Bare Feet Blog » Strategy

The Social Cost of Unpaid Tweetup Teams

Roxanne Darling — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:28:17 +0000

As the founder of the Social Media Club Hawaii chapter and a very active social media consultant here in Hawaii, I am often invited to attend events and receive services for free in exchange for social media buzz – aka tweeting, facebooking, photographing, and videoing about my experiences.

Though I thoroughly enjoy myself when I am on site and do pour myself into the activities at hand, I have this persistent nag of discomfort. I’ve been letting it percolate as I gather information and sort out all of the energies that are in play – just what my “systems analyst” mind likes to do!

I am ready to open up a conversation about this practice as I think we can do better.

In case it is not obvious why brands engage social media influencers in this manner, let me summarize as I see it:

Brands give things away for free in exchange for buzz.
Brands hope to use influencers to build their own influence and market their products and services.
Brands save money by giving things away free as compared to hiring said influencers to work on the brand’s behalf.
Brands save time by having the influencers organize themselves and manage their messaging, as compared to planning a social marketing campaign.
Influencers get freebies and possibly a chance to build their own influence, by association.

Here in Hawaii community, is not just a buzz word, it is a really big deal. Words, deeds, and intentions travel quickly on the coconut wireless as well as on social media. It has made me more sensitive, I believe, to the pulse of the community as an ongoing aspect of what I do and how I experience the community. As a new resident of Maui, I have dropped in to many well-established communities of people – each with their own energies and hierarchies. I am literally feeling my way around and am committed to as much transparency and openness as possible.

I think I have nailed down the key reasons why I have threads of discomfort woven into my own participation as a guest tweeter or member of a volunteer social media team:

1) Those of us who get freebies are set apart from those who don’t. For some, this could actually hurt participation as friends and peers who were not invited for free, feel left out. (Have you experienced this? I would like to hear about it.) Social media constantly pushes up against high school clique issues, and as a believer in best practices, I want to make social media activities more inclusive not less. The theory has been to get the influencers on board first and the masses will follow. But what if some of the influencers are left out and choose to hide the event info from their friends and fans? What if they develop a negative feeling toward the brand that persists after any individual event? What if the masses begin to doubt credibility because of the pay-to-play underlying mechanism? What if the brand loses credibility only by featuring cheerleaders and not objective reviewers?
Bottom Line: To me, there is risk for the brand and the influencer to actually lose positive sentiment/respect in the community – at least here in close-knit Hawaii. By inadvertently creating cliques, we are anti-community building.

2) Those of us who accept the freebies generally get less value than the brand, on a dollar-to-dollar basis. Looking at this strictly as business, we are providing our services for below market value in most cases based on the dollar cost of the service/product being given. This reminds me of that old saying, “Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?” Now if this is for a nonprofit cause, we have a different basis. So let’s take that off the table. But regarding for-profit businesses, they are paying very little for professional social media services. Consider a free meal or ticket or service in exchange for many hours of social buzz. They are also missing out on the best quality those influencers could provide them. If the brand makes judgments about the efficacy of social media based on these relatively random, unstructured free services, that would be a mistake.
Bottom Line: To me, when we work for free, we social media professionals devalue ourselves and do not help brands understand the full value of social media – regardless of the outcome of any given event – if for no other reason they are not getting our best work. OTOH, do you think working for freebies is a viable way for a newbie social media practitioner to build their expertise and business practice? Maybe I am jaded, having been at this for so long, and knowing with certainty the knowledge and value I can bring to a brand.

3) The third challenge is the FTC guidelines for disclosure. Bloggers in particular are held to a very high standard. (Tweeters not as much yet but the intent still applies.) I try to append my tweets at least a few times in the conversation with things like [gift] so readers know I am being comped. But I admit I do a lousy job of it and have never been given instruction by a brand to disclose. In a community, though, people have a way of finding out. When it is not out in the clear, I think there is enhanced risk of creating ill will as well as running afoul of the law.
Bottom Line: FTC rules require disclosure of freebies. We could all use clearer guidelines and easier practices to accomplish this.

So how do we improve on this? I have a few ideas and I am quite certain you readers can help add to this conversation. I want to hear from influencers and brands and community members about how we can collaborate in ways not that are not just win-win (you and me) but win-win-win (you, me, and the community aka marketplace).

Here are some ideas to get us started. I expect to modify them as I get more input from you. It requires an upgrade in your brand’s use of social media, but I think our time has come for that. Free tweetups were a great way to learn and connect but I think they have out-lived their usefulness to the brand, to the influencer, and to the consumer.

Stop giving away freebies and instead create standard business transactions.
Have a business goal for each event and hire influencers accordingly.
Make it an open process, so you expand your pool of support rather than restrict it.
Have at least a part-time social media consultant or staffer for your brand. There is too much to figure out on your own or in a scatter shot manner.

