You might remember this scene from the 2010 Oscar-award winning film “The Social Network.” Four young coders tap away at their laptops, face-off style. Every few seconds, or so it seems, one of the combatants downs a potent shot of cheap booze then resumes tapping away. Around them the cheering hits a fever pitch until… breakthrough! Code cracked. “Welcome to Facebook,” the Mark Zuckerberg character greets the victor.

I’m reminded of this scene as I scroll through Facebook’s impressive S1 this morning. The company is not only more profitable than many had believed, it’s soared into the black in a remarkably quick period. Basically, its fortunes turned when it turned on Like in 2009, and began integrating it into the fabric of the web in the following months. A lot of the focus over the next few months will be paid to Facebook’s numbers and what it means for the future of the social media sector. (Yes, it’s time to give social it’s own industry sector designation now). But what’s more impressive to me is Facebook’s management and recruitment philosophy, what it calls the “Hacker Way.” This comes from Facebook’s S1:

We value our “hacker culture,” which we define as a work environment that rewards creative problem solving and rapid decision making. We try to move fast in developing new products and then continually iterate and optimize to further improve our products. We seek employees who are motivated by the ability to have a direct impact on how hundreds of millions of people around the world connect, discover, and express themselves.

We encourage our employees to think boldly. We also have posted the phrase “this journey is 1% finished” across many of our office walls, to remind employees that we believe that we have only begun fulfilling our mission to make the world more open and connected.

Zuckerberg, the Harvard dropout, goes on to explain his unorthodox anti-business approach, that, it turns out, is very good for business. “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” he writes. As Reuters notes, this is a company “grounded in an engineering culture.” One that just happens to be more profitable than Google at the time of its IPO. Zuckerberg’s musings on his own success to date happen to neatly coincide with new research from this week that says it is engineers, and not MBAs, who are more likely to build and run successful new companies. To this, I say, nurture and channel your inner geek.

Stealing a line from Zuckerberg: Your journey is 1% finished.

Editor’s Note: we’re pleased to be bringing back our popular instructional workshop: Social Media Crisis Communications to be held in London on February 29. Again, we will be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief at BP. He has some amazing stories and lessons to share from his experience with the Deepwater Horizon spill. It will be an interesting day dedicated to reputation management and crisis communications. Come join us!

New York Times media reporter David Carr has a brilliant piece this morning about Rupert Murdoch, the embattled media baron, political kingmaker, and grumpy Twitter newby. In this age of super-controlled messaging and non-newsy corporate announcements, Murdoch’s emergence on Twitter gives us a rare glimpse into the mind of the man in charge. Is this a trailblazing moment in corporate comms or a one-man, one-act show about to get the hook?

First, a little perspective. Murdoch’s December, 2011 debut on Twitter comes about 9 months after that of the ultimate #winner Charlie Sheen and close to two years after Hugo Chavez. Late to the game? Nah, the likes of Jeff Bezos and GE’s Jeffrey Immelt are still on the sidelines. (With GE shares down 50% in the last decade, it’s unlikely the latter will start Tweeting to the masses any day soon).So, Murdoch’s neither late, nor early, (nor perfectly timed), but his Twittering style does serve us up an interesting lesson in proper Tweeting from the C-Suite.

As Carr states:

The rules of effective tweeting for business leaders are no different from the ones for us mere mortals who want to both express ourselves and remain employed: Don’t be boring, don’t curse, and for heaven’s sake, don’t always be shouting about how some junior executive is really knocking it dead. Being interesting is the key to going viral, and on that score, I’d give Mr. Murdoch decent marks.

Here too. We’ve twice featured his Tweets in our “Tweets of the Week” section. I don’t agree with his politics, his take on online piracy, but I’m a big fan of his candor, particularly in this age of bland corporate obfuscation that serves for corporate communications.

In 2010 when Chavez started Tweeting I put together a list together of golden rules for Tweeting bosses, not all of whom are sociopaths of course. I was hopeful at the time that we would be seeing more captains of industry, heads of state and local officials embrace the Tweet. I was wrong there, but the rules are still worth reviewing. Here they are again:

1) Don’t rely soley on Twitter to make your point. Chávez informed his party faithful of his imminent Twitter debut during his weekend variety show Aló Presidente. Sure, it helps if you have a monopoly on the local airwaves. But Chávez shows real social media savvy here by going cross-platform with his message. And there’s a Chávez blog too in the works. The Venezuelan president’s choice of “candanga” in his Twitter handle shows flair too. The word is a local expression to describe a person with an “explosive” personality. Expect some fireworks, twitterverse.

