The small Sony HD camera I used for the @Ford website while I was at Ford. It's not the size that counts!

It seems as time goes on, as well, that these small and good quality video cameras are also being placed into almost every consumer’s hand by being in highly portable devices like small digital still cameras, FlipCams, mobile phones, and even iPods. Some of these device makers, such as with the Kodak Zi8, create their software with the ability to upload directly to Facebook and YouTube. To take it even further some devices, such as the new iPhone 4 or Ion Audio’s Twin Video, are equipped with cameras on both sides of the devices that allow for recording video of both the user and their surroundings at the same time. This, coupled with editing software built in directly, as with the new iPhone 4, means that consumers have the ability to create engaging video content for the web at almost anytime.

Ion Audio's Twin Video has the ability to record video on both side of the camera at the same time.

So the question then becomes what are you doing with consumers’ ability to create, edit, and upload video at almost any point during their day? According to YouTube, every minute, 24 hours of video are uploaded to it’s site. How much of that video is talking about your products? Reviews about their experience in your store or restaurant? Impromptu commercials for a special contest you’re running? Stories about how they are using your product or service to better their lives?

What are you doing to turn these consumers with access to amazing video technology into your brand advocates?

I’d love to hear about how you are using this evolving technology in your Internet marketing. Comment below!

Facebook, as most people are aware, has become an Internet power house. The weekend of March 13, 2010, Facebook once again overtook Google as the most visited website for the week as it also did on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day 2010. It is estimated that its 465,562,160 users also give Facebook about 41% of all social media web traffic. Looking at the usage numbers can also be quite staggering. According to a website-monitoring.com study completed in mid-March, it was reported that:

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 3 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content are shared each week
• The average users spends more than 55 minutes each day on Facebook

Of course, as Facebook has grown and changed over time, it seems that some of the magic has been wearing off. Common complaints that have faced Facebook over the past few years seem to mostly center on people being fed up with having the layout change to a format that they didn’t like. As of recent, though, the complaints coming from everyone (from users to congressmen) have focused on Facebook’s usage of user data and privacy.

In case you have been hiding in a cave for the past month or so, the big problem that people have with Facebook currently is their new Open Graph API. This basically allows websites to pull in a user’s Facebook friends and other information to help connect them to other sites and services like Pandora and CNN.com. While the idea behind this is great, in my opinion, Facebook made all the sharing preferences set as ‘on’ by default without much explanation on how to turn it off. This, obviously, upset a lot of people. In the midst of it all, Mashable.com ran a survey for people we were planning on deleting their Facebook accounts to hear what their reason behind leaving was. According to the survey, two of the top responses were, “I don’t trust it with my personal data” and “It sells my data to advertisers”.

Why Facebook Users Are Considering Leaving - Mashable.com | Brenna Ehrlich

Recently, Facebook has made an effort into creating a solution to users’ privacy concerns by doing a total privacy overhaul that should make it easier for users to customize their privacy settings clearly and easily. It remains to be seen, though, if this move will lessen people’s growing anger and mistrust of the site.

What is your take on all of this, though? Is it too little too late?  Are you fed up with Facebook, all the games, and what they are doing with your data? Could you not be part of the more than 60 million status updates each day and delete your Facebook account?

Please feel free to comment below as I’d love to hear your thoughts!

References

http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/

http://theeword.co.uk/seo-manchester/facebook_dominates_social_media_traffic.html

http://mashable.com/2010/05/25/facebook-quit-survey-results/

http://www.checkfacebook.com/

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2010/03/facebook_reaches_top_ranking_i.html

Some marketers know that one component to add into a mobile marketing plan is the creation of a mobile app to run on devices like iPhones, Blackberrys, Palm phones, or Android equipped phones. Having an app is just one way to give a consumer increased access to a company’s services as well as increase a company’s brand recognition. According to studies, apps are also in high demand by consumers. Nielson reported that in the second quarter of 2009, there were 40 million app downloads and the industry as a whole has had approximately 3 billion downloads altogether. Looking at this surge of use, where is the app for your company?