Here is how this could work for each event or launch:

Have your social media staffer/consultant define the scope of work, outline the goals and metrics, determine criteria needed to meet said goals, and agree on a working budget. It does not have to be big! Keep in mind, the adage “you get what you pay for” still applies with social media.
Put out an open call for social media assistance and include your performance criteria. Your goals will determine the relative balance of skills you want: photos, tweets, video, blogs, local/mainland followers, peeps/business users, etc.
Provide specific and measurable assignments to your team and equip them with as much background info as possible so they can do a great job for you.
Measure and report on your measurements.
Rotate your hiring to give as many people a chance to collaborate as possible – building your de facto network of influencers as well as good will.

Since this represents a significant change for how we have been doing things here in Hawaii, I would really like to host a chat IRL to talk about these ideas and how we might go about implementing them. If you want to join in, please let me know! Leave a comment here or email me: roxanne@barefeetstudios.com. I will get it organized and post details here, and of course also across the social web. My goals are to strengthen our community (this includes personal relationships, as well as both business and consumers), to strengthen support for social media best practices, and to support the social media professionals in our midst.

Photo Credit: Mannequin Clique by quinn.anya on Flickr.

With love and Aloha,

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The Quiet Unsung Opportunities of Building Your Social Media Platforms

Roxanne Darling — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:54:40 +0000

In case your business is suffering from Missouri (“Show Me”) syndrome, here’s yet another example of why you build your social networks online when times are easy, when times are good. There is no price that can be put on being ready with a track record, the experience on how to implement, and an established fan base for when “something big” happens.

Toyota learned this the hard way when the (turned out to be mistaken) case of the stuck accelerator pedal hit the internet. The story went wild not only with little official response from Toyota, but with no established fan sites or fan bases to help defend the company against its detractors.

Contrast this to the White House, where they have been steadily posting photos about the happenings of our government on a regular basis, on Flickr, the most popular social network for photos. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Over 70% of people are said to be visually dominant – they learn by seeing not so much by reading or listing.

I ask you to consider the following numbers (from this post on TechCrunch) when you are weighing the pros and cons of getting started sooner than later on building your social platforms:

The photo was posted post-Bin Laden death announcement on May 2nd at 10am PDT via the White House’s Flickr account. Flickr for some reason was tracking the pic, and graciously has given us the following viewer stats; 390,000 views at 3:30pm (5.5 hours later at 71,000 views per hour),  600,000 at 5pm (7 hours later at 140,000 views/hour) and  1,400,000 at 11am today (25 hours later at 44,000 views/hour). The White House Flickr account averages 100K views per day, and yesterday it received 2.5 million views, and as of 7pm today it already had 3.6 million views an order of magnitude greater than normal.

Do read the whole article at Tech Crunch as Alexia also discusses the power of this photo in explaining Obama’s “cool confident cat” style of leadership – a man so secure in his abilities and his team that he can cede the head of the table to the general who is working on his laptop.

How would this fly in your organization? Over and over again I say, if you are proud of what you do and you believe in your products and services, then the more you can share with us about you the stronger your position in the marketplace. Build your fan base during the good times so we can be there to support you when the times are better or worse than anyone can imagine.

Photo Credit: The White House, photo by Pete Souza

Aloha,

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A Conversation About Social Media Influence #SMSHI

Roxanne Darling — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:44:09 +0000

In the spirit of transparency and speed, I am posting the notes I made as moderator of the Social Media Influence Panel at the Social Media Seminar being hosted by Technology News Bytes with their nonprofit partner, Social Media Club Hawaii Chapter. Stay tuned; I will be updating this post!

Please add your opinions/question in the comments or on Twitter; we are using the hashtag #SMSHI. This conversation will run from 10 am – 10:40 am HST today, April 14. Find me on Twitter @roxannedarling.

For background, I find Tom Webster’s work best in class. Read his blog at BrandSavant.com and follow him on Twitter @webby2001.

For Tammi Hitchcock: (Based on your work with small Hawaii businesses) – what factors do you consider when trying to build influence online for a client – what tactics do you use to accomplish that – what works and what doesn’t work in your experience – case studies and real examples are very welcome

For Rob Bertholf: (Based on your work building things and SEO expertise) – what are the top “crossover” factors that build SERP AND socmed influence – what tools do you use to measure/monitor online influence – which ones work well for what factors, or not? – case studies and real examples are very welcome

For Tara Coomans: (Based on your marketing experience and socmed practice) – are clients interested in understanding and/or measuring influence factors – what different strategies do you based on the type/size company – what do you see as the failings of online influence measures – case studies and real examples are very welcome

For all:
How important are twitter rankings in the overall online influence question
What are the qualitative tools important for building influence
How much “gaming” of the system is taking place IYO
Would you rather have a high Klout score or be on page 1-2 for a first-name-only SERP on Google?
Would you rather have 500+ connections on LinkedIn or 5000 followers on Twitter?
Would you rather see influence be used to create change or achieve personal power?
What forest are we not seeing by focusing on the trees?
Does this work differently in Hawaii?

