Tag Archives: social media

a tweet chat with my CEO

Last week I got the very cool opportunity to host a tweet chat with Vail Resorts’ CEO, Rob Katz (@RickysRidge).  Not something you see every day – an open, public discussion with someone so highly ranked in such a big company.  It was a very cool experience.  Many other folks jumped in as well, adding questions to the conversation.  Rob answered every single one, and added in some jokes, too.

The main topic was social media.

Rob offered some great opinions and thoughts, and he did it all within the 140 character limit, including the chat hashtag (#VRSS12)!

This is just another testament to how important social media/business has become, and also how committed Vail Resorts is to being a leader in the socialsphere.  I want to give major props to Rob for being so willing to jump on a tweet chat.

I hope to see more of this from other companies and industries.  Social-savvy CEOs are the future.  Other leaders out there who haven’t quite taken a liking to social media, or haven’t quite jumped in yet; take the lead from Mr. Katz.  That’s how you do it.

 

 

enhanced facebook page post targeting is huge

Today Facebook announced that they will be doing something that I’ve wanted for a long time now.  If you guessed that they will now be allowing brand pages to target posts based on fans’ Likes, gender, age and other demographics – then you are correct.  Yes, that is exactly what they are doing.  For now, of course, the new functionality is only available to a few extra-special partners.  In the coming weeks it should apparently roll out to everyone.

This is huge.

Previously we could only geo-target or language-target.  That’s good when you need to talk to one specific geographic location, but then you still run into spewing content about one subject to tons of people who could not care less.  Content is the key nowadays to a successful social presence, especially on Facebook, so the ability to now spew content to people that actually like that content is very powerful stuff.

For example, you have fans that “liked” your Facebook page for multiple reasons.  And these people themselves have other “likes.”  And they are made up of different age groups.  When you post about a wine event involving painting and what not, you realize that the younger crowd that follows you would rather chew glass.  Now, you will be able to target that  content specifically to your older fan base – whatever you deem “older.”   And if you want to get even deeper, you could target folks that specifically are interested in wine, or painting, or both.  The younger crowd that enjoys a trusty Keystone Light doesn’t have to know the post would’ve ever existed.

This should help with engagement on certain topics that otherwise just fell into a black hole.

One question from me would be regarding that engagement piece.  We know that a typical post sent to everyone that follows you gets seen on average by 18% of your fans.  Now, will it still be around that percentage within the interest or age targeted group?  Or will it be better?

This could make Facebook ads’ future quite interesting, since the specific targeting is one element that made ads so powerful.

We can be sure there will be post booster promotions available.  Gotta make money on this somehow.  Gotta make those shareholders happy.  Is that possible right now?

UPDATE as of 8/1: I learned today that apparently you won’t yet be able to target based on LIKES.  Not yet, at least.  Bummer.  However, the new demographic targeting will be huge.

my Twitter geek-out moment of the week

Every once in a while, we in social media have geek-out moments.  OK, actually probably much more than every once in a while.  This happens quite a bit.  Whether it is a new gadget, app or platform – we who “do” social media for a living are passionate about this stuff.

I had a geek-out moment last night.

I tweeted a photo that I took at the Denver Broncos training camp that day.  Simple enough, right?  I had already done some fancy editing to it in Instagram to make me think I’m a really good/cool photographer.  I wanted to share this image with the official @Denver_Broncos Twitter handle, since, you know, every once in a while big name Twitter handles spread the love.  I really thought the picture was pretty sweet.

I didn’t want to share my actual Instagram link with the Broncos community manager, as I figured that has much less chance of being re-shared to some extent.  That is more along the lines of self promoting my Instagram handle by way of my Twitter handle, and asking a big-name Twitter account to do that for me.  Too many steps and gateways.  They just want to a share a picture right there.  They have 165,000 followers and always appear to be pretty selective with what they RT and post.  Slim chance.

So, I just took the Instagram-edited photo from my phone’s memory card and shared that on Twitpic as a free-standing image.  No tie-in to Instagram.

Sure enough, about twenty minutes later, the Broncos official Twitter handle Re-Tweeted my original tweet to their large follower-base.  Granted, many of which did not see the post, but it’s still cool.   They replied to my tweet and kept my handle in their post.  This is when I geeked out.  About 10 minutes later the tweet had been RT by others 83 times and ‘favorited’ by another 34.  My Twitter handle was mentioned each time.  OMG!!!

