Social media can be a dream tool when the digital seas are calm and customers are singing praise far and wide across Twitter streams and Facebook walls. But what about when a crisis hits and the once-beloved social media channels turn from a lovefest to a battleground for disgruntled customers and fans? Recently, my alma mater Texas Tech University faced this very situation.

When news spread that the university had fired Mike Leach, the beloved, eccentric head coach of the Red Raider football team, Texas Tech fans, students and alumni stormed the university’s social media accounts to find answers, voice their opinions and vent their frustrations. What fans and high-paying students and alumni found, however, was that the university’s athletic department had locked its Facebook wall, was deleting fan-generated notes and comments, and had suddenly abandoned its regularly active Twitter stream.

Eventually, every company or organization will face a crisis or issue that plays out in the social media world. How you respond says a lot about you and your brand, and how committed you are to social media success. CMD counsels many of its clients on crisis preparation, and here are five tips that can help your organization face a predicament in the age of social media (Red Raider Athletic Department: Are you listening, yet?):

• Prepare
  • Do you have a social media crisis communication plan? Start by revisiting your existing crisis plans—do they include the use of your social media accounts? Spend time to develop messaging for each of your crisis scenarios and draft Facebook posts and Tweets so that your first communication during a crisis occurs within minutes, instead of hours or days. Are there prominent bloggers or Twitter users that can disseminate important information to target audiences during a crisis? Include them in your crisis plan. Also, assign a team member(s) to monitor and administer your social media accounts. In the case of Texas Tech, new Tweets and Facebook wall comments were coming in by the hundreds each hour—there needs to be a person dedicated to monitoring these conversations.
• Listen
  • An essential aspect of social media is listening—especially when a customer or fan is expressing a concern. What are the key issues your audiences are focusing on? What type of action are they calling for? Take this opportunity to let your customers and fans know that you not only hear their concerns, but you are taking them into consideration when planning your next course of action. The insights you gain from listening will help shape additional communications during a crisis as well as improve your communication plans in the future.
• Contain the conversation
  • People can be downright rotten at times, and unfortunately, the worst often comes out in the midst of a crisis or dispute. While you might not enjoy the name calling or what’s being said about your organization, it’s important for those conversations to occur in the appropriate space and that they don’t extend the reach of the crisis to unrelated digital properties. Don’t lock your Facebook wall or blog comments section, because detractors will simply find another place to voice their criticisms and these actions can add significant fuel to the fire. In the case of Texas Tech, the athletic department’s decision to lock its Facebook wall spread the flame war to the university’s general fan page, which is moderated by a separate office on campus and opted to remain open. Like Texas Tech’s general fan page, foster a place for open, two-way communication on a space that you control and are able to track. Also, keep in mind that your social media accounts should maintain the right to delete vulgar content; but don’t delete a comment because it states a point of view that you don’t agree with—after all, disagreements are simply human nature.
• Respond
  • Social media—especially Twitter—is all about what’s happening now. Your social media accounts will soon be, if they’re not already, the first places people visit when a crisis breaks. Become the main source of news by offering valuable information, such as insights from key executives on how they are taking steps to solve the issue. At the onset of a crisis, a post as simple as this could suffice while your team listens to the conversations and develops a forthcoming plan of action, “Hi all, we understand your concerns and we are here listening. We are taking everything you have to say into consideration and you will be the first to know when we plan our next steps.” Other actions include adding more robust content in the form of videos, additional information, updates, etc. to help balance the ongoing dialogue and achieve search benefits for your side of the story. For particularly influential detractors, determine whether it’s possible to take the conversation offline by offering to talk through their concerns or misgivings directly—person to person.
• Research
  • Research is essential to effective public relations. In the days and weeks following a crisis, track the conversations across your social media channels. Where did most of the conversations take place? What was the key issue that users focused on? Use this information to see what messaging was effective or what key events triggered a shift in your audience’s tone. This is also invaluable when modifying your current crisis communication plan to fit the behaviors of your target audience.