How will you use your influence? Are you about sharing, connecting, and uplifting? Support causes – one of the better ways to improve your influence and do good. Let’s tweet some Hawaii nonprofits! Make some donations. Share some link love.

We will naturally show HawaiiKlout.com built by our Rob Bertholf and provide links to these:
http://www.twitalyzer.com
http://www.twittergradr.com
http://www.peerindex.com
Klout – What’s it all about by Tara Coomans
Social Scoring will change your life

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Case Study: US Navy in Hawaii Uses Social Media During #hitsunami

Roxanne Darling — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 04:51:41 +0000

As a direct result of the U.S. Navy’s outreach to bloggers here in Hawaii, I have been fortunate to both participate in some outstanding programs (like an overnight embark on the USS Nimitz) and also developed enormous respect for their adoption of social media (video interview) and their orderly and standardized approach. They are among the best examples of what I often wish for: more grown-ups using social media to get the job done! I mention them frequently in my talks to business, as I did earlier yesterday to business customers at Hawaiian Telecom University.

Last night we held our monthly meeting of the Hawaii chapter of the Social Media Club (yours truly is the founder.) Our topic was Social Media, Tsunamis, and Crisis Management; lots of good links in the comments there too. Judi Clark live-blogged this event; you can read her summary here. Geophysicist Brian Shiro of the NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center joined us to share the back story and help us fact check. View informational slides that Brian prepared here.

I had reached out to Chuck Bell, Emerging Media Director of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet based here in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor; he was unable to attend in person but sent me this thorough report via email. I am sharing it here as it really is a step-by-step example of how this works – written in plain speak and bullet points = music to my ears! I have bolded a few things that really stand out to me as best practices and best case scenarios.

Please leave your comments and kudos for Chuck and the US Navy in the comments below and on Twitter: @PacificFleet.

It was a given that social media was going to be a primary means of communication. Adm. Patrick Walsh, U.S. Pacific Fleet’s commander, emphasized early on in the crisis that our efforts via social media were critical in communicating with our wider Navy family. While we in public affairs realize this instinctively, we are fortunate to have senior leadership that embraces the use of social media as a key means of communicating with our various audiences.

Here are the actions we took: —I immediately monitored my Facebook news feed, which includes extensive likes of Navy commands, and my Pacific military Twitter lists, for announcements and advisories from Navy commands in Japan.
—I reposted each advisory on our Facebook page with attribution and by tagging the Facebook page from which the information came.
—The Navy is much more active on Facebook than in Twitter, so I tweeted everything I was re-posting on Facebook, for the most part.
—At critical points during the crisis, such as the decision to have the ships remain in Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet PAO provided very specific verbiage for use on both Facebook and Twitter.
—As we began receiving questions that I couldn’t answer, especially those of an operational nature (no visibility on those types of decisions from my den at home), I immediately emailed them to the Pacific Fleet PAO and our PAO in the operations center. I would have answers back within minutes and was able to quickly respond to comments and concerns.
—We quickly had a “database” of answers to respond to questions, as many were similar.
—We addressed every question that was posted on our wall, often within minutes, and tried our best to keep a close eye on comments in our posts to quickly address any issues there.
—24/7 monitoring of our social media presence continued for three days.
—Given the ongoing relief effort in Japan that our Sailors are supporting, we are continuing to monitor our social media presence very closely, with truly, only a few hours during the day when there is not eyeballs on it from this office.

Biggest take away: Not only did the social media channels offer a way to immediately share critical information, but the interactive nature of it and our ability to answer questions and concerns immediately, appeared to provide reassurance in particular to the family members of our Sailors.

Thanks Chuck for being part of the conversation and for making it look so easy.

Aloha,

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New Media Artist-in-Residence Program for Lanai

Roxanne Darling — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:40:53 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write more about the innovative travel blogger program I am doing with the Lānaʻi Visitors Bureau and have decided that it’s just gonna ship without being perfect! I started the conversation here with some advice for travel destinations. I am very grateful to my clients at the Maui and Lānaʻi Visitor Bureaus for their willingness to reach out in this ground-breaking way! Read more about the program I produced in 2010 for Maui here. Now, by popular demand, is an overview of the program itself!

Lānaʻi Visitors Bureau Launches Innovative New Media Marketing Program

1) To get the most out of the new media team, we are sharing the Aloha with our bloggers:

They received a special digital invitation to join us as our guest.
They are invited to bring an assistant to help develop more, better produced, and richer stories.
They are being treated as guests, Hawaii-style, and honored as “New Media Artists-in-Residence” to reflect each person’s talent as a travel story-teller in his/her unique style and perspective, for their diverse online communities.

