This question-and-answer session is with Monica Pons, head of executive recruitment for NBCUniversal.

Describe NBCUniversal’s employer brand in five words or less.

NBCUniversal: A Universe of Opportunity

How do you integrate that with the consumer brand, particularly in social media?

We are using social media to inspire and engage audiences. Our Twitter account is employer branded. In addition, we incorporate a lot of our consumer brands (Bravo, Oxygen, USA) through our tweets by “mentioning,” or tagging, them. For example, let’s say I tweet something along the lines of, “Looking for a content producer at @msnbctv.” If followers click on the “@msnbctv,” they would be brought to MSNBC’s Twitter page. In addition, occasionally we tweet about big news or programming notes from our businesses and host discussions and upload videos on Twitter/Facebook/YouTube focusing on what it’s like to work at a particular business, and the company as a whole. (For example, what’s it like working at Bravo? How does the culture there fit in with the NBCUniversal culture as a whole?)

What role does social media play in your approach to recruiting?

Social media is a great platform to connect with online communities and mobilize people. Our strategy focuses on creating and executing programs that bridge traditional and new media to engage with candidates and deepen relationships. In addition, we are currently participating in a viral media lab to experiment on different ways to attract top talent, especially talent that doesn’t necessarily think about NBCUniversal as a destination. Basically, we utilize social media to get people to our careers site. Furthermore, we are in the process of re-designing our career site to make it more aligned with social media.

What was it like to transition from being a worker in your field to being a recruiter?

The media world is drastically changing. For instance, I have been interviewing executives from magazines and newspapers that are trying to reinvent themselves in the digital world. It’s a difficult transition, especially for senior executives. I try to help by speaking and listening to candidates while offering tools and resources to help them in their job search.

What is the hardest job you have ever had to fill? How did you do it?

A challenging search was the Legal Counsel Head for Asia Pacific based in Singapore. We conducted the search a couple of years ago from London and NYC. We had no contacts in Singapore and decided to source candidates via LinkedIn Recruiter. We found more than 15 individuals that fit our search profile and sent InMails to seven individuals. All seven individuals responded and we ended up hiring one of them. Today he is one of our global rock stars.

When you’re looking at a potential candidate’s social media presence, how are you evaluating them? What are the hallmarks of a great social media profile for someone who’s looking for work?

We look for professional profiles, integrity and consistency. At the same time, we are witnessing the blurring of the boundaries between professional and personal though social media. For instance, recruiters are increasingly using Facebook to find candidates. Potential candidates need to acknowledge this new branding of the self that social media generates and adapt their profiles to the new reality.

Can you give me an example of a time when a candidate used social media to catch your eye? How did they set themselves apart?

Someone created a blog that highlighted reasons why she wanted to work at Bravo. A recruiter noticed it when the individual engaged with NBCU’s Twitter account and it got her an opportunity to be phone screened for potential roles at Bravo.

Image credit: PashaIgnatov, via iStockphoto

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Lars Schmidt is the director of talent acquisition at NPR.

NPR has a very strong consumer brand. How do you integrate that with the employer brand, particularly in social media?

We’re fortunate to have a great consumer brand, active and established channels in social media, and many engaged followers and fans. To me, that was the perfect foundation upon which to begin building our employment branding strategy and social media will play a huge part in that. We started with launching @NPRjobs on Twitter as I felt that would be a good platform for building community. The intent of the feed covers several areas: sharing NPR job opportunities, providing a “behind the scenes” look at life at NPR, curating and sharing career advice and job search resources, and using our reach to create more awareness of career opportunities across public media.

The actual job sharing is less than 20% of the content that comes from that account. That’s by design. I think it’s really important for companies to look beyond job broadcasting. Job broadcasting alone is not community. If you really want to build a community, you need to share useful information and resources that your followers value. Jobs should be a part of that of course, but it shouldn’t be the sole focus.

We recently launched the Twitter hashtag #PubJobs to help drive awareness for careers in public media. This is a collaborative effort to help those interested in careers in this industry find jobs. Member stations across the country are participating, as is American Public Media, PBS and producers and distributors. It’s a great example of how we can leverage social media and the collective reach of our platforms to shine a bright light on careers across public media. It’s only a few weeks old, but has tremendous potential.

What role does social media play in your approach to recruiting?

