Last week, I attended a webinar from WOMMA where WOMMA General Counsel Tony DiResta discussed the importance of disclosure across social media. This conversation normally focuses on brand-blogger relationships but the same best practices and government guidelines may also affect your Facebook Page.

Here are five things to keep in mind about your brand and disclosure on Facebook.

1. Employment is “Consideration”: The FTC requires that any consideration from an endorser be disclosed; “consideration” includes anything that might sway endorsers’ words and this includes employment. Make it clear to employees that posting an endorsement or review on your Facebook Page without disclosing that they are employees is unacceptable, this also includes commenting on other Facebook Pages or Facebook content just as it does commenting on blogs.
2. Video Contests: If you are soliciting Facebook videos about how much fans love your product to be in the running for a million dollar prize treat this the same as you would if you were requiring a blog post about your product as a contest entry. Help fans by requiring that they include a link to your contest rules or a including the contest name in the video description- this disclosure will protect your fans and will raise awareness of the contest.
3. Disclosure in Celebrity Status Updates: Status for Sale is forbidden by the Facebook User Guidelines but do make sure that any celebrity spokes people disclose their relationship with you should they be posting about your products a lot. There is no standard format for this disclosure, the status update might include (sponsor) in the text or the celebrity might list the sponsorship or spokesperson relationship prominently on their Page information.
4. Disclosure of Celebrity Photos: If celebrities and influencers are seen using your products in paid advertisements or at your events it’s understood that these are paid endorsements and no disclosure is needed but a photo of a celebrity using your product lacking any description or context is more ambiguous. To be safe, if you are posting photos of paid celebrities or event attendees using your products make sure to add a note to the album description or under each photo as to where the photo came from.
5. Disclosure in Foursquare: One great question from the webinar was around Foursquare and whether free products or gifts given to a Mayor needed to be disclosed- Tony confirmed that they do. Since many people are now using Facebook and Foursquare together I thought this was worth including.

Remember to use common sense with social media campaigns just as you do traditional advertising campaigns and keep your customers’ best interest in mind. And no matter how much you study this stuff don’t forget the gut check: if you think you might need to be disclosing something you probably do.

A special thanks to Tony DiResta for his input on this- for continued discussion and updates about best practices and guidelines check out Tony DiResta’s blog on the WOMMA website see the full disclosure webinar here.

When SXSW, one of the largest gatherings of minds and enthusiasts in the digital world, didn’t feature more than a handful of panels on the intersection between health and social media - an “unconference” event called SXSH sprung up to fill the void. Yesterday that event came together in Austin and included speakers and pioneers in using social media to communicate for health issues in regional hospitals, government agencies, health insurers, nonprofits, epatients and pharma companies. Just about every part of the healthcare world had some sort of voice in the discussion as everyone gathered to share ideas on how the industry as a whole might use social media more effectively by building greater trust.

The day long discussion featured many highlights, starting with a talk from Doug Ulman, CEO of Livestrong about the power of health based communities online and how important real time information is to improving healthcare and the patient experience. Greg Matthews from Humana shared how a health insurer can innovate internally and use that to improve patient relationships and Jenn Texada from MD Anderson shared how she and her communications team use social media tools to interact directly with patients for customer service. David Hale from the National Library of Medicine presented an innovative new database to help identify unknown pills called Pillbox and Fabio Gratton shared how to build a movement through a case study of the success of the #FDASM movement in November of last year around the FDA hearings. In the “unconference” part of the day, companies such as ReachMD and WEGO Health talked about their communities and content and how they help bridge the gaps between patients, doctors and healthcare providers.

In the final session of the day, I tackled the question of trust. A central issue in healthcare communications, the session posed the question: why don’t people trust us? Or more specifically, what creates the culture of distrust online that so often causes negativity towards some companies in healthcare and what could we as an industry do to combat this? Our aim in the session was to brainstorm ways that healthcare organizations could overcome these barriers and build more trust and credibility. The entire room then selected what they felt the strongest ideas were and I promised to compile the results into a single blog post - which you’ll find below. In the spirit of the unconference, all of us who managed to be part of the great discussion would love to hear your thoughts on any other ideas that we could add to this list too …

1. Listen to and implement ideas from the community. Being part of a community or interacting with individuals is a great first step, but the real trust that can be built from this comes when people see some sort of action come as a result of the participation in a community. It is not the act of listening, but the impact of that listening which makes it real.
2. Have shared values on good health. Often the distrust in healthcare organizations stems from a belief that priorities are mismatched. Our priority as a patient is to get healthy, and their priority seems to be offering more medication or delivering care in a more “efficient” way. In order to build trust, it is crucial that people feel our ultimate goals are aligned toward making them healthier. We need to focus on prevention instead of promotion.
3. Answer your patient’s or customer’s concerns directly. With social media tools, people have the ability to broadcast their thoughts and desires. Often they are doing so because they are seeking a response. Having a smart listening program that can help you find these queries and a strategy for responding goes a long way towards demonstrating that you care and truly want to help.
4. Aggregate or curate useful information. Sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of information online, but a dearth of it. When information is scattered all over, it can become very confusing about what is credibile and which things to trust. One of the simplest roles for any healthcare organization to take is that of a curator of great content. By doing this, you can create resources for people that will be useful and demonstrate your commitment to their needs.
5. Serve as a resource or guide for the community. One of the things that many organizations neglect is actively using the experts that you may have internally. When it comes to marketing and communications, part of the role should be to unlock the best voices from within an organization (many of whom may not necessarily be in the marketing or PR departments). By bringing these voices out and encouraging them to share information, you can connect patients and customers to the individuals who can truly bring insight and deliver thoughtful and useful information.
6. Set expectations on what you do and why. Lack of trust can be based on a misunderstanding of motivations. There are times when people may assume that a policy or practice is done simply for financial reasons or because of legal motives when actually there are other concerns they don’t know. Being as transparent as possible about your decision process and thinking can go a long way to remove this misunderstanding.
7. Focus on setting a clear mission for employees. The most trustworthy organizations often are the ones that have a very specific and defined vision that everyone is working to implement. When the message coming from employees is consistent, it goes a long way towards establishing a belief in the organization from outsiders because they know what the group stands for.
8. Communicate results and outcomes. Large organizations in particular are often good about communicating outcomes or results in financial terms on a quarterly basis or some kind of cost related metric, but not as good about communicating impact of their efforts in human terms. To inspire belief, it is often the results in human terms that people respond to far more than the financial ones - so refocusing on how that story is told becomes vital.
9. Recognize both sides of the issue or data. Many people inherently believe that data and reports presented by many healthcare groups (and pharma in particular) is delivered with a strong bias towards whatever is most self serving for the group. When information is not presented in a more balanced way, the likelihood that people will not believe it is entirely credible goes up.
10. Build trusted long term relationships. Beyond all the other suggestions, the one thing that establishes a foundation for everything you do are the trusted relationships with influencers and individuals that you build online. You need a group of people who know enough about what you do and the real philosophy and thinking behind your actions that they can serve as vocal advocates for your brand if needed.

