I read a ton of business-related books.  If it has to do with branding, retail, or Starbucks, there’s a good chance I’ll read it.  A friend of mine recently recommended that I check out “The Trump Card,” Ivanka Trump’s first book.

To be clear, I’m a huge fan of Ivanka.  I admire her professionalism and passion for the real estate industry.  Many people will argue that her privileged upbringing undoubtedly helped her in her career, but I’m a firm believer that you are in charge of your own destiny.  After all, you have to be pretty darn intelligent and disciplined to get into Wharton.

So eagerly, I picked up “The Trump Card” at the local library one afternoon.  I enjoyed many aspects of the book, particularly the chapters that discussed the important of building relationships.  This is a subject Ivanka is clearly well-versed in, and I commend her for making the most of her connections. 

She’s also not afraid to get dirty…literally.  In fact, if you follow her on Twitter (@IvankaTrump), she often posts pictures of herself at various job site locations.  In “The Trump Card,” Ivanka discussed how she always knew from a young age that she wanted to build things, so it’s no surprise that she’s now spending her days wearing a hard hat.

The cover of "The Trump Card." Image via Simon & Schuster.

I started thinking about how these principles could be applied to social media and public relations.  If you’ve worked in PR long enough, you know it’s not a glamorous field.  In fact, a lot of time is spent “blocking and tackling,” (a phrase we often use at Doe-Anderson) reaching out to reporters and bloggers, staying on their radar and keeping them up-to-date on what’s going on with our clients.  And yes, sometimes, we even have to roll up our sleeves and get a little dirty. (If you’ve ever put together hundreds of media kits, or worked at a special event, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.)

Cultivating relationships, in my opinion, is what social media and public relations are all about.  This isn’t an easy task but with a little time and patience, you can start to build those important connections.  The old adage “You get what you give” rings true as well.  We often tell our clients that they’ve got to communicate with their customers and engage in conversations with them. 

Good, old-fashioned hard work never goes out of style and is certainly the key to having a successful social media or PR campaign.  And like Ivanka Trump, you can be professional and polished while doing it.

Image taken from Ivanka's Twitter account.

Remember the old Hans Christian Anderson story, the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Foolishness is exposed, more often than not, when we refuse to admit what we don’t know or see clearly.  Or to put it into a 21st century cultural context–our Poker Faces often as not end up exposing us.

All this is a pretty elaborate set up for a post on something fairly simple, that I continually hear people mumbling, privately, that they’re not quite sure how to do right: setting up a client’s Facebook page.

We don’t do a lot of “Social Media 101″ posts here, because lots of people cover that ground well.  This is less a “Social Media 101″ post than it is “covering a topic that no one is willing to admit they haven’t figured out” post.

I can’t really blame people for not knowing the best way to do it–”Facebook Help” is pretty much an oxymoron, and they change their UX about every three months, adding things like “Community Pages” that seem like a pointless duplication (pretty much because…they are a pointless duplication).  Also, I have a big problem with the way Facebook walks you through setting up a Page, because it’s pretty much designed to discourage you in every way possible from doing it the right way.

First, they threaten you with “violating the terms of use” if you create an alternate account.  Here’s the facts, Binky.  If “social media” is anywhere in your job description, you will have to have access to multiple accounts.  In any business case I can think of, tying all your clients’ Facebook accounts to your personal Facebook account is a bad idea.

Second, the language they use to explain “Business Accounts” is deliberately misleading and scary.  It’s designed to make you think that using a Business Account to set up a Facebook Page is going to hobble the Page.  It doesn’t.  It creates an administrator profile that can’t be used as a personal profile and can be easily reassigned to someone else.  Which is exactly what you want.

That said, here’s the way we’ve found, through trial, error and much hair-pulling, is the best way to set it up.

First, what NOT to do:

• Create the page using your existing, personal Facebook account.

Why not? Because removing the Creator (not Admin, but Creator) of a Page is a giant, massive PITA. I know–I had to do it on a major client when the employee who set up their Page left our agency.   Neither the client nor the former employee was comfortable with their Facebook account still having admin privileges to the Page, and it took weeks to get Facebook Support (yet another oxymoron) to even admit they could disconnect the two accounts.  Frankly, if the client hadn’t been a really well-known brand with potential ad dollars to direct at Facebook, I’m not sure it would have ever gotten done.

