Facebook Launches Facebook Stories-Is It About Us Or Them?

Facebook recently launched Facebook Stories. It's a website "dedicated to sharing the extraordinary, quirky and thought-provoking stories and ideas from the more than 950 million people around the world who make up Facebook's community."  

The plunge of Facebook stock after its IPO seems to indicate that it has more of a cultural significance than an economic one, so I'm not surprised to see that they're employing user stories to promote their social clout. The first story, about a man who completely lost his memory after he contracted tubercular meningitis, then used the "people you may know" function to piece his life back together, is a remarkable example of Facebook's power.

Congrats to the team who conceived of this and put it together. I just hope that they are able to nuance the messaging and positioning on the site so that it doesn't come across as a platform to say "thank goodness we're here," (which is somewhat sinister in a Big Brother-y sort of way), but more of a means to show how people are using Facebook to make a real difference in each other's lives.

And for Zuckerberg et al, that's always a thin line to walk...

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

The Cathryn Sloane Firestorm-Where Are You Ms. Sloane?

The technorati are not amused over recent college graduate Cathryn Sloane's blog post that all social media managers should be under 25. I wont enter the fray on that argument; suffice to say that in my experience, usage of social media for personal interactions does not equal qualifications gained over time managing a brand. (One of the complaints I often hear from Marketing and Communications Directors who have young staff working under them is that their team excels at understanding how new media tools work, but they don’t always know why they should be using the tools in the context of brand management.)

What fascinates me about this story, is that more than 500 people commented on Ms. Sloane’s article and numerous folks took the time to write articulate rebuttal articles, and even linked back to “prebuttals” such as this one. In short, it’s been a veritable link fest, engendering the kind of response to a piece of content that most of us who work in social media hope, and work hard for. Yet the crowd that she so successfully engaged has received nothing but radio silence from Ms. Sloane since the article was posted. She even went so far as to block followers on her Twitter account who had a dissenting opinion to her article. 

This is a problem.

I tell my clients to compare "engaging" on social media to going to a large, in-person networking party. There’ll be important people there that you should get to know, as perhaps they could be the key to the particular nut you’re trying to crack at the moment. You may know a few people already, so you shouldn’t ignore them, but you also have to have conversations with people you don’t know–whether it’s by listening in on an existing conversation to see where you can add something of value, or approaching a stranger and striking up a dialogue. And you have to do this in a respectful way; you have to be smart, interesting, funny and a really good listener and someone who can keep a conversation flowing. You must also hold people’s interest, so they feel a connection and start to see something in you. You never know who’s going to be there, and what role they could have in your life and career, so you wouldn't go to this party dressed in a risqué outfit, you wouldn't share intimate and inappropriate details about your personal life and you certainly wouldn’t start throwing out incendiary remarks to get attention unless you really had a good reason for doing so, and were prepared to defend them.

What Ms. Sloane did was the social media equivalent of dropping a politically incorrect bomb at an important cocktail party, then making a run for the door. While the dropping of the bomb itself might have been a strategic move to encourage link bait, her response seemingly was not. Not only did she not explain her position further–something anyone who has taken an undergraduate critical thinking class knows is, well, critical to credibility–she also missed a golden opportunity to engage and continue the debate with her detractors which could have created meaningful dialogue and provided a lot of value across the Internet. The fact that she eschewed such rigorous discourse is more damaging to her reputation than her actual article because we have to surmise that she’s either intellectually lazy or thin-skinned, and maybe a bit of both–it certainly doesn’t help her argument that young people just “know” how to be social, better than their older counterparts, because they are digital natives who’ve been using social media from a young age. Ultimately, the fact that she hasn't yet stepped up to the plate to take responsibility for and address the impact of her provocation, makes her look, at best, inconsistent and certainly not someone you’d want to be in relationship with–which is still a lot of what being in business is all about. 

The mind boggles as to what exciting things may have come her way–interviews, speaking engagements, job offers, book deals, etc., but I hope that no-one offers Ms. Sloane a job in social media–at least, not yet, anyway–until she’s learned (or displays) better etiquette. Her behavior is the antithesis of how networking and making real connections works, whether it’s in person or on the Internet. In professional settings it could seriously damage relationships and ultimately a brand’s reputation. In any case, it’s behavior that shouldn’t be rewarded.

And that’s true, no matter how old you are.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Content Creation and Curation

How do organizations maximize their limited resources and take advantage of various online channels to not only put out information they themselves create, but to recycle content – content from their community, and also content from other organizations and resources that are relevant to their work and useful to their community?

Content curation (the act of finding, grouping, organizing and sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online), can be very resource and capacity-friendly if done strategically. The challenge is in the strategy however: which channels should be used for which purpose? What kinds of content works best? What kind of volume? Frequency?

According to a forthcoming report: “Content Creation and Curation in Your Communications Mix” by the Nonprofit Technology Network and Idealware, 78% of nonprofit organizations do not have a curation strategy. Yet time-strapped organizations are still using lots of channels – almost four each on average: websites are the most widely used, followed by broadcast email, then direct mail. Facebook is the next most widely used, followed by Twitter, YouTube, then blogs.

