Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing? Beware.

How to Avoid Out-of-Brand Experiences that Wreck Your Credibility

Social media marketing is the hot marketing trend today – so much so that many marketers can’t get enough of it fast enough. Some marketers are choosing to outsource their social media marketing programs, or portions of them. And there is no shortage of social media marketing “experts” ready to take your money and take on your brand.

And possibly trash your brand, as Chrysler recently found out. An employee of Chrysler’s social media marketing agency posted a Tweet that included profanity and criticized the marketer’s home town. In short: the employee stepped out of brand, making a personal comment that reflected negatively on the Chrysler brand. Although Chrysler responded promptly and decisively, the situation was a black eye for the brand, and the agency lost the business.

I can understand why companies – particularly larger ones – may choose to outsource their social media marketing presence. But I wonder how many realize the risks – and take steps to protect themselves?

Before you entrust your brand to someone – be it a social media marketing agency or an enthusiastic employee – make sure that he understands, respects and cares for your brand as much as you do. The most important part of social media marketing is the social part: the people who converse on your behalf. So choose carefully and plan wisely.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Who’s representing my brand? As a former corporate public relations manager, I always wanted to know exactly who from our PR firm would be representing my company to the media – preferably a seasoned, knowledgeable business person and not the newest hire. Fast-forward to 2011: why wouldn’t I want to know exactly who would be representing my company and brand to the world via social media?

Understand who is representing your brand: his qualifications, his feelings about your product or company, his demeanor. Ask to meet and interview that person. Picture yourself talking with this person at a bar or a softball game. How does it feel? If your feelings are anything but positive, ask for someone else on your account.

What are the rules? Create a written social media policy that everyone understands and agrees to. Keep it simple – a page or so. List what you will talk about, what you won’t talk about, and how to handle special situations (such as negative comments or product complaints). It’s usually prudent to review your social media policy with your legal counsel.

Have three to five brand attributes that your social media reps should adhere to and convey during social media conversations. Better still, print this information on an index card that reps can post on their computer monitors, or create a note that they can reference from their mobile devices.

If you are outsourcing your social media marketing to an outside firm, ask how the firm trains and supervises its people. Also ask about policies for handling and reporting errors.

Finally, make sure to incorporate social media into your crisis communications plan – as a potential crisis not just part of your media mix.

What’s my technology risk? HootSuite, TweetDeck and other applications can automate social media posting for both individuals and teams. Technology can be good when it makes you more efficient, smarter, and more scientific about what you’re doing. But technology can also be bad if it replaces common sense, caution or thinking.

Understand the risks in the tools that you use. For example, the HootSuite dashboard gives you a birds-eye (no pun intended) view of multiple Twitter accounts, using a single log-in. You can post a single Tweet to one or all of the accounts in a single step. It’s all too easy, if you are not careful, to post a Tweet to the wrong account.

This simple mistake may not be a tragedy if it involves your personal accounts. But what if you’re mixing multiple client accounts – or multiple brand personas – in a single dashboard?

So, use technology defensively, not just prospectively. For example: clearly separate personal social media accounts from official brand accounts.

Also, use technology as a buffer or a sanity-check. For example: HootSuite allows you to schedule Tweets – great for when you are going to be on an airplane when you want a Tweet to hit. However, I often make use of the scheduling feature to sanity-check important Tweets before publication; by scheduling a Tweet 15 minutes into the future, I can proofread the Tweet and check any links or cross-references before it is published.

The bottom line: think before you Tweet or post. Most social media are relatively forgiving – you can sometimes correct errors if you are quick about it. However, the social media audience is usually less forgiving – as Chrysler and Aflac now know all too well. A faux pas by a major brand can be around the world – and on its way to “viral” – in seconds. A moment’s thought can often prevent heartbreak.

My advice is to spend time thoughtfully designing, testing and bullet-proofing your program up-front – no matter who is going to run it for you. This investment will pay off.

Businesses that treat social media marketing as a checklist item will get what they pay for: good and hard.

Mea Culpa Marketing: Does It Work?

Is “Going Viral” Worth It if It Kills the Host?

