Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
So you hear the good news that your boss/client wants to get started with a social media strategy. Before you start jumping for joy, does the conversation sound anything like this?
Boss: Let’s get on social media – let’s start with Twitter
You: Why? What’s the objective?
Boss: We’ll think about that later, just do it
If that’s what it sounds like, I can almost guarantee in 6 to 12 months that very person is going to be asking you “so how have we done on Twitter?” and you’re going to say “err but we didn’t specify any goals” and it’s going to be a one way ticket to hell. And you know what? In all likelihood if you’re doing it for the sake of “just doing it”, it’s probably not going to be work you’re going to be proud of anyway.
Instead, the conversation should go something like this:
Boss: Let’s get on social media – let’s start with Twitter
You: Why? What’s the objective?
Boss: I want to use it to improve customer service
You: So we’re going to monitor all mentions of our brand and respond to complaints and rectify them?
Boss: Yes
Replace “Twitter” with “Facebook” or “blog”, replace “improve customer service” with “increase lead generation” or “decrease costs’ and you get the gist.
Ideally it should go even further than this to identify whose time will be allocated to this, how much time and how the initiative will be measured.
You need to do this from the get go. Set the expectation early that social media efforts – while free/cheap – take time. Don’t let your desire to do some social media work/please your boss/please your client get in the way of this. It’ll save you a world of hurt later.
How do you deal with “just do it” requests? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
[image credits: themachobox]
Tags: blog, brand mentions, customer service, decrease costs, facebook, increase lead generation, just do it, leadgen, social media, social media goal, social media objective, social media strategy, themachobox, ticket to hell, twitter
Posted in Poor Practices, social media, social media business | 5 Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Ignore
Two days ago I posted about people being a big danger of social media marketing because of what they might say on various channels without thinking about the consequences.
But on a more personal (though it can be corporate) level, inaction is equally damning.
When someone adds you (the communication professional of the company) on, say, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and you wait a week before replying – what does that say about you as an individual, and as a representative as a company?
They add you and you accept it two weeks later – they’re not important.
They ask a question and you never answer it - they’re beneath you.
You ask your community a question but then don’t respond to the answers – you’re disinterested and insincere.
In the above cases you’d be better off not being involved in the social space at all.
I have to admit this is something I struggle with personally. Sometimes people I meet once at conferences want to connect on Facebook and that might be a little too personal for me so I procrastinate and before long it’s a month and by then, accepting the invitation lets the other party know I metaphorically sat on it for a month, thus conveying the message they weren’t important enough to accept within a few days.
There’s no easy answer to this question. Some people will be comfortable accepting every invitation, others will be more selective. It’s not so much the style that matters, but being aware that whichever route you choose to take (or not take) communicates something to that person or group of people.
How do you deal with the many requests you get on social channels? Do you ignore some? Ask them to add you on a less personal channel like Twitter instead of Facebook? I’d love to hear from you.
[image from Spraytint]
Tags: communication, communication professional. twitter, company representative, danger of social media marketing, facebook, inaction, LinkedIn, social channels, social media
Posted in facebook, online identity, social media | No Comments »
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
I came across this article titled Five questions every CMO should ask a prospective ad agency and want to draw attention to two specific questions.
Part of Q3 (What’s your criteria for hiring people?)
And find out for sure how many digital natives your agency’s hired recently. You definitely don’t want them playing catch up.
This I think is huge. And you know what? If the company says they’ve hired 10 new digital natives/Generation Y staff in the last year, ask them to show you a sample of their blogs/Twitter stream/etc to give you an idea of what these people are up to. This is a definite sign, trust me.
Q5
What are five recent creative ideas that aren’t ads?
This could be anything. An interesting use of social bookmarking for internal archiving purposes, running a new project entirely on Google Wave, using Facebook as the new company “intranet” to share information – something that demonstrates out of the box thinking which isn’t client driven – ie there’s some innovation from within.
The entire article is pretty good and definitely worth a read, and so are the comments. Once you’ve checked that out, what do you think? What questions do you need to ask your prospective ad agency?
