Successful Blog

Groupon Super Bowl Ad: When Being Clever Offends and How to Win One for Tibet

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Clever Only Works When Trust Is Around

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It must be a hugely stressful and exciting opportunity to find your startup with a slot for a commercial at the Super Bowl. Who wouldn’t want to make a fabulous debut? Can you imagine the meetings that must have been to plan that Groupon ad? Bet it was fun exciting and filled with clever ideas … all meant to go for the win!

By now you’ve heard of or seen the unfortunate Groupon Super Bowl ad that came from the meetings I just described:

Given the human rights crisis in Tibet, it’s not hard to see the response wouldn’t be good. To say it offended people is less than what happened. From Twitter to China, from CNN to Forbes to their own hometown Chicago Tribune the reaction wasn’t good.

CNN International: Super Bowl ad featuring Tibet triggers angry reaction in China
Forbes: Groupon’s 2-For-1 Super Bowl Special: Offend Both China And Tibet Activists
Digital Trends: Groupon’s Tibet Super Bowl ad offends everyone
Deal Book: Did Groupon Cross the Line in Super Bowl Ad Debut?
Chicago Tribune: Groupon Tibet Super Bowl TV ad discounts taste, sensitivity

Clever isn’t clever when it offends.

The problem with clever ideas is that they are a social thing. Clever only works where trust already exists. Clever is risky because it gets us looking at ourselves not the people we’re talking to. Clever backfires completely in a venue or a community where people don’t know us yet. Groupon found out what happens when we try clever without a firm foundation of trust in the mix.

Now, Groupon has problem. What would you do?

Reframing the Problem

The way you frame a problem is what keeps it a problem. This problem can so easily be a huge opportunity. Groupon has been in the social business world long enough to see the outstanding examples of companies who tried to apologize without apologizing and those who have owned their mistakes and won back the trust of the their core fan group instantly.

Here are five well known social media apologies …
Dell’s 23 Confessions
A Commitment On Edelman and Wal-Mart
JetBlue Launches Cross-Media Apology Campaign
Turner Broadcasting Apology Letter
Motrin

Those that worked were those that resonated started from a place of trust and rebuilding trust relationships. If you find yourself where Groupon is, start with these two tenets of connecting in honesty.

  1. Step away from the the clever and open up. Send out an actual human being to talk with your customers. They’re your heroes.
  2. Lead with trust. Trust the human being you send, trust your customers, and give people every reason to trust you. Trust is the currency of relationships.

With that mindset, a clear plan of action toward apologizing early and often is the only way to answer the hugely negative response to their ads.

The Action Plan

What would I advise the Groupon team to do? Realize that the relationships they’ve built have been based on price, not loyalty. Understand that the breach was something like

“If you could make fun of something as serious as that, would also make fun of anything, everything, that’s important to me?”

Here’s an action plan to begin a new kind of relationship and to rebuild what’s been lost by the ad.

  • Read enough to understand why people responded as they did to the ad. Read long enough and deep enough to see the disconnect. A wise, open-mind doesn’t have to read long to see what went wrong.
  • Say thank you to folks who raised the complaints.
  • Admit the mistake and apologize. A true apology includes …
    • a statement of regret …
      I’m sorry.
    • ownership of the act and responsibility for the outcome …
      I behaved badly … It was my fault this happened.
    • acknowledgment of hurt or damage …
      It made you feel small … It broke your trust … It lost you business.
    • a promise for better behavior in the future …
      It won’t happen again.
    • a request or statement of hope for forgiveness or renewed trust …
      I hope you can believe in me.
    • Then go back and read everything — every tweet, post, conversation about it. Talk to everyone you can about it. Become an expert on knowing every blog and blogger, every tweet and tweeter. Respond with appropriate personal apologies to as many as you can.

    Have a beginner’s mind. Listen. Listen. Listen. Say thank you again.
    Then don’t tell folks you’ve changed. Show them.

