Check out this Spreecast video chat with Orange County attorney Mitch Jackson about the stunning $1 billion purchase.

I wrote about an incident in Salt Lake City where a TV news producer was fired for tweeting during lunch about being surrounded by sexually repressed people.

Then there was a case where an office worker in St. Louis got the ax after her boss discovered her sex blog.

A waitress in Charlotte, North Carolina was fired after using Facebook to vent about a customer.  And a woman lost a job offer at Cisco because of her Twitter update.

These are a few examples why you might want to consider creating a social media policy for your business, company, nonprofit or organization.

Don’t know where to start? I created a social guideline to help you steer clear of these problems so you and your associates don’t crash and burn while on the fast lanes of the social media highway.

Join me and tech expert Dean Soto as we conduct an interactive webinar on how to create social media guidelines and policies that doesn’t put the brakes on your online engagement but helps you and your business safely move forward.

FRIDAY FORUM: Steering Clear of Potholes with Social Media Guidelines

9 to 10 a.m. Friday, June 15, 2012

• Learn tips and legal issues to consider when developing guidelines and policies
• Critical steps to take when creating your policy
• One comprehensive policy vs. multiple policies for each social media site

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:
Dean Soto is a web development and Internet marketing consultant, and president of Pro Sulum, LLC.  Dean and his team specialize in utilizing web platforms such as WordPress to help businesses to brand, market, and attract loyal clients. He also has a proven track record on devising creative ways for businesses to cut costs and increase profits in their industry.

Ted Nguyen is a national award-winning public relations professionals with more than 20 years of developing and executing cost-effective communications programs. He won PRSA’s coveted national Silver Anvil award for best issues management program. Ted is an active member of the blogging community, speaking at national conferences on the social web. Nguyen’s social media work won the best communications program in the state by the California Public Information Officers Association.

To register for the $55 session, click on the EventBrite page. If you register for the webinar, you’ll receive my social media guideline  with my compliments to help you get jump-started on your social media drive.

I just got word today that I’m giving the keynote at the first-ever Orange County Social Media Summit on Friday, May 18.

It came from one of my best friends and closest professional colleagues, Rochelle Veturis, a veteran in the social media space.

The event will bring together the best hearts and minds of the dynamic digital content field to the beautiful foothills of Lake Forest, Calif.

Rochelle is working hard with her sister, Haley Veturis, to organize and host what should be a highly successful event.

The unprecedented interest generated more than 100 RSVPs — before O.C. Social Media Summit was officially announced. With already more than 500 RSVPs, I’m expecting the unique gathering to attract a record number of participants for a social media event in Southern California.

It’s not just about the record numbers, but more importantly, the quality and diversity of the people who will share their personal and professional involvement, insights and inspiration of social media.

I can now divulge some of the speakers and panelists are a few of the modern-day social media pioneers who joined me several years ago at numerous events I hosted.

Here is the official program of the keynote speakers and panelists for what is expected to be the largest social media gathering in Southern California:

Orange County Social Media Summit

Connect. Teach. Share.

We warmly invite you to attend the first ever, Orange County Social Media Summit, Friday, May 18, 2012 at the Refinery at Saddleback Church. Join hundreds of O.C.’s nicest, most passionate business, non-profit, marketing and communications leaders, to refine our skills on the ever changing, social web.

• Created by the social media community, for the social media community in Orange County, enjoy speakers and panelists who started at ground zero, and have found their voice—in different ways—through the “socialmediaphere.”
• No one started off as a huge brand, with a large list of contacts.
• Driven by their passion for people and new media tools, they’ve experienced business success, personal growth, increased web traffic, and scores of other benefits, from simply being present, and being themselves in social media.

Our commitment to you, is to provide a safe and authentic learning environment, where you can come, take notes, ask questions, and connect with people who care. Speakers will lay out their strategies for you, step-by-step. You’ll learn how to think bigger and outside of the box to create breakthrough results.

From blogging, to making videos, to posting tweets and Facebook updates, we’ll cover:

• The top social networks, and benefits and tips about each
• Shortcuts, lots and lots of shortcuts—we’ve worked hard to uncover these secrets, and we’re ready to share them with you
• How to listen to your customers/potential clients, and repurpose their feedback in meaningful ways
• How to create content that will bring you qualified leads
• Easy, ready to use techniques you can employ as you explore, get engaged, and find your personal groove online—whether it’s for business, a favorite cause, or to create your own, solid brand.