Social media is a very important tool in my own approach to recruiting. LinkedIn is probably the best example for most recruiters. I use it regularly to find talent and grow my network. Most recruiters do.

While LinkedIn may be the most well known, there is an abundance of other platforms that also help recruiters identify and engage talent. Twitter is a great resource. Facebook has a lot of potential as a recruiting platform. Tools like Branch Out and Monster’s Be Known have great potential for providing more useful ways to leverage your Facebook network. There are other sites like Quora, Namesake and Focus that are really valuable places to find subject matter experts. Good recruiters are using these platforms every day to identify, engage and begin building relationships with candidates — before they even consider working for your company.

I’m fortunate that NPR’s Chief People Officer and executive leadership team support our efforts to leverage social media for recruiting in new ways at NPR. We’re really just getting started in terms of introducing new social platforms to engage with people and help us identify and attract talent.

What is the hardest job you have ever had to fill? How did you do it?

I’ve been recruiting for over 14 years and have hired a lot of people, so I had to think about this. I would say the most difficult position I’ve ever filled was Ticketmaster’s Chief Financial Officer overseeing the ticketing of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, a new joint venture between Ticketmaster and two Chinese government agencies. This was to be our first hire of a brand new team. There were a lot of complexities, timing and logistical challenges associated with this position. We had no established presence in Asia Pacific region and no prospects or leads on the outset, so we really started from scratch.

The first thing I did was tap into my peer network in Los Angeles and have conversations with several friends who ran global recruiting functions to learn from their experiences in China. Those conversations helped me to understand the fundamentals of the Asian talent market; I learned what worked and didn’t work for them. We then began building a talent pipeline of potential candidates and aggressively networked with our teams in the United States, Europe and Australia. Working against an extremely tight deadline, we elected to partner with a search firm based in Hong Kong that was referred to me through my networking.

We filled the position on time and within budget, so it was a big win for us. It was a whirlwind process, but I really enjoyed the challenge of the search and doing something completely new.

How do you see the relational aspects of recruiting translating easily into social recruiting?

Successful recruiting will always be based in building solid relationships. That was the case before the Internet came along, and will be the case whenever the next paradigm shift occurs. Social media is a really valuable tool to extend a recruiter’s reach. It allows you to network, build and maintain relationships with candidates in new ways. It provides a forum to engage a much broader audience. This doesn’t replace traditional relational recruiting, but rather enhances by allowing recruiters to extend their reach in a very cost effective way.

It’s interesting, I recently posted a job description for a News Recruiting Manager to lead recruiting for all of NPR News. I wrote the job as if I was talking directly to the person I wanted to hire, so it’s definitely not a cookie cutter HR job description (includes references to unicorns and cat videos). I promoted this broadly through my social channels, but also reached out to friends and peers I had relationships with, who in turn helped promote to their newtworks. This blended approach of combining traditional relationships with social media’s reach has allowed me to really broaden the pool of prospects who will see this job and produced some great candidates. On that note  – I’m still actively looking so if there are any great Recruiters out there interested in journalism, news and social media ping me at @ThisIsLars.

In what ways does the current plethora of social tools help recruiters? Hurt them?

There are fewer walls to hide behind in today’s social world. If you run a poor interview process, if you don’t treat all applicants and prospects with respect or interact with them on a professional level, if your candidate experience is sloppy — people will know. There are so many platforms for people to get their message out: Glassdoor, blogs, social platforms and other outlets. They all make it very easy for candidates to broadcast their experience with your company, good or bad.

That’s terrifying to many companies and recruiters. But, for recruiting leaders and companies that really focus on candidate experience, it’s a great way to build and grow your employment brand by putting the time and effort into doing all of those things well. That’s why candidate experience is such an important component to employment brand.

If a recruiter comes to you, expressing interesting in exploring social media, what would be your one piece of advice for them?

With hundreds of social platforms and products, it can be overwhelming for recruiters to keep up, and I understand the fear or hesitation about where or how to start many of them have. My recommendation would be to start slow and absorb as much information as you can. Resist the urge to throw together a corporate Twitter account, Facebook page or YouTube channel just to say your company has one. Spend time on the sidelines learning for as long as you need.

If you’re considering starting corporate recruiting accounts on these platforms, first build a list of top corporate Twitter feeds, or follow top employers on Facebook and then watch. See what they post, observe how they interact with their communities on each platform, gauge the percentage of posts that are job broadcasts versus others posts, and what type of messaging they use.

