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Pete SchiebelJanuary 9th, 2012

Custom WordPress Login – Part 2

In case you missed the first part of this unexpected series, check out Customize your WordPress Login page from a few months ago. Those instructions are still valid, the only thing we are doing different is adjusting the stylesheet.

The release of WordPress 3.3, like all WordPress updates, brought a lot of good new features. One unexpected product of the upgrade was a bunch of customized WP login screens I had developed looked broken. So what gives? We need to be more specific. Overall I try to be as generic with my style classes as I can, so I can more easily reuse code and also to keep the stylesheet as small as possible by not being overrun by selector overkill. It usually works out pretty well when you’re styling your own stuff but not as well on elements already being styled by another source like a plugin. Or in this case core styles.

When you need to tweak the styles of elements like these you want to leave the original styling alone. What’s the first rule of WordPress? Don’t hack core files. What’s the second rule of WordPress? Don’t hack core files. Plugins and themes you download should get the same treatment so when you upgrade any of them your files don’t get overwritten. What I like to do is append any of my styles to my main stylesheet. Usually I’m not doing big additions to the stylesheet so a separate stylesheet doesn’t seem worth an extra HTTP request. For this specific example a separate stylesheet does make sense because you don’t need to load your main stylesheet in the admin area. So what do we do when the element is getting styled after our main stylesheet loads? We get more specific. Using Chrome Inspector or FireBug we can find out the structure being used to style an element.

So let’s look at the old login styles I had in there and then the new styles that fixed the issue after upgrading.

.login {background: url(../images/bg-body.gif) repeat-x top center;}
form {border: 1px solid #ededed; background: #e60035 url(bg-form.jpg) no-repeat; width: 275px;}
#nav {padding-top: 8px;}
.login #nav a {font: bold 12px Adobe Garamond, Georgia, serif; text-decoration: none}
h1 a {width: 266px; height: 84px; background: url(../images/logo.gif); padding: 0; margin: 0 0 15px 27px}
label {color: #ededed;}
input {background: #fff;}

body.login {background: url(../images/bg-body.gif) repeat-x top center;}
.login form {border: 1px solid #ededed; background: #e60035 url(bg-form.jpg) no-repeat; width: 275px;}
.login #nav {padding-top: 8px;}
.login #nav a {font: bold 12px Adobe Garamond, Georgia, serif; text-decoration: none;}
.login h1 a {width: 266px; height: 84px; background: url(../images/logo.gif); padding: 0; margin: 0 0 15px 27px}
.login label {color: #ededed;}
.login input[type=text] {background: #fff;}

The styles I had in there before just weren’t specific enough. By adding the .login class before almost everything made them more specific than the core styles and restored my styles.

About the Author
Pete Schiebel is the lead front-end developer for the Platforms team, described by some here as the "front end MacGyver" for how he works to make sure client projects look and function as advertised. Follow him on Twitter @sneakepete.

Tweet Filed in CSS, Development, WordPress

Chris ThilkJanuary 6th, 2012

How Influencers Fit Into Publishing Programs

Over the course of the last week or so there was a lot of talk about Google+. Much of that revolved around a new ad campaign to promote the still young social network with TV spots starring The Muppets and more standard online placements that’s been designed to get more people on board.

(Of note is the fact that Google+ is, indeed, advertising to bring attention to the nascent platform. But if Twitter and Facebook were themselves responsible for even a fraction of the ads their logos appear in but which are run by other companies – something that’s questionable from a branding perspective, but let’s not dwell on that – Google+’s ads wouldn’t be a drop in a bucket.)

The appearance of those ads comes at an interesting time for Google+. After the initial rush to launch brand profiles immediately after they were available things seem to have slowed down a bit. Brand managers who weren’t part of that initial rush appear to be taking a breath and considering whether a profile there makes sense as part of their online publishing strategy.

Part of that, of course, entails an evaluation as to whether or not their target audience is actively participating there. Specifically, are the influencers they’re trying to reach among those whose attention can be captured by publishing there? And even if they are, is Google+ the best way to get that attention?