    How to Recover

    Groupon has a site for donating to the Tibet Fund. Finding out about it now, is too little too late. The ad might have led with that, but it didn’t. Here’s how Groupon might recover by using that site and enlisting from the folks who still want to believe in them.

  • Ask for help. Have a Groupon reverse offer. Offer to pay $500 budget to the first 100 customers who want to make a video version of a new ad. Make the Groupon offer that they get paid. Participate with time. Don’t just throw money at them.
  • Add a page to the Save the Money site to feature the videos they make and allow the audience to cast votes on for the video they think would have made the best Super Bowl Ad for Tibet that might have been. (Limit votes to 1 per email address.)
  • Put the top 10 winners on the Groupon site and donate $1000 to the Tibet fund in the name of each winner – a total of $10,000.

A company admits the error and shows they mean it with everyone watching could make difference in a huge way. Here’s a chance to turn critics into heroes and to use the momentum to make something truly good happen.

Groupon has a huge opportunity to bring visibility and real action to the crisis in Tibet.

This could be a win for the world, if Groupon wants to make it that.

Got more ideas for how Groupon might recover from this?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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SpyFu: The Secret Weapon of the Savvy Internet Marketer

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A Guest Post by Lior Levin

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Like most people new to Internet marketing, when I first started out, I made the mistake of believing that the Google keyword tool was the only accurate source of information and whatever Google’s tools said had to be treated as gospel. Boy, was I wrong! Not only are there plenty of other tools out there, they are actually a lot more accurate with their numbers because they are impartial.

Google’s goal is to make money, which they do from advertisers, so they care little about Internet marketers trying to make a living and their tools tend to reflect this bias. However, I’m here to tell you about a secret weapon no Internet marketer worth his salt should be without and that is SpyFu.com.

Competitive Data and Keyword Research

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SpyFu is a comprehensive, online keyword research tool that also offers SEO and PPC tools to allow you to spy on your competition. This online tool will allow to uncover vast amounts of data on your competition, including their daily PPC budget, their keywords, bid prices, how many clicks they get per day and much more. All you have to do is enter the domain name of the site you want to analyze and you are then presented with a plethora of information.

SpyFu allows you to also view the top organic rankings, the best performing ads and the SEO rankings for any of your competitors. It also features a list of the Top 100 Adsense keywords in terms of CPC.

You can also work backwards, by analyzing a specific keyword. You will be offered such information as the number of advertisers bidding on that particular keyword, the price range being paid per click and even the ads and links to the landing pages of the advertisers in question.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

One of the things I like most about SpyFu is that the information they provide is straightforward, with no secret formulas. You can see the complete history of a keyword, from how often a certain domain used a keyword in their campaign, to the highest and lowest CPC. It also allows provides information on when the ad copy was changed, which I find extremely useful. If I’m targeting a similar keyword, then I can always analyze the ad copy to see which approach delivered the best results.

The competitive data SpyFu provides is invaluable and I use it for almost every project I work on. After all, to beat the competition you have to know the competition and you would be surprised how much facts and figures can reveal about a competitors marketing strategy. I also save a lot of time by analyzing my competitor’s landing pages and ad copy. For example, if a certain ad has been in use for a while and hasn’t been changed, you can be sure that it is performing well. You can then use the ad copy in question as inspiration when crafting your own PPC ads.

However, SpyFu does have its limitations and I have found it to be somewhat inaccurate when it comes to the daily PPC budget of a competitor. While this information might not be important to you if you don’t do PPC, it is critical to any PPC-based campaign. After all, the budget you set plays a critical role in the ranking of your ad.

Despite its few limitations, I still find SpyFu to be one of the most effective market research tools available online. It certainly delivers much more realistic figures in terms of CPC, search volume and number of advertisers, offering a more accurate overview of a certain market or niche.

