Last week I put a presentation together for a group about getting started on Twitter. You can check it out below. It includes the "5 Kinds of People to Avoid In Twitter" list that I blogged about several months ago which, incidentally, happens to hold the record for the most comment I've ever received on a single post. Also included are a bit about proper Twittequette, and five other questions to answer on Twitter besides the infamous "what are you doing?" question.

I love the truth behind the comedy of Brian Regan. Here's a classic bit from him about UPS.

A couple days ago I had a client here in Nashville forward me a link to a blog post about Facebook's terms of use policy. The post, in essence, says that Facebook doesn't intend for personal profiles to be used for commercial purposes and that they can (and very well may) shut down your account if you violate this policy. The blogger went on to recommend everyone create Facebook Fan pages instead. The rationale here is that your "fans" permit you to promote to them, while your "friends" on your personal profile do not.

First let's take a look at what Facebook says about this.

In Section 3 of the Facebook terms of use/statement of rights and responsibilities it says:
1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.

In an updated (but apparently not official) Facebook statement of rights and responsibilities Facebook has included the following statement in Section 4:
2. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

Let's Make Sense of All of This
First things first, the item from Section 3 of the policy is the official policy as of today. The addition may be coming, but neither of these changes where I land on this. Ultimately it all of this comes down to whether you want to take the broad interpretation or the narrow interpretation of the policy. The broad view is that you can talk about work but you can't sell. The narrow view is that you can't talk about work or sell. I fall into the broad interpretation category (as you might guess) because the specific examples Facebook gives are both sales oriented examples. It's one thing to talk about life as an employee but something else entirely to say, "Email me now for a 31% discount on the latest Whizbang Life-Helper 5000. Get them before they're gone!"

Here's What I Love About the Policy
The most encouraging thing about Facebook's terms is that it prevents people from doing the things that don't work in social media anyway. The culture of social networking is informal and soft sales at best. Anyone who comes off as only participating because they're trying to sell you something isn't just going to have Facebook policy to contend with, they have to deal with the fact that they're annoying the heck out of people by violating the entire culture of the medium.

Facebook, like any other social network, works best with conversation that adds value to the people you want to reach. When you take the predatory salesman approach, you're going to be shunned for being a spammy jerk. The Facebook policy is the least of your concerns. You're out there bothering potential business and hurting yourself and your brand in the process.

Facebook Fan Pages Create False Sense of Security
Fan pages won't fix spammy jerks on Facebook. If anything they may enable people to continue using Facebook the wrong way. Using Facebook for business isn't directly about selling. It's about earning attention and listening to feedback that will help your business. The LACE method for social media measurement falls nicely into this. For instance, Facebook let's you capture leads, but not because you were annoying, but because you shared a link that met a need but coincides with what you do professionally. Or maybe you talked about something you do professionally that got them interested and now they want to know more.

If you want to win with Facebook in your business, it's most important that you learn how to think the right way and talk the right way. A strict adherence to the policy won't prevent you from completely missing out on everything you hope Facebook will do for you. Sure, you can violate Facebook policy and lose the business opportunities you most want. You can also adhere to Facebook's policy and miss out too.

For all the interest in social media today, I wonder if a few of the subtleties that really make it work are getting lost in some of the newcomers. When social media is done well, it is a nice combination of both awareness and engagement.

Engagement feels like you're doing something because you're blogging or Tweeting, but awareness feels like you're just watching and listening (which you are) but it doesn't give you that same "I did something today" kind of feeling. If that's you, I have three words of advice: Get over it!

Why Understanding Social Media Culture Is Critical
An organization that's excited to jump into social media may be blogging their brains out, Tweeting their thumbs off, and Facebooking their faces off, but if they don't understand the world of social media, they may be doing it all wrong which will only come back to hurt them.

Social media is not just technology. It's a culture of the new way to engage and interact with people online. You really only learn that through observation and personal, experimental participation. That's where awareness comes in. Awareness is what keeps you grounded in all of the engaging. It's what let's you know where the boundaries are.

The Bad Facebook Profile
Last week I was working with some clients and we were reviewing Facebook profiles of people in their particular industry. We found one lady, in particular, who quite obviously didn't understand the culture or protocol of Facebook. As interesting a discovery as that was, the more interesting thing to me was the reaction of individuals in the room. A few of them saw the problems with her profile right off the bat. They were aware of the Facebook culture. The rest of the room didn't see what the big deal was. They, as you might suspect, haven't spent much time in Facebook and therefore don't understand the culture. How could they? They haven't lived there yet. I can only tell them so much as their consultant. They have to experience it for themselves to fully understand it.

