Take control of your personal brand and identity

What’s your brand? No, I don’t mean your company’s brand. What’s your brand?

Much of what’s written these days about insurance and social media focuses on social media use at the corporate level. A great deal of the discussion is about bringing large company brands into the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.

[Photo by Sreejith K via Flicker]

If you have only devoted your time to bringing your company’s brand online, you may be missing one of the greatest opportunities afforded by the Web 2.0 era. Never before has the cost of marketing anything, including your personal brand been so close to zero.

Risk + 2.0 – The week in links 5/21/2010

The week in links

E-health and Web 2.0: The doctor will tweet you now – How physicians and other professionals in the health industry are using social media and Web 2.0 tools to interact with patients.

YouTube Surpasses Two Billion Video Views Daily – This Mashable post also shows an “infographic” of YouTube’s 5-year history.

Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends – A look at how social media has affected the health care industry, areas of resistance, and possibilities for the future.

Social Enterprise: 5 Tips for Getting Execs on Board – No effort to implement social technologies in a workplace will be successful without buy-in from management. This article lists several suggestions for gaining approval by those in the upper ranks.

Open Letter to Facebook on Privacy – A vehement recommendation to Facebook suggesting that opt-in is better than opt-out with Facebook’s new sharing framework. I agree. I really think that people value transparency over all else at the end of the day. Practices that are deceptive (intentional or not) simply won’t work in the long run. We should be paying close attention to how this unfolds.

The week in tweets

>> @blueeyepath How should healthcare organizations assess their social media risk? http://pbeye.info/3Ny (via @mindofandre, #mustshare)

>> @nancysiniard Healthcare Marketing: Why Risk Your Brand on Social Media http://wp.me/pzB01-em

>> @iAlvertis Social Media: Boon or Bane for Banks? http://bit.ly/cI2eeB #sm

>> @mebuell Young people are socially marginalized if they don’t particpate in social media; if they do they risk postings that may haunt them. #mesh10

>> @hiredeanpeters Amazing the risk companies take by not equipping/educating employees w/social media policies – http://ow.ly/1LFt8

Risk + 2.0: The week in links – 5/14/2010

The week in links (and video)

Erik Qualman recently posted a refresh of his “Social Media Revolution” video, and it once again quickly made the rounds in the social media blogosphere. Support for the statistics in the video are available at Erik’s blog. By the way, Erik is the author of Socialnomics, a book that I recommend to anyone who wants (or needs) an introduction to social media.

Making Sense of FINRA’s Social Media Guidelines – A look at a recent regulatory notice posted by FINRA and how it might affect agents. FINRA recommends keeping records of all communications done in social media networks and also recommends that communications be periodically reviewed by a supervisor.

Social networking boosts legal, regulatory compliance headaches – A very informative article on the challenges of controlling social media use in highly regulated industries like insurance and banking. The article also highlights a number of software tools that are emerging to fill this need. Thanks to Reinsurance Blogger for sharing this link on LinkedIn.

Facebook FTC Complaint: Insurers Should Distance Themselves From Exploitative Practices – A warning to insurers using Facebook. I think this is an important story to watch. It will be interesting to see how Facebook deals with the increasing angst about its esoteric privacy options. The NY Times also recently published a graphic that shows just how complex Facebook’s privacy settings have become.

Social Media: Risky Tool or Tool for Risk Management? – Why CEOs are slow to adopt social media and how social media creates risk for CEOs.

Top Five Ways to Respond to: “I Don’t Have Time For Social Media” – Good points on justifying some level of investment in social media.

What’s Needed First? Culture Change or Enterprise 2.0 Adoption – Thoughts about which comes first: cultural change or Enterprise 2.0 adoption (and some interesting comments at the end too). I’d say they are concomitant with each other but one doesn’t necessarily come first in every case.