As consumers, we’re increasingly being assaulted with marketing campaigns that irritate us, shock us and enrage us. The new formula goes something like this:

• Marketer creates and airs a television campaign that blatantly insults or stereotypes a segment of the population, depicts anti-social behavior, or is just in plain bad taste. (Yes, the latter is still possible to achieve if one works hard enough, even with today’s low bar.)

• Consumers recoil in horror. They flock to social media, posting thousands of messages about the campaign.

• Marketer pretends to be stunned by the market response, and suggests that it never dreamed its campaign would offend so many people.

• Marketer issues apology. It enlists the Professionally Offended – for example, advocacy groups or academic experts– to assist in its rehabilitation. It makes some sort of charitable donation to the offended group(s). Mainstream and social media duly report on the mea culpa, creating another wave of free news coverage for the marketer.

Recent high-profile examples of mea culpa marketing include:

Groupon: This marketer used the plight of the Tibetan people as the introduction for discounted coupons for Himalayan restaurants, chirped with a smug face by actor Timothy Hutton.

HomeAway: This marketer apparently thought it hilarious to launch an infant (played by a doll and labeled “test baby”) into a wall or through it. And even more hilarious to give people a Web-site game where they could place someone’s face on a baby before launching it.

Kraft: This marketer used a scolding, black-clad Greek grandmother to sell Greek yogurt to young women, raising hackles in the Greek-American community.

Mea culpa marketing campaigns tend to proliferate at Super Bowl time. Businesses that have invested millions in TV production and time – including startups – clearly want to get the most out of their investments. Super Bowl advertising has become a mini-industry, attracting lots of press coverage by the mainstream media and consumer engagement on social media. It’s apparently no longer good enough to aim to be the best commercial. Or even the worst commercial, securing your brand’s place in infamy. Marketers today have to really think creatively about how to break through the clutter.

As a consumer, I resent being so blatantly manipulated by marketers. And I respond accordingly, by shunning the marketer and not buying its products.*

As a marketer, I am curiously waiting to see the net effect of these campaigns. The cynic in me believes that many of these offensive campaigns were completely intentional. How could a professional marketer think that launching a baby (albeit fake) into a wall would possibly be perceived as okay by most people? Or that it is funny to exploit the plight of politically oppressed people to sell restaurant meals to overfed Americans?

As a marketer in the pre-Internet days, I was involved in my share of bad-news marketing situations. Our policy was to act quickly and decisively to acknowledge the situation, take corrective action, and then communicate the action thoroughly and clearly. The goal was to prevent press coverage of the story from extending beyond one or two days maximum.

Clearly times have changed, mostly because of the Internet. Groupon appeared to stumble around for days in responding to its situation, extending the story for nearly a week after the Super Bowl broadcast.

Time will tell whether these mea culpa marketing campaigns were profitable for the marketers.

In the meantime, here are some observations.

There is no such thing as an inside joke any more: The Internet brings anyone and everyone to your campaigns, not just the people you are targeting. This means people of different cultures who speak different languages and so on. Someone will be confused, or offended, or both. Your inside joke may be their first – and only – exposure to your brand.

The Offended is big business: There are private advocacy groups that represent segments of the population (for example, Greek-Americans) or problems (child abuse, brain injuries, political oppression in Tibet). There are also published authors, academics, government organizations and NGOs. All can be counted on to respond to a mea culpa campaign, because their missions, businesses and livelihoods depend on it. Further, today social media gives virtually anyone who is offended a platform for expressing himself – and a ready platform for such forms of expression as organizing a worldwide boycott of your product, inciting the vandalizing of your premises, or harassing your executives.

Most consumers have short memories: Particularly given information overload, consumers over time may remember your brand or company name, but not why they remember it. And, once they have vented their initial outrage online, many consumers will move on to the next thing and may continue to buy your product. The lure of discounts for restaurant meals may win out over moral outrage – particularly for people feeding families in today’s economy. Or not.

The Internet has a long memory: Conversely, a quick search on Google or Bing will instantly remind a curious consumer why they heard of you. Far into the future.

