At Chirp, Twitter’s Trends Emerge

By James Zipadelli

The best football players go to the Super Bowl. The best celebrities, journalists and politicians come to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Up until this year, the best developers did not have a venue to come together. Chirp, Twitter’s first ever conference in San Francisco, was held last month.  Where else can you find Twitter’s founders, like-minded developers, and a contest that kept some of those developers up for 30 hours?

For a first-person account of Chirp, freelance developer Ed Borasky’s posts are very helpful. Representatives from Twitter did not respond to repeated emails or Tweets for comment.

In that two-day conference, Twitter discussed its financial future and new apps that would be helpful to users, according to developers present at the conference. One of the new apps is called @anywhere, which went live April 14. For an overview, click here.

“@anywhere is essentially a re-packaging of existing Twitter API services in a more turnkey solution that can be easily be embedded into existing websites without lots of custom coding,” says Eric Chang, founder of the app TweetSwell, which conducts surveys on Twitter.  “You can “embed” Twitter functionality into your web page using JavaScript, including:

• embedded tweet box - just copy-and-paste some JavaScript into your web page
• auto-linking of Twitter accounts - this is similar to how the iPhone auto-links phone numbers
• auto-hovercards - same idea, but instead of linking to Twitter, pop up the Twitter hovercard

Evan Bailyn, founder of firstpagesage.com, says Twitter has “done a nice job” with @anywhere but still prefers Facebook because of features such as the “Like” button.

“I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near what Facebook’s social graph is,” Bailyn says. “I think it’s going to be for people that Tweet the most. I don’t know that it’s going to bring tons of new people… most of the people that use @anywhere a lot will already tweet a lot and it will just make their tweeting easier.”

“The Like concept is very natural to online browsing and socializing. It’s a lot easier than typing something,” Bailyn adds. “Personalized stories are an idea that might have been good for Twitter to employ.  Points of Interest, a new Twitter function, makes it easier to associate your location with whatever you’re tweeting. You can tweet about a location you’re at, and find a restaurant.  This could provide a lot of personalized information about travel, nightlife, restaurants. @anywhere isn’t as exciting as Points of Interest.”

Peoplebrowsr CEO Jodee Rich says the key to Twitter’s success is that their stream is open and available to third parties developers. A cloud has already been developed that has enough space to support 20 terabytes of data, Rich says. For those that are interested, here is Rich’s slideshow on the metadata cloud.

“Developers have taken the stream and put it up in the cloud,” Rich says. “What we’re really doing is extending the half life of the tweet. You can look in the cloud and find data from six months ago or more. Twitter data is open, third parties developers can store it for a long time - it then becomes a cloud that extends metadata coming from third parties developers, adding to Twitter profiles information about gender, influence, fields of expertise and more. Both Private and public data can be added to Twitter profiles and posts.

“Now Facebook is allowing people to store the stream for an unlimited amount of time; another reaction to Twitter,” Rich says.

Some developers were worried about Twitter’s recent acquisition of Atebits to acquire the iPhone client Tweetie. Borasky says, “Twitter made a business decision. Using phrases like ’stabbed in the back’ or sexual references, despite the way one might feel about it, isn’t either appropriate or particularly relevant or useful.”

“I’m on the StatusNet developers’ list,” Borasky adds. “In some ways, it’s complementary to Twitter rather than direct competition. But I’m guessing that those who truly intend to

compete with Twitter via StatusNet are still working at it. I was never formally invited to join the ‘rebels’ and didn’t see much point in doing so anyhow.” Andrew Stone, who developed the iPhone app Twittelator, says the worry is “way overblown.”

“My twitter client, Twittelator, shows that 3rd party developers run circles around Twitter with new interesting features,” Stone says. “I got up at Chirp and said, “Thank you for buying Tweetie! I now have one less competitor. Don’t worry, just do some cool stuff and you can compete with Twitter and Tweetie.”

Borasky says the future for Twitter is very promising if they partner with other media organizations.

“They’ve got Oxygen, MSNBC, the NY Times and Huffington Post already,” Borasky says. “I’d expect to see some name movie studios join that list for the summer blockbuster season.”

“The Promoted Tweets and analytics capabilities are still evolving,” Borasky adds. The kinds of questions their developers were asking me indicate that they’re looking to hire experts in this area. That’s a fiercely competitive arena, and their only real advantage is their huge raw data collection and real-time acquisition. The analytics, visualization, and natural language processing technologies are well-developed elsewhere.”