If you’re an independent consultant, accept that you and your client may not have a forever love connection.  And they’re not going to take it kindly when they realize that divorcing their Facebook Page from your personal account is roughly as complicated and time-consuming as executing a literal divorce.  Okay.  Point made, moving on.

Another thing not to do:

• Create the account using a “client@yourdomain.com” or “dept@yourdomain.com” email address that gets forwarded to multiple account stakeholders, an entire department, etc.

Why not? Because an even marginally successful or popular Facebook Page generates a heck of a lot of transactional emails.  You can either turn off all the transactional emails (which can hamstring the actual administrator of the Page) or get used to hearing a lot of complaints from people who don’t appreciate getting an email ping on their Blackberry at 2AM when a Fan simply needs to post a soliloquy on your client’s Wall.

Again, something we learned the hard way. We’re not above admitting our missteps.  We’ve being doing this a while, and that means we didn’t have a map in the beginning.

Here’s how to do it right:

• Create a special, unique email address for that Page only (or that client’s collective social media profiles). It’s okay if it’s on your domain, not the client’s.  Sometimes getting client IT to create a new email address can be a pain.  If you set up the Page properly, you can change that later if you need to.  It does have to be an email address that actually exists and that you (or whomever the FB Page administrator will be) can actually access.  Ideally, you’d auto-forward this email address to the FB Page Administrator’s primary email.
• Log out of Facebook. Go to facebook.com and click “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business.”
• Go with the “Create an Official Page” option. Ignore “Community Pages” for now.  Ignore Groups.  
• Create a Facebook Account. Go with “I do not have a Facebook Account.” Yes, I’m telling you to lie to Facebook.  It’s okay.  Really.  Trust me.  If they didn’t want people to lie to them, they shouldn’t have set up their Terms of Use to be directly in conflict with all laws of common sense.
• Use the unique email address you previously set up as the basis for the Business Account you’re creating to set up the Page, and populate it with your personal information (birthday, etc.)  That can be changed later, if staffing changes (something apparently Facebook never heard of) make it necessary.
• Activate the account and set up the Page. Add your personal account and any other accounts necessary as additional Admins.  Go to “Edit the Page,” look at the lower right column for Admins and click “Add.”  You’ll have to use the “Add by email” option, since your newly-created business account will have no friends.

So there you have it.  If you’re an agency social media manager, and your career eventually takes you elsewhere, or if the client eventually moves the business elsewhere, it’ll be okay.  You can change the email address and personal information associated with the Creator Business Account, and remove any Admins who will no longer have a business relationship with the Page.

You’re welcome.

I spent the better part of last week in New York, attending a trade show for a client of mine and visiting with a good friend.  During my down time, I literally walked all over the massive city, visiting Chinatown, Wall Street, Times Square and everywhere else in between.  Of course, I managed to make it to a few bakeries while I was there.  (Note:  If you’re visiting the city, check out the “Carrie” cupcake at Magnolia Bakery and the M&Ms cupcake at Crumbs. Both are wonderfully delicious!)

Cupcakes from the famed Magnolia Bakery in NYC.

One thing I did not do was check my e-mail or Twitter account. No, seriously—I did not log in to any of my accounts while I was in NYC.  Honestly, I was having too much fun exploring the city’s treasures, like the Waldorf-Astoria, the shops of Fifth Avenue, and Macy’s in Herald Square.  Because I usually check my e-mail and Twitter accounts several times a day, it was refreshing to disconnect.

I realized while that when I am disconnected, I pay much closer attention to my environment.  It reminds me of one of the (possibly) greatest movie quotes ever—“Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.”  Needless to say, Ferris Bueller had it right.  While technology is all well and good, it’s hard to deny that society isn’t quite as, well, social as it used to be.  Imagine what our lives would be like without texting, BBMing, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, Skype, and so on.  Some might argue we are indeed just as social as we once were and that our means of communicating have changed.  I can’t deny that fact but I’m also adamant that no amount of technology will ever replace the experience of an in-person conversation.