2) It bears repeating: be insightful, but keep it brief. Yes, the 140-character limit even applies to you too, dear leader. “The loquacious leader [is] known for speeches that last hours,” The New York Times points out, questioning whether he can be disciplined enough to stay within the limits of Twitter verbosity.

3) Don’t be complacent. Congratulations, you’ve recruited more than 85,000 followers in the first day. (The Dalai Lama scored just 44,000 in day one, I recall). But it’s been a full 24 hours since your first Tweet and your “Chavista” followers are anxious to hear more. Meanwhile, rivals, using the #freeVenezuela hashtag, have gone on the attack as Venezuelan Tweeter Arturo Hidalgo broadcasts, “power outages show saturation of #Venezuelan electricity grid.”

4) Do you have a crisis response strategy in place? Now that you’re on Twitter, critics will be leveling charges directly at you when you make a misstep. Are you ready for this? Ignore them at your peril, lest you trigger an angry Twitterstorm. Here are a few tips on how to deal with the hashtag-crisis that could sink your reputation. Hint: don’t pull a Toyota.

5) Don’t get distracted by your escalating follower numbers. What’s more valuable to you is what the public is saying about you. Scan Twitter to see where you’re performing well in the public’s eye, and what areas still need improving. Maybe the creaking electric grid is a good place to start.

6) How do you measure your influence in a forum that boasts some pretty influential people? Again, not by counting your follower numbers, but by watching the number of people who re-tweet your missives. After day one, you’re not doing so well, Mr. Presidente. We found only a few re-tweets, including this one from a Twitter used based in “Hell.”

7) Be generous. This is the same advice I gave the Dalai Lama in this column. You are not going to agree with everyone on Twitter, but do make a point to re-tweet the genuinely brilliant, witty and provocative posts you come across. Twitter is a conversation, after all. Yes, listening is required.

From a crisis communications perspective, Carnival Cruises, parent company of the stricken Costa Concordia Italian cruise ship, is in a precarious position. The company’s safety record is taking a tarring daily in the press and we may not yet have seen the worst: the ship could still sink further into the sea, creating an environmental hazard and adding further shock to the families of the missing. How then does the company respond to this? By offering survivors a 30% discount on future cruises! Cue: the hammering on Twitter.

As of writing, #Concordia will again be trending, for all the wrong reasons. Here’s a typical snapshot of the public reaction to its generous offer.

Carnival though shouldn’t be judged (entirely) for this tin-eared offer. It’s made efficient use of its social media channels, particularly on its Facebook page (home to nearly 1.4 million fans) where it’s toned down the cheery, we’re-going-on-holiday tone and answered serious questions about safety procedures. It even decided late last week to go quiet. “Out of respect for all those affected by the recent events surrounding our sister line, Costa cruises, we are going to take a bit of a break from posting on our social channels,” it wrote on January 19, generating over 5,000 Likes after two days.

Carnival has been one of the more progressive social media marketers. It’s spent a lot of money and effort into building a vibrant community on Twitter and Facebook over the past few years. Wisely, in one of the darkest hours of its corporate history, it’s used these same communities to share bad news, along with the good. This approach of using social media channels to amplify your crisis response message and even share tragic news was pretty rare even a year ago. It’s good to see crisis communications professionals embracing the idea that Facebook is not just a happy channel whereby you lavish games, give-aways and other goodies on fans.

Still, Carnival’s response has been remarkably inconsistent. For example, after saying it would go dark for (admittedly, they didn’t specify for how long) they started piping in on Twitter, commenting on the awesome-ness of a customer’s photo. Too soon to come out of mourning? Probably so. Better to repeat the Tweet that you’re keeping quiet for the time being. Other things to consider: tell us when you’ll be back online, and tell customers you  still want them to share.

What’s happened in the waters off the Tuscan coast is tragic. There are still 20 people missing. Out of respect to their family, keep the message consistent. The eyes of the world will be watching. And Tweeting.

