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Building Your Reputation Using Social Media

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

The three most important components of who you are: reputation, reputation, reputation.

The social media industry spends a lot of time talking about the brand.  Whether it’s your corporate brand or your personal brand everyone has an opinion of how to market yourself.  That’s what it is afterall is marketing.  The branding police come in and say the product will conjure images of…..”being a kid again” or “going to the county fair” or (you get the pictures).  What happens after you buy the product and decide the packaging is hard to open or that it really doesn’t perform as advertised?  Well, they make television shows for that (PitchMen).   The same goes for your personal brand.  how many times have you “heard” about the accomplishments of someone then when you actually work with them only images of SnakeOil come to mind.  Once you “out” the product or the person, you will not use them again no matter how good the markting message is for them.

I have a hard time with spending so much time on your “Brand” for that reason.  All of it is glossy brochure-ware unless you can actually do something.  My preference is to push people and/or client’s brands to focus on their reputation.  Autos are a good example of what I mean, you don’t buy a Lamborghini for comfort and you don’t buy a Lexus to go fast.  Both are remarkable cars in their own right however the Lambo’s reputation is built around speed and the lexus around comfort.  That’s what you get when you buy them irrespective of whatever kind of marketing stuff they put in front of you. 

I pulled a couple of thoughts on personal reputation from the website Brand-Yourself (horrible name, I know).  They defined your reputation as this:

It’s the iconic who, what, why and how principle.
It’s developing, celebrating and using that internal and external persona, that is already there and a part of our DNA!

Who are you?
What do you stand for?
Why should you serve?
How can you better the community that supports you and the world you live in?

Who you are is the combination of your external appearance or image and your internal essence.
Whenever you are out professionally, make sure you are dressed appropriately and groomed. People do notice the fine points and that can say a lot about you. Ask any professional etiquette coach about how important style, flair and appropriateness is in making a first impression!

What you stand for is about your values, attitudes, demeanor and how you express your unique qualities.
Show people that and they will make a connection with you because we all look for those commonalities in our relationships with others. Kindness, sense of humor, integrity, generosity, creativity, caring all speak volumes about you to others.

Why you serve is how you want to be remembered.
Whatever causes or social leadership you are passionate about will not only drive and motivate you naturally but draw people to you. Step up, volunteer, join a cause, initiate an action, support one that needs some help.

So what does all this mean?  It means that it doesn’t matter if you have 3,ooo followers or 300,000 if you can’t articulate your strategy for a client.  It means, if you can’t legitimately help a client then refer them to someone who can.  It’s substance over talk, results over industry stats.  Our moderator this week knows alot about reputation as she has one of the best in the public relations industry.  Kami Watson Husye is the president and COO of Zoetica Media.  Kami is well respected for her work and her missions and will lead our discussion around managing your reputation.  The topic and questions this week are:

Topic: Building Your Reputation Using Social Media

Q1:  Is reputation more important than a “personal brand” in #socialmedia?

Q2:  Be it a personal or professional crisis, what is your plan for handling a negative backlash in #socialmedia?

Q3:  How do you scale online success for an organization or individual as your reputation grows?

This chat will take place on Tuesday August 24, 2010 at 12 noon eastern.  Follow #sm74 from any Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The event will start at noon with the first question and Kami will move to the next question every 20 minutes for an hour. 

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Posted in Branding, social media | 2 Comments »

Creating a Social Media Strategy? Stop Wasting Your Time!

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

I enjoy hearing about companies having success with social media and I am certainly intrigued in understanding how they got there.  After researching dozens of case studies (as many as I have been able to get my hands on) one theme rings through.  Most of these companies have had success with little more than a tool, a concept and someone willing to figure it out through trial and error.  Noble for sure, not usually very sustainable or repeatable though. 

Then you hear about all the companies developing their social media strategies.  This becomes the plan behind a tool, a concept and someone willing to figure it out through trial and error.  Noble for sure, yet not very successful usually.  Why is this?  For one, the conversation usually starts with “We need a blog!”.  The boss needs to be able to cover their trail, so they require a strategy to go along with it.  The team creates a strategy full of love and happiness, the boss has no clue what it means and three (3) days later…violla!  The blog is in place.

The point of this (yes there is a point after all), is that no where in here did anyone tie a social strategy into a business objective.  You don’t hear much around “we created x number of new sales or x reduction in costs because of our social media strategy”.

