Influence, Perspective, and Emily
You want to uncover influencers, right?
Find those people that can carry your message, get heard, cut through the noise and get people’s attention? The ones with the most eyeballs, the most leverage, the strongest voice, the most accumulated “social capital”?
Let me tell you a story about Emily.
Emily was a donor to a non-profit organization I used to work for. She wasn’t an especially notable donor, but she was a consistently, quietly loyal one. She sent precisely $100, twice a year, to our annual giving campaign. By most fundraising “standards”, that put her neatly in a “nice but not major” camp.
Emily was also quite unassuming, but she was incredibly passionate about our work. She came to the events, but never stayed for the fancy-dancy reception. She talked with the kids. She was sweet, approachable, and kind. I talked to her often about music, books, and her grandkids who lived across the country. She taught me a bit of Gaelic. I taught her a bit of Spanish, and introduced her to comics (no I’m not joking).
We had a conversation once about the idea of “major donors” and she chided me a bit about how we development folks were so focused on the big gifts. But she mentioned that in her years supporting our organization, she’d always felt like her contribution – however small – made a difference, and that we valued her. We did.
Late one year, Emily died. She was mourned, and missed.
About a month later, I got a call from an attorney representing Emily’s estate. She had made some provisions in her will, one of which was that my organization was to be the recipient of a $5 million dollar endowment gift.
$5 million. That amount made an enormous difference to my organization in one shot.
In the traditional sense, Emily was never the person we would have identified as “influential”. Ever. She was a routine donor that didn’t make a lot of noise, insist on a board seat, volunteer on committees, or throw big money at capital campaigns. She cared nothing for having her name on plaques or lists. By our standards today, her social graph would have been rather paltry.
But she felt like she made a difference to us, and we cared about what that meant. We treated her in a way befitting her emotional commitment, not her financial one. And in the end, she made a more powerful difference to our organization than we ever could have imagined.
Your “influencers” are right there. In your customer database. They’re buying from you already, which means they have the ultimate currency of influence that should matter to you: their business.
They don’t have scads of followers. They might not spend tons of money. Some of them don’t give a rip if you have a fan page, and even if they’ve “fanned” you, they may never be back. They don’t have legions of fans commenting on their blogs, if they have one at all.
Yet they are the ones whose trust and evangelism you need. You’re much better off getting all of your own customers to love what you’re doing than try to convince a Jason Falls or a Tara Hunt or a Chris Brogan that they should care if they don’t already.
Deliver the best goods to the people that hold the keys to your kingdom, regardless of their social graph. Because if you are putting too many of your eggs in the fragile, fleeting basket of influence that’s based simply on today’s notions of popularity and visibility, you just might be overlooking an Emily.
Special thanks to Jim Long for sharing his post, which reminded me of this story and reinforces the need for perspective when it comes to influence.
image credit: Randy Son Of Robert
The Dots Need Connecting
Social media is grand, and yes, it’s proving to be valuable for customer service in some scenarios.
But it’s exposing a big disconnect: the companies embracing using things like Twitter or blogs aren’t necessarily taking those principles and applying them to their more traditional ideas of customer service and the operations that support it.
Best Buy’s Twelpforce
Yesterday, I had a small experience on that front with my local Best Buy store. I tried to call the store to find out if they had a product in stock. Four times. No one ever picked up the phone.
In typical social media fashion, I vented on Twitter, and headed out to the Apple store to find what I needed.
In rather short order, @Coral_BestBuy reached out to help. But of course, she couldn’t, at least immediately.
As awesome as Coral is (and she really was), she’s part of the corporate team, not the one at my local store that’s failing to answer their phone. She’s a couple of levels removed, and while she told me she was sending an email to store management, the problem is not of her construction. She can only rattle the cage on her end, apologize to me, and try to make things right the best she can.
(Aside: Let’s be clear. This was a minor inconvenience on my end. No one died. I don’t need anything to fix the problem. But to me it’s pointing to something bigger.)
The Disconnect
I love the potential of using things like Twitter for customer service. We at Radian6 use it too, and I’ve had some great experiences with folks like Coral, and the teams at Seesmic, Evernote, Comcast, and the Roger Smith Hotel.
Some of these companies are really taking the intent behind social media engagement – to improve their customers’ experience – and bringing it into the operations of their companies. Or, perhaps more accurately, they’re building companies that are equipped to deliver those kinds of customer experiences in the first place, and they’re deploying the social media tools as one way to do that.