MyFord Touch

After asking that, my next question is what happens to your app and mobile marketing plan when technology shakes things up again? Ford did this earlier this week at the 2010 CES. They announced that the next generation of SYNC and their new MyFord  Touch or MyLincoln Touch technology would allow mobile apps running the new SYNC API to be used by the system. As a quick backgrounder, SYNC allows drivers to use voice control access different services and features such as navigation, traffic, and hands-free calling by the system tapping into driver’s smartphone. With the upgrade of SYNC and the addition of MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch, a driver’s favorite apps that are equipped with the SYNC API are now able to enjoy the same hands-free control. The first apps to take advantage of this are Pandora, Stitcher, and OpenBeak. That’s right, Internet radio and Twitter right in your car via voice-control while you’re driving.

MyFord Touch and Pandora

So now I ask, how does this change your app strategy? Knowing that a mobile user would be able to use your app safely while driving around, would you create something for this? As a grocery store, would you create a SYNC enabled app that allows a customer to create a shopping list while they drove to your store? As an electronics store, would you create an app that allowed them to compare the different specs on TVs while they headed over to get one? For language training software, would you create an app that allows a customer to access all of their lessons during their morning commute? The possibilities are literally limitless for application of this technology. The question, though, is what are you going to do with it and your mobile marketing campaign?

In case you would like to view more information about the new SYNC API, the video below is a portion of the 2010 CES Keynote presentation where Ford introduces it.

Full disclosure: While Internet marketing and social media are his hobbies and potential future career field, Brad currently works for Ford as the Video Coordinator for Employee Communications, Broadcast Operations, and Public Affairs.

“Marc Ostrick and Michael Sean Wright set out to document a day at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. Ostrick, Co-Founder of eGuiders teamed up with fellow documentarian Wright, founder of nicefishfilms, to take the pulse of what some are calling the new media ‘revolution’. The gathering of bloggers, lifestreamers and seasoned journalists provided an opportunity to dialog with media producers from around the world. Ostrick and Wright attempted to push the limits of the current technology, shooting with Kodak Zi8 and Flip Ultra HD cameras. The short doc is part of the conversation focused on the shifting landscape of media. The new dial tone is a dialog among media producers, technologists and bloggers who are looking to express their ideas into the stream of the real-time web. The filmmakers shadowed Robert Scoble, early technology blogger-evangelist as he interacted with the influencers in social media. “Social media… is the new dial tone,” according to author Chris Brogan.”

One of the best things about this video, I think, is towards the end where Michael Sean Wright talks about how CNN doesn’t send a huge crew anymore to events but someone with a small format camera. I see this every day at Ford as, with my position, we shoot a lot of interviews and events using a small handheld HD camera and edit using Final Cut Pro on a laptop. Sure, for major events things were a nicer camera/lens would be required, we hire out professional camera crews and edit on high end gear. But for the everyday communication from Ford to its employees and customers, the format has changed a lot. An example of this is the interview I taped with Mark Fields talking about establishing trust with employees and customers through communication.

In the end, great job to these guys on putting this together!

In the past, previous versions of marketing tools and plans required only that the company come up with a catchy jingle or entertaining commercial. This information was directed to consumers, and even employees, in a one way direction. The company makes the message. The company then sends the message to a distribution tool such as TV or radio. Then consumers receive the messages. There was not much they could do to communicate back to the company or even look for advice outside of their close circle of friends. Sure there were the sales people, but could you really trust them since they were trying to sell you a product? Employee communications were not that different in that a company would have a message or idea it wanted its employees to think/feel, and so it gave it to them.

Telling and Not Listening

With the increased use of the Internet and invention of social networking, a review of a company or product is just a few clicks away. A consumer can read reviews, commentary, blogs, or even Tweets from people they may never have met from all over the world and make a decision based on what everyone is saying. Employees can communicate the love or disgust of their company with friends and countless others. Seeing this, businesses have begun to see that this is an area that they need to be involved with. However, if the interaction is done poorly, within hours the attempt can sometimes end up needing brand damage control.

