In the wake of this post on working hard or just working lots, I had a few chats with people that basically asked “so, what is work that matters?” In other words, what does true hard work look like?
This, of course, will vary based on your situation. But here’s my take on it. I’ll be curious to hear what you think.
Work with Context
This is the obvious one: the work that matters is the stuff that lines up with what you’re hoping to achieve long term. If you want to write a book, time to write is time well spent. If you’re building a community, time spent cultivating and talking to the people you hope will be part of it is contextual, and likely well invested.
Yes, And…
I tend to think that it’s not enough to just check off the items on the list and call it a day. Work that matters – the stuff that really moves needles – is rarely accomplished by doing just enough to get by. To me, the hard, impactful work is the stuff where you do what’s needed to get the job done, and then always look at how you can push it one step further to make it better.
Detours, Not Obstacles
Hard work is often illustrated when you see someone diligently working their way around a challenge, rather than lamenting their circumstances. It’s the very act of doing instead of making excuses that can demonstrate work that makes a difference.
Accountability
The discipline to measure and evaluate your work and learn from that analysis is what often separates the workers from the Workers. Demonstrating results, being willing to own both successes and failures, and committing to adjust the work accordingly is the mark of quality work, not just volume of tasks.
Stuff That Yields
Chris Brogan talks about the web enabling relationships that yield. I think the hard work – the stuff that’s important – is, quite simply, the stuff that yields results. Whether that’s better relationships, more money, better brand awareness and affinity, whatever. The hard work is in dedicating yourself to the things that produce.
So those are my five. Do you have some of your own? How do you recognize hard work when you see it, aside from just the hours someone logs?
I’m curious about your take. Sound off in the comments.
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
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.
image credit: David Paul Ohmer
In the realm of phrases that are often used to talk about what we do every day, we toss around “working hard”. Everything from what it takes to succeed in life, to social media and business and writing and all the things in between.
But here’s something to consider.
Working long hours doesn’t, by default, mean you’re working hard. You can work for hours at something totally and utterly valueless, and that doesn’t get you to where you want to be.
There’s an adage about working smarter, and that’s part of it. But you can work smart for an hour and not get anywhere, either.
The trick is in the balance between the two. It’s putting in serious, significant effort toward the things that line up with your priorities, goals, and needs. See the difference?
A 16-hour day is not a badge of honor. An email inbox full of 300+ messages isn’t an indicator of how successful you are. Those things are absolutely empty – foolish, even – unless the work you put toward them has impact on the end game, whatever that may be.
So when you say to us “I’m working so hard but not getting results”, it’s really likely you’re putting your effort in the wrong place. Don’t work blindly. Work diligently, with a keen editing eye, and if it’s long hours you intend to point to as evidence of your accomplishments, let them be hours spent in the places that matter. Busy isn’t the same as working hard.
That’s a tough game, isn’t it? It’s not enough to just put in the hours. A lot of the game is just showing up, but it’s not ALL of the game, not anymore. There’s way too much competition, plenty of noise, and way too many people willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. They’re making hard choices about what NOT to do in favor of focusing relentlessly on their mission-critical stuff.
So are you truly working hard, or are you just putting in the long hours? Are you auditing your work to be sure those hours are well spent? I know I have to work at this every day.
You?
image credit: jronaldlee
I have a lot of people ask me where I went to school, and what I studied in order to set myself up for the career path I have now. So it’s time for me to come clean with my dirty little secret:
I don’t have a college degree.
Moreover, when I was in school? I was a music major. Flute performance, to be exact. I am, actually, a professional band nerd.
To some of you, that’s not a biggie. To others, you’re sitting there going “but how on earth do you have a successful career in social media if you don’t have a marketing degree or something?”
My career path went something like this.
I went to school, and while I was fortunate to have some of it paid for, I changed majors and didn’t graduate in four years. And after my fifth year, I couldn’t afford to continue (bartending is awesome but not quite lucrative enough for rent AND a college education). I loved music, passionately, and wanted to be in the industry but not necessarily on the stage.
I walked in the door at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and asked for a job. Any job. Entry level, unglamorous. I got a job as a development assistant in the fundraising department earning $17,000 a year. I worked hard, and I learned.
That took me through 7 years of professional fundraising roles, both in the arts and in social services. From there I was recruited by a former colleague to lead first client services, then marketing and communications at a design and architecture firm, and I did that for several years. Then I left and started my own online communications business, worked my tail off to make it work – I would have been willing to work part time at Target to pay the bills if I had to – and did. A bit more than a year later, I got hired by my then-client, Radian6.
I overcame the lack of a degree with hard work. It’s that simple, and yet not.
In my first few jobs, people asked about the degree. I addressed that discussion by saying that I didn’t complete my degree for financial reasons, but I could point to tangible professional results in the positions I’d had to date, and that I believed they illustrated my capabilities in a more practical way.
Some people listened, some didn’t. The ones that didn’t weren’t the right culture for me. And after that, people stopped asking, because my work spoke for itself. Yes, I’ve heard the “degree is proof that you can finish something” mantra, but I don’t buy it. Wouldn’t you rather know I can finish a project for you that can help build the business?
I earned the role I have today because I have a track record of results, no matter what role I was in, and when I was an employee or a consultant. Period.
But enough about me…
I’m a bit of a heretic. I’ve always defied convention just a little bit, but it’s demonstrated to me that in the career path I’ve walked, the degree wasn’t the important part.
You can do this too.
And even if you have a degree, it IS possible to make it relevant to a new career, a new industry, a new role. It’s about demonstrating how hard you can work, what results you’ve achieved (and what you learned when you missed the mark), and what you’re willing to do to earn credibility and trust that goes beyond your education.
If you don’t have a degree, or the “right” degree, you can very much still build a case for why you can do the job you want without it. That might require being willing to take a more junior role in order to earn your stripes. That might require meticulous attention to tracking the results of your projects, and illustrating how you’ve succeeded without it.
You might take volunteer or internship work (even as an established professional) in order to earn relevant experience in a new field. You might seek out a mentor in your desired field, and patiently spend your own personal time learning outside your current gig in order to build up a library of knowledge that can help you earn the gig.
The point is this: if you want to make something happen bad enough, you do what you have to do, and find ways around the obstacles instead of whining about their existence.
What will you do next?
I feel kind of odd writing a post that’s so me-focused, but I’m hoping that you can take something away from this that’s relevant to you. It is, after all, the perspective and experience I have. And folks ask about it so often that perhaps there’s something in this story or experience that translates, gives you some ideas, or helps you see things through a new lens.
Do you have a similar story to share? Has your degree or college experience helped or hindered you, or have you overcome a challenge on that front? Are you proving your value through demonstrated results and practical examples?
I’d love to hear your stories.
Special thanks to my colleagues at Radian6, most especially David Alston and Marcel Lebrun, for believing in me for what I could accomplish, and not the piece of paper that wasn’t in my pocket.
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