When you’re ready to launch the platform of your choice, don’t just use it as a way to broadcast job openings. Share content, pictures and videos. Interact with your followers; give them reasons to come to your community even if they’re not looking to work at your company.

Twitter is an incredible learning platform for recruiters and HR professionals. Many brilliant thought leaders in the industry are actively engaged and use Twitter to share knowledge and information. It’s really helping to foster and encourage innovation within HR. I really feel the ease of dialogue, engagement and idea sharing within the HR community is moving our profession forward. This is the beauty of social media: It strips geographic and functional barriers and serves as a platform to connect those with like interests and passions.

Image credit: alexsl, via iStockphoto

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Discovery Education and the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute’s Education and Research Foundation have partnered to create TurfMutt, an online, science-based program designed to help elementary educators teach an appreciation of backyard and community green spaces and landscapes.  We spoke with OPEI and Discovery about the role social media played in spreading the word about the program. An edited version of that conversation follows.

You’ve set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account as part of this initiative. Why did you choose those particular social networks?

We set up a TurfMutt blog site, Facebook page and Twitter feed that convey stories, information and news about how we can take better care of green spaces all around us, appreciate the benefits and value they bring, and encourage future generations to become environmental stewards.

We chose Facebook due to its vast use among the general population and its format, which allows for easy (and visual!) sharing of information among compatible users that share the same interests. Also, its very nature is to start a dialogue and get a sense of whether or not someone “likes” certain commentary or shared information. We needed a place that was easy for people to participate with TurfMutt, see updated video and photos, and get engaged in conversation about the topics that TurfMutt addresses.

Also, Facebook users are also quite generous in sharing what they like and commenting on what they do not like. So, the TurfMutt educational program would not only be shared far and wide, but we could get instant feedback on what consumers valued or not.

Twitter is more like a steady stream of conversation, connections and referrals. It allows for small bits of information to be spread far and wide. The TurfMutt Twitter account also has allowed us to keep a pulse on what other individuals who are interested in lawn, gardening and managed landscapes believe; get more third-party information to share with our “friends and followers”; and be part of the overall dialogue about the benefits of green spaces.

Facebook seems more intimate, like a cocktail party. While Twitter is more like participating in a summit or a large trade show of individuals who just naturally gravitate to one another. Both are valuable and support one another. But, they operate differently.

You’ve also created a contest, Landscapes Across America, that challenges students to illustrate the their local ecosystems. How are you using social media to get the word out about that?

We post information about the Discovery Education program on all our social media platforms. We find that posts and tweets that include an action item, such as a contest, get shared more overall and more frequently. In addition, today’s teachers are very tech-savvy, and look to social media for more information about resources they can use in the classroom. Discovery Education is using their expertise in the education space to help us bring this message to relevant edu-bloggers.

How do you measure success in your social media activities?

There are several ways. First, the number of followers and “likes” on a Facebook page can be deceiving. Just having high numbers doesn’t mean we are moving the dial. Rather, it’s the quality of traffic (meaning we are reaching the right people) and the level of engagement from those people. We find that most of our tweets are retweeted a few times, which we deem as a good measurement that we are sending interesting messages that people care about. We also look at our impression numbers and number of comments on the Facebook page.

It’s interesting to see what piques people’s interest. We find the science around the benefits of managed green spaces seems the most interesting. Also, tips and techniques to grow plants, grass and other green growing things are also received quite well.

We also have tracked the conversations that a number of bloggers in the green area have treated the conversation around green spaces. We find that they are now paying attention to the science that proves green spaces help the overall environment from cooling surrounding areas, helping slow storm water run-off, sequestering carbon and producing oxygen and the myriad of other ways turf, plants and shrubs contribute. We can track that back to the launch of TurfMutt more than a year ago, when we began to tell that story.

Lucky, the face of the program, is one cute dog. Where did you find him?

Lucky has quite the back story! Check out his story.

Image credit: OPEI Education & Research Foundation

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This Q-and-A is with Gayle Weiswasser, vice president of social-media communications for Discovery Communications.

How would you describe Discovery’s social-media strategy, in a nutshell?

