On April 26, 2012, FIR co-host Neville Hobson gave a keynote presentation at this year’s annual conference of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) in Dublin. The overall conference theme was Reputation Management in the Age of Digital.

Could we genuinely have foreseen the extent to which technological innovations would have disrupted our way of working? asked the PRII. How social and digital media, in particular, would have given rise to consumer power and citizen journalism? Or that we would face unprecedented competition from a new wave of competitors?

These are powerful themes that were touched in every presentation and discussion. The PRII video-recorded every conference session (if you’re a PRII member, you can view the videos in the member area on the PRII website). They’ve kindly agreed to the audio of Neville’s presentation - called Reputation Management at Internet Speed - being made available to you in this FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast. You’ll get the most from it if you view the presentation deck as you listen, embedded below (or, if you don’t see it, view it at Slideshare).

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Watching television, once the epitome of passive media consumption, has become an interactive activity. Instead of sinking deeper and deeper into the sofa, people are sitting forward, smartphone or tablet in hand, finding engaging content related to what they’re watching and conversing with other fans of the same show.

This week and next, the producers of the ABC series Revenge are planning a to entice people to watch the last to episodes of the season when they are aired, rather than catching it later on DVR or online, by offering a stream of activities that will be made available through the Into Now app. They’re hoping to buck the trend of on-demand viewing using the viewer’s device of choice.

While watching in real time, viewers using the IntoNow app will be able to vie for a week-long trip to the Hamptons, test their series knowledge with trivia quizzes, and access special content produced for the app, among other things. Of course, most of the social viewing apps make it easy to consume content and interact with other fans whenever you watch the show, when it’s first broadcast or later.

Another social viewing app, Miso, encourages user-generated content, allowing fans to create material other fans might enjoy while watching a show. A Fast to Create article quotes Miso founder and CEO Somrat Niyogi’s vision is of a new market of second-screen producers, “people that are creating content specifically for the second screen. Imagine a history expert that nows more about the 1960s than anybody at (Mad Men), that can say, ‘This is accurate, this is not accurate, that product never existed.’ There are people who will follow history experts across TV, who’ll say, ‘I have to watch this show, with this person.’” Miso calls this viewer-created content—for which it has built its own publishing platform—Side Shows.

Social viewing on the rise

Social activity during primetime has jumped 193% in the last year, according to Wiredset and Trendrr CEO Mark Ghuneim, and while that’s not all attributable to people using apps designed to provide a second-screen experience—viewers can be doing anything from identifying an actor on Internet Movie Database to checking the latest pictures on Instagram—the number of users of such apps is experiencing equally dramatic growth. Even new players in the field are gaining traction. Viggle was introduced only three months ago but has been downloaded 800,000 times. Users spend an average of 93 minutes each time they use Viggle, checking into five different TV shows.

It’s a big enough trend that AdAge reports on the week’s top checked-in shows on the leading social TV app GetGlue. No less a player than Facebook is giving the trend a serious look: Speaking at AdAge’s Social Engagement/Social TV conference, the social network’s head of entertainment and media said Facebook is ready to help brands and networks extend the buzz around television events.

As for the worry that the second screen will distract viewers from what’s on the tube, a recent Nielsen report reinforces earlier research that the practice augments the viewing experience rather than pulling viewers away.

Trend watchers don’t expect the surge of new second-screen tools to last. “Many of these companies will disappear over the next year as leades emerge in the space and capital dries up for these guys,” TVplus co-founder Randy Shiozaki told a Mashable Connect audience. “The innovative ones will get acquired.”

From the living room to the meeting hall

Perhaps, but so far, the second-screen concept has been applied only to television. Marketers and communicators should be drooling over the potential for other kinds of activities as more and more people develop the second-screen habit.

While apps developed to provide in-depth information for conference-goers are plentiful (offering agendas, maps, speaker bios and the like), we have yet to see an app that can host content for a specific event. From an external communications standpoint, consider an annual general meeting, which has been as passive for attendees as watching an episode of NCIS. An event app, however, could provide access to any set of numbers a shareholder might want to call up, the text of any matters being brought to a vote, and a wealth of other material. Sitting in the audience, any shareholder can find any company information that answers a question that might arise as the company’s leaders drone on through their usual AGM agenda, and even network with others in the audience.

