Social Media Archives | Susan Emerick

Going #Rogue: Losing Control of Your Social Media

Social media plays an important role in global public relations strategies. As quickly as social media can build a global brand, it can tear one down at the hands of malicious insiders or hackers. Recently we have seen an increase in the proliferation of “rogue” social accounts across the social sphere. Attacks like these are not new. In 2013, hackers accessed both the Associated Press’ and FIFA World Cup’s Twitter accounts. A single tweet from the APTwitter handle resulted in a $136.5 billion drop in the S&P 500 index’s value in minutes. A year later Burger King’s Twitter account was made to look like McDonald’s while Jeep’s account was hacked noting that the company was sold to Cadillac.

Now, well known agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Park Service (NPS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have all fallen victim to “rouge” takeovers. Rand Research suggests that stolen Twitter accounts are now worth more than stolen credit cards. Rogue accounts attract followers by the thousands, which should be a warning signal for brands across the globe. Imagine losing control of your company’s online messaging or branding.

Crisis communication is evolving and becoming incredibly sophisticated. This session focuses on the variables involved in a new era of crisis planning and risk communication. Critical preparedness is important for the public and media when public perception becomes reality as a result of such a breach.

I was honored to present at PRSA 2017 International Conference in Boston, where I was joined by my esteemed academic collegues @GinaLuttrell and @drjamiward

In our session we shared:

How companies can be proactive and vigilant when protecting their brand in an effort to mitigate ramifications from rogue sites. Discuss the ramifications associated with the public’s blind trust in anonymous communication.
The importance of investing in and equipping the workforce with training. How to train organizational leaders to react to a crisis including appropriate responses to the public and within social media. Plus, we examined the role that PR practitioners play in damage control should a “rogue” or “alt” channel become a reality for your organization.
Participants learned about the future of communication stemming from hackers or acts of civil disobedience.
We rounded out the session with outlining the difference between social media guidelines and policies, and how to begin building the framework for social media policies. Plus, writing social media policies and developing education and compliance training on cybersecurity will help to address vulnerabilities.

Are You Prepared?
Have You Prepared Your Employees?
Registered PRSA members can access our presentation here If you’re interested in learning more about equipping your team, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

Susan Emerick, Founder, Brands Rising

Regina Luttrell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Syracuse University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

Jamie Ward, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Eastern Michigan University

Social Media Engagement forces HR to update job roles and skill requirements

The Human Resources department, in most organizations, is getting a dose of reality as they come to terms with employees having their own personal brand — forcing them to rethink job role definitions and skill requirements.

Long gone are the days that social media responsibility is limited to the social media team that administers branded channels or looks after social customer care. While these teams are still essential and have their critical role to play, employees are increasingly driving engagement with customers, partners and communities through social networking, requiring them to have the skills to engage in real-time conversations, online, and often in public view. But most are not professional communicators. So they will need new skills, and you will need to help them develop those skills while taking into account considerations based on various workforce management areas, as described in Figure 2.1. below

Scaling this kind of skills development program will require that you embed social media skills into the employee development and evaluation processes across the organization. Eventually, you will need to add social networking skills to your organizational skills taxonomy; in most organizations, this helps to define role standards throughout the organization.

Some employees’ job responsibilities will change, and the Human Resources organization will need to update job role definitions and skill requirements. These new skills will dictate employee performance evaluation criteria that may be new to the brand. You might find it helpful to define different skill levels at different career levels, and thereafter, skill development plans and assessments should change to support the new job role definitions, requirements, and career advancement.

During training and education, begin by helping your people to understand the business value that can be created when employees and partners build trust and advocacy online. To help them truly understand how the realtime and public aspects of social media engagement work, provide real-life examples that illustrate the types of behaviors you want them to demonstrate.

In particular, tell employees what they should do in social media, instead of what they should not do. Demonstrate this “what to do” approach across various roles in your organization, such as sales, marketing, and product specialists. Describe the benefits that the brand expects to achieve in terms of quantifiable business outcomes. Doing so will make the training more meaningful to employees.

Given the quickly evolving nature of social and digital media, you will need the ability to quickly create and distribute training or education to your people—especially as new channels, best practices, or policies emerge or fade. This approach could easily be used to train employees who are active in social media and also to keep them continually equipped with the latest information about your brand.

