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Social Media Tips: 5 Steps for Creating Great Social Media Optimization Content

There have been lots of blogs and discussions about developing website content for SEO, but what about creating content for social media optimization? Just like website content can be optimized as part of an SEO program, so can social media content. This is often referred to as SMO, social media optimization, and while SMO is strictly about social media it is also an important part of a comprehensive SEO program today. Done right social media content can help your search rankings, drive traffic to your website, and more importantly engage and develop a loyal audience for your brand. Done wrong your tweets, blog posts, and Facebook page will be ignored or worse viewed as Spam in which case your social media campaign could actually hurt your brand. Below are some Social Media tips for creating great content. Before you start develop a Social Media Strategy: There is nothing worse than starting a social media campaign without a strategy. Because the tone of social media is casual many take a casual approach to it and do not take their social media campaign seriously initially. Take the time up front to understand what your audience wants, their style and most importantly how their interests in your brand. Identify your Personality, Tone, and Style: This is a vital part of social media that many overlook. What is your social media persona? Yes, your brand has a personality in social media. Consider for example the Redbull Facebook page and Twitter vs Coke. Both are beverages and the similarity ends there. Their social media personas are completely different. It is important for you to define how your brand will interact and behave with your audience. For now I will leave it at that as this can be an entire blog on its own! Quality Content: This phrase gets used a lot often with no explanation of exactly what “quality” means. Your blog posts, tweets, and Facebook posts should offer your audience something interesting and useful. Note that this is different for each platform. On Twitter it might be as simple as a discussion between tweeps. On Facebook it could be responding to a question or post, or posting a link to an informative blog or article (not necessarily your own). And your blogs in particular should offer great content and be informative. Keep your content spam free: Again this relates to quality content and again it merits a separate mention. If your content is an overt or obvious advertorial or stuffed with keywords over and over no one will finish reading it, they will never come back, and they will never recommend it or share it. So much for the social part of your content! In addition if the content is overtly stuffed with keywords the Google algorithm will likely detect this and penalize you for it in the case of a blog or webpage and in the case of other content it will just be deemed Spam. Use long-tail keywords: Simply put Long tail keywords are a specific phrase. While long-tail keywords have lower search volume, the searches are more specific and thus more relevant than broad generic keyword searches.  So in creating your content be specific and focus on one topic for each blog post or Facebook post. When you tweet about the blog post again be specific about what the blog is about and consider using a relevant #hashtag. Cast your social media net wide: Social media is lumped into one singular topic, however, each social network is very different.  For example some users may follow you on Twitter, but not your Facebook page even though they are also on Facebook. It is important to participate at a minimum on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus; and in some cases LinkedIn as well. Get Hooked Up!  Connect your social media and networks to your website and blog.  Connect your social networks to your website so you can immediately publish new blog posts. Also make sure you set up Open Graph Share-Like icons, RSS, Twitter tweet icon, etc. so visitors can share your content with their friends.

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Social Media Tips: Who Owns a Twitter Account-Name

Who owns a Twitter name-account? When an employee is tweeting for a company, and compensated for doing this a part of their “job”, who owns the account when the employee eventually leaves? A lawsuit between a blogger and former employer over Twitter account ownership may lay some ground work to finally answer this question. Unfortunately this is not a great test case since the employment circumstances are a bit murky as wells as the promises made over compensation. The real problem here is that the account ownership was not clearly established from the beginning and there was no transition plan established for when the employee eventually left the company. This is the big lesson to be learned from this case.  Below I have outlined 5 Steps to Protect Ownership of Your Company Twitter Brand Your Twitter Account: For company twitter accounts-names make sure your brand name is in it. For example, Comcast, Best Buy and ATT uses Twitter names such @comcastcares, @comcastvoices, ATTTeamTatiana, @ATTcustomercare, @coral_BestBuy @Gina_BestBuy. Note that Best Buy incorporated the individual’s name in the Twitter name along with their brand name. This personalizes the account and is a good idea as long as you clearly establish up front the Twitter account is owned by the company. Company email address: On Twitter the email address assigned to the account pretty much determines who has the ultimate control of the account. If the account is assigned to a company controlled email account you   have control over the email address and should the employee leave you will be able to reset the Twitter password and retain control of the account, and even rename the account if you want to. So make sure all company related Twitter accounts are set up with company email addresses and not personal email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. Written Agreement: Set up a written agreement clearly stating that the employees social media activities on behalf of the company are to be conducted on company owned accounts and must follow company social media policies.  See my previous blogs on 10 Practical Steps to Develop a Social Media Policy and Social Media Policy Examples and Best Practices. Separate Personal and Business Social Media: Make sure your employees use your company social media accounts for business and only for business and use their personal accounts for all personal matters.  While their personal accounts are private, make sure your social media policy prohibits use of company trademarks and discussion of company business on personal accounts. Termination: Upon termination or an assignment change of an employee using a company social media make sure you do a debriefing and transfer usernames, passwords, and all other relevant information to the person that will be assuming the role moving forward. You want to make sure this is a seamless transitions without any wrinkles or missteps along the way or afterward.

