It has been a little quiet here, mostly as I am getting several e-books ready and preparing for several different speaking engagements. My next speaking engagement is for the Seattle Young Professionals Network on Nov 6th. You can read about the event here: Seattle Social Media Training.

On other avenues, you can read the intro page of one of the e-books I am currently working on. It should be available shortly for all my readers.

Introduction: Why Social Media Deserves Attention

In the past two years, social media has found a growing acceptance in nearly every niche. Unless you’ve been “LOST” on a tropical island, you have probably been exposed to social media from hundreds of different angles in just the past ninety days. Some of the significant reason this requires attention:

• Media is no longer print, radio, and television. Fragmentation has occurred. Traditional media and social media are undergoing a radical reaction and creating hundreds of new media channels. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of communication platforms that allow businesses and consumers to broadcast information. Examples: blogs (Wordpress), micro-blogs (Twitter), social networks (Linkedin), community news (Seattle PI), and search platforms (Google.)
• There is a significant shift in the fundamental idea of “broadcast media” and “collaborative media” Whether by choice or intent, businesses are being subjected to a very collaborative and brand defining conversation online. Any single company or professional may be found on social sites, resource sharing platforms, or evolved into material that was not originally intended. Examples of such dissemination can be seen on viral sites like YouTube  video or Stumbleupon’s site rating groups.
• The social media trend IS NOT a trend. It is a technology evolution of traditional media and social acceptance brought about by the wildly decreasing cost of high-speed internet access and mobile platforms (Laptops, Wifi Hotspots, Mobile Phones, Personal Entertainment Devices.)
• Niche audiences are using social media to become further defined by communicating with like-minded niche individuals and creating micro-networks of information that are not connected to traditional media. This requires an understanding of how content creators in the media space may be several levels away from any one audience member, and those levels of separation may be causing “brand mutation” before information is being digested by the end user.
• While “user generate content” is everywhere, what business brands need to acknowledge is that consumer audiences do not want “user generated content”, they are seeking “user trusted content.” Online audiences are turning to personal and professional networks to rate the amount of relevance, credence, and reasonable trustworthiness of the information.

Ignoring your online brand is not an option. If there is not a conversation about your brand and industry online yet, there will be soon. The only option you have today as a business is to decide what type of voice you want to have in the social media conversation. If you choose not to have a voice and be un-involved in the conversation, you are allowing the community at large (your prospects, your consumers, and your competitors) to control the direction of your brand.

Professional brands have always been subject to attack in the media, but until recently there have not been too many options for creating your own news channel to use as platform for staging complaints. A few days ago Robert Mark from JetWhine.com covered “United Pilots give Tilton a Kick” based on United Airline pilots launching a blog asking for the termination of the company’s CEO Glenn Tilton.

United Airline Pilots - “We’ve started this web site because we’re tired of seeing the Tilton organization play the blame game”

Robert does an excellent job of defining some critical elements of the pilots site:

“Although the anti-site is not new, this well-organized site is quite a clever tactic. It’s easy for anyone to choose a juicy topic from the menu like Tilton’s “Operational Failures,” strategic blunders, financial or even employee and customer service screw ups like, “Only 38% of United employees are proud to work for the airline.” Ouch.

Something Tilton is just going to love is the convenient message form tied to Mr. Tilton’s e-mail so anyone can send him a comment. My guess is that mailbox is going to fill up pretty quickly.”

Looking away from the GlennTilton.com site, this is a coordinated effort to destroy a professional reputation (and I must add, it is a pretty well-thought effort too.)

If you search Google for - Glenn Tilton, there are 113,000 documents.

The first result is a Wikipedia entry that has already been edited to mention the GlennTilton site launched four days ago:

“The Air Line Pilots Association has long been a critic of Tilton’s management style and airline experience. On August 11, 2008, ALPA launched a website calling for Tilton’s resignation at www.GlennTilton.com.

