Although Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and the other major social media platforms have enabled job seekers to reach an enormous network of people during their job search, these same tools – improperly used – also have the potential to derail and destroy your efforts if you don’t carefully manage your online persona.

The explosive growth of Facebook and its use for both personal and professional networking has revealed some cautionary tales from individuals who didn’t anticipate the damaging potential of too-familiar, vulgar or offensive profile content.

The destructive potential of an artless profile was revealed last week in a post written by Cleveland blogger clevelandsaplum. Her post detailed a candidate search for an addition to their public relations staff. After the first round of interviews, one candidate stood out as the clear favorite. But when the staff did a quick Google search and checked out his public Facebook profile, he lost any chance of being invited back.

Visible to anyone with access to Facebook, and shielded from no one was this stunning paragraph:

About Me:
I am awesome. I run sh**. I had relations with your girlfriend, and yes I got it on tape. I scoff at those less fortunate than me (read: everyone else). I tend to laugh at the handicapped as well as foreigners. I am a firm believer that women are without a doubt the weaker sex. I know more than you. I am a ridiculously huge deal. I’m utterly gorgeous, you (most likely as a result of terrible genes or an unfortunate run-in with the business-end of a shovel) are not. I make fun of ugly people, because they are ugly and they deserve it. My social life is clearly something that you will never experience because you are ugly, unpopular, or a severe combination of the two. I throw sh** onto my neighbor’s porch because I am better than them and they can’t do sh** about it. My friends are also better than you and they will let you know it. I break other people’s stuff. I do whatever I want without any regard for the repercussions. I intentionally ruin the environment via littering, not recycling, and other harmful action. I am an ass****.

Although it’s likely that this individual was attempting to be sarcastic and humorous, his description was highly offensive to those who viewed it within the company and it raised flags concerning his judgment and discretion. And in a heated competition with a dozen other qualified applicants, this was reason enough to eliminate him from consideration.

Now, go check out your own social media profiles and see if you’ve written anything that could offend or concern a potential hiring manager.

Then read these instructions to sanitize and protect your online reputation. Customize your privacy settings to restrict access to your personal information. Segregate all of your contacts into different lists, each with differing levels of access to your updates and photos. At a minimum, you should have a Personal list for your closest friends and a Professional list that allows you to connect with professional contacts but doesn’t grant access to all the intimate details of your life. Prevent photos tagged with your name from appearing in anyone else’s feed unless you specifically approve it. And restrict your personal updates solely to your close, personal friends.

Take control of your personal brand and online reputation before you become a cautionary tale yourself.

David Meerman Scott garnered attention this week with a 3 minute rant deploring the fixation of corporate types who insist on justifying social media marketing expenditures with Business 1.0 anachronisms like ROI (that’s Return on Investment folks).

He attracted dozens of comments from supportive readers who share his distaste for the MBA scourges who dominate corporate America and insist on facts, data and analysis to support requests for capital investment. After all, we all know that social media is good, strong relationships are beneficial, and any effort we can make to become closer to our clients should be pursued. Unless you do it wrong.

You see, there’s a burr under this social media saddle. If you do it wrong, you can irritate your prospects, alienate your clients and permanently damage your personal and company reputation.

When your CEO asks for an ROI of your social media marketing program, what he is asking for is a strategic plan and analysis of likely outcomes. Without the plan, you and your marketing/social media staff may simply leap into the social media void and flail around aimlessly, without clear objectives or measurable goals. Sure, you’ll be able to brag about the number of Twitter followers you have and the percentage of retweets you generate, but what have you really accomplished?

I admire many of the marketing activities that David has pursued over the past several years. And I agree that his approach – creating interesting, entertaining and highly useful content and then giving it away – is successful for many people and companies. But not all.

It obviously works for David. How do we know? Because he tracks the ROI of his activities. He knows that when he posts a controversial blog entry that gets commented upon across the web he generates more traffic, increases his search engine visibility, receives more comments, and sells more books. Activity = increased revenue. ROI.

