Many of us use a variety of social media outlets for self-promotion or to promote assorted businesses, clients, and products to the online world at large. Some of us also use social media for advocacy.

First and foremost in my mind is 12for12k, which did an amazing job raising money for charity throughout 2009. On a more personal note, I am very impressed with the work Kristine Brite-McCormick has done with Cora’s Story to raise awareness about Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) after her five-day-old daughter died from the birth defect that she learned about from the coroner.

And then there are all of the other causes I care about, the countless newsletters I receive urging me to take action about this workers’ rights violation or that new educational legislation they’re trying to get passed. The email can be overwhelming, and I admit to deleting a fair amount of them more often than I’d like to. But once the action groups caught on that they could reach their members on Facebook and Twitter, that was a big help. Now I can tweet or post to Facebook when I take  part in an action campaign, encouraging like-minded people to do the same – and my friends and acquaintances can do the same. They’re meeting me where I am.

And that’s why I’m going to be speaking at the 2010 Empowering Communities for Successful Aging Conference at the Holiday Inn on Wolf Road in Albany, New York on July 28. I’ve generally been more of an advocate for children’s issues since becoming a mother, but I can’t ignore the importance of taking care of our seniors. Along with Paul M. Bray of P.M Bray LLC, I will be presenting on Community Building and Advocacy: Using Media to Gain Community Support.

As I understand it, Paul will be speaking about using traditional media outlets (print, TV, radio) while I’ll be discussing how to use new media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and more. I am trying to remind myself that this will be nothing like speaking on the Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley 4 blogging panel, where most of the room was tweeting and texting throughout the presentation.

If you are interested in attending the event, the cost is $40 for the one day I’m speaking or $70 for both days, July 27 and 28.

I would be very happy to include more examples of organizations who are using social media for community empowerment, so please feel free to share your story with me if you’ve found success in this arena by leaving a comment. I can always use more case studies!

Using Social Media for Community Action is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC

In case you haven’t heard of Silkfair, they pitch themselves as a friendlier alternative to eBay and Etsy, though they do allow sellers to integrate their listings from both of those sites. “SILKFAIR makes buying and selling fun and easy.”

The Silkfair Twitter Party

In order to get the word out about their online marketplace, Silkfair hired Amy Lupold Bair – the inventor of the Twitter Party, aka ResourcefulMommy – to host a sitewarming party for them. Amy created a lot of buzz for them. She held an hour-long hashtag party, during which time partygoers were given the opportunity to win prizes. Silkfair was offering free custom stores to the prize winners. There were no qualifiers to this when I found myself a prize recipient. I was getting a free custom store on Silkfair!

My “FREE” Custom Store

It took forever for Silkfair to set up the free stores for all of us winners. And by the time it happened, our free custom stores turned into three free months of having a custom store. Custom stores generally cost $24.99 per month.

With my store set up, I decided I should list all of my old Tupperware from my Tupperware lady days… but life got in the way, and I only listed three things. One of them sold in December. I forgot about Silkfair. I thought my store would revert to a free membership once my prize ran out.

The Catch

Imagine my surprise when I was printing out all of my financial information to prepare for tax season, and I discovered that there were THREE separate charges – $24.99 each – to my credit card from Silkfair in December. When my prize period expired. I thought it might be a glitch. After all, I’d gotten an email from them stating that I owed them nothing for the month of December. It didn’t occur to me that the email also didn’t mention the 24 cent transaction fee for the Tupperware colander I’d sold.

So I checked it out this morning while looking for Silkfair’s contact form on their Web site. By the way, they don’t have a contact form, and their email addresses listed are not clickable. Not very user-friendly. It took me about 10 minutes to find where on the site my invoice for December was even located. And this is what I found:

So not only were they acknowledging by invoice that I was a winner from the Resourceful Mommy party, but they were indeed charging me for the three months that were supposed to be my free membership.

Much to my chagrin, I learned that my account also did not default to a free membership…I was charged another $24.99 – only a week after the other charges – for my continued membership.