Tags: advertising agency, Blogs, CMO, criteria for hiring people, digital natives, facebook, generation y, google wave, hiring talent, innovation, intranet, out of the box thinking, prospective ad agency, sharing information, social bookmarking, twitter
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Yesterday I talked about how there is a misconception that certain industries are more suited for social media and how in fact anyone can use the tools available to contribute to their niche, especially when they’re ramping up their job hunting efforts.
As promised, here are three things you can do to get started:
1) Write on Facebook
I know a couple of people who do this. They write spiffy notes, or thoughtful notes about current issues and then tag people relevant to encourage replies and a conversation. This serves the dual purpose of getting your thoughts out there and also getting valuable feedback. What if a HR student wrote a note about a more effective reward/compensation for Generation Y in the office? Or a finance student demonstrated his ability to explain the financial crisis in non-jargon terms?
2) Use Twitter
You can do this without even having a Twitter account. Use Twitter Search and enter phrases that are relevant to your field. Search for “javascript” if you’re a programmer, “branding” if you want to do branding or relevant hashtags like #analytics for web analytics. Soon you’ll get a feel of what people are talking about as well as the links they share, and you’ll be ready to create your own Twitter account and add to the discussion too.
3) Join a group on LinkedIn
There’s literally a group for anything on LinkedIn. Some a more active than others but there is probably an existing group out there. Try asking questions like “what would you look for when you’re hiring a fresh graduate in the [insert profession] field?”. The likelihood is someone will reply and you’ll be gathering valuable information straight from future employers.
The market is competitve and everyone needs a way to stand out. Try one (or all) of these ideas and bring a printout of that Facebook discussion (and the comments) to your next interview. Talk about the latest topic on Twitter that was mentioned an hour before your interview. Ask for your interviewer’s views on a topic commonly brought up in your LinkedIn group and ask how that company approaches these questions.
All these small things convey a message about you: That you’re passionate about your field, that you’re keeping a finger on the pulse on what’s going on, and that you’re not afraid to use technology to do it.
Don’t underestimate these qualities in today’s workforce – they can be priceless.
Tags: employers, facebook, fresh graduates, HR, LinkedIn, social media, twitter
Posted in social media | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Pat has a great post with the same title: how to be a social media junkie and keep your job over on Blankanvas and it inspired me to make a post of my own, though I certainly don’t mean to compare my fresh 3-month agency life with her career!
It took me awhile to figure out that I although my work and personal life crisscross in that the subject matter happens to be the same, there would be no way to manage this on a long term basis unless I turned it into a well-oiled machine, and I finally feel like I have that routine nailed down enough to get close to full productivity at the office.
First, a little bit of what I do. I work in a 100% digital ad agency so thankfully all my client work is online. While I have my fair share as billable hours, as the resident “social media guy” (not guru) in the team, I maintain all of BLUE’s social media presence from the BLUE blog to our twitter account to delicious, stumble upon, Facebook and the like. As with anything, maintaining these accounts and doing my billable work takes time, so this is how my typical day goes:
0745: get up, check my own Gmail for important mails I need to take note of, have a once-over my RSS feed and check in on Facebook.
0900 (ish): reach the office, clear my work email and work Gmail. This includes looking for comments on the BLUE blog, seeing who’s followed us on Twitter, approving friend requests on Facebook and anything else that might have come through those channels.
0945: check in on BLUE’s Twitter account to look for anything interesting, mentions, DMs or tweets worth re-tweeting. I make it a point to try to follow 3-5 new people daily just to expand our horizons. We deal in everything digital so everyone from design to mobile people to SEO/SEM to social media to even mainstream marketing people are all “fair game”.
1010: next I peer into my rss feed on Outlook (which is separate from my personal Google Reader feed) to look for stuff that’s relevant to the team and stuff that will help with thought leadership, case studies and the like. Where applicable I forward them to the team or bookmark them on delicious, stumble upon etc. I also make a quick scan of oursignal.com just to see what else people find interesting.
By the time all this is done it’s anywhere between 1030 to 11am and I move on to whatever tasks I have for the day. This is where it enters “anything goes” territory and things are a little flexible, but I always feel like I cleared an important part of my routine by now. And in fact given the line of work I’m in, that’s about all the routine I can expect. There was one week where I had more work than normal to do and I completely didn’t engage in this routine for a good four days. It took me a long while to dig myself out of that black hole.