Stone calls Twitter “a beautiful meeting of media and personality.”

“It’s not a walled garden, like Facebook,” Stone says. “The degrees of separation between people on Twitter are very small. You can get some serious resonance with an interesting tweet. It’s fun to come up with content that’s small, easy and tight. It’s just this totally new experience.”

“We’re writing cool code that’s changing the world,” Stone adds. “Chirp was fundamentally about the team building and for that, it was truly successful.”

Peoplebrowsr’s Rich, like other developers DigitalMediaBuzz.com interviewed for this story, says he enjoyed the “openness and authenticity” of the Chirp conference.

“We truly felt like we were part of the Twitter family,” Rich says. “I’ve never been to a conference where they exposed the non-executive board members as openly as they did. I’ve never seen a management team go up on stage and explain how they are running their business. It’s very exciting to be part of that.”

Knowledge Management: Measuring Social Media ROI

By James Zipadelli

Companies are harnessing the potential of social media to make connections with their clients through so-called “knowledge-management systems.” Knowledge management systems are programs that harness the power of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and track a company’s “buzz” around the Web.

What companies using social media say

One company that is doing this is Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com has an internal social media application, Chatter. 500 clients are using Chatter now, and this service is available to clients who have a subscription to Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com says it has more than 72,000 clients and 150,000 apps in the cloud community.

“People want to have relevance, connect easily to other people, and using devices to do it,” says Ariel Kelman, VP of platform and product marketing, Salesforce.com. “They’re accessing more though smartphones and notebook PCs. That’s Cloud 1. In Cloud 2, we’re looking to YouTube and Facebook, which is the magic of Chatter. We’re looking at the feed as your ultimate user experience. We want real-time status updates and platform technology to be as easy to use and alive with data is as easy as Facebook.”

“With Chatter, we are resetting people’s expectations for how their apps should behave,” Kelman says. “When they go into work, their expectations are Facebook Twitter and YouTube work. That’s why IT organizations have to reset their priorities and a new set of demands. They’re going to be asking the CIO, why can’t our application use Facebook?”

Another company that uses social media to track company buzz around the Web is OneRiot, which calls itself a “real-time search engine.” OneRiot spokesperson Courtney Walsh says traditional search engines don’t deliver what OneRiot can, which are socially relevant results on any topic in real time.

“OneRiot is a search engine. Although, rather than a traditional search engine, OneRiot is a realtime search engine,” Walsh says. “While traditional search engines like Google, Bing, Ask.com offer a way to navigate the web and conduct research - realtime search offers a way to search any topic to find the current buzz.  Realtime search is a great addition to the whole search experience.”

Businesses can use OneRiot to track their company buzz. Search “Microsoft” or “Google” and there is a collection of videos, articles, blog posts and Tweets which people are sharing.

Carlin Wiegner, CEO of the enterprise social software website CubeTree.com describes social media as “good” for the business. “Sometimes, it’s the only way you can reach people,” Wiegner says. “But you’re also trying to drive revenue and making customers happy. Most people are trying to do old way or new way.”

Wiegner says it’s helpful to do polls of CubeTree.com users and changes its software every week, although most changes are incremental.

“One, clearly more than one customer sees this need,” Wiegner says. “Two, it shows the customer they’re engaging in feedback. Those are sometimes the most passionate users but not all the users. Three, competition: We constantly think about where our competitors are going to be. Finally, you also need to have a vision. That’s why you need a project manager but it’s exciting to see what people want fixes to the product.”

What the analysts say
Gartner analyst Michael Maoz says companies are beginning to understand the value of social media and how it helps their businesses.

“There’s just as much value being able to foster internal social communication, and it’s not written about much,” Maoz says. “For example, with social media, companies are onboarding a new employee more quickly - plugging that person right into everyone. Before social media, a new employee comes in, and they jump around from server to server. When you bring together social media in form of wikis, blogs and integrated knowledge systems, they more quickly get a sense of, ah, this is who we are.”

According to Maoz, using social media saves time and money because people can find what they are looking for faster.

“It reduces the number of support personnel that they need directly and also helps product development,” Maoz says. “Instead of figuring out what to work on, I observe the community. Some companies, like Apple, Google, or Amazon don’t work that way. They say, ‘This is how the customer will interact.’”