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SEO Tips: Ideas for Creating Great Website and Blog Content

It is said over and over, “Content is King” for achieving top search rankings, but what exactly does that mean and how do you create great content.  Here are some quick SEO tips for developing great content for your website or blog. Don’t Write What YOU Think They Want to Read: Website owners and bloggers often create content based on internal assumptions of what they think their consumers or visitors want to read or should be interested in.  It is vital that your content addresses topics useful and interesting to your primary audience and at an appropriate level for their consumption and understanding.  Make sure you look at potential topics and the level it is written at from the perspective of your typical consumer, not your own internal view of how it should be or what they should want to know. No Selling, Telling, Shouting, Screaming – No Hype Zone: No one likes telemarketers and ditto for websites and blogs that SCREAM BUY NOW!  Shouting and screaming self-proclaimed achievements, features and benefits about your amazing new product, how your company is number one, or the industry leader in…  destroys any credibility your blog or website may develop.  Content that is overtly selling and making huge claims makes visitors immediately suspicious.  Likewise shallow content with a transparent cover to “sell” something is always detectible and will send visitors packing off to another site where they can find useful information.  No matter how catchy the title or creative the pitch, people know when they’re being led down to the checkout cart, no matter how well disguised the tour guide is. If You Think You the Information is Too Valuable, It’s Perfect: Readers are looking for one thing when they come to a website: information. Readers do not want to read pages and pages of case studies that all brag about your Fortune 500 clients, nor how great youthink your services or products are – see #2 above.Many bloggers and content writers or owners are reluctant to reveal “too much” for fear of “giving away” their secrets.  However, the information you may be clinging onto so tightly for fear of giving too much away – is likely the content that will drive traffic to your site. For illustration’s sake, let’s say George has a legal consulting website.  George regularly offers very useful, authoritative legal information and how-to’s in his website blog.  Things like what to do or say, or not do or say, when questioned by law enforcement, or how to file certain complicated court forms or claims, and so on.  When one of his loyal readers, who has never hired George before, needs serious legal consultation – is he or she going to scour his site for an article or blog regarding the situation, and say to himself, “Thanks for the free advice, George, now I don’t have to hire you”.. ?  On the contrary – because George regularly provides helpful, inside advice about legal matters, he will not only gain trust, but he establishes himself as a leading authority in his profession.It’s as simple as this: the more unselfishly information is given away, the more readers and customers will instinctively trust you and your business or blog, and the more your business or blog will be seen as an authoritative source and a “good” business. Unique Content: It is vital that your blog posts and web page content is unique and not copied from somewhere else on your website or worse from another website! Duplicate content will get you penalized by Google and hurt your search results, Google assigns the top rank to the oldest content and penalizes the copycats. In addition, duplicate content from a site or source other than your own material is plagiarism and also could be a copyright violation, and can cause more serious problems than a dip in search results, so create your own stuff. Keyword Stuffing – great idea, NOT really: If you don’t know much about SEO, know this: SEO is not just about inserting a few keywords into a blog or webpage.  Google does not base search results upon a magic number of keywords in website content.  A few clever words, or repeating some keywords according to some magic SEO recipe, will not get your site or blog ranking.  In fact there are over 240 factors used in the Google algorithm, no one knows the exact number and only about 50 factors have been reverse engineered by deduction; the algorithm itself is secret and as well guarded as the Coke recipe.Does stuffing or repeating keywords work?  Stuffing content, forcing keywords into a post or page, creates unnatural content that is hard to read and follow.  It is usually obvious to both readers and Google, and both will ignore content like this.  The overall quality of content is more important to both readers and Google than the number of keywords used (look up the Panda updates if you think otherwise). Page Content – at least 200 to 300 words: Pages with very little content don’t provide much information to visitors, nor do they give much to the search engines to index and digest.  Both Google and visitors view pages with minimal text content as having little value and poor quality/authority.  Make sure your key pages, Homepage and second level pages at a minimum, have at least 200 to 300 words per page. Make it Relevant: Make sure the page content is relevant to both your overall website and it is focused on the topic for that page.  The page title and content should relate to each other and be focused on a particular topic.  It is better to have several highly focused pages than a few pages that are very general  covering a wide range of topics, but not in detail. Page and website Structure: This is key to creating a high ranking website and page.  We could write an entire blog  on this one item alone.  For now, we will leave it at; follow good design practices, make sure your title, description, H1 and H2, etc are done correctly and that all are relevant to the page content.   Surprisingly this is one of the most overlooked aspects of on-site SEO.   A webpage and website can look great, and be completely non-functional from an SEO standpoint. We have met many that think that a great website, with great content; will eventually rank on its own.  In a perfect world this may be true, but the fact is that the internet is highly competitive and if you rely strictly on the content on your website and in-house SEO skills your website will not be competitive.  Your more aggressive and ambitious competitors certainly have SEO campaigns running and it is impossible to compete against well done SEO with website content alone and frankly, in-house teams can rarely compete against a good SEO professional team. SEO is not something that can be learned overnight, there is much, much more to SEO than most realize.  The best SEO tip is to hire a professional to either do your search engine optimization or advise your in-house webmaster and website team on how to optimize your website and blog.

