Well it happened again, and this time it was the U.S. Navy’s official account that published the mistakenly tweeted comment.

And what a splash it made — being covered in the Navy Times blog & Politico (the main source of buzz in the Beltway), among other industry blogs.

@USNavy image tweeted in response to mistakenly posted tweet

The tweet was quickly deleted, & followed up with an apology. Later, the Navy tweeted this amusing pic (complete with @ replies mentions to the most prominent online outlets who were already covering the story) showing someone presumably from the social media team writing “I will not tweet on my personal account at work” over, and over & over. (Side note, we have a word for this punishment in the Navy — EMT, which stands for “extra military instruction.”)

In a situation like this is is absolutely necessary to admit your mistake, which they quickly did. And in a mild social media crisis like this, humor goes a long way at maintaining a relationship with your stakeholders, which they did.

But the Navy social media team is more than just an official voice for the service, it also serves as a social media training point of contact for public affairs officers across the fleet. To their credit, the Navy team followed up with a post on their tumblr blog (intended for internal audiences) explaining the situation & offering social media management tips to other public affairs personnel.Their tips were simple & to the point:

“Our bad” is your good—Here are some key takeaways we wanted to share:

• Be careful of which accounts you are logged into when using a third-party application
• Don’t use your personal account at work—it’s too easy to get them mixed up
• When you make a mistake, know that it will be public, acknowledge it and be honest

The crisis response was well-handled, but I can’t help but wonder how we’re still having these problems — especially on such big brands. Not only should a social media specialist of all people be extremely cognizant of which account he or she is about to post to, shouldn’t the social media team more than anyone know to NOT post when you’re angry or distracted?

The bottom line is even if your response is excellent, controlling the situation to prevent the crisis in the first place is the better tack to take.

Quick Disclosure in Case You Forgot: While I used to support the Navy social media team, I haven’t had my hands in their work since early 2011. I am still in the U.S. Navy Reserve and always interested in what is happening with the services & their social media.

Dr. Lynda Lee Kaid toasts to Dr. Kaye Sweetser at her doctoral defense (May 2004)

It has been very difficult for me to mourn her, because the day that I found out she had passed I was getting on a plane to Afghanistan for my military recall. As you can imagine, the real world is suspended when you’re at war. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to celebrate her life and contributions to this world at the fantastic memorial service (video here) at the University of Florida.

Dr. Kaid’s research, approach to learning and presence is always with me. She created a true research family of her graduated students that made up a rich international network. Some of my favorite people and the brightest minds in political communication scholarship were taught the ropes by her and it shows.

Dr. Andrew Paul Williams, Dr. Lynda Lee Kaid, Dr. Kristen Landreville & Dr. Kaye Sweetser catch up at ICA 2005.

Beyond those public & scholarly contributions, I have countless memories of election returns parties at her house, movie screenings, late night pizza & data sessions, jury rigging cable in the journalism college for a debate experiment & fancy dinners at conferences.

Dr. Kaid was simply one-of-a-kind.

She believed that you learn by doing. Jump into a research team & just start — there is enough for everyone to have a meaningful contribution.

She believed in sharing knowledge. No need to keep your projects secret, rather invite in more scholars for a richer collaboration because there is always data enough for everyone.

She believed in working hard. Because of her I can manage multiple (upwards of half a dozen) projects at one time. Not only that, I remember that she edited my last draft of my dissertation only one day out of surgery. Her edits were thoughtful, complete and supportive while pushing me to make the research better.

She believed in being productive. People ask me how I publish so much scholarship annually & my answer is always “doesn’t everybody?” — I followed Dr. Kaid’s impressive lead as closely as I could keep up.

Most importantly, she really believed … as in she believed in me. One of my favorite stories about Dr. Kaid is one I didn’t come to really know until after I’d graduated with my PhD. I’ll start at the beginning.

