If your colleagues are nearby, stick your head in their office and ask for feedback: “Hey, would you take a look at this? What do you think?”  Your physical presence ensures a response.

More likely, though, you’ll send the presentation to your colleagues in email. But who to include?

Email one person to ask for feedback and you’ll need to wait until they have time to respond. Email many people and you might encounter “someone else”-itis: where all recipients assume someone else will reply, but no one does. Even worse, you might start a “reply all” thread that clutters everyone’s inbox with non-urgent and non-actionable email.

So email might not be the best way to ask for feedback.

Instead, you post the presentation to your favorite social media site and ask your friends/followers/subscribers/readers for feedback.

But what’s the likelihood of a random follower reading and providing useful feedback on your presentation? If you’re Mark Benioff or Mary Meeker with thousands of followers, you’ll get feedback. More likely, you won’t have the same number of followers, so you won’t get feedback. And if the slides include confidential information, sharing online may be illegal.

So posting to social media might not be the best way to ask for feedback, either.

That’s where Chatter.com comes in. Chatter provides a private social network for organizations; everyone with an email address @yourcompany.com can login. And it’s free.

Chatter works well to share posts, files, or links across the company. And, when people respond, the comments are visible to others — and can be found later. Information stored in Chatter is available to the entire organization, not buried somewhere in a few people’s email archives. In fact, you can find any shared information quickly with Chatter’s search feature.

Chatter lets you expose more of your work to others. No longer do ideas need to remain shared only with your team. Instead, you can share what you know and tap the expertise of your colleagues — without clogging up their inbox. Even better, if your company already uses the Salesforce.com platform, you can add Chatter to your system. You can choose to have the most recent posts display after you login to Salesforce.

You can create Chatter groups that are private or a bit more public, as well. In both cases, the group owner or manager must specifically invite members to the group. Internal private groups can be useful for smaller team discussions within the organization. And “Customer” groups, as Chatter calls them, let you engage people outside the organization. These can be especially useful if you’re working with a team that crosses organizational boundaries. When posting, you can share information with everyone or to a specific group.

Some standard features you might be familiar with from Twitter also exist in Chatter. The @ sign before a person’s name (e.g., @robmay) in a post ensures they’ll be notified about your update. The # before a topic (e.g., #erp for “enterprise resource planning”) ensures that the post will be found in all future searches for that hashtag.

Chatter is not a replacement for email or public social media. It also isn’t a replacement for a standard help desk, blog or file storage system. As with many social tools, Chatter becomes a more viable tool as the number of employees and employee locations increases. Ten people in one location can easily stay up-to-date on company activities and status without any tools. Chatter helps companies with hundreds of employees to recapture a bit of this intimacy.

Finally, Chatter provides larger scale organizations a way to “route around” conventional hierarchies and communication channels. It lets people share what they know, ask for advice, or obtain direct feedback from anyone in the company. So the next time you want feedback on a report or presentation, share it with your private social network on Chatter.

Related articles

• 4 Must-Have Salesforce Chatter Apps to Speed Up Chatter Adoption
• Social Media is Breaking Me of My Email Habits
• 3 Tools to Enhance Internal Communication with Your Colleagues
• Embedding Social Media in Enterprise IT
• Salesforce Social Contacts: Better than Caller ID for Your CRM Database

Salesforce Chatter can radically transform your sales organization — but only if you can actually get your team to embrace and employ Salesforce Chatter. It’s no small effort for persons who have never used social media in a meaningful way to suddenly embrace company-sponsored (or mandated) digital collaboration and conversation. It’s even harder to get employees who are already using other social media tools and platforms to embrace a completely separate community on Salesforce Chatter.

Fortunately, there are tools that can help ease your team into the Chatter-sphere. We outline four of the best Salesforce AppExchange tools to ease Chatter adoption below.

multiplex.io
Two birds with one stone; that’s multiplex.io’s sales pitch. This tool allows the hard-core Twitter users on your team to co-publish their tweets onto Chatter. Don’t worry, not all their tweets. Once multiplex.io is up and running, your team can simply append three extra characters to their tweets, #ch (that’s actually four characters out of 140, as you’ll need a space, too), and the message will appear on Chatter as well. It’s the best of both worlds; your Twitter addicts can set the tone for Chatter adoption by easily using both platforms at once, but the #ch hashtag ensures that only business-related conversation makes its way into the Chatter network.