So, before considering a mea culpa marketing strategy, ask yourself: “Do I feel lucky?” All the market research in the world may not help.

According to Nielsen, Groupon’s Super Bowl ads boosted traffic to the company ‘s Web site by only 3%. By comparison, HomeAway’s post-Super Bowl traffic was up 27%.

* Obviously, I am contributing to the wave of press coverage of bad behavior.

Do Your Customers See Dead People?

The Importance of Looking at Your Business with the Customer’s Eye

When your customers interact with your business, do they deal with real people? Or mindless automation? And how do you know?

Automation and the human touch clearly aren’t mutually exclusive in customer interaction. Businesses like Zappos.com have proven this. And many smaller businesses are proving it through the use of social media. Properly used, social media mixes live people with automation to help find customers and make fans.

But a lot of businesses get customer interaction wrong: dead wrong. They make easily avoidable mistakes – in spite of the millions that companies invest in automation and in software for monitoring the customer experience.

Often, it’s the little things. Consider the story of the national debt collection agency that robo-signed a dead employee’s name to thousands of affidavits in debt-collection lawsuits.

Beyond landing the company in the public eye and under regulators’ scrutiny, what sort of message does this practice send about the company? If they make this kind of mistake with legal paperwork, what else might be wrong at the company?

We’ve learned that the financial industry is a bit of a protected species, so perhaps it doesn’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of the business world. However, other companies – including large, publicly held companies in other industries – often suffer from the same disease.

In his book Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now, David Meerman Scott recounts his experiment with contacting the Fortune 100. A prominent blogger and contributing editor to publications, David contacted, via email, the media relations people at each company, with an inquiry for an article he was writing; he included his journalism credentials. He heard back from 28 of the 100. The relative response times for the companies ranged from snappy (10 minutes) to never, and a number involved inane and completely irrelevant robo-responses. (His experience in finding whom to contact is a story in itself.)

Why was this so hard? David was a customer: a journalist writing about a public company. All of these companies make a pretense of being reachable. They all have Web sites – often lavish Web sites. Many have automated forms and links on their Web sites. But the system breaks down there for many. So much for the real-time economy.

More recently, I was thwarted in reaching a firm in the information publishing business. I tried every avenue (except the US Postal Service). I navigated a confusing phonemail tree and left a detailed message in their general mailbox. I clicked on their Press Inquiry link on their Web site – and had three emails bounce back (I tried from both my email client and Webmail). I finally identified the human being who might be able to help me. But my personal email to that person was never returned, nor did I receive a response from the handy contact form that they provided on the contact’s bio on their Web site.

My recommendation: Marketers or business owners should regularly test their customers’ experience with the business. Personally. Beyond any automated testing you may do. Or secret shoppers you may employ. What’s it like to buy from your company? Return a product? Get a question answered? What does it feel like?

True, as a marketer or business owner, you can never be 100% objective about your own business. But just spending an hour in the customers’ shoes might be a revelation.

When I was working for an advertising agency many years ago, a retail client hired us to walk through a few of their locations “with the customer’s eye.” Yes, the results were subjective – and perhaps even biased, you may say – but they were very human. And the results added a dimension to the retailer's traditional research.

The good news is that small changes can often make a big difference.

Here are three obvious places to start:

Your Web Site: Test the email addresses, contact forms and links. Do they work? How quickly do you get a response? Is the response relevant? Coherent? Indecipherable? Lawyer-ese for “go away?”

Your Phone System: Make sure that your phonemail is easily navigable. Have a process and schedule for checking the general mailbox and routing or responding to the inquiries.

It’s also helpful if the automated voice on the system matches your brand. It’s disconcerting to a call a bank or brokerage firm and hear what appears to be a five-year-old girl answering. Pick the person on your staff who most represents your brand – a successful broker or financial adviser, in this case – and have that person make the recording. Or outsource this task to a firm that specializes in this type of thing.