Regardless of whether you are a nonprofit or a for profit company, how can you maximize your time and be strategic about giving your audiences the best of what's out there through the right mix of content creation and curation?

1. Start with your goals.
For each "stream", ask your self:

• Who is the target audience?
• What does that audience care about?
• What's going to encourage them to engage?

Identify the channels you're planning to use, and what audiences are going to be the main focus of each.

2. Aggregate potential content into a single place first.
Pull in good resources so you have them all in one place, and then decide from there how to parse them out to different channels.

• Find an aggregating tool that works best for your team (workflow, ease of use), and your end goal (what kind of content? for what use?)
• Divide things to follow across team members, according to their interest, so that it becomes more manageable and part of everyone’s workflow
• Assign someone to define what's in the queue and where the curated content goes– what makes sense for your Twitter feed, Facebook, eNews, etc.

In addition, repurpose the queue wherever possible; you’ve spent the time gathering resources, be sure to pull the best resources out and use them elsewhere as much as you can.

4. Find the "ideal" mix of created-to-curated-to-promotional content.
Not all social media tools are created equally. Twitter and Facebook, for example, have the most complex mix of use and not one type of content; while for blogs and e-newsletters, original content is typically more dominant. A good informal rule of thumb for content: aim for 1/3rd curated, 1/3rd new content (including curated new resources), and no more than 1/3 promotional.

3. Match each tool to the kind of content strategy you have there.
Don't start with the tool and ask "what can I use it for?" Ask "what do I want to accomplish?" first, then match the right tool and strategy. Some examples:

• On Twitter, re-tweeting is really important, but make sure you're adding to the Twitterverse value rather than just pinging the same info around that everyone's already seen elsewhere
• For blogs, people expect original content, but a really useful blog could have its primary purpose be to round up information from elsewhere and put it in context for readers
• Publish a "Best of the Web" newsletter to round up other good nonprofit tech blog posts and articles from around the web
• Send a daily e-mail with links to the best articles of the day, as well as news from other sources

4. Use fewer channels more strategically.
It doesn't make sense for busy small and medium-sized nonprofits to be experimenting way out at the bleeding edge of tools. Let large nonprofits and the business world figure out what seems to make sense, and what's a good return on the time, and then do that.

Organizations that take the time to be strategic about content on their various online channels are more efficient and ultimately ensure the ongoing relevance of their work.

Idealware has a free Social Media Decision Maker’s guide, that includes a lot of research, demographics, and a workbook that can help you decide what social media channels make sense to use for what.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie.

May The Burning Bridges Light Your Way

It’s always been true that success in business is predicated on one’s ability to build enduring relationships.  And people’s reputations have always followed (or preceded) them. But now, as the walls between our personal and professional lives continue to crumble due to social media, we’re still connected online socially to people we no longer work with, which makes relationship and reputation management an ongoing concern.

It’s not only easy to trace a person’s path and network of relationships online, it’s even easier to draw conclusions about whether to recommend someone do business with them from how they conduct themselves there.

Take note of people’s behavior online, because according to a recent study, it's very likely consistent with who they are offline.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Mad Libs For Non-Profits: Sample Follow Us On Twitter Copy

Sometimes, when I'm under the gun to write marketing copy, I wish I could pluck exactly what I need from the internet. I'm not suggesting plagiarism, just getting ideas from what other people did well before me. Below this paragraph is some copy I put together for a non-profit looking to introduce their new Twitter account to their members. I used the copy on this page as my starting point to get inspired. If you're under the gun to get something out about Twitter and need some text to get your juices flowing, feel free to use what I wrote as your starting point. Just let me know as I'd love to see the end result.

You’re busy. We understand. If you don’t have time to go to our website regularly and check in to see what’s new, consider creating a Twitter account and follow [insert your organization's name here] at [insert your organization's twitter account here.]

Twitter allows you to exchange information quickly and in real time between [insert your organization's name here] and fellow [insert issue, activity, etc. here] lovers. We tweet about breaking [insert issue, activity, etc. here] news, plus activities and events at  [insert your organization's name here] that will keep you informed about our work.

Twitter facilitates real-time interaction. Do you know you can send and receive tweets by text on your mobile phone? Tweet any message to [insert your organization's twitter account here] and quickly send us things we should be aware of: comments, critique, questions, or simply let us know what you love about [insert issue, activity, etc. here.] We’re interested in you and what you have to say.

We don’t just do ‘corporate’ tweets so you’re just as likely to hear about [insert issue, activity, etc. here] as you are to hear about [insert issue, activity, etc. here.] We also promise that you won’t ever get inundated with tweets; we’d rather tweet about things that we find genuinely interesting enough to share, (even if that means we tweet less often), or that we want you to comment on and pass along.

We’re interested in using Twitter to get to know our members better and we will follow everyone if it looks like they have a real Twitter account.  And you needn’t worry, if you do start to follow us you won’t get a spammy automated direct message that tries to [insert issue, activity, etc. here.] We’ll only direct message you if it’s a relevant message that only you should see.

