Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Product Manager as Storyteller

There is no clearly defined path to becoming a product manager. When I started, I was a graduate student in history at the University of Michigan. It was the product itself that seduced me—newspaper microfilm transformed onscreen to become searchable history. Product management is not a career path I planned or even something for which I could have gone to school. It is still something that most people learn on job, although there are nowseveral certification programs available.
Product managers come from engineering, sales, development, editorial, or even like me from a humanities background. Some are highly technical; others not so much. The good news is that you don't need to know how to code to be a product manager. But all great product managers are great storytellers .
Product managers need to inspire and persuade people across all departments towards manifesting a common vision. The best way to do that is with a great story. Stories have been told for thousands of years. Stories inspire hope; they provide meaning and purpose. Shared purpose that keeps people going through the many obstacles that impede a product’s progress. It’s what will get a product team through the Slough of Despond and up Difficulty Hill and beyond.
Product managers face an overwhelming amount of data from customer engagement reports, web analytics, research reports, market data and statistics. But great product stories move well beyond requirements or epics or data gathering. A story helps create the meaning behind all that data. Stories inspire us to action—finance to fund, developers to build and customers to buy.
Elements of a Great Product Story
Keep it simple! All great product stories address the why should I care question.
Hero
Who is your hero? Put your customer at the front and center of your story. Your hero must be relatable and he must be believable. Ask open ended questions, the more the better. What are his or her struggles?
Setting
What is your hero’s world like? What does he want it to be like? Remember the audience for your story is often inside the office, at least initially. Recreate your hero's world for them. Details count! Create an immersive experience for your audience.
Conflict(s)
No story works without conflict. What are your hero’s problems or obstacles? This is the heart of your story.
Resolution
What empowers your customer to become the hero of his story? The best stories become collaborations. Share your story as often as possible with customers, with advisers, with development, with finance and with sales.
When "your" story become "our story," you are on the way to becoming a great product manager.
[Source]

7 Reasons Not to Use Internet Explorer ever, ever again

Since the recent security lockdown of Internet Explorer (IE) yesterday (read more here) I figured I should write a post to all those people who still may actually be using IE
Drum roll please...
Reason #1 - IE is broken beyond repair. Literally there is no solution.
"We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem," the Department of Homeland Security's United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in a post Monday morning.
Reason #2 - You are safer from targeted software viruses
Because IE was used for so long and by so many people (and it still is to some extent), hackers find it an extremely valuable target to attack very large groups of people. You can be less vulnerable by choosing other browsers or using an Apple product.
Reason #3 - Microsoft is a little slow
In addition, I get the feeling that Microsoft is just slow in fixing Internet Explorer bugs. The last release of IE patches included a fix to a bug that Microsoft had been told about six months ago.
Reason #4 - IE interprets code differently
There are certain "universal" standards by which just about every internet browser interprets coding. This consistency is what allows websites to maintain their design and functionality across multiple browsers on a variety of devices. While most companies work to keep these standards, Microsoft opted to follow their own set of rules. Because of this, you encounter websites that either look incorrect on Internet Explorer or just flat out break.
Reason #5 - No automatic updates
Internet Explorer does not automatically check for out of date plugins / extensions and prompt you to update them - both Firefox and Chrome do this. Out of date plugins are a favorite method hackers use to get inside your computer. In Chrome the most commonly attacked plugins (Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader) run in a safe area of your computer called a "sandbox" so, even if they are compromised, they can't actually do any damage.
Reason #6 - No synchronization
If you use multiple computers, both Firefox and Chrome have built-in features to synchronize bookmarks and more between different instances of the browser. Internet Explorer (at least up to version 8) can't do this.
Reason #7 - No compatibility
There hasn't been a version of IE for Mac since Safari was developed in 2003 despite the fact that there is a Windows version of Safari. Frankly, what Mac user would want it? The lack of compatibility, particularly with mobile devices and the iPad, makes IE nearly obsolete.
Conclusion
With other great options available at no-cost, there are very few reasons to continue using Internet Explorer.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

U.S., UK advise avoiding Internet Explorer until bug fixed

The Microsoft logo is seen at their offices in Bucharest March 20, 2013. REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel

(Reuters) - The U.S. and UK governments on Monday advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers used to launch attacks.
The Internet Explorer bug, disclosed over the weekend, is the first high-profile computer threat to emerge since Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows XP earlier this month. That means PCs running the 13-year-old operating system will remain unprotected, even after Microsoft releases updates to defend against it.
The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an advisory released on Monday that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer could lead to "the complete compromise" of an affected system.
The recently established UK National Computer Emergency Response Team issued similar advice to British computer users, saying that in addition to considering alternative browsers, they should make sure their antivirus software is current and regularly updated.
Versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer dominate desktop browsing, accounting for 55 percent of global market share, according to research firm NetMarketShare.
Boldizsár Bencsáth, assistant professor with Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and Systems Security, said the best solution was to use another browser such as Google Inc's Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox.
DELAYED UPGRADES
Security experts have long been warning Windows XP users to upgrade to Windows 7 or 8 before Microsoft stopped supporting it at the beginning of this month.
The threat that emerged over the weekend could be the wakeup call that prompts the estimated 15 to 25 percent of PC users who still use XP to dump those systems.
"Everybody should be moving off of it now. They should have done it months ago," said Jeff Williams, director of security strategy with Dell SecureWorks.
Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, expects several hundred million people running Windows XP to dump those machines for other devices by the end of the year.
They will be looking at Windows machines as well as Apple Inc's Macs and iPads along with Google's Chrome laptops and Android tablets, he said.
"Not everybody will necessarily go to Windows, but Microsoft has a good chance at getting their business," he said. "It's got to be a good stimulus for the year."
News of the vulnerability surfaced over the weekend. Cybersecurity software maker FireEye Inc warned that a sophisticated group of hackers have been exploiting the bug in a campaign dubbed "Operation Clandestine Fox."

4 Cs Of Enlightened Leadership
























The other day I talked to a CEO of a successful start-up about key ingredients for success. We agreed that leadership is the most important component of building a thriving business. But we found that there is a difference between an average leader and a self-aware or enlightened leader. So then the question arose: what are the key characteristics of an enlightened leader? Below is my take. What’s yours?
Character
Who you are.
Being a strong leader means first and foremost understanding yourself: what you are passionate about, what moves you, what your purpose is, and what you are ultimately trying to build. It also means understanding your team and what it takes to motivate them to execute on your vision. It means knowing your strengths as a leader, recognizing your shortcomings, and working hard on becoming someone who people will follow. Great leaders are not born, they are made. No one is perfect, but having character that others in the organization respect and trust is essential. Tony Hsieh of Zappos said:
For individuals character is destiny, for organizations culture is destiny.
In my opinion, one cannot build a strong culture that withstands the test of time without character.
Competence
What you know.
Having clear understanding where your competences lie is crucial to great leadership. Your experiences and your knowledge shape your vision; they are your North Star. That said, being open to continuously learning and evolving is very important. The best of the best spend a lot of time exploring and being open to new experiences. They also admit that they don’t possess all the knowledge in the world, hence they form strong partnerships and collaborations.
Collaboration
Who you bring on board.
Being an enlightened leader means knowing your strengths and your weaknesses and augmenting them accordingly. Success is a team sport, hence it becomes especially important to form a leadership team that complements each other. The same goes for the industry partnerships.
Courage
How far you are willing to take your vision.
Revolutionizing industries and challenging status quo is not easy. But that is exactly what is expected from extraordinary leadership. Being pioneers means being on the front lines, but it also means having a big target on your back. There are a lot of nay-sayers, as well as a ton of external pressures. Having courage to stick to your convictions and seeing your vision through is essential to the success of any venture. Staying on course because you see something that others don’t is what eventually leads to establishing a new normal, it’s what leads to progress. I believe it was Ambrose Redmoon who said:
Courage isn’t the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
 [Source]

