One troubling aspect of ‘citizen journalists’ and the relationship unknown and untested bloggers have with respected online news journals is that sometimes these bloggers submit posts which have a detrimental effect on business. This situation has been seen over and over again. Last month for instance, a wrongly dated post about United Airlines caused stock prices to plummet 75%. Most recently in yet another false post about Steve Jobs’ health, Apple stock plummeted upon news on iReport.com of Steve Jobs being rushed to the hospital after a heart attack. Apple officials quickly rejected the post as untrue, and the story has since been pulled from iReport.com, where it originated.

If the false post wasn’t enough of a pain for CNN (the owner of iReport), the SEC is now investigating the false claims about Jobs. Registration on iReport.com only requires a working email address, but CNN is handing over what information they have about the author of the Steve Jobs post.

Twitter was abuzz with news of Steve Job’s heart attack, and many considered the value of their Apple stock declining in tweets to this popular micro-blogging service. Anecdotally, I noted very few tweets relating to the story being revealed as bogus once Apple rejected the claim. Much work is going in to correct the rumor and speculation, but for Apple, the damage is ongoing. 

Who is ultimately responsible for ‘citizen journalists’? If we, as bloggers can post to mainstream media news sites, what obvious system is in place to ensure the accuracy of each post? Offline when I take my old clothes to a consignment shop for donation, each item goes through a simple inspection to make sure they’re up to the stores quality standard. Certainly online, when ‘citizen journalists’ have the ability to post news stories which can erase millions of dollars in market value, why isn’t there at least the most rudimentary quality standard in place? The short answer is speed. News networks are under increasing pressure to be the first to release an important news story, so they prefer to deal with possible consequences later rather than miss the opportunity to be the first. I submit that a simple quality check should be in place for all mainstream news sites, which requires first and last name, working email address and no submissions from a blocked IP address. Surely, there are simple workarounds to these rudimentary submission standards, but also as sure they will likely eliminate some of the market instability caused by the rumor mill.

What other submission standards should online news journals implement to help ensure the accuracy of stories submitted by ‘citizen journalists’? I’d like to hear your views.

Our little Salt Lake City Tweetup group is gaining some speed. We’ve planned a short-notice tweetup for October 2, 2008. Incidentally, this tweetup occurs on the same date as the VP debate, so we’ve adjusted our original location to allow those who want to watch the debates to do so at the Tweetup.

Here’s the Tweetup details - we’d love to have any Twitter friends, old or new:

Coffee Break
435 E 400 S
Salt Lake City, UT
7 PM -

I’ll be uploading photos of the Tweetup soon, and here’s a little advance notice - we’ve got a very special Tweetup planned for October 20. Please clear your calendar and join us.

See you at the Tweetup!

SLC Tweetup

Please join us for our third Salt Lake City Tweetup event Wednesday, September 10 at 7:00 pm. We will gather at the Salt Lake City Roasting Company again to enjoy some offline socializing and business networking. This is the monthly meeting of Salt Lake City-area Twitter users. Come meet up with your fellow Twitter addicts and don’t forget your mobile phone to Tweet the event.

More Details -

Tweetup at Salt Lake City Roasting Company

Address: 320 E. 400 S

How to Find Us: We’ll meet upstairs.

Agenda: Meet fellow Utah twitter users, share twitter experiences, have a great time.  This time we’ll have a special guest. @marismith  (Mari Smith) author of Facebook for Professionals will be joining us. Please come and help welcome her to Utah, and spend some time informally chatting about using Facebook for business.

If you have any trouble finding the Tweetup or any of the attendees, DM me on Twitter @ghennipher.

Twitter Palin Peak

Twitter has seen much media coverage lately, particularly during heavy usage periods like the Gustav and Hannah hurricanes and of course, during the nation’s nomination of it’s highest elected officials. Seems that even the most respectable and resistant users have finally come aboard and are actively tweeting.

A couple of days ago the Twitter blog posted an image (shown above) which shows the dramatic increase of tweets per second that occurred during Governor Palin’s speech. The news media is all abuzz over the seemingly exponential growth of Twitter users, but this rate of growth was designed into Twitter’s architecture.

Twitter is a platform engineered upon the “viral expansion loop” concept. This concept, when done right, virtually guarantees self-replication – because that’s really all a “viral expansion loop” is, a system that naturally doubles and triples and quadruples till its much bigger than anyone ever expected. Because these systems typically start small, the media tend to dismiss them as a a great idea that no one cares about. Also, very typically, the media have to go back and eat their words in 12 or 18 months when these platforms have replicated to the point that they can no longer be ignored. That’s certainly the case with Twitter.

Now that Twitter is being taken seriously in mainstream media because of the elegant way it helps users broadcast what’s going on in their world, the media’s surprise is certainly laughable. Necessarily Twitter will have peaks during times of nationwide interest, such as the RNC. But Twitter’s increased uptime has helped it to manage this predictable boost in tweets per second on its servers.

Twitter is built on a viral expansion platform – it was designed specifically to exploit viral loops. Why the surprise? Any ideas?

A recently sponsored nationwide online digital marketing and interactive advertising survey by Sapient revealed some insightful results from its respondents. This was no mere web poll, the participants were “more than 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketing professionals, all of whom are either directly or indirectly responsible for managing digital marketing budget allocation across multiple channels”.

Here’s the top 3 results I think are especially sapient (Ha!) for those of us in social media:

• More than 1/3 of marketers surveyed revealed that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising.

• When trying to engage consumers with their brand, 90 percent of respondents agree that it is becoming increasingly important that their agency uses ‘pull interactions’ such as social media and online communities rather than traditional ‘push’ campaigns.

• It’s no surprise that marketers want an agency that can report on where campaigns succeeded, fell short and where they should be fine-tuned. Sixty-five percent ranked analytics at the top of their agency wish list.