See for yourself by visiting the [insert your organization's name here] Twitter page. If you’d like to follow us you can also do so from that page.

We hope to see you soon on Twitter!

Curation Is The New Aggregation

As 2010 comes to a close I’m betting many marketing communications professionals have had a challenging year hitting their goals. Organizations that I work with all express a desire to attract more customers, members, engagement, donations, etc. in 2011. One strategy that keeps coming up as a means to accomplish this is to bolster efforts to become the ‘go to’ place on the web for all the information stakeholders need about a product, service or issue. What this generally translates to is a bigger, richer, denser website–full of information, media and links, created, collected and fed from around the web.

This is all well and good, but it isn’t necessarily going to help reach the goals listed above, even if the effort is undertaken with more gusto next year. There are organizations that envision themselves as central content hubs, with others providing them funds, attention, time and patronage as needed because of their hub status. The danger of this worldview is that it's at odds with the realities of a society that’s both energized and exhausted by social media and connectedness. As Seth Godin points out in Linchpin, being the information hub is no longer a differentiator because anyone can now find and learn almost everything–and then some–on the Internet. Plus, other organizations are just as busy generating and collecting content based on their own needs and interests; creating a glut of information on the web, much of it overlapping and all of it competing for people’s attention. Web 2.0 technologies have given organizations the ability to collect and share content easily. This can be stimulating, but it can also become repetitive and tiresome.

Smart brands know that they must figure out how to integrate to be relevant in a socially connected world but not overwhelm or fatigue their constituents in the process.

One way to do this is to take a step back and analyze the usefulness of the content being aggregated. Mechanized “more” is not necessarily better–it’s far more powerful when organizations use their expertise to make selective choices about what’s relevant and what will engage their core audiences. This is where the art of curation comes in. If aggregation is about collecting content somewhat indiscriminately, curation––very much a human, and sometimes time consuming, endeavor ––is about choosing content; it’s condensing overwhelming complexity into easily digestible, enjoyable and useful chunks. Or as Tom Foresnki puts it, “curation versus aggregation represents human web versus machine web.”

As the web evolves, people will increasingly look to the people behind the organizations that they have relationships with and trust them to make choices about what content they get to see based on the things they care about and the depth of their interest levels. The organizations that have success in 2011 might just be those that can delight their constituents by being good curators for them. One caveat about curating: the right to deliver anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them has to be earned. It's power comes with permission.

Aggregation will still have its place, (any organization that hasn’t developed the expertise needed to set up the automated collection of specific content on their website should make it mission critical for 2011), but to have added value, there should be a layer of curation over it so that it's more selective and customized; as the web evolves, it’s part of what customers will come to know and trust a brand for.

Regardless of whether it’s aggregated or curated, all website content requires a strategy that aligns with the larger organizational goals. It's critical to know why content is being put together, who will use it and how they will use it; whether constituents are able to get it somewhere else; what the internal staffing implications are for managing it and what the potential outcomes might be.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

A Quick Review Of Jumo, The New Social Network For Non-Profits

Relationship maps have developed and continue to deepen all over the web: Facebook maps our personal relationships, Yelp maps our relationship with local businesses, Amazon maps our relationships to products. Jumo, a new social media network, which launched in BETA today, maps the relationships between people and non profit organizations. It's an attempt by creator Chris Hughes (who co-founded Facebook) to foster more long-term and sustainable relationships between people and organizations that are working to make a difference.

Steve Mclaughlin provides a very thorough overview of Jumo, so I wont go into too much detail here, suffice to say that the platform is broken up into three main components: Find, Follow and Support. Jumo helps the user find non-profit organizations by learning the types of things that interest them and making suggestions. The site then helps users follow those organizations by receiving a stream of updates about the work they’re doing and how that work is affecting real people. When they're ready, Jumo helps users support the organizations with which they’ve built a relationship.

After setting up an account and playing with it briefly this morning, here's my first impressions, typical buggy issues aside. 

It allows people and organizations to build a more organic connection with one another.
The donate button on many non profit websites can often be intrusive and email calls to action are sometimes insistent and urgent, all of which can be off putting for many potential supporters and make them feel like they are viewed as little more then an ATM machine. Jumo just might help organizations that aren't too savvy about this move to where they now need to be–in an era where relationships must be forged and cultivated first before a financial ask for support is made.  

It integrates nicely with other social media platforms and devices.
Jumo helps the end-user see all of a non profit's social media otposts in one place to get a complete picture of their digital presence. It also streams conveniently to people wherever they are, be that email, Facebook, mobile or elsewhere.

We're all somewhat unnerved by the plethora of options now available to us in the promotional mix and here's another social network for non profit marketers to worry about. So, is it worth jumping on the bandwagon yet?