Your Social Media Program: Have a protocol for responding to questions to your company on social media. Promptly. Most large companies – particularly those that consciously use social media for customer service (such as Comcast) – have this down pat, often using teams of people with real names and faces. For better or worse, these companies are setting the bar for all companies. Respond to queries promptly, and in the tone of your brand.

Remember that these forms of electronic media are proxies for your brand. They should reflect the personality of your brand, even though they are automation not actual people.

Or, you can continue to let your customers see dead people – and suffer the consequences.

Navigating a Corporate Crisis: Would You Sail or Fail?

Why Every Business Needs A Crisis Management and Crisis Communications Plan

As part of its year-end analysis of 2010, The Wall Street Journal published a post-mortem on the top corporate crises of the year – from BP’s Gulf oil spill to Toyota’s safety recall. With the help of crisis-communications and crisis-management experts, the article briefly examines each crisis, how effectively the company responded, and what the company might have done differently to achieve a better outcome.

While I disagree with some of the statements in the article,* it contains some useful lessons and ideas for every business.

The main lesson: Every company – even smaller businesses – should have a crisis communications plan in place. Smaller companies may not be in the public eye or under government scrutiny as much as larger, publicly held companies. However, smaller companies may be less able than larger companies to absorb the business damage from crises such as a product problem or a fire.

Professional PR or reputation management consultants can often be extremely helpful in such a crisis, but they can be pricey. If you are a smaller business on a tight budget, you can create your own crisis communications plan. It’s mostly common sense.

Here are a few tips:

First, define the most likely crises. What are the most likely crises that could happen in your business? What are the likely elements of the crisis (for example, interest by your local media)? Describe the scenario in detail. You can’t anticipate every possible scenario, obviously, but at least you will have some crisis thinking in place.

Next, outline a brief plan of action for each scenario. For example, in the event of a serious customer complaint that “goes viral” on social media, what is your policy for dealing with customer complaints? Do you refund or replace, without question? Or require a return? Does the policy need to be revisited? Then, define how you will communicate your actions and to which audiences. What’s the most efficient way to reach each audience?

Create a phone or email “tree” of the people in the company who need to be notified or involved in resolving the crisis. Keep it detailed but short and updated. In some cases, you may want to include your legal counsel on the tree.

Identify key members of the media and other important channels for reaching your audience, such as local business leaders or industry analysts. Make sure you have current contact information for each person.

Identify who will be your media spokesperson, and make sure that that person is readily available to the media via cellphone and email.

Write everything down, and share your plan with managers and executives. Make sure that everyone understands the process – and who to contact if they have questions.

Don’t forget employees. Make sure that line employees – often the first people to become aware of a crisis – know the process. Typically, you do not want non-authorized employees speaking to the media on behalf of the company. So, tell employees simply and exactly what they should do. Don’t leave them guessing in the heat of the moment about what to do or who to contact.

Always do a post-mortem. After any crisis, analyze how well your process worked. Update your process as necessary, in writing. Don’t forget to close the loop by briefing employees on how you handled the crisis and answering any questions they may have. Employees also may have ideas for improvement.

Don’t forget social media. Social media can accelerate some crises, by broadcasting the event and enabling lots of public discussion. On the plus side, social media – a company blog, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter – can help assuage crises by giving you a real-time, unfiltered way to convey information and engage in a direct dialog with your audiences.

If you are already using social media, make sure you include social media in your plans. If you are not using social media, familiarize yourself with it now because it more than likely will play a role in your crisis. Members of the traditional media (magazines, newspapers, local media, and Web press) participate in social media, and may use social media discussion as a source for information or stories.

In a crisis, it’s important to respond to public discussion using the same media. For example, if a customer complaint goes viral on Twitter, you must respond on Twitter (although you may use other media as well). That’s where the audience is. Ignore it at your peril.

David Meerman Scott’s book, Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now, contains some great advice about using real-time media in a crisis (see pages 124-131).

Obviously, it’s impossible to anticipate every possible crisis. However, if you follow the steps above, you will have a template in place to work from. You won’t be starting with a blank piece of paper if a crisis does happen.

Finally, view every crisis as an opportunity to deepen your engagement with customers. By doing the right thing and communicating it quickly and effectively, you may end up with more customers and an improved reputation.