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Install Android Marketplace and Google Apps on Amazon Kindle Fire

The first thing the Amazon Kindle Fire is Missing is the Google Framework API. Instead of works on Amazon’s API. This limits many different things you can do with your device. Not only is the fix easy, but doesn’t even require root access to the phone. You just need to enable “install outside applications”. More advanced applications like the Android Market and Calendar do require complex configurations, so for those of you who just want your apps to work now here is… The Quick and Dirty Step by Step: Menu -> Settings ->Device -> Allow Installation of Applications -> On. Install File Management Software. Root Explorer, ES File Explorer or DropBox. Find the App you want to Use on your previous Android device, or online. Option 1: Install Astro on your Android Device and use the “Backup” feature to create an APK on your SD card Make sure that you setup Astro to use the SD Card Click File Manager -> Menu Button ->Preferences ->Backup Directory -> Browse Folder /mnt/sdcard-ext Option 2: Find an APK Online Copy the Contents to your PC’s Hard Disk. Download this file Kindle Google Apps which contains many common Google Apps you probably want to use and also download this key file: GoogleFrameworkServices.apk Copy the Contents of these  to your Kindle Fire, most importantly GoogleFrameworkServices.apk You can skip the copying step if you copy your files on your PC to your dropbox folder and open them in your Kindle Fire. Open ES File Explorer or Dropbox to find the files you have copied. Open GoogleFrameworkServices.apk and install. If you are having trouble with this step, try using the Amazon App Store App “EasyInstaller“. Just remembered that worked for me. I did not need root for this step. Try rebooting your device before installing also, rebooting the Kindle seems to solve a lot of problems when loading the APK’s. Restart your Kindle Install Gmail or any other Google app that requires a sign on. Sign on to Google. Install the rest of your software. (it will use your primary Google Account.) Restart your Kindle Enjoy! Thanks to XDA Forums for the methods and troubleshooting and Sasha Segan from PC Mag for the initial intro on how to do it!   For the more Advanced and Adventurous- Installing the Google Android Market: Download and Install Android SDK Update Android SDK to Latest, including USB Drivers. If you have trouble updating the Android SDK try closing everything navigating to the folder in command prompt, and running android.bat out of the /tools folder. Thanks Mobile World for this fix. Configure your %USERPROFILE%/.android/adb_usb.ini to include “0×1949” Note: If the file or the folder do not exist, you MUST create it! Input it without the “”. In the command prompt (windows + r, type cmd, press enter) Navigate to your Android SDK Install directory under platform-tools (cd /program files (x86)/android/platform-tools/) and run adb kill-server then adb devices to check and see if your Amazon Kindle shows up. If the Driver doesnt work replace your android_winusb.inf with this one. You will then have to update the driver for your device (in