Say, for example, that you have a company that has decided to embrace this new format for communication because you deem it important to be apart of it. So you setup a Twitter account and begin broadcasting all the great things about your company to the world. People message you or make comments, but you ignore them because they are not directly related to the ad you’re about to post. After a few weeks, you’re wondering why it isn’t working, why you have so few followers, and sales haven’t increased. Why did this happen? Because even though you were using the new tools, your communication habits never changed and you were still using one-way communication.

One-way Communication

In their book Trust Agents, authors Chris Brogen and Jukien Smith talk about Robert Scoble. In case you are not familiar with Robert, he was an employee at Microsoft back in 2004. What made him so different is that on his blog he not only talked about the good things that were going on, he offered open commentary that would often put competitive companies and products in a better light than Microsoft. He also freely requested people’s comments and even posted his personal cell for people to call if the had questions. This kind of openness and transparency led people to openly trust him and just about everything that he said. Why? Because he wasn’t just promoting the company he worked for. He was giving honest opinions, both good and bad. This is what developed the trust of all the people following his blog. How transparent is your company?

As you may or may not know, I currently work for Ford Motor Company in the Employee Communications area coordinating all of the video production and video scheduling. One thing that has really impressed me during my time at Ford has been their openness to honestly communicate what is going on with the company and how we are all doing to both employees and customers. This type of transparency, I believe, goes a really long way in not only keeping employee morale high, but also develops that all important trust with employees and customers. In a recent interview I recorded with Mark Fields, President of The Americas for Ford, he talked about the importance of being transparent and authentic with your employees and customers to build trust.

Mark Fields Talks About Trust and Authenticity in Corporate Communication from Brad Lowrey on Vimeo.

So how is your business doing? Has it openly embraced social networking and pursuing that active, two-way communication/relationship with its employees and customers? Or is it still trying to dictate a message that may be falling on deaf ears?

“produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event.”

Due to a tremendous uproar over the policy by the media, fans, and free speech advocates, the SEC decided to revise the original proposal and posted the new guidelines earlier this week. The revision states that:

“No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a “real-time” description or transmission of the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of such Event. Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable. If the SEC deems that a Bearer is producing a commercial or real-time description of the Event, the SEC reserves the right to pursue all available remedies against the Bearer. Absent the prior written permission of the Southeastern Conference, game action videos of the Event may not be taken by Bearer. Photos of the Event may be taken by Bearer and distributed solely for personal use (and such photographs shall not be licensed, used, or sold commercially, or used for any commercial or business purpose).”

While this revision is a good step in the right direction, by now allowing fans to update things like Twitter and Facebook updates, it still is missing the point to all the uproar. I believe that people understand the SEC’s need to try and keep their exclusivity agreements. I think where people have the hardest time understanding this is how the SEC, in a sense, is comparing the video camera built into an iPhone and access to a Facebook account with the 5-15 HD broadcast cameras, production truck, satellite feeds, and on-screen talent/commentary that ESPN or CBS are using and providing. Being a college football fan myself, I can not imagine trying to watch a game or its highlights from someone’s cell phone video camera. Nor would I decide to skip watching a televised game because someone would be providing updates via a Twitter feed. If anything, any kind of interesting highlight, post, or Tweet about what’s happening in the game would make me want turn on the TV to watch. Bottom line, I think this policy came out of confusion and a basic misunderstanding of social media, its purpose, strengths, capabilities, and issues.

Some Organizations Are Doing It Right

When I think of sports organizations using social media to maximize their reach and audience, two particularly stick out. The first, oddly enough, is one of the SEC’s neighbor conferences The Big Ten. If you take a look at the Big Ten page or any of the schools in the Big 10 (University of Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, etc.), you will find their athletic programs are fairly active in social media. A good example of this are all the official Twitter accounts for the individual schools and fans that are listed on The Big Ten Network’s site or the official accounts listed directly on the Big Ten’s main site.