While checking out Midtown area of the island one afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice one structure in particular—the Bank of America building near Bryant Park.  If you’ve never seen it in-person, I have to tell you that photos alone simply don’t do it justice.  It is truly an architectural wonder.  I stared at it for several minutes, and I watched as hundreds of people, iPhones and Blackberries in-hand, rushed past the building. Granted, I’m sure many of them had seen it before and perhaps some may walk past it every day.  But I thought to myself, “I’m glad I can take a minute to appreciate this truly great sight.”

Sometimes we get so bogged down trying to keep up with technology that we forget to live life.  Try turning off your cell phone or abstaining from your favorite social networking site, even just for a day.  Strike up a conversation with a random stranger.  I guarantee you will have a new, enlightened perspective on the world around you. Who knows—you might even make a new friend.

The magnificant Bank of American skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.

I have always thought that social media marketing lends itself to right-brained “grammar geeks.”  Mainly, this is because social media marketing requires continually-generated, mostly-text, content.   Copywriters, public relations peeps, and bloggers can generally churn out the verbiage as-needed.

On the other hand, web analytics seemingly leans far to the left side of the brain, in the territory of the “numbers nerds.”  The ability to look at numbers and see trends and patterns is pretty key to being a good web analyst.  Not to mention the ability to rock a pivot table in Excel.

The problem with handing over the reins of your social marketing program entirely to the grammar geek squad is that sometimes, writers can fall in love with their own voices.  Without some kind of objective analysis of effectiveness, there’s no accountability on the creative/executional end of things.

Likewise, the problem with analytics being owned entirely by the number crunching crowd can be loss of context.  The temptation to let quantitative data (easy to get) dominate the qualitative data (usually a lot harder to get) to the extent that we fall into the trap of measurement for measurement’s sake.

Now, let’s take it to the C-Suite.

At the management/client level, there’s often a disconnect between the numbers nerds (who approve budgets based on whether the social media effort is being effective), and the grammar geeks who get their knickers twisted at the mere mention of the word “measurement.”

As a consequence, an unfortunate amount of the social content manager’s time is eaten up providing a convincing narrative explanation of the program’s value to CMOs who may or may not ever feel comfortable allocating budget based on a narrative with no supporting data.

They have to be the “social media expert” who has to continually keep selling and re-selling the program on the strength of their own conviction that it works, bolstered by case studies from other companies that may or may not apply.

Can’t we all just get along?

Ideally, the sticky peanut butter of content creation should be surrounded by the delectable chocolate of actionable insights.

If the person in charge of analytics goes beyond “monthly data dump,” and is capable of providing actionable insights to continually improve the response the social marketer is getting, they become the person who can make the social marketer look better.

[And since all of us social marketers are raving narcissists, that makes Mr. or Mrs. Analytics our good buddy.]

If the social marketer is willing to trust the analysts’ insights, and let the analyst provide sufficient qualitative and quantitative proof of concept for the social media program; then he or she can step back from the mission to constantly justify his or her existence.   The payoff for agreeing to be held accountable is freedom. The social content manager is then free to focus all his or her attention outward, on building fans and ambassadors for the company/client.

Can such an ideal scenario exist in the real world? What do you think?

I’ve been a home improvement enthusiast since I was a teenager.  I admit to being a longtime fan of decorating guru Christopher Lowell, whose show on Discovery Channel was one of my favorites for years.

His theatrical background (and personality!) appealed to the theater geek in me, and his ideas and suggestions were creative, fun and usually affordable.

So while I was on vacation last week, I nostalgically picked up a copy of his book, The Seven Layers of Design at my local bookstore.

In the introduction, Christopher shared the story of how he went from a guy with a failing retail decor store in the Midwest to an interior design expert with his own successful show.

The turning point for him came when he realized that fear was inhibiting his prospective customers from expressing their creativity in their home’s interior design.  He immediately changed his retail space into an education center, and began offering classes in Decorating 101.

Lowell recognized that instead of competing with other retailers for the limited pool of professional decorators, there was a richer, deeper pool of potential customers out there if he could give homeowners the CONFIDENCE to decorate their own spaces.