The straw man in his argument is his assumption that establishing ROI requires that one track the value of every tweet, blog post, Facebook entry or YouTube submission and then generate a value of that singular activity. No one is asking that anyone do all that to prove the effectiveness of a social media program. No company can get that granular in their analysis.

However, we can demand that marketing departments have a strategy in place and mechanisms established to measure the success of that strategy. If you are going to produce and disseminate free content, you need to know what type of content you need to produce. Videos? Podcasts? Slideshows? Webinars? White papers? Interviews? And where will they be available? On your corporate website? On your blog? On your Facebook Fan Page? On all of them? Then you need to track, analyze and adapt. If the downloads of your white papers overwhelm the views of your online videos, then get busy producing more white papers. But how would you know any of this if you didn’t prepare to measure the effectiveness of your efforts?

And then what are your next steps? How do you extend the relationship with the individual who downloaded your white paper? Do you ask them to become a Twitter follower so you can engage them online? Do you ask that they join your Facebook Fan Page so they can gather even more useful content? And to what end? At some point, your actions/their reactions/the non-financial impact must convert into a financial impact or what’s the point? (hat tip to Olivier Blanchard at http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/)

If you can’t convince your CEO that you have a plan to increase revenues or reduce your costs, then you don’t deserve the investment. Don’t blame their fear of your social media prowess or resistance to trying something new. Their understanding of business fundamentals hasn’t changed. Prove the value of your ideas. Something David’s Harvard Business School audience should understand, even if David doesn’t.

During last week’s BusinessWire sponsored panel discussion at the City Club in Cleveland (video above), every panelist agreed that determining social media ROI should be a distinct component of any social media campaign. So why do so few companies track any form of ROI?

Because it’s boring.

There, I said it. The cat’s out of the bag. Determining social media ROI is tedious, dull and boring. It requires you to read reports, check analytics, create timelines and check data against specific activities and website minutiae that are profoundly uninspiring, yet absolutely necessary.

Getting a social media program off the ground is fun. It requires strategic planning, creative execution and active engagement. Everything is fresh and exciting. Every new conversation is an affirmation and every relationship is a success.

Tracking the results of this activity, however, is considerably less fun. Although there are excellent software tools, like Radian6, that will measure the success of your social media efforts, most of these cost money. Social media is supposed to be free, isn’t it? So, most small companies will likely develop some home-grown, spreadsheet based tracking mechanisms to determine their ROI.

And then, they’ll be largely ignored or neglected, like 84% of social media programs.

Because tracking ROI requires you to know what you’re measuring, how to measure, how to interpret the data, how and when to establish a baseline, how to measure impact and requires you to track specific transactional activities.

And where’s the fun in that?

Exactly one year ago today I wrote that you could put a fork in Motorola. They were done.

At the time, Motorola was reeling from a string of lackluster phone releases that failed to generate any consumer excitement, their product designs were uninspiring and their engineering and development staffs were incapable of developing innovative products for the half-dozen different mobile operating platforms that they supported.

They’d lost their design mojo and appeared unable to recapture any Wow! factor.

The New York Times reported today that their new CEO, Sanjay Jha, has bet the company’s future on Motorola’s newest iPhone combatant, the Droid. And the early buzz indicates that the Droid may very well save the company.

How did Jha design a company saving product strategy that you can apply to your business?

1. design a better experience. The single biggest complaint about the iPhone is its lack of a real keyboard. The Droid offers a thin keyboard that slides out from the phone, thereby resolving the iPhone’s most glaring weakness and instantly appealing to thousands of users who love the iPhone concept but could not live with its touchscreen keyboard. Instant win.
2. personalize the experience. There are now more than 100,000 reasons why the iPhone is so popular with its users: applications. Every user has personalized their iPhone with the apps that complement their lives. Every user’s iPhone is unique to them, and by adopting Google’s Android mobile platform, the Droid has access to a growing library of Android apps that will allow Droid users to create a uniquely personal device that can’t be replicated on any other platform.
3. create a sensory experience. Although Motorola was known as a design innovator, they haven’t introduced a compelling product design for several years. The Droid changes that. Jha understood that the visual aesthetic and the tactile sensation of holding and using the Droid was crucial. Motorola smoothed some hard edges and covered the back of the phone with a tactilely pleasing rubberized coating. In addition, they’ve incorporated a larger, 16:9 hi-res display that delivers a compelling visual experience. Overall, it’s a sensorial delight.
4. create a WOW! experience. the Droid is being released with a new navigation system from Google that has amazed the early reviewers. It’s the kind of killer app that can generate huge volumes of sales on its own since it replaces the need for in-car navigation systems. It’s visually exciting, it’s instantly understandable and it delivers exceptional value. They captured Wow!

