As I’m the ‘social media person’ at my company I was just sent this video by a colleague and had to share it. Massive cringer all round but a fairly accurate representation of the various social networks and an apt summary of social networks as a whole.
Today Twitter announced a fantastic new service that allows you to access all your old Tweets.
Your Twitter archive will be downloadable and allows you to view your Tweets by month, or search your archive to find Tweets with certain words, phrases, hashtags or @usernames. You can even engage with your old Tweets just as you would with current ones.
To get your archive, go to the Settings area and look for the new “Your Twitter archive” feature. You can then request to access your archive – due to high demand at the moment there is a bit of a back log so you might receive an error message first time around. As I said, this hasn’t rolled out completely yet and I haven’t been able to have a play but It’s promised to go global over “the coming weeks and months.” Watch this space!
One way to deal with reputation management
Online reputation management is never black and white and every case if different. But whether someone is posting on your company Facebook page, commenting on your blog or posting their own negative content independently from your social platforms there are a few simple things to have in mind before you respond.
Getting your response wrong could have catastrophic results. Have a read of this blog post I wrote for Speed Communications a while back on crisis management for brands. It outlines some great examples of how not to go about dealing with negative press.
The list below outlines a few of the basics. With this in mind and with some good old common sense you should in most cases be able to deal effectively with negative comments.
1. Be transparent: Honesty is always the best policy – Don’t try and counter act negative posts with fake positive ones! State who you are and that you are a representative of the company in question.
2. Fix obvious customer service problems, just as you would if a customer called your customer service line. Be honest and courteous in your reply. Doing so shows the online community that you are committed to putting the customer first, and that you clean up your mistakes. If you solve the poster’s problem quickly, you may even earn a positive follow-up post.
3. Respond individually and personally when applicable. Acknowledge their complaint and offer a public apology explaining how you are dealing with the problem.
4. Be polite and take their argument on board- Never, ever, fight fire with fire. This is only going to make matters worse and is likely to attract more attention possibly angering the community around the post.
5. Respond directly to the comment – Don’t use “bad plastic surgery” to try and cover it up. This will be detrimental and will make people more fixated in the negative comments
6. Counteract negative posts with evidence – If the person in question is in the wrong then prove it but not in a confrontational manner as this could just make things worse!
7. Build up a profile within forums where possible: If you are getting flack within forums then make sure you yourself are active in these spaces. There is no point just popping up and responding to criticism as you will have absolutely no credibility and are unlikely to be taken seriously. However, if people are used to seeing and hearing from you anyway and you are providing them with good content and advice then what you say will carry more weight.
8. Try and take the conversation offline : Do this after you have made a public response so that your initial response is visible to others who will have seen the negative post. Ask for an email address or give them yours and try to move the conversation away from the public sphere.
9. Contribute to the conversation by leaving comments, writing guest posts, or setting up a blog for your company. As in any community, members of these online hubs are more trusting of people and companies they hear from—so give them a change to get to know you.
10. Offer additional resources. If the negative post refers to a common customer service issue, leave a comment pointing the post’s author to your company’s resources surrounding the issue. If the post poses a new problem, add that issue to your company’s online support desk. Doing so will help to prevent future frustration for your customers. There’s no better way to take a proactive, positive stance on a negative blog post than to provide additional resources.
11. Consider the tone of voice for the specific platform (If someone posts on Twitter respond using the same tone of voice for that channel i.e. informal and direct)
12. Don’t respond to everything at once- If you are unfortunate to have loads of negative comments about you especially on the same website/forum then a) Think about why this many people feel the need to publicly spurn you and b) don’t just fly in and try to deal with them all at once.
13. Prioritise which posts should be responded to – With the previous point in mind, don’t respond to everything as this will be perceived as spammy and bad practise. Think about which is the most damaging and respond to this one first.
14. Back up your response with factual information – It’s always better for everyone involved that the response be substantive and informed, not hastily put together before all the facts are known and interested parties consulted.
15. If comment is false or factually incorrect, contact the blogger or webmaster and politely notify him/her that the information is incorrect. On some occasions you may be able to remove the comment.
16. When relevant link to an ‘official’ page on the site that will back up the claim, however you must be very careful when posting links, this can be viewed as spammy if done too much or if it leads to information that doesn’t directly support the comment.
One of the biggest challenges I have faced whilst working in social media is how to maximise my outreach and measure success. Social media measurement is still a relatively grey area but as long as you are clear on what your goals are then there are a number of social media tools that can be utilised effectively to help you make the most of your campaigns.
Along the way I have come across a number of free tools that I have found hugely helpful. I have listed some of my favourites below and hope they help you too! Any additions are always welcome so if there are any others that you know of, then please feel free to comment below and I’ll add them to the list.