I admit that I did not read the part on their site where it said it would bill me automatically each month… but it was NOT easy to find. I only found it after hunting for where  in the world I could cancel this subscription I didn’t want. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to screenshot the location when I found it, since it has now been replaced by a giant “UPGRADE YOUR ACCOUNT” graphic. Hint: It was NOT on the Fees/Billing page, where one would intuitively think to find how to cancel the recurring subscription fees.

I have canceled my subscription as of this morning, and I’ve sent them a sternly but politely worded email requesting that the charges be reversed. If the nearly $75 in charges from December are not reversed, my next step is to contact the Better Business Bureau and the Attorney General. In no communication was I ever told that I would be retroactively billed for my FREE 3-MONTH MEMBERSHIP. I have also requested that the charges from January be reversed as a gesture of good faith, since I was also not made expressly aware that I would be charged automatically if I did not cancel. (Who knew I should have hunted and clicked on every tab and sub-tab on the navigation menu to find this out?)

I will happily post an update about this Silkfair FAIL if and when they contact me to resolve this matter.This was a massive fail of communication, ease to find information on the Web site, use of social media to get good buzz, and just business practices in general.

How  Silkfair Could Have Avoided This Mess

• Emailing all prize winners to let them know expressly that this was not a free membership, but that we would be charged for the full amount if we  did not cancel our memberships prior to the end of the three-month period.
• Emailing all prize winners to let them know that they would be charged automatically on a recurring basis for the membership, and that it did not default to a free membership after the trial period had ended.
• Itemizing all charges – not just amount outstanding – on email invoice notifications to account holders. An actual detailed receipt of charges made to our credit cards. Account holders should be able to trust that email notifications concerning money are complete and accurate.
• Following good business practices and not trying to pull a bait and switch on active social media users who can – and will – easily expose shady business dealings when they could have been cheerleaders of the business instead.

Updated January 27: The  Silkfair Twitter account has told me that “We personally want to apologize to you for incorrect billing, & refunds were applied to your acct.” As of 5:17 pm, nearly 27 hours after that tweet, my Silkfair account reflects no refund, and my bank account has not received any refunded money. Also, despite the fact that I canceled my custom store subscription, the Fees/Billing page still tells me that I am going to be auto billed for $24.99 on February 5.

The Silkfair Social Media FAIL is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC

In case you haven’t heard, Amy Mengel managed to convince me to get up in front of people and talk about blogging at the fourth installment of Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley, which is being held at the headquarters of the American Red Cross of Northeastern New York in Albany. Thankfully, it’s not just me up there in front of a sold out audience of 150 people… I’m part of a panel that includes Lara Kulpa of Gingko Consulting and Problogger.com, Amanda Magee of Trampoline Design Studio, and our moderator Greg Dahlmann of Uptown/Downtown Media and All Over Albany.

Here’s what other people have been saying about the upcoming blogging panel at SMBTV4:

• The #smbtv4 Eventbrite listing, with guest list
• Social Media Breakfast – Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #4
• Bounce – Talkin’ Turkey
• Metroland Online – Social Studies
• Tech Valley Computing Culture – ReBlogging: Talkin’ Turkey

Can’t be there? The event will be live-streamed on USTREAM from 8:00-10:00 am on Friday morning, December 4. If you watch, though, remember that there’s a reason I’m a writer instead of a speaker. I hope I don’t stutter, ramble, or turn so red that I actually emit radiant heat.

Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #4 is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC

In the Internet Marketing industry, we all have to consider both our personal brands and our professional brands. A handful of notable people have had to change their Twitter names to reflect job loss – statusgirl/melanienathan comes to mind first. We’re out there, promoting our accomplishments and those of our employers, in the big, wide world of social media. But who is benefiting from the reputations we build for ourselves? Are we building our own personal brand, or just that of the company we work for? Identity lines are blurry, and there are some steps that everyone should take to protect their own identity – their personal brand – when getting involved online.

A lot of people in the industry had some helpful tips for protecting your personal brand. They were kind enough to tweet me their advice.

