Reference Nestle on Facebook and now More Magazine on Twitter. What’s interesting about both cases is not that the companies responded but that they were perceived as acting more like a hostile individual than an objective brand trying to smooth over consumer criticism.

I have run and continue to run corporate accounts for brands from time to time [Tempero for one, and yes, always transparently] and while the temptation is always there to operate those accounts the way I would my  personal one, you have to maintain a sense of professionalism and accept you represent a brand. That means in the heat of the debate you have to keep your cool.

[Image: ACC Fan Blog]

I sit on the Legal and Best practice hub with Stephen Groom from Osbourne Clark (@OsborneClark), Joel Daves from Agency 2 (@agency 2), Adam Paulisick (@paulisick) from Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Paul Taylor (@Paul_TaylorUK) from 6 Consulting.

We have an initial list of issues to cover, ranging from privacy, to staff use of social media, to managing reputation, but we’re also currently gathering additional thoughts for the 2nd paper.  International concerns have cropped up more than once, as have geo-location services and user responsibility around viral campaigns.

If you’d like to add a topic to the debate or find out more about the DMA activity, drop me a note via @domsparkes

To illustrate the problem…

Managing your own Facebook page is relatively easy isn’t it?  Now imagine that each time you publish a wall comment, within one hour, 600 people post a response and 10 to 15% of those are inappropriate, offensive, spam or downright rude.  Then imagine people are doing the same on your discussion area, your photos, videos — or any other area you’ve allowed them to interact. Clearing the latest content is your best plan of attack, but what happens when an older posts picks up attention for some reason?  You then have the issue of having to hunt around your now frenetic Facebook page for new posts, any one of which could be a reputation or legal nightmare waiting to happen.

This scenario perhaps sounds a little over-the-top but it’s actually a live case study and mirrors many of the large Facebook pages we look after on a daily basis.

Here’s our top ten Facebook issues…

1.        There’s no moderation queue

2.        There’s no swear/spam filters

3.        Ability to contact users about their content depends on their settings

4.        You don’t get user alerts – they go straight to Facebook

5.        You may have to trawl through 1000s of fans slowly to try ban someone from a page

6.        There’s no audit trail of what you’ve edited or deleted

7.        Search is poor

8.        There is no way to change moderation status (pre, post or reactive)

9.        There’s no content workflow

10.     It’s time consuming when managing large pages

To be honest, many of these are non-issues on low volume pages and I don’t want to paint a picture that Facebook shouldn’t be used —  In fact, far from it. And thankfully, managing high volume pages can be solved through using a combination of  companies such as ourselves and the new wave of 3rd Facebook moderation tools.

We’ve teamed up with iPlatform, a long standing app development company, and had input into their ‘Conversocial’ Facebook moderation tool.  The system effortlessly plugs into Facebook and addresses many of our top ten concerns. It doesn’t remove the need for human moderation/administration but for large pages the return on investment is obvious.

The reason it’s popped into my head is that I’ve been reflecting recently on the seemingly circular transition of online communities into social media and back again.  When we started Tempero in 2003, after 4 years of forum and text-to-screen management within Granada Media/ITV, social networks were still years away, Facebook was a term only used by models, and engagement was something you did on one knee.

To us, the power of community was obvious: folks chatted on your site, became loyal and hopefully bought stuff.  Senior management saw it differently, seeing a geeky collective talking nonsense on their dime.  Seven years on, return on investment is still a little flaky at times but with the nerdy persona behind it, community has evolved into social media and marketing managers everywhere are scrobbling (sic) for fans, likes, comments and tweets.

Social media management is what we do, but I sometimes feel that doesn’t convey that the fact that community is at the heart of it all.  With that in mind it’s been heartening that many recent meetings with global brand names have had community as the focus and not the phrase ‘social media’.  This I hope, is a trend that will continue, with people coming together for contact, content and cause  – my preferred definition for social media and community.

It does bring up the question though, what is the difference between social media and community? You could answer it based on platform, purpose, or a more evolved anthropological basis – any of which could be correct.  More importantly, does it matter?  Right now I’d say no.  The community/social media industry is growing nicely so perhaps I should stop reflecting and enjoy the ride.

If you fancy adding your thoughts, concerns, betting tips, to my ruminations, comment away

The service will allow users to share where they are while on the move. The service is currently restricted to the US, however the company is hoping to extend this to its 500 million members as soon as possible.

Places will also allow you to tag your friends with your current location, as long as they’ve also ‘checked-in’ at the same location.

It’s an interesting development for Facebook, as it allows the site to publish real-time activities of its members, rather than simply the short updates and photos that are generally published after the event. It’ll also provide them with a lot more information on your general activities outside of work and home.