The year 2009 will undoubtedly go down as the year that Twitter exploded onto the communications scene. With so much attention and interest, Twitter gave us a new and interesting way to engage in two-way conversations with people, clients and customers, as well as take advantage of a plethora of off-shoot companies built to service the microblogging site. Also, due to Twitter, breaking news that was usually delivered 45 minutes or more after an event is now delivered in a mere 45 seconds.

To help our clients keep up-to-date on Twitter best practices, the CMD Earned Media team has presented numerous Twitter how-to seminars over the past year, guiding and showing how to use the channel strategically and addressing the basics of getting started. (See our earlier blog post on our Twitter 101 session for local Portland media.) We recently held a seminar for our CMD colleagues to offer insight and best practices to those who wanted to learn more and get started. The session was spirited and full of interesting questions, including these five:

Q: I’ve set up a Twitter account, but really, why should I be on it?
A: We all use social media to communicate in various ways. Some people use it to keep in touch with family and friends. For business-savvy users, you can listen to what is being said about your clients, research your competition, find recent news pertaining to an industry and connect with media and people who share common interests. If you’re interested in what others are interested in, then Twitter is for you.

Q: What type of information should I list in my profile?
A: It’s important to note that all information on your Twitter profile is searchable, which means that what you tweet will show up in real-time search results based on keywords that you use. Make it easy for people to find you by listing the company you work for, your current location, occupation and interests. Now that Twitter search results show up on Google and general Web search, it’s more important than ever to ensure that what you’re twittering is relevant and interesting, and not just a space-filler, i.e. “I’m eating lunch.”

Q: How do I develop followers or find people to follow?
A: There are many ways to develop followers. For example: using Twitter’s search bar, doing a Google search, or using one of our favorite free tools, www.twellow.com. Twellow is like the Yellow Pages of Twitter – with over 12.5 million profiles listed, you can harness your following/followers by looking up your favorite hobby, the industry you work in, location and more.

Q: What if I accidently share something on Twitter that I did not want to?
A: As we like to remind our clients, once you send a tweet, it technically lives forever in the “twittersphere.” Sure, Twitter offers the ability to delete a tweet (when you hover over your update when viewing your home or profile page, you’ll see a trash can at the end of the update), but there is no way to prevent it from ever not turning up in search results. When in doubt, re-read what you’re about to tweet to make sure you’re comfortable with the message.

Q: Can I update multiple social media channels at once?
A: Yes. We are busy people, and managing different social media profiles takes time. If you are interested in integrating both your Facebook and Twitter profiles simultaneously, visit: http://www.ping.fm/ (another favorite tool of ours). Also, LinkedIn has recently been enabled for Twitter updates, so your tweets can appear in your network updates section.

Questions? Tweet us @CMDPortland. We’re here to help.

More than anything this year, the 2009 International PRSA conference hit some emotional nerves that have been sparked by an industry in the midst of a complete and utter transformation.

There were flashes of brilliance and forward-thinking from leading innovators ready to speed toward the new era. There was also denial, filtered through the lens of disbelief. There were those just now coming around to realize the industry they’ve known for years is undergoing a change that is deep, permanent and real. The collective question overall: how will this change the world we’re living in and how do we get prepared?

Time and again, every presentation involved the idea of challenging the norms of the past. But in addition, it was striking that some fundamental truths remain self-evident. Here’s my own perspective on the various conference presentations about which traditional PR and marketing ideas still have solid legs and which are being demolished right before our eyes.

Live by new rules…

Turn over your brand.
The days of one company, one agency defining what a brand or a product means in isolation are over. A brand is now made up of collective thoughts and opinions from the public - people increasingly engage and express opinions about who you are and what you do. Be ready to embrace and empower those who are inspired by your brand; and work just as hard to listen to and win over those who are not.