—–
This outstanding review was written by Lior Levin who is a consultant to 123 neon signs, and also works with an online task management startup.
You can find Lior on Twitter as Liors

Thank you, Lior. You’re welcome back here anytime.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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28 Telling Responses to 27 Things About Working in Social Media

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In traditional print, writer and reader have static conversation, a disconnected relationship. The writer set forth ideas; then later in another context, the reader reads and considers the ideas. In social media, the conversation is often immediate, sometimes fleeting. People on our blogs or on Twitter read what we write, think about (or not), and add their response, taking the original thought to new places.

The beauty of this dynamic social interchange is that it the original thoughts can be developed, become deeper and broader through community participation.

This week I published a thought piece called 27 Things to Know Before You Work in Social Media, an audience, thoughtful, intelligent, experienced readers — you — contributed thoughts and taking the original to a higher level. Those thoughts deserve a discussion of their own.

Social Media for Business Is Still Business

Though the ROI isn’t always initially apparent, it’s naive to assume that it’s a no return endeavor. Just as a trade show, sales call, or lunch with client can appear to be something else, the relationships forged through social networks serve customers, solve problems, and develop new business. They also require strategy, experience, expertise, execution and customer care — internal and external, online and offline.

… the uncertainty of it all–it’s sometimes the hardest part of trying to convince people of the value when things are changing at the speed of light. …
— Successful-Blog who is @MikeCassidyAZ on Twitter.

I would add that there is nothing virtual about social media. It is in fact grounded in real business application and acumen. Understanding what you are trying to achieve is always the first step. Keep that in mind, be transparent, true and efficient and the rest will follow.
The other truth is to set expectations and practices according to how well you are resourced. If you are committing yourself to an online profile, ensure you have the resources to maintain, manage and effectively meet the expectations you are creating.
— Alasdair Munn who is @ajmunn on Twitter.

My biggest issue is convincing people it’s worth it. There is ROI just like any other form of customer satisfaction has ROI- not always direct.

Another issue is that people think that because they don’t ‘get’ social media that it’s going to disappear.
— @brashley on Twitter.

There is such frustration when walking into a room of “traditional” business professionals and advocating for “social” media…and such potential too. It’s tricky using the potential as enough motivation to battle the frustration. …
— Shayna Walker who is @weddlady on Twitter.

Managing Vocabulary and Expectations.

As we bring this all together, we have the disadvantage of speaking the same language — our conversations rife with hidden assumptions that set conflicting expectations. We straddle two cultures with two similar, but not equivalent vocabularies.

As time passes, we gain experience, our words get clearer and closer. Two years ago, when we said “community” offline, people thought “church” or “Omaha, Nebraska.” Aligning our vocabulary and our expectations can solve problems, decrease conflict, and lower negative perceptions.

I agree with the desire to lose the Social Media title. I tend to look at the process with a wider lens. It’s just part of the digital puzzle that includes optimizing your web site, paid search, integration with non web properties, location and mobile. …
— Gordon Phillips who is @gophillips on Twitter.

One of the things I ponder recently is how to describe what I do when so using the phrase “social media marketing” is considered by people within the social media and marketing to be inaccurate and yet people from outside (current and potential clients) use that phrase to describe what they want help with.

The fast pace of e digital world and the constant arrivals of new tools and changes in the landscape make it a compelling and exciting place to work. But bridging the gap can be confusing and knowing what words to use to convey has me tied up in knots at times.
— Allen Mireles who is @AllenMireles on Twitter.

I think people need to be careful about false expectations. Also, if you’re not flexible by nature, this might not be the right area of work. Being able to roll with the punches and adjust at a moment’s notice are definite temperament requirements.
— Keri Jo Raz who is @KeriJoRaz on Twitter.

Personally investing and detaching really hit home, and Nos. 17 and 19, too. We are in uncharted waters here and it’s nice to know we are all experiencing the frustrations and rewards together.
— Susan Young who is @sueyoungmedia on Twitter.