The trouble happens when the companies are building something like a Twitter brigade as a surface treatment, or an isolated channel. The folks manning the accounts aren’t really empowered to do or change much operationally, and there are still some significant shortcomings in customer experience via the call center or the website..
It creates a disparate experience, and an inconsistent one that still doesn’t reflect well on the brand. It drives people to use Twitter, sure, but more because they are more certain of a response, and less because of deep affection for Twitter itself.
For the optimist, it can appear like they’re trying, but that the mainstream operations haven’t caught up to the new stuff.
To the cynic, it can look like they’re chasing the trendy tools, and ignoring the underlying problems they have, both culturally and operationally.
Life on the Front Lines
I live and breathe life in the social media trenches, along with a super kick-ass team. We are responding to and experiencing the front lines of social media on a daily basis. So I get it.
And we are fortunate, because our executive management team looks to us to actually inform process, operations, and product development to help align what we do with what our community tells us they need. But that’s not always the case.
How much are folks like Coral empowered to actually change the broken processes that are affecting customer experience? Can she really call up my local store and make sure they fix the phone answering problem, or does her authority end with a sternly worded email?
What happens when you just park an intern in front of the Twitter stream? The expectations for delivery on the part of the customer might not match the execution ability of that person.
I always talk about offering solutions instead of just pointing at problems, so I’m going to try and tackle the “so what can we do about it” question in a separate post. But do you see the problem here?
If we go about social media from the outside in, it’s going to have a really hard time taking root. If the intentions of social media are not wired into the function and purpose of a company, and if those manning the social media posts aren’t able to help inform and drive necessary change, it’s just veneer.
What Can We Change?
I’ll be thinking on this and delivering some ideas. But I want to hear from you too. Let’s talk in detail about not just that we need to bring social media into the operations, but how we’re going to do that.
Do you have thoughts and ideas to share? What do you think?
The New Court of Public Opinion
There’s an interesting characteristic of the online world that makes things sticky sometimes.
We can get opinions from anywhere.
The ubiquity of information means that not only can we comment or opine on anything, but it’s easy, and even widely accepted to do so.
It’s rather understood that if you put a statement, issue, opinion or action out there publicly, you are tacitly inviting commentary and opinion on same. (And if you choose to close your comments, that must mean you’re closed minded to others’ ideas, right? Anti-social? I think not.)
The more you share information, the more it’s reacted to. Sometimes you ask for opinions directly, but other times you don’t. Is simply publishing content of any kind an implied solicitation of input? Is that the price of being an unfettered publisher of ideas?
And when that happens, how do you figure out who to listen to? When you should put stock in something, and when not? When do you take heed of the stuff that’s not necessarily easy to hear, the criticisms that have merit, and when do you chalk it up to noise? Can you let any of the accolades act as a barometer either, or are they mostly empty, sycophantic ramblings? How to distinguish?
If you ignore it all, are you narrow minded? A snob? Or judicious about what input you entertain?
I’ve been called a snob for socializing with familiar faces in smaller groups instead of mingling among massive crowds. (There are reasons I don’t like crowds much). I’ve been accused of being elitist because someone offers an unsolicited opinion of what I’m doing wrong, or what I should write about, or how I should do my job, and I’ve chosen to do differently. I’ve seen friends, colleagues, and complete strangers come under fire for not responding in the way people want them to.
Should I care what you think?
The answer for me comes back to a constant: Trust.
Maybe more than just trust. Maybe it’s whether it feels like someone’s being thoughtful, or just asserting an opinion. (Julien Smith once gave me great constructive feedback about talking too fast in my speeches. What made me take that to heart?)
Maybe it’s whether that relationship feels like it has a reciprocal investment. Maybe it’s whether I have a sense of that person’s integrity, and their motivations for saying something in the first place.
For me, I’ve found a few ways to tap small groups of trusted advisors in my universe (thank you, Google Wave) for the kinds of questions I’d honestly be afraid to put out there in the public. The ones that show vulnerability or uncertainty on my end, that might give away the fact that I’m not made of armor. Or the ones that have a lot more to do with where I’m driving toward next.
I’ve found it amazingly helpful to have forged a few trusted affinities. They help offset the influx of impromptu commentary that’s much harder to filter.
But I’ve still got lots of questions about the expectations we’re setting for each other here. I’m as social as the next person, but that doesn’t mean everything I do or say is up for debate. Several people have been quoted as saying “What other people think of me is none of my business.”
Or… is it?
image credit: southerntabitha
Avoiding the Social Media Pigeonhole
Listen here: You don’t want to be a social media expert, okay? You really don’t.