2) To get the most ROI for our state and partner dollars, we are applying sound marketing and business practices:

Each artist guarantees a minimum amount of content (stories, photos, and conversations) to be delivered across numerous social web platforms
Each artist has agreed to collaborate with the other team members, extending and cross-pollinating their extensive individual networks.
This collaboration creates a much longer and stronger impact (measurable by links and tags) across the six-month time frame as compared to having individual writers come on isolated, solo trips.
Artists were selected based on several criteria, including their ability to reach diverse audiences: male/female, 20-30-40 age groups, single, couples, and family travel. They are based throughout the U.S., representing east and west coast as well as central locations. Six of the seven are currently in the top 100 Travel Bloggers.
Numerous types of content will be created: text blog entries, Twitter messages with links, Flickr photos, Facebook conversations, and YouTube videos. There will be daily updates while on-site as well as edited stories posted before and after each visit.

3) To support extensive online conversations and market impressions, numerous social platforms are being employed:

I created a new Posterous blog, that enables quick, simple article creation by approved contributors generating links that are automatically cross-posted to Twitter.
I also created a Twitter account and Facebook page to help manage the online conversations on behalf of the LVB and begin to build some social media assets of their own. I also wanted to be sure and grab those names too!
There is a central hashtag that is in use, to aggregate multiple assets across numerous web sites over the six months, (#VisitLanai)
The conversation and market communications began within one week of confirming the initial group of artists, and will continue through May, 2011.
Interested travelers can follow and join the online conversations in real time. It is interactive; we can entertain questions over the course of the campaign and give answers – documented in photos, audios, and videos. (Both Shannon and Matt have queried their readers about what to do.)
A new media artist brings enormous credibility – they are committed to sharing the authentic travel experience. This can address one of the most common questions re: the out of the way locations: “What is it really like? What did you do actually? Show me!”

4) To help the destination partners get the most ROI, some training and support is included:

Private online web site where partners can easily find information about the team, and follow the milestones of the trip.
Periodic conference calls for Q&A with the partners.
Brief training and “cheat sheets” to be provided so the partners can make the most of the artists while in residence.
This will translate into some partners creating Facebook and Twitter accounts for the first time while others receive advanced tips for social media engagement.

New Media Artists ( in order of their visits)
Shannon Hurst Lane – Traveling Mamas
http://www.travelingmamas.com

Chris Gray Faust – Chris Around the World
http://caroundtheworld.com/
Featured in USA Today Travel

Matt Long – Landlopers
http://www.landlopers.com

Gary Arndt – Everything Everwhere
http://everything-everywhere.com/

Sheila Beal – Go Visit Hawaii
http://www.govisithawaii.com

Kara Williams – The Vacation Gals
http://www.thevacationgals.com

Melanie Waldman – Travels with Two
http://www.travelswithtwo.com

This program is being produced by Roxanne Darling, Bare Feet Studios for the Lānaʻi Visitors Bureau.

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Hawaii Social Media Trends 2011 – SMCHI, Jan 18

Roxanne Darling — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:28:32 +0000

Those smiling faces are Malia Yoshioka of WhyGoHawaii and Randi Okuhara of the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani Hotel

Social media planning is like any other business practice: the questions you ask will enable the optimal strategic considerations. This is a distinctly different modus operandi than follow the herd or panic jumping. There is no “one size fits all” solution, however by examining the possibilities, combined with your own market knowledge and company culture, you can put things into focus. Below are the results of our inquiry into the topic at the January meeting of Social Media Club Hawaii. Be sure to check out the #SMCHI tweet stream, nicely fed by Tara Coomans who posted several useful links for further exploration.

Mobile Interactivity and Smart Phone Apps
Which ones do you use and why? Start playing with apps from the viewpoint of a developer and a customer. What do you find easy or confusing? What problems are you wanting to solve? How do other apps solve problems for you? Become a systems analyst to trigger your own brain cells to think in this new direction.

Which ones do your customers use? It’s a decent question to ask, either formally via a survey or informally in conversation one at a time. This info tells you about how they use their mobile devices and the type of interactivity they have already sought out.

How are you managing mobile communication and customer support? Have you upgraded your phone recently? Does your company support smart phone usage? IMO it is really hard to think about developing apps if you and your team don’t use smart phones already and spend at least some water cooler time comparing notes and tracking customer interactions via mobile. If you are in retail or consumer products and services, how many people are checking in to your business with location-based services? Are you responding when they do?

Do you search for your competitors’ apps in the App store? It’s one more line item of market research that will inform the cost-benefit analysis of developing your own app.

How do you market your app once it is developed? Just like in the early days of building a web site and forgetting to add the address to everyone’s business cards, it’s important to use as many communication channels as possible to help people discover your app.