Finding Followers or influencers
One of the biggest challenges people face is finding people who share the same interests or are in the same area so they can start conversations and engage. For brands, this may be finding their target audience so they can better understand their needs or what they are talking about or it could be to find local people to promote an event or launch.
Twitter directories are a great way of finding relevant influencers to engage with, search for people who share the same interests or find followers in the same local area as you.
Those listed below have been the most effective for me but I’m sure there are others out there as well.
http://nearbytweets.com/- Useful tool for finding people in the same area.
My favourites
Exportly is my favourite tool of the moment! It allows you to export a CVS spreadsheet of all your followers. This allows you to have a proper look at who they are, where they are from and who are the most influential. You can do this by sorting the data by number of followers. Once you know who of your followers is the most influential you can target your engagement at them in the hope of increasing your reach.
Klout- http://klout.com/
Calculates the level of influence your Twitter account has taking into account reach, followers vs followees and level of engagement
Kurrently- http://www.kurrently.com
Useful tool for searching for keywords or competitors on Twitter and Facebook.
http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.
http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.
http://twtpoll.com/ – Twitter poll. Great different way to get customer feedback. Share poll with twitter followers and Facebook friends. Can later post this onto a blog or Facebook page to gain further followers and fans.
Measurement
http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.
http://twiangulate.com (gives diagram + compares 3 profiles followers) Great way to compare twitter profile followers and friends. Finds who follows who, who your most influential followers are and compares.
http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/# – great visual of followers/ connected conversations via hasthtags
http://www.foller.me – Shows tweetcloud of @mentions + world map of engagement
http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.
http://manageflitter.com/ – manage followers
http://friendorfollow.com/ – manage followers
http://twitterfeed.com/- Feed your blog/ news into Twitter
The Advertising standards agency new extended remit
In March this year I gave a talk at Brighton SEO on the The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) new extended remit that now covers all advertisers’ own marketing communications on their own websites and in other non-paid-for space online under their control. The ASA’s digital remit will now cover marketing messages on all websites, blogs and social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The Advertising standards agency new extended remit
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are the UK’s independent watchdog committed to maintaining high standards in advertising. They are self regulated and funded by the advertising industry who are required to contribute 0.1% of their media spend to regulating the advertising industry. The ASA’s authority is recognised by the Government, the courts, other regulators such as the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Office of Communications (Ofcom) as the established means of consumer protection from misleading advertising.
The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) are the body responsible for writing the CAP Code which is governed by the ASA. Their purpose is to ensure the industry remained honest, truthful and within legal guidelines. Basically, to ensure that what you see is what you get.
Unbelievably, until March the 1st the digital remit only covered paid for advertising such as E-mail marketing , banner and pop-up advertisements, PPC, commercial classified advertisements and paid-for listings on price comparison sites so out side of these paid for adverts online marketing was entirely unregulated and advertisies could get away with saying what they liked. The new rules will effect all businesses no matter what the size or nature.
What are the benefits?
Firstly, the new rules should go at least someway to ensuring what we see online is what we get a reducing the amount of outright dishonesting in marketing messages. It will also be effective in making online marketing an more equal playing feild as currently ethical marketer could be losing out to competiors who sound amazing and lure in unsuspecting clients with far cheaper prices which are not anywahere near the truth! The good that about the guidlines is that if you are aware of a competitor doing this you can report them and they will have to be open and truthful about their prices and services.
Why has this only just come in to place?
The extended CAP code has come into play this year for a number of reasons. Firstly and probably most significantly as 2010 was the 1st time online advertising spending in the UK exceeded TV yet this was largely untracked. Unsuprisingly, the internet is now the second most complained about medium after TV. In the last 2 years, Over 3500 complaints regarding websites that fell outside of remit. For these reasons, even the Conservative Party pledged to ‘Tackle currently unregulated marketing on corporate websites targeted at children’ and ‘to shut this regulatory loophole and clamp down on irresponsible online marketing targeted at children’.
The ASA gave advertisiers a 6month grace period from September to get to grips with what the new rules mean to them and have been offering online site audits to marketers who are unsure (these do cost a hefty £8k so it is probably worth learning it yourself!) To fund the new remit, the industry has agreed to apply the standard 0.1% levy on paid-for advertisements appearing on internet search engines through media and search agencies. This has been spent on an advertising campiagn including TV ads (click to watch here )and posters around stations and on bill boards (I am still yet to see an actual Ad myself though??)
The Official line from CAP….
“Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.”
So what does all this actually mean and how will it affect me?
There are now a number of things that you will need to be careful of when considering your marketing activity:
1. Watch out for claims you cant back up.
In theory everyone should have been doing this anyway! But you must now substantiate not just everything you say or write on your site, social media platform or blog, but also everything everyone else does too.
“3.18 … Quoted prices must include non-optional taxes, duties, etc.”