Change your idea of the traditional agency model.
If your agency hasn’t recognized that the one-to-many model is crumbling right along with the old icons of the mass media, proceed with caution. No longer are traditional lines being drawn between PR, media, digital, advertising, etc. Today, it’s more about listening, strategy development, content creation, community builders and recruiters with small, nimble, knowledgeable strike forces that go after and build relations with influential audiences using the latest techniques, not the big, mass mentality. If your agency is still thinking in the old silos and the lines aren’t crossing, it’s time to blow up the model.

Remove strict boundaries.
It used to be that PR results were clippings, shared in a book that gathered dust on the shelf of the marketing head’s office. That’s how companies determined how we were being talked about. No more. Share of conversation, Web analytics and real-time reactions and opinions are going on between real people; they need to be captured, analyzed and shared with business decision makers including R&D, management, marketing – even legal and HR. Direct consumer feedback is readily available and it’s not just about metrics for the marketing department, it’s about strategy setting for the entire organization.

Focus on content and context.
Quit thinking short-term “campaigns.” Today, it’s about creating movements that empower your customers, encourage them to take ownership, inspire them to engage with your brand, help spread the word to others and get results. They don’t start and stop, because the conversation really never starts and stops. Be ready to engage consistently, offer ongoing value and work to keep building.

But keep the old…

Listen up
Again, listening is the most valuable tool marketers and businesses have today. Good PR and marketing initiatives have always been based on research. The good news is, it’s easier than ever to tap into what customers are thinking real-time about brand, services and marketing initiatives.

Make strategy paramount
It is as it always has been. Marketing without a strategy is garbage – a complete waste. Strategy helps you be relevant, reach the right people and engage in ways that are meaningful and generate results.

Be tactically selective
This goes back to marketing 101 – this step comes third not first. Good tactics are the meat of any plan, but launching the latest tools, rushing headlong into trying to do it all just because it’s new, shiny or available, without taking the first two steps is just plain silly.

Put measurement into practice
More important than ever, this is what it’s all about. Did we turn the dial? Did we have an impact and meet our goals? Luckily, it’s also easier than ever to measure in more meaningful ways, and then refine the strategy and re-engage.

For me, this year’s conference was great reinforcement for the direction CMD’s Earned Media team is going, and it’s reassuring that we’ve not only embraced the latest thinking, ideas, tools and techniques, we’re also staying grounded and true to principles that are the basis for exceptional results.

The top public relations campaigns from Oregon were on display last night at the PRSA Portland-Metro Chapter Spotlight Awards. This annual event serves to recognize strategic initiatives that produce great results, and we’re proud to say that our Earned Media team picked up four awards during the course of the evening.

These awards showcase the reasons behind why we’ve transitioned from CMD’s Public Relations team to the CMD Earned Media team, which better describes our approach for seamlessly leveraging both social and traditional PR practices. To us, earned media is the attention, reputation, credibility and awareness that is earned organically by non-paid means through the value of the information and the merit of the interaction you have with the audience/public. That includes a strong combination of solid PR thinking and the ability to tap the latest opportunities social media presents. It embodies our commitment to remain on the forefront of emerging trends in communication while continuing to deliver great results.

Thanks go to our clients who work day-in and day-out as our partners in these campaigns and allow us the freedom to concept solutions to meet their business objectives. Here’s a brief recap of CMD’s work that received 2009 Spotlight Awards:

JELD-WEN Contest Scares up Terrifying Utility Bills – Spotlight Award

Situation
With rising energy costs and a growing interest in environmental concerns, energy efficiency is top of mind with homeowners.

Strategy
The CMD team created the JELD-WEN Scariest Utility Bills Contest to tout the importance of home energy efficiency and find a real-life example to prove that efficient windows and doors can help homeowners save money.