Here are some of the questions we posed to the developers, providing some of the technical considerations to keep in mind for your own potential app development:

How much should a company budget in terms of time and cash to get an app?
What types of functionality are easy versus hard/expensive to program?
How important is it to be in the iTunes Music Store vs offering a web app?

What stats are available on app usage?

The Intersection of IT, HR, and Marketing
Most social media begins in the Marketing Department, and more often than not without any particular mandates or blessings from the C suite. Now HR is discovering there are advantages for recruiting in addition to the policy considerations.

IT, it might be said, now has some fun stuff to support in terms of unblocking access to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and adding blogs to the company’s IT assets. They are learning how to join and support social conversations instead of repeating the mantra, “No, you can’t do that here.”

We talked about how the US Navy provides separate and unequal internet connections to segregate secure communication from social communication. They value them both though understand better than any of us perhaps the security considerations.

These are the strategic questions just about every organization should now be considering:
How is your organization cooperating among these historically divided departments? Who gets to be in charge, overall?
What policies are really needed and how do you decide?

What are your organization’s smart phone policies?

Local firm Simplicity HR prepared a free white paper on Social Media and the Workplace which references a post I wrote last year sharing one framework you can use as a basis for HR policy development.

Aloha,

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Social Media Measurement and the Stages of Change

Roxanne Darling — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:31:26 +0000

For the best science and insights in the business I frequently turn to my colleague Tom Webster, whose blog, BrandSavant, has been exploring social media metrics these days. Tom is adept at pointing out the risk in over-relying on purely transactional data and reminds us frequently (one of my favorites) that baseline data is one of your most useful metrics. Most companies tend to rush in and worry about measurement later. On the web we are lucky, as some of this can be done after the fact: certain transactions are inherently trackable and come with a date and time stamp! I think Tom and I would agree though the ex post facto method will leave out some of the more relevant data points.

New media and internet business people have touted our ability to measure “things” as far superior and accurate as compared to traditional media. Traditional media surveys a manini segment of the population once or twice a year, hope those people are telling some version of the truth, and then they extrapolate like hell to come up with numbers. “Each magazine is read by an average of 3.4 people!” Really? (Please hear that “really” in your head through the voices of Seth Myers and Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live.) New media people measure every things that shows up on a web page, then try like mad to turn it into something meaningful, aka sentiment analysis. I love that everyone is trying, yet we have by no means nailed this challenge.

Yesterday Tom was looking at some of things that are not easily measured, aka “The Unmeasured Power of Social Media” and why we should not be blinded by just sales data as in many cases it cannot tell the whole story. He was referring to a recent article from my other colleague Chris Brogan, on Social Media Metrics. Chris was sharing one of his faves, the value of conversion: How many of those warm fuzzies turn into sales? Of course that is relevant to business, and dare I say we “social media types” have gotten a little defensive at times from the onslaught of skeptics who maintain that social media is nothing more than a few warm fuzzies. Yes, conversion matters to us too.

So now that it’s on the table, of course we business people know that some things can be literally measured, some things cannot, (PR anyone?), and at the end of the day we can learn other ways to assess the value of our efforts in the marketplace.

Which takes me back to my earlier career as a health coach for Johnson & Johnson. You all know how hard it is to change health behaviors, right? Well, JNJ supported a researcher, Dr. James Prochaska, over 20 years leading to not only an understanding of behavior change but also the development of a coded system for creating behavior change. Would you believe that a 10-minute phone call between coach and client once a month for 6 months could translate into a 15-30 point drop in blood pressure or 10-20 pounds of weight loss or cholesterol down by 10-20? It did, over and over again.

The secret to our success was being able to assess the stage of “change readiness” and then collaborate with the client on a stage-appropriate behavior change that was not just palatable but welcomed by the client. While the human interaction was very important, the foundation is quite defined and could be applied in numerous ways, technologically speaking. Curiously enough, the first “stage” of change readiness is defined as “Not interested in change at all.” The brilliance of this methodology though was that there are prescribed things we can do to move a person from that stage to the next! Compare this to the traditional treatment for smokers. First, there are only two stages in most trained health professionals’ minds: smoker and non-smoker. So then if you encounter a smoker, your “only” option is to make them a non-smoker by enrolling them in a smoking cessation program – 80% of which fail. Not because the program or the patch doesn’t work – they do – but because most smokers are not at the actionable stage for quitting when others intervene upon them!

I have often wondered what would happen if we transferred this knowledge to business. We talk a lot about targeting based on evolving data of first demographics then psychographics and what I now call “friendographics.” What Tom describes in his post, is that early stage of market behavior: “thinking about buying a car” that by definition will not lead to a car sale transaction in the next 24 hours or in a single measurable transaction. I know Tom; he is far too thoughtful to act that quickly no matter how slick your sales offer or compelling your tweet. But if you have the patience to help educate Tom about the benefits of your vehicle and know how to engage with him in a “stage-appropriate” manner, you are well on your way to having not just a happy customer but one who will share his transaction with his followers. How do your strategies match up to the “stages of sale” as I will call it, and that Tom laid out so clearly below? (Emphasis mine.)