Internally, there’s the town hall meeting, where employees gather to listen to leaders. An app that provides access to related presentations, speaker bios, information about the products and services under discussion, and other content would not only keep employees awake during what are often dreadful meetings can help make the sessions relevant and interesting. The app could also include polls related to the current subject being discussed from the stage.

The concept extends to virtually any event where people are seated, as long as they have a smartphone or tablet with them.

Just as Miso, GetGlue, IntoNow and Viggle accommodate any TV show, an app for business-related second-screen content could provide a platform for any number of companies’ meetings (for a fee, of course), allowing the organization to populate its “show” with any content it wants.

It would be easiest for the developers of the existing TV apps to modify them and release them under a new name for corporate use. It’ll be interesting to see who is first adapting the second-screen concept to business. That somebody will is inevitable as it becomes clearer that the second screen is the best way to get people engaged in what was once a passive experience.

Content summary: FIR interview with Grantoo co-founder and CEO Dimitri Sillam is up. The Speakers & Speeches file from Neville’s talk in Dublin is coming this week. Neville recounts the talk he and Philip Sheldrake gave at the Wikimedia UK Annual General Meeting over the weekend. A discount code is available for FIR listeners interested in attending Like Minds Exeter 2012.  News That Fits: brand humanization is not a social media fad; Ragan Communications promo; the rise of social influence marketing with Klout and PeerIndex; listener comments discussion; CustomScoop’s Media Monitoring Minute; Dan York’s report addresses audio apps for the iPad and iPhone, DRM, and the 2,000-plus applications received for new gTLDs; social TV on the “second screen” evolves into content in its own right; TemboSocial promo; half of UK Internet users say online adds are worth it in exchange for free content; music from The Scarred; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 14, 2012: A 74-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

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So, until Monday May 21…

The best social media training effort is one that has been tailored to your organization’s requirements. Off-the-shelf training programs may cover the basics, but the basics will get you only so far. The payoff can be huge if you invest the time and effort to get the information you need to make sure your training addresses the unique circumstances of your company—and every company has unique circumstances!

That’s why research is the most important phase of the training development process.

What you need to know

Everything from the content of your training to the means by which you deliver it will be determined by the information you gather from various parts of your organization. While the nature of your business and the composition of your employee population may lead you to come up with additional questions, here’s a rundown of what you want to know:

Employee readiness

Just how steeped in social media are your employees? It’s dangerous to make assumptions. You may believe pretty much everybody in the company is on Facebook; research may prove different. Knowing what parts of the population are and aren’t using social media, and which tools they’re using, can help you determine how deep you need to go into fundamentals.

Knowing which levels of the population are and aren’t using social channels can also help with your planning. For instance, if front-line employees are engaged by managers and supervisors aren’t, you’ll know that some training targeting middle levels of the company may be appropriate.

It’s also important to know how employees are using these tools. For example, are they more likely to use social media from a mobile device than a computer?

There’s more to assessing readiness than determining employees’ social media competency, however. There’s also the matter of comfort. For instance, while they may be adept at using Facebook, they may be less comfortable sharing company information with their communities. That may be because they want to keep their personal and work lives separate, or it may be that they’re not all that engaged at work.

You may be inclined to think that your company’s employees are a mirror of the general population, but more often than not, that turns out to be a dangerous miscalculation. Company cultures can have a strong influence on behaviors and every company’s population is different to a greater or lesser degree.

Company policy

Embarking on a social media training journey starts with having a policy in place. Assuming it is, you need to review it to make sure it doesn’t serve as an inhibitor all by itself. You can make that determination just by reading it: If it is filled with a lot of don’t statements and warnings of the consequences of misbehavior, employees could read it and determine that it’s just not worth the trouble to engage, even if the company is asking them to. Asking employees about the policy can confirm that notion.

Asking employees can also determine that the policy may exist but employees are unaware of it. At one company where I helped develop a training program, only 35% of employees were aware that a policy existed. Where most employees are aware of the policy, you can devote most of the training to other topics and provide a basic overview of the policy. With 65% of the population unaware, however, the training clearly will represent the first time most mployees have been introduced to it, meaning that you’ll need to balance the training between policy and other topics.

Opportunites for engagement

Assuming your training isn’t strictly a policy review, you should devote a fair amount of the program to how employees can engage on behalf of the company and what the rules of the road are for that kind of interaction.

At the above-referenced company, it was top leadership’s commitment to its corporate social responsibility (CSR) platform that drove the training in the first place; leaders were enthusiastic about the potential of employees authentically discussing and answering questions about the company’s commitment to sustainability, talent diversity and other CSR categories.

