You would think that with the national coverage of such follies as The Jaguar Post-It story other large brands would pay attention and learn from the mistakes of their corporate cohorts. Such does not appear to be the case when it comes to Toyota. I wrote an article for the Denver Egotist that looks at Toyota’s recent folly in one light, but I’d like to address it in a different one here.

The Story
Before we talk about some of the underlying issues of what went wrong I’ll give you some back story on this. Last Tuesday freelance photographer Michael Calanan was told by a friend that one of his photos were being used in a new Toyota 4runner campaign. The real rub of it is that Michael (and all the other artists involved) had no idea their images were being used.

Toyota apologized via Twitter to Calanan and 2 other artists, and they even made a formal statement about it in the Flickr help forum. They have removed the images from both of their 4Runner sites however, they still have not contacted the artists as promised. At the end of this post I’ll have a list of blog posts from some of the artists involved so you can get their perspectives as well.

Responsibility
Ok here’s the deal, it doesn’t matter who made the site because when you and I look at it all we see is Toyota. That doesn’t absolve them from what was done, but ultimately it’s up to Toyota to make sure the people they do business with are doing it ethically.

Both parties had an obligation here to ensure that the artists were talked to about this. They had a very nice concept, but the execution was poor. When getting involved, if you’re not 1000% sure on something ask someone who knows. A small consultation fee is worth it when avoiding the backlash from poor execution of this manner.

However if you do make a mistake own up to it and then take action. Toyota did great at owning up to it, but that’s where it stopped. Which brings us to the next lesson.

Sincerity
If you’re going to be seen as a company who truly cares then your apologies need to be followed up with sincere action. Right now it just looks like Toyota is only interested in saving their own skin and that’s it. It’s been almost 3 days since the whole thing came to light and they still haven’t talked to the artists.

Everyone screws up. We’re all human and corporations are made up of humans so it’s safe to say they will screw up. The real source of strength in that event is how you deal with it. If you make some half-hearted remarks to save face but do nothing to make amends you have failed. We are humans just like you and we expect to be treated with respect and sincerity just like you do.

Think of others
This is a simple lesson that we all should have learned as kids. When doing something that uses other people’s content you should ask yourself “do they even want it used?” What if some of the bloggers and photogs hated Toyota? Wanted nothing at all to do with them and now their work is on Toyota’s site.

We all have our own thoughts, feelings, and views based on the experiences we’ve had in our life. That needs to be respected and you can’t jump into the online culture these days with a “me me me” mentality.

Planning
To me it doesn’t look like there was much planning on the side of Toyota when setting up the social media column on their site. The execution of it all just reeks of “look what I can do”. If they had planned it all out then this post wouldn’t be written and people wouldn’t be pissed off.

Part of planning for this should have been “how do we get people to look at our expensive new site?” and one of those answers should have been “lets reach out to the people in our social media column”. Most people would be thrilled to have their work used by a major brand even just for the exposure it would bring and it eliminates the shock of finding out your stuff was used and you didn’t even know.

Importance of a Reaction Strategy
The online world today has changed dramatically and is in a constant state of evolution. This is why you need to be prepared for the worst. If Toyota had a reaction strategy for bad online press this would have been done and over with on day one. They would have known who needed to do what and how to do it.

Right now I can only imagine that their silence stems from one of two things. Lack of sincerity or panic because they don’t know what to do. Even if you have a true lack of sincerity you could at least try and make things suck less for yourself by having a solid plan behind how to react to situations like this.

Education
Like i said above, the Internet is evolving faster and faster and if you’re going to survive and avoid things like this you need to keep on top of it. If you don’t have time to deal with it or don’t want to then I’ll say it again HIRE SOMEON WHO WILL. What you will pay them in consulting fees or as a salary will be well worth it every time they help you avoid disaster and build your brand in a positive way.

Communication
Social media, hell the entire Internet is based on communication of some sort. Someone dropped the ball somewhere and left communication out of the process. Whether it was Toyota not communicating with the artists or Toyota not communicating with their agency to make sure it was done right doesn’t matter at this point. What matter is they didn’t communicate and it’s costing them.