The week in tweets

>> @Themelis_Cuiper Social Media : Department of Defense Goes Social, Invites Risk http://su.pr/2DfgBG #seo #socialmedia #fb

>> @LoriAMoore Healthcare Marketing: Why Risk Your Brand on Socia Media http://wp.me/pzB01-em

>> @identitysafe Reduce Identity Theft Risk Through Social Networks: Social media identity theft is growing with criminals posing a… http://bit.ly/a79KOt

>> @jkoul Zandt: siloing of social media content presents a risk to social capital. If Facebook crashed, how much would we lose? #fpsummit

>> @liberatemedia Social Media News: How to Ride—Not Fight—the Social Media Wave – Insurance Networking News (blog) http://bit.ly/b1IeY2

Using Twitter searches for risk management – how to get started

Recently, I’ve been reading comments on LinkedIn and elsewhere that suggest insurance companies, while beginning to talk about social media, are not outwardly using it as much as they should be.  Maybe that’s true; maybe it isn’t.

What did occur to me after reading these comments is that sometimes those of us who have been around social media a bit longer than others may take some things for granted.  And certain things that seem basic and fundamental to us may not even be known to others that are newer to the game.

[Photo by Vicki’s Nature via Flicker]

This is by no means limited to the insurance industry. Not long ago, I attended a social media event, the attendees of which were picking their jaws up off the floor after the keynote speaker, a member of the US House of Representatives, indicated that neither he or his staff were using Twitter to monitor what his constituents were saying.

In a previous post, I talked about a few Twitter basics like Follow Friday and hashtags.  Today, I’m going to talk about a really easy way to use Twitter to monitor online chatter about various things.  In my mind, the first step toward using Twitter as a risk management tool is to listen to what’s being said about your company or brand.

While not everyone is broadcasting on Twitter, everyone should be listening. In this post, I’ll show you how.

Risk + 2.0: the week in links – 5/7/2010

I read a lot. And believe it or not, it’s not all about social media and risk! But a lot of it is. Even within that niche genre, I collect a lot of links from around the web. I can’t possibly dedicate a post to each, so going forward—and schedule permitting—I’m going to post a “round up” of various links and tweets I find. . . probably on Fridays.

If you find any of these links interesting, please let me know in the comments or by contacting me privately. If you’d like to find more information or similar articles, let me know, and I’ll try to help.

Articles and blogs (not necessarily published in the last week)

Research on Tweeting Inside and Outside the Enterprise – A summary of a study on microblog usage inside and outside the workplace.  “In both settings, posts that provided information or were directed to others were more common than posts on status. Within these categories, it was more frequent to provide information externally than internally but more common to ask questions either through broadcast or directed posts internally than externally.”

Half of social networkers post risky information, study finds – Consumer Reports notes that “52% of adults who use social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, have posted personal information like their full birth dates and other revealing facts that criminals could use to victimize them.” I can see the need forming for a spin-off of enterprise risk management: “personal risk management.” Even the acronym PRM is catchy.

The Two-Year Lag from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 – A very interesting piece that explores the length of time it takes for Web 2.0 tools to go from consumer adoption to enterprise adoption.

E2.0 evangelists : the Revolutionaries and the Evolutionaries – An interesting attempt to group Enterprise 2.0 advocates into two distinct personality types and the effect of each on gaining management approval.

The week in tweets

@jeffbullas: Only 29% Of Companies Have A Social Media Policy: Is Your Company At Risk? http://bit.ly/b8hZzT

@SpyderRogue Risk & Social Media for Business – Defending Against the Top 3 Exposures http://bit.ly/cUzipr

@three60inc social media is fun.. but be aware of the potential security risk as it could be a cyberstalker haven ! read on.. http://ping.fm/atFbY

@TechnoTrendz Immediate Release: Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and …: Hospitals and medical practices are risk adverse… http://bit.ly/a98d7M

@Analiesehx Staff flouting policies on use of social media at work puts organisations’ security at risk http://tinyurl.com/27ur7pe

@lifeinsuranc Social networking brings risk management concerns: The rapid growth of social media sites will bring new risks .. http://bit.ly/9f6vBw

Update: Chubb social media discussion will continue through May 14

Just a quick update today. . .

The Chubb-sponsored social media discussion I mentioned last week will continue through May 14. I’m not affiliated with Chubb in any way, but I’m pleased to see that they’re taking this initiative. I’ve enjoyed reading the comments in the various idea threads so far.

Here are a few of the themes I’ve found particularly interesting, along with a description of each taken directly from the idea thread: