There have been numerous stories over the last couple of years on how Twitter and other social media outlets have enabled communication between people in less than desirable conditions. Last month, Seattle, WA (Projectline’s HQ), experienced the snowy wrath of Mother Nature when she gently laid a couple inches of snow on the ground, turned the thermostat below freezing, and blew wind at highway speeds.

Now, if you’re not from Seattle, you might not think that a couple inches of snow is that bad, but in Seattle, it can be devastating. As you would expect, social media was right there in the thick of it.

#snOMG

Twitter was one of the key social media outlets. The main Twitter hashtag (hashtags are words used to categorize tweets) of the winter storm was #snOMG. Right before and as the storm hit, Twitter was alive with conversation about the storm with people tagging their tweets with #snOMG. From pictures of the white, fluffy stuff to reports of which roads were closed, Twitter was being used to distribute information.

Paolo Mottola was stuck on I-5 for 10.5 hours attempting to travel the 35 miles from Seattle to Tacoma. In that time, through Twitter, he amassed quite the following of people interested in the happenings of the stopped traffic on the interstate. Mainstream media even took notice of his tweets. That is the power of social media. The quick and easy flow of information allows people to gain information they may not have been able to figure out otherwise and in this case, it often helped people to find safer roads to travel on.

The Social Media Ecosystem

Twitter was but one outlet for cold Seattleites to turn to. Somebody even created a location on Foursquare, a location based social network, which let people check-in at the winter storm to make it official that they were really there. Youtube had tons of videos of people sledding, cars sliding, and kids playing. Facebook statuses were updated, pictures posted, and comments made. Social media came alive when people needed to connect with other people.

Think of Social Media

Next time there is a major weather emergency happening, don’t forget to check out social media. Many people publish firsthand information that might be valuable. Remember to update the social media websites you use so others might find the information helpful. Until next time, stay safe and stay social.

Picture by Chuck Taylor and licensed under Creative Commons.

 

Hi everybody. Your social media handyman Brian is here with another tool for your social media toolkit. To learn how you can build your own social media style guide, grab your hammer and a bag of nails and read on.
It should go without saying that every company should have a social media style guide for many of the same reasons that communications departments have style guides. What is a style guide, you may ask? It’s a reference document that provides communication uniformity. You want to maintain consistency across multiple communications channels. You don’t need to develop an elaborate AP size style guide, but you should have a basic outline for internal use.

Let’s start with the basics, using me as a test case:

Username – If at all possible, you should attempt to use the same username for all of your social media properties. What that means is your Twitter account has the same name as your YouTube channel and the same name as your StumbleUpon account. If your username is on the longer side, your style guide should have a couple shorter variants for those websites that limit the length of the username. For instance, my Twitter name @captainchunk could also be @cptnchunk.

User image – Having a user image is one of the best things you can do for customer engagement. Even though the effort to post an image to a social media account is minimal, the visual cue that a viewer gets when they click a link on your Twitter post and jump to your YouTube account lets them know it is your content and your brand.

Bio –There is a little more leeway in what you can use for your bio across social media tools, so you might want to include a few different versions in your social media style guide. Your bio might be tailored to different social media websites depending on the kind of social media and the number of words the websites allow, or the personality you are trying to show off. For example, your Twitter bio is brief, limited to 140 characters, whereas with LinkedIn you want to be more detailed.

Links – This is another important section to have in your style guide. You could specify a single link that all of your social media outlets would link back to, but I would suggest having a few different links to choose from depending on which social media website you are setting up. For instance, you might want a LinkedIn account linking back to your career page, or you might want the link in your Twitter account linking to the webpage for your latest product launch.

Those are the four main sections any social media style guide should have. Let’s see how we (Projectline) does? Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Delicious. We use a common image and user name across all four accounts, tailor our bio for each account, and link back to our website – it’s a start!

If you have suggestions for a social media style guide, post them in the comments.

Until next time, don’t forget to be a social (media) animal!