Hughes has said that he sees this helping out small non profits that don't have a lot of resources to devote to their social media presence. In her Los Angeles Times article yesterday, Jessica Guynn wrote that "the site could potentially benefit smaller charities which don't have in-house social media experts." Unless I'm missing something, I don't see this. Each non profit still has to spend time creating their Jumo profile and must continue adding content to all their other media outposts in order for it to be aggregated on Jumo, so it's not really a time saver for them. The benefit, as I said earlier, is for the end-user who gets to see all the content in one place. The real benefit for small non profits will come when Jumo starts making user segmentation information available to them, assuming they can afford to pay for it.

Ultimately, there's no guarantee that all of this activity will bolster a non profit's social capital sufficiently to lead to donations of time and or money. Money quote from McLaughlin in today's New York Times piece about Jumo:

"It’s still not clear whether or not followers translate to volunteers and donors. But people that are more engaged with nonprofits are most likely to become a donor or support them in another way."

Users who may be suffering from social media fatigue could be reluctant to adopt one more social network but if anyone can pull this off, Hughes may be the man. Aside from his stint at Facebook he was also the former director of online organizing for Barack Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign. Whether this network will succeed and take off, where others like Yahoo For Good and GlobalGiving have failed to soar, remains to be seen.

Hughes’ presentation at the Social Good Summit earlier this year below.

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Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Marketing Campaign Case Study: How The President Of The United States Helped Slurpee

The best marketing communications professionals think on their feet, mobilize rapidly and do it in an authentic way that aligns with their brand image and delights their customers. I’m impressed by what the Slurpee team did in the last few weeks with their Unity Tour marketing campaign, which wrapped up a two-week-long cross-country journey from Dallas to Washington D.C. on Thursday.

Here's 6 things they did right with this campaign:

They were nimble enough to seize a great opportunity quickly
The genesis of the tour began during the heated rhetoric of the 2010-midterm elections, when President Obama used an analogy about Republicans sipping on Slurpees while Democrats get the car –aka the nation–out of the ditch. This was manna from heaven for the Slurpee marketing team and they jumped right in to capitalize on it; White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs maintained that 7-Eleven (coyly, I'm sure) "declined to comment specifically that Slurpees were a Republican drink."

They created a campaign that is not only clever but upbeat and positive
The day after the elections, Bloomberg reporter Hans Nichols jokingly asked President Obama if he would have John Boehner and other Republican leaders over for a "Slurpee Summit." The President laughed and then quipped that Slurpees are delicious drinks and that he might very well serve Slurpees during the conversation with leaders from both parties.

Slurpee launched a new grape flavored slush drink to take on a nationwide tour called "purple for the people." The color was chosen based on the idea of mixing red for Republicans and blue for Democrats in hopes the parties would work together in passing legislation on the Hill.

They combined social media and traditional marketing seamlessly
The national tour, documented with video, was replete with special offers, customer interaction, and giveaways, and was complemented beautifully by humorous and authentic social media marketing that represented the latest trends in marketing.

They maintained a strong and consistent brand voice
Throughout the campaign, whether it was on the website, various social media outposts, or in comments they made to the media, Slurpee found exactly the right tone and stuck with it.

They were not afraid to be real
Slurpee gave people an insider look into the tour with some behind the scenes footage.



They made sure the campaign was consistent with the personality of the product
These slightly tongue-in-cheek comments from 7-Eleven Marketing Manager, Daniel May, show how Slurpee doesn’t take itself too seriously. The team knows the product is fun and is willing to take some risks:

"We are hoping there will be a Slurpee summit…The tour has sent formal invitations to everybody and everybody is welcome…We truly hope there is one and if they want Slurpees there, we will make sure to bring them."

All of this obviously caught the attention of the media. Here's video below of some news coverage of the President's comments.







Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Save "Save The Words": A Quick Marketing Case Study

If you spend any time on the web and are connected to relatively erudite people (aren’t we all?), chances are you’ve been sent the link to Save The Words, a new website developed by marketing communications company Y&R's Singapore office. Save The Words is an advertising campaign created to stimulate sales of the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary in Malaysia.

There’s a reason the site has gone viral–it’s creative and cute. Users can choose and “adopt” a word to keep it alive or just click on words and learn their meanings. When they find a word they like enough to adopt, they promise to use the word, “in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible.” There’s even an option to purchase a t-shirt with the chosen word on it.

Verbal branding consultant and word expert Christine Harkin enthuses that it “simply shimmers with brilliance” and “greets its audience with a protest-connoting march of signs which all cluster in the foreground and beg readers, “pick me!” While I agree with Ms. Harkin (disclosure: I have worked with Ms. Harkin previously and she’s an esteemed colleague) that this is a clever idea, I can’t get quite as worked up about it as she does because the execution, from a communications and web usability standpoint, diminishes my experience. Plus, I’m not fully on board with the strategy either.

Here’s what’s bothering me:

Design
The Flash-based design will be difficult for some computers and mobile users. Flash also makes deep-linking impossible and individual words unsharable – a tragic missed opportunity in today’s social world.

Usability
Designers love small font sizes and light grey type but it’s impossible to read, especially for older people who read and write a lot and love words (aka the site’s target audience). The fixed font size on the site is not only deadly for older eyes, it's a usability no-no for the disabled too. On the FAQ page, the link to the Facebook group doesn’t go to Facebook, but to the Oxford Press online store; creating possible confusion and frustration for users.

