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 bea 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.
Late upload (all my fault) but here is the 6th episode of The GennY Podcast once again with Dorothy and myself talking about things that that happened at Ad:Tech 2009, and our observations.
The show notes:
00:00 – Starting off “live” from Ad:Tech
00:24 – A slight comparison of Ad:Tech 2008 and Ad:Tech 2009 and trends we’ve noticed
00:51 – First trend: The audience still seems to be semi to largely clueless!
01:51 – Is there a trend of inertia of companies not wanting to get their feet wet?
02:52 – Second trend: The idea of strategy vs tools. Shouldn’t this be common sense?
03:20 – There really needs to be a bigger strategy than “collecting followers”
03:32 – Should marketing move up from the tactical level to the strategic level?
04:52 – There should be a budget shift from expensive TVCs that no one is watching, especially when numerous presentations show data that TV isn’t as powerful as it used to be
05:45 – If your digital initiatives aren’t working for you, prove that your traditional media initiatives are
06:36 – Maybe the truth hurts? The blind faith of buying an ad makes you feel better?
07:22 – So how do you deal with intangibles? Maybe you can’t have it both ways?
07:49 – Maybe online interactions have a different angle. Maybe it’s not about sales. Maybe it can be used for feedback?
08:12 – Are advertisers just conning themselves? What does 4.5 million eyeballs even mean?
09:00 – Dorothy sighs in utter exasperation. You’re doing this to her advertisers! You!
09:08 – Maybe we’re just in a stage where we don’t know what the different numbers mean
10:50 – How is employing one person to take care of your social media presence a more expensive investment than producing and buying a TV ad?
11:08 – In the future, advertising should be come “invisible” and woven in
11:52 – There seems to be a universal Generation Y culture
13:27 – Maybe they just want to reach more people, but as Seth Godin says, the world has shifted from the “how many” to the “who”
14:32 – Hopefully we’ll have the rest of the crew back soon and we’re trying to make this regular!
As a graduating student, it’s hard to go by a day without someone asking “have you found a job?” or talking to a fellow graduating student about job prospects, job hunting efforts or the like. On Monday, it hit me that I have officially eight weeks (or two months) to go, before I hit my last day of school in SMU.
I don’t know how big deal getting a first job is for most people, but it’s a huge deal for me. I’ve had friends who got a job early after graduation, or even before graduation, but find themselves in another job after a year. Some will say that’s experience, I see it as a waste of time. Call me the typical Gen Y-er, but if you’re not waking up happy to go to work every morning, why are you going to work?
As much as I’m eager to get a job and not be unemployed for moths on end, I feel it has to be the right one. Or as right as possible, given the current economic climate.
I can’t speak for the rest of my friends, but I have different expectations when it comes to work. Many of my cohort think about money, I think about fit. Many think about how fast they can get to the next pay bracket, I think about culture. Perhaps it’s idealistic, but I figure it’s better to think about these things now and aim for them, rather than “wake up” figuratively after three or five years, realising that you weren’t working for what you wanted all along.
So what are my options? Knowing my passions and skill sets, and graduating with a business degree majoring in marketing and communications (specifically, digital media) I see myself doing one of five things:
1) Working in media
It could be a TV station, radio station, record label or publication. If it deals with media, I’m for it. If it deals with digital media, music and/or youth, all the better. I did two stints at MTV Asia and at least specific to those experiences, I think it would be something I would really enjoy. Granted, people with business degrees don’t usually end up with such fields, but in this day and age, I think it’s a plus to have someone from business school who can understand the value of delivering results/ROI over artistry. Additionally, many of these traditional media channels need to adapt to digital, an avenue I could potentially add value to.
2) Working in a company interested in a social media strategy
This is a no brainer considering the content of my blog. Admittedly, I would go into this with no “real” experience as measured by conventional businesses. But I’d wager I could bring more to a social media strategy than a Gen X-er who doesn’t get what social media, community and conversation is about. The difficulty here, besides the thorny “experience” issue, is finding the “fit” with a company that is genuinely interested in embracing a social media strategy for the long run, and working in one that is truly going to bring about change, as opposed to doing it because digital is the new TV.
3) Working in PR
Another semi-no brainer. It is after all my major and I did have a very short stint at Waggener Edstrom doing digital PR. Difficulty here is similar to #2. Working in PR should be a fairly straightforward thing. Working in an agency that is truly embracing digital and not doing it for the sake of doing it, will be difficult.
4) Teaching
Teaching used to be a “long term” end goal of mine. Given the conditions, maybe I’d go into it earlier than I thought. Youth is a passion and I’ve been helping out back in SJI for four years. I know the fantastic feeling it is to bring boys from secondary one to secondary four, and the pride I took in the journey is immense. The tradeoff? Transferring back to the corporate world may not be easy.
5) Starting something myself
You may have read about Claudia’s new company, 24seven in the papers yesterday. I think doing something like that requires a lot of guts and a lot of sacrifice. I’m convinced there’s a market who wants the stuff people like Claudia and myself can provide. I just wonder if it’s big enough, and how long it would take to pay itself off.
What about you graduating students? What do you want to do? What’s more important to you in life right now? Just finding any job with the hopes of switching once the economy picks up? Or trying to find that elusive “right” one?
There was an allusion to “Tribes” a couple of times in yesterday’s post, listen to Seth Godin talk about it for more than an hour in this special edition of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast. It took me a long time to finish it because my daily commute is five minutes, but so worth it.
Generation Y, Digital Natives & Millennials
Workplace 2.0: Motivating and Managing Millennials – Very short (12 pages total, about 8 pages of content) PDF file on managing millennials (aka: us). It doesn’t actually give much of a “how to”, but it does lead you to understanding us more. I must say he is right on about fervour, hard work and tireless labour. I’d work overtime, for free, for a job that’s rewarding in an industry I’m passionate about.
Digital Natives are here by Mitch Joel – Again, great post to help the people in management understand the digital natives. I feel a lot of people still aren’t ready to accept that our generation is a little bit different and that being constantly connected is more of an empowerment than a distraction. But those organisations who do grasp that, are going to be able to channel us much more efficiently.
Social Media Strategy
The Strategist and Social Media by Kami Huyse – Great slides in there that you should read if you’re beginning to think of a social media strategy, especially points about risks of social media engagement, and the Sea World case study.
MTV to MySpace: Post Our Content, Please – you might remember in my review of the book/rant Cult Of The Amateur by Andrew Keen that he called Viacom (parent company of MTV) suing YouTube a “powerful message”. I say the partnership between MTV and MySpace is a) a more powerful message b) a sign that at least one player in the industry waking up to reality.
The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks – I agree with every single point mentioned here, and it absolutely sucks that Apple obviously doesn’t care what people are saying, with similar issues existing in 2006. At this point I hate iTunes so much, I’d pay money for a programme that would solve these problems.
As always, share your links with me in the comments, or you can find me on delicious.
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?
