After attending the talk given by Mike Murray at RSA Conference in San Francisco last week on “Tweeting for Dollars: UsingSocial Media to Enhance your Career in Security” I found myself even more intrigued by some people’s message in the social media spectrum. One of the major points that Mike made during his talk was that not only do organizations need to have a social media strategy, but each person who is engaging in social media should think about theirs as well. Regardless of any intent, each person in social media has a brand. It is our responsibility to ensure that this brand is reflective of what we desire it to be. Some brands are easier to spot then others, but what is your brand saying about you?

The best question that someone asked in the presentation was that of a gentleman ‘screwing up’ his twitter account. By his definition of screwing up, it meant that he wasn’t focused on tweeting about his career only, he was tweeting about everything and talking to people. This wasn’t a screw up at all, this gentleman was having a conversation, he was doing social media right! The humanity of social media is what makes it so attractive to readers. People have been using the internet for years to read press releases, and some even use RSS feeds on a daily basis to keep up on those news articles. They don’t need Twitter or Facebook to keep up on that, Social Media let’s us all know that every celebrity, industry pundit, and random people you met at a convention all have something else going on outside of their career, or hobby that they are known for.

As an organization, it is also very important to decide on how the corporate brand is going to be reflected by the employees. Compose a social media policy stating if employees are allowed to share corporate information, or if that is going to be left only to be executed by the corporate social media accounts and team. If employees are allowed to share certain corporate data, it is very important to identify and classify what information is never to be shared in the social media space. The organization is also responsible to educate the employees of these policies to ensure a clear, unified message.

So how would a person or an organization drive their brand while engaging their audience? Have a conversation! Read whatyour followers are doing, and engage them. Sure, throw out important information that is self-serving as well (ie. Blog Post announcement, PR release links, etc.), but also retweet and share other contributors information. Know who you audience is, and get to know them!

Sharing is caring!

SecurityBSides in San Francisco on March 2nd and 3rd held at Parisoma was an experience that those in attendance will not soon forget. This is not for the reasons of Andrew Hay’s opening slide with his pink dress, but for a community of security professionals sharing and collaborating in a fresh new way from the vendor is king conference that was across town. What makes this conference so very different is the interaction at a granular level that the attendees can have with the speakers and sponsors. Not only are the actual talks much more interactive, but the sponsors who are in attendance can actually interface with the attendees and understand their needs as well as have the opportunity to convey their message in a conversation, not an expo-floor 5 minute pitch.

Some of the talks that were covered over the 2 days of the event are listed here.

Media coverage of SecurityBSides here.

Thank you to the vendors & volunteers that made this event possible!

Upcoming SecurityBSides Events:

March 13, 2010 - BSidesAustin – “Keep Security Weird” – Coinciding with SxSW Interactive

April 24-25, 2010 - BSidesBoston – weekend after SOURCE Boston.

July 29-30, 2010 - BSidesLasVegas – coinciding with Black Hat / Defcon

Here are some highlights from SecurityBSides San Francisco acquired using the ancient art of screen capture from the Flickr streams of Jack Daniel and Vissago.