Remembering Robin Carey, founder of Social Media Today

I had the good fortune to meet Robin several years ago when I began serving on the Social Media Today (SMT) Advisory Board to help her advance engagement with Social Business Leaders and extend the Social Shake Up event programing to feature such leaders. It’s hard to believe what she was able to accomplish in such a short number of years. Always on the vanguard of what’s new and emerging in the industry that was coming of age. Robin was not only brilliant; she was fun and incredibly interesting. She was sincerely interested in knowing you, as a colleague as well as a friend.

She loved her boys and was so proud of their accomplishments. She joyfully shared updates on their progress as any doting mother would. She was open about the reality of building a business while balancing the demands of being a Wife and Mother. She had a special knack for helping aspiring women. I was a beneficiary of her generosity, for which I’m forever grateful. She was the quintessential Master of Ceremonies, bringing business leaders together from all over the world to advance the Social Media industry through knowledge sharing and collaboration.

No one could host an event and make it fun like Robin. She would light up a room with her energy and elegance. She knew how to prepare the “run of show”, she owned the stage with her glamorous style. So many times she’d break into dancing to her favorite tunes in between event segments. She embraced good times and welcomed all to join in … and we did. She made you feel special for being a part of what she was building. Always giving with her time and intellect, she was a connector from the heart.

Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 7.01.42 PM — Robin Fray Carey visits IBM Design Lab in New York

She shared the stage with so many. Not just the event stage, the editorial stage. She wrote incredible pieces highlighting bleeding edge work from brand leaders who were in the trenches making it happen. She wrote this post featuring the work of my IBM team, showcasing how we were using Agile practices to transform marketing as well as featuring the foundational work of the IBM Select program that I championed.

Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 10.34.46 PM — Employee Advocacy Summit 2014 Left to Right: Jeanne Murray, Constantin Basturea, Tammy Wagner, DeShelia Span, Denise Holt, Liz Bullock Brown, Sabrina Stoffregen, Michael Brito, Susan Emerick, Michael Ambassador Bruny, Chris Boudreaux and Robin Fray Carey

I’m especially grateful for all that she did for my co-author Chris Boudreaux and I. From hosting a book-signing event for our book launch in 2013 to allowing us to share the W Hotel venue to launch the Employee Advocacy Summit in 2014 as a half day pre-opener to the Social Shake Up.

The most moving post she wrote was this one about our book The Most Powerful Brand on Earth. While I was moved by the accolades she included and the hard hitting facts on the integrity of our content … that wasn’t what moved me most. It was the date that it was published and how I came upon reading it that really moved me. You see, Robin had a sixth sense. She knew that my mother was dying and I was her primary care giver. We talked a lot about our Mothers over the years and the kinds of role models they were to us and how we hoped our children would reflect on our legacy some day. So it was … the morning my Mom passed, as I was walking out of her room, a notification appeared on my phone of a new SMT post. When I opened it, this was the post she wrote. It was postmarked the same date my Mom left this world, January 27, 2014. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of Divine Intervention that my Mom was proud of me, while at the same time, so was Robin Fray Carey.

Thank you Robin and the SMT Family. We’ve created a movement, together.

How many hours of social media training are enough for social employees?

There is no right answer to this question. The number of hours of social media training required depends entirely on the individual, for two reasons:

Each person comes into social media training with a different level of understanding, skill and practical application of social capabilities.
Each person is unique in the way they learn, some requiring more time than others.

So saying any given number of hours is sufficient is the really the wrong question. The notion of setting the clock and saying everyone should be able to get this in a set amount of time is pretty dangerous concept. Let’s play this out a little further …

Early adopters of social who’ve built a significant presence and social currency on their own prior to the training, may need very little training. While those starting from scratch and/or have many doubts about the value of social to begin with (these are the ones who come kicking and screaming into the training), may need much more, that is … if you convince them to being trained in the first place.