Apple has retained its position at the top of the smartphone heap for over two years. Challengers have been easily dismissed. Until now. And if Motorola can continue to focus on designing and delivering exceptional user experiences, they may very well challenge Apple’s dominance.

Any iPhone users thinking of making the switch and betting on the Droid?

This past week saw the public release of three of the silliest attempts by professional sporting associations to manage and control the use of social media channels. The NFL, the SEC (who count as professional in my book, since three of their teams could beat last year’s Detroit Lions) and the USTA all published social media guidelines intended to control the dissemination of information by players, coaches, media representatives and even fans.

The SEC was first out of the gate with their near universal prohibition on any and all social media communications during a game. Yep, their first draft even prohibited college gameday fans from tweeting about or, heaven forbid, sending a photo of, their team’s gridiron splendor. To their credit, the SEC revised their published guidelines and acceded to the desires of rabid and frequently gun-toting fans to celebrate through concise tweets the magnificence of their student-athletes and their impressive SAT scores 40 yard dash times. As long as there are no commercial interests attached to their 140 character broadcasts.

The NFL, in all their controlling authority, were next to publish a set of draconian restrictions on social media participation. This time, the league’s prohibitions were directed at players (and anyone representing them), coaches and officials from engaging on any social media channel from 90 minutes before gametime until after all media interviews after the game’s completion. The media were also put on warning about sending any tweets or other messages that could compete with the broadcast of the game. So, a fan sitting a row below the press booth can tweet the score, but the reporter sitting six feet above him cannot. Makes sense to me.

The USTA released the silliest and least enforceable social media policy, warning against the dissemination of “certain sensitive information” that could be considered “inside information” about a match. Even Andy Roddick commented on the lameness of the USTA’s efforts. Specifically, the USTA is concerned about:

“information about the likely participation or likely performance of a player in an event or concerning the weather, court conditions, status, outcome or any other aspect of an event which is known by a Covered Person and is not information in the public domain.”

But, once someone tweets about court conditions or weather, doesn’t it immediately become public domain? Are there really any super-sensitive tennis secrets that, if revealed, would alter the fundamental nature of the sport itself?

I can understand the league prohibitions on tweeting during games. Players, coaches and officials should be focused on the game itself, not on satisfying their Twitter followers or Facebook Fans with status updates. But prohibitions on media members and even fans is both ridiculous – do they really believe we won’t tune in to watch the game if we can get a Twitter update instead – and utterly unenforceable.

Want some reasonable social media guidelines?:

1. explore ways to engage online before, during and after the games. Post a scrolling Twitter feed on the scoreboard with a scrolling feed of all comments that include your team’s hashtag. I did this during the Final Four, and the Twitter feed was more fun than the game. There are some hilarious tweets flying through the ether that could be shared with the entire stadium.
2. toss up a twitter poll during the game to make the game more interactive. Twitter poll question: Will Tom Brady throw for more yards today than the entire Cleveland Brown offense generates? 63% say YES.
3. put a highlight YouTube video up on your Facebook Fanpage at halftime and again after the game. Tweet about the video so fans can click a link and watch in the stands on their iPhones and Blackberrys.
4. sponsor contests that spectators can enter via Twitter
5. publish online stats, again distributed realtime via Twitter and Facebook
6. accept the fact that you cannot control this social media phenomenon. You can continue to publish more and more specific prohibitions and narrowly defined exceptions in a vain effort to wrestle control of these assorted publicly directed channels, but you are tilting at online windmills. Embrace the brave new world of social media, and learn how to harness its power to fulfill your own goals. They shouldn’t be too different from your fans’.

