Digital Likeness » social media

You Can’t Hurt Coke’s Feelings

Andrea Hill — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:02:44 +0000

As organizations increasingly turn to social media to engage with (or broadcast to) their audience, the etiquette for setting up a corporate account needs to be considered.

Frequently, an organization will set up a company-branded Twitter account, complete with a corporate logo as the avatar and devoid of any sense of personality. This seems “safer”, more like the sterile press releases they’re used to sending out. As well, by not tying it to an individual, there is less risk of that person moving on with all the brand equity and relationships they’ve established.

But here’s a secret, and the reason why you need to break away from what’s comfortable to be successful in social media.

You can’t hurt coke’s feelings. You also can’t get that grin of satisfaction when Coke turns to you for advice and tells you you’re a lifesaver. Despite what those big agencies will tell you, people can’t truly forge relationships with brands. So when I’m trimming my followers list because I can’t keep up, I may hesitate to unfollow @GibranX, who I met at a conference in November, but I wouldn’t worry about offending @CocaCola.

Beyond offering value, offer personality. It’s the real thing.

Chipotle Haiku Contest

Andrea Hill — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:31:52 +0000

Win via Facebook
Chipotle burrito prize
Write, invite, vote-NOW!

Chipotle just announced an online contest: today only, post a haiku on their Facebook page, and the haiku with the most “likes” wins.

Chiptole commercials are always creative, and recently they’ve looked to crowdsourcing for content. This contest also takes the next step, encouraging hopeful winners to invite their friends to vote on their submissions. Obviously, you must ‘become a fan’ to vote, so Chipotle benefits from an increased fan base, at least during this voting.

View the contest ad here

Is the Comment Section for You or Your Commenters?

Andrea Hill — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:05:41 +0000

When I leave a comment on Ari Herzog‘s blog, I tend to receive a reply within a matter of hours. Yesterday I left a comment on Micah Baldwin‘s blog, and didn’t hear anything from him until this morning.

I don’t know; perhaps he was just busy yesterday. But suppose this is part of a strategy: you blog, then commenters get to have their say. Perhaps we may as a community decide to interpret things a certain way, apart from what the original writer intended. Then after some time, the blogger returns and responds. And a new round of conversation is stimulated.

I think it’s an interesting idea, giving the commenters some encouragement to express themselves without an immediate response from the original author. Micah can respond to a number of posts one after the other, which is likely more efficient for him, and it may bring back some people to the post now that there is a bit more overall discussion.

What to you think: this is a good approach?

Numbers Lie

Andrea Hill — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:54:47 +0000

According to MarketingCharts.com, as of November 2009 Facebook has 46% of the US market share of social networking site visits.

Does that mean you need to have a Facebook presence, because nearly half the people you want to reach are on there? Well, is your target audience all US social networking site visitors? (This is a trick question. The answer is NO).

Don’t get caught up in trends if they’re not relevant to your specific objectives and audience. Respect your new or potential constituents and refine your strategy to fit them, not the amorphous majority of all Internet users.

That’s why I like the Forrester Social Technographics Profile Tool. While it still makes some broad generalizations about Internet usage, at least there are some distinctions made. Obviously, direct surveying of your audience will help even more in ensuring your strategy fits with their needs and behaviors.

Why Should I Fan Your Brand?

Andrea Hill — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:29:22 +0000

The other day I ‘fanned’ Heartless Wheels on Facebook.

Heartless Wheels are a specific type of wheel used for roller derby; they are narrower and lighter than other types of quad wheels like Atom or Radar Wheels. Some of my fellow skaters use Heartless Wheels, but I don’t. So when I fanned them, one of my Facebook friends asked me why.

Yesterday, Heartless announced, via their Facebook page, a contest to win a free set of wheels. Now my friend understands.

For all extents and purposes, I’m not a brand advocate for Heartless. They don’t have a single cent of my hard-earned money. But that could change if handled correctly. Obviously, winning a contest is going to make me a true advocate for their brand.

Introducing me to their products in a non-pushy way can also get me there. Lululemon does a great job at featuring their products on their Facebook page. Got questions about a product? Ask it here and they will respond back. This is super for a brand where people may not be able to “try something on/out” before buying. Dedicated administrators can answer questions or encourage discussion, or eventually the passionate community can entertain itself.

Too often in social media, we concentrate on what we want to have happen (generate fans, comments, and ultimately sales) without considering what our target audience wants. How can we help them achieve their goals, and then how does that translate into our own? What will encourage them to fan us, and then to continue to be engaged, and eventually perform some action beyond hitting “become a fan”?