I caught up with our own Thomas Crampton last week in Istanbul. Thomas runs our teams across Asia and one of the big events coming up this year is the Shanghai World Expo.  To help inform our work and our clients who will participate in some way or another, Thomas developed some great research on the current buzz throughout Chinese social media on the Expo. I had a chance to ask him about what he found:

Q: Can you tell us briefly what the Shanghai World Expo is and what it may mean to China, its government, business leaders and even the people there?
A: Shanghai Expo has been billed as one of the largest events of its kind in China. While people outside of China may not have heard of the event, the organizers expect a extremely large domestic audience.

Q: You did a unique survey of what the Chinese people were saying online via social media about the Expo, what surprised you most?
A: One of the biggest surprises about the discussions online was the intensity of discussion taking place more than three months before the event began. While you might expect sponsor and the government to speak about the event, it was interesting to see the level of discussion going on among China’s netizens.

Q: Can you tell two of the insights in the survey?
A: The report gives insights into how individual citizens and companies are already gearing up for the Expo. In terms of Chinese citizens, the report shows that they are concerned about ticket prices and taking action. Among the initiatives are group purchasing of tickets and rural citizens asking for advice on how to buy tickets.

Q: How could brands engaging in the Expo use this survey to their advantage?
A: By understanding the concerns of consumers looking at the Expo, companies can find ways of offering value to those who may visit the Expo. One interesting example in relation to the ticket prices is one company, , that is offering tickets to Expo at the original price. The promotion costs them very little - the difference in ticket price is very small - but the publicity and discussion about it has been fairly extensive. As we follow the Expo with these publicly available reports, companies will be able to see possible hooks for their own Social Media strategy.

Shanghai Expo Chinese-language Social Media Buzz

View more documents from 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy PR Worldwide.

How can brands leverage social media to drive sales and lead generation?

While social media spending is on the rise for both B2B and B2C companies, many brands are still realizing the full potential of online engagement for business development and lead generation.  Next week, I’ll be presenting ideas to the Silicon Valley Capital Club on how brands can best leverage the social web to drive word of mouth buzz and, ultimately, sales opportunities.

Below, I’ve provided a sneak peek into the insights I plan to cover, however, I’d welcome your feedback and stories as to where your organization experiences the greatest online business development success:

1.      Listen first – What does this really mean in terms of lead generation?  Essentially, it’s absolutely critical to know where your customers and competitors live on the social web what issues are most prevalent in your space.  Read blogs that are relevant to your space, look for webinars about key issues and use Google blog search to understand what trends are most discussed among your customer base.

2.      Set clear goals as to what you want to achieve – Start with one or two measureable objectives that are attainable within a specified timeframe and build from there.  It’s okay to begin with a pilot project, allowing you to easily retool your plan if your objectives are not tracking toward success.

3.      Add value to the online conversation – After listening to what is being discussed in your space, be ready to offer something more than a “quick hit” opportunity to buy your organization’s products or services.  Share insightful content, develop webinars, offer product demonstrations or training, create live events and answer questions.  Be viewed as an industry resource and seek to establish rapport and validation within your targeted audience.

4.     Empower employees to tell your story – Intel (disclosure - they are a client) published their social media guidelines as a best practice and several organizations have done the same. Intel’s policy clearly states that employees should “stick to your area of expertise and provide unique, individual perspectives on what’s going on at Intel and in the world.”  Who better to tell your organization’s story to the world and add a human element to your brand than your own employees?

5.      Paid and Organic Search – Ensuring your content can be easily found is absolutely critical when there is so much competition for eyeballs on the social web.  Investing in paid search and ensuring your web properties use consistent keywords/metatags to assist with organic search results are both instrumental.  Google Trends and Google’s keyword tool are free resources that help identify the search strings that will work the hardest for your digital content.

6.      Make your corporate website relevant to the sales process – Too many brands miss opportunities to capture attention and add immediate relevance to the customer once the customer finds them online.  I’ve listed some ideas on how an organization’s website could immediately strike greater engagement possibilities:

• Develop a blog and use it as a sales tool/testing ground. Posts should be brief, incorporate photos and/or videos that help in telling a story and speak in a conversational tone.  Be ready to respond to comments and questions in a timely fashion, noting which topics have the most traction for your prospects.
• Analyze where people are clicking, use trackable URLs (bit.ly offers metrics) and regularly review the metrics
• Offer Q&As with happy customers and how the product offering is being implemented, using both video and text
• Socialize the press area and more visible areas of your site, ensuring content is shareable and interactive
• Incorporate product and service reviews via third-party applications that live within your web platform

7.      Broaden your digital footprint and develop a content calendar – While it’s critical that your organization’s website offers relevant content, it’s also a good best practice to allow your content to live beyond the confines of your organization’s web platform.  Posting engaging content on LinkedIn, Facebook brand pages, YouTube and Fast Pitches can only help extend your reach and produce better search results for your brand.  Additionally, ensuring that content is produced on a regular basis and is timely (i.e. teases a tradeshow presence, product demonstrations are scheduled with product announcements, etc.) can offer a much richer experience for your potential customer.

8.      Don’t neglect Twitter as a business tool – It’s fairly easy to integrate Twitter into your sales strategy without much effort.  By using a management tool like TweetDeck or Seesmic to track specific keywords/lists, organizations can hyper-target those who are most interested their space.  Twitter can also be very powerful as a customer service mechanism, for introducing special offers and for answering questions about products and services.

While there are a number of ideas I haven’t covered here, I’m hopeful this list will generate some additional thinking on how organizations can best leverage social media for sales and lead generation.  What are your thoughts?  What’s worked well for you?

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Bangalore for a Brand Summit event that featured many marketers, communicators and even a Bollywood star talking about the future of marketing in India as country goes through what the conference termed as the “era of discontinuity.” With a ballooning population, growing Internet penetration, arguably the largest mobile phone market on earth and an entrepreneurial culture - India is at once a bewildering and maturing market for all things social. On the streets of India, word of mouth marketing and old school lessons are actively driving commerce. In businesses, the hot topics are similar to what they are in the US or elsewhere … how can your brand reach consumers who are increasingly placing their attention elsewhere and getting progressively better at ignoring you.

On answer that has risen to some level of prominence in India is the use of celebrities in marketing. You could argue that celebrities are popular everywhere in the world, but in a country that release more films in an average week than most countries do in an entire year, the rules are slightly different. In India it is not uncommon to see a Bollywood star’s face on everything from facial tissues to pens. Celebrity is used to connote trust, and in a culture with many different socio-economic classes (they even have names), the only way that marketers can often reach across these levels is with celebrities that many people recognize.

