Post Control Marketing

This past weekend I presented at INTEGRATE a marketing communications conference associated with the graduate IMC program at WVU. As with my PRSSA National Conference presentation last fall everyone was tweeting my speech. This is a new phenomenon. Whether I like it or not, my speech will simply be Tweeted. I really have no control of it in terms of stopping this activity. However if I embrace it and plan ahead, I can focus the activity, and direct it for my benefit. This is the same for any organization.

Keith Quesenberry INTEGRATE 14 WVU IMC — Tweeting Is Now Simply A Part of My Presentations Making My Audience Much Larger.

So let them Tweet if they want to, just do a little planning ahead to take more advantage of it. Here is a list of ideas I put together for our Center for Leadership Education Business Plan Competition at Johns Hopkins this past Spring. How to integrate Twitter into your next live event:

#1 Create An Event Hashtag. Put it on all event materials. Encourage people to put the hashtag at the end of every Tweet about the event so anyone following the stream will see all posts related to the event like #Integrate14, #PRSSANC #jhubizplan

#2 Tweet With A Purpose. The point of tweeting from an event is to give a commentary of what is happening, announce results and highlight statements made by speakers (or people asking questions) that are interesting, but remember you are limited to 140 characters.

#3 Give Credit Where Credit Is Due. When curating relevant points from speakers give them credit by using a format like “[name] says [their statement].” and use the speaker’s Twitter handle to attribute a statement to them such as @Kquesen. If you can’t find the Twitter handle right away, search Google for “their name” + “Twitter.”

#4 Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Characters. Use links to multimedia content mentioned by speakers or relevant to your observations such a websites, blog posts, papers or videos. Don’t forget you can take and tweet photos!

#5 Follow The Leaders. Follow other people whose handles appear in the livestream. This enables you to make connections beyond the event day.

#6 Keep It Up. Try to keep conversations going. Agree that an important point was made or ask a follow-up question. Keep your phone going to by bringing a charger!

#7 Follow Through. After the event reconnect with new followers by sending a “thanks for connecting at the ____” for possible future partnerships and supporters. Also a collection of the most interesting conversations that occurred on Twitter during the event can be pulled together for a follow up blog post.

#8 Get Help. Finally here is a free Twitter chat tool that automatically adds the event hashtag to each tweet, and the feed automatically updates as you chat with other users in real-time: http://www.tchat.io/ Or if you want to post to multiple social channels at once. Take a photo and add commentary in Instagram from which you can then post to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, FourSquare and Flickr all at the same time – still use the hashtag.

#9 Give Prizes. At the INTEGRATE conference they give away a prize or three (social media gift baskets) for the most Tweets and other social media updates to the event hashtag by individual users. This can help jump start and motivate social conversation. That event is three days long so they give updates of the leaders of the Tweet race throughout the program.

#10 Storify It. One of the coolest things at INTEGRATE14 this year was the Storify page described as “On May 30-31 2014, West Virginia University’s Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program presents INTEGRATE 2014. In this story, you’ll see tweets from my experience, as well as those of my classmates, professors & the speakers of each session. Will be adding posts all weekend.”

My presentation starts on slide 219 and you get the main points of my talk from the collection of various audience comments and pictures via their Tweets to the conference hashtag.

Are ready to take your live event to new social media heights? What social media tricks have you used at events?

A new global workplace study has found that more than 70% of employers report having to take disciplinary action against employees for social media misuse – up from 35% in 2012. Wow. That is a lot. Should we just shut social media down and block it from our employees? What kinds of misuse are happening and does this mean we need to clampdown on employee social media efforts?

What kinds of employee social media misuse?

Misuse of confidential information (80%)
Misrepresenting the views of the business (71%)
Inappropriate non-business use (67%)
Disparaging remarks about the business or employees (64%)
Harassment (64%)

What is interesting is that while employee social media misuse is up, overall workplace misconduct is down. Only 41% of employees observed misconduct in 2013, down from 55% in 2007. Why? Researchers found that 81% of companies are proving ethics training and it seems to be working. Yet other research has found that only 25% of companies offer social media training to their employees.

I believe misuse is up because employee social media use is up and many have not followed suit with employee social media guideline and training. Even the courts and law are playing catchup.

For example, a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, has determined that it is legal to vent about your employer on a personal social media account if you’re speaking on behalf of a group of employees and your intent is to improve the conditions of your job. This ruling was in response to employer social media policies that were seen as too restrictive.

Research has found that 31% of companies still have no social media policy in place. Do you have a social media policy? Does it need to be updated? One place to start is to look at what others have put together. Here are over 100 Social Media Employee Policy Examples thanks to Social Media Today.

WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association also has resources to help you understand the responsibilities brand have in complying with the FTC Guidelines in their Social Media Marketing Disclosure Guide.

When it comes to training, companies like Unisys, Sprint and HP are creating social media training programs to avoid social media crises, but also show employees how using social media can be a valuable business tool to increase performance and productivity.

At the end of day it comes down to employee trust. Jeff Bezos’ employee Pay To Quit program for Amazon.com makes a lot of sense.

6% of companies block access to social media sites in their workplaces. Should you lockdown social media? Or should we provide our employees with the proper guidance and training to use social media properly?