(Incidentally: an article on Inside Facebook outlines the policy regarding requiring individuals to become fans in order to enter contests on Facebook. Definitely worth a read if you’re planning on creating a contest on the page itself.)

Is there such a thing as too many comments?

Andrea Hill — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:28:56 +0000

Recently I was reading a blog post that sparked a thought in me. I felt compelled to comment; and honestly, this isn’t that frequent a response in me. So I started scrolling down to the comment section… and scrolled, and scrolled.. and scrolled. The entry box to leave a comment was at the bottom of the form, below 81 comments left by others.

Because I had to scroll through the comments to leave my own, I started reading some of them. I got to perhaps the 10th comment before I started to get distracted from the initial response I wanted to leave. Yet, I felt compelled to keep reading the comments to ensure I wasn’t going to simply be echoing something someone else had left.

Have you experienced the same? Do you sometimes find that too many comments causes you to leave silently? (This may or may not be somewhat related to a blog post written by Sire: Why I No Longer Link to the Likes of Problogger and John Chow. Once a blog hits critical mass, do you worry you have nothing more to offer?)

Facebook: It’s Time to Enhance Events

Andrea Hill — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:13:44 +0000

Dear Mark and team,

Please, forget the Newsfeed. You’re never going to please everyone. Instead, can you step it up with events?

Events aren’t bad right now. The ability to see who else is attending, and share to my profile is great. But there’s so much more you could be doing…

Make it easier to add events to Facebook

My organization has ongoing events. Right now I add information about it to our website, and then if I remember, I create a Facebook event. The ability to duplicate or set recurring events would ensure I always used Facebook for promotion.

Promote events off-site

You’ve gotten into the widget game already with the fan boxes, why not create an event box as well? Let an organization host all the event details on Facebook, and point people to it from a event box on their site? Like a fan box, you could show attendees to motivate other people to RSVP and attend. And of course, draw more people to Facebook.

Remind people of the events they RSVPed to – and remind their friends!

Ok, so don’t completely forget about the Newsfeed. What if the day of an event I’d RSVPed to, you prompted me to tell my friends I was attending? That would help me remember what I had going on, and give the event organizers one last promotional push. And of course, as we all learned from Beacon: make sure the notifications are per-event, and opt-in! ;^)

Let administrators RSVP as individuals

If I create an event on the behalf of a page, I can RSVP as an individual, but any comments left on the wall are on the behalf of the page. Actually, this is an issue with page management on the whole, I can’t respond to wall posts as an individual on a page I administer. Yet apparently I can “like” items on the page…? Sorry, I digress: I’ll save fan page administration for another note.

Just make the whole iPhone experience better

On the iPhone right now I can see events I’ve been invited to, and must click to view details to see how I RSVPed. If I’m invited to something and I decline, it still clutters up my view.

In contrast, on the full version I only see the events to which I RSVPed, whether or not I was invited. This is a very different experience, and actually seems like it’s counter-intuitive. On a mobile device, space is limited. Why would I want to see events I wasn’t planning on attending, and not have access to those to which I’d RSVPed?

When I click on the Events tab…oh wait, what???

Geez Mark, so I grabbed that screen shot above from my Events tab, but when I created an event and then deleted it, I ended up at a different URL (facebook.com/events.php) – which looks more like my iPhone experience. So now I’m confused as to which is the “normal” way of accessing events. Sneaky, sneaky…
Well, regardless of which is the primary means to access events, it’s confusing to be dealt a screen of events you’ve declined. Can you imagine if accessing the friends page showed you all the people you’ve denied? Uh.. that’s rhetorical. Do NOT build that!

Let me find local events

Much to-do was made about Facebook enhancing in-site search a few months back. So why can’t I search for public events by, let’s see, location? Or type? Again: events are good right now, but actually letting people FIND events using your site would probably really encourage organizers to ensure their events were listed.

Ok, well I hate to be too demanding – and I’m sure you’re working hard on many of these enhancements already. But I really think you could enhance events as a win-win-win: benefits to event promoters, benefits to event attendees, AND benefits to your organization.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with – and hey, if you have any sort of press conference to promote it – invite me, mmkay?

Yours,
Andrea

What is a “Popular” Post?

Andrea Hill — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:29:02 +0000

The other day, I posted a list of the Top Ten Posts on this blog. I used Google Analytics’ measure of “top content” to create that list.

Top Content according to Google Analytics is page views. But does that really equate to popularity?

