SoMeRo (a play on Social Media Round) has introduced an international competition specifically designed for social media managers. Personally, I’m excited because I think it’s about time for social media managers to get a little credit for the work they do.

Social media managers are those incredibly important people who do the real work and get very little of the credit. They are those people who have to watch every single word they type to their audiences for fear of a major media blow-up that leaves their name in the dust and jobless. They are those people who are on call over the weekends, in the evenings, and even on holidays in case a “crisis” breaks out. It’s time for social media managers to be in the spotlight and this contest is a great step in the right direction. Oh and did I mention 200,000€ were divided up for the prizes, and the top prize is 100,000€? Here are the details.

Contest Details

What is SoMeRo?

It’s the first annual international competition entirely dedicated to the emerging jobs linked to web marketing and web communication on social media. Four competitors will be chosen among the participants and will be awarded of the title Best Social Media Managers. There are 200,000€ of global donations.

Social Media Round #SoMeRo is not only an international competition, but it’s also a prestigious rendezvous for handpicked partner-companies to share and exchange in a professional space.
Side events, such as concerts, exhibitions, talks, debates, and conferences, a blogging pool and PR platform, will be organized.

Dates: June 2015, 4th to 7th
Location: Corsica (France)

Full Contest Details 

What can I win?

1 Competition – 2 contests – 4 prizes 
The competition will take place in a unique location mixing a connected open space dedicated to the participants and a corporate space dedicated to the sponsors.

60 professionals from all over the world will be selected to participate to the competition.
Main Round: Master of Buzz
First Prize: World SoMeRo Champion – Master of Buzz – 100.000€
Second Prize: Buzz Legend – 40.000€
Third Prize: Buzz Captain -30.000€
Live Round – Special prize : Influence Soldier – 30.000€

The travel cost to Corsica will be offered to all the 60 selected participants. They will be staying in
upscale hotels and residences (4 to 5 stars); they will discover during the 3-days competition the magnificent landscapes of the Balagne region. This is a prime location for the SoMeRo challengers!

How Do I Enter?

Wait? Did you say an expenses paid trip to France? Yes, I did. So now you probably want to know how to enter, right? Here are the details:

Anyone interested in joining the competition is invited to send their complete application dossier to the pre-selection jury.

Their entry should include:

• A summary of their professional career through an original resume
• A concrete example of a Social Media campaign that will be presented to the final jury at the event competition (PDF, Video, Prezi, etc.)
• The selected applicants for the final round will have 7 minutes to present their concrete example with a visual support + seven minutes to answer questions
• The objective is to present a realization of SocialMedia Strategy already implemented or in progress in a clear and concise way
• Note that the exercise asked is not to convince by presenting only performance indicators but to show the relevance of the global actions to answer the initial need
• The applicants must demonstrate the adequacy of their strategy against the initial need

40 applicants will be selected at the end of the pre-selection round.

Click here to fill out the entry form, or get all the details here.

The deadline to enter is February 28, 2015.

The candidates that are selected will be published on March 20, 2015.

Why is Social Media Explorer Participating?

Personally, I am so excited to see an event that is offering prizes that are worth competing for. Sure, I can appreciate another paperweight award on my desk, but giving people the opportunity to win real cash is something unique and awesome. Secondly, I truly appreciate that they are also paying for the participants to get to Corsica. This isn’t one of those competitions that you have to pay to participate in. These two factors piqued my interest in promoting a contest that is awarding winners based on achievement of their objective and giving them a prize that will affect them personally.

As such, I have agreed to be an influencer covering this event in France. First, I’m totally down for going to France in the summer; second, I’m a huge hell yes to celebrating social media managers.

Here’s the thing. If we want to see more awesome contests like this offered in our field ,then we need to support it when they come along.

If you want more contests like this now and in the future, here’s what you can do to help this one be successful:

• Enter the contest yourself here
• Send this article to your friends and colleagues that are social media managers using this link
• If you are an agency, share the contest with your client’s social media managers using this link
• Share this post on your social networks using the handy dandy icons at the top of the post

You’ll notice that we provided you with separate links for some of these activities. That’s because we actually want to track our results in helping to support this contest, so we created trackable links. It would be awesome if you used them to help us in our reporting.

Are you ready to join me in France?

Disclosure: As an influencer for the event, I will receive airfare and accommodations while in France and a small stipend for expenses and my time.

The post Social Media Managers Can Enter to Compete for 100,000€ Grand Prize appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Everyone plays games (even you)

People play games because they want safety, approval, or control. Something will trigger their need for one of these three things, and they create a story to get it. Here is a list of the games we’ve seen. These games happen in organizations, and they happen in our personal lives.

Hero/Villain/Victim

We put people into these roles. Someone is the bad guy, someone is the victim, and someone else is the hero. We even see people collectively agree on these roles as they look to solve a problem they’ve identified. This doesn’t exist. There are no heroes, villains, and victims in business. There are only people with unmet needs for safety, approval, and control.

Status Games

We see this most prominently when someone tries to pull rank in the organization. They put others down as less than them: less smart, less successful, or not part of their “class”. We also see this from the opposite spectrum, people working towards achieving a certain status or a certain job title because they think that will make them happy. Unfortunately, a job title will never make someone happy.

Parent/Child

We’ve all experienced this one. It’s the person who always treats you like you are one of their kids. These people micromanage you because you can’t be trusted to make the right decision. Or this can go in the reverse, where someone plays the child game and constantly looks to someone else to make decisions. They are scared to take risks, and look to someone they’ve put in a parent role to provide approval. There is an adult-parent role that provides guidance without telling someone what decision they should make. They don’t treat their employees as children, but rather as equal adults. People who are acting in the adult-parent role are usually fantastic mentors in the organization and a source of wisdom. However, when someone is playing a parent/child game, they reinforce the insecurities of the other, and it can create a vast amount of tension between them as they rebel against each other.

I’m Right/You’re Wrong

This game could be the most prolific in organizations. It’s the game of winners and losers, where someone always has to be right, which inherently makes someone else wrong. It creates a battlefield of everyone fighting to be right and leads to stagnation where nothing can move forward until the ultimate winner is decided.

Success/Image

This is the game of keeping up with the Joneses or trying to manage or measure your reputation. This is a game we’ve all played. We show up to our class reunion to show how successful we are, we boast about our latest success on Facebook, and frankly we make sure everyone knows just how successful we are. Unfortunately, the minute you start measuring your success against the success of others or your reputation, it never ends. You can never be successful enough for yourself. Your reputation will always take a hit that you struggle to recover from. The funny thing about measuring these things is that it will never be good enough. It’s a game you can’t win.

I’m so different

This is the game of rebellion against the norm. You are so different from all those other group thinkers in your organization, and you do everything you can to make sure everyone knows that you aren’t like them. We also see this when individuals claim their organization is so complex or so unique that what works for another organization couldn’t possibly work for them.

I’m so smart

Have you ever worked with someone who wants to make sure you know they have an ivy league education or calls every idea that isn’t their own stupid? They make sure everyone knows how intelligent they are because, in this game, they have to be the smartest person in the room.

I belong (to the tribe)

This is an approval game of wanting to fit in. It’s fighting to be a part of a collective group because being different is terrifying. People playing this game will do incredibly interesting things to show that they belong.

Filling a void

This is usually a personal game someone plays alone. They feel something is missing and so they look to find something to fill that empty void. They need something to fill that pit in their stomach or that ache in their heart and so they turn to something that makes them feel full again, even if it’s something dangerous. They could fill it by self-medicating, extreme sports, or even playing online games. This is one where people attach to something that they think will fill a void that has been left by something or someone else.

Control/manipulation

We’ve all seen this game. It’s the person who fights for control and will go to impressive lengths to get it. This can manifest through manipulation of people and situations. They may not share information through the organization because they think, if they are the only one who knows everything about their area of expertise, they can’t get fired. Or they may go and lobby for their pet project to leadership behind everyone’s back.