I know, this really shouldn’t be that exciting.  Behind even the Broncos’ account is a community manager (who was totally on it after 9 PM by the way), or social manager of some kind.  A human.  Doing a similar job that I do.  However, for some reason it’s still exciting to see your Twitter handle out there mentioned by a “big deal.”  I geeked out.  I know, beat it nerd.

As of this afternoon the tweet has 126 RT, 49 Favorites, 9 other mentions and my Twitpic has been viewed over 1,200 times.

Without the Broncos boost, I guarantee I probably would have 1, maybe 2 RTs and potentially 100 views.

So with a few clicks and one post, boom.  Another quick example of the the power of social media.

And I’m a geek.

should your brand be social?

The answer to this question has been forever changing over the last several years.  Brands are fickle.  Some hop on social media right away and ride it out for a while and then get darn right sick of it.  Some think they aren’t seeing any ROI so they peace out.  Some have no idea what ROI means with social media so they pretty much have no strategy, fail, and peace out.  Some partake in social media simply because they think that’s what you are supposed to do in 2012.  Other brands love social media and are locked in for sticking it out.  The latter are typically the brands that know what they’re doing, or, have a community manager that knows what they’re doing.

So, should your brand be social?

This is kind of a trick question because I believe that any brand can utilize social media to their benefit in some way, shape, or form.  So, the answer is yes.

There are a few things brands need to remember when building out a social strategy to make sure this works for their brand:

  • What platform(s) make the most sense? Brands don’t need to be on 14 different social media channels simply because they think that makes them look cooler or more “with it” or whatever their reasoning might be.  Different platforms have different fan-bases, tools, resources, conversations, and methods for connecting with fans.  Some are all visual, some are information-based, some do several different things.  Take a look at the socialsphere and determine that for your brand, with who you are trying to talk to and connect with, what are the best ways to do this?
  • What is your goal for social media? Over the last few years the main version of ROI has always been “how much revenue are you producing through your social channels?”  Not anymore.  That is still definitely a component to some social ROI strategies, but it’s not the only one by any means.  Maybe you are really going after connecting with new demographics and fan-bases, or you just want to build brand awareness.  Or, the engagement piece driven through conversations is #1 on your list.  Figure out by prioritizing – what are your goals?  Revenue?  Engagement?  Brand awareness?  Put your pieces in order and build out from there.
  • What kind of content will you be putting out there? Have an idea in place for what kind of awesome stuff you want your fans to see.  And make sure these aren’t the same across all social platforms.  Again, different platforms have different fans, conversations and uses – don’t be lazy and auto post from one account to all of your accounts.  That is the opposite of social media.  That is robot media.  Do you have great photos to put out there?  Funny videos making your brand and products look more human?  Will you do some contests or sweepstakes?  Embrace your community and you’ll gradually find out what they like as you go.
  • Know your voice. This is an element that perfects over time.  You don’t just kick off a new social media presence and have an amazing voice that everyone loves, however, you can know certain elements.  Short and sweet?  Witty but friendly?  Robotic and sales-pitchy (hope not!)? Helpful and approachable?  Quick to respond?  And probably the most important: human.  You’ll get a feel for how to respond, how to deal with negative posts, and how to put new content out there as you go.  Voice can be tricky, but finding it and sticking to it is huge.  Fans will come to expect the voice you land on, they’ll get to know it, and this will become and extension of your brand and public relations arm.

These four items above are  key components and very important when building out a social strategy, however, they are the tip of the iceberg.  Social community management and strategy can get very, very deep.  Anything beyond what I say above needs to be discussed over beers, however.

a vacation from social can be good for you

My family and I went on a vacation last week.  Not the tropical, I’m just going to lay on the beach and sip terribly fruity drinks I hate just because of the fact that I’m on a beach type of vacation… but rather the we’re going back home to the Midwest for a wedding and want to see old friends and family type of vacation.  Both have their pluses and minuses.

I shut myself completely out of social media for 5 days.   Well, almost completely.

I checked my own personal feeds a few times, and maybe posted 1 or 2 updates.  But, I did not look at the business accounts that I manage….once.  Seriously.  My fabulous team was covering for me and making sure nothing hit the fan.  It was not easy for me. I am so programmed to click on the brand pages I manage before even looking at my personal feeds – sometimes I don’t even look at my own for a day or two at a time.  I am so deep into the business accounts that they have become my own; in a way.  If you manage business accounts from the client side or an agency side, either one, you know what I’m talking about.