Screen shot from http://www.bigtennetwork.com/twitter/

When thinking about sports organizations who are using social media to their advantage, the other one that sticks out to me are the New York Islanders and the NYI Blog Box. Basically, in 2007, the New York Islanders decided to create an opportunity for avid fans to be able to blog and talk about their team to increase the overall coverage of the team from a fan’s perspective. One thing that made this effort unique was in how the Islanders treated those selected to be a part of the Blog Box. These bloggers were given press credentials, placed in their own special section of the arena, and even given the ability to interview players and coaches after the game. While the bloggers were not allowed to blog live from the game, this still opened up an opportunity and showed that the Islanders encouraged this kind of communication via a social media tool. This is a quote from one of the fans turned blogger from the Islanders’ web site:

“Blogging as a function is actually the voice of the people, so, as Islander fans, we’re serving not only to entertain the fan base, but also to represent it,” said Dee Karl, author of the Unique Perspectives of the 7th Women blog. “It’s more work than I ever expected, but more fun than I could have ever imagined. It’s bridged the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and really has made us ‘all Islanders.’”

How the SEC and Other Sports Organizations Could Use Social Media During Live Events

No matter which way you look at it, social media and social networking are completely changing how people interact with their world and those around them. While there are a lot of growing pains that will take place, I believe that eventually most or all businesses (including sports organizations and even traditional media) will have to embrace and use social media to increase the overall engagement of their customers, clients, and fans. Instead of trying to stop the inevitable in this case, the SEC could have been very creative and come up with a few different ways to encourage fan participation using social media tools while still maintaining their media contracts.

Encouraging Use of Status Updates on Twitter and Facebook

As I mentioned before, there are not too many sports fan that I know (me included) who would rather watch updates from a game through someone’s Twitter feed or their Facebook status updates. If I was working on something else during a game and wasn’t able to view it live but saw someone Tweet about how Michigan scored an amazing touchdown or how close the game was, you can bet I would be doing everything I could to get to a television to watch. So by encouraging a fan in the stadium to Tweet, they just got another television viewer that ESPN and CBS can serve ads to.

Have “Guest Commentary” During the Game

Another way to use the tools and social media in a somewhat controlled environment would be to create a mobile website or mobile app that allowed fans to video record themselves with their phones doing commentary or talking about a highlight that just happened. This 30 second to 1 minute video would post on the site for viewing and would invite their friends to check them out talking about a highlight like the last touchdown. This could also be expanded into a contest where there would be voting on the best commentary for each game with prizes like free tickets, trip to a bowl game, etc. The end all benefit to this would be not only increasing fan engagement, but also bringing valuable metrics and exposure to people who may not have watched the game to begin with.

Live Interaction Using SMS

To increase live interaction during the game, they could post polling questions on the best play that quarter or have live voting for the “Fan Choice MVP” on the main scoreboard video screen. Fans present at the stadium would text in their votes using a special code or message using their cell phone. This would give fans a way to interact live with the event and those around them while also allowing the organization to capture valuable metrics and user information.

Calling An Audible and Moving Forward

As I mentioned in the last section, social media is drastically changing how consumers are interacting with companies and their world. This, both fortunately and unfortunately, is going to inevitably force businesses and organizations to ‘call an audible’ and change how they typically approach consumers or get pushed out of the way by those organizations that will. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I think the SEC revising their policy is a good step in the right direction, but they really need to take a cue from the Big Ten and engage their audience instead of trying to impose almost completely unenforceable rules on them. Because in this new social media world, it will be the consumer who decides who wins and loses in the end.