Cloud Swarm 3
One the main barriers to effective Chatter adoption is training your team on how to “follow” people and information on the collaboration platform. Cloud Swarm solves this problem by applying rule-based auto-following to Chatter, automatically signing up team means to follow relevant Leads, Cases and Opportunities. For example, if a new lead comes in and Salesforce auto-assigns it to a sales representative, Cloud Swarm will automatically set that rep to follow the Lead on Chatter. Cloud Swarm can also ensure that every Sales Manager auto-follows every Opportunity that any of her reps is pursuing. Once your employees see their Chatter stream fill with relevant Cloud Swarm-assigned data, the value of Chatter will become apparent, and the adoption of Chatter will upswing.

Apptus X-Author for Chatter
One of the main barriers to entry with Salesforce Chatter is that, while the tool is easily accessible from within Salesforce, employees who spend a great deal of their day in other applications — like Microsoft Office — can just as easily forget about the social network. Apptus X-Author addresses that specific use case by integrating Chatter with the core MS Office suite — Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Not only can your team launch a Chatter thread from within an MS Office App, but Apptus also makes it easy to share Office documents and document excerpts directly into the Chatter stream. This, in turn, makes it very easy to attach this information to Salesforce Leads and Opportunities. By reducing the friction required to integrate Chatter into existing Office-centric workflows, Apptus X-Author makes Chatter adoption notably easier. You can see Apptus X-Author in action here.

Chatter Usage Dashboard
At the end of the day, the best way to manage Chatter adoption is to measure Chatter adoption, which is where Salesforce’s own in-house Chatter Usage Dashboard comes in. Monitor the number of posts in your team’s Chatter feed, identify your top Chatter posters, and track nearly two dozen Chatter usage metrics so you can keep your adoption on course.

And, as always, if you’re putting valuable data into Salesforce, you should have a good Salesforce backup plan.

Tell us your story: How well has your team embraced Salesforce Chatter, and how did you manage Chatter adoption?

Related articles

• The Best Way to Restore Your Backup Salesforce Data
• Backupify for Salesforce: User-Informed Design
• 5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Using Salesforce
• The Three Scariest Threats to Your Cloud Data
• 29 Startup Marketing Experiments That Didn’t Work (and You Should Try)

These questions came to mind recently as we had a deep discussion at Backupify about the value of data in the cloud. Sometimes people ask me why they should backup their cloud data. The answer that I give comes from asking thousands of Backupify customers why they do it – because the data is valuable, and it is always important to protect valuable assets.

Quantifying the value of data to a business is relatively easy. For customers who use our Backup for Google Apps or Backup for Salesforce products to protect their corporate data, it boils down to three basic concerns:

1. How difficult it would be to recreate that data
2. How much revenue would be lost if the data was lost
3. How much productivity would be lost if important data could not be accessed

The value of social data (for both consumers and businesses) is a little bit harder to quantify. We decided to take a shot at it by building off some publicly available information to figure out what social data, which social media companies, and what social media actions are the most valuable. The results are in posted in the Backupify Social Data Value Infographic below.

We plotted the data in two different ways. The first is by average per-user value, which of course has Facebook as king of the hill. The second plot shows how many users a service would require to reach a $10 billion valuation. As you can see, most of the companies are unlikely to ever get that big.

So take a look, and let us know what you think. Are Yelp reviews really worth more than tweets? Who should we have put on the graph that didn’t make it? Which pieces of social media are over or under valued? Leave a comment, write a post, or just tweet @backupify with your thoughts.

Click for full size version

Remember the photo of your niece in her adorable Halloween costume? Now, was that on Facebook, Gmail or perhaps shared on Flickr? Having to visit all those sites to find it is simply a pain.

We’ve experienced the same pains and frustrations as you with not knowing where something is saved. With so much of our lives now in the cloud, it’s hard to track where and when we do things nowadays.

How about we help solve this problem for you?

Today, we’re announcing account-wide search within Backupify. Remember that discussion with Dan? Well, if you are backing up your Twitter, Gmail and GChat accounts with us, you can easily select a service to search through — say, Gmail — then search for “Dan”. Every message you sent or received from Dan will be returned. Too much? Add in a keyword from the conversation, or narrow down the date range. Still can’t find it? You can perform the same search for Twitter, GChat or any other service that Backupify protects.

And that photo – perform the same steps as above to search across your accounts to find it in seconds, not hours. But don’t take our word for it: Try out our new search function for yourself.

When you log into Backupify, you’ll see a big search bar on the top right of your screen.

Here’s how to drill down to the exact piece of data you’re searching for:

• Type in any keyword (or person’s name) that you need to find within your archives

• You will be brought to a search results page (the default account we search through is your Gmail account, but this can be changed)

• To switch what account you are searching through, simply click on the drop down menu under ‘Account’ on the left side of your screen to switch to Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, etc.
• If you need to search within a date range, choose a start and end date on the left of your screen.

