To work, social media must be fun and interactive

There’s no shortage of opinions on the do’s and don’ts of using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, based on responses from panelists at Providence Business News’ 2011 Social Media Summit.
But one message was clear at the March 2 event, which focused on marketing and employment issues: Social media has to be fun, interactive and innovative.
“Do you have a divorce glass?” one user posted to the Designs by Lolita Facebook page, owner Lolita Healy recounted, noting that her fans love to share almost anything through social media.
Women that buy Healy’s products want to share their life with her, it appears.
“People love to share their ideas. Everyone creates and has ideas about how things should be done and idea contests [through social media] can be very effective,” said panelist Healy, who boasts more than 7,200 Facebook fans.
Responding to a question from the audience of 300 at the Providence Marriott Downtown on how to promote a local theater company, some of the five marketing panelists suggested, as an example, allowing Facebook fans to vote on which actress should play the lead role in the next show.
To which Brian Lamoureux, a panelist and lawyer with Pannone Lopes Devereaux & West, groaned, “My head is about to explode!”
Lamoureux, who often contrasted sharply with some of the more go-getter social marketers at the summit, pointed out that companies should be aware of the state laws for sweepstakes and contests.
“Great marketing ideas fall apart in the legal department,” he said.
One recent Facebook feature, allowing users to download their entire Facebook presence – every piece of information you’ve ever posted – onto one zip file, “should petrify you if you have children or are active on Facebook,” he said.
Another audience member asked how to measure the return on investment of social media. The panelists agreed that there is often no clear-cut way to do so but there are definite intangible benefits to having a social media presence … even to “just to be part of the world.” “All of you are frustrated by the signal-to-noise ratio on social media,” said Lamoureux, who advised: “Leverage, sell it and find a way to monetize it.”
Healy warned that, “The wrong reason to start social media is to impact sales. It’s like hiring a public relations agency. What you will get is feedback about your brand. You can use it as a sales tool [but] it’s more of a community, a forum for marketing research … which could cost tens of thousands of dollars.”
“It’s ironic how nontrackable it is,” said panelist Alec Beckett, creative partner of Nail Communications. But, he said, if you talk about tasty margaritas on a Thursday afternoon when people are getting ready to go out, your restaurant is more likely to make it onto their consideration list.
“What does not work is any kind of overt marketing. I cannot sell life insurance on Facebook,” said panelist Laura Meade Kirk, public relations coordinator of Amica Insurance.
What to do about a “rogue” comment on your company’s page? Even if you have a safe harbor from a legal perspective, you should regulate Facebook with a “strong and swift response” to prevent brand damage, Lamoureux said.
For comments that are not offensive – but may not cast the company in the best light – there’s a little more wiggle room, panelists agreed.
“Sometimes it’s nice to stand back and let your community defend you. There’s real power to honesty,” said Beckett. “It’s customer service that the world gets to watch.”
One absolute legal no-no, however, is having your employees posting comments as if they were customers, Lamoureux warned, to the surprise of some panelists and audience members who recognized that it was generally accepted as bad etiquette, but not grounds for a legal argument. For nonprofits on a low budget, social media tools may be a godsend but “don’t let the intern do it!” said panelist Kathleen Malin, director of technology at The Rhode Island Foundation. “You need someone [who] understands your vision. You have to be updating frequently and engaging with people.”
And although having millions of fans is a nice thought, what counts is the quality of your followers, said Beckett, noting that Facebook’s “Top News” algorithm favors updates that users interact with.
“You can buy fans but … if you have to pay people to come to your party … they don’t really like you,” he said.
Addressing social media issues related to employment during the summit’s first session were: William O’Gara, partner at Pannone, Samuel C. Palmisano, senior assistant vice president of Amica Insurance, Anthony R. Wheeler, associate professor of human resource management at the University of Rhode Island, and Tiara Adducie, senior recruitment specialist at FM Global.
Rule of thumb, don’t have supervisors and subordinates “friending” each other on Facebook, agreed O’Gara and Palmisano.
“Nothing good will come of it. People get more ‘loose’ on their home computers than if they were at the office,” Palmisano said.
Using LinkedIn is a great recruiting tool for fostering “talent communities” or “poaching” passive candidates, panelists said. But, relying on LinkedIn for candidates may soon be an EEOC violation in the near future; members of the social network are overwhelmingly white.
“You need to be aware of the downside of social media, especially in term of making [candidate] decisions. … You need to have a strategy,” said Wheeler. •