Social media is limited in focus and lifespan.
It’s *one* line of application in an otherwise vast business landscape that includes many disciplines, and many approaches to solving the related challenges.
That goes for me too. I am first and foremost a communicator, and as I like to say, a constructive heretic. While my role is focused and specialized toward social media, I didn’t seek out a career there.
I wanted a career that focused on communication and brand stewardship. I communicate inside my company. From my company to my customers. I help people talk to each other by making connections when I can. I communicate about what I believe, and I digest a lot of what others think (which emphasizes that communication isn’t always about what you say, but sometimes, what you absorb). I share what I learn. I push boundaries and break rules, but always with the intent of creating positive, progressive change that can grow a business.
I do those things with various tools, but always toward larger aims. Once upon a time, I did it with paper and mail. After that it was websites and video and email. Today, it’s Twitter and blogs. Who knows what might be next? But the intent is always the same.
Think Specialization Within A Field
It’s kind of like my life as a musician. I’m a flute player, which is my instrument, my specialization. But I am a musician first, and I apply the theories and applications of a broader music landscape to my niche role as a flute player. The goal is to make music, and I play my part with the instrument I’ve learned best.
Put another way, my friend DJ Waldow knows email. But he’s a marketer and communicator, with email as his specialization of choice, and where he focuses his expertise. But to him, it’s about applying email into a larger communication strategy, not a suggestion that email is the one and only thing. And he uses social media to help drive his larger goal, which is to help companies use email marketing for *their* larger goal, which is better communication with their customers. Savvy?
Need one more example? Look at these entrepreneurs, all of which you might recognize through their social media activity, but whose callings and ideas are bigger than the tools they use to get there.
Social media mastery isn’t the goal.
The goal is to master better connections. More effective communication. How technology links people. Relationships that matter, in context, to individuals. Business that keeps a people-focused attitude at the core of its actions. And with mastery in the larger idea comes evolving expertise in the tools and underlying strategies.
Beware of tunnel vision, my friends. Strive to focus on a larger construct: Customer experience. Communication. Human resources. Business development. Innovation. Entrepreneurship. And within that, if social media is your weapon of choice, by all means learn it, and learn it well.
But remember that social media has to be applied to something broader in order to work. It’s not the end game in itself, but rather one vehicle with which to get there, and one which will inevitably give way to something else. If you focus too closely on the tactical pieces, you’ll make yourself obsolete as soon as the next new thing comes along.
And in the name of putting my money where my mouth is, those blog changes I promised are coming in the not-too-distant future. You can expect a continued thread of social media and how it applies to business, but I’ll be exploring more in the context of communication, change-making, and what it really means to build community in the truest sense of the word.
Don’t get stuck thinking that the means is your aim. The social media pigeonhole is a sticky place to be. Find something bigger and more timeless to drive toward, and you can adapt to whatever the fast-and-fickle world throws at you.
image credit: James Cridland
Being A Director of Community: One Year Later
Last year, I wrote a post about being a director of community. It was a bit of a drilldown on what a job like mine entails, some of my functional areas of responsibility, and a bit about the time commitments that come alongside working in the social media realm full time.
It’s been a little over a year since I’ve been in this role, and boy has that year seen a lot of changes. So I thought I’d share with you a bit about what’s evolved, what’s stayed the same, and what I think the future looks like for community-related roles inside of companies.
What’s Evolved:
Team size:
A year ago, our community team was just emerging. David Alston was manning the ship, and in addition to me we had Mike Huggard, who helped us manage some of the lead pipeline from the community to the account teams. So there were three of us.
Today, we’re a team of twelve, and still growing. In April, keep an eye out on the Radian6 blog where we’ll dive into more detail about how we’ve built our department, and the structure and processes we use to operate in this unique way.
My Responsibilities:
When I started my role a year ago, my responsibilities were chiefly doing the active listening as well as front-line engagement through our external communities – Twitter, blogs, and the like – and creating content. I still do engagement and content creation, in addition to now overseeing a more complex and strategic system of team community management and content generation.
The biggest part that’s changed is the growth of our company, and therefore our team. I’ve now got a pretty awesome team of community and content folks that make me look good every single day. That means I’m less in the trenches, and more in an oversight role to help keep the big ship on course.
Here’s a bit of what’s in my wheelhouse:
Events and Business Development
I do a great deal of speaking and attending industry events, because the offline component of community building is still critical. During busy event season, I spend anywhere from 40-60% of my time on the road to spend face time with the people that drive our business (and our community team is doing more and more of this, too). My goal at those events is to meet and talk to existing customers, get to know the social media community at a deeper level, and yes, bring home potential leads for our sales guys.
