The Pinterest explosion hasn't passed us by at Calista - we are keeping an eye on it.
First things first - what is it?
It's (yet another) social media platform, that allows users to pin images that they either create or find on the Internet. You can visually represent things you find interesting or if you are a company you can visually represent yourself. You group your various "pins" on boards of your choosing.
This last point caught my interest. Working with a number of service based companies, we find that they tend to find it difficult to truly differentiate themselves. Ten years ago, something like over 85% of law firm's corporate colour was blue. That's not the case now - they have differentiated themselves! How about a platform where you could visually represent what your company is really like, both from a client and an internal perspective. You could appeal to both new clients and potential employees. As a marketer I liked this idea and it got my creative juices going. So I read up some more.
That's when I came across a little issue called "copyright".
Enter stage right my IP lawyer friend, Robert Lands (Head of IP/Media at Finers Stephens Innocent). I asked him if he would be happy if his firm was on Pinterest? His response was "I wouldn't want to see my firm on Pinterest unless its use was very carefully controlled. It encourages its users to reproduce other people’s images and then lays the blame at their feet if their actions turn out to be infringing. Unless you have the permission of the copyright owner in the images you Pin you are likely to be infringing copyright in the images by making an unauthorised reproduction. US users might have a defence under US “fair use” provisions, but the UK has “fair dealing” which is much narrower and unlikely to provide a defence." As the platform originated in the US I'm wondering whether they considered other nations laws?
How about if we used images that we had the copyright to and/or copyright free images where we could link to the creator? Would that change Robert’s view?
“This raises two issues:
Images that we have the copyright to
Pinterest are making effort to address copyright concerns. One of the problems when the site first launched was that the Terms of Use said that you couldn’t Pin third party copyright content, but the “Pin Etiquette” rules said you shouldn’t use the site to promote your own work either - that led to a Catch 22, where the user’s choice was to either infringe someone else’s copyright or break the site’s rules. They have now dropped that Pin Etiquette rule, so there are no problems pinning your own copyright works.
Copyright free images
Most of what people think of as “copyright free” actually isn’t. An artistic work is only copyright free if copyright has expired. Copyright in an image lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years after the end of the year in which they die. Also, the process of touching up and scanning an old image to put it online may create a new copyright in the digital image, so you are highly unlikely to find truly copyright free images on the Internet.
However, there are “royalty free” images available online (images that can be purchased for a one-off cost without paying usage based fees) and images where permission is granted to use them entirely free, such as under a Creative Commons licence. But you have to be careful with those licences as they often do not allow every kind of use. In particular, if the licence prohibits “commercial use” you will have to determine whether your use on Pinterest to promote your business is a “commercial use”. It may be.”
Conclusion is that if you are in the UK, then you do need to be mindful of the potential copyright infringement that you could be making on behalf of your company. However, I think this platform has the potential to help service companies better articulate and represent themselves in a way that is more accessible by the general public and their target market.
This is a debate that I often have with my clients. None seem to welcome the opportunity of having people commenting on their blogs, although some do see it as a necessary "evil" to look open and communicative. Most start from the standpoint that the comments will be negative. Some think that the comments will criticise or heaven forbid actually point out inaccuracies in the copy!
My view? I think if you are engaged in social media and digital marketing you need to embrace people wanting to talk and interact with you. They may actually find you interesting enough to want to ask your opinion or ask a question.
Here are our 8 top tips for dealing with comments
1. Make it someone's job
You need to have someone responsible for the content of your blog. If you run several blogs, you may like to have a different person for each. That person should be responsible for making sure that the content is in the right tone of voice, it is appropriate and for moderating comments
2. Check your settings
Check the settings on your blogs. You may want to close the blog to comments after a certain period of time say 30 days. That way you only have a finite pool of comments to moderate. You also need to decide whether comments can be immediately approved or if they need to go to a moderator.
3. Get an alert
Make sure that if you are responsible for comments that you get an email notification that someone has made a comment. This means that you can respond immediately. If you have comments going into moderation, then you can set aside some time every day to deal with comments.