“3.7 … must hold evidence for any claims that consumers are likely to believe are objective“
“3.17 … price statements must not mislead by ommission and relate to product listed“
“3.9 … not stating significant limitations or qualifications”
2. Social media and User generate content
For the first time, Social media platforms fall uder the remit as “ Non Paid for Space under Advertisers control” something that will undoubtedly effect they way we think about our social media strategies.The biggest challenges for marketers regarding social is with regards to User generated content (UGC) and distance marketing rules.
The first big consideration is using content from your Facebook page, Twitter account , blog or forum for your marketing materials. Previously, you could quite rightfully take positive comments or Tweets and use them for self promotion. This, along with using photos that have been posted by users on Facebook, even if you are tagged in them is no longer allowed.
Another major factor is ensuring evreything you Tweet or post can be substanstanciated at the time you post it. This includes ReTweeting or even liking something a fan has written about you that at the time you engage with that comment is no longer true.
Top Shop for example recently go into trouble for ReTweeting a comment someone made about how great they were and how they had just bought a skirt in the sale. By the time Top Shop ReTweeted the skirt was no longer in the sale so the comment was unsubstansciated.
“Inaccurate or misleading facebook copy that contains a claim written by the advertiser themselves or by the customer and then reused by the advertiser”
3. Distance Selling Marketing
The inclusion of Distance selling marketing communications in the online remit essentially means all promotions, Tweets and comments about a product must include:
9.2.1 the main characteristics of the product
9.2.2 the price, including any VAT or other taxes payable (see “Prices” in Section 3: Misleading Advertising, and payment arrangements
9.2.3 the amount of any delivery charge
9.2.4 the estimated delivery or performance time (see rule 4.9.3) and arrangements
9.2.5 a statement that, unless inapplicable (see rule 9.6), consumers have the right to cancel orders for products. Marketers of services must explain how the right to cancel may be affected if the consumer agrees to services beginning less than 7 working days after the contract was concluded.
This is virtually impossible to do in 140 characters and so could essentaily change the way we use Twitter and Facebook for promotions. However it is still very unclear how strictly this will be enforced.
Enforcement
The ASA have stated the following will be the procedure for dealing with complaints of advertisers acting outside of the code:
Informal warning at first asked to withdraw Ad
Should an advertiser refuse to do so, there will be no immediate fines but a referral to office of fair trade.
There will be no active policing – Someone will have to make a complaint for them to look into.
Like every set of new regulations, advertisers and agencies will have to wait for the first companies to be rapped on the knuckles.
My next blog post will look into whether or not the ASA have acted on their threats and whether anyone has been caught….
The power of social media is something we have all been aware of for some time but the horrendous riots across the UK have truly demonstrated the impact on Twitter on real life events. Previously dubbed the “medium of revolution” Twitter has certainly showed its strengths and weaknesses this week.
The real-time sharing of information through Twitter has made the platform the ideal discussion platform to spread updates on major news events like the riots, and the 8th August was Twitter’s biggest ever spike in U.K. traffic online according to Hitwise, who also give some interesting stats into how it was used over the peak times.
There have been accusations that Twitter and Blackberry are responsible for the events that unfolded across London this week as times and locations were instantly spread across these channels allowing the young people involved to coordinate riots in areas quickly and on a never before seen scale. Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that “inflammatory” and “inaccurate” messages on Twitter helped fuel the riots.
Blackberry have agreed to help police in tracking down the looters but Twitter will not close down the accounts of those involved stating, “Some tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don’t always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.” Rightly said, whilst they may have facilitated the riots in terms of logistics, they cannot in way be held responsible for the actions of those individuals.
On the plus side, Twitter allowed us to follow events as they unfolded in real time and with images simultaneously posted as the riots happened across London. Never before have I followed an event so avidly. Before, when something like this has happened, you will hear little bits through word of mouth or stilted news reports that usually repeat the same information until they can find out the details. Now it is instant. From the moment the first scenes of violence kicked off in Tottenham you could follow them.
The highly spreadable mediums of Twitter and Facebook have also shown to be the perfect platforms for mobilizing the in the early aftermath of the rioting. Whilst #LondonRiots was the trending topic for some time, it took just a day for #riotcleanup to pop up allowing thousands of Londoners a channel where they could communicate and join forces to start the clean up. At the time of writing, #riotcleanup has had more than 100,000 tweets.
Some of responses to to #RiotCleanup and social media
Not far behind the riot cleanup, another effort to catch and prosecute looters has taken root, with the Tumblr account “Catch A Looter” where members of the public can upload their photos of the looters in an effort to name and shame them. Similarly, the Met police, In what can be called “modern policing” @metpoliceuk have set up a Flickr account to catch looters. The project has been dubbed Operation Withern, and the aim is to investigate the series of riots through identifying and naming suspects.
