All I Learned was taught by the Beatles
24 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: beatles community
I’m forever quoting Seinfeld episodes, but yesterday was different. I found myself quoting the Beatles, and John Lennon in particular, at least three times.
How does John Lennon relate to social media, you ask? My first response is he did it way before anyone else did. Remember the John & Yoko “bed-in” for peace that was broadcast globally? But his lessons remain true today.
Let it Be
It may take me a bit of time, but I have learned during the past 18 months as a Community Manager to sometimes just let it be. Not easy for a driven, Type-A personality to let a request go unanswered even for a few hours. But when I’ve practiced, I find that folks often answer their own questions given the time and the ‘opportunity’ to look for the answer.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not abandoning my community. I’m just letting a bit more time lapse before I don my “Community Savior” cape and offering people the chance to figure things out. Received three excited messages yesterday from folks like this, who found the answers to their own questions and were SO proud.
All you Need is Love
That speaks for itself. Let’s face it, when you manage a social community, with tens of thousands of people, some of them will…….well……..push your buttons. You have to remember that they are YOUR buttons, and only YOU can decide who will push them, and you, over the edge.
I’ve learned that with patience (and more patience), full explanations, examples, illustrations, and most importantly kindness that community members will always respond positively. They may not get what they wanted, but they will get what they need
Instant Karma’s Gonna’ Get You
This one’s my fave. Whatever you reap, so shall you sow. When you teach someone how to do something in their social space, you can expect a teaching to come your way. When you respond with kindness and patience, it will be returned to you. Maybe not the same day but it will be returned.
So, imagine.
Housecleaner Needed: Why Every Community Manager needs one
08 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Lessons, New Community Managers, Uncategorized Tags: cleanup effort, housecleaning, space management
Or, why some might argue that every Community Manager must BE one!
Spaces proliferate faster than putting two undetermined gender bunnies in a cage. Before you know it, you have hundreds (and hundreds) of communities and groups. Wearing our rose-colored glasses, we can quote those stats to show how we’ve accomplished adoption in our work environment.
But let’s get a dose of Dr. Phil and get real. Not every space is successfully launched, prepared, nurtured, revised, evaluated, redesigned, and adopted. I don’t have numbers to back me up, but I do know from experience that an annual ‘cleanup’ effort reduces the overall number of spaces by about 20%.
So back to the housecleaner. I don’t know about you, but my workday is quite full with supporting users, community managers, creating and changing spaces, moderating content, making connections between the business and community…oh, and attending meetings, planning strategy, generating reports and doing all the things that all of us have to do all the time.
Housecleaning communities is, for me, an annual event that is mind-numbing. I have to wonder what it would be like to have the time to follow up on every space request, to reach out to Community Managers to offer assistance and to jump start their spaces, to archive spaces well before they hit the ‘no content in six months…you’re archived’ rule.
One person can’t do it all. Anyone out there have a housecleaning strategy?
A New Year is Upon us
30 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
And with a new year comes a whole new vision of what enterprise communities will look like.
Here’s the short list of what I hope to accomplish this year:
- A new way of organizing groups and spaces to help our user more easily find that they want/need
- Unique ways to blend events, campaigns etc. with social activities as well as traditional marketing
- Cross linking strategies to ensure one voice across a variety of platforms and domains
- Continuing knowledge and skill particularly in the art of consulting, negotiating, and marketing
My resolution?
Advocate for customer ease of use as adoption of social media increases across the enterprise.
What’s yours?
Social as a Business Workstream
11 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Lessons
Many members of company communities are interested in their social platforms first as a social outlet. Lots of gardening and photography (and let’s not forget motorcycle!) groups the first year.
As time passes, and users become more adept at using social as part of their day to jobs, they realize that it can :
- easily replace blast eMails sent to constantly outdated distribution lists (internally)
- replace those much-deleted monthly ‘broadcast’ newsletters from the corporate university or division
- offer an opportunity for users to ‘talk back;’ to offer their opinions on corporate positioning; to suggest better ways to position products or services to customers
- and, in short, it can create a dialogue that enhances the quality of communication and the quantity of sales via transparency in sharing best practices
Making social part of the overall workstream is a challenge that many of face.
How have you done it, or how do you plan to do it? This intrinsically ties into the notion of measurement; if aligned to the workstream, would social then be considered a factor…maybe even a driving factor in driving leads or revenue?
Enough – When Seeking More Leads you Astray
02 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Lessons
When is enough enough for YOU?
Duirng the latter part of 2011, we had a rather eventful family life. Nothing so unusual that I need to write about it in great detail, but the regular joys and trials of family life (lucky for me, far more joys).
But I have realized something about myself, pretty much nothing is enough. I’m always looking for more, to do more, to be more, and…shamefaced…to have more.
While many of us have resolutions that we seriously intend to keep, I just want to be mindful of the many blessings in my life and to acknowledge that I have enough. In fact, when it comes to family and friends, I have receive far more than my fair share.
Have you had enough yet?
Happy, Happy!
26 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
No matter how you celebrate, what you celebrate, or even IF you celebrate, may you all be happy and blessed!
When Service Becomes a Disservice
18 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
I’m a first time Jet Blue flyer, and I have to say it was great. Each seat had more legroom than any other recent ailrine I’ve flown, no charge to check luggage, and free premium movies. All good.
So after a great vacation, I was happily looking forward to the flight home. The boarding process was fast and orderly, but after sitting for about five minutes the pilot made an announcement that there were folks ‘stuck in customs’ and we were going to wait for them. No bother for us, we were flying home to Boston so didn’t have to make a connecting flight.
