The Social Media Blog - Methodical Madness

What the pharmaceutical industry can teach us about social media

Social media marketing has grown faster than most any other business discipline (and I use the term "discipline" loosely) in the last 50 years.  And like many new disciplines, it has been going through growing pains. Social marketing has always had its critics. Some celebs have even announced it death. But this is to be expected with any new discipline. What's happening today in social media marketing is reminiscent of the trials and tribulations of the pharmaceutical industry in the late 19th century.

Back then, chemistry and industry came together and created well-known brands such as Merck, Bayer and Pfizer. It seemed there was no ailment that modern science could not cure. Unfortunately, this also gave rise to snake-oil salesmen selling tonics and potions to cure everything from headaches to hair loss, with no real idea what they were selling or how to properly use it.

There was such a rush to be first to market that proper research was often pushed aside—sometimes with disastrous results.  Bayer, for example, created a brand new product to help morphine addicts kick their habits called Heroin (yes, Heroin was a brand name, but thanks to the Treaty of Versailles we can all use it now...so to speak).  The only sign of efficacy people looked for was if it made you feel good. If it did, they reasoned,  it must be curing you. That's how we end up with cocaine-laced pain medications.

Social media marketing is going through a similar process. Since its inception, much of social media's efficacy has been based on anecdotal evidence with little thought to research and true causation studies.  In fact, if you look at some social media marketing reports, the numbers seem very promising on the outside, yet a bit more in-depth study reveals serious flaws in their research (read our " Don't believe everything you read about social media" post) .

That's why it was refreshing to listen to Dan Zarrella's The Science of Social Media Webinar this week. What Dan does best is take aim at, what he calls, "unicorns and rainbow" advice from social media experts. In other words, he tries to put science behind the hyperbole with interesting and sometimes surprising results.  For example, according to Dan and the numbers he's looked at, the idea that "engaging in the conversation” is important, really isn't. The most important thing, as we've all heard before, is publishing interesting content. Dan will also be the first to tell you that his research is not iron clad, but he makes the best inferences based on the data he can collect. But the promising part is that the marketing industry is starting to look at social media with a more critical, research-focused eye.

Social media has a bright future but it is still in its infancy. And despite what you may hear, social media is not a magic tonic that will cure all your marketing ills. It can be an effective part of your overall marketing program, but it takes more than just showing up. Like a 19th century patient downing elixirs filled with opiates, simply creating Twitter accounts and Facebook pages may make you feel good, but is it really fixing the problem? Social media—like any marketing effort—takes serious thought, thorough research and a solid strategy.  

At The Duffy Agency, we have a motto that says "we don't guess, we know." What that means is that when we develop any type of marketing campaign, we never assume; we take the time to find out. The same is true with social media. Your social media campaign needs to be based on strategy not just tactics. And if someone tells you all you need to do with your social media marketing is simply show up and "engage in the conversation," watch out. They could just be trying to sell you something.

(By the way, if you would like help with your social media marketing feel free to contact us.)

What do you think? Is there too much hype in social media and not enough fact? Let us know in our comments section.

 

Is Twitter really helping your brand or your employee's brand?

Does your company have its own Twitter account, e.g., @AcmeCorp? Or do you rely on an employee to use their own personal Twitter account to act as the voice of your brand? If your answer is the latter, then you could be setting yourself (and your brand) up for a social media fail.

A few weeks ago, we did a social media audit for one of our clients. We asked them about a company Twitter account, and the client told us that that a marketing manager named Susan (not her real name) took care of that. Upon further investigation, we found that Susan was using her own Twitter account to tweet for the company.

Susan is a typical social media guru. She's in her mid to late twenty's (I'm guessing...I didn't ask her exact age) and has been the company's main social media manager for about 3 years. Her bio on her page sings the praises of her company (she describes it as "fabulous"). Her tweets are centered around her company's industry, as well as social media in general.  She engages with other Twitterers and gets retweeted often by a core group she interacts with the most. All-in-all, she if offering great content to her followers who number in the low thousands right now.

