What I love about getting older, is answers to life questions I used to ponder seem to become so clear to me now. While I still have lots of questions (most discerning: “What am I going to do when I grow up?!”), every time I can ’symbolically’ scratch one out in my head, I feel a small sense of accomplishment.
As of the last few months it’s become clear what I’d do with a million dollars.I’d love to say I love my job so much I’d just keep on working! But that’s simply not true-only because there are opportunities out there that I’d love to embrace if only I could support myself in doing it.
As much as I love my chosen field of PR/community management, the first thing I’d do with a cool million is go back to school and major in economics and minor in computer science. Why? Well most importantly I think those skills combined with my successful PR background would be the ultimate trifecta of awesome! (Particularly as an aspiring entrepreneur)
More seriously though I would love the opportunity to pursue something I thought I always thought I was bad at. My parents both studied math, my sister is becoming an accountant and my brother is a developer. It must be in my genes somewhere right? Also when I started college my doc sent me to do a psycho-educational analysis because of problems with concentration and focus. One thing I learned from that was my logic skills were abnormally awesome (top one percent believe it or not!) and that my math skills were not too shabby either. It was actually quite a shock-but I didn’t think much of at the time as I was already choosing a career in communications.
Now seven (gasp!!) years later I wonder if I took the easy route out? Did I always think I hated math because girls hate math and aren’t good at it? One day if a bundle of money falls in my lap maybe I’ll find out…
In the public relations industry, from day one in the field you hear “It’s all about who you know.”
And in a sense, I completely agree that networking is an integral part of *any* industry and a great way to ensure future success. However, it’s more than just who you know.
Influence and social capital sans social media
These are more than just the buzz words du jour and they are very important even if you take social media out of the picture… Which is exactly my point here. The power of influence and social capital is amplified by social media, but it’s really just about how others around you perceive you and think of you. It’s created out of how you treat other people and carry yourself around others. What’s unfortunate here is the same reasoning behind “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” applies and people are not always fair in their assessments of others.
Not to rant or anything. My point is it doesn’t matter who you know. What matters is who knows you and what they think of you. But it also matters who that person is and what others think of them. You have control over a small portion of this–but not all of it.
It starts to get pretty confusing, doesn’t it?
When you visibly put yourself out there via a blog or Twitter, or a public Facebook profile–this extends the number of people who potentially “know” you. (And people will say they know you even if it’s just online, I know others have said that of me and I have definitely done the same). Again, in this case you don’t only lack control over how people perceive you, but you may not even know who is claiming to know you.
Risk vs. Reward
The risk is people may (unfairly) judge you. The reward is you’ll know more people and more people will know you, which may lead to more and more opportunities. I’m fortunate to say I’ve had a lot of great opportunities come my way because I put myself out there, and it far outweighs the few awkward (and possibly psychosomatic) moments I’ve felt I’d been unfairly judged.
This might seem oh-so-obvious, but I notice people often who seem to miss this point completely (I don’t think these type of people would read my blog, so I don’t have a problem saying it). This is also yet another justification to live your life by doing the right thing, being nice to others and staying true to what you believe in. Again it seems so obvious but not practiced enough in reality.
OK-Now I never actually said the campaign *wouldn’t* be successful–just that we should all shut up and wait until the campaign can demonstrate real results.
Well it can and did, and Wieden & Kennedy packaged it up in a great little case study video:
And now, through the Ottawa Community Manager Meetup group started by Angelina Munaretto and me, I’m fortunate to be constantly meeting great homegrown community folk. Over 60 current and wannabe community managers in our little town, who knew?! It’s fabulous news because I happen to think community management is a really hot career to be in and I love meeting others in the same boat…
So thinking of all the awesome community people I know, there are many qualities we all share that I think make us all good at what we do. Here’s five I can pick out right away:
Social – Perhaps this one is a big “duh!” but I’m going to throw a little hook in it. By social I don’t mean popular or outgoing. I mean someone who can easily connect to others and is interested in meeting both like-minded people and those with different view points. Although communities are almost always formed around common interests, that doesn’t mean all the members are the same. In fact every community I’ve been involved in is quite diverse, and a community manager needs to be able and interested in relating to all of them.
