When you’re engaging with anyone online, rule #3 is “Be The Gatekeeper”
You should never be a roadblock. Give customers a clear path. Just being there isn’t enough. Communication has to go both ways. You now have access to incredible feedback you used to have to pay a lot of money for. Lead customers to where they need to be, and listen to what they have to say.
(if you missed it, see Rule #2: Address The Need)
When you’re engaging with anyone online, rule #2 is “Address The Need”.
Everyone needs something. We listen, we may even understand what we’re being asked — but it that what they really need? If you’re engaging online, make sure you’re actually addressing the need.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently after a discussion with a support rep. A customer on Twitter asked if the upload timeout could be increased. The rep very diligently found the answer to her question — “Unfortunately, no.” I asked the rep why the customer was asking for this. A little investigation showed that the customer was trying to upload a file and it was failing. Was file size the issue? No, it wasn’t. So she really didn’t need someone to increase the timeout, she needed someone to figure out why the upload was failing for her. Armed with that, the rep was able to work on addressing what the customer needed, not just what she asked for.
(if you missed it, see Rule #1: Be Real)
When you’re engaging with anyone online, rule #1 is “Be Real”.
The world is full of bots (both human and digital.) Your customers are people, it’s ok to be a person t00.
So you’ve listened and maybe engaged in social media, now what?
It’s important to be there since the conversations are already happening, but have you integrated that work into your overall strategy? I was on a call Friday with a PR firm talking about social media strategy. When I think about what many of us often do (and yes, I’m including myself in this), I can’t help but think of a children’s soccer game.
We may have passion and focus, but we’re usually just chasing the ball.
Many of us get so caught up in the tactical execution, we forget to look at the overall strategy. Two great posts to get you thinking about this more are Leslie Poston on Social Media Curves and Shannon Paul on The Missing Ingredient in Most Social Media Strategies. Leslie discuses working from front end goals to setting “appropriate expectations” on the back end. Shannon gets to the heart of the biggest problem, that most social media strategies are missing “actual strategy.”
We’re often substituting tactics for strategy. One of the questions I discussed with the PR team on my call is “what are we trying to get out of this social media engagement?” Shannon offers five “Steps to Defining the Strategy in Your Social Media Strategy” in The Missing Ingredient in Most Social Media Strategies:
There’s a ton of advice out there that you ignore social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) at your own peril. I’m having a difficult time finding best practices on when you may need to use ignoring as an approach — or is it something you should never do?
I’d love to know how you feel on this. Is it ok? If yes, when? Feel free to comment below, send me a tweet (@kevinmic), or email me directly.
Thanks!
-k
Communicating your organization’s message, whether that message pertains to a sales, marketing or support function should always take your audiences needs into consideration. The problem tends to be that professionals write professionally. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a place for technical jargon, buzzwords and catch phrases – but unless your message is specific to a technical or niche market, your audience may be more inclined to walk away and choose other options. This has the potential to damage your brand image and bottom line.
Clearly defining your goals and understanding that your audience’s goals and your organization’s goals need to be in tune with one another is very important, yet the needs of your audience are more than just ‘widget A’ or ‘concept B’, they are driven by issues of belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization.
Creating a sense of belonging makes your audience feel valued.
Enabling deeper and more personal relationships with your audience has the potential to make them active participants in the defining and creative processes of products, services and solutions. Setting clear standards for your ‘Brand Personality’ and simple directions for your employees and co-workers, if done with your audience’s perspective in mind, allows your organization to develop brand trust and customers to develop brand affinity.
When your audience is looking for assistance with finding a solution or resolving an issue, the last thing that they need is someone communicating in language that is technical or using language that implies a lack of knowledge or experience. Though this tends to go both ways, using language your customers don’t understand may turn them off to your brand, but simplifying the language too much may wind up insulting them. Conversational language beats jargon any day!
Creating avenues for your audience to respond and communicate in a perceived real-time way develops a sense of ownership and true brand trust. This empowers your audience to:
In the end, your audience is depending on you. They are looking to you for solutions, support and recognition – yet they are also looking to find a home for their personal fulfillment, even if only on a professional level.
When I was studying interpersonal communication at Ithaca College in the early 90s, one of the concepts we looked at was whether your environment encouraged or discouraged communication. The terms I learned were: sociopetal (environment encourages communication) and sociofugal (environment discourages communication.)
Sociofugal Environment
Sociopedal Environment
Determining if a physical environment encourages or discourages communication is a pretty straightforward process. You may look at how the chairs are arranged in a room or where the food stations are placed at a party. Evaluating how we’re encouraging/discouraging communication online can be more challenging. It’s obvious that a blog post with comments closed discourages communication. But what if your goal is for blog commenters to interact with each other? Does it make more sense to have threaded comments so it’s clear which comment someone is replying to?
When designing your blog/community/site/app, you need to know your goals to determine if you’re getting what you need. Are you looking to encourage discussion among your customers? To encourage conversation directly with you?
A form to rate content and submit comments that doesn’t show previous ratings or comments like in Microsoft support articles (at bottom of article) will encourage communication with you directly, but not among customers. While an approach like Amazon customer reviews, encourages some interaction among customers.
It’s worth stepping back (or getting someone with fresh eyes) to look at how you’ve designed your blog/community/site/app. Are you encouraging or discouraging communication?
For the September, 2009 Social Media Breakfast NH (#smbnh) at the Manchester, NH Public Library I gave this talk about my rules for community. I call it ‘Kev’s Rules for Community’.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TUzBQ5TYeA
I try to live these rules every day–whether I’m engaging online via twitter, blogs, or any other tools. The rules are simple:
These rules are part of a project I’m working on to get the Dimdim support team on Twitter, directly engaging with customers. My goal was to go beyond just teaching the tools. Anyone can create a Twitter account and jump into the conversation. I wanted to make sure we are consistent in our approach.
I personally have a hard time following rules if there are too many to remember. What are your rules? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter (@kevinmic)
-k
[Special thanks to Matt Turner (@onmatt, www.onmatt.com) for helping to pull all the examples together for this talk, and Leslie Poston (@geechee_girl, www.uptownuncorked.com) for the opportunity to speak. I do so love to talk.]
As someone reviewing resumes for a Social Media & Web Marketing Specialist position, I’d like to share some tips. In the first 48 hours I had about 100 people email me. I’m guessing other employers are having similar experiences. Some of these tips really aren’t social media specific, but take my advice:
Everyone wants to stand out, but if you create more work for the person reviewing resumes, chances are you won’t be considered.
I’m doing my best to review every applicant who has contacted me, but if it takes me more than a few minutes to get an impression, I’ll admit you go on the “no thank you” pile.
Tip 1: Resumes are still used
It’s great you have a LinkedIn profile or that you keep information about yourself on your web site. If 99% of other candidates are still sending a resume, having to go find information about you creates more work. Not good. It may be a personal preference, but I try to stay organized and my inbox expands by several hundred a day, for me it’s easier if you send your resume as an attachment. No need to attach your cover letter, your email can say the same thing.
Tip 2: If your resume doesn’t include links to you & your work, you aren’t presenting yourself as a social media pro
I hate to be harsh about this one, but if I’m looking to hire someone it’s because I need help. (Meaning I’m already overloaded.) If I have to lookup your information to know you have a professional online presence, you haven’t made it easy for me. I’m not saying you should provide a laundry list of all your sites, just the ones you feel are key. You want the links to point to you and your work. It’s your portfolio, not the kitchen sink, just include the best.
Tip 3: Be easy to find
It should be a given, but just in case you’re new to this, if you make it past an initial review of applicants, expect the next step will be that someone Googles you. Are the links that come up ones you would want a prospective employer to see? Do you come up in the results at all?
When I get so many files, I typically save them all off into a folder. Naming your resume ‘resume2.doc’ makes it that much harder for me to find you again later. At a minimum, make sure your name is in the file name.
I’m sure there are many things I’m not thinking of, but I have to get back to finding the right person for this role. Any other suggestions? Leave a comment.
-k
Background
One of the first people I met at my first tweetup in August 2008 was Alexa Scordato (@alexa). She was just moving to the Boston area to work for Barry Libert at Mzinga. Alexa and I spoke for less than a minute, but I made sure to follow her on Twitter. Since then, I’ve had more opportunities to talk with Alexa at events in the Boston area and even joined her a few weeks ago at an “Apple Pickin” tweetup in Stow, MA she helped organize. Alexa has a passion for social media and technology. She’s active in the blog community, working with some of the industry’s A-list bloggers, and has been working on “bridging the gap between Microsoft gurus and MySpace addicts.”
Tools
Alexa uses a relatively basic set tools for managing her online conversations.
When it comes to blogs, Alexa remains very active in the blogosphere, but doesn’t rely on any feed/rss readers or Google alerts.
Usage
Alexa follows conversations on Twitter primarily using the Twitter site and Twitter Search . Her approach is a bit different from others I’ve talked to. She is very comfortable joining existing conversations and starting new ones, but views the Twitter stream as an ongoing conversation.
For the blogs she follows, she doesn’t read every single blog post. She picks up on the current conversation when she can. Alexa knows many bloggers and will often call a blogger to discuss what’s being discussed on their blog. She’d rather have an hour conversation by phone to better understand the timeline. She keeps a strong focus on the personal relationships, with the understanding that you can’t keep up with everything.
Alexa grew up with technology (as with most millenials). She has a more native use of technology, not working to follow any specific “best practices.” As an early beta tester for Facebook and early Twitter adopter, the technology is just a new platform for the same type of conversations.
On Twitter, Alexa will typically check someone’s profile to see if they are in the Boston area. As someone new to the area, she is using the platform to help her meet more people. With Facebook, she typically connects to people she knows well or meets in non-social media contexts. For Alexa, the quality of the connections is more important than the number. She goes for higher quality connections.
When I asked her about how much time she spends a day on social media, Alexa asked a great question. “Was I including interactive sites like the NY Times?” I wasn’t — though I’ll need to give that more thought for future interviews. If she just focuses on the “social media/social network” sites she uses, she is currently at around 2-3 hours per day. Before taking on her new job, she used to spend 12-14 hours per day.
Insights
The way you conduct yourself in real life should apply online.
As I mentioned already, for Alexa it’s about higher quality connections and natural conversations. To help maintain this, she keeps her use organic and doesn’t try to force connections with tools. She uses a great metaphor, “If you were at a party would you want to know what everyone in the party is saying?”
Alexa feels you lose the “connectedness” the more people you follow. It’s about understanding what people need and “give so you can get.” She brought up the example of the teenage girls who are creating wildly successful MySpace fan pages. It’s clear they understand what people need and they are willing to let it grow organically.
Alexa believes that social media as it stands isn’t scalable if you are going for quality connections and natural conversations. In real life, who has 1,000+ good friends? She defines good meaning the type of person who would drop everything if you were in need.
Advice
personal is the new professional
Alexa sees the need for more “personal” with the “professional.” She’s found there is “no shortcut” when building your relationships. It needs to be organic and we need to catch ourselves so we don’t end up being socially inept in our attempts to communicate on the web.
For those getting started, Alexa recommends Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn . Facebook because it is a more living breathing social space. Twitter because it’s hot. It’s where the cool kids are. And LinkedIn because it is your digital resume. She’s even heard that some companies are only allowing their employees to have LinkedIn profiles.
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