Category

Social Media

Dec 18
Love0

Beware the Overshare this Holiday Season

By Social Media

From time to time, I join my friend Coy Barefoot in the studio at Newsradio WINA to discuss the social media/media news of the day. In our last broadcast together, we talked a little bit about the holidays; how they’re often difficult for people dealing with grief. In this era of frequent self-publishing and access to larger and larger audiences, there’s a growing tendency to overshare on social networks. We’ve all seen it, and many of us have done it — posting overly personal thoughts without regard to the audience and the impact our words may have on others.

Listen to the broadcast here. 

Just a note of caution and a reminder that it’s possible to create a list for yourself, or establish a group of trusted friends so if you absolutely MUST post on Facebook how terrible your Christmas/New Year’s/Hannukah is, that your closest friends, the ones who can be relied upon to respond and to reach out with a virtual pat on the back, will only see.

In case you need a little help with this task, I’ve prepared a visual:

Toodle on over to the left hand side of your Facebook account when you sign in and select Create a Group. Choose the privacy level appropriate, then spend the next several hours pondering your very best friends. Feel free to edit the group once in awhile. I have several groups to suit several needs — and I’m always conscious of what I’m sharing with whom.

Do I mess up? Sure I do — I’m only human. But managing our messages to others is something we can all try to do better.

Nov 29
Love0

Lost in Translation: How Social Media Tenets Got Dropped Between Personal and Professional Use

By Social Media

I’ve been talking and writing a lot lately (here, and here, and here) about ways that businesses have dropped the ball using social media. Two major venues in my community have missed significant opportunities to manage their reputations, particularly on Facebook, in the last week. Both rely on fourth quarter revenues to, in some cases, make their year. One is a shopping mall, the other, a movie theater; both totally consumer-facing and consumer-dependent businesses.

There are three main attributes of social media that seem have to been misunderstood or left out completely when the use of social media transferred from personal to professional use.

 

  1. Social media’s strength is built on personal relationships; a business must also have a personal face and identified human beings behind the brand with which we (consumers) build relationships. No one builds a relationship with a logo.
  2. Transparency, availability and responsiveness are what have made individuals superstars in the social space. Those affiliated with a brand or organization have done that brand a great service by acting on their behalf in a public way. Even when the chips are down, and the face of the company is the one to take ownership of an issue, a name and a face acting on behalf of a company is much more respected and welcome than the nameless, faceless corporate messaging.
  3. The difference between social and mass media is that social media represents TWO-WAY CONVERSATION. In the age of mass media, such a thing didn’t exist. To treat social media as if it were mass media, by only broadcasting deals, offers, promotions and other self-serving content, is a sadly misinformed approach. Asking customers what they want, welcoming feedback and interacting with the public in the social space is the RIGHT WAY to manage your professional social presence. Always.

I think the reason why businesses have handled the transition to social integration so poorly is a lack of education and understanding of the tools and how they should be used. In some cases it’s arrogance, in others it’s the blind leading the blind.

I see a couple of scenarios; in one, businesses put a person in charge of social media who only knows how to use it personally. This is common when social strategy is left to the youngest person in the marketing department, or the digital native who has been using social media personally since she was a kid. Those skills do not automatically translate; just because a person knows how to write doesn’t mean they know how to write a communications plan. In the second scenario, businesses are doing what they see others doing, copying it or modeling the same online behavior, WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING IF ITS THE RIGHT APPROACH OR STRATEGY.

Of course both of these situations make me crazy. I hate to see any business, particularly small business, spending time or money without strategy, or not taking advantage of tools at their disposal, or seeking knowledge before diving in to marketing techniques they barely comprehend.

The public, particularly the users of social media, understand the difference and are quick to point out when companies are not following the rules of social media. They demand the kind of interaction they get personally from friends, even from a corporate level. It’s all personal to the consumer, and because of that, and the nature of the social space, all social strategy demands a personal approach.

Nov 28
Love0

How to Create a Good LinkedIn Summary; Four Great Examples

By Communications, Social Media

I get that it’s hard to write a good LinkedIn Summary, but I also know what a difference it makes when someone has a good one. It’s easy to understand where they’re coming from, and the direction they believe their career to be headed. It’s nice to see what someone is about, what they want from connecting with others in business and what drives their ambition as a professional.

I combed my contacts for a few more good examples to share, since this post of other good LinkedIn summaries has gotten so much attention. I like the diversity among the candidates I’ve chosen below, representing engineering, software development, publishing and science-based business.

 

Brian Geiger uses a short and simple solution to the summary:

Project manager, systems designer, and developer on a variety of technical and creative projects and fields including video games, newspapers, and robotics. Interested primarily in making people the best at what they can be, from art and programming to learning to cook. Always looking for interesting problems to solve.

          Specialties

Finding clever solutions to complex problems in a variety of different realms. Using automation to reduce drudgery in employees work and enable them to do the things they do best. Completing projects.

 

Michael Prichard takes the third-person approach to the LinkedIn Summary, one which allows for cross-posting on several platforms:

Michael founded WillowTree Apps, Inc., a boutique apps and mobile web development company, in June 2007. WillowTree Apps is based in Charlottesville, VA and currently has an in-house team of 28+ including designers and developers. They have released over 100 apps and currently work with a wide variety of companies including Game Show Network, Johnson & Johnson, and the University of Virginia. WillowTree works with Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile 7 as well as Mobile Web technologies.