Across our networks, we use social media to deepen our engagement with our fans. We do this by building community among fans of our networks and shows, delivering valuable content that extends and enhances the viewing experience, identifying and embracing the existing communities of viewers of our shows beyond our own platforms, and strengthening the relationship between fans and talent. In the end, we hope that this deeper engagement drives our fans to tune in to our shows, click through to our websites and share their enthusiasm across their personal platforms.

We use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and our hosted fan sites to execute this strategy, and have seen great growth over the last year. Currently, we have over 16 million “likes” across our Facebook pages, and over 1 million followers of our Twitter accounts. We are also working with emerging platforms like social TV check-in site GetGlue to reward our most active fans who check in to our programming as it’s airing. Social media has reinvented the traditional watercooler, and we are eager to be part of the conversation around our shows and encourage and reward the fans who are engaging in that dialogue.

What does that look like, in terms of staffing? Do you have a dedicated team just for social media?

We have a centralized team housed in our corporate communications and digital groups that focuses entirely on social-media strategy across the networks. That team works hand in hand with the network brand marketing and communications teams at our U.S. networks, who set the messaging and marketing strategy for our programming, as well as with the producers of online content on our websites. Our team members are embedded in the networks, but they also do a lot of cross-network promotion, group brainstorming, and development of best practices, policies, and templates that we use across networks. The team is currently about 10 people.

How do you measure return on investment for your team’s efforts?

Like most companies developing a robust social-media strategy, this is a question we are grappling with. It is a challenge to correlate social-media activity directly with ratings, but we look at many quantifiable benchmarks: numbers of fans/followers; level of engagement and activity (shares, views, likes, retweets) of those followers; traffic from our platforms to our websites; views of our corporate blog; etc. to get a handle on how our efforts are paying off.

There is strong anecdotal evidence as well that our social media activities drive awareness and enthusiasm for our programming. We also spend a considerable amount of time researching and reaching out to bloggers across a wide range of niches that are relevant to our breadth of programming, which helps spread the word about our brands and offerings. We are in the process of drilling down even deeper on the analytics we get from our social-media platforms to determine the return we’re seeing on our efforts.

News of the recent hostage situation at Discovery’s headquarters hit social-media channels almost instantly. Was your team involved in monitoring and responding to those conversations?

Like everyone else at the building that day, our team was focused on the quick evacuation and safety of our colleagues and the children in our onsite day care center. Because we were dealing with a volatile, unpredictable and dangerous situation, we opted to be totally quiet across our official platforms until it was safely resolved. At that point, we worked in lockstep with our corporate communications and internal communications team to use our platforms, including our corporate blog, to push out Discovery’s official statement about the incident. We did monitor the platforms to ensure that the information being posted by our employees was accurate and did not in any way compromise the success of the ongoing police strategy and negotiations.

Image credit: cybrain, via iStockPhoto

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This guest post is by Jeremy Epstein, founder and chief marketing navigator at Never Stop Marketing, and Jay McBain, head of Lenovo’s small- and medium-business sector.

For six consecutive quarters, the small- and medium-business team at Lenovo had trailed its industry by an average of 10%. That changed significantly when Jay McBain, the director of the group, and his new team decided to try something different.

Instead of targeting on demographics, as had been traditionally done, they targeted based on behavior. But not behavior as in a “Like” button or a purchase, but as in “where” and “how” do people spend their time. “Targeting” is what they did only in the loosest sense of the word.

The Lenovo SMB team members employed the principles of Dandelion Marketing, taking advantage of the cost structure of digital, to spread their efforts to as many communities as possible. Instead of a few “big bets,” they made a lot of small bets, and more often. Much like a dandelion distributes its seeds — amid the reality that many of them will fail — this approach assumes that enough will succeed as to make it worthwhile.

How They Did It

McBain and his team identified 30 communities in which they thought their customers might be active. Then, they committed to executing 30 different marketing activities per community. Three of the most effective were:

1. Instead of doing the traditional room drop or lunch sponsorship at a major convention, Lenovo gave away a Harley-Davidson, which cost half as much, but drove 50 times as much attention.
2. Using a coveted keynote slot at a major industry event to pitch a Wi-Fi toothbrush — not because Lenovo was announcing one — but to illustrate the point of pervasive computing and positioning itself as the hardware vendor of the future.
3. Embedding with a mobile cupcake vendor in New York City for the day.  The mainstream media became interested in a location-based business using Twitter and Facebook to make sales.  Lenovo was the technology enabler and received dozens of media mentions.