According to a new study on data loss prevention published by Proofpoint, an average of 1 in 6 US companies that took part in the survey investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via social networking or social media sites. Here are how the numbers from the study breakdown:

• 18% of US companies investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via video or audio media posted to a media sharing site (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo). 15% have disciplined an employee for violating media sharing/posting policies in the past 12 months. 8% reported terminating an employee for such a violation. 42% are highly concerned about the risk of information leakage via media sharing sites.
• 17% of US companies investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via a posting to a social networking site (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn). 10% have disciplined an employee for violating social networking policies in the past 12 months. 8% reported terminating an employee for such a violation. 45% are highly concerned about the risk of information leakage via posts to social networking sites.
• 13% of US companies investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via an SMS text or Webbased short message service (e.g., Twitter). 41% are highly concerned about the risk of information leakage via Web based short messaging (e.g., Twitter).
• 18% of US companies surveyed investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via a blog or message board posting. 17% disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies in the past 12 months. 9% reported terminating an employee for such a violation. 46% are highly concerned about the risk of information leakage via blogs and message board postings.

Looking at data like this and seeing that companies are looking more closely at what their employees are doing, what is a person to do? Stop using the sites and services to be safe? No, I believe the answer is just use them smarter. Here are some tips on how to keep yourself safe while still being able to connect with friends and family on social media and social networking sites.

Check Your Company’s Social Media Policy

As social media and social networking becomes more prevalent, many companies are beginning to adopt social media policies for their employees. These companies recognize that having and encouraging their employees to post comments about the company on their own personal sites can help the company’s overall brand development and marketing. They also recognize that there are possibilities for having trade secrets or inside information released and so they make policies letting employees know exactly what they can or can’t post. If your company doesn’t currently have a policy, suggest that one be created and do what you can to help out.

Keep Business and Personal Separate

About 6 years ago I was working for a company and it was discovered that they were using key logging and screen capture software on the computers to monitor everything that was going on. This was not a published policy and it was only discovered after a fellow employee had been fired for typing some comments about the owners in an instant message session with a friend. I remember feeling like my privacy had been totally violated. I checked my personal email, bank accounts, sent my wife (girlfriend at the time) and friends email… and all of this had been monitored and captured by the company’s system. Ever since then, I live ‘off the grid’ while I’m at work. I don’t check personal email or personal sites while on a work computer. When provided, I don’t use a company laptop at home for personal items or web surfing. I even carry 2 cell phones when required to have a work phone. Some people look at this as extreme, but I believe that my personal life is my business and not my company’s.

Sometimes, though, you have to find a way to mix the two. You’ll probably make friends at work and want to make them your friend on Facebook or connect with them on LinkedIn. Should you bar them from being a part of your personal life? Not necessarily. Sites are now starting to recognize the need for changes to their publishing/privacy policy and capabilities. Facebook is one of them. If you have a Facebook account, one of the easiest ways to keep people separate and ensure that the right people see the right content is to create different Friends Lists. This feature allows you to place different friends into different groups. Once in these groups, you can set up different levels of privacy for your content. For example, you can create a group called Managers for all the management at your company who might be on your friends list. Then you could create a privacy setting that keeps the Managers group from seeing your status or photos tagged of you. Alison Driscoll wrote a great blog on how to exactly do this and I would recommend checking it out for more information.

Don’t Use an Updating Service

With something like 50+ major social media and social networking sites out there, it can get really hard keeping everything updated and synchronized. That is where update services like Ping.fm can really come in and save you time. The basic idea behind these update services is that you make one post and it will update all of your social media/networking sites. While the idea behind services like this are fantastic and really helpful, it can come back to cause trouble in the long run. For example, say you have done really good about keeping your Facebook all personal contacts and your LinkedIn profile a mix between professional and personal. If you had Ping.fm setup to update both, anything that you post to one will show up on the other. This just makes it too easy to accidentally vent on Facebook and then have it show up on LinkedIn. Because of this, as a general rule of thumb, I typically don’t recommend using these types of services. If you do, just pay attention to the next point and make sure you think before posting your update.

