One of the last things I did while working in Television back in 2008 was to get my local Telemundo Bay Area station active in Social Networks. A few issues arose with questions about copyrights, confidentiality, etc. Many companies today are struggling with how to best approach this social phenomenon without jeopardizing their reputation. Do they join the conversation? Do they ignore it and pretend it is not there? The bottom line is that marketing has forever changed and big companies are understanding this more and more. You cannot ignore the evolution of communications and media. According to a report issued by eMarketer, 35% of the Fortune 500 companies are currently tweeting! Yes! They are actively connecting with their customers, improving their services, getting reviews for new products and growing their BRAND equity. Check out Intel Social Media Guidelines or IBM Social Computing Guidelines.

What is required here is a new mindset both for companies and their employees. A mindset that needs to be consistent! Are your employees well aware of how to talk about your company in places like Facebook and Twitter. If your answer is no, then perhaps you should take a look at what other companies are doing in this regard. Take a look at the 152 policies that compliancebuilding.com has published as a reference. Also, take a look at Shift Communications’ Top 10 guidelines for social media participation (Company) template.

Social Media is here to stay! You can either join now and become RELEVANT or join later and play catch-up.

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Two Thumbs up! Gather Your Crowd feels extremely proud to co-facilitate Stanford Continuing Studies class: Branding Yourself Strategically. In only 3 sessions Angelika Blendstrup, the instructor, has created a family-like-environment where people from a diversity of professional and cultural backgrounds are now making long lasting connections. Really! Only someone like Angelika who is fluent in 5 languages and has lived on 3 continents can achieve such a feat!

The first half of the class, students had a chance to learn specific tools for reputation management online. Angelika’s suggestions included: Zoominfo, Ziggs, ClaimID, LookUpPage, CV 2.0, and Visual CV. We then moved into Blogs and Angelika quoted Tara Hunt, author of “The Whuffie Factor“. Tara has 8 Tips for the courageous people diving into the blogosphere:

1. Get advice from the experts but design for the novice
2. Respond to ALL feedback
3. Don’t take negative feedback personally
4. Give people credit
5. Point out and explain changes as you make them
6. Make small, continuous improvement
7. Go out and find your feedback + Respond as needed
8. Ignore the haters

During the second half of the class we had the pleasure of having Ravit Lichtenberg, Founder and Chief Strategist of Ustrategy Consulting,  present the awaited “5 Keys to Creating a Successful Online Brand”. Ravit’s presentation was truly impeccable! If I may say, having worked for 12 years in Television doing Branding, I can attest that Ravit truly personifies the BRAND she has created for herself, and THAT is a true achievement. Gather Your Crowd had the pleasure of interviewing her and this is what she had to say about the one social media tool she uses most effectively online:

Key takeaways from Ravit’s presentation include:

1. You cannot NOT communicate
2. Branding yourself with social media requires a strategy—in its core, is the perception you’d like others to have of you and your offering
3. Like it or not, branding yourself requires you to think of yourself and your offering like a product. Your job is to help your audiences separate you from everyone else.
4. Create campaigns! Choose 2-3 campaign objectives and stick to them
5. Don’t try to do everything at once: pick a few key personal campaigns and 2-3 tools that are relevant to your brand message and to your audience and stick to these first
6. Make sure you build a foundation that allows you to adapt and change quickly

To get Ravit’s complete presentation please click here.

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