After ten minutes, four people boarded and we all felt badly for them. Two adults, hustling two children, obviously harried after running from customs to the airplane.
Ready for takeoff!
Not. The pilot spoke from the cockpit, “We have another five people stuck in customs, and since we’re one of the last flights we’re going to wait for them.”
A low rustle could be heard through the airplane rows. Why are we waiting for people AGAIN? I was at the airport three hours before takeoff, as instructed, what time did THEY arrive? People started to speak across aisles, weighing the pros and cons of waiting and one man expressed his concerns to the flight attendant.
It boiled down to this:
- It was incredibly nice of the Jet Blue staff to wait for everyone (and, they were already late for takeoff waiting for the first group so waiting for another group wouldn’t be a hit against them)
- As nice as it was to wait, there were about fifty people on the airplane who had arrived on time, and worked their way through the process in time to board. Of course, those most upset were those with connecting flights.
We did, of course, eventually take off about 30 minutes after scheduled takeoff. It did make me wonder, though, did the gratitude of the five people we waited for outweigh the anxiety and occasional anger of the fifty who were kept waiting?
I’ll tell you what the flight attendant said, “It’s the holidays, why WOULDN’T we do everything we could to make our customers happy.”
Couldn’t argue with that.
I’ll fly Jet Blue anytime I have the option.
EMC Innovation Conference Aftermath: An Environment of Trust
01 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: innovation, tips, trust
After an inspiring day at the EMC Innovation Conference, I began to realize that we are all surrounded with brilliance. The woman who was talking about some quantum-physics style algorithm (or something like that), the presenter who spoke about a nametag that could offer an analysis of your interaction via body language and the like, the EMC Innovation award winner who has a plan for global mentoring…..and so many more.
Brilliance surrounds us, but I wonder how much of it we recognize. Conversely, how much of it goes unnoticed?
EMC’s VP of HR talked about trust being the key driver of innovation. Trust to state an opinion, even if it opposes the norm; trust to make a stand and persist in the face of naysayers, trust that when you fail you may not be applauded but you will be encouraged to continue pursuing both your career and other great ideas.
Here are my quick tips on trust, gathered from 20+ years in corporate environments.:
- Know your group. Not a quick ‘hello’ in the morning that you learned in a management class, but via (minimum) weekly 1:1 meetings. In really trusting organizations, you don’t even need the scheduled meetings because you collaborate on a daily basis.
- Play to your, and your team’s strengths. Find out what folks love to do, and let them do it. Even if it’s in addition to their ‘day’ jobs, if there’s a passion it will be done.
- Laugh at yourself, not others. We all have our quirks, sharing a good laugh that doesn’t involved laughing AT anyone but yourself is a great tension reliever and builds trust
- Keep secrets secret. Really. If you’re told something in confidence, NEVER repeat it. If you hear it six more times, from six different people, get really good at putting that surprised expression on your face and saying, “You’re kidding!”
- Share the plan. We all have one, whether it’s our own career development or the evolution of our organization. Let people know what the current thoughts are, and where they might fit in. If you aspire to a different role, share your plan…..once. Make it known, give it a chance, and then move on if it doesn’t happen. No use bitching about it and bringing everyone else down.
Simple thoughts that require zero time in a management immersion experience 
Listen to This!
18 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Lessons, New Community Managers
I’m getting increasingly disturbed by the widespread use of the word “listening” in a social context. We’ve been taught that listening can be either active or passive in a face 2 face situation, but the word listening is inherently passive.
Maybe if we started using words that our non-social wannabees could relate to, it would be easier for them to understand what we’re talking about. It’s like talking to them in their own language; how radical is that?
Listening is not:
- Monitoring social channels for mentions
- Pumping out reports on the number of mentions
Listening, to my beginner’s mind, IS:
- Monitoring social channels for mentions AND taking action
- Replying to happy customers and inviting them to our social spaces to continue the conversation
- Responding to unhappy customers and offering a quick resolution to their issue
- At least attempting to measure sentiment, albeit not an accurate science or easy task
Maybe we call it engagement (another widely used social term). Or Customer Conversation. Or Customer Touch Point.
I don’t propose to have the answer, but I know that the word ‘listening’ doesn’t get across the breadth of activities, or the full value that can be produced by its flawless execution.
Post-Cleanup Aftermath
14 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lessons, New Community Managers, Space Architecture
If you’ve been following along, you remember that I just finished archiving over 170 spaces / communities. It was among the most tedious, mind-numbing things I’ve ever done and I will think three times before ever creating a new space again. OK, that’s an exaggeration but I will certainly apply lessons learned.
Of those 170 spaces, managed by approximately 300 Community Managers, I have received three…..three…..requests to reactivate the spaces:
- “I post a quarterly newsletter in that space, I need it.” Well, communities aren’t really intended to ‘push’ content but rather to engage but in any event the last time a newsletter was posted was a year ago. Haven’t heard back from that one, time sure does fly.
- ” Where did my space go? It just disappeared!” Remember that post that I highlighted, advising that I’d be archiving spaces? Well, your space had three pieces of content, all posted by you, all more than a year old. It’s gone, baby, gone.
- “I urgently need you to reactivate my space; my boss is all over me.” Really? Maybe your boss has been gone for 11 months, but not a piece of content has been added or viewed in that timeframe.
The rest of the Community Managers may someday discover that their spaces have been archived, but I doubt it. Monitoring spaces, especially when attempting to manage over 700, has to be a nearly weekly routine.
Blaze an active space!