Curious – In my mind, being curious means willing and able to learn quickly. A community manager need not start out tech savvy but if he/she is really curious about how something works, learning about it quickly is easy. Also back to the social point. If you’re curious about people it means you’re willing and able to listen and ask questions and that’s the best way to get to know your community members.
Boundless Energy – Have you ever looked at a community manager’s day book or agenda? A community manager thrives off being around people, both online and off. As much as I love the occasional lazy day in front of the TV, I’d never do it at the sacrifice of a good time. Even if a community manager has family commitments or otherwise can’t be available always, you will find him/her taking advantage every given opportunity.
Multi-disciplinary – While community managers come from all different backgrounds, many share similar skill sets that crossover into several disciplines. Perhaps a by-product of curiosity, but you’ll never hear a community manager say “that’s not in my job description!” (Though this could be because he/she wrote the job description).
Passion – OK while it may seem like a real cliche thing to say, it’s totally true. I’m not sure any of us could really dedicate so much to what we do if we weren’t completely passionate about it… Am I right?
I listed five for the sake of brevity, but I’m sure I could go on about this all day. However, I’d love to hear what you think… Either from other community managers, or those who observe them.. What would you add?
The more time you spend on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, the more benefit you derive from the experience. I often find it hard to describe a lot of the personal benefits I get beyond connections and fast access news, but after a little creative thinking I’ve put together five unapparent benefits to social networking:
5. An insatiable thirst for knowledge
I honestly can’t remember if I was like this before and it was amplified, or if it’s a new quality all together, but I’ve definitely noticed that I now crave knowledge. I need to learn more and I need to at least skim Twitter to see what’s happening in my community/country/the entire world. Even on weekends and days off I’m always checking my phone (when appropriate! Not in the rude anti-social way!)
4. A newfound willingness to take risks
Or perhaps I mean the ability to take more calculated risks; when you’re exposed to more, you can make better decisions. For example, if I wanted to start a business helping restaurants with marketing, before I would maybe look up a few web sites, makes some calls and try to get an understanding if there were a need for such a service and if my potential client base would be willing to pay. However, without a lot of money to do proper market research (let’s face it-most entrepreneurs definitely don’t have money for it), I’d have to rely on a very small number of opinions based on my limited time to do said research on my own. However, now I can simply passively research this info through Google and various social networking sites, poll or survey my Twitter followers and Facebook friends and I can get a better glimpse of the risky industry and whether or not my idea will fly. Sure it’s still not as accurate as proper research, but it’s a whole lot better than what I was going to do.
3. A humbled world view
I admit, I’ve often been a “big fish in a small pond” kind of person. I exceeded in school and many hobbies/sports but mostly participated in small communities, as is pretty normal in the offline world. Secondly I’ll admit I’m a bit of a competitive person, not in a malicious kind of way, but in the sense that I’m always looking to benchmark myself against others, so I can work on improving. Well online there are so many more people doing whatever it is you’re trying to do. It’s humbling–which is awesome because it gives you a great sense of how *much* you can improve. And yes, on the flip side this can also be discouraging, but we all know the best out there know how to persevere!
2. A stronger sense of confidence
Especially as a writer (or any creative field) you always practice your craft with a certain level of vulnerability. You’re putting yourself out there. It’s scary. People will judge you. You might make a mistake. To me, it seems like whenever I’ve gone too far and lost my sense of what I’m doing, the community around me chimes up with words of encouragement. Even when things go wrong, there will always be someone backing you up and cheering you on.
1. An optimistic view of the world
OK maybe you’ve caught on that I’m generally an optimistic person… But I’m talking about something bigger. For all the awful things going on in the world, it’s amazing to see people band together for the greater good. There are so many great examples, but most timely is @unmarketing’s Tweetathon for Tanner (go on, read the whole story and try not to shed a tear!) it ends tomorrow at 9 pm and since earlier today has already raised over $8,000 for a very worthy cause. Also take any natural disaster–even the most recent floods in Pakistan, a simple search shows many tweets urging help and many have been retweeted hundreds of times.