Maoz used the example of Microsoft and Oracle having communities of developers posting solutions to questions instead of employees. Maoz says the benefit for the developer is two-fold: The developer is sharing information with the consumer and promoting themselves as a trustworthy source in the process.

“These social tools are in a way a mechanism to get back to a level of trust,” Maoz says. “The best way to gain your trust (from a company perspective) is to know what you’re thinking in the first place. We know we’re not perfect, we know you know we’re not perfect and now we’re giving the mechanisms to help you.”

It remains to be seen whether there will be a dominant social organizer on the Web, like Google for search engines. ABI analyst Dan Shey says there will not be a dominant social organizer on the Web.

“I think social networking is enhancing current applications already used in the enterprise.  I would say that search is an important function for internally-focused enterprise social networking - the ability to search the web and internal databases for data specific to a group’s needs.”

Gartner’s Maoz is more optimistic.

“I think it’s going to happen, I don’t know when,” Gartner’s Maoz says. “What they’re going to provide me is a secure way to plug into a framework. I’ve got my stuff right there,” referring to his social media tools to communicate. “Facebook is the idea. I want Facebook to fit to me.”

CubeTree’s Wiegner says having a program organizing social media would be helpful.

“We’d love to have a single tool for social media,” Wiegner says. “You really have to get specialized social media tools to figure out who is saying things about you.”

Street Attack

• Location: Boston, Brooklyn, Dallas
• Number of Employees: 15
• Notable/Clients: Sparks, Liberty Mutual, Pop-up Wedding Chapel
• URL: www.streetattack.com

Operating out of offices in Boston, Brooklyn and Dallas, Street Attack is an award-winning agency that specializes in both digital and alternative marketing solutions.  The company goes above and beyond to help consumer-facing companies and online businesses connect with their customers, leveraging innovative programs that include Experiential Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing, and Street Teams. Street Attack’s solutions are designed to help organizations engage, boost traffic, and increase their bottom line.

DMB’s Contel Bradford caught up with Larry Jenkins, Street Attack Field Marketing Drill Sergeant, to learn more about the agency that has garnered much success balancing cutting edge technology and old school strategies.

Street Attack is definitely one of a kind. Aside from the obvious, what makes your approach to marketing different from other agencies on the scene?
We’re a unique hybrid of authentic grassroots experiential and socially focused digital. Our approach is often referred to as “inside out” where we build credibility and emotional bonds from within the influential ranks of a subset of consumers. This becomes extremely powerful when applied to hyper-local or super-niche slices. Our approach is to essentially create demand for a product or service based on its merit and ignite a movement around its promised benefits.

How can word of mouth still be so effective in the digital age of marketing?
Blogs, websites, and web personalities are in essence new entertainment properties. Have you ever recommended a movie or a TV show to a friend or family member? The prevalence of content has also exacerbated the need to weed out the junk. Now more than ever we’re inundated with choices and channels. There seems to be an inversely proportionate curve to time and available bandwidth. Thus I rarely seek clips or digital snacks. Rather I’ll respond to the recommendations, fwds or links from my friends and trusted sources. Also technology and developers tend to make things better and smarter and thus forces of attraction kick in. This allows memes to form more rapidly- multiplying the eyes and ears tuned to subject or piece of content. Remixing occurs, further refinement, open source allows for real time editing, wikis blossom… Crowds cluster and rally around topics sculpting the silly putty into clay models just waiting to be picked up by the main stream media and instantly cast in bronze. 0 to 60 is no longer a respectable measure. We’re now dealing with information wormholes.

How can WOM still be effective? Is Has to be and it has way more tools and it’s fun and you’re way more likely to be a contributor/creator which puts skin in the game and thus amplifies your likelihood to spread the good word whatever that may be.

What is the average work day like for your Street Team?
We have a pretty stringent program for our Street Team and I’m happy to say we’re one of the few firms that operate actual BOOT CAMPS in major cities around the country. These boot camps operation much like the national guard and are activated as needed based on the call of duty. On a training day there’s a 6AM call time which starts with a rigorous battery of calisthenics, cardio and strength training followed by breakfast. Next we have 2 hours of acting and improve to sharpen interpersonal skills and field readiness. Finally there’s a psych profiling field test where the Street Teamers have to make snap judgments and profile consumers as they engage them in a mock campaign. Based on their scores we group them into classes and assign them to projects according to rank.