It seems a lot of the social media discussions focus on the engagement side. Heck, I'm even guilty of leaning that way myself sometimes. That's where it feels like all the action is. It's great to know how to Tweet better, blog smarter, position your YouTube video for viral success, and Facebook like a rockstar. I'm all for that, just don't miss the value of taking the proper time to become aware of the culture.

I recommend people experiment personally before they do anything from a business standpoint. You have a lot of freedom and autonomy as an individual, but once you start that corporate profile for your business, you're going to feel the pressure to do something whether it's what you should do or not...and doing can sometimes be the worst thing to do. Take the time to be aware of how the world works before you set up your own camp.

Kids do the darndest things. This one certainly looks like he knows what he's doing.

It seems like in the last few weeks I have come across a lot of interesting social media statistics and reports. I tend to share them on Twitter and save them for future reference personally, but in an effort to make sure blog readers don't miss some of the more interesting news to pop up about social media in the last few weeks, here's my mishmash of noteworthy posts and stats:

Nervous Companies Still Pursue Social Media
National brands and corporations are increasingly feeling compelled to jump into social media even when they have concerns about losing control. The most most interesting sentence in the post was this: "And one thing became clear: For now, companies seem more fearful of being left behind than they do of losing control."

Yes, Your Boss Is Checking Your Facebook Updates...
8% of companies have fired employees for their behavior on social networking sites.

...Because He Suspects You're Wasting Time
Companies that allow access to Facebook lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity. I wonder if chatting with people in the cube or office next to you has decreased though? The bottom line on this is that time wasters will do it one way or the other. Don't let this stat be used to build a case against the usefulness of Facebook in business. Especially because...

Facebook Now Allows Search
I wrote about this already so I won't rehash it here.

One In Three Videos Gets Shared
A recent report showed that a third of all online videos are shared. It also revealed that viewers are twice as likely to ignore TV ads as online ads, and are 28% more likely to pay attention to online advertising.

Boomers Choosing Online Over TV
A new study revealed that Baby Boomers are now spending more free time online than watching TV.

There was a homecoming yesterday at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. The U.S. Army base just up the road from those of us here in Nashville is a common homecoming destination for soldiers returning from various parts of the globe. Yesterday, however, was a different kind of homecoming because is was for Vietnam War soldiers. According to new reports, Ft. Campbell officials realized they had never given a proper homecoming to their Vietnam War soldiers, a ceremony common for soldiers returning home from war ever since then. The ceremony was a long time coming and it seems to have been both greatly appreciated and a necessary even if almost 40 years overdue.

So what does this have to do with your business and social media? Well, not much from a social media perspective, but a heck of a lot for business.

The main lesson here is that it's never too late to do the right thing. In some cases doing the right thing may be very private, and in other cases it might be public. The true measure of any organization is whether they are willing to rehash an old wound (both for them and other people) in order to make things right. I personally know of organizations that offended people many years ago but have never really apologized for it. They have probably assumed people moved on, and they're right, people have moved on, but it doesn't mean the offended individuals have forgotten. Time and distance from an unresolved issue provides the illusion of closure. It was obvious by the emotional reactions of those Vietnam veterans that even 40 years later the wounds are still very real today.

If your organization owes someone (or many people) an apology or thanks, don't hesitate to do it. You'll be saying as much to your community and employees about the type of company you are in addition to finally repairing a situation that had been left undone. It's never too late to do the right thing.

I've noted several time before on this blog that Rhett and Link understand what makes online video work about as well as anyone out there. Not only do they understand it, but they make it happen all the time. They know that creating online video is about earning people's attention...regardless of the topic. This video is a perfect example of them putting their understanding to good use.

Enjoy the video.

Yesterday Facebook announced it was going to open up the search function within the site. What this means is that now you can search for any word or phrase you want within Facebook whereas before  you could only search for groups, locations, or individuals. This may not seem like a big deal, but from a business perspective it's huge. The walled garden isn't closed anymore.

The world of social media monitoring has been growing steadily for the last year or so, and I think this new development from Facebook is going to blow it wide open. Until now, there were a handful of ways businesses could really know what public sentiment was about their business, brands, products, services etc. They could search blogs, Twitter, discussion boards, and even online video, but Facebook was always the big unknown yet it was the premiere social network with the biggest numbers of people to listen to. Now that it's open, I think it's going to become the first place for businesses to look for consumer sentiment instead of Twitter.

