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One of the most frequent concerns I hear expressed when speaking to people about social media is the fear of being attacked. Business people are worried they will ruin their reputation or inflict brand damage simply by being out and about on the `net. Social media provides the perfect veil of anonymity encouraging some people to behave in a way they wouldn't in person. While harassment does happen from time to time, it's not really a problem if you have a plan on how to handle the social media hecklers.

My two golden rules of social media are:

1) It's "social" so you should be focused on building relationships.

2) You are representing your brand or your company brand. At all times you must maintain a professional tone and attitude.

For the purposes of this discussion, we need to keep the second item firmly in mind. You will encounter angry and disgruntled people who have no compunction about voicing their displeasure and feel no allegiance to constructive criticism. Believe me, they're easy to spot.

The Barkeeper's Secret
My sister has worked in pubs and bars in the USA almost her entire life. She's very good at what she does and owns a wildly popular bar/restaurant in the city where she lives. She's dealt with her fair share of unreasonable people often fuelled by alcohol. My sister advises,

"The only way to deal with drunks is not to".

It's worth considering that the person attacking you in a social network could very well be under the influence. Regardless of the sobriety factor, I apply my sister's advice when I find myself on the receiving end of an unhappy character.

3 Steps to Neutralising the Angry Masses
The goal with any attack is damage control. The quicker you can neutralise the situation, the sooner you can put it behind you. It's critically important not to respond in anger but keep your tone neutral or even friendly. From the school of hard knocks, here is what I've learned about managing a social media attack.

• Acknowledge the Person Lodging the Complaint

The worst thing you can do is ignore an attack and hope it goes away. It won't. In fact, ignoring the situation can often make it worse because an assumption is made that the allegations must be true. A simple, "Wow, you're really upset" is a signal that you've heard the complaint and are listening.

• Show Empathy You don't have to agree with them. In many cases you probably shouldn't. It never hurts to show compassion. I will always say something like,

"I'm really sorry that happened to you" or "That must have been so difficult for you." Again, you don't have to take responsibility but angry, drunk, or even crazy people feel like no one cares.

• Give Them Something to Do A call to action is a classic marketing technique that I put to use in these situations. I talk a lot about aged care and often garner negative comments about the industry. I always ask them to help by sending them to a website where they can generate a letter to their government minister, give them the name of someone who can handle their complaint, suggest they put a tag on their online comments to direct the conversation to the right group, i.e. #agedcare, #education, etc. or even ask them to distribute an article or a press release. I always tell them we, the aged care industry, need all the help we can get.

My experience is that most people want to complain and blow off steam. If you don't engage in combat, there's nothing to fight. It's pretty hard to continue punching someone who is being nice to you. Giving them something to do is nearly always a sure fire cure for their ailments. If they decide to take the action you suggested, everyone is a winner.

If all else fails, walk away. An irrational person won't be won over no matter what you do. You might be surprised to find your network and even total strangers will take up the fight on your behalf leaving you an elegant getaway.

Making Lemonade
The way you interact with detractors on social media can leave a good impression about you and your company. Remember, you will have an interested audience that could easily number in the thousands. Like a fight on the playground, harsh words and body hits even virtual ones have a habit of drawing a crowd. If you behave in a reasonable way and don't start throwing punches yourself, you've got a very good chance of coming out of a social media attack with a lot more supporters than you had before.

Have you ever been under attack in a social media setting? How did you handle it?
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Last week Joe Pulizzi laid down a challenge at his Junta42 blog to discover the content mission strategy for your customers and prospects. Titled, Your Content Mission Strategy Statement, Pulizzi urged us to define a strategy that has nothing to do with what we sell. Instead, he advises us to focus on what our business stands for. He says a content mission strategy is "based on the informational needs of your customers and prospects, and also inherently drives your business". It got me thinking.

I knew almost immediately I had been operating a content mission strategy at Global Copywriting even though I hadn't considered it in these terms before. For the past few months, I've been talking a lot about Asset Based Marketing. My content mission strategy fully supports this category; ` Content should be an asset to your business, not an expense.'

It's worth thinking about. Most companies develop a vision statement and a mission statement for their business. They know where they want to go and how they expect to get there. It makes sense to define a content mission strategy, as well. Does the content you produce support the overall mission of your company? Is it going to assist you in carrying out your mission and realising your vision? If you haven't given it much consideration, now is the time to do it.