..consumers move from problem recognition, to information seeking, to evaluating options and eventually to a sale (and to post-sale behaviors, loyalty, evangelism, etc.)

Adding in “his followers” is the gorilla in the marketplace that has changed business today. This is the power that social media platforms bring to any transaction. Building the assets and the strategies to use these platforms smartly is not easy by most counts.

It’s what I’ll be addressing head-on next Tuesday in my keynote address at the Hawaii Social Media Summit (#HISMS), hosted by Technology News Bytes: Social Media – More than Tweets the Eye. The seminar series tickets are mostly sold out however you can join the Expo from 12-5 pm for only $3. We’ll have a booth there for our “coming soon” KnowHow Cafe along with the Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club. If you are an early riser, please check out my related appearance on KITV 4 Tues, Oct 5th, around 6:15 am Hawaii Standard Time. Tweet them your questions and comments: @kitv4, @mahealani, @danmeisenzahl.

Aloha,

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Social Media: Making Business Fun Again

Roxanne Darling — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:36:25 +0000

When speaking to newbies about the what, where, why, and how of social media, I often remark how social media seems to help business people actually have fun again with their business! We all go into business because we like doing something – be it fixing cars, flying planes, making muffins, or creating ad campaigns.

But then we get bogged down with hiring and firing, taxes, government regulations, market share, and all matter of other requirements that for many of us are no. fun. at. all.

Along comes social media which is so conversational, creative, interactive, mostly free and bam! Business is fun again. Here are a few examples inspiring me today:

1. Star Wars Remake – Crowd-Sourced Edition

You know your fans truly love you when they assemble themselves together out of the messy soup that is the internet to create “a shot-for-shot crowd-sourced remake of “Star Wars,” diced into 15-second segments and re-created, reenacted, reanimated and recontextualized piece by piece by fans from around the world.” Amazing! Hilarious! Genius! Power to the people! Love in action! You get my point. And for Casey Pugh, you made my day. I had heard about this way back when, and had completey forgotten. Now hop over to www.starwarsuncut.com to watch it, visit the LATimes to read the full story and watch a few clips, and if you are in Honolulu or San Francisco, please drop into Blue Hawaii Lifestyle for a snack and tell Matt Olson “thanks for sharing this story with Rox!”

2. JetBlue “All You Can Jet” Pass

I heard about this today on the radio at NPR.org. It was literally a 30-day pass, fly as much as you want wherever you want. Similar to what Cathay Pacific has been running for years over there in beautiful Southeast Asia. But now, we have the power of the internet and word-of-mouth marketing by consumers, to consumers, for consumers. Read this (with a British accent) from JetBlue Corporate Commercialization Officer Robin Hayes:

“I think it’s fair to say we were gobsmacked with the success of All You Can Jet,” says Robin Hayes, the airline’s chief commercial officer. “I would describe that as a nonstop party. We had flights with 80, 100 All You Can Jetters on them. I mean it really was 30 days of a very carnival-like atmosphere at JetBlue.” To add to the carnival-like atmosphere, JetBlue is helping its “Jetters” get organized, with a Facebook page where travelers can make plans to meet up, ask advice, post their personal dos and don’ts, or list their favorites spots.

Too bad they don’t fly to Hawaiʻi…

3. Mailing a Package Becomes a Video Tutorial

Shane and I are developing KnowHow Cafe, an online learning community. I save snippets of things all the time, for future Quick Tips and tutorials. One of them relates to how to manage file extensions – a rather boring topic but something that can stop you dead in your tracks if you don’t KnowHow to work around them. My example is the USPS.com website, on a Mac. But then this morning, in real life, Shane comes to me and asks for a mailing label for a package he is sending to his sister in a USPS Priority Mail box. (I love how they give those boxes away!) So we shot a little video, involving him with the box, me with the bathroom scale, and a few screenshots from the usps.com website. The tutorial is coming soon! (Be sure to join our free email list at www.knowhowcafe.com) It was a lot more fun than just typing up another boring list of how to manage messy file extensions – though we will offer both. David Pogue, at the NYTimes, does a great job on these. He writes a column and he produces a video of same; we subscribe via Tivo and watch it in the living room for entertainment and education!

4. WOMMA Awards Are Looking for Your Story!

As head of the local chapter of Social Media Club, I was contacted by Steve Ziemba at WOMMA – the “official” organization promoting best practices in word-of-marketing marketing, to help spread the word about their current award campaign, the WOMMY Awards. Visit them to learn more here about submitting your example of using word-of-mouth to build your brand – oops! – I mean have fun using social media in your business!

