A few weeks ago, I highlighted some helpful technology available today to help you strategize, analyze relationships, add to your productivity and visualize the affects of social communications.    I mentioned that it was important to be a Technology Tester, to take the time to research and test technology to have the right tools in your social media toolkit.  The four resources in the post included:  the Vocus Social Media Strategy App, Post Planner for Facebook, Asterisq Mention Map and Cloud.li.

I caught up with Julie Cros, founder of Post Planner, and was interested to learn how she married marketing and technology.  With so many of us learning, testing and embracing technology, I asked Julie to share her story on how and why she decided to launch the Post Planner Facebook application.

Here’s my interview with Julie Cros:

Q1:    How did you come up with the idea to create Post Planner?

Post Planner was born out of a personal need that evolved into a business one. I was going away for the weekend and wanted to share some useful information with my community while I was away. I knew I could use one of the social media dashboards to schedule my post, but thought it was a bit of a pain to download a dashboard to my desktop or log in to another website. I started looking for a Facebook app for planning posts, but couldn’t find anything easy to use.

So the app idea stayed in my mind for the next couple days before I thought of it as a business idea.  Then I realized the potential and added value a comprehensive Facebook-located scheduling tool could have for brands and companies.

Q2:    How does Post Planner help PR and marketing professionals?  How is it different than other apps?

Post Planner is strictly Facebook focused, and has quickly become the must-have business app of many PR and marketing experts. It just makes their daily operations easier.

With Post Planner, PR Marketers can plan and strategize future wall posts in a matter of minutes. The app (which, again, is built directly into Facebook) lets them schedule posts easily, but also helps them raise brand awareness via our new White Label application.  With the White Label app, businesses can replace the “via Post Planner” footer with “via Your Brand” and link the footer to any website they choose.

Post Planner also helps marketers and PR experts increase their page’s exposure by giving them access to our huge Status Ideas database, which offers over 3,000 prewritten statuses, each designed to help increase EdgeRank.

On Facebook, creating the most engaging and consistent content is key, and Post Planner helps you achieve that.

Post Planner is unique among apps in many ways! It’s directly integrated to Facebook making it easy and simple to use. It’s a smart and complete product design offering a full service package: schedule your posts, repeat them, find powerful status ideas, maximize your branding.

Q3:    What are some best practices when it comes to the planning and development of content?

Easy: make sure you use Post Planner. 

Customers want to feel important. They want to know you’re listening to them. They want you to provide valuable information.  And they want exclusive incentives. But they don’t want to be bombarded with promotional offers or advertisements.  TV does that already.

So I have two content tips:

1) Provide useful content:  create a need that will get your community impatient to read your latest news, give them sexiness, and do not promote marketing messages over 20% of the time.

2) Be consistent:  it doesn’t have to be everyday (in fact what works well with one community may not work with another one, and vice-versa) but it should at least be steady.

Q4:    You mentioned you have a marketing background.  What made you decide to marry marketing and technology to develop your social media tool?

With technology invading any marketer’s daily activities (think websites rather than brochures, smartphones instead of faxes, emailings vs print mailings, e-shops complementing stores, QR codes replacing a business’s ID, etc.), I started a love affair with Facebook and leveraged its incredible power in its early years. As marketers, we see and have many tools available, but that doesn’t mean they’re all requirements for doing business. My vision was to provide a simple way to anticipate conversations and make the lives of Facebook users easier, and the combo marketing-technology came as a natural evolution.

Q5:    What advice can you give to other marketing and PR professionals who are interested in building a tool and launching it in the market?

Create a product that solves people’s problems!

Don’t go for the fanciest tool in the world.  And don’t just create a copycat tool.   Make sure you’re creating a product that cures the pain of customers and make their lives easier.

It doesn’t have to be designed for everyone, and in fact “a product that is designed for everyone barely reaches much of anyone” (Seth Godin).  But it needs to be clever and it has to offer smart features.

When it comes to launching it in the market, make sure you define the relevant channels first, and then listen for feedback to make your tool even smarter and better adapted to your user’s needs.  Listen, care and respond, so your customers feel important and can sense that you’re making their lives easier.