As much as starting the day off is important, I like to end it with some structure too. There’s a great post on Webworker Daily called firewall your time and I try to dedicate half an hour starting at around 545 to do certain tasks:
- Achieve inbox zero (both work and Gmail) (I sometimes fail this step)
- Check ‘later’ email folder for actionable items
- Save sent emails worth saving
- Check outlook calendar and Google Calendar for appointments/events tomorrow that I might have to prepare for
- Write todo list for next day
- Review any stuff I wrote down on paper today
- Check check my tickler notes for today and tomorrow to see if there’s anything outstanding for today I need to do, or take note of for tomorrow
- Clear physical inbox (things that I have to process once goes in here: paper to recycle, trash to throw, stuff to bring home. So I don’t shuttle back and forth)
- Fill up my timesheet (daily is a must)
- Decide what to do when home, enter that into my tickler file
- Clear what I can from my Outlook RSS feeds
- Clear my desktop – limited to what I’m working on tomorrow and archiving the rest. (I usually fail this step)
After work, I clear stuff I’ve written down on my tickler file and generally do my own thing (game, catch a movie, have dinner etc) but more often than not stuff I read online is work related, so I email that to myself and make a note of what action I should take the next day.
So that’s what I do to keep myself same, get my social media ‘fix’ and keep my job (so far) all at the same time. How about you?
ps: Interestingly enough, almost exactly a year ago Pat and I did a similar ‘day in the life’ post talking about the brands we would come into contact with and use throughout the day. Read about her brand timeline and mine if you’re so inclined. (Caveat: I was in Canada at the time of that post, so Canadian brands will probably be overly represented)
Tags: agency life, blankanvas, facebook, gmail, inbox zero, outlook, patlaw, rss, social media junkie, timesheet, twitter
Posted in Gen Y, social media | 6 Comments »
Monday, October 26th, 2009
Is the company that is clueless about social media, which is equally harmful for the fresh grads looking for jobs thinking they actually found one that’s social media-related.
I’ve had enough of this social media “guru” bashing (for the record, I don’t consider myself one of them). I’ll take the opposite point of view, a view i was particularly familiar with until about three months ago:
How about all these companies who think they want to be involved and throw around catchphrases like join the conversation but have no clue whatsoever what they should be doing? Yeah you know the kind I’m talking about. Those who want to know how many Facebook friends you have so that they can use you to invite some of them to their “influencer events” or readily dump you the awesome job of “setting up a Facebook group” (while Facebook is blocked by their firewall).
Those are both true stories by the way.
The fact here is there’s a gap. A gap which both sides are readily willing to exploit. I’m not agreeing with either but let’s face it, companies who hire the social media “gurus” aren’t really victims here. They get them because they’re equally eager and greedy at the chance to jump into this and will hire anyone, qualified or not, and don’t bother to do their research.
Think about it. The social media “gurus” lure companies in with the false promises of solving their social media problems and take their money, the companies lure job applicants with real talent with the false promises of a chance to work in real social media and take a piece of their soul. Either way someone is getting conned.
It’s a match made in heaven.
Tags: companies, facebook, social media, social media guru
Posted in social media | No Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
At best, you’ll be as good as them.
Today the BLUE blog is finally going live after about two months of planning and preparation. It was literally handed to me on my first day of work and I was told to make it a reality. I gotta say, it has got to be the hardest blog I’ve ever set up, compared to signing up with Wordpress with a click.
But one thing I really enjoyed about working on the blog was that I was never told to look at company X or firm Y. It was really built on the belief that we’d get it started and it’ll evolve organically as time goes by. And when you aren’t thinking within the “box” that competitors or other firms have set, then you have much more room to grow.
Maybe you notice one competitor is on Facebook and another is on Twitter so you decide to go on both just to “keep up”, when that money could have been spent on paid search or SEO and doubled your conversion rate, but you didn’t because your “competitor wasn’t doing it”.
