The shit has hit the fan - now what?

As part of Social Media Club Atlanta’s Coffee and Content breakfast series – I recently spent the morning with a group of social media marketers discussing our favorite Social Media #Fails. Of course, we weren’t just meeting to laugh at our fellow marketers, but to try and learn how we can avoid some of the situations and pitfalls that these marketers found themselves in.

The discussion was lively - and definitely amusing - but I think the best part of the morning was our recap of what to do when you are the one making the mistake on social media. So here are my steps on how to minimize the damage, and perhaps turn the social media #Fail into something positive for the brand by showing that you are responsive, that you are transparent, and that you care about the community you are interacting with.

OK, here we go. Someone in your company did something on social media… and the shit has hit the fan. What do you do?

1. Own up to the mistake immediately. Timeliness and responsiveness are key to getting a handle on this and ensuring that it doesn’t become an even bigger issue than it has to. You may not have all the answers yet – but admitting that you made a mistake in a timely fashion and that you are actively investigating what happened will curtail a lot of chatter and speculation within the social community. The more time spent contemplating what to do next, the bigger the issue will become.
   
   
2. Admit your mistake – don’t shift blame. #1 and #2 go together. It’s your fault, admit it. (I don’t mean you personally, by name – but you the company or organization. PLEASE don’t publicly blame or shame an individual.)
   
   Don’t blame a 3rd party like your marketing agency either, even if they played a role in the mistake. You’ve heard “The buck stops here” – well it’s true. You are responsible for the oversight and management of your own social channels.
   
   
3. Explain what happened – be transparent. You know that authenticity is key to your interactions on social media. There is no time when this truer than when you are trying to recover from a blunder. Again though, transparency doesn’t mean throwing an individual or a 3rd party under the bus. Don’t think about how an individual failed – think about how the PROCESS failed.
   
   Transparency also means that you don’t try to hide the mistake. Trust me, within 5 seconds of your post, if something screwed up someone else has a screenshot of it. Now, if the content of your snafu is pornographic, obscene, a personal attack, or otherwise NSFW… sure, you probably want to remove it. But if you can, in the interest of transparency, you shouldn’t hide or delete your posts. Even when you screw up.
   
   
4. Discuss what changes are being made to prevent something like this happening in the future. This is the big one. What changes are you making, what new processes are being put in place to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again. This may be bigger than a tweet – you might need a blog post or something to really discuss the situation transparently and how you are rectifying the situation. But seriously, this is the most important step. Admitting you made a mistake doesn’t mean much if you aren’t talking about what you are doing to prevent these types of mistakes in the future. So… how are you updating your process, oversight, management, etc. to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again. 

It’s important to understand that these steps are for when YOU screw up. (Or someone in your organization.) They are not meant to be a general guideline for social media crisis management. That’s a whole other dirty fan we have to clean up.

So, what do you think, did I miss anything?

It’s SXSW Baby! It’s More! It’s Bigger! (But it’s still the same.)

I’ve just wrapped up my 13th SXSW. I met a lot of really great people in Austin - and the one question I heard more than any other when meeting new people was “How has SXSW changed over the years?”

Well… everything is different, and everything is still exactly the same.

My first year at South by there were just under 10,000 attendees during the week of Interactive. (That’s back when music didn’t overlap with Interactive or Film weeks yet.)

This year numbers are not official yet, but I would expect that close to 80,000 people attended conference sessions, and well over 400,000 are participating in some aspect of the conference this year.

It’s certainly harder to decide what to attend - there are lots of overlapping speakers, sessions and activations. FOMO is a real thing at SXSW. My advice, as in years past, has been to select 1 or 2 events each day that are your MUST DO events. And then, get to those events early and stand in line so you are sure you get in.

Everything else that happens each day is serendipity. Try to go to other events, but don’t stress if you can’t get in. Follow the flow, be open to just wandering or following along with friends or strangers when they invite you to join them somewhere. Follow a crowd if it looks interesting. Once of my best SXSW stories from years ago was joining a random meeting about 30 people. We were not told what to expect. And...the next thing we know we are all on Willie Nelson’s Tour Bus heading out to….but that’s another story.

What hasn’t changed over the years? The connections you make every day.  Seeing old friends, meeting online friends in person, and meeting new people is the heart of the SXSW experience. Attending a keynote session with 5000 people where you get to watch a celebrity on a screen is great - but I experience much more meaningful interactions from the small groups that I engage with.  Meeting people from a Facebook group over breakfast and coffee, or hanging with new friends on the back patio at the Four Seasons overlooking the water.  A great dinner at a food truck or one of Austin’s exceptional foodie restaurants.  Sitting at the bar meeting new people and catching up with friends at one of the many hosted events.