In an illuminating panel filled with journalists, filmmakers, marketers, creative directors and one celebrity (Bollywood Actor Vivek Oberoi) the conversation turned to a in-depth discussion of the role of celebrity in marketing in India and whether it was indeed a necessity, or whether it has become a “crutch” for the lazy marketer who doesn’t want to do any real work so they just hire a celebrity and consider their marketing efforts complete. Here were some of the biggest takeaways that the conversation raised for me:

1. Understand the difference between talent and celebrity. When you hire an actor to play a part in an ad, you are hiring them as “talent.” When you get a celebrity, you are hiring them to bring their personal brand to your product or service and serve as a spokesperson of sorts. The first key is to know the difference and not confuse the two.

2. Start with an idea, not a celebrity. Often a marketing strategy starts by selecting the celebrity the team will work with and then an idea is built around that choice. This method is backwards and results in marketing that lacks strategic vision and often fails to resonate. To do better, you need to have a strong creative idea … then find the celebrity that best fits that idea.

3. Build on the personal brand of a celebrity. Vivek Oberoi raised many intelligent points about the celebrity point of view when it comes to marketing (something we don’t often hear). He understands his personal brand and what resonates positively or negatively with it. As a result, he chooses personally not to do tobacco or alcohol related advertising. Many other celebrities lack those same principles and simply go where the biggest dollars tempt them. The best marketing will be something builds on the personal brand that a celebrity has built, instead of ignoring or countering it.

4. Use real people too. Thankfully, the point did emerge from the panel that there may be times where you don’t NEED a celebrity. There is a power of real people to connect with one another that can be missing with celebrity focused campaigns and for a growing number of brands in India taking this real approach is working well and shouldn’t be discounted.

This weekend saw the New York Knicks host what they billed as the first ever fan #tweetup, at their home court, the legendary Madison Square Garden here in New York City. They put together a very impressive panel to chat social media and catch a game, and really pulled out all the stops: three big screens broadcasting tweets, official #tweetup t-shirts and those cute little tweetup nametag stickers.  The event was sponsored by Discount Tire: definitely a little different than your run of the mill ‘few folks in a bar’ #tweetup.

The panel featured Amy Jo Martin, head honcho of @digitalroyalty (the folks who did, among other things Random Acts of Shaqness),  Peter Robert Casey ( the first ever media accredited micro-blogger, he covers St John’s basketball here: @Peter_R_Casey), Jim DeLorenzo (a VP at Octagon, the guys who have developed Twackle, a sports tweet aggregator), and Jack Dorsey* (founder of Twitter and Square).  Three sports/marketing folks, and one guy who hand in inventing (or popularizing, depending on how you look at it) micro-blogging. A serious panel indeed.

After some opening words from Howard Jacobs, Sr VP Marketing & Ticket Sales for MSG Sports**, things kicked off with intros and powerpoints from the panelists.  Somewhat of an unusual start, and one that I didn’t personally care much for in truth (I would have preferred that they get straight to the discussion), but the assembled peeps were certainly left in no doubt as to the credentials of those on the panel.  With that out of the way we got into the meat of the event: a spirited and lively discussion on the state of social media in sports and beyond, and the Knicks’ plans for the future.  Although I was a little critical of the first half (it felt like a missed opportunity to me to have that expertise without maximizing the audience’s interaction with them), it was pretty cool to see how engaged everyone was once the panelists got chatting.

Jordan (he of @thenyknicks) did a really good job moderating the event, and there were some great and varied questions from the audience.  It’s very clear that the sports industry is starting to embrace social media, and the Knicks are without a doubt one of the teams leading the charge. Kudos to the organization for having the guts both put on such an event, and to embrace change with such gusto. Nobody has all the answers just yet, but the Knicks and the folks on their panel at #NYKTweetup are certainly helping get us there. It’s going to be interesting to see how it continues to develop in this most unique of areas: sports fans are like no other audience. We know everything, are rarely happy, and are never short of opinions.

My 2 cents on where things are going in this space: social is in no small part about empowering individuals and any brand that chooses to engage needs to be prepared to relinquish a certain amount of control, so it will be particularly fascinating to see how an industry that is perceived to so much about control (ticket prices, contracts, restricted free agency, broadcast rights and so on) adapts to this new world. Fans are going to require more than behind the scenes access, we’re going to want to be heard, and to be given a meaningful stake in the team we support.

Congrats to the NYKnicks for having the guts to dive headlong into it, and on hosting a great event. Looking forward to the next one

@PhilCatelinet’s pics from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/catelinp/sets/72157623523695882/

@amandarykoff‘s pics from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandarykoff/sets/72157623399427947/

Panel discussion ustream here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5061506

*As a sidenote: I also got to see Jack’s new venture, @square in action, and it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Effortless & elegant, it’s a real game changer imo.  More on that here.

** ‘lil edit/correction thanks to @digitalroyalty.  Thanks Amy

According to the most recent numbers from Inside Network’s Appdata, there are currently over 82 million people - or about twice the entire population of California - playing Zynga’s social game Farmville.

Aside from the growing magnitude of the player base for social games like Farmville, a recently released Information Solutions Group / Popcap study also suggests that these games are reaching a broader and more diverse segment of the population than one might expect.

Here are some of the US-specific findings about social game players from the study*:

- average age is 48

- 90% reported the same or increased game play over the past 3 months

- 27% and 25% reported less time spent reading (mag, book, newspaper) and home TV/movie viewing respectively

- 43% of the time, game players log into social networks specifically to play games

- friends’ recommendations are the #1 factor influencing social game selection

- 35% have purchased a virtual gift while playing a social game

- among the specific games studied, Bejeweled Blitz and Farmville were more popular with women; Mafia Wars and Texas Holdem Poker were more popular with men

Here’s a recent Appdata list of the 15 most popular social games.

*the study also surveyed UK players

This Facebook Friday is dedicated to the Little Guy: the one-man communications team, the small business owner, or the intern for a non-profit who just got assigned Facebook (I’ve been there). So here’s to you, Little Guy, and because you make Facebook awesome, here are six easy and (almost) free tips for your “little” Facebook page. And you Big Guys can learn a thing or two as well.

