In Gremln’s second installment of becoming a LinkedIn “Super User” we’re sharing tips for expanding your business leads, getting involved with and creating groups, reading and sharing industry news, and using all these features to help you network with the best of ‘em.

Find New Leads
LinkedIn is a great place to find leads for your business. With more than 1.5 million groups, you’re sure to find a few connected to what you (and your company) do. Spend some time researching groups that relate to your business, reading posts that have done well in the past, and learning about the group members. Your research will save you time in the future when you share with the group, as you’ll have an idea of who to cater your message to and what sort of language garners the best response.

So how do you find these groups?

LinkedIn recently vamped up its search features, making it even easier to find your niche. Start typing a keyword that applies to your business, and see what pops up. Here’s an example – we started typing “Financial” and got the following suggested companies, groups, features, and skills:

Not a fan of what this snapshot offers? Just hit “enter” and you’ll be directed to a full page of search results. Or, let LinkedIn do some of the searching for you and select the “Groups You May Like” option. This will result in groups that might make sense for you based on your profile.

If you’d like to discuss a niche topic that you don’t feel is adequately represented, you can create a group of your own. Share it with the rest of your social networks, invite relevant LinkedIn connections to join the group, and remember to talk about it when you are networking or presenting to new people.

Once you’ve joined a few groups, take a look at the recent conversation topics. Share your comments where applicable, like posts that you find interesting and engaging, and take a look at who is sharing what. If you’ve got a company or personal blog that might prove useful to the members of the group, this is a great place to share your work. When you’re sharing your link, include a call to action to help entice people to share their thoughts. When someone does comment, be sure to respond! Blindly posting and then leaving the group alone will not endear you to your new potential customers. 

Networking
If you’re attending a conference, presenting to a group, or just meeting with new potential clients and industry professionals – ask your audience to connect with you. Print your LinkedIn profile link or company profile on your business cards, include it in your email signature, and mention it in person.

Perhaps you’re considering reaching out to an old colleague or an industry leader you recently met at a networking cocktail party. You find their profile on LinkedIn, and click to connect with them. You see the following screen:

Before you click the bubble and click “send invitation” consider personalizing the note. The more effort you put in to showing how important it is to you to reconnect, how lovely it was to meet the person, or including a personal anecdote that relates to your wanting to reach out, the more memorable you will be to that person.

Use LinkedIn Contacts to incorporate contacts from your email correspondence, calendar entries, phone addresses for reminders and suggestions for how to reconnect. Heading to a new city for business? LinkedIn Contacts will let you know who in your network lives in that city – the perfect opportunity to reach out and reconnect with them!

If you’d like to congratulate a colleague, share an article with someone you are connected with, or tag a collaborator in some work you’re presenting on LinkedIn, the mention feature is a great way to do this. Of course, maintaining a professional demeanor when using any of LinkedIn’s features is of utmost importance – so use your mentions responsibly.

Industry News
Survey groups and other industry professionals for issues they’re currently dealing with; you could find new solutions to provide with your company, or share elements of your business that could help them.

Checking out the LinkedIn news feed for stories relating to your profession could provide you with content to share on your other social networks. Perhaps you’ve just read an article you find particularly helpful – if you tweet your opinion on the piece, or share it with your Facebook network, you could spark a conversation or alert a potential client to your line of work and expertise.

LinkedIn has recently revamped its “LinkedIn Today” feature, which allows you to customize your news feed by following Channels for topics and influencers that matter most to you. You can select five topics and five influencers that you can automatically set to follow, and browse through all the channels or influences LinkedIn offers if you’d like to change your specifications.

Now that you’ve learned how to professionally prep your profiles and dive into groups and conversations, you’re ready to get networking with your LinkedIn connections! Stay tuned for Part 3, where we discuss advertising and recruiting to further spread your company’s reach.

What are your top tips for getting new leads and networking on LinkedIn?

With over 225 million users and more than 10 years in the social networking game, LinkedIn has grown from what was once considered a place to hunt for a new job (and not much more) to a community for professionals and businesses to talk shop, find new leads, connect and reconnect with colleagues, friends, and business partners.