Editor’s Note: SMI again this year will be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief of BP and a veteran of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, on a series of instructional Social Media Crisis Communications workshops. The first is scheduled for Feb. 29th in London.

We’re only a few days into 2012 and we already have a clear vision of what will really matter in the year to come: personal content. We have Google to thank for this. It raised the stakes this week with its biggest ever tweak of its search algorithm, this time giving additional weight to content created/vetted/linked/+1′d from our network of friends, family in our search query results. The search giant explains it will be “bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.”

The news of course has already generated complaints, the most prominent of which comes from Twitter’s chief attorney Alex Macgillivray who fears Google will once again be using its search dominance to dictate how we receive breaking news, both local and world-changing. Macgillivray calls it a “bad day for the Internet.”

Don’t get hung up on the back-and-forth between these two Silicon Valley rivals. The truth of the matter is our trusted contacts are a far more powerful force than a search algorithm. The power of word-of-mouth endorsements – the “personal content” Google was speaking of – from our network can even be measured. New research out this week reinforces other previous studies that say nothing beats word-of-mouth endorsements, not even the Facebook timeline of trending Tweets.

Whether you like it or not, the public and personal of our lives have been converging for years now. Privacy advocates (and some Valley attorneys) may not be thrilled, but for the extroverts among us this is a time to celebrate. So, go personal. It’s what the public wants.

And, on an even more personal note, I just want to thank you all for your support in 2011. We look forward to hearing from you (and even meeting many of you) in 2012. We have a number of exciting workshop offerings to tell you about. The first is Feb. 29th, our first Social Media Crisis Communications workshop of the year. Again, we’ll be teaming with former BP comms chief Neil Chapman.  And, of course there’s our big event: Social Media Influence 2012 in June. It will be a fascinating lineup. Stay tuned.

The early tally is in. Despite the doom-and-gloom economic predictions, the 2011 holiday shopping season has gotten off to a record start. Online shopping and, dare we say it, the nascent social shopping sector is a major factor in what is shaping up to be a record holiday season.

Here’s the figures: Americans rang up $1.25 billion in online purchases on Nov. 28, aka Cyber Monday, a benchmark date for all industry watchers. That’s an impressive 22% year-on-year rise. Whether the $37 billion prediction for e-Christmas 2011 is achievable is still anybody’s guess, but it certainly helps when you blow away old records on the busiest online shopping day of the year.

While the overall sales figure should delight retailers, the fact that the number of online shoppers (10 million) and their spend ($124.82 on average) was well up on the year ago tally is what holds the most promise for the season. The news put investors were in a buying mood too.

And what factor did social commerce play in this good cheer. Nobody is breaking down the numbers, but major retailers are crediting their Facebook fans and Twitter followers for big early season sales. I could see plenty of jockeying happening among some of the world’s biggest retail brands for that coveted #BlackFriday promoted hashtag a week ago. Reuters reported that J.C. Penney and rival department stores Kohl’s and Macy’s all used Facebook “a lot more this year to attract online shoppers” with J.C. Penney even giving its 2.1 million Facebook fans a sneak peek at all its Black Friday deals to peruse and share with friends and contacts, wish-list style. In the spirit of giving, J.C. Penney is also promising to donate up to $100,000 to the Salvation Army; the tally will be determined by how many Foursquare check-ins it lands during the holiday season. 801 people like! the gesture, and so do we.

The silly season is back. This Friday starts the annual countdown to make-or-break-dom for retailers. Already I’m seeing plenty of #BlackFriday chatter, with Best Buy paying out handsomely for the most sought-after hashtag of the year. Days later, it will be #CyberMonday. (As of writing, those promoted Tweets were still in the holster, thankfully.)

So what’s in it for retailers this year? IMRG calculates Europeans will spend 52 billion euros online this e-Christmas season, up 20% year-on-year. Not bad. In the US, where the season is longer (really, it is), consumers are expected to spend nearly $60 billion in November and December online sales, says Forrester. ComScore (the analysts we typically follow as they report sales on a weekly basis) forecasts e-Christmas 2012 sales will top $37.6 billion, up 15% year-on-year.

In other words, there’s little talk of recession, double-dips or crisis in the online retail space. Watch this space closely as we’ll be again reporting on the weekly ups and downs of the holiday shopping season this year. We were pretty dubious consumers would match the lofty goals of analysts a year ago, but they did, thanks to some last-minute discounting and some novel social tie-ins by retailers. We’ll see if a mix of old and new tricks can seal the deal again this year.