Social media can be your friend. If you play nice.

I was invited yesterday to attend a couple of high-level presentations at an enormous Cleveland-based health care concern that intends to pursue web-based fundraising initiatives.

Two groups were invited to compete for a seven figure campaign to test the efficacy and potential of web-based fundraising and each sent high-powered teams to deliver their extraordinarily mediocre messages through their numbingly ineffective PowerPoint presentations.

At the end of the day, after our private recap of both presentations, we were all in agreement that neither company did themselves any favors with their presentations, although each had the potential to blow the other out of the water with an exemplary, creative, memorable and distinctive presentation.

What went wrong? Both were wedded to the PowerPoint presentation template that insists on delivering text based information in a visual environment. With bullets. Endless bullets. Each one read to us. Just in case we had become suddenly stricken illiterate.

So, let’s review. Each presenter brings a laptop to connect with a high-resolution LCD projector capable of displaying brilliant video, and each decides to present…. (wait for it)… TEXT. Brilliant.

Here’s the rub. Both competitors had amazing, compelling and memorable stories to tell. Huge, nationally recognized clients with exciting success stories. Creative campaigns that generated lasting results. And neither elected to tell any of these stories.

However, we were graced with annoyingly derivative methodology diagrams, dense process flow charts and unnecessary recitations of dry stats and figures that contributed nothing to our attempt to determine one thing: are you the guys we want to execute this campaign?

Let’s revisit the irony here… two firms send teams to demonstrate how wonderfully creative and capable they are and both center their presentations not around story, emotion, community, engagement or connections (words not even mentioned for the first 90 minutes), but around bullet points. I’m sold.

I know it’s been said before, but let’s say it again:

1. tell a story. first. foremost. If you don’t know how, read Beyond Bullet Points and learn. Before your next presentation. I’ll remember a story. I won’t remember that 4.8% of direct mail recipients will elect to give their contact information if presented with a free premium option. Or is that 8.4%? Or 6.9%? Oh hell, I forgot.
2. use visuals. See the slide deck embedded above. Simple graphics aren’t so simple, but they are devastatingly effective. And they support your story. (see how this all ties together?)
3. edit ruthlessly. Don’t use eight words when five will do. Or two. This is a presentation, not a shared group reading session. If you pick the right visual, you won’t need a single word on the slide.
4. learn your presentation. I believe that most presenters fill their slides with bullet points as a crutch. They’re afraid that they’ll forget to mention something, so they make sure that every single talking point is included in their slides. The solution: practice. Learn what you want to say with each visual. Use the slide notes feature if you need to have a visual reminder visible only to you. Just get rid of the lists of text that detract from you and your story.

Want to separate yourself from your competitors? Learn how to tell a visually compelling story. Your clients will be eternally grateful that they never have to sit through another miserable PowerPoint bullet point recitation and you’ll be their hero. Win win.

A recent study released by Universal McCann reveals that we are immersed in the fourth wave of internet usage characterized by social networking participation. Their study notes that social networks are becoming the dominant platform for personal interaction and content creation and distribution.

The global internet audience now totals 625 million people, with almost 100 million of those users located in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of these users are active in one or more social networks.

What’s also revealed is how these users spend their time on the social networks. The most popular activity was watching video, followed by listening to streaming audio, blogging and connecting with friends.

What does this mean for you or your industry?

First of all, the place to connect with people – whether personally or professionally – is on one of the social networks. They’ve made their choice how they want to interact with others, and it’s not through email. For professionals, this typically means LinkedIn, though Facebook is being used more and more by professionals who have learned to adjust their privacy settings so as not to share overly personal information with other professional contacts.

These trends also mean that you need to generate content that is interesting, engaging and compelling enough to generate views and inspire your connections to share your content with their own network of friends and colleagues. The dominant format for this content: video. If you’re not creating videos to put on your site, your blog, your LinkedIn page, your Facebook Fan Page, then it’s time to start.

But don’t stop with video. Over 70% of social networkers also post photos to their pages. People want to see who they’re connecting with, and a thoughtfully designed series of photos can generate a powerful impression. For the professional, these can include images of your office, your personal workspace, your coworkers and even photos from events that you participate in. Sharing some personal visual insights will increase your familiarity, strengthening your connections with your networks.