Having a social policy or code of conduct for how employees should represent the company (both internally and externally) is needed.  Having some thought around governance and a crisis plan is certainly good measure.  However developing a social strategy that does not tie back to meeting some corporate objective is simply a waste of time.  Instead, create a business strategy that includes social media to help solve a problem faster, better, cheaper (assuming that it will). 

In the end, it really doesn’t matter what you want to call your efforts.  Call it a social media strategy, call it a business strategy or call it a Bazinga!  Whatever you call it, it has to tie back to some real value to the business.  To ensure that we do tie it back to the business, our host this week is B.L. Ochman.  B.L. is a 2nd time moderator for us (#sm45) and is recognized for her contributions to this industry.  For the chat she will cover the following topic and questions: 

Topic: Creating a Social Media Strategy? Stop Wasting Your Time!

Q1:  Should you create separate social media strategies or business strategies?

Q2:  How do you budget for social?

Q3:  Do you train staff for social or hire for it?

 

The chat will take place Tuesday 8/3/2010 at 12 noon eastern.  Follow along by monitoring #sm71 from your favorite Twitter client or simply goto our LIVE page (www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live).  The chat will begin at noon as B.L. tweets the first question and the conversation will start.  Then at 12:20, the next question is asked and 12:40 the final question.  The conversation is fast-paced and full of helpful insights from the people who are blazing the trails in this industry.

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Posted in ROI in Social Media, corporate, social media | No Comments »

Buiding our own Frankenstein: Is engaging with customers via social media required, or optional?

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Social media is the greatest boon for business since, well, the cash register right?  I mean just log onto twitter and grab some Facebook love and sit back, watch the customers start lining up and make sure your cash register is full of change.  It’s that easy.

Listen to a few “experts” and they make it sound that easy.  Some agencies focus on creating Facebook pages, widgets and applications and sell it to everyone who will buy it.  Just change the colors and voila!

The fact is that social media is not the savior for everyone.  Social media is not the silver bullet, the people behind it are.  Some companies will be poised to take advantage of new forms of engagement and new ways of interacting with customers, suppliers and employees.  Then again, some won’t.  

Just having a tool will not make you successful, the purpose, strategy and planning you do first might.  The way you integrate it into the entire campaign or initiative might.  Having a clean user experience may make poor tools perform better.  Even as simple as configuring the tools to support the initiative and not using the tool to define it.  Understanding the science of networks, the phsychology of why people participate and making that work for you and not against you is another way to make your social initiative stand out.  Once again, it’s not the tools, it’s the heft of the planning and purpose behind them.

Some companies have figured out how to make television work and some are still trying to figure it out after 60+ years.  For some companies, radio works great and is less expensive than alternatives.  Your business cannot be forced to go social, it has to be ready for it. 

So how do you know if your company is ready to go social and what do you use first?  This week’s host of the 70th edition of #socialmedia chat will help us explore just that.  Jay Baer has been weeding out the social media overgrowth for a long time and has ben helping companies figure out their right marketing mix for more than a decade.  This week’s topic is:

Topic:  Buiding our own Frankenstein: Is engaging with customers via social media required, or optional?

 Q1:  What are the circumstances when a company should NOT engage with customers via social media?

 Q2:  What are the organizational drawbacks to engaging with customers in this way?

 Q3:  How should companies modify their interactions, based on individual customers’ influence (if at all)?

Join in the discussion Tuesday 7/27 at noon eastern by following #sm70 from any twitter client or simply goto our live page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

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Posted in corporate, social media | 2 Comments »

Weaving Social Throughout Your Organization

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Companies are challenged to grow in uncertain times and to do more with fewer resources. There is a continuous need to explore new systems and methodologies to help your employees work smarter internally and engage external resources who will advocate more often with less incentive. As a result, organizations are turning to the promise of new web based technologies.  As our moderator, Adam Cohen puts it:

“Social media is changing the game, providing new touchpoints, technologies and techniques for businesses to build, maintain and encourage relationships with customers.  But social media tactics and tools alone will be limited in their business impact.  When combining social media with other interactive marketing practices, the results can magnify both.  In other words, social media integrated with other forms of marketing is greater than the sum of the parts.”

So what are the parts and how does the sum equal more than the parts themselves? 