Prior to WillowTree Apps, Michael founded, grew and sold an email archiving software business and worked as a development consultant for many large companies including IBM, State Street, and Adobe. He has the unique ability to understand business needs, communicate effectively with executive management and then guide a group of technical staff to deliver an enterprise solution.

Jennifer Bryerton takes the first-person approach, and summarizes her career and aspirations:

For more than 10 years, I have been a publishing partner in Ivy Publications, best known for our Charlottesville Family Living magazine and website (formerly Albemarle Family). As a small start-up company, everything from editorial to putting magazines out on stands could be part of my day. Now, with a fabulously talented team of employees, my partner Robin Bethke and I are able to specialize more. As art director, Robin keeps our award-winning design strong while I supervise content including the work of our editorial team as well as advertising sales. I am a firm believer, especially with a strong niche like ours, that ads are content and we work for the best fit for readers and businesses alike. The quarterly Charlottesville Welcome Book has led us further into the tourism market with another hot and targeted niche magazine. Locally Charlottesville, a series of directories for Family, Home and Women, focuses on promoting the local businesses that make our area so unique. And our newest publication, the Charlottesville Welcome Book Wedding Directory, is a multi-media planning tool for destination weddings in Charlottesville. My background in education administration, as a teacher and as the owner of a consulting business, helps to give us an edge when we launch new projects, driving the company forward with research and enthusiasm. Robin and I are famous for having new ideas percolating and we look forward to implementing new design, editorial and even new publications and events in the years to come.

 

Crystal Icenhour takes an approach that blends the purpose of her company and statements about her professional goals:

Phthisis Diagnostics recently launched a novel nucleic acid extraction kit that is fast, easy, and simple. The E-Sphere Simple NA Kit takes the complexity out of extractions. http://phthisisdiagnostics.com

My professional goal is to develop business and scientific skills, bridging the translational gap between these two worlds. In Phthisis Diagnostics, my goal is to make modern, easy, and cost-effective diagnostic tests for a variety of infectious diseases. Long-term, these diagnostic tests will be modified for use in developing countries, resulting in a profound impact on global health.

Each of these provides a good example for you to follow when crafting your own LinkedIn professional summary.

Nov 16
Love0

How Social Media Has Actually Made Marketing Easier, Not Harder

By Communications, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Media

There are a LOT of articles and blog posts out there warning the business world that social marketing is the One True Way. CMOs that are not using Big Data acquired through myriad, massively integrated social platforms might be out of a job soon. Social has replaced advertising. Etc. Etc. Etc. It can be very intimidating if you’re used to marketing your products in more traditional ways. The ROI of a social program can be hard to calculate. There are many companies making a nice living just trying to help marketers compute it!

But I’d like to argue that the era of social marketing has actually made your job easier.

Social tools add complexity, it’s true. They can fragment the marketing budgets and team. Hooking all these social listening and sharing platforms up so you can make sense of your customers’ online habits and predilections can add a lot of work, both in the short and long term.

But the transparency of messaging that social marketing requires actually takes a lot off the table. Since spin and backpedaling are really not effective anymore, it’s actually easier to decide what to do. The kind of content you create, the strategy you develop, and the systems you use to communicate can all be much simpler because they are designed to do one thing–explain what you’re going to do and how. You’re not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince someone to buy something of questionable value anymore. Their peers are going to provide the validating information about you and your offering that they need, not you.

It all comes down to doing what you promise and then enabling the satisfied to amplify their satisfaction via social channels. No more lying, covering, shaping, hiding, reacting. All you have to do is explain, clarify, and deliver.

Isn’t that why you’re in business to begin with?

Enhanced by Zemanta
Nov 15
Love0

Five Ways to Use Social Media to Attract Talent, Boost Recruiting

By Communications, Social Media

This week our president said that our priority needs to be on jobs and growth. Our local economy seems to be on board with that, as this week’s Hiring and Social Media workshop had a great turnout. I partnered with my colleague Mickey Kampsen of Management Recruiters International of Charlottesville to offer an educational session for people in charge of hiring and recruiting for their companies. The representatives that participated were from very large international companies down to small shops; all with many of the same challenges and needs.

Mickey’s expertise is on the recruiting and HR side of business, while Jaggers Communications offers expertise in social media. Our firm HAS been engaged to recruit community managers and social media/marketing associates and team members, so we have gained first-hand experience in the recruiting field, as well.

In the workshop, we shared five ways anyone in a hiring position can use the tools of social media to attract better talent and boost recruiting efforts:

  1. Use monitoring tools such as Topsy to watch competitors or other companies you admire, to see new jobs posted and their techniques for attracting talent.
  2. Use monitoring tools that search the social web to qualify a candidate and see if they’re behaving themselves professionally on social networks.
  3. Use the LinkedIn company page to full advantage, and further your reach into internal referral sources by growing your network and encouraging colleagues to improve their profiles.
  4. Blog — even in regulated industries you can blog to share your corporate culture, the stories of the  people who represent your team, and a sense of what it’s like to work within your company.
  5. Consider (especially if your company is large) establishing a Facebook page just for the hiring division of your company. Marriott takes this approach with success,  as does Unilever and Boeing — all great examples of how this can be done successfully.

We’re excited to see this much interest in jobs and growth on a local level and look forward to assisting companies with the next stage of sharing their stories through the growth cycle.