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:
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!
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!
I get asked a lot about what exactly a community manager does, what skills are important, how much experience one should have, etc. Yes, I’ve been doing this a couple of years now–and could probably just tell you from my own experience, but what fun is that?! Instead I opted to interview another community manager, Heather Ritchie of Lymbix, who in turn thought it’d be fun to interview me. Now we have a pretty cool dual-blog post going on. Check out her interview on the Lymbix blog.
KR: There are people who live outside of the social media bubble and don’t know what a community manager is. How would you explain your job to them?
HR: It varies from company to company, and has everything to do with the stage of growth the company is in. A community manager at a start-up, for example, might juggle a dozen balls at once, while one in a more established company may just oversee a support team or forum relating to a specific product.
In my case, it’s the former not the latter however in order to retain my sanity, I look at them as quite simply internal and external relationship building and maintenance. Internally, I’m responsible for thinking like a user and challenging our team to do the same: tackling web architecture, developing written content, and managing relationships with our creative agency. I play a role in determining how to go to market with our products, and how to communicate with specific user groups.
Externally, I manage our public and media relations, attend events, and talk to as many people as will listen in order to help put Lymbix on the map. There’s a fair bit of soft-selling involved in what I do: having the conversations, identifying opportunities, and finding a fit between our products and companies or individuals. On top of that, I also spend a fair bit of time responding to technical support inquiries and helping find answers for our community.
KR: Completely agree on everything, having community managed at both an early stage startup and MediaMiser (which is quite a bit larger), it’s a lot of the same, but very different too. Essentially it’s about managing relationships, internally and externally. Also I think the intrinsic company culture will dictate the position as well, a more open and transparent company will have a more public-facing community manager, whereas a more closed company might focus on communicating directly with customers a little more.
KR: What skills and experience from your past prepared you most for community management? Anything you’d wished you’d learned previously?
HR: When I was younger, I was convinced I was going to be a computer programmer. Anyone I tell that to now looks at me like I’m crazy, but I grew up around tech-savvy people and always wanted to do something non-traditional. I dabbled with programming in high school, and realized that although I loved having a technical mind, I needed to find a way to use my energy and passion to it’s fullest.
I studied and received a combination Business Administration/Information Systems degree, and fell in love with communications and marketing while I was at it. I couldn’t see a natural amalgamation of all of those loves when I first graduated so took a job as a community development officer with the City of Moncton, where I live. That was when I first gained an appreciation for community, and how to unite groups of people to take action and make a difference. This was community in the most traditional sense but was so fulfilling for me.
Eventually government bureaucracy takes it’s toll on the young and energetic, so I made a move to an advertising agency and built up a specialty in new media campaigns, copywriting, and online user experience. The environment was a fast-paced one, and I definitely sharpened my skills there. That experience definitely gave me what I needed to have the confidence to dive head first into the start-up environment. So to answer your question: I learned about ‘true community’ from the residents of my own city, marketing/PR from the ad business, and found my passion for technology thanks to friends, family, and my studies.
The main thing I wish I’d spent more energy on is in technical writing. I’m a ‘good’ writer, but I want to be a great one. That’s something I’ll spend more time on in the future.
KR: I also wanted to be a programmer in high school. My mom is one and my dad a technical guy too.. It seemed like it was in my blood, but alas my passion for writing and communications took over and I pursued an education in PR instead. Also got unique experience via a boutique agency (client services), the City of Ottawa and from working in startup environments (oddly similar to HR). I wish I had kept up my coding skills a little better,
KR: If you were stranded on a desert island, with no computers or internet, but with the entire ‘community’ you serve, what would you do?
HR: We’d play get-to-know-you games, gather food, and prepare huge family dinners. One of my favourite things do with friends and family is share meals. Just think of how creative they could get in a deserted island!
KR: That would be amazing. Can I come to your island?
Heather Anne Ritchie (@heatheranne) is the Community Manager for Lymbix Inc – an Atlantic Canadian company specializing in identifying and analyzing the emotional tone behind text-based communication. A foodie, wine lover, outdoor enthusiast, and cat lady, she credits the support of her amazing friends for her passion for life.
I keep hearing more and more about ‘automated social media marketing‘ solutions. And while the promise “That Anyone can use to Literally Flip a Switch and Automate Their Social Media Marketing WITHOUT Spending More” sounds great (well… maybe..) before you jump in, you may want to consider if it really makes sense for you.
Unfortunately if you work in social media, chances are you have other things to do than blogging, tweeting and Facebooking. And you should actually, whether connecting with your community members directly, measuring and benchmarking your efforts, working internally in your organization, travelling to meet people in person, all of these are really important tasks for a community manager and take away from the ’social media marketing’ part of your job.
So is automating the right idea? My answer, as always it seems, is it depends. Here are some automating situations and what I’d suggest:
Automated tweets: tools like Co-Tweet or TweetLater allow you to schedule tweets in the future. I’ve signed up for both (and Hootsuite, which does as well) and hadn’t really made use of the feature too much. However, one great example is while travelling – I was at SXSW last week and barely tweeted due to running around and weak wifi. Also sometimes there’s just not enough time in the day and Twitter falls lower on the priority list. Now I’m going to try and spend an hour a day hunting out good content to tweet and schedule it throughout the day or week. However I’m still going to spend as much time monitoring and tweeting during the day as needed. You can’t completely automate-you lose the real-time advantage and personal touch of retweets or responding to others.