Tilton has also been a vocal proponent of mergers in the airline industry, dating back to United’s bankruptcy days. Tilton attracted much scorn for his views on mergers, until recently with talk about consolidation among US network carriers.

Upon exiting bankruptcy, Tilton received compensation valued at $39,700,000, mostly in stock options that vest over several years, and this caused unrest among the airlines labor unions.”

The second result is an article form the Chicago Sun-Times, “United Pilots want CEO Glenn Tilton to resign.” which clearly covers a statement made by the Union “the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association said United needs new leadership. It launched a Web site to draw attention to what it says have been Tilton’s failures since he took over as CEO in September 2002.”

“‘‘This is not a personal attack on Glenn Tilton,’’ Wallach said. ‘‘These dismal numbers speak for themselves. They are a reflection of his inability to lead, his incompetence as a manager and his failure in virtually every category that can be measured. We have tried every conceivable way to convince him to invest in, and maximize the goodwill of, his employees. He has failed miserably.’’

Aside from Glenn Tilton, the bigger picture for online reputation problems extends to the overall United brand as well. On a search for United Airlines, one first page result is a wonderful article from Airsafe.com titled “Fatal Events Since 1970 for United Airlines“ (if that isn’t a bad brand line, I don’t know what is.)

The second negative result is a site playing on the same letters as United: Untied.com. The brutal items to assemble information against United are well assembled into brand problems that would rock the most hardened company:  The worst airline — ever, Legal Action Time, Form Letter Time, Mishandled Minors, Joining Lawsuits are all examples of categories of information there.

According to Compete.com, Untied receives roughly 11,000 unique visitors a month who read that information. Assuming that an average ticket is $300 to $400, how many of the 11,000 unique visitors a month to Untied.com are either prospective United customers or current ones? Even if only 5% are (500 monthly unique visitors) the monthly brand damage by this one site can be estimated at $150k to $200k in lost revenue. Unfortunately I would estimate that the actual percentage of possible/current airline clients is in the 25% or higher range ($750k to $1 million monthly brand impact.)

If you are aware of other brand issues online and would like us to cover some of the ramifications or solutions to the situation, please drop me a line at barry.hurd@123socialmedia.com. Our team is always looking at these issues and examing how they are affecting business. FYI- we like hearing about positive social media brand impacts as well!

Per Wikipedia “Defibrillation is the definitive treatment for the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a device called a defibrillator. This depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the arrhythmia, and allows normal sinus rhythm to be reestablished by the body’s natural pacemaker, in the sinoatrial node of the heart.”

I was recently thinking on this topic. Why is social media such a hard thing to wrap your business head around? Probably because we use so many terms trying to shorten our ideas and concepts into statements that area not only hard to understand, but as non-sexy as you can get. Like good health, social media tends to push novices into a dark spot where they do not understand the lingo and vocabulary. By pushing them into unfamiliar territory, they retreat and ignore the basics of getting healthy to improve their life.

If you are trying to understand social media, you are probably realizing that it has more in common with our body than you could know. Unfortunately many of us treat our bodies very poorly (FYI- if you want to treat your body better and get healthier, I suggest talking to Jamie and Meagan at Kinetix Living)

Take consistency as a point. Like a strong heart, a social media campaign has a regular beat to it. Unfortunately social media tends to be comparative to sitting in the bleachers of your favorite sports game and being trampled by the star player as they make a dive for the game point. One minute you are at rest, the next minute you are subconsciously dealing with information overload.

Those instant “ups and downs” created by communities reacting to your online presence (or lack there of) can be mitigated by having a healthy check-up and having a regiment of flexing your social media muscles.

Too many companies simply rely on one aspect of an online presence to mitigate one freak instance from doing irreparable damage. Sure you may have a website, but do you YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, or simply converse with your own clients?

