The free-form writing style of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is changing the way people communicate, and causing students to fail English. That’s the claim of a piece out this afternoon from the Canadian Press. According to the article “(at) Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, one in 10 new students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses required for graduation.” And academicians are, in part, blaming social networking.

I was interviewed for this, and I share the view that students who let social network style, like SMS (text) abbreviations, such as L8R, and emoticons (like smiley faces) slip into their more formal communications, run the risk of being viewed as poor communicators by very influential people, such as potential employers and graduate school review boards. These things:

“say to me … ‘well, this person doesn’t think very clearly, and they’re not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they’re not very good at expressing themselves, or … they can’t spell, and they can’t punctuate,’ These folks are going to short-change themselves, and right or wrong, they’re looked down upon in traditional corporations.”

So have fun when you’re online, but remember, almost everything you “say” and do is visible to the entire world, including people who can make a difference in helping you achieve your objectives. And even if the social media gurus tell you the old rules have been thrown out, and communications has gone informal, and you should be yourself, someone apparently forgot to send that memo to our universities and corporations.

Social media, particularly its use in business communications, is still in its early days, and like anything new and different, there’s plenty of mythology surrounding it. The problem posed by certain of these myths is that they mislead those trying to adopt social media, and can lead to bad decisions, poorly implemented initiatives and unrealized expectations.

E-Mail Is Dead

The blogosphere has been buzzing recently in response to a Wall Street Journal article declaring that e-mail is dead. Unfortunately, the Journal didn’t say e-mail was dead, but reported on Oct. 12 in Why Email No Longer Rules, “Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.”

The concept that e-mail is in decline, rather than dead, is too complex for many bloggers, and the technique of declaring things “dead” is a tried and true blog traffic generator. Gizmodo, for example, responded with Email is Dead? Oh Really? and went on to cite statistics that show both e-mail and social networking use on the increase.

E-mail is far from dead, particularly in large companies. It’s hip and cool to say Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging have replaced e-mail, and “anything worth saying can be said in 140 characters,” but it isn’t true. Running a business is a complex affair requiring complex communications. Some companies use Sharepoint and other technologies to manage documents, but many still use e-mail to circulate Powerpoint, Excel, Word and other docs. Could you imagine negotiating a contract 140 characters at a time?

I emailed this article to my editor at Talent Zoo (where it originally appeared). Had I sent it to her via Twitter, it would have required 60 separate messages.

The CEO Needs to Blog

Guy Kawasaki once said that one measure of a company’s commitment to the Macintosh community was whether the CEO could be found in the company’s Macworld booth. That might be realistic for startups and small companies, but no way would you find the CEO of Adobe in the company’s booth.

Similarly, today, many contend that a truly engaged CEO should have a blog, or ought to be on Twitter. After Barrack Obama was elected, many people were disappointed when they couldn’t find him on Twitter chatting with the hoi polloi.

As powerful as it would be, it is unrealistic to expect the CEO of a public company or the president of a nation of over 300 million people to maintain a blog, or a personal presence on Twitter. To do so might not be a good use of time for a CEO or a president. These people must also comply with laws, governing communications by publicly traded companies or the president of the United States, which limit what they can say and may require too much oversight to be worth doing.

Certainly there are successful CEO bloggers at major companies, and politicians who use Twitter to communicate with the electorate, like Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition in Australia. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every company.

Many CEOs have opted out for business reasons. Or maybe the CEO is a poor or uninteresting communicator. Perhaps social media is not a part of the company’s communication strategy.

A company should choose its bloggers on the basis of their potential to write well and interestingly on one or more topics relevant to the company’s business. In all likelihood there are people in the company who are more interesting and more articulate than the CEO.

MySpace Is Where the Young People Hang Out

Everyone knows MySpace is the social network for kids, but in truth, in October, 2006, comScore reported More than Half (51%) of MySpace Visitors are Now Age 35 or Older, as the Site’s Demographic Composition Continues to Shift. 2006! That was three years ago! Of course the demographic at MySpace, and on every network, continues to shift, and is interpreted differently from study to study. A recent Pew Internet survey found:

“The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.”*

Early impressions of a social network tend to stay with people, even if these impressions are no longer true. In social media, as in any endeavor, conventional wisdom should not be used to make business decisions. A little research can help a company avoid investing in the wrong places.