On the surface, you may not think there is anything wrong with this. But here's the rub: what happens when she leaves the company? And according to statistics from the Department of Labor, she will. In 2010, the average years of tenure with a company for a woman her age is 3 years. In fact, since the median years a woman over 25 stays in one job is 5.0 years, she will probably have up to 7 different jobs in her lifetime.

Although her followers may know she works for a certain company, her face and name are splattered across the company's Twitter account. The result is that Susan is building social equity for herself and not for her company's brand. So what happens to all her followers when she leaves the company? Most likely she will take them with her—and continue building her personal brand at another company. (Btw, for more information on personal branding, check out How to Manage Your Personal Brand by Sean Duffy on TalentZoo.com)

So what is a company to do?

What we told this client was that they had to create a social media policy that protected and built equity in their brand and would mitigate any effects if an employee left.  

Step 1
Create a brand or company account (E.g., @AcmeCorp). This would be the main account the brand would tweet from.

Step 2
We also suggested our client create Twitter handles for relevant employees (e.g., @Susan_AcmeCorp) that the company issues. Our client would have the password and more or less "own" the account. The policy should further state that this is the only account they can tweet from during work hours.

Step 3
If they leave the company, our client will review their followers and make sure their company account is following all the employee's followers. Then they can cancel the ex-employees account and not lose the social equity.  

Developing a social media policy is not an easy task. It takes balance. Too light-handed and it amy not protect your brand. Too heavy-handed and employees may start feeling like Big Brother is lurking over their shoulder. However, without a social media policy to addresses these statistically-likely scenarios, you may find out—too late—that your employees have spent more time building their own brands and not yours.

What do you think? How can companies safeguard their social brand equity without being too oppressive.

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

Is Google+ just the next Google Wave?

As most of you know, the new social networking site from Google, Google +,  went live on a limited basis at the end of last month. Since that time there has been a scramble in social media circles to get invites. But recently, it seems that invite ration has opened up a bit. In fact, according to +Paul Allen, Google+ will be approaching the 18 million mark soon.  

But in my mind, the question remains, do we need another social network and will Google+ succeed in the long run?

Google+ certainly has many unique features. The best of which is the "circles" feature. If you are like me (and if you were you'd be a tall, goofy-looking Irish guy), you might categorize your social networks. For example, Facebook is more for friends and family, LinkedIn is more for business and Twitter is more for, well, everyone. With Google+ you categorize people into circles— you can have a friends circle, family circle, business circle, etc. Google+ allow you control over who see your posts, from everyone to a single person. Now, you no longer have to worry about business contacts seeing posts about a party you went to the evening before. This also alleviates the problem of business contacts trying to friend you on Facebook (if you feel uneasy about that). On the one hand, you don't want to ignore a friend request and possibly offend a business acquaintance. Yet, on the other hand, you don't necessarily want clients to have access to the more personal aspects of your life that you might share with family on Facebook. By the way, I'd expect Facebook to steal this "circles" idea very soon.

There are also other features like Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles. Mashable, as usual, wrote and excellent overview of all the features of Google+.

Whether Google+ will succeed really depends on its user base and how extensively it grows. Very few people have the time to manage another social network. In fact, I'd say most of us have a hard enough time with the Big Three (FB, LinkedIn & Twitter). So Google+ will have to replace something. It does has the horsepower and feature sets to replace all three. But it won't. At least not completely. Inertia is a very strong force. People have already invested their time and energy into the Big Three, so breaking that strangle hold is close to impossible.

And what about that investment in time. You probably already have a slew of pictures and videos on Facebook. You have written and received recommendations on LinkedIn. You've already linked your entire life to Twitter for easy sharing. Are you willing to walk away from that now? I'm sure that LinkedIn and Facebook will not make it easy to transfer data to Google+. In fact, Facebook has already blocked tools that would allow for easy migration to Google+.  Moreover, I know there are people (non-tech friends and family members) that have a hard enough time with Facebook and will never switch. And if they don't switch how can I?

