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I need a job, so chat me up!

by Janine Swenson

I had to chuckle to myself when a young man visiting in my home noticed on the wall a photograph of my college-aged daughter and absent-mindedly said to no one in particular, "Chat me up!" That young man understood the importance of one of the foundations of social media marketing, which is to get others on your behalf to speak of and promote your positive traits. However, he had not convinced me to be his evangelist because I had no history or experience with him, no knowledge of his character. Whether or not I chatted him up depended entirely upon what I knew of him, whether he might be the type of beau my daughter would like, and if her father and I viewed said prospective suitor as, well, suitable. This is not different from a company seeking a prospective employee having a chance meeting between a job seeker and an employee of the organization.

The fact remains, if you need a job, you need someone who is willing to "Chat you up!" The job seeker does not just walk into a room and immediately say to their friends and contacts, "Chat me up!" I suppose that someone could do such a thing, but rarely would such an encounter result in employment, any more than my daughter's admirer's request of a reference would land him a date. Getting others to "chat you up," is in essence a social skill.

People can acquire social skills. Like the taste of Oma's Strawberry Rhubarb pie, soc/> [...]

Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:55 am

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Our Many New Phones

We have really messed ourselves up, haven’t we? It used to be that we could expect correspondence from two (at most three) ways: phone, mail, face to face. Look at us now. Have we really improved the world?

I woke up this morning and realized that I now check the following:

• Email (3 accounts)
• Facebook
• SMS/text
• Twitter
• Voicemail (woe to you who leave me voicemail)
• Third Tribe Marketing
• LinkedIn
• Google Wave
• Comments back to people who’ve commented on my blog or others (not always, but I try)
• Contact form (thank you, Steve Brogan, for blocking and tackling most of this)
• Face to face

I’m not alone. This isn’t just me doing this. Companies are faced with this.

Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6, has been talking about the “social phone” for a long time. “The social phone is ringing. Is your company answering?” That’s his line. I share it with as many companies as possible.

When we say it, what we’re saying is this: people have multiplied the methods by which they’re communicating. Whether or not you want to receive on all this various channels, people are speaking on them. It requires a lot of listening, a lot of processing, a lot more frenzy.

Why did we do it? Why do we set up all these channels to monitor? Because they all seem more useful when we start them. They all are more useful in one format or another. But they get quite burdensome taken en mass. We’ve taken on several methods /> [...]

Wed Jul 14, 2010 03:31 am

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Google's Plan for Mobile Domination

Many businesses delude themselves with plans to be the next big thing in their industry, but when Google is the one with the plan, it's time to sit up and take notice. Now, no one at Google will admit to wanting to dominate any business (being investigated for antitrust violations puts a damper on such talk), but when you add up all the collective moves that Google has made recently, it's hard to deny that their big push centers around mobile phones and the mobile Web. If you haven't been piecing together Google's moves, check out my latest post on Internet Evolution, "Google's Plan for Mobile Domination."

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Wed Dec 02, 2009 05:20 am

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Challenges in Everyone in Your Company being Social
In the last post called Just 4 People doing Social Media? we discussed how social media like email will eventually be in the hands of everyone in your organization. I even put a date on it Jan 1 2012.

But there are challenges to this happening that were not apparent when email rolled out across the enterprise.

The issue is Brand “voice”.

Sure some people are funnier than other people when it comes to witty emails. Some people like to write tombs and some are masters of the one-liners (like myself).

But in Social Media that approach wont work. You cant have some people being long Tweeters – it just wont work – and you cant have some people being fast and pithy. I think it presents a real challenge for a brand. And you run the risk of dilution of the brand.

Now factor in your Contact Center …

They can’t go from super nice phone personas, then whitty Twitter/Facebook personas and then over to long detailed email personas. That would be a very hard thing to do and few people are qualified to do that. And most likely those few would be reserved for high profile escalations of customer service.

I think organizations are going to need a lot of training on successful Social Media situations that resulted in a very positive experience for the brand. Some of this training will be generic to all companies and some will have to be very specific to each com/> [...]

Tue Dec 29, 2009 05:15 am

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