Steve Vandergriff of Redline Creative Media: People are getting more search-savvy; IMO you should focus more on yourself and your expertise, and less about who you do it for.

Christina says: Excellent advice! When you focus on your own accomplishments, your employer benefits from the fact that you work for them, and you don’t lose out if/when that work relationship ends.

Andy Beal of Trackur: Make sure you fill the Google void. In the absence of any content created by you, Google will fill its results with third-party content it discovers. The danger? Google is sentiment-neutral–it doesn’t care that it just ruined your reputation by including a negative web page in its SERP.

Christina says: Have you Googled yourself lately? You may be surprised.

Michael Gray of Atlas Web Service: You need to have a plan to protect your name/reputation before something bad happens, not after. Don’t be afraid to control negative press with a PPC campaign to a landing page.

Christina says: You can’t be too careful!

A. Ryan Robbins of ycopfiles.com: Set your own boundaries before you 1st start, only post things you are ok with your mom reading, respect your IRL friends’ rights to privacy too. Remember, once posted, never forgotten (Google).

Christina says: The Internet has a memory that doesn’t fail. It can be tricky to remember that sometimes.

Since I’m no expert at online relationship management, it was great to get some advice from those who are. So what can we take away from this?

1. Set up your personal and professional profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Use an email address that belongs to you, not your employer. Don’t use your company name in your ID, unless required to do so. You can be a representative of your company without giving them complete control of your online identity.
2. Google yourself. Is there a SERP void you need to plug up? Or worse, is there something negative floating about that needs to be addressed? You’ve got work to do.
3. When you leave blog comments, leave a personal URL instead of a company URL. If you don’t have your own Web site (why not?) you can always link to one of your social media profiles, the one you update the most.
4. Watch what you say. Much like drunk dialing, you can’t take back something blogged or tweeted in anger. Your tweets will still show up in Twitter search, and the Google cache lives on.
   
5. When in doubt, ask a friend. A simple “Is this a bad idea?” could be the 5 seconds that make a difference between a good decision or something you’ll regret.

The next time you leave a blog comment – you know, maybe to add your own tip on this post – are you giving yourself the credit for it, or are you giving your employer an endorsement you can’t take back if you ever part ways? Your reputation and personal brand are at stake!

Protecting Your Personal Brand and Online Identity is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC

Over the last 24 hours, I have been slightly losing my mind. The economy sucks, as we all know, knowing you’re in “good company” doesn’t help when you’ve been laid off from your job. Especially when, just two months ago, you thought you’d never have to look for a job again. (Which was huge, since my husband and I have suffered at least one layoff per year for the last five years.)

Instead of completely freaking out, which was a real possibility, I threw all of my personal belongings in a box, stopped crying so I could drive home, and hopped on Twitter.

Within five minutes of my first tweet about being laid off, I had DMs from half a dozen people. Within a few more hours, dozens of people had contacted me to extend their sympathies and to offer any help they could.  I’ve had a few feeler emails asking for my rates and areas of expertise. I’ve cobbled together a quick listing of services and introductory rates in editing, article writing, and blogging.  For now, everything is negotiable.  I’m sure the rates for my services will sort themselves out once I see how busy I’m going to be!

I would like to thank everyone who offered their help in setting up this Web site, particularly the anonymous person who generously donated a copy of Thesis for me. (Once I’m back on my feet, I’m totally getting myself the developer version so I can use it on my other sites.)

Thank you all for your kind, supportive words.

Thank you to those who have told me to “keep in touch” so we can work together on a project. (My Gmail is overflowing, so I hope I don’t lose your messages! I’ve got a support ticket in with my hosting company to set up my new email here, so stay tuned.)

Thank you to everyone who has joined my network on LinkedIn.

Thank you to the folks at SMX who are doing some face-to-face networking for me. (Wish I was there!)

Out of the dozens of people who have reached out to me, I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve actually met in person. The rest of you are all people I’ve met in the Twittersphere or elsewhere online. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have gotten to know you, and to have earned enough of your respect that you were so responsive when I needed support.

Social media rocks.

Social Media Really Does Bring People Together is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC