Declare independence from cyberbullying.

by Mike Hanbery on July 2, 2010

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As we celebrate the birth of our country this July 4, let us draw upon the spirit of those who founded our nation to define for ourselves an aspect of our modern society: How we treat each other online.

I wrote this week for Examiner.com about cyberbullying monitoring and prevention, and in the article promised additional information on my blog. Here it is.

Online Resources

The comprehensive overview in plain language from Wikipedia.
The official government resource at National Crime Prevention Council.
The Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use helps teachers and school administrators instruct and model constructive use of Web 2.0 technologies.
SafetyWeb is dedicated to making online safety simple and defending against cyberbullying and similar threats.
This blog. Sometimes best practices for business people translate well to…well, everyone. Make sure social network privacy settings for every account in your family are optimized and enforced. Use Google Alerts, and other services to monitor your child’s online activities.
WiredSafety.org provides a form to report cyberbullying and cyberstalking.
SchoolTipline allows students to anonymously report cyberbullies.

Please don’t see any of the above as a substitute for contacting your local authorities. If you’re dealing with something serious, or think you might be, the police want to know.

Additional Tips

Know what aliases your children use and monitor them, too. LAXman? MountainGirl?
Make online monitoring a standard agenda item at community gatherings such as PTO, HOA and parent meetups.
Know what “apps” your kids have downloaded onto their phones. Here’s one that shocked me. Randomly monitor all mobile phone activity.

Most of us, at some point growing up, wrote, said or did things we later regretted. We were not saddled, however, with the permanence and ubiquity online comments carry. We now find ourselves in the position of coaching our children through responsible behavior using tools with which they are more tactically familiar than we are.

Don’t overthink here. In all the research, reading, listening and conversing I’ve done with social media and Internet marketing, I have yet to come across fundamentals that aren’t applicable from other areas of business. In social media marketing, for example, we advise people to start conversations, reply to comments, take ownership of issues and to not argue publicly. See, the way we do business hasn’t changed; we’ve just modified our conventions.

Same thing with parenting and growing up. Whether they’re on their bikes or on the Internet, we need to know where they are, who they’re with and what they’re doing.

Wonder if my parents stressed this much about after-school television.

Hanbery Marketing's Swift Kick

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4 Ways Bloggers Differ From Reporters (Stephen G. Barr, Group Publisher)

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Jim Nichols July 30, 2010 at 3:49 pm: Thanks for the pluig Mike. Though I think you said things better than I did.
Mike Hanbery July 30, 2010 at 4:14 pm: Jim, we're all trying to crack this nut together. BTW, cosmic moment: Just as this comment came in via Disqus I was sending a link to your blog http://www.nofunnylawyers.com/ to an audience member from my Qwest Business seminar yesterday who had a question about fair use and republishing of content from the Internet.
David July 31, 2010 at 7:07 pm: Interesting article Mike, and very true. There are so many engaging viral videos, social media driven community projects and even some forums that are engaging for a company's customer base. This is significant viral pull already out there. It comes down to who is running the corporation and buying into a big leap of faith from their current point of view.

We are long past the “Social Media is here to stay” phase, thou so many people are still writing blogs with that as their feature article title. It's like they are stuck on a wow factor from 7 years ago.

We are into the strategy implementation stage. And just like brands can regress with actions like: making cars with brakes that disengage; put out cable commercials that completely turn off their market; or produce multi million dollar movies that are high on graphical wonders – low on writing skills; brands can also completely miss the advantages of social media that others are perfecting. And perfecting in clear view. Thank you for introducing us to Jim, I'll read his article now.
Mike Hanbery July 31, 2010 at 8:25 pm: David, yeah, I often wonder if we have reached critical mass with, “Social media is…” and, “Why it's important…” As you say, people write and speak on those subjects with pervasive proliferation, and I guess I'll leave them to it. When their audiences graduate to actually wanting get something from their efforts, we'll be here Swift Kickin'.

I'm sure you'll find it somewhere between comical and alarming the number of big advertisers who haven't acknowledged the shift. We think that about a third of all companies using social have a policy for its use and less than half have applied any sort of measurement criteria, and you know not all of those criteria are meaningful, so…we're still on the upward slope of the curve.

Thanks for reading and for the insightful comment. Y'all come back soon, you hear?
Bronte August 4, 2010 at 1:06 pm: You have done good job, quality twitter followers are no doubt your most important followers. These are the ones who are actually following you to listen to what you have to say, asking questions, replying to your tweets but this type of followers a bit harder to gain but worth the work.