PR 101

I have been active in social media for about a year.  I have also sat at the (digital) feet of Simon Ford, a man I consider a true social media expert, and learned a lot. I am active on over a dozen sites – ranging from Facebook to Squidoo. I range over another dozen at least once a week.

Now, that’s all well and good. I know I am not unique in my use of social media. One thing that makes me unique is my age – I am 55-years-old. I don’t how many other baby boomers do as much as I do with social media.

I bring up age for a reason: Mrs. Cole raised a polite boy, one who knew his manners from an early age. Just as there are (or at least I hope there still are) rules for conversations, there are also social media rules. Ignoring some social media rules will only get your marked as a boor, ignoring others will get you marked as a spammer and ignoring still others can cost you a job. In some instances, if you are really stupid, it can get you sent to jail.

So here, in about 800 words, are Mrs. Cole’s son’s rules for using social media sites. I cannot cover them all, but I will hit the high points. Most of the rules are universal.

One thing – there is no privacy on the Internet. It is the price we pay for connectivity. Nothing ever really goes away. It is on the ‘net somewhere. The rule I always use is that if I would be embarrassed for my family to see it, I don’t post it.

There two general rules I want to tell you first, although I hope you already know them both.

• First, social media sites are not a popularity contest. You have already graduated from high school. So don’t try to add followers just because you think it’s cool to have a lot of followers. Followers, and those you follow, should be people with which you have things in common. Hopefully, you are on a site to talk, debate, learn and share information. It is almost never cool to push yourself. If you post something that attracts attention, others will repeat it. It is like all social media – third party endorsements are the best.
• Second, no spamming. You should not be using social media lists to sell the latest scheme for anything. As Social Traffic Inc. CEO Doug McIsaac says: “if you wouldn’t want it to happen to you, why would you do it to others?”

Oh, I am going to assume you know about the sites I am writing about. There will be no explanations of which sites do what.

Let’s start with the rules for Twitter:

• First – use your real name, or some variation thereof. I follow people with real names; I usually won’t follow @stonerchick88 or @studman. Why aren’t you using your real name? What do you have to hide? And, if you use a dumb nickname, I will assume one of two things: you are about 12-years-old, or you are spammer. In either case, I am not interested.
• Second, post a link and a bio. Again, I assume if there is no information, you are hiding something. As a side note, if your link leads me to some get rich quick scheme, I will block you. Pictures, while not required, are also nice. I like to see to whom I am talking.
• Third, tweet at least once a day or so. If you ask me to follow you, and you have not tweeted since George W. Bush was president, I am not interested. It means you have nothing to say.
• Retweet what others have to say, it ‘s common courtesy.
• I don’t give a damn what you had for breakfast, or if your dog has gas.

Facebook

• I know Facebook is a little more, how shall I say, homey. People do talk about breakfast, flowers, and their dog’s intestinal upsets. That’s fine. Just don’t get upset when I ignore that.
• For all you students out there, do not, I repeat, do not, post pictures of you smoking a joint at that wet t-shirt contest. Potential employers check Facebook before making hiring decisions. You think they are going to hire you if they have pictorial evidence of you doing something stupid? And don’t gamble on taking everything down in your senior year. Nothing is ever secret on the Internet. The rule of thumb is if you want Mom to see it, don’t post it.

LinkedIn – this is my favorite social media site. You have to be adult to be on it. It’s rules are strictly enforced by both its moderators and it members. Still, there are rules, including:

• Complete your profile. I have picked up clients because people have read my profile.
• Generally, it is common courtesy to link in with someone who asks. Contacts are at the heart of LinkedIn, so honor the requests.
• If you join a group, it is good manners to comment on discussions and answer questions. That’s what linking in is all about. It is a discussion group, after all.

If you really like what someone is doing, recommend them. It tells others that this is a good person.

YouTube – This one is pretty simple. Don’t post any videos you don’t want a future employer to see. Just like Facebook, employers check YouTube. Of course, we have all read the stories of people committing a crime. For some unknown reason, they feel the urge to record it and post it on YouTube. I personally think the sentence should be doubled because of the stupidity of it all.

There are a number of other sites – Digg, Squidoo, Technorati, and FriendFeed to name a few. The basic rule for all of them is showing some respect for others. And be yourself, but don’t be a jerk.