All that is a long way of setting up the real question that needs to be considered: What sort of material are you, as a communications professional, offering those you’ve identified as being influential either as part of your regular publishing program or as part of a specially targeted outreach program?

Going the “publishing program” route, reaching those among the audience who are more influential among others (be that with a broad audience or a more narrow, specialized one) is easier since they’re exposed to the same messages that everyone else is. But it’s still possible to gear the message in such a way that it will (hopefully) resonate a little more deeply with a select niche of the audience, though honestly that should be the goal of everything that’s published on owned platforms.

By taking a “targeted outreach” approach it’s a little easier to set aside some special material just to send to them, whether it’s an exclusive news item that they get to be the first to publish or some sort of other special access.

Theoretically Google+ allows brands to get the best of both these worlds, publishing some updates to everyone who’s following them there but then taking some material and only pushing it to select Circles. But, assuming such Circles have even been created, doing so has some notable potential downsides.

The one that sticks out most in my mind is the “why am I not in the exclusive Circle” problem. Everyone who follows you on Twitter or Facebook has the same access to what’s posted there, regardless of whether or not they actually see it. But if you’re fragmenting your Google+ publishing a class system is being created that, if found, can lead to some resentment among those who feel they’re worthy of velvet rope access but who aren’t getting it. Instead of a platform you’ve created risers, with some people told they’re sitting higher up than others with no good explanation why.

This all isn’t necessarily to denigrate Google+ as a part of the publishing mix. Client experience has shown it’s a valuable way to reach some members of the audience in a way that best suits them, which is exactly what corporate publishing programs should do.

Instead it’s meant to be an illustration of how reaching influencers isn’t something that happens in a bubble. It’s not, even when it’s part of a targeted outreach effort, completely separated from the rest of the communications program that’s in place. Far from it. Influencers communication is something that needs to be accounted for in all levels of a program and folded into the overall effort so it fits seamlessly, achieving goals in the same way, if not the same manner, as any other tactic that’s being executed.

About the Author
Chris Thilk works on the Client Services team, part of Voce Connect, developing and executing social media strategy. You can follow him at @christhilk on Twitter.

Tweet Filed in Publishing Programs

Josh HallettJanuary 5th, 2012

Curation, The Next Big Thing Since 1995

Reading over various prediction posts about what will be ‘big’ in social media in 2012 I can’t help but chuckle a bit when people talk about curation being the next ‘thing’. Curation on the web is not new, it’s just now more accessible and packaged much better.

Curation has been around since the start of the web. Before fancy browsers like Mosaic if you visited a little site called Yahoo on your Lynx browser this is what you saw.

Reading over the initial focus of Yahoo it was curating the web. Trying to find things of interest and grouping/classifying them together in a common thread.

In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University when they created a website named “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”.[9] David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages

Fast forward a number of years and the self-publishing revolution of blogs comes into play. Now anybody could curate (I mean publish) content. By anybody I mean the early adopters who harnessed the power of the blog. Sure they published opinions, rants and daily journals, but they also began to meta-edit and curate.

The next steps were sites like Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia.com (remember that one?). Bookmarking, clipping, curating, whatever you wanted to call it became even easier. Tagging provided another layer of meta-data. An initial list could now be segmented and sorted in different ways. People began to pay attention to not only what people wrote, but what they bookmarked. However, there was always an extra step involved. Bookmarking services didn’t pull in content, you had to visit each site. The list of sites was in a single place, but the content was disjointed.

Blogging and other self-publishing platforms continued to evolve. They became easier to use and more casual users began to embrace them. One of Tumblr’s core elements if the re-blog, not just linking to another page but the ability to re-use content from another user. Now curated content could be viewed in a single thread.

The evolution continued with dedicated services like Storify and Paper.li. Brand’s ears perked up when institutions like the Washington Post began to use Storify to evolve their content models and engage with users.

Of course the ‘hot’ new service today is Pinterest. Users such as my nieces love the ability to create an on-going custom view of their interests and share with their friends. In some ways I reflect back on the explosion of MySpace and the ability for basic users to customize their profile as an extension of their personalities. As much of as web design nightmare as that was it drew in users.