Bottom line there is no excuse for what happened. Several images were copyrighted, some were “All Rights Reserved” and others were “protected” under the Flickr TOS. Until people realize that this isn’t the old west and playing fast and loose doesn’t cut it anymore we’re going to see more and more examples like this popping up.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua”Peters

Related Posts by other people:
Artists
Michael Calanan: Found my photo used without permission
Dmourati: Oh What a feeling
Snorri Gunnarson: Toyota stealing photos of Flickr

Others
Photo District News: Toyota Apologizes For Using Flickr Photos In SUV Ad
Brands Anatomy: The bigger the brand the bigger the blunder
Cnet: Getty and Flickr deepen photo-license ties
The Denver Egotist: Toyota Shamefully “Borrows” Image from Local Denver Photographer

Gallaries of the “borrowed” images
Toyota, oh What a stealing! 1
Toyota, oh What a stealing! 2
Toyota, oh What a stealing! 3

Update: The agency of record in this case is Saatchi & Saatchi, other posts point to them as the culprit, and their site lists Toyota as a current client. I called them, left a message with the Toyota rep but haven’t heard back so I removed them as the “official” agency until I hear back from them.

Update: I talked to Erin Poole, the PR manager for Saatchi & Saatchi and she did acknowledge that they worked on the campaign and that they were in the process of making things right. I applaud them for that and I’ll be doing a follow up piece about it.

Update: It looks like Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi were very serious about making amends. I talked to some of the artists and they received a stipend of around $500  for the use of their image and an offer to keep using it on the site. Kudos to Erin Poole and the folks at Toyota for taking action and working with the community and not against it.

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This nitty gritty details of PPC (pay per click) and Twitter post is brought to you by yesterdays post What do PPC (pay per click) and Twitter have in common? Everything! After making it’s rounds on Twitter I received several DM’s asking for more info and a deeper explanation, so here we go.

Keywords
Keywords are the backbone of a PPC campaign. If you don’t have your keywords list ready you won’t know what you want to bid on and you won’t be able to write your ads and so you won’t have a PPC campaign. It’s really that simple. When it comes to Twitter and using it’s search feature you’re going to be searching for keywords.

Lets stay with the bird theme I started yesterday (it is Twitter after all) and say you run a store that sells bird supplies online. A very simple keyword list you might be using for a PPC campaign might look like this:

• Bird Cage
• Bird Feeder
• Bird House
• Bird Food
• Bird books

Depending on how in depth you want to go and competitive the field is you might have a list that spans dozens or even hundreds of keywords you bid on, but for the sake of simplicity lets just say these 5 are your main ones that cover the largest portion of your business.

If people are looking for it on Google, chances are they’re also talking about it on Twitter. What you want to do is take your keywords, do some searches, and then get the RSS feed of that search sent to your Google Reader or feed reader of your choice. If you’re not using an RSS reader use Google’s, it will make your life easier.

Here’s an example using our keyword Bird Books

It’s not anyone looking to buy a bird book, but there were people talking about a really cool bird book that seems to have recently come out (it actually is an incredibly awesome site: The Bird Book). If you have anything that compares in your shop to what’s being talked about bring it up, or simply join the conversation and make some new friends.

Once you have your lists setup and they’re being delivered your RSS reader then you can setup a schedule to look through them. When you do this think of them as leads, they’re people who could possibly be interested in what you’re offering so screen the results as they come and look for good, qualified leads of people looking for what you’re selling.

Optimizing
Optimization is a big part of a PPC campaign, you look at what words and ads are performing, which ones aren’t and you try out alternative copy inject holiday relevant terms with your other keywords, etc. If a keyword or an ad isn’t performing and it’s just not getting the kind of conversion or traffic you want then you cut it. Same with Twitter keyword searches.

Using the Advanced search option (to the right of the search box) you can create more detailed searches and optimize what you’re looking for as you hone your feeds and figure out what’s working and what’s not. Right now I have a list of 25 search feeds delivered to my RSS reader that I work with and optimize as needed and check 1 – 2 times a day.