Navigation
The red arrows that indicate that the screen moves in all directions are so small that it’s hard to see them. Plus there’s no language to tell users that the screen can move in all directions. The main navigation is extremely small and hard to read. Also, two words–no search.

Content
It’s assumed the user will figure things out by clicking around which quickly becomes a tiresome exercise. Not answering users questions - such as what this site is about or specifically where they can buy a dictionary is frustrating. If users are searching for an interesting word to help them say a particular thing there’s no thesaurus function to help them do that. What’s also missing are some fun facts about word usage and the dictionary–the brand image and relationship with the Oxford English Dictionary isn't really being strengthened here.

Registering and Lack of Social Interaction
It’s clear from a marketing perspective why users are required to register but it can be a turnoff for some people, especially since there’s no apparent reason here why they should have to. If user information is being collected it should be integrated on the site to show people who've adopted words and it should be fun and social–read Facebook and Twitter–in terms of who has taken on the most words, etc. 

Strategy
“One of the problems we were facing,” says Creative Director Edward Ong, who reportedly came up with the idea in a bar with friends after work, “is that many people prefer to use the online dictionary. So we thought, why not get them to develop a love for words online and push them back to the physical dictionary?” Aside from a brief mention in the FAQ section the website does little to push users back to the physical dictionary or reward them for using one. I wonder if it’s actually doing the opposite by allowing them to fall into the web again.

Ong claims that there have been 3 million website mentions of this site and a 12 percent increase in sales of the dictionary since the campaign launched so the things that are irksome for me about this site may not be an issue for most people. I've certainly seen some interesting words get slung about on the internet this past week and anything that helps increase awareness of the richness of our language can only be a good thing.

Y&R, (formally Young and Rubicam), is an industry giant so I expect them to know and implement the best practices for marketing communications and web usability. I'd like to see them come up with some social media strategies to encourage use of the dictionary and/or thesaurus offline (Youtube anyone?). Hopefully they can continue to improve on the site; it could become a great resource for people and help bridge the gap between surfing the web and the tactile and delicious experience of leafing through a "real" dictionary.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Social Media and Politics

Image: Mashable

When I was a kid, it was practically impossible to get away with being naughty and even harder to lie my way out of it when I'd done something wrong. My grandmother, who babysat me after school while my mom was at work, would knowingly say, "the truth always finds it's way out", and my mother, ever her daughter, would build on that with, "tell the truth, because you’ll be found out eventually." My husband’s mother always told him growing up, “don’t do anything that you wouldn’t mind being splashed on the front page of your local newspaper.” Wise women–all of them. And now, more than ever, aphorisms to live by.

Social Media makes it hard to get away with anything. It's in our nature to want to exaggerate or pretend to be something we aren't to advance an agenda, but today’s world is a tricky place to do that. Both individuals and organizations need to be careful what they disseminate on websites and other outposts because people are paying attention, and, let's face it, most of us dislike being lied to. It's human nature to want to call out falsehoods when we see them and social media gives us the perfect outlet to do that. I think we feel just as strongly, if not more, about hypocrisy, lying's ugly sibling. So why then, aren’t people more careful about what they do behind closed doors or about representing themselves to be something they aren’t?

I am convinced that most people–regardless of their age–haven’t fully grappled with the reach of the Internet yet. Social media is still fairly new and technology in general is moving faster and changing our lives in more ways than we can wrap our heads around. (It might even outpace us soon; Kevin Kelly's latest book What Technology Wants has great insight into this.) Attitudes, while slowly changing in regards to what’s acceptable to publicize and what isn’t (and what it all means about a person’s character), still haven't adjusted to the reality of the information age in which every detail of our lives is suddenly fair game.

A large part of the job in communications used to entail controlling the message and the public personae of the leaders that we represented. Thanks to the explosion of social media, reputation management has become somewhat more challenging. We are all now public figures–the CEOs of our own lives and reputations–even when we're not officially working, and it can be difficult to keep things off the record. Anything we say or do in private can easily be used to besmirch us.

The people who are struggling the most with this are the boomer and x generations. Millenials, on the other hand–who aren’t running the world yet, but soon will be–have grown up with technology and have much different attitudes vis a vis their privacy and what is acceptable to be made public. They may face judgment from hiring managers as they navigate the shoals of today’s workplace but that will most certainly change over time as they and their peers move into management positions. All in all, it's not really an issue for them. They just don’t criticize others’ “off the clock” behavior as harshly as previous generations. Consider for a moment that Bill Clinton had to deny inhaling, yet it’s common knowledge that Barack Obama, who enjoyed large amounts of support in the last general election from young voters, not only smoked-but publicly enjoyed-marijuana and cocaine.

Speaking of politicians, it's only a matter of time once someone announces their intention to run for public office before something gets surfaced from their past and splashed all over the Internet; social media is amplifying the reach and impact of our desire to throw stones at people who live in glass houses.