Automated following: Ranging from super spammy (GET 50,000 FOLLOWERS IN A DAY!!1!) to legit apps, these promise to build your followers in an automated fashion. Basically, what they do is seek out tweeters based on keywords and follow them, with the hopes they will follow back. I’m not to keen on these for a number of reasons. First is I think you should only follow people you actually intend to follow. Twitter is two-way communication and is most effective when used as such. Second, many Twitter power users can tell an auto-follow a mile away and will not follow you back. If you’re looking to build relationships with influential people on Twitter, this can hurt more than help.
Simul-posting tools: I may have just made that word up, but I’m talking about services like ping.fm that allow you to update all your social networks at once. Another example is a handful of tools that will update your twitter feed when you post a blog update. For a personal account, I always recommend against this. Different tools serve different purposes and likely different audiences. As well there’s also likely great overlap in those audiences who can quickly be annoyed by reading your updates several times on several networks. For a business there are definitely situations this makes sense. If possible the preference is to tailor your content for each, but I believe this is a small sacrifice you can make for the sake of time. People don’t follow businesses to develop relationships (though do so incidentally), they do to gain value for your content. Most people are less likely to follow a business on multiple networks and even so expect a less personal experience. (Note that’s-Less personal, NOT impersonal).
Personally, I get annoyed by excessive use of automated tools. I can tell. Others can tell. So if you choose to go that route, it’s a sacrifice you might be making make. Let’s remember, we don’t get rich quick. It takes time and effort and so does success with social media. However, I definitely think you can be smart about automated tools to help make the most of your time and not alienate your audience.
Finally a plea: one thing I will say is you definitely cannot automate social media without a savvy person on staff. You may not need a full-time community manager (although I might argue that you do) but at least have someone who understands the online medium, and business strategies around it (not your intern). That person would probably be the right one to determine a strategy around automated tools.
These are my thoughts and, of course, only my opinion, so I’m open to your arguments!
Ugh. That Margaret Wente post has really gotten under my skin. I get it, I’m satisfying the point of the article by reacting to it, I won’t link to it, but I think the damage is done.
However, others have read this and actually believed what she said and spread the problem even more. I’ll link to him because I don’t actually think he’s linkbaiting, I just don’t think he’s too smart.
That’s the problem. Had Wente written that column on a personal blog, she probably would have easily been dismissed as a buffoon. However, on a platform such as a Globe and Mail column? People believe the news media to be credible. Even columns-which are opinion-based, are still assumed to be researched and laid out with actual fact.
What I do want to point you to, however, is a blog post by Clay Shirky about women’s lack of self-promotion. Yes he’s generalizing and clearly giving his opinion, but it’s laced with actual real fact, and more compelling anecdotal evidence rather than “his friend Sarah”. However, this is a real issue in the blogosphere and if we can glean some real action and insight from this situation, let this be it.
And finally because I think a lot of really smart talented women have already weighed in, I’m linking to the great posts I’ve read so far (though I’m sure there’s many more-just point me to them!)
“Don’t feed the trolls” is an old saying that goes back to the days when people communicated online via forums or chat rooms like IRC (maybe even before that?)
It’s an expression you use when someone is trying to conjure up a (usually negative) response from others. In a forum or chat setting, it’s usually just for attention.
However often bloggers will post absurd opinions on controversial issues to stir up response. The point of doing this is for linkbait–to get other bloggers to link to them.
Well apparently this is the new trend for mainstream media as well. I’m referring to a column by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail. Notice how I’m not linking to it. You don’t need to read it here’s the gist: Margaret thinks women don’t blog. The reason they don’t blog is they don’t have opinions or the need to put themselves out there, yada yada yada.
Well anyone who’s ever visited more than 5 blogs in their lives knows women do in fact blog. LOTS of them. Hell there’s even a conference/movement around women bloggers!
Wente likely knew that, she likely knew that people get riled up when newspapers write generalized, ignorant statements about women, as the National Post did a couple months ago (also not linking to). And what happens when people get riled up? They spread the news. More hits means more advertising dollars which means her boss is happy.
So I’m not upset at Wente about her ridiculous article about women not blogging, just the fact that she’s given up her personal reputation and journalistic integrity for ad dollars. Exactly what the mainstream editorial media is *not* supposed to do.
To all you who blogged about it today: I admire your passion and agree with your view points, but please remove the link to said article! And if you do, I’ll gladly link to your articles and we can discuss the issue of women blogging, but without G&M getting ad dollars out of it.
Oh yea, finally on a lighter note, my personal favourite response to the article via @kittenthebad
you know what else women don’t do? Lock crazy women in cages and throw them in the river. Shame.
Oh-so now there’s a debate tomorrow with Wente and Annie Urban (@phdinparenting) and Tamara Plant. This I’ll support as they are both passionate women who know what they’re talking about. They deserve the press.
One final note about linkbaiting
I just want to clarify, there’s nothing inherently wrong with linkbaiting. It’s a great tactic to get traffic to a blog or web site and invoke a response. HOWEVER, good linkbaiting is fueled by passion and conviction and based on fact. Spreading bad, insulting information to get a response is not. THAT is what is wrong here.
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.