*Particularly that the oil spill was unexpected (I think it was inevitable)

Is Business Getting Soft?

Five Pieces of Weak, Confusing Patter to Ban from Your Language

President Barack Obama has been criticized of late for weak messages and language. This doesn’t surprise me: he’s a 21st-century politician in an industry (politics) that’s fast reaching its nadir.

What does surprise me – and scares me – is the growing number of business people who regularly use weak, unnecessary language or patter.

“Patter” is language that fills in the breaths between statements and questions. Patter appears to be on the upswing, probably because we have so many bits to fill – hence its extensive use in social media. But just because the bits are there, you don’t have to fill them.

Here are five pieces of patter that you should exorcise from your business language:

• “Just Saying”: As opposed to what?

• “IMHO”: If you feel unqualified to offer an opinion, then don’t.

• “My Two Cents”: If your opinion is really only worth two cents, then why say it? And why admit to it?

• “Oh, and” (often followed by “did I mention?"): Did you really forget to mention it? If so, was it because you don’t think clearly? Or because it was an afterthought? Many people seem to use “oh, and” and “did I mention” to set off the most important item in a list. This makes no sense to me at all.

• “Kind of,” when used to obscure what it refers to (“we were kind of confused”), not distinguish it (“Kate Moss is a different kind of cover girl”)

In business, “kind of” is a pox on precision. It calls into question the truth of whatever term it modifies, as well as the knowledge and seriousness of the speaker. The phrase is cropping up in many executive quotations in news stories, making me wonder if reporters’ word processors have a macro that automatically inserts it into quotes.

“Kind of” is particularly deadly when it describes a corporate action or financials. It makes me wonder: “Doesn’t the speaker know how much, or how little?” “If he means ‘approximately’ or ‘estimated,’ why not say this, instead of using the verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders?”

Here are two recent examples:

Example 1: “When [former Walmart CEO Lee] Scott was thinking about what qualities his successor should have, he saw a match with [new Walmart CEO Mike] Duke’s skills. ‘I kind of thought -- and I think the board thought - that the company could be better managed,’ says Scott, who is careful to say that it was the directors who picked Duke for the job, not him.”

Example 2: “Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, wanted to increase its visibility to U.S. investors but worried about associating with over-the-counter offerings, says Thomas Kudsk Larsen, head of investor relations in North America. The OTCQX designation addressed those concerns, and the company started trading there in 2007. ‘By segregating out high-quality companies, we kind of get away from the reputation of the Pink Sheets,’ Larsen says.”

Perhaps by using equivocal patter, business people hope that they won’t offend anyone. (Offending anyone is the third rail in our Post-Crisis world.)

True, if you wallpaper your business speech with weak, equivocal patter, you probably won’t offend anyone. But I can almost guarantee that people won’t remember you – or the points you are trying to make.

Perhaps this is the idea?

The Reluctant CEO Blogger

When Blogging, CEOs Should Do it Right or Not Do It at All

There’s been a lot of debate about whether CEOs should blog. The CEO’s main job is to allocate and optimize resources – including his own time – to meet the company’s goals. So, why don’t more companies apply this criterion to CEO blogs?

In my travels as a marketing consultant, I have encountered some CEOs who start blogging and using other social media merely because it's trendy - not because it's central to their business strategies.

The thinking usually goes something like this:

“The people at [my company] have finally persuaded me to share my ideas via social media. So, I'm now blogging about [subject]. Here goes."

In situations like those above, it seems as if the company has no clear goal or strategy – other than to jump on the blogging bandwagon. The company also does not have a well-thought-out plan: the CEO seems unsure about what to do, how to do it, or why he’s doing it. Precious resources – starting with the CEO’s time – are being allocated to a project of ill-defined value.

My opinion: this CEO should not be blogging.

In contrast, meet my long-time colleague and client Guy Hoffman. A former software entrepreneur, Guy is founder and CEO of U.S. HomeTeam, a company that offers new property and casualty (P&C) insurance products that make more profits for carriers and agents while providing more choice and value for consumers. The goal is to make everybody involved in the insurance transaction a winner – hence the use of “team” in the company’s name.