When I started my doctoral program at UF, it is no surprise to the people who know me that I had a very aggressive plan for accomplishing my goal. Not only did I want to finish in about 2 years (not impossible since I was just rolling out of a master’s program at the same school), but I also wanted to research a communication tool that was new and mostly made fun of at the time (blogs). I remember asking Dr. Kaid to be my dissertation chair, much like one asks a date to the prom. Though I had worked on her research team at that point for several months, I was not officially her student nor was my area officially political communication. (I had just been on the team for fun.) I talked to my friends about it, created a strategy for the discussion and even role-played. I was nervous for nothing because she signed on immediately. Not only did she agree to formally be my mentor, she agreed to allow me to develop my first-choice dissertation topic: celebrity blogs. At the time this was not en vogue, nor did it seem like a scholarly topic at all. I later learned that her own adviser, another scholarly great (Dr. Keith Sanders), had extended her the same support in that when she asked to study political advertising for her dissertation most at the time said that topic was not going anywhere. She took a chance on me, just like Dr. Sanders took a chance on her.

There is so much to say, so many things to thank her for and so many accomplishments that me and my 40 Kaid-advised research “brothers and sisters” have all thanks to her mentorship.

As I mourn her loss a full year later, I’ll spend tomorrow in the way she most would want: in a political communication research team meeting on campus.

Rest in peace to one of the greatest scholars and all-around-most supportive and wonderful people of all time.

I can sum it up in one word: purpose.

In scholarly research I see a lot of descriptive (mine included, no one is safe here!) research that just describes what is happening. Often from the organizational perspective. The biggest offenders are content analyses of social sites, which just describe what organizations are doing online with no connection to their stakeholders or inquiry into the effect the social tactics have.

In practitioner-targeted metric articles, there appears to be a focus on cool new ways to count things but a lack of connection of those metrics to the organizations goals and objectives. There are lists with meaningless measures like number of fans/followers or cool ways to measure mentions, with little discussion about what type of question that data would answer for an organization or how it could inform or change a PR campaign.

Now of course I’m making sweeping generalizations here, but that is what blogging is about. Yes, I know that there are guys like Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, Olivier Blanchard and others who do actively focus all metrics as extentions of business goals. But they are not the norm.

In academia we are also falling short of asking those really interesting questions that not only explain what organizations are doing in their social spaces but what impact social presence has. This involves external variables and well, sometimes actually asking people, which of course takes more time and more money and who in the ivory tower has that these days?

As I move forward in my own research, I’m pledging to be a better scholar & not take the easy road. I’m in the great position, just coming out of hiatus if you will, of being able to re-focus my research program. I plan to do more surveys and experiments coupled with content analysis.

Now more than ever we see everything is connected and I’ll make a conscious effort to represent those connections in my research.

The purpose of the videos is to help students sort through the mounds of data that they can collect. I want to help them determine what meaningful and actionable metrics they can track. Measurement, especially in an ever-changing environment, can be a little intimidating. I am hopeful these little tips help my students focus their attention on measuring things concepts that really get at understanding engagement – not just numbers for the sake of numbers.

I decided to do videos rather than cover tips daily in class to not only save time in class, but give students a chance to review the tips as they desire.

The videos are basic (this is an intro research methods class, after all), but if you are interested you can follow along at 1 metric, 1 minute playlist.

And so this semester I have my students monitoring real clients and producing 3 social media monitoring reports on the client throughout the semester. The purpose is not only to show them how to measure social media, but to allow them to do it over time for tracking purposes and come to a deeper understanding of what metrics really matter.

Each student will follow an assigned client all semester. The student will create a monthly report, determining the baseline in the first report then trending data for the 2nd and 3rd reports.

Here is the information I gave to my students in the handout, and the video (.mov) I made to explain the basic assignment.

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This on-going assignment will have you tracking your client throughout the semester and creating a total of three reports detailing trends in online conversation.

Resources
The following social media monitoring resources may help identify conversations about your client.