Christine O'Donnell seems to be this election cycle's poster child for negative press. Why? Ms. O’Donnell has been very public with her views in the past and there's lots of fodder available to lampoon her with when human nature rears it's ugly head. Consider the most recent story that Gawker published about Ms. O’Donnell’s antics at a Halloween party a few years back. Whether or not you agree with their approach, it's clear what Gawker's intent was behind publishing it: they saw it as an opportunity to call out hypocritical behavior. (Plus, Gawker was very upfront about their profit motives–no hypocrisy there.)

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for the media strategy session regarding this incident, especially since Ms. O'Donnell's communications team should have known that there is footage of her (courtesy of Bill Maher) saying explicitly that she doesn’t celebrate Halloween because it’s a paganistic and satanic holiday. Team O’Donnell’s response–that Gawker was being sexist–was a red herring that just added lies to the hypocrisy (Gawker has lambasted many male public figures for their regressions too and can hardly be called sexist).

People make choices that others question, or that they regret, or they change their positions over time. I’m not saying that they shouldn't run for elected positions because these facts may come to light through social media; we'd be hard put to find applicants for the job if that were the case. I’m merely pointing out that it’s more important then ever to be honest about who you are, and what you've done, as the truth will eventually find its way out. At the very least, you should fess up when it does and not try to detract from what’s really going on. Social media shines a light on authenticity, or lack thereof.

Which brings me to my final thought. I wonder how my colleagues in PR deal with the challenge of managing the reputations of politicians who run on public platforms that are disconnected from their private actions and behavior. There seems to be lots of them on both sides of the aisle. If I were Ms. O'Donnell's Communications Director, I'd have wanted to know the truth ahead of time so I could figure out how to spin it in a way that didn't make her look even less credible.

But then, I'm not Ms. O'Donnell's Communications Director.

UPDATE: Wisconsin voters are sending 39 year old Sean Duffy, a contestant on the sixth season of The Real World, to congress. NY Mag wryly points out:

Kids, take this as the inspiring lesson it should be: Don’t let anyone scare you into thinking there are embarrassing things you can do on television that, given the right amount of time and effort, you can not live down.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius. 

Finding Out About Baby On Facebook

In the last few weeks three of my friends announced they were pregnant. One called me on the phone to tell me and two updated their status on Facebook.

Which experience do you think I was the most delighted by?

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

One Man's PR Nightmare...

As Jason Linkins over at the Huffington Post almost gleefully points out, there's been a lot of rubbernecking on the web in the last few days about the tense exchange between Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center spokesperson Marc Slavin and Bay Area ABC News reporter Dan Noyes. In case you haven't seen the video, it's below.

I received a link to the video from friends and colleagues in PR via 3 different sources yesterday: it was shared on Facebook, discussed in a LinkedIn group I belong to and emailed to me and many of my PR colleagues in a group email.

I should give full disclosure that I have worked with Mr. Slavin in the past as part of a communications task force for Laguna Honda's soon to be open new hospital building; I always found him to be extremely respectful and professional. Was Mr. Noyes aggressive? Undoubtably. Was Laguna Honda administrator Ms. Hirose flustered and unprepared? Yes. Could Mr. Slavin have handled this situation with Mr. Noyes differently? I'm sure. In fact I'd bet that he has probably replayed this incident over and over again (if not in his head, on his computer screen) wishing for a different outcome.

We all have days or situations that are better than others and that we wish we could do over or forget about completely. (I'll leave specific commentary about what Mr. Slavin did, and the debate on how he could have handled such a situation differently, to the millions of people who are discussing, commenting and dissing on what Gawker called the best local news video this year.) Point being, when we have these types of situations, we have to deal with the consequences. Unfortunately for Mr. Slavin, his bad day quickly became that much more public thanks to social media sharing tools such as Youtube, Digg, Twitter and Facebook, (to name a few), that spread this video across the web like wildfire, only amplifying those consequences.

The Huffington Post, like many other news outlets, helpfully displayed some other places on the web, including twitter that this story was getting play.

and provided the requisite social media tools to share the video.

Note that there were 536 comments on the video on the Huffington Post website alone. 321 people tweeted about it, their followers retweeted and so on, ad infinitum. (Guy Kawasaki, who has almost a quarter of a million followers, tweeted this story. Imagine his reach!) A quick google search for it produced more than 37,000 results–many in languages I couldn't understand.

Painfully, Mr. Slavin can not only replay the video but spend countless hours scouring the web to see comments people have made– about him personally, his professional demeanour and the organization he was representing. He is now an integral part of the new story and as a result has spent many hours I'm sure he didn't account for answering inquiries from all fronts about the incident. This video is a great example of how quickly content can go viral and create bad PR for an individual or organization.

So what's the takeaway here? Being on the front lines, sometimes in tense situations, is nothing new for PR professionals. We know this and develop thicker skins the further we advance in our careers. What is a fairly new development is how social media adds yet one more layer (or many, depending on how you look at it) to managing an organization's public image and can make our jobs (and us) even more visibly and inextricably linked to that image. Is this being talked about when we train up and coming PR professionals? How about when we do speaker training and crisis communications? Prior to the advent of web 2.0, this video would have aired on TV in the original newscast and been posted on the ABC 7 website. Some people would have emailed it to their friends but it most likely would not have gained enough strength to become the tsunami it did in such a short time.