And if you haven’t yet seen it, we’ve posted this week a helpful guide to social media SEO – all you need to know to build visibility for your brand using smart and current editorial. Consider it an early Christmas gift from us.

Oh, and, to our American readers, Happy Thanksgiving! I’ve ordered my bird for a big feast in Rome.

Last week I was asked to deliver a presentation on social SEO and what Google’s search formula tweaks now mean for brands and organizations looking to boost their visibility. This is a rapidly evolving issue, but there are some enduring points here that all organizations (and journalists too!) should keep in mind. Hopefully this guide will help you.

Yes, I decided to clean up the presentation a bit and cut it down to size, leaving in all the big take-away points for essential social SEO best practice. As I explain in the presentation, I came onto SEO even before the term was coined, back in the 1990s when most of us tech journalists were trying to figure out which issues attracted the most eyeballs.

Of course, SEO has gotten much more sophisticated since then. First, the techies and code-breakers jumped in to figure out how to boost visibility by doing everything from smart meta-tagging to content seeding. Now, thanks the Panda Update, Google (and the other search engines too) are rewarding high quality editorial content. For brands-, companies- and organizations-turned-publishers these changes should mean more visibility for your stories. As I explained earlier this year, the authoritative voices on a given topic will be rewarded under the new system with greater visibility in the form of enhanced search engine positioning. This is important, I believe, as it rewards strong journalism over gaming the algorithm.

Here’s the presentation:

The banks have confounded us yet again. Last week, we told you about the story of 22-year-old Molly Katchpole who used Change.org to marshal the support of over 300,000 angry Bank of America customers in a matter of days, forcing the mighty BofA into an embarrassing about-face and apology. Now, we learn, courtesy of a new survey by UK-based MHP Communications, that the banking industry is a sector that just may be one of the most anti-social of all consumer-facing industries.

Consider these findings:

• just 16% have a social media strategy in place
• 28% are in the early stages of implementation
• 41% of respondents are in the process of creating a social media strategy

What’s happening here? We’re six weeks shy of 2012, bankers! Evidently, the uproar caused by the BofA climb-down and the subsequent “Move Your Money” movement is still not enough impetus to convince the highly regulated industry to go social. In fact, 3% of respondents – to be sure, a small number – say they have looked into a social comms strategy and have decided, nah, not for us.

Move your money, indeed.

Editor’s Note: we’re pleased to be bringing back our popular instructional workshop: Social Media Crisis Communications next month, to be held in London on February 29. Again, we will be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief at BP. He has some amazing stories and lessons to share from his experience with the Deepwater Horizon spill. It will be an interesting day dedicated to reputation management and crisis communications. Come join us!

If you are not yet familiar with the story of 22-year-old Molly Katchpole, you’d better listen up. Peeved about a new $5 monthly bank fee imposed by Bank of America, Katchpole logged on to Change.org a few weeks ago to start an online petition urging the bank to back off. That’s when things got interesting.

In no time at all, more than 306,000 people joined her pressure campaign demanding the bank drop the unfair monthly usage charge. The ripple effect did not end there: CBS News reports, “Bank of America — and several other banks — announced this week their plans for debit card fees are now dead. Many are now crediting Katchpole with the victory.”

And the story of the people-powered movement defeating the big bad banks continues today. Katchpole’s crusade has been featured by just about every major news outlet in the U.S. Her cause was picked up by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and talk show host Jay Leno. The digitally savvy Katchpole, meanwhile, is being cast as a David for the social media age while BofA is looking like the tin-eared villain.

In dropping the charge after just one month, BofA offered a big mea culpa, saying we’ve come to this decision after listening to our customers. But the damage is done. BofA wasn’t the only bank to introduce a fee like this, but it made the mistake of slapping a fee on the wrong person. The lesson of course is that big  brands like BofA have plenty of Molly Katchpoles that they do business with. The online advocacy forum Change.org at the moment counts hundreds of similar victories. BofA is getting pounded with bad PR and will have to weather this storm for some time to come. Seems like an awfully big price to pay for listening too late.