Aside from making your search process throughout all your online accounts much simpler, this also makes restoring and exporting your data much easier. No more manual browsing, just search for your missing data. Time is money, so consider this quick search feature a nice big discount for you.

Want account-wide search for all your online accounts? Try Backupify.

1. Adria Richards
Adria Richards is a tech consultant specializing in workflow efficiency. She is also a very familiar face at blogging and technology conferences across the country and has inspired thousands by helping them embrace their inner geek.

We follow Adria to get the latest in the world of Cloud Apps, Social Media, Google Apps and SaaS. Adria never fails to update us on the important talks and conferences going on in the tech world and even provides her expert opinion on topics affecting businesses and consumers alike.

Twitter handle: @adriarichards
Recent tweet: “Just got email invite to test drive Real Time Google Analytics! http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html”

2. Susan Cline

Susan Cline (aka Google Apps Expert) specializes in developing and delivering adoption solutions for organizations moving to Google Apps. Susan has also authored a series of Google Apps courses on the subjects of Google Docs, Google Mail and Google Calendar.

We follow Susan to get deep insights into anything and everything related to Google Apps. Susan’s our go-to resource for bridging the gap between understanding what Google Apps is and actually using it to its full potential.

Twitter handle: @GoogleAppsSusan
Recent tweet: “10 reasons to trust Google in business http://t.co/8K34xNdT. We’ve got a lively discussion going on in the comment section #googleapps”

3. Steven Peltzman

Steve Peltzman is the Chief Technology Business Officer at Forrester Research. He made his bones as the CIO at The Museum of Modern Art during MoMA’s landmark $858 million building project (which included a great deal of technology infrastructure).

We follow Steve to understand the scope of IT and technology integration in businesses today, all from a successful CTOs perspective, along with the words of wisdom that Steve often dishes out during the day.

Twitter handle: @stevenpeltzman
Recent tweet: “Understand that #cloud risk is not a single entity but one in a long, long chain. What’s the total risk chain of NOT going cloud?”

4. Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a business analyst that specializes in the cloud — specifically how online apps can increase business agility. When he’s not writing about cloud-based organizations, he’s directly advising or participating in them.

We follow Ben to get his expert views on enterprise software, software integration, platforms and infrastructure but most importantly, we admire Ben for his exceptional ability to articulate technology simply for everyday users.

Twitter handle: @benkepes
Recent Tweet: “For the one person on the planet who doesn’t agree that Steve Jobs was prescient, watch this http://youtu.be/Or7zaUaP-J8 #Cloud #Amazing”

5. David Linthicum

David Linthicum is the CTO of Blue Mountain Labs, but he still finds time to regularly write about developing trends in cloud computing, SOA and data integration.

We actively follow David to get the latest in the world of technology as it happens. Expect David to fill you up with news and reviews on topics ranging from data analytics, business intelligence to cloud-based applications and integration.

Twitter handle: @DavidLinthicum
Recent Tweet: “Beware Best Practices, they can kill productivity, innovation and growth – Adopt Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter http://lnkd.in/QwfE-H”

6. Krishnan Subramanian

“Krish” is an ex-physicist turned tech evangelist who dabbles in a dozen subjects and pursuits at once. The Next Web named Krish as one of the Top 25 Influential Voices tweeting about Cloud Computing.

We follow Krish for a sneak peak on high impact topics in the fields of Open Source, Cloud Computing and the interface between them. Krish also occasionally treats us with his tweets on progressive political ideas.

Twitter handle: @krishnan
Recent tweet: “Gmail’s new theme should let me set the “Comfortable, cozy or compact” setting for each device/browser instead of account. #besmart”

7. Matt Rosoff

Matt Rosoff was the the founding editor at CNET from 1995 to 2000. Today he’s Silicon Alley Insider’s West Coast Editor. In between he was an analyst for Directions on Microsoft for 10 years. We wish we had his resume.

We trust Matt to keep us updated on the latest in the world of tech and the developments in the valley. But what’s most entertaining is the wittiness Matt adds to his tweets, that make them a must-read.

Twitter handle: @MattRosoff
Recent Tweet: “Look At How Google Is Backing Away From The Idea Of Google+ As A Social Network $GOOG http://read.bi/t3i6Ny”

8. Loraine Lawson

Loraine is a tech journalist with bylines that span IT Business Edge and TechRepublic, with content aimed squarely at CIOs and high-level IT managers.

Loraine tweets regularly on key issues of data and process integration, such as SOA (Service-oriented architecture). Follow Loraine to get quality information and views in the data integration sphere.

Twitter Handle: @LoraineLawson
Recent Tweet: “So, no opinions on integration and internal clouds? Is internal #cloud an oxymoron? I feel like it is.”

