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Best of Whitespace Volume 2
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009Creating a Social Media Policy
Monday, August 31st, 2009Even if your organization does not officially engage in social media, it’s very likely that some of your staff members have profiles on social networking sites like Facebook. Having a social media policy is something every organization should consider. But, what exactly is a social media policy, and what should it say?
Here are some tips to help you create a policy that fits your association.
Six Tips to Help you Get Started
1. Introduce the purpose of social media policy.
Staff members need to know what’s in it for them to get them to read the policy and adopt the guidelines. Let them know that the goal of the social media policy is to empower everyone to engage with social media responsibly. The policy is not simply about protecting the association’s reputation, but also about protecting those who chose to participate. Encourage them to be smart about protecting themselves because what they publish is widely accessible and can be around for a long time.
2. Define what is included in the policy.
Let staff members know that the policy applies to all employees and contractors who contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, or any other kind of social media. List specific examples including Twitter, Facebook, commenting on online media stories, etc.
3. Define the rules of engagement.
Encourage staff members to be authentic and themselves by using their name, company info and title when appropriate. Remind them that they are a valuable asset to the organization, and their involvement with the association’s social media efforts will enhance the experience for everyone. Just as in meetings in the office, everyone is responsible for what content they share and should strive to add value to conversations.
4. Comply with company conduct policies and company culture.
Everyone needs to know that the same policies that apply in the office, apply online. It’s not okay for employees to harass colleagues in the office, and doing so online will not be tolerated. Same goes for sharing of private conversations and confidential information. Using common sense and common courtesy are great rules to follow.
5. Set rules for moderating content.
Let staff members know that the social media sites within the association’s control will be moderated, which is the act of reviewing and approving 3rd party content. To create a safe environment for users, you should let it be known that all offensive, abusive, illegal and irrelevant content is prohibited. As content is added from anonymous users, it should always be reviewed before being approved. This isn’t the case for content being shared by registered users. Also, let staff know how you plan to handle comments that could be considered negative for the organization. If you are going to have an authentic online presence, then you can’t hide all the bad comments. Instead, look at it as an opportunity to show the world how you manage conflict.
6. Where to get more information.
There may be times when staff members get involved in conversations online that turn nasty, and they don’t know what to do. Provide employees with a method of contacting your PR department about issues like this. Also, reminding employees that they can contact the HR department to have questions answered about the policy and on how to protect their privacy online. Of course, this first means you must equip your PR department with the skills necessary to handle potential problems. And, provide resources to the HR department that can be used to teach users how to protect their online reputation (i.e. a class on how to properly set privacy settings on Facebook).
Take a look at policies from companies and organizations that are similar to yours. Use those benchmarks and these tips to guide you in creating a policy that fits the culture of your association.
Tools for Social Media Metrics
Monday, August 31st, 2009RCG’s Comprehensive Guide To Measuring Social Media Metrics
A list of tools to help you measure ROI, engagement and help you develop social media strategy.
The essentials:
Calculators:
ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaings from Frog Loop
Social Networking Media ROI Calculator from Dragon Search Marketing
Tools, widgets & more:
Sometrics
Analytics that measure social advertising efforts.
Social Media Metrics Plugin for Google Analytics
Bit.ly
URL shortener that tracks information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur.
Xinu Returns
A great dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media. Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Googe Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.
PostRank
Detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and Friend Feed. Great for blogs with a lot of content
SocialToo
Create social surveys and track social stats. Also, reports on Twitter follows and unfollows.
Tweet Reach
Follow your tweets and retweets to see how far they travel.
Social Meter
Check out your site’s social popularity on sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Google, Technoratic and more.
Statsaholic
Compare rankings and other info on up to three sites at a time.
Site Volume
Compare how often keywords show up on a site.
RCG Manifesto!
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
We are changing the way organizations market their conference—one conference at a time.
1. We perceive that conference marketing is one arm of an organization’s holistic messaging for fulfilling their mission. We embrace conference marketing efforts that will enhance an organization’s strategic messaging and fit within the organization’s overall goals.
2. We believe that a marketing plan is a schedule of strategic activities that will guide behavior. We will achieve conference marketing success by following a roadmap that leads to a desired destination. We affirm that a marketing plan is a well-researched strategic map that addresses the role, appearance and tracking of all marketing efforts.
3. We will adapt our marketing plan based on past history, current needs and future goals. We value impact and success over tradition. We will develop new means to work within industry trends and cultural shifts to remain relevant and vision-focused.
4. We will promote value over venue when developing a conference brand mark. We will position ourselves as experts with valuable resources and information to share with like-minded professionals, instead of positioning ourselves as tour guides. Through multi-media and strategic communication we will educate potential attendees on why they should attend.
