Last week I put a presentation together for a group about getting started on Twitter. You can check it out below. It includes the “5 Kinds of People to Avoid In Twitter” list that I blogged about several months ago which, incidentally, happens to hold the record for the most comment I’ve ever received on a single post. Also included are a bit about proper Twittequette, and five other questions to answer on Twitter besides the infamous “what are you doing?” question.

I love the truth behind the comedy of Brian Regan. Here’s a classic bit from him about UPS.

A couple days ago I had a client here in Nashville forward me a link to a blog post about Facebook’s terms of use policy. The post, in essence, says that Facebook doesn’t intend for personal profiles to be used for commercial purposes and that they can (and very well may) shut down your account if you violate this policy. The blogger went on to recommend everyone create Facebook Fan pages instead. The rationale here is that your “fans” permit you to promote to them, while your “friends” on your personal profile do not.

First let’s take a look at what Facebook says about this.

In Section 3 of the Facebook terms of use/statement of rights and responsibilities it says:
1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.

In an updated (but apparently not official) Facebook statement of rights and responsibilities Facebook has included the following statement in Section 4:
2. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

Let’s Make Sense of All of This
First things first, the item from Section 3 of the policy is the official policy as of today. The addition may be coming, but neither of these changes where I land on this. Ultimately it all of this comes down to whether you want to take the broad interpretation or the narrow interpretation of the policy. The broad view is that you can talk about work but you can’t sell. The narrow view is that you can’t talk about work or sell. I fall into the broad interpretation category (as you might guess) because the specific examples Facebook gives are both sales oriented examples. It’s one thing to talk about life as an employee but something else entirely to say, “Email me now for a 31% discount on the latest Whizbang Life-Helper 5000. Get them before they’re gone!”

Here’s What I Love About the Policy
The most encouraging thing about Facebook’s terms is that it prevents people from doing the things that don’t work in social media anyway. The culture of social networking is informal and soft sales at best. Anyone who comes off as only participating because they’re trying to sell you something isn’t just going to have Facebook policy to contend with, they have to deal with the fact that they’re annoying the heck out of people by violating the entire culture of the medium.

Facebook, like any other social network, works best with conversation that adds value to the people you want to reach. When you take the predatory salesman approach, you’re going to be shunned for being a spammy jerk. The Facebook policy is the least of your concerns. You’re out there bothering potential business and hurting yourself and your brand in the process.

Facebook Fan Pages Create False Sense of Security
Fan pages won’t fix spammy jerks on Facebook. If anything they may enable people to continue using Facebook the wrong way. Using Facebook for business isn’t directly about selling. It’s about earning attention and listening to feedback that will help your business. The LACE method for social media measurement falls nicely into this. For instance, Facebook let’s you capture leads, but not because you were annoying, but because you shared a link that met a need but coincides with what you do professionally. Or maybe you talked about something you do professionally that got them interested and now they want to know more.

If you want to win with Facebook in your business, it’s most important that you learn how to think the right way and talk the right way. A strict adherence to the policy won’t prevent you from completely missing out on everything you hope Facebook will do for you. Sure, you can violate Facebook policy and lose the business opportunities you most want. You can also adhere to Facebook’s policy and miss out too.

For all the interest in social media today, I wonder if a few of the subtleties that really make it work are getting lost in some of the newcomers. When social media is done well, it is a nice combination of both awareness and engagement.

Engagement feels like you’re doing something because you’re blogging or Tweeting, but awareness feels like you’re just watching and listening (which you are) but it doesn’t give you that same “I did something today” kind of feeling. If that’s you, I have three words of advice: Get over it!

Why Understanding Social Media Culture Is Critical
An organization that’s excited to jump into social media may be blogging their brains out, Tweeting their thumbs off, and Facebooking their faces off, but if they don’t understand the world of social media, they may be doing it all wrong which will only come back to hurt them.

Social media is not just technology. It’s a culture of the new way to engage and interact with people online. You really only learn that through observation and personal, experimental participation. That’s where awareness comes in. Awareness is what keeps you grounded in all of the engaging. It’s what let’s you know where the boundaries are.

The Bad Facebook Profile
Last week I was working with some clients and we were reviewing Facebook profiles of people in their particular industry. We found one lady, in particular, who quite obviously didn’t understand the culture or protocol of Facebook. As interesting a discovery as that was, the more interesting thing to me was the reaction of individuals in the room. A few of them saw the problems with her profile right off the bat. They were aware of the Facebook culture. The rest of the room didn’t see what the big deal was. They, as you might suspect, haven’t spent much time in Facebook and therefore don’t understand the culture. How could they? They haven’t lived there yet. I can only tell them so much as their consultant. They have to experience it for themselves to fully understand it.

