Thursday, November 5, 2009

Work / Life Balance

I have always struggled with work/life balance. And, ever since I caught the social media bug it just seems to be getting worse. While I find social media fun, and I enjoy the connections I'm making, it still feels like work sometimes.

One of my struggles is time management and getting over the feeling that I have to "read everything". Working on that over the next couple of months is going to be one of my biggest challenges.

How do you manage work/life balance? What tools do you use to not allow work to take over your life?

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

SD Forum - Real Time Social Media Monitoring and Marketing

The SD Forum Semantic Web SIG held a forum on Real Time Social Media Monitoring and Marketing. It was a mixed bag of two companies that do social media monitoring (Techrigy/Alterian & Scout Labs) and one that's using blogs and other online social media to do marketing (BuzzLogic).

Most of the folks in the room were techies, although there also seemed to be a bunch of marketing folks there as well.

The presentation by Connie Bensen of Techrigy was disappointing. Her presentation seemed more pedestrian than it should have been for the audience in the room. She also seemed a bit nervous, which may be her natural presentation style. One of her most interesting slides (and not in a good way) was a set of two slides trying to show where the community manager fits into the cycle. The slides made absolutely no sense.

The second company to present was Scout Labs. They do social media monitoring. Top clients include Netflix and others. Margaret Francis and Jochen Frey were the two presenters. Francis is on the marketing side of things and Frey is the CTO. Margaret Francis did a fantastic job describing the social media platform and why especially an enterprise sized company should be using a platform like Scout Labs for monitoring. Her take on why folks like @comcastcares are doing customer service on platforms like Twitter was definitely interesting. They expect to monitor 100M in 2009. That's compared to 10M in 2008. They don't expect that same level of growth in 2010. The currently only monitor English language results.

The final presenter was Keith Kilpatrick of BuzzLogic who talked about how they are using online social media, and blogs specifically, for digital media and advertising for their clients. He shared information on how they are using Comscore and other ratings to determine where and how to advertise.

One topic that was covered by all three was the importance of listening before leaping. There are a ton of free tools out there to listen even before you have to pay. Alterian/Techrigy is a freemium model and Scout Labs allows you to do a 30-day trial.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Tweetup - Have you attended one?

Tweetups are the "in person" extension of Twitter relationships. I'm one of those people that is more social on Twitter and other forms of social media than I am in real life. I'm either an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert. Either way, I don't do well in large groups of people that I don't know.

I've been planning on going to a tweetup for the past several months, but they were either up in San Francisco or at an inconvenient time.

The first tweetup I attended was sponsored by Cadillac and featured a guest - Chris Brogan. The tweetup part of the event seemed under-advertised so it wound up being a fairly small group but with awesome food at the Sino Lounge at Santana Row in San Jose. There was plenty of time to get to know folks and it was relatively quiet and relaxed.

The second tweetup I attended couldn't have been more different. It was held at Rosie McCann's pub (again at Santana Row in San Jose) and was a loud, crowded affair. I didn't decide to go until the last minute. I talked to a few people I didn't know and then thankfully my introverted self was saved when someone I knew showed up. I talked with him and a few of his colleagues before calling it a night.

Two tweetups is not a large enough sample size for me to really base a solid opinion on whether or not the events are worthwhile. Hoping to attend more in the future.

The next Peninsula Facebook / Twitter Meetup is on Thursday, Nov. 5th at 7 pm at the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Brand Loyalty

I follow a lot of folks on Twitter who talk about branding, and I worrying about branding quite a bit at work too. For our non-profit's brand, it's more about visibility than loyalty.

For consumer brands, building that brand loyalty is key to repeat customers. There's only one brand that I'm absolutely devoted to and that's Rubbermaid. On Friday night, I went to multiple stores looking for Rubbermaid containers and that was after doing several web searches to see who might have Rubbermaid on sale.

Sterlite, at least in the home organization market, is probably Rubbermaid's biggest competitor and while I do have some Sterlite in my apartment, I'll never buy it again. I find it cheap and unusable. I can't tell you how many pieces of Sterlite I've had either break or buckle.

Rubbermaid isn't perfect and I've broken a couple of lids (mostly due to my own fault of dropping something heavy on top of the Rubbermaid lid).

What brands are you loyal to and what are you doing to support those brands?

Other great ideas on branding:

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Why I have a hard time writing ...

I used to be a writer. In high school and college, I wrote a lot. After college, I did two internships that were heavily focused on writing. The second one burnt me out, and made me change my career to more of a marketing role. Ever since, I've had a hard time writing in any style. At work, my writing projects take way too long to get completed because I am so self-critical.

