Connie Bensen

When I think of viral, the first thing I think of is YouTube. In particular the WillItBlend videos. But YouTube isn’t for everyone. I have the capability to make live videos and screencasts, but umm I’m not compelled to do so. I’ll leave that to a master like Gary V.

Two days ago Slideshare sent me an email about my Case Study for using Twitter for Lead Gen:

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

Today I received another email that said:

"Twitter: a Case for Lead Generation" is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we’ve put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section).

It was odd because I had tweeted a link, but Twitter was quiet (or so I thought…). In looking at the stat’s on Slideshare I saw that SocialMediaToday and it’s sister site, MyVenturePad had published my blog post and were receiving a LOT of traffic. There were almost 1500 views between them. Next question, what was driving the traffic? A quick search for the phrase, “Twitter Engagement”, that’s a part of my blog title showed that there was some serious retweeting happening on Twitter!

Slideshare is an active community with great shareable features

For the past three years I’ve been studying why things happen in social networks. Then I unravel them and share the steps so that you can apply them to your situations. And this one is easy to replicate. It will work for YouTube as much as Slideshare too!

First, a quick explanation of Slideshare. Skip this if you’re familiar with it.

Slideshare is a free site where you can host your powerpoint decks. It’s a really active community. They totally understand the concept of ‘shareable’ which is so imperative for word of mouth (some call it viral). (This is one of the main principles that Andy Sernovitz asserts and I highly recommend that you read his book, Word of Mouth Marketing.)

The secret sauce is that it allows you to embed your presentation in your post and others can download it and also embed it. They also offer a nice widget that I’ve put on the side of my blog AND are integrated into Facebook and LinkedIn so my friends there can see my newest decks.  It can grow legs! and Slideshare keeps track of the number of views. The community in Slideshare can favorite presentations and comment on them. So Slideshare has done a great job of helping their users connect!

How can you make Slideshare + SocialMediaToday + Twitter = Viral

I’ll list the steps. You provide the ideas

1. Create your content and post on a shareable site such as Slideshare or YouTube
2. Write a blog post and embed the content
3. Syndicate your blog to great communities like SocialMediaToday.com, MyVenturePad.com, etc
4. They and many others tweeted the link x 180 + times!
5. Engage with the communities on Slideshare, Socialmediatoday & Twitter. Here’s an article I wrote on syndicating your blog. (That post is how I got my job at Techrigy)
6. Watch the ripple effect afterwards and thank those that blog about it and further share my content.

Here’s the stat’s on this adventure 24 hours after publishing my blog post:

On Slideshare.net (note that it’s been downloaded 48 times)

SocialMediaToday.com – 1529 views

MyVenturePad.com – 1147 views

Tonite I was asked a question. Will this work for a company and their brand? Of course! I realized yesterday that Dell had followed me on Slideshare. And their decks are quite interesting! Check out the So So Social Media Strategy. (Note that my deck is also branded & has my contact info.)

Another point is that you don’t need the reason of speaking at events to create and post slide decks. There are also people in Slideshare community that have never posted a deck (but what fun is that?!)

So what are you waiting for? Get busy, and make a slide deck. Link it up here. Need ideas? Go explore the decks in Slideshare.

Special thanks go to Beth Harte & Ann Handley for inviting us to share Techrigy’s story in Marketing Prof’s Twitter Success Case Studies and again at their virtual event! (It forced me to make the slide deck!)

And thanks to Adam Helweh @SecretSushi for his thumbs down on my first draft. You can thank him for his honesty & for pushing me to be more creative!

Now I want to see your work!

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

Beth Harte has a great post on Personal Brand Equity. And it’s very timely discussion for me because we talked about it at MSP Social Media Breakfast yesterday. Our topic was the community manager role. In discussing the role & the impending culture changes that Gen Y’s are going to bring to the workplace someone asked, Will companies want to hire people with strong personal brands?

In addition to that Albert Maruggi asked, should companies be helping build personal brands? If they invest in an employee by sending them to training & workshops, then should the employee need to pay some of that equity back when they leave? (It sounds like a prenuptial agreement. If there’s a falling out, you will only leave as financially successful as when you came into this relationship.)

My question is: Does a company want to be filled with faceless, obscure beings? What if they don’t care if their employees have any passion for their profession? What if they’d prefer that their employees didn’t grow professionally? What if they’re not interested in contributing to the industry & profession at large?

I guess I’m not interested in working at that type of a company.

Beth’s post reviews traditional corporate branding. And she adds the following list in regard to the personal perspective:

What are you selling? How does your unique skill set, experience, reputation, etc. achieve corporate goals and objectives?

What’s your brand mark? Perhaps you have a personal logo or an avatar (photo). Are you distinct?

What’s your name? That’s obvious. But is it a well known name that a corporation would embrace? Is it a name recognized and established in the industry?

How much loyalty do you have banked? Can you bring ready-to-buy customers/prospects to the table upon hiring? Does the brand loyalty you’ve established help shorten the sales cycle? Do you have marketing/PR relationships that help save money or generate revenue?

What is your personal brand worth in revenue? What value does it add to the existing corporate brand? (Or does it conflict?) Does your personal brand help propel the corporate brand forward or create buzz?

Yesterday at SMB I proposed that the younger generation is going to expect certain things:

• utilize social media tools & technology
• have a personal brand that’s established on social networking sites
• to enjoy their work & be gratified in it (or they’ll move on)

My prediction is that the smart brands will value those with strong personal brands. I love the term ‘Talent Management’. It’s very similar to community management in that it’s a misnomer. But if you read about talent management the focus is on engaging talented people and ensuring that they’re challenged, it makes total sense. It’s important because they’re intrinsically motivated. My feeling is that those with strong personal brands are leaders & if they’ve taken the time to be outstanding in their own right then they’ll also take pride in doing the same for uplifting the corporate brand. What company wouldn’t want that? Does a company say, ‘Well, we’re fine with our corporate brand being mediocre.’ If a person has worked hard to ‘define’ themselves through education or life experience shouldn’t they be compensated for that?

Peter Kim asked these questions on Beth’s post:

- Personal brands seem best suited for awareness, consideration, and preference. But a different skill set takes over to drive purchase and loyalty.
- When the tangible (e.g. salary) meshes with the intangible (e.g. personal brand), objective metrics for evaluation are critical. We need to solve measurement, fast.
- With the changing nature of work, should employers even “buy” personal brands anymore? Or should they be thinking of leasing them for shorter terms for specific purposes?

I agree with Peter’s distinction that a personal brand is well suited for awareness, consideration & preference. That’s why community managers need to sparkle. I would add loyalty to that set because high level customer service is also a result of an effective community manager.

A personal brand is built over time. And I would argue that time = experience. So if that person has achieved & demonstrated an excellent skill set then shouldn’t salary be commensurate? This brings me back to the problem of companies thinking that they can bring in an experienced community manager at an entry level salary. They’ll bring their metrics & provide the deliverables to justify the cost.

Does “buy” = salary versus “lease” = contract work? For someone to contract they have to more than double their cost to offset being self employed, benefits & retirement. Does the organization get high quality consistent work over a long period of time that actually makes a difference & is adopted? In contrast to having someone on salary leading the corporation in that area.

I’m going to ask Dan Schawbel for his suggestions from the personal branding perspective. And Peter Gold who introduced me to the concept of talent management. What are your thoughts guys? And I welcome my readers to join the conversation too!

Does a personal brand have equity?

*update on this post – Beth had written a previous post. I just realized that Dan was used as an example in that post. (Dan & I have been friends for almost two years with complimentary mentorship. Hence I subscribe to the value of personal branding ideas too. They have served me well & my last two jobs have come to me.)

Not too long ago Aaron Newman, Founder of Techrigy, & I began a conversation about his product and the needs of the community. That evolved into his inviting me to join his team & lead their community! I enjoy the brand monitoring space for a number of reasons so it’s a good fit – more on that below & why.

I will also continue to work with Network Solutions. So I like to be busy, what can I say?! For those that know me well (ie connected on IM) you know that I work seven days a week.

In regard to Techrigy, I’ve been connected to them for awhile. They’ve been syndicating my blog into their community for their customers. Their product SM2 is a monitoring & measurement tool. If you read my blog regularly you know that I focus on building brand & social networking. My philosophy is that a community manager should be actively participating in the full range of marketing, PR, awareness of competitor’s products & visibility, product development, etc.

I’m excited about SM2 for a number of reasons! I’ve been using various tools since 2006. The trick is to efficiently identify the relevant information & respond. The other aspect is the reporting & to be honest I’m a bit of a stat’s junkie. (That may be because I have majors in math, chemistry & physics. You didn’t know that huh?! I’ve always enjoyed collecting data & making sense of it. Now you know the rest of the story! I enjoy pondering ROI too.).

In addition to SM2 they also offer a Freemium version that allows 5 keyword phrases & up to 1000 results. Aaron & his team have created an amazingly robust product! There are many tools that offer the same basic features. The following features in SM2 stand out for me:

• Results are emailed to me daily – so I don’t need to use a number of monitoring sources
• In the dashboard, the results are displayed in a variety of manners allowing for easier interpretation (they’re sliced & diced in many ways!)
• The keywords define the results, but categories subdivide the results offering more in-depth interpretation
  • preset categories are available to get you started
  • you can create your own
  • you can share your categories with others & likewise use shared ones
• Access to results back to late 2007. Or you can choose specific time segments
• Demographics – this information that would be very helpful to marketing as you identify your customer segments

These are graphs from my search for the keywords of ‘Community Manager’, ‘Connie Bensen’. The 2/3 male results are as expected as is the age. All graphs are drillable to view the results that generated them.

Domain information lists the domains, along with the # of results, & an authority calculated by an algorithm (for some reason Twitter is my highest!)

Maps have pins depicting the number of search results. (As everywhere you can drill down & see results from a certain locale).

Finally each result has this powerful little tool bar:

From left to right:

• pencil/paper – you can edit the placement of that result in the categories
• magnifying glass – you can view information on a specific result. It provides considerable information on the blog & owner including author demographics, email address, traffic details & ranking. This is really helpful to quickly gather information on an identified influencer.
• mark as spam
• delete result

The last 3 each open a new window so that you can view the result in the corresponding analytic tool.

• technorati
• compete
• alexa

See why I’m loving it? My goal is to provide the community with:

• assistance in learning to use the tool so that it’s a timesaver
• workflows for utilizing the data on a daily basis & for reporting (ROI)
• ideas on how to use the search results & data to leverage their social media efforts (I hesitate to use the word ‘campaign’)
• gathering product feedback to make improvements & for feature development
• increasing brand visibility
• connecting them with others to share ideas on how they’re using the tool

If you want to check it out, sign up for the Freemium version. The trick is to use keywords that aren’t too broad. We will be glad to help with that. If it pulls the max search results, then just delete them, and make your keywords more specific.

And of course let me know if you need assistance. On Twitter I am @cbensen or send an email to:

connie@techrigy.com or support@techrigy.com