So how does this relate to business blogging? Simple.  A business blog can be wildly effective when it’s not about tooting your own horn, but about building up your customer’s confidence.

When you use blogging as an educational tool to create better, stronger, smarter customers, you create a relationship between your business and their own self-confidence.

If you can manage that, then you’re already on the first step of creating your business’ army of enthusiastic brand ambassadors.

Growing up in south central Indiana, summertime meant many things for my family:  delicious watermelon from Jackson County, the 4-H Fair and yard sales.  My grandmother, who is one of the best bargain shoppers I’ve ever met, would take me “yard saling” all over our town.  She had a knack for finding treasures in everyday trash.

Coincidentally, my friends and I are hosting a yard sale this weekend. While it’s been a lot of fun planning the event, it’s been a good deal of work.  And the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized there are many similarities between social media and yard sales. 

Many times, I’ve stumbled upon some neat piece of equipment or gadget at a garage sale that has a too-good-to-be-true price.  But alas, I don’t really know how to use it, therefore making it worthless to me. Unfortunately, social media sometimes falls into this trap.  Many clients want to take advantage of online networks and sites because they perceive it to be a high value for very little investment cost.  While this can be true, a big part of social media is knowing how to operate the its tools properly. 

Part of the fun of shopping at garage and yard sales is scouting for bargains.  But that being said, you’ve got to be educated enough to know when you’ve found something of real significance.  For example, I know of a woman who found a rare Hummel figurine for a few dollars at a non-profit organization’s sale several years ago.  She showed it to some local collectors, who told her it was worth hundreds of dollars.  Cha-ching!

This scenario reminds me of Twitter and Facebook, specifically the “followers” and “fans” aspects of each network. It does you very little good if you don’t have the right people clued in to what you’re promoting.  If you’re not reaching your target audience, I don’t believe you can grow your brand effectively because others won’t truly understand the value of what you’re trying to accomplish.

So while many clients view social media as “bargain hunting,” it’s our job to show them the real merit of these tactics. After all, you just never know when you’re going to uncover a treasure. 

Image by edwardkotun via Flickr.

A few short years ago, I was spending most of my days traipsing around the Indiana University campus, making the daily trek to Ernie Pyle Hall, otherwise known as the School of Journalism.  You could often find me there slumped behind a Mac, typing ferociously in order to meet some sort of deadline, with a huge cup of specialty coffee dangerously close to the keyboard. And I was never without two things:  my oversized black Prada tote bag and my dearly loved (though faux) Ugg boots.  

During my senior year at IU, I was introduced to blogging.  I had enrolled in an Online Journalism course (still a very new concept at the time) and one of our assignments for the semester was to create and populate a blog with content.  I enjoyed writing and reporting, so I eagerly approached this task. We were required to have a theme and a name for our blog.  “Deconstructing Pretty” followed current fashion trends with a focus on the business aspect of the industry.  I’ll never forget my first post—I wrote about Sarah Jessica Parker’s commercials for The Gap and how much of a financial impact the ads could have on the struggling store chain. 

Needless to say, I never imagined how much that assignment would shape my professional life. Coming from a journalistic background, blogging was an entirely new world to me.  I found myself asking questions like, “What do you mean I don’t need to quote three sources?” and “Is someone really going to care what my opinion is?”  I had spent years perfecting my style of writing, which obviously did not include my personal feelings on the subjects I was reporting on. 

The famed Ernie Pyle Hall on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, Indiana. Image by the IU School of Journalism News Department.

When the semester was over, I continued working on “Deconstructing Pretty” and did so even after graduation.  I didn’t have a ton of readers, but a nice comment here and there was enough to encourage me to keep writing.  Eventually though, my life started to get busier and blogging wasn’t as much of a priority as it once was.

About a year after I was hired at Doe-Anderson, I started contributing to the company’s blog and discovered how much I had missed blogging.  It was a welcome addition to my other duties at the agency and I saw it as an opportunity to improve my online writing skills.  Working on the Doe-Anderson blog  and The Social Enthusiast has pushed me to keep up with the latest trends in social media and how I might be able to use these strategies for my public relations clients.  It has challenged me to strive harder to write interesting posts that will be entertaining as well as helpful to those who read them.