Aside: Postrank tried to change our perceptions of “top” content, looking at visitor engagement rather than merely visits. I loved the concept, but unfortunately had trouble with hosting the widget on this blog and finally removed it after several months of no results.

So how do you want to define popularity, or top content? Really, it depends on what you’re hoping to achieve. If I want to know what posts are bringing people to my site, the list I posted is appropriate. If I want to know what posts elicited a response in people / caused them to forward, retweet or comment, that would likely be an entirely different list. Arguably, determining what it was about those posts that interested people would be a bit more challenging: and if I really wanted to geek out about it, I could figure out which posts elicited the most feedback per eyeball by cross-referencing the two lists.

There are plenty of tools out there to get data about your content or activities online. The tricky part is figuring out how to turn the data into meaningful information, and how to learn from it.

Should Twitter be Banned at Conferences?

Andrea Hill — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:26:01 +0000

Yes, according to Joseph Jaffe. In episode JJTV #60, Jaffe pledges to personally escort disrespectful tweeters out of any conference he’s attending.

It’s a known fact that I dislike online video, but I was curious to see what Jaffe’s reasoning was. Was it that attendees are too busy on their phone to be fully paying attention? That truly great insights can’t be captured in 140 character sound-bytes, and when an audience of hundreds is parroting the same quotes, it’s questionable if there are any real insights being gleaned?

As perhaps should have been expected, Jaffe is primarily concerned with the impact on the speakers. Either speakers are ‘left out’ of the conversation as tweeters are sharing commentary in real time, or in some cases they’re being expected to follow along with the tweetstream and respond. He also touches on the financial implications: tweeting attendees have paid for the privilege of learning; those following on Twitter have not.

What’s interesting about this issue is how others are impacted. Social media is ‘opt-in’: someone can choose to follow the hashtag to be a part of the conversation, or not. Individuals around me are not whispering or passing notes, they’re simply typing. (Yes, I will admit that I was once told that my typing annoyed another conference attendee: I was taking notes for my blog and she later thanked me when she went back to read them). If someone doesn’t wish to engage in the chatstream, they obviously have the choice not to.

So, I’ve identified reasons Twitter negatively impacts the audience experience, and Jaffe highlights the speaker’s challenges. But are we all so caught up in ‘being connected’, that we feel an obligation to engage even if it results in a poorer experience?

And ultimately, justified or not, is it really even possible to expect that Twitter will be disallowed at conferences, either officially or socially?

Career Advancement Core Conversation at SxSW

Andrea Hill — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:29:52 +0000

Back in a post last August, I asked you, my blog readers and twitter followers, to vote for my SxSW proposal: “Forging your Ideal Career”. And you listened! Today I’m very happy to announce that I will be speaking at the 2010 South By Southwest Interactive Festival.

As I mentioned back in the blog post, I’ve called on a former co-worker, Michael Krotscheck, as a co-presenter. Michael and I were senior developers at Resource Interactive, and sought out different ways to advance our managerial and entrepreneurial skills to allow us to advance beyond coding (not that there is anything wrong with that!)

Our proposal was such:

Forging your Ideal Career

You’ve proven you’re a great developer / designer. How do you rise above the production floor to share your ideas and insights, and drive the solution rather than simply implementing it? Presenters will share their strategies for cultivating your career and attaining personal satisfaction while still keeping a steady paycheck!

What if you feel your company’s career path is not for you?

How do you position yourself as what you want to be doing, versus what you’re currently doing?

How can networking help?

What opportunities exist outside work?

Forget work-life balance: how do you maintain paid work-unpaid work balance?

How do you get support from your organization for your outside activities?

What ideas do you share with your employer, versus keeping them to yourself?

Wherein lies the problem: Your career, your job, or your company?

When is it time to leave?

How do you move on without burning bridges?

Although we didn’t pitch it as such, our topic was selected as one of the “Core Conversations” sessions. I’m really pleased with this, as I noted last year that some of my favorite SXSW sessions were Core Conversations. In general when I have speaking or training engagements, I really enjoy the interaction moreso than the “talking to”, so the format will be comfortable. As well, although Michael and I have our own experiences to draw from, we are not by any means “experts” in career development. I look forward to networking and engaging with others, hearing their challenges and hopefully collectively finding solutions in helping others find satisfaction and self-fulfillment in their work.

If you are planning to attend SxSW, I hope our paths will cross! Even if not, I’d appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you may have on this topic. I want it to be a rewarding, helpful experience for all involved!