I recently presented at a summit in Hartford with my colleague Danielle. Our breakout session was focused on educating small to mid-sized businesses about social media and which platform(s) might be right for their organizations. At the end of our presentation, we opened it up to questions.
One question that sticks in my mind was from a gentleman who worked at a large health insurance company. He asked (I’m paraphrasing), “From a Human Resources standpoint, what do we do to control or monitor our employees’ use of Social Media?” Continue reading →
While most publicists understand the importance of educating themselves on all things social media, there is still a large number of professionals that do not have that same mentality. I can’t tell you that why that’s the case, perhaps it’s the new school versus old school (no pun intended) way of thinking, but getting employees up to speed on social media should be just as important to an agency as it is keeping current clients happy and pursuing new business.
So realistically, what can agencies do? Can they force employees to read books on SM? Give assignments to follow Chris Brogan’s blog or have them monitor Robert Scoble’s tweets? Assign quarterly reports on which brands have the best SM campaigns? I certainly don’t run my own agency and I haven’t done the research on what effects this type of program might have on company morale, but my short answer to these questions is a resounding YES … current and future employees should be required to do all of these things, and more. The positives of putting your staff through a ‘Hell Week’ type of SM program far outweighs the negatives, in my opinion. Continue reading →
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be blunt. Social media isn’t about listening. No one cares about listening. I wrote a post earlier where I said customers don’t care if brands are listening. It’s true, we don’t. You know who else doesn’t care about listening? The person who signs your paycheck. The head honcho, the big wig, the (wo)man upstairs. However you want to phrase it, the decision makers don’t care about listening. So why are you still using “listening” as a reason to invest in social media?
I’ve spent the past 5 years of my professional career on the corporate side of things. To make things worse, it’s been in the financial space (I know, we’re greedy bankers, we caused the crisis. I’ve been called a lot of bad names, don’t worry). So maybe it’s the “business” in me, but let’s face it, the only thing that matters…it’s green and hopefully in large denominations. Continue reading →
Following up on my post from last week about SMPR, I promised to go into a bit more detail about my second main point during that panel: It’s time we all step away from the social media rainbow just a tad and realize that many CEOs/C-levels don’t fully grasp the impact of social media. Therefore, we need to do a better job of helping them see a corrallary between getting a great placement in The New York Times and how many times that piece was retweeted, commented on or whatever the case may be.
The fact is, folks, many people will never get this, and we need to learn to be OK with that. In fact, we need to be better than OK with that; we need to help them understand why having blogger X tweet about our company is just as important in many cases as a write-up in Shoes Today. We need to put these great social media accomplishments that I know many of you are working hard to achieve each day into the context of what our executives know and understand. Continue reading →
At least once a day my brain goes for the e-brake to prevent me from putting my foot in my mouth on Twitter. Honestly, who cares about the guy snoring/drooling on me during my commute? I also make a mental note to check Facebook on Sunday nights to see what pictures need untagging from the weekend. Trust me, they aren’t reminiscent of Girls Gone Wild but the pictures from the latest PRBreakfastClub karaoke night aren’t very flattering either. For the people who think I sound ridiculous I suggest you read Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck. In it he explains that our resume is much more than a piece of paper. Continue reading →
It’s very interesting to see the evolution of social media. From just networking with friends and looking at fun pictures, to conducting business and measuring interaction, social media has become the means of communication. The response time of a complaint or compliment on when someone is mentioned is astonishing. One time I mentioned, “Everytime Kate Perry E-mails me, I get excited for a split second thinking it was the singer, then it’s Vocus” and instantly Vocus responds “We’ll be sure to mention that to Kate!”
Its a great feeling having your voice heard, just recently I tweeted something negative about Cision, our best friend and worst enemy. I tweeted that Cision was going way too slowly and i’m sure I did a big “You Suck,” but I instantly got a response asking to do something to my brower to speed it up. Great customer service there. However, that is not the point of this post. Continue reading →
This post is a result of joking around on Teh Twitters with Josh Sternberg, who pointed out that social media, God bless it, has a tendency to get blown way, way out of proportion in terms of, well, everything. Of course there are some things that the deserve the hyperbole–you know, like the snowmaggedeon/snowpacolypse. But being the pragmatic, rational people we are, when we see people make overblown statements it just makes us wonder, “Hmm, what’s the real message behind this message?”
I recently saw a tweet from someone who complained that Verizon had it out for them and that they’d have to wait until their contract was up to get a new phone when the one they had was dysfunctional. The next day, I saw a tweet complaining that a hotel didn’t let people walking on the street into the lobby when it was pouring rain outside.
Seems we’ve all discovered the customer service side of social media. Hundreds of companies are in the social media sphere now to not only spread the word proactively about their organizations, but also to do damage/crisis control with less than happy customers.
But when does legitimate customer dissatisfaction turn into a public twitter and blogosphere annoyance? Continue reading →
As social media becomes more and more popular there’s another issue that is a direct result of its growing popularity: more social media conferences. In Arik’s recent post, he discusses his views that our society may in fact be over-conferenced.
I think the thought itself is interesting, but I have to admit that my gut reaction to hearing that assertion is that it just isn’t true. I will admit, there are a lot of different conferences out there. Just take a look at Mashable’s most recent conference guide. Looking at that list, you’ll notice that there are oftentimes several conferences during the same time period. However, there are also a couple things you won’t see there: overlapping cities and subjects. Continue reading →
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a local event sponsored by LaBreche and Twin Cities Business named: Reputations. The keynote? None other than Chris Brogan. The event also featured a solid panel of communicators and leaders from local agencies and organizations like Best Buy and Select Comfort (disclaimer: client).
Leading up to the event, I was both excited and skeptical. Excited to hear how a major brand like Best Buy manages its reputation online. Skeptical because I have heard the same song and dance a few too many times now.
Unfortunately, like a number of other folks at the event, I left a little disappointed. Continue reading →
I recently presented at a summit in Hartford with my colleague Danielle. Our breakout session was focused on educating small to mid-sized businesses about social media and which platform(s) might be right for their organizations. At the end of our presentation, we opened it up to questions.