Right now there is a lot of buzz about Google+ (not to be confused with Google Buzz). Google fanboys love it, of course. But there was also a lot of buzz about Google Wave (R.I.P.). There was the same accolades on Web sites. There were the same pleas on social media channels asking for invites leading to the inevitable eBay sales.  Google+ will probably have more staying power. If nothing else, it's a bit more familiar and intuitive than Google Wave ever was. There are also a lot of cool new features. Of course, nothing so proprietary that Facebook or LinkedIn couldn't steal these ideas.

Personally, I like Google+. I also think that it can help tie all the loose ends of social media into one nice, managable package. But it's ultimate success still comes down to your friends and family.

Will they start using Google+? And if they don't, then do you actually have the time, energy or desire to maintain another social media site?

What do you think? What do you love or hate about Google+?

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

Will Tout be bigger than Twitter?

On Wednesday, Shaquille O'Neill announced that he is retiring from the NBA via social media app Tout. This is a big score for the internet startup that launched its service on April 12 of this year. But will the apparent endorsement of Shaq help Tout break through the clutter?

Tout is a video sharing app for your iPhone, with Android and iPad apps coming soon according to their website. In essence, it's a video Twitter. And like Twitter, Tout limits length of your content; in Tout's case that means being able to record only 15 seconds of video at a time. This keeps file sizes about the same as a large photo which helps any potential bandwidth issues. According to Tout CEO, Michael Downing, they tried 7 seconds, 9 seconds and 11 seconds, but after feedback they decided 15 seconds was optimal and made each "tout" (or would it be "toot") a bit more personal.

Btw, speaking of their website, it turns out Tout.com is using a little creative freedom in the "What people are saying" section. One of their quotes looks like it comes from CNET, which technically it does. But the article it comes from actually compares Tout to a failed video sharing service called 12seconds that went belly up in 2010 after a two-year run. The rest of the article is actually not very complimentary of Tout. The quote they use is actually a comment from the CEO that appears in the article. As does the quote from benharvell.com. So the CEO thinks it's an awesome product, that's for sure.

But I digress.

Mr. Downing thinks that video is more intuitive because we are born with the ability to process the world visually, while it takes up to 7-8 years to get the hang of writing, "and many of us still aren't that good at it."

Of course the flaw in that argument is that the market for Tout is not newborns. In fact, according to a report last year from Pingdom.com, 85% of the people who use social networks are over the age of 18. The average age of a Twitter user is 39. And if you really have a tough time writing a thought in 140 characters over the age of 18, then you may have bigger problems than using Twitter.

No doubt Tout will receive a bump from Shaq's endorsement. (And no doubt Shaq has some kind of business relationship with Tout.) He is already splattered all over their home page. But I don't think that will be enough to really put Tout in the mainstream social consciousness. Tout is a nice little app, but it doesn't do anything that I can't already do with SocialCam or even the video recorder on my smartphone when I upload to YouTube. And both of those don't put a time limit on the length of my video.

Moreover, the same day that Shaq announced his retirement, Twitter also made an announcement. They have unveiled a native photo and video sharing service. This is part of their overall plan to start bringing third-party services in-house. Not the best news for Tout.

So although Tout's CEO thinks "we will be much bigger than Twitter," I think he may just be touting his own horn.

What do you think of Tout? Have you used it before? Will you try it?

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

Why customers hating your brand could be a good thing

In today's social media world, brands are focusing on connecting with and engaging their customers. Customers are asked to become fans, to "like" Facebook brand pages, and to follow brands on Twitter. However, while there is definite merit in getting customers to engage with you through these methods, there is a huge untapped social media market of potential brand ambassadors out there that many brands may have overlooked: customers who don't like your brand.

I quick search on Facebook for "I hate <insert brand name here>" or "<brand name> sucks!" produces dozens of groups dedicated to trashing some brand. While it may seem counterintuitive to try to market to people who are already predisposed to dislike your brand, I believe there is an opportunity among these online diatribes.