Monday, April 28, 2014

A New Leadership Model That's Surprisingly Useful

hen it comes to leadership, are you like the person at the gym with huge biceps and skinny chicken legs? Are you adequately recognizing the different forms of leadership needed to do your job and that your team members bring to the table?
A few weeks ago, the founders of the Coaches Training Institute unveiled a new, simple leadership model that surprisingly helpful in thinking about this. After putting the model to use with my coaching clients, mostly entrepreneurs and business leaders, I believe it has the potential to be as powerful for leadership as Porter’s Five Forces is for strategy.
It’s called Co-Active Dimensional Leadership (CDL). The premise is that leadership is expressed in a variety of forms, not just the take-charge kind. The model specifies five different leadership dimensions:
  • Leading from within means leading ourselves. It’s the foundation for all the other forms of leadership, which is why it's at the center of the chart. Leading from within is about channeling the best versions or ourselves. It's about getting in the zone. When we're tired, stressed out, or just not present, it's hard to be effective in anydimension of leadership.
  • Leading from the front is what we most often associate with leadership. It’s being the Alpha-dog point person who’s providing vision, inspiring action, and driving things forward. This is the most visible, vocal form of leadership, the kind we think of when someone says Lead the way!
  • Leading from the whole focuses on leading the emotional vibe in the work space, the spirit and morale of your team. It's about being attuned to the energy in the space, giving voice to it, and pointing it in a helpful direction. Examples include rallying your team with a fun cheer, acknowledging and caring for a colleague in need, or calling a time-out during a meeting that’s not going well and redirecting it more positively.
  • Leading from beside focuses on the dance of co-leading with another person towards a common goal or intention. Successful parenting relationships and co-founder teams are great examples of this. When you co-lead a project with someone, supportively playing off of each other, that's leading from beside.
  • Leading from behind is about helping others be successful and shine. It’s the type of leadership you see in coaches, mentors, and bosses who help others be successful. It makes me think of Yoda in Star Wars. Yoda led Luke from behind, helping him call forth The Force within him.
The folks I work with typically excel at leading from the front. This is where they tend to focus the most energy and what they value in others.
When we audit their leadership, the two dimensions where they typically see an immediate need to improve are leading from within and leading from the whole. Though hard-working and disciplined, the stress of running a business puts them in a reactive and stressed-out state more than they’d like. Similarly, their relentless drive to move things forward makes can make them overlook, and sometimes steamroll, the energy in the room — and then they wonder why the team isn't as motivated as they'd like.
What I like about CDL is that give us a language to talk about these issues. It reminds me of asset classes in an investment portfolio: where do we need to rebalance our leadership?
Another thing I like is that it challenges us to view leadership more expansively. In our society, we're great at recognizing leadership from the front. But what about those other dimensions? Should we do more to recognize them?
The CDL is still evolving and, to continue the investment lingo, I'm bullish. I'll be interested to see where it goes.

Friday, April 18, 2014

How CV & Resume are Two Different Documents?

brightspyre-BW.jpg
Confused if your CV or resume should be detailed or concise? Well, every individual will give you information according to their knowledge or experiences, or some might even suggest it’s the same thing.
But did you know that CV and resume are two different documents and should not be mixed together?
Unfortunately, only a few percent of people might know the actual difference between two documents. The reason might be lack of professional studies or teaching of professionalism in our educational sector and lack of attention to minor details.
Main purpose of this article is to clear the confusion between a CV and resume. So, next time you apply somewhere, you should know if you need to drop your CV or resume in the given organization. Or, if you are an employer, you should clearly state what you are looking for.
CV:
CV is, basically, an abbreviation of Curriculum Vitae, which means “course of life” in Latin. It’s a detailed document – minimum of two pages, which includes all your academic and educational qualifications, including your publications, awards, affiliations and other relevant accomplishments. You should also state your work experience, interests and skills in concise manner.
Curriculum Vitae is sent to apply for any academic posts such as teaching or for internship posts; it is also used for fellowship, grant or scholarship applications.
Here’s a checklist for you, when writing your curriculum vitae:
• Professional licenses or certifications
• Listing of relevant course work to match career or academic objective
• Scientific or academic research, laboratory experience, grants received
• Description of Thesis or dissertation (if you have advanced degrees)
• Papers, books and other related publications you have written
• Academic or professional presentations delivered
• Travel / Exposure to cultural experiences
• Related extracurricular activities, professional and association memberships
• Additional information that may support objective or qualifications
• Letters of recommendation or a list of references
• Professional development you have undertaken
Resume:
A resume is a concise document, not more than two pages – about all your work experience, professional achievements and skills. One needs to alter resumes according to the job posts you are applying for because every organization has different selection criteria. So, you should design a resume according to their requirements to get an interview call.
The goal of a resume is to make an individual stand out from the competition. So, a job seeker should make changes in the resume as per employer’s requirements.
A typical resume includes the following information:
• Name and Contact Information: your residential address might be most appropriate, especially if you do not want your current employer to know that you are looking for another job!
• Education: a listing of your degrees or certifications and educational institutions or programs.
• Work Experience: names of the companies or organizations that you have worked for, the location of each company, the dates worked, your job title, and duties performed.
• Skills and Interests.
It is highly recommended to carefully see the criteria and job description given by the employer and take your time to decide if they wants to see your CV or resume, if not mentioned already. And if you are unsure, it is worth your time to contact the agency and ask which would be most appropriate for the position.
In Pakistani organizations, resumes are usually required which should contain all the relevant work details and experiences. But if you are applying for an internship, opt for curriculum vitae.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

