Harnessing the World of Social Media and Client Relationships

The Wall Street Journal Online recently published an article by Marshall Loeb of MarketWatch titled Improve Client Relationships Through Social Media.

In this article, Loeb discusses the growing popularity of social media platforms like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, and how all types of businesses are embracing these tools to build community and strengthen consumer interest.

Loeb then highlights the co-founder of ThePort Network, Dan Backus. ThePort Network is a firm that focuses on creating software tools for virtual communities. Below Backus outlines the following four tips on how to use the power of social media to support your company's advantage when dealing with consumers:

- Know your audience. The tools you will want to invest in should be directly related to the online behavior of the people you are trying to reach. Ideally, you will want to conduct audience research to determine how often potential customers are online, what other sites they visit and how comfortable they are downloading podcasts or setting up RSS feeds.

- Align organizational objectives with social media tools. Different tools are better at accomplishing specific goals. For example, blogs are a great way to get feedback on potential programs from large groups of readers, while photo-sharing programs are useful for building a sense of community and excitement around new programs.

- Establish procedures. Social media require companies to have a higher level of trust in their publics than other communication tools. At the same time, it is important to retain some oversight to ensure communications remain appropriate and continue to focus on your company's key goals. You might want to begin by identifying forum moderators and establishing rules for posting.

- Identify resources and bring everybody on the same page. A successful social-media strategy requires participation from many constituents, as well as from the organizational leaders themselves. Before initiating, make sure the internal personnel support the idea and are willing to integrate social media functions into outreach activities. Ideally, those same leaders will want to participate in the online communities themselves – both to learn more about their customers and to use that knowledge to shape future goals.

These are great tips on how to harness the world of social media to your company’s and/or your client’s advantage.

Facebook Warned It Could Face Fraud Charge for Safety Claims - Associated Press

Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. — The social networking Web site Facebook has been warned that it could face a consumer fraud charge for failing to live up to claims that youngsters there are safer from sexual predators than at most sites and that it promptly responds to concerns, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Sunday.

"We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our investigation," said the spokesman, Jeffrey Lerner.

Cuomo announced last week that he had subpoenaed Facebook after he said the company did not respond to "many" complaints by investigators who were solicited for sex while posing as 12- to 14-year-olds on the site. Officials from Cuomo's office discussed the issue with Facebook by phone and fax Friday after they said Facebook took three days to answer calls and e-mails from state investigators.

An official in Cuomo's office said he and others are scheduled to meet with Facebook representatives this week and anticipate changes will follow immediately.

"We said, 'You have got to make accurate representations on your Web site," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because court filings haven't yet been made. "What we told them is, 'Correct the language describing the site and stop marketing yourself as this pristine Web site ... parents have a misimpression. You can't mislead people."

Lerner said Facebook's contention of being safer than most sites was accurate when it started out as a closed site 3 1/2 years ago. But it's now much larger, and the safeguards and apparently the response times for complaints aren't what they once were, he said.

There was no immediate response to e-mail and phone messages left for a Facebook representative. But a statement issued a week ago stated the company was concerned about Cuomo's claim that sexual predators could use the site to meet with children.

"We strive to uphold our high standards for privacy on Facebook and are constantly working on processes and technologies that will further improve safety and user control on the site," Fcebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said in the statement.

Lerner said Facebook has continued to promise to cooperate.

Do you Twitter?

Twitter appears to be an excellent social media tool for public relations. The idea is simple, based on one question we ask our friends all the time “What are you doing?”

Friends and strangers alike are responding to that question on Twitter either posting on the Website or via SMS (text message). Members can invite friends to join and Twitter privately with them, or they can Twitter with the masses, posting their response to every Twitter member. The site has even launched a Facebook application so Facebook users can add it to their Facebook page.

At first I thought the idea was silly, but after reading Cohn and Wolfe’s Boomerang Blog on Twitter, it seems Twitter has the potential to generate PR for businesses.

If you’re a blogger, you might Twitter- “I just posted a blog on x, y and z, check it out!” (using 140 words or less). Or if your company is launching a PR campaign you might provide a sentence pitch or link to the website.

It’s worth checking out, for no other reason than to see what people are talking about-from the outrageous to the mundane, there’s a million and one ways to answer the question, “What are you doing?” As for me, I’m finishing up this blog and grabbing another cup of coffee!

Can We Do It? Yes We Can.

In a recent marketing survey in PR Week, I came across an interesting quote. Clark Caywood, professor of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University, said he’s skeptical as to whether the PR industry can capitalize on the new media that has emerged in the last few years.

Caywood doesn’t believe that the “PR industry will be able to demonstrate some form of thought leadership on blogs, how to measure blogs, or even the integration of video and blogs,” according to the PR Week article.

“To a lot of my friends in PR, [new media] is like another press release vehicle, and that’s not what it’s all about,” said Caywood.

Respectfully, I disagree. Just because new media may not make for an easy ROI formula, does not mean that we underestimate its value or mistake it for another vehicle for distributing press releases.

To the contrary, Furia Rubel and many of our colleagues encourage clients to blog, not just when they have press release-worthy news to report, but when they come across an article and want to comment or share important and relevant information with their target audiences. We also encourage new clients to embrace Myspace, Facebook, YouTube and other social media opportunities when it makes sense to reach their target audiences. Certainly a press release wouldn’t jive with any of those forums.

Perhaps the industry can take this skepticism as a call to arms and rise to the challenge of utilizing new media.

The New Facebook Means New PR

In early May, Facebook , a social utility site designed originally as an online community for college students, opened its doors to everyone. As someone who joined the Facebook bandwagon in the days before users could even post photo albums, I was surprised. I think the New York Times article ‘omg my mom joined Facebook!!’ best sums up most college students’ feelings.

But now, Facebook is becoming much more than a social network of college students, and if creator Mark Zuckerberg has his way, it will replace the fragmented social networks of yesterday, when online users had to visit different sites for shopping, online dating and blogging. He predicts that Facebook will provide it all.

The new Facebook has partnered with big-leaguers like Microsoft and the Washington Post to launch a host of applications that users can download and install on their page, to share political leanings, movie reviews, music preferences, etc.

But what does this mean from a PR standpoint?

“Facebook is now offering the opportunity for any company, Internet service, or software maker to build services for its members,” according to senior editor David Kirkpatrick of Fortune magazine. With 24 million current members, and 150,000 news members joining every day, Facebook is quickly becoming a vast market for advertisers and PR campaigns. Microsoft and Victoria Secret frequently advertise on the site and presidential hopefuls and non-profits like the ONE Campaign have recently hopped on board.

As a college student, I have mixed feelings about all the changes Facebook has made, but after my first month at Furia Rubel, I see Zuckerberg’s social utility site as fertile ground for launching new forms of PR targeted at Generation X and Y.