The Take-Away
If your company mission statement is the map to get to your destination, your content mission strategy is what you use to plot your route. Each company will have different requirements and will find benefit in different areas. Avoid "marketing autopilot". Consider each piece of content and every marketing activity as part of your strategy. In doing this, it will become obvious where your marketing investment produces the best assets.

What is your content mission strategy?

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*Image courtesy of jkleske, on Flickr

Over the past couple weeks I've blogged about the importance of giving equal consideration to content and design in an asset based marketing strategy. Good content is worthless if no one reads it. Good design can encourage someone to read a document they wouldn't normally consider. Still, even with the best writing and the most creative design techniques, your content can still lie dormant.

I've written extensively about business uses for social media. My special report, Practical Advice for Social Media, continues to have evergreen appeal even though the usage statistics for the tools are a year out of date. (And, yes, I know I need to update it. It's on my list!)

While I'm hearing fewer objections in my speaking engagements about the usefulness of social media in business, I'm still having conversations with clients who aren't quite convinced. My impression is social media marketing is gaining grudging acceptance as a viable business exercise but many people consider it "not for me". The recent 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report sponsored by the Social Media Examiner contains a wealth of information indicating social media is here to stay for one reason; it's working.

Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report from www.hubspot.com

How does social media help transform your marketing efforts from an expense to an asset?

Social Media allows you to broadcast.
In the simplest use of the medium, social media puts business in the role of a broadcaster. For years business has courted the media, written press releases and invested a fortune in public relations in the hopes of getting mentioned on TV, radio or the newspaper. With tools like Twitter, Facebook, VIMEO and YouTube you get to say what you want to, when you want to.

Social Media gives your content legs.
Distribution of content before social media was often limited to a particular geography or a certain market segment. Businesses used very structured campaigns for local, national and international coverage and there was a cost associated with each one. Social media removed all those barriers. Even the micro-business owner can now distribute content, free of charge, to all corners of the world.

Social Media extends the shelf-life of your content.
One way to look at social media tools is to view them as a repository for your content. While some are more suited to this than others, tools that allow you to post content also retain it on your profile. Blogs are a perfect example. Publishing magazines for articles or newspapers means your content dies with the next issue. A blog is an archive of everything you've written and is available into perpetuity if you want it that way.

The Take-Away
Social media is an important element of an asset based marketing strategy. Once you've made the initial investment in high-quality, well-designed content, social media activity has the potential to convert your marketing expense into a long-term asset for your company. When you control your own message, reach more people and increase the longevity of your content, it absolutely starts performing as an asset.

What ways does social media increase the value of your content?

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Related posts:

• Asset Based Marketing: Content as an Asset[*]Why Design Matters in Asset Based Marketing[*]Are You Mixing the Right Online Cocktail?

A couple weeks ago I received a very odd email from a sender I didn't recognise. It was a humorous little note about a missing brain, an international search party and a remote beach in Mexico. I'm a big fan of creative writing so even though my anti-virus program flagged it as probable spam, I considered it a gift. It was written in the form of a press release making me think it might be the first part of a marketing campaign.

Quickly losing interest
A couple days later I got the exact same message again. This time I gave it a closer look. Except for the sender's details, nothing in the email gave me a clue where it had come from or why it was being sent to me. There was no "Unsubscribe" link. The following week, I got the same email, yet again. I had a look at the domain used in the sender's address which belonged to a professional services company in Canada. Nothing on the site explained the odd message I was getting.

Irritated into action
I couldn't figure out why a professional services company in Canada would be sending me unsolicited emails in Australia. Irritated, I replied to the note which, on reflection, was a bit curt.

Dear XXXX, This is the 3rd time I've received this same exact email. Will you please remove me from your list? There is no way on the note to Unsubscribe. I don't remember subscribing to email from you in the first place. Cheers, Sarah

I did feel like I was doing the right thing by writing to the sender and not reporting them for SPAM. Two days later, the same email appeared in my inbox but I was too busy to worry about it at the time. Five days after I sent my email, I received the following reply.

Dear Sarah, This is simply my vacation autoresponder and because I receive your blog by email, you receive the autoresponder. It's truly unfortunate that in this day and age people jump to conclusions about bad intentions – as is so clearly demonstrated from the extremely abrupt tone of your email – as opposed to seeing the more innocent explanation. So no – you didn't subscribe to anything and I certainly don't have a habit of spamming. As I often use autoresponders when I am out of town, the best solution for you at this point will be for you to remove me from your list so that I don't disturb you with them in the future. Thank you. XXXX

I was taken aback. My three sentence request was met with a fair bit of defensiveness. There was nothing in the four emails I received to suggest it was an "Out of Office" notice. I have an automatic subscription service for my blog so I'm not always aware of all the names on the list. I should have left it at that but I didn't.