Haley, Chelsey and Rochelle Veturis are hosting what's expected to be the largest social media event in Southern California. The first-ever Social Media Summit is May 18 in Lake Forest, Calif.

Speaker and Panelist Lineup 

What we can tell you:

• They are the real deal; no snake oil salesmen—here.
• Between them, they amass more than 140,000 Twitter followers; 349,00 views on YouTube; 25,000 friends on Facebook; and more than 3,500 LinkedIn connections.
• They have each used their power and influence to support worthy causes, that benefit and serve others outside of themselves, including: the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Compassion International, Gavin’s Groupies, Stand Up To Cancer, Cameron Siemers Foundation for Hope, American Red Cross, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Irvine Public Schools Foundation, HomeAid Orange County, Baldwin Park Dogs, and the Amanda Foundation, to name a few.

As you RSVP, be sure to include topic ideas that you’d like us to cover. We look forward to serving you through this fun and informative, full-day event.

Event Hashtag: #OCSMS

To RSVP for the no-cost event, click on the Eventbrite page.

Let me know if you’re planning to attend this event. And I’d love to hear your suggestions on what I should cover at my presentation. I want to deliver a meaningful talk — especially for the Veturis sisters who have done so much to elevate social media sharing in Southern California.

Demonstrating the power of social media, a 29-minute video produced by a San Diego organization called Invisible Children on a once-little-known Joseph Kony has gone viral overnight with more than 50 million views worldwide on YouTube and Vimeo.

The group’s goal is to make the guerrilla group leader from Uganda “famous” to heighten worldwide awareness of his brutality. The viral video’s director, Jason Russell, tell his young son: “We are going to stop him.”

He continues in the narration, “And the fight has led me here to the movie you’re watching … and this year, 2012, is the year that we can finally fulfill it, and if we succeed, we change the course of human history.”

I’ve never seen a video explode onto the global scene, crowding my Twitter stream and Facebook post like this one.

The video continues to generate jaw-dropping attention despite the news media’s criticism of the video being overly simplistic on a complicated the 26-year conflict in Central Africa where approximately 66,000 young boys were kidnapped and forced to become members of Kony’s the Lord’s Resistance Army to fight and kill. The video also names Kony as being responsible for young girls being used as sex slaves.

Though the International Criminal Court has indicted Kony in 2005 for war crimes, he has evaded capture and is likely hiding out in the jungles of Uganda or Congo, where some 100 American military officers are working local authorities to help bring the warlord to justice.

I’ve shared the power of social media to mobilize people for a common struggle in numerous posts on the uprisings in Iran, Egypt and other Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Will this one make a difference? It already has. Since Monday’s posting of the video on YouTube and Tuesday’s Twitter push with celebrities and journalists and Facebook posts that have generated 2.6 million “likes,” the nonprofit has succeed where no other brand or celebrity has gone in just a few days — created a dizzying amount of buzz with worldwide attention from mostly young people aimed at putting political pressure to capture Kony.

How did this nonprofit succeed so wildly?

To launch the campaign, it used social media instead of the traditional news media. The video itself outlines the social media strategy — tweet messages to 20 “culturemakers” and 12 “policymakers” with influential Twitter accounts urging them to join the effort.

The Twitter targets included: 20 celebrities such as George Clooney, Jay Z, Ryan Seacrest, Rihanna, Angelina Jolie, Mark Zuckerberg and Lady Gaga and 12 policy influencers such as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush.

Tweets that members of the Twitter community could share with their followers included a hashtag, #Kony2012, making the movement the cause celebre to help galvanize an army of warriors for peace.

And  April 20 will likely be the next social media firestorm for Invisible Children as millions of people may be engaged in campaign to put Kony 2012 posters overnight across America.

Let me know what you think. Will this movement gain even more momentum? Do you think the nonprofit will succeed in delivering justice and peace? If social media were around in the mid-1970s, do you think the world would have prevented Pol Pot from the killings of more than 2 million Cambodians?