With Pinterest and other services the ability to curate and view content is a smooth and somewhat elegant experience. Add in the social layer and the ability to Tweet, share on Facebook, etc and you have a potent mix. That all fuels tremendous growth and interest.

However the notion that this is something new is a fallacy.

Maybe we’re reaching a tipping point for mass-adoption or curation with Pinterest, but for those of us using Twitter back in 2006, we thought the next year, or the next year would be when it really took off.

Cross posted from Hyku

About the Author
Josh Hallett leads up the Voce Connect Client Services team, managing the care and feeding of clients and developing social media strategies with the rest of the team. You can also read his personal Hyku blog and follow him on Twitter @hyku.

Tweet Filed in Marketing

Doug HaslamJanuary 3rd, 2012

Finding Influencers and Collecting Data? Tools Help, But It’s Nothing Without Hard Work

Recently, I had a discussion with a local (Boston) technology professional about finding influencers via social media. Additionally, I constantly have discussions with clients, colleagues and peers about measurement. Why mention these two facts together? These two topics have a lot more in common than they might seem to on the surface, at least when it comes to the practical applications in social media programs.

Photo by Martijn vdS on Flickr

First, both “influence” and measurement come with a variety of tools designed to help us find and analyze. These tools, whether they be Klout, PeerIndex or Traackr on the influence side, or Radian6, Sysomos, Spredfast and any number of tools on the monitoring/metrics/analytics side, all have their plusses. They all have their minuses too. Are they too unsophisticated or broad, too complicated to use, missing pieces, too expensive, lacking tech support? There’s always something.

Which tool a given program uses isn’t all that important, it turns out. However, let’s assume that having some tools to help you harvest information is necessary. The reality is that most social media professionals have to have at least some familiarity with a variety of the tools, as different clients, or even departments within a company (probably a separate discussion there), use different tools.

OK- we have established that we need tools, but we are limited. That sounds like a nightmare, no?

Well, yes and no. I believe it’s healthy to believe that the “magic bullet” tool that finds the best influencers for any specific program, or covers all your metrics needs, will never exist. It’s also healthy to believe that just about any tool, despite any public criticism, will help you in some way.

Great; so what?

Even as these tools become simultaneously more sophisticated and easier to use (good luck with that) the need for what I like to call spade work does not go away. The spade work is divided into two categories:

Figuring out what to ignore: Good tools mine everything. That’s almost as bad as having nothing, as a large chunk of the work in analyzing info is figuring out what not to include. How do you sort for the things that only affect your goals? How do you find people who are not merely “influential,” but are specifically relevant to your program? How do you filter monitoring data only for the things you need to see- and how do you determine which metrics are the one you need to see? Great tools filter further. Klout does offer some categories of influence, for example, and most monitoring tools allow you to tweak and adjust search terms. However no matter how good or great the tool manual sorting is necessary; not just due to a lack of complete trust in tools (Klout categories, to keep using that example, can yield some head-scratching results, such as the marketing expert who was, hilariously, deemed to be influential about “sheep”), but because every program, every campaign- and every data source- is unique
Goals: Actually that should be first, but I’m being counter-intuitive. I was also tempted to write “Program goals” to distinguish from campaign oriented goals, but it is important to find influencers for and measure campaigns as well as the ongoing program. As hinted at in the previous paragraph, your goals determine which of the endless metrics and influencer types you need to focus on, to the exclusion of all else that lacks relevance, beyond the limited extent of any tools.
Analysis: The value any social media professional brings to a program is in the analysis- I don’t mean sifting and sorting data, as anyone can learn to do with the tools, but in figuring out what it all means. At the beginning, it’s applying thought to the types of influencers that matter and what criteria count most. In the end, it’s applying meaning to the program data. For example, what does that decline in Facebook Page comments mean? Why were there fewer clicks to the Website from Twitter vs Facebook? How did a surge in blog publishing frequency this month affect subscriber numbers- or even product sales?

Tools are necessary. But making them worthwhile is hard work. Anyone who thinks differently is not using them (or their social media team’s brainpower) to their full capabilities.

