Sign the Petition: Instagram, Don't Sell Us Out

Instagram caused a fire storm on Monday after they pulled a bait-and-switch in their Privacy Policy and Terms and Service that claims "a business or other entity may pay" Instagram for users images without any compensation or notification. It's not just individual users that are upset over the announcement, nonprofits raised many questions about how this impacts their content posted on Instagram. For example, with Instagrams new Terms of Service, a nonprofits photo could be used by an opposing lobbying group to misrepresent them in an ad they purchased.

After more then 24 hours of silence, Instagram's founder Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram responded to the communities outrage and apologized for the confusion around the legal jargon. Systrom said, "legal documents are easy to misinterpret..... "To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear."

Here's the issue though. Instagram's new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service were clear about their intentions. I suspect Instagram senior leadership and Facebook who know owns them, thought the community would not revolt about the sale of their personal data. (Won't FB ever learn what ticks off their community of users?)

While Instagram made a commitment to update their Terms of Service, we've seen this type of backtracking before and with Facebook at the helm, it's more important than ever to keep the pressure on Instagram to make sure they stick to their promise of protecting your photo rights and not sell them without your permission and with no compensation. Sign the petition I started on Care2's Petitions Site.

Is Social Media Making Organizations Lazy?

My Facebook stream has been filled with nonprofits and businesses asking me to “like” photos, political statements, new products, petitions, etc. You name it, they have asked me to “like” it.  And it’s not just nonprofits or small business with limited resources relying on this lame strategy, it’s big organizations and major corporations who have invested significant money, resources, and staff in social media. Check out this update from Walmart who thought the best way to engage their 25 million Facebook likers was to say “We know you like to be the first to comment. Now, we want to see who can be the LAST to comment. Ready, set, GO!”

Walmart received over 28K comments such as:

What a mind-blowing discussion around their brand, don’t you think?

When I look at other organizations that are using the “like this” or RT tactic with their community, the comments by the community are often along the lines of: Thanks for sharing this. Agreed. Yeah. Nice work.

You maybe asking what’s wrong with asking people to “like” something on Facebook or retweet on Twitter? The issue is when you ask people to passively “like” or RT content, it’s the equivalent of them saying “hey, thumbs up dude,” and then they move onto to the next item in their stream.

Sometimes I see constituents ask questions on organizations Facebook pages, which is a great opportunity for real engagement, but sadly many organizations don’t bother to respond within 24 hours. And often they don’t respond at all. #Fail.

Social media, which started out with the best intentions and as a way to foster community transparently, has evolved into a space of laziness among marketers and social media campaigners. Constantly asking your constituents to “like” a photo, political statement or commenting just for the heck of it and to increase your organization’s EdgeRank is not real engagement and certainly not making any sort of real impact on any social issues or businesses bottom line.

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Strategies to Manage an Online Crisis

Every organization makes mistakes. Of course some mishaps are bigger than others and can damage your reputation among important stakeholders like your activists, donors, and volunteers. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to share my best tips for managing an online crisis, with Allison Fine, for a podcast on the Chronicle of Philanthropy. We had such a terrific discussion that I thought I would contribute my list back to the community. The next time your organization makes a mistake, use these tips to handle the crisis ASAP, so it doesn’t bubble up and explode.

First, it’s important to understand how an online crisis can unfold.

An online crisis can often start with someone at your organization publicly insulting your community. For example, when a consumer of the ice-cream brand Wilcoxson's asked, on Wilcoxson’s Facebook page, if the gelatin in their cookies and cream ice-cream contained pork, their CEO responded on Facebook with “we don’t deliver outside of Montana and certainly not in Pakistan.” That’s a pretty outrageous comment on the CEO’s part, and obviously upset the consumer. This CEO’s response also spread across social media and blogs and people began flooding the company’s Facebook page posting angry comments.  Eventually the company shut down its Facebook page and the CEO offered to resign.

Framing a campaign or situation that your constituents or the public did not think was an accurate portrayal is another example of how an online crisis can unfold. For example, when the first Kony 2012 campaign video was released bu Invisible Children and went “viral” it helped energize the organization's own constituents. However, many people in Northern Uganda (who this was ultimately about helping) felt that it over simplified things. It also portrayed the Americans need to “come in and save the day” because Northern Uganda could not take care of its own country and people. The campaign’s facts were also highly criticized by a lot of the media and bloggers.

Another common way an online crisis can unfold is when the person managing an organization's social media account accidentally posts personal commentary to the organization’s account. For example, when the Kitchen Aid staffer managing the Kitchen Aid account on Twitter tweeted during the 2012 Presidential debates “Obamas even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president #nbcpolitics,” which referred to President Obama’s deceased grandmother, it caused the company great embarrassment and spread like wildfire. The popular blog, Gawker, deemed Kitchen Aid “the biggest loser of last night’s debate.”

Tips for Responding to Online Criticism and Attacks

1. The first 1-24 hours are crucial in handling an online crisis. Have a social media hand guide in place that has a section on how to deal with a crisis so that staff (both experienced and newbies) can quickly refer back to it in moments of panic.
2. Don’t bury your head in the sand. If you are in the wrong, acknowledge the community quickly, and apologize.
3. If someone is vocally issuing a complaint about something the organization did or said and you were not aware of it, be prepared to say something along the lines of, “Thanks for letting us know. We are looking into it and will get back in touch. What is the best way to reach you?” 
4. If it’s a crisis that you know has reached a lot of your community and the public at large, make sure you re-purpose your response across multiple channels and adapt the response for each channel. For example, while a 500-word blog post about the situation maybe appropriate for your website, you would want to adapt that message with a more personal tone for an email message being sent to your donors. Then you would need to adapt your core message into a 140 character tweet or two, and so on.

