Marijean Oldham (Jaggers), a social media specialist and public relations professional, is president and CEO of Jaggers Communications LLC, a strategic communications firm based in Charlottesville, Va.
It’s so hot I think my brain is boiling. So today I’m going to leave this post to you, the people sitting in air-conditioned offices, complaining about how cold it is.
What would you like to know about social media, communications or public relations that, perhaps, you’ve always wanted to know, but been too afraid to ask.
* photo courtesy of Kelsey Sparkle Rakes
As I’ve written in the past, I’ve been a long time Newsweek subscriber. The publication has evolved, congruent with the ascendance of new editors, but no more dramatic change has occurred than when Tina Brown took the helm.
Newsweek, essentially, became The Daily Beast, a different animal than what traditional Newsweek readers and subscribers sought. The change, made ever more dramatic by changes to the look and style of the publication, ultimately made us discontinue our subscription, after more than 15 years of weekly cover-to-cover reading.
News this week is that the URL newsweek.com will no longer exist; that all the content will be found on The Daily Beast’s site.
Starting July 19, we hear, newsweek.com will no longer exist. Instead that URL will redirect users to a channel on the Daily Beast site, like its current “politics,” “entertainment,” and “fashion” verticals. The Newsweek channel will still have all the archived magazine content from before (unlike Time, Newsweek puts all of its print content online), and it will be edited and updated once a day to rotate features. Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown and Chief Digital Officer Daniel Blackman decided it made the most sense to have all-new non-magazine content appear on the Beast homepage.
What does this mean for the printed edition? Will it continue to be mailed, added to newsstands and archived in libraries? Unlikely. I predict a short life span for the printed pages from here on out. This may be outstanding news for Newsweek’s arch rival Time, but the days of printed news, delivered weekly are days gone by. News happens too fast for weeklies to be relevant, and its no surprise to me that this is where we’re landing.
What do you think? Are you a Newsweek or Time reader or subscriber? Will you, if you have read the printed magazines, read the same content online instead? Do you already?
In May, financial industry giant Morgan Stanley decided to allow its brokers to begin using social media in the course of their jobs. Since the use of social media tools like LinkedIn, Twitter and even Facebook have become mainstream methods of doing business for most industries, the financial industry has, somewhat understandably, been dragging its feet.
According to Reuters, and based on a memo released from the company:
Next month, a test group of 600 Morgan Stanley Smith Barney advisers will be allowed almost full use of LinkedIn, the professional networking site, and restricted use of Twitter, the micro-blogging service, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.
Within six months, the program will be expanded to the firm’s entire force of 17,800 advisers.
“The emergence of social media has changed the way in which people communicate with each other and companies interact with clients,” Morgan Stanley Smith Barney U.S. wealth management boss Andy Saperstein said in the memo. . .
Morgan Stanley is not allowing full use of social media. The freewheeling nature of social networks — letting users link to other websites, spread messages and images — has made them wildly popular but a source of anxiety for brokerage compliance officials.
The company will use social web monitoring software to keep tabs on and collect all activity, but look for brokers to make mistakes as they navigate unfamiliar waters.
I’m terribly curious about what “restricted use of Twitter” and “almost full use” of LinkedIn means, exactly.
I’m also terribly curious about what kind of training the 17,800 advisers are completing between now and November. Former financial advisers from other companies have shared with me the “social media guidelines” handed down from their corporate offices. To sidestep proper use of social platforms, the companies have given advice to the advisers that goes against the grain of the entire Internet culture. In short, cold calling, based on scraped contact information and relationships gleaned from prospects’ social networks. Mark my words and put a note on your calendar for November 2011; expect to be contacted by someone you don’t know via a social network, reaching out to help you with your financial needs.
Every Morgan Stanley adviser should know this: don’t engage if you’re not 100 percent sure you understand the culture of social media and where the culture and the rules of your company (and compliance standards) intersect.
Hey Morgan Stanley — if you’re listening, and I hope you are, I’d really like to know how you’re helping your advisers adjust to the new culture. And while you’re waiting for that flip to be switched in November, take a look at some of my recommendations of how your industry can be using social platforms right now, and in the future.
There probably isn’t anyone alive who hasn’t heard about Anthony Weiner’s stupid Twitter move. I won’t rehash that here, but I will tell you that this isn’t, by any stretch, the last time someone is going to do something dumb using a social platform.
This week, bakery giant Entenmann’s f’ed up on Twitter by tweeting a hashtag they didn’t thoroughly research.
The hashtag, #notguilty was trending because of the Casey Anthony verdict.
Not-so-savvy Entenmann’s thought they’d take advantage of the trend, jump on the bandwagon and add #notguilty to a tweet about tasty treats.
Uh, no.
TechCrunch said this:
Depending on what you believe, the voice of @Entenmann’s either decided it would be funny to hashtag surf on the trending #notguilty hashtag or sincerely didn’t look and just stuck a random #notguilty in a tweet about eating tasty tweets, presumably to get pickup.
In any case, misuse of a hashtag by a business or a brand is a serious mistake, whether intentional or merely misguided. Understanding hashtags, what they mean, why the trend, when to use them, is imp0rtant if you’re using Twitter for business.
Don’t be a Weiner or an Entenmann’s, in this case.
In certain situations, a Twitter feed is established as a method of publishing information. It’s not there to engage, and the people behind it are not tweeting conversationally at all. Some examples of this are the feeds from news organizations, some nonprofits or other institutions. There are often too many regulations placed on these institutions to allow them to engage in social media the way a business, individual or nonprofit would.
In this case, for an organization that wants to have a presence on Twitter integrating that account with an official Facebook page is probably the most efficient way to achieve their communications goals.
Hopefully, the organization has set up a Facebook page (not a group or a profile). If you’re an admin of that page (and I hope you are!) take the following steps:
If you manage more than one page and more than one Twitter account, take care that you’re linking the right Twitter account to the right Facebook page!
Now, updates on Facebook will cross publish to Twitter. I think it’s important to mention that users that choose to use this method of integration still need to log in to and monitor Twitter — there’s no excuse for not paying attention to replies, mentions and direct messages your Twitter account may have, regardless of your method of publishing there.
