An important example of how one irresponsible tweet can have lasting damaging effects on a brand. 

prweek:

Appliance brand KitchenAid has apologized for a tweet sent out on the company’s official Twitter account during last night’s presidential debate. The tweet read: “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president.’” The tweet was in response to a reference President Obama made about his grandmother’s passing. Company officials said an employee mistakenly sent out the tweet on the corporate account, rather than a personal one.

KitchenAid’s senior director of marketing Cynthia Soledad released a statement to several media outlets saying, “During the debate tonight, a member of our Twitter team mistakenly posted an offensive tweet from the KitchenAid handle instead of a personal handle. The tasteless joke in no way represents our values at KitchenAid, and that person won’t be tweeting for us anymore. I am deeply sorry to President Obama, his family, and the Twitter community for this careless error.”

(via Huffington Post)

Cheers! — Anna

As the summer comes to an end and I prepare to head back to school, I look back on how glad I am to have found the internship with Media Maison. While marketing has always been the direction I had wanted to go in, the addition of a social media tie-in made it more enticing as it provided a sense of familiarity and the chance to be constantly interactive. Moreover, it gave me the opportunity to develop skills and tailor my learning in a field that’s continually up and coming and prevalent.  Also, I feel that gaining knowledge of PR and customer relations will serve as a necessary bonus for future prospects.

Coming into the position, I was expecting a fairly simple transition given that I felt so in touch with social media considering that I essentially grew up with it. However, the depth and detail that goes into coordinating each effort was something that surprised me but that I greatly enjoyed learning about.  On the surface, the objectives seemed fairly straightforward. However, Anna was able to introduce me to tools, tricks, and resources that made the work much more effective and the content coming out of it better suited for particular clients. I see this as an essential facet in any professional field. It’s so important to understand your client and if you believe in who you’re working with, what you’re doing and want to have positive results, it can make it that much easier and rewarding to achieve.  

Lastly, being in an awesome office surrounded by people who were happy to work with each other made the environment that much more comfortable and instead of dreading coming into work, I always looked forward to it.

All in all, these things made the internship such a great experience. In about a week, I start my last year of college and while I’m excited to go back, I’ll miss the summer, this position and the people involved.  I’ve come out of it learning a lot and am looking forward to diving into the professional world upon graduating.

-Aaron

The Oatmeal has a history of getting their fans to support them with great results. Once again they are demonstrating the effects of having a strong fanbase who wants to help with a good cause.

Oatmeal creator, Matthew Inman, discovered through twitter that Wardenclyffe Tower, Nikola Tesla’s laboratory was going up for sale and that a group of people who intended to purchase it to preserve its meaning were struggling to come up with the funds. Meanwhile, another company was hoping to purchase it and apparently use the location as retail space. Instead, lovers of Tesla, particularly Inman, felt it would be better to use the landmark as a museum and a chance to educate those about the mark that Tesla left on the world.  

With the state of New York offering a matching grant of up to $850,000, Oatmeal fans would need to raise approximately that much to purchase the land. As of today, contributors have raised more than $400,000-not bad for a day and a half of fundraising.

Prior to getting attention from The Oatmeal, the campaign was having some trouble getting the off the ground. After the story was posted on Reddit, a website heavily responsible for generating page views for Inman’s site, the fundraising started to pick up tremendously. Not unlike his previous campaign, redditors were happy to help contribute towards something they were familiar with. As an indication of how much they love his content and character, support rolled out in large numbers. Those who were unable to contribute cash were encouraged to help with help in other ways, “You could donate some time. Go spread the word on other sites. Text the link to people. Tell folks at work.”, exemplifying the power of word of mouth in the day and age of social media. This prompted some redditors to reach out to  musicians, record labels, actors, and producers for help with funding. In a way, a domino effect of communication had rolled out with the movement developing more and more as people found different ways to contact potential helpers.

Perhaps more importantly,  Inman’s presence serves as a great example of trust and loyalty. With his previous campaign still lingering in users minds, fans are happy to help with something that is not only a great cause, but backed by someone they believe in. In addition to that, he has always been very involved with his followers, engaging with them through different platforms. Demonstrating the importance of connecting with your audience, Inman’s campaign shows that present commitment is a reflection of your past. The movement initially lacked direction and a voice before Inman and Reddit got involved but with their push, it is certainly on slate to reach its goal.  This goes to show how having the right face as the driving force behind your message can be a game-changer.

Read more about the ordeal here.