• Search all social media: Addcitomatic, IceRocket, Yahoo! Pipes, Samepoint, Social Mention
• Twitter searches and metric tools: tweetgrid, Twazzup, trendistic, twitalyzer, tweeteffect, tweetstats, twitturly, tweetvolume, trendpedia
• Blogs: blogsearch.google.com, postrank
• SEO: google.com/insights/search
• Facebook: facebook.com/lexicon/

Be sure to also consider searching Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler and any other social site you can find!

Tips

• Make the layout of the report consistent from month-to-month
• Use graphics and minimize text
• Specify what you think the goal for the client should, include target audience: focus data around that
• Avoid heavy text that will be complex to process
• Track: topics, tone, message salience, word-of-mouth, engagement, etc.
• Set up system to collect data throughout month & code as you go (content analysis)

Read blog posts seek out current resources on best practices for metrics and monitoring.

• Social networks: http://www.kayesweetser.com/archives/206
• Twitter: http://www.kayesweetser.com/archives/214
• Viral video: http://www.kayesweetser.com/archives/221
• Photosharing: http://www.kayesweetser.com/archives/223
• Todd Defren’s blog: http://www.pr-squared.com/
• KD Paine’s blog on measurement: http://kdpaine.blogs.com/

Requirements

• Each report is only limited to one page (and no, not 2-sided), margins unimportant
• Provide basic information on how each metric was measured (parameters, search terms, method, etc.)
• If reporting a statistic garnered from an online tool, cite the tool as the source
• If publishing a graphic created by an online tool, cite the tool as the source

Turning it in

• Print a copy (in color if desired), place the print out on the table at front of class
• E-mail a PDF of what you turned in to professor no later than 11:59 p.m. on the day the report was due, subject line will be client / report # (example: @NavyNews / report 1)
• Late work never accepted and the assignment is not fully turned in until professor has both the print out and the PDF

Whooo! I got tenure!

Tenure, for young academics, is that magic word that represents all we work for our first 7 or so years after earning the doctorate. At a point when our academic unit feels is right (around the 5-6 year mark), a tenure dossier is made and includes one’s CV listing research, teaching and service duties (due April 2009 for me). During the summer before the package is voted on (summer 2009 for me), the package is sent to at least 3 reviewers at peer institutions who are experts in that scholar’s field. The outside reviewers look at the young scholar and essentially summarize his or her work then answer the all-important-question of whether he or she would get tenure at that outside reviewer’s institution. The reviews come back (Aug. 2009 for me), the department votes (Aug. 2009 for me), the college votes (Sept. 2009 for me), then off it goes to the university for consideration (Sept. – Dec. 2009 for me).

The purpose of tenure, though perhaps archaic in the modern world, was to allow scholars the freedoms to pursue knowledge regardless of who it may offend. If your research is controversial to the church or state, theoretically those with tenure can’t lose their jobs for pursuing such academic interests. One could argue this is how we know the world isn’t flat and a slews of other facts we now take for granted.

These days tenure is more of a simple milestone. Some institutions don’t even offer it anymore.

Even so, it creates much stress for young faculty members.

How many publications do I need before I go up for tenure? (I’d been told 2 per year, so about 12 would be minimal.) How will I know if I’m doing well? (Annual reviews and a good 3rd year review should provide feedback.) Can I go up for tenure early? (Not at UGA.) What if one of my outside reviewers is someone who hates me? (I was able to provide a very short “black list” of potential outside reviewers I *didn’t* want to review my dossier.) Will I be fired if I don’t make tenure? (Essentially, yes.) I previously worked at another institution before coming here, will those years count or do I have to start the tenure clock all over again? (I was given the option to either carry over my LSU years or start over, whatever worked best for me.)

In the end, my dossier (pdf) turned out to be good enough, warts and all. In the dossier, I had 26 peer-reviewed journal publications, a few teaching awards and served on the right mix of committees. Enough people in the field were citing my work in a diverse set of journals. I made the cut.

The path to tenure for me was very focused, but not stressful. I was always mindful and working toward it but never stressed about it. I just wanted it done with.

My research stream definitely changed as a result of my pursuit. I had been given very specific paths that I should pursue in order to get tenure, paths that I never would have naturally taken on my own. At first packaging my research that way felt forced, but in the end I really think that I as a scholar grew from it, it connected me more to my teaching and the changes in my research program are ones I believe I will keep now, post-tenure.

I don’t feel as if getting tenure were hard. I was certainly focused, but that is just my personality.

I’ll leave young scholars with a few take-aways from my own tenure journey looking back. This list got so long, I ended up breaking it up into sections.

RESEARCH

• set annual goals for yourself in regard to publication, make sure they exceed what your department tells you (if your department tells you 2 per year, shoot for 3-4)
• use your CV as a living document to keep track of the projects you are working on, where things were submitted, MS numbers for items under review, future works, etc. When you send your CV out or post it online though make sure to remove the works under review & work in progress to protect blind review (huge pet peeve of mine)
• keep a tenure tally comparing yourself to other tenured professors in your department to help give you a quick look as to whether you are on track
• if a senior colleague suggests a different packaging of your research, give it a try because it may actually be a good suggestion (& help you place your work more)
• get out of your hall/college — meet other people around campus. It will open you up to other theories, approaches & even if you’re just getting out  socially it can still help give you a more multidisciplinary frame of mind that will improve your scholarship
• don’t sit in your office all day long, go out & talk to colleagues. When I was a grad student I heard a stat (not sure how true it is) that there was a correlation between how prolific a scholar was and how often he or she would just chit chat with colleagues. The idea is that you will get inspiration, help & maybe collaboration from your colleagues if you’re talking to them
• use breaks (winter, summer, holiday) for focused work on projects. I would go into every break with a set of goals for each of my manuscripts in progress — sometimes I’d get it all done and sometimes I was too ambitious, but the time away from campus was a great opportunity to focus
• collaborate with colleagues — you do more work quicker and can then handle several different papers at once
• keep authorship in mind – try to be first author and solo-author as much as possible
• don’t waste your time with non-tenure seeking activities, for me this meant don’t consult. There was money to be made but in the end it took way too much time away from what my focus should have been so I stopped doing it.
• revise & resubmits take priority. Once you have one, you’re one step closer to publication so don’t let that slip away. Make the changes the reviewers want (most often it will make the piece better despite your grumblings) & push aside other projects in order to get these done in a timely manner. There are actually 2 r&r that I let slip away during my own tenure journey & that is an unfortunate waste.
• your 1st year is the most important – make a solid attempt to get at least 3 things under review by the end of the 1st year. Set your pace to win the race. You will never catch up so start off with a bang (and not just relying on dissertation, but start new projects as well).
• your journal submissions don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be done. Get work out the door & don’t obsess – make sure it is good but shooting for perfection will hold you back. The final published version will be different after the review process anyway.

TEACHING

• try to combine teaching & research to make the most of your time. I did this by collaborating with my undergrads on their research class projects (after the semester was over, I was last author but did the post-class work to get it published) and centered my lectures around my own research interest
• be smart when you write syllabi for your classes so you optimize learning for the students but don’t create repetitive & time-consuming grading for you
• use a TA to help you with as many admin teaching tasks as possible & research work

SERVICE

• serve on diverse committees in the dept/college, but not too many — don’t serve on a university-level committee your 1st 3-4 years if possible

POLITICS

• don’t go to everything, but go to the events that matter — find out what the “important things” are that you need to show up for within your dept/college but don’t feel like you have to go to everything. I’m probably worse at this than everything else, but as nontenured faculty you want to get your face out there. But going to every college and dept event could kill your research focus. Ask around about what the “must be seen at” things are (likely faculty meetings & start/end of semester get-togethers) then go to those.
• network at conferences because those senior scholars in the room may be your outside reviewer in a few years