So what are you doing to make the most of this professional landscape? We’ve broken a how-to guide to LinkedIn into sections, and will be sharing our tips and best practices in a three-part series.

In this post, we’re focusing on making the most of your LinkedIn personal and company profiles.

Great Photography? Great Design? Great Job!
Use strong design and eye-popping visuals to draw people in to your LinkedIn profiles. When people see a professional headshot or a colorful, well-designed cover photo, potential leads are a lot more likely to click through to your page than if they see a bizarrely cropped, poorly designed, or non-existent photo.

• Cover Photo: Design an image that showcases your brand’s personality and helps you stand out. Consider including a call to action to drive your message home and take the mystery out of who you are, what you do, and what you want new connections to do next. With 646×220 pixels to play around with, you’ve got the space to be creative! If you have a company logo, be sure to include it somewhere on your page to drive home the connection between your company name, description, and logo.
• Profile Picture: If you’re using LinkedIn to promote your personal presence, be sure you have a professional, friendly profile photo. You don’t want something low-resolution, grainy, or inappropriate to represent the quality of work you bring to the table. (The dimensions for your profile picture are between a 200×200 – 500×500 square, 4MB max.)
• Highlight your social media presence – including LinkedIn – by placing the network “follow” and “recommend” widgets in a visible place on your website, emails, and blog. You can also include the LinkedIn logo or your LinkedIn company page URL on printed materials for additional exposure.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profiles

• Whether writing your company or personal profile, be sure you are using the best language to help your pages appear in search results. We don’t recommend stuffing your profile full of every applicable keyword you can think of, as it looks messy and unprofessional. But do pay attention to the keywords you do include when describing your company’s products and services and your personal skills and specialties.
• Include backlinks to your company blog, your website, other social network profiles, and any sites that reinforce who you are and what you do. Not only will this provide people with information, it will boost your search engine optimization.

Complete Your Company Page

• Take advantage of the LinkedIn Company page profiles and fill out all applicable sections. Your overview should include your company name (which LinkedIn will use to create your company page URL), your company description (a great place to include popular industry keywords), company locations, your website URL, as well as the type, size, industry, and status of your business.
• Have you added products and services? You have the opportunity to share videos, special offers, product and service descriptions, people to contact, and more. Don’t miss out on this chance to really get specific when highlighting what your company offers.
• Share updates. If you’ve recently posted a new article to your blog, or some aspect of your company was featured in the press, or your team hit a goal you want to share with your followers – this is a great way to keep your brand front of mind, as the updates filter into your followers’ news feed.
• Don’t forget about your employees. Let them know your company has a profile on LinkedIn so they can follow the page and share it with their personal networks.

Perfect Your Personal Profile

• Even if you aren’t currently on the job hunt, be sure you’ve filled out all sections of your personal profile. You may have gotten a new job and entered your title and start date, but be sure to also update your current responsibilities and job description. As a representative of your company, your profile could help potential clients learn more about what your team does.
• Create a customized URL for your personal profile. When you are logged into your account, opt to edit your profile, and click on the edit button next to the URL that appears underneath your profile picture. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to claim your first and last name for your custom URL, making it even easier for people to find you.

Endorsements & Recommendations For a Job Well Done

• For your company profile, you can ask people who you know have used your product (and liked it!) for a recommendation on LinkedIn via a dedicated email, a personal request, or on a “Thank You” page. Another group to reach out to? Your brand ambassadors. Repeat customers and particularly supportive Facebook and Twitter users are often very willing to their thoughts about your product. You can direct them to your LinkedIn company page to give a recommendation by using LinkedIn’s “Recommend” button. Add it to your emails, homepage, product pages, and “Thank You” pages to make the recommendation process even easier.
• Endorsements are available for personal profiles. A great way to get endorsed for your skills and expertise is to do the same for others in your network. They’ll get a notification that you’ve endorsed them, and may just feel so warm and fuzzy that they endorse you right back. If not, your name is now at the top of their mind with a kind gesture attached to it. Win, win!

