Notes from 56th International STC Conference
Atlanta, Georgia, May 2-5, 2009

The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Networking Sites

Greg Koch and Roger Renteria

Session Description: This session examined how to use social networking sites to benefit yourself and your organization by networking online with family, friends, and other organizations while avoiding the pitfalls associated with these websites.

• Facebook: You can control how much you put out there. E-mails can be posted with icons, thwarting spammers mining social sites for victims.
   
• Profile: you can control who sees it
• Search: you can control who can find you
• News feed: you can edit, determine how much to say and who can see it. You can have special distributions with different levels of access.
• Different users have widely different purposes for subscribing to a social medium
   
• Recreation, socializing
• Connections within colleges, companies
• News feed and wall settings: posting is within your profile site; news feed is outside the profile and open to everyone in your friends group
• Social Networking Faux Pas
   
• Cisco “Fatty Paycheck” tweet: New hire disparaged firm that just hired her; she was unhired
• Facebook Fairy ... Intern called in sick; boss found him on Facebook partying and fired him
• Facebook Airline crew (of 13) broke airline/employee policy, insulted passengers; all fired
• Tips for personal use
   
• Post only info you’re comfortable sharing
• Limit amount of contact information
• Avoid posting offensive material
• Check your employer’s policies
• Marketing
   
• Free promotion
• Broad audiences
• Targeted advertising
• Networks save all your information; use it to sell targeted advertising
• Bands do a significant amount of advertising (concerts, CDs, etc.) on social media
• Shopping carts/PayPal can be incorporated with any site
• Apple students page on Facebook directs them to their storefront, thereby selling iTunes and other products
• Positive and negative postings: monitor for slanderous or obscene comments; remove the worst, but generally accept positive and negative, for credibility (answer negative diplomatically and objectively; take the high road, which will often discredit the detractor)
• Marketing through Twitter
   
• Promote products
• Send updates
• Notify customers
• Give freebies
• LiquidWeb, Quest, etc. ... if you’re using new media on behalf of your company, never take off your company hat
• STC.org twitter page
• Twitter can be done through computer as well as cell phones, but anything posted there is 100% public
• Yammer ... firewalled version of Twitter for companies