Our research revealed that most employees—more than 60%—had already been asked questions in their social neetworks about their employer. Some dealt with CSR, some with references to the company in the mainstream media and a lot with employment opportunities and queries about what it’s like to work there.

These inquiries directed at employees via Facebook and other channels represent a singular opportunity for employees to respond to questions aleady posed that reflect the company’s values and messages. Yet the same research reflected a reluctance to respond.

You may not be fortunate enough to have a C-Suite already exicted about employees participating in social media on the company’s behalf, but there may be business initiatives or challenges where employee engagement could have a significant positive impact (assuming, of course, that employees are trained and have access to resources that help them answer accurately).

Obstacles

Research will also surface barriers to implementing training and the online employee participation the training is designed to promote.

You could, for instance, find out that front-line employees are enthusiastic about sharing company information within their communities but that their managers are opposed to it. You can also find out why they’re opposed. For example, is it that supervisors don’t want employees wasting work time on social networks that they believe have nothing to do with work, or it is a more specific issue?

Research can also help you determine if those managers objecting to social media are open to learning or are digging in their heels.

Research will also identify whether employees are uncomfortable—or even downright afraid—to mention work in their networks. If that’s the case, you’ll now now why and can address those issues in the training. In the case of the client previously mentioned, front-line employees uniformly felt more comfortable sharing links to official resources that contained authoritative answers than they were in crafting answers in their own words. The problem was, they didn’t know where to find those pages, given the company’s multitude of websites. As a result, the company worked with a taxonomist to develop a one-page listing of links to the various categories of information employees were most likely to need when responding to a query from the community. The training introduced them to the resource.

In other companies, research has determined that employees were more likely to share tweets and status updates prepared by the company (and disclosing the source) than in creating original comemntary.

Leadership/management buy-in. (Unofficial spokespesons) Fear and discomfort (concern over what people might say about comments). Lack of knowledge (e.g., where to find correct information). Lack of resources (e.g., no material available for sharing).

Between the interviews and focus groups, and the identification of obstacles, you should also be able to figure out whether a voluntary or mandatory training program is most appropriate. For example, in a highly engaged workplace, a voluntary program is probably adequate since most employees would be inclined to take it. If your company has employees who are mostly actively disengaged, you’d be better off with a mandatory program, since few employees would be inclined to go out of their way to make that discretionary effort on behalf of their employer.

The training environment

A lot of organizations are inclined to make assumptions about the nature of the training they will deliver. For example, you may think it’s a no-brainer to put the training online. But what if a significant portion of your population works in a factory and is unionized with a contract stipulation that they are not required to engage in any work activities outside of contracted hours? And what if plant managers oppose giving employees an hour away from the line to participate in training?

Even if your employees can access online training modules, do you have a learning management system (LMS) that will accommodate training? You’ll need one if, for example, your training or HR department insist that your training include a quiz, recording the results to determine who has completed the training and how well they absorbed the material. What’s more, some LMSs handle multimedia better than others.

If your training is face-to-face, is it classroom style or, as it is at Dell, more of an open forum?

How to get the answers you need

To assemble all the information you need to develop your training program, consider the following four distinct activities:

• Review existing data—Your company may have already conducted some research, ranging from employee engagement surveys to technology audits. Get your hands on them and review them. Read the policy—and all related policies—and ask around for any other resources that can help you better understand the environment.
  
• Interviews—The more interviews you can do, the better. Your goal is to learn everything you can about the policy, the reservations that key players might have that could torpedo your effort, the training environment, perceptions and opportunities. At a minimum, talk to the head of training, Human Resources, legal, IT, customer service, compliance and PR/communications. Ideally, you’ll also be able to talk to key C-suite members, the head of sales and marketing leadership.
  Focus groups—Focus groups have gotten a bad rap lately, but as an internal communications research tool, they remain invaluable. Asking straight-ahead questions about employee use of social media, how they use it related to their jobs and what their concerns are will raise categories of feedback you can test in a survey.
  
• Survey—You never know until you ask. Surveying a representative sample of employees will produce statistics you can use not only to guide the development of your training effort, but to convince leadership that the approach is appropriate. After all, leadership loves numbers.

Post-training research

One other benefit of reserach is the establishment of baseline metrics for determining just how effective your training was.