These are just a few tips to get you started with sprucing up your LinkedIn profiles. Get these areas set up, cleaned up, and optimized, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a LinkedIn Super User. Stay tuned for Part 2 – we’ll discuss building leads through LinkedIn groups and good, old-fashioned networking.

What are your top tips for company and personal profiles on LinkedIn?

In cases where your social media profile is public, the gloves are off. Your employer has the right to view your posts – as does everyone else in the world (you know, being public and all). But if you’re using social media in both business and personal contexts, and using only one account that you yourself created and are held accountable for, is it fair for the regulatory bodies to monitor and archive your business communications? Or is that hitting below the belt?

According to The Wall Street Journal 35 states have adopted, introduced, or begun work on social media privacy legislation since the start of 2013. Both the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) have sent multiple letters to the legislators pushing the bills, asking for modifications to regulate those in the financial sector, thus protecting investors.

This becomes a grey area when employees use their personal social media accounts for business communication related to their position. For example: in the financial industry, brokers and dealers often use their personal LinkedIn accounts to reach out to perspective clients, share industry related information, and interact with current clients. While that is a personal account, financial industries want to be able to protect the social public from potential Ponzi schemes, instances of fraud, and subjection to investor risk.

FINRA’s social media guidance, Regulatory Notice 10-6, published January 2010, requires those held to financial regulations to monitor and archive business communications made using social media. Even if employees use their personal devices to engage in such communication, the regulatory bodies believe it must be monitored and archived.

Without the ability to access social media accounts of employees, employers cannot comply with the supervision and record keeping responsibilities mandated by the financial industry regulatory bodies.

Acting as FINRA’s “corner man,” SIFMA supports the effort to provide more allowances for business social media use and has done its part to attempt to modify the language in each state’s proposed legislation. In letters to the various signers, SIFMA cited the 2012 American Century Investments study, which claimed that almost nine out of ten financial services professionals have social media profiles or accounts, 58% of those professionals use social media for business several times per week, and 27% use it for business on a daily basis. (Business use includes reading and posting commentary, monitoring and sharing relevant news, business promotion and brand building, sharing best practices, and obtaining customer feedback.) According to SIFMA, a “personal” account that is also used for business purposes should be treated as a business account.

SIFMA’s letters also include a quote from North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) president Heath Abshure:

“State laws and regulations require broker-dealers, investment advisers, broker-dealer agents and investment adviser representatives to maintain books and records relating to the firm’s business, which can include business communications made or transmitted using social media. To comply with these requirements, broker-dealers and investment advisers must be able to access social media accounts used by employees for business purposes. Legislation under consideration by certain states may prove problematic because, absent an appropriate carve-out, such laws would place broker dealers and investment-advisers in a precarious position where compliance with state privacy laws might cause them to run afoul of their supervisory and record-keeping responsibilities under state and federal securities laws and regulations, and vice versa.”

State legislators counterpunch with the belief that they are not only protecting employees’ right to privacy but also saving employers from themselves in the process. Requiring access to a prospective employee’s social media account that would also disclose personal information could backfire if said candidate was not hired. Employers could be subject to lawsuits suggesting the personal information gleaned from social media accounts such as appearance, political leanings, or sexual orientation played a role in the decision not to hire.

Some states are more aggressive than others in terms of blocking any and all attempts of employers to access current or prospective employee social media profiles. Maryland and Illinois, for example, include no provisions for firms to be able to access accounts that engage in business communications, though they do allow for employers to conduct investigations of employee misconduct that may necessitate social media account information. Utah’s Internet Employment Privacy Act offered a bit more clarification as to what rights employers have to require access to employee social media accounts, specifically those that are used for business communications or accessed from an employer-issued electronic device. It also protects employers in that they can still require access to accounts created, maintained, used, or accessed by employees and applicants for business related communications or a business purpose of the employer.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie conditionally vetoed the state’s proposed social media privacy law, Bill 2878; he found it too broad. In it, employers are forbidden to ask potential employees if they had personal social media accounts, even if they were just trying to ascertain certain occupational skill levels. Christie, like the financial regulators, also found fault with disallowing employer access to social media account(s) used for business purposes.

