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 »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
This isn’t new advice. I learned this just over a year ago from Keith Ferrazzi in his awesome book “Never Eat Alone“. And this doesn’t just apply to you as an individual when you need help with a problem, some advice, or in my case a job search – this applies to your organisation if you’re even thinking of engaging in social media.
Something that happens all too often is a company realises it has a new product launch coming up, doesn’t have bloggers to seed to (what a dirty word) and begins the “relationship” process at that point.
That’s too late.
If you do that, don’t be surprised that no “advocates” leap to the defense of your brand when a crisis happens and blame social media.
If you start a blog before you built relationships with other blogs and then get no traffic when you post something, don’t blame the blog.
If you want to push a press release and follow the “best practices” and tweet it at the magical hour on Friday afternoon but no one in your network retweets it because you never engaged with them, don’t blame Twitter.
You need to build that network and goodwill way in advance, so that when you need it, it’s there for you. If you’re thinking about building it because you need it – you’re already too late.
I’d love to hear from either side of the coin: great stories where you invested in a network/community and reaped the benefits or stories as a blogger/influencer where you knew the other party had its back against the wall and was grasping at straws to just get anyone possible for their press event/product launch. The comments are yours!
Tags: advice, advocates, best practices, blame social media, blog traffic, bloggers, build your network, community, engaging in social media, goodwill, grasping at straws, help with a problem, influencers, job search, keith ferrazzi, network, never eat alone, press event, press release, product launch, retweet, seeding bloggers, social media, tweet, twitter
Posted in blogger outreach, social media, social media business | 2 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 »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
There isn’t one.
If I follow you because you’re having personal conversations – that’s the right way to use it for you.
If I follow you because you’re telling me about where you’re eating and because of that I find new places to go – that’s the right way to use it for you.
If I follow you because you share social media links that help me learn something new – that’s the right way to use it for you.
If I follow you because you tweet about Lost and believe season six is going to be the television equivalent of the second coming – that’s the right way to use it for you.
And if I don’t follow you because of something you’re doing (or not doing) – then I’m just the not right follower for you. It’s like choosing clothes – just because I prefer skinny jeans over baggy ones doesn’t mean no one want to buy baggy jeans. Make sure your focus is on them.
It’s okay to have 100 followers who are right for you than 10,000 who aren’t.
Tags: eating, lost, personal conversations, right way to use twitter, social media links, twitter
Posted in social media, twitter | 7 Comments »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Earlier this week Brian from Happyesque dropped me a private message on Twitter asking me to send him a Tweet on what would make me happy in 2010.
I took a few days to think this over – should it be social media focused? Or something personal? Could I write something smart? After all the options are endless – Companies finally start to wake up to social media, being happy, Arsenal winning the Premier League, the final season of Lost being the best ever….
Then in the few short days I was thinking about it, barely a week into 2010 we have bloggers wasting company time and resources for a prank , angst over postbox publicity, the whole fiasco in Malaysia and buses carrying soccer players getting shot at and I just thought to myself “jeez this is how we’re starting the year?”
And with that my answer formed: I just want people to be kinder to each other, both online and offline. If we can do this and not start new wars this year, I think I’d be pretty happy.
Head on to Happyesque to check out the responses from Tweeters and Bloggers and share what would make YOU happy in 2010 in the comments.
Tags: 2010, arsenal, happiness, happy, happyesque, lost, postbox, social media, twitter
Posted in community | 2 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 »
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
If you don’t already follow me on Twitter, you might not know that myself along with Dorothy, Mark and Amelia have started a group blog on Posterous called Digiramblings.
It’s a group blog for us to talk about all sorts of social media, digital marketing and public relations stuff from the point of view of four Gen Y bloggers in our first job doing digital in one agency or another.
Think of it as four blogs in one! Do check us out and give us feedback!
Tags: amelia wong, digiramblings, digital agency, dorothy poon, Gen Y, mark khoo, posterous, twitter
Posted in Uncategorized | 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, August 31st, 2009
Today Coleman tweeted that the Ministry of Education’s teachers’ day website was a risky move, and coincidentally at the time when I clicked on the link the one and only “careless” tweet appeared (screenshot courtesy of Coleman):
Teachersday.sg
Yes, I give MOE credit for trying something new and for experimenting, but there are still points to be made/lessons to learn:
1) It may have been the only negative tweet, but I think we need to think about these things. Who else will see these tweets besides the teachers? Other kids? Parents of kids? It’s entirely possible to get on to a service like Pheed.me and remove foul language in advance. And I think we need to be keenly aware of our target audience.
2) I understand that the purpose of keeping it uncensored was to maintain authenticity, but looking at the tweets that came out.. I’m not sure how many were just set up for the sole purpose of tweeting this one hashtag.
3) As Daphne points out, this web portal wasn’t largely publicised and therein lies why this was the only “careless” tweet. If more of the general public got to know about it, I bet it wouldn’t be long before tweets like “Miss Lim from [whatever] school I remember you for being such a b!tc# 20 years ago and I hope you’re still single #tday09” start appearing, and this turns into a #skittles fiasco – where people tagged on racist/malicious comments to the #skittles hashtag for everyone to see.
So for a moment, let’s forget this is the Ministry of Education (MOE), let’s forget that the people tweeting are predominantly kids, and let’s think about it in the real world:
First, while I don’t think the people who are involved are inexperienced or ignorant of social media, I think they jumped on the shiny object bandwagon without thinking it through. From their blog post:
If Facebook was the vehicle that brought social media to the mainstream, Twitter is the shiny new Ferrari F70 of the online space
Accurately said. I shiny new Ferrari isn’t an everyday, run-of-the-mill car. It’s like re-taking your drivers’ licence test again and making sure you understand the vehicle and can control it under all sorts of conditions, sunny or stormy.
Second, I know I’ll get some flak by being critical of something like this where there’s one negative post in a sea of hundreds. But that’s not where I’m coming from. It’s not specific to the case. It’s specific to the understanding, usage and application of social media that I think we have to be aware of. Those of us who are fortunate enough to work in this space really have to be conscious of this. If you did this for a client, or your CEO of an MNC and they saw this happen. What do you think are the odds you’d get budget for your next “social media experiment”? Slim to none?
Basically, I think you have to be careful how much risk you take with your brand. It’s great to hand over control to the consumers, but you gotta know your audience. Have you already been in the community cultivating “antibodies” for awhile who will come to your defence when someone steps out of line? Or are you jumping in cold? Just because you introduce a platform for one, noble purpose, doesn’t mean it will be used that way by everyone. And you have to take the good and the bad.
Back to the specific case, although the boy managed to delete his tweet and seemed quite embarrassed afterwards, I really hope he doesn’t get punished or anything because of this. It was a conscious decision to make this platform public, and therefore consequences that arise of it being public comes from that choice to be public, not the user.
After all, he just served as a reminder to us that anybody can be made aware of anyone’s social media efforts at any one time, and they’re not always going to be in sync with your organisation.
Tags: know your audience, metacole, ministry of education, teachers' day website, teachersday.sg, twitter
Posted in Marketing, SMU, Singapore, case studies, education, social media, social media breakfast, twitter | 6 Comments »