It will take time and some work will need to be done with it, but  it will help you connect to the right people and help you find the right kind of leads. Keywords and searching is where the power of Twitter comes from, use some of the efforts you’ve already put in place through other marketing methods and start integrating everywhere you can, in the end it will make things easier to manage.

Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

P.S. How was that? Better? Did it help clarify? Are there any other questions you have about this idea? If you do, please put them in the comments.

image by Oddsock

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What do PPC (pay per click) and Twitter have in common? Well the short answer is everything when it comes down to the core of it. The most powerful feature of Twitter (and one of the major factors in it taking off) is the ability to search for keywords or terms. PPC ads are often based on search terms (keywords) you bid on, as in the case of the ones we see on Google everyday.

If you or your company is running a PPC campaign then you should have a list of keywords you’re bidding on and have a core set that are the most valuable to you. You should also know which keywords have the best conversion and which ones are costing you the most per click.  These keywords should be translating directly into your Twitter searches.

By using the same keywords on both mediums you’re going to be able to hit more people who are interested in and talking about the keywords you’re interested in targeting. The big difference is on Twitter you have the ability to make a connection with the person and make it a more personal experience than a PPC ad.

Social media integration doesn’t just stop at making sure your Twitter and FaceBook profiles are listed on your companies site it involves making sure that all of your other marketing enhances your social media efforts and vice versa. It’s about looking at everything you have available and seeing how they can best fit together.

What do you think? Any other “basic” internet marketing tactics that could easily help with your  social media use?

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

UPDATE:
I’ve had a few discussions on Twitter with people (mostly via DM or I’d post it up here) about this article and they felt I missed out on a few points or that I didn’t give enough info to use the word everything. Sometimes when you get so used to working and playing in the field you forget that not everyone draws the same parallels immediately because it’s not something they mess around with everyday.

Someone felt as though I was “speaking above them” and felt I did a horrible job of explaining to people trying to learn. I apologize sincerely for this and hope no one was seriously off put by this.

To make up for this I’m going to add a few more points and give a few tips for managing this in a post I’ll put up tomorrow. I have work I need to finish right now, but I will burn the midnight oil to get a companion piece up for you who want a little more info and I’ll do better next time, I promise… fair enough?

Josh “Shua” Peters

image by Koshyk

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Have you read Trust Agents (afl) by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith yet? If you haven’t you should go and pick up a copy today because it’s just plain brilliant. One of the keys points they talk about is making your own game. Doing things differently.

They talk about how people throughout history have made big strides in what they’ve been doing and how they have made enormous impacts just by making your their own game or changing the rules a bit of an existing game.”Recently” the Johnnie Walker company released an amazing advertisement that embodies this spirit.

Unfortunately the smallest YouTube embed is slightly larger than my middle column here so it over flows a bit, I apologize, but I promise you the message told in this truly amazing piece of story telling won’t be lost.

Here was someone who saw the game, changed the rules, and made it his own.

Putting aside the the Trust Agent aspect of this video I want to make a comment on the other aspect that makes this video so great. Storytelling.

One of the key points to successfully using social media for your company is to tell your story. If you don’t know what that is, figure it out. This video is one of the best examples of a company telling it’s story in an interesting and compelling manner.

What do you think?

If Johnnie Walker were alive today would he use social media to continue making his own game and telling his story? Are you?

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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The FINAL word on social media ROI is this… sometimes. Give me a few minutes of your time and I’ll gladly explain.

Right now people seem to be fretting far too much over ROI and social media. Right now the camps seem to be polarized and split into two very outspoken groups. One side chanting “Social Media has no ROI” the other side scream ” Yes it does and you’re an idiot for not thinking so.” It’s getting to be rather annoying actually.

Social Media is a tool… that’s IT. It’s a very versatile and extremely powerful tool with an immense amount of potential I believe we’re only just beginning to tap into. However, by itself it is just a tool and has no inherent value of it’s own.

A hammer laying on a table has no use or purpose until it’s swung into action and used to get results. Social Media is absolutely, positively no different than any other marketing tool out there on it’s own.