4 Core Values of Any Great Company

In my post discussing the stages of companies, there’s a significant transformation that occurs in stage 2 (“the process-focused company”), a key to which is establishing the company’s culture and values so as they are retained while the company scales its employee base from tens to hundreds of employees. Only a minority of companies succeed in this process and reach escape velocity growing from mere “people companies” (stage 1) to stage 2 and beyond.
The challenge is not only to be one of those few that succeeds, it’s also to do so before the competition is able to reach its own escape velocity and dominate the market.
The good news is that there are four common ingredients that maximize the chances of a company’s success in reaching escape velocity. I contend that these four are shared across all industries and sectors applying just as much in the enterprise software space as they do in consumer electronics space, or any other space for that matter.
A company’s philosophy should include the following four values, among others it deems specific to its specialty, in order to ensure its success.

The Four Values

1. We hire and grow the best talent

As I stressed in the post entitled, “Why Projects Fail“, it is people who are at the heart of a great company. Winning companies always have the best talent. Admittedly, recruiting and retaining the best talent is much easier said than done as it requires a leadership team that’s not only able to attract such talent, but also continually help that rare talent with their desire to grow and be constantly challenged. Companies with the best talent are able to continue to attract the best talent. Without the best talent, the remaining three values are impossible to achieve.

2. We trust and support our colleagues

We’ve hired the best; now what? Trust is next. “Trust” is a very strong and multi-faceted word; a team of colleagues that doesn’t trust one another isn’t a team at all. Suffice it to say that there are lots of dimensions to trust not the least of which is believing in the competence of the party to trust. It’s impossible for trust to exist between two people who do not believe in each other’s ability to do their job. Trusting colleagues allows each to do his or her own job effectively without having to be concerned about a colleague’s work. With that trust established, a team can collaborate and support one another effectively, each contributing his or her part to the equation. A culture filled with trust exudes a sense of confidence of collaboration.

3. Our mission is to create delighted evangelist customers

We’ve hired the best, established a great culture of trust and support; now, it’s time to ensure a united mission. Ultimately, the mission of any company is to delight customers to such a degree as to create evangelists of them. Those customer evangelists are then an even more effective sales force than any in-house sales team can be working alone. Evangelist customers are willing to do everything from providing reference calls for other prospective customers to proactively recommending your product to others inside and outside of their organization. Delighted customers are a sure sign you’re on the right track; evangelist customers tell you that you’re winning the market.

4. We hold ourselves accountable for the good and bad

Finally, with a talented team, a trusting culture, and a united mission, all that remains is a sense of accountability. Effective companies celebrate successes but, equally importantly, hold themselves accountable for failures. All employees from the top down must believe in a culture of making commitments, keeping those commitments, and holding themselves accountable for the quality and timeliness of those commitments. It is that accountability that drives responsibility and ultimately drives quality actions and progress within a company.

The Short of It

Successful companies believe in talented people
who build a trust culture
that unites them around a customer-centric mission
to which they hold themselves accountable.

This article was originally published in Bassam's blog, Against the Herd.

