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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
Social networks can be organic, they can form based on the desire of two people and grow from there. It’s up to the desires of the group. The key that turns a group that grows organically to a dynamic organization is leadership. When there is leadership, meetings become events, individuals know who to turn for action, and success begets success.
The Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul is a grassroots local group for the most part, although there are many folks not from the Minneapolis area participating as online members and tune into the monthly programs being streamed online. Rick Mahn is an IT consultant by training and practice, helping large organizations address technology issues. Over his career however, he noticed that technology is an enabler, not necessarily a solution. This brought him to social media as the bridge between enablement and action. He started the Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul chapter and triggered a human chain reaction in Minneapolis that has made the Social Media Breakfast monthly meeting a sought after ticket and a regular staple for hundreds in this community.
To be sure, there are many who contribute their time and talent to the community. Mykl Roventine is a go to person who has developed the web presence for SMBMSP and Brad Bellaver and Phil Wilson are regular contributors to the community with podcasts and just helping when and where it’s needed. Mahn also gives a tip of the hat to Christopher and Mary Lower for their social media innovation aligning off-line and on-line aspects of an apartment community. See that’s the leadership part. I mentioned at the Social Media Breakfast event at South by Southwest, that there are any number of people and organizations willing to pitch in with talent, time or dollars to help the organization fulfill the needs of the community. Companies see the benefits of being part of this community, Best Buy and Verizon Wireless are sponsors of some events. Verizon Wireless also supported my coverage of South by Southwest which included this series on social media innovators. That is the leadership part which is the difference between a casual group and a thriving organization. It is a recurring theme in this series on social media innovators of the Midwest.
I’ve travelled around the country meeting with plenty of people from online communities. Some are individuals I’ve met for the first time on Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed etc. etc. etc. Others I’ve met for the first time in person. As a long time marketer I know getting people out of their routine to attend some event is one of the most difficult tasks of the profession. Whether it’s a political rally, a non-profit fundraising event, or a simple Tweet-up, the commitment of time let alone the energy to engage in conversation is among the most demanding on one’s busy schedule.
So when I see a group come together just to be with each other there is usually a person or two who acts as a catalyst. Catalyst, you know from high school chemistry it’s “a substance that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected.” Or a person or thing that precipitates an event or change. How about this definition from dictionary.com a person whose talk, enthusiasm, or energy causes others to be more friendly, enthusiastic, or energetic. Yeah, that’s the one.
There is a phrase, “make time” which is usually attributed to people that can be found helping everywhere, or who are focused to the point where they can bring about change, their own or for someone else. They just make time.
Now some will say that a super organized person is able to make time because they are so efficient. I don’t buy that. Sure organization is helpful, but the people who are catalysts usually make time by getting to bed later, getting up earlier, taking the dog on shorter walks, giving the kids a Cliff Notes version of their bedtime stories and plenty of other anecdotes that involve sacrifice. The places that have energetic events usually have a catalyst or two to spread their chemical energies and watch the reaction. You just need to see the discussion at the wichita Tweet up about network marketing to see the chemistry.
In this segment of Social Media Innovators of the Midwest we feature Cindy Kelly, also know as WichitaCindy on Twitter.
There are only a few ways humans show they value something… give their time or give their money. Another, for argument’s sake, is to lend their name, but that isn’t a good example for this post so I’ll leave it as a side note.
This podcast with Bryan Person of Live World is about building communities, and the elements necessary to make them successful. It’s focused on how companies should evaluate whether they have what it takes in both culture and potential to establish a community. Live World is both a technology platform and provider of social media services.
In the last podcast with Steve Rubel, we talked about communities really being an ecosystem, not necessarily a destination. In this segment, we are focused on communities as a destination. One of my favorites is Campbell’s Kitchen – an address on the web and a place to get and give information about food.Hey, as a father of five and the maker of a few meals in my lifetime, soup is more than just opening a can, heat and eat. Enchiladas, anyone?
Community Manager Essentials
1) Write, talk, communicate and understand all formats (please don’t say duh, this may well be a new title in the profession of journalism.)
2) Personality, and the sense to understand how the individual’s personality aligns with the brand he or she is representing online (that’s not easy either!)
3) No egos allowed. This is about the community and its members, remember?(managers need to facilitate and fade into background. Here’s where I love talking about personal brands. It is an outright clash with a company’s objective of building community. Please do comment because I’d love to take this issue on. :>) )
4) Domain expertise in the area of the company or organization you are facilitating (you can’t talk the talk if you have a limp in your walk.)
