“There’s a great case study of how not to deal with a social media crisis on the Guardian’s Ethical Living blog.

Neal’s Yard Remedies reversed a decision to participate in the Guardian’s ‘You ask they answer’ series after online contributors had already started to post questions aimed at the company.

The piece explores the outcomes of Neal’s Yard Remedies’ decision not to repsond to some pretty searching questions and how bloggers and well known twitterers have helped to spread the story.

When faced with social media crises of this nature companies are very rarely best off saying nothing…

See the full article here.

Big excitement over the New York Times’s appointment of a social media editor. Jennifer Preston, a former regional editor on the newspaper, has been tasked with expanding and promoting it on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Digg.

The newspaper has twigged that as well as people who buy it or make regular visits to the website, a lot of readers come through alerts and recommendations from their friends and colleagues. Preston’s role is to help staff use social media to find sources, contacts and information, and to gather and break news. There will also be a big emphasis on tweeting.

What is Preston’s qualification for the job? Very little, according to blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick, who was able to find very little trace of any social media activity, at least under her own name:; and she has only just opened a Twitter account.

But the newspaper says no one knows much about social media, so who cares? That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s true that once one dives in one can quickly pick up what one needs to know.

The New York Times itself has a good reputation for engaging with social media; it produces lots of streaming video and real time updates, and reporters are enthusiastic Tweeters. That’s a contrast with other US news organisations, which have a somewhat last-century attitude to the social media activities of their employees.  Staff at Bloomberg staff have been told to stop Twittering about competitors or sharing links to their sites, and the Wall Street Journal is said to have cracked down as well.

There’s probably also an element in Preston’s appointment of bringing discipline to staff’s use of social media. The paper was recently miffed at the way details of a closed editorial meeting were splashed across the Internet. But it makes sense for a major organisation to lay down guidelines and boundaries, as long as – as in this case – it is clearly using the medium to good advantage.

Social Media continues to rise in numbers. According to Nielsen Online’s latest research, social networking is now more popular than email!

According to the study, 66.8% of Internet users have used social networks, while only 65.1% have used email.

Read more up-to-date stats here.

Eric Schmidt, chairman  and chief executive of Google was interviewed in the FT over the weekend and talked about the rise of YouTube.

According to Schmidt, roughly 15 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded every minute by a global audience. The figures are staggering, and he rightly points out that you can also sense the impact that YouTube is having due to the controversies it is spawning.

The growth of YouTube clearly  underlines the significance of social media and its potential importance to the communications programmes of companies. Schmidt says: ‘It’s an audience far larger than what traditional television sees; it’s a global audience.’

Despite the rise of YouTube, many companies are still ploughing huge sums into traditional TV communications campaigns. As social media continues to increase in influence, budget allocations are going to have to change. The money needs to go where the customers are.

There are many examples of companies looking to harness the power of YouTube but those that are successful tend to be ones who approach the content in a less corporate way. It has to be more individualistic, more personal, useful to your networks and often fun to be shared and passed on. Companies have also got to be prepared to experiment to see what works best.

And of course the staggering  rise of YouTube underlines the value of video and video clips as a means of communication. Companies need to start using video more to enter into conversations with their audiences and they need to start talking to those audiences in meaningful ways ie they must offer genuine value to their audiences.  Spin will not work. Otherwise people will just continue to watch their own favourite videos and ones recommended by their friends and peers and companies will struggle to get a look in.

You cannot buy attention through YouTube or social media; you have to earn it.