It’s may be well trod ground, but it’s still a topic that needs to be considered:  What to do about reputation-damaging tweets or critics mobilizing on social media websites like Facebook. This week we get a brief glimpse into the world via the Boston Business Journal. In their survey, they found that 33% of PR professionals said their companies were not prepared to deal with social media attacks.

“Online threats to corporate reputation are escalating the social media imperative when it comes to the new skill sets and experiences required of today’s CCOs,” said George Jamison, one of the survey’s creators, in a statement. “Credible experience in this area has shifted from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’ for the most desirable corporate leadership roles.”

Local companies say that it’s key for firms to establish a presence on social media sites before issues arise – not after.

Indeed, you need to “be there” before the problems occur. The problem is this: everyday it becomes harder and harder. SM staffs tend to be the first ones cut when the budget needs to be slimmed down, more and more services reach that critical level where they really need to be monitored. Last year we didn’t care about Foursquare, and the year before Yelp didn’t matter.  How about today?  What is going to really matter tomorrow?

Also, we miss a couple important facts: not every “dissatisfied customer” out there is going to be someone we can “fix” via social media. And, even worse, there are some we really shouldn’t be trying to fix.  Face the facts, in business you do your best to please most of the people most of the time, but the threat of social media is that someone who doesn’t really understand will start to expect that we’re going to magically please ALL of the people, ALL of the time.

I think the best path forward here for business is to adopt the prime tenet of the Hypocratic Oath: “Primum non nocere – First, do no harm.”  In short, we do our best to be conversant and transparent in our dealings with customers.  An even hand goes a long, long way.

However, we need to remember the world is full of trolls and miscreants, and some of them love to dog a brand.  One thing I can tell you from experience: engaging/enabling a troll is a recipe for pain and heart ache.

Here are a couple of things I learned from managing online communities that you should consider:

1. Your commitment matters – commitment lets you set standards for users.
2. Lead – your position makes you a leader.  Be a good one…
3. Nastiness isn’t allowed – let people act towards each other or towards you in an uncivil manner and the good folks run for the doors.  Don’t accept rude treatment in Social Media, either.
4. Check your ego at the door – your company isn’t perfect, neither are your products, or even yourself…get over it.
5. You can’t control the message – nor should you try.  You can correct falsehood and solve problems, but think more in terms of “good results” as baseball stats (.400 average is outstanding) vs. nuclear war (a single loss is a total loss).
6. Embrace the community – no one likes to feel left out.  Be inclusive, not exclusive, wherever possible.  Kewl Kid Marketing often alienates as much as it inspires.

Further reading:

7 Truths About Running Online Communities

Forget Disclosure and Transparency – We Crave Honesty

5 Lessons from a Social Media Campaign Gone Horribly Wrong

Manifesto for Social Media: Stop Talking and Start Doing

Monetize This…

I’ve been using Twitter now for 2.5 years.  Honestly, I’m still grappling with the question: what the heck is Twitter?

Wikipedia, never short for answers has this:

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page.

That’s not really what I’m looking for.  You see, I certainly know what it is, in terms of that dry level of description.  What I’m looking for is more of a contextual view of where it fits, and that is where we go down the rabbit hole…

I’ve always hung my hat on “it’s a tool in the web/community developer’s toolbox”.  That’s true, but what kind of tool?  Obviously there’s a gulf of difference between a sledgehammer and a micrometer, and in Social Media, there is probably even more of a divide between some of the tools.

In order to put it into a little more context, perhaps a history of the general trends I’ve seen in Twitter might be of use:

• 2.5 years ago, it seemed to be mostly people tweeting about social media, cup cakes and bacon.
• 2 years ago, the hash tag began to appear in greater prominence.  It had been around since almost the beginning, allowing us to work our way around the obvious failing of the system in its lack of categorization.
• 1.5 years ago it was all about the fail whale.  Twitter’s down, oh my God…the world is ending.
• 1 year ago, the anti-Social Media backlash started to play in.  Too many wannabes, posting information that was wrong, self serving, or outright plagiarized.
• .5 years ago – the rise of accounts on auto pilot.  They randomly tweet quotes, but strangely never engage with anyone.  And somehow they get right around 54k followers in couple months.  Spam spam spam spam…

In that time, many of the folks I used Twitter to converse with have come and gone.  The burn out rate must be staggering…I really would love to see some stats on that. From my point of view, the folks that stick with it tend to be the folks with a common interest, such as my friends from the Red Sox hash tag.  Simply being on Twitter to be there doesn’t seem to be enough to really engage users long term.

Having watched over the years at the open rates on the links I can share, I can definitely say a couple things:

• The open rates on links are way down.
• That may be due to me posting more information that is arcane or of interest to a very limited audience.
• I suspect it really as to do with a fundamental change – I think Twitter is becoming even more of an echo chamber and most users are more interested in the outwards flow of information.  They’re here to lecture, not converse…

The whole idea of brands on Twitter has been a failure for me.  I go to Twitter for conversation.  I don’t want to talk to a #$%@ing brand, I want to talk to people.  If I want to buy something I Google it and go get it.  Period.

Content brands are a different story. I do like getting news alerts from sites via Twitter.  For me, the pitch has to be right.  CNN does a good job, so does Drudge, but I found I had to drop TechCrunch and several others who simply flooded the stream with stuff of little to know value for me.  I can’t tell you what is right for you, but I can certainly tell you when you’ve crossed the line.

So, what the heck is Twitter?

• A good back channel communication stream
• A great way to open discussion on formerly closed communication streams like TV, sports and events
• A lump of clay that maybe you might mold into something useful
• A system in search of a reason raison d’être

That I’m still asking the question, this far in, is in part the answer.  It is, at least in part, a failure, in that it hasn’t managed to truly define itself after several years of existence.

So I ask you all, what is Twitter to you?  Fill the comments with wisdom…