Device Manager, look for your Kindle with an Exclamation mark on it, inspect it and click Update Driver…navigate to where the android_winusb.inf is in your Android SDK Directory) If your Kindle is Visible in ADB Download SuperOneClick v2.1.1 Run it and Root your Phone Use Root Explorer (Can buy from Amazon App Store) to Copy A Market APK Backup to /system/apps Click the R/O Button to R/W if you can’t copy properly. Use Root Explorer CHMOD /system/apps to Full Access (777) Run the Market APK From the /system/apps directory. Install the Market APK Restart the Kindle Fire You should be able to install applications now! Installing Google Calendar Sync Another tough one is Google Calendar Sync. You can just install the App, but it wont connect to your Google Account. You need these two files:  Google Calendar APK’s The technique is pretty simple, and similar to the Android Market Installation. Using Root Explorer you need to copy GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter.apk into /system/apps and change its permissions to 777 or full open. Then you can run the Calendar.apk and install it. On Reboot, you should have your calendar syncing with your Kindle! Congrats! Thanks Technipages for helping me realize I was missing the adb_usb.ini file! All problems solved! Now it is a real tablet! A really cheap tablet to boot!  

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Adobe mobile Flash Abandoned, Impact on PC Flash and Web Design

What is the impact of Adobe abandoning mobile Flash? Actually abandoning Flash for mobile is not really a big deal in itself, what is a big deal is what this move likely means for the future of Flash on all platforms, PC included. Apple has been a Flash antagonist and Microsoft joined the Flash opposition with IE 10 and Windows 8 declaring it is time for the Web to move on (ouch). With this the demise of the antiquated PC Flash platform can’t be far behind. In fact, Adobe already has the replacement for Flash in work, Edge which is scheduled for launch in 2012. Adobe has finally embraced web design standards such as CSS, although a bit late in the game. CNET has a great article on this with more details, Adobe Abandons Flash Plugin For Mobile. For a more technical assessment of this see Alex’s post The Internet Progresses as Adobe Abandons Flash. Flash was amazing when it first launched, it brought animation and graphics to life on a lifeless internet at the time.  Since then HTML 5, CSS,  and other languages have advanced and made Flash much less relevant and more importantly provided better options for animation and video. Add to the mix that Flash is horrible for SEO and effectively invisible to search engines and there are huge disadvantages and disincentives for using Flash. With today’s announcement from Adobe Flash for website design is now a dead language, like Latin, and it is time to move on to better options. We use HTML 5, CSS and other SEO friendly languages for all of our website development and applications. In fact we have been very busy lately converting Flash video and Flash animations to HTML for some clients that still have them on their websites so their website will be iPad and mobile compatible.