Keeping the peace

This is the game of avoiding confrontation at all costs. They are the peacekeeper on the team who makes sure everyone is happy. We see this a lot in organizations that require a unanimous decision to move forward on an initiative. They usually have a leader who is playing the game of keeping the peace.

Urgency

Have you ever felt like everything is a priority, and it’s all due right now? You would think that we are finding the cure to a major pandemic or something. Half of the time, the projects get done quickly and then stop because they weren’t actually all that urgent. Or they get finished, just to sit on someone’s desk.

Scarcity

This is the game of never having enough ________. You can fill in the blank. We never have enough of something to do something else. These are the people who complain about a lack of resources, lack of budget, lack of time, or a whole slew of reasons why something can’t be done.

Do any of those games sound familiar? How many of these games have you played? The funny thing about games is that we may recognize them in other people, but we fail to look in the mirror at how many we play ourselves.

Can I stop games in my organization? My life?

Absolutely. The only way to stop games is to stop playing them. The best thing about games is that it only takes one person to stop playing to completely eliminate every game. There are a variety of ways you can deal with games. You can just call out the game that is being played and say, “I’m not going to play the game”. You can simply not entertain the game and provide no response. Or you can just walk away from the situation. Even if it doesn’t lead to a dramatic transformation in your organization, at least you can lean back and feel the stillness and peace that comes with a life that is free of games. The crazy thing is that the game of no games can be contagious; but even if it isn’t contagious, it’s worth it for your own sanity.

Why do we need to stop the games?

How many initiatives have been completely derailed by games? How have games completely halted forward progress? How much of your company’s culture can be defined by the games people play? Think about those questions for a second. The reason to stop games is because all of these are games you can’t win. They are games your organization can’t win. They are games that aren’t worth winning.

Now you have a way to articulate what’s been holding you back. You can articulate what’s been holding your team back. You can articulate what’s been holding your company back. You know that you hold the keys to stop it. The question is whether you will take the key out of your pocket and open the door. Once you open the door, it can never be closed. The game of no games starts a journey to truth, and truth is the only thing worth fighting for.

The post The Only Game Worth Playing is the Game of No Games appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

We’ve been using a Lean Rapid Prototyping Approach for the last year at SME Digital for ourselves and for our clients, and it yielded tremendous results that create the exact testing methodology your marketing team needs. I thought I’d share the approach so you could decide if it’s worth testing with your marketing team. First, let’s start with a little background.

What is Lean Rapid Prototyping?

Lean Rapid Prototyping is a combination of Lean Start Up principles and Rapid Prototyping principles that have been adjusted to work for marketing teams. To put this in perspective, take a look at how Tom Chi rapid prototyped Google Glass. When I ask marketers how long they think it took to rapid prototype Google Glass, most say anywhere from 1-2 years. The reality? 1 day.

How Can Lean Rapid Prototyping be Used by Marketing Teams?

Marketing teams are constantly fighting the battle of which shiny new idea is worth investment vs. the tried and true tactics that have consistently delivered results. Lean Rapid Prototyping provides an excellent framework that allows marketing teams to explore new ideas in a way that is consistent, objective, and doesn’t require marketing investment until an idea has been proven. It removes all the political barriers and all of the emotional decision points we commonly see for new ideas. It also provides a safe way for marketers to test and fail until they find something that sticks. We recommend using Lean Rapid Prototyping for any new idea, any marketing project, any marketing campaign, and anything else that is utilizing resources from the marketing team. While it is a great way to test ideas, it is also a new framework for project management that helps projects move far more quickly and integrates audience feedback much earlier in the process.

What are the Rules of Rapid Prototyping?

Tom Chi defined 3 rules for rapid prototyping that are spot on. You need to understand the rules in order to make sure you know how to properly build prototypes.

Rule 1: Find the quickest path to experience

This isn’t about building some big, perfect thing. It’s about finding something quick, dirty, and simple that gets you closer to the experience you want to create. You noticed that Tom Chi used sheet protectors, paper clips, and chopsticks in his prototype. He didn’t design a computer model to simulate the experience as the first step. Why? Because a computer model doesn’t allow an actual person to feel the experience of using Google Glass. That is the frame of mind you want to be in when you think about what your prototype will be.

Rule 2: Doing is the best kind of thinking

Often, we want to set time aside to really think about a solution to a problem. In rapid prototyping, it’s about actually doing something to try and solve a problem or test something out. When you overthink it, you actually create solutions that are far more complex or more difficult to implement. You are looking for shortcuts to experience, and the best way to get there is to actually do something.

Rule 3: Use materials that move at the speed of thought to maximize your rate of learning

This goes hand in hand with the first two rules. You want to use materials that move as fast as you can think. I’ll give you a tip. A lot of times it’s a piece of paper and a pen. Sometimes, it’s post it notes and a marker. Other times, it may be tools like Tom Chi used. Ultimately, you want to find tools that move quickly and that you can test in seconds.

How Does the Lean Rapid Prototyping Process Work?

Step 1: Define conditions of satisfaction

The first step is to define your conditions of satisfaction for the project with everyone who has a vested interest. This usually includes the person with the idea or project, other people who will have a role in the project, and the senior leadership who will oversee the project or have a vested interest in the outcome or budget allocation for the project downstream. As an example, we recently defined conditions of satisfaction for the new Social Media Explorer | SME Digital website that will roll out soon. They looked like this:

• The new site must provide a seamless experience between the Social Media Explorer blog and the SME Digital consulting site for digital marketing measurement services
• The new site must quickly get people where they need to be (blog, consulting, speaking)
• The new site must show all of the brands and companies we represent and have a vested interest in (Social Media Explorer, SME Digital, Actionable Intellect) and allow navigation between these sites in a seamless manner without interrupting the user experience
• The new site must make it ridiculously easy for blog readers to convert into an email subscriber, SME Rock Star, and Consulting lead, where appropriate
• The new site should make it super easy to find the type of content you are looking for through navigation and through search

Step 2: Define your Minimum Viable Product to ship for feedback

The second step is to define the minimum viable end to the project that is ready to send out for testing with your audience. In the case of SME’s website, it was draft wireframes to get feedback on. In the case of content, it might be a status update on our social channels or a blog post. In the case of an infographic, it might be a sketch of what it could look like. The goal is to truly define the minimum viable thing you can put in front of your target audience for feedback. This allows you to iterate before you’ve done all the work, based on what your audience says. Notice, the audience for feedback isn’t your internal marketing team; it’s your “real” audience. This removes a lot of the subjectivity in feedback we receive internally. No one will argue with the feedback or direction if it comes from your target audience, but if it’s Nancy, your Marketing Manager’s, opinion vs. Lucy, your Director of Marketing’s, opinion, there are politics that will come into play. Lucy may win by default even though her opinion is irrelevant to the target audience’s opinion.

These two steps are critical in determining what needs to be done to make sure it meets the conditions of satisfaction and the minimum thing you can put in front of your audience. The next step is to define the first rapid prototype.

Step 3: Define your Learn, Measure, Build (L, M, B)

To do this, we ask three key questions and answer them.

1. What is the first thing you need to learn to move forward? (L)
2. How can you measure that you’ve learned it? (M)
3. What can you build in under two hours to test it? (B)

In the case of the website, we decided to tackle the navigation between the blog, the consulting site, and our partner brands.

Learn: How can site visitors navigate between the various SME sites in a seamless way?

Measure: Can site visitors go between the sites from any page? Yes or No?

Build: List of options for seamless navigation to review

Step 4: Check risk assessments to determine if you have the correct first Learn, Measure, Build

When you are new to this process, a couple of things will happen. Many times, your build is something to do with the end of the project versus the first step, or it’s something that will take much more than two hours. Other times, it’s the wrong learn for where you are in the project OR your measure doesn’t actually measure the learn. You probably won’t pass the risk assessment test the first few times and that’s okay. It will train you on how to think about your future Learn, Measure, Builds.