I’ve come a long way from the halls at Ernie Pyle.  Not only do I not wear fake Ugg boots anymore, I also don’t question my writing abilities as much as I used to and blogging is a big reason for that.

Faux Uggs, or "Fluggs" as they're often called.

We all knew “social media,” as a buzzword and a stand-alone job title, had a limited shelf life.

As I predicted a year ago, “social media” is cooling off just as “mobile” is building a nice head of steam, in the same way that “social media” picked up on the tail end of “web 2.0″ and “viral video.”

Are people still making “viral videos”?  Sure.  Just ask Rhett and Link.  Or Old Spice.  But “viral video” has lost its new car smell, and I predict “social media” will be looking for a hanging tree air freshener soon.

I think I find buzzwords and their evolution, obsolescence and replacement fascinating because language says a lot about a culture and the general headspace of people and industries.  It says something about what we value and the way we perceive things.

If I got to pick what we call blogs, forums, social networks, podcasts and the whole shebang next, I wouldn’t divide it along lines of the technology (blog) or lump it all together (social media).  I would divide it into personal media, passion media, and professional media.

Because really, that’s how the whole conglomeration is shaking out.  We get it: creating media is something almost anyone can do now, thanks to technology.  Sharing media on a global scale is something almost anyone can do, thanks to the proliferation of connectivity. That’s the old news that is exactly that: old news that we really don’t need to keep puzzling over.  If  this month they’re creating it on an iPad and sharing it on Foursquare, and six months ago they were creating it on a laptop and sharing it on Twitter, so what?  If WordPress is a better simple publishing platform than Blogger, or Vimeo is a better video platform than YouTube, who cares?

What we’re still figuring out (and just might be forever) is why people create media, and why people consume it.

You’ve got lifecasters and social networkers and personal diarists who are creating personal media.  Whether you like it or not, some people think the details of their lives and their inner monologue is fascinating–and some of them are right.

You’ve got people who create entire vast communities around silly vampire novels, or balsa wood airplanes. They write dissertations supporting their favorite “ship” on a television show (and other people read them!)  They craft detailed videos layered with music and graphics as homages and labors of love.  This is passion media.  While it would be great if they got paid to create it, the truth is, they would pay others so they can create it, because they already do.  They already pay for the domain, or the hosting, or the laptop, or the broadband connection.  Passion is a reason to create and consume media, and production values aren’t a reason not to, when the barrier to entry is low enough (and it has been for a while now.)

I’ve watched with interest while the mainstream, traditional, professional media has had to figure all this out again. They used to have resources and distribution on their side (and they still do).  But for too many of them, they saw the high barrier to entry that existed before the social media revolution as their Great Wall of China, keeping the Mongol hordes of “amateur” content creators safely at bay and their revenue streams safe.  They owned eyeballs and attention, big companies would pay for those eyeballs and attention.

Now, what I’m seeing is a merging between the best and brightest of the personal media and passion media creators, and the most agile of the traditional media into a richer, more vibrant professional media ecosystem with an exponentially wider spectrum of cost, quality and subject matter.

It’s not 200 channels and nothing’s on.   It’s 2 million channels, and there’s always something that you as an individual can lose yourself in.  It’s a beautiful mess.

As a consumer of media, I love this because I can now feed my attention with thirty-one thousand flavors.

As a creator of media, I love this because it forces me to clarify why I’m creating, and helps me prioritize.  Some outlets are for attention, some are for love and some are for money.  And that’s okay.

As a professional marketer, I love looking at media this way because it draws meaningful lines in the sand around my interactions with the new media ecosystem, because I know what they want.  Offer attention to personal media creators.  Offer resources and new ways to  connect with the object of their affection to passion media creators.  Offer cash money and acknowledgment of legitimacy to creators and organizations who genuinely meet the bar for professional media.  Pay them for their hard-earned eyeballs and attention.

What do you think?  I’d love to hear your take in the comments.

