Why aren't you listening?

It's a bit surprising to find that a vast majority of companies don't respond to customers that reach out to them through social media.

Study from Socialbakers about Facebook, indicating that brands don’t respond to 95 percent of questions posted on their walls.

Research from Maritz and Evolve24 of 1,298 Twitter complainants found that only 29% of those tweet gripes were replied to by the companies in question.

83% of the complainants that received a reply liked or loved the fact that the company responded.

The bottom line is that angry customers just looking for a sympathetic ear, and that's how the company should approach these people in resolving their complaints since these particular people are shouting about it in a public forum.

The needs and desires of your customers have changed - i.t's time to start listening to what people are asking for!

Could this be an OWS goal?

Yale Prof. Says OWS Should Resurrect Guarantee Clause

Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin proposed this morning on his popular legal blog that OWS should resurrect the Guarantee Clause to "offer a still deeper vision of the Constitution than simply a rejection of Citizens United."

The Guarantee Clause of the Constitution, found in Article IV, states that "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union, a Republican Form of Government." The clause, Balkin argues, "was designed to ensure that a small group of powerful and wealthy individuals could not hijack the government and make it do their bidding to the exclusion of the vast majority of the public."

The clause has been unenforceable in the courts ever since the mid-19th century, when the Supreme Court handed down a decision that left it to the political branches to decide for themselves whether they were, in fact, representative of the people they are supposed to serve. Luckily for OWS, that decision was penned by Chief Justice Roger Taney, whose legally and morally bankrupt Dred Scott decision has forever cast doubt on the legitimacy of his legal judgment.

If the Tea Party can take its vision of the constitution, abandoned long ago by the mainstream, from "off the wall" to "on the wall," writes Balkin, so should OWS ground its protests in the constitutional text that guarantees "a government that cares about the 99 percent, not a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent."

Coaching the Boss on Social Media

Mashable has an excellent article on How to Provide Social Media Support to an Executive - I think it has some pretty useful main points (and pains) that you may experience working in communications.

1. Listen First

Listen to the customer/audience before diving in with a blazing flag and blaring message.  

2. Communicate Externally and Internally

If an executive were to spend all their time gazing at the beautiful view from their 44th floor corner office they probably wouldn't notice Patrick Bateman behind them with an axe.  Basically, you need to keep the lines of communication strong internally as well as externally - by mirroring these networks adoption will be closer to integration.

3. Be Open and Accessible

Approachable executives are paramount to foster a culture of openness and sharing. Encourage your leadership team to establish direct lines of communication.

4. Coach and Reverse Mentor

Traditional mentoring has been a top-down process during which an executive mentor adopts a junior mentee. However, social rests on a different set of skills. Therefore, it may make sense to pair up “digital natives” with “digital dinosaurs.”

5. Start Small Conversations

Start executives off by encouraging them to post to a private space that you can monitor, then provide direct feedback.

6. Focus on Impact

It’s important to stress from the beginning that executive involvement will affect how the organization views social. As leaders, executives must recognize that their actions will affect not only themselves, but also the entire social process.

For example, my company’s customers generally report significant bumps in engagement after the CEO joins and engages on social media. One customer organization saw a 27.93% increase in messages, a 28.37% increase in replies and a 49.60% increase in “likes.”

Think they're of any use?

More infographics!

Mashable has some great infographics that are really beautiful, informative, interesting, and useful.  Social media metrics are displayed in an easy to understand and playful way.  Graphics like these are excellent tools for organizations to use when communicating both growth, gains, or movement to both internal and external publics.  The graphics provide the information in both text and visual representation so more people will understand it in general.

There are some great templates and tools in Microsoft Office to create charts and some basic dashboards but these are custom works of art tailor made for the story they're telling.  But it's still easy to borrow this idea and create something along these lines for your organization's story - think of how amazing it will look online or printed in an annual report.  I've fount that this type of thing is often LOVED by executives - they think it's young and hip and professional-cool.

The real difficulty in creating one of these beauties is the information, facts, figures, and statistics that determine everything about how the final art will look.  Getting that information may meen bugging someone to create a report with statistics, then drafting something and taking that back to the numbers person to make sure it jives, working out any discrepancies, re-do, etc. ..... done and it's amazing and DURABLE -- once you've done this kind of thing once it's much easier the next time around.