• Is that the right learn for what we are trying to deliver?
• Does that move us toward our minimum viable product?
• Is that the right measure to show we have achieved the learn?
• Is that the right build for the stage where we are today

Step 5: Build your prototype

You have 2 hours and only 2 hours to build your prototype. You defined your prototype when you defined your build in the L, M, B. Complete it and you have your first prototype.

Step 6: Get feedback from the target audience for the project

The final step of Lean Rapid Prototyping is to get feedback. The best way to get feedback is by scheduling a 15 minute in-person meeting, but if that isn’t possible, sometimes we use video or phone conversations. The key is to make sure you are getting feedback from the target audience for the project you are working on. In many cases, this means you need to get outside of your marketing team. If it’s for an external marketing project, put it in front of actual prospects and customers. If it’s a sales enablement tool, get it in front of a few sales people. This is where a lot of people get hung up. They don’t like to get feedback on something that isn’t final. If you can let go of that, you will get amazing feedback that truly makes sure that what you deliver as final has already been tested by the market with positive results.

The format for getting feedback is to ask these questions:

• What really works for you?
• What could make it even better?
• What do you want more of?
• What do you want less of?

We call these Plus EBIs. “What really works for you” is essentially asking for their number one plus (Plus), and “What could make it even better” is defining what would be even better if (EBI).

Step 7: Iterate, rinse and repeat

Once you have the feedback, iterate your prototype until you get to the point that people say it is perfect and they wouldn’t change a thing. Then move onto the next Learn, Measure, Build to get you closer to your MVP.

This is a big mindset shift for how to manage projects. We find that doing weekly Rapid Protoyping calls helps to hold space for completing prototypes because it’s easy to fall back into your old patterns. The reality is that a blog post probably isn’t enough to make this stick. We typically do a day-and-a-half of training with teams and do live rapid prototypes to cement the methodology. However, you can definitely take this and try it.

To help you, we’ve designed a training aid that you can download and use as a worksheet to help you define your first prototype.

Oh, and if you are wondering where we landed on the navigation between sites for our new websites, we are going to do something similar to how gap.com allows you to quickly bounce between their brands. What are your Plus EBIs on that?

Does your company use rapid prototyping? How has it worked out for you? What really works for you in this model for project management? What would make it even better? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

The post Could Lean Rapid Prototyping Increase Your Marketing ROI? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Most of us have and it makes me wonder if we are too digitally connected to the point where we have forgotten how to interact with humans in real life. I’ve spent the last week in Barcelona, Spain for a workshop being held by Billie Sastre and Victor Martin. They are fantastic hosts and we’ve spent a lot of time in the city exploring. I noticed some distinct differences in how people interact here and it inspired me to write this post.

Why do we have to move so fast?

The first thing I noticed when I arrived is that Barcelona has a much slower pace of life. When you go to dinner the waiters don’t try to rush you out to turn the table. Rather, it is fully expected that you will sit and talk for hours while you are there. The service may be slower, but the authentic human experience is far greater.

The rapid pace of technology and the desire to have everything OnDemand has carried over into our real lives. We are rushing from one place to the next at a pace that is so fast we can’t fully appreciate any of the experiences we are having. We do this without even realizing it because it is the new normal. We don’t even realize what we are missing out on because we are too busy to notice.

Do you remember the days when we really appreciated the music on the radio? So much so that we would dance and sing as a family driving down the road? Do you remember when we would go for walks as a family and talk about all the new flowers blooming in the neighborhood? Do you remember when we would go to a networking event and actually create friendships?

This desire to rush through our lives is causing us to miss out on some of the best experiences life has to offer. Is it possible to slow down and literally smell the roses in today’s uber connected world? It certainly is, if we make a conscious effort to do it.

When you find yourself hustling and bustling about stop and think, “experience this”. Focus on the experience, it could be a great experience or it could be a horrible experience. Allow yourself to feel it fully whatever it is. The crazy thing is that when you focus on actually experiencing things you tend to notice everything that is great about it.

Why can’t we put our devices down?

The other thing I noticed in Barcelona is that you don’t see a bunch of people with their heads in their devices at all times. At dinner people spend hours talking, to each other! They walk down the streets looking at the various shops, talking with others, or just gazing at the buildings around them. I found it incredible to watch how prolific it was to actually be present for whatever they were doing.

Have you ever stopped to think about how many times you check your device each day? Is it 10-20 times? 30-50 times? More than 100 times? The reality is that we are glued to our devices. Perhaps it’s a result of our fear of missing out (FOMO) that we have the urge to check so often, but what are we really going to miss out on? That Suzy shared a link to an article? That Bob posted a new photo of his kids? That you got a comment on your most recent blog post?

Are any of those things more important than the experience you could be having right now? Are they more important than talking to your spouse and kids at dinner? Are they more important than being fully present during a meeting so you know what’s going on?

My husband, Jay Kelly and I have an unwritten agreement with each other that we will be fully present in every moment. When we get together we check in so we can clear our minds of whatever is running about. Then, if we see that the other is head-down in their device and not present, we simply say, “Can you be present?” It’s a nice reminder that we are missing out on something more important than what is happening on our device.

When you find yourself head down in your device in the company of others, remind yourself to be present and put your device out of sight. When you are in the company of others who are head down in their device, the simple statement, “Can you be present?” works like a charm.

What would change if you were fully present for every experience?

Everyone will have different experiences along the way, but I’ve had some that are truly life changing. So much so, that I’ll never go back to my hyper-connected zombie state.

I notice that I feel safe to fully rest into the moment without feeling a pull to be somewhere else. As such, I’ve seen my daughter smile and get really excited about a pink covered donut at Dunkin Donuts, coloring a picture that she wants to give me as a gift, and even feeling clean after a shower. I’ve had in-depth conversations with my boys about things that are important to them, their fears, and what they are most passionate about. I’ve noticed Jay and I laugh more, appreciate each other more and truly enjoy being around each other more without our devices. I’ve built relationships and made new friends. I’ve actually taken the time to get to know what’s important to people and what makes them laugh.

I’ll tell you it’s one of the most rewarding changes I’ve made in my life. I hope it’s one you’ll consider trying for yourself. You may just be surprised with how great life is when you are fully present for every experience.

Do you think we are too digitally connected? Do you put your device down when in the company of others? Have you slowed down to relish in every experience? Or are you in the thick of it and happy where you are? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

The post Have our devices turned us into zombies? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Does a “Pay to Play” Entry Process Find the Best Work?

I have to admit; I was a bit shocked by this finding. I looked at local awards, regional awards and national awards from a variety of different organizations that celebrate marketers. Every single one had a pay to play model, meaning you have to pay to even be considered for one of their awards. As I thought about it, I understood that these organizations need some kind of revenue to actually give a nice trophy, but then when I dug into all of the fees the entry fee was just the beginning. Just looking at the entry fees, I noticed they definitely aren’t for the faint of heart. I saw fees ranging from $150 to $500, just to enter. Awards ceremony tickets ranged from $150-300 per person, not including travel. And some even charge you for displaying your award from $50 for a certificate to packages with trophies up to $800. When you multiply the entry fee by the number of entrants in each of the various categories, it was pretty clear that this is definitely a revenue stream for these organizations. That brings up a lot of questions doesn’t it. Does pay to play actually find the best work or does it find the organizations willing to pay to win an award? If these awards programs are revenue drivers for the organization is there a conflict of interest? If you had to “pay” to be considered for an award was it earned or bought?

My biggest risk assessment with this type of process is that there could be a lot of really great work being done out there by people who might not see the value in paying to enter an awards competition when they are generating a steady stream of business and others like solopreneurs who simply can’t afford it. When you combine the cost with the cumbersome entry process, it’s possible that the process is weeding out some of the real talent these programs are designed to highlight.

Call me naïve, but I honestly thought the people who were considered for awards were hand selected or nominated by third parties.