NAVIGATING THE PROCESS

• stay focused but not stressed
• get feedback from a senior colleague about your cv over coffee  once a year — you might not be packaging yourself in a way that will make sense to a chemistry professor on the university tenure & promotion committee and that senior scholar can help you put your best foot forward
• 2 years before you want to go up for tenure have “the talk” with your supervisor to make sure that your plan is feasible. Work out a schedule. Since I was using my 2 years from LSU in my tenure clock here at UGA, I had to get the timing just right on my 3rd year review then tenure package. If my dept head hadn’t realized in enough time what my intentions were, I might have been delayed. Once you are a year out from putting together your package, make a checklist of what paperwork is due when so you can start to create deadlines & get samples of the packages. Dossiers are odd little documents and likely your university has a very specific format for yours.
• get examples! Ask colleagues who have recently successfully completed the tenure process if you can see their dossiers (Dr. Bryan Reber and Dr. Lynne Sallot at UGA both gave me copies of their recent dossiers – Bryan’s for associate with tenure and Lynne’s for full). You can copy the format and it also helps you in knowing what to write in your own.
• start writing your dossier about 2 months before it is due. Mine was due in Mar. 2009 to my dept head, so I wrote it over winter break 3 months before. I sat down with Dr. Bryan Reber’s dossier and nearly word-for-word typed in what he had in his about his career but replaced the facts with those about my own. That made writing the 1st draft so much easier than I believe it is for others.
• talk with other new professors in your same cohort about tenure. Socially, I used to take weekly walks with Dr. Lisa Lundy during our 1st 2 years at LSU & we were both picking up different pieces of what was expected for us thereby able to combine notes. Plus it is nice to have someone to talk to about expectations & the tenure journey!

I didn’t sell out. I didn’t burn out. And I reached my goal. Nothing too exciting, but it is nice to be here none-the-less.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a revision I have to finish.

And now I can.

BlogWell, a case-study rich half-day conference sponsored by the Social Media Business Council, is coming to Atlanta on Nov. 10. At the event, you will:

Learn how the biggest organizations succeed using social media with 8 practical, how-to case studies. You’ll learn everything including how to get started, how to get past roadblocks, and how to make your social media program phenomenal.

You’ll ask questions, network with lots of smart people, and walk away with fantastic, actionable ideas for your social media programs.

And those case studies? We’re talking Coke, HomeDepot, Newell Rubbermaid, UPS, Turner Broadcasting & others.

If you’re still not sold, watch previous case study BlogWell vids (here too) & imagine what more you might have learned if you were in that room to ask questions rather than watch the video months later.

I hope I’ll see you there — register today!

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Oh-by-the-way: In my Navy Reserve work, I’m now supporting the Navy’s Emergent Media Integration division at the Navy Office of Information; the Navy recently became a member of the SMBC. Even if I weren’t remotely in some strange way affiliated with SMBC, I’d still think BlogWell was thebomb.com .

Thanks to the fine people running things at UGA’s Grady College, I’ve been able to secure two amazing offers that will help pre-luncheon attendees fast-track their social media training.

It’s a very simple contest. The top two pre-lunch attendees who post the most tweets during the pre-lunch using the hashtag #UGAsocialmedia will win:

• Grand prize: $50 off registration for the October 24 Strategies & Opportunities in Social Media (S.O.S.) seminar led by Dr. Karen Russell and me in Atlanta

• Runner up: $25 off registration for the September 19 Connect conference in Athens

Your tweets must be public (so we can see them) & you must use the #UGAsocialmedia hashtag for a tweet to qualify. Only tweets posted during the pre-lunch qualify.

So get to twittering!

Creating Your Social Media Playbook: A Pre-Season Training Camp

Are you ready to jump into the social media game, but you don’t know all the X’s and O’s to get a win for your team? This pre-luncheon seminar will help you assemble a playbook sure to make you the company MVP. Learn social media tactics from all-pro social media scholar and practitioner Kaye D. Sweetser, Ph.D., APR. Dr. Sweetser will coach you on a mix of best practices and case studies covering a wide range of social media tools, including Twitter, Facebook and search engine optimization, among others. We’ll watch game tape of what others have done – both successfully and not so – in social media spaces to develop plays that will have your fans cheering in no time. Join us, and go from powder puff to pro.

