide visibility for the Dress for Success brand.

In less than stellar economic times, non-profits always seem to be affected. What marketing efforts is Dress for Success doing to make sure that they have the donations needed to continue helping women in need?

We always value our donors and work hard to show our gratitude regardless of the state of the economy. We have a diverse base of corporate, foundation and individual donors, and we will continue to build new relationships while we nurture existing relationships. Fundraising in difficult economic times requires creativity, flexibility and a long-term outlook. We anticipate an increased need for our services because of the challenging economy, so we are committed to raising the funds needed to operate these vital programs.

What marketing strategies have you found to be successful?

We utilize marketing strategies that show the heart of our organization—the women we serve. All of our marketing efforts include photos, quotes and success stories from our women, who are truly our best ambassadors. People want to support people, not just an organization. We want our supporters to see the impact that they can have on a woman’s life by giving their time, talents and resources.

Social media has helped a lot of non-profits in ways that traditional marketing does not, has Dress for Success considered adding social media and Web 2.0 tools to its strategy?

Yes! We recently added a Dress for Success Worldwide page through Facebook’s Causes application—please join us! We’re working to incorporate a broader social media strategy going forward.

What inspires you about marketing Dress for Success?

The women of Dress for Success inspire us every single day. The women who walk through our doors are strong, courageous, determined individuals who want to become self-sufficient to change their lives—and the lives of their families. Having the opportunity to share their stories is an honor and a privilege.

And finally, after Blog Action Day is over what can bloggers do to help non-profits like Dress for Success keep a spotlight on poverty and how it affects women in the United States?

There are many ways that you can support Dress for Success:

• volunteer as a “personal shopper,” mentor or career coach,
• donate your nearly-new professional attire,
• join Y.E.S! (Young Executives for Success) to support Dress for Success, or
• sustain our programs by making a monetary donation.

You can find your local Dress for Success affiliate or learn more by visiting www.dressforsuccess.org.

Thank you Suzanne for your time and for helping me to support Blog Action Day 2008 by getting out the word about such a wonderful organization!

[Photo: iStock]

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A recent post by Kami Huyse and my own stream of followers prompted me to write this post. In Kami’s recent post, “Painting by Number: Bringing Blog Content to Life by Coloring the Canvas,” she lists the below rule:

Learn the rules and then break them intelligently: Every community has a culture, until you know and respect the culture, you can’t start breaking the rules.

I am not talking about blogging, but microblogging…sites like Twitter and Plurk. (We can debate the term microblogging another time.) I have learned from being on Twitter that the rules of culture and etiquette, among other things, for the most part, expect a reciprocate follow to a follower.

Well, I am breaking that rule…intelligently.

Here’s the thing, as more people and companies become aware of Twitter and Plurk, they don’t take the time to see what the culture is like. By not taking the time to do so, they don’t see that most folks on Twitter are real people with real names. And from now on I am not following them back.

Here’s why:

The other day, after checking out a follower’s profile (to make sure they weren’t a spammer, etc.), I followed them. Then response I received: “Thanks. You can check out my website here [link] to learn all about me and what I blog about.” What the…?!

Another favorite: “Thanks for the follow. Be sure to follow my company too. And check out our site.” Ah, sorry, no. How about we chat first?

And my #1 favorite: “Thanks. If you don’t subscribe to my blog, be sure to do so today via RSS.” What am I, just a number to you?

Today as I was going through my followers, I was greeted by all kinds of avatars (some creepy), crazy names, and one-line descriptions (if any). It was very enlightening.

Here are are some tips to people and companies who want to join the conversation on Twitter, Plurk, identi.ca, etc.

• Use a name, a real name, somewhere. If you don’t want to use a name, I suspect you aren’t ready to engage in social media or a conversation. I can’t have a conversation with “BugGurlz” (okay, I made that up, but you know what I mean.)
• Don’t use Susie234 as a name, spammers do that.
• Use a photo of yourself, not an avatar. Okay, well, I can deal with an avatar if I have other proof you are human and not a spammer (as in a real name somewhere and a description).
• Fill out the description. And not just a one-liner (“I am a blogger.”) Tell us who you are and what you are about; otherwise, why should anyone follow you?
• If you are a company, designate a real person to your Twitter/Plurk/identi.ca account and let them have a voice.

I feel at a disadvantage. You know my name, what I do, what I am interested in and all about me (or at least what I share on Twitter & Plurk). I am asking you to reciprocate. You might be a real person with whom I could have a great conversation with or perhaps a business relationship…but we will never know.

Trust me, being real will benefit you more than me—really.

Update 10/9/09: Matt J. McDonald over at A New Marketing has a great post that includes a checklist to brand your Twitter account. Be sure to check them out!

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Marketers with enough years under their belt know what spin is and pretty much know they can’t get away with it —prospects and customers are just too savvy these days. Marketers involved in social media know what transparency is and know that customers expect it.

Recently I came across a press release from Cone [hat tip: @JackiePeters] regarding their recent 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study.

According to the survey:

• 60 percent of Americans use social media, and of those, 59 percent interact with companies on social media Web sites.
• 93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media.

(Social media was defined as: Technology facilitated dialogue among individuals or groups, such as blogs/microblogs, forums, wikis, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking and social gaming. According to their spokesperson Andrea Larrumbide, the survey was conducted with a “pre-existing panel of respondents. We screened for prior usage of social media.”)

Those numbers didn’t sit quite right with me, so I relied on the numbers I’ve shared in the past. There are 301,621,157 people in the USA, of which 220,141,969 have Internet access.

Now stating that 60 percent of Americans use social media and 93 percent believe a company should have a social media presence (93% is about 204,732,031) seems to be a bit of a stretch.

I’d venture to guess that if I went to Any Town, USA and asked a group of Average Joes/Janes if they use social medial and believe companies should have a presence, I am pretty confident they wouldn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about. Heck, some marketers I speak with don’t even get social media!

eMarketer reported on September 3, 2008 a recent survey from Synovate that stated only 40% (5,200 of the 13,000 surveyed globally) of the Americans surveyed knew what a social network was. The eMarketer report also shared stats from a Universal McCann survey that states only 23.4% of the American population utilizes social networking with blog readership at: 23% daily, 42% weekly and 19% monthly.

These numbers seem to be a little more realistic.

Knowing about the above surveys, I reached out to Andrea Larrumbide and asked for a copy of the survey and the results (an executive overview like Universal McCann’s would have been great) and was told that they only share that information with paying customers. Interesting.

Skepticism aside, what can we learn about social media surveys and how we share data at a time when social media has become an important part of how we interact and do business?

• Don’t spin findings. Doesn’t “93% of those surveyed believe…” work better?
• Share your survey and findings in an executive format—it’ll provide credibility (that’s a no-brainer)
• If you are going to invest money in primary research, survey people outside the echo chamber

And for those researching social media or utilizing social media research to justify their plans, etc., don’t get caught up in research numbers that state what you want to hear. Question them.

Having done a fair amount of market research for the purposes of PR and thought leadership, I understand the urge to want to spin results and be the one company with the findings that justify its existence, but I am not a market researcher by trade.

That said, what’s your impression? Do you agree with my spin factor assessment? What tips would you offer to marketers and social media professionals when it comes to research?

[Photo: iStock]

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