Are Tangible Marketing Projects the Best Examples of our Work?

For the next search I started looking at what type of awards these organizations give and one thing was super clear, marketing campaigns lead the charge. Sure they are called a variety of things besides campaigns, but when you look at what has to be submitted with your entry it’s clear you have to show something tangible to be considered and the easiest thing to consider is a campaign. Some of the organizations reviewed both internal and external marketing initiatives, but the majority look at externally focused campaigns. I would totally agree that there are some phenomenal marketing campaigns out there, but it made me step back and wonder about all of the other great work that marketers are doing that wasn’t included in any of the categories offered. So I created a list of categories that I think are important, but not offered.

Here are some categories I’d love to see:

• Best ROI optimization (based on optimizing the ROI of a specific program)
• Best end-to-end measurement transformation (demonstrating a measurement transformation from a benchmark (before) to the result (after) and showing the improved measurement capability and newly available metrics)
• Best operationalizing of social media, content marketing, and/or advocacy (based on policies, workflows, and adoption throughout an organization)
• Best social customer care program (based on average time to respond, first-time resolution rates, satisfaction rates and cost to service)
• Most helpful social media or online marketing team (demonstrating helping people through direct engagement, not content)
• Most profitable marketing team (demonstrating the highest ROI for all marketing programs in a single year)
• Best marketing mentorship program (demonstrating internal training and mentorship through all levels of employees)
• Best integrated marketing plan (based on the whole plan, not just one campaign)
• Best culture transformation (demonstrating a shift in culture within an organization around a key area of focus, i.e. social media)

And that’s just a few I saw missing that show a tremendous amount of progress within an organization. The reality is that having one home run campaign is great, but it’s the entire marketing effort that really matters in the long run. That takes us back to where we started, are tangible marketing projects the best way to show real progress? I think there is room for celebration for a winning campaign, but I’d love to expand the focus into some of the things that are less tangible and possibly even more important to long-term success.

My personal position on these awards doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether or not we have a system in place for awards that truly highlights our most important work. With that, I throw it to you.

Do you think these awards programs are finding the best work? Are they highlighting our most important work?

Do you agree with the pay to play model for entering?

If you were to look back over your efforts in the last year, do you think the awards being given cover what you are most proud of?

Have you ever hired an agency or consultant based on awards they’ve won?

What’s working in today’s model? What would make a marketing awards program even better? What do you want more of? What do you want less of?

Consider those questions or add thoughts of your own in the comments section.

The post Are Marketing Awards Really Highlighting the Best Work? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

You could argue that we’ve become such good liars that we can’t even tell the difference between lies and truth anymore. How did this happen?

It probably started with spin

I’m pretty good friends with spin. In fact, I’m so close with spin I’d take him on a family vacation. Many of you have been there. You get some marketing copy that just doesn’t flow as well as you’d like, it just doesn’t sound sexy enough. So what do we do? We edit the bejeebus out of it until the words are crafted into the perfect mix of suave goodness. But, if you really look at it with novice eyes and start picking it apart for what an actual human would say, you have no idea what it says. We see this kind of copy all over the place, but in case you need an example, I’m providing one below. As a note, this was pulled from a CRM company website that I actually like very much, but really this could have come from any of the CRM sites (or any other company site). This kind of language is all over the web.

“Customer relationship management (CRM) is all about managing the relationships you have with your customers. CRM combines business processes, people, and technology to achieve this single goal: getting and keeping customers. It’s an overall strategy to help you learn more about their behavior so you can develop stronger, lasting relationships that will benefit both of you. It’s very hard to run a successful business without a strong focus on CRM, as well as adding elements of social media and making the transition to a social enterprise to connect with customers in new ways.”

I mean seriously, does any human being actually talk like this? Thankfully, I’ve never met anyone that does. This copy was most likely written by a marketer; it probably went through several rounds of edits, had layers of spin added with each, and resulted in a paragraph of marketer speak that most prospects and customers have to decipher. It’s almost as if we think that flowery, non-intelligible language is a sign of our intelligence. And we do this so often, it’s become hard for marketers, myself included, to separate spin from fact. As a marketer, when I read this the first time, I thought, hmmm…that’s pretty solid copy. Then when I started breaking it down and trying to put it into human terms, I couldn’t. There’s just too much in there to adjust. To fix it would require completely starting over and removing all the jargon. Ultimately, it might look something like this:

“If you want to know what’s happening with your prospects and customers, you need customer relationship management (CRM) software.”

Frankly, even that sentence could become more human, but that illustrates my point. I’m a marketer, and it’s extremely difficult to take off that hat and write something that doesn’t sound like fluff. Have we become so good at fluff that we can’t even write like humans anymore?

Then the omissions started

A lot of marketers call this positioning. It’s when we highlight all the good stuff and leave out all of the things we don’t do really well. Because who wants to shine a light on something the company doesn’t do well? So we’ll just leave that out and only address it if someone asks us.

In the same CRM example above, it seems that they left out that the user interface could use some work for the non-tech savvy, and that if you have monthly reoccurring revenue streams that aren’t a static price it’s almost impossible to run an accurate pipeline report.

It seems that companies want to position themselves as the best solution for everyone. Maybe we don’t want to highlight who we aren’t a good fit for because we’re willing to take money from anywhere. The challenge with omissions and not being forthcoming about what you don’t do well is that it doesn’t allow the reader to quickly opt-out if you aren’t the best solution for them. They think you do something well that you don’t, and then they realize it after they’ve become a customer.

Omissions set our prospects and our company up for a failing relationship right from the beginning. In our quest for revenue from any source, we can easily be setting ourselves up to deal with customers who aren’t a good fit. What happens then? They drain the resources of your customer service team, they complain, and they may even share their unhappiness in social channels. It’s easy to point the finger of blame at the customer, but I believe the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the marketers and sales people who use omission as a sales tool.

Omission is lying in its most socially acceptable form, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t a lie. In my opinion, glossing over information that allows someone to opt-in or opt-out is a recipe for a disastrous relationship with your customers.

Then we started downright lying

This is when we make conclusions that are not based on fact. It’s when we make erroneous assumptions about our audience and present solutions as if they are the best or the only way. And it’s when we say things as if they apply to the majority of our customers when we know that they really only apply to a few. This copy is on the same CRM companies website.

“A new world, and a better way to sell. Where field sales closes deals from anywhere. And inside sales is fed nothing less than the best leads. It’s sales managers knowing which deals will close. And when. A world where lead and contact information is always fresh and complete. And everyone performs like an ‘A’ player.”

First, software does not create a new world or a better way to sell. If you really read that, it’s obvious that it’s a ridiculous statement. Perhaps field sales closes deals from anywhere, as long as it doesn’t require data or internet access. Sales managers will only know which deals will close and when if their sales team puts in the right information and keeps it up to date. However, history shows that these dates are always guesses and not based on reality. The next sentence just makes me laugh: A world where lead and contact information is always fresh and complete. Ha! I’d love to see that world because it’s never been true in any CRM system I’ve ever used in any company I’ve worked with. This has a huge requirement for the sales professional, and, after all, they are fallible humans. Finally, software does not make everyone perform like an “A player”. That is a wild assumption about people. People have their own motivations that are not controlled or determined by the software they use.

I used these examples because they come from a software company that I use. It’s a company I respect tremendously. I have friends in their marketing department that are smart, genuine human beings who do not want to mislead their prospects or customers. I know they have the best of intentions in their hearts. And ultimately, that is the point of this entire post. Because I know some of the people behind this brand, and I know they wouldn’t ever lie, intentionally.

Are we blind to all the lies we tell because we’ve done it so often we don’t even recognize it anymore? Do we not see them as lies and rather as good marketing? If that’s the case we’ll need to start making some choices because if being a good marketer means being a great liar, I’m not interested. But perhaps I am already there. Maybe in my quest to be great at what I do, I accidentally became a trained liar and didn’t even know it.