Aloha,

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Why I Did Not Freak Out Over My Stolen iPhone

Roxanne Darling — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:23:16 +0000

Last Friday night we were heading home from visiting some friends in Lanikai. We decided to pull over and walk down to the beach to look for Mars, which is very “close” to earth this month and shining bright in the sky. We were gone no more than 20 minutes, yet in that time the front window of my car was smashed and my purse was stolen. With my iPhone 3GS inside, wallet and credit cards, and a few coupons and lip balm.

Luckily, Shane had his phone on him, so we could call the police and report the incident. I was not freaking out. To many people, the loss of phone and wallet is truly like losing major parts of oneself! To me, it was an opportunity to let technology work for me, and of course, get a new iPhone 4! I could barely wait to get home and start tracking where my phone was IRL (in real life.)

My Tech and Internet Guardian Angels

Mobile Me Account
I always purchase Mobile Me alongside my iPhone service. It is only $99 a year and it saved me and my privacy.

I had enabled the “Find My Phone” feature that interacts with the GPS on the device. As soon as I got to a computer, (any computer with a web browser would do), I logged in and could see right where my phone was: Kalanianaole Highway near the Circle K/76 Gas Station in Waimanalo. I could then follow it to the back yard of a specific residence. With a Kailua policeman standing over my shoulder, he was calling his counterpart who was knocking on the door of the residence.

At that moment I sent a loud, shrill sound for 2 minutes to my iphone, hoping the officer could hear it, though the phone, as I said, was far in the back yard behind the house. Alas, he could not hear anything, and the person at the door declined any further investigation. So I sent the signal again, only this time it did not go through. So I then issued the command, literally!, to my phone, to “wipe” the entire contents of the phone.

This would preserve all of my personal information and prevent the thief from accessing me. Think for a moment – this is the future we imagined in science fiction, only I am living it now.

My Mobile Me account also lets me sync all of my contacts, calendars, and email via the web, so I could access them from anywhere. This is great if someone steals your computer and your phone! It also restores all of my information to my new phone/computer the instant I plug it in and add my Mobile Me credentials.

American Express Credit Card Registry
I pay $39 a year for this service. In the case of my stolen wallet, all I had to do was call one number at AMEX, and they would cancel all credit cards associated with my social security number (or only a subset if so requested on the phone) “immediately.” The cacth here is that I did have a Visa/debit card from my business checking account in my wallet. They did not find that one, (it “belongs to the business tax id not my personal SSN) and my intuition kicked in after playing on the computer watching my phone roam around Waimanalo. So I called the bank, and sure enough two transactions had just been made at the Circle K/76 Station, one at 11:11 pm and one at 11:16 pm. So now we can connect the “fraudulent use of a credit card” with the time stamp of the phone at the gas station. I am kinda glad now that the card had slipped through the cracks, as it will help the police crack this case more easily! I just know the Kailua cops are going to catch these folks one day soon. No doubt they were frustrated as the other 4 cards they tried to use, failed on them.

My Amex card was delivered by Express Mail and arrived Monday morning (the theft was reported around 10 pm on Friday night.)

iPhone and iTunes: The Secret Sauce
What can I say? These two things are the core of my life, and it is because they work so well that i did not freak out even for a moment over my stolen purse. Once I was able to get a new phone (NOT easy! The island was sold out till I found one at Radio Shack in Kailua – and I did not even know they were sold there!), all I did was plug it into my computer. Instantly, all of my notes, music, text messages, apps, settings, etc. were restored!

Window Replacement
I logged into my Progresive Insurance account to report the incident on Saturday morning. I filled out a simple and smart form. An agent called about 4 hours later and gave me the location of Safelite, where I was able to make an appointment for 3 pm Monday. It took 45 minutes and only cost $168 – about half the retail price courtesy of my Progressive policy. If you read this blog, you know I love being able to do things digitally rather than on the phone.

Drivers License
Tuesday morning at 8 am I was at the WIndward Satellite Office of City Hall for the City and County of Honolulu. This is a gorgeous new-ish facility – especially compared to waiting outside the old one at the police station further down Kamehameha Hwy. Bright, colorful walls with art, and friendly staff. I had my new license in about 5 minutes (and a much better photo if I do say so myself!) Replacement cost: $5.

The bonus here is that since Shane had to drive me, he was able to get his renewed at the same time – and it was due to expire in a few months. It is one of those errands we tend to put off until the last minute, then stress over! Stress: no need.

Oh, and remember I got that new iPhone 4! Thanks to Mike and Pat at the Kailua Radio Shack. When the Apple Stores and the ATT&T stores have no phones, check your local Radio Shack! Five days later, I am back to normal, though I still am looking for a new “wallet” to keep my cards in. Your suggestions welcome!

At this point most writers would lecture you about your back up plans, your due diligence, your responsibility quotient, etc. But I’d rather just inspire you to embrace technology and let it be your slave too!