Social media should not stand alone and “being social” does not change your objectives.  Being social merely changes your approach to achieve those goals whether internal or external focused.  When used as part of your digital ecosystem, the results can be significantly more valuable.  Consider the following areas:

  • CRM + Social – although we discuss it quite a bit, the market is still not at a point general adoption.  Social CRM provides an opportunity to know more about your customer’s frame of mind at the time and better understand life events that may affect purchase decisions.
  • Search Engine Optimization – most companies have paid and organic search strategies.  If your site does not optimize for what customers are asking for then your your competitors will enjoy more organic result while you will end up paying dearly for your web search traffic.  As social typically creates a wealth of fresh content (of which gets spidered by the engines quickly), you can focus the topics of your content to better effect organic results that your prospects are using at the time.
  • Content Management – Ask this wealth of content is developed, you are creating a corporate asset.  If you are a global company or run across an enterprise, there is a lot of value to making those assets reusable across campaigns, countries, departments, etc.
  • Mobile - find companies where they are, when they are there and in the way they want to be found.
  • e-Commerce – Imagine going to Best Buy site, searching for TVs and your friends from Facebook populate the TV screens.  You would be more apt to take notice and spend time.
  • Website-optimization – Imagine once again that the first set of comments on that TV are that of your friends who have purchased that same TV.

This does not even mention customer service, marketing, advertising and running campaigns.  To cover this topic in more depth is Adam Cohen.  Adam is a partner at digital agency Rosetta.  He will tackle one of the bigger issues that we have had on this chat and is more than capable of doing so.  The topic and questions this week will be:

Topic: Weaving Social Throughout Your Digital Marketing

Q1) How should marketers approach weaving social media tactics into their marketing arsenal?
Q2) Why does blending social media improve the effectiveness of other tactics?
Q3) Which tactics have the most impact when combined with social media? (Think both digital and traditional)

Be sure to follow the conversation this Tuesday 7/20 at noon EST by tracking the #SM69 tag on Twitter or visit our live page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com.

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Posted in Mobile, Public Relations, SEO, SocialCRM, corporate, social media | 4 Comments »

How to Get Measureable Results From Your Facebook Presence

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

When it comes to social networks, Facebook is certainly the 800 pound gorilla in the room.  For this reason, Facebook is (or at least needs to be) a staple in most every company’s social media strategies.  While there are other social networks out there, none hold the attention or capture the market share of consumers especially in the US market.  In fact, here are a few stats from the Facebook stats page:

People on Facebook
  • More than 400 million active users
  • 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
  • Average user has 130 friends
  • People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Activity on Facebook
  • There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)
  • Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
  • Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month
  • More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
Global Reach
  • More than 70 translations available on the site
  • About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
  • Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

As a marketer Facebook is one of those places you have to be in order to interact and engage with your customers and also as a way to be seen as relevant and impactful.  A marketer without a meaningful presence on Facebook for their company will not last long in that position.  Therein lies one of this era’s greatest challenges, making your Facebook presence work for you and not against you.  Anyone with 20 minutes can throw up a corporate page on Facebook and call it a presence.  Like anything else though, it pays to spend the time and resources to make your presence work for you. 

One of the key things to remember when considering your Facebook presence is how it will fit into your overall digital marketing strategy and what it will accomplish as part of it.  What are some other key take-aways you ask?  We decided to bring in the queen of Facebook marketing to help us answer that question.  Mari Smith will be hosting this week’s chat on the topic.  The coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day, Mari brings a wealth of practical experience to us.  The topic and questions will be:

Topic: How to Get Measureable Results From Your Facebook Presence

Q1:   How do you gain momentum with a Facebook fan page?

Q2:   What should you be measuring on Facebook?

Q3:   How do you scale Facebook engagement?

Join us for this week’s chat Tuesday 7/6 at noon eastern.  To participate follow #sm67 from your favorite Twitter client or simply follow along from our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

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Posted in ROI in Social Media, social media | No Comments »

Quick & Legal: How to Make Social Media Less Scary for the Legal Dept

Monday, May 24th, 2010

There’s a saying in software development that customers want to get their projects done:

Cheap, Fast and Good.

The typical IT joke is that you can have 2 but not all 3.  I have a feeling that’s where the legal department’s position is with the other departments who are deploying social and have a need to engage with their customers.  Where the CEO ideally wants the response to happen Quickly & Legally.  The joke here is that Legal departments say “Quick” OR ”Legal” but not both.  There have been a couple of big brands on the wrong end of that joke lately and therein lies the importance of incorporating the legal department as a founding partner of your social efforts in the beginning rather than trying to “bolt” them on afterwards.