About the Author
Doug Haslam is a Supervisor on the Voce Connect Client Services team, managing client programs and developing strategy. In addition to Voce Nation, Doug writes his own personal blog and you can find him on Twitter as @dough.

Tweet Filed in Measurement

Chris ThilkDecember 7th, 2011

The First Part of Live-Publishing is the Plan

This past weekend, while attending WordCamp Orlando, I was doing there what I’ve been doing quite a bit of lately: Covering the event live, posting updates to Twitter and to the event’s blog as the day went on and sessions progressed.The specifics of how these things play out are pretty well known at this point – live-tweeting isn’t anything new – but having done this more than a few times now I started to think about the lessons that have been learned and how I’m taking those lessons and applying them to what’s coming down the road. And for the sake of brevity I’m going to avoid anything like “Make sure you have some sort of wireless signal” since that’s both a no-brainer and likely an impossibility.

An editorial calendar is essential: While spontaneity is a great thing when it comes to bringing the happenings on the show floor to remote audiences, it can’t be overstated how important a planned editorial calendar is. As much as possible it helps to know when certain announcements are being made, when panels or speakers are taking the stage and more. Things can always be removed from that calendar but this helps whoever is covering the event know where they should be, what needs maximum distribution and more.
Be prepared for video: Even if it’s not planned for ahead of time have some means to shoot a quick video. At the last two events I’ve been to there’s been an opportunity to steal a minute of someone’s time to do a one-minute video interview. At WCO someone asked a question on Twitter about the font on the t-shirt so I went out, found Jeremy Harrington who designed the shirts and got the full background on the fonts and more. Yeah, it’s a little shaky but that can be adjusted for in the future.
Know who’s going to be there: As much as is possible find out what press will be in attendance so you can specifically track what they’re saying and engage with them on Twitter or other social platforms. Same goes for staff, talent or other folks who will be on panels or speaking. Mentioning not just their name but their Twitter handles increases the likelihood that they themselves will respond or amplify the core program messaging.
Monitor the conversation: This shouldn’t really need to be said but I’m going to go ahead and do so because it’s just that important. There are all sorts of tools that will allow you to not only publish but to see what’s being said. Not only that but then make the response to or amplification of what other people are saying an integral part of that publishing. Choose moments where, instead of tooting your own horn you amplify someone else’s excitement about an announcement.
Plan for the before and plan for the after: What’s being published before and after the event? How are you setting the audience up for what’s to come and how are you putting a ribbon on what’s been published? It’s not enough to plan for the day itself but also for what happens around that event and how you’re providing for regular, more substantive touchpoints inbetween the regular stream of activity updates.

These are just some of the things that allow for a fully-fleshed out publishing plan to be developed. And the better that plan is the more likelihood that not only will be plan be approved but that it will lead to a successful execution.

About the Author
Chris Thilk works on the Client Services team, part of Voce Connect, developing and executing social media strategy. You can follow him at @christhilk on Twitter.

Tweet Filed in Publishing Programs

Chris ThilkNovember 11th, 2011

Three Things to Consider With Google+ Publishing

As you’ve read about on roughly every website, blog, Twitter feed and other web-based communications platform, Google opened up Google+, their nascent social network, for use by brands, businesses and companies this past Monday. Instead of rehashing the “how to set up an account” tutorials or other common themes that have been done to death in the rest of that coverage I instead wanted to walk through some of the points that need to be considered when working a Google+ Page into a corporate publishing program.

1) What are you publishing there: I’ve seen Pages that have solely unique content and Pages that are more or less straight cross-posts from what’s being published to Facebook. But if you’re not providing a unique experience and signaling that Google+ is basically the same thing as Facebook then you’re not giving people any reason to choose one over the other. Which then means that people will choose one over the other and you’ll see either your Google+ reach slowed because there’s not anything they’re not already getting by following you on Facebook or your Facebook network growth slow as people opt for Google+.

2) Will you target content at specific audiences: Just like you can put the people who follow your personal profile into Circles and then decide which one of those Circles to share a particular update with, brand Pages let you do the same thing. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Creating Circles of your fans and then only sharing certain updates with certain Circles can create some tricky situations and there is, of course, the risk that some folks will be alienated because they weren’t in a group that’s getting certain updates.