The P&C insurance industry being pretty resistant to innovation, Guy started his CEO blog, “Insurance Matters,” to help educate consumers, carriers, agents and service providers about the value of change. The blog talks about the importance of insurance in a good personal financial plan – something that most consumers don’t spend much time thinking about – and about the constraints of current products.

Equally important, the blog communicates the company’s Conscious Capitalism philosophy. It shares the company’s purpose and the culture it is building to achieve that purpose.

Guy writes the blog himself: it sounds like him and is authentic. He has a regular editorial schedule, and he SEOs his topics and blog headlines. His team promotes the content through the company’s social-media program (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn).

The blog is attracting followers and fans, and it’s generating click-throughs – albeit a bit more slowly than Guy would like (not a surprise given the subject matter). However, Guy knows he’s creating a body of content that keeps his Web site fresh and the company well-represented in search engines, while having other potential uses. The blog is cathartic and stimulating for Guy, helping him create a dialog with the industry and shape his ideas for new products, markets and customers. In short: the blog is meeting his business goals.

Before sending your CEO off to blog, I recommend the following:

Have a goal. Know what you are trying to achieve, who you are trying to reach, and why.

Make an honest assessment of your CEO’s potential as a blogger. Does he have the time? Does he have the willingness? Can he and will he contribute substantively to the growth of a blog, which is a long-term proposition?

Have a plan, including:

• an editorial mission and guidelines, including what the CEO will and will not write about.

• an editorial calendar, defining how frequently you will publish. (If someone must edit or approve the CEO’s blog articles before publication, remember to build this additional time into your calendar.)

• an editorial “machine,” for identifying timely topics that the CEO may want to blog about. This machine might include Google alerts, a marketing assistant who monitors the Web and forwards news and articles, or both.

• a promotion plan, for promoting the blog on social and traditional media – including other blogs that your CEO may want to follow and comment on.

• a policy for how you will handle comments on the blog.

• a simple measurement program.

Have the first several posts written before the blog goes online. This will enable you to get off to a strong start while the blog gets established.

Remember that the best CEO blogs are those that reflect the personality of the CEO and the brand characteristics of the company – and bring both alive in a natural, authentic way.

If you don’t have a clear understanding of your goal and your ability to meet that goal, do not proceed.

A PR Succession Strategy – Do You Have One?

Chief PR Person Leaving? Have a PR Plan, or Face the Consequences

Most companies have established communications policies they follow when important executives leave. For publicly held companies, the departure of certain executives may be material information. For any company, saying the right thing is just good business. An executive’s departure (or temporary illness) may affect the company’s reputation.

So, why do so many companies fail to have a similar policy in place for when their chief public relations person leaves? PR people come and go all the time – either voluntarily or involuntarily.

Your chief PR person is usually the front line to journalists, bloggers, industry analysts, and possibly financial analysts. His departure will be noticed – possibly more quickly than the departure of a senior executive. His departure also may send a message (accurate or inaccurate) about the company and its stability. Many reporters and journalists assume that the chief PR person has insights into subtle changes in the company, which may or may not figure into the departure. (For example: a good high-level PR person will spot a change in the CEO before anyone else does.)

And reporters often keep track, as one company I know learned the hard way. When the chief PR person left, the beat reporter remarked to the temporary replacement: “That’s the seventh PR director to have left in 10 years, you know.” The temporary replacement to the PR person was aware of only five – but the reporter was right.

So, it’s important to have a communications policy that kicks in when your chief PR person leaves, to both protect the company’s reputation and ensure continuity. (It’s usually good to check with Human Resources and your Legal Department when you develop your policy, as there may be contractual or other legal considerations.)

It’s critical to make a seamless and immediate transition to a successor – even if it’s only a temporary solution.

Keep in mind that many reporters routinely watch for clues of senior managers’ attitudes toward the Public Relations department – for example, senior managers who disdain, ignore or fear the PR department. Therefore, when a senior PR person leaves, sloppiness or delay in the transition may reveal or confirm those attitudes.

