Social Tech Animal

Facebook today announced that it is bringing hashtags to its service, letting users add context to a post, indicate that it is part of a larger discussion, as well as discover shared interests. The company says hashtags have become “a vital part of popular culture” and since it has seen users using them on the social network organically, it has decided to actually implement the feature.

While you could always technically create a hashtag on Facebook (just put a # before any word), they will now be clickable, taking you to a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic. On hashtag pages, you will naturally only be able to see the posts that you would normally see elsewhere on the social network: those that your friends have shared with you as well as those shared as Public.

The new feature means Facebook users can now:

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. Facebook mentions other services that use hashtags, putting Instagram first on its list, and then noting competitors Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest, but notably excluding Google+. Although Twitter does not own the concept of the hashtag, the company has popularized it to the point most people associate the phrase with the social network – nowadays it’s difficult to find a Twitter feed without multiple hashtags, and many tweets have arguably too many.

Facebook and Twitter regularly grab features from each other as use cases for the two social networks continue to overlap. Many users nowadays have both Facebook and Twitter accounts, although the former service is still significantly larger than the latter.

Recently, Facebook changed the name of its “Subscribe” button to “Follow” and also renamed subscribers to followers. This tweak came after Facebook built its own button similar to Twitter’s Follow button.

A rumor suggesting Facebook could soon be adding hashtag support first surfaced in March. Given that Facebook last year acquired Instagram, which uses hashtags mainly to let users sort through photos, we noted at the time that hashtags could be a way for the company to bring the two services closer together, but right now that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Facebook is presumably adopting the hashtag for the same reasons as Twitter: to let its users organize and filter messages around a single topic or theme. This offers yet another way to browse the social network, in addition to manually going to people’s Timeline profiles and of course visiting the News Feed.

In fact, the company hints that hashtags “are just the first step” in a series of features that will bring conversations about public events, people, and topics on the social network to “the forefront of people’s Facebook experience.” Some of these include trending hashtags and deeper insights, slated to arrive “in the coming weeks and months,” but Facebook wouldn’t share more.

Whether you're convinced that Google+ is a virtual ghost town or not, it can be difficult to refute the social network's stable of unique tools and features for business users. One of the most valuable is Google Hangouts, the tool that allows you to host video chats online.

With Google+ Hangouts, up to nine people can chat face-to-face for free on the network. Participants can watch a YouTube video together, doodle and collaborate using Google Docs.

Business owners can take the chat tool a step further with Google Hangouts on Air, which allows you to host video discussions and broadcast them live to the public. All a viewer needs to do is have a Google+ account and connect with a business of interest by adding it to his or her Circles. The video is broadcasted on the admin of that Page's personal YouTube channel and on the business's Google+ page.

Google+ Hangouts on Air can be helpful for internal and public use, but broadcasting them allows for deeper, face-to-face interaction with your customers that you might not be able to achieve with other channels online. 

Here are some ideas for effective Google+ Hangouts on Air:

Related: Surprising Ways to Use Google+ for Business

1. Offer free product demos and webinars to your customers. 
Providing value to your customers for free can be a rewarding way to encourage them to pay for your services in the future. Whether you're giving a sneak peek into the cooking classes you offer or teaching your audience about the newest changes to Facebook's algorithm, using this feature can be ideal for turning viewers into customers.

2. Host customer service sessions.
Set times with your audience where you're open to question and answers sessions about your products or services. Hangouts allow viewers to take their turn and easily ask questions as they have them.

Try hosting one of these sessions to see if your audience is interested. If they are, be sure to remain consistent about when you hold the sessions and for how long.

3. Interview experts and leaders. 
Grow your audience on Google+ and the variety of the information your company provides by inviting industry experts and leaders to do a Hangout on Air. Interview them from your company's perspective and allow for questions from viewers. It's important to leverage the expert's audience to increase viewers of the Hangout and the circlers to your Google+ Page.

Related: 4 Tools for High-Def Video Conferencing

4. Hold regular giveaways and contests. 
Reward your audience by hosting Hangouts with the sole purpose of stirring face-to-face interactions through giveaways and contests. A live giveaway can encourage increased visits to your Google+ Page and increased viewership to your other Hangouts on Air.

Provide prizes that are valuable to your audience not just in price but relevant to their interests and the focus of your business. The cost of the items given away as prizes can be worth the circlers, viewers and increased brand awareness your business receives.

A lot of social media advisers will tell you, without hesitation, and without reservation, to never, ever, ever, even in times of great desperation, put your company’s social media into the hands of an intern. The reasons they’re likely to cite for this are many; interns are untrained; interns are unproven; interns are untested; interns have limited experience; interns turn over faster than steaks on a grill.   I know because this happened to me when I was an intern.  I was in charge of writing media pitches for a big conference taking place in San Francisco and then, through email marketing, attempted to gain exposure on the event by reaching out to our contact.  In a astronomical email mistake, too long and complicated to get into now, I botched it and the conference received little media coverage.  And are you really going to entrust your most accessible and spreadable public voice to a college student who is unfamiliar with your company and, in all likelihood, not even on your payroll?