There’s plenty of data on social network demographics, although, as we learned above, it’s not always consistent. Even so, making any statement about “young people” constitutes a vague generalization, and is a phrase last used without irony by June Cleaver.

Social Media Communication Is Informal

Everyone knows online communications is not the same as formal business communications. Spelling, grammar and capitalization don’t matter as much as they used to, and Twitter, with its 140-character limit, also calls for a loosening of the rules.

Wrong. When you’re communicating online, people are judging you. Sometimes they’re just jerks who judge people, or martinets who enjoy correcting others, but they can also be important people who can influence your success.

If I was going to hire a PR agency, I would read the agency blog to learn about the firm’s communications philosophy. If its employees write poorly on the company’s blog, which after all is just a new kind of company web site, then why should I expect good writing if I retained them for my company?

In an age in which there are many regulations limiting how much information a potential employer can request from a candidate, social media is one area where they can freely gather extensive data on potential hires.

Recruiters are looking beyond employment history for hints about a candidate’s personality, possible drug or alcohol use, attitude toward previous employers and ability to communicate clearly and professionally. If you post a story about your night in a Mexican jail, you probably won’t get hired.

In fact, a poll by Harris Interactive and CareerBuilder disclosed that 14% of recruiters who use social media to vet candidates would reject a candidate who used emoticons (aka “smiley faces”)! LOL!

It’s Going to Go Viral

The best way to ensure the failure of a social media initiative is to label it “viral.” Every marketing manager is eager to create a video that will be viewed 1 million times on YouTube, making the company’s name a household word. Truly viral videos rarely come out of the corporate communications laboratory. They are instead more spontaneous, and involve a complex synthesis of many elements that is too difficult to reproduce with a business process.

When I was at the agency, we made what we referred to as a viral video. We wrote a script, scouted locations, and hired a videographer. The project took over a month. We posted the finished video on YouTube and Facebook. More than two years later, the video has fewer than 700 views.

On the other hand, my daughter, who was seven at the time, asked if I could suspend a couple of her Webkinz stuffed animals from a ceiling fan. She suggested we take a video of the animals spinning around. She then asked, “Can we put this one on YouTube?” That video has nearly 7000 views, many positive comments, and at one time was the most viewed YouTube video of Webkinz spinning on a ceiling fan.

Don’t Be Taken In By Conventional Wisdom

Most of the myths above stem from sweeping generalizations, a common form of logical fallacy. Corporate communicators who approach social media initiatives with logic instead of emotion will avoid the perils posed by buying into the mythology. You should always do the research before venturing into a new area, and assumptions should only be acted on when they are backed with data.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to add me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

* Pew Internet and American Life Project, Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009 by Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith, Oct 21, 2009

This piece originally appeared November, 2009, on my Very Public Relations column on Talent Zoo.

Tags: Debunking, social media myths, CEO blogging, e-mail, dead, viral video, myspace, young people, informal communications, conventional wisdom

I see so many motivational quotes on Twitter, I thought I would take a moment to share a few of my favorites:

1. How will you know the depths of your ineptitude until you try something you’re unsure of?
2. If you fail to plan, you’ll have a lot more time to do the actual work.
3. I have never failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Don’t you wish you could screw up 10,000 times before you got fired? You’re not Thomas Effing Edison, pal.
4. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life. Teach a man how to exploit disadvantaged workers in the third world, build a multinational seafood empire and feed his family for generations.
5. Some see the future with anxiety, some with hope, and still others as the inevitable approach of the apocalypse replete with biblical plagues, pestilence and alien invasion.

I hope I’ve helped brighten your day if only a bit.