Thanks for reading. Next week, I will be talking about the do’s and don’ts of media training.

When I was a wee slip of lad back in the ‘60s (alright, I was a teenager, but I was small), Black revolutionary poet Gil Scott-Heron wrote a poem entitled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

The first stanza said:

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

In other words, you will have to be involved to make the revolution happen. Although I am not sure Scott-Heron would make the connection, I think his poem applies to what is happening in countries like Moldova and Iran. Social media – which demands involvement – is bringing people into the streets. It Moldova, it is being called the Twitter Revolution.

Television has been one of the key tools those power use to stay on top. That’s why the first target of any revolution was always the broadcast outlets. It used to be he who controlled the outlets controlled the information. And he who controlled the information controlled the outcome.

Well, that’s how it used to be. But, as we saw in Moldova and now in Iran, social media trumps old media. It is social media that is sustaining the protestors in both countries. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and YouTube have become the instruments for protests.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi has a Facebook page, where he, or most likely an aide, give updates on what is happening inside their country. Moldovans and Iranians tweet about what is happening inside their country. Powerful amateur videos of protests in both countries are posted almost daily on YouTube.

I am a social media advocate. I firmly believe it is rendering conventional marketing and advertising obsolete. But what social media is being used for now is far more important than selling a few more widgets. Social media is allowing people who used to be completely shut out of any say in their own political futures to make themselves heard.

The media has always been important to anyone trying to make changes. This is especially true in free countries where the government does not control the media. In August 1968, protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago started chanting “the whole world is watching” as National Guardsmen and Chicago Police officers beat them. They knew what was happening to them would be seen because the national networks were recording it. What happened in Chicago gained even greater impact when then CBS news correspondent Dan Rather was punched on the floor of the Democratic National Convention.

“What an official report later described as a “police riot” did more damage to Chicago’s reputation and the fortunes of the Democratic Party than anything the protestors could have done,” according to blogger Jo Freeman. What did the real damage is that people found out about it. Many historians now believe that what happened in Chicago was when mainstream America started to turn against the Vietnam War.

It used to be different in places like Iran where the rulers control all of the official outlets. I think they thought they could control the flow of information during what looks to be a deeply flawed election. They used the old model of the media lecturing to its audience. What they didn’t understand is that social media fosters conversations, arguments and information sharing. It is the democratization of information.

“What Twitter and Facebook can do is spread information to large groups. In any crisis, that’s important, both to the participants and to the outside world. But what is the true value of Iranian tweets,” Forbes Deputy Editor Elisabeth Eaves asks in a column. “On one hand, they are more valuable than crisis tweets would be in a country with a free press, because they are one of the few sources of information the government has not found a way to control.  Gaurav Mishra, founder of a Mumbai-based social media analytics company observes … “in Iran … social media are the only things you have.”

Mishra estimates there are only be 10,000 tweeters in Iran. But I suspect those 10,000 are the leaders of the protest, or at least the leading communicators. I have no idea if all 10,000 follow each other, but I suspect there is a lot of following among the group.

So, say the 10 of those tweeters spread the word about a protest. That tweet reaches all 10,000. Each of those 10,000 uses the oldest form of social media known – they talk to their family, friends, and neighbors. Each talks to 10 of their neighbors. That’s 100,000 people. Each of those 100,000 talks to another 10. Suddenly you have a million people pouring into the streets. I think that also explains why the protest seem to be an urban phenomenon. People live closer to each other in cities.

Twitter seems to understand the power of social media and what is happening in Iran. It delayed scheduled maintenance so as not inhibit the Iranian protests. That allowed the protestors time to organize more demonstrations.

As I write this, it appears the Iranian government is beginning to use violence to stop the protests. The protestors are fighting back. Although no one can predict what will happen, it appears the Iranian people are willing to take their protests to the next level. Will they succeed in toppling the current regime? Who knows? But, if they do, it means social media has moved from the marketplace to a much a larger stage.

For only the second year since records have been kept, charitable giving in the United States declined in 2008, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. The paper reported that “according to an annual report released Wednesday by the Giving USA Foundation, U.S. giving in 2008 totaled $307.65 billion, down about 2 percent from 2007’s record total of $314.07 billion. When adjusted for inflation, the drop is 5.7 percent.