4. Dealing with spam
Just like email spamming, blog spamming is here. Once your blog is established I can guarantee that you will come across this. First time you see it, you'll wonder what on earth it is, then it will dawn on you that this is just someone fishing. Make sure that your blog has a spamming filter put in place.
5. Reply or no reply
Replying to comments is the human side of blogging. You actually get to speak to an individual who may be a future customer. Think about it in those terms when you engage in a conversation. There again, the comment might not be that nice, see below
6. Dealing with the negative
In his blog post, The Sales Lion gives the following advice:
Step 1: Read Stupid Comment
Step 2: Shake head and say, “Geez…Now that was a stupid comment.”
Step 3: Laugh slightly and repeat out loud, “Bye-bye stupid comment.”
Step 4: Carefully move mouse arrow just below comment and find the button that says “Trash” or “Delete”
Step 5: With authority, click one of these buttons.
Step 6: Return to work with a smile
I like this approach. Negative comments always stirs the desire in me to justify my viewpoint and prove the other person wrong. Don't do it. Ranting in public is not very sightly. Delete the comment, let it go and take a few breaths.
7. A justified negative comment
OK, so you did muck up and the person who left the comment pointing it out probably has a valid point. It's time to put on your PR hat - a) yes X happened b) we are doing Y to put it right and c) thanks for pointing this out so we can rectify the situation.
8. You are in control
Don't get bogged down and try to see the bigger picture. You are not required to leave all comments up. It is in your control to delete whatever comments are left, be they from clients, competitors or the grumpy people in the world. Go with your gut on reacting to comments, it's usually right.
The final word is about YouTube. If you use this channel please beware as it is noticeable that it attracts some of the most negative and abusive comments of all the platforms. Get your hard hat on - you have been warned.
Image by thaikrit.
Facebook has gone all image mad! As they say, a picture can speak a thousand words.
Have you taken advantage of Facebook's new look yet? You can now really express your brand by using both the cover photo and the profile picture. Here are some great examples.
O2 - love the image they have used
Dropbox - I really like the use of illustration as well as the use of their logo
Old Spice - yes I know what you are going to say, but I love the way they have incorporated the profile picture background into the cover photo - really niffty!
Beware that Facebook has some strict guidelines about what you can't do with your cover photo, namely:
- no adverts, coupons or promotions
- shouldn't be primarily text based (although we have used a wordcloud as part of our design!)
- no contact info
- no references to user interface elements such as "like" or "share" or any other Facebook site features
- no calls to action buttons
I wouldn't risk infringing these as you never know quite how strict Facebook will be.
Your profile picture has a number of uses, namely:
1. It is embedded on your cover photo
2. It is the thumbnail that accompanies any of your posts
3. It is the main brand image used in Facebook apps on mobile devices
Take these into account when you design it!
Image by tungphotos
OK so you've decided to embrace the Twitter-sphere and you've created an account. Next issue - what to call yourself???!!! You need to think about this carefully. First off, take a look around Twitter and see what other people call themselves.
Here are our handy tips to choosing a fabbie Twitter handle.
1. Shorter the better.
You are limited to 15 characters. As tweets are only 140 characters, if you have a long twitter name, you are leaving less room for the message.
2. Limited characters.
The only characters you can use are upper and lower case letters, numbers and the underscore (_).
3. Keep it clean and honest.
Don't have a risqué or questionable username - not everyone will think it's funny!
4. Company name or not company name???
You can put your company name in the Name text box in the account settings and also within your profile. This means that when people search for your company, your handle will appear. Therefore, you don't necessarily need to have your company name as your handle.
5. SEO influence.
Your twitter name has power and influence on SEO (search engine optimisation) which determines your rank in search results. For a business, consider using a valuable keyword as your twitter name.
6. Don't look like a bot.
Seasoned twitter users can spot a bot in seconds. Usually it's something like "free_books".