By Ryan Romeos
Guest Blogger

I was at Olive Garden on Saturday and the table next to me was just receiving its lunch.

One of the customers noticed the order was wrong and told the waitress about the mistake. The waitress apologized, and said she would have the cook make another dish. The customer said she did not like that the food would be wasted, to which the waitress replied, “Don’t worry it is a popular dish, it will be reused.”

Shocked by the comment I immediately tweeted my disapproval, “@OliveGarden one of your waitresses said a dish being sent back will be reused. Ummm #gross?”

My disapproval may not get a social uproar, but it proves a point. Gone are the days of writing the business or calling your Congressional representative when you disapprove.

Social media has given society the power to have its voice heard and the power to ban together when a company or organization does something the public does not agree with.

Take Susan G. Komen and its decision to not renew its grants with Planned Parenthood. When the news hit, people voiced their disapproval, and Komen received some major backlash on social media. #NoKomen trended on Twitter and the organization’s Facebook wall was full of comments opposing the decision.

The backlash was so big it made Komen reverse the decision and renew the grants to Planned Parenthood. People from across the nation came together and voiced their opinion causing Komen to change course.

This is what makes social media so powerful. Before social media, organizations could throw away letters, ignore phone calls and delete emails, but now everyone is watching.

The American people now have the ability to share what they think and come together publicly from the comfort of their own homes.

Social media users have the power to hold organizations and people accountable for their actions. Where most business people see it as a “great place to market,” public relations professionals see as a place to engage and measure how the company or its campaign is doing.

Some organizations are scared of social media because things like the Komen incident. However, it is great tool to engage and interact with people who love or hate your brand. When a company dedicates a team set to engage and not market on social media these things can almost always be controlled.

Ignoring the issue, however, is not the way to do it. Ignoring issues leaves the public feeling abandoned and makes the organization look guilty or negligent.

When things like that happen, it is our job to see if there is merit to the concern and act accordingly. If you know the issue will take a while then a simple post like, “We are aware of BLANK issue and we are looking into it. As soon as we have any information we will share it here. Thank you, Ryan.”

Olive Garden may never respond to my tweet, and it may never go viral, but it is not a matter of how many followers or friends someone has on their page, it is the content that matters. If more and more people talk about Olive Garden reusing its food then it may go viral.

Paying attention can go a long way and a simple reply to my tweet from the restaurant could have stopped the damage before it has chance to become a bigger problem for the Olive Garden.

But as of right now, I am still left to wonder: Was my chicken alfredo a hand-me-down from a customer who did not want it? I really hope not.

Ryan Romeos is a senior at Cal State Fullerton majoring in public relations and minoring in human communications. Romeos is the president of Titan PR group, a student-run firm on campus, and a member of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA). Romeos’ Twitter page is @RyanRomeos. 

The world reacted to breaking news that pop superstar Whitney Houston died at 48 at the Beverly Hilton this afternoon on the eve of the Grammy awards.

With the prolific use and meteoric rise of social media, I wasn’t too surprised to learn that a social media user named “Big Chorizo” with the Twitter screen name of @ChileMasGrande in Nevada was the first to tweet to his 14 followers about Houston’s death — 27 minutes before the Associated Press shared the breaking news story on its Twitter feed.

This social media user was reportedly the first one to tweet to his 14 followers news about Whitney Houston's death -- 27 minutes before other media began reporting the late-breaking worldwide news story.

Increasingly news is breaking on social media. I first learned about the killing of Osama Bin Laden on Twitter and then tweeted and posted on Facebook the information an hour before the mainstream media first reported the worldwide story.

Social media also has quickly become our world’s go-to forum to share our ideas, comments and feelings as well as to celebrate or grieve with each other.

Nine of the world’s top 10 trending topics on Twitter was about Whitney Houston.

The first full hour after the news broke witnessed nearly 2.5 million tweets and retweets. More than a thousand tweets occurred per second at its peak of 61,227 tweets at 5:23 p.m. Pacific Time.

Celebrities joined millions of others worldwide on Twitter Saturday night to share their thoughts and grieve with others on social media over the loss of the incredibly talented but troubled pop legend.