That no matter how many times you explain it, social media is not free.
— Mike Cassidy who is @MikeCassidyAZ on Twitter.

The Opportunity Is What the Tools Can Do

Explaining that the tools aren’t the end game is the first goal and problem. Simply picking up the tools doesn’t get us anywhere, any more than routing through a huge red chest of workman’s tools. The tool chest isn’t the end game, the opportunity is what a craftsman can do with the tools. Not everyone is ready to see the house that a gifted team might build, but those that do have the advantage.

28. Just because you use the tools personally doesn’t mean you have a grasp on how to leverage them for a business.

29. Unless you start at a strong brand or within a strong community it takes more offline work than online work to be great at your job. If you don’t have offline skills then don’t bother applying to do online work.

30. You will need to engage, interact and drive your businesses community to action; not the “social media” people you follow and talk to all day. There is a difference.

31. That your awesome/best idea in the world will get less traction than you thought.
— Chris Theisen who is @cjtheisen on Twitter.

The unfortunate issue I see with [legitimate] social media experts and those who truly are knowledgeable in the field is that, like real estate, too many people are able to claim to be experts. How do you raise the bar so the many wannabees do not dilute the vocation?
— Susie Blackmon who is @SusieBlackmon on Twitter.

Learning, Evolving, and Adding Value Is the New Expertise

Learning, evolving and adding value with the speed of the Internet is the new expertise. Those who are able to capture, filter, translate, curate, package and deliver valuable resonating messages; those who connect people, content, and context matching urgency to situations will win the game. They will attract both loyal communities and easily enlist crowds of two-minute volunteers to pass on faster, smaller messages when they need them.

Social media sometimes feels like you’re in a partially lit tunnel going at lightspeed with things coming at you to catch, handle and pass on whilst also battling against a strange crosswind of resistance and misunderstanding. all the while, you’re commentating on yourself for the benefit of others…
— Serena who is @serenasnoad on Twitter.

… no matter how many hours you spend doing SM, you can never know everything about it. SM changes so rapidly and constantly that it is next to impossible to keep up with each new idea, blog, platform, service, etc. …
Nicole Ott who is @nicolelynnott on Twitter.

Learning what is meaningful and significant is more important than saying or following the meaningless and insignificant 🙂
—Jay Deragon who is @ConversCurrency on Twitter.

… I have had a few internships where I am the go-to person regarding the social media strategy. And I love that. Although many people may still be skeptics, I am embracing everything I can, and hopefully when I do go into the working-girl world I can bring something new and different to the table.
— Selena Larson who is @selenalarsonpr on Twitter.

I have two possible additions –

– that it takes about a year of listening, watching, absorbing and doing it before you really having any idea what it is you are doing

– that, at any given moment, the vast sea of ‘things needing attention’ or ‘things to work on next’ or ‘things I want to explore’ is so great, focus and traction can be the biggest challenges of all.
–Judi Young who is @ohyesshecan on Twitter.

Think Community Not Skillset

Social business is about the people, not the message. It’s a philosophy of business — way of thinking and seeing — that can’t be contained or fully realized in a single campaign or a single department. These new tools make the pace faster and easier. They also allow us to connect with more people. Our challenge is to fill those connections with meaning — to meet where our values align and use those connections to build better businesses together.

Social media is an interconnected, symbiotic organism comprised of flesh and blood people – people with hopes, goals, fears, dreams, and a need to be heard.

That’s too big of a job for just one person.
— Molly who is @mckra1g on Twitter.

Social Media is a community, not a commercial. Just as one wouldn’t show up to a party empty handed, you don’t show up online with your hand out. It’s permission-based – you have to earn respect among followers. The old adage remains true, ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood.’ Listen, share, engage, then speak.
— Tami Belt who is @1bluecube on Twitter.

I really hope more people will “get” social media soon, as these 27 make it a very difficult job. I too tell my family something else and my friends from university seem to think I “play with facebook” for a living.
— @Simpli_B on Twitter.