To be fair, there are a lot of reasons that the Legal department should be a significant partner in your efforts.  This deck from Daliah Saper does a solid job identifying all the reasons that mitigating risk in social is important.  Here are just a few:

  • Privacy Laws – Like HIPPA in medical
  • Negligence – in assuming a duty and not following  through on it
  • Trademark – confusing a consumer about your Brand and it’s use
  • Copyright – using/sharing something that’s not yours
  • Discrimination – especially when used in the hiring process & checking up on current employees

The marketing reality though is that Brands simply don’t control their messaging the same way in which they used to.  Responses to outcries from promoters and detractors alike that are measured in days or worse yet weeks is simply unacceptable today.  Speed is of the essence and customers just want to hear the truth.  That puts legal departments, who are in place today to mitigate risk, in a precarious position.  Where their primary job is reviewing the actions of employees it typically takes longer to get tasks completed.  Much of the time now executives who take the time to run through legal are actually opening themselves and their companies up to increased risk of being perceived as non-responsive and contrived (or not authentic).  The damage from being too slow can sometimes be more than acting quickly and genuinely.

What are companies to do?  Our moderator this week, Lucretia Pruitt, has been working on answering this question as well.  A veteran of the digital space, she has had her share of run-ins with the legal debate and has agreed to help all of us work through this.  Following in our tradition of 3 questions spaced 20 mins apart, Lucretia will lead the chat starting at noon eastern with the following questions:

Topic: Quick & Legal: How to Make Social Media Less Scary for the Legal Dept

Q1: How can big companies advocate for less regulation to reflect realities of social media engagement?

Q2: Should you train legal in SM and what does it look like?

Q3: How do you create SM policies/strategies that legal will accept?

We invite you to join in the conversation to share or learn or both!  Follow along by using #sm61 on your favorite Twitter client or simply follow along on our LIVE page.

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Posted in Privacy, corporate, social media | 1 Comment »

Connecting With Consumers Through Social Media

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

"Take a look from the outside looking in"

The title of this post pretty much sums it up.  So often we get caught up in frameworks and checklists and strategies and everyone is running around looking busy.  Meanwhile, back at ranch where the real work happens, consumers are still being marketed at even online.  How could this be?

It is helpful sometimes to take a step back and take a look at what you are doing from the outside looking in.  Consider how your consumers view you online and where they view you.  You might begin to understand why your social programs are performing the way they are.  So many strategies stop at the tools so you end up with a blog or a Facebook page and the strategist goes home.  Inevitably the same marketer or communications person does what they know and starts blasting messages.    As a result, the consumers that you were trying to get closer to actually end up further away.  To translate this back into social media jargon, you end up with an audience of lurkers (assuming they stay that long) when you are attempting to get those consumers engaged.

Jake McKee 90-9-1.com

Jake Mckee’s infamous 90-9-1 pyramid comes to mind.  If you do not make it easy, fast and safe for consumers to engage you will end up with more than 90 percent lurkers trolling your content.  On the other hand, if you take the time to create baby steps of engagement like a simple “thumbs up/down”, share this, or even a one question “quick poll” your audience will begin to engage more.  This helps to establish trust as well.  With trust comes responsibility though.  If you allow members to digitally attack each other via comment threads, etc then you will end up with the same 4 people running your site like street dogs marking their territory on trees.  Curating community content to keep it safe will go a long ways for members to want to contribute and connect with greater frequency.

Once they are connecting with higher frequency, what’s your plan then?  What messages do you want those consumers sharing?  Your consumers have 2 experiences with every interaction they have with you.  Those 2 experiences are perception and reality.   If you ask for suggestions, get them and never respond or even acknowledge them, the consumer’s perception is that you really don’t care.  All of these experiences get crafted into a story that is told and re-told online, at dinner parties, at the gym and anywhere else someone brings up your store, brand or product.

If consumers are your storytellers, then shouldn’t you have a plan to help shape that story every chance you get?  Two main themes are emerging: 1) enable consumers to connect with you more frequently and 2) have a plan in place to help mold their story about you once you do connect.  Sound straightforward?  If it does then you have never had to a) manage a community first hand, b) never been responsible for results or c) all of the above.

By design, our moderator has a lot of experience doing both.  Kyle Lacy is the head of Brandswag and a highly sought after social media practioner for businesses.  Kyle will lead a discussion around how to better connect with consumers by converting more passive consumers into active consumers of your brand and what to do once they become active.  This discussion will follow our weekly Tuesday event schedule taking place 5/4 at noon Eastern.    The topic and questions will be:

Topic: Connecting With Consumers Through Social Media

Q1) What are ways to move customers up the interactive chain from lurker to influencer?

Q2) What’s the value of storytelling vs. messaging?