PPC (pay per click) has no monetary value (and so no ROI) on it’s own. Media buys, affiliate marketing, SEO, SEM, and blogging have absolutely no value on their own. What gives them the value, and thus the possibility of ROI being calculated is how they are used.

If you’re using a hammer to put a screw in the wall you’re not going to get amazing results and end up wasting a lot of time. Why? Because you’re using the wrong tool for the job. You’d get much better results if you used a screwdriver or a power drill.

This analogy moves right over to internet marketing and thus social media.

ROI is a financial equation, a metric and that’s it. It’s not the end all be all. It’s not the ultimate answer to a broad question (the value of social media).  At the end of the day when you write up your reports you need to have solid business metrics to back up your success or document your failures and that doesn’t just mean ROI, because honestly, it’s just one piece of this puzzle.

Recently I wrote an article about The GAP, ROI, and Awareness where I laid out the 4 basic types of marketing campaigns. Acquisition / Lead Generation, Awareness, Brand, and Loyalty. There are many sub campaigns that can fall under these, but these 4 cover the vast majority and each have their own metrics.

4 Types of campaigns and their metrics

1. Acquisition / Lead Generation  – These types of campaigns are used to gather information (like email addresses, profiles, home addresses, etc) with the goal of winding up with a list of people who are most likely to buy from you.  This type of campaign uses ROI,but only after you’ve determined what each lead is worth to you based on previous numbers.

2. Awareness – This type of campaign can be used to increase the awareness of certain products or the brand itself. Here we would be looking at Impact. ROI doesn’t work here because there are no sales being made and the goal is not financial.

3. Brand – Here the goal is to associate the company with it’s services and offerings. This type of campaign will have hooks into the sales channels, marketing materials will be laden with copy points surrounding what it is, does, or offers and will typically have a CTA (call to action). ROI is prevalent here as the goal is to lead them through your marketing and sales funnels and make a purchase.

4. Loyalty – When a company launches this type of campaign their goal is to reward their current, frequent buyers or to entice customers away from competitors with their awesome loyalty program. This can take the form of a discount card, some kind of point system, or keeping a list of your best customers and having an event in their honor. Here you’re going to be using a mixture of Impact and ROI. Impact for how it’s being received and picked up, ROI  on the program as a whole (which includes SM spend) to ensure the campaigns health.

Looking at it broken down like this you can see where both sides are coming from. Once side who seems to only think Social Media should be used for making money have the battle cry of “ROI or Die”. While the side more concerned with awareness and building brand affinity shout “You can’t put a dollar sign on a conversation”.

Before I expose you to a seemingly “new” term here’s what I have to say to both sides. You’re both right and you’re both wrong, metrics are not one size fits all. So Knock it the #$%* off and start using the metrics properly!

And now for something new

While discussing this with my good friend Rick Galan he made a great point about all of this. Why are we squabbling over certain metrics when there is something already in place that fits very well with social media, and that is KPI.

Wikipedia defines KPI as “A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a measure of performance. Such measures are commonly used to help an organization define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term organizational goals”

By now we should all know that social media is all about the long haul. We should know that social media is just as much about building relationships & making a soft sell as it is building a solid online foundation for you to grow over time.

Let’s look at that last part of the definition again “…typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term organizational goals.”  Social media was built for that. Building your reputation and community while strengthening your brand over time.

I think we need to start a new chapter in social media, and I’m going to spend the next couple weeks creating articles that all run around this subject. Creating the KPI’s or adjusting current “accepted” ones for social media use. At some point you have to stop looking at only today and start looking towards the future.

All this debate about ROI is just going to keep going in circles until people remember that marketing has many facets as does social media. We need to stop point fingers, and start building the future of social media use in business.

What do you think the KPI’s of social media should be? I know that things will change based on goals of the business, but what basic measurements should be included in the overall KPI’s for a company?

Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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There is a free Twitter seminar next Tuesday the 20th being put on by myself, Sharon Hayes, and Joshua Denney to give insight into our new project BrandedTweets.  This seminar is going to be at 12 PM Eastern/9 AM Pacific. During this seminar, we’ll be sharing some strategies and tactics to help you harness the power of Twitter for business, personal branding, or whatever else you choose. The one thing we won’t be doing is talking about how to be a Twitter spammer.