While many of these laws prohibit employers from asking their current or perspective employees for access to their social media accounts and profiles, employers are allowed to promote workplace laws and procedures for how office equipment and Internet can be accessed for personal use. Employers also maintain the right to investigate instances where employee misconduct is causing reasonable concern.

If you’re allowing your employees to use social media for business, you’re already in the ring. So make sure you don’t get sucker punched! Update your social media policy regularly to ensure it informs and protects you and your employees based on the current legislation. Stay up-to-date on your state’s laws as well as the latest regulations put forth by your industry’s regulatory bodies.

What do you think? Should regulators throw in the towel and amend compliance laws? Or should state legislators add in provisions to help the financial industry regulate employees using social for business? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or chat with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus.

Social media has a love-hate relationship with risk. You’re encouraged and expected to take some risks by trying new content concepts, playing around with your posting schedule, and developing methods to elicit customer engagement. Being at the mercy of your customers, fans, and followers can be risky indeed – but it can also prove beneficial for your marketing, brand awareness, and customer service efforts.

But what about those other risks, such as those that involve human error? Mistakes happen – and they could land you in hot water with your employer, the media, the law, or industry regulatory bodies. Not to mention the potential risk to your reputation, risk with your employees using social media personally and professionally, and risks to your account security.

Standing quietly and safely on the sidelines is no longer an option. Social media continues to maintain a strong foothold in the business world, making it necessary to get your company online and into the social sphere.

So what can you do to mitigate these risks and ensure a secure social presence?

Risk: Employee Error
Imagine a rogue and regretful tweet has posted from your account and caught the attention of a very influential blogger. He notices it’s an error, and instead of politely notifying your social media manager, he shares the blunder with his entire network. Your team now has to stop everything and get on damage control. Representatives from marketing, PR, legal, and customer service are on the case – instead of dealing with their regular workload. Depending on your company rules or the level of offensiveness in this accidental tweet, you may have to let that employee go. If so, you’re now without a social media mana­­ger in the midst of a social PR crisis. Yikes.

How to Manage It:

• Create a detailed social media policy that specifically outlines what’s allowed and what’s not (and includes the repercussions that could result from breaking the rules).
• Conduct regular training sessions to keep your staff educated and up to speed on the latest rules, regulations, and procedures.
• If you are going to encourage your employees to use mobile devices to access social media for your company account, consider supplying a department device to lessen the chance of personal account confusion.
• Gremln’s enterprise offerings include the ability to supervise your team social media efforts. From monitoring the keywords and phrases you want to prohibit from posts to providing varying levels of access to each team member, you can implement safeguards to help protect your account.

Risk: Online Reputation
It’s likely that your company is being mentioned online even if you don’t have an active social media presence. Customers can say anything they want about your brand and your products/services. It’s pretty risky to let that go unmonitored! The financial industry regulatory bodies (FFIEC, SEC, and FINRA) have all strongly suggested banks get online to protect their good name and diminish the potential reputation damage done when customer comments, questions, and frustrations are left unanswered. Even if you aren’t in the financial industry, it’s a good rule of thumb to be aware of what’s being said about your business.

How to Manage It:

• Defend your brand when negative comments are expressed by finding out what the problem is and how you can amend the situation. Respond quickly, kindly, and concisely.
• Run searches of social networks and blog posts to see how your company or brand is being mentioned taking care to include common misspellings, acronyms, or nicknames your company may have.
• Think before you respond to every post that mentions your company name or issues a complaint. In some cases, spammers or trolls will be encroaching on your social media space and do not deserve your time. Consider this before you post: will participating in such a negative conversation make the situation better, or worse? You don’t want your brand to appear condescending, self-righteous, or petty – so if you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Risk: Fraudulent Accounts
What’s stopping anyone from “brandjacking” your company on social media? These accounts can be seen as satire, and are therefore in legal realm (unless particularly libelous) so it is entirely possible for someone to find a reason to create a moniker aligned with your brand, leaving with you with little to do in terms of shutting it down. Fraudulent accounts happen – and have been known to do brand damage. Someone created a Twitter account for @BPGlobalPR when BP was dealing with the oil spill in the gulf and tweeted insensitive comments. UK bank Tesco suffered from a pseudo Twitter account that targeted unknowing customers and attempted to steal personal account information. Several fake credit union accounts have been popping up recently, attempting to bamboozle unsuspecting followers into submitting financially sensitive information. Don’t let this happen to you!