This was the first time in a year that I took more than 1 day off at a time.  So, not looking at social media as “work” for 5 days was ground breaking for me.  It was weird.  I was so curious.  I wanted to know.  But, I realized I didn’t HAVE to know.  I forced myself to stay away and it was…healthy.  When social media is your job, it is a much different beast than people using it for personal reasons.  I wasn’t going to look at my email for 5 days, so, why would I look at the Facebook page?

People who mow lawns for their job aren’t going to sneak in a few quick yards while on vacation.

In the time that I was away from the social business world, Mashable kindly posted around 100 articles of “social media news.”  I typically read several different online social news sources to keep up on what’s new, updates, changes, and beyond.  But, I usually check Mashable first.  Just because.  Not necessarily because it is the best.  Personally I think they blow stories out of proportion most of the time to qualify it as news, but that’s just me.  I still read it.

Why am I telling you this?

100ish social media articles.  Pile that on top of the many emails waiting for me in my inbox and you have an exploded head.  Keeping up with all that is constantly changing, growing, improving, sucking, disappearing, coming back, and working with social media is impossible.  Even if you sit and read articles ALL day you would still miss something.  You can take snippets of all of the “big” news and at least be aware, but to completely be on top of absolutely everything new in the social online world is just silly.  When I got back I skimmed a few of the articles, took away some key headlines and basically chalked up the time from June 6 – 11, 2012 as the week that I had no idea what was going on in social media.

And it feels good.

I like to stay on top of as much of it as I can, so, if I am unaware of something down the road I will just blame these 5 days and hope this “news” dropped while I was on a break.  That might work, right?

Now I am back at it.  But to those of you who also live in social media for your job – make sure to give yourself some breaks, even if just for a few days.  After the 2nd or 3rd day it gets easier.  Do it.  You’ll keep your sanity and want to dive back in that much more when you return.

What Should We Call Social Media

 

 

 

 

What Should We Call Social Media

If you work in social media, you will find this hilarious.  If you don’t work in social media, you will find this hilarious.  I absolutely love this and laugh every single time I scroll through these.  I am just mad I didn’t think of this first.  Just kidding.  But not really.  Anyway, this is amazing and is the first link I’ve posted on here.  Big honor, I know.  I just wanted to “re-blog” this so others could enjoy it. You’re welcome.

shut up about Facebook failing. please.

The Facebook IPO is this week.  Big whoop.  We all know that.  This is not about that.  There have already been thousands of millions of hundreds of trillions of blogs and articles written about it.

Facebook is supposed to be valued at around 100 Instagrams.  

Anyway, what I am sick of, are all of the articles and blogs about how Facebook could fail.  Ya think?  It’s a multi-billion dollar company.  Of course it could fail.  Any business has a chance to fail.

What annoys me is that all of the chatter about Facebook failing was pretty quiet up until IPO week.  Some people could say I sound like an idiot because obviously that’s the week that this subject matter would come to light.  I understand that.  But why all the crushing negativity?  This is one of the most innovative companies in the world with some of the brightest people on the planet working for it.  If Facebook runs into problems with some facet of their business, they will adapt and continue cruising.  It’s Facebook.

The company did release their 35 reasons that they could end up in the toilet as part of their SEC filing.  Every company filing for an IPO has to do that.  They were honest and many on the countdown are pretty obvious.  My opinion is that people are blowing these way out proportion in order to make a big story.  The biggest and most successful tech company in history is going public this week, the media (professional and social) definitely wants to try to bring Facebook down.  Oh, they put a list together for us?  Perfect!

Facebook will be fine.

Their biggest risk right now might be the fact that they haven’t found a way to make money on mobile platforms due to the lack of ads.  At least that’s what they’re telling us.  Do you really think Facebook can’t figure it out?  If it’s not from ads they’ll come up with something else.  They probably already have something else.  Whatever it is will probably piss a lot of people off, but that’s what Facebook does.  They come out with innovative new things, like Timeline, piss off a ton of people who complain about their use of a free product, but then those people continue to use the platform.  Of course they do.  It’s Facebook.

And that’s my rant.

Facebook is going public and is worth a ton of money.  They will continue to adapt and be successful.  They’ll continue to acquire new companies.  They are not AOL.  Or Groupon.  Please shut up about Facebook failing.

Thanks.

A follow-up: a month with Path and Instagram

Exactly one month ago I started using Path and Instagram.  The delay on Path was due to my utter need to avoid it as long as I could, and for Instagram it was the barrier to entry since I have only Android devices.  On that day a month ago, the Android Instagram app launched and I started to walk down the Path.  I wrote a quick blog about the two new (for me) social platforms.