For now, my solution is simple. I’m going to have a really sensitive radar for spin, omissions, and lies. I’m going to actively seek it out because the only way I can see getting out of this rabbit hole is to shine a light on it for myself so that maybe… just maybe… one day I’ll be able to recognize the lies from a mile away and not do it myself.

The post Can marketers tell the difference between lies and truth? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What does preaching look like?

The first question is how do we know if you are preaching or not. There are a few easy signals that you can use to evaluate your content or topic ideas.

Black-and-white content

This is the content that tells you there is a right way and a wrong way to do something. There is no room for gray because our way is the right way. This content avoids the other options for doing something entirely or simply dismisses them as lesser options. It can breed an air of arrogance in your content that can either excite people or turn them off entirely. Any time your content has a black-and-white approach, it is most likely preaching. And to be clear, these posts don’t always read preachy. Many times they are positioned in a very professional way and may even come across as useful to your readers. But if we really looked at it, we’d have to ask “Is this content doing a disservice to my readers because it is only sharing one perspective on the solution? Is it covering all of their options or just presenting the option I want them to take?” Anytime we present one way as better than another, we are making a lot of assumptions about our readers. And you know what happens when we assume.

Telling readers what they need to be doing

We’ve all done this in one way or another. We create content that says our audience needs to do x, y, or z. I’ve definitely written this type of content. This post is an example of where I told readers what they needed to do:

Stop Listening When Social Media Experts Tell You ROI Isn’t Important

I’m telling people to stop listening. But in fact, they don’t have to stop listening. They can listen and make their own decisions. I personally believe ROI is the one thing marketers can learn that would advance their career faster than anything else because I’ve seen it happen. Sometimes I tell people what to do in an effort to show my passion, but it achieves the opposite result. It creates a parent-child dynamic that is unnecessary. You are all smart adults; you can decide what is the best thing to do for yourself. Personally, I have stopped listening in that situation, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for you.

When you are creating content that makes it sound like you are a parent telling a child what to do, you are guilty of it, too. The tone of the post is counterproductive and shows a lack of respect for your audience, even if it comes from a place of good intentions.

And as I said in the post that inspired this one, if the tone of your post is coming from your ego, not what’s best for your audience. This is preaching.

Assuming you know what’s best for your audience

Speaking in generalities can be truly dangerous because many times our audiences view us as an authoritative resource and may blindly follow our recommendations

It’s worth taking the time to dive a little more into making assumptions about our audience because this is by far the biggest type of preaching I’ve seen. These are the posts that make recommendations based upon an invalidated assumption. Quite frankly, even making recommendations using validated assumptions is akin to putting your audience into a predefined stereotype that is never true. This comes from a few places.

First, you could be assuming you are like your audience, creating content about the things you prefer, and assuming everyone is just like you. For example, I’m a marketer. It is easy to think that I know what marketers want and need, but the reality is that every marketer is working within their own set of circumstances; without fully analyzing each individual’s circumstances, it is impossible to truly understand whether the content I’m creating applies to them. Speaking in generalities can be truly dangerous because many times our audiences view us as an authoritative resource and may blindly follow our recommendations.

Second, you could be using research findings based on where the majority of the audience falls and creating content that assumes everyone IS the majority. For example, The 2014 Professional Content Consumption report released by LinkedIn revealed that 61% of content revolutionaries consider professional content necessary for success. The flip side is that 39% of content revolutionaries don’t consider professional content necessary for success. If you create content that only speaks to the 61%, you are missing the opportunity to address almost 40% of the audience. This happens as a result of any kind of research, including focus groups, research studies, and surveys. Be cautious about using research as the fuel for how you address your audience. The majority will never fully represent the needs of your audience, and this is an easy way to unintentionally start stereotyping them. Think about how well stereotypes work in real life; we know most of them are absurd or have very little relevance to the real people we are trying to interact with. Creating your content strategy to speak to stereotypes means it probably won’t apply directly to anyone.

Third, you could be assuming you understand your audience’s needs, wants, and desires based on what a small segment of your audience is doing. Even if you don’t think you are like your audience, you probably think you have learned a lot about them. You pay attention to how they react to your content, what they respond to, and equally what they don’t. This is great, but don’t assume you know why. We assume it’s because of a snazzy headline, compelling writing or visualizations, or some other split test we ran. Then we create similar content, it falls flat, and we are dumbfounded. The former could have worked because you caught them at the right time, they had a great offline interaction with someone at the company, or any slew of other reasons that cause us to act in the moment. We seem to forget that the percentage of people who respond are usually the small minority, anywhere from 1-2% of the total. If we start basing all of our content on what worked best for 1-2% of our audience, we’re missing the boat on what could have worked best for the other 98-99%.

What should we do instead?

That leads us to how can we do it differently. There are several things that you could try to remove preaching from your content.

1. Bring the gray into your content. Instead of black-and-white content, start unveiling the gray areas where your solution may not be best. Help people opt-in or opt-out of the solution you are offering by showing all sides of the story.
2. Be clear about the scenarios where your solution will work and where it won’t. If you are creating content based upon a set criteria of factors that makes it relevant or not relevant, highlight those factors right at the beginning of the post.
3. Don’t tell readers what they should and shouldn’t do. Accept that your solutions aren’t the only options. You’re audience is smart; let them make their own decisions on what to do with the information once they have it.
4. Don’t make assumptions about your audience. Recognize that you don’t know what’s best for them and that it’s impossible to create content that applies to everyone.
5. Speak to majority and the minority. When using research to fuel your content, try to create content for both sides of the percentages.
6. Drop the stereotypes. While there are likely some commonalities amongst your audience, recognize that the combination of those commonalities is what makes each person unique. If you respect that there are humans on the other end of your content, you’ll have a better chance of creating content that takes their differences into account.

The post Preaching is creating a divide between you and your audience appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

First, it’s important to have a discussion about self-promotion and why we do it. The reality for many of us is that we have social presences for our brands and ourselves because we wanted another distribution channel to drive traffic to something. It could be our blog, our products, our website, or some other web property. After all, that was the promise of social from the beginning, right? And the only way we can actually deliver on that promise is to promote things that will drive that traffic.

Is self-promotion all bad? That’s definitely up for debate. The only way we can have a healthy debate on the topic is to take a deep look at how much value we really provide to our audience when we self-promote.

Analyzing value versus ego

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if your audience really cares about your self-promotional content? I’ve always looked at it through this lens, “If you add value to your audience 80% of the time, you earn the right to talk about yourself 20% of the time.” Personally, I still think there is some relevancy in that equation; however, it’s what we are doing with the other 80% and how we talk about ourselves in the 20% that is really coming into question.

In “Is your ego driving your social presence” , I asked, “How much do you promote yourself or your own content?”, and I said:

“This includes all of your status updates about your blog posts, your speaking engagements, your recent awards, your sales offers, and even that testimonial from your customer. If it’s more often than not, then ego is driving your social presence. Because if it weren’t about our ego, wouldn’t it be okay to simply go out there and help people? I mean help ridiculous amounts of people with all kinds of things that have nothing to do with us? Wouldn’t that be okay, if it weren’t all about us and what we can get out of it?”

How often do you help other people and ask nothing in return?

When social media started it was about conversation and building relationships

I have typically looked at a content strategy and adding value as sharing really great content from other people, not the brand. But as I’m looking deeper, I have to question whether or not content curation is the best and only form of value. Because if we go back to when social media started to get popular, it was about conversation and building relationships. It seems like we may have lost sight of that and turned it into a broadcast channel. And trust me, I totally understand how this happened. Some of us have limited resources assigned to social media channels and the best way we can maximize those resources is to schedule posts. Content curation makes it easier to add value 80% of the time than actually engaging and helping people. To help people would require someone to be in front of their social media management tool, look for opportunities, and act on those opportunities. That would take a lot of time and it’s a pretty big ask, but I believe it’s an important one. And I fully admit that I am personally guilty of not spending enough time helping people and that SME hasn’t spent enough time helping people.