Results
The contest was wildly successful, nearly doubling the contest objectives and earning placements in publications including the Chicago Sun Times and Houston Chronicle. The U.S. Department of Energy even expressed interest in using JELD-WEN’s contest winner as a case study of its own, positioning JELD-WEN as the expert on reducing energy costs.

Be sure to check out this year’s Utility Bill Bailout Contest. It just might win you new JELD-WEN ENERGY STAR qualified windows and doors and an appearance on an upcoming episode of the nationally syndicated show, “Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford.”
http://www.jeld-wen.com/bailout/

JELD-WEN Lighthouse Campaign – Spotlight Award

Situation
JELD-WEN Windows and Doors needed to raise awareness and directly link its products with reliability, a crucial factor for homeowners, builders and remodelers when considering which windows and doors to purchase.

Strategy
The CMD team created a campaign that helped JELD-WEN walk its reliability talk and prove product performance by helping restore highly visible landmarks, America’s lighthouses, which also face some of the toughest climate conditions in the world.

Results
The campaign has helped build JELD-WEN’s image of reliability, created strong product performance proof points, and generated millions of media impressions, all while fostering tremendous goodwill.

The CMD Earned Media team also received two Award of Merit honors for “An Exploration into the Digital Frontier for Intel and Lenovo” and “Building the HealthCareGoesMobile.com Virtual Community.”

Social media has taken the marketing world by storm. This new concept of humanizing brands by building online communities and relationships is changing the way companies market products.

In many ways, social media marketing and sociology are loosely based off of one another. Sociology is centered on identifying communities and their social preferences and actions. Sociologists work to understand the society and community, much like businesses do with online communities. For example, businesses participating in Twitter create pages and write tweets based on what their community desires to hear.

Social media focuses on social behavior and lifestyle instead of relying on more impersonal resources, such as demographics. This way interaction can occur at a deeper level.

The use of social influence – the sociological term for the impact others have on our everyday life – is the major component in social media marketing. Social media marketers study how users and brands function and interact on social media forums such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other platforms to better understand and participate within the community where their target market interacts. This interaction enables each side to both spread and gain knowledge in a mutually beneficial way.

Following sociology methodology, here are five tips to consider when participating in social media:

1. Make sure your social media “properties” fit the audience. Find out what their style is and match it. For example, when trying to reach a younger audience, consider bright fun colors and hip designs, something they would pick out themselves. If they feel comfortable within your community, they will listen to what you have to say and provide feedback.

2. Post meaningful and relatable topics. Choose topics that are newsworthy and write with personality. Do not try to sell, but rather relate to them.

3. When a follower messages you, message back! Use personal messages instead of auto-replies to make them feel valued. Don’t let technology get in the way of real human interaction.

4. Create a constant flow of information. Do not overload your followers with information, but at the same time post enough to keep them interested.

5. Understand unique community attributes. Just like societies, unwritten rules of conduct and behavior spring organically from distinct online communities. Leaders and influencers within these circles typically help set the tone and it’s important to pay attention and learn appropriate conduct in order to successfully engage.

Today’s marketers would do well to apply ideas from sociology when considering social media.  The old model of marketing which forced consumers to fit into defined categories to be reached by limited marketing tools left many consumers’ needs unmet. Using the sociological idea of forming and understanding different communities in concert with the latest social media channels gives marketers the opportunity to reach audiences on a much more personal, and effective, level.

Anna Reilly is entering her sophomore year at the University of Oregon and is majoring in sociology. She served as an intern this summer in the earned media department at CMD Agency.

Just like “no elbows on the table” is a dining rule, people should also mind their manners in this social media space

Poke. Poke. Tag. Poke. Tag. Poke.

Oh, the Facebook poke. Do you poke back? Is poke code for “hello”? What’s the difference between a poke from a friend and a poke from a co-worker?

All this poke talk and no idea what you should do? Here’s the best solution to deal with the pokes: ignore them. It’ll save you embarrassment. You don’t want a co-worker announcing at the next meeting, “I poked you!” Instead, send the person a private message or add them as a friend (if you know them, of course). Unless you poke someone with your finger in person, you should resist doing it with a mouse.

