The Sum of the Parts--Encouraging Personal Branding

We spend a lot of time trying to build unity in athletic departments. Offices can be spread over a campus and people can feel disconnected from the whole. So why would we want to encourage individual coaches, programs and staffers to develop personal branding?

A recent article in the winter 2010 issue of The Public Relations Strategist addressed this topic in an article, "Recruit and Retain the Best Talent--Why Companies Should Encourage Personal Branding." Many organizations are struggling with the idea of employees using work time to blog, twitter and post on Facebook. Author Ed Schipul says, "...social media has provided an ever-expanding array of channels through which individuals can advance ideas and build their brands. As more people become content creators, (companies) have the opportunity to leverage the creativity of of employees--their words, photos, videos, and even music--like never before for the benefit of the organization."

He goes on to say that personal brands can be disruptive to companies, but they more often reflect positively on an organization and contribute to profitability. I can also tell you from experience that the more personal branding you encourage through social media, the easier your job (as social media director) will become. Now, instead of having to create all the content, you have help.

We made a conscious decision at Montana State last year to encourage our coaching staffs to develop personal brands. We had sessions on effective Facebook, twitter and YouTube usage. As the social media person in the department, I help many of them figure out the best way to promote themselves in addition to what we already do for them. We have links to all our coaches websites, blogs, twitter feeds and Facebook pages on our website.

Schipul's article gives some good suggestions for getting started.

1. "Establish clear policy." Our administration had always had pretty understandable guidelines about what was acceptable behavior for players, coaches, and staffers, so this became an extension of who we already were. I helped "coach the coaches" occasionally on what was appropriate and also gave them tips and tricks for using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

2. "Conduct an (ongoing) audit. Maintain a data base (or URLs in our case) of people who are creating content and follow them. "This is my job and I get help from another SID who follows his sports as well. We keep an eye on tweets, posts and blogs.

3. "Encourage others to participate in the conversation. Those who are most passionate about a given subject are most likely to create great content that builds buzz." I encourage the coaches that like to create content. We ask them to re-tweet the department feed and we do a lot of cross-promoting of video on our website and other websites of our staffs. We tweet out new blog posts by coaches and our booster club also cross promotes the content. Our football staff has a great passion for social media, but they are busy. I take pictures and videos with a Flip camera at spring ball practice and post them on our website as well as on their Facebook page. Ulimtately, this drives a lot of traffic to our website.

4. "Promote them" Again, we post links (as many do) to all our "private" department websites, twitter feeds, blogs and YouTube channels. Just remember if you are going to promote them, you will have to pay attention to #2

5. "Keep them in the loop. Think of your internal content creators as influencers who can help deliver your messages." I email everyone in the department who has a twitter feed when we have an important news item and ask them to re-tweet. It might be asking a basketball coach to tweet a news item about four All America nordic skiers, but it works.

In my next blog post, I'll write about the second part of Schipul's article that talks about best practices. I wish the article was online, but this particular one is not.

One Man's Trash...

When I saw the recent Tiger Woods interview, so precisely engineered and scripted, I had mixed reactions. The journalist in me was grinding my teeth and mumbling under my breath, but the PR/crisis communicator in me was mumbling, "this is godd stuff."

I read a bit of a tirade this morning by freelance media critic Eric Deggans and I felt for him...but I didn't agree with him. Complaints that Woods is somehow "controlling the message" are completely lost on me. What else would a competent PR person try and get him to do? Word is that Woods hired Ari Fleischer, former Bush aide, to maneuver his PR. Fleischer supposedly bowed out less than a week later fearing he was becoming too much a part of the story. Too bad...but I am sure there was someone else in place before he disconnected that was fully competent to help manage the crisis.

My graduate work was done in crisis management and crisis communication. Controlling the message is one of the cornerstones of good PR, and I understand the importance of controlling the message while maintaining a certain amount of transparency. The thing about transparency is the media doesn't get to dictate it--Tiger does. All he needs to do is maintain enough transparency and stay on message and the public will refrain from making any harsh conclusions. And that is what this is all designed to do--keep the core public satisfied.

And the message itself is emotionally disarming--"let me get my personal life together..my family is important...I have to get help...I have to get back to my core values...I know I am a bad person and I am working on it." How can you criticize that? That is basically all the public wants to know. We might like to know the sordid details of his fall from grace, but it is not necessary to know them to continue to embrace him as long as he is forthcoming about rebuilding his life.

In an earlier blog post, I likened transparency to wearing a see-through blouse. Even though some around you might like to see more, the amount of "see-throughness" is a comfort level thing for the wearer. And, remember that there are many ideas out there of what see-through means. To me, an older woman with fairly conservative values, see-through doesn't mean the same thing it does to a twenty-something single who likes to flaunt what's underneath.

And always be tasteful--never reveal more than the comfort level of the general fan base dictates. Parents don't want their kids hearing about the details of Tiger's fall. And he isn't about to reveal them either--the general public is not entitled. Just because a group of journalists want to know more doesn't mean squat to the American public in the long run.

Like it or not, Tiger is masterfully maneuvering the perception of his crisis, just like he does his golf game.