How to Manage It:

• Claim your social accounts and handles to protect against fraudulent accounts being created in your name. Even if you haven’t figured out exactly how you want to use social media for your company, register for your brand name, common misspellings of your name, popular acronyms.
• Report instances of fraud to the social networks. Know the steps to take so if a fraudulent account is created in your name and is libelous in nature, you can get take immediate action.
• If you’re a large brand, research the steps you can take to “verify” your accounts with Twitter Verification and Google Plus. (Sadly, not every business has enough ‘cred’ for this, and not every social network provides this as an option.)
• Get your logo and any other company-affiliated collateral copyrighted and make it clear that you have such a copyright clearly visible on your social media profile pages, so you can take legal action against those who are using your material illegally.

Risk: Account Security
Worried your account might get hacked? It’s been happening quite a bit lately; Burger King, The Associated Press, The Guardian, E! Online, and The Onion are just a few extremely public accounts that have experienced a hack within the past few months. Know what you can to do to protect yourself against ever getting hacked, as well as how to immediately jump into action should your account be compromised.

How to Manage It:

• A memo sent by Twitter to The Guardian contained the following advice for protecting the organizations’ Twitter accounts: “Change your Twitter account passwords… never send passwords via email, even internally. Ensure that passwords are strong – at least 20 characters long. Use either randomly-generated passwords (like ‘LauH6maicaza1Neez3zi) or a random string of words (like ‘hewn clothes titles yachts refine’). It’s definitely worth taking a look at the various social networks’ suggested security measures (Twitter; Facebook; Google Plus)
• It may seem self-explanatory, but be sure to educate your staff and board members on Internet safety precautions. For example, don’t open emails from suspicious or unknown parties; if you do happen to open those emails, do not click on any suspicious or unknown links.
• Have protocol in place for a potential hack or suspected hack – change your passwords immediately, notify the social network to the situation, and alert your customers or social audience so they know not to trust unusual activity from your account.
• Know the steps for how to counter such a breach even if you’ve never been hacked and don’t “expect” it to happen. If the unthinkable happens and your account is compromised, you can take immediate action rather than having to do all the research while you’re under siege.

Risk: Blurring the Line of Personal and Professional
Your employees may use social media personally or professionally – if they’re well-known in their fields or list the company name in their online bio, there’s risk associated with letting them post as they please. While of course you don’t want an employee complaining about how much they hate their job to all their friends and followers, you also don’t want gabby (albeit well-intentioned) staffers sharing not-yet-released company projects or proprietary information.

How to Manage It:

• Spend some time with your human resources department to decide how you want to allow social media use and company affiliation with your employees. You want to make sure you don’t hinder employee rights, but also be careful to protect your brand and company. A social media policy, clear roles & responsibilities, and secure platforms (like Gremln!) for accessing your social media accounts can all help in managing the risk of employee social media use.
• Be overtly clear with your employees concerning confidential information so they are aware of content that should not be posted under any circumstances.
• Social media use and the workplace is a topic currently under debate. Many states in the US are currently working on legislation to address employee rights and business social media policies. Make sure you stay up-to-date with the latest state laws and regulations.

What it boils down to is this: the more effort you put in to your social media program on the front end – with trained, educated employees, proper safety precautions, and tools to help you stay compliant – the more you’ll protect your social media accounts, saving your company time and resources in the long run. Your front-end security measures will make your social media team run more smoothly and efficiently.

What are your safeguarding measures to protect your social media accounts from risky business?