1. Promote In-Venue- For most local businesses, your customers only know you offline so it’s the perfect place to start your efforts. Post a flyer, print some stickers, make a poster… just let your customers know that you’ve got a Facebook page and let them know where to find it. Local businesses like Primal Surf Shop in New Jersey can keep update local and also keep in touch with tourists and summer visitors who might only be in once or twice a year but who are spreading the word about the shop to their networks through interactions with the page.
2. Put Facebook Forward Online- Whether or not you’re planning to promote in-venue make sure you grab the low-hanging fruit of promoting Facebook through your online presences. Add the URL into your e-mail signature, place a link on your personal Facebook page or local chamber of commerce site, and add a Fan Box to your own website so visitors can become a fan right there. The Fan Box is also an easy way to update a static website and bring a little social into it, like this site from West Des Moines Leadership Academy.
3. Network- Small businesses are great at networking and you can do this on Facebook too. Local DC restaurant Marvin does this well; they often host local artists and musicians and not only create Facebook events on their own page but also post and link to the artists’ page and Facebook content such as photos or poetry posts. Non-profits can do this too; on National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Know Stroke page they list other stroke-awareness pages and partners in their Favorite Pages and Links section.
4. Buy Targeted Advertising- You can purchase Facebook ads from amounts of $5-$500 with any credit card or Pay Pal. Facebook ads can target by age, gender, hometown, current city, relationship status or interests. One ad that caught my eye recently was from Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, a coffee shop in my hometown of La Jolla, California. I’m now a fan and even though I’m miles away I check the page frequently and comment on photos from the owner, Chuck, and his trips to coffee farms all over the world.
5. Go Mobile- Not having a desktop at work is no longer an excuse to slack on Facebook. Curbside Cupcakes is a mobile cupcake shop that uses Facebook and Twitter to let fans know when they’ll be in the neighborhood so mobile updating is perfect, it’s also a great solution for those on the sales floor during business hours who want to keep customers coming in from 9-5. Facebook offers four options for updating on the go: e-mail, text message, mobile browser, or iPhone application. Get more information here http://tinyurl.com/FacebookPagesMobile
6. Be Patient- This final and critical tip come from Charles Nelson, owner of Sprinkles Cupcakes in Los Angeles. He told the New York Times last year that part of his tip was, “Be patient. Technology is about the network effect. It takes time for those connections to build.”

Do you have other tips and tricks that you’ve seen or have a local business you love to follow online? Share below and good luck, Little Guy.

Update: Facebook also posted about local businesses and tips for using Facebook (#kismet)

Live events play a critical role to engage consumers with a brand or product thru out the life of a campaign. The challenge with events is they are usually bound by geography, size of venue and of course cost. Many brands use social media to extend the reach of events with roving reporters who are live tweeting, creating hashtags for people to follow and posting twitpics.

All of these are great ways to extend the event but why not take coverage to the next level with a live broadcast? Creating a live show from an event is a great way to engage consumers and maximize your reach.

Solutions from Livestream and Ustream allow mobile broadcast stations to be set up from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. No Internet access? No problem. The Livepack from Livestream is a turnkey hardware solution for wireless live streaming at HD quality. This makes man on street coverage much easier as you can literally point the camera and go.

Recently we live broadcasted from an event. The concept was a behind the scenes sneak peak of a show with exclusive interviews from campaign spokes people and attendees. Our goal was to create new ways to extend reach of the event, engage with consumers not able to attend and drive action by getting people to tune in.

The results were excellent by comparison. The brand micro-site saw its single largest traffic day since it launched in November of 2009. Visitors tuned in for an average of 10 minutes, which is five times longer than an average day.

Not only did people tune into the broadcast from over 20 countries, 70% of them explored at least three additional pages within the site. The live coverage of the event coupled with active monitoring and engagement on twitter proved to be a great recipe for extending the event experience.

Before plugging your camera in and going live here are some tips for a successful live broadcast.

• Create a “Show” not a stream: Fully develop the story you want to tell with a mixture of live coverage and pre-recorded video. This requires more up front planning, pre recording of videos and more tightly incorporating segways to pre-recorded video.
• Promote across channels to build awareness of the show: Using email, social channels and engaging with online influencers played a huge role in the success of this online event.
• Encourage viewer participation by bringing them into the “show”: Another way to engage viewers in the live broadcast is to in create points of interaction with event goers and online viewers via twitter, Facebook or chat. A simple example of this would be a Q&A with attendees.
• No wifi – No show: In situations where you rely on a wifi connection it is essential to test each physical location the broadcast will air from. This will ensure there are no dead spots. For venues that do no provide wifi/wired capabilities you can also have lines dropped or secure a rental of the LiveStream Livepack.
• Poor lighting and sound can ruin a great effort: Having the right equipment can make or break the experience for your viewers. Plan ahead and be prepared to bring additional lighting especially if you are broadcasting indoors. The use of microphones will also significantly increase the audio quality for those tuning in.

Live broadcast are certainly not for every situation but can be a great way to maximize the investment in offline events.

I will be speaking along with folks from a lot of great UK brands this Friday in Devon UK at Scott Gould’s most excellent Like Minds event. While it covers the world of social media, it is both more business-disciplined and broader. It certainly meets my criteria for worthwhile conferences this year. Get all info on attending here.

So come for two reasons:

1. To learn from your peers in a very intimate setting. There is actually an intensive summit the next day (Saturday) which I would encourage many to explore and attend. Orange, the Guardian, Kodak, BSkyB and my friends from 1000 Heads will all be there.

2. To meet with me and help me find 2 talented Digital Influence Strategists to hire into our UK/EU operation. I coudl really use your help as our team keeps expanding in UK. You can get the skinny on our blog and lets talk this Friday (I arrive Thursday PM) in Devon

The title of this post might make you shudder since commenting policies and risk mitigation seem like heavy subjects for something as fun as Facebook; but setting simple, straight-forward guidelines should be an essential part of your Facebook strategy. These guidelines (which you can post or link to on your Info tab) are part of facilitating an open sharing environment and have the added benefit of coaxing you to figure out exactly how you want to use your Facebook brand page.

These guidelines are going to unique to your brand and your objectives but here are the basics elements to include:

1. Who is Operating the Brand Page- Is this page run by the communications department, employee volunteers, the owner, a collaborations with fans, or someone else? Who can fans contact with administrative issues? No need to provide detailed bios, emails, and addresses here but you could if you as a person are part of the brand.
2. How You Plan to Interact with Fans- This is your chance to set expectations. Let fans know exactly what kind of communications your Facebook page will be supporting. Is this an outlet for customer service requests? Will you be sharing coupons and codes for your website?
3. How You DO NOT Plan to Interact with Fans - If you have specific functions you will not be supporting or issues you will not be addressing through Facebook spell it out. Let customers know you won’t be responding to service requests, that you can’t answer questions about specific franchise promotions, or maybe you represent a government office and there are certain issues that can not be handled through unofficial channels.
4. Resources Outside of Facebook- Review what you included under How the brand does not plan to interact with fans on the page and provide alternate contact information where appropriate. For customer service issues if you do not plan to support these on the brand page let customers know where to take them. If your brand partners of spokespeople have their of Facebook pages list them here.
5. What can Get a Post Deleted or a Fan Blocked- Fans will understand that healthy discussion needs some moderation; provide a short list of reasons comments may be deleted from the page. General language is fine, something like, “comments that are off-topic, offensive or inappropriate (i.e. thinly veiled sales pitches).”

