Category

Social Media

Jul 25
Love0

Social Media Fatigue: Why Communications Professionals Should Pay Attention to the Overwhelmed

By Communications, Public Relations, Social Media

Rusty SpeidelToday’s post is from Rusty Speidel, vice president of marketing at Encell Technologies. Rusty is a 20-year veteran of the internet/online marketing space, specializing in alternative energy marketing and user experiences.

I’m a one-man Marketing department for an alternative energy startup. As such, I rely on a lot of consulting assistance to set and execute against my company’s marketing objectives. We use services from all types of vendors; IT consultants, software developers, web design firms, PR firms, even procurement and manufacturing firms. It’s part of being a startup and I actually relish the freedom it gives us to act quickly on ideas. I come from a user-experience background, so I like staying connected to the latest trends in marketing from the customer’s point of view, including social media tools, customer-controlled communication and transparency. In a former life I actually built an entire social network about auto racing, so I appreciate the philosophies and processes of connection and sharing.

But lately, I’ve been feeling a little fatigued. OK, a LOT fatigued. Suddenly everywhere I go there are “opportunities to connect.” Whether it’s loyalty programs like the CVS Card, Cardagin, and Groupon, location –based social tools like Foursquare or Places, any one of thousands of social media “experts” that claim to have all the answers for this new marketing paradigm (like Google+), or the hair-trigger salesmen that react to any request for online information with four phone calls and seven emails within 30 minutes, it’s all just getting exhausting. It feels like if I don’t react to all these “opportunities” it’s me that’s missing out, not plugged in, not up to speed. I can’t even order lunch or buy a quart of oil without being asked if I’ve joined this or that rewards program, or if I’ll go online to take a survey. I’m actually starting to get angry with these poor cashiers.

At work, it’s not a lot better. We make batteries. Large batteries. We are not a consumer brand, we are a large-scale energy wholesaler. While I agree that using the social platforms to create thought leadership in the alternative energy space online is appropriate, I am not particularly worried about reaching fans on Facebook. I don’t need a Twitter-based customer service department yet. And yet every PR and marketing assistance proposal I receive suggests I need just that. Everyone’s climbing on the social media bandwagon so aggressively that I just shut down.

Everyone just STOP. Stop now.

I don’t WANT to find my service station on Facebook. I don’t NEED a rewards program for toothpaste. I don’t feel particularly stressed over the fact that our company is not completely plugged in to every social network available RIGHT NOW. I do not need to share every little detail of my personal or professional life on YouTube. I DEFINITELY don’t need another lecture on “how to create a social presence online.” What I NEED is expertise in mapping my company’s needs to strategies that reach my customers where they are, not where the expertise is headed. None of our competitors rely much on social platforms and 70% of our customers still make buying decisions at trade shows. Why doesn’t that matter?

It feels like the old snake oil days, when gypsies roamed the west on covered wagons hawking the latest solution to whatever ailed folks back then. Today’s sarsparilla is SEO, social media monitoring, blogging advice, video production services, reputation management, letting the customer tell you what he wants, etc. It’s totally, completely overwhelming. Sometimes I think the industry likes to keep it that way so they can make a living explaining it.

I am sure I am not alone. Communications professionals take note: there are other disciplines out there besides communications. They don’t all see the world the same way you do, and the overload is starting to hurt the head. Soon it will start to hurt your bottom line.

Jul 22
Love0

WTF? Friday: Whining and Blogging Don’t Mix

By Social Media

Today’s post is brought to you by Ken Mueller, the owner of Inkling Media, a small Social Media and marketing company in Lancaster, PA. He’s quite possibly the coolest guy I know, and deserves a lot of pie.

I have a secret about MJ: she’s a whiner.

Just the other day she told me “if I ever say to you, ‘oh, I’ll just get up early and do it’, make sure I stay up late instead. I’m a pathetic morning person”

Well, as I write this, it’s Thursday night, and MJ just said to me, via g-chat, “You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking I’ll get up early to write WTF Friday”

Now being the observant person I am, I realized this was a test. And thankfully I passed the test. Sorta. I responded, “I’m thinking that my very good and wonderful friend MJ should stay up and just do it tonight”. Her response?

She whined.

As in, “Wahhhhhhh”.

Yup.

And then suddenly, I went too far. I went from supportive Internet friend to enabler. I not only came up with an idea for her WTF Friday post (this one), but I offered to write it for her. Actually, I just started writing it while she was off getting pie. For her. Not me.

So here it is, a WTF Friday post about whiners who don’t want to blog, even though they know they should (that would be Marijean), and the importance of having others who hold you accountable (that would be me).

But seriously, having that community of people is important. Marijean and I both have others who push us and encourage us, and allow us to vent and complain, and in her case, whine. More often than not, she and I are the ones that hold each other accountable.

One of the keys to blogging is being consistent, especially when you have an anchor feature like WTF Friday that people expect to see.