Do communities sell more soup? Well, successful communities at their core get people engaged in each other and their topics. Without their interest, there is nothing. Companies that build two-way channels to listen as well as share are able to capture ideas. Acting on these ideas allows them to be more responsive, gain more credibility and the circle goes on.
Can companies with successful communities draw a straight line to sales? Probably, but more importantly they can connect the other value currency, time spent with your company. Time is a zero sum value currency, the time I’m able to capture from you is time not spent with something else. That’s the value successful companies treasure.
Bryan the Person
Bryan and I also get into his social baby, the Social Media Breakfast. Talk about community managing and stepping back… Person started the Social Media Breakfast a couple of years ago. He encouraged and gave wings to many others in cities across the country.
We recorded this conversation in late May when Bryan was in Minnesota to speak at the Social Media Breakfast of Minneapolis/St. Paul – It is regularly a very well attended monthly event sometimes dealing with advanced concepts or at other times highlighting the basics. Bryan’s vision to create the offline event for an online audience includes some of the elements of successful community building: sharing, personal connections, the dynamic created by some regular gathering that requires an investment of time and effort. Let’s face it, writing 140 characters is easy. Getting in your car, fighting traffic and meeting new people is hard.
Check the list of cities that have a Social Media Breakfast. If there isn’t one in your community, maybe you can be the spark to draw people together, and then step back and watch it grow. That’s what the organizer of the Minnesota chapter of the SMB, Rick Mahn,(pictured) did and now the online SMB Minnesota community has reached 830 members and the social media breakfast held on Friday, June 26 had more than 150 attendees, that’s a lot of bacon!
I am paraphrasing a quote attributed to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill who said “All politics is local.” Given how technology has collapsed time and space, it is accurate to say then that all politics is social, as in the social communities that have common interests shared on the web in many forms. With a couple of keystrokes these interests can be inspired, appeased, and heard. Their message can spread around the world in the format that most powerfully communicates their message. So it is with this foundation and a decade in politics and more than a decade in the private sector world of communications I’ve come to the following key elements of social media.
Social media is like grassroots organizations
Little issues can spread like wildfire if ignored
Political skills are required to understand the implications of social media on a corporation and its interested communities
Corporations should develop their own communities of interest that are active in social media beyond that of their own corporate site
Understanding social media requires openness within a corporate culture
Corporate functions such as customer relations, call centers, sales and service departments, research, and product development can potentially benefit from and contribute to social media, so coordination is critical.
These characteristics and situations are part of what goes on in political and public policy campaigns. This is why I believe experience in those areas is especially helpful to corporations seeking to understand and participate in social media.
This also gets into the issue a bit of who owns social media and a thread of that conversation is at Mitch Joel’s blog Twist Image.
Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology has a post on the political war room angle of social media.
Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst for Forrester and author of the well-read Web Strategist blog, is our guest on the Marketing Edge. You know, as of this posting, he is at the top of the Tweeterboard, a ranking of influencers using the microblogging platform Twitter.
In this podcast, we touch upon his big three trends to look for in 2008 and the following items:
-Social media is like jazz: don’t ask, just listen. He explains it better than I can write about it.
-The corporate structure needs to become more flexible if social media is to gain greater status. Owyang believes 2008 will see a rise in the job function of community manager in large companies.
With more than 3,000 followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook, do you wonder how he juggles his day? First rule: Get up early.
We also get into one of my key themes about social media: It’s making companies incorporate some of the best practices of political and grassroots organizations. Listen, be responsive, be sensitive, seek consensus, build your base — those are just a few. Platforms like Twitter help facilitate the movement of people and opinions that give life to ideas. This is the essence of the political democratic process.
As corporations seek a greater understanding of social media, the social graph will play an important role. This is another Owyang prediction for 2008.
Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to invite all your friends to join you on some other social network? Owyang predicts the expansion of widget networks and with it the expansion of the use of social media in 2008.
Lastly, I promised Jeremiah I’d post a link to one of my favorite places in San Francisco, the Buena Vista, home of the Irish Coffee.
Share your comments on this post. For each comment posted, Provident Partners gives a food item to a St. Paul food shelter.
Last call for the drawing of the book “Join the Conversation” by Joseph Jaffe. Send an e-mail to marketingedge@providentpartners.net and we will include you in the drawing. The winner gets a copy of the book with my comments in the margins; it’s our way of continuing the conversation. Get your e-mail in by midnight on Dec. 19.
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