I believe Social Media is a journey, not destination! And the more you’re open to the twists and turns, the more possibility and excitement there are. It’s just that when a majority of an organizations people don’t use SM, you have to then rethink who is SM for and how to reach those younger folks. And that requires energy back on their end “offline.”
— Elizabeth Doherty Thomas who is @MarriageKids on Twitter.

Social Media Is Community Amplified

Anyone in management, communications, or a business that serves people has experienced more than a few of these frustrations. Most of them are seated in the naturally occurring communication issues that humans have when we interact. Any interdepartmental team could make their own list that would be similar to this one. Any community would be easier to manage if it didn’t involve people.

I’m pretty sure that in order to comprehend this list and be able to comment means that I must work in the same environment. I do.

Social media is still so new and still in a state of constant evolution. People don’t understand it so they assume and believe misinformation as truth.

To understand the community, you need to live in the community. When you spend more time online than you do off, the lines get blurry. Those of us on the inside still understand and relate.
— Chris Eh Young who is @Chris_Eh_Young on Twitter.

… I confess that by the time I reached #7 I was thinking that most of these insights describe my career in public relations. the person who creates, buys, places an ad is easily understood. The behind-the-scene nuances of massaging a message and crisis management are often (deliberately) opaque.
— Karen Malone Wright who is @KarenMW on Twitter.

… Social media is all about relationships. … you have to be personally invested and detached at the same time. Social media is more than just a tweet or a Facebook post; it’s about building lasting relationships with people. For people that don’t fully understand social media, it can be a difficult concept to understand.

Yes social media is your job. Yes you sometimes seem more interested in your online friends than your offline ones. But the real reason for this is that if you are doing your job well, then you have built a relationship with these people that you can’t just turn off at the end of the day.
— Sean Clanton who is @parallelic on Twitter.

I might also add that sometimes being social 24-7 can feel very lonely since you have each foot in a different world, you technically belong to both and neither. Also, your online friends might lose any sense of personal loyalty and publicly bitch about your company as if they were a stranger to you.

You’re right though — it is totally worth it when you see things start to work well, when you can actually see lightbulbs go off in other peoples’ heads and they share good ideas that weren’t even on your radar. Social really can make everything we do as a business better and more meaningful and it’s nice to be someone working on that side of the equation.
— Shannon Paul who is @ShannonPaul on Twitter.

Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

Lead with relationships not the tools. If you wonder what that means listen more. When you hear a sentence with the words, social media, inside it. Replace “social media” with the word, telephone, and you’ll have idea where we’ve been and we’re going. The tools are what allow us to connect. It’s our minds and our hearts that get us to the core of the matter where we agree – where we can align our goals and work together on something we can’t build alone.

Like this blog post, we are building this social media culture together …

It was like you were reading my soul! Thanks for the reminder that I’m not the only one with these experiences and ups and downs.
— Vanessa Williams who is @williamsvanessa on Twitter.

Wow. Jumping on the bandwagon to agree with everyone else… just wanted to take the time to let you know lots of people are paying attention. My one response probably covers about 23 others that didn’t take the time to respond.
— Jason Terry who is @JasonTerry on Twitter.

Special thank you to these folks who contributed their support and encouragement. Danielle D. Ali ( @DanielleDAli ), Christina Rigby ( @@cjrigby1 ), LisaDJenkins ( @LisaDJenkins ), Dave Delaney and chris bartlett ( @followcb ).

Jay Baer and I are marking our calendars to meet next year at the same to see what’s changed.

I’m putting this in the time capsule and plan to look at it every year on this date, to see how the industry and its participants evolve.
— Jay Baer who is @JayBaer on Twitter.

