Integrating Social Networking:
Difficulties and Usability
Mike Sink, Town of Cary (@sinkawitz)
Jen Riehle, NC State OIT (@ncsumarit)

Welcome!
Social Media: The Theory
Social Media: The Policy
Social Media: The Plan
Social Media: The Implementation
Social Media: The Reckoning
Discussion & Questions

Disclaimers
This is not Social Media 101
We are not going to call it “Web 2.0”
We WILL tell you how to figure out if you should be using social media; what to use; how to implement it; how to
make it work in a community
We’re going to talk about integrating social media into your business plan and workflow and using it to improve your
relationship with your constituency.

NOT easy
... or it shouldn’t be if done right

WON’T solve all your problems
Probably creates new ones. :)
This is an enhancement - should build on what you’re doing

CAN’T set it and forget it
You can’t just create an account and say “Yay! I’m on Twitter! We’re done.”

What is social media?
so●cial me●di●a
n.
Def: Blending of technology and
social interaction for the co-
creation of value
Wikipedia has several definitions but at its core says “blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value”
With a definition like that, social media can include buying a latte at your local internet cafe. VERY broad.
We’re going to break it down a little into TYPES of social media TOOLS

Conversation
Services
Facilitate conversation
between users
Ex. Facebook, Twitter,
Ning

Information
Services
Serve as a (primarily)
one-way communication
resource to users
Ex. Wikimedia, Blogger,
WordPress
LinkedIn

Photo-sharing
Services
Share photos
Ex. Flickr, Picasa,
SmugMug

Video-sharing
Services
Share video
Ex. YouTube, Vimeo
Could mention iTunesU here briefly

Location-based
Services
Check-in at locations and
events
Ex. FourSquare, TriOut,
Yelp

The Tools
Twitter
Facebook
FourSquare
YouTube
Flickr
LinkedIn
WordPress
Wikimedia
Ning
Poll ‘em?
Look around at who is using what!

The Tools
Twitter
Facebook
FourSquare
YouTube
Flickr
LinkedIn
WordPress
Wikimedia
Ning
Poll ‘em?
Look around at who is using what!

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/2010-social-network-analysis-report/
Demographics
Gender
Education
Salary
Age
Even male/female ration (48/52); higher education; higher salary
Self-selecting nature: have to have a computer and/or cell phone - mostly better educated, older, have more
money
You won’t get too many younger users (under 18); you won’t get too many under-privileged users
28% of Facebook, Flickr and Twitter users are over 45 years old; 16-18% under 25 (60%+ b/w 25-45)

Dealing with Policy

First, do no harm
Look for your Communications Plan and/
or Social Media Policy
Review the State “Social Media Best
Practices” (12/09)
Be aware of Records Retention issues
MIKE:Your municipality may not want you to do this at all. This may be your only stop.
State of NC has
- Social Media Best Practices and tutorial (12/09)
- No retention requirements specific to social media at this time (have them for e-mail and websites)
NCSU has
- communications plan
- no social media plan YET - comm plan being redone

Do You Need a Policy?
Yes

Why You Need a Policy
Ensures you’re following policies and
guidelines at community and state level
Gets buy-in from management
Helps lay groundwork for your Social
Media Plan
Legitimizes the effort - credibility
Social Media policy usually a part of a larger comprehensive communications plan

Key Elements in a Policy...
Authenticity and Transparency
Protecting Confidential Information
Copyright Concerns
Respecting Your Audience
Obeying Terms of Service
Brand and Naming Guidelines
Coke’s Policy:
1.Be Certified in the Social Media Certification Program. 2. Follow our Code of Business Conduct and all other Company policies.
3.Be mindful that you are representing the Company. 4. Fully disclose your affiliation with the Company.
5.Keep records. 6. When in doubt, do not post. 7. Give credit where credit is due and don’t violate others’ rights.
8.Be responsible to your work. 9.Remember that your local posts can have global significance. 10. Know that the Internet is permanent.

Making Your Plan

Your Plan,
Your Ruleso So we talked about the policies and plans above you and they are important
o But if you want to use social media you have to decide for yourself WHAT to use, HOW and WHEN to use it, etc.
o It’s your turn

1. What are your goals?
Determine your objectives:
Why are you here? What do you hope
to achieve?
Find a niche and be an expert
Too many objectives? Consider multiple
accounts
Want to offer customer service? Provide information?
Ex: P&R channels: Largest common denominator - athletics, cultural, events - will segregate
your audience
Be a resource when people need help? SME? Build a brand?