The fine art of etiquette doesn’t seem to be appreciated as it once was.  I’ve always enjoyed reading the Miss Manners column and reading her advice to our everyday quandaries.  I’m often amazed at the topics people write in about (one recent column involved a very nosy librarian).  If Miss Manners were answering questions about social media etiquette, I think it might look a little something like this. 

   Dear Miss Manners,

   Like most everyone else on the planet, I have a Facebook profile.  I mostly use to keep in touch with family and friends, socialize, and occasionally indulge in Farmville.  However, I’ve recently started getting friend requests from people I went to high school with (I’m too much of a lady to tell you how long it’s been since I graduated from high school!).  I don’t really want these people knowing my personal business.  Am I obligated to ‘friend’ them?

    Signed,

    Private Polly in Pittsburgh

   Dear Private,

   No, you are not obligated to add them to your network.  While Facebook is a wonderful tool to connect with people, you have to be aware of how much personal information you’re putting online and more importantly, who has access to it.  Don’t feel bad for not accepting their requests—it’s not like you’ll probably ever see them again.  After all, Facebook has pretty much made class reunions obsolete.

   Dear Miss Manners,

   I’m a public relations consultant, and one of my clients is a local restaurant.  Recently, someone wrote a rather scathing review of us on a popular food website.  How should I handle this?

   Sincerely,

   Spin Sister in Sacramento

   Dear Spin,

   It’s always good to have a system in place for dealing with bad PR.  Think about this situation as a friendship.  If a friend were upset with you, how would you handle it?  Hopefully, you would reach out to them and graciously offer an apology.  Reply back to Mr. Meanie’s post and communicate how very sorry you are about his recent experience at the restaurant and offer to make it up to him with a coupon, a discounted dinner, or a complimentary dessert.  You might also ask him specifically what the restaurant could do to improve their customer service.  Hopefully, this action will resolve the situation. But that being said, some people are just trolls.  And sometimes it’s better just to leave them alone.  They’ll go away eventfully.

   Dear Miss Manners,

   What’s your opinion of Twitter etiquette? 

   Signed,

  Ready to Tweet in Reno

   Dear Ready,

   Miss Manners doesn’t tweet a lot, but she does have a few pieces of advice.  Number #1:  It’s always a good idea to follow those who follow you first.  Exceptions to the rule:  spammers and “questionable” people.  Number #2:  Don’t just pump out information about yourself.  Try to engage in conversations with others—ask them about what’s going on with their lives.  People love to talk about themselves.  Number #3:  Grandma’s “golden rule” still applies on Twitter:  If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

So you see, dear readers, etiquette is alive and well, even in the digital realm.  I’m curious—what social media etiquette issues have you dealt with recently? 

It’s always important to be a lady--or gentleman—when navigating the sometimes tricky world of social media. Image by nelu_b via Flickr.

Last week, while driving into work, I stumbled upon a rather heated debate on a local radio morning show.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t about the BP oil spill or the Joran van der Sloot case or another current event.  The debate in question was about allowing children to have Facebook profiles.  Several parents called into the show to voice their opinions.  One mother shared that she allowed her eight-year-old son to create a profile because “all of his friends have one” and she didn’t want her son to be “left out.”  Another mother called in and said that even though her six-year-old daughter had been “begging her for months” for permission to have a profile, she refused to let her, because of safety issues.

In my opinion, children (and by children, I mean anyone under the age of 18), have no business having a Facebook profile.  My main problem with children belonging to social networking sites is the lack of privacy.  We’ve all heard horror stories about pedophiles stalking children online—if you remember, in the past few years, MySpace has been the target of some very bad press for this reason.

So what’s a kid to do?

Togetherville.com is hoping to be the answer to this question. The idea behind the site is that parents and kids can explore social media together in a safe environment.   The network, which launched last month, bills itself as “a fun, safe social site where kids under 10 can play games, create art, and learn new things, with you and people you know and trust there to supervise.” So how exactly does Togetherville keep kids safe?  The site uses the parents’ own social networks, such as Facebook, so that “there is no way anyone anonymous or unknown can ever interact with your child.”

The "kids" version of Togetherville. Image by kmakice via Flickr.

The "adult" version of Togetherville. Image by kmakice via Flickr.