Wow, it’s really easy to just eat your way through SXSW.

So...what’s the SXSW experience in 2019 vs. 13 years ago? It’s bigger, lots more people, more overlapping and conflicting events, everything is way more crowded, it spreads out further each year.

And it is exactly the same in every way that matters.

Just cause you know Photoshop...you're not a designer!

My rant for the day:

Design is a skill as much as a talent. You can take art classes and learn all about composition, design principles, etc...  The problem with a lot of "digital designers" (and the schools that teach them) is that they learn how to use the software - and think that makes them a designer or artist. It doesn't.

Manage your Social Media Security and avoid hacks, mistweets, and major goofs

(You can download this as a PDF on my slideshare account at www.slideshare.net/brianrudolph_internationalmanofmystery)

Between the most recent Sony hack and some very prominent social media mistakes over the last few years, social media security is top of mind for a lot of companies right now.  Most of the cases that make news are a result of phishing attacks, poor password management, or poor social media tool and process management.  Brand Twitter accounts have been particularly vulnerable to security or process failures.  For example:

• Sony Corporation is compromised during events surrounding the release of “The Interview”
• US Airways accidentally tweets an extremely NSFW image when it replied to a customer.
• Burger King and Jeep had their Twitter accounts rebranded and hackers went on a juvenile rampage commenting from those accounts.  In both of these cases, the root account password was stolen by hackers due to failures in email security.
• Kitchen Aid, Microsoft, StubHub, Chrysler, Red Cross, The Vatican, and even Twitter itself have all posted inappropriate or offensive content when someone with access to multiple accounts on the same device published to the corporate account by mistake. 
• The Associated Press (AP) Twitter account was the victim of a phishing scheme.  During the time the account was compromised, the AP account erroneously reported a bombing in the White House. This threat damaged brand credibility, caused their Twitter account to be suspended, dropped their fan base from 2 million to 100,000 followers (although they gained most back.) The false bombing report also caused a 143 point drop in the Dow Jones stock market index. 

The potential negative impact to a brand or a company from a security breach or social media snafu can be huge.  However, in most cases, these types of incidents can be avoided with the proper planning, workflow, and some good old-fashioned common sense.

Here are some security practices that everyone should be aware of:

Part 1) Creating Accounts on Social Platforms

Don’t register your brands social media accounts with your personal email address.

The registered owner of all social media accounts should be an official address at your company’s domain.  Don’t use your personal email  (like your yahoo address) and don’t use your personal corporate email if you can avoid it.  Best case is to create a new unique email address on your corporate domain – if you register a lot of accounts, perhaps more than one.

• You want to use an email on your corporate domain whenever possible, it can make proving that your company is the authorized owner of the account a little easier should the need arise.
• If you can create a stand-alone email account – even better.  After all, if the account is registered to johnsmith@company.com - what happens when John leaves the company?
• Sometimes, however, you are not able to use a corporate account. YouTube and Google+ typically require a Gmail account. (Of course they do.) For these platforms, you can create a new Gmail account only for this purpose – don’t use your personal one. (Google recently changed this policy and you can now sign up without using Gmail using the link: https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail )
• Facebook requires that your personal Facebook account connect to the brand page to serve as an admin.  That’s fine, but I would strongly recommend using a Facebook Business Account whenever possible to manage your brand pages within the Facebook environment. Read more at https://business.facebook.com/ 

A quick note about Agencies:  If you are a brand, your advertising or marketing agency might be creating these accounts on your behalf.  Make sure that when they are creating your brand’s accounts – they do so using one of your own company’s email addresses.   Some agencies have a practice of creating accounts with agency emails. If you ever decide to take your business to another agency – you might have a challenging time getting ownership of your own account!  (And personnel turnover at agencies is another issue to be aware of….)

Use a strong password, and keep it safe!

You know the rules for a strong password.  Passwords should be at least 8 letters, a mix of lowercase and capital letters, numbers, and special characters.  Don’t have any common words, trademarks, or other guessable phrases. 

While using a strong password, it is still a good idea to choose lengthy, random content that can be remembered and communicated verbally. For instance, ‘BrickFenceCan#23’ may be a better choice than ‘~r_t-*s&PH2’

Limit who has access to the password and keep the password safe.  You might use one of the password keeper apps if needed.  Don’t distribute the password – if you have more than one person who needs to publish (and for a wide variety of workflow and safety reasons) everyone publishing or managing the account should be using a 3^rd party social media management tool such as Hootsuite, ExactTarget, Percolate, Expion, or a host of other options.) More about these tools below.