Have you noticed the same? Do you have others I haven’t mentioned here? Please share! (Especially because I’m super excited that I finally have Disqus running on here! Yea, sometimes I’m not such an early adopter–and this blog gets neglected.)
Using Facebook to build hype for a product before it’s released is a great idea, but if you really want to turn heads and gain attention, use Facebook and then seal the deal with a large-scale magic trick! (What can I say, with a PR background, I’m a sucker for good publicity stunts)
I was pointed to an event that happened yesterday morning in Toronto where magician, Greg Frewin, made the new car magically appear. I also understand similar events were held across North America.
To tie it all together, the campaign points to a Flash-based microsite that encourages you to sign up with the chance of winning a 2011 Ford Explorer. While I do loathe Flash-based sites, I do find this one very well executed and usable. This is smart because 1. it adds a conversion point for Ford to measure against, and 2. It helps build a database (with an explicit opt in!) for future marketing. Which, in the long term, may help ties these efforts to actual dollars. It was a compelling call-to-action, too. I signed up and now can’t wait to win my own Explorer!
What I love about this campaign
It was definitely a great multi-touch campaign. In addition to live events and Facebook, Ford also paid for promoted tweets on Twitter and paid ads in various online media. Overall, the buzz was pretty high (OK, it was no Old Spice man, but it did have impact)
Also the focus on Facebook allows for real-time engagement and feedback. Since yesterday, hundreds of comments (almost all positive) have been posted on the wall.
What could have been better
I would have liked to see greater cohesion and promotion about the events happening in different cities. It was not really talked about on the Facebook main page–I had to dig to find it on the wall. Also would have loved to see the events streamed online. Why not take advantage when you put in all that effort?
Also in addition to the events, Ford was updating the Facebook page with videos every couple of hours, including many with spokesperson Mike Rowe. Maybe there were are Ford fanatics out there who patiently waited every two hours for a new video, but it really didn’t capture my attention or entice me at all.
Is it a success?
Like anything, I don’t think we can fully declare this launch a success until we see the the road full of 2011 Explorers. However, Ford is definitely no stranger to social media. Not only does the company have a ‘head of social media’ but it has pulled off a successful launch before using social media with the Ford Fiesta, which saw unprecedented results particularly with building awareness among its target audience of Gen Yers. Car sales are tricky to tie to social media as the buying cycle is typically much longer than your average product. (Note: I said tricky: not impossible!)
Overall I liked this campaign and I’m interested to see where it goes. At the root of it however (and which I haven’t really mentioned so far) is a great product. Ford has “re-invented” the Explorer with much improved fuel economy, safety features and quite a few bells and whistles. I simply cannot stress enough: it doesn’t really matter how savvy you are, or how much money you put into a social media campaign, it won’t really mean anything if you don’t have a good product to begin with!
No doubt you’ve seen the Old Spice Man on Twitter, responding to tweets with videos, exciting both influential tweeters, celebrities and regular folk alike and getting covered on pretty much ever blog and media outlet out there…
While I definitely agree with the masses that this was a well-executed campaign-it was funny, engaging and captured the attention of so many, but I’m still reluctant to declare it a resounding social media success story (yet?) for a few reasons. And more importantly, these are some factors to consider before you go out and try to replicate Old Spice’s success (since I’m sure already this will be a case study social media experts everywhere will be preaching to the masses):
Will it increase sales for the company? My guess would be quite possibly, but we don’t know yet, it’s simply too soon to tell. Aren’t we always whining about business outcomes and that success needs to be based on more than just eyeballs?
What about ROI? Sure maybe they’ll get fantastic results, but clearly they spend A LOT of money on this campaign.
Did Old Spice really take a big risk with this campaign? Well not really, the built it off an already successful ad campaign–which don’t get me wrong was a very smart move, but let’s all remember that when we’re trying to build our own loveable brand character.
Doesn’t social media require long-term commitment and ongoing strategy? Obviously they can’t keep up the videos for ever. where will they take it yet? How will they keep their new-found audience engaged? I’m not saying they won’t but perhaps we should wait and see before we declare this the most successful social media campaign of all time.