The fact that our words and actions can infect the web like this, doing damage to companys we represent and to our own reputations is something we should all be acutely aware of.

Is Rush Limbaugh Helping The Sierra Club? A Marketing Case Study

Last Monday, Rush Limbaugh was discussing the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and asked his listeners "When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak?", blaming what he called "the greeniacs" for driving oil drilling offshore. I wasn't there, but I'm betting that when they got wind of what Mr. Limbaugh said, there were some pretty happy marketing communications strategists at The Sierra Club.

Agree with his positions or not, no-one would argue that when Mr. Limbaugh speaks on a topic he draws lots of attention to it. The Sierra Club's marketing communications team has attempted to turn what could have been a piece of negative publicity strategically to their advantage and used it to raise awareness of the organization's efforts to promote clean energy solutions and put an end to offshore drilling. The fundraising campaign they've created is slightly wicked: give $10 to the Sierra Club in Mr. Limbaugh's name and get the opportunity to send him the finger, um, a personal message, with the donation. And the hook? Help Rush become the Sierra Club's top fundraiser. Nicely played.

Or is it?

Here's what the Sierra Club marketing communications did to bring the strategy to life:

1. Cut through the inbox clutter.
The subject line: "Why Rush Limbaugh Deserves a Free Backpack" is a great way to get a Sierra Club constituent to open an e-mail. This was permission-based e-mail marketing so recipients had already given a vote of confidence that this e-mail content was valuable to them. On top of that, it's fair to assume that Sierra Club supporters disagree with Mr. Limbaugh's position and perhaps even that they don't like him very much. What could he have possibly done? they ask. By lampooning Mr. Limbaugh with this subject line the copywriter entices them to open the e-mail.

2.  Engage with good copywriting and a strong call to action.
Once they open the e-mail they then learn that Rush has been so good at helping to raise money for the Sierra Club that he deserves a free backpack. This engaging copy ties in beautifully to the call to action. (I wonder if they'll stuff the backpack with all the messages from donors?) The ask is a realizable target - for anyone who feels so inclined, ten bucks, or the price of a movie ticket to stick it to Rush Limbaugh is easily manageable.

4. Socialize it.
Each little blurb in the newsletter allows for socialization and integration of the message through other outposts such as Facebook and Twitter. The convergence of e-mail marketing with social media marketing is opening up exciting new opportunities. Social media complements other tactics such as e-mail and The Sierra Club team is empowering its constituents to reach out to their tribes to connect the Sierra Club with new fans and followers. It's a smart way to use e-mail marketing to complement other tactics and turn those casual connections into meaningful customer relationships.

5. Make it easy to give money.
When you click through from the newsletter, you arrive at this landing page:






















It's clean and well laid out and the embedded video of Mr. Limbaugh is the perfect touch.

6. Make the ask everywhere.
The home page of the Sierra Club. Enough said.

7. Make the ask more than once.
Then, two days later, a follow-up e-mail from the Sierra Club Executive Director, Michael Brune.

Remember, The Sierra Club isn't trying to convince people who agree with Rush Limbaugh that he's wrong. They're talking to the people who've already bought in that he's wrong. On paper, it's a fundamentally sound strategy and the marketing tools are being used effectively and judiciously to implement that strategy. So what could possibly go awry? Here's a few things I noticed:

1. Consistent and clear messaging is key.
I saw a big disconnect between the copywriting on the Sierra Club Facebook page and everywhere else. The info blurb, (it's on the left hand side of the page) usually gives some information about an organization. Instead it says: "On May 17, Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners "When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak?" That seems appropriate, so help us raise the money to foot the bill."

This makes it sound like the Sierra Club not only agrees with Rush Limbaugh but is trying to raise money to pay to clean up the oil spill. If you click through from this, the copy clearly states: "You and Rush will have the satisfaction of knowing your contribution will support Sierra Club's efforts to promote clean energy solutions and put an end to offshore drilling." Unfortunately, the copy as it's written will prevent some people from clicking on that link as they are put-off right away by the idea of paying for the spill.

Similarly, on the wall post about this topic it says: "Rush Limbaugh wants the Sierra Club to pay for BP's negligence, help us raise the money!" and "Donate $10 today and we'll send a card to Rush Limbaugh telling him that your donation was made in his honor!" Again, this sends the message that the Sierra Club is raising money to pay for the oil spill and that all donations will somehow be credited to Mr. Limbaugh.

 









2. Using reverse psychology is risky - it can backfire.
Some people dislike Mr. Limbaugh so much they wont give money to anything that has his name attached to it, even if it is to advance a cause they believe in. There has been much debate in liberal circles about whether democrats are giving Mr. Limbaugh more power by talking about him and should just ignore him instead. 