Now it’s your turn … What will you do online or offline to continue and extend the conversation? Do you think we’ll still be saying the same things in a year?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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An Engagement Checklist for Successful Business

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A Guest Post by
Shawn Hessinger

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As the experts and this blog often state, you’re only a stranger once. You’re a stranger up until the moment you extend your hand and introduce yourself. From there, you begin the process of becoming an acquaintance, and eventually, a friend. And social media has taught us that’s where we want to be. People don’t want to do business with logos anymore. Perhaps they never did. They want to do business with people they know, people in their network. To get in their network, you start by saying hello. You engage.

I know. In recent months you’ve no doubt heard the term ‘engagement’ more times than you can recall. Every social media expert wants to lecture you on its importance. But what does it all mean? As a marketing professional, a blogger, an entrepreneur – what types of customer engagement should you be worrying about, and how can you be sure you’re doing enough to not just stop being a stranger, but to start becoming a friend?

Below you’ll find a quick checklist to help you pinpoint opportunities and create new customer touch points.

Are you creating content?

Creating content on a consistent basis is one of the most powerful ways to engage your audience. It gives them something to engage with, while also showing your interest in getting to know them. The simple fact that you’ve penned that blog post, created that resource, or published that newsletter tells your audience you want to be part of the conversation, and you want to create a different type of relationship with them. Your post is your offering to a more intimate conversation. How you choose to create content is up to you. Whether you start a WordPress blog, a Tumblr account or create videos over at YouTube, is your choice. What matters is that you create content. That you give your customers (and potential customers) something to introduce them to your brand, and that shows them what you believe in. The first step of engaging is bringing something to the party.

Are you sharing other content?

Creating good content on your own site is only the first step in becoming part of your community and building awareness for your brand. The second step requires realizing that it’s not all about you and doing your part to lift up the people around you. You do this by sharing other people’s content and promoting their brand. For example, I act as the community manager at BizSugar, a social network focused around connecting small business owners and promoting their content. It’s a place where bloggers, entrepreneurs and others go to lift up other people, and the results of those interactions have been pretty fantastic. Engaging with others doesn’t always mean you go in talking about yourself. Sometimes it means talking about them. In fact, ideally, that’s what it means more often than not.

Some other ways to promote others?

  • Share links to your network on services like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.
  • Recommend or submit great content to social networks like Sphinn (http://sphinn.com/) or BizSugar.
  • Bookmark their posts at places like StumbleUpon or Mixx .
  • Create new content that promotes theirs, perhaps in the form of a YouTube video or a follow-up blog post.

Again, the medium you choose to use isn’t what’s important. It’s that you’re taking time to connect with your community in a way that is welcomed and shows it’s not all about you.

…Are you sharing it on your own site?

All the social media gurus will tell you that a great way to build your personal brand is through guest posting on other people’s blogs to leverage their audience. But what about your own site? Do you accept guest posts, or is it all you, all the time? This blog and Liz Strauss is a great example of a place that does engagement really well. Liz engages with her community by opening her home to them when appropriate, and creating a new level of trust between herself, her audience, and her guest authors. It’s a relationship where everyone benefits, and it’s a powerful form of engagement.

Are you networking online?

Another important way to engage with your community is to go where the action is and talk to people. What are the popular blogs in your niche that house the industry’s most important conversations? Identify them and get involved. What industry-specific social networks does your audience gravitate to? If you find they’re members of Third Tribe , then you might want to become part of that community and establish yourself as a trusted resource. If they’re active in certain Twitter chats, then you may want to block off time to participate in those. You can’t do a good job engaging your audience if you never leave your front porch.

Are you creating a presence offline?

What? You didn’t think you just had to engage online, did you? Don’t forget to also reach out to customers in the real world. That means creating engagement touch points in-store, joining your local chamber of commerce, starting a local Meetup, and partnering with local vendors. This is a great way to strengthen relationships you’ve made online, and to really get to know them as people.

The evolution of social media into marketing has changed the way brands must interact with customers. It’s no longer good enough to offer a great product; now you must offer a great brand experience as well. And that experience starts with that first introduction, when a company extends its hand to engage with a larger community. It’s when they stop being a stranger, and begin on the path to becoming a friend.

—–
Shawn Hessinger is Blogger & Chief Moderator at BizSugar
bizsugar You can find her on Twitter as @bizsugar

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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How to Get Bean Counters and Kumbayers Serving Both the Company and the Customers

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash

10-Point Plan – Align Values with Value Proposition

The Clean and the Unpredictable

The core of any great business is the business model that drives it. A company without a viable, thriving business model — a process which consistently yields a growing profit — is a hobby not a business. The mathematics of the process — the return on investments — has to justify the decisions and directions of the business. Human relationships — intelligent, trust bonds with employees, customers, vendors, partners — are vital to the true and ethical execution of those decisions.

Mathematics and numbers are a comfort. They add up to clear, clean, predictable answers. We can reach the solution to a mathematical problem with the right algorithm, good data, and a trusty calculator. People are not so comfortable. Their behavior can be unintelligible, messy, and unpredictable. To reach the solution to a people problem requires experience, leadership, and gray matter decision making.

In any business, some employees are drawn to the bottom line clarity of the mathematics – the bottom line, the sales figures, the profit and loss statement. Other employees are taken with the less tangible, but equally important, human relationships – customer service, product experience, community building.

Some folks call the two groups the Bean Counters and the Kumbayers. Both terms discount that group’s value. In great businesses, every employee belongs to both groups. In not so great businesses, employees haven’t yet discovered the strength of getting those two groups together.

See the Values in the Value Proposition

So how do we get the bean counters and the kumbayers to come together?
The two groups aren’t so far apart if you consider their best intentions. One group wants to protect and grow the company; the other group wants to protect and grow the customer base. Without a company, neither group would be here. Without customers, the company wouldn’t be here either.

Serving the company serves customers and serving customers serves the company.

No business can thrive if every employee isn’t doing both. What if every employee could align customer values with the company’s value proposition. Here’s how to bring the two groups together.

  • Bring together a dozen leaders who represent both bean counters and kumbayers. Seat them at mixed team tables of four. Point out that: It’s no secret that our strengths are also our weaknesses. It’s human nature to be drawn to and value what we’re good at and to discount or overlook what isn’t our strong suit. Truth is, we think people who think as we do are smart and those that think differently are … well … either not so smart or being difficult.
  • As a group define the company’s reason for being in business. Write it large on a flip chart or white board. Ask them to record it at their tables.
  • Tell the teams, each individual has five minutes to write three words to represent the highest values their job role brings to executing that value proposition. Explain that they should focus on what they uniquely bring to their job role that adds value to the organization.
  • After five minutes, have the teams share their words and explain them to each other. Suggest that people listen for what others do of value that they themselves would never want to or could never do well.
  • Ask each team to choose rewrite the value proposition including three values words that represent the entire table. Explain that the new values proposition should reflect a focus on both growing the company and customer relationships.
  • Have the teams share and defend their new values-based value proposition. Challenge them to give examples of how their value proposition in action — decisions they might make — would support both growth of the company and customer relationships.

People who think differently than we do often care about things important to the business that don’t draw our personal interest. A discussion of company and customer goals can lead both groups to value every kind of contribution. Seeing how passionately one person cares about the profitability to maintain a stable business unit while another cares about totally satisfied customers opens the door to dialogue about how one can’t happen without the other. When that light goes on, people start to get interested in what they used to find difficult and the organization can develop and grow exponentially.

How do you get the bean counters and the kumbayers to serve both the company and customers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

27 Things to Know Before You Work in Social Media

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Let’s Be Honest

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Every day, I’m immersed in social business. I spend as much time on my computer as some people spend in their shoes. I rarely talk about “social media” except with clients, because to me that’s like talking about “pencils.” I’d rather be using one than talking about what they do.

I use social media tools to work on SOBCon with @Starbucker, to build communities and brand visibility for clients, to write blog posts and to curate content for people with similar interests. Social tools are business development, customer service, marketing, pr, community building, change management, and leadership — all at the speed of the Internet.

So I guess you could say I work in social media. If that’s your reality, your goal, or even a possibility for you, I’d like to point out a few things about working in social media worth knowing. This is not a rant, simply a set of observations which are quite similar to the challenges of any communication-based, people-centered endeavor.

The purpose of this list is merely to share that most people who are in this new and quickly changing area of business are finding that the work often has more nuances and challenges than we expected.

The problem with working in social media is …

  1. that, when you start, no one will believe you know anything useful — and you might not.
  2. that you’ll have to be multi-lingual, speaking and translating between two vocabularies — that of the social media culture and that of the people who’ve little to no experience with it.
  3. that you’ll have to figure out how to measure something that traditionally hasn’t been measured and to explain why those measurements are valid — you’ll have to have goals, tools to match the goals and reasonable expectations — without history that’s hard to do.
  4. that some folks will believe that impressions, eyeballs, and broadcasts are the best use of the tools.
  5. that, though you were enlisted to bring about change, the very folks who enlisted you might be the most uncomfortable with changing — one friend advises you might take care if you’re hired to be the “heretic” because heretic stories don’t end well for the heretic.
  6. that some people won’t be able to see the value of making relationships to growing business and keeping satisfied customers — even though relationships have fueled the businesses based on decades of trade shows and sales calls.
  7. that, when you do social business well, it looks easy, but it’s not — and no one will care how hard it was.
  8. that some people will misread safe responses as dangerous ones and dangerous responses as safe ones — understanding the culture of social business online is a learning curve that most folks acquire incrementally.
  9. that you’ll find most folks have a different sense of urgency — their sense of urgency will change some as they experience the speed of the Internet.
  10. that social media work isn’t glamorous.
  11. that the pay for the hours worked is even less glamorous.
  12. that, if you build a strong public presence, your mistakes will be public too.
  13. that, if you build a strong public presence, some folks will think you are all about making yourself “internet famous” — and that could be true.
  14. that some folks will be confused when you promote what other folks are doing — you might accused of “going native.”
  15. that you’ll need to personally invest and be detached simultaneously.
  16. that you’ll be critiqued by people who don’t know how to say things nicely.
  17. that you’ll be critiqued by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
  18. that you won’t have resources to bring all of your strongest ideas to life.
  19. that some of your ideas will be out-of-sync, out-of-reach, or out-of-date before you have them.
  20. that only other social media advocates will “get” what you do — you won’t be able to explain the thrill of a ReTweet from someone you admire.
  21. that your significant other may think you care more about your online friends than your offline friends — your significant other might be right.
  22. that being social online means you’ll have to be social offline too.
  23. that no one human is good at every aspect of social media interaction.
  24. that no matter where you sit, stand, listen, or talk, you’ll have to change your point of view to see and respond to the whole picture.
  25. that the second you forget that social media is about the people, the people will find a way to remind you — sometimes they’ll remind you even when you haven’t forgotten.
  26. that each day will require that you focus fiercely, that trust yourself so that people can trust you, and that you learn more things faster than ever before.
  27. that, if you’re the person introducing social media to a business, you face the challenge of getting people to imagine the possibilities of something they’ve never experienced.

So there you have 27 things to know before you work in social media and here’s the one that makes those 27 worth it.

Inside each frustration is a chance to be a leader, to reach out and invite people to help build something we can’t build alone. The effort, the explaining, the energy can transform a a business by enlisting and celebrating customers, employees, vendors, partners who help it thrive. The first connection occurs when we show folks how these new tools make what they do faster, easier, more efficient, and more meaningful.

Soon enough, I hope we lose the term “social media” in the same way that we no longer have classes in “computer” or people who teach “email.” In the meantime, I tell my family that I write spy novels. It’s easier.

Bet you could add to this list. What do you think people need to know about working in social media?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!