This is in response to Google’s recent announcement to use their user’s profile pictures, names, photos and product reviews harvested from Google+ and plug these into advertisements as endorsements.

Google has called the planned advertisements Shared Endorsements and Google has announced that on on 11th November  a new Terms of Service will go live which explains that it is intending to use content in this way.

Endorsement Ads

On top of our images Google is intending to display reviews of products, shops and restaurants, as well as other content such as product reviews or songs  bought on the Google Play store, when our friends and connections search on Google. Click the image below to see how Google’s Shared Endorsement ads will look like.

Click to enlarge

Shared Endorsement Scheme Opt-Out

Google is offering its users a way to opt out of advertising endorsements, and that will in all likelihood sidestep the legal issues that Facebook ran into over their similar advertising scheme called Sponsored Stories.

For its part, Facebook paid out $20 million in August 2013, which followed a $10 million charity payment in June 2012 over the way it used “social” ads.

How to opt out of Google’s Shared Endorsements:

Many organisations are also realising the potential business risks that unguided or irresponsible social media usage can have if they do not have effective social media policies, procedures, guidance or governance in place.

Employees who use social media either as part of their job or in a personal capacity, need guidance  as to the company’s expectations of acceptable online behaviour, and educated in social media best practice and etiquette and adherence to social media policies that not only help protect the brands reputation but also the employee.

The line between personal and professional social media use is blurred

Social media policies are necessary for all organisations and all employees, management and the board need to be aware of guidelines for proper use of social media at work and at home as it relates to being employed by the company.  Whether you like it or not, the majority of your employees will already be using social media in their personal lives and the line between personal and professional topics is often blurred, so a well written, and well communicated set of social media policies and guidelines must make it clear to everyone of what is permissible, and what is not.

A social media policy can be the first line of defence in mitigating risk for both the employer and the employee.

A well-written social media policy should:

Social Media Policy Awareness Training

A policy is worthless if you do not provide education and awareness with every employee for following the guidelines. Do not assume that everyone has read and understood the guidelines.  Instead, show them what is deemed appropriate and provide examples for acceptable and unacceptable uses of social media behaviour. If there is no one in-house to provide this training,  hire someone like myself who can provide customised training and awareness programs specific of your business needs. By providing clear guidelines and parameters to your employees, you will ensure that your organisation’s brand is enhanced and that your reputation is not inadvertently damaged by misguided employee comments.

Knowing where to start to create your own social media policies, procedures, governance and guidance documents can be difficult as this area of corporate governance is relatively new.

Free social media policy downloads

Below is my list of links to over 300 free social media policies, procedures, governance and guidance resources that I’ve found on the net, feel free to follow these links and use what you find to help you build a social media policy that will help your organisation to protect your brand, and protect your online reputation.

Free Social Media Policies

Sources:

Have your say

If you know of any links I may have missed, please let us know in the comments below and I’ll add them – Many thanks!

Ellee has been running her own blog for seven years which had accumulated a vast amount of content with over 1000 blog posts, and included hundreds of images and videos. Her site was beginning to look tired and was in need of a serious workover to bring everything up to date. Her blog is archived by the British Library as a record of life in the UK today and has been featured on the Andrew Marr Politics Show, BBC News 24, in The Guardian and recommended on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour. Ellee has also embraced social media tools and Social Media Websites to increase visibility of her blog on search engines and to grow her number of subscribers.

Social media strategy

After careful consultation we identified a theme that would suit Ellee’s requirments and Ian put together a social media strategy that incorporated Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, FaceBook and LinkedIn which was integrated seamlessly into her site with a bespoke Social Media Policy.

Mindful that Ellee needed to measure the success of her social media strategy, Ian added several new plugins for Google Analytics, WordPress Jetpack and Social Metrics Pro which gave her visibility to all of her social media marketing efforts. Ian also included WordPress video training plugin, personalised one-to-one social media training, and he also introduced Ellee to a selection of iPhone apps that allowed her to manage her blog and social media from her iPhone while she was out and about working in the field.

Social Media

Since completing the work for Ellee, she has become so advanced with her own social media that she now offers social media training and support to her own clients while Ian continues to act as her personal social media advisor and mentor.