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How to Connect Website Badge / Link to Google+ Business Page

For those of you who skipped configuring your badge for Google+ Pages and can’t find the option anymore, use the following link: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config Type in your page’s ID and you will be able to create it again.  You can see it live here at esotech.org at the footer and also the breadcrumb on inner pages. You will have to add a bit of code to your header, and then use the link wherever you like. The link seems highly customizable if you know what you are doing. For example, setting height and width of the icon shouldn’t be a problem. Here is a code snippet example for Esotech’s Page. <!– Place this tag in the <head> of your document–> <link href=”https://plus.google.com/103467698593383507666/” rel=”publisher” /> <!– Place this tag where you want the badge to render–> <a href=”https://plus.google.com/103467698593383507666/?prsrc=3″ style=”text-decoration: none;”> <img src=”https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-64.png” width=”64″ height=”64″ style=”border: 0;”> </img> </a>

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Social Media Enhances and Complements SEO, like Yin and Yang

The argument that Social Media will ultimately kill SEO is an amusing one. Yes, Social Media will dramatically change SEO, in it fact already has changed  it forever; but Social Media will not replace SEO.  SEO and Social Media have a Yin Yang relationship – opposite forces that complement each other within a greater whole.  I think Social Media is the most exciting thing that has happened to SEO in many years and it will significantly improve the relevance and quality of search results. Social media, combined with the Google Panda Update, and eventually Google +1, have changed the landscape of search rankings.  The Panda update made great strides toward better rankings based on quality content, pushing down the rankings for content farms and junk content.  Google +1 will eventually reward highly regarded sites with quality content with higher rankings.  Social Media in a similar fashion will reward websites with quality blogs, great content and engagement via Social Media with higher search rankings, higher website traffic and greatly expanded exposure.  Panda, Google +1 and Social Media are paving the way to more democratic search results based on user likes and interests and much less influenced by those that game the system. So with that said it would appear that SEO is in fact on it’s way to extinction,but this is far from true.  Yes old school SEO of mindless link building is already on it’s way out and is only marginally effective today.  However, there is now a huge demand for Web 2.0 SEO utilizing best practices of website SEO combined with SMO (Social Media Optimization). Organizations still have a need, in fact now more than ever, for high quality SEO and thanks to these developments quality content and engagement will be rewarded and Spam will be ranked accordingly.  So how does Social Media figure into this and what is the Social Media and SEO Yin Yang Relationship? The purpose of SEO is to get your content found, BUT, the presumption and requirement is that someone is looking for that particular content in the first place.  If so, then SEO works beautifully.  SEO relies on people proactively searching for words associated with your product, service, or organization.  SEO is reactive to a proactive user. Social Media has evolved from personal chatter between close friends to sharing news, discussion, debate, and education across diverse groups.  Sharing and discussion is driving the viral affect of Social Media and this is the link between SEO and Social Media. There is a 24/7 discussion raging on Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook and LinkedIn about everything from politics, to music, news, movies, and products.  These discussions often share links to blogs, websites, Facebook Pages, and other posts and these posts are often re-shared and commented on.  Sharing and the viral affect of Social Media makes it proactive in the sense that the message/discussion is reaching people that weren’t necessarily looking for that in particular.  This is how Social Media is complementary to SEO.  Social Media actively reaches out to and engages users, while SEO relies on users to actively search for content. This is the Yin Yang relationship of SEO and Social Media and why the two are complementary to each other.   Social Media is now an essential be part of  a comprehensive digital marketing strategy along with a SEO campaign designed to work with and complement social media.  With Social Media becoming an essential element of a Digital Marketing Strategy and SEO campaign a new term has been coined to label SEO work specifically focused on Social Media and that is Social Media Optimization or SMO. To develop and implement a successful Digital Marketing Strategy today one must employ top notch SEO, with high quality content, and a lively and interesting SMO-Social Media campaign.  More on that in a future blog…

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Reputation Repair & Management, Learn from the Worst and be the Best