7. It's never too late.
If the worst comes to the worst, you can always change your name at a later date (before you get too well known or have loads of followers). It is fairly straight forward to do (search twitter help for "how to change username").
8. Develop your shortlist.
When you get into your Twitter account, you can play around with different options and Twitter will helpfully tell you if that handle has already been taken. That way you can develop a shortlist to take soundings on before you choose.
A few starters for 10
Here are a few ideas to help get your creative juices going.
Use underscore: @Kall_Kwik
Use a title: @DrJohnSmith
Name and description: @LawyerJohn
Use "I" or "I am": @IamProbate
Image by sixninepixels
What are the other 88% doing then? Well, funny you should ask that…we’ve just produced a report analysing the Top 200’s use of Twitter. Amazingly, you’ve got 24% just not participating at all and a further 64% where they’re either inactive or have too small a following to be viewed as successful.
Are the big boys dominating? Not at all, in fact quite the reverse. With the exception of A&O, the performance of the Magic Circle is decidedly lackluster.
There are some success stories in the Magic Circle firms. The top 3 firms together have just over 4,000 followers, but the vast majority (68%) of these followers are following inactive or small accounts – leaving 1,400 people following active and popular accounts. Hardly world domination and certainly below par for their size and resources.
Twitter does however provide a great medium for punching way above your weight – for example, Pannone, ranked in the mid-50s, has twice the number of followers of the top 3 firms combined. Even Thomas Eggar, ranked at a modest 74th, has over 1,400 followers. So, there are bright lights out there, but they are few and far between.
If you would like to read our report, click on the button below to download it.
This week I came across this statement "Social Media is a logical extension of PR, but has very different rules". I don't disagree that social media has a unique set of rules that must be understood in order to get value from it. It's the other part of the statement that I take umbrage with.
I've seen the results of PR taking control of Twitter accounts. In our recent study of the top 200 UK's law firms over 50% of the accounts were only blasting out news about the firms themselves. That's what PR does - it is the media facing part of a business. They control the messages about the firm, or at least try to! They are there to safeguard the company's reputation.
Social media presents an enormous challenge for companies. Many established management methods are ill-suited to deal with customers who no longer want to be talked at but who want to be listened to and engaged with. They want conversations with real human beings and they don’t want to be broadcast to.
According to Kietzmann et al*, there are seven functional building blocks which have important implications for how companies should engage with social media. By analysing:
- identity
- conversations
- sharing
- presence
- relationships
- reputation
- groups
companies can monitor and understand how social media activities vary in terms of their function and impact. They can then develop a coherent social media strategy using the appropriate balance of building blocks for their community.
Increasingly, the term 'social business' is being used to suggest that engagement with social media goes beyond marketing and PR departments, and should also affect those working in sales, human resource and R&D. You only have to look at the use of LinkedIn as a job board to see how recruitment processes are changing. In fact, it’s been suggested that the recent changes to LinkedIn's company pages are there so that companies can access prospective employees more easily.
Conclusion is that everyone needs to understand social media. It’s not the domain of one person or one department. Unless of course you don't want to use it effectively and miss out on measured return on your investment of time!
* source: Kietzmann, Jan H.; Kris Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy, and Bruno S. Silvestre (2011). "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media"
Facebook are up to their old privacy setting tricks - you really need to keep an eye on them! Your timeline is being made public. This means that anything you have posted will be available for all to see - not just your friends! Particularly scary for any teachers out there!!!
The first step to Facebook privacy is making your profile, or Timeline, private. To do this, go to:
- Privacy Settings - How You Connect and change the settings for "Who can post on your timeline?" from "Public" to "Friends"
- and change the settings for "Who can see posts by others on your timeline?" from "Public" to "Friends."
- Go to How Tags Work and change the settings for "Maximum Timeline Visibility" from "Public" to "Friends."
That's the settings for your future activity. Now you need to tackle your past posts.
To do this, go to "Limit the Audience for Past Posts" and click "Manage Past Post Visibility," then "Limit Old Posts." This will change all past posts to Friends-only, even if you initially made them public.