Ellee Seymour Proactive PR

I would like to thank you for my new professional website. I absolutely adore it and it totally embraces my personality, as well as my varied professional skills. I was amazed to find I had written almost 1,000 posts on my old blog, and with all the pictures and videos, there was an incredible amount of content. Thank you also for helping me to transfer everything over; it was a mammoth task. I was delighted to retain all my precious blog content, and the main focus is now on my professional skills. Thank you so much for such a professional job which always impresses those who visit the site, resulting in very positive feedback. www.elleeseymour.com

My response is usually, “Listen to what others are discussing and join in the conversation by adding something of value”

This method of engagement works really well because over time you build up trust, respect, integrity, and eventually you become recognised as the friendly, approachable expert in your particular niche, someone who intimately knows and understands their subject.

Listening – a difficult concept for some

To some people this concept [of listening and engaging] seems a bit tricky to grasp, and when they get onto sites like Twitter, FaceBook or LinkedIn they turn into human megaphones who end up shouting “At” people about who they are, what they do, and what an amazing difference their product or service will make to the lives, the businesses, or the problems of their followers.

Social media integrity

Worse still, which I found out today, is the selfish networker, the social networker who is only interested in what they can get out of social media advertising. Just this act alone could have a truly devastating impact to the integrity and reputation of a person, or to the brand they are associated with.

Inappropriate tweet

I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I saw the following tweet from BBC World Affairs Producer and Journalist Stuart Hughes.

Clicking on his link took me through this social media Tweet from New York Times Metro Reporter Sam Dolnick which appears to have offended a lot of people for his apparent blatant attempt to gain an interview with Kayla Pjatak whose cousin was one of the 26 who died in the Newtown school shootings in America on Friday.

Lack of appropriate corporate social media policies and procedures

Seeing feedback like this is not comfortable reading, and it makes me wonder how he, or his employer The New York Metro feel about the responses his tweet has generated and how it fits with their online strategy. At the time of this post no-one seems to have officially responded, but like so many people (and entities) it may be because this account is not being monitored correctly, or it’s not being managed with the appropriate social media policies and procedures in place. I’ll be watching this with interest over the coming weeks to see what we can learn from how they deal with any potential outfall.

Have your say

Do you have any examples of inappropriate social media use, or maybe you saw a similar situation with social media tools handled well or badly? If so, please share your thoughts using the reply section below.

Now, a concrete answer has arrived to that question, in the form of the product known as Social Metrics Pro.

As this plugin is so simple to use, and gives so many SEO ranking benefits we now install it as standard on all of our SuperBlog customers sites, that way everyone can easily and automatically keep track of the social signals they are making and helps them deliver against their social media strategy and policies.

Simple to use

The best part of using Social Metrics Pro is its simplicity. This is what makes it possible for even the most amateur online marketer to use this tool and harness its potential to gauge the online popularity of their website.

Social Metrics Pro Dashboard

Social Metrics Pro is driven by a dashboard that keeps track of the social status of the content on the website. The dashboard is simplified with a system of colour coding. Different colours indicate the relative popularity of the posts (see image below). Reds indicate posts that are performing poorly on the social networks, while greens indicate posts that are performing well on the social networks. As the poor performing posts are worked upon, the reds turn into greens, which is a direct measure of the improvement of the social signals of the website.

Export social metrics data to Excel

Social Metrics Pro also allows the optimiser to directly transfer the output into a Microsoft Excel file. This can be used to further analyse the performance of the website. These files are viewable on all spreadsheet processors.

Social measurement WordPress plugin

The best part of Social Metrics Pro is that it is available as a plugin. Once installed, it sits pretty on the taskbar of the browser, until it is called upon to perform its analysis. The plugin works for any blog that has been created on WordPress, upwards of WordPress 3.2 version. Its access is also available through the admin dashboard of WordPress as well.

Packed with features

There are many small features that help the newbie optimiser immensely. For instance, the webmaster can choose to refresh their data. The frequency can be preset, which helps to give an updated version of the social networking status of the blog at any required time. The plugin begins performing as soon as it has been downloaded and installed. Once installed, the plugin keeps on updating itself. There are free lifetime updates provided with the plugin, and a dedicated technical support team helps people with any issues that they might have.

Conclusion

My final verdict is that Social Metrics Pro is an awesome tool for anyone wanting to tap into the potential of social media marketing to bring their website on the top of the search engines. If you have any apprehensions about its functionality, you might put them to rest as this is one of the easiest social optimisation tools that I have come across. Click the link below for more information.

Social Metrics Pro

Find out more by clicking this link>