When building a training curriculum start by teaching:

The value of building trust and credibility online and how it can be used to engage with colleagues, partners and customers to establish or nurture relationships.
Help your employees understand the shift in the way people seek and consume information. And, how the most sought after sources are actually credible and trustworthy experts in their field. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer is a great study showing this trend.
Explain the way humans communicate has changed dramatically as a result of social capabilities, our world becoming increasingly more social every minute and earned media sources remain most credible, the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey provide more details.
Help them to understand how their personal engagement can benefit them professionally, as well as benefiting the company or the customers they serve.
Be clear about the level of effort and commitment required to develop an effective online presence.

One size fits all training in a set amount of time with certification is a recipe for disaster. As cited by Gallup Leadership research:

When leadership fails to focus on individuals’ strengths, the odds of an employee being engaged are a dismal 1 in 11, or 9%. But, when . . . leadership focuses on the strengths of its employees, the odds soar to almost 3 in 4, or 73%. When leaders focus on and invest in their employees’ strengths, the odds of each person being engaged goes up eightfold.

I recommend a training program include an assessment of the employee from which they can plot the course that’s right for them. Consider approaching the assessment and personalized planning through the following steps:

Inventory each participant’s social presence to understand the social venues they use and how they use them.
Understand each person’s motivation for getting involved and remaining engaged in social media.
Assess the employee’s preferred online behaviors to determine the employee’s comfort level with various methods of engaging online. For example, do they only read what other people publish? Do they comment on other people’s content? Or do they create content on their own?
Determine the most effective ways to mobilize each employee according to their strengths and preferences. Also determine how you will empower them to utilize their skills, preferences, and strengths.

A social employee training curriculum needs to begin with an overview of the benefits of participating, clearly defining the expectations, time commitment, training support provided and the milestones, goals or desired outcomes your expecting them to drive. For example, our program focuses on 3 key themes Go Social. Stay Safe. Be Smart.

Go Social: Collaborating via social computing to pioneer intellectual capital and drive innovation that matters for clients and the world
Stay Safe: Practicing secure computing – building trust by taking personal responsibility to secure IBM, our clients and colleagues
Be Smart: Building and sharing insight and expertise, and exercising good judgment

We’ve created over 60 courses available on the Digital IBMer Hub, IBM’s employee training portal, to educate our 430,00+ employees on Social Business best practices. Nearly 200,000 courses have been completed.

This is a tremendous opportunity for the employees, but they may not see it right away. If they don’t see the value for them personally and what they’ll get out of it any amount of time is a waste.

This post was inspired when I served on a panel today at the Social Media Today “Social Shake Up” event with Richard Margetic, Director, Global Social Media, Dell and Sandy Gibson, CEO, Elevate, our panel moderator was, Greg Shove, Founder and CEO SocialChorus. The panel was called “Throwing Open the Floodgates: Empowering Employees” – here’s a brief descriptor: The rise of social media means that employees can become engaged with their customers within their individual capacities. But of course that’s easier said than done. Well ask four important questions: What are the floodgates, what does through them open mean, what are the risks and rewards of dong so and finally, how do you best throw them open?

Our panel moderator, Greg Shove, asked us an interesting question …

“How many hours of social media training are enough for your employees before your brand considers ready to participate in social media?”

Richard, responded explaining the Dell Social Media and Communities University (SMaC U) program requires 8 hours of training before any employee can receive their certification and use the @Dell identifier an officially represent the brand.

Empowering Camp Moxie teens to establish and manage their social reputation

Stimulating young women leaders by increasing their understanding of personal internet reputation management and social media analytics.

I recently had the opportunity to partake in a rewarding opportunity. In partnership with Institute for Learning & Performance Improvement, College of Education at Wayne State University, I volunteered my time and social business expertise as part of IBM’s Corporate Citizen Initiative to present at Camp Moxie, a summer camp, sponsored by Girl Scouts of America.

It’s not just a summer camp though, it’s much more! It’s a leadership adventure for girls who want to make a difference in the world! At camp, girls explore their interests and talents, build confidence, and strengthen leadership skills. They make lasting personal friendships while cultivating valuable professional relationships. Girls develop leadership skills by participating in exciting, interactive, hands-on workshops and activities facilitated by local women leaders in business, philanthropy, and elected office.

I prepared this presentation, which was intended to stimulate their understanding & interest social entrepreneurism, personal reputation management and social media analytics.