I was heavily involved in the research leading up to the development of a training program for PepsiCo (as well as developing the training itself). That effort will be honored at the IABC World Conference next month with two international Gold Quill awards. Among the results PepsiCo was able to demonstrate:

• Ninety-eight percent of those who took the training said they understood the social media policy (compared to 34.5% who reported they understood it before taking the course). A majority added that the training gave them the permission to participateb based on their new appreciation for their obligation to be transparent, ethical and honest in their online dealings when talking about work.
  
• By incorporating a feedback mechanism into the training, PepsiCo was able to identify 2,000 employees who wanted to learn more and/or get more involved. The training thus served as a recruiting channel for the company’s evolving ambassador program. Those who sought only additional information said they felt empowered with their new knowledge to supplement discussions with consumers, friends and family with the information the company made accessible to them.
  
• Eighty-four percent of those who completed the trainingsaid they would be willing to share PepsiCo information with their social communities at least monthly. This group of employees wanted additional information on products, social media and nutrition, suggesting they would be better equipped with this information to engage to the company’s benefit with their social networks.

Resistance is not futile

You may feel some pressure to opt for an off-the-shelf training solution based solely on cost. You should be able to resist based on a business case for equipping your employees to engage on behalf of your company—with the positive results employee engagement can accure—rather than simply provide a generic introduction to social media.

Have you conducted research about employees and social media at your organization? What did you learn that surprised you or led you to adjust your training in a way you didn’t expect?

Social Media Training Series

• Part 1: Introducing a series on social media training
• Part 2: Getting buy-in for social media training

Aside from the link-bait headline, it was the last item that led to my dismay. Under the label, “Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations Agencies That Have Hung a Social Media Shingle,” author Tim Judd writes…

It doesn’t mean they understand content that engages, promotes, or converts prospects to customers. “There are very few experts in social media,” (Killer Facebook Ads author Marty) Weintraub said. “It takes a lot of time and work to develop such expertise, especially now that social communities are turning off the ability to market to anyone other than friends.”

In its blurb linking to the article, the Smart Brief on Social Media added, “Self-described social media “experts” often don’t know what they’re talking about, so it’s important to keep a close eye on whoever is running your social strategy.”

Why the dismay? If you have to be told this about any contractor, you have no business being in business.

Once you have established a relationship and built a bond of trust, of course, you can ease off your oversight. But when a relationship is new, it doesn’t matter if you’ve hired a social media expert, an accountant, a graphic designer or an engineer. It doesn’t matter how sparkling the references were, how impressive the resume was or how blown away you were by their presentation or proposal. You can’t rely entirely on the due diligence you performed, allowing the contractor to work in a vacuum.

It’s your brand and yours and your organization’s reputation that are at stake. Monitoring the activities of any agency, freelancer or contractor is a fundamental obligation for anybody working in the world of business. (Recognizing this from my own days managing communications departments and consulting practices, I always build regular project reviews into the timeline of any proposal. If the people you’re hiring haven’t done that, insist that they do.)

This issue has bugged me ever since the social media consultant bashing began several years ago. Are those tasked with social media really so lacking in basic business skills that they can’t figure this out? If you can’t evaluate a contractor’s capabilities before hiring him, how in the world did you get hired into a position that requires you to make such decisions in the first place? As it is in the consumer world, caveat emptor: buyer beware.

Student loan debt in the U.S. has reached $1 trillion. Charitable organizations are suffering, but young cash-strapped students haven’t developed a giving habit. Organizations invest considerable sums in corporate social responsibility initiatives for which they get little recognition. Companies want to grow their levels of engagement with important young-adult audiences but struggle for relevance. Wouldn’t it be awesome if all of these issues could be addressed with a casual social game?

In fact, they have. In this FIR Interview, FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with Dimitri Sillam, co-founder and CEO of Grantoo, which blends all of the issues listed above in a single game-playing environment. Playing in tournaments, students can win money for tuition while getting into the habit of donating to charities that hold meaning for them. Meanwhile, organizations can channel their philanthropic dollars into a cause that engages the organization with an important demographic while raising their CSR profile.

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About our Conversation Partner

Dimitri Sillam is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur. He founded OrientalPeople.com, the first dating site focused on the Middle East/ North Africa region (MENA). After selling the site to Moroc Telecom (Morocco), he founded LAZEO, a French beauty/health care franchise. Now, Dimitri is co-founder and CEO of Grantoo, where his experience in social media and consumer marketing will “help students play their tuition bills.” Dimitri is 26, French with Tunisian and Russian roots. He holds a BA in Economics from America’s Brandeis University and completed a program on Negotiation and Strategy from Harvard Law School.