Maybe I’m just a little bitter because my man already wears Old Spice (long before Old Spice Man even) and now every man will smell like him? Either way, I love the campaign but I’m saying stop the madness–at least until we’ve had enough time to step away and see the whole picture.
And now, for your viewing enjoyment, the original Old Spice Man ad that started this all
While the title community manager has been growing in popularity, I’ve noticed there still aren’t all that many in Ottawa… However, I’ve also noticed that despite this, there are many people here–both in private sector and government–who do pretty well work as community managers (albeit under a different title). On top of that there’s tons of interest in the job here as well.
Back in March at SXSW I was able to connect with a few community managers, in talks we (@vero, @yarrcat and I) decided to plan a community manager meetup, and amazingly with two days notice at a busy conference, over 25 people showed up to talk about the ever-changing job role. (photo)
While tweeting about the event, Angelina Munaretto, also from Ottawa, saw my tweets and at first thought I was in Ottawa.. That started our discussions about hosting a community manager meet up in Ottawa.
Though it took us a few months to get the inaugural event off the ground, the support from the community (community of community managers?!!) was very positive! Our first event on June 16 saw about 15 community managers and people interested in community management, showed up and participated in a interesting discussion on what exactly it means, how it’s evolved, and where it’s headed.
We plan to have more of these informal meetups in the coming months (next one probably after summer). To start we set up a LinkedIn Group where we can continue discussions between meetups.
Sometimes people ask for my opinion, but more often, I like to give it up anyway… I can’t remember which one this was, but I told #SMBOttawa organizer Simon that I thought a sociologist would make for an awesome speaker at Social Media Breakfast.
And you know what they say, ask and you shall receive!
From the SMBOttawa registration page:
Sam Ladner is a sociologist who specializes in technology and organizations. She has been a speaker at industry and academic conferences including mesh — Canada’s Web Conference, the Information Architecture Summit and has even presented in Second Life, a virtual world. Using a range of methods including interviewing, observation and ethnography, she consults on digital product design, organizational change and the social aspects of technological innovation. She has consulted companies including Citibank, Dell, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Smith Barney, Nokia, VeriSign and Genentech. She is a consultant and principal of her own firm, Copernicus Consulting Group and holds a PhD in sociology from York University.
Sam will present several sociological frameworks for understanding social media behaviour and phenomena. She will also summarize a recent study on women’s social media use, how the study was designed and the conclusions that are being used for a real-life social media program.
One problem with social media is we often focus on the media and not the social. Or the tools and not the strategy. If we understand the science behind how people behave online how can we really know what we’re doing? As someone who’s always been a big fan of sociology but never pursued it formally in school, it’s a topic I’m really excited about. Hope to see you there!
The report made quite an impact. I don’t know about you, but I hear about it everywhere. As well, I’ve heard quite a few remarks from people who defensively claim: “I don’t tweet what I’m eating for breakfast!”
Ok. Fine. I get it. There are some people (usually outside of the social media bubble) who tweet silly mundane things all the time.
But here’s the thing, do you know what’s worse that finding out what someone ate for breakfast? Following someone who only tweets links. Unless you’re already a famous person or trusted source, you are not going to build trust and relationships but simply tweeting links to blog posts or news articles. Yes many of us have nearly or altogether replaced our RSS readers with links we get from Twitter, but we’ve done so because we appreciate reading links from trusted acquaintances who’ve we’ve come to know through our interactions, and yes, the occasional breakfast tweet. Not personality-lacking link bots. Twitter is not a broadcast tool. We have quite enough of those. Get out and interact, and throw in the occasional breakfast tweet (or cute thing your cat did, or whatever else might be dismissed as pointless babble). I will appreciate it.
Using Facebook to build hype for a product before it’s released is a great idea, but if you really want to turn heads and gain attention, use Facebook and then seal the deal with a large-scale magic trick! (What can I say, with a PR background, I’m a sucker for good publicity stunts)
While the title community manager has been growing in popularity, I’ve noticed there still aren’t all that many in Ottawa… However, I’ve also noticed that despite this, there are many people here–both in private sector and government–who do pretty well work as community managers (albeit under a different title). On top of that there’s tons of interest in the job here as well.