Has anyone done anything they'd like to share?

Now you'll get it

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Who bought the candidates you're allowed to vote for?

"We are the 99%," but the 1% Buy Elections, Reports Show | Center for Media and Democracy

Read this if you care about corporate greed

ALEC Politicians Spin Special "Interest" Bill to Protect Corporate Wrongdoers as "Job Creation" | Center for Media and Democracy

How much spin has BP got?

BP's Gulf of Mexico PR, One Year Later | Center for Media and Democracy

The U.S. Department of the Interior and the Coast Guard recently released their joint report (pdf) on the Deepwater Horizon disaster and it has restarted the blame game.  The report concluded all three corporate participants in the calamity -- BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton -- were at fault. Furthermore, it concluded all three companies violated federal laws and safety regulations by "failing to take necessary precautions to keep the Macondo well under control at all times." Additionally it found all three companies were "jointly and severely liable for the failure to comply with all applicable regulations."  Meaning all three companies are mutually responsible for the accident, and each can be held singly responsible for the entire debacle. The report parsed blame among the companies for sloppy materials and workmanship, inadequate training, failure to properly assess risk and conduct proper testing, failure to abide by stop-work policies after multiple anomalies were discovered, and so on.


BP agreed with the report's "core conclusion" that the accident was the result of "multiple causes, involving multiple parties, including Transocean and Halliburton." BP encouraged the other companies to "acknowledge their roles in the accident" and urged them to make changes to prevent similar accidents in the future. The report, though, held BP "ultimately responsible for conducting operations at Macondo in a way that ensured the safety and protection of personnel, equipment, natural resources and the environment."

BP Messages and Actions are Far From Aligned 

A year after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico BP is publicly trying to look like it accepts responsibility for the disaster. However, behind the scenes the company is quietly engaging in activities that cast doubt on its sincerity and appearance of contrition. For example, BP is one of the highest-level corporate funders of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that gives companies a hand in crafting business-friendly legislation and resolutions. ALEC helps energy companies fight restrictions on offshore drilling and pushes a deregulatory agenda at every turn.

Contrary to What BP Wants the Public to Believe, All is Not Well in the Gulf

The PR tactics seem to fit BP's strategic "corporate responsibility" needs at this point. But while BP's website shows pleasing photos of clean sea turtles and throngs of happy beachgoers cavorting in the water along the Gulf of Mexico seashore, reports about the status of the Gulf one year later show marshes still saturated with oil, even after billions of dollars have been spent on cleaning. One marsh that BP pronounced particularly clean showed oil oozing out of the mud just below the water's surface when journalists stepped in it, and it still reeked.  BP has also refused to help restore Louisiana's oyster beds, saying "BP is not obligated to pay for such damage -- because it was not caused by the oil spill." The damage, BP claims, was caused by a release of fresh water, but the fresh water was only released because of the oil disaster, to try and flush out the wetlands. Dolphins and dead endangered sea turtles are washing up on Gulf shorelines at 10 to 20 times the normal numbers.

BP is hoping that Americans will simply forget about the 2010 Gulf disaster, absorb their corporate PR strategies unquestioningly, and won't look any deeper than the "all's fine" facade they're striving to spin.  Is this the best they can do in a case like this?>

The BP homepage shows their latest business success a $15.95 billion dollar project in the North Sea.








Their Gulf Recovery section mentions $500 million earmarked for study to monitor long-term effects of the spill.  Isn't that generous of them?

Podcasting for some

Podcasting is a great method for new artists to get their music heard in a couple of different ways.

First, an artist could make their own podcast and provide content for however long they wanted the show to be.  The downsides of this are that updates are the responsibility of the artist, but more problematic is their listener-base is likely to be quite small.

The second way hearkens back to the olden days of calling DJs and asking them to play your song ... get in touch with the DJs of popular music podcasts and try to get your music played there.  The benefits of this are being able to reach much larger audiences that already exist, many of these are spread internationally due to the portability of podcasting.

Third, start micro-podcasting on sites like SoundCloud.  Choose a site that suits your needs and setup an account here with your sounds, keep things up to date so fans know you're alive and producing.  Have fun with it really.

