"These views are my own..."

The caveat that graces several million Twitter bios (including my own), and that is required by just about every social media policy going.

Now that I’ve added that disclaimer to my bio, I’m free to turn the twittersphere blue, endorse politically-incorrect causes and indulge in tweeting some offensive ‘jokes’... right?

Wrong.

Everything you post says something about you and adds to your overall digital footprint, which can say a lot about you. Check it out - Google yourself and see what you find, I’ll wait...

... Done? Did you like what you saw? Would a current or potential employer like it? Would clients or customers of that employer like it? You had better hope so, because it reflects on them as well.

If I see an employee of a charity posting offensive comments online, am I more or less likely to donate money or volunteer with that charity?

If my broadband contract is up for renewal and I see that a customer support officer at ‘Broadband Provider X’ tends to tweet highly offensive jokes, am I going to want to deal with that person when my connection drops?

Those examples may be trite, but if your employer has seen fit to employ you, that is both an endorsement of your skill-set and of your personality.

But I don’t reference my job in my bio

That doesn’t really matter I’m afraid. In the vast majority of cases it just takes a quick search and a few clicks to find the person behind the twitter account and to figure out where they work.

That all sounds a bit depressing

It doesn’t have to be. Protecting your employer by being careful with your posts also protects you. It helps you to avoid tweeting a stream of expletives when your football team concedes a goal and it helps to stop you getting involved in pointless spats online.

I dislike the term ‘personal brand’, but it does have a place here. Do your online posts reflect the personal brand that you would like to present and market?

---

*Disclaimer* The tone of tweets mentioned in the second paragraph are not indicative of the sort of content I would like to be able to tweet. The sort of tweets that I want to (and do) post are sometimes a little bit grouchy, but mostly pretty safe (some might even use the term ‘dull’)

Measuring a Twitter Campaign on a Budget

Great, you’ve designed a Twitter campaign that you’re sure is going to go viral, now all you need to do is work out how you’re going to measure it.

The first thing you need to do is work out what your ‘done’ is. Is your campaign about your hashtag reaching as wide an audience as possible, is it about attracting more Twitter followers, collecting stories, or is it about driving people to a conversion page?

Hashtag Stats

Measuring stats on a hashtag is rarely a terribly useful metric, but it does have merits when used in conjunction with other key performance indicators. I use Hashtracking to measure the hashtag stats side of any campaign. The free service will measure up to 1,500 tweets over a 24-hour period. If you think your campaign will top-out at over 1,500 tweets or go on for more than 24-hours, I recommend using their paid-for service (currently $40USD).

Hashtracking will measure the number of tweets containing your hashtag, the reach of those tweets, and the impressions they generate.

This may go without saying, but if you want reliable stats on your hashtag ensure that your hashtag is unique to your campaign.

Twitter Followers

Well this is easy, you can take note of your followers before the campaign starts, and again when it’s finished. If that sounds a bit too much like hard work, you can always turn to Twitter Counter (they’ll even give you a graph).

Collecting Stories

Asking people to tweet their stories to a hashtag can be a great way of sourcing case-studies and identifying online ambassadors. Storify is a great free way to publicly curate these stories.

Conversions

This comes down to your on-site analytics package. Google Analytics is a great free tool and the good people at Google have some really useful resources to help you get started.

One final note before you kick-off your campaign – Read the Twitter “Guidelines for Contests onTwitter”

Slacktivist or online activist?

Now, chances are you’ve already seen the infographic below on Mashable, and I don’t intend to do a copy-pasta job on their content. What I will do is borrow some insight from one of my colleagues, Jo Hobbs, and ask – Is “slacktivism” really an appropriate term, or is “clicktivism” more accurate?

Slacktivism suggests a lack of engagement and a lack of real-world action, but, as is made clear by the stats in the infographic beneath, this isn’t necessarily true of online activists. These figures/stats suggest that there is a great deal of value to be had from an audience of online activists, and that the passive term “Slacktivists” simply will not do – These people are active and passionate, they are “Clicktivists”.

Decision Engines - The Impact of Online Research

Is your website up to scratch?

It had better be. Check out this infographic from Sortable.com:

• 87% of people research products online
• 72% of people abandon a website for a competitor to do more research...

Infographic borrowed from Sortable (Great infograph, but does contain some sales fluff):

Some Infographic Fun

I'm on the look-out for great data visualisation tools - I love data and clever data visualisations but my modest Photoshop skills don't really cut it when it comes to turning interesting data in to engaging data-visualisations.

My first port-of-call is Visual.ly - A tool that automatically creates infographics based on your social media presence. They say:

"Visualizations are powerful, but they’ve required time and hard work to create -- until now. You no longer need expensive software, extensive design skills, or number crunching ability. We’re building a tool that will allow everyone to quickly and easily create professional quality designs with their own data. And when you’re ready to show your work to the world, publish it on your Visual.ly profile, your own personal showcase."

The infographic below represents my Twitter presence. Clearly some of the data has not been pulled in properly, and that's a shame, but for a free tool that takes a few moments to create an infographic, it ain't half bad.

Team follow-back and naive social media ‘professionals’

I received a rather depressing LinkedIn Group email the other day. I won’t name names, but it was a group for social media professionals. The top threads, in order, were:

1. A Twitter follow-back thread
2. A Facebook Fanpage mutual-like thread
3. A Facebook Fanpage mutual-like thread
4. A Facebook Fanpage mutual-like thread
5.  ... well, you get the idea

I have no doubt that there are many similar threads across a range of LinkedIn Groups.  I struggle to assume good faith in these circumstances, but I do hope that these threads are based on a naive approach to social media rather than something more underhanded – We all took some time to learn the ropes when we started (didn’t we?).

It’s easy to understand the thought process behind their approach; ‘A greater Twitter following, or more likes on Facebook will mean that potential clients will take me more seriously’. This may be correct when securing a contract with a client unfamiliar with social media, but it won’t do them much good when it comes to delivering on that contract.

This results in a hoodwinked client throwing away money for a sub-par service and potentially tarring the reputation of sharp and hardworking consultants at the same time (That’s me, and possibly you if you’re reading this).

Despite a willingness to believe these threads are the work of social media noobs, the people creating and posting on these threads are advertising themselves as a mixture of social media and digital professionals - freelancers/consultants, agencies and client-side - when they clearly are not.

Rant over, if you are new to social media and fancy carving out a career in the field, check out some of these links to help you get started:

• Arie Moyal on metrics: Thank you, Wow and Done - The only 3 metrics you need 
• Arie Moyal on worrying trends: 3 Worrying Trends in Social Media - Part 1: Competitions and giveaways
• Emelyn Chand on bad practice: Cease and desist: 10 bad Twitter practices to be stopped immediately

So, what do you think: Are you a client that's been burned by a bad social media consultant experience; are you  a consultant or freelancer that's equally frustrated, or, are you someone that thinks follow-back is great? Let us know your thoughts