Think Before You Tweet

This may seem like common sense… but for some reason common sense is always overlooked! Before you Tweet, post that blog, or let those on Facebook know “what’s on your mind”, take a second to think about what you are about to publish for the world to see. If you’re using an update service like Ping.fm, what sites are about to be updated? Who is on your friends list? Should they see what you are about to broadcast? Could what you are about to submit be confidential or a business secret? Just taking a few seconds to think about questions like this and what you are about to post could mean the difference between collecting your pay check or a pink slip on Friday. As general rule of thumb, when in doubt… don’t post. Bottom line, social media and social networking sites are here to stay and can be fantastic resources. As more and more company HR departments use these types of sites in applicant screening, they can even be used to get you that next job. It all comes down to your ability to manage your personal brand and being able think about who will see the posting before you end up making a huge mistake that could cost you friends, your credibility, and even your job.

Creating Your Brand

One of the first steps in managing your online brand is to have one. This can be established a few different ways, but the fastest and best way is to make sure you have a presence online.

You.com

One of the best ways to ensure you have a strong presence online is to have your own website. This can be a very scary idea to some people who may not be as tech savvy as others, but with the different services available now, just about anyone can create some sort of website in a short amount of time. If you need to get a web address, in my opinion, one of the best places to get started is GoDaddy.com where you can purchase a domain name and even have them host your email and website. The added bonus to having your own domain is that you can have a more professional looking email address instead of something like pinkfluffybunnies23513@yahoo.com.

Google Profile

Another way to ensure you show up properly in Google searches for your name is to create a Google Profile. This profile will let you add as much information about yourself as you feel comfortable with as well as allowing you a place to put links to your other sites. The best part about a Google Profile, though, is that when someone searches for your name, your profile will appear at the bottom of the first search results page that Google returns! This can go a long way to ensure that potential employers find you and you control where they view your content online.

LinkedIn & Other Professional Networking Sites

While your first thought might be to use your Facebook or MySpace as part of your online brand, this may not be the best use for a personal social networking site. Friends or other people you are aquatinted with may post inappropriate content that you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see. Lucky enough, services like Facebook allow you to set up privacy rules to prevent people other than your ‘friends’ from seeing your information. Federal laws even protect you as it extended the reach of Equal Opportunity Employement to cover you if a potential employer did not hire you based on age, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or veteran status information they found in a private profile. Best rule of thumb, though, keep your personal networking and professional networking separate and lock down your personal profile sites. You may be wondering if you can’t use Facebook or MySpace, what is there to use? One of the best professional networking sites out there is LinkedIn. It is one of the best resources currently on the internet for professional networking and having your professional information available on the internet. Once you create a profile, I would recommend making most of your profile information available to the public as it will allow Google and other search engines to index the most amount of information connected to you which can help to increase your performance in organic search results. The other nice aspect of LinkedIn is that you can connect with others on the site in your company and profession. There is a common statement that says that “it’s not what you know, it’s who”, so the more people you can connect with in your profession, the better. Other professional networking/profile sites include: Xing.com, Zoominfo.com, and Spoke.com

Professional Blogs and Forums

One of the other places that can help you appear more online, and appear as a viable resource for your particular industry, is to contribute to the conversation on professional blogs and forums. Most industries have a space where professionals come together to talk about news, techniques, etc. Join one of these online communities and start contributing. Depending on how the administrator has the blog or forum setup, chances are that the search engine bots are crawling through indexing the information. Another thing to do is ensure that a link to your domain always appears in your signature on the profile. Not only will this help to drive traffic to your site by other members/readers, it will also help validate your site to the search engines. If for some reason you can’t find a good online community to contribute to… start your own!

Monitoring Your Brand

Now that you have your presence established, your job is about half over. The other side of it is that you need to continually monitor what is going on and how you are appearing. Sometimes directories can pull the wrong or out dated information from sites or, even worse, someone may be posting bad or inappropriate content related to you.