Connect with Dimitri via LinkedIn.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 253 780 9125 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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I follow so many blogs from PR, marketing and advertising agencies that I was taken aback when the headline Agencies Ditch Blogs cross my feeds. The Digiday post by staff writer Jack Marshall suggests that agencies “are increasingly turning their backs on blogs in favor of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and newer kids on the block like Instagram and Facebook.”

A lot of agencies do maintain blogs, Marshall observes, but largely so they can shine a spotlight on themselves when they win awards, make a noteworthy hire or issue a press release. But because blogs don’t contribute to reputation or brand, some agencies are dumping them. The post quotes Sam Weston, communications director at Huge, a digital agency, arguing that “Nobody reads agency blogs.” The agency has back-burnered its own blog while they try to figure out what to do with it.

Blogs, SEO and thought leadership

The assertion that nobody reads agency blogs came as a surprise to Niall Cook, one of the architects of Hill & Knowlton‘s blogging initiative. Cook left H&K last year to start his own consultancy—Sociagility—but says that by the time he left, the agency’s blogs “were generating more traffic and higher search engine rankings than the corporate website.” The website, he says, cost considerly more than the few thousand dollars invested in getting the blogs up and running.

“Even today, there are way more links to blogs.hillandknowlton.com than to http://www.hillandknowlton.com or www.hkstrategies.com,” Cook says. His new company’s blog covers topics like why there will never be a standardized social media ROI metric. There isn’t a new-hire or we-won-an-award post to be seen.

In fact, those self-promoting blogs Marshall seems to think characterize agency efforts don’t represent the best agency blogging. Agency blogs that produce the kinds of results H&K has achieved spotlight thought leadership, not awards and new-hires. The ain’t-we-great style of blog—whether from an agency or a company—never appealed to anybody, a fact reinforced by Forrester research that dates back 3-1/2 years.

When I asked study author Josh Bernoff about the Digiday article, he asked, “Did (agency blogs) have anything to say in the first place? Blogs are for thought leaders.” Which is exactly how Forrester approaches blogging. “Only Forrester analysts blog,” he points out, “and they are all, by definition, trying to be thought leaders.”

Good content isn’t easy

H&K has taken the same approach from the start, but “it took 3-4 years to create a sustainable community of conversation and content that demonstrated experience far better than a talking heads video,” according to Cook.

David Jones agrees. Jones, vice president of Social Strategy ad advertising agency Proximity Canada, points out that there are no shortcuts. “Building your ecosystem and filling it with content is hard work. You get out what you put in.”

While engagement with audiences on social channels like Facebook or Twitter and maintaining a blog aren’t mutually exclusive activities, you have to wonder about those who can’t figure out blogging and abandon it for other channels. As Gini Dietrich, CEO of PR agency Arment Dietrich, put it, “You have to have content to post on Facebook and Twitter. Why would you choose to post content that doesn’t drive (traffic) to something you own?”

Dietrich has made the most out of blogging as the lead writer for Arment Dietrich widely-read SpinSucks blog. If SpinSucks has ever been used to announce an award, it was slipped in between torrents of thoughtful posts that produce high levels of engagement. For example, Gini posted an item two days ago on press releases that has generated some 70 comments. Not too long ago, Dietrich launched SpinSucks Pro, a fee-based version of the blog that not only generaes revenue but drives people to deeper levels of content, such as webinars, white papers and more.

Asking the right questions

Dietrich’s success with blogging aligns perfectly with Jones’ and Cook’s views that success requires focus and effort. The same is true at Edelman, the world’s largest PR agency. Edelman Digital VP Phil Gomes says, “In terms of thought leadership and lead-generation, EdelmanDigital.Com does a great job.” Edelman Digital’s website is a blog featuring posts by recognized thought leaders like CEO Richard Edelman, cross-posted from his Edelman Speak Up blog, and David Armano, whose contributions are cross-posted from his personal blog.

Edelman also gains visibility and reputation through its Fellows blogs, where nine employees from around the world share their experiences working and living in markets dramatically different from the ones in which they grew up. As with SpinSucks, the engagement level on Edelman’s blogs is high.

“(I’m) not sure the DigiDay piece is asking the right questions,” says Gomes.