A few weeks ago I talked about measuring social media success using the LACE (leads, awareness, customer service, engagement) method. With the new Facebook search available, smart organizations will be able to do this even better than before.

Last year I had a video of the week called "pride killer." It's worth watching when you start feeling like you're ready to show off a bit.

This week's video consists of the same issue...just in a different sport.

Some recent stats from an eMarketer research project reveal the ways people of all demographics use social networking sites. The data from a recent survey is as follows:

• 75% of people using social networking us it to keep in touch with friends.
• 55% of people use it for fun.
• 41% of people use it for keeping in touch with family.
• 5% of people use it for keeping touch with their business network.
• 4% of people use it for job hunting.
• 3% of people use it for business development and/or sales

So what's to be learned from all of this? When you engage people in a social network, you're more likely to be talking to them in "personal" time rather than professional time. They're there for fun, friends, or family. They're not there for you and your business interests.

If you're going to use a social networking component to your marketing plans you need to understand the space and what the people are there for in the first place. Without understanding what a person's primary interests in social networking are, you're likely to have them either ignore you for being irrelevant and valueless or they'll get frustrated at you and fire back for violating their online personal space.

If you went to another country for business you would study the culture and customs to keep from damaging your relationships. The same thing applies here.

Here are the full results from that portion of the study for those who may be interested.

Today I had the chance to do an introductory presentation on blogging to a group of employees at a company I work with. In the past I have generally taken the "here's what you should do" approach filled with best practices and tactics for these kinds of presentations. For this presentation, however, I did just the opposite. I decided to take the approach of ten things not to do.

I've found that when people are getting started on something it's easy for them to be overwhelmed with all the opportunities and they just want to make sure they stay out of the ditch while they learn how to ride. This presentation was intended to help them see what to do by learning how to stay out of the ditches. Here's a link to the presentation for those of you who can't see the embedded version below.

Two weeks ago I wrote about how there's really no such thing as a little guy anymore (unless someone chooses to be) and used the "United Breaks Guitars" event as a case in point. A MicroExplosion reader contacted the customer service department at United Airlines after that post to see they had done about the guitar in question. In less than three hours he got the response below:

Thank you for contacting United Airlines Customer Relations.  I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your inquiry.

At United, we continually work to ensure the proper handling of your items when you fly with us, and we transport thousands of checked bags each day without incident.

We have had discussions with our customer to make what happened right, and at his request, we donated the money that would have gone toward a new guitar to the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz that provides music education for kids with potential.  The video provides us with a unique learning opportunity that we plan to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us.

Your business is important to us, and I hope you will give us an opportunity to serve you in the future.

As bad as this has been for United, it looks like they're taking it in stride and trying to learn what they can about the social media space and understand why it means business must be done differently now than it used to. It was encouraging to see that they responded to the reader and got a response back to him in a matter of a few hours. Perhaps, in the long run, breaking the guitar will turn out to be one of the best things that's happened to United in a long time.

In the most recent episode of The New Mediology (listen online or in iTunes), Nathan and I discussed the recent debate in social media circles that blogging is dead and that lifestreaming is the new thing to do. What prompted much of this debate was that at the end of June, one of the blogging world's top bloggers decided to abandon his blog in order to begin lifestreaming. The blogger, Steve Rubel, announced on his blog in a final post that he was leaving blogging to lifestream because "blogging feels old."

I've been reading Steve for several years now and have generally thought he was pretty well on track with things in social media, but I think he made a mistake this time. The mistake I believe he made is that he gave up ground as an influential voice in the world of social media in order to do something that does not continue to validate the voice he'd worked hard to develop.

With blogging, you have the chance to build a tribe by telling people what you think. If anyone is interested, they'll keep coming back to know more about what you think. With lifestreaming you don't tell people what you think. You're really just showing them the things you're thinking about. That's very different. Thought leaders offer perspective by telling you what they think. Everyone else just tells you the things that are on their mind, catch their eye, or just seem interesting. I believe Steve Rubel gave up a great seat at the thought leader table to go sit with everyone else.

If you're trying to establish a credible, authoritative voice on any topic, blogging is perhaps one of the best opportunities ever available to you to do so. You can do lifestreaming secondarily, but don't walk away from a chance to become a leader by telling people what you think.

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Unrelated Request: We need a new theme for the beginning and end of The New Mediology podcast. If you want to suggest a new show theme song at a site like Podsafe music, you own the rights for a song, or want to write an original song for the show, please let us know. We really, need a new one!