I continue to be amazed by stories of employees of large companies trying to conceal their identity to influence issues via social media. Burger King is the latest to be in the news on this topic, although from what I’ve read (and admittedly I know very little about this particular case) it seems as though the company handled the situation well and was transparent in how they disclosed it.

I spoke with a reporter from the Miami Herald last week (the story is available online) and she asked some great questions around how companies should figure out when to participate, and when they decide to do so, how they should go about doing it. The initial answer is easy - if you participate you need to say who you are and be transparent about stating your reason for participating. Transparency is often used to indicate you have to disclose everything. That isn’t the case, and is usually too much information. You do need to be transparent about the topic you are discussing, and need to be unassailable in your truthfulness. People who try to participate under fake names need to just stop it. Go away! You will be caught, but more importantly, you are ruining it for others who are doing the right thing.

It is a hard enough decision to figure out how to participate. Note use of “how to participate” and not “whether or not to participate.” Companies who want any chance to influence their reputation and brand online have no choice but to be involved in online conversations. If you aren’t part of the conversation then your point of view is not represented. But when companies see others on the front pages and online news sites for improper behavior it elevates the overall feeling of confusion and concern about being involved online. It makes the blogosphere seem dark and scary (insert Halloween music here) and minimizes the true opportunity for companies to engage with their stakeholders.

I am not suggesting that companies need to respond to every every story, topic, and blog post. I am recommending that companies:

• Put social media guidelines in place so that employees and partners know what is allowed, and the implications for violating behavior (I wrote some about this in February.) The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is a good place to start for guidance.
• Monitor online conversations to understand what is being said. This is a great opportunity to get real-time feedback, almost a focus group of thousands. It will also give you a way to understand the topics that may be relevant for you to participate in, both proactively to contribute to a story, but reactively to correct misinformation.
• Determine how you will decide which posts to respond to. There will be some blogs that you want to avoid for whatever reason - the blogger is not open to differing points of view, the community has a set opinion and will use your participation to flame an issue, or the blog has a significant amount of offensive material that you don’t want to be exposed to. These are a few ideas, but think it through because there are others.
• Contribute to the community. Organizations that find a way to contribute to the conversation as opposed to only participating from a selfish perspective have a great opportunity to build relationships. H&R Block did this with tax tips, Southwest does it with open conversation and an integrated social media approach, and selfishly, our founding chairman Harold Burson occasionally does it by sharing his wisdom and insight.
• Think broadly. This isn’t only about blogs. It is about social media, twitter, discussion forums, and more.
• Participate. Monitor. And stick with it. It won’t always be easy, and the results won’t come quickly, but if you truly want to influence your brand position then you need to have a voice. And that voice needs to live online and off.

Yesterday was a good day at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s WOMM-U conference. The main session speakers were interesting, and the conference organizers featured a round robin style approach to breakouts, giving participants a choice of two learning tracks. I led breakouts on the topic of “Building a Complete Blog Program.” Essentially the idea was to facilitate a conversation about best practices pertaining to developing a complete blog program.

The groups I had were a nice blend of agency and corporate communications or marketing professionals. Participants tended to focus on corporate blogging, but when probed started to open up about other elements that comprise a “complete” blog program. Our final list included:

• Blog monitoring for immediate consumer feedback but also longer term trend identification, etc.
• Corporate blogging on company sponsored/developed blogs
• Blog responding both reactively to correct misinformation and proactively to participate in conversations
• Blogger outreach to generate conversations, where appropriate
• Microblogging to have a more consistent presence with interested stakeholders

We then started speaking about what best practices should be deployed for corporate blogging programs. Each group had different thoughts, and the combined list is certainly a good start for anyone considering a blogging program. Some of the best practices discussed were:

• Determine a clear strategy and objectives - the first question I always ask when someone tells me that they want to start blogging is “why?” Organizations need to have a clear marketing strategy and business strategy before moving ahead with a blogging program. The strategy and objectives will drive numerous elements including who blogs, topics discussed, levels of governance, etc.
• Conduct a risk assessment - organizations need to consider the risks associated with conducting a blogging program, including the risk of not participating. What regulatory concerns need to be addressed? Who from the company can participate? How will comments be moderated and handled. How will you respond to negative comments about executives and the company? And so on.
• Implement a social media policy and governance strategy - having a clearly defined social media policy is critical to ensuring that employees know what is within the realm of acceptable participation and visitors know how comments will be handled.
• Define the commitment required - participating in blogging activities is not for the faint of heart. It takes a deep commitment on many different levels — time is an obvious commitment, but a willingness to speak in an authentic voice is another that has to be considered. Bloggers also have to consider the fact that their content may live online forever, and be comfortable knowing that they can’t necessarily retract or remove comments from everywhere they get posted.
• Consider the implications of being translucent - everyone talks about being completely transparent online, but I think that is too much information for people to absorb. I think translucency is a better concept to consider. You need to be truthful and authentic in everything you say and must be unassailable in terms of being able to defend yourself, but you don’t have to discuss every single topic under the sun.
• Select the right spokespeople - that’s right, spokespeople. Bloggers are company spokespeople, whether they intend to be or not. Just as you wouldn’t let an inappropriate person conduct media interviews, you need to ensure that people involved in blogging activity are appropriate for the type of activity and level of visibility that they may achieve.
• Put a scalability plan in place - as your blogging program grows so will your needs. This includes things like resources to manage the program, time to develop content, the effort required to moderate and respond to blogs / comments, and the potential need to scale the technical infrastructure.
• Be realistic about results - it is important for organizations to have goals tied to their blogging programs that are realistic given the space they are in and the amount of effort put into the program. Results should be measured, but organizations must be patience as you generally need to participate and contribute to the community for some time before you are truly invited to the party.