9. Om Malik

Om Malik needs no introduction but for those (few) who don’t know him;
OM is a venture partner at True Ventures and founder of the leading tech blog, GigaOM, which was named among the top 100 most influential blogs on the Web, by CNET. Om has closely watched the Internet revolution and is one of the most well-connected people in the valley.

We follow OM for his great insights on VCs, hot startups in the tech industry, future of social networks and basically everything you would want to know about the Silicon Valley.

Twitter handle: @om
Recent Tweet: “my counter argument to Mark Z that without Silicon Valley there wasn’t gonna be Facebook. Read before commenting. http://gigaom.com/2011/11/03/sorry-mark-facebook-needed-silicon-valley/”

10. Kevin L. Jackson

Kevin L. Jackson is the founder of the Cloud Musings blog, which covers the rather niche (but giant) topic of cloud adoption by government agencies. Kevin’s street cred comes from his post
as General Manager, Cloud Service at NJVC, a heavyweight tech contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

We follow Kevin to keep up with cloud computing related technologies and their use in public sector to support net-centric operations. Kevin expertise is reflected in his tweets and that is precisely the reason we follow him.

Twitter Handle: @Kevin_Jackson
Recent Tweet: “NIST releases ‘Bible of cloud implementation’ http://gcn.com/articles/2011/11/04/nist-cloud-tech-roadmap-impact.aspx”
So, that is our top 10 list of people to follow in the cloud computing space. Please feel free to add to this list if you have someone you like following to get your dose of the latest in cloud computing. We would love to hear your thoughts.

There are also individual government leaders such as New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo (@nygovcuomo) who are leaders in the social media space for their willingness to participate on social media and genuinely talk to people.

However, most state, local and national government organizations have not yet moved beyond the most basic functionality of social media. The most common government use of social media is to post low-level information such as weather and road work announcements.

The main social platforms that we’ve observed in use by government agencies include blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Here is how they are currently used:

Blogs:

For these organizations, blogs serve as a central repository for content that is sent through all social media channels. For example, if a state is in a national weather emergency, the blog may go into detail about this and then it will be tweeted out in short-form so followers can engage on both platforms with the agency.

Typical government blog content includes:

• Press releases
• Updates on day-to-day government activities and announcements
• Supplements to website content i.e. stories to along with website announcements

Twitter:

Agencies most prepared and advanced at social media are also turning to Twitter to engage with the public and receive feedback. Many organizations shy away from this channel due to the instant feedback and word of mouth that can be generated instantaneously just from one post.

To emulate a government official fully utilizing Twitter, visit Cory Booker’s (Mayor of Newark, New Jersey) Twitter account @CoryBooker.

Typical government Twitter content includes:

• Project updates
• Press release syndication
• Traffic alerts
• Emergency communications in real-time (@Boston_Police does a great job at this)
• Amber alerts; Cancellations
• Breaking news

Facebook

Organizations who have adopted Twitter use Facebook in a very similar manner with the exception of the enriched photo and video sharing capabilities.

Why are agencies reluctant to join?

When you think of well-known companies and organizations using social media, government agencies are probably not at the top of the list. Their reluctance to use social media is due to several factors.

These factors include:

• Inexperience with social media
• Uncertainties surrounding delicate information and whether it should be shared
• Jobs and reputations that could be jeopardized through over misuse of social media (unintentional or not)

Jason Johns, Director of Marketing and Portal Operations at West Virginia Interactive explained that, “There’s always going to be hesitation and consternation when the White House imposes new technology initiatives on agencies.”

To overcome the friction of joining social media as an agency, many government bodies are developing guidelines and handbooks to educate employees on how to use these channels to communicate properly and ethically.

Casey Mahoney, Tennessee’s Assistant Director of Public Affairs and Chair of the Social Media Council explained, “A comprehensive manual that employees can refer to is invaluable when they are working within a medium they are not completely comfortable with. Employees can refer to our policy guide to learn whether a Facebook post or Tweet is appropriate rather than running [the question] up to a manager, or worse, publishing it anyway.”

As social media adoption becomes more mature in the government sector and employees become more adept at using it, these policies will, of course, change.

While we work and talk with many government agencies large and small, we too are learning both the challenges and opportunities these organizations face in terms of social media use. In general, the consensus is that they know their presence on social media is imminent at some point but they need to first put in place policies to both train employees and protect their communication channels.

We’re excited to continue to see further adoption of government social media usage and to work with these agencies to educate them on how to best use and protect their social media interactions.

If you are a government agency currently using social media, what were some roadblocks you had to overcome before fully implementing a program? Now that you have one in place, have you seen a positive reaction from the public? Share your stories below!