2. What tools should you use?
Conversation Tools (Twitter, Facebook)
Information Tools (blogs, wikis)
Photo-sharing (Flickr, Picasa)
Video-sharing (YouTube, Vimeo)
Location-based (Foursquare, TriOut)
DON’T USE EVERYTHING. No one needs all these.
Evaluate each category and determine the categories and tools that best serve your purpose.

2. What tools should you use?
Who is your audience and what are they
using?
What is the purpose of your message?
How many channels of communication
can you commit to?
What channels are best for your
message?
Audience: young, old, net users?
One-way communication vs. two-way communication

Remember...
It is a lot harder to get OUT of social
networking than it is to get into it.
Tempting to get into a lot of channels but it’s terrible to get into a profile and then not use it.

3. Create/amend your
business model
What outreach is already being done and
how does this fit in?
Who/how many people will be doing this?
What will the workflow look like?
Will they be trained?
Will this be in the job description/work plan?
This is an enhancement to your current marketing and outreach strategies, not a replacement
It takes a TEAM of people
Training in writing for the web; communications - your staff needs to be an expert in what they’re talking about
This is not “goofing off”! This takes time and skill and needs to be considered a real responsibility

4. The Employee Factor
Don’t just grab some student or intern
This is official communication, needs an
expert
Person should understand and care
about the dynamics of social media
Try to find people who are passionate about this; that will make it easier to succeed
Just because you "grew up" with social media, that doesn't mean they know how to do social media. It's marketing and there are other skills, oversight, knowledge of legalities
involved.
Training in writing for the web; communications - your staff needs to be an expert in what they’re talking about
This is not “goofing off”! This takes time and skill and needs to be considered a real responsibility

4. The Employee Factor
>
other
Other people in your organization are going to be using social media
The story of “Rick”
Triage approach: 1) Assess the message, 2) Do you want to respond? 3) Evaluate the purpose of the post (Unhappy employee/
Dedicated complainer/Humorist)

4. The Employee Factor
Educate employees about the communication
plan and social media guidelines
Encourage them to participate in the
community, when appropriate
Have guidelines for employees social media
behavior
If you’re tweeting personally then remember:
- build a community within the industry you’re in
- don’t tie yourself to your position in your organization
If things change you want the contacts but you don’t want to leave an account behind; reasons to separate personal and
professional
ITS A Balance

5. Set Expectations
Consider your assets:
Do you already have some processes in
place?
Do you have any in-house expertise?
How are your peers doing?
How much time and money are you
investing in this endeavor?
Be realistic
If you plan to assess your success make sure you have some metrics in mind and that you do some work to track your success -
later ROI slide

... and then keep track
Keep a copy of all your posts
Record data based on your assessment
plans
Don’t have to be big or costly, just has to
work
Where did my tweets go?
Twitter doesn’t save everything, so if you want to you need to 1. actively make that effort with a text file or 2. sign up for The Archivisit,
TweetDumpr
At the end of the week copy everything you did into a text file. Just know who did what when.
If you plan to assess your success make sure you have some metrics in mind and that you do some work to track your success - later ROI slide

Warning: Preparedness
In case of emergency, have a plan
Everyone will be posting but it’s important you offer quick and reliable information- get ahead of or correct rumors
In case of negative interactions, have a plan

Warning: Security
Some scams, phishing attacks, hackers going after social media tools
Firesheep, Koobface,
Keep computers secure
Keep employees informed on the latest bad stuff
Koobface: Worm spread on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux to get sensitive information such as credit card
numbers. Spread by sending e-mail to a friend to look at something that purportedly requires flash to up
updated. When click on button to update flash, worm downloaded.

Remember...
You are not just making a plan to share
information; you are making a plan to
build a community
You are making a social contract between
you and your followers
Jen 1st
Mike 2nd
Expectations about what you tweet, how often, your level of expertise in your niche, etc.
There will be some expectation that if they direct something at you, you will respond
You must be able to meet and exceed their expectations or they will stop following you and, even worse, they’ll
tell others to as well

The
Implementation

Create Your Profile
And I don’t just mean ID and password...
CREATE YOUR IDENTITY / PERSONA
Find a voice/tone and stick with it. Can be funny, cool, have a gimmick, whatever but goes with your social
contract (audience expectations) so make it work and be consistent

Crafting Your Post
Think about your AUDIENCE
In what CONTEXT will your audience be
reading?
What is the PURPOSE of your message?