Obviously there are a lot of other elements to consider, but the best practices above are certainly a step in the right direction for companies considering a blogging program. I believe the risk is in NOT participating, and that companies who do engage truly do have an unparalleled opportunity to build relationships with stakeholders as opposed to simply driving a transaction. The rewards outweigh the risks, but only if you enter the space with a well-thought out plan and realistic expectations.

Southwest Airlines has announced that they have had to ground more than 40 planes for lapsing in safety inspections, and the FAA is trying to fine them more than 10 million dollars. Given that Southwest has been celebrated for their open communications via their blog, I was immediately interested to see whether or not they’d post a response or point of view on this situation.

As it turns out, they did post their press release on the “Nuts About Southwest” blog but also posted links to their CEO’s media interviews, and other comments directly to the consumer. This is a great example of a company creating conversation and even opening themselves up to criticism because it is a) the right thing to do, and b) the best way to truly understand what their customers are saying.

The comments to their blog are the most interesting part of this story from my perspective. There are the usual suspects - brand loyalists supporting the company and committing to ongoing patronage, and of course, those who are upset with the company and say they’ll never fly SW again. More interesting though are the conversations happening among the blog readers, including Harrison, a self-proclaimed former Southwest mechanical intern who vouches for the strength of their crew and applauds the company for allowing an open dialogue and several current Southwest employees sticking up for the company.

What are the implications of Southwest’s creating dialogue with stakeholders via their blog? There are a few that jump to mind, although I’m sure there are others that I’m missing. First, both mainstream and online media have an additional source of information that goes beyond the standard press release. Obviously, they are getting real time feedback from customers. Employees are rallying, or have the opportunity to rally to the company’s defense. And, they are likely seen as more credible since they are engaging in an open conversation as opposed to simply issuing a press release and then slamming the door. What are the other benefits of the conversation Southwest is participating in?

Nice job Southwest, and good luck beating that fine. I think you deserve a discount just for the way you are handling this situation.

I am sure that by now you are aware that Southwest Airlines had to ground 44 planes for further inspection after rumors that the company failed various safety inspections. While I will not go into the details of the case, watch the CNN interview with Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly for that. I would like to make reference to Southwest Airlines’ blog “Nuts about Southwest”, whose authors has been posting information on the subject since March 6th.

A total of three posts have been published since, receiving more than 230 comments from customers…obviously there is concern, and some even rant on about what a horrible airline Southwest is. But after scanning the comments, overall I noticed a very supportive and positive reaction.

For example:

“I DO believe you. After much frustration with United, I transferred a couple of years ago to Southwest on parallel runs. After retiring over a year ago, I still have 600,000+ miles banked on United. But I’ll take Southwest any day.

I have carefully watched your pilots’ pre-flight inspections and despite the occasional levity of your crews, I have nearly absolute faith in them.

Beyond that I most appreciate the fact that immediately on learning of this error you reported it to the FAA and Boeing. The naysayers can say what they want. I still think that Southwest is the best managed airline in the business. And by the way, my wife will be on a 7 am flight to Oakland tomorrow and will fly to Sacramento on Tuesday!

Posted by: Len Frank | March 7, 2008 at 12:12 am”

And there are plenty more like this - the majority of negative comments are “pulverized” by customers supporting their airline. It seems to me that Southwest Airlines has done the right and honest thing: kept a clear and open conversation with their passengers. Further more, this has enabled Southwest customers to become the airline’s most important spokes person.

The web is buzzing today about Guy Kawasaki’s launch of AllTop.com. The site serves as an aggregator of stories across numerous topics and is essentially a magazine rack for the web. From Twitter to blogs, the digerati are discussing merits and drawbacks of both the site and Kawasaki himself. Check out posts from Doc Searls at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, TechCrunch and Jeremiah Owyang.