Internal Communication
Our community management team is focused on supporting our users and external communities on a day to day basis. And while that’s my role too, I’ve also taken a lot of ownership over internal communications and community, making sure I’m the bridge between our internal departments, executive team, and the communities we serve. We have lots to communicate, so I work closely with our product, support, and sales teams to keep the lines of communication open, and always find better ways to keep everyone informed and working from the same sheet music.
Community Resource Development
It’s my job to make sure our team is mobilized to provide our users and the social media community with the resources they need. Whether that’s our monthly ebooks, content for the website, our blog, or a community for our users, those are the projects I help shepherd. I also continue to actively contribute to our content creation myself, and am ever thankful for folks like Teresa, Lauren, and Katie for keeping me on task. That goes for our internal folks too; when they need help with strategic social media input for customers, our team helps on that front.
Listening and Engagement
We have an entire team dedicated to fielding the discussions in the community about our brand and industry, and engaging with them actively online. I do plenty of direct engagement myself, and help set some of the benchmarks like engagement guidelines, processes and workflow, and responsibility distribution on our team. And I have awesome people on the front lines that are the ones that make those thoughts reality.
Measurement and Reporting
I have a dashboard of metrics I track daily, looking at 14-30 day timeframes: breakdown of engagement (% of posts responded to and what categories they fell under, like support or compliments or content sharing), our Share of Conversation, competitive landscape, sentiment trends, and what media are carrying the conversation about us so we can gauge our outreach accordingly. We’re also putting together regular executive reports that detail metrics on community engagement, content performance, lead generation, and competitive analysis to take regular snapshots of the impact of our work.
What’s Stayed The Same
Community work is still not a 9-5 proposition. Our team has grown, but that’s just scaled the number of people we have managing specific pieces of our community and content functions. The intent remains the same: for us to build human and personal relationships with our users and the social media community as a whole, provide rich and useful content on social media strategy specific to listening, engagement and measurement, and help businesses build social media into the very operations and culture of their organizations.
That means I’m on and connected more than might be comfortable for some people, and I balance that with being a mom and having a personal life. I still work long days – anywhere from 12-16 hours usually – and I’m blessed to work with one of the hardest working groups of people I know. My role has definitely evolved from an in-the-trenches and hands-on role to a more strategic and leadership-based role, but it’s critical for me to stay involved directly in my community. But make no mistake: this is all by choice.
You never really scale, because the needs always grow alongside. So you have to consistently evaluate priorities, and tweak your approach accordingly. And I still have to always balance my personal and professional presence, but you do eventually settle into what “feels” right, and go from there. There’s no checklist or precise answer for this one, and it’s something that every community person will have to figure out for themselves.
The Future of Community Management
It’s hard to speculate on this one still, because community management is still a bit of an enigma for many companies. They’re not sure what it’s for, or why these roles exist, and they tend to be pigeonholed as “online” community managers, as in the days of forum moderators. But the role really does have business significance, offline too, and it’s serious work.
If I had my druthers, I’d be educating companies about how this role is a hybrid discipline – a mix of sales and customer service and communication – and how really should be silo agnostic, functioning as a hub for many different disciplines inside the company. Online engagement is part of the role, but so too is the integration of that online world with offline efforts, business strategy, and even the culture of an organization.
These people are spokespeople, Trust Agents, communicators, networkers, brand ambassadors, and representatives of their community all wrapped into one. And in my opinion, it’s a role we need to take seriously and require that the people who hold them can demonstrate a wealth of mature business and interpersonal skills. That’s the ideal, of course.
The folks over at the Community Roundtable (I’m a member) have put together an interesting report on the State of Community Management. It’s worth a read, as it reflects a lot of the realities today (to the good and to the challenging) as well as a glimpse at what tomorrow might look like. And at Radian6, we put together an e-book on Building and Sustaining Brand Communities that gives our take on what these roles and functions look like inside an organization.
What Do You Think?
Does this job look the way you expected? Is a role like mine going to become more prevalent in the future, and where do you think it fits in business (and why)? What other questions do you have about community roles that I can help answer?
I’m looking forward to your comments.
Special thanks to my Radian6 colleagues for making this year the roller coaster of the best kind, and to my team for always making me look smarter and more accomplished than I am. You guys are what keep me doing this every day, without question, and keep the ship afloat.
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