Occupy Wall Street unites nationally with social media

Protesters attempt to occupy US Senate - http://pulse.me/s/28mhY

Does RSS make sense for you?

It probably does.  It makes following your content easier and accessible to a wider audience with relatively little effort.  So, why not?

RSS will add real value across all industries and client types (nonprofit, corporate, governmental, associations, and so on), and a variety of subjects and interest areas can be broken into syndicated RSS enabled information.


Content isn't going to be updated enough - even if content isn't updated often RSS makes sense because it will allow followers to receive new information as soon as it's published, without having to check your site.

• RSS is a straightforward means to reach your audience, it is unmatched in terms of its effectiveness. 
• Ability to distribute targeted information reduces your audiences sense of information overload from e-mails. 
• RSS setup is simple - software programs guide you through the process without having to be an expert. 
• RSS technology bypasses the "typical" influencer, it should still be considered an important part of communications planning. 
• Customers might find tremendous value in your RSS feeds; however, it's yet to be determined the number of journalists who sign up for feeds to find interesting information for story ideas. 
• RSS keeps your brand top of mind. The more interesting, newsworthy information you make available, the more your audience will immerse themselves in your brand. 

Breakenridge, Deirdre (2008). PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences (pp. 159-160). FT Press. Kindle Edition.

Social media metrics for the modern practitioner

The following tips came from this excellent article that is absolute must read.   Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value

The author proposes for useful metrics for determining the vlaue of your social media activities.  These metrics aren't currently built in to other reporting suites but are easy to calculate manually (or you could even design a custom reporting system for yourself using something like MS Access or FileMaker).

Four (New) Social Media Metrics:

1. Conversation Rate

Conversation Rate = # of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post

Achieving a high conversation rate requires a deeper understanding of who your audience is, what your brand attributes are, what you are good at, what value you can add to your followers and the ecosystem you participate in.  By boosting your conversation rate you’re building your own watering hole in the digital universe and have meaningful conversations with your audience.

2. Amplification Rate

Amplification is the rate at which your followers take your content and share it through their network.  Amplification allows you to reach more users than you could solely through your own network (simply due to follower, friend, or other limits in the medium).

On Twitter: 

Amplification = # of Retweets Per Tweet

On Facebook, Google Plus:

Amplification = # of Shares Per Post

On a blog, YouTube: 

Amplification = # of Share Clicks Per Post (or Video)

(Share clicks as in number of times your social media buttons were used to spread the content.)

Calculating this metric allows you to measure what pieces of content (type) cause amplification (allow your social contributions to spread to your 2nd, or even 3rd, level network).  This metric also provides insight on the times and geo locations and topics and things that cause amplification.

3. Applause Rate

Measure applause ….

One Twitter:                    Applause Rate = # of Favorite Clicks Per Post

On Facebook:                           Applause Rate = # of Likes Per Post

On Google Plus:               Applause Rate = # of +1s Per Post

On a Blog, YouTube:                  Applause Rate = # of +1s and Likes Per Post (or video)

Applause rate tells you what the audience likes (to use the Facebook terminology) and what they don't. You get a much deeper understanding of what your audience likes so much that it will +1 your content (or contribution) and allow for that to be then shown to others in their social graph.

4. Economic Value

The actions that social media campaigns spark among consumers translate to Macro and Micro Conversions (which are further explained through that link)!  And with macro and micro conversions you can measure Economic Value!

On all social media channels: 

Economic Value = Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings

Social media participation, done right, adds value to the company's bottom-line. Some of it can't be computed.  The best tools to begin using to measure economic value of online activities are Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends, CoreIBMInsights, etc.

Four metrics to prove your work is working

Conversation Rate. Amplification Rate. Applause Rate. Economic Value. Four simple measures that get you to focus on the right thing from a social media participation perspective, help you understand how well you are doing at it, and quantify the business impact.

The dashboard is available here: 

Download: Social Media Metrics Dashboard. Adapt it to your business.

I'm going to make sure my resignation is this fly

How To Quit Your Job

Ways for CMOs to Utilize Social Media more effectively

Just an interesting article I'm sharing, stay tuned for further commentary

Four Ways CMOs of Major Companies are Using Social, Multimedia to Engage Audiences - http://pulse.me/s/20LLM