June 28, 2009 | Branding, Communication | Connie

So you’ve built up your personal brand to superstar status. Everyone is watching. You are setting the pace and rocking it as an A-lister. Your community loves & adores you. Everything is awesome right? What could go wrong?

An unintentional mistake …

I’ve watched it happen over the past couple of years. The blogging community is a warm tight knit community. But as with any group the leaders are held to high standards. They’re expected to set the bar.

It’s easy to sit back & watch the kerfluffle unfold. In the past I haven’t said much out loud because it was ‘safer’ to support people in the back channel. We went thru the puppet fiasco with Shel Israel. I got to know him at a personal level by supporting him in the back channel. The puppet videos weren’t funny if you put yourself in his shoes. And there is the person on Twitter who has a parody going. I’m not interested in being on their radar.

This spring I watched when Jeremiah Owyang made a slip on his blog. We talked by phone & he told me that many of the anonymous comments were from the same IP. I was glad to be able to offer my support & suggestions for weathering the storm.

Most recently I saw a post on SocialMediaToday criticizing Gary Vaynerchuk’s PR blogger campaign to promote his book, Crush It. I received the same email & agree that there was one sentence that won’t motivate me to engage:

On your side, anything you do with him is going to get an influx of readers to your blog due to his massive and loyal following.

I was interested in participating in promoting Gary’s book because:

• as a past librarian, books are amazing
• we were invited to suggest how we wanted to share the book with our community/network (allowing creativity)

I didn’t know Gary & so his personal brand wasn’t a motivation (hence that last sentence didn’t resonate with me).

What are the ramifications: At the time I put my opinion on the post, 600 people had viewed the post. I see that 2000 have now. I understand John Cass’ intention to use examples to teach others but at what expense to Gary’s brand? We agreed that we get bad pitches every day but this one came from a social media superstar.

The conversation was taken up on Shel Holtz & Neville Hobson’s live interview on Friday. Gary apologized & said that he realizes that some things could have been done differently.

My take aways:

• I disagree that an effective blogger campaign requires reading each person’s blog to find what motivates them. It’s not scalable. (Gary was trying to grow his community – the email just didn’t describe his book to connect with the audience)
• scaling a brand & connecting with potential new audiences on a personal level is difficult. How can one connect & build relationships?
• empowering others to help you with your work has its risks. They need to understand the space because even though this email was signed by someone else, it still represented Gary’s brand.

Gary graciously expressed his apologies many times in the interview. He did say that of the 500 emails, he had a 50% response rate which is really good. What success rate do professional agencies have?

I look forward to seeing Gary’s book (and the other nine! He signed an unprecedented 10 book deal). You can read John Cass’ follow up is here & I respect his opinions. John’s intent was to use it as a learning experience. After commenting on the post Gary sent me a personal note & we are now connected. He works 19 hrs a day & I am guilty of that too. We need to support each other as we’re all going to make mistakes. Let’s speak up for what we believe in & not be too hard on each other. What will happen when you stumble?

Photo credit: gicol/Flickr

2 Comments

June 26, 2009 | Books & Resources, Events | Connie

This past week I was at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston. Before Alistair Croll started his session he apologized with a quick forewarning, “I’m going to be beating up on Community Managers”. I’m fine with that! I think that we need to be pushed out of our comfort zone.

Alistair started his presentation with – Community gardening is going to change. It’s about capitalism. Companies are concerned with the bottom line & everything needs to be measured. He wasn’t hard on community managers at all. His challenge was simply: We need to take it to the next level for it to be taken seriously in the Enterprise.

I totally agree & echoed the importance of measurement at my session on the day before. His presentation took it to the next level with a focus on measurement and is aligned with the book that he’s co-authored with Sean Powers, Complete Web Monitoring.

Measurement & reporting are key to building value around the community/social media role. The only way to grow the position is to provide concrete data supporting how it’s contributing to the goals of the organization. And in most cases that’s to increase revenue.

The Big Quandary – I can’t measure social media, right?

Everything is measureable now. Web analytics are mainstream and provide the statistics related to your site. Now conversations online can also be gathered, measured & analyzed in a number of ways. There are many free tools as well as professional ones. I work with Techrigy SM2 & we offer a Freemium version so you can get a feel for aggregating the conversations. (Many use it for their consulting businesses).