Twitter #Music: Twitter officially launched Twitter #Music as a way for users to discover new music that’s trending as well as learn what your favorite artists and friends are listening to and tweeting about. Twitter #Music is available as a web version and as an iOS app. The music is pulled in from three sources: iTunes, Rdio, and Spotify.

LinkedIn Contacts: LinkedIn continues to improve its set of tools to help you stay better connected to your business connections. LinkedIn Contacts is the latest feature – it brings your address book, email, and calendar contacts together in one place. You’ll get alerts for job changes and birthdays, making it even easier for you to reach out to your professional connections.

Twitter Advertising: Twitter advertising is now open for all businesses in the United States, from personal brands to major corporations. Twitter advertising will not only allow companies small and large to further leverage their social media marketing to targeted groups, it also allows for an additional revenue stream for Twitter itself.

Pinterest Features: Pinterest continues to fine-tune its feature set based on user recommendations and suggestions. A few of the previously-removed features, such as “See It Now” and “Via” have returned, while the ability to tag other users in comments (using the @ symbol before tying a name) has been added. You can use the new “Find Friends” feature to see which of your Facebook and Twitter contacts are on Pinterest, and take advantage of the new “Suggested Search” feature, which provides suggested keywords.

Facebook Business Pages Mobile Updates: A new layout for Facebook mobile means users will experience a cleaner, more streamlined appearance with the “more relevant” information up front, such as location and photos. You can also access popular interactive features easily, such as “Call”, “Like”, and “Share” at the top of the page. Facebook page owners can pin important posts, allowing them to be at the forefront of the mobile view.

Instagram Photo Tagging: Instagram announced that users will soon be able to tag people and brands in their Instagram photos. This feature will roll out to the public on May 16. Users will be notified when they’ve been tagged in a photo, and that photo will appear in a new “Photos of You” section of your profile. Worried about potential photos being associated with you without your permission? Fret not – you can adjust your privacy settings to require your approval before the photo tag is accepted.

Which of these updates are you most interested in trying? Have you used any of them yet? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Your Audience Wants to Hear From You!

A CEO active on social media promotes:

Trust: According to a study by Mass Relevance, 59% of people are more likely to trust a brand that integrates social media. That same study showed that 75% of people talk about brands on social media, and 91% of those 18-34 take to social networks to discuss brands. Imagine how much that trust and customer-interaction will improve when your followers learn that your CEO is taking time out of her extremely busy schedule to engage with them, listen to them, and learn from them!

Intimacy: When you, as the CEO, interact with your customers directly via social media, you create a bond with them. You’re showing your customers you have made time for them, you care about what they have to say, and you are actively listening to their comments. This, in turn, creates a positive correlation between your customer and your brand.

Brand Awareness: When you’re the head honcho, you are your brand. You eat, breath, and sleep for your company. People see your name and think the brand, so what you say online will ultimately reflect on your company. As a recognizable name, the more you say about your company online, the more it will spread brand awareness.

Marketing: Work hand in hand with your marketing department to increase link sharing and exposure for your various marketing campaigns through social media. Adding a personal handle to the social media marketing efforts of your company will spread your reach even further.

TeamLeadership: If your company has a social media policy, having the people at the top endorse it (and lead by example!) will prove they take social media seriously, and could help invigorate staff to do the same – inviting internal brand ambassadors to take to the social channels to spread the good word about your company.   

So, What’s Keeping You From Getting Social?  

Time: CEOs are busy people. There’s no arguing that. And social media sometimes has a reputation for being a time-vacuum. But if you have an organized way of going about your social media presence, you’ll find that it is not that time consuming. Here are a few of our tips for keeping your time on social media short and sweet:

• Organize those you are following into lists, so you can search for re-tweetable comments, articles, and information with a purpose.
• Set up advanced searches to see how your brand is being mentioned so you can quickly scroll through the comments and decide which ones you’d like to respond to.

Advanced Twitter and blog searches are easy to set up in your Gremln dashboard, so you can monitor brand mentions and respond as you see fit.

• Integrate news sources that line up with your industry and that you trust with your feed to share timely and appropriate articles with your followers.