Hide past posts
Some posts will be "highlighted" on your timeline. Take a look at your Timeline and look to the right. There will be a list of years -- all of the years that you have been using Facebook and posting items, as well as any years that you or your friends have posted about. Unfortunately to tackle these past posts you have to do it year by year.
Click on the first year you started using Facebook. You'll see 20 "highlights" from that year, as well as month-by-month breakdowns. First you'll need to click on the upper right corner of each of the "highlight" posts and choose "Hide from Timeline." After you hide or delete the "highlight" posts, you'll need to click on each month and hide or delete all of those posts.
This will take a long time, depending on how many posts you have, but it's worth it. Be methodical and go month-by-month, year-by-year until you're back to 2012.
Tackle other people's timelines
How about all those messages and posts you've done over the years on others accounts?
To remove your posts from someone else's Timeline, go to your Timeline and click "Activity Log." You can now see all of your posts -- comments, likes, and events -- organized by date. To see just your posts, click "All" in the upper right corner and choose "Your Posts". Anytime you wrote on someone's wall, you'll be able to delete that post -- not hide it, because it's no longer on your Timeline, but delete it so that it won't show up on their Timeline.
Be careful about taking advantage of Facebook's "helpful" option of "do you want to hide all posts of a particular year" - it doesn't work! You need to do it the long way. You can check out how your Timeline looks by clicking the gear button and then "View As…" to see how your profile appears to strangers and friends.
If this all seems too much - you could also consider deleting your account and starting again!
Get Clients Now!: A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches
by C. J. Hayden
If you don’t know where to start this book may be a good place. However, a word of warning – this book is incredibly detailed. In fact so much so, that you might be overwhelmed and give up altogether!!
There are numerous checklists but I found it very long winded in its explanations. Could be much shorter and punchier. Calista verdict: 28/50
Judging criteria – marked out of 10
Ease of reading 5
Technical 7
Can I do something new? 7
Wow – I never knew that 3
New way of looking at something 6
Here's the scenario:
Through my extensive reading on the topic of social media for business, I discovered that two of the UK's (and the world's) top accounting firms had issued reports about this very topic. So I downloaded the reports and read them. Both were pretty good, although one was certainly more lightweight than the other.
It was when I got to the end that I made an interesting discovery.
Neither the firm nor the authors seemed to have any social media links. I did a quick search on the three authors of one firm's report. Only one is on Twitter. I quote from the report "we use our skills and experience in the digital space to help our clients to realise the
benefits of digital transformation". Hmmm. Not sure I'd trust someone to advise me to embrace digital transformation if they aren't embracing it themselves.
I also searched for the two authors of the other firm's report and again found one of them on Twitter. So I direct messaged him and asked a question. That was around Christmas time and I'm still waiting for a reply, or in fact any kind of interaction. I've concluded that they have taken the strapline of their report - "When social media becomes a liability" - to heart, and decided against participating.
If someone held themselves out as a restaurant critic and had never actually visited the restaurant they were reviewing we would dismiss their views. I think the same can be said about business advisers. As the saying goes practice what you preach.
Deleting a twitter account is fairly straight forward. If you go to the help section of twitter and type in "deactivate my account" it will provide step-by-step instructions.
There are a few things that you need to consider before and after you have deleted your account. Here's our top 5.
- Why are you deleting it? There are some very good reasons, like focus or inactivity. You may have too many accounts and it is becoming unfocussed and misleading to your audience. Or your business direction may have changed over the years. Or even, the person who set up the account has left without anyone knowing the password!
- Notify any followers of the account that you intend to dectivate it and which account, if any, you'll be tweeting on in the future
- Your data will be retained for 30 days after deactivation so you can change your mind within that period. After 30 days it's gone for good!
- After you have deactivated, some tweets and content may still appear on some search engines. This is because your tweets have been indexed by them and Twitter cannot control this 3rd party content. You'll need to contact them individually to get the content deleted.
- Consider not actually deleting the user name as this means that someone else can take it. Just leave it as a dormant account.