Audience
“Craft your message based on your knowledge of the audience”
Our coaches will delete a message that starts with “All fields are open...except.” Know Your Audience.
Knowledge domain of your topic (niche)
Don't bury the lead (“All faculty and staff will be attending an off-campus DE continuing education session on
Thursday”)

Context
Where will your audience be and how will they receive this message.
What equipment will they receive the message on.
Electric sign or desktop or smartphone or iPad
In a place where sound isn't appropriate?
First time site visitor or repeat visitor?
Potential "unique" context (Student Health Services website)

Purpose
- know what you’re trying to convey - is this a call to action? or just information.
- know what they’re trying to accomplish (make it task-oriented)

Communicative Purpose
“That post is from NC State OIT!”
Example: NC State OIT
Goal is for reader to say this. Short of that, "Oh that makes sense."

You are what you tweet
Advertising (workshops, seminars, services,
events)
Announcements (outages, change
management, security issues)
News (technology, education, technology in
education)
Customer Engagement

Introduction to Excel 2007 Part 3
(formulas, macros, drop down lists)
04/22, 1:30-4:00, 6 seats left, More info/
sign-up: http://idek.net/7U8
ncsu_oit
Advertising

Tiny URLs can be big security risk! (And
you know Twitter uses them
extensively.) http://oit.ncsu.edu/news-
releases/tiny-urls-can-be-big-security-
risks
ncsu_oit
Announcements

RT: @hfrankm3 NCSU's library lends all kinds of
cool equipment... Including iPods & Kindles. [ &
MUCH MORE! see http://idek.net/6F1 ]
RT: @higheredu STATS: U.S.A. Social
Networking Rankings: http://tinyurl.com/
9bply5 (Twitter in 17th [Hitwise] & 9th [Nielson]
place resptvly)
ncsu_oit
News

Thanks for the follow. Welcome
to NC State! Hope you enjoyed
our IT presentation. :)
Yeah, first presentation I've stayed
awake for the whole time haha
Ha! We're flattered! Best of luck in your
time here, & don't hesitate to call on us if
you have technology needs/problems
while you're here.
Customer Engagement

More Engagement

Hashtags and Searches
Hashtags tie content into larger
community themes
#ncsu_oit, #orientation, #gopack
Makes tweets easier to find and
aggregate
Tools like Tweetdeck and Tweetgrid to follow multiple users and hashtags - see what people are saying!
Where did my tweets go?
Twitter doesn’t save everything, so if you want to you need to 1. actively make that effort with a text file or 2. sign up for The Archivisit,
TweetDumpr

Building Community
Welcome newbies, orient them
Reward contributions
Make sure there is always someone
listening (and responding!)
Use screen names and connect names
with faces IRL
Connect with other local communities

{FUN}
FUN - HAVE SOME
1. Be authentic
2. Have fun
Your audience will know if you’re not being yourself, if you’re not having fun; you won’t post because you’re
frustrated.

The Reckoning

Return on Investment
First, have a goal (see: The Plan)
Use tools to monitor success:
Google analytics
URL shorteners that track usage
(bit.ly, goo.gl)
Facebook pages monitor usage
Many new tools for monitoring social
media usage
Tools: Omniture, ViralHeat (built with SAS analytics), ShareThis- Argyle Social downstairs

What does “success” mean to you?
What do you do with your success?
Return on Investment
You may have all kinds of data but what does it mean??
But what does “success” mean? Subjective AND objective
Measure success in interactions and building of relationships

Your Reputation
Get into good habits
Solicit and respond to feedback
Pay attention to what’s being said about you
Reputation is everything in social media - won’t have followers without a good rep
Find good resources and share your knowledge - BUILD CREDIBILITY
Eventually you will become the resource and you’ll get more followers
Tools like Tweetdeck and Tweetgrid to follow multiple users and hashtags

You are not in control
ANYONE can say ANYTHING at ANYTIME so pay attention!
DON’T IGNORE IT. Ask for feedback; move on - this is an opportunity!
If it becomes abusive you can choose to remove content but it helps to have a policy (publicly available) to point to
in order justify why you’re blocking someones comments

When to Bail
It will take time
This is an enhancement, not
a replacement
Don’t look at the number of
people, look at the quality
of connections
You’re using it whether you
like it or not
Just because you haven’t posted in ages, does’t mean you should stop; DOES mean you
should re-evaluate

Questions &
Discussion

BIG PHOTO THANKS!
STÉFAN

Thank you!
Mike Sink (@sinkawitz)
Jen Riehle (@ncsumarit)
Slides available online at
http://slideshare.net