3) How will your metrics and goal change: As I said above how you decide to approach the publishing question will impact what you’re counting. If you’re deciding to cross-post everything to Facebook as well as Google+ or if you’re throwing exclusive content there when it normally would have gone to Facebook then the goals that you set out months ago for where Facebook network reach would be at the end of 2011 may need to be revisited and revised down. That goes for comments, new fan affiliations and more.

Google+ is new, obviously, especially from a brand point of view and it remains to be seen what else needs to be taken into consideration when incorporating it into a corporate social publishing program or if some of the concerns I mention here are overblown or not. But whenever there’s a new channel being considered for such a publishing program it needs to be viewed not just as a shiny new thing to latch on to immediately. Experiment, yeah, and if you find a great “third way” to approach things that doesn’t impact the audience on your other established channels that’s great. In the meantime consider these and other points that are specific to the program you’re running before jumping in too fully.

About the Author
Chris Thilk works on the Client Services team, part of Voce Connect, developing and executing social media strategy. You can follow him at @christhilk on Twitter.

Tweet Filed in Publishing Programs

Doug HaslamNovember 10th, 2011

The SNCR Symposium: Whither Measurement?

Jen McClure, SNCR Founder & President

Voce Communications is proud to have been a supporter of the Society for New Communications Research since its inception, and I personally have been attending events since 2006, the latest being the 6th annual SNCR Research Symposium, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts this past week.

There was much substantive research presented over the two days, but the one recurring topic that grabbed my attention continually was measurement.

Aside from the anecdotal “When Justin Bieber retweets your cause, Tweetdeck rolls like a slot machine” (from Paull Young at charity:water), there were more practical applications of measurement.

First, in the annual UMass study on social media adoption presented by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes (referenced in a previous post by Chris Thilk), the research showed that, while there were varying adoption metrics among the categories of Fortune 500, Inc 500, major non-profits and educational institutions, a connecting thread was a lack of measurment for the programs.

Why is this?

I suspect there is a combination of reasons at work here. One, the biggest problem of any measurement, is that the ultimate goals of the program are not defined in terms of social media– are they trying to increase awareness (perhaps number of mentions or share of voice vs competitors?) Are they selling products, services or memberships through social media? We may be in a stage where many organizations know that they need to do social media, and just do it without thinking about the accountability- which may explain why metrics proving value may not be in demand as much as one would think.

In any case, this presents an opportunity to anyone– in-house or agency- who owns social programs to take the lead in measurement. There is still a lot of land to grab here.

Katie Paine presented the other big measurement topic when she reported on a recent measurement conclave attended by WOMMA, PRSA, IABC, Cision, Thomson Reuters and several other organizations and companies. First I will note that the group has not finalized any standards, but rest assured that it will not rely on over-simplified single metrics of influence, ad-value equivalencies or simple follower counts, but will rest on something more complex.

The problem? We find that every program is different- while we start from the same place, what metrics we emphasize or ignore is largely driven by individual program needs. This was underlined by an exchange I had with the Boston Celtics’ Peter Stringer over an article he wrote for the Social Media Club Boston blog pooh-pooh-ing the practice of trying to assign dollar values to Facebook fans. My main argument? While I haven’t necessarily seen the need in my travels either, it is certainly a valuable metric to the right organization (let’s leave out for the moment that NBA teams, should the labor standoff continue, may fid themselves in the process of looking very hard at programs that are not creating measurable revenue).

Standards? I welcome them. But more fun will be figuring out what rules our peers will establish, and then breaking them.

Tweet Filed in Events, Measurement, Social Networks

Chris ThilkNovember 2nd, 2011

Have We Hit the Corporate Social Publishing Ceiling?

