I talk all the time about planning out your social media strategy and setting company policies BEFORE there is a problem or you find yourself lost in cyberspace. A great way to get started is to work with your lawyer on putting together company policies to not only get you started but to protect yourself and your brand.

I had the opportunity to discuss some of the questions I try to tackle with clients with Mr. Alfred C. Frawley, III a partner at Preti Flaherty (one of New England’s largest law firms). Mr. Frawley specializes in complex business litigation, technology law and intellectual property law. A Partner of the Intellectual Property and Corporate/Commercial and Business Services practice groups, he practices from the firm’s Portland office.  Read more about Mr. Frawley here.

During our interview, Mr. Frawley lends his expertise to some of social media’s most burning questions. Anyone who is using social media to promote their brand should listen to the advice given below to protect yourself, your employees and your brand. I hope you get as much out of this post as I did during the process.

Amanda: We work with a lot of small and medium sized businesses who are trying to figure out the best way for their business to participate on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.  What are some things businesses should consider before joining social media sites on behalf of their company?

Frawley: I think the first rule is that if you jump into using these services to advance your business , you must convey a consistent message. You should choose a tone or voice which suits your business and which consistently reinforces the value proposition of your goods or services.

Equally as important (and this is often overlooked), a company must be committed to regular posting or updates. If your last post on Twitter was 3 months ago, the message is that you are not that interested in keeping connections with your followers/customers.

If your company has a blog, update it regularly. Otherwise, your efforts look sloppy and seem to be an afterthought. You wouldn’t run radio spots for Holiday sales in July; in the same way, your last posting on your blog shouldn’t be a preview to a new product offering “a few weeks away” if the posting was put up in June. If you are not going to create content regularly and consistently, you should probably avoid the effort.

Although it is often said that “no publicity is bad publicity”, the rule doesn’t apply to social networking sites. Digital posts are forever. At the very least, they are very difficult to wipe out, once someone picks up a comment and gives it wider circulation.

I have had clients who have had criticisms or an insult directed against them on social media sites and message boards, and it is very difficult to remove the posts (or in some cases, even to find the owners of the message boards). So, it is important that some thought and care goes into what is posted and where it is posted.

The sites you mentioned are legitimate services, but as social networking expands, there are sites or services with sketchier audiences or content. Before creating a presence on a social networking site, it probably makes sense to monitor the service for a week or more, just to get a feel for the vibe or ethos of the site.

Finally, if your postings allow for comments, make sure you can approve all comments before they are posted. Otherwise, you will lose control of your message and the site.

Amanda: As companies proceed with producing content on social media sites who is the best person to be updating these sites?

Frawley: If your company has a marketing department or a designated person responsible for external communications, that person or department is best suited to keeping the postings on message and to preserve the integrity of the branding message that you are trying to convey.

A senior executive may think that she is going to keep up with the content, but unless it’s part of their job, it will probably slip in the face of other more pressing responsibilities.

Amanda: When it comes to blogging, what policies should companies put in place before creating content?

Frawley: As stated before, the Company should “speak with one voice”, and, therefore limit the number of people who are creating content for the company.

That said, it is inevitable that some employees will blog (whether from work or home) and there are some simple expectations that should be put into place to control risk. Early on (in 2004), Charlene Li, in a Forrester Report (http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,35000,00.html) set forth six guidelines, which are worth repeating here:

1. Make it clear that the views expressed in the blog are yours alone and do not necessarily represent the views of your employer.
2. Respect the company’s confidentiality and proprietary information.
3. Ask your manager if you have any questions about what is appropriate to include in your blog.
4. Be respectful to the company, employees, customers, partners, and competitors.
5. Understand when the company asks that topics not be discussed for confidentiality or legal compliance reasons.
6. Ensure that your blogging activity does not interfere with your work commitments.

For employees whose job it is to create content, the second, third, and fourth bullets are probably the most important. But for “unofficial” bloggers, each of the bullet points should be observed.

Amanda: Can anyone take any content from the web and add it to their blog? What about images?

Frawley: In the age of digital content, it is easy (and tempting) to simply cut and paste content from another source. You should resist the temptation. Digital content (text and pictures) is subject to copyright law, and the author of the content is entitled to exclusive use of the content.