On a day in the field they assume the role of chameleon… slipping in and out of character undetected. They deliver messages across 5 senses with ease (sometimes 6 depending on the client) all with the end goal of a smile. We’re in the experience delivery business masterfully designed with a time-release mechanism that delivers a predetermined result.

Our street team members that get this end up going very far in their careers including hosting a talk show, roles on Saturday Night Live and Olympic divers. We work our Street Teams hard but they produce and our repeat business is a testament to the strict training program.

Please give our readers some in-depth details on your Experimental Marketing program.
Weather it’s experimental or experiential… we’re mad scientists at heart, conjuring curiosity, inspiring discovery, creating sticky and memorable events that brighten and liven people’s day.

The process is a product of the desired result as our campaigns are highly customized and often adapt to their channels and vehicles to ensure delivery and absorption. You could say our lab is like the Brawny testing facility. We’re striving for maximum pick up with minimum waste. We actually have a piece of software called the RAGUM (Random Access Generator and User Maximizer) that will calculate the probability of adoption/absorption of an idea, product or service. We’ve found a much higher take-rate when applied to its purest target (again the paper towel reference) Once we’ve concocted the experiential Frankenstein the fun part begins… field testing. Frankenstein might be in many forms, a senior simulator driving suit, an event footprint full of twists, turns and surprises, and interactive scavenger hunt that has a user solving clues while crowdsourcing ideas for a contest. Finally our experiment is ready for the real world and for public consumption. Then again based on the program, we populate the periphery with additional components such as: partners, media, call-to-action that supplement our “Big Idea” or RAGUM meets Frankenstein. We can roll-out a concept on a national basis overnight. We maintain a hyper-link to our field network. Able to activate at the flip of a switch.  These elite street nodes maintain their our respective networks and replicate our concept with minor tweaking to adapt to their own climate and local market nuances. Thus very little is lost in translation between Wicker Park in Chicago and St. Ides district of Houston. So to recap it’s a matter of invention, testing, adaptation and retro-fit coupled with a quality product or brand that’s destined for success. We’re just the grease in the machine wheel that catapults an idea across our own hand-picked neural network of enthusiasts, designed and recruited in the likeness of the mission.

Mobile advertising hogged a lot of the spotlight last year.  In your opinion, what emerging trend will make an impact in 2010?
Hyper-local enabled platform games and apps that work on the simple principle the sum of the parts are greater than the whole. There’s a little chicken/egg issue but with the right formula you can reach critical mass in a given neighborhood and prove the concept in short time- then replicate, expand, rinse, repeat, etc. look at foursquare… also rapid prototyping meets circuit bending meets technology curve that enables the normal walking man/woman to control more of their life and their networks from their pockets. Let’s call them pocket jockeys. And the pocket could be a backpack and the jockeyed device could be a tablet, mobile, mini-device - but it flies a helicopter.

DMB Releases iPhone App: Provides Users With Key Stats From Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Digg

By Lauren Fritsky

For the media professional that is constantly on the go, the ability to access his or her website’s analytics and social media stats from anywhere, at any time is essential. Digital Media Buzz just released its first mobile app, Buzz InSites, to provide users with the ability to access their website’s metrics and social networking stats directly from their mobile devices.

DMB founder Eric Diamond says the app is ideal for the mobile professional who wants to keep track of his or her key website and social statistics whether on the road, in a meeting or on line at the bank.

Buzz InSites mines key stats from all of your Google Analytics accounts and statistics from Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube to keep you updated on your website traffic and activity. The app will also let users email reports in Microsoft Excel format.

“Mobile devices have become a bigger part of our business lives, giving us access to information anywhere, anytime,” Diamond says. “We want to enable digital media professionals to get quick and easy access to all their analytics data anytime within one app. Now you can monitor, review and analyze your site’s metrics remotely, on your schedule.”

Buzz InSites will display key information from Google Analytics such as website page views, unique visitors, top keywords, top referrers and important stats from your social networks such as number of friends, number of followers and top video views. The Buzz InSite service will synchronize with Google’s database to update daily from various analytics accounts, and the service will store one years worth of data.

“We felt that anything beyond one year wasn’t useful to the mobile user,” Diamond explains. “Anything beyond a year, you would probably want to sit at your computer and use other applications to help analyze the numbers.”

On the social networking end, data is displayed in live, raw numbers, not graphs. Buzz InSites is the first iPhone app to provide access to data from both Google Analytics and social networking sites, Diamond says. “There are apps out there that individually do these things, but not one app to easily get all your website analytics and social stats.”