There are all sorts of great statistics in this study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth about the usage of social publishing (I’m steadfastly avoiding using the term “social media”) platforms by Fortune 500 companies. Among those statistics:

Only 23 percent of those companies – that translates to 114 – have public facing blogs that have been updated in the last 12 months. But that last qualifier doesn’t discount very many, though, since it’s noted that just about everyone is regular in their writing, showing that once they’ve made the decision to publish a blog they stick with it.
91 percent of those blogs accept comments or have RSS or email subscription options. All that is generally lumped under the heading of “Interactivity” though on-domain comments are significantly different than just allowing options for people to receive the latest published material.
308 companies – 62 percent – have corporate Twitter accounts and 289 – 58 percent – have an official Facebook presence, both shockingly low numbers. It’s not broken down, though, whether those companies interact on those status networks in lieu of allowing on-domain comments.

The study finishes up by reiterating that the 23 percent of companies with public blogs is not a significant change from 2010 and even the rise in Twitter and Facebook adoption is relatively small.

But wait – Wasn’t social publishing supposed to be engrained in the DNA of every company by now? That’s what we heard back in 2005 (and continue to hear the echoes of today), that if a company wasn’t fully committed to being social then it would surely whither and die.

The reality has always been less rose-colored than those sort of statements have ever let on. While yes, there’s a lot to be said for being as social possible it only makes sense if doing so aligns with the goals of each individual business. That’s why, as the study points out, the percentage of companies with blogs and other outlets differs when broken down by industry. Those sectors that are more “fun” when looked at from a consumer perspective have more blogs than those that are less sexy. That only makes sense. And even more than that there may be no good reason for a company to launch a blog or have another public-facing social publishing presence.

While it might be tempting for some people to wag their fingers at the fact that 77 percent of companies in the Fortune 500 have not embraced social publishing i choose to focus on something more positive: That the 23 percent that are doing so have been consistent in their publishing. That shows that (like many of the clients we work with here) they’ve seen positive results from those efforts and have built sustainable programs to support them. And that’s far better to see than a collection of dead or dying sites that lacked such solid programs but were started because it was trendy to do so.

About the Author
Chris Thilk works on the Client Services team, part of Voce Connect, developing and executing social media strategy. You can follow him at @christhilk on Twitter.

Tweet Filed in Blogging, Social Networks

Chris ThilkOctober 20th, 2011

Sharing is About Affiliation

There’s always (and by always I mean consistently for the last five or six years) a lot of talk about making content engaging and easy for people to share online. That’s the way people spread word of mouth recommendations on status networks and elsewhere so the race is always on to encourage readers of corporate blogs, Tumblrs, Facebook pages and other outlets to share what they’re reading, looking at or watching with their own networks, thereby increasing the reach of that message.

Often this race includes making sure the blog (or whatever) as a whole as well as each individual post or update has ample prompts for someone to easily share it with their friends and connections. There are also strategies that impact the content itself such as asking open ended questions, calling for people to weigh in with their opinions and so on, which are all good. Taken together this ideas go a long way to getting people to engage with a post that’s been written, a video that’s been produced or whatever else it is we might be talking about when we use the word “content.”

But the real key to someone not only providing feedback on that material but then taking the next step and actively sharing it with their networks is that they want to use that action to bolster their own reputation and persona.

There’s a lot of talk – particularly around major Facebook announcements and similar moments – about how sharing material and actions online is the equivalent of creating a scrapbook of what clubs we enjoyed, what music we were listening to and what activities we were engaging in at a particular time in our lives. But we’re unlikely to check in to the fast food chain we’re driving through because if not then the passing out is going to start. We’re unlikely to share the fact that we’re unironically cranking up a 90′s boy band’s entire (read: three records before they broke up) catalog. And we’re unlikely to share that we’re hitting a particular store at the mall for the third time in as many months because they have another new t-shirt design celebrating our (secretly) favorite movie about vampires and the Pacific Northwest girls who love them.

At least we’re unlikely to do all that if it doesn’t fit with the reputation we’re trying to curate online.

The same goes for online content. While someone may love that announcement that was just published about X new service or product that excitement does not automatically mean that person will share that news with their online networks. It has to not only be interesting and engaging but also hit the bullseye – which is different for everyone – of being something that they want to become part of their online reputation.