It’s a tragedy. Whitney Houston was the greatest singer I’ve ever heard and she will be truly missed,” singer Tony Bennett tweeted.

“Oh my … heartbreaking … to the family and friends of Whitney Houston, deepest regards,” actress Kristie Alley wrote.

“RIP Whitney Houston, we sang along and fell in love to your songs,” Canadian actress and screenwriter Nia Vardalos said.

“I’m speechless. Such sad news about Whitney Houston,” Glee actress Lea Michele wrote.

“So sad about Whitney Houston. What an extraordinary voice. Prayers and wishes for her family,” Top Chef host and model Padma Lakshmi said.

“The voice of a music legend has been quieted today. R.I.P. for one of the most amazing artists of our time,” actor Sean Hayes wrote.

“Wow, I am devastated. The world has lost another one of the best voices in history. RIP whitney houston, so fortunate am I to have worked with u, and have u touch my life. may god bless this family,” American Idol host Randy Jackson tweeted.

“Shocked we’ve lost the immensely talented Whitney Houston! Sending prayers of peace & solace 2 her family, friends & fans! Such a loss!” singer Gloria Estefan write.

News of Whitney Houston's death set Twitter trending with nine of the top 10 topics on the pop superstar.

“Dear God … there is a grief that can’t be spoken. #DEVASTATED,” talk show host Rosie O’Donnell said.

“Wow. RIP Whitney Houston. Grew up on her. She contributed to the soundtrack of many of my 12-year-old sleepover parties,” actress Elizabeth Banks wrote.

“Oh dear Lord! Hurting so bad! My sister Whitney. Newark, please pray! World, please pray!” Queen Latifah tweeted.

“What a sad tragedy – the end of the life of an incredible talent. RIP to an amazing singer and legend,” talk show host Joan Rivers tweeted.

“RIP Whitney Houston. Sending my love and deepest condolences to her family and friends. Fly Whitney Fly,” singer Ricky Martin wrote.

“My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Whitney Houston. A legend with the voice of an angel, she will be missed,” singer Bret Michaels tweeted.

“Jesus Christ, not Whitney Houston. Greatest of all time,” singer Nicki Minaj wrote on her Twitter account.

“RIP Whitney Houston. An amazing talent and a tragic soul. So sad,” comedian Ricky Gervais shared on Twitter.

“I was 10 when I fell in love with Whitney on my red $9 tape player – as soon as I put her tape in she made it feel like a top notch Walkman,” The View co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck wrote.

“Whitney Houston I will always love you,” singer JoJo tweeted.

This YouTube video is among the last known performances of Whitney Houston. She sang “Yes, Jesus Loves Me” — one night before she died. She performed at the Kelly Price & Friends pre-Grammy concert Feb. 10.

Houston’s performance of the National Anthem was one of my favorite songs from the incredibly talented artist. Which one of her songs will you most remember her by? I’d love to hear your thoughts about how differently we’re sharing news and information using social tools.

A Well-Oiled Political Machine Doesn’t Miss a Beat

But Somehow Team Romney Misses a Tweet

This article is appearing in the March 2012 issue of the Social Media Monthly magazine, the world’s first printed social media publication.   

By Ted Nguyen

Social Media Strategist

When Team Romney went looking for a political operative that had experience in political communications and social media, they didn’t have to go very far.

Eric Fehrnstrom became the so-called “golden boy” who helped Scott Brown snatch a victory from Democrats, taking Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat and thus upending the political world in the midterm elections of 2010.

He’s now trying to defeat the world’s most-powerful leader with a formidable social media arsenal he’s built for Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts.

Fehrnstrom, 50, a Boston native, is no stranger to politics, covering the statehouse for the Boston Globe.  

A former spokesman for the first Romney run for the White House in 2008, Fehrnstrom is known in Democratic circles as the Karl Rove of the Northeast. “He’s the best operative on the Romney campaign,” GOP strategist Mike Murphy told the Boston Globe. “I think he’s the secret weapon.”