Finally, if your company really wants to engage online, you need to create a community that’s worth joining. That means frequently updated, compelling content. The promise of interaction with other, like-minded people. A thoughtful, meaningful – even delightful – user experience. And the ability to listen to your community members and adjust your activities to satisfy their needs, not yours.

This week saw the debut of a YouTube video United Breaks Guitars by Canadian songwriter Dave Carroll that satirized United Airlines’ negligence and indifference to the way their O’Hare baggage handlers damaged his guitar. The video went viral and accumulated more than two and a half million views and over 14,000 comments in less than a week.

The attraction and impact of Carroll’s video demonstrates the enormous potential of social media tools when wielded skillfully and exposed the vulnerability of sclerotic organizations with no social media aptitude or capacity to engage their clients in substantive dialogue.

Do you want your SM content to have the same impact? Follow these lessons:

Lesson 1: Tell a story. Marketers continually preach the value of storytelling for a reason: stories stick. Carroll’s song tells his entire story from witnessing the guitar carnage at O’Hare to the denouement nine months later when his claim is finally rejected by the kind Ms. Irlweg. There was no recitation of United’s lost baggage policies, their industry ranking in bagage claims or even details of the damage done to his guitar. Raw data simply doesn’t have the impact of a well crafted story. No one who views his video will forget his basic narrative: United broke my guitar, they don’t care, they don’t take any responsibility for their negligence and he’ll never fly them again.

Lesson 2: Keep It Simple. Carroll’s song reinforces a simple message directed at United: You broke it, You should fix it. Simple, easy to grasp and powerfully true. If you click through to his personal website, he provides a written narrative that contains all the gruesome details of his nine month saga. But the song is actually more powerful because the core elements are all contained in his facile lyrics.

Lesson 3: Be Authentic. Authenticity is powerful and persuasive. Carroll doesn’t embellish his story, but relies instead on understated frustration and anger that thousands of his viewers can empathize with. Although he may be entirely justified in ranting against United’s casual indifference, his temperate presentation enhances his believability and strengthens his message.

For those wanting to emulate United, these simple lessons should help you enrage half a million clients yourself:

Lesson 1: Design Client Interactions to Maximize Anger and Frustration. One of the reasons that Carroll’s video resonates so powerfully is that it perfectly captures the indifferent response that so many travelers have encountered with the major airlines. While several upstart airlines like Virgin and Southwest have adopted business models that reflect a genuine concern for their passengers, the legacy airlines, including United, American and Delta retain business models that appear to be designed to antagonize and disappoint their passengers. Until the advent of accessible social media channels, they could get away with boorish behavior, but not anymore.

Lesson 2: Refuse to Engage Purposefully In Any Social Media Channels. United has a corporate presence on a single social media channel: Twitter.  And that presence appears to exist for outbound dissemination of ticketing specials and other company promotions, not to engage passengers in active dialogue. Is it any wonder that they appear coldly imperious and uncaring?

Lesson 3: Outsource Your Limited SM Participation to Public Relations. Visit United’s Twitter page and their profile reveals that the account is managed by their public relations department. Not by someone on the front lines of customer service. Not by anyone who has the authority to solve problems immediately. Nope, United apparently views Twitter as another media channel to be managed for their corporate interests, not as a method to interact in real time with their passengers. Want to complain? Not our department.

Lesson 4: Limit Your Response When Confronted With Execrable Behavior. In a case study for what not to do when confronted with appalling corporate behavior, United has limited their response to two brief Twitter messages (right) asserting that they intend to make it right with Dave Carroll and to use the video in future training so everyone receives better service from us. This anemic response is being overwhelmed by over 14,000 nearly universal negative comments attached to the YouTube video. As the video gains more exposure, it will be picked up in other media outlets and has the potential to inflict serious damage on United’s precarious brand image. But it appears that their ingrained, insular culture will trump any creative response that takes responsibility for their negligence and embraces serious change in their service delivery.