Google Yourself

One of the easiest and fastest ways to see what potential employers would see when looking for information on you is to do what they would do and google (verb not noun) yourself. While you are looking through Google, it may be worth the effort to also search using other popular engines such as Yahoo! and Bing. A quick searching tip, if you have a formal first name (Bradford) and a name that everyone calls you (Brad), make sure to check both.

Setup Google Alerts

One way to take your Google search to the next step is to use the Google Alerts service. The nice part of this service is that it allows you to setup a search term to monitor (i.e. your name) and when the search bot comes across that term during indexing, it compiles a report, and that report is sent to your email. While this is a fantastic free service, it is not updated all the time and, depending on your online activity, you may not receive an alert email more than 2-3 times a month. Bottom line, a great thing to setup but it shouldn’t take place of an occasional Google search of your name.

SocialMention.com

SocialMention.com is a great tool that will help you to track your appearances on sites like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, and Digg. One of the best things about SocialMention.com is that the results page is fairly detailed and includes information like the average time between mentions and an estimate on whether the information is positive or negative. The site also offers a free daily alert service that sends results directly to your email.

Only You Can Prevent a Personal Brand Disaster

Depending on what you do and how well you manage it, when a potential employer goes searching for your information, they could find results that confirm you are the person for the job… or find items to give them second thoughts. In the end, though, you are the one that will control how you appear online. As Chris Brogan puts it, “the Web has become our workplace, our water cooler, and our social mixer”. You can get almost as much information about a person online as you can from talking with them in person during an interview. With proper management, the information they find about you online will set you up to be just the person they were looking for.

Every seminar, book, and resource I have ever read on the topic has had the same exact answer… respond using the same exact way the damage is being done. If someone posts a bad review on their blog, have someone important in the company email or call the person to fix the problem and then post an apology/solution as a comment on the blog. If they make a YouTube video (like the whole Domino’s cheese thing) respond to consumers using a video in YouTube. Writing a press release might be a part of the response to handle broadcast media, but it’ll never reach most of the people who are still watching or reading the bad report online. Bottom line, monitor social media and use it to manage your reputation. Don’t be scared of it or try to pretend it doesn’t exist because that will not accomplish anything. One great example of how to use social media to monitor and handle your reputation online comes from Comcast. This summary comes from Augie Ray and was posted on Social Media Today:

Comcast Responds: This is the story of a potential disaster that was largely averted. Michael Arrington, owner of the enormously popular blog TechCrunch, was getting bad service from his ISP, Comcast. Michael’s connection was down and Comcast was not resolving the problem with the speed Michael expected, so he started “tearing into Comcast on Twitter.” Problem is, he has 12,000 followers, so his tale of woe was reaching huge numbers of people, all of whom are early adopters and significant consumers of technology. Unexpectedly, 20 minutes after his Twitter post, Michael got a call from a Comcast executive who wanted to know how he could help. Comcast was monitoring Twitter and reached out to resolve the issue. What could’ve been a PR disaster was turned into a cause for praise and compliments, thanks to Comcast’s proactive use of social media.

So a great example of how a company can use social media to help manage their reputation online to prevent a possible disaster. A current example of this is with United Airlines. The long story short, on a flight to Nebraska, Dave Carroll witnessed his $3500 Taylor guitar being mishandled by baggage handlers which resulted in it being broken. He tried for 9 months to get them to replace/repair/pay for the guitar. After no luck, he decided to write a few songs and now has posted the first on YouTube. Click here to view the video. This video (and the promise of 2 more) is a huge opportunity to United to turn some bad PR into something good and make themselves look good to all the consumers who are currently being served this negative review. Jason Murphy posted in a blog on SEOmoz.org an advisory letter to United on how to handle the situation and I think these points could be used by any company as the basis for how to handle bad online PR like this. Here are the main points from the blog or you can click here for the original post.

