I’m pretty sure the IABC Calgary content manager is a little miffed at me. I think she probably wanted a new blog post from me a few weeks ago, and I haven’t delivered anything. The problem? I just couldn’t seem to find my “awesome” anywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I tried to write a new post in my series on social media. In fact, I started two. And they sucked. Actually, one of them didn’t get past the headline, so it really sucked. But, while I was in the shower this morning (I am actually sitting here writing with a towel wrapped around my head right now), I had a jolt of awesome – why don’t I write about how communicators are expected to be awesome all of the time.

It’s so true. Clients or colleagues come to us every day asking us for an amazing communications plan or an innovative new way to get our message out on social media. But we can’t always deliver the high quality of work we pride ourselves on. We’re human; we have our off days just like everyone else. We can’t be awesome 24/7, as much as we’d like to be.

So what are we supposed to do when we can’t find the awesome switch? Can we tell our clients “Sorry, I can’t help you just yet, I’m feeling very uncreative”? If we want to continue to get a paycheque, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Sure, we could browse the web looking at things other communicators have done, but we don’t want to be ripping off ideas either.

I want to know: how do you get inspired when you can’t find your awesome switch? Clearly, I get inspired while I’m in the shower (has anyone invented a waterproof computer yet?). And what do you do when you can’t just seem to find your “awesome” and a client needs something right away, or yesterday?

Hopefully my awesome switch has been turned on again and I can finish those other two blog posts. Or maybe, it was just a mini surge of awesome and it will be gone by the time I send this post to the content manager…

A couple of great examples of social media use have surfaced in the last couple of days. These links do not necessarily promote who I think I’m going to vote for. I just think they are great uses of social media, especially when trying to get out the vote with the younger generation of voters, who are typically known to be pretty apathetic when it comes to elections.

Check them out and let me know what you think:

“Get out the vote, Alberta.” (for all you Trailer Park Boys fans out there)

I Never Thought I’d Vote PC

 

 Dani Dollars (donate your Dani Dollars for a good cause)

Tory or Wildrose? (A quiz to find out if you know which party said what)

The organization I work for has been pretty involved in social media for about eight months now, and as a result, we are being mentioned in online conversations. As I said in my previous post, we deal with a lot of different stakeholders, including landowners, who may not always be happy with us. So how should we respond if someone says something negative about us on a social media platform? How important is it for us to get our defences up and reply to a negative tweet or wall post?

Like any good organization using social media, we developed a response matrix. This is basically a guide to determine how and when you should respond to anything said about you on a social media site. The United States Army created a really great one for responding to blog posts, but the concept can be applied to a post or comment on any social media platform (click here to view the US Army matrix).

Now that you know how you should respond to different types of posts about your organization, it’s time to get involved in the conversation. At my organization, we don’t always say much in response to things people post about us. Why? Most of the time they are just trying to get us riled up, and there isn’t really any point in responding. It won’t be a constructive or meaningful conversation, and, like any organization, we don’t have the time or manpower to engage in this type of conversation. However, if someone has a question about our organization, or has an incorrect piece of information, we try to answer or correct them as soon as we can. In the case of Twitter, we usually try to answer a question or correct misinformation through a direct message, rather than a tweet the whole world can see. This gives the added benefit of being able to provide a link to the source of the correct information.

One great new technique I recently learned about is “trans-media storytelling.” This is when you respond to a question or inquiry in a different way than it was asked. For example, if someone posts a question on your organization’s Facebook page, and the answer is not easily explained in writing, you could make a quick video – it doesn’t need to be fancy or “produced” – to answer the question. Then, you can post the video on your Facebook and/or YouTube page and direct the person to that video for the answer.

Just as you don’t respond to spam or negative comments on your personal social media pages, you don’t need to respond to the “trolls” when it comes to your organization. Remember to be honest and transparent in everything you post, but also remember to keep it classy.

This story should make everyone stop and think before they post anything on social media sites. Have an enemy? Don’t tell them where you’re going for dinner with a tweet. Going out of town for a few days? Don’t announce it on Facebook so the robbers can come break into your house.

Good tip: Pause before you post.

Read the Calgary Herald article about the incident in Vancouver:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/touch/news/Twitter+possibly+used+target+Vancouver+restaurant+shooting+victims/6352609/story.html?rel=841484

Social media for business – this isn’t your typical Facebook page

courtesy youngentrepreneur.com

When I started with my current employer last June, the organization was really just getting started in social media. They had a Facebook page and a Twitter account, but a concrete strategy hadn’t been developed yet. When I was asked to help develop the strategy, I thought to myself “this will be a piece of cake! I’ve got a Facebook page and I tweet, how hard can it be to do it for a business?”

Needless to say, I quickly learned it’s not that simple. Like any good communications plan, we needed to figure out who our audience was and what they wanted to hear from us. We needed to figure out if we really had anything valuable to say, because we all know telling our audience what we had for lunch or posting a video of an employee’s cat drinking from the tap just wasn’t going to cut it. We were already posting the organization’s new job postings, but was that what our followers wanted? Are people using Twitter to find a job?

It was time for our group to really figure out what our followers wanted to hear, and to hammer out what we wanted to say. Our organization deals with a lot of different stakeholders, so we decided we should start sharing information about upcoming open houses. Our organization also plays a big part in providing an essential service for people across the province, so we started to share information about the value of that service, how we help to maintain the high quality of life Albertans enjoy today, and how we will be there to keep up with our province’s growth into the future.

Our goal in every tweet, wall post, or Flickr photo we share is to demonstrate to our fans and followers the value of what we do, and to reinforce that we touch many aspects of their lives, even if most people don’t even think about where our service comes from.

Developing a social media strategy is not an easy process, and since the nature of social media is fluid and innovative, we strive to ensure our organization maintains its adaptability and open-mindedness to try the next new tool or platform that comes along (if it works for our business); we are prepared to modify our strategy if we see something that isn’t working. It’s also important to keep learning about new techniques and platforms that are available. A colleague and I just completed the IABC online course “Developing and Implementing an Integrative Approach to Social Media for Organizations,” which was hosted by Shel Holtz and Joe Thornley. We are very excited to apply what we learned in the course to our social media endeavours at our organization.

Stay tuned to learn about our new ideas and progress in implementing them.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/touch/life/Calgary+house+party+tweet+sparks+global+interest/6274124/story.html?rel=841484

And you thought your high school parties got out of control…

Update: March 11, 2012
What happens if you cry “wolf” too many times on Twitter? Below is a link from the Calgary Herald on how the party turned out.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/touch/Calgary+Twitter+party+fails+meet+hype/6283910/story.html?rel=841484

Update: March 15, 2012
Now the kid is getting death threats tweeted to him because his party was the blow-out that was expected. Way to go, kid.
http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/1124930–projectkris-creator-gets-slew-of-death-threats

Ayn Rand

Remember my post about all the s**t Lululemon was getting about using an Ayn Rand quote on their reusable bags? (Refresh your memory by clicking here.) Well, Women’s Health Magazine posted this tweet the other day:

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
-Ayn Rand

While it is inspirational, I’m curious to see if Women’s Health Magazine gets the same sort of backlash from its readers (excluding me) for quoting such a controversial author. I guess we wait and see…

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