Note: Facebook may already be covered in your corporate social media guidelines (if so just stay consistent and make sure to add a link).

Have you seen any great examples of Facebook page guidelines? Have some essentials to add here? Please leave a comment and I will update this resource with your suggestions.

Thanks to Sam Ilic (flickr: Stage 88) for the awesome photo- I think it embodies the TGIF dream.

The theme throughout all the answers to TED 2010’s title “What the World Needs Now”was the need for innovation in everything from nuclear energy to education to foreign aid to disease prevention to music to graphic design.   So where does the world need to innovate?

Energy - Bill Gates is still focused on alleviating poverty for the world’s poorest 2b inhabitants, but was not talking about  vaccines, but the need for immediate innovation to solve for cheap, zero-emission energy or “energy miracles”.  Vaccinating the world won’t address poverty if the newly vaccinated then can’t go to school, have medical services, or grow crops.   Gates suggested 5 energy sources with the potential and will be investigating those: carbon capture, nuclear, wind, solar photovoltaic, and solar thermal. Nuclear energy was also a topic of a debate in one way or another in multiple talks.

Education - Expert Sir Ken Robinson, autism activist/cattle handling designer Temple Grandin, and Harvard philosophy Professor Michael Sandel believe that education is a due for a revolution as energy.  Robinson spoke of breaking the dynamic of linear college-focused education and appreciate learning wherever it occurs and directed to the needs of the student - whatever their abilities.  Temple Grandin was quick to observe how much asperger’s syndrome was on display at the conference and that that portion of the autism spectrum, when appropriately channeled can lead straight to silicon valley.  Professor Sandel called for a desire to teach the fine art of democratic debate and to end the rhetorical “food fight” that greets us on cable tv each night.

Management - Joie de Vivre hotels founder Chip Conley talked about changing the measuring stick for business growth and people management.  Many of the lessons of his talk were drawn from studying the Kingdom of Bhutan - famous for developing the Gross National Happiness measure and measuring towards that instead of the GDP. Director James Cameron spoke of not measuring himself by laurels, but the respect of his team.  Inspiring words, though I’m sure he wouldn’t turn down another Oscar.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  A relatively typical Sarah Silverman 18 minute set an+ a since-deleted comment on Twitter sent 1,500 people to dinner hotly debating “what is comedy?”  Amazing performances from Natalie Merchant, ukelele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, loop box pioneer Andrew Bird, and the continuous all day/all night genius so generously offered from ETHEL made me realize that most of the music I consume is the auditory equivalent of fast food.  This type of insanely creative music touches the soul and could  inspire true innovation - and that is what the world needs now.

Apologies that Facebook Friday is coming at you a day late this week but here in Washington DC we got TWO blizzards so I hope you’ll forgive us. The 2010 Winter Olympics started yesterday and of course every major athlete, organization, and sponsor has a Facebook campaign going on. Here are some recommendations for getting the most out of the games using Facebook.

The Officials - Inside Facebook has a good run-down of the main Facebook pages from the IOC, Visa, Vancouver, and NBC. None of these stand outs but some are a great way to keep track of scores and upcoming events if you’re a hard core fan. The majority of them simply repurpose content or sweepstakes from their website or YouTube and the applications are action oriented, inviting fans to learn about the sports or get into the action with virtual skiing, speed skating, or hockey.

The Athletes- There are lots of Athletes who manage their own fan pages and if you have a sport or an athlete you love these are really fun and the best way to feel like you’re there. Brand pages make it easy for athletes to share their stories and experiences with fans through status updates, blogs, and multimedia; today USA’s Lindsey Vonn posted a status update that she was in her condo baking banana bread and is her injury is healing nicely. Vonn and other athletes and also using Twitter but in Vonn’s case you can tell it’s linked off of her Facebook so the posts don’t make much since when their cut off at 140 characters.

Your Friends- Last week, Facebook quietly rolled out their next jab at Twitter: a search feature that letsyou look at friends’ posts and everyone else’s. Search for “Olympics” and you can see status updates, photos, videos, or links your friends are sharing related to the games. The search functions aren’t nearly as flexible as Twitter search and the use of hastags hasn’t appeared yet but if privacy advocates don’tcomplain about this new feature I think we’ll see a new version of the now-dead Lexicon in 2010.

Overall, I’m underwhelmed with branded Facebook campaigns this year because they didn’t take advantage of human element of platform.

In 2008, our team worked with Lenovo to build the Voices of the Summer Games. We found 100 relatively-unknown Olympic athletes from around the world, armed them with Lenovo products, and asked them to blog about their experiences. The reason the program was a success was because it reminded people about who these athletes are: not everyone is going to win gold; most of these athletes have jobs andfriends and families outside of their competition and are living the dream of their moment to compete against the best in the world. Had this program been done today with the flexibility of brand pages, Facebook would be the perfect platform to bring these great stories to life and cheer on the unsung heroes of the games.

Briefly noted- USA Today had an article about broader social media use at the Olympics: here.

Day 2 of TED2010 covered everything from suspended animation in humans to the need for better democratic argument in our society.  What continues to be top of mind, however, are issues of id and identity.  These were touched on in some way by 4chan founder Christopher “moot” Poole, game designer Jan McGonigal, and multiple demos from both Google and MSFT.

4chan is an insanely popular and prolific anonymous imageboard that has no memory or archive - threads are deleted after a few days.  While I don’t know what the causal relationship is, obscenity, porn, and rage run rampant in the environment of anonymity and inpermanence.  Is it a collective online id?  If you could say or post whatever makes you feel good regardless of how it will make you look or impact reputation, who would you be online? Maybe, but its not entirely bad - the community has come together and organized to do everything from protest scientology to using online tools to find and punish a board member who uploaded a video of abusing his cat.  The community even organized to game Time.com’s voting system for 100 most influential people and got their founder a #1 berth. Now, “moot” is afraid that the coming specter of universal online identity will make havens like 4chan an endangered species.

Jane McGonigal from Institute for the Future believes that we are not playing enough online games.  In games, we are allowed to be their best selves  - persistent, resiliant, optimistic, and collaborating with teams to create “epic wins”.  The question becomes how do we take the qualities we exhibit when playing games got 3 Billion hours/week and apply that approach to some of the planet’s biggest problems?  You can read more about her ideas for this on the link above, but maybe a bigger question is, will we ever be able to connect our online and offline selves?  OR, are they already too connected?

Throughout the day, both MSFT and Google gave some very exciting technology demonstrations.  MSFT’s Bing Maps will soon be synching up with geotagged flickr photos so that you can not only zoom in on street level views in an incredibly smooth, quick, exciting way, but you can see user generated images - taken from different angles and at different times, overlaid with this.  Exciting technology, but the likelihood of your whereabouts being tracked, captured, and uploaded into large search engines grows and grows with improvements in capture and integration of these technologies.