Vice president of product Chris Cox told BBC News “This third place is the one we end up talking about a lot. I went to a movie, I saw a band, I went to a bar. So much of the interesting stuff in our lives happens in this small amount of time and we want to make that come alive.”

Foursquare offers a similar service, offering users the ability to gain points and virtual badges after checking in to certain venues. Some quick-thinking companies have seen the potential for advertising and promotional purposes with the services, particularly as it provides an excellent opportunity for targeting customers when they’re actually near the venue. Domino’s Pizza came up with the concept of offering a free pizza to the ‘Mayor’ of each store, which they claim increased their profits significantly and expanded their current online community.

Foursquare and Facebook Places also expands on the theory that community recommendations are much more successful than standard advertising. If your friends love something and you see them visiting often, you’re more likely to visit too, right?

The main criticism of location-based services is the concern over privacy, and Facebook has been quick to ensure that users have as much access to their privacy settings as possible.

So, are these new location-based services the future for targeted and community-based advertising?

Discussion participants were FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, and the panellists included:

• Steve Rubel, Senior VP and Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
• Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company
• Jennifer Cohen, co-founder and president of Something Creative LLC

You can download the discussion from FIR Live #18 – August 14, 2010: Web pages or Facebook?

What is a community manager?

Take Community Manager for example. What exactly is a Online Community Manager? We have our own view but a quick look at available roles on the market rates salaries from 20 to 60k with a range of responsibilities that would make the Prime Minister gasp. True Community Management is highly under-rated and nothing annoys me more than so called social media experts creating best practice when they’ve managed nothing more than their own Twitter feed and Facebook presence.

Skills required for social media management

The difficulty in defining the skills required for social media management and communities is even harder for smaller companies and this was highlighted to me when presenting at a couple of Media Trust events recently. In the Third Sector where funds are tight, every penny has to work twice as hard as any other sector (well maybe apart from in government!) and that generally means roles are combined, responsibilities shared and even Jack has his work cut out to learn all the trades.

Managing social media

This is where we come in with our processes designed to take the pain out of managing social media as cost effectively as possible. That said, we’re always after good people so if you know anyone that can write great content, deal with the public, generate insightful reports, has experience of 20+ platforms and knows their Four Square from their four candles, send ‘em over

Other useful posts

• The Four Tenents of the Community Manager
• Three Emerging Digital Careers to watch
• Community management: the essential capability of successful enterprise

The Idea Agency: A virtual creative agency gave children the opportunity to work on creative briefs for ChildLine from creating slogans to web comics. Our team moderated content posted to the campaign’s Habbo, Piczo and Bebo pages.

Thanks to Tom for writing this one up.

Thank you to one of our community managers, Frank, who wanted to share his thoughts on the impact of The Times paywall – Darika

So The Times & Sunday Times has begun to charge users for accessing its online content.  Prior to this, the Financial Times was the only UK paper to do so.

This is an interesting development as The London Evening Standard announced that it had recently broke even, which is remarkable for a paper that is freely handed out around London.  Major advertising leading up the World Cup may have played a part so time will tell if this continues.

One wonders what impact the daily charge of £1 (£2 per week) to access the Times will have on exposure from a marketing point of view. Users may well choose not to pay, what admittedly is not a large amount, whilst there is a wealth of alternatives still available to the reader.

The key development will be who moves next and also charges for online access.

Where do you sit? Will you pay?

[Image: Giuseppe Bognanni]

Download our FREE resources on using Facebook for business including advice from Head of International Business Development for Facebook, Christian Hernandez.

No registration required. Just click on the hyperlink of the resource you want and a new window will open.

Available:

1. Facebook presentation about Brands on Facebook
   
2. Protect your online brand reputation with Facebook page management (Dom Sparkes, Tempero)
3. Engagement: How to make a successful Facebook page (Josh March, iPlatform) PLUS info an intro to Conversocial and available packages
   
4. Case Studies from Blue Rubicon & Outside Line

A transcript from the night is also available via CoverItLive.

Facebook Page Management

Tempero now offers a range of tiered packages for Facebook page management providing brands with enhanced online brand protection within the social network.

Prices start from £750 month and include:

• Dedicated moderation resources 7 days per week
• Expert moderators with years of experience
• Multi-lingual across English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (additional languages on request)
• Ongoing advice and management support
• Monthly reporting
• Moderation software for profanity and keyword filtering outside moderation hours extending protection
• Professional indemnity insurance backed

Please contact us hello@tempero.co.uk to find out more.