What that means in practical terms is this:

Allow people to share anywhere. Throw as many sharing buttons out there as are feasible within the boundaries of technical feasibility and aesthetic common sense. Sharing buttons shouldn’t make a site more ugly design-wise but they should also be plentiful enough so that someone can choose which network of theirs to use. Many people have clear and definite lines on what they do on Facebook, what they do on Tumblr and so on so cater to the fact that usage differs.
Because usage differs so does measurement. Success cannot be judged on Facebook alone. So if you find that certain material is finding more success on another network be sure you’re accurately measuring *that* and not holding everything up to a universal standard that can’t be met. Doing so means you could make a decision that seems right from a limited point of view but which cuts off what resonated with a sizable chunk of the audience.
Plan accordingly. Work to produce content that is going to be not only engaging but is going to rise to the level of something that people want to associate themselves with, something that they wish they had written or otherwise produced themselves and so are eager to share under their own name. This though is dependent on the first two already being done.

People want to associate themselves with the brands they love. The entire souvenir magnet industry is based on that precept. But just like with those magnets they’re only going to do so if they had a good time and want those who see that affiliation to think more of them because of it. That’s a tricky and moving target but the reward is that more people become distribution networks that are worth quite a bit for a company’s own reputation.

About the Author
Chris Thilk works on the Client Services team, part of Voce Connect, developing and executing social media strategy. You can follow him at @christhilk on Twitter.

Tweet Filed in Uncategorized

Doug HaslamOctober 19th, 2011

Exploring Social Media in (near) Boston

Awareness' Mike Lewis and the Case Study Panel

This week I attended Exploring Social Media Boston (well, Burlington, but don’t get me started about the commute. Burlington is the proud home of the Burlington Mall, shooting location for Paul Blart: Mall Cop), a day-long social media conference hosted by Jason Falls and sponsored by Awareness Inc. Aside from being a time for social media professionals to catch up with each other and whatnot, the event presented a program that went above the introductory material we see in many of the larger “social media” conferences out there, and assumed the audience had experience, responsibility or some combination of the two.

Some takeaways:

Sessions that offered practical, actionable takeaways were welcome and really filled a gap. Whether it be simple advice from Jason Keath of SocialFresh on constructing blog posts to be more readable and effective to Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang’s overview of organizational approaches to social media programs, there was something to take away from most of the sessions.
One observation I made during the day was that many of the sessions provided part of the thinking a company or agency could use in planning social media. I found that useful in that companies need to design their own programs to fit their own needs. Even Owyang’s more broad organizational look does not have to be taken verbatim, but does get us thinking about how companies’ structures might help or hinder efforts to organize around social media; for example, most people probably came away with the impression the “holistic” (think social media in the DNA) model of corporate social media to be the ideal, but I’m not convinced it’s an attainable goal, or even a desirable one in all circumstances. A more regimented company in a more highly-regulated industry might benefit from more centralized approaches, if only to take advantage of existing corporate culture that works.
It was also refreshing to see several of the speakers talk about measurement; Awareness’ Mike Lewis among them, not surprisingly since measurements is part of their core offering. Again, the several takes on measurement varied slightly, and we at Voce have our own thinking, which allows for flexibility to accommodate client goals, but it is more important that the presenters stimulated thinking than dictating methodology.
Also interesting was a sense of perspective. Mike Schneider, co-author of Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, knew LBS’ limited place in the marketing world (wouldn’t you expect unabashed cheerleading instead?), compared FourSquare’s “winning the LBS war” to an invasion of Delaware. True- placing too much importance on tools or types of tools is foolish, though making sure we are aware of their advantages is still important.
On that note, the first mention of Google Plus did not come until 3:30 pm, an hour before the end of the day. Perhaps this was because there was little focus on the tools themselves (a friend suggested that though I only partially agree), but more likely it is that marketers do not fully have this in their (pardon the use of the word) awareness- as yet.

What did Exploring Social Media leave me wanting? I was hungry for more of the actionable, practical sessions, case studies (They had one panel. but aren’t we always starving for those?) and even some workshops (perhaps to give rise to the methodologies I refuse to take verbatim from the presenters) to give this experienced audience a hands-on role in the event.

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