Fred Sheahan's List: Social Media

Community managers, who come in all shapes and sizes depending on the company and its mission, are often the online face of their companies, and more increasingly, offline as well. They’re the social strategist, community builder, storyteller, marketer, product manager, designer and evangelist rolled all into one. But most importantly, they’re responsible in projects and initiatives that strengthen the community of consumers, users and customers of the company.

1, you can build and maintain a strong personal brand even if ... you have a great compelling story to tell
2. the importance of having a few, clear messages that are easy to communicate

What are my key messages?
Who are the target audience of these messages?
What channels can I use to broadcast my messages?

The days of social media marketing campaigns are numbered. The future lies in radical social design; the ability to socially-enable the things we do everyday. I'm not suggesting we share EVERYTHING we do, but share valuable things we don't even realize are valuable yet.

Companies should have a ‘Customer Strategy’ not a ‘Twitter or Facebook Strategy’. To start, first understand your customers social behaviors, below are the slides and recorded webinar featured yesterday by Charlene Li and myself.

It is rare for me to work with a organization where the root cause for their faith based decision making (rather than data driven) was not the org structure.
It is almost never tools. Not any more.
Surprisingly it is often not their will to use data, that is there in many cases.
Sometimes it is that they don't follow the 10/90 rule.
It is always the organization structure.

Throughout the process of sifting through the data from our B2B Content Marketing study, a couple favorites stood out. First and foremost, we all believed the confidence gap (below) was the most interesting.

With so many tools on the market, some paid and some free, some old and some new, how do you decide which one will best meet your needs and give you delicious, usable data? Well, you start by asking the right questions so you can gather your intel and make an informed decision. Here are some things you may want to think about when trying to decide which social media tool your company wants to go steady with.

Twitter is a human seismograph and it represents a transformative channel where everyday people possess the ability to affect actions. The cloud of collective consciousness that houses our thoughts, experiences, and conversations is also a data trove for experts to measure and mine serendipitous and organized behavior and events

Social media is technology used to engage three or more people.
Social learning is participating with others to make sense of new ideas.
What’s new is how powerfully they work together.

Mind map of social learning

I’ve played a role in helping earn adoption of social media through a couple of very traditional corporate cultures now, and I am quite qualified to tell you it is hard work. It’s a triumph of patience, navigation, skill and more patience. There’s an exhilaration that comes with winning over a key executive, and getting them to see the value in using new technologies to solve old problems.

Facebook vs. Twitter: An Infographic

Does your workplace have a social media policy?  Thousands of companies do and you can view some of them here at Social Media Governance. 
I picked a few at random – first let’s look at Ball State University. It is three pages long, large type, easy to read, nice bullets.  It has some great points – reminders about confidentiality and respect and a reminder to link back to the university site whenever possible.  I expected a lot of jargon and guardedness from an institution like this, but was pleasantly surprised

Community Management would be nothing without actual community members to manage. When I think of an ideal and great community, the first thing that comes to mind is Reddit. It’s diverse, no censorship. Everyone just have a sub-Reddit where they feel like they belong. It’s a hyperactive community where the content is generated heavily by the community.

This course will highlight online communities from both the Community Manager and Community Architect perspectives. We will initially touch on the basics such as what the different roles are in an online community, how each type of member plays a vital role in the ecosystem, and the different methods and procedures a community manager can utilize to act as a proper role model. After the basics we will go into communication theory, specifically three computer-mediated theories that frequently apply to all members in the ecosystem, and a psychological theory that will assist in your understanding of what motivates an online community. Finally we will wrap things up with identifying how and when an individual, organization, etc. should create an online community, how to identify the right tools for the job, and digging into the self-sustaining online community ecosystem model that acts as a foundation for Community Architects.

Lots of things are being said about the revival of the customer relationship made possible by social media and that’s a good thing, a more human way of doing things, less mechanized, aiming a building a richer and fruitful relationship for everybody. But businesses should be careful of too easy things and smoke and mirrors. We hear lots of things about “fans”, “passionate”, “engagement”, suggesting that if a business shows as much interest to its customers as they show to the brand, a positive impression is generated, the company improves its image and sells more. But thinking that it’s all about communication and good feelings is a dead end. Most of customers are not passionate nor fans but…simple customers.

Before you write for MailChimp, it’s important to think about our readers. Though our voice doesn’t change much, our tone adapts to our users’ feelings. This guide will show you how that works.