BoA is hardly the first big brand (or bank for that matter) to get caught out by customers-turned-social-media-activists. That’s a big reason why we recently launched a new instructional workshop series dedicated to reputation management and crisis communications. Our next Social Media Crisis Communications Workshop will be held in London on November 16. There’s an early-bird rate that expires in less than a week!

The numbers are trending nicely for social media. A new piece of research out this week estimates the global social network ad spend will top $8 billion next year and approach $10 billion the year after. There’s another social media figure on the rise too: despite the increased investment in social, companies are getting blindsided by the social media-fueled PR crisis, as our recent research into this shows. Here then are a few important tips to consider for integrating social media into your crisis communications plan.We thought it would be more helpful for you and your team if we took the findings of our analytical History of Social Media Screw-Ups and distilled these eight take-away points.  They are the most oft-repeated missteps and misconceptions that lead big brands into trouble with the public.

• Underestimating influence/impact of your social media critics at your peril. Kryptonite is the business school case study here, but loads of brands since – from Target telling the blogosphere they don’t rate to Nestle telling off eco Facebook protesters – have failed to understand that bloggers/Tweeters and Facebook protesters may not be The Guardian or New York Times, but they do hold plenty of weight.

• Giving the online community flashy marketing message when they just want simple, straightforward detail. These days, companies can get into big trouble for issuing fictitious glowing reviews or trotting out seemingly genuine testimonials by paid actors. Even before these consumer protections were put into place, L’Oreal paid a higher price – it got burned by vigilant bloggers.

Is your staff prepared to handle a fast-moving social media crisis? Join us on Feb. 29th for SMI’s instructional Social Media Crisis Communications and Reputation Management workshop in London. We’ll again be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief at BP. His stories and lessons from the Deepwater Horizon tragedy will fascinate you!

• Culture of unresponsive/uncaring customer service fuels recurring gripes, becomes PR headache. Dell learned the hard way that Jeff Jarvis’ customer service gripes were not an isolated issue; a massive backlash was brewing. It just took one well-connected critic to put his finger on it and the avalanche ensued.
• Failing to understand the Coke credo: “our consumers control our brand.” Coca-Cola tried to stifle conversation around the combustible combo of Diet Coke + Mentos. Later, it would acknowledge, you cannot hope to muzzle what everyone is talking about.
• Petition the public for crowdsourced ideas, only to be caught out when they have something nasty to say. Crowdsourcing is in vogue these days, giving loyal fans a chance to name a new product or devise a new softdrink formula. But as Chevrolet learned with its Tahoe SUV, be prepared to get from the public more than a clever new slogan.
• Asleep at the wheel: giving junior employees full reign of the channels and providing them with little direction. What could go wrong? Where to start here? Last year, the epic #fail was engineered by Habitat which gave an “overenthusiastic intern” the keys to the Twitter feed. The result? Famously tweeting sale promotions by piggy-backing on the trending Iran election hashtags. More recently, the Vodafone UK Twitter feed was hijacked by a rogue employee who let fly with the odd homophobic Tweet.
• Don’t assume attempts at feel-good social media washing won’t come back to bite. Wal-Mart took the most heat here when a folksy, it-will-be-blogged “Wal-Marting Across America” journey emerged just as it was getting pressured elsewhere for its checkered labor practices. All goodwill was lost when it was revealed Wal-Mart was funding the feel-good road trip.
• Facebook is not just a forum for fans and “Likes.” Burger King, Nestle, and BP, to name just a few have seen their Facebook pages overwhelmed by critics who want to expose dodgy company practice. Greenpeace has had great success mobilising its followers in a series of corporate Facebook pressure campaigns. BK quickly caved to the demands to cheers. Nestle, on the other hand, shouted back, inviting more opposition.

The biggest culprits – plain dumb marketing, officious customer service and asleep-at-the-wheel moments in monitoring online reputation – are alive and well and triggering protests from the general public. For all the fresh money pouring into social media, we would expect the number of screw-ups to rise before companies really get the message that social media investment means more than crafting a slick campaign. It means two-way dialogue, transparency and, yes, learning from your mistakes.

Editor’s Note: we’re pleased to be bringing back our popular instructional workshop: Social Media Crisis Communications next month, to be held in London on February 29. Again, we will be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief at BP. He has some amazing stories and lessons to share from his experience with the Deepwater Horizon spill. It will be an interesting day dedicated to reputation management and crisis communications. Come join us!