“The reduction is the first in the survey’s 52-year history caused by economic conditions. A slight decline in 1987 is attributed to changes in tax laws.” Experts estimate that 2009 will also show a decline in giving, the paper reported.

Clearly, charitable organizations should be rethinking the way they fund raise. The old ways are not working as former donors react to the recession.This is not the first recession charities have weathered. There have been several since records started being kept in 1957. Yet, for the first time, donors are backing off.

What have charities done in response? Stepped up their traditional fund raising methods of mailings, phone calls and emails. Judging by last year’s results, these methods are no longer working. Plus, I suspect sending out more letters and making more phone call raises administrative costs, thereby taking money away from the various charities’ missions.

To me the solution is simple – adopt social media methods. Start blogging, tweeting, using Facebook and other social media sites to get their message out. I think it will be a lot more effective than the way charities and foundations are doing it now. Instead of sticking their hands out, charities should be demonstrating the benefits they provide. Entice people into giving; don’t beat them over the head.

Let’s look at the way it is being done now. In my mail each day are solicitations from a number of charities. At the Cole household, we probably get somewhere around seven or eight such mailings each week. All come from worthy causes who appear to have real needs. Some send pens or mailings labels, while others included poignant pictures or sobering statistics about the effect of this disease or that pollutant.

In addition to the snail mail, we receive emails and phone calls from various groups. The range of groups who call is even wider than the mailings. They range from my wife’s and my alma mater to groups we support and a lot we don’t. They usually come in the evening around dinnertime. I guess they assume that’s when people are home. The colleges always seem to have some hapless student make the calls.

These solicitations annoy the hell out of me. I think they are ineffective and counter-productive. Instead of convincing people to donate, I have the feeling they do just the opposite. And how much do these organizations spend buying pens and mailing labels? I use them, but it doesn’t make me want to donate. My biggest peeve: the multiple mailings from the same organization. Don’t the local, state and national organizations ever talk? Do they really think people are going send three separate checks?

I am not just speaking from the hip. I have participated in, worked on, and run a number of local charity events. Because diabetes is prevalent in my family, I have done a lot of volunteering for the American Diabetes Association. I have also done pro bono work for a several charities.

Instead of killing whole forests, I think charities should be concentrating on converting their donors into true communities. As blogger Andy Sernovitz noted in the “Smart Blog on Social Media,” the key for anyone trying to do anything on the Web is community-building.

Sernovitz’s suggests:

• Create focused communities. A group focused around a central issue or mission will be much more active than a general fan club.
• Offer training and certifications. Use your groups as virtual classrooms for educational training and offer things members can add to their resume.
• Reward participation. Promote your active community members by awarding them leadership roles and credentials.

Now, I firmly believe with two decades social media is going to knock traditional advertising, marketing and public relations ass over teakettle. (Sorry, the Irish in me comes out sometimes.) It is already happening. Study after study is demonstrating that before consumers fork over hard-earned cash for anything, they want to know everything they can about their purchase or donation. I believe the recession has heightened that.

The other effect the recession is having is that people are reassessing their spending. “All in all, 51 percent of Americans project that they are going to settle into a new, normal pattern relating to either spending or saving. Within this universe, a group of significant interest is those who say they are going to be not only spending less in the years ahead but also saving more — behaviors that would mark them as true exemplars of the ‘new frugality,’” according to an April 27 report from the Gallup organization.

I think most people are going to reassess charitable giving as part of their personal spending reviews. So, as I just said, they are going to need a reason to donate beyond just a free pen or some mailing labels. True, there will some loyalty from long-time donors. But, I can tell you from experience you cannot rely on just them. You need the so-called “casual giver.”

Couple this with the coming of Gen Y. This is a group of people who have little or no brand loyalty. They also don’t have a lot of money. They don’t read newspapers, and they don’t watch a lot of television. Where they do get their information from is the Internet. You want them to donate, you have to go where they hangout. That would be cyberspace.

So, it’s time to turn to social media –  blogging, twittering, podcasting, vloging. The entire social media toolbox needs to be utilized.  Not doing that is asking for trouble.

What do you think?

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My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.

Email me at jjcole54@gmail.com.