According to research compiled by Orange, an international telecommunications company, almost two-thirds of people on social networks (such as Facebook, Myspace or Bebo) are frustrated and confused by online etiquette. Also, more than a quarter of those surveyed were uncertain about how to respond to unwelcome “pokes” or messages.

With more than 150 million active users spending three billion plus minutes each day on Facebook, this social media application has become part of our daily lives, and manners can’t be an afterthought just because it’s an online tool.

Below are 11 Facebook etiquette rules that users should follow to ensure proper, courteous and respectable use (reference: Debretts and Orange):

1. Wait 24 hours before accepting or removing someone as a friend. During that time, decide if you feel comfortable sharing personal information with that person.

2. You don’t have to become friends with people you don’t know. Think before you poke or request someone to be your friend.

3. Don’t upload profile pictures that you wouldn’t feel comfortable appearing on the front page of the New York Times. This space can be just that public.

4. #3 applies to posting photos of friends too. Ask for their permission before you do.

5. For important events, don’t only rely on “virtual” cards. Virtual cards tend to get buried in e-mails, and you don’t want someone to forget a special occasion.

6. Block your profile so that only your selected friends and co-workers can see it. Click “privacy” toward the top of your Facebook page and you’ll have the ability to change your settings. You can decide who sees what.

7. Even if you think you’ve blocked what you needed to, double check and have a friend check from their profile. Potential companies looking to hire you will search and go out of their way to find someone who can access your full profile to see if you’re hiding any inappropriate behavior that may risk their company’s reputation.

8. Don’t agree with a news article, photo or Web link that someone posted? Refrain from posting a harsh comment on Facebook for all of your friends and theirs to see. Instead, write the person a private Facebook message.

9. Don’t spam people with invitations to participate in an online game unless you’ve asked them personally or they have asked you. Sorry, but some people don’t believe that throwing a staple at an alien is the best use of their time or attention.

10.Keep your profile updated and visit often. Take the time to read what people and friends are posting and writing on your wall. Don’t be blind-sighted if someone suddenly asks, “So you went and partied in Cancun last week?”

11. As with public relations, the best policy is always honesty, but it is also essential to show restraint and realize that broadcasting your opinions, point of view and personal feelings can have unintended consequences both positive and negative.

Have questions? Still debating if you should poke your boss and request them as a friend? If so, let us know.

Visit and join CMD’s Facebook group: click here.

Congratulations. You’ve taken the first step on the business networking site LinkedIn and created a profile. Your picture is posted and you’ve listed a few previous jobs from your past. Maybe you searched for a few old colleagues and friends. Now what do you do?

For many of our clients at CMD who ask how their companies can use LinkedIn, our recommendation is to make a plan with goals you want to achieve, designate a spokesperson who can represent the company, and start participating.

Think of LinkedIn as a networking event at your local chamber of commerce. After you walk into the room, what do you do? Do you stand by the wall and not speak with anyone, or do you make connections through conversations? Is your goal to get five business cards at the event? Well, try to do the same thing on LinkedIn.

Overall, it’s best to plan a strategy for using LinkedIn and getting your brand recognized. Part of that plan should include being active in groups.

Groups are a big benefit of LinkedIn. Joining groups gives you the chance to be part of the conversation, which is really what LinkedIn is all about. Are you a marketing professional? Join marketing groups. Are you looking to engage with customers? Join groups that your customers are members of and participate in the discussions. Answer questions to show your knowledge. This is where visibility will be your ally, raise your LinkedIn presence, and get a few more people to know who you are and learn what you can do for them. For example, here’s a little tip I read from a LinkedIn expert that can send people to your Web site to learn more about your business:

when you leave a discussion comment, you can put your URL in and have it converted to a hyperlink. So, if you put your email signature in, like this:

Darcie Meihoff
Managing Director/PR, CMD - http://www.cmdagency.com

then it will make that a clickable link. Just having the link to click might get a few more people over to your website to learn about what you do. Be sure to ask the group manager if it is OK to do this first, as some might consider it advertising and ask you to leave the group. When in doubt, ask first.