Reputation repair and reputation management is a hot topic today as social media and blogs are exploding in popularity.  Social media is making it increasingly easier for an irate client, customer, or employee to smear your company name and make it very public.  In fact, without a great deal of skill it is fairly easy to create negative content via social media and blogs that will rank in Google or Bing searches such as Company Name Scam or Brand Name Scam.  On twitter the popular hashtags for this are #FAIL to indicate a company or brand has really screwed up or #LAME for a less offensive, but still stupid move. So how does one go about actually implementing a reputation repair campaign.  Below is our 7 Steps for Reputation Management, or How to Do Reputation Repair, but first let’s explore the issue and challenges. Google and Bing search engines are giant calculators, they run huge algorithms to analyze content and webpages to determine the credibility, authority, content quality, along with over 200 other factors to arrive at a search rank for specific keywords.  Thus a blog with Your Company Name Scam in it along with a few keywords will rank at the top of that search result in absence of any competing content.  Likewise, dozens of blogs with Your Company Name Scam will dominate the first and second page of search results, a potential disaster for your reputation!  Add websites like Ripoff Report and press releases or public records for litigation and it is easy enough to have an ugly page one for search results. The best way to learn how to conduct a great reputation management or reputation repair campaign is to look at some companies that have had severe image or reputation problems (many well earned by the way) to see how they turned this around. The simple answer is content, content, and more content, but successful implementation actually more complex than that.  The picture I choose for this post illustrates the point well, it is a matter of counteracting and displacing the negative content with your positive content. Content is absolutely vital and it is equally important that the content is published with the right keywords and on blogs or websites were the search engine spiders will find the content and index it.  There is a bit of art to selecting the right keywords, to borrow a phrase from George Orwell’s book it is “double speak”.  For example, to rank against Your Company Name Scam, you would write blogs with those negative keywords in the content, BUT in a positive context. To illustrate this I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago titled “SEO Scams, You Need a New Website, Is this Really a Scam?”.  If you do a Google search for Esotech  Scam this turns up on page one in several other positions.  Thankfully no posts about other companies with similar names have any negative posts and this is all positive for our firm and it illustrates this point well. How to do Reputation Repair, 7 Steps for Reputation Management Research: Do Google and Bing searches for your organization name, brand names and key management.  List any keywords or phrases that need attention. Google and Bing search each name and phrase. Google and Bing search each name with scam, sucks, ripoff, etc. in search terms. Identify Keywords: Make a list of words and phrases that either are causing a problem or could cause one in the future. Offending Keywords: List all of the keywords and phrases that showed up in your research above. Be sure to list exactly how it showed up in search results and exactly what you searched for. Potentially Offensive or Harmful Words: List words that are likely choices or targets for complaints or a campaign against your brand or name. Develop Content Strategy: This is a very critical step. This is where you develop your content strategy to either combat and attack an existing problem or defend against potential attacks in the future. Use the research and keyword list from above to develop your content strategy. Identify blog topics and keywords. Identify article topics and keywords. Social media posts and content strategy to leverage the above. Implement Social Media and Blogging: With your research and keywords identified and your content strategy in place now it’t time to implement your campaign. Quality content is vital for a successful campaign, make sure you create quality content consistently to achieve the best results. Crisis Plan: Develop a crisis plan. What will you do if something goes wrong in your business? How will you respond? Who will respond? Monitor: Low Cost-free option: Set up Google Alerts for Your Company Name Scam, Sucks, Ripoff, #Fail, etc. and also the same for your personal name and key managers, and brand names. Paid Monitoring: You can use systems like Radian 6 to monitor chatter on social networks, blogs and new search results for your brand. These platforms offer a comprehensive solution to social media monitoring, however, they are not cheap and generally start at several hundred dollars per month for basic service. Be Proactive and Respond Promptly: Now that your campaign is in place and rolling it is vital that you respond to posts, comments and complaints promptly. It is also important to be proactive and act immediately if something happens and get out in front of the problem.  Don’t wait for the tsunami of complaints or jeers, be proactive and get in front of your clients, consumers, or constituents immediately.

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Social Media Policy Examples and Best Practices

My previous post discussed How to Develop a Social Media Policy, as promised, this post lists provides some great examples of Social Media Policy along with links to policies from dozens of organizations across a range of industries. Social Media Policy Examples My two favorite social media policy examples are Intel and Ford (see infographic below).  I like the Intel policy because it is easy to read, focuses on a common sense approach, is practical, and at the same time it is very comprehensive without being overly authoritarian or rigid.  I like the Ford policy first and foremost because they employed a very cool infographic that will cause people to actually read and use it (clever concept guys), and secondly because it has great content and is a good policy.  Below the Ford infographic is a  link to a great blog by Social Media Today with a list of over 100 examples of social media policies.  Some of the links are now broken, but still a great resource. Intel Social Media Policy Ford Social Media Guidelines   Over 100 Examples of Social Media Policies, via Social Media Today and Social Governance.