Having a presence on different services may not impact your brand today, but it can help mitigate and defend your brand tomorrow. There are three parts of understanding why having a healthy social media and online brand is good for you:

1. A strong body stays healthier, longer. If you keep fit, your body (aka personal brand) will take care of you in some rather tough situations. You can jump higher, move faster, and manage to turn heads a little more often.
2. Healthy brands, like healthy people, have dedicated friends. While a presence on Twitter or Facebook may not work for every company, having an established group of supporters and evangelists is in your best interests. If you had a heart attack in real life, do you really want to experience it alone… or do you want to be surrounded by a community of trusted supporters who know the right person to call?
3. Knowing the right person. Regardless of how good your personal network is; the “network effect” multiplies the number of people available on a ten-fold level. (I.E. Your 100 contacts give you access to 1000.) Would you rather turn to your immediate personal contacts and rely on one of them to perform open heart surgery on you, or open up the search to a few connections away?

After thinking about it, take a moment to browse the links below and give yourself an education on terms used in social media and steps that will flex your social media brain.

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame has an excellent guest post by Dustin M Wax regarding “Nine Signs of an Effective Blog Post“. Many good writers fail to realize some of the subtle nuances in writing online (such as for blogs or online communities) and this piece by Dustin breaks down some exceptional points. For additional pieces like it here, you can also read Effective Social Media Writing and Blogging Like a Kid.

“You sweat blood all night, hunched over your keyboard, typing away at your blog’s next masterpiece. Finally, you click “Publish”, the post flies into the ether, and then, you wait.”

The following nine points are all well defined in Dustin’s article, but I also think there is some wonderful knowledge trapped in the basic essence of his nine points:

1. The headline draws the reader in.
2. A concrete detail or visual illustrates the benefit promised in the headline.
3. The lead expands the theme of the heading
4. The layout is clear and skimmable.
5. The post covers the topic in a logical sequence.
6. The post is persuasive.
7. The post is interesting to read.
8. The post is believable.
9. The post asks for some action.

These points are a good resource for any writer trying to grab a hold of the ideas behind social media and blogging. On a more technical level of moving readers into a post, I would also point out that writers looking to harness the promotional and viral aspects of blogging go through some additional steps before posting an article:

• Analyze Your Keywords - This article on social media keyword tools shows you how to look at keywords and phrases that will help draw relevant traffic to your article.
• Have a Traffic Strategy - while browsing through social media keywords, think about the bigger picture of who and why you are reaching readers. If you are reaching journalists, your information should be provided in a more concise format for reprint. If you are reaching consumers, tone your message to the audience appropriately. In either case, realize that monetizing your traffic may have a delay depending on the length of your sales cycle and the information you are presenting.
• Ask Readers to Subscribe- this may sound simple, but check the bottom of this article and look at the “if you like this article, why not subscribe?” button. Selling your services and keeping your readers informed are often the same thing when it comes to social media. Provide useful information on a consistent basis and you will develop a longterm audience that provides a healthy marketing channel over time.
• Link to the post to your other articles- Once you have someone on your site and they are reading your information, encourage them to stay around a little and read more information. By directing readers to other helpful information you can increase your traffic and develop stronger relationships with your readers.
• Keep Your Articles Focused - if you are trying to develop a readership, try to keep on-target with your core articles. This also applies to the technical side of search engine optimization for your articles, if you are trying to rank for competitive keywords you may need to produce 3 to 10 articles that revolve around the same relevant keywords.
  
• Use Related Keywords - Before publishing articles on your site, try to plan a few articles in advance so that you can coordinate keywords between them. As good example is for real estate terms, if you want to rank for the phrase “seattle real estate” then you could produce several articles on other local terms such as “Bellevue Real Estate” or “Bothell Real Estate”

This article will not earn me any amazing supporters in the world of advertising…

It seems that social media is moving more and more “main stream” everyday. Advertising Age (a fairly popular marketing industry publication) has the wonderful statement of “Nothing is worse than a half-assed blog with infrequent updates and little customer relevance or connecting.” continue

There is a lot to be said about the power of branding your company online, but also understanding how that branding is perceived and accepted. Search engines are one of the key methods that you are found online, yet what kind of information can you find about a business with online search engine knowledge? continue