Where would the iPhone be if Apple looked at the existing competitors in the market at the time? How about the Wii if all Nintendo did was look at what was in existence in the form of the Playstation and the Xbox? How much money would then-presidential candidate Obama have raised if he chose to do it the same, “tried and tested” way every presidential candidate had before him, through fund raising parties intead of going straight to the voters via new media? Where will your company end up if all you’re doing is looking over your shoulder?
I’m not saying scoping out the competition is a waste of time, definitely not. But you’ll have strengths that they won’t have and they’ll have weaknesses that you don’t. So whatever they’re doing may not work for you and vice versa.
Take my limited real world “experience” with a bucket of salt, but give me the choice and I’d choose to cut my own blazing path than be a follower. Innovation is key.
Tags: apple, blog, blue, competitive analysis, facebook, iphone, nintendo, obama, playstation, social media, twitter, wii, wordpress, xbox
Posted in social media, social media business | 4 Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
Facebook Logo
The reason is simple: it comes down to demographics.
Last week I was casually looking at the profiles of people who joined Facebook while they were in school, and those who joined Facebook while they were already in the workforce, and one main difference struck me. Keep in mind that this is by no means a scientific method of “research” but casual observation. Remember that Facebook was started out as a social network for college students to share stuff like timetables, and for those of us who started it while in school, it may well have been used for those purposes and connecting with people in the same classes.
The Big Observation
I realise the people who were in school/are currently in school, tend to have much more friends on Facebook than those who were part of the workforce when Facebook appeared. I’m not sure if this is surprising to anyone, but to me, while the number of friends in itself doesn’t necessary say anything explicitly, it does suggest a number of implications:
1) We’re used to this mode of communication
Some days I realise I don’t have someone’s phone number with me, but we’re friends on Facebook. So I whip out my iPhone, log into the Facebook mobile application and I can send them a message and expect a reply back pretty quickly. And not all messages are created equal. The tone and context of a Facebook message is different from that of an SMS or an email, bringing a certain level of flexibility to communications. I think Gen Y will learn to leverage this mode of communication more and more in the future.
2) We’re used to being searched
We know that employers and colleagues screen us on Facebook. We know how to blend our personal and online profiles to get across who we really are on our Facebook profiles. This may differ from people who aren’t used to sharing information about themselves or pictures of their family. I think this enhances our ability to connect and build relationships and networks.
3) We’re used to adding “friends”.
It’s not at all uncommon to attend an event one night and be tagged in a Facebook photo the next day and become friends soon after. The old definition of “friend” becomes looser all the time and these loose links may actually turn out to be the most valuable of all, so there’s a lower barrier to adding these aquaintances. (Caveat: it doesn’t work when you’re obviously a pushy marketer out to collect friends rather than build relationships)
In addition to these three points, obviously with time, more people we know will get on Facebook from friends to family to co-workers to business partners to casual connections online, and that will only enhance the network effect and that will be a big factor in keeping Facebook “sticky” because people simply won’t switch to another social networking site unless most of their network does too. And when “most of their network” translates to easily 500 friends, it’s no easy task to induce a switch.
So why two years?
Simple, that’s the time it would have taken for all the people who joined Facebook in the first few years of its’ existence, to have graduated out of school and enter the workforce and start using it as a real social connector and virtual rolodex. I’m pretty sure this will lead to reversals of decisions to unblock Facebook and perhaps really solidify the wave for social media marketing via social networking channels by people who understand them the most.
This of course is my possibly skewed view. What do you think? Do we use Facebook any differently than people even slightly older than us? Is there a greater propensity for us to connect or is it a level playing field? The comments are yours.
Tags: definition of friend, employers screen facebook, facebook, facebook application, facebook demographics, facebook friends, facebook mobile, facebook popularity, facebook profile, facebook search, facebook searches, Gen Y, generation y, loose links, social media marketing, social networking channels, used to facebook communication
Posted in Gen Y, facebook, social media | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
In the last 10 days or so, I’ve come to learn a few things about data.
1) Data tells stories
It tells you what people are interested in, what people are talking about, and that can sometimes be a polar opposite from what your brand would like them to talk about. Dorothy, who works at a similarly data-driven company, Brandtology, tells the tale of brand mentions and searches telling the financial sector that they should sit up and pay attention. Everything is data, data, data. If you’re not plugged in, you’re losing out.