I guess I’m missing something, because part of the beauty of the web is that if you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. The Internet allows us to self-select sites, content, people of interest based on whatever criteria are individually relevant. If you are a hipster and have your own RSS feeds all set up, feel free to ignore the AllTop site. Or, perhaps it may still be useful, giving you an easy way to scan top stories in topics of occasional interest. For the techies who say the site is entry level and not useful to those of us who live online, I say, “Duh!” It isn’t meant for us. If I had a dollar for every client who asked me what RSS is, I’d be rich by now. I sent this to my brother who is not very savvy when it comes to digital and he said, “Cool. I’ll bookmark this.” It will probably be a valuable resource for him and will enhance his online experience.

Personally, I think the site is just fine. I like the simplicity of the layout, fully acknowledging the nod to PopURLs. I like being able to scroll numerous feeds, many of which I don’t subscribe to as a new source of content. I spent a bit of time stuck in an airport this weekend and AllTop definitely helped pass the time. I really like the Twitter channel as I don’t have time to subscribe to everyone I’d like, (although I have to confess to being disappointed in not getting a nod on the acknowledgments page for initially recommending the idea to Guy) and think that he deserves a ton of credit for building this site quick and marketing it well.

Besides, I think there are a lot of other things that we could spend our time griping about. How about Internet pollution to start?

Two recent surveys highlight the state and nature of internet usage in mainland China:

The first, from CNNIC (aka the official China Internet Network Information Centre)’s ‘Survey Report on Blogs in China 2007′ (eng summary), reports that China now boasts some 47m bloggers, or one quarter of internet users in the country. Of these, a remarkable 36% can be classified as active bloggers. Interestingly, female  bloggers out-strip males by 57% to 43%.

The second (press release), by fellow WPP agency JWT, digs deeper into quite why China’s youth are taking to living their lives online with such relish (in contrast to young Americans, who are significantly less enthusiastic). The reasons given are not new, but are worth repeating:

 - in a environment where freedom of speech remains tightly controlled, the internet provides access to a range of information and opinion they would otherwise stuggle to find

- beyond this, China’s relatively (at least, relative to its mainstream media) unregulated internet and ability to post anonymously allows the Chinese to express themselves and gain a voice in ways they would not and can not in their offline lives

- the internet enables people with a personal and public outlet to discover themselves, develop their self-identity and experiment with different identities.

- in a highly structured society, online communities, games and other channels makes it easy to meet and build relationships with others with similar interests.

Fortunately for the authorities, the great majority of time online is spent on entertainment-related activities - celebrities, music, fashion are all the rage. In contrast to western style blogging, often done for personal brand-building purposes, bloggers in China restrict their output to records of personal thoughts and for their own pleasure - very rarely do you meet Chinese who promote their blogs, even to their friends.

Yet, the stirrings of a more activist citizenry are emerging. Last year witnessed a mobile-phone based campaign against the building of a new chemical plant in Xiamen via mobile phone and Zola Zhou’s well-publicised (online) lone battle against the destruction of the Chongqing ‘nail house’.

Like most surveys in China, the surveys require qualification: China’s internet population remains highly skewed to the top tier urban centres as the internet has not yet hit the country’s massive rural base (indeed, internet penetration remains limited to c.12% of China’s population - CNNIC).

But when it does, the social and cultural implications may well be startling.

A new survey released by Synovate eNation demonstrates that 8 in 10 Americans know what a blog is and that nearly half have visited a blog.

You’d have to live under a rock in today’s 24/7 media environment to not know what a blog is, and I’d bet that the number who have visited blogs is actually higher. Reading about this study made me think of a client meeting last year. The CEO of a company was asking for digital guidance, but told me he was tired of hearing about blogs and didn’t want to discuss them. About three slides into the presentation I took a glance at his computer screen and was surprised to see a blog on the monitor. I asked him what the site was and he replied, “oh, it is just some guy, he writes every day about current events and politics and is really entertaining. His is the first site I visit every morning.” That was quite the gotcha moment. (And yes, we did discuss blogs after that!)

Anyway, the more important issue really is content. Given user search habits, the delivery mechanism is not at important. What matters is that companies have a push / pull strategy to participating in online conversations. Users access all sorts of web content based on search engine results, including proactive client blogs, microsites, consumer-generated content, and rick-media materials. The key is to have consistent messaging, relevant to targeted groups, in numerous places and formats, that can all be confirmed on a corporate website. And, companies need to recognize that consumers are no longer interested in receiving directive marketing messages, but are quite open to having marketing conversations with companies who are willing to dialogue in a genuine fashion.

Blogs can no longer be considered “emerging media,” especially if 8 in 10 Americans know what they are. And companies can no longer ignore blogs as a significant component of an overall communications strategy.