Using myself as an example, campers learned about visual rendering of data, how it can increase knowledge, communication and help shape your personal brand. In a workshop which followed, they were provided the opportunity to analyze basic social network structures and understand their implications. As well as explore the complexity and reach of digital communications, while recognizing how to apply social media to increase awareness of issues relevant to their lives.

This community outreach opportunity allowed me to live a few of IBM’s Values and practices, including:

Put the client first. With an audience of 150+ teenage girls from 12-17 yrs., I weaved throughout this talk relevant points to them (from following and tweet to Justin Bieber to SnapChatting with their friends) as I spoke, while also bridging to the future which is not far off, such as preparing for graduation and potentially college.
Think, Prepare, Rehearse. As I prepared my presentation, I thought through my material from the vantage point of my audience (luckily I have my own children in this same age bracket, so I had plenty of first hand understanding of how they use social networks and what they expect from it). I prepared for the evening with a few key objectives in mind. I wanted the girls to be inspired and take these messages of empowerment away after the session:

I pulled together a story based on the notion of “your regulation proceeds you”

Understand that every interaction is public and can be mined and analyzed

You’re empowered! Use it for GOOD, anything is possible!

And last, but not least, There are women leaders everywhere! Will you become one? ~ Thanks for the inspiration Ginni!

Share Expertise. I’m so fortunate to have open leadership, which encourages sharing our passions and expertise. This opportunity not only benefited me through sharing my passion and helping to teach and demonstrate my expertise, it also helped 150+ teens think about their digital reputation and what it means in shaping their character. Many, with eyes wide open, thought about this for the very first time!

I would like to thank the Wayne State staff at the Learning & Performance Improvement, College of Education at Wayne State University who made this possible, especially: Dr. Kenneth Chelst, Monica Tracey and Ingrid Guerra-Lopez

Show me. Guide me. Let me.

An approach to building a training curriculum to improve employee engagement through social media.

Over the course of the last year, I’ve worked with our internal communications & training specialists to lead the develop of an education curriculum to advance employee skills in the area of external social media engagement to benefit our customers and our brand. In this post and several to follow, I’ll share our approach in hopes of helping other brand marketers contemplating building such an education curriculum.

Getting Started

Before you begin creating any materials, it’s important to conduct listening research to understand which venues your customers are most engaged on. Knowing this will help you prioritize the training modules that need to be developed. For example, since IBM’s a large B2B in the tech space, we have specific focus on professional social networks, User Groups, Tech Forums & Communities and Tech related blogs so we’ve prioritized training on these venues. You’ll want to support your employees to advance skills on appropriate venues where your customers & prospects are more likely to connect & develop relationships. Stay away from developing training about the latest tools, there will be several hundred new ones introduced in the next few months and you won’t be able to keep up with them or the enhancements made post release.

Outline clear learning objectives

Once you’ve prioritized the venues important for employees to engage in, you’ll want to map out a curriculum that can accommodate various skill levels from beginner to advanced and begin segmenting the skills each module will deliver. For example:

Blogging 101: The Basics

Learning objectives:

Identify the basic features of Blogging and its terminology
Select a hosting platform for your blog
List techniques to create compelling blog content
Describe the guidelines and policies for Blogging specific to your brand

Blogging 201: Intermediate – How to Plan, Maintain and Optimize your blog

Learning objectives:

Identify the need to schedule blogging on your calendar
Demonstrate how to create compelling content
List techniques to optimize your blog for search engines to grow your audience

Blogging 301: Advanced – Differentiating and Promoting your Blog

Learning objectives:

Identify how to differentiate your blog and promote your expertise
Grow your blog followers and connections
List tools to help you measure your influence

Training Approach: Show me. Guide me. Let me.

We use a progression of simulations under the framework of Show me. Guide me. Let me. This approach gradually helps learners develop the skills they need to engage in social media on behalf of IBM. More specifically:

1. Show Me (Demonstration): Video simulations demonstrate the steps of procedures to learners, while also showing text that describes the process. Audio is often also provided to explain the steps to learners.

2. Guide Me (Guided Practice): Learners participate in the simulation by clicking the tools they would use in real life, but the tools are simulated. Throughout the simulation, text or audio guides learners through the process within a safe environment where learners can make mistakes without interfering with actual customer information in a live system.