What if we better defined the 80/20 rule and changed it to something like 41/39/20? Recognize that any arbitrary percentage we discuss is just a starting point; it’s not a definitive answer for everyone.

• 41% Helping people and asking nothing in return
• 39% Adding value by sharing helpful content
• 20% Talking about ourselves

If we spent at least 41% of our time in social helping people and ONLY moved on to the other areas after we had done it, would it change the relationship we have with our audiences? Would it make it more about them than about us? Could it help us check the ego at the door and better understand what some of the individuals that make up our audience need? I believe it’s worth testing and seeing what happens. Ultimately, if we are truly helping people, the person who received assistance would most likely consider it a valuable exchange.

Is the content we’re curating really valuable to our audiences?

Does the content you’re curating really add value?

A lot of companies I’ve talked to and consulted for use some form of content curation as part of their value equation for their audiences. The big question that comes into play with content curation is, “Does the content you’re curating really add value, or is it just there to open up the door for a conversation about your products or services?” When we look at whether or not ego is driving our social presence, another possible indicator can be found by looking at the content you curate. If the only type of content you curate has a direct line to your products or services, couldn’t it be more about you than your audience? To be realistic, we are the only ones with this kind of tunnel vision. I’m 100% sure that our audiences are made up of real-life human beings. They have diverse interests that expand beyond what we can do for them, yet we choose to curate content that is so hyper-focused on something that relates to us that it begs the question as to whether it really is valuable? Yes, if your company sells running shoes, it would be a little odd to share the top movie releases for the week, right? That could be more confusing than valuable. However, we could likely go a little broader with our curation strategies. If we sell running shoes, we could curate articles about fitness tips beyond just running because, I know it’s crazy, but a lot of runners do other types of work outs. We could mix in some articles with healthy eating tips, some of our favorite recipes, and even some articles about great workout clothes. Or what if we did something totally crazy and actually asked some of the people we help with 41% of our time what kind of content they are interested in and shared that type of stuff? We don’t want to confuse our audiences by sharing anything and everything, but we could do a better job of understanding more about our customers and sharing stuff that doesn’t always have a direct line to what our company does. I believe there is value in sharing informational content that helps our audience without a veiled sales tactic.

Is promoting yourself okay, at all?

In a perfect world, we might want full reign to just go out and help as many people as possible. This would be amazing, for sure. However, reality shows that companies and individuals at some point in time are going to need to promote something they have to offer. So we are going to have to find a happy balance so that we can promote ourselves when we need to, but the question is, “How can I promote myself and remove ego from the equation?” and “What does that balance look like?”

If we are honest, the answer to the first question is that you can’t. Inherently, any type of self-promotion has your ego attached to it. So it’s probably best to just accept that we all have a little bit of ego, but we want to work harder at helping our audience and do our best to keep our ego in check.

With that in mind, what does balance look like?

If you truly believe that your products or services add value, perhaps we make a simple change and not mention our company or ourselves in the status updates. We can leave that as a little easter egg for people to find out if they engage with the status update. For example, I speak at a lot of events. I don’t necessarily have to mention that I’m speaking at the event in order to share the event with my audience. If I genuinely think the event is valuable, I can share it and say so. It doesn’t have to be valuable because I’m speaking, it can be valuable on it’s own merit. I may think my audience is interested in knowing I’m speaking, but frankly they aren’t going to buy a ticket to an event because of me. This could work in a variety of situations and for a variety of different types of products and services, but to really take a deep look, let’s look at when to share and when not to.

How can I check that my ego isn’t driving status updates about my company, brand, or myself?

1. When you ask “does this add value to my audience or is it about me?” can you honestly say it’s to add value to your audience? If not, it could be ego.
2. Is it still valuable to your audience when you remove your brand, product, or services from the message? If not, it could be more about you than about your audience.
3. How deep does the value go? If you were to guess at the percentage of your audience that would truly care about the information in the message, is it the majority or a minority? Anytime it’s the minority, it may not be valuable enough to share.

Keeping self-promotion in check can be challenging when we are dealing with resource and time constraints. However, if you agree that you want to have a more engaged and deep relationship with your audience, it’s worth taking a look at how much real value you’ve been adding. If the value you’ve been adding is holding up a mirror to your ego, I think we can all agree that we have a lot of room for improvement. Myself included.

The post Is Ego Coming Between the Value You Could Offer Your Audience? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Why do you want to be a thought leader?

What difference does it really make if you or your brand is a thought leader? As an individual, perhaps you’ll be more respected, have more credibility, get more speaking engagements, or even make more money. As a brand, perhaps you’ll be more respected, have more credibility, get more PR, get more customers, and generate more revenue. As you can see, there is quite a bit of ego wrapped up in all of the benefits being a thought leader offers. What if instead of focusing on being a thought leader, you focused on giving your greatest gift and only that? Do you know what your greatest gift is? What if all of this work trying to be a thought leader and letting ego drive the bus is what is holding you or your company back from your true potential? If it is, what good is being a thought leader at all? That sounds like a lot of work to end up being mediocre.

What does being a thought leader really mean?

This question is really at the heart of the debate. There are a lot of individuals and brands who have worked really hard to position themselves as thought leaders, but, when you pull back the curtain, how many are truly thought leaders? I would argue that a leader in thought does not make you a thought leader.

It’s actually much easier to come up with good ideas that sound great on paper than it is to come up with ideas that result in plans that get implemented with tangible results on the back end. If I were to analyze some people I believe are true visionaries in our lifetime, it’s a pretty short list: Elon Musk, Tony Hseih, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos are right at the top. These individuals are not leaders in thought; they are leaders who turn forward-thinking thoughts into action, today, despite a mountain of obstacles in their way. That’s something worth respecting and something that is truly inspirational at the deepest level.

Interestingly enough, they are celebrated both as visionaries and thought leaders.

If you or your brand were really a thought leader would you have to be positioned as one?

Results take a lot longer to formalize than an idea

Perhaps what it really boils down to is that real thought leaders don’t have to spend time positioning themselves as a thought leader because their results speak for themselves. How much positioning do you think Elon Musk, Tony Hseih, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos have done for themselves and their brands? I honestly don’t know the answer, but I’m guessing it’s very little. If we were to entirely remove ego from the equation of thought leadership, the only thing that is left is the work, the results. Results don’t need to be positioned. Results are what they are. They could be tremendous, they could be mediocre, or they could be really cruddy. In any case, if we started celebrating people and brands for what they do versus what they say, how would our lineup of thought leaders change? Would we have a really hard time coming up with a list? I certainly would because what I see is a lot of talk about ideas and far less talk about results. Results take a lot longer to formalize than an idea. Many times the gap of time between an idea and the results it delivers is so great that the idea doesn’t seem as sexy anymore. At that point, the next question becomes even more important.

Are you really a thought leader at all?

If the gap of time between the idea and the results being delivered is so great that the idea isn’t sexy anymore, was the idea ever thought leading? Probably not. If it’s still sexy when the results came in, perhaps it really was thought leading. All of this forces us to step back and ask, are we really thought leaders at all? Have we really done something that created visionary results? And if we were to look at our brands, can a brand be thought leading? I mean, a brand can’t think, so it really it comes down to how thought leading the people behind the brand really are. Are your leaders and employees doing something that is still visionary when the results come in? If not, then isn’t this thought leadership stuff just smoke and mirrors? Isn’t it all just a bunch of lies? If they are, the results will speak for themselves and your industry’s media outlets will be beating down the door to figure out the story behind how you created them. Thought leadership unlocked.

When I really started to look deeply at thought leadership, I found that in a lot of cases we are equating ego with thought leadership. We are celebrating a lot of ideas that haven’t proven out to deliver results. As followers of thought leaders, I believe we can stop this trend. We can start asking the tough questions that cut through the smoke and mirrors. If thought leaders were asked, “What tangible results has this idea delivered?”, we’d start to see who is the real deal and which ones have positioned themselves into a place of authority they may not deserve.