Once they began the “conversation” with potential advocates and customers, they worked to cultivate those relationships, earning people’s trust and attention. Among other things, the Lenovo team members fully committed to participating in a genuine and authentic way. They added thought leadership to the communities — as opposed to selling to or through them.  They fully engaged in forums, guest blogs, podcasts and webinars, as opposed to just advertising.

What about ROI?

Measuring success for Lenovo was a challenge. There isn’t the instant feedback that a direct mail or coupon code gives.  So they took a “barometer” approach to measuring the business, rather than the traditional thermometer approach.  For example, measuring the impact of a tweet would be foolish, but the underlying momentum of the community and the resulting behaviors are easier to gauge.
Lenovo’s success provides a glimpse into the future of how organizations must rapidly identify, test, and adapt their efforts to a highly fragmented world. Numerous small bets really can, in concert, generate big results.

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This post is by Kaukab Jhumra Smith, a contributing editor at SmartBrief.

A team of researchers from Facebook has come up with a way to predict the ethnicity of Facebook users in the U.S. by using a combination of U.S. Census data and an analysis of users’ first and last names. The team won the award for best paper at a social-media conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Washington, D.C.

The Facebook Data team confined its analysis to the country’s four largest ethnic groups: Caucasians, African-Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics. It used Census records to identify the most likely ethnicity of a user based on his or her last name. For example, said data scientist Jonathan Chang during his presentation, if your last name is Mueller, Census records show you have a 97% chance of being white. Similarly, if your last name is Washington, there is an 89.9% chance you’re black.

The team then refined its predictions by factoring in users’ first names, Chang said. That helped reduce confusion, for example, between Caucasian and African-American users with the same last name. A user with a first name such as LaToya was probably African-American, Chang explained.

By applying their predictions of ethnicity to users’ friend networks, the team found:

• The ethnic makeup of Facebook users has steadily become more diverse and now generally reflects the U.S. population, unlike a few years ago, when Caucasians and Asian/Pacific Islanders were over-represented.
• Users are more likely to be friends with, and communicate most often with, people of the same ethnicity.
• Users are more likely to be in romantic relationships with people of the same ethnicity.
• Particular ethnic groups tend to behave similarly online, with Asian/Pacific Islanders engaging in “unexpectedly high number of wall, video, note, gift, comment and group-sharing actions.”

The team acknowledges a few caveats: Its analysis didn’t account for a lot of factors, such as socio-economic status and education, and it didn’t include smaller ethnic groups in the country. The researchers plan to use more detailed Census data to factor in user locations, professions and other self-disclosed data to “improve the predictive power” of future analyses, the paper concludes.

So what does this mean for businesses looking to refine their marketing on Facebook and other social networks?

Approached after his presentation, Chang said he knew little about business and could not answer how his team’s findings would apply to consumer marketing.

But surely, now that it’s possible to predict ethnicity on Facebook with relative accuracy (accuracy that will only improve with subsequent studies), the next logical step would be to allow marketers to target users based on ethnicity and not just age, location and known preferences.

It would be a simple matter to rotate racially appropriate photos in Facebook ads aimed at 30-year-old women in the Washington, D.C., area, for example, in the hope that they would respond better to someone from their own race.

What do you think — does that kind of marketing cross a line or is it just one more refinement on what advertisers do all the time?

Image credit, Rich Hobson, iStock Photo

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Videos that are going to be viewed primarily online or on mobile screens must be created differently than those watched on TV, says Mary Coffman, a broadcast journalism professor at Northwestern University’s Medill News Service.

Coffman, who also leads video-training sessions at the National Press Club, offers the following tips:

1. Pick the right story. Make sure your story features a persuasive central character and vivid visuals.
2. Get the best sound possible. “One of the most important aspects of the video story is the audio,” Coffman says. “People will put up with lousy video on the Web, but they will not put up with lousy audio.” Avoid scratchy, static-filled or muffled sound by using a camera with a good built-in microphone. Get as close to the sound as possible and use an external mike if you must stay farther away.
3. Use a tripod. “You don’t want your shots to be shaky,” Coffman says. “Having a tripod makes all the difference.” She recommends an inexpensive tabletop tripod in addition to a traditionally sized one.
4. Channel the moment. Capture details — such as a person’s jiggling foot or the natural sounds around you — to let online viewers experience what you saw and heard when you were there.
5. Shoot sequences. A sequence shows the way things happen, Coffman explains. Shooting a combination of tight close-ups, medium shots (from the head to the waist) and wide shots will help your editing later. “When you’re editing, you don’t want to go from a tight shot to a tight shot of the same person or scene,” Coffman says. “You want to have a wide shot and then go tighter on the scene.”
6. Avoid extremely wide shots. “Keep in mind the size of monitors people use to watch your video,” Coffman says. Extremely wide shots may look fine on big TV screens, but they pack in too much information for little screens.
7. Don’t pan or zoom. “Too much movement online tends to make your video jerky and jittery,” Coffman advises. “Panning or zooming works better on TV than on a little computer screen or a mobile screen.” Instead of zooming in, move with your body -– as long as you can hold the camera steady –- or let the action happen within your frame.
8. Hold each shot for 10 seconds. You may not use all 10 seconds, but having that footage will help you find five clean seconds of good footage when you’re editing. “Newbies don’t hold their shots long enough,” Coffman says. “Get the shot and count to 10, and then get another shot.”
9. Don’t rush through editing. “Look at what you’ve got,” Coffman says. “Don’t just pick the first shots; look for the best.” The shots you pick will dictate how you write your script.
10. Match your sound to your video. “Write to your video,” Coffman said. “If you’re writing narration, pictures are going to trump your words each time.”
11. Keep it short. Your videos should be less than two minutes long. If you must have a longer piece, Coffman recommends breaking it into two-minute chapters. That way, interested viewers can simply click on the next chapter to keep going.

What are some things you’ve learned the hard way when making videos for the Web? Tell us what’s worked for you and what you still struggle with.

Image credit: cybrain via iStockphoto

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Some people just  manage to maintain their brand’s Twitter account, but Liz Dee of Ce De Candy has taken it to another level. She is leading her family-owned company through the ever-changing trends of social media. Rebecca Pollack met up with Liz at the Sweets & Snacks 2010 Expo in Chicago and learned that the “little guys” are giving consumers something to talk about online.

You are the director of digital media at Ce De Candy, home of Smarties candy, and are finishing your master’s in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University with a focus on Food Studies. How do you find a work-life balance, and how do your work and personal lives overlap?

It’s a good thing I love what I do, because my work, personal and academic lives overlap tremendously. One week I’m live-tweeting from the Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago and the next I’m in Bloomington, Ind., for a Food Studies conference panel on new media. The overlap really works for me. Not only do I get to see my whole family while I’m at work — check that off the to-do list — but I also conduct research that is useful for future digital media projects, as well as my forthcoming thesis on candyways.

What is “candyways?”

Candyways is a term I coined to mean candy culture. Like folklorist Don Yoker’s term, “foodways,” it is meant to describe thoughts, behaviors and customs relating to candy. Candy deserves its own term because candy is so different from other foodstuffs in terms of how, when and where we eat it, as well as what it represents to consumers. If you want to know more, you’ll have to wait for the book. Just kidding! Sort of …

How did you gain support from your family-owned company to set up Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as oversee a redesign of the website, Smarties.com?

My family understands the value of having a strong Web and social-media presence, but to do this properly requires constant attention. Thankfully, company leadership allowed me plenty of autonomy to create and execute projects. For buy-in as well as fresh ideas, I try to keep everyone as involved as possible, from the initial brainstorming phase to the final approval. Plenty of communication is key.

I like your new website, particularly that you offer games like digital air hockey. How is that related to Smarties, again?

I’m so glad you like the new website. Our developers actually recently received the “Oustanding Achievement” award by Interactive Media Council for the site, which was really exciting. So, why air hockey? We are all about fun. We want to entertain our site visitors in addition to providing them with information consumers need and want to know, such as nutritional facts.

Consumers update their statuses or tweet that “they are eating Smarties” or “something smells like Smarties.” How are you engaging with these consumers and promoting brand awareness?

Proust wrote volumes inspired by a madeleine cookie, and together, consumers write volumes about Smarties candy. Like Proust, our consumers are inspired by memory and sensory experience. On Twitter, I try to respond to people who write about our product in a way that shows we are listening, we care about them and we appreciate their input. I also post information about the candy, funny photos and whatever else seems to be interesting, fun and of-the-moment on Facebook and Twitter. In short, I spread the Smarties love.