Don’t share passwords via email.  Let me repeat that louder: DON’T SHARE PASSWORDS VIA EMAIL.  This is one of the easiest ways for hackers to gain access to your accounts. Every time a password is emailed there is a copy of the content created on each recipient’s email provider, desktop, phone, corporate IT server, etc. If any of the recipients lose access to one of these locations your brand’s root credentials would be available.

Change your password at least every 90 days.  

Part 2:  Publishing and Ongoing Management

Use secure third-party social media management and publishing tools.

You don’t need to give your passwords out to everyone who is posting to your account.  Instead, provide each person access to a 3^rd party social media management tool such as Hootsuite, ExactTarget, Percolate, Expion, or many others.**  We are focused on security here, so I won’t go into details of selecting a publishing or management tool – pretty much all of them support multiple users with unique user accounts and role permissions for each person. 

Don’t use the same publishing tool for your personal accounts as you do for company accounts.

If your company uses one tool – use a different publishing tool for your personal accounts. If you have two completely unique tools, it will considerably reduce the risk of accidentally publishing a personal post on the company account.  

Limit the number of third party applications that have access to your account

Every so often, review your account and remove access to any third party applications that you don’t recognize or are no longer being used.   

(A third party application is any piece of software that needs access to your presence, typically through an API. If the application is no longer being used, it should no longer have access to your social account.  And if it is being used – it might be good to go in and update the passwords periodically.)

Restrict mobile device publishing to approved tools

It’s best practice to restrict direct access to your accounts and to use a 3^rd party publishing tool for publishing. This is true on both mobile devices as well as computers.  If you are going to be publishing a lot from mobile devices – you should look for a publishing program that has a robust mobile version to compliment your desktop access.

Cell phones and tablets get lost and stolen.  Keep that in mind when selecting “save my password” or “keep me logged in” options on your mobile device. It’s a risk!

Part 3:  Staying safer from hacking and phishing schemes

It’s hard to stay perfectly safe – but here are a few tips and best practices that can help keep your passwords safe and your system clean from malware and attacks that can compromise your accounts…

• Keep anti-virus software up to date, and run scans regularly.
• When possible, use 2-factor authentication. Using both a password and RSN key or SMS approval is much more secure than even the best password practices.
• Never login to your accounts when connected to public Internet access (such as a Starbucks.)  Instead, use a VPN to connect to your company network to create a secure connection before publishing to any social networks, accessing emails, etc…  from any public location. If you don’t have a corporate VPN, you can create personal a personal VPN on a computer that you keep at your office for this purpose.
• Never email your password.  If you are using a 3rd party publishing tool – the times you will need to provide your actual password to someone are pretty seldom.  However, if you do need to provide your password to an agency partner or a remote employee – give it to them directly to them over the phone or through some other more secure means. Several of the most prominent hacks in recent years were specifically due to hackers finding a password in an email message.
•  Limit the amount of time people need the administrator password, and reset the password when their task is complete.  Do now allow anyone to maintain an admin password for any extended period of time.  
• If you change agencies, fire your social media manager, or change your administrators for any reason – make sure you change the password before you give them the news.  I know we trust and want to think the best of the people we work with – but it’s always better to be safe. 

Be aware of phishing scams.  Here are some ways to avoid getting caught by a phishing email or message:

• Read your emails in plain text.
• Don’t open or click on any emails or messages from people you don’t know that contain any type of link.  Also be aware of:

• Unofficial “from” addresses

• Emails requiring “Urgent Action” from someone you don’t know.

• Generic Greetings

• Unexpected password resets:  Did you request a password change on your account before an unexpected email notification arrived? If not, you should be very suspicious.
• Are there spelling errors or bad grammar in what is expected to be a professional email?  This is a key indicator of a phishing scam email.
• Is a business email from an unexpected email address?  Beware of “spoofing” – when a scam artist pretends to represent a legitimate company.  You can mouse over (hover over) addresses and links to ensure they are really how they appear.
• Facebook, Twitter, Google (YouTube/G+) and other legitimate companies will never request personal information or passwords via email.   If you get a request asking you to “verify” your password, PIN, or other identifying information – don’t.

 Part 4: Create a Social Media Crisis Plan (just in case)

Even with the best-laid plans, you may still have a social media crisis that you have to deal with.  Loosing access to your account (whether by a deliberate hack or something less sinister) is something I hope you never have to deal with – but a scenario that should be part of your social media crisis plan.

I’m not going to go into the full details of a social media crisis plan here, as a good crisis plan deals with much more than just the security of your accounts.   I’ll simply remind you that 1) you need to have one, 2) it should contain contact information for the key people responsible for a response (and their backup,) and 3) it should clearly outline what anyone in the company should, and should NOT do on social media in a crisis situation.  