Domino’s Pizza’s new Pizza Turnaround campaign set off a wave of discussions in the social media world. The Pizza Turnaround video, which was produced by Domino’s, features Domino’s employees, including its head chefs, and some of the company’s marketing executives, admitting outright that the pizza sucks. Some of the quotes in the video include “Domino’s pizza crust is to me like cardboard,” a sentiment expressed in a focus group but echoed by Domino’s executives. “Doesn’t feel like there’s much love in Domino’s Pizza,” says another focus group participant.

This is, to be sure, a bold move, and many are applauding Domino’s for publicly owning up to making bad pizza. Everyone’s talking about transparency, but not many companies are really doing anything about it.

There’s a reason for that, of course. Only an idiot is 100% transparent.

Setting aside literal definitions, what does “transparent” mean? For publicly held companies, “transparent” has come to mean conducting business and doing accounting according to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Every company is supposed to report its financial situation using the same measures as every other company, and using the same measures every quarter, to ensure that shareholders and regulators can read them and make valid judgments and comparisons.

In the social media world, transparency extends beyond finance, meaning something like “using social media to expose to the public the inner workings of the company and the candid thoughts of its executives and employees.”

So where does the publicly held company draw the line? The CEO can’t be 100% transparent on his or her blog. Comments about the company’s finances are regulated by FASB and the SEC. Comparisons to competitors are regulated by the FTC. When, what information, and in what format an officer of a publicly held company can disclose information is all strictly regulated.

One could argue in fact that Domino’s admission that its pizza isn’t up to par is contrary to its obligations to shareholders to maximize value. In fact, Domino’s stock traded around $11.39 today, not far from its 52-week high, and nearly triple its 52-week low of $4.76. So how bad can the pizza be?

Maybe we expect too much transparency from the companies we do business with. How transparent are you? Do you tell everybody everything you are doing and thinking, or are there some things you might omit? If you want to be 100% transparent, you would have to walk down the street saying out loud, “That’s an ugly shirt.” “You look so cool with your Bluetooth.” “Your girlfriend is way too hot for you.” We wouldn’t call that transparency, actually, we’d call it Tourette Syndrome.

Why then do we expect the companies we do business with to overexpose themselves? I think the social media “movement” has pressured companies to act irresponsibly. OK, the Domino’s thing is clever and is attracting a lot of attention. And maybe Domino’s feels it’s “working.” But I think these guys are subjecting themselves to an unnecessary beating. The following (with one letter masked) was displayed by Domino’s on its Pizza Turnaround site:

When counseling clients on blog commenting policies, and the use of RSS feeds and Twitter feeds on their corporate sites, I remind them that they still own that real estate, and while they can’t control what people are saying about them out in the blogosphere, they can control their own Web sites. For example, no public company should permit racism, gratuitous obscenity, out-of-control bashing of the company or its competitors, etc.

I used to argue that companies should not surrender their brand to consumers, but should share it. Some things require careful branding and messaging, some things should be more open and participatory and a lot of things are simply beyond the company’s control. Domino’s has raised the stakes by inviting consumers to trash talk the company and its pizza. I wonder what’s next?

Tags: Domino\'s, Pizza Turnaround, transparency brand

Nick Sobrak-Seaton and I, and maybe a few surprise guests, will be on KSCO Santa Cruz AM radio this Saturday talking about social media as a marketing and communications tool for businesses and non-profits. Some of the topics we’re thinking about covering include:

• Developing your brand online
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Video, such as YouTube and 12 Seconds
• Ethical social media business practices
• Social networking Etiquette
• Using social media for career development and job hunting
• Location-based services like Brightkite, Foursquare and Rally
• New technology, like augmented reality
• Social media policy for businesses

We’ll be on the air from 10 a.m. to noon this Saturday, January 23. Tune in or catch it streaming.

Two hours is a long time for two average guys from the 831 to carry the show, so please call in during the show to discuss anything related to social media and business. And we’d love to hear from Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley social media entrepreneurs discussing or shamelessly pitching their latest endeavors. The call in number is probably 1-831-479-1080, but we need to verify that. Hope to talk with you Saturday!

Tags: Santa Cruz, KSCO, Nick Sobrak-Seaton, Joel Postman