Alistair took it one step further. He shared ideas that make it easier for your web analytics software (Google Analytics in particular & it’s free) to track your ‘campaigns’. I’ve also been helping my Techrigy customers do likewise so they can maximize their measurement capabilities.

Why is this so important?

1.  Show Value – Quantitative data is the proof in the pudding. Every other department has reporting requirements, so this isn’t any different.

2. Grow your role – The only way that you’re going to get more resources (ie: time & people) is by providing concrete numbers on your progress.

3. Increased budget – Budgets are only provided to those that can justify them.

5. Expand the benefit to the company across more departments. We already know that there are huge benefits to talking with the customers across the touchpoints of the organization. The only way that more people will be empowered to work directly with the customers is by proving the value of that with numbers.

6. Job security – If you’re providing excellent service your organization will sense that. But how will they know what impact you’re having?

I look forward to reading their book! I predict that it will be a key read for anyone in a social media role.

Check out Alistair’s slide deck from his presentation.

What are you measuring? Is it showing the value of your role?

1 Comment

June 21, 2009 | Events | Connie

Working remotely is great, but I love the opportunity to connect with people face to face! In the next couple of days I will get to meet my good friends from Boston as well as many of social media’s finest.

If you’re in the area, join us! I want to meet you!

Monday night - Rachel Happe & Jim Storer are two people who really know community! They have founded The Community Roundtable, a resource for Community Managers to network & learn together in a peer environment. Rachel & Jim have put together a meetup for me in Boston. Join us to talk about all things community!

Dutch treat drinks/dinner at The Barking Crab

Monday, June 22, 2009

6:00 PM - 10:00 PM (ET)

Sign up (limited spaces)

On Tuesday night, there’s a meetup organized by Peter Kim. It’s another great opportunity to connect.

Here’s an overview of my half day workshop on Monday:

Session Title: Redefine Customer Communication: A Framework for Social Media Success #e2conf5
Date: 6/22/2009
Time: 1:00 PM
Room: Lewis

Sponsored by one of my FAVORITE resources!

Are you Ready to Redefine Customer Communication? Customer engagement is being revolutionized by new tools and methodologies in social media. Leading enterprises which embrace the adoption of social media are experiencing profound improvements in how they engage with customers, whether in marketing, product development, sales or customer service. Online consumer conversations offer companies the opportunity to realize increased customer satisfaction & loyalty, shortened sales & product development cycles, expanded markets, competitive insight & more. This half day workshop will discuss a framework for how social media can be adopted in business and the strategies that will help you to effectively connect with your customers in a direct and cost efficient way.

Course Outline

* Explore key concepts & methodologies for monitoring online conversations & community related activity with relationship of how they relate to your business needs.

* What are your business objectives for listening, engaging & supporting community?

* Breakout sessions to explore strategies for internal, B2B, & B2C communities

* Who should coordinate this effort? Definition of the emerging social media/community oriented role

* A review of compelling case studies to support discussions with executive level & stakeholders

* An overview of supporting resources

Who Should Attend
This workshop is intended for anyone interested in better serving their customers & improving their products to reflect consumers expressed needs & desires. This includes executive level & management from public relations, communications, marketing, product development and customer service.

You Will Learn
Join us in discussions of strategies that guide you with specific steps to identify online consumer conversations and how they will contribute to your business objectives.

No Comments

June 14, 2009 | Events | Connie

This week I’m making the trip back to the home office in Rochester, New York. Our newest team members from San Francisco will be joining us. It’ll be fun getting together again with the Techrigy guys!

We’re having a social media meetup in Rochester on Thurs evening at Label 7 at 6 pm. It’ll be great to reconnect with the local enthusiasts. Thanks to @susanbeebe, @markfrisk & @emiltsch for your enthusiasm & help organizing!

On Saturday we’re flying to Boston for Enterprise 2.0. It doesn’t start until Monday but it’s the first trip to the east coast so we’re going to do some exploring.

On Monday I’m doing a half day workshop at Enterprise 2.0 on Community Strategy & Connecting with your customers. They have a great line up of speakers so I look forward to attending & meeting people too.

More info on my workshop here:

Redefine Customer Communication: A Framework for Social Media Success

Monday, June 22,  1:00 - 4:15pm

I’ll post my presentation after. If you would like to attend I can find a discount code for you. Just let me know!

I look forward to seeing you in Rochester or Boston. Connect with me by email or by Twitter if you’d like to meet.

1 Comment

June 8, 2009 | Inspiration, Motivation & Leadership | Connie

How many meetings have you sat through? Are some of them interminably long and you wonder why an email wasn’t just sent out? In my previous life I would drive 2 hrs one way for regional meetings that were four hours long. Sometimes it felt like that information could have been passed on in an email or two.

Working online has taught me a couple of things. Well really it’s only one: to be succinct! Long ago Jeremiah Owyang said he wouldn’t read my email if it was longer than a few bullet points. So the world has him to thank for my brevity in writing.

My newest skill is that I can call a team meeting and get everything accomplished in a half hour! For this I have my CEO, Aaron Newman, to thank. He’s not into meetings & we appreciate that. But they are a necessity for communication (especially considering my working remotely).

Then I happened up this article by Steve Roesler, Better Meetings, Better Leadership. I like the way he has divided meetings into 5 types based on the amount of participation expected. And he ties it into leadership skills. As a community leader stop & think about how you call meetings and what type are they? I’m putting my comments in parenthesis.

1. the Tell Mode – no participation is expected (umm send an email please)

2. the Sell Mode – in addition to telling, you want buy in (please take some time to make sure that the team is involved in the decision/policy! Then you won’t need to ask for buy in because they were part of creating the solution)

3. the Test Mode – you allow for some input (but this is sometimes met with apathy. Again make sure the team is involved in creating solutions)

4. the Consult Mode – you encourage participation & no decision has been made (note Steve comments that the leader listens. Aren’t these types of meetings more interesting to attend?)

5. the Join Mode – everyone arrives at a decision together (there’s nothing better than attending a meeting, participating, and feeling as if you’ve been heard & your input has been taken into account)

I see meetings as a place where we need to shift our organizations into being transparent and aspiring for the new culture that supports everyone being involved in social media and working with customers. The power shift is going to be away from the top down so will our meeting style need to reflect that?

If you’re leading meetings what type of message are you sending? And when you attend the various types of meetings, which type do you prefer?

1 Comment

June 6, 2009 | Comm Mgr Role | Connie

There are many analogies about community building. Some say it’s like gardening. Planting seeds in fertile ground, then providing the seedlings with the things they need to flourish. As the garden grows it continually needs maintenance and ongoing support (water & fertilizer). Another is that a community is like a party where the community manager is the host.

I think that the community manager role is like parenting. Parenting has it’s challenges and there are no specific instructions. Each family has it’s own culture, routines, traditions and expectations. As a parent you wonder about things. My daughter is 20 and I’ve went thru many phases.

Here are the parallels that I see.

• a continual worry – are you doing the right thing by everyone?
• are you treating everyone fairly & not showing favoritism?
• are you encouraging everyone to spend time together & participate?
• are you giving the community space to grow independently?
• are you empowering them to be individuals? yet encouraging them to learn together?
• are you ensuring a happy, safe environment for everyone to participate in?
• are you introducing new ideas and encouraging the community to grow, thrive and contribute to it’s own success?

And I view my colleagues as my work family. And that’s just as important as the community/customers.

• are you encouraging your team to learn new things about social media?
• do you encourage them to work cross functionally and build on each other’s knowledge, share new ideas & grow the company together?
• are you sensitive to to other’s needs and support your colleagues when they need it?
• do you work to identify & break down barriers in a constructive way?
• are you introducing innovative ideas that better your workplace?

I’m sure that you can think of more! And if it sounds like the position is part social worker, psychologist and parent there’s probably a reason for that! Those of us that thrive on this type of work enjoy the challenges of working with people, leading, teaching and empowering others.

Do you agree with my analogy?

3 Comments

May 31, 2009 | Events | Connie

I had the great fortune to meet Lee Aase at Community 2.0 & have dinner with him. You know how it is… two Minnesotans have to go to San Francisco to finally meet. (I met Lee Odden and Greg Swan in Las Vegas last fall. So there may be a trend).

Today at the Twitter Conference, Guy Kawasaki listed @MayoClinic for using Twitter in innovative ways.

The Mayo Clinic is in Rochester, Minnesota (an hour south of the Twin Cities). It’s famous for it’s health care and Lee is adding to it’s notoriety by using social media in creative ways. (He’s a fan of the Flip).

For his presentation he shared this video that was running on YouTube. Since then the couple was featured on Good Morning America. It’s such a heartwarming video!

Then you have to watch the interview that Lee does of them in their home. It’s too cute listening to 80 yr old’s talk about YouTube!

Great stuff eh?

2 Comments

May 26, 2009 | Comm Mgr Role | Connie

Not too long ago I wrote about the joy of being a change agent. I firmly believe that it’s the community manager’s role to push the boundaries. Some friends pushed back and suggested that it wasn’t advisable. But I think that the attitude of wanting to get things done is part of the leadership aspect.

I have one of these pins. They gave them out at a library conference. I kept mine on a bulletin board in my office. It suited me!

Community means relationships and that’s as much with coworkers as it is with customers. Over the years I have learned some easy ways to initiate change.

1. If you can make a difference – do it! People will appreciate your initiative.

2. Don’t just complain about an issue, offer solution(s). You’ll be amazed at how quickly things will be resolved if you do some homework and offer the solution. (As a bonus your ideas will either be used or kick off the discussion).

3. Plant seeds of your ideas and grow them. If you have an idea, do some research and present it. Sometimes the adoption of an idea depends on the amount of change & how well you can sell your idea. After working with two library boards I realized quickly that it sometimes took many months to convince my stakeholders of the importance of the idea. This was a valuable time that allowed me to consider it from many angles and create a more complete project. It was always sweet to see it come to life.

How do you effect change at your organization? I’d love to hear your tips & tricks.

5 Comments

May 23, 2009 | Blogging, Web Strategy | Connie

Last week in San Francisco I visited the offices of a company that had proudly launched their blog the previous day. They asked for feedback and as a Community Manager my first impulse is: ‘How can I help you?’. Here is my advice for them & all of you bravely venturing into this world.

First, I am not an expert on SEO but I have been successful. I invested a considerable amount of time reading up on it when I started blogging. And I never do anything part way! So how good is the search engine optimization on my blog? Google ‘community manager’ and see what you get:

What does this mean (ie: why should you care?):

1. Today I rank #1 for searching in Google for ‘community manager’. (I finally rank higher than my friend, Jeremiah Owyang, who rightfully deserves high regard for his Four Tenets article.) Yes, this is a competitive sport.

2. The organizer of Community 2.0 reached out to me to speak because she Googled ‘Community Manager’

3. My present client Googled ’social media community manager Minnesota’ and found me. Yes, I also live in Minnesota (And yes, I do consult on special projects)

Be forewarned that SEO (search engine optimization) is addictive.

But the payback is that a blog can greatly increase a site’s presence in the eyes of search engines. What does this mean? 

1. People who are looking for your topic can find you.

2. You don’t need to buy Google Ad’s for your site or advertise it.

3. It gives you presence as a leader in the niche and increases your brand presence.

Let’s translate that into business goals:

1. Customers seeking your product/resource will find you

2. Little or no $$’s need to be spent on marketing and advertising

3. Establishes your brand as an industry leader providing information and increases your brand visibility

Most importantly, it’s gratifying to give back to the community that supports you (whether as an individual or as a company)

My sister is my webmaster and she’s done a great job with mine. You can find her at SolutionsByHeidi

Here are her 3 suggestions in terms of what she feels are important:

1. Sitemap - submit to Google & Yahoo so that it’s crawled immediately
2. AllinOne SEO - this is a very popular WordPress plugin (esential is probably more like it)
3. Metatags - choose ones that people search for and don’t have too many

Content - This takes time but writing about related topics on a consistent basis builds SEO quickly. For example, I put up my blog in Sept 2007 and focused on Community Management in Dec 2007.

There is no need to worry about keyword density. (If you don’t know what I mean by that - don’t worry about it, be happy!)

Note: If someone hands you a list of corporate keywords & tells you to use them… you need to have a talk with them. Here are my suggestions:

1. Review the keywords. Are they words that your customers use in their daily conversations? (If not, it’s no use to use them).
2. Use a monitoring tool like Techrigy SM2 to analyze conversations around your brand & industry to analyze the author tags to identify the best keywords to use. Here’s an example of a tag cloud for my niche of Community Manager from SM2. (Do the corporate SEO keywords need tweaking? oh my! See what I mean?)
3. Writing around corporate keywords comes off stilted. Just write naturally & the organic SEO will happen. I always appreciated that @ShashiB got that when I worked with him at Network Solutions.

More importantly, make sure that your titles have keywords related to your topic in them. For example I used to put up a weekly post called Community Strategist Links to reinforce my SEO for that phrase. I also have a redirect from http://communitystrategist.com so the URL helps with my SEO. (ie: purchase a URL related to your keywords if possible).

And search engines also see the first paragraph, so getting your terms in there is also useful. (Make your point as soon as possible). If you scroll back up I slid in ‘Community Manager’ in the first paragraph. For awhile I was on a bent of disliking ‘community manager’ so I was using community building & community strategist but I realized that I was doing myself a disservice in terms of SEO.

Utilize internal links within your site. If you wrote about a related topic then link back to it. Search engines like seeing the interrelationship within your site. In number 2 just above I linked to a previous post that shows an Author Tag Cloud that I was referring to.

Search Engines love back links

Link love - Link to other blogs in your niche. As bloggers we all like to have backlinks. That builds our own SEO. And when you link to us, then we’ll come over, read your post, comment and then in the future link to you. This will increase your SEO and it creates a lot of happiness in the community at large. Not sure where to find related bloggers? Use Technorati Search and search by those with High Authority. (It will introduce you to new friends in your topic area too!)

Blog Roll - These are another type of backlinks but they aren’t viewed as highly by search engines as backlinks in the content. Link to the blogs that you read and as time goes on others will link back to you. If you get to know a blogger, you can ask if you could mutually link to each other’s blogs but please develop a relationship before asking (otherwise it’s tacky – I delete so many emails about this… If you don’t know me, don’t spam me!).

Commenting on other people’s blogs - This is really important if you’re going to be a blogger. It’s as much about participation as it is about writing. So go forth and read other people’s blogs in your niche and comment. Leave meaningful comments. If you have written a post that adds value to your comment then add the link. I call these legacy links or breadcrumbs because they create a path back to your blog for readers in the future. It also contributes to your SEO because it’s another type of backlink. People love getting comments and if you expect them then give first and ye shall receive.

Measuring your progress

Google Analytics is the best place to watch your blog presence grow. You can see what keywords are helping people find your blog with. You can also see where your traffic is coming from (both physical source as well as blog url’s). Google has set up a self paced course at Conversion University.

Claim your blog on Technorati - this shows your Rank, Authority & the number of backlinks. You can track your progress. Some bloggers feel that Technorati no longer has as much relevance.

Finally, Google your topic area. Once you start getting on the top one to three pages it will serve as additional motivation.

For more reading: Darren Rowse has tons of resources (that’s where I learned much from!)

What are your suggestions for improving blog SEO?

7 Comments

May 17, 2009 | Networking | Connie

Has it happened to you? Have you had a rash of new followers on FriendFeed?

It’s been a topic of discussion for a couple of weeks. Last week at Community 2.0 it came up at our workshop during our discussion on social networks. We agreed that the new followers are our friends & people that we know.

I have been following trends on social networks & the FriendFeed Following Frenzy had me wondering. This morning I spent the time to get caught up on following most everyone back. But it is a painfully slow process so I emailed FriendFeed and asked them to make it faster. I also asked where all the new followers were coming from?

I got an email from FriendFeed saying:

http://friendfeed.com/friends/search makes it easy for you to find your Friends on Facebook, Twitter, and your email contacts.

AHA! People can now auto-follow their friends on Facebook, Twitter & 3 major email platforms. And there’s the friendly ‘recommended section’.

So being the curious sort that I am I tried it. umm I followed 1200 people in a couple of clicks. Was that right or wrong? Well, I think it will save me the time of manually following all these people back. So I’d highly recommend doing it. It will save you LOADS of time! pass the news to your friends.

But – then I got this question -

Hey Connie - great to see you here on FriendFeed. I’ve noticed a lot of my Twitter network showing up here lately. Question - what made you decide to get more active here?

Let’s not get carried away here! I will be honest that I don’t spend much time in FriendFeed. I do like their new auto-updating page, but I don’t watch that. If there was a way to monitor FriendFeed by topic like I can with Tweetdeck then I’ll be interested.

My company’s social media monitoring tool, Techrigy SM2 gathers conversations from FriendFeed so that’s my way of monitoring it now.

I do have a room for Community Managers that is active. I have thought about utilizing the ability to create a group of select people to follow but I just haven’t had time. But then if I only watched their conversations I would lose the serendipity of the masses.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel better that the mystery is solved? I hope that it saves you some time!

9 Comments