For ourselves, I believe we are all worth so much more than positioning ourselves as thought leaders. I believe we are all doing important work that will deliver results. When those results come to fruition, it won’t matter to us if anyone else celebrates with us, or if anyone else cares about our ideas, because we will have already won. The results will speak for themselves.

The post A leader in thought does not make you a thought leader appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Unfortunately, brands are no different. We all jumped on the social wagon without a clear purpose and mission, and if we really looked deeper, we’d see it was a whole bunch of ego that led to a game of ego back-patting. You share our content; we’ll share yours. You follow me; we’ll follow you. I’ll make you the hero of our content because we are so much more superior than you, piddly follower.

Whether you are a brand or an individual with a social presence, there are some tough questions we need to ask ourselves.

How much do you promote yourself or your own content?

This includes all of your status updates about your blog posts, your speaking engagements, your recent awards, your sales offers, and even that testimonial from your customer. If it’s more often than not, then ego is driving your social presence. Because if it weren’t about our ego, wouldn’t it be okay to simply go out there and help people? I mean help ridiculous amounts of people with all kinds of things that have nothing to do with us? Wouldn’t that be okay, if it weren’t all about us and what we can get out of it?

How much do you preach at your audience?

These are all the posts that tell your followers what they should be doing and what they shouldn’t be doing, all wrapped in an ugly film of listen to me I know what I’m talking about. If it’s more often than not, then ego is driving your social presence. I mean honestly, how can we possibly know what our audiences should be doing? We don’t know anything about them. We certainly haven’t spent time understanding their circumstances, so why would we assume that that little formula that worked so well for us would work for them? We don’t.

How much do you focus on being a thought leader?

Saying the same things everyone else is saying does not make you a thought leader

So many times I’ve heard individuals and brands say, “We want to position ourselves as thought leaders in our industry.” The big question is, are you really a thought leader at all? How much do you talk about theory versus tangible results? How much real work have you actually done? What are you a thought leader in? Saying the same things everyone else is saying does not make you a thought leader. Sharing great content from others does not make you a thought leader. The real thought leaders are most likely working in the trenches, behind the shadows, and I bet you don’t even know their names. If your goal is to position yourself as anything, including a thought leader, ego is driving your social presence. In fact, the desire to be a thought leader is all ego. You want to have that pin in your cap so you can get the next promotion, the next speaking engagement, or maybe even have people recognize you in the airport. It’s 100% ego talking, and I have to say, I believe we can be so much more than that.

How much do you focus on building an audience?

Why do you need an audience? What do you think an audience is going to give you? Influence? Credibility? Access? Let me ask you this: If you were helping people and had 10 followers, is it somehow better to help people and have 100k followers? I mean really, is building audience more about you or about them? If you really look and it’s more about you, then ego could be driving your social presence. Because seriously, your follower count is not an indication of your worth and the value you can bring, yet it gets so much attention. Trust me. You are worth a gazillion times more than the number of followers you have.

Are you building meaningful relationships and actually helping people?

Real relationships happen because two humans genuinely connect and have mutual interests

Or are you instead collecting followers like baseball cards? How many people do you actually interact with online each day? Is your list of recent tweets longer than your list of recent direct messages or @ replies? If you aren’t spending more time engaging with others in a meaningful way than you are promoting yourself, then ego is driving your social presence. Real relationships happen over a series of conversations. They don’t happen because you shared a great article. They happen because two humans genuinely connect and have mutual interests. Think about how many of your followers you would take on vacation with you and your family. Not many? Exactly.

That’s a tough list to look at, isn’t it?

I fully admit I am 100% guilty of many of these.

• I started using Twitter because I wanted to be a thought leader and build an audience, but admittedly, I barely use it anymore because my home feed is an ego fest, so the only thing you’ll see are a few @ replies to people who’ve reached out to me and a daily post from Social Media Explorer and Social Media Examiner. Guilty!
• I rarely comment in LinkedIn Groups. Guilty!
• I have a ton of engagement on Facebook and spend way more time commenting than I do posting. Yay! I’m not all bad.
• I authentically engage with my friends on Path in ways you won’t see anywhere else online. That’s probably because it isn’t as public, so again guilty.
• Many of my blog posts may come across as preachy. Shucks even this one probably reads that way.

We spend a lot of time talking about the real jackhats in social, the trolls, and the people that are just downright obnoxious. We don’t spend near enough time talking about what social media has really become: a place for us to fuel our egos and a place for brands to fuel theirs.

We don’t talk about it because too many of us are guilty of doing it, but maybe we should. Because if you look at what social has become, it makes you really start to question why are we here. Why is it valuable for my brand to be here? The problem with ego-driven relationships is that both sides are fighting for control and no one ever wins. It fuels a parent-child dynamic instead of a human-to-human dynamic. We aren’t all equals in a fight for control. We become ego-driven maniacs that do stupid things trying to get that next ego stroke.

Maybe it’s time to take a step back and check the ego at the door. Because maybe…just maybe…then we could become friends. Friendship is a powerful thing. If I have a choice between buying from a friend or from someone who is not a friend, I’ll choose the friend every time. And maybe that is why our brand should really be in social.

The post Is Your Ego What’s Really Driving Your Social Presence? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

As we sit and watch the latest customer service issue go viral, we all need to sit back and ask where leadership went wrong. Putting the entirety of social media’s fate on the backs of marketers who are trained communicators is a reflection of the lack of trust in our employees who deal with our customers every day, and this is where we should consider correcting course. Every employee is a reflection of our company, whether we like it or not. Perhaps it’s time we show how important they are to our mission, teach them how to build solid relationships with others, have empathy, and communicate in an honest and authentic way.

Our employees lack interpersonal skills

We’ve all dealt with employees that are simply rude. It happens so often that it’s almost not worth mentioning. But what about the employee who never makes eye contact? What about the employee who isn’t 100% present for the conversation and is clearly distracted? What about the employee whose tone makes you feel like you are an annoyance? These subtle things aren’t something that comes up in an annual review. They aren’t something worth writing a bad review about. They simply aren’t big enough to ever hit the radar. But they are big enough to dampen your relationship with your customer. They are something the customer remembers the next time they come back. It’s gotten to the point that customers rave about the employee who smiles, is pleasant, and goes above and beyond to help us. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs because shouldn’t that be the status quo? Unfortunately, it’s not. So customers get excited when your front-line employees reach what used to be the minimum threshold for satisfaction.

Our employees aren’t trained on managing expectations

There is a huge difference in how we feel after that experience if our expectations were managed throughout the process

How many times have you been stuck waiting for a scheduled appointment? Or been transferred multiple times waiting for an answer to your question? It is very rare for the front-line employee to actually explain what is going on, why you are still waiting, or even that they don’t know who has the answer to your question so they are going to try another department. I’m sure we’ve all had an experience where we were inconvenienced by a long wait time or something didn’t go as planned. There is a huge difference in how we feel after that experience if our expectations were managed throughout the process. There is nothing wrong with simply admitting that things are really backed up and you are working as quickly as you can to provide them with service. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you don’t know the answer to their question and that you are personally going to call around so they can be transferred to the right place the first time. There’s nothing wrong with apologizing, admitting you placed the wrong order for them, and unfortunately it is going to cause a 3-day delay. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, the customer gets put in a defensive stance against an employee that has been trained that the company is always right and we hide our mistakes.

Our front lines hold up a mirror to our entire organization

This starts at the front line, but it travels all the way up the organization. We aren’t fully honest when talking about our products and services. We don’t talk about the things we DON’T do. We talk about all of the things we think we do really well and hide the rest. We aren’t honest when a crisis breaks out because we are terrified of legal liability. We are so trained in lying that we don’t even know how to tell the truth anymore. And guess what, that is exactly what we teach our front-line employees to do. They follow our lead.