We've all heard that consumers are more apt to relate bad experiences about a brand more than they do about good experiences. In social media, those that create "fan" pages for brands (e.g., "I love <insert brand>"), are seen as valuable resources. Why? Because they went to the trouble of expressing their brand loyalty by creating a fan page, or sending a tweet. However, if you think about it, just as much effort went into expressing disappointment in a brand. Just look at what Dave Carroll did when Untied Airlines damaged his guitar during shipping. And it is this effort that shows me that these types of consumers could be persuaded to change their opinion.

Why?

I would argue that the reason many people create these brand-bashing pages, or express their views in this way, is because they were disappointed in their brand experience. Which means that they expected a different experience. They expected to like the brand, maybe even wanted to like the brand, and something happened to turn them off. In fact, I think that Facebook should create a "Dislike" button for content, and provide brands with metrics on this, including the ability to message people who have disliked a brand.

Of course, there are some people you will never win over. Vegans will never start eating at McDonalds. However, for those that create a page because of a bad experience, this is a prime opportunity for engagement from a brand. Perhaps there is something you can do to rectify the situation that spawned the bad sentiments. Or perhaps it's just a matter of clarifying a misconception.  Whatever the reason, a quick post or tweet can do a world of good winning over people or at least showing that you are listening.

Many brands, for example, have already deployed Twitter accounts as an extension of their customer service departments. They scan the Twitterverse for hash tags and comments, both good and bad. This is a fantastic strategy and one that we advocate for our clients. In fact, getting a response from a brand you tweeted about is a great way to form a lasting relationship and show that the brand truly cares about its customers.

Of course, concentrating on consumers who dislike your brand should not be your only strategy. However, it should be part of your overall social marketing strategy. The important thing here is that anytime a consumer is publicly talking about your brand—either good or bad comments—you should be aware of it, and when warranted, you should be engaging with those people. And if a consumer goes to the trouble of creating content that actually bashes your brand, look at it as an opportunity not a failure.

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

10 Cool Social Media Infographics

In the age of the 30-second attention span and a 24/7 information availability, you need more than plain words and ordinary graphics to communicate to the social masses. Luckily, we have the infographic—a hybrid form of communication. A visual sampling of data. The amuse-bouche of in-depth analysis.

Infographics are not new of course. They have been a staple of cavemen and cavewomen for years.

Aurochs on a cave painting in Lascaux, France

And because of the lack of a Google Translator in space, NASA also deemed the infographic a fitting way to communicate with any E.T.s the Pioneer space craft may contact.

The plaque attached to Pioneer 10

Today, we thought we'd show you 10 of our favorite infographics that help shed some light on social media sites. Btw, these are in no particular order.

1. An Interactive Map of the Internet

Just to kick things off, we thought it would be cool to see a map of the Internet based on Internet topology data from the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA).

 

2. The Power of WordPress

The popularity of WordPress has ballooned over the last few years. Here is a nice infographic that talks to its power over the content we create.

 

3. The Business of Facebook

Facebook is the king of all social media. And when you look at these numbers you'll be astounded.

4. The Best Social Media Monitoring Tools

It seems there are as many social media monitoring tools out there as social media sites. How do make heads of tales of any of it? This infographic does a good job.

 

5. Facebook vs. Twitter

What's the difference between people who use Facebook and people who use Twitter? You might be surprised.

 

6. The Growth of Foursquare

Foursquare has been steadily growing since its founding way back in 2009. Last year, it grew an astounding 3,400%. This infographic from Foursquare will give you some insight into their users.

 

7. Profiles of a Twitter User

Are you a smore or a maven? Discover what type of Twitter user you are in this infographic breakdown.

 

8. An Infographic Look at LinkedIn

LinkedIn recently surpassed the 100 million person mark. They celebrated by creating this cool infographic highlighting different aspects of the social media site.

 

 

9. The Evolution of the Blogger

You could say that blogging was the tipping point for social media. As soon as people realized that their voice could be heard as simply as hitting the enter button, the Interweb changed forever. Here is a cool infographic that shows the evolution of today's blogger.

 

10. An Infographic that Spoofs Infographics

No deeper meaning here, but still very funny.

 

What are some ones I missed? Share the URL of your favorite infographic in the comments section.

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

Will RockMelt succeed where others have failed?