These results are a real kick in the pants for interactive agencies. I recently met with some execs from a local interactive shop representing the 2nd largest advertising agency in the world. They were scared stiff to even consider talking about social media to their largely tech clientele. This agency excels on the creative side, and recently won awards for a great “viral video” they designed for one of their Fortune 1000 clients. But a search for this viral video doesn’t immediately connect it with the client it was representing! The only search results for the client promoted in this “viral video” are well below the fold. No viral video results at all show when I search for the company name. It takes some real searching to even figure out who the viral video was created for. There’s a HUGE disconnect there. That client paid 6 figures for this ‘viral video’ campaign, and yet finding out who the video is supposedly promoting is a real challenge. What’s the ROI in that for their client? It seems to have paid off more for the interactive agency, what with the design awards and all.

This is the kind of thing marketers can no longer tolerate. In the past, when advertising successs was measured only by reach, this may have been considered a successful campaign. Now with the specific analytics tools which make agencies much more accountable for the results of their campaigns, results like the ones above are simply unacceptable.

Smart interactive agencies will continue seeking out social media professionals and re-evaluating how to best serve their clients. Social media marketing is certainly not about creative advertising that still “pushes” a message on customers. That old standard is crumbling fast, and many agencies are hurting as they scramble to understand the new medium that is totally “pull” based and customer-centric.

Some social media marketing detractors speak against the need for a professional standard to this medium since its ruled by customers. But as a consultant, I look at things from both the business’ and the customer’s viewpoint. Businesses are completely like a fish out of water and frustrated when they see customers lamblasting their brand all over social networks. So they generally either bury their heads in the sand and throw money at their interactive agency to create more digital advertising, or bravely create social network accounts and sometimes anonomously get involved in a negative discussion about their brand and try to change opinions – unknown and with no authority, so often to be found out – heaping even more dirt on a struggling brand. Don’t think this won’t happen with you or your clients – some of the biggest brands in the US fell into this trap.

A Social Media Professional’s job, especially in consulting interactive agencies and/or their clients, eliminates this kind of self-inflicted brand wound and can very often stop the hemorraging from previous decisions based on the traditional “push” mentality. In business, its the customers that matter anyway – not the creativity of an ad. The real focus should be on building relationships with the customers, not so much on the Creative Director of an agency. Social Media Marketing professionals are needed as the solid bridge from traditional marketing to greater levels of business transparency and customer interaction.

Check out the full text of the CMO answers here: Survey Reveals Brand Marketers’ Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future

We all know that transparency is one of the virtues of social media. But what happens when a company, actively engaged online with its customers and investors, reveals too much, possibly compromising its primary obligations to the public and federal regulators?

Yesterday, Social|Median CEO Jason Goldberg “decided to let [his] followers know on twitter that there might be an opportunity to invest.” Goldberg announced via Twitter Wednesday morning that Social|Median is “raising some more angel investment now. $25k - $100k/investor, up to $500k. Interested parties can contact me directly.”

Goldberg’s announcement set off a flurry of conversation and controversy. Michael Arrington on TechCrunch said the tweet “disregards 60 years of securities regulations” and violates numerous laws, but adds that enforcement is unlikely. Arrington is not a securities lawyer, but does have some experience in the world of start-up investment.

The discussion on FriendFeed and TechCrunch continues to grow. Goldberg deleted the tweet saying it “Wasn’t worth the TechCrunch headache.” The screenshot first captured by Michael Arrington is all
over the blogosphere.

Social|Median on Twitter

The idea that a communique like this could be “reversed” by deleting it, especially one broadcast via web 2.0, is probably a little naive. This is one of the issues the SEC — which recently relaxed the rules on financial reporting, allowing companies to post financial results to their web sites in lieu of more traditional and expensive reporting methods — will have to grapple with. It is unlikely, however, the SEC will allow “corporate do-overs” like deleting an already published message that the commission feels was in violation, though it may temper their prosecution of an offender.

Social|Median took a chance and used social media as a way to connect with potential investors, but may have overlooked its accountability to current investors and SEC regulators. Goldberg says he was using Twitter to reach his existing investor community, and that he was not making a public offering. Unfortunately, Twitter updates are visible to the public, so this strategy backfired, and as Goldberg commented, reactions to his announcement have been a “headache”.

When it comes to sensitive matters like investment and financial disclosure, how can you avoid your own social media headaches?

• Play By The Rules - Familiarize yourself with SEC financial
  disclosure regulations. A couple of resources for this are here and here
• Be Strategic - Your corporate social media strategy should include training and clearly stated policies on financial reporitng
• Social Media Isn’t a Get Out of Jail Free Card - Just because you’re on Twitter, Facebook or IM, don’t act as if the usual rules don’t apply
• Take Intelligent Risks - There are opportunities to take advantage of social media to court investors in some cases. This just wasn’t one of them

I’d love to hear your ideas on the role of social media in investor relations. This is a fast moving, interesting field and we definitely want to be current when SocialCorp publishes later this year.

Posted by Ghennipher this morning to the Social Corp blog

We love Twitter! Image credit: Hugh at GapingVoid.com

I’ve rounded up the Salt Lake City Twitter bunch for another Tweetup. Please join us for our second Salt Lake City Tweetup event tonight Wednesday, August 20 at 7:00 pm. We will gather at the Salt Lake City Roasting Company to enjoy some offline socializing and business networking.

More Details:

Address: 320 E. 400 S

How to Find Me: We’ll meet upstairs. I’ll be wearing a Google Dance tshirt

Agenda: Meet fellow Utah twitter users, share twitter experiences, have a great time.

If you have any trouble finding the Tweetup or any of the attendees, DM me on Twitter @ghennipher.

Hope to see you there tonight.