Q3) How can you get customers to take action on your behalf and tell the story for you?

The event will begin with Q1 at noon eastern followed every 20 minutes with the next questions.  To follow along and add your POV simply track #sm58 via any Twitter client or follow along via our LIVE page.

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Posted in Content, social media | No Comments »

This Town's Not Big Enough For The Two of Us: Social Media Marketing (SMM) vs. Traditional Marketing

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Marketers seem to be more judicious before hopping on or off the social media bandwagon these days, yet they are still not quite sure where “social media marketing” fits within their organization.  Is social the “new” marketing or is it complementary to exisitng initiatives?  Beth Harte has a strong opinion on this matter and if you know Beth, I don’t think I’ll argue too much with her experience.

For our post, we have used much of Beth’s post from a couple of weeks ago to prep for our conversation this week.  Her original post follows:

“All of the panelists agree that social media are exciting new ways to listen and communicate, but they are basically new tools. So how do we get across to the marketing community that boring old marketing disciplines still apply and how do we get rid of this silly dichotomy between social media marketing and classic marketing.”  

My basic response was that social media tools are not new and some have been around for ten years or more. And second, there isn’t a dichotomy because social media needs to be integrated. 

I think this is a serious discussion that needs to take place because there marketers and marketing executives who have been given the wrong impression or direction when it comes to social media. 

Integrating Social Media 

First, I am not a fan of the term ‘social media marketing’ because a) it silos social media from other marketing communications tactics and other marketing disciplines and b) because a lot of folks out there are implementing social media tools without understanding the nature (or theory) of marketing as a whole. Second, as an integrated marketing practitioner, I totally disagree that ‘social media marketing’ is replacing classic marketing (or the theory that comes with it). 

What’s new and important is how these tools are being used in business; how we have a window into what our customers are really thinking, where they interact, how to engage with them, etc.; and how we now have data to serve our customers BETTER. 

But this notion of knowing our customers isn’t anything new…that’s basic marketing (and I mean ALL of marketing here, not just the promotional aspect of marketing), public relations and communications.

While CRM systems have been the tool of choice for keeping track of customers and extracting data  they never really allowed marketers to put faces to names (unless there’s some stealth way to take a photo and add it to your CRM), to listen to conversations or to actively engage in a two-way manner. The only tool that allows that is social media. 

The key to integration today is simple. Marketers need to be flexible, able to adjust, and most importantly able to provide pertinent AND timely information when, where and how customers/potential customers need/want it. Social media allows for that across all areas of marketing (product, pricing, promotion and distribution). 

Who/What Is Creating the Dichotomy?  

I think the most important issue here, however, is who/what is creating the dichotomy? Who or what is causing marketers to think that it’s an either/or situation? 

Is it that we’ve been siloed for so long and that there hasn’t been a good job with integration to begin with? We only need to look at E-Mail Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, and Direct Marketing to get a sense of the answer. 

As social media evangelists and practitioners we need to truly understand what is going on in our industry. Otherwise, we are doing a disservice to our customers and future as marketers. 

Beth’s post was perfect for this week’s chat which is set to take place Tuesday 4/6/10 at noon EST. 

Topic:  This Town’s Not Big Enough For The Two of Us: Social Media Marketing (SMM) vs. Traditional Marketing

Q1: Is SMM on its way to replacing traditional marketing?

Q2: Can marketers be as accountable with SMM as traditional marketing?

Q3: What are best practices for cooperating traditional marketing with SMM?

To follow along, use #sm54 or simply go to our LIVE site, now with new features.

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Posted in corporate, social media | 1 Comment »

What Location Based Social Means to Businesses

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Location, Location, Location the 3 key words that any business uses in selecting their real estate customers?

Location based social media tools are beginning to gain traction with early adopters.  Although they have been around for 4 years or so, it is just recently that there are enough smart mobile devices in the hands of consumers to gain some sense of critical mass.  In today’s economy, businesses are looking for anything that will help bring in more customers and location based solutions just might be an answer.

For those not as familiar, there are many types of location based solutions available.  Here is a sampling of what’s out there:

Find places around you: Where, Yelp, Loopt

Check in and earn status: Gowalla, Foursquare

Track Friends: Glympse, Ipoki

Find a new “friend”: MeetMoi, MeetNowLive, Grindr (for gay men)

These services work in a number of ways.  The newer phones like iPhone3G and the Android based devices have geo-location capabilities built in.  Other devices use cell tower triangulation like the original iPhone and some Nokia devices and some take advantage of location services across wi-fi connections.  With one of these devices, you can add your location to any tweet, status update or restaurant review or simply leave it turned “on” to allow anyone or only certain people to track your where abouts at any time.

