Social media is more mainstream than ever, with most businesses at least aware of blogging, Facebook and Twitter – even if they aren’t using them routinely. Many medium to large sized organizations have now been using or experimenting with social media for some while now, to the point where many individuals and departments have created a range of social media.

However,  they do not always have the guidance to use it in an appropriate way that reflects the brand and ‘voice’ of the business – or coherent policies and procedures to inform their use of social media.

This can lead to social media mishaps. Anyone can tweet something they regret later; for a business, it can be disastrous to break the unwritten rules of social media and incite a backlash against your brand.

Look at what happened to Habitat in June 2009. During the Iran election crisis, #iranelection and related hashtags were top trending topics, as Twitter became the main way to get news out of Tehran. UK home furnishing store Habitat suffered a social media backlash when tweets from their @HabitatUK account included updates such as “#Mousavi Join the database for free to win a £1000 gift card”. This is known as “hijacking a hashtag” – and people on Twitter really don’t like it. Habitat swiftly blamed a marketing intern and publicly apologized – but not before damage had been done to their brand.

At the less serious end of the spectrum, even something as seemingly trivial as the naming conventions you use for Twitter or YouTube accounts is important to agree on as an organization, to avoid confusing your audience and to reflect your brand as you would wish. Having a clear procedure for initiating social media campaigns will help you avoid multiple accounts or duplicated effort, and a ‘social media zoo’ of free-range Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other accounts that people across the organization are barely aware of.

Policies, guidance and procedures – which can be communicated to staff via clear documentation and training – will help avoid these traps, big and small.

10 Things to Include in Your Social Media Policy

I make a distinction between top-level corporate policies, departmental guidelines, and team strategies. As these cascade down the organization they get less directive and more strategic. Together with a procedure for initiating social media campaigns, these form the basis of your organizational social media marketing framework.

There is a fine balance between being so restrictive you stifle creativity, informality and the conversational approach that usually works best in social media; and giving employees carte blanche to do as they please with little or no guidance.

A corporate social media policy is the starting point, and will usually be set by a Corporate Communications department or equivalent – ideally in consultation with senior managers, and informed by a social media audit of what is already taking place in the organization. It should include the following key elements:

1. Purpose – What the document is for and who it relates to.
2. Company Philosophy – What is your overall attitude to social media and how it should be used?
3. Definitions – What do you mean by the term ‘social media’? Which tools and platforms are covered by the document?
4. Use of Social Media - Include a social media audit – what is the organization already doing? Plus any specific guidance on naming conventions, how the company uses e.g. YouTube, what the organization uses Twitter for, or when to start a new blog.
5. Campaign Initiation Procedure – How should a campaign be initiated? Who is responsible for maintaining a central record of e.g. Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to avoid duplication? This may vary between departments or teams, but any company-wide guidelines should be included here.
6. Key Principles – Including legal e.g. libel, copyright; transparency; behaviour; and ‘rules of engagement’ (e.g. how you respond to comments / criticism)
7. Employee Identification – Do you want employees to include a disclaimer in any personal social media, such as “All opinions are my own and not the BBC’s” in a Twitter biography?
8. Terms of Service – i.e. of individual tools and sites – it is important that employees are aware they must stick to the ToS of e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.
9. Risk Assessment and Crisis Plan - What are the key risks and how will you manage them? What do you do if it all goes wrong? Not responding to a social media crisis is the worst thing to do!
10. Disciplinary Action – For a policy to be effective, there must be consequences for violating it. What actions would lead to disciplinary action? This may be something quite serious which clearly crosses a line, such as setting up a hate page on Facebook.This should link to any relevant HR policies.

The scale of your documentation will vary according to the size of the organization and the scale of social media use. It may be a hefty document, or a couple of pages of guidelines. But thinking through these issues is an important first step for developing a coherent, coordinated and effective plan for using social media in your organization.

Learn more about Managing Social Media on my one-day workshop for managers.