2) Data is imperfect
Dorothy and I have said this before on The GennY Podcast. As much as existing web analytics does not report statistics in the depth that people are (unreasonably) demanding, it’s still miles galaxies ahead of “faith based initiatives” as Avinash puts it:
How do you measure the effectiveness of your magazine ad? Now compare that to the data you have from doubleclick. How about measuring the ability of your TV ad to reach the right audience? Compare that with measuring reach through Paid Search (or Affiliate Marketing or …..). Do you think you get better data from Neilsen’s TV panel of between 15k – 30k US residents to represent the diversity of TV content consumption of 200 million tv watching Americans?
There is simply no comparison. So why waste our life trying to get perfect data from our web sites and online marketing campaigns? Why does unsound, incomplete, and faith based data from TV, Magazines, Radio get a pass? Why be so harsh to your web channel? Just because you can collect data here means you won’t do anything because it is imperfect?
Lesson? Give me half-sound data over guesswork any day.
3) Data Surprises
One of the data related posts I read early on came from Avinash, telling us how gun websites and car rental sites can be platforms for targeting older men who have performed searches on Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. I took a long time reconciling that fact. And maybe at some level I still haven’t. It’s going to be one of those things I need to do, test and see the results to believe. But I do believe data doesn’t lie – but it will surprise.
Does data have a place right now?
Frankly, I’m of the personal opinion that a data-driven, results/strategy-focused mentality has yet to be the norm in organisations. It’s not always going to be this way. Sooner rather than later, people are going to tire of experimenting with the “shiny new object” and wonder just how much traction their Facebook, blog, email, search, Twitter efforts are getting for them, which they need to invest more money in and which need to go.
And the only thing that will deliver those results, is data.
Tags: affiliate marketing, avinash kaushik, blog, brand mentions, brandtology, data, data tells stories, data trends, data-driven, dorothypoon, email, facebook, faith based initiatives, genny podcast, nielsen, paid search, results focused, ROI, Search, SEO, strategy focused, tv ad, twitter, web analytics
Posted in Marketing, social media, social media business | 6 Comments »
Friday, July 31st, 2009
It feels good to be able to share opportunities with people today. Opportunities are great things. — C.C. Chapman (via Twitter)
As of Monday, I’ll be the new business analyst at Blue Interactive: The measurable marketing company (also newly awarded Agency of the Year by Marketing Interactive). There are plenty of reasons why I wanted to work for Blue, but that’s not where the story is. The story is in how I got the job:
Just over a month ago, Jasmine (from school) dropped me a Facebook message asking if I had heard of any job openings. I passed her an ad I saw from Vocanic (provided by Ingrid). In a couple of weeks, Jasmine became the new business development executive at Vocanic (and is having the time of her life, I might add).
Awhile later, she dropped me another Facebook message with a job opening at Interuptive (named “Next Big Thing” at the Marketing Interactive awards), where I then met Kevin, the founder. I really liked Kevin as well as what Interuptive was doing, but unfortunately Kevin was looking for someone a little more senior. Despite that, he gave me a list of digital agencies to check out (without knowing if they were hiring) and Blue was on the list.
The rest, as they say, is history.
And that’s the beauty of it isn’t it? I didn’t give Jasmine the link with hopes she’ll reciprocate. Neither did she do it out of an obligation to reciprocate, and Kevin certainly had no compelling reason to refer me to a competitor. But they did anyway and I could not be happier to start my career at Blue. I blogged about this more than a year ago, and it still stands true today:
There is something about people engaged in this space. A natural desire for community and exchange and sharing, even if the person giving doesn’t get anything out of it.
There really is something about the space that attracts a certain type of people, and I genuinely believe that if we keep doing this and looking out for our own, we’ll weed out the trash and truly pave the way forward.
Tags: blue interactive, business analyst, cc chapman, facebook, interuptive, measurable marketing company, share opportunities, twitter, vocanic
Posted in Announcements, community, social media | 15 Comments »