The communications expert’s digital target is firmly focused on the White House — that’s if he and the rest of the political operatives can fend off the other GOP challengers and Mitt Romney’s perceived weakness as a not-conservative-enough Republican candidate:  too moderate for the right-wing base of the GOP and Tea Party activists, too stale and too rich to connect with ordinary Americans struggling in this difficult economy and too Mormon for the influential Evangelical voting block that might thwart his changes of becoming the nation’s first Mormon president.

With the tremendous lead Pres. Barack Obama’s social media team has amassed over the past six years with a jaw-dropping 24 million fans on Facebook and 11.9 million followers on Twitter, it was not surprising that the political operatives in Boston hired a digital director, Zac Moffatt, one of the first key positions before Romney announced his presidential candidacy.  

While Moffatt was a partner at Targeted Victory, a GOP digital firm, he and his team helped deliver victory for U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who likely will be Romney’s pick as No. 2 on the ticket.  The Boston-Miami alliance mirrors the strong partnership formed with Fehrnstrom and his choice for social media and digital lead in Moffatt.

Even with a narrow loss in Iowa (a virtual tie with Rick Santorum), a win in New Hampshire (a commanding victory with 39 percent compared to No. 2 Ron Paul’s 23 percent), a surprising loss in South Carolina  and commanding win in the most-expensive media market of Florida, Team Romney is still trying to drum up energy and passion among GOP voters who generally aren’t too fond of their choices in the field to take on Pres. Obama and the Democrats who in the last election cycle easily outplayed their Republican rivals in the digital landscape.

That’s quickly changing. It’s the GOP with the social media edge this time around. Team Ferhnstrom-Moffatt helped tilt the balance with impressive wins in 2010 with shock and awe in a landslide victory for Republicans in the U.S. House and a near-takeover on the Senate side. And they are hoping to go the distance against a formidable foe in David Axelrod and his Digital Director Teddy Goff, previously of Blue State Digital.  Obama’s social team will get their chance if they can squat away the dogged-determined Ron Paul and his high-octane buzz of supporters.

Though Ron Paul’s social media efforts are passionately connecting with high-flying engagement with supporters even in some cases – irreverently, Mitt Romney’s online presence reflects a disciplined and traditional approach to message management in the social sphere. 

Romney has amassed more than a quarter million Twitter followers, 1.3 million Facebook fans, 3.5 million YouTube views and more than 75 videos created.

The digital strategy for the campaign relies on consistency in messaging – not surprising for the well-tooled political machinery. Its Facebook and YouTube pages relies on the same branded look and feel as the campaign’s website that contains its primary social focus – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Tout, which features short videos of the candidate speaking to supporters shot by hand by staffers and uploaded instantly with a cell phone. 

The Facebook and YouTube pages also display similar the latest social streams in easy-to-navigate columns.

But the power of the Romney digital strategy may lie in its quietly created MyMitt community that has raised more than $1.5 million.

Upon logging onto the campaign’s website, users can join the MyMitt site that contains customized features such as exclusive emails and messages from the campaign, fundraising pages that contain a user’s unique profile and fundraising goals, social share features for family, friends and other contacts as well as a specific action items such as making phone calls for the campaign. And it’s all done at the convenience of a computer, smart phone or tablet.  

The more active the user on MyMitt, the more points. Upon registering for the special site, the user automatically earn 5,000 points for what may be political prizes and opportunities to be with the candidate himself.

Although the campaign may have taken these features out of the 2008 Obama campaign’s playbook, it has customized them with easy-to-navigate call-to-action buttons. Its simplicity likely will fuel its popularity. Look for it to make a significant tangible impact on the outcome of the GOP primary and inevitably propel the Romney campaign to battle forcefully against the Democrats’ power of incumbency.

There is no word yet from the Romney folks whether it too will follow the wildly popular Obama-Bidden app and texting program that played a powerful role in mobilizing legions of young adults to polling places in 2008. The current Romney app merely contains the latest social media streams and YouTube videos. It’s unclear if the handful of apps for Romney supporters is official.

That’s because calls, emails and tweets to various campaign officials were not answered. Though that’s understandable as the campaign is in high gear, it’s also a reflection of the Romney conventional political strategy of message development, mass dissemination and tracking for outcomes in media impressions – both likely with the traditional media and social media.

But the danger of treating social media as another communications vehicle is overlooking its true transformative power of first listening and monitoring, then engaging for mutual benefits.