-Aaron

Earlier this week, Illinois became the second state to make it illegal for employers to request Facebook log-in information.  While you would expect a certain space between your online profiles and work environment, it is becoming quite prevalent that the two associate in some regard. This begins to beg the question however; is there a necessary separation of work and social media?

It’s always good to keep your private and professional life somewhat separate but with a good chunk of your information available online, it becomes difficult for the two to not seep into each other. Given that your profile is a basic summary of who you are, it seems fair that it would give an accurate representation of your character.  If a potential (or current) employer were to see you doing something compromising, it could reflect poorly on the company. What does this mean for monitoring your profile content though? Should you be extra cautious just so you can maintain a good image?

              

Essentially, yes. At the end of the day, this is a representation of who you are. And as our attachment to social media continues to grow, it’s going to be harder to distance yourself from your online persona. You could try living off the grid and consider a life void of Twitter and Facebook but unfortunately, that can hurt you as well. An article by Forbes states that those who choose not to use Facebook could be considered “suspicious”. Does not having a profile necessarily mean that you’re hiding something? Most likely not, but with how commonplace they have become, people wonder why those who choose to be left out, do so.  It seems strange to think this way since 7 or 8 years ago, none of us had Facebook accounts but as our connection to the internet grows, so does our online presence.  

-Aaron

—

For tips on managing your personal brand, see this post by Anna O. 

In the world of up-to-the-minute news, it is difficult for social media users to separate themselves from constant coverage. Those following news outlets and friends are quick to come into contact with what’s current in the world.  Normally, this would be a great tool in keeping up to date with breaking stories, but with NBC broadcasting the London Olympics on a delay, users not located in the UK are finding themselves face-to-face with event outcomes before getting the chance to view them. While the network offers the option live stream the events through their website, many find the the service unreliable and a hassle to use. As a result, spectators are refraining from Twitter and doing their best to keep in the dark from all of the talk about the events until primetime when NBC airs them.

However, even some of those carefully avoiding their Twitter and Facebook updates, were spoiled by NBC’s mistake during the first few days of coverage. The channel aired a commercial promo for an interview with gold medal winner, Missy Franklin, minutes before the actual race was to be televised. This example in particular really pointed out to the spectators the issue with the delayed broadcast. Users took to Twitter to complain about this, exclaiming that the excitement and suspense of the event had been ruined.  NBC issued an apology for the incident, stating that it will “not happen again”.

This, in addition with a number of other guffaws made by the network led to the popular #NBCfail hashtag and it’s spreading as fans attached it to their tweets about their frustrations with the network’s actions.

While we value our association with social media and depend on it when necessary, this serves an example when we probably wish we weren’t so connected.

Have you been careful to avoid spoilers of the events?

-Aaron

Impressive social media metrics for the opening ceremony!

via: courtenaybird:

The 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in tweets 

(via journo-geekery)

In the age old power struggle of man v. woman, it’s never easy to pinpoint who has the official upper hand in most comparisons. But with ease and availability of web analytics and analysis, at least we can finally determine who is winning the battle of social media dominance.

The victor: Females, of course.

As highlighted in Mashable’s piece, women make nearly 99 million more visits per month than men, making them the dominant gender in social media, specifically on Facebook and Twitter. But men aren’t without their strengths. Males take the cake when it comes to LinkedIn, Reddit and Google+.

But why is there such a gap in the social media use of men and women, and why do they gravitate toward certain platforms?

There are more female bloggers, and blog readers, than male: This matters because bloggers are very active across all forms of social media and are twice as likely to share and comment on relevant content across Facebook and Twitter. Since they’re mostly women, it’s a no brainer that this would lead to an increased social media presence among women, especially moms, who make up 1/3 of online bloggers. The rise of Pinterest, where women make up 82% of users, has also been a boost to the online blogosphere allowing for more effective sharing.

Women are actually being social, men are looking for information: Women are more likely to comment and update their status several times during the day than men, but that doesn’t mean males are completely absent from social media. They just use it differently. With the domination of LinkedIn and Reddit, men are more aggregators of information and professional networking across social media than actual engagers. And with the most common Google+ user occupations being engineers and developers, traditionally male dominated fields, it’s no wonder Google+ has become a platform for males for professional information and sharing than actual personal networking.

The women may have won this round, but men are not that far behind when it comes to social media savvy. Professionally, as is seen with the undisputed champions of LinkedIn, males tend to be better with professional networking online while women are just better and more active on social media as a whole.

What else do you think contributes to women dominating social media over men?

Until next time! -Anna C

Last week, we had another one of those big news days. After much anticipation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act and, what do you know, it took over social media.

