Glen Gilmore is an American digital marketing and social media strategist, and ranked 15th on Forbes’ 2013 list of Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. He is a lawyer and teaches at Rutgers University. He came to Dubai in November after speaking at the Mena ICT Forum in Jordan.
What made you visit Dubai after Jordan?
I reached out to Tara Rogers [co-founder of Mojo PR] who has been a friend of mine on Twitter for years. We’d never met but we both have a passion for social media, and we’ve talked about a one-day meeting and collaborating. When I was invited to the conference, I sent her a tweet saying, “Hey, Tara. Is this legit?” She replied saying it really is the ICT conference for the Middle East and, if you are going to go, you should spend some time here, too.
What did you think of the conference?
It impressed the heck out of me: the spirit, the pizzazz, and the sophistication. You have the leadership of Jordan committing itself to hosting events that encourage the use of technology and social media for business purposes, and bringing together entrepreneurs to see how that exchange of ideas can leave everyone inspired and better informed about what is happening in the digital space.
What did your speech convey?
The Arab Spring was an incredible demonstration of the power of social media – so it’s very presumptuous for anyone outside the Mena region to come and talk about social media. But, in recognising that, I wanted to emphasise that the region should continue to use social media, but in a way that provides opportunities for collaboration far beyond boundaries. Social media provides a network to reach across the region. For example, one individual working on a start-up said it was a problem to be in Jordan. I said that he shouldn’t think of it as a limitation because I can already see that Jordan is a start-up hub and if you leverage social media in a way that shares your product, your information and your ideas, you will make connections regardless of where you live. Young people shouldn’t be disheartened by distances to where they think the action is happening. The action is happening all over the place.
You are a strong advocate of businesses using social media, right?
The big trend now is embedding social media rather than one person being in charge – so people within an organisation must be given an understanding about the do’s and don’ts of social media which, from a business perspective, have to do with transparency and truthfulness. To do social media correctly as an enterprise requires investment of time and energy. Enterprises should establish a social media policy and guidelines so that employees understand what’s expected of them. It also requires training because to effectively use social media, you have to have an understanding of where the conversation is shifting to. A brand that might have started using Facebook has to understand that Instagram is also another network they should be participating in. It’s a different niche, a different platform that has different techniques to leverage the information that is shared there more powerfully.
What should businesses do when social media goes wrong?
You have to take great care when you are in the social media space, but understand that at some point, a crisis will occur; very often, it happens because of a mistweet or an unintended post. When someone from the American Red Cross posted a [potentially offensive] tweet from the corporate account rather than her personal account, the organisation was very transparent about the fact it was their fault. Sometimes elected officials or even businesses try to deny they are the culprit. The ARC was very candid and dealt with it first with humour, then by apologising and then by directing people who wanted more information about the incident to their blog. This is again another example of doing it right: enterprises should have various platforms to share their stories. On the blog, you saw a very candid explanation of the fact that it was a mistweet and profuse apologies to anyone that was offended. One of the end goals for social media is to humanise the business and that unfortunate incident showed that behind the scenes are hardworking individuals who, like all of us, sometimes make mistakes.
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