Aloha,

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Brain Crack, Innovation, Leadership

Roxanne Darling — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:38:54 +0000

Forget the 30,000’ view of the marketplace, I am going into space for some cosmic observations. I invite you to debate a few of these ideas – one person’s perspective is never enough to really get a complete sense of things!

What is Brain Crack?

As far as I know Ze Frank coined this term on one of his daily videos from 2006 when he discussed the notion that having a bunch of brilliant ideas was nothing really, if you don’t act on them. It strikes point blank to the fear some of us have about their ideas being great but “would never succeed out there” etc. He is motivating us to get off our brains and do something. Otherwise, shut up. “Brain Crack” is such an awesome, clear description of that high we get from wondering what if – often followed by the post-drug crash and depression when we see someone else executing one of our brilliant ideas. He he, been there done that.

Watch the original Brain Crack episode from Ze Frank here.

I do not intend to discourage brainstorming and imagining though – it in itself has tremendous rewards, and often, the ideas in the mind are all that was necessary to have the glorious experience of the idea – the high if you will – and there is no need to execute. Your mind can indeed get the emotions flowing and a somewhat palpable experience of the concept. Plus, execution takes time and effort and sometimes other people too. This is all my way of saying don’t let anyone make you feel pressured. Instead, use the ubiquitous information and inspiration to find your own voice, have your own daydreams, and execute when you feel the irresistible pull.

I’d rather focus on what we do with the execution, more than what we do with ideas.

Twitter is an Innovator, But Not a Leader

So back to my question at the beginning of this post. To me, there is tremendous innovation taking place online in the past decade. But very little leadership. Twitter recently announced they will be selling ads in the content stream and they will be demanding a cut in ads sold by others in the Twitter stream. I was so disappointed, but not surprised.

Three years ago, when Twitter was a tight knit community of tech and communications early adopters, we literally begged them to charge for the service. We saw the intrinsic value of this real-time, widely distributed conversation and we wanted them to grow into a stable, successful business. As late as November, 2008, Guy Kawasaki ran a poll and over half still said they would be willing to pay – despite the usual snark attack common by internet communities.

Instead, they kept it free, getting more and more investment to cover server and development costs. Twitter has experienced crashes and growth issues throughout its entire history (including today – hence I was inspired to write this post.)

If Twitter were truly a leader and not just an innovator, it would have seen that “free plus ads” is a very old and not too successful business model.
If Twitter were truly a leader and not just an innovator, it would have seen that even a nominal fee would all but eliminate the huge waves of spam and bot attacks that cost it money to constantly track, clear out, manage and that irritate its users so much.
If Twitter were truly a leader and not just an innovator, it would have realized that big numbers hold less and less true value and that the quality of the members, the quality of the conversations, and the quality of innovations being developed by the user community are far more valuable than a whole lot of bots.
If Twitter investors were leaders, they too would have realized the unique opportunity that Twitter offered in the marketplace. It was truly a game changer – there was nothing like it even remotely. The impact it has had on the world is awe-inspiring to me. But it seems all they can think these days is “build your user base, sell ads around the content, hope Google buys you for an insane amount.”

Leadership is More Risky than Innovation

But it really is the secret sauce if you are looking for lasting change. Tom Friedman addressed this in his NYTimes editorial today:

Although there are many “innovation” initiatives ongoing in this administration, they are not well coordinated or a top priority or championed by knowledgeable leadership. This administration is heavily staffed by academics, lawyers and political types. There is no senior person who has run a large company or built and sold globally a new innovative product. And that partly explains why this administration has been mostly interested in pushing taxes, social spending and regulation — not pushing trade expansion, competitiveness and new company formation.

You see, leadership is the truly hard part in today’s marketplace. Ideas are coming at us a mile a minute, yet finding the time and the courage to actually go out and do things differently is a rare find. 37 Signals has been a leader in this regard, both innovating and leading by being willing to charge for their web apps from inception. We’ve used (and paid for) their web apps like Basecamp from the the beginning and love them far more and more. Meanwhile Twitter has become something of a cesspool – relevant mostly because of the third-party apps that make swimming in that muck a more productive experience. Many new Twitter users do not realize this but most of the innovation on the Twitter platform has come from the user community and third party application developers.

I can only imagine what a rich and fertile and innovative community Twitter could be if they had listened to their core users and started charging two years ago. Meanwhile, Twitter just buys more servers, gets more investment, and encourages robots. Now it is going down the tired, worn road of embedding ads and extorting others to pay them for ads on the re-purposed user-generated content stream. That is not innovation nor is it leadership IMO. And certainly not as much fun as brain crack.

What’s your opinion? I will talk in a future post about practical ways to find leadership within. It’s an ongoing task I assign to myself.

Photo Credit: “Desert Leader” by Hamed Saber on Flickr.

Aloha,

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