We all know some of the main reasons to protect and backup our online accounts like Gmail and Twitter because of accidental deletions, server downtime and hackers, but how about these reasons as well:

1. China isn’t getting less fascist (read more)

2. IPv6 might break the internet

3. The shibboleet isn’t real

4. Cylons

5. You only have three passwords, don’t you?

6. Because even the encryption experts get hacked

7. ‘Anonymous’ is actually in charge of the Internet

8. Your digital dilemma is social media and the law

9. Backup your tweets because it was so fascinating the first time around, you know you want to read it again some day

10. Have you ever seen the Google support forums about data loss?

11. You were looking at your lead flow in Salesforce when your toddler decided to “play” with your computer

12, Because you are THAT guy who backups up everything

13. Your best friend left Facebook, taking all 200 pictures in which she tagged you

14. Because $50/month is better than a subpoena (read more)

15. On Friday the 13th – anything could happen!

Still not convinced? See what others are saying about having an online backup here.

Last week, fellow Bostonian and marketing thought-leader David Meerman Scott published a fantastic article interviewing a law professional who works with lawyers on the use of marketing and social media. The post was titled, f“Is social media worth the risk? A lawyer’s perspective” interviewing Vivienne Storey, General Manager of BlandsLaw, a small law firm specializing in Australian employment law.

As David explains of Storey, “In her role at a law firm, she advises global companies such as Deutsche Bank, ING Bank, Nestle, Phillip Morris and Deloitte about social media in the workplace.” Storey provided a very unique perspective on the use of social media for law firms in her video interview with Scott.

“There is no point trying to prevent people using social media because if they are not doing at work, they probably have smartphones and will be doing it under their desk if they’re not allowed to do it own their own computer and they definitely will be doing it at home.” Storey’s statement here could not be more true. With over 700 million people now on Facebook and tons more joining Twitter every day, it is almost inevitable that most of your employees will be using social network to some degree.

When asked how law firms should deal with social media, Storey pointed out that, “It’s better to train your employees to use social media appropriately, properly, responsibly, well-for-purposely for your organization rather than to pretend it doesn’t exist.” We agree completely. It’s a fact that social media is a pervasive technology and instead of ignoring it, why not embrace it? There are ways to use it in a safe manner just by creating a social media policy to guide employees.

“What do companies need to think about in terms of guidelines for social media?” asked Scott. “The basic principles to cover in guidelines are to cover your risk management issues. Things like confidentiality of company information and employee or supplier information or potential deals. Privacy issues with their employees, clients, IP issues. Brand protection is very important. Their image, company image is crucial and how that’s portrayed.” This is usually confidential information to a majority of companies, many of which like to keep it that way.

However, Scott asked if companies today should still keep this information 100% confidential. Storey responded, “Policies should absolutely be made public. It’s a great publicity tool which is what all of social media is about. it’s another way of saying ‘we are involved in social media’, ‘we want to engage with clients’ and its a great way to show the general public what you are actually trying to do on social media.”

Today, social media is all about transparency and trust. If a firm implements certain policies that pertain to their customers and clients, it is good business to share that information publicly with them, not in the tiny fine print at the bottom of a mailed document.

We at Backupify have spoken with many professional lawyers, specifically at LegalTechNY this past spring, and realized that almost all of them are experiencing this same dilemma: to get involved or not to get involved? After discussing the pros and cons, many realized that social media really is an impending technology to just about every business and they can  no longer ignore it.

The major drawback to the use of social media in law is the process of developing a social media policy to direct employees on how to use it appropriately for work. The other aspect is complying to the multitude of regulations, one of which is a records retention program. For law firms, government agencies, schools and non-profits alike who are looking to adhere to these regulations, many have found Backupify to be a great solution for archiving this data. Don’t take our word for it, though, see what others are saying about our archiving service here.

Q: Tell us a little about the City of Rockford, demographics-wise? How active are your citizens online?

The city’s population is roughly 150,000 people and it was previously the second largest city in state of Illinois. The population has fallen a bit over the past 5-10 years as we were hit fairly hard by the recession. That is one of the reasons we wanted to further develop our web and social media presence to get in touch with the citizens a bit more. Typically, we don’t have a great amount of engagement from users so we felt that utilizing Facebook and Twitter would help us get the word out and generate some more traffic and interest in the city’s projects and businesses –especially with the 18-23 year old demographic.

Q: And, how was your initial foray into social media? What were some of your initial challenges?

Well, we have been using the city’s website as the primary channel for communications for the past 5-10 years, but it wasn’t until October of 2009 when we started to use Facebook. Twitter then followed soon after that, and that is around the time that things got… ‘interesting’. Soon after we started using the sites, our legal department held up a big red flag. Were these communications in compliance with the state’s Local Records Act?  What about the Freedom of Information Act? In both cases, we needed to ensure that we retained a record of all public communications to and from citizens, and at that point, we just did not have the policies and programs in place to do so. We had to pull the plug.