Treat other people’s content as you would want your own treated: don’t steal it. If you want to repost an article or a picture, ask permission. In most cases, the author will be flattered and give you permission to use it. It’s ok to link to an article from your blog. You may also quote a small excerpt from an article, particularly if you are commenting on it or criticizing it. That’s called “fair use” under copyright law and is acceptable practice. However, if you think you are taking too big an excerpt, then you probably are. When in doubt, link, don’t copy.

Amanda: What other advice can you give businesses to protect themselves and their brand on social media sites and online in general?

Frawley: I think the discussion above probably covers it. You should at the very least create several Google Alerts for your company’s name, your key competitors or product or service categories that your company features. Then, you can keep aware of what’s being said about those subjects, and act to counteract it. Google Alerts mine news articles, web postings and blogs fairly deeply, so you might get some surprises or insights into your market or your competitors.

***

I would like to again thank Mr. Frawley and Preti Flaherty for taking the time to chat with me. If you have any more questions on this topic please visit Preti Flaherty’s website and Mr. Frawleys’s bio page for contact information. Thank You!

It’s Good for SEO

I really enjoy learning about clients’ businesses and coming up with an organic search marketing campaign for their websites.  During the keyword research phase when I’m gathering information about words and phrases that my clients value, I’ll perform my normal keyword testing but I also need to check on the content available for these keywords.  If there is little-to-no content regarding these keywords, I’m quick to advise that we need to get that content in place.  There are various on-page SEO practices that can be implemented to emphasize keywords, but if there isn’t any content to support them- fuhgeddaboudit! 

Search engines check the titles and h1 tags but they also index the text on the page.  Keywords aren’t relevant if they’re not in a page’s content. This also goes for websites that are image-heavy and text-light.  These websites might look pretty, but they’re not going to perform well from a search perspective.  This does not mean that all you have to do is write your keywords repeatedly on your page.  The text needs to make sense to the humans who will be reading it and the keywords should be used only where they sound natural in the passage.

Search engines also like it when your site has inbound links from other quality websites.  As an added bonus, if you’ve got good content that is interesting and informational, other site owners will be more likely to accept your link requests during your link building campaign.

It’s Good for Conversion

There should always be a goal for your website.  Are you an online retailer?  Then your goal is to get people to put your products in the shopping cart and buy them.  Do you provide a service?  Then you want to be able to collect quality leads from people who are interested in what you do.  Unfortunately, if you’re not telling people how your product and service is going solve their problem or fulfill their need, you will probably be able to hear the sound of the bounces from the people leaving your site.  You can’t accomplish this without words.  Let’s not forget , however, that not just any ‘ole type of ad copy will do.  Your content needs to be written in a way that is focused specifically on how you are going to help the person who is visiting your site. Make it all about your target market, not you.

It’s Good for Your Grandma

Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Generations Online in 2009 report found that “older generations use the internet less for socializing and entertainment and more as a tool for information searches, emailing, and buying products.”  Take a look at your website.  Do you have a bunch of flash animation, videos, and other various widgets?  It’s not wrong if you do, as all of these things can have their place on a website.  Just remember that the goal is to make sure that you’re balancing it out with clear and concise content to make it easy for people to understand what your business is about and how to get what they are looking for.  People over the age of 55 are becoming even more active on the Internet, but according to Pew, the percentage of them that download videos is less than half.  Make sure you’ve got your information available in content form as well.

Do It!

Now that I’ve convinced you just how important content is for your site, what are you waiting for?  Go beef up those product descriptions, write those blog posts, and tweak that website copy!  Please don’t make me send my Grandma after you.

Now that several of them are live, I thought it was time to start looking at them in depth. The one that’s received the greatest buzz is the expansion of Google Goals, which was nicely summarized by Joseph Cutroni of Epikone.

Google has released their own take, but I wanted to write about how this changes how SMBs and B2B services companies should change the way they’re tracking things in Google Analytics.

Goals, Fool

You already should have goals defined. If you’re in B2B, generally that means trying to monetize things like email newsletter signups or contact forms by calculating a value based on conversions… i.e. if you close 10% of leads through your website, and a typical sale is $5,000, that little form on your site is now worth $500.

Google’s new engagement metrics allow you to track things that indicate people are interested in your content, even if they don’t reach out to you during their visit. You can feel free to have fun here, because you can now have 20 goals per profile in Google Analytics: 5 goals per group, 4 groups per profile.

So for instance, we might recommend a small B2B site have its primary site profile be configured like this:

• Goal Set 1 – Conversion Metrics (sign up forms, contacts, etc)
• Goal Set 2 – More Conversion Metrics (ppc, special landing pages)
• Goal Set 3 – Progressive Time Based Goals (time on site above 1 minute, above 5 minutes, above 15 minutes, etc.)
• Goal Set 4 – Progressive Page View Goals (pages per visit above 2, above 5, above 10, etc.)

Adding the engagement metrics will almost guarantee that your sheer # of goals increases – cool! It’ll also allow you to get some interesting screens of “Visitors who completed goals” when you’re looking at more data.

Our recommendation is to NOT assign $$ value to engagement goals, because of the value inflation you’ll see (i.e. you don’t want to see $$ value accrue because someone left your website open in another tab).

It’s great to track more “goals” in general because you see a broader picture, but keep your ROI narrowly focused.

Focus on the Negative… Then Kill It

Of course, it’s sometimes better to know where we fail than where we succeed, so it’s useful to be able to define negative goals in the new Google Analytics. This will give nice segmented data on the people who bounce, close, scream, and howl when they see your site.

Create a new profile to track negative goals. That way, you’re not gumming up your POSITIVE goals with the not-so-good stuff. Once that new profile is created, you can set up goals like:

• Time on site less than 1 minute
• Page views less than 1

And then use the Advanced Segment “Visits with Conversions” to get the scoop on how people are leaving your site… so you can fix it!

Other Cool Stuff

Of course, this is just touching the surface. Google Analytics is an incredible powerful piece of software and we join thousands of others of analytics lovers in patting Google on the back for all the new features.

I’m especially excited about Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts and will post up here again as soon as those features are active and I’ve been able to play with them.

PS

Oh, and since I now have a way of telling you this – let it be known that I’m a Google Analytics Qualified Individual!

Social Media is just conversations happening online. We have covered that. People are talking online with people they know and people they know only virtually. In those conversations they are also inadvertently reviewing products, services and looking for advice about their next purchasing decision.

By participating in social media in the B2B world you have the opportunity to reach new customers at a new touch point, share content about your company online in other spaces than just your website and the potential to create trust with your audience… All so when it comes time for a purchasing decision or expert advice, they come to you.

Should your company be participating in social media?

I have two things to answer that today:

1. Are your customers participating on social media sites? And are your BEST customers there?

   Figure that out first. Send out a survey with your next newsletter, have a conversation with your best customers, ask other people in your industry etc. Don’t set up your business on social media because your favorite author is or your marketing buddy told you to after your hike last weekend.Your company has a unique niche of people who use your products and services (doesn’t it?).

   You are trying to reach those people and probably not your friend or your favorite author. I also just read a blog by Seth Godin, Some people are better than others. I like Seth’s blog because it makes me think. You aren’t just trying to reach everyone but your best customers.

2. What are you missing out on by not participatingIn Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s book Trust Agents, they remind us that you will survive if you don’t participate in social media. You will probably be just fine actually. What you need to weigh out is what potentially will you be missing out on by not being a part of these online discussions?Tom Hall has had great success using LinkedIn to foster business relationships, I have put quite a few people in our sales lead column through Twitter. Social Media is a tool that we find very valuable for both B2B and B2C industries.

   Use tools like Google Blog Search, Twitter Search and the new social searches to see if people are talking about your business right now. Is there benefit for you to be participating in social media to react and respond to content in these networks?

All the world a Twitter

The social network we get asked about the most is Twitter. It is still pretty new, it is unlike anything else we have seen yet and those who are participating seem to be addicted and that is all they can talk about.

Unlike any other social network, on Twitter you choose to ‘follow’ people or not by the content they produce (their tweets). Sometimes you follow people because of their geographic location, their picture or because you know them ‘in real life’ but generally people find people to follow (or subscribe to) strictly on their content they produce.