Thornley Fallis CEO Joseph Thornley found irony in the fact that the Digiday article appeared just one day after his agency relaunched its website on the WordPress platform, which supports blogging integrated seamlessly into the other content the site offers.

Ultimately, agency blogs used for self-promotion have always been ill-advised and most likely should be ditched. Does that mean agencies should shy away from blogging? The number of influential agency blogs—from SHIFT Communications, Peppercom, Voce Communications, Twist Imagethe agencies noted above and scads of others—demonstrates how absurd the notion is.

It could well be that the strategic planning and hard are required for successful blogging is driving some agencies to what they perceive as the simpler worlds of Facebook and Twitter. Says Cook, “It’s just another demonstration of the fact that they really don’t understand what social engagement is.”

Because talentless hacks anxious to capitalize on a trend, working for organizations that want to employ only the fastest and easiest way to make a buck, will always greatly outnumber creative minds inspired to make the most out of a trend working for organizations willing to invest time and resources over the long haul in order to do things right.

So it goes with mobile.

As we approach the point where more Net access occurs over mobile devices than PCs and laptops, organizations are scurrying to deploy apps and optimize their websites. Thus, we’re seeing a crapload of worthless branded apps and websites that have been shrunk down to fit a 4, 7 or 10-inch screen.

Few are examining what the shift to mobile actually means so they can deliver services that accommodate how people actually use the Net on their phones and take advantage of the law of mobility, which states that the value of things increase when you can take them with you.

Not that there isn’t plenty of data to help organizations think through how the mobile web experience should differ. The Pew Interent and American Life Project just released new numbers yesterday that focus on the just-in-time manner in which people use their phones. The Project had already explored the spur-of-the-moment donation to a charity via a phone, as well as in-store uses. (

Content summary: FIR Book Review of "#FAIL" is up; FIR Facebook group is growing; video interviews with Mark Ragan in Amsterdam posted, with Neville about podcasting, with Shel about gamification; Neville guest lecturer at David Phillips’ PR class at University of Gloucester; News That Fits: dealing with corporate reputation crises - Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, Scott Thompson and Yahoo, Ben Baldanza and Spirit Airlines; Dan York reports on ebook DRM, and more; Ragan promo; why great design is the future of content marketing; listener comments; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on shadow QR codes in South Korea, Fanta uses gaming to engage Chinese youth, and mainstream media goes black in Malaysia; how O2 got a 117% engagement rate in a paid-for Twitter campaign; TemboSocial promo; people who get customer service through social channels are the most influential; music from White Denim; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (29.8Mb, 74:29)
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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; and TemboSocial (formerly Pollstream): helping you transform your communications goals into exciting strategies that will enable you to engage, educate and inform your customers and employees online, pollstream.com/fir/.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 7, 2012: A 75-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

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So, until Monday May 14…

FIR co-host Neville Hobson reviews the Kindle e-book edition of #FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups and How to Avoid Being the Next One, by Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans.

This book lays bare not only the biggest corporate mistakes and miscalculations of the social media age, but also points out where the organizational vulnerability is that caused each of the 50 screw-ups, and how you can identify this very thing within your own organization.

From the book description:

"All corporate screw-ups are social. Don’t believe us? Pop onto Twitter and type in the word ‘#Fail’ or search the word ‘boycott’ on Facebook. Up pops the names of many of the world’s largest brands, and the latest consumer grievances and organized pressure campaigns against them.

"#FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups and How to Avoid Being the Next One chronicles another kind of digital pioneer, those brands that have made iconic, early stumbles in social media that have resulted in consequences well beyond a loss of a few ‘friends’ or ‘followers.’ From a lock-picking geek’s take-down of Kryptonite in 2004 to Carnival Corp’s tin-eared response to the Costa Concordia tragedy in January, 2012, the blunders chronicled here have cost companies millions, bruised well-honed corporate reputations and sunk careers.

"There are plenty of mistakes to learn from here - or at least chuckle at in disbelief."

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"#FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups and How to Avoid Being the Next One by Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans.

Publisher: SMI Press
E-book and paperback (122 pages)
Published: February 2012 (UK), March 2012 (USA)
E-book Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1471615235
Paperback ISBN-10: 1471615235
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1471615238

• Purchase the book online at Amazon US (Kindle | paperback), Amazon UK (Kindle | paperback) or Amazon Deutschland (Kindle | paperback); see book website for other purchase locations.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Review is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Cross-posted from the For Immediate Release blog.