So, while 4chan is worried I won’t be able to be anonymous on a message board, in truth, I may not be able to be in a coffee shop 3,000 miles away from home either.  Remember that cat abuser that 4chan board members found and had arrested?  They did it by triangulating the images he uploaded with a MySpace profile and other online data to pinpoint his name and exact location.  So you may want to think carefully about exactly when and where you tap into your id, because you ID is not far behind…

We are a company of communicators. We embraced social media years ago as a new way to communicate for ourselves and, also, for our clients to push their business forward in new ways.We have always had a socila media policy to help our staff use social media productively.

The recent decision by Forrester to restrict their analyst/bloggers to publishing within the Forrester blog domain (vs. allowing them to publish personal blogs outside of Forrester and grow their personal brands that way), has kicked up a dust storm of opinions.  

I particularly like Shel Holtz’s thorough summary of some of these opinions and the issues. We are a client of Forrester’s and I understand what they are trying to do. Still, I am grateful that we have chosen another path. We sell IP and POV and, yes, we mostly sell client solutions to marketing and communications problems. We have different business needs. Their business is more narrow. I would summarize the two key questions about their approach:

• Will this help Forrester drive up or maintain the value of their IP by exerting more control over where it is found and how it can be accessed/purchased?
• Will this help Forrester retain valuable analysts talent by avoiding a real or perceived “personal brand brain drain?”

We Benefit

For us, we want our communicators out their sharing their POV. Ogilvy benefits from Rohit Bhargava and Thomas Crampton developing their personal brands. Can they fly off and parlay the value they have accrued via their work at Ogilvy to benefit only themselves? Sure. But I am not going to solve that problem by trying to lock them down or, more likely, hiring folks who are not driven to build their personal brand.

I am not completely at peace over this issue. I grew up at a time when this much snow (big snowstorm this week in DC) was normal (”it snowed up to my head and I walked three miles to school,” he boasted) and loyalty to the organization was a virtue. Still I don’t expect as much from others today. I have seen some personal brand pundits who clearly put themselves in front of their clients or the companies they work for. I am not in favor of that.  Inside our organization, there seems to be plenty of room for compleimentary personal brands.

Social Media “Guardrails”

We have given all of our staff the guardrails they need today to use social media well. It is forever a work-in-progress. In fact, I am sharing a new draft - not even “final” - of our policy (see below). We will refine it (e.g. “should staff check-in via FourSquare when they reach their client’s offices?” I think I’m gonna suggest “no” on that one - goes against our posting on clients restrictions).

I actually don’t think Forrester’s move will hurt the personal brands of their analysts. If anything, they will likely all benefit from a well-promoted space and it will likely launch some new personal brands. Still, it is a tough decision to try and restrain the natural self promotion of the most prolific “personal brands’ out there. For us, we learn form these guys and gals. Some of the lessons of personal brands apply to our business and we have learned that some do not. Still, we are a company of communicators and prefer to be hip-deep in social media everyday.

 

Ogilvy On… Social Media

Ogilvy PR Global Social Media Guidelines 2010: DRAFT

 Social media brings us new opportunities to connect and communicate with our global community. As dedicated communications practitioners who are committed to driving the evolution of our industry, we openly embrace social media and seek to inform and inspire our associates to engage in online conversations. Here’s what is driving us: 

• Insatiable Curiosity: The unrelenting devotion to pursue new angles, new methods and new platforms;
• Global Citizenship: Collaborating with a worldwide network of thought leaders and industry luminaries;
• Complete Candor: Dedication to integrity in everything we do;
• Excellence: Recognizing that nothing less than our best will suffice; and
• Continuous Learning: Always learning and teaching each other in a world that is in perpetual beta

 While we expect all Ogilvy staff to utilize common sense in all interactions, both online and offline, these guidelines endeavor to guide our participation in social media both personally and professionally.

 Overview of Social Media Tools

 These guidelines cover all social media platforms - technologies that enable social interaction. These include, but are not limited to: 

• Social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Foursquare, LinkedIn)
• Video and photo sharing websites (Flickr, YouTube)
• Micro-blogging sites (Twitter)
• Blogs (including corporate or personal blogs as well as comments)
• Forums and discussion boards (e.g., local discussion boards, Whirlpool, Yahoo! Groups or Google Groups)
• Online encyclopedias (e.g., Wikipedia, Sidewiki)

Ogilvy PR Social Media Guidelines 

Personal Usage: Connecting and networking with friends and colleagues 

• Be Responsive: If someone responds to something you’ve said, be responsive and follow-up quickly (e.g., 24 hours). You should, therefore, monitor for mentions of yourself to avoid any issues. If you say something in error, never take down the post - simply go back and update it with the correct information. 
• Clients and Our Business Are Confidential: Don’t post about clients or potential clients without explicit permission from your client and manager. Our client relationships matter more than anything and we must protect their business. 
• Be Yourself: Never assume a “fake” identify in social media and always be transparent about who you are and who you represent. 
• Build a Following: Promote yourself by finding and sharing information that will be interesting to your friends and followers and useful for them to share. We also encourage you to connect with other Ogilvy PR employees and affiliates online. 
• Know You’re Always “On”: You must assume that your social media usage is visible to clients, managers and prospects. Unless you go to extraordinary lengths to keep your online content private, be sure to manage what and with whom you are sharing. As a reminder, while we all have the occasional work frustration, Facebook and Twitter are not the best venues in which to air them as those comments are available to your clients and coworkers. 
• Be Civil and Human: You can have an edge without being obscene, defamatory, threatening, harassing, overtly sexual, discriminatory or hateful to another person or organization - including Ogilvy PR, its vendors, partners, competitors and/or other related people or organizations. 
• Fully Disclose…Always: Never talk about a product or organization in social media in exchange for cash. If you receive a product or service to review for free, you must disclose it in your post or review. We firmly ascribe to WOMMA’s Guide to Social Media Disclosure (in review now) and Ogilvy’s guide to the new FTC Guidelines (summarized here). 
• Always Give Proper Credit:It’s OK to quote or re-Tweet others, but never attempt to pass off someone else’s language, photography, or other information as your own. All copyright, privacy, and other laws that apply offline apply online as well. Be sure to credit your sources when posting a link or information gathered from another source.  
• Give Respect: Always demonstrate respect for others’ points of view, even when they’re not offering the same in return. Never pick fights and always take the high road. If you are sharing a negative customer service experience or commenting on a brand or individual, please consider doing so in a constructive way.