There will be a second phase for Buzz InSites that will focus on creating custom reports and obtaining statistics from additional social networking sites such as LinkedIn.

“Each day we download from Google all of your key stats, and store all the information in a secure database,” Diamond says. “Because of this we can ensure that our app serves up the requested data as quickly as possible. Also, because we store all of your data, in future releases we will be able to provide you with very useful custom reporting options.”

Users can download the app for $4.99 by visiting the BuzzInsites.com website or by going to the Apple iTunes app store from their iPHONE. DMB also welcomes feedback from users to help shape the second phase of the app or contribute to updates. The company’s mobile division is also working on other apps, such as sales management tools and display advertising insights to meet the needs of the mobile business professional. For more information, visit BuzzInsites.com.

Product Buzz: Apps With a Future

By Ned Smith

Our Product Buzz section gives Digital Media Buzz the chance to kick the tires and get under the hood of a number of new and innovative products. We’ve taken a look at some of our recent Product Buzz selections and picked the ones we think have a strong shot at longevity.

Gold Standard
Our Product Buzz winner with both personality and prowess, is Appcelerator. Its Titanium Platform is a free and open source application development platform that lets you create cross-platform,  native mobile and desktop  application experiences using existing Web skills like Javascript, HTML, CSS, Python, Ruby, and PHP. It can be invaluable to developers who have world-class Web skills but don’t have the expertise to port their apps into different languages. It saves time and money. It comes in both desktop and mobile flavors so you can cover all your online bases with a single code base. You get native power without having to acquire and maintain skills in languages such as Objective-C and Java. The company recently announced that it would add Apple’s iPad to its list of supported platforms.

One app created with Appcelerator recently made headline news. Tradui, the first Haitian Creole to English translation app, is improving communication for on-the-ground aid workers during the earthquake crisis there. The idea for the app came from tech volunteers at CrisisCamp DC. Intridea engineers used Titanium and the HaitiSurf Creole Dictionary to develop and release iPhone and Android apps in just three days.

Silver Salute
Twitter and a host of Twitter wannabes are good at keeping you connected with people and what they’re thinking about in 140 characters or less. But if you have more pressing business issues on your mind, like what’s happening to a sales account or when your new product will be going beta, they aren’t of much use. They follow people, not subjects. Tibbr takes a different approach. It lets you follow subjects as well as people.

Built using TIBCO Silver — the first application delivery platform for cloud computing — tibbr utilizes the real-time publish-and-subscribe capabilities that TIBCO pioneered and integrates directly with any enterprise system. It lets staff follow business-critical topics within the enterprise in real time. It offers massive scalability, state-of-the-art security encryption, high availability and reliability. Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadive calls his company’s buttoned-up app, “Twitter on steroids for the enterprise.”

Currently being used Tibco employees, tibbr registration is now open for the soon-to-be-released public beta. Guess how Tibco’s employees will find out when it is set to go live?

Bronze Bravos
Application plug-ins play a minor but often critical role in the software ecosystem. Xobni is one those players waiting in the wings that can be a positive life (and sanity) saver by bringing order out of the chaos in your Outlook contacts and mailbox. Xobni is in-box spelled backwards

But there’s nothing backward about what it can do for you. Xobni creates rich profiles for every person you’ve ever communicated with- even people cc’ed in emails. These profiles contain relationship statistics, contact information, threaded conversations, shared attachments, and information on that contact pulled from social networks, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Skype and Hoovers. Type-A personalities will be tamed by its blazing fast search speed, some 50 times faster than Outlook’s native capability. It also greatly simplifies finding attachments, an incalculable boon for those who are memory-challenged. Xobni is The Little Plug-in that Could.

Using Social Media In the Workplace

By James Zipadelli

A survey by Accenture says that everyone needs to learn how to use technology and the knowledge that young adults age 14-27 — millenials — bring to the workplace, because the “old” IT rules need not apply.

In, “Jumping the Boundaries of Corporate IT: Accenture Global Research on Millenials Use of Technology” young adults in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific also have a more positive view of technology, whereas in European nations such as Italy, France and the Netherlands, technology is seen more negatively.

The anonymous survey was done over an 18-month period in 13 countries around the world, excluding Africa and Antarctica, says Gary Curtis, Accenture’s chief technology strategist. Accenture is planning follow-up research over the next 18 months and they hope to have new U.S. data by the end of 2010.

