For those of us who work in social media and are asked to come up with these BIG ideas and these GRAND campaigns…we usually hit the same roadblock at about the same time of the planning process. You have this big idea and grand campaign, and it’s fabulous. It is planned to engage your existing customers, bring on new ones, and truly provide a unique and fun experience – pretty much what social media is meant to do!

Then…you run it by your PR and Legal team for approval. And you hear phrases like this:

• “You have to make sure that the link to the Terms & Conditions is only one click away from the message promoting the contest, so you need two links in your Tweet.”

• “You have to remove that photo from your Facebook Wall because we didn’t get written permission from the individual in the background to show them on Facebook.”

• “Once you select a winner you can not ask for their mailing information via email as that’s exchanging personal information and is illegal. You have to get their phone number and call them.”

• And so on, and so on.

Yes, these processes are tedious, and they can be extremely frustrating. However, they are there for a reason. Yes there are times I myself want to pull my hair out by making sure that this amazing contest has the appropriate Rules written to accompany them. It definitely seems to take the ‘fun’ out of social at times.

However, when you work for a company, for a brand, or for any professional entity, your business or even yourself have the potential to get sued for what is said on social media platforms. It has happened. And if it happens to you, you may not speak so quickly when bashing PR and Legal.

For example, if you post an image from Google Images on your company’s Facebook Page, that photographer can sue you for not paying them for the photo credit, for not giving them credit for the photo, or by misrepresenting the photo itself. And that’s just one little photo. For specific examples of social media cases that provided quite a bit of notoriety in the law, check out Glenn B. Manishin’s blog post on the 2010′s top four law cases in social media. A more recent case you may have heard about is the case of Ryan Giggs suing Twitter for breach of injunction.

The issue of legal issues within the realm of social media is quite timely to the point that GSMI just last week hosted a conference in Boston on social media risks and strategies. For latest updates from GSMI, check out their Twitter handle. One of their posts from last Friday may not surprise some of us:

Social media is a new industry meaning that everyone’s catching up to it including the industries that are using it and those who are fighting to protect themselves and others from it. So before you start bad-mouthing Legal and PR during your next campaign, think about what may happen if you received the court notice because you didn’t have them in the beginning.

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media

Corporate blogs benefit greatly from a collaborative effort to produce and maintain. While it’s easy for anyone to start a personal blog in seconds, a company blog takes considerably more thought and planning to execute.

We are fortunate to have talented and engaged clients and want to highlight a couple of our most successful blog launches for The Alter Group and Bliss PR, which each benefit from multiple contributors. These projects engaged talented designers and thought leaders outside Astek who were essential to the end results. Both blogs run on custom installations of WordPress.

Astek’s focus on helping our clients produce blogs over the past few years is especially rewarding since the client has so much influence over the life of the end product, which changes nearly daily.

Case Study #1
Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire blogs featuring podcasts
Business Focus: One of the nation’s preeminent corporate real estate development firms.
Blog Focus: Corporate Real Estate, Finance, Economy, Healthcare
Approx. Combined Monthly Visitors: 4,800+
Original launch: April 10, 2008
Redesign and ALTER+CARE Inspire launch: April 6, 2009
Featured in: Alltop.com

Astek worked closely with The Alter Group team over several months to hone the voice and focus of the blog, identify and train contributors on software, design the feature set needed, and deploy a flexible platform for growth. The initial budget was low to make sure appropriate resources could be committed consistently and to prove ROI before “going big.” Once the process and message proved stable, we engaged a designer to add the finishing touches that make the blog what it is today.

Dramatic color and imagery set Alter NOW apart from other blogs:

Consistent and careful use of relevant imagery in each article pulls the reader in:

The footer of each article features a ShareThis link for easy distribution across email and other web sites (important for viral growth to reach new readers), the author photo, name, relevant categories and tags, and a link to leave a comment, which invites readers to become part of the ongoing conversation blogs present. This article also features a link to the corresponding podcast on the subject.

The sidebar features easy subscription links, quick links to the podcasts, and prioritized standard blog features such as search and recent posts:

Both blogs are featured prominently on The Alter Group home page for easy access:

Case Study #2
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders blog
Business Focus: Business-to-business strategic media relations and marketing communications
Blog Focus: B2B marketing, public relations, professional services, financial services, and healthcare

Working with BlissPR to design and launch their blog was, well, blissful! They had been planning this launch for some time so the overall strategy and content development were in good shape. BlissPR primarily needed a partner to help with design, production, and blog deployment and integration strategy.

BlissPR wanted to integrate the new blog into their existing Web site, which presented a unique set of design opportunities and challenges. The new design features a prominent masthead for the blog with subscription links and a search box. Each article on the home page is clearly delineated with a green title bar, photo of the author, and crafted abstract leading to the full story. The “Share” link has plenty of room to breathe, highlighting the importance of this word of mouth feature.

The side bar focuses on the people behind the blog to provide context to visitors. A brief description of BlissPR is immediately followed by photos linking to bios of all the authors. This is a great way to add personality to your blog. The sidebar is followed by standard blog elements like tag cloud and recent posts.

We’re very proud of our clients’ ongoing success with these publications. Please check them out and remember to leave a comment!

Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders

Here’s a succinct list of five things you can do to improve your corporate blog. The three blogs featured above stand as testimony to these recommended tactics.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Web

I’m attending the BlogWell social media conference today, which is put together by Andy Sernovitz at GasPedal and The Blog Council. Really looking forward to hear how some larger companies are embracing social media, as they often have a harder time adapting to change and truly adopting the notion of transparency.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web