Numerous sentiment analyses conducted during the GOP primary fight shows Romney generating only lukewarm responses. Because Team Romney is not treating social media with its unique features, just like the others, the well-financed campaign is having mixed results from its social media and other digital communications tactics. That’s because the campaign is just using these powerful tools to simply to amplify its message.

But if it truly wants to build a following of passionate, dedicated and engaged social media users, the campaign must shift strategies because social media represents a fundamental shift in how people communicate and interact with each other on an egalitarian level. It should engage with social media users, develop relationships of trust and then once voters heed the call to action in person, they are more fully informed and invested.

For example, although I’m a graduate from a master’s degree program at Brigham Young University – the same one that bears the name of Romney’s father (the George W. Romney Institute of Public Management), I’m not a part of a political machinery. I just love my adopted homeland after escaping from war-torn Vietnam as a child refugee during the fall of Saigon in 1975.

But after recognizing the transformative power of social media, I’ve utilized Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and other social sites to cultivate relationships, build a community of like-minded and like-hearted individuals across the world and achieve tangible results. On Twitter, I have more than 31,000 followers – which pales in comparison with Mitt Romney’s whopping 250,000. But after performing a quick analysis of my reach to my followers and Gov. Romney’s reach to his followers using a third-party app called TweetReach, I discovered tat my reach as a citizen user was powerful.

As I was writing the article, I used TweetReach to perform the analysis. My last 50 tweets reached 82,421 people with more than 595,000 impressions while Romney’s last 50 tweets reached nearly 36,000 people with just 40,300 impressions.

Obviously, from a political, social or business perspective, Romney is significantly more powerful than any one citizen. But on social media, influence is measured by a whole set of different metrics.

In addition to the paid media campaign bombarding the airways, Romney and his wife and sons are hitting the ground, meeting voters one-on-one, shaking their hands, looking them in the eye and trying to earn their vote by having a conversation with them – albeit often brief.

That’s true of social media. It’s about having respect for users by listening to them and engaging them in organic and authentic ways. The process is part of the Gov 2.0 or Citizen 2.0 movement that hopefully brings voters closer to their public servants.

Though Moffatt says his boss uses an iPhone and iPad. “He’s inquisitive … He’s fascinated by it,” Moffatt tells Kate Kaye,  senior editor at ClickZ News. “He’ll jump on Facebook and see the comments. He’s a businessman who understands metrics.”

In today’s social media and digital age, one must also understand the basic human behavior of feeling ignored or not listened to. And if Team Romney wants to generate and sustain the passions of its followers to help propel the campaign toward the White House, its campaign people would be wise to respond to comments and engage with voters using social media beyond their self-selected echo chamber.

A review of Romney’s own Twitter account as well his key social media, political strategists and PR team members (@EricFehrn @GGitcho @AndreaMSaul @ZacMoffatt @LanheeChen @RyanGOP @KevinMaddenDC @TeamRomney) reveal the vast majority of the tweets are messaging blasts and retweets of one of the team member’s posts. Very few are @ mention responses or just to say two simple words but powerful words to their followers for an RT: Thank you.

The @MittRomney account does contain many “thank yous,” but it’s unclear whether the former head of the 2002 Salt Lake Games tweets or Facebook posts himself. To his credit, Romney still has a chance to tweet before he officially resides in the White House – should he ultimately win. Pres. Obama didn’t tweet for the first time until closer to his second year in the Oval Office. The president claimed he had clumsy thumbs.

Romney ran multi-billion dollar corporations, rescued the Salt Lake Winter Olympics and governed the state of Massachusetts. He should be able to perform a simple yet powerful task of tweeting or posting on Facebook because then he would be communicating directly with instead of at his constituency – surely to the delight of his followers and fans.

And Romney’s going to need all the excitement and the authenticity possible to counter the prevailing perception that he’s a bit too stale and phony to win one fan or follower at a time if he’s to make his way toward the nation’s highest office one tweet at a time.

I’d to love to know what you think. Will the GOP field catch up to social engagement  to win the White House? What are your ideas on how political campaigns can tap into social media? And will our elected officials harness the social tools to help enhance citizen engagement?