This unique phenomenon is still being figured out but I am seeing some really great work done by people in the B2B space who are using Twitter effectively. I will be doing a webinar next month Tweeting For Your Business! An introduction to Twitter.

Laura Fitton aka @Pistachio, co-author of Twitter for Dummies, tackled the “Twitter for B2B” question recently. A video of her interview with Jeff Cohen from Social Media B2B is on his site. Check out her interview here.

For those with a marketing campaign mentality, they will have a hard time adjusting to a world without carefully crafted added-value messaging and the old set-it-and-forget-it periodic campaign methodology. For those who do not have the desire or inclination to take on a greater responsibility for their own marketing effort, things will be challenging in months and years to come.

Take Ownership of Your Message

To be successful, we must take ownership of our message, personalize it, become familiar with the tools to deliver it, and dedicate resources in-house to handle it. For SMB’s this usually means a greater commitment from management and key staff members. There is great reward to those who are prepared for the hard work associated with diligent marketing. Allocating the right amount of resources to fulfill your strategy is a critical step.

The lazy among us will find diligent marketing to be an incredibly challenging exercise. In reaction, they will look to cut corners in hopes of saving time and effort. We see many doing it now, based on the absurd belief that they have to be doing something in this space. Tweeting the same pitch of shameless self promotion over and over again, blogs with scanned national magazine articles from years ago, LinkedIn accounts that are clearly just a place where an Outlook address book was uploaded and a few previous positions entered.

The lack of effort is noticeable and a sad commentary on those involved. Doing something in this space is not a necessity.  If you do not have the time and the commitment to do it well, don’t do it. Remember your failure will be public.

Marketing Expense Has Been Replaced, in Part, by Human Capital.

It takes more personal effort to market your business effectively than it did a decade ago. In this shift towards internal ownership, you should not abandon the same demand for success that exists with traditional marketing vendors. Don’t get caught in that trap. Demand more effort and effectiveness from yourself and your team and you will be rewarded.

I really like how it separates the results into “Most Recent Tweets” and “Top Shared Links”.  The focus is definitely on user experience here, helping people find what they need with a logical and appealing interface.

And if all this wasn’t enough excitement for one afternoon, news also broke that Bing will be integrating Facebook status updates into their search results as well (within the next two months).  Well played, Bing.  Since you can’t beat Google at the search game, this is a great way to differentiate yourself and be part of the social-media-real-time-search explosion.

Oh, wait.

Just hours after Bing’s big Twitter release, Google announced their very own deal with Twitter to incorporate Twitter’s real-time observations directly into the SERPs.

Google hasn’t been turning a blind eye to the relevance of social networks.  In a surprise announcement at the Web 2.0 summit yesterday, Google also unveiled a Google Labs feature called Social Search.  A quick demo showed that the bottom of the search results pages will include social networking information from your friends (connected via your Google Profile).  Social Search will be released in the next few weeks.

For me, these announcements aren’t about a competition between Google and Bing; it’s further validation of the real-time search movement.  Not only is web search about finding the most relevant information for your search query, it’s about receiving news, information, and observations as they are happening.  Bing and Google are making it easier for people to get the best of both worlds and proving that traditional search and real-time search can live harmoniously on the same page.

Personally, I’m all for it.

How is that possible? Don’t people have PR Agencies, Marketing departments and regulations on who can represent a brand? Those rules are in place for a reason, right?

Those people and departments are professionally trained on how to talk about your company and now Joe from Accounting wants to Tweet about his company. That can’t be good.

Relinquishing the Content Control

Some companies are all for letting their employees create content for the brand.  Some… are really not comfortable with that. Those who are not ready to release the reigns have their reasons.

What do you do to fix a social media meltdown?

Well… something happened. Good old Joe from Accounting was upset, he had a really rough day and someone on Twitter pushed his buttons… you don’t need the gory details but we need to fix this fast. Now what?

Figure out what happened – There are 17 sides to every story. Before making rash statements or actions figure out what happened. You don’t want to have to apologize for your apology.

Take responsibility and apologize – No one likes their dirt just shoved under a carpet. Admit the fault publicly or privately depending on the situation. An apology can do so much. The internet is powered by humans and all humans make mistakes. We expect a lot from the people we know, like, and trust, but they are human.