It seems a lot of the social media discussions focus on the engagement side. Heck, I’m even guilty of leaning that way myself sometimes. That’s where it feels like all the action is. It’s great to know how to Tweet better, blog smarter, position your YouTube video for viral success, and Facebook like a rockstar. I’m all for that, just don’t miss the value of taking the proper time to become aware of the culture.

I recommend people experiment personally before they do anything from a business standpoint. You have a lot of freedom and autonomy as an individual, but once you start that corporate profile for your business, you’re going to feel the pressure to do something whether it’s what you should do or not…and doing can sometimes be the worst thing to do. Take the time to be aware of how the world works before you set up your own camp.

Kids do the darndest things. This one certainly looks like he knows what he’s doing.

It seems like in the last few weeks I have come across a lot of interesting social media statistics and reports. I tend to share them on Twitter and save them for future reference personally, but in an effort to make sure blog readers don’t miss some of the more interesting news to pop up about social media in the last few weeks, here’s my mishmash of noteworthy posts and stats:

Nervous Companies Still Pursue Social Media
National brands and corporations are increasingly feeling compelled to jump into social media even when they have concerns about losing control. The most most interesting sentence in the post was this: “And one thing became clear: For now, companies seem more fearful of being left behind than they do of losing control.”

Yes, Your Boss Is Checking Your Facebook Updates…
8% of companies have fired employees for their behavior on social networking sites.

…Because He Suspects You’re Wasting Time
Companies that allow access to Facebook lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity. I wonder if chatting with people in the cube or office next to you has decreased though? The bottom line on this is that time wasters will do it one way or the other. Don’t let this stat be used to build a case against the usefulness of Facebook in business. Especially because…

Facebook Now Allows Search
I wrote about this already so I won’t rehash it here.

One In Three Videos Gets Shared
A recent report showed that a third of all online videos are shared. It also revealed that viewers are twice as likely to ignore TV ads as online ads, and are 28% more likely to pay attention to online advertising.

Boomers Choosing Online Over TV
A new study revealed that Baby Boomers are now spending more free time online than watching TV.

There was a homecoming yesterday at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. The U.S. Army base just up the road from those of us here in Nashville is a common homecoming destination for soldiers returning from various parts of the globe. Yesterday, however, was a different kind of homecoming because is was for Vietnam War soldiers. According to new reports, Ft. Campbell officials realized they had never given a proper homecoming to their Vietnam War soldiers, a ceremony common for soldiers returning home from war ever since then. The ceremony was a long time coming and it seems to have been both greatly appreciated and a necessary even if almost 40 years overdue.

So what does this have to do with your business and social media? Well, not much from a social media perspective, but a heck of a lot for business.

The main lesson here is that it’s never too late to do the right thing. In some cases doing the right thing may be very private, and in other cases it might be public. The true measure of any organization is whether they are willing to rehash an old wound (both for them and other people) in order to make things right. I personally know of organizations that offended people many years ago but have never really apologized for it. They have probably assumed people moved on, and they’re right, people have moved on, but it doesn’t mean the offended individuals have forgotten. Time and distance from an unresolved issue provides the illusion of closure. It was obvious by the emotional reactions of those Vietnam veterans that even 40 years later the wounds are still very real today.

If your organization owes someone (or many people) an apology or thanks, don’t hesitate to do it. You’ll be saying as much to your community and employees about the type of company you are in addition to finally repairing a situation that had been left undone. It’s never too late to do the right thing.

I’ve noted several time before on this blog that Rhett and Link understand what makes online video work about as well as anyone out there. Not only do they understand it, but they make it happen all the time. They know that creating online video is about earning people’s attention…regardless of the topic. This video is a perfect example of them putting their understanding to good use.

Enjoy the video.

Yesterday Facebook announced it was going to open up the search function within the site. What this means is that now you can search for any word or phrase you want within Facebook whereas before  you could only search for groups, locations, or individuals. This may not seem like a big deal, but from a business perspective it’s huge. The walled garden isn’t closed anymore.

The world of social media monitoring has been growing steadily for the last year or so, and I think this new development from Facebook is going to blow it wide open. Until now, there were a handful of ways businesses could really know what public sentiment was about their business, brands, products, services etc. They could search blogs, Twitter, discussion boards, and even online video, but Facebook was always the big unknown yet it was the premiere social network with the biggest numbers of people to listen to. Now that it’s open, I think it’s going to become the first place for businesses to look for consumer sentiment instead of Twitter.

A few weeks ago I talked about measuring social media success using the LACE (leads, awareness, customer service, engagement) method. With the new Facebook search available, smart organizations will be able to do this even better than before.

Last year I had a video of the week called “pride killer.” It’s worth watching when you start feeling like you’re ready to show off a bit.

This week’s video consists of the same issue…just in a different sport.