 Company Guidelines: Talking about Ogilvy PR and its affiliates 

• About You: If you have permission and plan to discuss Ogilvy PR-related information across your social properties, you should disclose on your “About” page or bio that you are an Ogilvy PR employee and be clear about which business unit you represent and what your responsibilities include. Please also indicate that your opinions do not represent official positions of Ogilvy PR. 
• Speaking for Ogilvy: Remember that you are not an official “spokesperson” for Ogilvy PR and there are many cases when we must leave speaking for Ogilvy up to them. Contact Rachel Foltz with any questions.  
• Using Social Media at Work: While we encourage the use of social media during office hours, your time at work should be focused on your primary responsibilities. 
• Ogilvy Experts: If you are positioning yourself as an Ogilvy expert on a personal social media account (e.g., not the Ogilvy PR Blog), please seek prior approval from your manager. 
• Ogilvy Confidentiality: Only disclose publicly-available information. Don’t use your blog to break news about clients or Ogilvy. 
• Discussing Ogilvy People: We ask you to remember that sharing personal information about co-workers may affect them inside and outside of the office. All standard HR policies apply to interactions between colleagues across the social Web.

 Client Social Media Etiquette: Representing and Talking about Ogilvy PR clients, partners and contacts 

• Client Transparency: If you have permission to share what a client is doing publicly (e.g., launching a Web site or running a contest), you must be transparent and disclose your relationship. For personal blogs this may include a few sentences fully explaining your relationship. For micro-blogs, like Twitter, this is generally done by adding a (disc: client) or (cl) when space is limited.

 Common sense should always rule, but please do not hesitate to ask for clarification. For questions, concerns or comments please contact Virginia Miracle or John Bell.

It would be impossible to wrap up the first day of TED in 1 post.  Themes emerged around the power of diet (to do everything from prevent angiogenesis leading to cancer to reversing childhood obesity), taking scientific lessons from space and spiders to improve our daily lives, and the Nobel-winner-documented delta between happiness and economics (hint: means, not end).

The theme that is most relevant to our ongoing discussion here, however, is the possible societal echoes of the transparency that social media facilitates.   The most powerful applications discussed yesterday:

• Regardless of your political affiliation, the unscheduled simulcast appearance of predicted next Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron made a big impact on the crowd.  In his 18 minute TED talk, his message was improving the well being of Britain through a combination of de-centralizing power (“Power to the People”) and changing behavior by understanding how people actually are motivated.  Power to the People was essentially an all-social media plan in 3 parts: Transparency (publicly listing every government expenditure over 25,000 pounds as well as every potential contract), Choice (providing individuals more information to make better choices), and Accountability (such as showing interactive crime map that allows the public to hold the police accountable or, say, interactive maps of places where snow has been plowed).  I found it interesting that his open government examples were all taken from the US when Canada has more vibrant examples, but maybe he was playing to the crowd.  Regardless, it resonated as a very sensible use of government transparency.
• Why not use Social Media to find intelligent life on other planets?  SETI satellites collect so much data, and the subtlety of seeing patterns in data is difficult to be done by computers.  So, what to do?  Distribute the work to amateur ET hunters all over this planet?  SETIQUEST, launched yesterday, provides citizen scientists with the opportunity to review pieces of this data from anywhere via mobile device and trigger other citizen scientists to take a second look if they think they see something.  If others agree, the telescopes are repositioned to hone in on the signal and the SETI scientists then review.
• The difference between Data and Insight was the topic of a 5 minute TED U talk by Monitor 360’s Doug Randall.  He told the story of the US Government having access to reams of data, but relying on on the ground, crowd-sourced insights to combine with that data to make decisions related to military strategy.  Algorithms can not replace the value of  human instinct.  The key to culling the insights is asking the right questions and tapping into the right “crowd”.

And why, might you ask, have I included the photo I did at the top of the post?  Because I was moved over and over again by the pieces put together by musical director Thomas Dolby - seen here with power string quartet Ethel and I wanted to give them a digital kuckle bump even though it has nothing at all to do with social media.  More to come tomorrow!

Snowmageddon.  Snowpocolypse. Kaiser Snowze.  The 2009/2010 winter season in DC has gone by a lot of names.  One of the most notable side stories in my (social media crazed) mind is the role that social media (or should I say snowcial media?) has played in everything from storm tracking, to commiserating, to clean up efforts.  Particularly noteworthy is the way “traditional” players got in on the action.

The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang

A blog at its core, the Weather Gang blog became my go-to for all things weather related.  They give insightful, accurate forecasts with a personality, and take advantage of the rest of the social Web (Twitter, Facebook) to promote the site, its content, and its conversations.  What’s great is that this is run by the Washington Post - it’s great to see such integrated use of social media across a traditional media site.

Washington, DC Department of Transportation

DDOT DC has taken a proactive role in communicating its snow removal plans to the community.  A Twitter handle DDOTDC is collecting reports of unplowed streets and sending them to the Snow Command Center (which is probably in Cheney’s secret bunker…) - so while huge swaths of the city remain unserviced, there is a sense that someone is out there listening.  Notably, DDOTDC is even going one step further that listening and has launched Snow Map DC which allows you to type in your address/crossstreet/block and see what service its received and what the current road conditions are.

(Personal side note - all those dots don’t necessarily translate to clear streets, as they would commonly be defined.  Here is Wisconsin Ave between M and K Street last night - doth those green flags lie??)

Of course Twitter and Facebook also played pivotal roles in keeping the DC community together.  Twitter did what it does best and became a real time focal point for discussion -  hashtags, twit pics, and live updates dominated  in the days
leading up and during the storm.  Facebook played to its community organizing strengths - The Official Dupont Circle Snowball Fight group has over 6,000 fans - 2,000+ of whom showed up for the actual event last weekend.

I’ve written this post in the past tense - which is ironic, seeing as how we’re about to get another 10 - 16″ tonight and tomorrow… snowcial media may have more gas left in the tank.  Stay tuned!

This week I participated in a Social Media Week New York panel “Putting the Social in CSR” along with Bonin Bough from Pepsico, Deb Berman from Just Means, and Chrysi Philalithes from (RED).  Its an extremely timely topic and one we have been thinking a lot about  from a number of different angles.  The great news?  Social media provides the media for corporations to leverage their Corporate Social Responsibility investments to yield greater fruit for both the customer and the beneficiary.

The time-worn model of CSR of “Purchase X and we’ll contribute to Y up to $Z amount” can leave all parties feeling a little empty.  Consumers know the company has already earmarked the money for the cause and is now trying to blackmail us into unlocking it by picking their brand over the equivalent.  That similarly does little for the cause beyond the actual money donated - there’s little room on a package to tell the charity’s story and there’s no way for the consumer to choose to become more involved.  To paraphrase John & Yoko, “EMPTY CSR IS OVER if you want it”.

