No Blogging, Posting, or Twittering Please

Over the past couple of years, we’ve written about how some diary keepers and ppm panelists use social media to share their experiences. For example, a recent Twitter PPM post @yaygrr “Just got off phone with the Arbitron rep; ready to “represent 10K-15K people” for media ratings w/ this piece of tech: http://tr.im/icF4” (see also Mar 06 and the sidebar in Apr 09).

Well, it appears that some stations are taking advantage of these self-trumpeting consumers and Arbitron is cracking down. VP/Compliance, Dave Willinski says that they are reaching out to any station that uses Twitter as a means for communicating to diarykeepers, “applying our Rating Bias and Rating Distortion guidelines as they would apply to station communication to diarykeepers in any other medium.” Which, of course, means the station faces de-listing.

Willinski adds that diaries from households that identify themselves in social media will be disqualified (as long as Arbitron finds out about them before they return their diaries). Presumably they will do the same to a panelist household who identifies themselves.

It’s interesting to ponder a couple of questions here: 1) does this seemingly understandable gag-order policy inadvertantly initiate other bias? For example, would it serve to artificially limit the participation of this socially prevalant portion of the population because they would no longer participate? 2) it’s fairly clear that social media is an area of interest for at least some diary keepers. How are you embracing social media to help build your stations loyalty?

Congratulations to Jay Guyther & ROI

  Our friends at ROIMedia Solutions have landed a great hire. Former Arbitron President and Senior VP, Jay Guyther joined the legendary (and former Arbitron colleague) Mark O’Neill, Doyle and Josh Rose.  dmr’s had a long and strong partnership with ROI and look forward to more with this great hire!  Radio-Info has the story here. RadioINK has it here.

Putting A Name With A Face(book)

As of last Saturday, Facebook began offering the chance to add a branding component to your Page. The Facebook blog says:

“…This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future….people can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google…”

Now you can choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/.

Why should you select and register a username? 360i’s David Berkowitz writing in today’s AdAge highlights notes that “the most important reason is brand protection. If your company is Acme Widgets, you can claim facebook.com/acme or facebook.com/acmewidgets . The other key reason is for brand promotion. The Facebook username can be promoted through other marketing channels online and offline.”

But, there’s a hitch: your page must have been live on Facebook with at least 1,000 fans as of May 31.  If you missed the date or the fan cut-off, don’t worry because Berkowitz adds that “Facebook is increasingly vigilant about protecting marketers’ brands. On its FAQ , Facebook offers a number of measures for trademark owners to report infringement.” Berkowitz suggests some action steps:

Plan of Action
If you have a page with 1,000 fans as of the end of May:

• Read the Facebook FAQ. There are important rules regulating usernames; for instance, generic terms such as “pizza” aren’t allowed.
• Determine the username — one that adheres to Facebook’s terms and best represents the brand. If you run traditional media, think about what would look good on a billboard or TV spot, or sound good on the radio.
• Decide which of your page administrators is reliable, really understands Facebook and will be available at 12:01 a.m. ET June 13 or very soon after.
• Make the change. And be very careful — a typo could be irreversible.
• Check Monday and periodically thereafter to see if any of your trademarks were registered by others.

If you don’t have a page, or it didn’t hit 1,000 fans:

• Consider whether it makes sense to have a page, or if you do have one, consider ways to grow the fans. Some strategies are discussed in 360i’s Social Marketing Playbook . Facebook will undoubtedly create new windows for claiming vanity URLs, so it’s not too late.
• Scan Facebook for any trademark infringement violations in the meantime.