3. Let Me (Assessment): Learners click through a series of steps within lab exercise to achieve desired results, but no guidance is provided during the exercise. Learners rely on their knowledge attained in steps 1 and 2 to complete the simulation. This is the most effective way to know whether learners understand the process.

Training delivery methods

It’s not always feasible to host on-site training. This was the case for us because we’re a global brand, so we use web based collaboration tools like IBM Connections and Smart Cloud to deliver the training. Hosting a series of community based lunch & learns in which the presentation was shared by the trainer during the first 30 minutes and then was opened up for questions and discussion the last 30 minutes. Throughout, participants and moderators are actively using text chat to provide input and ask questions or provide answers. We also recorded each session and made the modules available on our internal intranet portal called the Digital IBMer Hub. Employees to access the modules on demand at a time that is convenient and replay as many times as they like.

Trusted Experts engaged in social media are 135% more effective at generating leads

The Practice of Effective Social Business Program Management
Social gives you the ability to connect human beings with one another and ignite conversations around shared topics of interest relevant to your brands priorities. So if you’re thinking about social as just another channel to push content through, think again.

As you build your social program, identify insights and key learning’s from your listening research. Evaluate the ecosystem of people and connections. Think through how you can create a presence that will appeal to those you want to build relationships with and who would be best suited to be the focal point. Most likely, it’s not a marketer. Rather, focus on encouraging dialogue with your employees who have expertise to share. These leaders will not only have valuable knowledge, they also hold the promise to become the most trusted and credible within a relationship.

Like any other tactic or channel, social should not be approached independently but with an eye towards fulfilling your larger objectives. As you begin to think about your social plan ask yourself what role it will play in achieving your overall goals? Defining and identifying realistic ways to measure success are critical steps in creating the framework for a successful program.

Another crucial element in the early stages of developing a social program is performing listening research – this is how you get to know your audience and come to understand where they like to spend their time online and what kinds of content and tactical approaches they are most likely to respond to.

A change Agent – The emerging role of the Social Business Manager
Social business management is undertaken by people who create and engage in social digital experiences on behalf of your brand. At IBM, there’s a new role emerging, the Social Business Manager. This individual not only collaborates closely with the extended marketing management team to provide oversight for all aspects of a social business program including social listening research, planning, engagement and measurement. They also act as a change agent.

They’re driving cultural change and adoption of social through their commitment to:

Work with employees as a relationship manager and coach
Provide direction to employees on relevant influencers, external brand champions, partners and competitors within specific topic area. Help employees establish priorities which relationships to focus on.
Provide supporting assets, program guidance, training and critical feedback to those employees engaged in social outreach

Through some early pilot work I’ve been leading, we’re able to quantify that engagement with influential experts in social media is 135%* more effective at generating sales leads than traditional digital marketing tactics. Another way of saying this is, trusted SMEs who share their expertise online are 7x more likely to drive initiations with a call to action (offer) when compared to other digital marketing tactics in the same period.

This is a win-win for the brand and employees. The employees benefit from building their professional reputation and increasing their visibility in their field, while they drive the brand’s influence and support lead development in the market.

If you’re approach social as just another channel for marketers to manage and push content through, think again.

*IBM Select Social Eminence pilot 3Q2012

SocialMedia in the Underground World of B2B

I just returned from SXSW Interactive, it was my first experience attending this event and I was thrilled be a part of it. If you’ve heard from others that it has to be experienced to be understood, it’s true – I’ve never seen anything like it. There was an incredible vibe from the massive amount of high energy innovators who are all on a quest to lead the future of digital & social innovation. Representation ran the gamete from small start-ups to well established global brands leading the way and shaping this exciting period of our history.

I had the privilege to represent IBM Social Business leadership by participating in a panel: SocialMedia in the Underground World of B2B #SMB2B in which we discussed many of the pressing issues of implementing social media programs and leveraging social media as a competitive advantage from a leading B2B brand perspective.

Melissa Chanslor from Text 100 Moderated the panel. Participating along with me were marketing leaders Duane Schulz – Xerox, Jeanette Gibson – Cisco and Shanee Ben-Zur – NVIDIA.

6978068783_39b928c399-300x224 — Left to right: Melissa Chanslor, Shanee Ben-Zur, Jeanette Gibson, Duane Schultz and Susan Emerick – Photo courtesy of Text 100

Here’s a summary of key points I shared based on our IBM Social Business leadership initiatives:

– Conduct social listening research to better understand how and where your constituencies are participating in social and apply insights gathered from the research to your marketing planning process and tactical execution roadmap.

– Deploy subject matter experts (SMEs) to build relationships with key influencers and those that follow them based on your understanding of the social ecosystem. This approach will position limited, high value resources strategically to drive business outcomes.

– Support SMEs to build their personal as well as your brand’s reputation by implementing employee enablement programs that support high value thought leaders to engage in the right place, at the right time in a secure way. Set clear priorities for engagement.

– Help SMEs understand the many benefits of committing to sustaining engagement by sharing examples of other leaders like them who’ve successfully established a position of authority as a trusted topical thought leader.

You can listen to the panel on the podcast on demand to hear the honest dialogue and many great recommendations shared amongst the team. Thanks to Constantin Basturea you can also read a summary of the Twitter steam on Storify

Thoughts on establishing a branded blog

Working for a Global Brand can bring questions and challenges for employees when it comes to whether or not they should establish a branded blog in their respective region or country. I recently worked on this guidance and thought it would be helpful to share with other B2B marketers who are working to establish branded blog guidance for their employees.

Online collaboration platforms — such as blogs — are fundamentally changing the way people work and engage with one another, clients, partners and prospects. By blogging, your ideas and expertise can be shared enabling dialogue with clients, shareholders, and individuals in the country in which you market. Blogs can be an important part of your country’s overall communication strategy, however as you consider getting started, it is critical that you begin with an understanding of the worldwide strategy for your program, brand or service, and determine how to support that strategy before establishing your own country or regional branded blog.

Whether you integrate with an existing branded blog or create your own because one does not already exist, remember that you represent your company and must uphold the standards of quality pertaining to content, creation and curation, relationship management, real-time listening and engagement. Individuals are responsible for the content they publish online, whether in a blog, on a social network, or any other forms of user-generated media, so it is imperative that you provide social computing guidelines for employees to follow. As an example, here’s a link to IBM’s IBM social computing guidelines. Also, be sure to provide employees guidance to follow on any branding, naming and messaging guidelines that have been established.

Avoid Redundancy

A key aspect of a successful brand strategy is to provide value to social outreach and relationship building. Think about how you can centralize efforts to increase reach and impact rather than running the risk of duplication and redundancy which could be the result of working independently. Begin by taking an inventory of what already exists and work to collaborate as a contributing guest blogger as opposed to creating a new blog. Group blogs are encouraged and often overlooked as a strategic option.

Make A Plan

Establish the editorial calendar, messaging and subject matter experts to contribute content that will ensure the blog will provide value to the target audience, be a long-term, sustainable presence that fosters two-way dialogue.
Should I set up a blog?
Before getting started consider the following: Does a branded blog already exist that offers the same type of content and reaching the same constituents as you would like to? If so, then you should work with the blog author to contribute as a guest rather than establishing a separate and potentially redundant branded blog.
What are your objectives?
If no branded blog exists, you should clearly define the objectives for your blog before you establish one. Consider what role you expect the branded blog to play. The more specific your goals — defined over a timeframe — the easier it will be to focus your efforts.
Who is your audience?
As you begin planning a branded blog, it’s important to do so with a focus on customer relevance.

Whom are you trying to reach?
What knowledge are they seeking?
What problems or issues are they challenged with?
Are they consuming social media — and if so, what are their venue preferences?

Looking at a combination of these factors will help you ascertain the value of your blog and will help you evaluate if there is a place for a branded blog within your overall strategy.
Next, you should identify the needs of your target audience.

What are their goals and objectives?
What other blogs are they reading and why?
How will your blog be different from other industry-leading blogs?
What topics do they find of interest?
What are their pain points?
How will your branded blog provide them solutions?

Do you have the necessary resources to effectively manage a blog?
Before establishing a branded blog, you should be committed to maintaining a long-term, ongoing presence. This is not broadcasting, but relationship building. For this reason you should write in the first person — you are communicating to other readers in a one-on-one fashion and creating a relationship. You’re not simply delivering news, you’re delivering information and content through the lens of your experience and expertise. You’re delivering it in such a manner that others will find it useful or helpful. You’re adding value to the industry news by applying your observations or your perspective.