Acknowledge it happened and that you were wrong. By taking this official stance and letting your employees, PR firms, and ad agencies know that is your stance, you are opening the doors to allow mending to begin. This goes beyond a few corporate tweets or a press release. This needs to be a letter to all your employees so they can adopt the same views and show it in their customer relations. It’s true that you abided by your internal policies and this was a series of coincidental bad timing and follow-up, you still need to adopt the internal stance that you wronged a paying customer. Without this first step, nothing else matters.

Respond to Dave directly using Dave’s way. Write a song, produce a video. This doesn’t need to be as thought out and well produced as Dave’s video, but it should definitely be humorous and light hearted. But it should also say “We’re Sorry!” loud and clear. For example, you could use the lyrics “It broke our hearts when we heard we broke your guitar”. Using Youtube, post this video as a Video Response to Dave’s. This video might have an opportunity to go viral too, so get some quick minds on it and get it up ASAP.

Send an email to all your consumers on your mailing list. It would be best if this was a letter from the CEO. Inform consumers of the video, that you thought it was fun and done very well, and that you are sincerely sorry that you caused Dave so much grief but you are thankful that he was able to have some fun at your expense. Link to this video directly from your newsletter so consumers know what you are talking about, and realize you aren’t trying to hide it. Next acknowledge that you are aware that Dave isn’t the only one who has had misfortune regarding baggage handling. Apologize to all your customers in this email. Then explain that you’re working directly with your contracted ground crews to enforce stricter baggage handling policies.

Create a campaign asking every user to create their own YouTube music. Use those videos as part of a advertising campaign (online and ofline) to show that United Airlines now offers better baggage service. “No one cares about your stuff like you do, except for us.” or something along those lines would make for a great message. The prize: 5 new Taylor Guitars or free airfare for a band (any 4 people).

Hire Dave Carroll to produce a commercial. Yes, I said that. Hire him. This would go way beyond anthing you could do by paying to replace a relatively unknown band’s music equipment. By hiring him you are giving him, his band, and their creative abilities massive exposure. You are also ultimately owning up to your mistake and making the best of this situation in the most transparent way possible. The commercial doesn’t need to about baggage handling, but it does need to show Dave’s face and be a catchy jingle.

The association between United and guitars has been made, so leverage it. Do something crazy like offer every member of the studio audience of Ellen a free guitar (cheap $100 Gibson acoustics from Costco) and free tickets for two. If anyone reports a broken guitar upon arrival at their destination, they get a million Mileage plus miles. It doesn’t have to be to this extent of crazye (or maybe you should), but the idea is to get people thinking that you are serious about protecting their luggage, even if it is a guitar.

Finally, and this should be a no brainer, feature Dave’s band Sons of Maxwell in your in-flight entertainment. Write a cover story for your in-flight magazine, play their entire catalog in your in-flight music, and maybe even do a documentary for your in-flight TV. These are just a few of the many, many ways you can capitilize on this moment of misfortune, and turn a negative into a positive. I’m sure that the community where this letter is posted will also have additional insight in their commentary to this letter, since I know they are some of the brightest minds on the entire Internet. Dave’s story isn’t finished. He promised that he would write three songs. Song 1 is produced. Song 2 is written. And with the attention he’s getting, you can bet he’s going to write Song #3 soon. If you and your agencies play your cards right, the third song will be like a happy ending to a story. It will be about how you finally listened and you helped out. Ultimately, the goal here should be that when Dave writes his third song, the title should be something about “United bought me a brand new guitar!”

So what is the overall moral to this story? As a company, your online reputation should be just as important to you as it is in broadcast and printed media. It is always important to track and react when a customer is unhappy or your reputation is being tarnished. The key thing to keep in mind is that the reaction and/or apology must use the same delivery that the initial complaint or bad PR came from. Especially in social media, it is important to reach consumers using the same tools that use to communicate. Issuing a press release when a ‘tweet storm’ is taking place will not only waste your time and not communicate to the proper audience, but it could give you more bad PR in the end.