5. We acknowledge repeat attendance is not a given. We will not rely on history or any other external force to be the reason for success or failure. Instead we will trust our own efforts to drive success. We will treat each conference as its own experience, and will work from the ground-up in generating attendance numbers.
6. We accept that late registration is a fact, not a trend. We will not ignore cultural shifts. Instead we will work with them to make our marketing plan even stronger and more effective. Adding new means of communication and changing the schedule of communication are musts.
7. We will gather feedback and use it. We will not make uninformed guesses at what our target audience desires, instead we will ask them through surveys and track the effectiveness of our efforts. We will use their answers to develop strategies and actions.
8. We will use social networking to reach out to all attendees. We will learn new ways of communicating through social networking to engage in meaningful, effective conversations with individuals before, during and after the conference.
9. We agree that greater conference attendance will advance an organization’s mission. We will use our marketing efforts to increase opportunities for organization’s to fulfill their mission, and have a greater impact on their members.
10. We will recognize that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is tenuous. We will not engage thinking that supports ineffective habits. We will transform our habits and works based on research, the audience’s needs, and our vision. We will test our efforts to ensure that we are putting energy into projects that produce quantitative results.
11. We will have a vision of growth for conference attendance and commit the energy to implement necessary changes. We will not accept excuses or utter the word “can’t” when faced with a challenge. Instead we will be flexible towards change and open to learning for the sake of growth and success of every single conference.
It is time for organizations to realize they must approach each conference as a unique event, with unique offerings and unique value, instead of marketing every conference the same way year after year. We can draw a parallel from how large corporations successfully launch new products. Are they using the same marketing plan from five or ten years ago? Definitely not. They create a new plan and a new vision for each product, with targeted marketing efforts in each of their markets. This is how organizations who desire greater attendance need to market their conferences in order to help them fulfill their organization’s mission.
4 Innovative Ways to Increase Membership Retention
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Listen in as Gary focuses on four innovative ways that an association can be more strategic about membership retention. There are opportunities to be had and successes to be achieved in this uncertain economic environment. Step outside your comfort zone to master new approaches of reaching your goals.
Recycling Information for Blogs
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
If you’re organization is currently running a blog, then we’re sure you’ve had days of staring at the computer screen, wanting to pull out your hair as you attempt to come up with new, fresh content that your readers will love. We understand we’ve been there, too. To help you think out of the box when it comes to generating new blog content on a regular basis, we’ve come up with some ideas to help you recycle information to benefit your online readers.
Press Releases
Press releases are a great source of information that can be leveraged to benefit your online readers. By nature press releases are full of details about your organization, upcoming events and your mission – this is a gold mine for your blog!
Here are a few tips to recycle press releases and make them blog-worthy:
- Supplement with pictures or links to related stories
- Re-write to make the press release more suitable for the tone of your blog (i.e., more conversational)
- Use headers and bulleted lists to make the information easier to digest
- Post a link to the original press release
Articles & White Papers
With a little bit of tweaking, any article or white paper written by someone in your organization can also be repurposed for a blog. But, don’t post it on your blog until after the article runs in the publication.
- Create a series of blog posts out of long articles
- Include links to various resources
- Write a new intro letting your blog followers know where your article was recently published
Presentations
With all the time you pour into creating presentations, it would be great to get more than just a one time use out of them. Repurposing them on your website not only exposes more of your audience to your fine work, but is very likely to bring new traffic to your site through search engines.
- Check out SlideShare to help you upload and share PowerPoint presentations
- Create a series of blog posts walking readers through the presentation
E-newsletters
Many of you likely use email marketing to keep your members up-to-date on association happenings. But, we all know how easy it is to “lose” an email, or get caught up with other things to take time to really look at it. Reposting e-newsletter information on your blog is a great way to make that valuable information easily accessible to your audience, on their own terms.
- Let readers know that the information came from your newsletter, with a link for them subscribe if they do not already receive it
- Post the information 1-2 days after the newsletter goes out
Now that you are inspired and full of great ideas, start blogging! Let us know if you have other content that could be repurposed for your blog, but you’re not quite sure how to make it work – we’d love to help you out!
Twitter to the Rescue!
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
This afternoon our web hosting service (Earthlink) went down causing our site, along with over 2 million other customers sites, to be down. This has gone on for over 6 hours. Earthlink has not posted anything on a blog nor on twitter.
All of our updated information has come from twitter. A hastag was instantly created for #earthlink and within minutes thousands of tweets were sent. The tweets ranged from finding out if anyone else is expereicing this issue to how ironic it is that Earthlink went down on Earth day.
This goes to show that twitter is a great resource for up to date news between users and how it can keep others in touch with the happenings around the world.
Earthlink has not updated their twitter status in over 2 years nor have they sent out any updates on the issue. If twitter was not around, all earthlink customers would be left in the dark about this major issue that is affecting millions of business around the world.