What we have done is gather our knowledge based on our various areas of expertise and put together a training program that includes, but definitely isn’t limited to:

• How to use Twitter to extend your brand
• How Twitter can fit into your organization’s sales cycle
• How to find the right mix of using Twitter like a TV station, town hall, cocktail party for networking, listening post and for customer support
• How companies and individuals have been using Twitter successfully

I hope you’ll join us for the free seminar on Tuesday and when you sign up, you’ll be entered to win access to the training program for free.

Register for the seminar

Thanks for reading, hope you’ll be there.
Josh “Shua” Peters

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When it comes to avoiding Twitter phishing scams (or any for that matter) there are 3 “Common Sense” things you can do to avoid getting swindled.

1. If you don’t know them, don’t click it. It’s really that easy, if you don’t know the person, or haven’t been in a social situation with them before then chances are they’re not going to have a “vid” or some “picz” of you.  Just like you’re not supposed to click on email from people you don’t know don’t click on links from people you don’t know.

2. The links usually hold some clues as well. Look at the url on this one: videos.dskjkiuw.com does that really look like a trustworthy URL with the garbled mess in the center? No one would remember that if it was a serious site. If it isn’t a shortened URL and contains a string of letters like that, chances are it’s no good.

However, lets say one of your friends got duped, sent you the link because their account became compromised and they are sending you a legit looking link… then what?

3. This is the easiest way to tell if it’s a phishing site. If it looks just like a site you’re familiar with, but the URL in the address bar is all wrong. In this latest phishing scam the above URL will take you to what looks like the Twitter sign in page, but when you look at the URL it’s that same garbled mess.

Twitter, FaceBook, your bank, etc are never going to have you log into their site through videos.ghjghjgy.com or twitter.lameurl.com or YourBank.scamcentral.com or anything else.

If you use a little common sense, and only use the accepted and sanctioned routes to access your accounts then you will never have a problem.

Thank you for reading
Josh “Shua” Peters

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There is a problem on Twitter and that problem is free speech. People are allowed to say what ever they want, when ever they want, and this costs Twitter money. Money that isn’t being well spent if people are getting no value from it and it’s causing unnecessary calls to their API and use of their service.

I’m not saying Twitter needs to censor, in fact far from it. I’m a huge advocate of free speech and all the inalienable rights we enjoy in America. What I’m saying is Twitter could save money and increase the value people get from it by allowing users to setup filters on their side.

Twitter is already filtering conversations based on who you’re following and who they are talking to. If someone you’re following sends an @ message to someone you’re not following the tweet never appears in your stream and you don’t see it. Why not extend that capability and make it so people really get what they want out of Twitter?

I live in Utah, and this past weekend was the LDS conference which happens 2 times a year and for 2-3 days straight my Twitter stream is filled with #LDSconf appended tweets and content doesn’t interest me at all. I like all of my Utah twitter friends and associates, but I have no interest in their religious based events.

Last time this came around I unfollowed everyone using this tag, made a list, and then followed once again on Tuesday when it was all over. I hate doing it, and this year I just moved my “Utah” column out of view, but that didn’t really help. As a last resort I just filtered out the tag using the built in feature in TweetDeck, but it’s very limited and so plenty still flooded in.

During the last election I saw many reports of people unfollowing people till it was all over, heck I did it too. I got sick of seeing the same stuff over and over so I made a list, unfollowed and once it was over refollowed them. I see people talking about it when certain conferences roll around (Blog World Expo, SxSw, etc) and people get burnt out on seeing all the same info from a dozen or more people.

Events have an odd effect on Twitter users. Usually low key tweeters become power users and start sending out more tweets than usual. Some twitter power users go into overdrive and it’s like you’re at the event as they tweet everything that’s said. It’s easy for it to wear on people, and TweetDeck’s filtering option just doesn’t fit the entire bill.

Right now when a big event we don’t care about comes along and floods Twitter we have 2 options.
1. Make a list, unfollow people, and then follow them back later.
2. Stop using Twitter until the event is over.

