Does This Kind of Ad Still Work
Image via Wikipedia
I got this ad on my Facebook page today. Technically, they have a few things right: I just broke my laptop a little. I love Macs. I *could* use a new Mac. But I know it’s going to be a really stupid marketing bait and switch (I’m copping from David Meerman Scott because I saw him yesterday, and he shared his disdain for bait and switch online marketing).
But really, I’m asking YOU. Does this work?
Will Companies Value Your Personal Network
Your job resume tells people what you’ve done in the past and where you’ve done it. Is that the sum of your capabilities? What about your resourcefulness? What’s the value of the people you can reach in your various networks, online or otherwise? And how should companies value this facet of your professional experience? Do companies need to consider how this might impact their departments?
With Sales, it’s a No-Brainer
Sales is a relationships game. The more folks you know, the deeper your Rolodex, the better your chances of finding the right hinge to close the sale. Building networks of value, where you can be helpful is made far simpler with these tools. They don’t do the work for you, but they give you new ways to reach out and establish connections, and stay just a little more in touch with other people’s environments. A salesperson who’s not exploring tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and yes, even Twitter, is missing some potential opportunities.
How does your organization stack up in this regard?
For Other Departments, It’s Still Pretty Good
Imagine the difference of employing seven software engineers versus having access to thousands of engineers. How powerful is your internal marketing team when they are aligned with social networking tools and the ability to listen to your customers via these tools? What does your HR team miss by not having their listening powers tuned into the robust stream of human capital that roams Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn?
Customer Service is Trickier
In this time of economic downturn, customer service is often viewed as a cost center. Reducing average handling time, and reducing representative headcount are the realities, and no matter what the mission statement says, except for the amazing companies, you’ll find that customer service is more of a “must have” requirement than an empowering strategy. And yet, there’s gold in these hills. It’s just harder to do. For thoughts on how to advance customer service, see Lionel Menchaca and Frank from Comcast for a few simple examples. My take? There can be MUCH more going on here.
And YOUR Personal Network?
When I look at the networks people have built around them, there’s value there. Tangible value. Consider someone like Liz Strauss. She reaches out deeply into her community to build events like her popular and successful SOBCon. She gives and gives, and then when she needs something back, Liz has a strong network of multi-layered contacts to reach into for her needs.
It’s amazing, really. Liz alone is a powerhouse to hire, but if you really did give credit for her extended network, which reaches into the largest companies in the US, UK, and for all I know, the rest of the world.
How do you place a value on that? What does it mean when you can reach deeply into your network for nonprofit fundraisers, or job placement, or contact to land business deals? If you are an employer, or someone involved in the hiring of talent, how much is this influencing your thoughts?
I think this is something that goes into the consideration and metrics of hiring practices in the next handful of years (at least for some sectors). What do you think?
Photo credit, Jurvetson
What Does Facebook Actually DO for Me
Think about this:
Facebook has messaging.
My email has messaging, plus forward, plus a filter button, plus an address book.
Facebook has status messages.
Twitter has status messages. LinkedIn, too. Heck, EVERYTHING has status messages.
Facebook has friending.
I know who my friends are.
Facebook has a wall.
My blog has comments.
Facebook is where all these people have chosen to gather.
Hmm. That might be it.
Right?
Facebook Apps And Me
Facebook is a social network where people can stay in touch, join groups, have discussions, and learn more about each other through various profile attributes and additional applications. And Facebook is a place for people with some time to kill. It’s that latter set that are piling up in my notifications window. If it weren’t for IgnoreAll, I’d probably just delete my account for the volume of random apps people invite me to join. It’s not that I’m a stick in the mud. Rather, I just don’t have a lot of time to buy friends, bite chumps, see which historical monkey I resemble, or any of the other applications.
For the record, here’s a shot of the applications I do have installed:
Facebook Could Get Really Creepy
Disclaimer: part of me thinks this video is a little bit of “Do you think your food is safe? Think again! Film at 11!”, and yet, another part of me thinks this is all really worth considering further. It relates a bit to my post about Facebook’s use of the Social Graph data from the other day.
What do YOU think?
Hat tip to Pamela Rosenthal, a Boston area community specialist you should get to know.
A Sample Social Media Toolkit
There are countless ways to get into the game with Social Media, but sometimes, we get hung up on evaluating tools and thinking about which are the best for the job. We go further into thinking about the variety of tools and why we’d use which ones for what, and then, next thing you know, the day’s over and nothing’s been done. Here are a few sample tools and what they can be used for, and from there, maybe some new ideas will spread.
Quick note: I know and use and admire and communicate with LOTS of providers of these tools. For every one of these categories, I could probably name between four and sixteen more people. If I didn’t list you, I probably still love you. Maybe that will be a post for another time, a big fat list of resources.
The Quick List
For the sake of summary, let’s list out what’s in our toolkit, and why, and then we’ll go into detail AFTER that:
- Listening Tool - Google Reader
- Search Tools - Technorati and Google Blogsearch
- Home Base Blog - Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org to host your own).
- Scratch Blog - Tumblr
- Better Reach - FeedBurner
- Mobile Blogging - Utterz ( Qik for streaming video from your phone).
- Social Conversation - Twitter
- Social Profile - Facebook
- Business Profile - LinkedIN
- Social Bookmarking - Del.icio.us
- Collaboration - PBWiki
- Shared Documents - Google Docs
- Instant Messaging-Web Based - Meebo or Campfire
- Photo Sharing - Flickr or Zooomr
- Video Hosting - Blip.tv (also YouTube)
What They All Do
Google Reader and the two search tools make it easy for you to set up a quick network of searches on topics, brands, company names, and whatever else you want to follow in your space. (If you didn’t get my Five Starter Moves free PDF document, drop a note in the comments, and it describes HOW). The “Shared Items” feature and the email to others feature makes this a great way to share interesting articles with others, by the way.
When I say “home base” blog, I feel that in MOST cases, making your main website a blog is preferable to something static. Why? Because it hints at recurring content. It fills search engines with things to think about.
A “scratch” blog might be one that you don’t even publish to the outside world, but the beauty of Tumblr is that you can blurt short text, audio, video, and other things onto the site. I keep a few around for a few different purposes: one for private notes, and one for multimedia posts.
I use FeedBurner to improve the quality of my RSS feeds, to give people more options to subscribe to my posts, and for some extra functionality.
Utterz is a simple tool you can use from ANY mobile device (the barrier to entry is whether or not it has the #2), and post either audio, text, photos, or video. Qik does live video streaming, if your phone supports making movies.
Twitter allows for one-to-many messaging from multiple points (web, IM, 3rd party app, or mobile device). It’s also good for presence, and sharing quick status information.
Facebook actually does lots of things and is a full-featured social network, but at the baseline, fill out a personal profile with lots of information about you, and links back to your main site and/or your blog, and it will do a great job of helping people find you. Other features exist, including groups and several 3rd party applications. There’s lots to explore there.
LinkedIN is a popular site for posting a summary of your current job role and responsibilities, as well as a work history. There is now a group feature there as well, and you can use this tool extensively to reach out and meet new colleagues in your field, prospective employees, and there are all sorts of other uses for such information, if you give it some thought.
I like del.icio.us (pronounced “delicious”) for social bookmarking because it means my bookmarks are out on the web, so I can access them from anywhere. It also means that I can add tags and other metadata to the bookmarks to improve the ways I search for them.
We’ve used wikis for collaboration projects, such as planning an event (we built PodCamp on a wiki, and it’s still running strong!), or sharing status information that might need to be changed by more than one person. There are tons of free wiki software projects out there. I think PBWiki is simple, flexible, and easy enough to share with others. The only tricky thing about explaining wikis to colleagues who aren’t up to speed is the name itself. If you just say “collaborative web page” or some such, it’s easier.
Google Docs works as a great replacement for sharing word processing and spreadsheet functions. It’s free, secure, and makes for less file clutter, as you’re sharing a link to a shared, common document instead of sending around various versions. They also have a presentation software, though I haven’t had much experience with it just yet.
Instant messaging isn’t dead. There are still plenty of great business uses for quick one-to-one conversations. Meebo is a great tool because it lets you bridge several services at once (Desktop apps that do the same thing are Adium for the Mac and Trillian for PC) and chat with people about quick hit items.
Photo sharing and video hosting can be used in lots of ways. They make for richer interactions, add some dimension to the media you’re making with your company, and give you an opportunity to express your story in different ways than straight text.
How You Might Use These Tools
I won’t go into each and every tool, but here is a quick rundown of some tools and how you can use them for business purposes:
- Listening tools - understand how people react to your organization, follow your competitors’ news stories, learn more about things that might impact your business.
- Blogging - communicate your company’s news, discuss the industry as a whole, share information and learning, respond to things you find while listening, internally- as a status platform.
- Mobile Tools and Social Conversation- status and presence information, visuals from field engineers, audible daily meeting messages.
- Collaboration and Shared Documents- project plans, intention documents, status reports, meeting minutes, shared creative projects.
- Instant Messaging- meetings while virtual, backchannel during conference calls, quick integrated conversations.
Personal Use
Lots of these tools are often explained in their typical use as a way to communicate outwards to lots of people, and yet, as I explained above in my “scratch blogs” use, there are all these great tools to use for yourself as a creative type looking to capture information on the fly. Remember that tools have an obvious first use, but sometimes, they have a different use when applied to a different kind of problem. Don’t lose sight of that option.
What Would YOU Recommend?
These are all just part of one sample kit. You probably have different kit ideas and different use cases. For instance, what would a mobile journalist want to build? What would an audio producer add in there? How would you take advantage of even more web tools that aren’t exactly media but that you love for different reasons?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Photo Credit, FurryScaly