Find top tweeters by topic on WeFollow

Once you’re on Twitter with a nice branded profile, tweeting appropriately and engagingly and following key people in your community, it’s time to build your followers. Why do you want to do this? Because building followers on Twitter is like building up your email list. Once you have a sizable list, you can announce your latest product, service or event – so long as it is genuinely of interest to your followers and you’re not doing a hard sell. Like an email list, you don’t want people on there who are not interested in what you’re offering. You don’t want to randomly broadcast a wasted marketing message – you want to engage your fan base of followers who are actually interested in what you do.

The big secret is simply: follow more people. About half will follow you back. OK, there is a bit more to it, and a few caveats. Here is my Five-Point Exploding Twitter Technique, for significantly increasing your followers while maintaining their value:

Continue reading at: www.getuptospeed.biz

Social media types are coming out of their bedrooms and emerging, blinking into the light of real-life social interaction! Actually, I never believed that stereotype. But what started as homemade media and geeks behind keyboards is finding new applications in real life all the time. One thing Twitterers like to do is meet each other in person: Twitter, like many social networks, can be a facilitator of real life networking.

Twitter meet-ups (or ‘tweetups’) have become increasingly popular over the last year, and this trend looks set to continue. I shall certainly be attending and organizing some myself. Here are my top ten tips for running a successful tweetup:

1. Have a focus for the event. This depends on the size and aims of your tweetup – sometime you just want a post-conference drink, an informal gathering of local people, or a chance for an online community to meet and chat in real life. But you can also have a more formal networking event, guest speakers or a panel discussion if you so choose.
2. Get organised. For a small ad-hoc gathering a quick shout-out on Twitter might do. If you have a larger event to organise, use Twtvite – a great free tool to manage your guest list, and even print out name badges with Twitter names, user names, and avatars. If you plan to charge for your event, use Eventbrite. You can also use this for free events, or to invite people to make a donation if they wish. You may consider creating a Facebook event too, for those on Facebook but not Twitter, and publicising through sites such as Meetup and Upcoming.
3. Choose your venue carefully. Make sure it is large enough (you can specify a maximum guest capacity on Twtvite), and caters for any food, drink or audio-visual requirements you may have. Most important of all, make sure there is access to WiFi so that people can tweet from their laptops. At the very least, there should be a good mobile signal so people can tweet from their phones.
4. Anounce the hashtag. Hashtags are keywords with the # symbol in front of them that become links to a list of all tweets using that keyword. Pre-announce the hashtag to be used. Twtvite has a facility for doing this and displaying a list of all tweets using it.
5. Use a Twitterwall. This is a real-time updated, animated list of everyone tweeting with your hashtag. Use www.twitterfall.com, plug in your hashtag(s), set the speed you want, and you’re good to go. Then project it onto a wall for all to see at the event. This may encourage people to tweet at the event, since their tweets will be highly visible – some may tweet just to knock someone off the top spot! It also enables people not physically there to participate.
6. Encourage people to take photographs. These can be live-tweeted on the night using one of the Twitter photo services such as Twitpic. You could also set up a group pool on Flickr for people to post to. Ask them to tag their Flickr photos with the event hashtag so they can be found easily, and even be pulled into a widget on your website.
7. Let’s hear what’s going on. Why not audio too? AudioBoo is a new service that started this year, and the easiest way to describe it is ‘audio Twitter’. Like Twitter, it is part of the real-time web. It’s a free iPhone app (though you don’t need an iPhone – you can now also record direct from your laptop or upload an audio file). Record some audio – perhaps a short interview with someone – on your iPhone. Take a photo. Upload both to your AudioBoo account with a short description, and it automatically tweets to your Twitter account and/or updates your Facebook status. It even includes a little geo-located map showing where you recorded it.
8. Live-stream or record your event. If it seems appropriate, take your media a stage further and consider live-streaming your event, or part of it, using a service such as www.ustream.tv. That way, people outside the room – even outside the country – can see what’s going on, tweet comments and questions, and feel involved. This is useful if, say, you have a large international Twitter following and you’re running a speaker event. And/or you might consider audio or video recording your speakers, and then podcasting it for the benefit of those unable to attend.
9. Consider sponsorship. While you may not want to provide food and drink – for the sake of your budget or to screen out those only coming for free booze – sometimes it may be appropriate to invite sponsorship for the event to cover these things or any other costs associated with your tweetup. There is a space on Twtvite to list sponsors as well as organizers. You’re more likely to attract sponsors if you have previously arranged events with a large niche audience that a sponsor wants to target, or if you generate a decent-sized guest list in advance of your event.
10. Facilitate networking. Create a Twitter list of attendees after the event so that people can make contact with those they met. Twtvite will provide a guest list; or why not use the new Twitter list feature?