So, you need a policy and a communications plan to execute it. Here are five things to think about as you create your plan:

(1) Check All Connections
Change access (passwords) to the chief PR person’s company phone/cellphone, phonemail and email immediately, and forward to a successor. This should be done immediately, or by the end of the day at the latest. (In a company under fire, this is crucial – the chief PR person may get dozens of calls or emails every day.) If your PR person used a personal cellphone for business, ask that he change his voicemail message temporarily to refer company calls back to the company. The bottom line: Never leave the press hanging.

(2) Don’t Drop the Ball
Debrief your chief PR person about projects in progress. Identify what press opportunities or inquiries are in progress, and understand their status. Proactively call or email reporters on important inquiries to provide them with the new PR contact.

(3) Agree on a Statement
Just as you would for a departing senior executive, have a statement about the chief PR person’s departure that the departing chief PR person and the company can agree on. Provide it to the successor, the chief PR person’s manager and anyone else who may have to answer questions about the departure. Then stick to the script.

(4) Prepare for the Worst, Hope for the Best
Sometimes employment or consulting relationships end badly. Don’t be surprised if news about the PR person’s departure ends up in blogs, on social networks and even in the mainstream media – remember you are dealing with a communications professional who is both concerned with his personal brand and adept at using the media. Most PR professionals are ethical and governed by their profession’s code of conduct, but never rely on this alone.

(5) Don’t Drop Your Guard
Set up Google Alerts to monitor for the person’s name, and keep them in place for a reasonable amount of time. This way you will know immediately if any stories run, and can respond accordingly.

By having an established communications policy in place for your chief PR person’s departure, you can ensure continuity of service to the press and other important constituents. And you can usually prevent PR from becoming the story, instead of telling your story.

The Tweet Not Taken

Sometimes What You Don’t Say Sends the Most Powerful Message

At an awards show last fall, the world went wild when a well-known rap star grabbed the microphone from America’s country-music sweetheart and went on a rant during her acceptance speech. People posted hundreds of thousands of messages on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, expressing their outrage. In the process, they of course mentioned the rapper’s name, thereby raising his profile on the Web – and playing right into his ham-handed publicity ploy.

Not me. I practice the fine art of Twunning – the modern-day, social-media equivalent of shunning.

In our searchable, SEO-ed, social-media-dominated world, sometimes the best way to “send a message” is not to send a message at all. Don’t reward marginal or anti-social behavior with a Tweet or a post. Instead, punish it with inattention.

True, there are plenty of examples where the power of social media has helped focus attention on important social problems or injustices. And I think we will see more of this good work in the future. But the Rapacious Rapper doesn’t fall into this category.

The urge to share and be heard is apparently winning out over common sense – even for seasoned professionals and other adults. Beyond bestowing attention on Rapacious Rappers, I see people saying things on social media that they would never say in person. Their comments are instantly broadcast to the world. They are also instantly searchable, stored forever, and permanently associated with the commenters’ names (and reputations).

Many people are frustrated with Facebook’s continually evolving privacy policies for its free service. But you shouldn’t count on Facebook – or Twitter or any other business – to protect you.

How about starting to take responsibility for yourself, by just saying [ ]?

Before you post that Facebook message or make that Tweet, THINK. Is it really worth it?

Do you really want to broadcast your location, or the fact that you will be away from home on vacation for the next two weeks? Or show a photo of your expensive new car? (Ever searched for your own home on National Geographic's Map Machine?)

Do you really want people to know that you had a very successful business meeting with a prospect – mentioning that prospect by name?

Do you really want to argue with a sibling in public, on Facebook?

I have seen all of the above – and worse – over the last few weeks on social media.

Privacy settings will continue to be a moving target, even as the open web evolves into more services that offer privacy for a price. So-called “walled gardens” can only be so effective. (I also suspect that private services may become targets for hackers because of the greater perceived value of the information within.)

So, whether you are consciously and strategically building a personal brand or not, best to think before you Tweet.

And sometimes it’s better to just say [ ].