About Julie Cros … Co-Founder at Post Planner: www.postplanner.com Digital junkie, Social Media Big time, Life, Laughs, Love. Pro twitter: @PostPlanner – Personal: @LiveJulie.

I’ve been studying brand responses to blog posts and comments for quite some time. However, a recent Facebook incident made me build my own personal comment policy for my online persona.  No matter who you are, or your level of influence, you need to be prepared to respond when someone takes the conversation to a level that is uncomfortable, inappropriate and/or just does not belong in a conversation with you or your constituents.

For me, there are several phases or tiers of responses.  I want to be able to discuss topics, give and hear differing opinions and welcome critique as a “gift.”  I learned about 20 years ago, in an organizational behavior class, that both the ability to give and receive feedback is the best “gift” for professionals who are looking to learn and grow.  However, there are times when you can see a conversation is moving in the wrong direction and just like a brand that’s responsible to answer questions, you can’t always just sit back and hope the commenter goes away.

A helpful tool that I came across is the Air Force Response Chart.  If you haven’t studied this chart yet, you should definitely take a look.  It walks a brand through a process of how it should respond based on the nature of the comment.  Of course, this could be your personal brand. Here’s how I evaluate personal blog comments and messages that people direct toward me on social sites:

Comment or Blog Post Validity: Is the comment or the blog post valid, related to the conversation and present a different but legitimate perspective? If yes, accept the comment and thank the individual for the information. If not, you can explain any misinformation or how you feel the information may not apply to you or your community.  This is considered healthy debate and you can at some point agree to disagree.

Level of Responsibility: Does the comment show that the commenter understands the needs of the community and is trying to be helpful or just purely representing his or her own interests?  If there is a level of respect and responsibility, by all means accept the comment and engage in the dialogue.  If there is no level of respect or responsibility, you can choose not to allow the comment to go through or you can let the comment pass.

Level of Respect: The comment reaches an unexpected heightened level of disrespect. Sometimes conversations can go in the wrong direction because of a misunderstanding or purely because the commenter does not have a level of respect for you or your community.  If someone misunderstands something that you have said and gets upset, then you should immediately apologize and be accountable.  If they have offended you and it was a misunderstanding you should work toward resolving the issue. If there is no respect involved and the comments are nasty, harassing, defamatory, etc., you have the right to not accept the comment on your blog.

The Commenter is a Troll: If the commenter is clearly a Troll or what’s known as a Rager (according the Air Force Response Chart) and has not contributed anything positive to the conversation, but is immediately bashing and degrading or ranting and sarcastic, this commenter does not deserve a response.  I do not recommend blocking Trolls or Ragers on Twitter, as it’s always important to listen and monitor what they are saying.  In more cases than not these Trolls and Ragers are put into their place by the community. Here’s where it helps to have a supportive community in place.

The Commenter is a Spammer by Nature: There are times that the commenter is not quite a Troll or Rager, yet has been able to become a friend and access your network on different social sites.  Then, he or she decides to start spamming your wall.  By all means, you have the option of using your privacy settings to block your wall, so this individual can’t make any comments that are uncomfortable and inappropriate and would be offensive to those who are conversing with you.

I’m all for healthy debate and there should always be mutual civility in our conversations.  If we all had the same opinions, it wouldn’t be as interesting or educational.  However, its important to be prepared and set up a system that tells you when its time to respond and thank someone for a different perspective and when it’s time not to respond at all or to change your privacy settings.  In most cases, I find that people want to give opinions and to help one another.  However, spamming and nasty and inappropriate comments just don’t belong in our conversations.  When do you say enough is enough and it’s time to discontinue the conversation or block the person you thought was a friend?

The past few years have been revolutionary for PR and communications.  We’ve seen changes in our approach and in new technologies that allow us to share, collaborate and connect directly with our constituents.  For me, 2011 will be a year to dig in, making sure that our organizations have embraced the changes and are better prepared to deal with new ways of sharing communication, with the ability to monitor conversations as they occur.