Make it your New Year’s resolution to attend a tweetup this year – and maybe I’ll see you at one!

Now you can also tag people – and pages and groups – in your status update – another move that seems designed to compete with Twitter. I have seen almost no-one using this yet, but it is something worth considering, as it can help promote what you’re doing to a wider audience.

You may know that, in Twitter, people often mention other people on Twitter using their username, such as @jonreed. The us of the @ symbol turns this into a link that clicks through to the user’s page. These may be replies to people, or  simply mentions of them. The person mentioned can see all their replies and mentions by clicking on, in my case, a link that says @jonreed.

The same principle now applies in Facebook. For example, I recently went to a Society of Authors event with my friend Isabel. One of the speakers was my old Macmillan boss Richard Charkin. Both are Facebook friends. I was able to mention Richard – and turn that mention into a link to his page – by using the @ symbol, just like in Twitter. How does it work? As soon as I type ‘@rich’, a list of all my Facebook friends starting with Rich showed up, and I could click on his name:

The same principle applies to Facebook groups or pages – such as The Society of Authors and Publishing Talk in this case.

Like Twitter, people are aware of who has tagged them in a status update – because, as with tagging people in Facebook notes or photos, it shows up on their wall (and they can untag themselves if they wish). This also happens with groups and pages, where their permissions settings allow.

Isabel also tagged me and Richard in the same way – so her status update showed up on my wall, as above, and also on the Society of Authors page. Just as it would for a tagged note or photo.

And don’t forget that, earlier this year, Facebook introduced status updates for pages as well as profiles – so you can also use these tags there. Status updates on pages are an effective way to spread your message, because they now also show up in the newsfeed of your fans (unless they have chosen not to receive them).

This is potentially a powerful new way to make links between pages, groups and profiles. Marketers now have the ability to highlight their own pages and groups in their profiles, or post their status updates to relevant pages and groups. So go on: get tagging! Just do it sparingly, authentically and contextually – and without spamming people with your marketing message.

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are simply a way to group tweets together by topic. They are a keyword, or words (with no spaces), and start with the # symbol. You don’t need to register them anywhere – you just make them up. By using the # symbol, they become clickable links. Click on a hashtag and you will see everyone’s tweets containing that hashtag as a list updated in real time. Click on this one to see what this looks like: #followfriday

The most popular show up in the ‘trending topics’ list in the right-hand column of your Twitter page. Trending topics may or may not include the # symbol.

So what is #followfriday?

‘Following’ on Twitter is like ‘friending’ on other social networks, except you usually don’t need to get your follow request approved – unless someone has protected their tweets. You just click the ‘follow’ button on their Twitter profile, and their tweets will show up in the timeline on your page.

#followfriday is a little game that Twitterers play on a Friday. It’s a way of recommending interesting people to follow. It can also be a way of finding people to follow (especially if you’re new to Twitter), and for building your followers if your friends think you’re interesting enough to recommend!

Other alliterative variations take place on other days of the week:

• #musicmonday for recommending music
• #charitytuesday for recommending – you guessed it – charities.

Other days are more or less up for grabs, if you want to have a go at starting your own trend. Various attempts at this have been made, including #woofwednesday for following pets. I know.

How to #followfriday

Don’t just recommend your mates – at least not without a reason. #followfriday works best when you list a few people, and give a reason, or group them by the type of Tweeters they are. That way people can decide if your recommendations look of interest to them, without having to click through to the accounts of those people first to find out what they tweet about. One of the downsides to Twitter is that it’s just so vast – where do you start to find people to follow? #followfriday is a way of using your network to filter through the great unwashed mass of information on Twitter.

Here are a couple of examples from my recent past:

So now you know how to #followfriday, get following, recommending and tweeting!