When it comes to breaking news, especially during the workday, the internet is king. Many Americans spent their morning glued to their screen, refreshing their feeds to be the first to know how the high court ruled. And as goes with many breaking news stories, some of us got the right information, and some of us didn’t.

In a digital age where it’s increasingly difficult to be the “first” to know about anything, unless you have a grandma without internet or cable (my Nonnie was really shocked to hear about the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorce), chances are when you deliver “breaking” news, you’re not telling someone something they didn’t already know. So why all the fuss on Twitter? Because nearly 50% of people learn about breaking news from social media, rather than traditional sources. It was a battle of who could be the first to know and the first to tell the ruling in those crucial first seconds, and some of them got it wrong in the fight between speed and accuracy.

With the SCOTUS ruling, Twitter exploded, logging nearly 13,000 tweets per minute when the ruling was released. Nationally, the trending topics for most of the afternoon were #SCOTUS, #ACA, #Obamacare and #HealthCare.

CNN infamously broadcast, tweeted and put up for the internet to see the wrong information. Fox News did the same, but most of the incorrect information was during live broadcast, not on the web or social media.  There was a moment of panic in those first few seconds, where tweets and retweets circulated the Twittersphere, with the wrong information. CNN’s initial incorrect tweet garnered over a 1,200 retweets before they issued a correction tweet nearly 12 minutes later.

When playing the game of breaking news on social media, being the first may seem like a top priority, but it’s the accuracy that counts. And with an election year that’s turning out to be one of the most social media centered in history (Mitt Romeny’s tweet calling for the replacement of Obama to get rid of Obamacare garnered over 4,000 retweets)it’s important to double check your facts before hitting retweet. Just so you don’t end up the butt of every CNN joke.

Until next time. –Anna C. 

It’s 2012 and in a few short months the world as we know it will come to an end. Well, at least according the Mayans and three-years’ worth of History Channel programming. The accounts of our impending doom have been around for a while, but what is fueling the ongoing conversation about the end of times? Look no further than your Twitter feed.

By now, we’ve all read about, re-read, Googled and come up with our own theories about the “Miami Zombie.” The story went viral, and within a couple of days, more strange accounts of person-biting-person incidents and crazed zombie-like behavior sprung up all over the country. There was the wig thief in Connecticut, another Miami man who tried to nom on an officer’s arm, a Louisiana man who bit off part of a his neighbor’s face and a New Jersey man who did something equally disturbing.

As we’ve all learned in the movies, this crazy, erratic, super-human chomping and flesh munching behavior is typical of your run-of-the-mill zombie.

But the Mayan’s centuries-old predictions and a few sketchy cases of “zombie-like” behavior, ultimately attributed to bath salts, is all we have to go on, right?

Oh, then there’s the plague.

But what makes these stories so interesting? It’s the proverbial man-bites-dog effect (biting reference coincidental). It’s just so strange, that we feel the need to share it with others. Within three days, the Miami zombie story on the Miami Herald’s site had over 2 million views. When a story like this explodes, it’s bound to spur more coverage of similar incidents. Mentions of the word “zombie” on Twitter went from an average 15,000 tweets a day to more than 80,000 mentions the day after the story broke.

The onslaught of “zombie” and human-on-human munching coverage afterward was a result of the virility of the original story. A story of man-bites-man garners over 2 million hits, so naturally we assume that similar reports will gain just as much coverage. Tweets, retweets and shares across all social media platforms keep the conversation alive. Retweets and favorites of the Oregon plague story on TIME’s Twitter feed almost matched the announcement of Obama’s new immigration policy, and, thee days later, is still one of the top Tweets regarding the story. It’s not that more apocalyptic events are happening more regularly, it’s just, as a whole, we eat this stuff up (pun intended).

So there’s no need to build that fall-out shelter just yet. But just in case all the hype turns out to be true, here’s a zombie survival guide for your reference. Good luck.

Until next time! -Anna C

I get all the news I need on my Twitter feed. From breaking news [Obama & #SSM] to MTA delays [don’t get me started on the L train] I turn to Twitter. Besides building a tech and media savvy community to follow, Twitter takes the cake for having the simplest and fastest platform to find information on. 

Today’s hot topic on Twitter is “Time” Magazine’s cover. Captioned “Are You Mom Enough?” the cover displays 26-year-old mom breast-feeding her 4-year-old son. The image is going viral - gaining support from some, criticism from others, and being photoshopped by the Adobe obsessed. 

Do you think the cover is worthy of so many Tweets or does the Twitter world take some issues too far? 

XOXO - Hannah