Q: Tell us a little more—what were your biggest concerns from a compliance standpoint?

We had a couple of concerns—if Twitter and Facebook activity fell under the FOIA, and specific messages were demanded by a citizen, would we have an archive of that data elsewhere in case it was lost or deleted online? With the LRA, it’s a requirement that we retain any public record—so if an individual posts on Twitter or Facebook, but then deletes it…we need to make sure we had a log stored elsewhere that retains the original message.

Q: Despite these challenges, staying clear of social media did not make sense either, right? Is this when you determined that you needed to archive your social media activities with Backupify?

Of course. Facebook and Twitter are great tools to utilize, and help us to specifically target the demographics we need to communicate with. But we finally realized that we needed to have policies in place before we really got started. As I now recommend to any colleague in local government—developing and following an internal policy for how to effectively and legally use social media is critical, and to help you do that you need to have the right tools. That’s where Backupify came in.

Q: How do you use Backupify and how has it been beneficial to your online programs/initiatives?

One of the best parts about Backupify is that it isn’t something we need to check in on every day—we can set it and forget it. While I haven’t had to restore anything yet, I will get alerts and then see what changes and updates have been made to the logs in the nicely formatted XML document. Is our data in there? Good. Also the timestamps are very helpful for compliance.

Aside from pacifying our legal department, Backupify just puts us in a lot safer position with our social media. I don’t have to stress about losing data and we can get even more sophisticated with our activity. We have been using Facebook to set up additional fan pages for local businesses to help generate awareness as we continue to rebuild our local economy. While we are still mainly using the sites to broadcast information and communicate announcements, we’re starting to get more comfortable with opening up the pages to interaction with users. We’ll continue to update our social media policy to facilitate this and leverage Backupify to ensure we’re retaining the information.

Q: So it sounds like you would recommend Backupify to other peers working in municipal government?

Absolutely. It has certainly put us in a better position then we were before, and when I researched solutions, it was clear that nothing even came close to Backupify when it comes to archives, backups and functionality. I would definitely recommend Backupify, especially to cities like ours that are still bouncing back from the recession. Social media is important to improving our image and ensuring transparency as we get back up and running. Backupify helps make sure we are doing it the right way.

As we detail in today’s announcement, our government customers increasingly turn to Backupify to not only mitigate data loss concerns but also to satisfy compliance requirements related to records retention and data reproduction. As social media interactions and communications are now legally classified as “information of the public record” for many federal, state, local and international agencies, our independent backup and archive services help these organizations to preserve and retain this information so that they can continue to use social media without fear of legal or regulatory red flags. This is a critical requirement for governments and we are very happy to provide it for our new customers.

It is also important to note that government agencies continue to vary widely in the sophistication of their social media use. Some, for example, continue to approach social media with apprehension, while others have detailed processes, policies and solutions (like Backupify) in place to optimize their programs. This variance of usage is addressed in our new whitepaper that explains “Everything You Need to Know About Government Social Media (But Were Afraid to Ask)” and how Backupify can serve a critical need for governments with even just a limited social media presence.

Welcome again to our government customers and please be sure to contact us if you’re a government agency seeking a solution to your data retention and reproduction challenges.

A couple important points that these panelists discussed were:

• Federal agencies are just now starting to share best practices with each other
• Officials are finding it hard to consistently identify, capture and retain official records on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Each agency is moving in its own direction but there needs to be a unified way for all agencies to retain these records
• There are risks for both engaging and not engaging on social media – If you do engage, you can reach the public at crucial times with pertinent information but you need to be mindful of the necessity of retaining those messages. If you don’t engage, you may miss out on important opportunities yet will avoid losing control of your messaging.

NASA’s social networking manager, Emma Antunes, explained that, “In my experience, retention of records is easy, destruction is hard.” Agencies want to be involved in these mediums to reach the mass public but also realize that once they publish a message, they ultimately lose control of it. In that case, agencies certainly recognize that retention tools are needed in order to keep a copy of every message. “How do we retain legacy records if we don’t control them?” asked Antunes.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s CIO, Darren Ash, explained that their agency approached this issue at a different angle. Before they created social media accounts, they stepped back and looked at their existing retention policies. Ash brought together legal, IT, union and communication managers to determine how these new social media tools could be used to further NRC’s mission while still following a records management strategy. From this meeting, they developed a blog with retention in mind–every 60 days their blog morphs into a PDF to ensure that the content of each post is retained. This blog serves as their main public social communication tool.