Take the appropriate action to remedy – Is an apology and taking responsibility enough? Should an account be suspended? A blog deleted? A follow up blog explaining the situation? That is up to you to figure out.

Take if offline – Text based messages have no tone (unless you count emoticons). Faceless crimes are easy to let linger. Just because the incident happened online doesn’t mean the rest of your rocky relationship needs to stay online. Pick up the phone. Meet someone in person to talk.

How to avoid a social media nightmare

Mistakes happen but there are things you can do to do your best to prevent a social media nightmare.

Set company policies BEFORE you do anything – Policies provide structure. Protect you and your brand by setting boundaries. Put somewhere in writing (your website, wiki, employee manual etc.) what you as a company will and will not do online, what your employees can and cannot do online and what members of the public can and cannot do with your content online. Policies may not seem as fun but they really do set boundaries and even can empower your employees by highlighting what they can do to be a part of your communication strategy.

Think before you tweet – Think of each piece of your content, whether it be a tweet, blog, Facebook update etc., as a mini marketing message, not just assorted ramblings. Does this give value to your customers? If you have to think twice about sending something out, I would just leave it on the cutting room floor. Better to be safe then sorry.

Appoint employees who you trust to represent you in your online space – I get nervous when I hear about unpaid interns maintaining an organization’s social media strategy (I also get nervous when I hear about ghostwriters producing content for your company). What will happen when those people move on? You want your online voice to echo the values and voice of your brand. You should try to keep that as consistent as possible.

Appoint employees who understand and are enthusiastic about this online space – Perhaps the employee on your staff who ‘gets’ Twitter the most and has already used it isn’t on your marketing/PR team. Perhaps one of your best bloggers isn’t either. Using these tools will be easier for someone who is familiar with them and who understands each one of these arena’s particular style of communicating. Sometimes traditional marketers feel challenged creating content for these spaces – it is a different style of communicating then they are used to dealing with.

Creating a plan and having those tough discussions early on (if not before) in your social media strategy could save you a whole lot of trouble later. I also recommend feeling comfortable approaching your lawyer about being a part of these discussions. Having a plan in place is much easier then playing defense with your social media strategy!

The outcome of this experiment was at once both enlightening and alarming.  The amount of misinformation that’s still out there about SEO is shocking and left me hoping that the people feeding this stuff out have as few followers as possible.

What I Observered (Not Necessarily Scientific)

#seo and “seo” seem to be used largely by SEO companies, not by ordinary people.  Of the 1000s of posts I reviewed, roughly half were links to blog posts, created by and promoted by a search company (or consultant, or so-called “expert”).  Approximately 10% were direct solicitations with no benefit to the reader (”Do you need free SEO advice regarding your website? Just let me know and I can help with free tools and help anytime. Thats right, free!” or this gem: “Link Builders pls add me for Link Exchange at xxx@xxxx.com.”  The remaining 10% was split between foreign language tweets and legitimate questions and chatter.

“Google Rankings” was better, with a large number of terms being people talking about how to improve Google Rankings or wondering why their Google Rankings suddenly tanked.  Unlike SEO, which seems to suck in black hats like a magnet, much of the chatter here seemed legitimate (if not always accurate).

SEO myths still being propagated by Twitter?

• Submitting your website to Google and Yahoo is still important (it’s not, way not!)
• META Keywords are still important.  Um, no.
• The META Refresh command is an acceptable way to redirect a website.  No!  Use 301 redirects.
• Reciprocal links, links pages, and link directories are good link building strategies.  They aren’t.
• You can buy your way into Google Organic results.  Eh?  Seriously, there are articles out there that seem to blur the definition of organic search and pay per click.

I also learned some fun things – “Google Slap” seems to be a trending term, and I came across the Derek Powazek SEO controversy as it was unfolding.

The key takeaway? “SEO” is a word used by those in the know, and good luck separating the wheat from the chaff if you’re using Twitter to start your education about search engines.  That said, organic search is more important than ever for businesses and seeing how wild west the landscape still is re-affirmed the importance of putting out good quality and useful information out there.