You can add multiple feeds using Gremln, schedule how often you’d like to share stories, and even weed out stories with keywords you want to avoid (such as those mentioning your competitors). 

Keep track of news feeds you follow right in your Gremln dashboard to stay up to date with to-the-minute news (and save even more time).

• Have a plan. Know what you want to use social media for – do you want to engage with your customers, share industry knowledge, recruit potential team members, or share behind-the-scenes moments from the workweek? Know how you want to use social media, and you won’t waste any time thinking about what kind of post you want to share any given day.

Non-Compliance: You’ve heard the horror stories of posting from the “wrong” account and publicly embarrassing yourself and your brand. You know there are myriad rules and regulations from your industry about what someone at your level can and cannot share willy-nilly with the public. You’re afraid of making a mistake. We get that. Don’t worry – you can use social media to your benefit without creating a public relations nightmare. All it takes is some pre-planning and self-regulation, and you will have social media compliance handled.

• Get your marketing team involved. Find out what they’re doing and not doing for the brand, and get in line with how you want to connect with the company’s overall social presence.
• Filter yourself. If you’re particularly worried about tweeting inappropriately, make a list of words you don’t want to ever say, and create a filter for yourself.

If you want to bring filtration to your (and your company’s) social presence, check out Gremln’s compliance-friendly enterprise toolkit.

Lack of Knowledge/Interest: You may think you’re not interested in social media. You’re a fan of literal person-to-person communication. You want the value of a handshake, eye contact, and good, old-fashioned human connecting.

• Keep time in your schedule for in-person coffee dates, lunch meetings, and networking events. But don’t be afraid to Tweet about your great meeting (if the topic is appropriate to be made public!) and how inspired it left you.
• When it comes to your business, you really can’t avoid the numbers – and the numbers show social media is where your customers are. The younger your consumer base, the more important it is that you be active on social media.

Examples in the Field:

Marissa Mayer: She’s the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, AND she has a newborn baby. She still finds time to tweet – sharing her own musings and observations, as well as company info, new hires, and industry news.

Richard Branson: Founder and Chairman of Virgin Group, Branson is very active with accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, to name a few. He’s actually spoken to the importance of CEOs on social, saying that they “have the opportunity to set the bar” when it comes to social media use. His Twitter feed shares important moments and news for Virgin Group and all its entities.

Reed Hastings: CEO of Netflix; Hastings was investigated by the SEC for his July 2012 Facebook post announcing that Netflix viewers had enjoyed over 1 billion hours of content, as it was seen as a potential violation of Reg FD (Regulation Fair Disclosure). He was cleared of any wrongdoing in April of 2013, which led the way for more lenient rulings on how regulated information can be disseminated. (learn more about this here!) 

Hastings shares company news, interesting stories, and tidbits about his life and travels on his Facebook page. Netflix officially announced to investors in mid April that the company (and CEO’s) social channels would be potential outlets for future disclosures.

Is your company’s CEO on social media? Do you think he or she should be? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Gremln wants you to be a social superhero. Having a social media account with any number of followers wields a certain amount of power and we want you to use it for good, not bad!

We’re sharing our tips and best practices for social posting in the infographic below – which will hopefully lead you to think twice about berating your barista, and opt to post positively instead.

Amazingly, 70% of customer questions on Twitter are being ignored, as reported by Socially Devoted. And according to Social Mouths, 86% will stop doing business with your company because of bad service experiences, and 51% will only give you one chance to earn back their trust. Oh, and 50% of social media users in the US expect a reply to their complaint within an hour, 24 hours a day — so you must be kind, competent, and quick in your social care!

All these statistics show that customer service is an incredibly important part of social media. You need to be where your customers are, and be ready to interact with them. It’s another great reason to have a social media policy in place where you cover the rules for handling situations, what is and is not okay, and the workflow processes your company will use to respond to your customers.

It’s also important to run regular searches of social networks and blogs to find out how and where your brand is being mentioned (be sure to check for product names, applicable keywords, and common misspellings!) so you can jump in on the conversation and maintain your brand reputation.