This PRSA chapter is the second largest in the nation & Atlanta is home to many Fortune 500 companies – so it is an understatement to say that I’m honored to be invited.

We’re going to be drinking from the firehose, so come join us for the crazy fun!

Imagery, as one of the most powerful means of communication, should be both harnessed by the company as well as monitored for situational awareness.

Hosting

• Titles of images should be descriptive with keywords with the intent of maximizing SEO. Search engines rank a title of a page as an important element which tells what is on that page – so using the image name (DSC10032) as the image title means you totally miss this opportunity. The public doesn’t understand that name & while it’s important to classify the image, it can be done at the end of the caption. Sample titles should make sense like a bulleted item and be rich with keywords, such as: Miss USA talks to School Children in Athens, Ga.

• Tie flickr image back to site to generate traffic to the company Web site. If there is a companion story then make sure to add that link to the story in the caption, which will connect the flickr content with company Web site & probably generate new visitors to the site.

• Be accurate with keywords. Keywords should only reflect what is happening in the photo – so if the picture is Miss USA at the same event as another dignitary – but the dignitary is no where to be seen, don’t tag the image with that other guy’s name.

• Ensure tags are consistent. Make sure that everytime you tag a component of the company from photo to photo that the tagging conventions are consistent. For example is it Coke, Cocacola or Coca-Cola? Be consistent so that you are better able to group similar pictures over a long period of time.

• Be maximally inclusive with tags. What is every and any possible object featured in the image and what would people type into a search engine to find that picture? Don’t settle for a single keyword because not everyone will use that same word when searching for the same type of image. Use the “referrers” in the “domains” part of the flickr stats to understand what people are typing in search engines to get to these pix to help you pick the most successful tags.

• Since this flickr is targeted at the public, try to make it more understandable to the public. That is, pick a username without acronyms. Make the name as generic & big company branded as possible.

• Create albums. With the flickr pro account, you can add several albums. Make the most of that & create differently themed albums then file images appropriately.

• Link the profile back to the company Web site. The profile should make it obvious that this is an official account, and be written conversationally. Additionally, it should link back to the company to drive traffic there & lend credibility to the fact this is the official account.

Engaging
Consider starting a group for others’ pictures dealing with your company. People would be able to share their own brand-related shots in the pool and is a great way to also increase exposure to your own imagery. You simply need to create a group or a pool as desired then when you find someone eles’s image that fits with the theme of that group you click “Invite this photo to ….” (under the comment block) and select the appropriate group. Even if the user doesn’t allow his photo be added to your group, other viewers of the image will see the invitation which is listed as  comment on that image.

Make more contacts (i.e., “friend” more people). When you friend someone, that person is likely to friend you back. Getting someone to add you to his lists of contacts is key because then everytime you upload a new image it will show up for that friend when he logs in — which often leads to unplanned viewing of your images. Don’t be afraid to friend people or align with them – if someone has racy or inappropriate content then just unfriend that person, it isn’t a big deal.

Monitoring
Create a list of keywords that describe your company and its issues. Do regular searches on Flickr, Google images and other photo sharing sites to see what is being posted on these topics.

Metrics
With regard to metrics, the pro account allows you to look at all kinds of really elementary stats in the stats screen.

It shows which pix are most popular, referrals, etc. The stats are pretty basic so you will just get an idea of what TYPE of pic the users like the most (pics of people or coke bottles?).

The best use of stats is to really review the referrals to figure out what people are typing into search engines to get to the site, which should help in fine-tuning tags. Additionally, it will help showcase a particularly popular referral (say Facebook, for instance). Use this to not only inform decisions on putting more of what people like on the flickr, but also to identify areas to work harder (increasing referrals from a specific site like Facebook etc).