I'm hoping this month by forcing myself to write every day I can start to break out of the shell. Not many people reading this blog, so I'm hoping I can turn off the self-critical side of my brain and actually get something done.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

You Don't Say ... a blog by Danny Brown

Another great blog by Danny Brown about how much we use the same
examples of Comcast / Dell / Zappos and how we need to get away from
that. Even though I am totally guilty of using those examples (and
those of Ford (@scottmonty) and others, I totally agree with what he
has to say. I made a couple of comments on the blog.

http://dannybrown.me/2009/10/28/you-dont-say/

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Questions for Prospective Director of Social Media

A short blog post asking what questions would you ask a Director of Social Media. I commented on the blog about the question I think is the most important.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Social Media Reading - 102409

Tips and Tricks 
What Else I'm Reading 

Monday, October 19, 2009

Social Media Reading - 101909

Tips and Tricks
What Else I'm Reading 

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Social Media Reading - 101509


Tips and Tricks

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Social Media Reading - 101409

Tips and Tricks
What Else I'm Reading 

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Friday, October 9, 2009

Social Media Reading - 100909

  • Social Media Alignment Map - Interesting way of looking at social media alignment and whether your organization should get involved in social media

Tips and Tricks


What Else I'm Reading

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Social Media Reading - 100809


What Else I'm Reading

Monday, October 5, 2009

Social Media Reading - 100509

Tips and Tricks
What Else I'm Reading

FTC Announces New Rules for Bloggers

10/5/09

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Social Media Reading - 100409

Tips and Tricks

  • Get Your Email Answered - Chris Brogan gets over 600 emails a day and gives people some tips on how to your email answered from someone like him that could also be applied to all communications. 
What Else I'm Reading 

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Social Media Reading - 100309


Tips and Tricks


What Else I'm Reading

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Social Media Reading - 093009

What Else I'm Reading

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Social Media Reading - 092909


What Else I'm Reading

  • Chronicle of Philanthropy reported on its survey regarding compensation for non-profit executives

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Social Media Reading - 092709

Tips and Tricks


What Else I'm Reading

Friday, September 25, 2009

Social Media Reading - 092509


Tips and Tricks
What Else I'm Reading

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Social Media Reading - 092209


Tips and Tricks


Webinars and Conferences


What Else I'm Reading

Monday, September 21, 2009

Social Media Reading - 092109

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Social Media Reading - 092009

Tips and Tricks
What Else I'm Reading 

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Social Media Reading - 091909 Part Two

Social Media Reading - 091909

    Wednesday, September 16, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 091609

    The problem with non - my take

    In a recent blog, Seth Godin said some things that have caused quite a stir on Twitter and with those that work for and with non-profits. In his blog post, The problem with non, he talks about how non-profits are resistant to change.

    There are a couple parts of his blog that I agree with:

    • Too many non-profits aren't willing to take the leap from the traditional to the new. If the donations are coming in - even if they have slowed down - they aren't willing to risk those donations to go find new ones. But, for many non-profits this means that they are not engaging younger activists, volunteers and donors and have a donor population that is just going to continue to age. 

    There are other parts of his blog that I disagree with:

    • Not all non-profits should crowdsource their social media efforts. While crowdsourcing works for some groups, it can backfire on others. 
    • Social media is not free. Some of the tools may be free, the resources that it takes to write the messages and get them online are not. 
    • I see interactions with non-profits that blow me away on a regular basis. 
    Other people's responses: 

    Tuesday, September 15, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 091509

    Webinars and Conferences

    What Else I'm Reading  
    • YouTube Races to be #1 ... on Facebook - YouTube is trying to be the first page with 1M fans on Facebook. If they make it, they are going to let fans choose which non-profit videos are featured on their site.

    Sunday, September 13, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 091309

    Webinars and Conferences 
    What Else I'm Reading

    Saturday, September 12, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 091209

    Webinars and Conferences



    What Else I'm Reading

    Friday, September 11, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 091109


    What Else I'm Reading

    Thursday, September 10, 2009

    Tuesday, September 8, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 090809


    What Else I'm Reading

    Sunday, September 6, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 090609

    Tips and Tricks


    What Else I'm Reading

    Saturday, September 5, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 090509 Part Two


    What Else I'm Reading

    Social Media Reading - 090509

    Tips and Tricks
    What Else I'm Reading 

    Thursday, September 3, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 090309

    Webinars and Conferences

    #chats 
    • #SMMetric - Wednesdays at 1 PM Eastern - Social Media Monitoring 
    What Else I'm Reading 

    Wednesday, September 2, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 090209

    What Else I'm Reading

    Why I Started This Blog

    About 4 months ago, I started actively tweeting. It was during the NTC NTEN 09 conference, and just like I expected I became hooked.

    But, there are limitations to the 140 character format, so I decided I wanted to start blogging about the social media world and what I was reading. This was two months ago, and my initial goal was to post a blog every day. I specifically didn't plan on any original content and just wanted to make comments about other people's content.

    My goal for the month of September is to still blog every day, and do around 20+ "Social Media Reading" blogs per month and at least 10 original posts this month. It's a challenging goal, but one that's achievable.

    Tuesday, September 1, 2009

    Monday, August 31, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 083109

    #chats
    What Else I'm Reading

    Gravity Summit

    News
    • CNN: Hammer Tweets - MC Hammer talks about Tweeting and being a social media enthusiast [video]

    Sunday, August 30, 2009

    Social Media Reading - 083009


    What Else I'm Reading