If your organization can quickly take ownership of your mistake or failure, you can diffuse the situation before it implodes. One of my favorite examples of an embarrassing rogue tweet that was handled exceptionally well and quickly is from the American Red Cross. During the 2010 Snowmageddon storm, the Red Cross’s social media manager accidentally tweeted from the @RedCross account, “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer… when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd." She quickly realized the tweet was sent to hundreds of thousands of @RedCross followers and responded by deleting the tweet from the @RedCross account and turned it into the following humorous response:

Then something incredible happened. The American Red Cross followers on Twitter began using the #gettngslizzerd hashtag to promote blood drive donations. And the company @dogsfishbeer, which was mentioned in the original rogue tweet, encouraged their own followers to support the Red Cross.

Short-Form Stories Sizzle on Social Media

Editors Note: This week Frogloop is devoted to a blog series on storytelling. Nancy Schwartz, nonprofit marketing blogger, kicks off the series with Short-Form Stories Sizzle on Social Media.

How’s that for alliteration? More seriously though…

I’m in the midst of a storytelling deep dive, and some of the most memorable nonprofit stories I’ve found were shared on .org social media channels.

It’s really no surprise, given the nature of social media, that the best of the best tend to be short-form stories.

Less is usually more in any written product. When your word count is tight, you have to work even harder to shape a protagonist your reader relates to and the rich detail that enables her to feel what it’s like to stand in your protagonist’s shoes. So the result is frequently a better read.

Facebook storytelling is a natural, because it’s so quick and easy to share photos and videos. Narrative plus photos (or video) is the best combo there is. That’s why the first books kids read are picture books!

But there’s more—Facebook is confessional to the core, all about personal stories. So when organizations like yours feature people stories on your pages, it just makes sense. They’re just what Facebook users are seeing from their friends and family.

Add the ease of posting and sharing photos and videos that Facebook offers, and you get a powerful nonprofit storytelling channel.

Follow this strong model from the Findlay-Hancock Community Foundation, one of a group of natural storytellers I had the pleasure of training last week.

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Will Social Media Pick the Next President of the United States?

Earlier this week on Frogloop, we discussed how social media channels like Facebook and Twitter were flooded with people discussing (ok there was a lot of bickering too) the Presidential debates. It's where the hashtag and meme Binders Full of Women erupted. With social media being such a prevalent space to get the latest news, will it have an impact on people selecting the next President of the United States? Check out this infographic.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Binders Full of Women

As voters watched the heated 2012 Presidential debates last night, there was a flurry of discussion and commentary happening on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But things got even more interesting when Romney began discussing women's issues and in particular fair pay. Romney said that while he was Governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007 he looked through binders full of women to find qualified women candidates to serve in his cabinet.

“I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women,” said Romney.

Within seconds the hashtag #Bindersfullofwomen and meme was brought to Internet life. Professional designers and novices began designing image macros with Big Bird looking through a binder of women, the famous photo of Hillary Clinton looking at her Blackberry with text superimposed that said “Romney still uses binders?” And of course there is one for actor Ryan Gosling that says “Hey Girl, I won’t put you in a binder.”

A Facebook page was also started that instantly attracted about 146 "Likers" a minute. As of this morning, the page has over 290K people who have "Liked" the page.

This meme is a terrific opportunity for women’s advocacy groups to do some creative campaigns. Hopefully we will see some of them rolled out later today. In the meantime, here is a list of Binders Full of Women resources to check out.

Binders Full of Women Resources 

• Binders Full of Women on Posterous: Note, this is a site I started after the debates to track all the great image macros http://bindersfullofwomen.posterous.com/

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Learning from Amtrak's Failures in Customer Service

Two nights ago I took an Amtrak train up to Baltimore for the Grace Hopper Conference. When the station manager announced a 20-minute delay, the lines of people waiting to board became irritated. Many had already spent the day travelling or had a long day at the office. Then the irate tweets directed @amtrak started. The person managing their social media account was quick to respond with an apology and provided a link to file an online complaint to customer service.

When the train finally arrived, I was relieved to board and settle in. Unfortunately, as I was walking through the café cart to get to my seat, I slipped and fell onto a soaked floor of water. After some nice folks helped me up and asked if I was ok, I collected my belongings and told one of the employees in the café cart about my fall. I also asked why the floor was soaked with water and why there was no signage that warned people to be careful walking through the cart. He said he had just finished dragging ice across the floor, and that they should not have allowed people to board the train so soon, but that they were running late. By the way, he did not even ask if I was ok. #Fail 1 – not expressing concern for your customers or apologizing.

When I got back to my seat, I tweeted @amtrak about my fall. Their response? Radio silence. I tweeted them two more times relaying my experience. Still no response. #Fail 2 – not responding to your customers.

Dissatisfied with Amtrak’s lack of compassion and response, I told the train conductor who collected my ticket about my fall when he asked “how are you today?” He looked at me and said “well if you are hurt, you should get off the train.” He then began to explain to me that he was not responsible for the train’s boarding safety practices. #Fail 3 – not showing compassion for your customers and passing the buck.

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