If you don’t find groups that meet your needs, or engage with the right audience, start your own group. Take the initiative and invite your customers to join your group and participate in discussions that help their businesses. We started a CMD Agency Pros LinkedIn group for CMD employees, CMD customers and potential clients to talk about topics of interest, like social media, marketing, advertising and branding.

We want our customers to join our group and look at CMD as a resource that can answer questions and provide feedback. Imagine having an entire integrated marketing agency read your question. Someone is bound to have an answer, which helps you and establishes CMD as a reliable source. We invite you to join our LinkedIn group at CMD Agency Pros. Feel free to pose a question, supply an answer, or share a link to a relevant article that deals with today’s marketing climate.

That’s the beauty of LinkedIn – you’re part of the conversation.

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about where social media should reside within the marketing world. And because it’s the hot topic that so many corporate marketing divisions and clients are buzzing about, everyone is vying for a spot at the head of the table.  Is it advertising, PR, direct, customer service – or a totally separate form of marketing that needs to be off on its own, while coordinating with other more traditional avenues?

Creating a separate social media “division” is a bit out of touch with reality – not only when it comes to the best ways to approach it, but also with what most companies can afford to do. For one, these tools will soon not be new anymore – they simply make up the world we live in and are part of a company’s overall communications strategy.  Because of that, isolating social media as its own area of expertise isn’t a sustainable long-term approach.

To maximize social media, it’s obvious that it must be driven by smart strategy, be well-managed and implemented, and live in tandem with other disciplines, as it touches many different areas. But first and foremost, it needs to be spearheaded by a fundamental sense of community, information sharing and the desire to foster long-term, ongoing relationships, directly with the public (which applies whether you’re talking B2C or B2B).

I’m a PR person, so my viewpoint is admittedly pretty biased, but I think there are some very good reasons why social media needs to be steeped in a solid public relations perspective:

• Most importantly, the objective and strategy must be the priority (before leaping straight to tools). Following the latest, shiny new tool is distracting. The PR discipline has always emphasized setting strategy and measurable goals before delving into tactics.
• The emphasis is on audience-centric content that attracts and compels, not pushes. In PR, if you don’t have something of importance to offer to the public or the press, you’re dead.
• There is a fundamental need to build leadership, credibility and reputation in order to maximize exposure. As it has been since the beginning, reputation management is core to PR discipline.
• Social media allows you to “become the media” for your audiences. It’s about great content, and essentials of journalism apply. The best PR practitioners are trained as journalists as well as marketers, and have a nose for news. In fact, many are former reporters.
• The basic PR practice of community relations – how to interact, conduct yourself, deliver on-point messages, and relate to publics at deeper, more meaningful levels – is paramount.
• Like any solid PR initiative, social media takes time, effort, planning and commitment to gain momentum and traction. It is not a flash in the pan approach.
• Generating goodwill and influence means listening to input and becoming a credible, responsive and reliable source of information.
• Proactively monitoring, spotting and responding to issues before they turn into crises is essential in PR, as it is in social media.

Now, I know a lot of people will say PR has no business in social media, as it’s about anti-spin and authenticity.  But keep in mind that social media is a very self-policing form of communication.  Similar to traditional PR practices, the bad apples will quickly get weeded out if they use these channels to be sneaky, self-serving or aggressive, put themselves and their own company’s interests before the public and the community, or behave unethically.  Those kinds of practices are and always have been shunned by the best in the profession. That said, smart PR practices: solid community relations abilities, corporate social responsibility sensibilities, and an eye for issues management and crisis communications as well as journalistic ethics and integrity are very much at home in social media.