If your account is ever hacked, compromised, or part of any other type of social media crisis situation (even a PR issue) having an easy reference guide for everyone in your company that describes who to contact and what steps to take are crucial. 

**I’ve published a “Bag O’ Tricks” document which lists a number of free and paid tools for social publishing along with many other social media resources that may be handy to managers. You can find it here: bit.ly/brians-bag-o-tricks

Co-Authored by:

Brian Rudolph   

http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrudolph/

Wes Finley   

http://www.linkedin.com/in/wesfinley/

No big surprise - social media DOESN'T influence purchase decision.

There's a Gallup Poll making the rounds causing quite a bit of stir in the social media community.  There's someone else shouting "The sky is falling!! Social Media doesn't produce results!!" 

My friend Sam Fiorella at Sensei Marketing nails it on the head - the survey's questions are written to get the wrong answer. "Does Social Media influence purchase decision?" - I would also expect a low percentage to a question written like that.  It's a self serving question focused on the technology of social media, not on the personal connections with family and friends or the way they create influence.

There is another question in the very same survey: "Do you connect with your friends and family on Social Media?" 94% say yes. If you were to follow up that question with something like - "Do your friends and family influence your views on news, politics, and (...*gasp* here it comes...) brands and businesses?" Rutt Roh! I'll bet the percentage on that question would be equally high. 

I strongly recommend you read Sam's interpretation of the Gallup Survey.  It's focused on the fact that  "People Influence People, Social Media Does Not Influence People."  In other words - Why do you use social media? (“To connect with family and friends”) and those are the folk who can actually influence your decisions. 

Yoots are STILL USING FACEBOOK. Really.

All the talk is about how teens are leaving Facebook. In droves. 

The truth is, they're not leaving Facebook - they just are not using Facebook exclusively any more.  take a look at this chart from eMarketer:

What this is showing us is that Facebook has only lost its selectivity with teens, but they are still there. Teens used to over-sample on Facebook, and all social networks. Makes sense, since they are usually the early adopters. Now - especially on  Facebook - teens are just about as equally a balanced demographic on the platform as any other.

Does that mean you can't reach teens on Facebook? Of course not!  You simply have to be targeted in your content, make it desirable for them to share, and definitely consider amplifying your posts with paid media. 

This leads to a few other questions:

1) So...where are teens oversampling now? What are the platforms they are now the early adopters on?

• Teens are flocking to the newer, more visual based platforms like  Snapchat, Instagram or Vine. 
• Engage with teens across all these platforms. (Especially the ones their parents haven't adopted yet!)
• Make sure you look at your content on all these platforms on a mobile device, not just your computer. Teens consume content on the go.

2) How do you target content to make it desirable for teens to share?

•  Listen to the insight that visuals appeal to teens. Use images and videos in your posts over text based content.
• Ensure your content is relevant and valuable!   You content needs to provide value to them if you want them to share it. Think about what would make a teen look cool to their friends, and what would entice them to share your content. (We call this "social currency.")
• Use teens when talking to teens.  They are more likely to share content that depicts someone in their own age group.

Oh...I could keep going.  It's nice to start the brain dump process again. I'll post more in a bit. 

-b

Social Business by Design - Peter Kim

While in Austin at SXSW I had a chance to listen to Peter Kim from Dachis, who recently put out a book on Social Enterprise - Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company

In 20 minutes – he outlined the key principles for success of a social business program, which I think are extremely applicable to any company trying to launch Social Enterprise  initiatives.   

1.       Ensure that anyone and everyone can participate .  When you limit participation, you limit results.


2.       Create shared value by default. Most shared value is created in simple social connections and contributions  – however when they are all aggregated together, the value will build exponentially.


3.       While participation is self-organizing, focus on business outcomes. Don’t try to control the direction of the community, but clearly outline the business objectives for the organization and participation.


4.       Enlist a large enough community to achieve results.

5.       Engage the right community for your business objectives.  Ensure the correct communities are participating to both identify issues and discuss possible resolutions.


6.       Participation  can  take any direction, be prepared to take advantage of that.  You will be surprised at some of the directions and ideas. Be prepared to take advantage of serendipity.


7.       Eliminate friction. Eliminate barriers to participation. Ease of use is essential.


8.       Listen and engage continuously. 


9.       Tone and language of social is casual and human. No marketing speak, internal acronyms, etc… speak and respond with a human voice.


10.   Most effective social business activities are deeply integrated into workflow. Don't tack on to the end as an afterthought, participation in the Social enterprise must be integrated into the company workflow.  If you have to consciously shift from one to the other, you will limit participation and loose inspiration.

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