Hats off to Paul Worsham for organizing this event, which we hosted at our Alexandria office on Wednesday, February 11.  As a matter-of-fact, here’s my quick plug for Paul because he organizes lots more of these types of events around the DC area, like the Social Rockstar Happy Hour and Startup Rockstars (next event, March 12 at 6pm).  Frankly, I don’t know how he finds the time because he also holds down a full-time job, tweets (@1p) and keeps up with his own blog, Chief Social Officer.

Approximately 25 people attended the event and the conversation went non-stop for two hours and included some after-hours networking.  So, since this was a “Do’s and Dont’s of Social Media,” what did we learn?  Here’s a few highlights:

• If you haven’t yet begun, DO start participating in Social Media.  Companies or organizations that decide against this run the risk of becoming obsolete.
• DO set clear commentary policy for your company or organizational blog.  It’s OK to establish clear guidelines for allowable commentary and to police personal attacks and inflammatory comments in order to keep those out of public view.
• DO allow for negative comments, which is not the same as allowing purely personal or inflammatory attacks.  Negative comments and your response to them will give you credibility in the blogosphere.
• DO police and respond to negative commentary on other social media sites such as Twitter.  There were some good specific examples of companies that make it a part of their business to immediately respond to negative commentary about their products or services and offer assistance.  The group agreed that this was an excellent way for companies to connect with their clients and turn a possibly infuriated customer into an advocate.
• DON’T create various aliases of yourself to pass off the illusion that there is more commentary than actually exists.  Doing this is a recipe for disaster.
• DON’T sit on the sidelines assuming that Social Media is a fad.  This is happening now, it’s happening fast and it’s here to stay…so start participating!

Thanks to all who participated in this event and I hope to see YOU at the next one!