Social media allows for the type of participation that can provide better return on CSR investments to all.  Just a few:

• Connecting Customer and Cause - Activating around a CSR commitment in social spaces allows the customer to choose to go a step beyond just the purchase for token donation to donating themselves, connecting to the cause’s social space or promoting the cause to there social nets.
• Inspiring Meaningful Involvement - Social media allows companies to set up infrastructure for their customers to be the connection that makes the biggest difference.  For example, Time Warner Cable (Disclosure: Ogilvy client, but we are not responsible for CSR), who has made a 5-year $100MM commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through their Connect a Million Minds initiative. They are measuring success not with number of $$ donated, but number of minds connected – a function not of their donation, but the number of people they have inspired & empowered to take advantage of the infrastructure they have created.
• Platform for Awareness & Promotion The much publicized Pepsi Refresh Project is taking a huge step in CSR - providing $20 million in grants to individuals and small organizations with good ideas to improve their local communities.  Pepsi provides a platform to tell your story, promote your idea, and is doling out 32 grants per month to the democratically selected winners.  The impact for these causes will go far beyond a microscopic logo on a box.

To reference Ann Charles’ Mashable piece on CSR 2.0, the new way to look at CSR is the “triple bottom line of people, planet and profit”.  Maybe social media adds a fourth P – participation - that could be a goal in itself.  Participation benefits the brand, beneficiary, and consumer alike and will fuel the type of CSR that will hopefully increase the efforts and investments of corporations in some of society’s most serious challenges.

Social media continues to evolve, shaping not just our thoughts on connectivity and information consumption online, but how it applies to our everyday lives.

This is not breaking news. Still, there are many people, brands and companies that are still dipping their toes in the social media pool, trying to gauge the value of social media platforms and leveraging these sites to connect with their key audiences. As a digital strategist with a traditional public relations background, I can see the value in both online and offline media, but note the increased convergence between the two mediums. Yet many companies still grapple with social media and are tasked with demonstrating “the value” more than ever. What if these same organizations knew that mainstream media reporters were conducting a good deal of their research on social media websites, such as blogs, Twitter or Wikipedia?

Last week, our team came across a recent study by George Washington University and Cision titled “2009 Social Media & Online Usage Study” on how mainstream media and web-based journalists use social media sites in their daily work. The subhead of the press release announcing the study states, “Poll Finds 89% Use Blogs, 65% Use Social Networking Sites, and 52% Use Microblogging Sites — but Reliability is a Major Concern,” which piqued our interest. As a result, my colleague Rachel Polish and I decided to conduct our own mini-study of both mainstream media and bloggers to see if our results corroborated with the Cision study. Additionally, we wanted to know if there were major differences in how mainstream media and bloggers leveraged social media tools.

Here are some of the questions we posed and responses we received from our friends in the media:

What social media tools are you using to publish, promote and distribute what you write?

From a high-circulation, mainstream magazine reporter:

• Blogs: Wish I had better connections here, would love to do better cross-syndication of information.
• Twitter: Lots of promotion throughout official channel, not very much through my personal one.
• LinkedIn: I’d very much like to increase my reach here. Seems like a nice way to be personal and professional.
• Facebook: Facebook is my private place. No public promotion here, save a “fan” group with like 20 people.
• Flickr: None.
• YouTube: We’re starting to post videos here, though unofficially.
• Review sites: None.
• Other: Email!

From Eliane Fiolet, Publisher and Editor of the blog Ubergizmo (www.ubergizmo.com):

We use LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, and YouTube to re-publish the content (mostly article title + link to the blog post) that we post on Ubergizmo.com, sometimes Flickr, but not too much. Other blogs re-publish our content; some do a total copy/paste with a link to our original article, and some use the information and write their own post and link to our original article. When we have access to exclusive events, like the Apple press conference, we authorize other blogs who do not have this access to use our live blogging pictures (three or more updates per minute) in exchange for a mention and a link, and our logo is watermarked in the pictures.

How do you measure the impact and/or traction of your stories published on the Internet/Social Media sites?

From Brian Stelter, the New York Times (www.nytimes.com):

I sometimes notice when a story is retweeted especially often. I sometimes view the comments on articles, especially when I’m writing other stories about the subject.

From Cheri Loughlin, the blog, The Intoxicologist (www.intoxicologist.net):

I don’t worry so much whether an individual post or cocktail receives comments, or what reader views happen to be on any given day.  My focus revolves around what readers are interested in over the long haul.  I look for trends in what my readers search for in key words that brings them to specific articles.  Readers will also tell you what they want if you build respect and trust.  Rather than use The Intoxicologist Facebook fan page as a tool for just placing article links, I try to engage my readers in conversation for feedback so I can bring them more of what they want.  I also learn a great deal from my readers, which is a great experience for me.

From Jane Maynard, the blog, This Week for Dinner (www.thisweekfordinner.com):

I consider the number of website visitors, number of comments or views, number of Twitter followers, and number of inbound links, although I feel like traffic to my blog and number of comments are my most accurate gauge.

Which search engines/sites/sources do you use most when doing online research or distribute what you write?

From Robert Selna, Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com):

I use Google in nearly every instance in which I need quick contact information for a company, non-profit group or government agency. I rely on Lexis-Nexis for harder to find contact information and for news stories related to the topics I’m covering.

With the changing media landscape, it is clear that both mainstream as well as web media are increasing leveraging social platforms to conduct research and locate sources for their stories. Additionally, it is evident that there is a growing value placed on engagement and what topics trend to have the most traction.

What social tools do you find you use the most to communicate your messages? How do you measure the impact of your work or posts on the social web? While it’s clear both public relations practitioners and the media are leveraging more social tools and platforms, there is still an evolution taking place in terms of how these tools are perceived and how trustworthy the content is. We’d be interested in learning what resources and tools are most effective for you.

This week, Facebook Friday will look at six of Facebook’s top news stories and how they affect brands. As a bonus- a link to a bit of Facebook psychology.

1. Facebook recently introduced per-post analytics for Facebook pages- these show up only for authenticated pages (see below). For each link, video, wall post, or other content a page administrator posts you’ll be able to see the number of impressions it has gotten along with a feedback percentage (formula: comments or likes/impressions). Facebook provides some good explanation of each number means on their blog.
2. Does anyone have more information on authenticated pages? I’ve made it my personal message to figure out what it actually means since it could affect brands and brand representatives (like PR firms) who are brand page administrators. All I’ve tracked down so far is a message board of people being confused and a mention of authentication in the blog post above where it says, “Once a Page reaches 10,000 fans, the administrator is provided instructions on how to authenticate the Page.” But I am the administrator of a page that large and haven’t heard anything…
3. Doppelganger week? Huh? No one knows. Just go with it.
4. Facebook requires third party advertisers on applications (those banner ads you see on application pages) to agree to new terms. Pretty standard, just make sure if you use one of these providers that they are certified.
5. Facebook introduced new home page navigation and it looks pretty awesome. The only issue I’ve ID-ed is that the new photo upload plug-in I installed is broken so I can’t upload any new pictures yet. This doesn’t alter brand pages but it does raise the profile of applications and games from brands and developers, something discussed here last week.
6. Happy 6th Birthday Facebook!

Briefly noted: Facebook profiles capture our true personality, according to new psychology research.