These are all excellent points, and for many people, they outweigh the distinct benefits of intern social media management, namely, interns are cheap, they’re eager, and they tend to be digital natives. But sometimes, a dedicated social media employee just isn’t an option. Non-profit organizations and smaller companies with extreme budgetary constraints (or even budgetary non-existence) can find it impossible to justify the resources needed to manage an ongoing social media presence.

In other words, sometimes there’s no choice: Hire a social media intern, or forego a social media presence altogether.  Despite the warnings of naysayers, though, utilizing a social media intern doesn’t have to be a doomsday scenario, on the contrary, hiring interns can be a rewarding experience for you and the intern.  I was lucky to get two internship within social media and they have been wonderful in terms of learning  and growing and exposure to the biz. Finding the right fit just requires a little careful preparation.  I have put together a list of 7 ways for you to prepare before you take a leap of faith and  hire an intern in your marketing department.  

Interns or no interns, your company should have a social media plan that explains in some detail the expectations of those who post on behalf of the company in terms of original content, shared content, and responses. Some plans go so far as to include guidelines by which all employees are expected to present themselves on their own social networks. Regardless of how far your plan extends, it should set a firm set of guidelines as to the operation of your company’s social media, including the delegation of duties, response time goals, content dos and don’ts, and a description of the company’s social media “voice.” Such a plan will be helpful, not just for interns, but for all employees.

This should be no brainer, but when hiring a social media intern, make sure you put in the time to find a candidate who possesses a relevant skill set. Specifically, a social media intern should be a good writer and a good editor with a creative mind. A good candidate should demonstrate a sense of social media maturity. Use Facebook and Twitter as tools to vet your potential interns if you can. Some applicants will keep their social media accounts private, but others will leave them open to the public, and you can get a good glimpse at how well (and how often) the candidate uses social media, which will also allow you to get a good sense of his social media maturity. If he posts a lot of four-letter words and angry rants, he might not be the best choice to represent your organization.

Chances are, your new intern already knows how to use social media. If he didn’t, you probably wouldn’t have hired him, right? So before you delve into the specifics of your social media plan, spend some time discussing your company’s background, including its history, its present state, and its vision for the future. Help your intern to gain a sense of the company’s voice by sharing your organizational content; website copy, strategic plans, brochures, etc. Understanding how your company wishes to present itself will be extremely important for your intern as he begins to present its social voice.

Additionally, be sure to make your company accessible. The more your intern knows about your company, the better he’ll be able to represent it on Facebook. Giving your intern access to other employees, other departments, meetings, and planning sessions will not only help drive ideas for social media content, but it will also provide a more complete and satisfying internship experience.

Even with all your careful preparation, it’s probably not a good idea to hand your intern the social media keys and let him take your Twitter account for a joyride. You’ll want to monitor what he’s saying, where he’s saying it, how he’s saying it, and to whom he’s saying it. There are a few different moderation methods you can use. You can sit over his shoulder while he types, you can ask for all social media posts in writing in advance for your approval, or you can use moderation tools like Gremln’s that will allow your intern to send social media messages that you will be asked to approve or deny before they post to the public networks.

Odds are, at some point, one of your intern’s social media posts will draw a little fire, or in the case of myself, completely mess up a email marketing campaign. This will likely have less to do with the fact that he’s an intern and more to do with the fact that social media backlash just happens. Even the best intentioned tweet can end up going awry, and when it does, it’s important that both you and your intern understand how to how to handle a social media faux pas here, but generally speaking, when a social post backfires, the best way to handle it is to respond appropriately, repair the damage as best you can, remove the post if it needs to be removed, apologize for the misstep, and carry on with your regularly scheduled social strategies.  It’s important to let your intern know that while social media backlash is certainly not a desirable outcome of his work at your company, it’s also a learning opportunity, both for him and for you.

Your intern is going to learn a lot from his internship experience. Make it one of his responsibilities to keep a regularly updated record of the work he’s doing and the trial-by-fire lessons he learns along the way. When his internship is over, this journal will be extremely helpful in two different ways. First, it will show you the strengths and weaknesses of the internship program. You’ll learn what worked, what didn’t, and a few things you probably didn’t know about your company’s own social media. Second, it will serve as a foundation for the next intern’s experience. Add the journal to the resources you hand over to the next intern during the training period so she can learn from past intern successes and mistakes.

This may seem obvious, but it’s oh-so-easy to forget. If you handed over your social media passwords, make sure you change them as soon as the internship is over. There are all sorts of disaster scenarios that could result from a former intern having access to your company’s Facebook page, so play it smart and change your passwords at the end of every internship cycle. Or, for a simpler solution, use Gremln’s “Groups” tool to create an Interns group and grant your interns appropriate social network access . That way, instead of changing your passwords every four and a half months, you can simply remove the intern’s access to the Interns group.

Sometimes, a full-time social media employee just isn’t an option, and social media interns really can be a great option. Many organizations have interns to help manage their social media strategies, and they do so with great success. By following these seven steps, your social media internships will be beneficial to the interns, to your department, and to your organization as a whole.

Do you have any other tips for social media intern success? Share them in the comments below!

Many bloggers out there may be writing great content but receive very little appreciation by the number of social shares.  I know because this very same thing has happened to me countless times.   And why is that you may ask?

Thanks and happy blogging!