3. Social Media is about listening.
There were more than 110 comments on the above wall post and by my quick count, more of them were negative or neutral in regards to this campaign than supportive. It wasn't a terribly large sampling size, although some would argue that any post that incites more than 100 people to write something is worth paying attention to.

As marketers we must never forget that negative perceptions can be stickier than positive perceptions. Remember the old adage, when people love something, they tell 1 person, when they hate something, they tell 10? Hate something on Facebook and the whole world is listening.

Noticeably absent is a response, new comment or wall post from someone at the Sierra Club. Is it because more than 150 people have clicked on the "like" button already? It's important to think of Facebook as a strategic listening outpost and as such it's a garden that needs daily tending. From a customer service perspective, it would be helpful to respond to the naysayers and to provide clarification for those who, gasp! don't get, what the Sierra Club's intentions are.

Facebook is also wonderful in that it's a place where you can run tests to see what works and doesn't work. Given the subject matter, his post would have been a perfect opportunity for the Sierra Club team to set up A/B experiments to test the efficacy of various post content (photo of Mr. Limbaugh versus no photo of Mr. Limbaugh, for example) and with a combination of quantitative metrics culled from Facebook's metrics tool Insights, and what people are saying on the page, to glean some deep insights.

As a result of all of this effort (and my hat goes off to the team for being so nimble and proactive in the last week or so) the Sierra Club has reported a spike in website visitations and giving to the tune of more than $50,000 already. How much of this is marketing spin or a direct result of the Rush Limbaugh campaign is anyone's guess. I'll be tracking their efforts with interest and will try to obtain some Sierra Club statistics on giving and visitations to their website and various social media outposts in the coming weeks.

In any event, many non-profit organizations would do well to take a page from the Sierra Club's playbook and be half as coordinated in the execution of their marketing communications strategies.

What Can Your Older Members Do To Support You In Addition To Donating Money?

One of the questions I am often asked by non-profits when we're discussing membership engagement beyond donating money is how to reach out to members (typically older) who they think are not using tools like Facebook and Twitter. Since the Facebook 55+ audience grew a whopping 922.7% in 2009 (source: 2010 istrategylabs report), I answer that it's becoming more and more likely that older members will have a Facebook account. Twitter? Maybe not so much. Why and how non-profits should gather accurate data on their constituents and not rely on anecdotal evidence is a whole separate conversation (and a different blog post).

For the sake of this discussion, let's assume your members don't have a Facebook account. Three-quarters of the United States population is using the internet and, according to this AARP article, a recent survey indicates that senior citizens in the U.S. regularly go online for a variety of reasons, including using email, and reading news. So it's fairly safe to assume they are surfing the web at some point during their day or week. Encourage them to use some of this time to spread the word about your work. It's a way to make change that doesn’t cost any money at all. Here's two ways to do it that are quick, easy and free, yet cumulatively can make a big impact.

1. Comment on newspaper stories
Even if Twitter and Facebook is lost on them, many of your members get their news on the web from online newspapers, websites and blogs. The internet was born as an interactive medium and has facilitated chats, discussion groups and blogs for years. Recently, the largest newspaper sites have enabled readers to comment directly on their stories.

Whenever they read a mission-related article in any of the major local, regional or national newspapers online, your members can take some time to comment on the article in the "comments section" (usually found below the article). Depending on the publication, they may have to create an account to do so. While commenting, they should always paste in your organization's website address as part of the comments and let people know why they should be aware of, and support your organization.

How It Helps

• It lets the publisher/writer know real people, like your members, read the story and that the issue is an important one.
• It adds dimension to the story and creates further discussion.
• It drives traffic to your organization's website and eventually other media outposts to produce more page views and ultimately more members.
• It shows the world that your organization's membership is active and engaged in the issues.

Be sure to warn your members, comments are not always pretty. In fact, for many stories about politically charged issues, it can sometimes get downright ugly. But it can also be constructive and energize your most passionate members to enjoy a level of engagement with the issues and others who hold opposing views they may never have had before.

Once they’ve commented, it's important that they check back on the story for additional comments from others. As in any conversation, once they’ve stated their point, someone may respond to their comment and they might feel the need to reply.

2. Pass it on.
Encourage your members to send URLs of articles they're reading and commenting on to their friends and colleagues so that they can add their comments to the article too. 

Here's a few tips for the best way for them to do this: 

1. They should send the email to themselves only and blindcopy their friends so they're not giving out friends’ email addresses without their consent.
2. Send only URLs – no attachments– so people don't feel they are being spammed. Plus, it’s easier to read an email and click on a link from a smart phone than open an attachment.

How It Helps

• It creates a groundswell of opinion and support. Elected officials and large corporations typically invest a lot of time and money in their “spin machines” and have the lobbying power and access to the halls of power that a small non-profit will never be able to match. Encouraging members to voice their opinion lets those who are monitoring the stories (such as elected officials’ staffers who like to take the citizenry's pulse on many issues, and the PR professionals on corporations payrolls)know the public is aware of and cares about the issues.
• It improves SEO for your organization as comments that show up in search engine results.

It's good practice to encourage all of your members, regardless of their level of internet savvy to engage in this kind of viral activity.

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