Imagine if all the social media tools and channels that we rely upon today were available back in the 1930′s while Stalin extended his dominion over the Soviet empire.

Eager to propagandize stories documenting the unrivaled success of his agricultural collectivization and industrial expansion, Stalin would have turned to his battalions of Party apparatchiks and impelled them to repeatedly Tweet the wonders of Sovietization. And like the advertising agencies slammed in today’s AdAge article, Stalin’s Soviet Ministry of Communications Enterprises and Functions (Digital Formulations) would have been an abject failure.

Mimicking Stalin’s command and control methodology, today’s behemoth advertising agencies are simply attempting to appropriate the assorted social media platforms as yet another ancillary broadcast channel where they can propagandize their uniformly one-way message.

Pursuing social media tactics that would have made the commissars proud, these ad agencies lack a few significant components that differentiate successful SM campaigns, including:

1. Transparency – the best SM programs enlist senior executives to participate in the conversations. They may not tweet with the regularity of their employees, but their participation sends a distinct message that dialogue with their clients is important for everyone in the company.
   The laggards outsource their SM chatter to ad agencies or other third parties, clearly communicating to their own staff and their clients (who will inevitably discover their dereliction) that social media is employed simply as another tactic, not as part of any strategic communication or brand building plan.
2. Authenticity – Twitter posts from named executives and employees resonate with clients and prospects. When the CEO pronounces his commitment to customer service or product quality in a global, open forum, that proclamation has significant meaning and impact. It’s not a nameless, faceless corporate voice, but Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh or Richard at Dell making these statements. Real people articulating real promises in their real voices.
3. Conversation – Social media is about dialogue, not broadcasting. Relationships aren’t built or strengthened when you yell your message at an individual over and over. He resents it and you derive no value unless your hectoring somehow compells him to purchase your product. Not likely. SM is all about generating conversations. Getting to know others online, building relationships, engendering trust and maybe, just maybe, finding a way to transact business together.
4. Longevity – Mars, Inc, the candy company that produces Skittles, followed the advice of their ad agency to make a highly visible commitment to convert Skittles’ entire online presence to Twitter. It turned out to be a huge failure. One of the biggest mistakes was for Skittles to cannonball directly into the Twitter pool and expect an enthusiastic welcome. Although their splash was huge, their welcome was not. Skittles had made no effort to create an online community, to engage with their customers or to provide any type of customer support or interaction. The strongest SM participants are in for the long haul. Their employees establish online reputations, contribute to discussions, interact freely with all participants and integrate their SM activities with their daily routines.
5. Community – Ad agency employees need a huge banner strung across their  ergonomically pure, ecologically sustainable Herman Miller outfitted cubicles reading: It’s Not About You. Self interest may be the single defining quotient of Twitter accounts that are managed by ad agencies. They formulate dozens of clever ways to announce their new product, to roll out a contest or slick giveaway and to link to their own promotional websites. What they don’t engage in is dialogue of any kind.

Cheezhead this week wrote about Monster.com’s recent announcement that they will (for a hefty fee) execute a social media strategy for their clients.

What’s noticeable about this announcement isn’t that large companies are becoming aware of the value of social media and are trying to cash in on the gold rush of consulting fees that uncertain and unfamiliar companies will fork over to play in the social media pool.

No, the shocking thing about this announcement is that Monster.com has absolutely no social media presence themselves. They don’t tweet. They have no Facebook page. And I can’t find a Monster blog. All of which suggests that perhaps they’re not the best source of social media advice.

What’s also disturbing is that they don’t promise any tangible ROI, just a number of impressions. That’s right, for a mere $12,000 they will set up a Facebook page and Twitter profile for your comapny and promise that a banner ad will appear on 2 million Facebook pages.  Are you whipping out your checkbook yet?

Developing a social media strategy isn’t something that you can outsource to a third party. It should be part of your strategic marketing plan with specific objectives and an anticipated ROI. Company participants need to engage online in genuine conversations. Bloggers need to write about their real world issues. Problems. Successes. Difficult issues. Complex questions. With an authentic, human voice.

It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, it’s not quick and it’s not someone else’s responsibility.