Latest Social Networking Data No Surprise

Today, Mashable.com is reporting the latest stats on social network usage globally. The figures come from Nielsen so they are pretty reliable. There is nothing real surprising here, but if you're not used to watching the stats, you should take note of a couple things.

First, and not surprising, the United States only ranks third in the world in time spent social networking. Italy is first, Australia is second. We are third with the an average of 5 1/2 hours per month per person spent using social media. We are not the only ones in the universe using social media it seems.

Second, and also not surprising, Facebook accounts for over half of that (52%) . MySpace was next with a meager 15% and Twitter right behind at 10%. This was magnified by the news piece yesterday that Facebook has now suprpassed Google for visits.

What are the ramifications for marketers and SIDs? First, I think we need to concede that Facebook is a medium that people who are looking at increasing their influence and reach need to use. I also think these stats need to be cross-referenced with other data such as that done by Forrester Research for Groundswell so that you can see exactly who is using Facebook and for what. Numbers only tell part of the story.

The biggest ramification of this data, I think, is the fact that social media usage is up in the U.S. 29% from a year ago. So, whether or not you think your venue is Twitter or Facebook or blogging or whatever...you need to figure out how to incorporate the right pieces of social media strategy into your marketing. Social media is rising at about the same pace that the time spent reading newspapers and listening to radio is falling. How does that impact how we do our jobs?

Recently, someone showed me Klout, a free service for analyzing the effectiveness of your Twitter feed. I knew going in that our department feed was not going to rank very high. And that is mostly because I don't "follow" very many people with that feed and don't retweet much. We use it strictly to connect people to our website. It is a small part of our total new media strategy. What I found is that we were succeeding at that. We aren't at the place where we desire to be an influencer in the social media scene. Our marketing plan doesn't call for that...yet. But I think we have succeeded in doing what we set out to...for now. I also think there will come a time, sooner than later, when we will want to increase our influence through the use of social media and we will have to re-think our strategies.

I guess my point in all this is that we need to have a strategy. I think it's a total waste of my time (and money--because my time is money to my department) to just blanket every social media venue with mindless posts and information. Besides that, I wear several hats, have several duties and new media is just one of them. Do you have a strategy that fits your personnel, your time and your budget? You gotta start somewhere.

Be Careful LIttle Fingers What You Tweet (and blog and write and ...)

Today I read a piece about John Daly--did you see that? It seems a reporter got hold of Daly's PGA disciplinary file and wrote about it. Daly got so mad he tweeted out the guy's name and cell phone number and asked his fans to call the guy and complain. Yikes--time for a new cell phone number, I guess.

Recently, one of our local newspaper writers went on a tirade on his blog about what he thought was the poor job play-by-play guys did on our rival basketball game. He also volunteered to give an audition tape to the station.

After I informed one of our other SIDs of the blog entry, thinking he should read it before the weekly press lunch where both parties would be present, he told me a story. It seems years ago, another newspaper reporter had done the same thing to a local sports broadcaster. The local TV then proceeded to hunt down the writer at a sporting event and caught him on camera digging a cavern in his nose with a finger. They decided to run the footage on their sports broadcast. Well, there you go...

Even though social media has afforded us a wealth of ways to get in touch with our fan base quickly, it also has tremendous downsides. One is the push to be so quick, we don't check facts and end up back tracking. Another is the temptation to use the media to say things we would never say at a microphone or in print. The laid-back nature of social media lends itself to letting the guard down. Just remember who you are, where you are, what you are doing, and who you work for.

One of the pieces of my job is to follow the twitter feeds, facebook pages and blogs of anyone who represents the department. And believe me, I've made a phone call more than once asking coaches to take twitter posts down. I've also been called out by head coaches who don't like the way I tweet about their games. It's a tricky medium. Thankfully, I've never had to call a coach and ask them to take down a totally inappropriate post like the one I read last fall from a men's basketball coach whose Twitter feed extolled the establishment that had the best happy hour in town.

I read this today on Conversation Agent by Valeria Maltoni and thought I would pass it along. Interesting comments about using social media. Some don't apply to college SIDs, but it's worth a look anyway. I especially like #4. We're working on figuring out what really works for us. One thing, we aren't having any success using Twitter for contests. Decided to re-think.

7 social media behaviors that won't win you customers

(1.) you have a blog, or a Twitter account, or a Facebook fan page and still don't understand that the Internet or the world wide web is the context, not your brand

(2.) you're pushing your message at specific users without a connection -- one thing is being syndicated by people who want to pull your feeds, the other is pushing to them, do you understand the difference?

(3.) you're not prepared to address potential issues in real time -- visibility and connections in a two-way medium come at a risk

(4.) you're all over the place, yet there isn't a coordinated effort behind it -- seeing what sticks is not a marketing strategy in 2010

(5.) you're not looking for your fans and evangelists -- or you want to make them conform to your idea of social

(6.) you focus on changing what people say by talking at them, locking them out, or positioning them as crazy when they aren't, instead of looking inwards and changing your business practices as appropriate

(7.) you want to interact with customers, when all customers want from you is a great transaction -- put shopping carts everywhere, and support those transactions