A few months back I did a quick review of the RockMelt browser. In that review, I talked about its reported benefits and challenges. I could not review it firsthand because I had yet to receive an invite. Well last month, I finally received my invite (although I tend to think my SPAM filter might have done away with a couple earlier attempts). Coincidentally last week, RockMelt was made available to anyone as a public beta application; invites are no longer necessary. So, I thought now would be a good time for my review.

I've been using RockMelt for the better part of a month now, and I can honestly say—it's not that bad. Not a glowing recommendation, I know, but it could have been worse.

You see, I hopped on the bandwagon when Flock first came out. On paper, Flock was a brilliant idea. It was just that in practice, Flock was a pain in the butt—at least for me. Too many things going on. Too confusing. Plus, it ran slowly on my system. I felt a bit let down. I had wanted to like Flock, but it just could not deliver on its promises.

RockMelt has been different. It has delivered on its promises (even though some people were put off by how those RockMelt promises were delivered). RockMelt is built on Google's Chrome browser, which, overall, is amazingly fast. As those really cool Chrome commercials show, there is a noticeable improvement in the speed of pages loading. However, some pages repeatedly loaded incorrectly (Boston.com, for example), although they did incorrectly load incredibly fast.

The main selling point for RockMelt, however, is not speed, but the integration of social media apps like Twitter and Facebook (FB) as well as your RSS streams. These are the areas I really liked. The left-hand side of the screen is dedicated to Facebook. Being able to see my FB friends online with just a glance—as well as being able to easily IM them—is very convenient. I also like the fact that you can stay within your browser page to chat with someone on FB. This worked well last week when a friend and I were watching a Ustream show, and we were able to comment on the action (I'm talking to you Mr. Tigerblood).

The good news is that you can also easily toggle between offline and online on Facebook in case you want to get some actual work done. Sharing is also incredible easy with the "Share" button located between the URL bar and the quick-search bar. This allows you to quickly share any page you are on to Facebook or Twitter. You can also just drag any URL to the left and share it instantly with any of your online FB friends.

The right side of the browser allows for feeds from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and just about anything else with an RSS feed attached to it. I have a few of my favorite blogs and Web sites entered into this area. For me, the Facebook and Twitter updates are pretty much useless because with all the friends I have (that sounds a lot more snarky than it should), both fill up quickly, and I can't keep up with it. Every time I turn around I have another 99+ updates from my FB friends. I do like the RSS feed updates. This is a bit more manageable. And I find it very useful to keep up with all my favorite sites.

Overall, everything sounds great, right? So why don't I have a more glowing opinion of RockMelt? Because my current browser is just not bad enough. And that's the rub.

If you are like me, you have your current browser set up so you know exactly where everything is. My StumbleUpon and Delicious buttons? Got 'em and can use the in an instant. Favorites? Got those all lined up where I like them and in the folders I want them in. (Btw, you can import current bookmarks and other browser data into RockMelt.)

The bottom line is this: I'm not sure I'm ready for a new browser relationship. And I think that is going to be why RockMelt isn't going to attract a mass audience. And as cool as some RockMelt's features are, inertia in the marketplace is just too strong. RockMelt just doesn't have enough muscle.

It should also be noted that although last fall there was a lot of hype about the product (people like Robert Scoble were declaring RockMelt the next best thing), its release into public beta was a lot more subdued. Not sure what to make of that. About a million people have downloaded it so far, and according to TechCrunch, between 20 to 30 percent of those who have tried it so far are still active users.

I guess only time will tell if RockMelt will be successful or just another Flock in the pan. What do you think? Have you tried it? What features do you like or not like? What is preventing you from switching over from your current browser?

 

Some final thoughts on South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2011

Today's post is brought to us by guest blogger and fellow TAAN member Mark Gale. Mark is the president of Charleston|Orwig, a Wisconsin strategic communications firm that deals with reputation management and integrated marketing.

With ten venues and a reported 18,000 registrants scrambling to sort through hundreds of sessions, along with untold dozens of promotional parties and impromptu events, it’s pretty much impossible to get a sense of everything that happened at the 2011 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin, Texas. However, even with all the churn, there were some things that still rose to the top and just might be worth a look.