Are you committed to engaging in a conversation?
Will it be supported by you alone or by a team of owners?
Are your authors skilled in first-person blog-writing style?

You should plan enough time to author new posts regularly, listen to your followers and respond in a timely fashion to comments they share on your blog, and expand your network. You will want to post at least two times a week, with an ideal post length of around 500 words.

Are you able to effectively manage and maintain valuable content and grow and nurture relationships? Keep in mind that readers will post at all times of the day and night — and may expect responses within a business day.

Will you have a person dedicated to responding to your audience, or will you do it “in your spare time”? Be realistic about the amount of time you can spend on this work.

What criteria will determine the success of the blog?
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used to gauge the success of your branded blog. The challenge is knowing which measures are meaningful. Some important criteria to track would be Reach, Engagement and Advocacy. A monthly review of your success metrics and your goals will help you keep track of your progress.

Understanding policies:

Ensure that your branded blog complies with your companies Social Computing Guidelines. This includes all entries within your blog, whether you author them or not.
Remove any community-generated content that violates your companies policy and if, necessary, report any violations.
Follow any processes established for starting blogs, reporting defects, requesting technical support or submitting requirements.
Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
Follow messaging and naming guidance.
Protect all confidential and proprietary information.
Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.
Know the rules for engagement: what is appropriate to share and what is not.
Identify yourself. Names of the administrators must be publicly listed in the “about” section.

Maintaining your blog
Successful blogs have an editorial plan with a publishing cadence and are relevant to a topic that the target audience finds interesting and of value. Blog owners should establish an editorial calendar to help plan at least two to three posts a week. Offer content that aligns with the interests of your target constituency, is thought-provoking and timely. Here are a few examples:

Thought-leadership pointsofview (POVs) around industry hot topics or products.
Commentary on industry trends and forecasts.
POVs on other blog posts.
Responses to common questions.
Review of industry-related news from reputable third-party resources.
Information such as company press releases for new products.
Identification of current events and how products and/or a virtualized environment could have played a role in preventing, improving or evolving the situation. These types of posts are dependent on outside circumstances but allow readers to apply the benefits of technology to issues and situations that resonate with them.
Pre- and post-events coverage: Before and after events, write posts detailing your attendance/participation and link to other industry influencers who are either planning on attending or did attend. Following the event, write a recap and link to any Influencers you may have met or listened to while in attendance. For example: A post could revolve around “Five Things I Learned at Event XYZ.”

Promoting your blog
Once you have set up a branded blog, you should consider how you will promote it and attract a following. To ensure that your content has the highest potential to be viewed by new audiences, there are a number of tactics that can be utilized. Here are some starting suggestions:

Build a strong blogroll— a blogroll is a list of blogs that you might recommend or link to on your blog in a sidebar list. Your blogroll should contain influencers and peers.
Comment on — and link to — influencer blogs and blogs in your blogroll frequently. The best way to generate awareness around yourself (or the team) as a thought-leader and the content you post to your blog is to actively participate in conversations and comment on other bloggers posts of interest. By exposing yourself to industry influencers, you have the ability to initiate a discussion and share your point of view by leaving a comment and linking back to your blog.
Use the same keywords you use in your blog posts when writing your comments, as this information is searchable and can increase search results.
Be sure to include your name and a link to your blog in open fields or at the close of your comment.
Link to interesting/valuable content posted on relevant blogs
Share links to posts on other social media properties for example: LinkedIn Status Updates, Twitter, etc.
Ask your readers for feedback or future topics they’d like covered or where you can provide additional details and information; pose questions to audience or bloggers as part of your post.
Reach out to fellow bloggers for guest post opportunities on your blog and on theirs
Approach other bloggers or team members, who don’t necessarily have their own blogs but would like to contribute, and encourage them to build their social eminence by authoring a guest article for your blog. Also, consider co-authoring posts.
Include a link to your blog in all social profiles and in your email signature(s).
Enhance search results by using consistent keywords in the metadata (tags/categories) that resonate with your target audience – be sure to use their language. Consistency of key terms will be indexed by search engines — impacting organic search results.