Boss vs Leader


Live the 80/20 Rule


















“There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker
Also known as the 80:20 rule, irrespective of the nature of your business, the Pareto Principle holds that 80% of the consequences of any action come from 20% of the causes.This principle can actually be applied to everything you do. It is a powerful, fundamental principle of life – and of working smart.
The original 80:20 observation was as a result of Italian economist Pareto noticing in 1906 that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population. He then carried out surveys on a variety of other countries and found to his surprise that a similar distribution applied. He and others later discovered that this principle is proven in many other areas of interest:
  • 80% of results come from 20% of effort;
  • 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your profit.
Apply the 80:20 rule to the information you receive: 20% is useful, whereas 80% is not. The key is to identify and focus on that 20% and ignore or remove the rest completely.
The same is true of time expended for results achieved. Think of the benefits of applying the Pareto Principle to your time management and personal and business productivity!
Which one of these statements rings true for your business?
  • 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers
  • 20% of your product or service range contributes 80% of your profit
  • 80% of customer complaints originate from 20% of the causes.
  • 20% of your individual effort and time achieves 80% of the desired results
  • 80% of your business productivity loss results from 20% of the causes
  • 20% of your staff is responsible for 80% of the business outputs and results
  • 80% of the value in the business is generated by 20% of the processes
The common approach to business is to squeeze every last drop out of each opportunity, to go ‘100% all-out’, without consideration of the impact on time, productivity and wastage. Simple, time-efficient businesses recognise that it is fundamentally inefficient to go for the ‘whole pie’ when you can get the majority of results for the minority of effort. With knowledge of the 80:20 principle, you can concentrate on what wins you customers and success. Look at your business and concentrate on the 20% that produces the 80% of benefit. Spend 80% of your time doing the 20% that really gets you results. ‘You win some, you lose some’ is no way to run a successful business, but armed with knowledge of the Pareto Principle, you can work the system to your benefit.
It’s not just about working smarter – it’s about working smarter on the right things that will get you the best results. Think really boldly about this law – how far, and in how many ways you can apply it. The more incredible the results can be.
  • Why spend 100% of your money and time on ‘growth at all costs’ when you could downsize, freeing up capital and time? Spend just 20% in developing the most profitable 80% of your current business, and invest the rest in other ventures?
  • Why work full time, when you can work only 20% of the time on the things that get you 80% of your profits? And spend the rest of the time sipping a cold beer on the beach, watching the sun go down!
How can you use this rule to revolutionise your business and your life? Take it to the limit!

Enough of the Cloud Already, What Is Next for Enterprise Technology?

Business leaders interested in the future of enterprise technology should stop thinking of "the cloud" as a noun and start thinking about "clouding" as a verb.

When we talk about cloud computing in general, we're describing a set of efficiency principles only applied to once stateful compute and storage resources that are now stateless and liquid.

Clouding is not new, and compute, storage and network are not the only things that can be clouded.
Although the cloud concept has taken hold in enterprise technology, it's not entirely new to other parts of life. One could argue, for example, that condominiums and hotels were early multitenant housing clouds. Airbnb are modern versions of housing clouds delivering housing as a service, and similarly, Zipcar and Uber are car clouds, offering consumers transportation as a service.
Anything can be clouded, if we put our minds to it. The clouding of compute resources gave rise to infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). To make clouding meaningful, we can't stop there, and we have not, we are clouding storage quickly and successfully. This explains the success of Box, DropBox, Apple's iCloud, Google Drive and others.
There are other, unconventional opportunities for clouding to drive innovation, and advanced thinkers are gravitating to the notion of anything as a service, or heck everything as a service (EvaaS).

A modern enterprise with everything as a service.


In the new world of leading enterprises leveraging EvaaS, workspace can be a service (WsaaS); expertise can be a service (ExaaS); and business processes can be services (BPaaS). We can roll all three into an overarching industry as a service (InaaS) capability eventually delivering on the age old promise of standing up "XYZ in a Box" type businesses.
When everything is a stateless and a liquid service, entire environments can be orchestrated for specific jobs, demands, roles or expertise, creating the opportunity to eventually leverage humans as a service (HuaaS). HuaaS would be game changing to how companies procure, leverage, and strategically execute on their most valuable and expensive resource, human capacity.