Oh, and have I mentioned that Marijean and I have never met in person? In fact, we actually met online by accident. And yet we have been able to develop a friendship that allows us to push one another, and whole each other accountable with our work and blogging.

So what have we learned?

  1. MJ is a whiner
  2.  MJ gets pie. Ken works.
  3.  If you’re going to blog, you need to be consistent
  4.  It’s important to have others who can push you when you just don’t feel like blogging.

Blogging and Social Media are major commitments. You can’t just dabble. Make the commitment, and stick to it, and find others who can help you as you move forward.

Oh, and I wouldn’t mind a slice of Key Lime pie right about now…

 

Jul 21
Love0

Social Media Assignment # 11: Find Your Top 5 Ambassadors on Klout

By Social Media

Stop and think for a minute: do you know who your best customers are? Do you know who the ambassadors are — the people who are most likely spreading positive word of mouth about you, your products and services?

You’ve been using Twitter for business for some time, and have established a following. If you’ve been engaging with the community, you have, no doubt, attracted people who support you and share what you tweet. Klout is a site that measures Twitter influence, but it has additional business benefit. It helps you identify who on Twitter is most influenced by your Twitter feed and to learn their potential for carrying that influence forward.

Let’s take the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport Twitter feed as an example. @CHOAirport uses its feed to provide airport news updates, special deals and other information. The account is managed by the executive director of the airport, Barbara Hutchinson. In addition, posts to the airport’s Facebook page, managed by my firm and an airport employee, update the Twitter feed as well.

If we look at the top five people the @CHOAirport account influences, we see some strong relationships emerge.

I see myself at the top, and I should hope so, since the airport is a client! Second is Jeff Uphoff, an airport commission member, pilot and frequent flier. Jeff is someone who helps spread airport news regularly. The third is the local news weather team. The airport has a partnership with The Newsplex and hosts a weathercam that looks out over the runway.

Relay Foods shares CHO’s philosophy of  supporting local business. Allison Linney is a local business owner who flies frequently, always flies CHO, and enjoys spreading the word on behalf of other Charlottesville businesses.

At a glance, you can see the Klout scores of each of these ambassadors. When the airport shares valuable information via Twitter, these people often retweet that information to their followers. The sharing and number of people reached grows exponentially. It’s fast, effective and measurable.

Do you know who the ambassadors for your business are right now? Has it changed, or could it change? What are you doing to reward and reciprocate with those who participate in your community?

Jul 18
Love0

Connecting to History through the Socialization of Food: A Morning with Leni Sorensen

By Social Media

I spent the most amazing morning this weekend learning to can peaches and tomatoes. I’m fascinated by and deeply attracted to learning skills mastered by generations before me. (See my passion for homemade pie at Pie it Forward). 

Mostly these skills are related to food; growing it, cooking it, preserving it and preparing it in ways that I never learned as a child. While I was thrilled to spend the time learning a valuable method of preserving the dozens of tomatoes that are about to pour forth from our fabulous back yard vegetable garden, I was even more enthralled with my teacher, Leni Sorensen.

Dr. Leni Sorensen is the African-American Research Historian for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. Leni is a treasure; an endless source of experience, passion for craft, thoughtful consuming, preparing and creating and a gentle, nurturing soul. She is an actual grandmother and someone you want to adopt you the minute you meet her. Leni welcomed me into her kitchen and her garden and I was immediately at home.

It may be partly the culture I live in; in Charlottesville, Va., locavores outnumber Baptists* and bring to the consuming of local foods a fervor some cultures reserve for religion. It’s counter to the culture I grew up and worked in, even five or six years ago, thinking little of the origin of my food and less still about the economy and practices required to provide me out of season produce.

Leni, through teaching students like me to can fruits and vegetables, to bake bread, to cut and freeze beef and pork, is spreading a kind of retr0-socialization, so that we may provide more sustainable lifestyles for our families.

The contrast is not lost on me that my technology-driven peers, professional women grafted to smartphones, bloggers and massive consumers of electronics who, at the same time are gardeners, knitters, crafters. We cook, shop and plan our meals around a local structure and try to reach back to a time when food was healthier; life, simpler. We find each other via social networks and learn from one another’s content online. I was introduced to Leni via a friend who is a food blogger, (who I also knew online long before we met in person) and discovered her classes via Facebook.

It’s kind of fascinating, isn’t it? Technology is bringing us together to focus and learn arts that were it not for the ability to connect in this way, would undoubtedly fade out of our consciousness. I’m grateful for people like Leni and for these tools that allow us to find our passions and connect with others that share them. You can find information about Leni’s classes and what she’s up to in her kitchen and garden on her website, The View from Indigo House.

*I’m not sure if there are actually more locavores than Baptists in Charlottesville but I will tell you this: in the five and a half years I’ve lived here I’ve met dozens of people who are confirmed and self-described locavores and have yet to meet someone who told me they are Baptist. Very scientific, I know.