One critical area, which demands attention, and where we should dig in more, focuses on monitoring and maintaining a record of social media conversations.  Now, many organizations may feel that this is only reserved to those companies that have to adhere to Public Record laws, such as healthcare companies.  However, reading an article called “Tools to Help Companies Manage Their Social Media,” in The New York Times, makes me think otherwise.  The article discusses how, “if three years from now somebody comes and says, ‘I need every Facebook post, every tweet …’”  Are you prepared to accommodate this request?

It wouldn’t surprise me if, in most cases, you said, “no, we don’t have that data archived,” or “well, let me see if my monitoring platform can pull together that information from the past.”  These are not the answers that your legal team wants to hear, should the company be facing a lawsuit regarding specific content posted on one of your social networking sites.  It’s better to be prepared and to understand the access that you have to archiving and/or the limitations before the legal team inquires.

The article is our wake up call and being in communications and a part of the reputation management team, we have to make it our business to have certain technologies in place.  If we are the team that guides strategic communication, curates the content and is responsible for monitoring the results of the social outreach and the sharing of information, then we have to have a better answer in place.

When you are in your strategy and planning phase and you know exactly where the employees of your company will be communicating on social sites, then you need to make sure you select the proper monitoring and tracking platforms; ones that will allow you to archive at certain intervals.  I just recently learned that one of our clients platforms will archive (by PDF) up to 175 posts and 1,000 comments on their Facebook wall, before we have to pay additional fees to upgrade our package.  Ask now to protect the brand later.

Based on this article, I think we will see some sophisticated archiving tools in the future that will help us to manage the communications better and to feel prepared to furnish the “can I have the last three months of posts and comments” request with ease and with speed!

Finally, we’re ready to announce the winner of the #PRStudChat Challenge.  The two finalists were:

Finalist #1: Karen Russell, PR Professor at the University of Georgia. Editor of the Journal of Public Relations Research. Karen’s collaborative lit review: http://bit.ly/9aT851 group SM book review: http://bit.ly/bW0l9Q offered a great example of the use of collaborative learning techniques in the classroom

and,

Finalist #2: Barbara Nixon, Assistant Professor, Southeastern University; Adjunct professor, Georgia Southern University. Barbara’s blog posts / assignments for #PRCA3030 (Social Media for PR) from Spring 2010 http://bit.ly/a4kZcW including a final project for which students had the option of creating their own Social Media Resume or writing a Social Media Policy for a client organization, gave students an opportunity to get experience that will directly impact their professional success.

Although both professors had excellent submissions, the winner of our challenge is:

(Drum Roll…….)

Winner: Barbara Nixon

Congratulations Barbara!  Here are your prizes:

• A Skype visit with your class by the co-founders of #PRStudChat.
• An interview with Barbara or the student of her choice on the new PRStudChat Podcast Series with co-hosts, Harrison Kratz (@KratzPR) and Ashley Funderburk (@amfunderburk1).
• An interview in the Examiner with @ValerieSimon about the winning project and social media in the classroom.
• A guest blog post on PR 2.0 Strategies and/or the PRStudChat Blog.
• The choice of one of the following books from Amazon (courtesy of Mango! Marketing):
  • The Mirror Test by Jeffrey Hazlett and Jim Eber
  • Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investement by David Meerman Scott and Jim Stern
  • Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman
  • The Networked Non-Profit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change by Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, Randi Zuckerberg
  • Facebook Marketing: Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign by Justin Levy

We want to thank all of the professors and students who participated in the October #PRStudChat challenge.  We hope you will all help us to congratulate Barbara on being our winner.  Great job Barbara!

I want to share a incident that happened to me last weekend.  In between work projects and running around being a chaperone for my daughter….I received a voicemail on my cell phone.  It was one of my Facebook friends, not someone who I know particularly well, but definitely a Facebook acquaintance.  He said that my mobile and landline number both popped up on his Facebook phone application.  And, not just my number but the numbers of 15 other people as well. I was not happy about this, and asked him to somehow send me a screenshot of whatever he was viewing. I wanted to immediately get to the bottom of the situation.