When these conversations go online, it shines a big bright light on this lack of training. Now this incompetence is public, and everyone can see it. But it isn’t the employee’s fault. It’s the company’s fault because they don’t have training in place to set the standard for how the company communicates at all levels. And no, a single orientation training session doesn’t cut it. Frankly, this isn’t just about teaching employees how to communicate with customers. It starts with teaching them how to communicate respectfully with everyone, including each other. We can’t assume communication is common knowledge.

Are your online communications coming from a place of truth and authenticity?

When I look at what is happening in social, I have to ask this question because there are a lot of companies in social who communicate like you would expect companies to communicate. They lack authenticity; they lack humility; they lack interpersonal skills; they lack everything that makes us human. They lie, they spin, and they foster a one-sided relationship where they have control. If you are sitting there thinking this is a THEM problem, it’s time to look in the mirror.

• Are your online communications layered in spin? Take a look at your website. Does the language even make sense to an average Joe? How many lies are on the page? How many half-truths? How many omissions? Chances are, all of this has made its way into your social presence, too.
• Are your online communications coming from a place of fear and mitigating risk? If every status update has to go through legal, it definitely is. If every word is polished before it’s sent, it definitely is.
• Is your marketing team your primary social presence? If the majority of the brand’s social interactions come from your marketing team, you are limiting your ability to be responsive in the moment, and it likely means the organization doesn’t trust it’s employees to represent the brand.

The best real-world communicators act like human beings. They don’t spin. They are fallible. They make mistakes and apologize. They genuinely care about the person on the other end of the conversation. The reason companies are so bad at communicating is because their employees haven’t learned how to communicate one-on-one, much less one-to-many.

In the end, we may find that we are still not great at communicating. But at least we’d be human. And isn’t that worth a lot more to our customers than our latest marketing spin?

The post Why are companies so horrible at communicating? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

We just figured out a huge shortcut to getting all the benefits of an office without actually having one; Sococo.

Sococo virtual office is a game changer

Jay Kelly, our VP of Operations, saw a sponsored post (proof that they work) on Facebook for Sococo, a tool that creates a virtual office for your company. The name is a shortened version of Social Communications Company. Jay brought it to the team and suggested we try it out. We tested it out with three employees one Friday afternoon and it is absolutely changing everything for us.

How Sococo works

The company gets a virtual office building. Inside every employee gets an office. No more arguing about those offices vs. cubicles. The number of offices available depends on the subscription option you select. The company also gets one or more conference rooms. The layout literally works just like an office would.

Employees can pop into your office to start a conversation

You can open their door if it’s okay to pop in. If not, simply shut the door and other team members have to knock before they enter. For us, a shut door means we are busy and we’d prefer not to be interrupted. We might be in another off-Sococo meeting or head down working on a project.

You just double click an office to pop-in and start talking with the team member. Sococo uses VOIP and your speakers to give instant access for conversation. You can also share your video camera and even share screens for ad-hoc collaboration.

This has been really helpful for that quick question or feedback on something you are in the middle of. I was working on a client document and popped into Tracey’s office and asked for some quick feedback before I got too far down a path. I captured the feedback and immediately started adjusting the document. Typically, I’d finish the document, assign a task in Basecamp, wait for Tracey to review and then have to find time to get back to it. I was able to get the feedback in the moment when I was in the right brain space to receive it and it cut at least two days out of the feedback and editing cycle. The whole process took 10-15 minutes. That’s just pure awesome!

Teams can meet up in a conference room, share screens and video anytime

Sococo also offers conference rooms where the team can meet to hash out the latest project or hold general team meetings. Every office and conference room has the ability to quickly share one or multiple screens with whomever you are talking to. This is really cool because I can share my screen with the group and others can share their screen at the same time so we can bounce back and forth between them, as needed. You can also share your video camera so you can all see each other. This is literally just like being in a conference room, we can see each other, we can see a virtual projector, and we can talk just like we were sitting next to each other. We don’t have to set up a conference line or even dial in. We just pop into the conference room and we’re talking to who ever has arrived. Plus we can see who is there before we pop in. We can also see if others are already using the conference room and select another one.

You can also add a non-user to a meeting by sending them a link. They enter their phone number and Sococo calls them and adds them to the conversation. We haven’t really tested this out much. You have to pay a nominal fee per minute and we’re still testing it internally at the moment.

Ad-hoc conversations with the click of a mouse

There is a lobby and an office we decided to call “water cooler” where employees can jump over to if they want to chat about randomness. This is where we can chat about Orange is the New Black or what we are making for lunch. If you aren’t working on anything important and you’re open to a random conversation you can hang out in the lobby or at the water cooler. This signals to the team that you aren’t busy and are cool with chatting about nothing in particular. This is great for those times when you feel like you need a little socialization or just want to throw up the flag that you are open to running into someone to chat.

Why is this better?

First, Sococo is the first platform I’ve seen that truly mimics a real office environment. It also doesn’t require setting up dial-ins or web logins to collaborate. This makes it so quick and easy that it is resulting in way more collaboration and interaction with the team. Finally, it’s fun. The feedback from the team has been overwhelmingly positive. We are all raving about how awesome it is, how it has helped us get a project done faster, and how funny the latest office prank was.

Here’s what my experience has been since we started using Sococo.

• I’ve popped into multiple offices to get quick feedback on the latest rapid prototype I’m working on. Within minutes I have feedback from multiple people on the team and can work on the next iteration.
• It’s making getting projects completed with feedback so much faster. I’ve gotten immediate feedback on client documents while I’m actually working on them. This is eliminating the old mantra of “finishing” something, posting it, and then waiting for feedback. Instead, pop in, get feedback, ask questions, boom, keep working.
• We’re talking about the random stuff that we were missing before. I’ve chatted about everything from my love for the Biggest Loser to how tough my latest work out was.
• We can see when other team members are in meetings together. Just this morning I saw that the whole client services team was doing their daily stand up in one of the conference rooms. It made me smile because meetings aren’t happening in the ether anymore. They are happening in a physical location we can all see and appreciate even more.
• We’ve started pranking each other. There is nothing funnier than popping into someone else’s office, screaming something random, and then popping back out before they even know what hit them. When their door is open, of course.

What would make it even better?

Nothing is ever perfect. There are some improvements I’d love to see in the future, but I say all of this with the spirit of love that I have for Sococo.

1. We’d love an editable “white board” option for our offices and conference rooms. Matt mentioned he really wants a “library” where he can post great things to read for the team. This would create the experience of walking into a conference room and seeing what someone else left on the white board and/or the do not erase section of the board. This could also be used to document notes and/or take aways from the meeting that anyone could edit.
2. It would be awesome to customize your avatar with your picture or a caricature of yourself. This would add a little bit of each person’s personality to the mix. We’ve laughed about how we are basically just naked circles popping in and out of offices.
3. I really want to decorate my office! I want to be able to choose my desk (a swinging chair with an ottoman for me please), hang posters, put up some of my favorite quotes, and even a random meme occasionally. This would allow team members to get a real feel for each person’s personality and how they design their own space.
4. Allowing administrators to “design” their office layout/look/feel would be amazing! This way you could create collaboration spaces wherever you want and layout your offices in whatever order makes sense. It would also be cool to have modern, traditional, and non-traditional themes. For example, I’d love to have our office on a private island and be able to put my office beachfront in a cabana.
5. The design of the office layouts could definitely be more real and graphic. In the screen shot you can see that it looks more like Super Mario than Halo.

Sococo is changing the way we work. I could see this working for any combination of remote and in-office company or even fully remote workforce. I’d love to see it in a larger company. I’d envision each “department” having an office and being able to scroll through and pop in to an office in another department being really useful.

Have you ever used Sococo? What did you think? Are you using something else to collaborate when workshifting? Leave a comment and share with us.

The post How Sococo is Completely Transforming the Virtual Office appeared first on Social Media Explorer.