Evidently, there are still major steps that federal agencies need to take to get to a level of equilibrium between social sharing and records retention. First, agencies need to proactively discuss best practices together to help each other learn. Next, individual agencies must sensibly sit down and determine the mission of using social media and how they can retain their messages on these mediums. Once this process is streamlined and more fluid among organizations, there will emerge standard practices and a higher level of comfort within this communication channel.

We’ve spoken to many government agencies who have a Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account and have found that a good deal or these organizations are now comfortable sharing agency information with the public. Many have found it extremely useful in spreading emergency notifications. The next step in this process is to determine how they can protect themselves by creating a formalized retention policy.

Does your agency currently use any social media sites? Are your currently implementing a records retention policy? Why or why not?

Since Flaherty works for an IT company and is also heavily involved in social media both for himself and his company, we wanted to get his insight on the importance of social media to the IT industry.

Below is our interview with Flaherty:

Backupify: As social media is a big part of your marketing efforts for BreakingPoint, what are the specific social tools you use? What is the primary business objective behind your social media marketing strategy/tactics?

Flaherty: All of our marketing and communications activity starts with one mantra, “Be part of the conversation, never interrupt.” Whether that is traditional marketing or social media we always remember that when integrating different platforms into our mix.

At BreakingPoint, we don’t really separate ”social media” as a disparate practice nor do I think any business should. Instead, it is simply part of our DNA as a company. Integrating it from every level allows social to become a part of your marketing, and not something you try so hard at, a lesson often missed by most brands, ultimately leading to issues.

BreakingPoint has a significant presence on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, but we are also involved in LinkedIn groups, SlideShare conversations, Scribd communities, and more. Again, we want to be part of the conversation, wherever that may lie. Through this use of social media we can actually get great input from our industry that helps us shape the content we produce on our very popular industry blog which is the nexus of our communications program.

We interact on different platforms to provide answers and solutions. We are a business and our entire marketing program, including social, is centered around generating leads and winning new business in order to help new customers address their needs.

Backupify: Since BreakingPoint is a cyber security company that works to stabilize and secure network infrastructure, how important is it to ensure that your own marketing data is secure, safe and always accessible?

Flaherty: Every company should be concerned with the overall state of cybersecurity, especially those depending on social networks to communicate with customers, prospects, partners, and others. We take security very seriously for ourselves and for our customers. We all have a duty in a hyper-connected world to validate the security of network and data center infrastructure, particularly social networks.

Backupify: Out of all the social media tools you use for marketing, which one is most critical to business, and if the data were to be lost, deleted, temporarily unavailable or hacked, would cause the most issues? How would you expect to remedy the situation?

Flaherty: None. If you are relying on social media tools to that degree you are doing it wrong. We make sure to download all our data on a regular basis whether it’s social or otherwise. Be prepared.

Backupify: How important to your business would it be to be able to archive and search through your various marketing communications?

Flaherty: Very. The ability to not only look through that info, but analyze it, could really be a huge help for evolving campaigns and cultivating leads.

Backupify: How do you foresee enterprise social media sophistication growing in the next year? Do you think social media will become more or less important for B2B marketing?

Flaherty: I see social media continuing to just evolve directly into all marketing aspects and hopefully in a few years we don’t even talk about social media and we are just back to talking about marketing. Fortunately, the enterprise will push us in that direction because they are smarter than the fringe “gurus” and will recognize social for what it is, an evolution, not a revolution.

Backupify: How important do you see support tools like Backupify being to online marketing and communication efforts?

Flaherty: Your data, no matter where it is, keeps your business going. I back up my computer system every hour using Apple’s Time Machine…why would I not do that for my online marketing efforts whether they be a community of people, videos, forum answers or more.

To learn more about Breaking Point, check them out here. To experience how Backupify can help your business safeguard business-critical social media and Google Apps data, check us out here.

To read the rest of our Social Media Leadership Series, follow these links: Part 1 and Part 2.

Do you know what are the best tools to identify brand evangelists and industry influencers? What if you lose important customer contact information from your Facebook fan page or Twitter account?

Tomorrow at 2pm ET, we are teaming up with two other Boston-based companies, Hubspot and oneforty, in a webinar to walk you through the process of generating customer leads and turning them into brand evangelists.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• How to generate leads in the first place
• How to efficiently monitor conversations and brand mentions
• What tools to use for rewarding advocates
• How to manage and document your conversations on social media

Sign up for the webinar now!

Bonus: All webinar attendees will automatically be entered in an iPad giveaway sponsored by Nimble, a social relationship management solution.

We hope to see you there!

Whether a Facebook user or not, you are probably aware of it’s increasing impact on the way we consume news, interact with old friends, and share information.