Like most, I’m a private person and I don’t share my cell number or landline on Facebook or any other social platform.  Prior to this incident, although privacy was on my mind, it wasn’t necessarily top of mind. Maybe it should be. When I think about this scenario, what really concerns me is the sharing habits of younger people … the teens or tweens who openly and willingly share information to people they think they know or trust.

The purpose of this post is not to have every parent, who has a child, up in arms and ready to block Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Tumblr and Formspring (a popular site among teens where you can “ask, answer and learn about friends”).  However, it is an ever so subtle reminder that we should be careful for ourselves, our families and take the time to monitor more closely the activities of our children.  That weekend, it didn’t surprise me when I was reading an article in the Asbury Park Press about a study by TrustE and Lightspeed Research that said, “70 percent of parents monitor their teens profiles, at least once a month.” It was refreshing to read that 70 percent are on board with the monitoring, but the “at least once a month” should increase depending on your child’s active participation.

Anyone who knows me realizes that I’m a huge proponent of social networking to collaborate with people and cultivate relationships.  Of course, as we do this, it’s important to focus on privacy and to be role models for our younger social networking peers and family members.  I can’t quite explain how or why my number showed up on someone else’s Facebook phone app, but it makes me want to ask this question, “How private are you?”

As a follow up to my post on PR and Cyberbranding post, I wanted to touch on the personal brand as it will be a part of my presentation at the University of Sacred Heart in Puerto Rico.

It used to be the thirty 30 second elevator pitch that would tell someone everything they needed to know about a brand in a quick conscise statement.  With social media….how many characters do we have? Is it 140 on Twitter?  Or, is it a set number of words?  I remember reading that you should be able to say what your brand stands for in 4 words or less.  Maybe that’s true.  I also believe that you should be able to look at someone’s Twitter profile or an individual’s facebook profile and fan page, and identify in less then a minute the following: a person’s interests, what he/she likes to talk about, and something that stands out with respect to his/her personality.

I conducted an experiment with the head of our accounting office the other day.  She is a part of my company, but not involved in the communications, or social media programs or any type branding efforts that we create.  I asked her to look at my Twitter page and in less than 30 seconds, give me the first four words that popped into her head.  She said:

• PR
• Books
• Communications
• Education

It didn’t take her long at all.  I asked her to do the same thing with my Facebook fan page and the first four words out of her mouth (in the same amount of time) were:

• Author
• PR
• Communications
• Professor

Now, you may say that she is a member of my company and knows who I am. So, I’m going to try the same test with individuals who are unrelated to me and not members of my company (to see if they come up with similar are different answers).  To sum up my brand, although the words social media and business weren’t mentioned in my little experiment, I would say that my accounting person did a good job.

Try this little exercise on your own and it may prove a few things.  First, it could reveal that you are headed in the right direction; building the brand that you want to be.  However, it could let you know that what you talk about and how you visually represent yourself is not the brand you want to create.  But, hurry, because social media travels quickly and once a brand is embedded in the minds of an audience, it’s difficult to get them to change how they see you, and how they want to interact with you.  Let me know how you do!

In the past, you may have heard me say,”No one owns social media.”  However, that doesn’t mean that different departments in your company aren’t trying to own it.  Actions always speak louder than words.

I remember reading a post a year ago by Jeremiah Owyang that I thought was excellent.  He outlined five ways that companies allowed their employees to participate in social media.  I took the liberty of taking those five examples and tacking on my own perspective to illustrate how a few of the groups within an organization can try to own social media (as the company moves from stage one “no rules” through to stage five, which “empowers” the workforce).