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How to Develop a Social Media Policy in 10 Practical Steps

As social media exploded over the last few years organization policies have not kept pace.  In fact until recently few organizations had formal social media policies and today the majority still do not have one. Among the organizations that have tackled this challenge there are three lines of thinking on social media policy: Comprehensive Policy: This camp believes Social Media Policies should be comprehensive with strict rules for employee use and content. Comprehensive social media policies often require approvals for blogs, posts, and content and involve strict oversight to ensure compliance with company policies, branding, and marketing messaging. Broad Guidelines: This approach and line of thinking favors establishing broad guidelines for employee use of and content on organization social networks, websites, and blogs. This approach relies on common sense on the part of both management and staff as well as trust. Another line of thinking with this approach is that existing organization policies already cover or can cover employee behavior and actions.  Note with this approach you should review and update your existing policies to cover social media use and content. Laissez-fairer: The thinking here is that there is no need for an organization Social Media Policy or that existing policies sufficiently cover this. This is a common approach in small and mid-size companies and organizations with an entrepreneurial culture. What are my recommendations for developing a social media policy? Personally I favor the approach of developing guidelines for social media use.  My feeling is that strict rules inhibit creativity and kill any real conversation resulting in stiff uninteresting content that is pretty much corporate speak.  In addition it is very difficult to manage and enforce a strict policy where every post or blog must be approved. 10 Steps to Developing a Social Media Policy Determine which approach your organization will employ: Comprehinsive (strict) Policy or Social Media Guidelines (obviously those electing the third approach of no policy are already finished).  This seems simple enough, but for large organizations there could be different points of view as to what approach is best and what is required.  Make sure you involve all that will have a stake in this. Review existing organization policies: Do they conform to the current environment and law? Can existing policies be updated to cover social media or does your organization need a separate policy? Determine Key Policy Issues: What are you trying to accomplish, prevent, or control?  I recommend writing an outline of the key issues for your organization.  Again, for large organizations different departments will have very different concerns, make sure you solicit input and involvement from the appropriate departments or management.  For example, the concerns from of the marketing department will be very different from those of the legal and HR departments. Research: Review other social media policies (learn from those that have been down this path, my next blog have a list with links to examples of social media policies). Legal:  Yes, depending upon the size and scope of your organization legal and HR review may be required.  The obvious legal question is privacy and free speech, but there are also important issues such as trademark use, copyright, etc.  Review NRLB rulings on social media and employee personal use as these are the new rules of the road. Develop your Social Media Policy: Write your policy, keep it brief and succinct, use examples were possible. Training and Use Guidelines: This is a key part of your policy. Regardless of how well written your policy is, it is useless if your team is not well trained in social media and clearly understands your objectives.  Your training needs to include managers, HR, and others that may be involved in managing social media activities and explaining the policy.  Your entire management team should be familiar with the policy. Implementation: Time to roll it out and walk the talk. Engage:  Oddly and sadly this is where many fail.  Social media is all about engagement, actually talking to people and responding to them.  A one way way outbound billboard campaign will not engage the community.  Your campaign must be a two way interactive dialog.  This topic alone is an entire blog, more on this later… Monitor:  Monitor sounds ominous, but in this context it is a good practice.  It is vital that you monitor your social media campaign.  The discussion on your Facebook page, Twitter, and blog posts is your best and most immediate barometer for how your customers feel about your organization or brand and what they want.  It is your best feed back mechanism, make sure you take advantage of it and have a system in place to share the results and feedback with management. By monitoring the campaign you can adjust your course if necessary, change the tone and content if necessary and expand on what is working. Of course monitoring is of little use if you don’t have a reporting system.  Make sure you have a reporting system established as part of your policy where key management is kept up to date on your organization social media and what is going on in the world.

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