Not everyone appreciates free advice

I wrote back, apologised, and said I truly didn't understand the intent of the note and it would have been helpful if the title had an "Out of Office" tag on it somewhere. I shouldn't have bothered. I received a lengthy reply telling me, explicitly, that I was stupid. Evidently dozens of other people applauded this creative approach to business communications. A prediction was made I would go broke since I was so unsuited to my own profession I couldn't recognise good marketing copy when it landed in my inbox.

Also evident was the holiday in Mexico hadn't worked very well. Needless to say, the name came off my list.

Sticks and Stones

But here's the thing; my intent, however abrupt, was an honest attempt to let a small business know they had a problem. When it was obvious I had caused offense, I tried to correct it with an apology and a suggestion on how the problem could be prevented in the future. I can't help but feel the reaction I received says a lot more about the sender than it does about my intellect.

The Take-Away
I think we can all agree it's never a good idea to insult potential clients regardless of the reason. It's an especially bad idea to do it in writing. (And, no, I will not "name and shame" so don't ask.) The bigger lesson is that the original email didn't effectively communicate what it needed to. While it was mildly amusing the first time I received it, by the fourth time I was having a total sense-of-humour failure. Sadly, the author put a lot of work and creativity into it but missed the mark by leaving out 3 little words, "Out of Office".

I would say this is a classic case of marketing communications working against you. What do you think?

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*Image courtesy of Kiva.Dang, on Flickr

You’ve heard the famous quote from Lord Leverhulme, British founder of Unilever, right? He said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half.” That quote has been attributed to many different people over the years. It resonates with anyone who has ever had to budget for an expensive activity with intangible results, specifically advertising or marketing.

Defining Assets
Business can spend a lot of money on promotional campaigns and have nothing to show for it afterwards. Running print ads in the newspaper, buying airtime on TV/radio, attending trade shows and running contests are all common ways to spend marketing budgets with nothing tangible to show for them in the long-term. An important distinction to asset based marketing is the content should have a long shelf life. Any product or activity with a brief lifespan doesn’t qualify. I shudder to think how much money was spent on the Y2K “crisis”. I bet most of it was completely irrelevant even before the calendar turned over to the year 2000.

Content with a Longevity Factor
What sort of content has evergreen appeal?

• Blogs – One blog post does not constitute asset status. However, a blog that’s regularly updated and been around for awhile will quickly begin to position the author as an authority on their topic. The collective work of a blog is definitely an asset. The bonus is that it helps influence SEO, which adds to its appeal in an asset based marketing strategy.
• White Papers – Often referred to as the “King of Content”, white papers consistently remain one of the most influential marketing documents you can have. The 2010 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report from Eccolo Media said this, “White papers are also the most frequently shared type of content, firmly cementing their place in the upper echelons of the marketer’s toolkit. Our advice: invest in white papers”. The great thing about a well-crafted white paper is that it can be updated with new statistics year on year, making it an extremely long-lasting investment.

• Case Studies – Also called Customer Success Stories, people cannot get enough of “advice from strangers”. The advent of social media has opened the sphere of influence and whom we trust the most is other consumers. Document what your business does well in a persuasive case study and you’ll have a real asset on your hands.
• Email Newsletters – You might be wondering how a newsletter can become an asset. In the case of email newsletters, you’re able to archive every issue on your website. Not only available to subscribers, they also do a fine job of boosting your SEO. For a great example of how an email newsletter can continue to provide value to your company, have a look at the newsletter archive for Fitzgerald Photo Imaging. As with a blog, consistently publishing quality content will help establish your authority with new prospects as well as current customers.

The Takeaway
Spending on marketing can provide tangible results if your content is planned and managed appropriately. Before allocating money to a project, consider how long it will be in service and whether you can repurpose the content in any way. If the longevity factor is present, your asset based marketing strategy becomes more cost-effective and holds more influence in the long term.

What other content works as an asset?

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Related posts:

• 4 Essential Elements and 1 Big Benefit to Asset Based Marketing[*]Asset Based Marketing: Where Content Meets Design[*]Why Design Matters in Asset Based Marketing

*image courtesy of Francesco Marino at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net