Here are the five ways that Jeremiah outlined originally, with my added comments in bold regarding “ownership” in the organization:

1. Employees have no rules, no guidelines and no policies.  Just go out there and do it! Translation: No one wants to own social media and frankly this can be dangerous for the brand.
2. Shut it Down: Protect the brand and protect the employees from any liabilities that may occur from “losing control” as a result of social networking.  Translation:  Legal and IT are trying to own social media. Regardless of this type of ownership, conversation will continue. Employees will talk after hours, on their Facebook or via Twitter feeds.
3. The media trained spokesperson will be the only person who can blog and be involved in social media.  This person already has the training and can represent the company.  Translation:  Corporate Communications is trying to own social media.  This won’t work because social media is about open, human and transparent conversations.  The trained media spokesperson doesn’t necessarily allow customers to interact with the people behind the brand and tends to speak with prepared statements.
4. The corporate employees blessed for social media. A few select individuals will receive social media training and best practices Translation:  Executive/Leadership, Corporate Communications and/or Human Resources are trying to own social media.  Although the organization is willing to train certain “lucky” individuals, there are many other internal brand champions who want to engage and be trained the right way.  There will be dissent in the ranks, if only a chosen few are able to participate, and other employees are banned from social communications.
5. Empower the employees…the “all in” approach.  Translation:  This is the best way to handle social media within an organization. To empower, educate and have guidelines for the employees to participate; where there is buy in and trust from the top, and there is the willingness to participate and the right tools to engage on the bottom.  Both ends meet in the middle with a great social media policy that frames out participation.  In this scenario, many departments own social media and together, the organization finds value.

So, there you have it, five ways that clearly illustrate how some types of ownership are not beneficial.   The last scenario, having everyone work together, is the best way to approach social media across the organization, with good guidelines, for a successful program.

Speaking at the Florida Public Relations Association 72^nd Annual Conference was such a great experience for me. I enjoyed presenting PR Revolution: From PR Past to Hybrid Power, which was received with open arms.  After my keynote, one topic of discussion I found extremely interesting surfaced during a Q&A session with the senior counselors.  The topic:  does the name “social” media automatically create a false impression in the minds of the C-level and senior executives as just “chatting” or “socializing.”  Does the name social media convey this message:  social media is serious business.

Here’s my quick take on a name.  Years ago, my mother told me that she had a couple of names in mind for me before I was born.  When she went over her top picks with me, I turned my nose up at her alternative choices.  Each one came with an image attached to it.  When she unveiled the first one, I immediately thought, “Well that would have made me sound old before my time and from the 1940s.” The second name she considered would have been tough for a little kid.  I would have been teased for my entire childhood.  It was one of those rhyming names.  I’m happy that she and my dad selected the name I have today.

Do certain names give you a mental, predisposed image of what something should be based on your perceptions? After all, companies spend millions of dollars on building their brands (names, experiences and brand promises). So, when we introduce social media for the first time to the higher ups in our organizations, and they hear the word “social” do they resist because they think it is “one big cocktail party.”  I don’t have the answer but it would be an extremely interesting study.  However, I do know that a name can sound fun, social, serious, smart, etc.  So, what would happen if we went to all of our executives before they heard of this phenomenon called social media and said, “We need you to consider a program in Strategic Digital Media because it has a tremendous impact on our business and our competitors are increasing their market share and chipping away at our profits?

I’ll answer my own question.  They would have said, what is this Strategic Digital Media, how does it affect my bottom line and how does this make our shareholders happy?  They would not have said, “Is this going to cut down on employee productivity and does this mean employees are going to be checking their personal Facebook pages all day?”  Of course, regardless of the name, you definitely need to do your homework and educate your executives. But, is the negative reaction and hesitation that many communications professionals face, due to a misperception of the name? Could it be the way “social” is perceived?

Another quick example I can share. When recently working with a client, we were tossing around hashtag names for a Twitter discussion. One suggestion was the initials of the organization and the word “social” attached to it.  So for instance it would be something like #XYZSocial.  The response to the team was…this makes it seem like it’s one big party. And, you know what…in a way it does.

Maybe we have spent past years viewing “social” as personal and party conversations.  But today, social media is so much more than your party talk; it’s moving markets, creating business and generating ROI.  So the question is:  Do we keep educating on Social Media or is there another name?  Would Strategic Digital Media have been a better choice? What do you think? Can we get past a name?