GroupMe clearly had the group’s attention. If you are not familiar with the company, it’s a simple service that lets you share via texting with several contacts at once, creating a private chat room of sorts. For example, I signed up (it takes about a minute) and can now send a text message or photo to my wife, daughter and son by using my “Family” group. They can all reply back to the group. GroupMe also allows for voice conferencing and has a GPS function that shows you where individuals in your group are on a map. (Handy for the three of us from Charleston|Orwig spread out around Austin.)

Foursquare brought 40 of its 50 employees to SXSW this year, along with a new interface and a CEO (Dennis Crowley) who enthusiastically spread his passion. In an interview with Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Crowley explained that the Foursquare vision goes well beyond getting crowned as mayor of the local coffee shop. The idea is to tie your location and even your history at a location into a database that pushes out useful information and suggestions based on your preferences. To spur further development, they’re also opening up that database to others. He sees strong retail tie-ins and a heavy emphasis on useful information.

FourSquare CEO, Dennis Crowley speaking at SXSWi

In a sense, Foursquare is where Twitter was a couple years ago—moving from a novelty to a legitimate business platform. Foursquare hit a daily record 2.6 million check-ins during the festival and is certainly worth a second look. (Meanwhile, closest competitor Gowalla was heralded as has having great design.)

Another company getting some buzz at SXSWi was 4chan. If you are like me, you might not have heard of 4chan. Before you search it out, be forewarned that content can be a bit wild, which is why no link is included here. Regardless, 4chan is one of the largest, loosely-knit communities online with a reported 12 million users per month and more than 20 million page views per day. Its 24-year-old founder, Christopher Poole, launched a new platform called Canvas that might just bring the raucous idea of 4chan into mainstream use. Right now, the beta site allows community editing of photos and promises to provide a platform to do the same with music and video. Those of us involved with communicating and influencing ought to take a look. Wired wrote a nice article about Canvas also.

It’s worth a note that some of the “biggest” designers and user experience experts at SXSWi still use paper notebooks, pens, whiteboards and flip charts to generate ideas. In one session, the presenter had her “slides” drawn in marker on a flip chart by an intern. It was quite compelling.

Not all designers use computers to generate ideas.

 My final bit of advice is this: If you attend SXSW Interactive next year, you should certainly seek out the obvious marquee sessions and events that relate to your business. Then do yourself a favor and look for some quirky thought-starters. On Monday afternoon, I quietly sat in on a discussion of some very passionate and self-proclaimed activist vegan bloggers. They said that less than one percent of America is vegan. Yet, several made their livings by serving this extremely narrowly defined niche. In fact, check out Vegansaurus, which is said to be one of America’s leading vegan blogs.  

You can read more from Mark on his company's blog, Reputation Forward.

 

5 ways to recover from a damaging tweet or post

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The great thing about Twitter (and social media in general) is that it allows you to quickly communicate to millions of potential customers in a frank and engaging manner. The worst thing about Twitter (and social media in general) is that it allows you to quickly communicate to millions of potential customers in a frank and engaging manner.

Last Wednesday, the American Red Cross found itself in the middle of a potential disaster of their own when Red Cross social media specialist Gloria Huang sent out a personal tweet on the ARC's official Twitter stream.

 
As you can imagine, tweets about getting drunk weren't part of ARC's social media strategy. An embarrassed Huang apologized, explaining it was her ineptitude with Hootsuite that was responsible for the inadvertent tweet. The Red Cross also quickly diffused the situation by stating that they deal with life-changing disasters every day and this is not one of them.

The sheer frequency of communication that is an inherent part of social media increases the chances for an errant communiqué exponentially. Not to mention how easy it is to quickly share any misguided messages and you can see how some companies are still reticent about delving into the deep end of the social media pool.

However, if handled correctly, you can easily diffuse any bad tweet or post and perhaps even enhance your brand. Here are five strategies to help you in case a malicious missive makes its way to the social media airwaves.