Notably missing are the big boys you say? They are all either launching or have recently launched their own location based solutions as well:  Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter.  Facebook and Google are specifically using geo-tagging and location based services to capture more lucrative ad dollars from the small business markets.  Seems straight-forward for SMBs, instead of buying impressions or ad-words on local community sites, you would pay to show ads to people within 2 blocks of your store or even pay for actual visitors to your store.

Certainly, consumers seem to be taking the lead in adoption but how can businesses take advantage of attracting these early adopters to their stores, restaurants, clubs and bars?  That’s Jay Baer’s job to help us all figure it out!  This week Jay will be moderating the 53rd weekly chat for #socialmedia.  The details are as follows:

Topic:  What location based social means to businesses

Q1)  How will “check-ins” and geo-tagged content change the believability factor of ratings and reviews?

Q2)  What impact will widespread, instant, on the spot reviews and tips have on customer experience?

Q3)  Recommend best practices for businesses with a physical presence to capitalize on “check-in” behavior.

The chat will take place, as usual, on Tuesday 3/30 at 12 noon EST.  This week you can follow along by following #sm53 from any Twitter based client or simply follow our LIVE page.

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Posted in Mobile, social media | No Comments »

Characteristics of Highly Influencial Brands in Social Media

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

When you go out at night with friends, how do you decide who you go out with?  Sometimes you might like to hang out with the funny one, the quiet one or the friendly one, but whoever it is, there is some amount of trust and shared interest.  Whether in person or online, you have a choice of where to go and who you want to hang out with.  Understanding this simple perspective is easier said than done for companies who are jumping into the digital social space.

As the world has gone “social”, so too have companies.  In the past, a brand or company did not need a personality to be loved by entire generations only a good marketing department.  One of the biggest challenges with social media that companies have is transitioning their personalities from a prepared marketing push to an ad-hoc, two-way communication.  Some companies and brands are diving in and taking on the challenge of morphing their digital personality and some are not.  For those who are taking the leap, some are showing better results than others. 

Consider the results of a global corporation like Coca-Cola so loved on Facebook (with over 5 million friends and wall comments that PR firms can be proud of) while another global consumer goods company, Nestle, is having a bit of a time on Facebook to say the least.  The issue with Nestle in particular is very telling in many ways.  A small recap for the purposes of this post: Greanpeace puts up a video on YouTube mocking the Kit-Kat candy bar.  Many users took the mocked-up wrapper and used it on Facebook as their avatar to post messages.  A Nestle rep responded to not use altered versions of their logos or risk being deleted.  The rest….is, well, making history as we speak.  Grass-roots efforts build up and blow over for every company, look at Nike.  Remember in 1996 when the campaign against their use of sweatshops to produce their shoes was all the rage?  Guess what, it still is look here.  Back in 1996 Nike was forced to reconcile with the way their products were produced.  Their actions made enough people happier and for most it’s done and gone while for a few, they think Nike could still do more.  It’s not the grass-roots movement that set this tyrant off on Nestle, it was the tone and manner in which Nestle responded that set this off.  By the way, take a look at Nike’s Facebook page  now (1 of them), they have learned and in my opinion are using Facebook in a way that Nestle and every other conglomerate global brand should, by focusing on the experience of each Brand and not on a wide-open corporate catch-all experience (that’s probably a different topic though).

So what makes companies more likable than others in the digital or social media space?

This seems to be the million dollar question (or multi-billion in some cases).   How can companies convince consumers to be digital “friends” and hang-out on social media sites without causing virtual riots?  For this topic, Marc Meyer and I went to the top of the virtual food chain to get a moderator who could guide us through this subject and come out of it with helpful tidbits that any company can use.  Tamar Weinberg is a veteran of community management and released a book last summer on The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web that continues to do very well.  Her hands on experience with Mashable’s community along with dozens of other clients puts Tamar in a league of her own.  This week she will moderate 3 questions on the following topic:

Topic: Characteristics of Highly Influencial Brands in Social Media

Q1: Is there advantage to having Brand or a person be your SM “face”?
Q2: How do you choose to follow Brands on Twitter, Facebook, blog, et al?
Q3: Build a checklist for Brands on how to behave in SM for best results.

Join us Tuesday March 23 at noon EST for a 1 hour interactive chat.  Participate by following #sm52 on Twitter or simply go to our LIVE page to get to all the action.

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