For more candy news, check out NCA SmartBrief.

Image credit, Maica, iStock Photo

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When Twitter agreed to allow the Library of Congress to archive its tweets, the public response to the news brought down the library’s website. That hadn’t happened since the release of the Starr Report in 1998, said Hope O’Keeffe, the library’s associate general counsel.

The government’s agreement with Twitter holds mutual benefit, she said: Twitter gets recognition as a culturally relevant tool, while the government preserves “a snapshot of our time.” Although historians and researchers are delighted, many members of the public have expressed alarm at the privacy ramifications of such a deal.

O’Keeffe and Elizabeth Hochberg, assistant general counsel at the U.S. General Services Administration, addressed the legal issues that crop up as agencies move to follow the Obama administration’s directive to increase transparency, participation and collaboration between citizens, communities, businesses and government. They spoke at the recent Gov 2.0 conference in Washington, D.C.

O’Keeffe and Hochberg’s advice is useful both for government agencies and the people who do business with them. Their biggest tip?

• Friend your lawyers. If you jump into a project because you think it’s easier to ask for forgiveness later than permission upfront, you may be risking jail, a lawsuit or the loss of your job, Hochberg said. Or you could be risking having your software platform yanked out from under your feet for noncompliance after you’ve spent months developing it, she cautioned.
  “You know you’re going to have to work with us in the future, and trust is really important,” Hochberg said. “We can help speed things up exponentially if you bring us in from the beginning.”

• Go by FAR. The Federal Acquisition Regulation applies to all software applications contracted for with appropriation funds, just like a tangible item purchased by the government.

• Don’t be deficient. If you offer your software application to a government agency for free when it usually commands a price in the marketplace, your software is considered a gift and requires the agency to jump through several internal hoops before accepting it. Otherwise, the agency could be held in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act.

• Negotiate terms of service. Standard terms of service from software providers usually don’t fly with government agencies. “We understand that you have your policies, but we have our laws,” Hochberg said.

Trouble spots can include:

• Indemnification. The government will never agree to unlimited or undefined compensation for injury or loss.
• Jurisdiction. The federal government cannot be sued in state court, only in federal court, according to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
• Endorsement. The federal government cannot call any business a partner or an official provider. It will allow you to use the agency in a case study, but only if it scrutinizes each word.
• Federal records. The government has to comply with federal records laws.
• Intellectual property. The federal government has a right to copyright its images, and IP provisions must be hammered out in any terms of service. “People think they can screen-grab federal government pages and use them for themselves, but that’s not true,” Hochberg said.
• Privacy. “Privacy is going to be a bigger and bigger and bigger issue for all of us,” O’Keeffe said.
• Accessibility. All electronic and IT services have to be 508 compliant — that is, accessible to citizens with disabilities.
• Advertising. The government has to negotiate out any advertisements that would give the appearance of endorsements, like it has on its Facebook pages.

Make your case. If your lawyers end up being more of a roadblock than help, O’Keeffe and Hochberg suggest building a business case for adopting new technologies. Anticipate their objections, and show them that what you want to do is “a logical outgrowth of something that you’ve already been doing,” O’Keeffe said.

Identify lawyers who are open to technological change and add them to your team working on larger Gov 2.0 goals. Early notice and engagement can go a long way to winning lawyers over, O’Keeffe and Hochberg said.

Image credit: RTimages, via iStockphoto

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• Are you prepared for the pitfalls of Gov 2.0?
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Some of his social-media advice:

• Realize that buy-in is key. You need to get not just your leadership, but also other departments, on board to launch a successful social presence.
• Education is an advocate’s best weapon. Your role as a social-media evangelist is to take away colleague’s fear of the unknown.
• Use social media to help broaden events. He notes that encouraging video and blogging and conference helps bring that live experience to a wider audience.

Check out our full interview with Midkiff.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Want to learn more about managing the integration of social media into your trade association or nonprofit’s operations? Join SmartBrief on July 20 for Buzz2010: Social Media for Associations in Washington, D.C., where workplace columnist and author Alexandra Levit, Securities and Exchange Commission New-Media Director Mark Story and American Red Cross Social-Media Manager Wendy Harman will share their thoughts on managing the pitfalls of social media.

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• 6 allies every corporate social media effort needs to succeed
• Is tracking ROI a social media requirement?
• How social media can make your organization stronger