1. Remove the tweet or post
   Sometimes the simplest solution is the easiest one. Twitter and Facebook allow you to quickly and easily remove anything you post of their sites. Twitter does warn that it could take a while to remove it from Twitter search, but it will eventually disappear.
   
   
2. Mea culpa
   Although you may be quick to remove a tweet or post, it is more likely someone will still see the offending/embarrassing tweet or post and spread it around. Look no further than the "Cisco Fatty" incident when a job offer was extended to a woman who tweeted that she had to weigh the idea of getting a "fatty" paycheck from Cisco against hating the potential job.
   
   The best thing you can do is admit to a mistake. Social media is all about the importance of being authentic, and mistakes happen. People recognize this and are more forgiving if you actually 'fess up. Making no comment or denying any wrong-doing will only exacerbate the situation.
   
   
3. Take your lumps
   Sometimes, there may be a remark that is not easily covered up by simply saying you're sorry. Kenneth Cole tweeted about the events unfolding in Egypt and used it to promote his spring fashion line. His attempt at humor was ill-conceived to say the least.
   
    
   
   
   He has since come out an apologized for the tweet. But with the firestorm that quickly rose in social media circles (as well as traditional media channels) concerning his comment could not be contained. Ultimately it may have damaged his brand. The best thing he can do at this point is sit back and take his lumps and learn from his mistakes.
   
   
4. Revisit your social media strategy
   Once the post or tweet goes out and apologies have been made what should you do next. Well, it may be a good time to revisit your social media strategy and make sure that everyone in your organization understands your social media policy to help avoid any future mistakes. It may also be a good idea to create an official response for these types of situations and make that part of your policy.
   
   
5. Try to make lemonade
   If for some reason you are at the receiving end or somehow involved in a mis-tweet or post, there may be a chance to improve your brand while helping diffuse the situation for the offending tweeter or poster. In the Red Cross example, the Dogfish Head brewery used the publicity of the tweet to help the Red Cross by asking people to donate blood and support the ARC. This was a brilliant move that also helped enhance their own brand. And I hesitate to use that word "move" because it makes what they did seem so calculated, yet I suspect that it was more of an honest, authentic response to the situation.

Do you have any embarrassing stories about social media gone bad? How would you or do you handle these gaffes when they present themselves? Let us know in our comments section

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

The end of whitelisting: What it means to Twitter developers and marketers

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Last week, Twitter announced that it will no longer whitelist applications. And this could mean the death knell for thousands of companies.

Most third-party applications such as Tweetdeck use an API (application programming interface) to get data such as @replies, mentions, etc. In order to keep their systems running optimally and not crash, Twitter imposes a limit on how many requests (API calls) these programs can make on Twitter's servers. However, data-intense applications such as Klout or TwitterCounter need more API calls than are normally allowed in order to function. To help these heavy users, Twitter created a whitelist, that allowed certain programs the ability to go over the request limit. 

Twitter now says that it will no longer be whitelisting any more companies. Companies already whitelisted will be grandfathered in and allowed to continue operations (I think I just heard the folks at Twitalyzer breathe a group sigh of relief). 

Twitter is trying to get people to start using their streaming API, but this does not allow you to data mine older content. So you may be able to collect data from now and for the future. But historical data will be nearly impossible to come by. 

So for new companies this is bad news. Many developers have had their application into Twitter for whitelisting while developing their data-hungry apps. These apps will now be killed or die on the vine unless people can find a work-around. One of which is to pay Twitter data resellers, a whitelisted application, Gnip for historical Twitter data. (It would seem that this is the one company that is happy about this news.) 

For marketers this could also mean a crimp into insight. The development, especially of social media tools, seems to be less linear and more detached. One company develops a product, another company sees it and adds onto it creating a more powerful app, and so on. As if innovation leapfrogs from company to company. 

Many applications right now provide a huge amount of data concerning Twitter. But like any new technology most of these sites are rudimentary. By stopping whitelisting, Twitter could be stopping innovation that would help marketing companies further mine Twitter data for trends and similar qualitative and quantitative insights. Our hope now remains with those companies that were grandfathered in that they will continue to innovate and make their products even better.

 

 

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