Ignoring tweets with a certain tag or subject is just not practical with the way Twitter is currently built and everything is mingled and mixed together.

The subject of why we would individually use filters isn’t the real reason of this post, it’s about the benefits we could gain from it. Besides allowing us to control the conversations and topics we see a bit more it would help Twitter with some of their own problems.

1. Spam – You could create filters based on currents spam trends so that you never even see the tweets. If you never see the spam then, for the most part, Twitter becomes a dead end for spammers.

2. API calls – Twitter is always worried about calls to their API because it costs them money in operational costs. Add to that the additional loss if it’s a tweet the end user doesn’t even want to see. This would lower API calls while increasing the value of what we did see.

3. Keep interest – It is so easy to get on, start following several hundred people and get overloaded. If users had the ability to filter out certain things and “tame the firehose” a bit it would make it much easier to manage for new users.

Twitter is obviously evolving, and who knows, maybe this is already in the works. I just hope robust filter options are in the works. Being able to filter and use operators like And, If, Or, But, & Not so that we as users can narrow down what we see. But what do YOU think? Would our ability to filter tweets be a good thing or would it ruin some of the subtle values of Twitter?

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

image by stephend9

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Turns out I was right. They are a spam account and they just keep pushing out the same messages over and over and over with no interaction at all. The biggest shocker of all is when I saw that they had blatantly ripped off the Mozy logo (linked because they are the good guys here).

Exhibit A – Logo of our beloved Mozy

Exhibit B – Logo of the spamming Liquid4Health

Before I get into the heart of this post  I’m going to finish the back story, so bear with me.

I have to express complete awe at them thought they could get away with something like this. Now of course being the concerned citizen I am I reported them as spam, and also alerted Mozy of the affront via Twitter.

This type of blatant ripping off is just not acceptable in any way, but what I didn’t expect was what followed from the local (and even out of state) community at large.

There was a miniature cavalcade of outrage about the blatant rip off that continued with random RT’s and such for the next hour or so, but here’s a good snap shot of the immediate outcry.

As my good friend JdNorton pointed out on the site when you land is a claim to ethics and where we get into the meat of this post.

Now, you would think that a company so concerned with ethics that it’s part of their landing flash animation wouldn’t be ripping off the logos of well known companies. They would be using their own logos and promoting their product in a much more altruistic manner.

The good news is that they didn’t. The bad news is that someone who bought into their MLM did, and now their image is being tarnished because of one particular unscrupulous MLMer.

How does this relate to anything else? Well in your company you probably have people who represent the company in many ways. If they’re tied directly to the company and it states that in their Twitter or other social media profile then everything they do will be tied to the company as well.

This is a VERY real fear of companies and individuals alike. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with a representative of the local government and this was the #1 concern brought up when dealing with social media and it’s application for spreading a message.

That is why you need to have a stance on how to ethicly do business. Once you do it’s your responsibility to monitor your MLM “partners”, Franchisee’s, employees, etc. You need to be aware of how they’re representing themselves because it all leads back to you and your business. This is yet another good argument for having a social media department in your business, practice, agency, etc.

Social media management aside, ethics is something that should be taken far more serious than it is. It isn’t a marketing buzz word, it’s a core value that you should embrace. Not just because if you don’t that “buzz word” will be a huge target for your critics, but because it’s the right thing to do.

This isn’t meant to scare anyone away from social media, it’s meant to be a warning. A reminder that you need to have policies in place, and decide on the best way to display your company online. Don’t play fast and loose with your reputation and how your business and the members of it carry themselves or the ethics you uphold.

It all adds up, and can very quickly come back to haunt you.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. We’re still giving away free copies of Twittfaced, if you want to see how you can get your mitts on a copy go here: 4 ways to win a free copy of TwittFaced!

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This is just a quick FYI to let you know I have another article published on Mashable today. HOW TO: Make Facebook Your Company Newsroom. Since my last Mashable article was 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook it seems like I have a theme going on. Please check it out and let me know what you think, thanks.

Josh

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