Survey findings

• 77 percent of U.S. young adults say, “Technology helps improve the quality of my work.” 62 percent surveyed in Asia-Pacific feel this way and 32 percent agree in Europe.
• 73 percent surveyed in the U.S. say, “Technology helps make it easier to communicate with my peers and supervisors.” 53 percent agree in Asia-Pacific and 34 percent agree in Europe.
• 30 percent surveyed in the U.S. age 18-27 say, “State-of-the-art equipment and technology will be vital in my employer selection.” 65 percent in India agreed with this question.
• Working adults in China spend the most time — 33 hours per week — on social media Web sites, texting or instant messaging. Their U.S. counterparts spend 19.3 hours per week on those sites.

Curtis, 60, says this research has helped him understand the value of technology and social media. ”For example, I wasn’t an active Facebook user prior to research,” Curtis says. “This has real value, I’m a regular Twitter user, but I have found sources that are very interesting. I fly almost 400,000 real miles per year.”

Curtis hypothesizes that there is a correlation between technology and the work/life balance.

“A lot of new technologies extend business availability into personal life. On my Blackberry, the thing never stops giving messages,” Curtis says. “I get 300-400 per day. The fact that I have a device more or less enables me to deal with it. Those things become part of your personal space, they can rob you of personal life balance. These technologies become an extension of work.”

According to Curtis, he does put his Blackberry away from time to time, but not for long.

“I go places where there is no digital service on vacation. Much of Baja [Calif.] does not have digital service,” Curtis says. “I find it to be refreshing but after a few days I find I’m falling behind in my work. You have to make choices in work and life balance.”

‘Millenials’ speak up about technology and work
Working adults DigitalMediaBuzz.com spoke with say technology is very helpful in the workplace. “I use social media websites every day, all day, for work specifically,” says Stephanie Robinson, an associate at R|F Binder, a public relations firm in New York City. “Once I get home I don’t do as much.”

“A variety of my clients are on twitter and Facebook, and I have had the opportunity to advise them on the launch of their pages,” Robinson, 24, says. “We host social media meetings every Friday and help with Twitter chats once per month. We’re looking to partner with mommy bloggers and are always looking for different ways we can promote our clients’ pages. Facebook has been an amazing platform for consumer interaction for my clients.”

Robinson’s colleague, Tara Maroney, 25, says she finds social media websites useful at work. “I use both Facebook and Twitter for clients, and in the past I have also monitored a LinkedIn page for a client,” Maroney says. “Twitter is valuable because it gives me a quick snapshot of what’s happening in the news.”

“I am an avid New York Times follower, and getting instant updates of what’s happening helps me do my job better,” Maroney continues.  “I also follow a number of reporters and this gives me insight into the types of stories they are working on and what sources they might be looking for. Facebook I find less helpful from a professional standpoint but I do use it to see what’s going on and to monitor if anyone is talking about my clients.”

Kate Farber, the firm’s director of interactive solutions, says it’s beneficial to use social media to reach out to clients. “No matter the age of us or our clients, everyone is very interested in getting involved with social media and we’re here to help them do that,” Farber, 27, says. “A lot of the Millenials in my company read blogs and Twitter to keep up to date on their areas of expertise. They’re pitching journalists via Twitter, connected with them on LinkedIn, reaching out to bloggers, etc. Social media has really become an integrated part of the PR business.”

According to Farber, personal and professional lives become blurred with technology, so she advises employees of any age to use good judgment while online.

“Some of the ‘best practices’ we recommend to our employees and clients alike are to practice full disclosure when engaging in social media - make sure whoever is reading your comments know your connection to the company or brand,” Farber says. “Also, taking the time to listen to what others are saying online is crucial to successfully engaging them. And don’t forget, when you write something online it could theoretically live there forever - clients, employers, the media - basically anyone could read it.”

Robinson says she limits the amount of personal information she posts on Twitter and Facebook. “Even though I have some of my friends on Twitter, and it’s my personal page, I would never write anything inappropriate because I’m still representing the company and still representing the client,” Robinson says. “I will Tweet interesting stories from food blogs or other online sites, which is helpful for my clients and for me. I do accept friend requests (on Facebook) of some of my colleagues, but I don’t go out of my way to friend them considering I still have pictures from high school and college on there.”

Next Page »