Some notable statistics pointed out in this videos are:

• 1 in every 13 people in the world use Facebook (whether active users or not is another statistic)
• 48% of 18-34 year olds check Facebook immediately after they wake up. That’s before they check their email
• When Facebook launched, it was geared towards college students. Now, people 35+ dominate 30% of the Facebook userbase
• 57% of people talk more online than they do in real life. That statistic alone shows the power and penetration of social media into our regular lives
• 48% of young Americans find out about news via Facebook over any other news medium

We’re pretty sure the very last slide of statistics will blow your mind – it sure took us by surprise.

See the video for yourself here:

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

This week, we are featuring Mike Lewis, VP of Marketing and Sales from Awareness Inc.  Awareness provides enterprise customers with social media marketing software that allows them to control, centralize and measure the ROI of their social media activities in one platform. We contacted Lewis because he is a well respected leader in the industry on new media, innovative technologies and bringing products and services to market.

Here is what Mike had to say during our interview:

Backupify: Tell me about Awareness Inc.’s Social Marketing Hub. How is this product being utilized by your customers to help them better manage and track their social media efforts?

Lewis: Awareness Inc. started off as a blogging and community provider. When founded in 2007, the company heard from many clients expressing a strong interest in social networking but wanted to be able to create their own customer networking communities. Over the next few years, Awareness Inc. developed the Hub which allows customers to publish content to many channels at once, interact with community members and measure the results all in one spot – their very own customer network. The draw to this idea is the ability for their clients to tie things together in one central place and optimize it. The idea stuck and now Awareness Inc. is popularly known for their Social Marketing Hub.

Backupify: What social tools are your customers most interested in using? Have you noticed an increase in usage of any of these tools in the past year?

Lewis: The big social tool right now is definitely Facebook – right behind Facebook is Twitter. After Twitter, for most companies, would be their company blog. The Hub helps customers optimize Facebook and other networks by showing what content is resonating the most on each platform. The Hub not only measures what is going on within a company’s social networks but it also gives them actionable data they can use to optimize what they do on each channel.

Backupify: What are some specific trends you are seeing in the social media space? How does Awareness capitalize on this?

Lewis: The big thing companies are trying to do from a marketing standpoint are email, blogging, utilizing social networking channels, observing web analytics and developing a CRM system – and all at the same time. The biggest challenge with doing this is that people become overinformed and don’t know what to do with the data once they have it. The Hub helps clients slice and dice the data into digestible parts to help them understand what it means.

On a further note, social media is just one part of the marketing problem. The question people should be asking is, “How does social media translate into my overall marketing efforts? What is the right way to look at my data?” We’ve found people are still very much in learning mode and slowly moving into execution mode.

Backupify: Out of all the social media tools both your customers and your internal team use, which one is the most critical to business? How important is it to be able to secure this data in the case of an accidental deletion, server downtime, account hack, etc.?

Lewis: In terms of social platforms, Facebook is the most business-critical platform for our customers. In terms of tools, the Hub is the most important. We’ve also found that many are concerned with their audit trails and being able to backup and archive their data – this is especially critical for bigger companies. Any security measures that add to their outreach efforts – from archiving to adding more compliance managers in the social media involvement process – is important today.

In a lot of cases, people need to know when something was published and must have a running backup of all content they push out. The issue of accountability then comes into play: Who is to say who did what on social media? Without an audit trail, this is impossible. When you think of regulated industries such as financial services and government agencies, these security measures are not just critical, they HAVE to be taken.

Backupify: How important do you see support tools like Backupify being to online marketing and communication efforts?

Lewis: I think Backupify is very important to the overall marketing mix. Especially with the industries that are using you today, it is absolutely critical for them to archive their online data; they take this matter very seriously. The challenge to many marketers is that they have not yet seriously looked into backing up their online data – it’s not the first thing a marketer thinks of. They’re thinking of email blasts and things like that, not what they back up. The more sophisticated marketers, especially in larger companies, will see it quicker. The challenge is how fast that will trickle down.

Awareness Inc. joined the social media space just as it was sprouting and gaining interest. They have since seen it flourish into an amass of data that people know they need to be a part of and understand but many just don’t know how to do that. Lewis and his co-workers are tasked with helping their clients understand all the available channels, how to interact and then what to do with the data after something is published.

The next phase of this evolution is the realization that archiving, backups and audit trails are becoming more important. For some industries that face heavy regulations, this is critical and they cannot even join the conversation without first having set in place stringent policies and archiving tools.

To learn more about Awareness and their Social Marketing Hub, check them out here. To experience how Backupify can help with your business’ social media records retention and archiving initiatives, check us out here.