Think about this as TaskRabbit, meet eLance, meet TopCoder, meet your human resources department.
Employees working in enterprises are currently stateful reservations of human capacity, assigned to tasks needing their primary expertise and controlled by a single manager. Many times if an employee possess expertise outside her primary area of business, she is unable to contribute in other areas where said expertise may be needed shackled by a stateful role, manager, and job description. Today's employment model only takes into account the primary talents of an individual and ignores the reality that humans are generally multidimensional and useful outside the scope of their stateful roles.
This means valuable human capacity is often wasted corollary to historic pre-cloud wasting of valuable compute and storage resources before clouding was introduced.
If human capacity were aggregated into a liquid pool of stateless supply as enterprise TaskRabbits, or eLances, or TopCoders, it would allow companies to spin up and tear down human capacity to meet the human resource demand of projects all on the fly. Much like enterprises now spin up and tear down compute and storage resources needed.
We may not move clouding all the way up the enterprise resource stack right away to humans as a service, but companies that move furthest and fastest into clouding up the stack will engineer the agility and on-demand operating models needed to win. In other words if you aim for human as a service and a cloud of human talent, you will find it easy to think past only compute and storage clouds.

To get started, simply replace cloud as a noun and use clouding as a verb to drive discussions around everything as a service, both inside and outside of technology.
Consider this scenario: My connected car needs a new alternator, but instead of my car accessing my calendar and making an appointment with the service center (which would be cool), it broadcasts its alternator replacement demand to a supply of local clouded mechanics possessing the necessary expertise (ExaaS) to change said alternator on said model of car. Those with the ability to accept my warranty (BPaaS) would bid on the demand/job, and then work with a supply of mechanic shops to find an available automotive hydraulic bay (WSaaS) and tools to work on my car on a time we agree on. What would this scenario mean to an automobile manufacturer's need to have stateful/dedicated service centers and dedicated/fulltime auto technicians on staff?
When everything is a service, it's easy for enterprises to achieve efficiencies that we now only dream of. Imagining an EvaaS future is thrilling. I predict that by 2020, global enterprises with large allocations of knowledge workers will have commercial grade, human-capacity clouds leveraging ExaaS, WsaaS and BPaaS.

To do so, we have to collectively get over the hoopla of only the compute and storage clouds, and starting thinking about clouding everything else.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

How to Handle a Social Media Crisis

In today’s quickly changing social environment, every company should be prepared to handle a social media crisis. It’s not a question of if, but when you, or your company could be under attack online.A social media crisis usually starts small, but can progress into something very difficult to handle. It is crucial that you detect a social media crisis while it is still in its early stages.
Step #1: Don’t ignore it
Social Media fiascos typically start with something small. A customer posts a bad review, or a negative blog is posted. Recognize that this is the point at which your company should respond to the situation proactively.

When you notice an unhappy or angry customer has left a not-so-good review on your Facebook or Twitter page, it’s a good time to reach out. It is crucial to constantly monitor your company page and set a Google alert for your brand. Once you spot a social media issue, try to resolve the problem that is causing it.

Step #2: Identify the Problem
Accepting blame is not a typical human response. While there are individuals out there that will never be happy, consider most customers are being honest about their experience.Apologize right away if you are sorry. Explain why your company has a certain policy if you’re not. Things can get hairy very quickly, so having a publicist manage the situation properly can be invaluable. No matter what you do, don't give your initial knee-jerk response. Make sure your response is professional, truthful, and prompt.

A certain company went through a sudden social media crisis when a fan posted a question asking for directions on how he could ask them for help and they failed to respond. Because of this, the fan posted very bad reviews about the company the next day, which went viral quickly. People shared the negative post more than 50 times in 24 hrs. Once we stepped in , we approached the unhappy poster, and provided him with the info that was required. He then posted a positive review, which got shared 15 times. This is typical of human nature. Bad news spreads a lot more quickly than the good, so digging yourself out of a social media snafu can take time.

Step #3: Be Proactive, not reactive
One of the biggest mistakes to is to not respond to customer inquiries or reviews. Respond to posts and messages within 2 hours. Social Media leaves a public record of how your company handles customer service, so respond quickly and politely. A pro-active response tells customers that you are serious about their concerns and want to satisfy their needs. When used properly, social media can actually help publicize stellar customer service, and fans will be drawn to you.

Step #4: Don’t get Lazy
Once you have successfully managed your current social media crisis, you need to work towards making sure that it doesn’t happen again. For this reason, it is vital that you assign responsibility for all your social media pages and accounts. Once it's online, it's forever, and your reputation is on the line. Everyone posting willy-nilly is a recipe for disaster. Either hire an agency to do it for you, or train an employee to do it in house. Maintaining your online legacy is an ongoing process.