My first impressions were positive for both.  I really liked how clean and easy to use Path was.  For Instagram, I already knew what I was getting myself into so there was no surprise factor, but in finally getting to use the app I quickly realized the cool factor was worth all the hype.

A month later?

Instagram is still really, really cool.  Worth a billion dollars?  Probably not.  But yes, really cool and also fun to connect with people strictly with imagery.  There are also benefits for a brand, too – sharing beautiful pictures that can quickly reach your followers to show off your product, location, style or whatever it may be you’re aiming for.  Instagram has been added to my home screen on my Evo and tablet.

Path is a bit of a different story.  While I still agree with my original assessment about the cleanliness of the app and the smooth sharing functionality with other platforms, the app is just plain boring.  I have been adding people for weeks and checking the app consistently, as well as posting my own content, and….crickets.  I never really got much more than a few views on my posts (which I will admit was pretty generic content) and other people that I followed hardly used the app.  A check-in here or there, a picture once a week.  Not much else.  The posts screamed, “I’m posting something that you’ll think is super boring, but it’s OK because I felt like my Path quota was coming up.”  The app is great and the platform had potential, but it just didn’t go anywhere.  Path has since been removed from my phone.

And there’s my update.  The winner by total knockout: Instagram.

managing brand social media is a lot more than responding to tweets

Quite often I am asked what it’s like to be on Facebook all day.  Or Twitter.  Or whatever else social platform you want to enter in here ________________.  Anyway, I usually just laugh and say something like, “it’s work.”  The truth is, managing social media for a successful business is a beast of a job nowadays, especially if you are doing it right and growing, expanding, innovating…and staying on top of the community.  The funny thing is, to a person that really knows very little about social media, I am just playing on a website that their 14 year old kid sits on for hours a day with that smart phone they shouldn’t have yet.

In reality, managing a social presence across many different platforms and channels for a business, is like running a business in itself.  You need customers (fans and followers) and you need to provide a product or service (great content).   In return you get paid (engagement).  If you are really lucky you turn that into profit (actual revenue by web traffic to your site or sales direct from the platform).  Simple equation, right?

What a lot of people don’t understand is that it is MUCH more than just monitoring Facebook and Twitter.  If that was the case, then social manager jobs in big cities wouldn’t ask for 3-5 years experience managing a social presence for a business and brand(s).  At this point, not much beyond 5 years can really be required, since such a large number of businesses hadn’t even adopted social media yet in 2007.  Well, most of the platforms that we all know and love didn’t even exist yet.  We still don’t have “experts” in social media yet.  We are close, but not quite there yet.  Yet!

Believe it or not, but a lot of thought goes into individual posts, social campaigns, and content.  The most important is the latter.  Without great content you won’t have engagement.  Without engagement…why are you on social media?  Just to sit there and be a brand?  If you think you need a Facebook page or Twitter handle just to have one, because that’s what businesses do now, then you’re missing the point.  You need a plan.  You need goals.

This might seem like I’m complaining about people thinking that managing social media is easy or elementary, as I manage social media for a brand.  However, I am more so just defending other social media managers, and hoping to educate people a little bit more about what it is that we do.

I will expand on this sooner than later, as I’d love to pick some of my favorites from around the socialsphere from brands I like, campaigns that were awesome, etc.  Look for it.

LeBron. The digital brand

Today LeBron James hired an ad agency to help him better connect with fans and take advantage of the ever-evolving world of social media.  This is a good thing, considering his brand page is already violating a key guideline of the Facebook cover image.  Yep, right across the middle in huge font sits “lebronjames.com.”  Just check out the Facebook page guidelines, Section III, B, ii – right there, boom: “Covers may not include contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.”  With over 10 Million fans, one might want to check on that.

Sports.

Back to the point of this blog.  LeBron the brand.

Today he signed with creative ad agency, SapientNitro, to take care of his digital presence.

In my opinion, this is genius.  He, or at least his management company, understands that he is in fact a living, breathing brand.  They also understand the power of his online presence and social engagement.   He is perhaps the most recognizable athlete in the world.  He genuinely wants to connect with his fans, and he wants to be innovative in the way those connections happen.

I’m very interested to see what comes from this partnership, and I am expecting a lot of awesomeness.

I’ve always looked at LeBron as one of the smarter business athletes and this just reinforces that notion.