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H1N1 Flu Virus (Swine Flu) and Suggestions for Associaton Events

Due to the nature of associations and the number of public events that we hold on a regular basis, here are some suggested guidelines to follow:

1. Encourage members and guests who may be ill to stay home.
2. Request that members and guests who have family members who are ill to stay home.
3. Consider asking your venue operators to add hand sanitizers to all restrooms.
4. Request that your venue operators have Restrooms and all "Touch Points" (rails, doors etc) sanitized multiple times each day.
5. For large gatherings, consider having a health care professional on site and/or on standby. 
6. All participants at events should be encouraged to take routine precautions, washing hands frequently, not sharing food or drink, covering their mouths with a tissue when coughing or sneezing, and immediately disposing of the tissue.

If you have any questions or concerns, please consult with your public health officials or visit the Centers for Disease Control website at http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu

Some organizations are giving out logo'd bottles or applicators filled with hand sanitizer. 

Suspicious about LinkedIn Weakening Intellectual Properties

LinkedIn has a beta feature called "Company Profile".  This facilitates building out a company profile with some similarity to a personal profile.  If you find a company or organization name on LinkedIn, even your own, that doesn't have an official profile it may already be hyperlinked to a page that is somewhat pre-populated based on the personal profiles of that company's employees.

Only company employees with an email address at the company domain can complete the profile.  I brought this to the attention of one of my association clients and prompted them to complete their profile.  After all, it is complimentary and undoubtedly a good community building strategy.  Not having a presence probably says more about an organization than having one.

Suspicion?

The response I got was quite interesting, similar to my last post about opening a Twitter account, but not the same organization.  Here is the response, verbatim but with names removed [] to protect the innocent:

First I think [legal counsel] needs to have a chat with some of our younger (translate: younger than any of us) [members] to make certain we really understand the issues so that we don't open [association] to liability or worse, end up weakening our intellectual properties.  [They] may come back to sound the "all clear" but I have a suspicion there's more to it than first meets the eye.

So it is not surprising that I couldn't find this person on LinkedIn.

We're looking at starting a Twitter Account Next Quarter

I recently asked a very well respected thought leader in the CRM space if they had a Twitter account, as I wanted to follow them.  At first blush I found their response quite astonishing: "No, we don't have a Twitter account, but we're looking at setting one up in the next quarter."  Well guess what, your preferred Twitter handle could be taken in the 30 seconds it took you to tell me that!

I wholeheartedly support developing a strategic approach to social media while at the same time I would admonish those whose speed to adopt could be considered Jurassic.  What I'm really hearing is "No, I don't really have a social media strategy and I'm struggling to get it all figured out."  That I have empathy for.  Social media tools are coming at us with blazing speed and it is already hard enough to manage all of the messages coming through email and RSS channels without monitoring keywords on Twitter, being friendly on Facebook and nurturing our network and groups on LinkedIn. 

Gotta run, I just got poked!

Slideshare and one Company's Sharing Policy

I've been watching the changes in the way individuals and companies have become less reluctant to share and publish content in the public domain.  While there is a growing trend to publish content, there are still some people who are hanging onto their corporate firewalls for dear life with the great fear that someone is going to get their "stuff" for free.

I recently experienced this as I was producing SMEI's Social Media Road Show.  We invited all of the thought leaders presenting to share their PowerPoint presentations on Slideshare.  The Slideshare site offers free hosting of files and is especially good at converting your PowerPoint into a flash file that you can embed as a presentation on your website.  In today's social media sharing world, getting your content into the conversation is as easy as that.

Most of the presenters were quite willing to share their material.  Some even have there own Slideshare accounts and provided us with access.  One presenter in particular responded "For proprietary reasons we don’t publish our presentations or hand out copies during the presentation.  We typically are on the cutting edge of Internet marketing, advertising, and public relations technologies and don’t want competitors to gain easy access to what we’re doing and how we’re doing it."  While I may have bought that argument a few years ago, trends and ROI on content publishing indicate that things have changed and that if a company is truly on the cutting edge today, they are going to be publishing a lot of content.  Maybe not their trade secrets, but there are compelling reasons why they may want to rethink their strategy. 

For example and education, I'll share one of the presentations here by Paul Dunay:

SMEI: Leveraging New Media

7 Thought Leaders on Social Media Marketing in 7 Minutes

Onsite interviews from the SMEI Social Media Road Show in Vancouver on March 26, 2009.

Twouble With Twitters Video

Sweet to Tweet Later & Other Ways to Socialize Your Website

We've been employing different tools to build an online Social Media presence and help our association clients get involved in online conversations.  Here are a few tips and examples:

1. If you have a group on LinkedIn, use the new discussion feature.  It is a great way to engage your members and provide a forum for knowledge exchange

2. Have someone who has good online etiquette and is social media savvy to be your face in online conversations.  Promote their Twitter account on the home page of your website.

3. Put a live Twitter feed on your website.  We have done this for one client and use it to cross link with discussions in the LinkedIn group.  See our example graphic and visit the SMEI website for a live example.  We used www.tweetlater.com to create the widget that feeds the website.

4. If you have a page on Facebook for your association, use the approved Facebook "badge".  Be sure to adhere to promotion guidelines for Facebook.

Happy Holidays Tekorg Readers!

Here's a little holiday cheer:

Twitter and Your Social Media Space

The New York Times calls Twitter "one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet" and we're seeing companies and organizations adopting Twitter as one of the key tools in their social media arsenal.  Created as a way to keep in touch with friends and family, Twitter is now a popular choice for organizations to monitor and participate in online conversations that impact or include their social media space.

So, if you have a personal Twitter account, should you create a separate one for your organization and if so, how do you manage two or more Twitter feeds?  I personally like www.splitweet.com.  It also allows you to have a home page where you can select and monitor "brand" conversations happening on Twitter.

Another best practice for a corporate or organization Twitter account is to authenticate it by posting a link from your Twitter profile to your organization's website and vice versa so that readers can verify that you are the "real thing".  This suggestion thanks to @jowyang.

Tripped over TripIt

Received a notice from LinkedIn that they have added a number of new applications to their site and I decided to check some out.  Most impressive was TripIt.  If you do a lot of traveling like I do it can be a chore to keep all of your itineraries straight and let your staff (and family) keep up with your where abouts.

TripIt is very easy to use, in fact you can simply forward your travel email confirmations to the TripIt website and your intinerary is created automatically.  The cool thing is that the site combines your airline, hotel, and car rental confirmation emails and creates one master itinerary. 

You can also develop your own social network of fellow travelers by inviting your LinkedIn network to connect with you on TripIt.  An automatic update lets you know who is going to be near you on your upcoming trips.

Check out my profile at http://www.tripit.com/people/WillisTurner and let me know what you think!