Soci@lByte

These aren’t good days for Toyota, and it looks like Twitter played a big role in the destruction of the formerly bullet-proof car maker’s brand reputation. Many companies have dusty crisis communications plans on their shelves, but do these plans address the exploding role social media is playing in helping or hurting brands?

Reviews are all over the map for Google’s latest service, Google Buzz. As you try to figure out whether it is useful to you, tech PR blogger Drew B. offers his tips on how to test drive it.

It’s no secret that AT&T has become the wireless industry’s whipping boy lately. Dropped calls, slow wireless Internet connections and spotty network coverage complaints have aggravated many AT&T customers, and many iPhone users have been begging Apple to open the phone to other networks, most notably Verizon. The iPhone is handicapped by being tied exclusively to AT&T’s inferior network, according to these critics.

But yesterday, a wireless industry researcher announced that poorly designed iPhone hardware likely is the primary cause of AT&T customers’ connection problems. The researcher says the iPhone’s chipsets have trouble connecting to cell towers, resulting in poor performance for both voice and Internet connections. Analysts say that AT&T actually is better than Verizon on metrics ranging from network coverage to download speeds to rollover minutes. The problem with AT&T’s network is that it is overwhelmed by iPhone data traffic, which is estimated to be twice that of a typical smart phone.

So like millions of other iPhone users, I hope Apple offers the iPhone through Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint when its exclusive deal with AT&T expires this summer. But unlike most of them, I’ll probably stay with AT&T. I just want Apple to spread the massive amount of bandwidth demand across multiple providers’ networks rather than just AT&T’s. That move alone should instantly fix AT&T’s network issues. And while Verizon’s marketing executives may salivate at the thought of offering the iPhone, I can guarantee you its network operations executives are scared to death. AT&T has seen the iPhone wreak havoc on its once-strong brand reputation, and I doubt Verizon has any silver bullet that will protect it if it experiences a mass migration of iPhone users.

Whether it is complaint or praise, chances are you aren’t shy about sharing what you think about companies on blogs, Twitter and user groups. But is anyone listening? Apparently, yes. IBM, Harrah’s and Microsoft are among companies who are using new technologies to find, filter and make sense out of what consumers are saying – and aren’t saying – about their brands online. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Then, they are incorporating those findings into their more-conventional research and using them not only to choose the overall themes of their marketing campaigns, but also specific text and photos for their ads. Once the campaigns are up and running, the companies and their ad firms are using the same Web-scanning technologies to gauge consumer reaction to their messages, and to fine-tune them to boost performance.

While its great to see companies paying attention to social media, I’d much rather see organizations responsible for customer service and customer experience mining this information. After all, when I have a complaint about a product, the solution is not for marketing to simply advertise around the issue. I want them to fix it.

Do you hate your company-issued computer? Of course you do. Your IT department is in charge of what computer you get, and its goal is to reduce cost, not increase your efficiency. That’s why you probably have a 2004 Dell laptop that couldn’t process its way out of a paper bag. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were in charge of your computer? If you could select whether you got a PC or Apple? And if you could load whatever applications helped you do your job the best way possible?

While that may seem like a pipe dream, it could be closer than you think. Stodgy old Kraft Foods has seen the light and made a number of changes recently to empower employees to be more productive. For example, the company gives employees a stipend so they can pick the smartphone they want, and it also has started a pilot program that allows employees to pick their own laptops. As if that weren’t impressive enough, Kraft also recently ordered its IT department to stop blocking consumer and social media Web sites. It figured that employees who couldn’t access those sites might fall behind important industry trends.

I don’t know if Kraft’s strategy is the future or simply the exception that proves the rule, but let’s hope it is the start of something new.

You were pretty lame in the beginning, but you’ve certainly grown into something impressive over the past 40 years.

PR Week released the results of its 2009 Social Media Survey this month, and as you would expect the results are about as muddled as the average company’s social media strategy.

Among the findings:

• It still isn’t clear who will (or should) own social media efforts. Only 18 percent of respondents thought PR would own social media, while 56 percent thought it belonged to marketing (and 20 percent thought either a new social media department would evolve or some combination of PR/marketing/communications would handle it).
• While it may not be clear yet who owns social media, it is becoming clear where the dollars to fund it are coming from. 48 percent said social media is being funded from advertising budgets, while only 18 percent said budget came from public relations. Most likely, that is just because advertising has much larger budgets to start with.
• Despite the wealth of information and feedback that social media offers, nearly two-thirds of companies just aren’t listening. While 34 percent said they had adjusted their product(s) or marketing tactics based on feedback, 66 percent said they had not.
• Social media still hasn’t established its value. When asked what discipline will have the most impact on the success of their companies, 48 percent said direct marketing while only 10 percent said social media. Interestingly, PR was named by only 17 percent of respondents.

So what does it all mean? Mostly that there is tremendous opportunity because of the social media flux confusion exists. Opportunity for PR to exert control of social media to ensure it remains a two-way conversation rather than a one-way bullhorn like advertising and direct-mail. And opportunity for companies to hone their social media strategy so it can be a competitive weapon before their competitors figure out how to use it most effectively.

Corporate anti-Twitter rules are all fun and games, but when I can’t get get the scoop on the latest Shrek film from Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers, well, we’ve crossed a line.

From the Desk of Jeremy Story…

Research commissioned by ExactTarget says yes. Of course, ExactTarget is an email marketing firm, so you should remain suspicious of any of its pro-email research.

From the Desk of Jeremy Story…

The Wall Street Journal says social media services such as Facebook and Twitter are replacing email as the preferred form of communications for many of us. Of course, if you care enough about social media to read this blog, you probably already knew that. While it is true that the instant and group nature of Twitter and Facebook give them an edge over email, it is clear that email has also suffered from its own success.

As someone in his late 30s, I remember the early days of email, when 99 percent of my inbox was relevant to me. Ironically, the decline in the value of email was proportional to the increase in the number of people using it. So how long until Twitter and Facebook start to collapse under their own success?