   Gremln’s advanced search tools allow you to keep a close eye on brand mentions so you can get in on the conversation to help, clear up confusion, answer questions, and build overall brand awareness.

Lucky for you, we’ve got some tips for how you can start (or improve!) your brand’s social care.

• Consider using a dedicated Twitter handle to interact with customers asking questions, complimenting the brand, or complaining about a problem or issue they are having. 30% of companies in the Interbrand 100 (which ranks businesses based on financial status) use them to separate their customer service dealings from their primary account. This allows you to separate the amount of tweets coming from your account and keep general attention away from customer problems or complaints out of your main feed.

With Gremln, you can create dedicated panels for each of your social accounts, making it easy for you to keep track of customer conversations across all your channels.

• Some problems are too complex to cover 140 characters at a time. If a customer is hoping to get a specific situation regarding personal information (account information, order numbers, etc.), you can only do so much before you need to start collecting their personal information. In these cases, let the customer know you’ll need to continue the conversation offline and let them know how to get in touch with you.

• In situations where a customer is particularly verbose in their displeasure, you might also want to go offline. If you’ll be offering them a special discount that you don’t want all your followers to know about, or you want to decrease the amount of negativity coming from their end and contain it in a personal phone conversation, ask if you can take the conversation offline to better assist their needs. Continue to be kind and professional, no matter how disrespectful the customer may be, and encourage the customer to reach you by another method.

• If a customer is asking a question or voicing a complaint, respond. Unless the customer is using blatantly offensive language, respond in a calm and understanding manner as quickly as possible. Social media has conditioned customers to get feedback almost immediately. Responding kindly, quickly, and appropriately will diminish the risk that the angry customer will take to multiple outlets to air his or her grievances. Angry customers who receive prompt, helpful attention often turn in to some of your biggest brand ambassadors!

• Trolls (not the bridge-guarding kind… the negative-attention-Internet-lurking kind) and blatant foul language are common signals that someone is just looking for trouble and not for help or honest frustration with your brand. You don’t need to respond to everyone.

• Remember that anything you say online is being recorded… whether by the archiving system your company uses to keep compliant, or potentially by someone else. If you wouldn’t say it with your boss looking directly over your shoulder, don’t post it.

Does your brand use social media for customer service? What are your best pieces of advice? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that companies would now be allowed to post news on social media profiles, provided investors were made aware of which accounts would post such notices. This came as a result of the investigation into Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, after he posted favorable company news as a status update to his Facebook page December 2012.

The SEC decided not to press charges against Hastings, though they do agree he was in the wrong to post news of Netflix success that had not been made public in any other forum to investors prior to his post. (Netflix stock jumped from $70.45 at the time of the post to $81.72 at the close of the next business day.)

Before you encourage your CEO to start posting your company’s financial reports or latest product releases to your social media channels, make sure you both fully understand all the rules and regulations surrounding social media. All posts – whether from the company’s official social media accounts, or those belonging to C-level employees – must still meet with Regulation Fair Disclosure:

“Whenever an issuer, or any person acting on its behalf, discloses any material nonpublic information regarding that issuer or its securities to [certain enumerated persons], the issuer shall make public disclosure of that information… simultaneously, in the case of an intentional disclosure; and promptly, in the case of a non-intentional disclosure.”

Why? “One set of shareholders should not be able to get a jump on other shareholders just because the company is selectively disclosing important information,” acting SEC enforcement chief George Canellos explained in the report press release.

The release went on to say that “although every case must be evaluated on its own facts, disclosure of material, nonpublic information on the personal social media site of an individual corporate officer – without advance notice to investors that the site may be used for this purpose – is unlikely to qualify as an acceptable method of disclosure under the securities laws.”

After all, even if a board member or investor follows your company on Facebook or Twitter, you cannot guarantee that he or she is going to see every post that goes live. Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm can severely impact the reach of each of your posts. Companies will likely still use traditional methods for sharing updates with investors, and use social media as a means of reiterating news updates.

To learn more about keeping compliant within the financial services world, check out our post on the FFIEC’s social media guidance and our top tips.

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