Matt, Garreth, Trinity, & I are moving to San Francisco!

Our goal is to be there for May, though we still have a ton of details to figure out.  We’re hunting for a new place while working to purchase our house of 11 years of accumulated junk.  Our plan is to keep the house in Francestown and rent it out (if you know anyone cool & reliable looking to rent, let me know!)

As you may know, I’ve been working for salesforce.com for over a year now.  When I first joined, it was a 1-year transitional role, so it made sense for me to keep working from NH.  By the end of 2011 I had officially transitioned into a new role as the Data.com Social Media Marketing Manager.  Now it’s become more important for me to physically be working at headquarters in San Francisco (plus it will mean I get to work closely with some pretty amazing people!)  And it’s beautiful! (I took that pic above working on a 7th floor patio at one of our offices there)

I’ll admit thinking about it is overwhelming, though it’s exciting to be shaking things up like this.  I’ll keep you updated as we go through this process!

Please wish us luck as we start a new chapter of our lives with a grand adventure!

-k

Four people volunteered to talk about their goals so we could work on them together.  We had:

• Tom: Working on an independent film.  Needs to raise awareness to generate interest in his film about the NH Lakes region.
• Laurie: Experienced author and consultant.  Needs to reach more parents interested in whole health.  Also needs to promote her professional image online.
• Robert: Working as a hotel consultant.  Needs to raise awareness and drive more business.
• Sean: Works within an educational institution.  Needs to raise awareness of the expertise of his department’s work both within the institution and outside.

What I found incredibly interesting in the discussion about these challenges is that much of the advice shared was not specific to social media.  Social media gives us great new tools, but it’s important for us to see them just as tools, not as solutions in and of themselves.

Thanks!

-k

While our focus is on the active conversation, it stays out there, meaning the next person to come along can read (and even try participating) but they won’t have the same understanding of the context you and your original participants did.  It’s up to you to provide some clarity for those that will follow.

That extra step not only helps those that follow to understand, it also helps to manage perceptions. Just leaving the public portion of the conversation hanging gives a bad impression, even if you are really moving mountains in the background.

In this age of social, there’s no better way to learn than socially.  There are events all over the country (and around the world) where people are meeting, expanding their networks, and learning from each other.  Some events, like Social Media Breakfast brings people together monthly to meet and learn from speakers. Others, keeping with the heart of the social web, are “unconferences” where you have the opportunity to connect, learn, and teach without the rigid structure (or incredibly high costs) of a traditional conference.

Here in NH we have the second PodCamp NH coming up the weekend of October 23-24 in beautiful Portsmouth, NH.  Last year I met many incredible people from all over the region, some I learned from, others I helped. Most important, I had time to spend, in person, getting to know more people. I always see a shift in the quality of the online relationship when I’ve had a chance to spend quality time face to face, “in real life”.

I’ll be at PodCamp NH again this year, offering some sessions and trying to catch as many others as I can. If you have any questions about PodCamp NH or if you’re planning to go, let me know. I’m looking forward to meeting you (or seeing you again)!

Things should be back to normal soon!
-k

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You should never be a roadblock. Give customers a clear path. Just being there isn’t enough. Communication has to go both ways. You now have access to incredible feedback you used to have to pay a lot of money for. Lead customers to where they need to be, and listen to what they have to say.

(if you missed it, see Rule #2: Address The Need)

• A Following = an audience that interacts with you
• A Community = an audience that interacts with each other

I see people confuse the two often (and I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of it myself.)  Rich says “organizations that sell sociable and highly engaging products/services” are suitable for community.  There are benefits to each approach and significant pitfalls from pursuing the an approach that’s not appropriate for your audience.

Does your audience want to know about your products or about each other?

Here’s how I currently try to track everything:

Address Book (2,000+ entries)

My address book is an extension of my brian.  I’ve been using it for keeping track of people I’ve met for years now.  It’s currently a Microsoft Exchange address book that I access from Apple Address Book, BlackBerry, and sometimes Outlook.  For every person I add, I go into “digital stalker” mode and dig for information about them from their online accounts, contact info, family, pets, twitter accounts, blogs, etc.  I also add notes on where I met them — because I know I’ll ultimately forget.

Evernote (8,000+ notes)

I take notes.  Notes on meetings, phone calls, ideas, etc.  I’ve accumulated over 8,000 notes over the years that I track in Evernote.  I even email voicemails into my Evernote to archive.

It’s a great platform and I love that my notes sync to their servers — there’ve been a few times now where laptop failures have required me to rebuild my system.  Each time I’ve only had to install Evernote, log in to my account, and it automatically downloaded all my notes.  Well worth the small monthly subscription.

GMail (5+ GB work, 5+ GB personal)

I’m a bit of digital communications packrat, GMail has become a close friend over the years.  I archive all my mail there (since 2004).  I can quickly search to find emails by topic or person.  You’d be amazed how much it comes in handy.

In my ideal solution, I’d no longer have to go to multiple sources to find my data.  I can’t exactly pull out my laptop, connect to wifi, and lookup notes from all these sources when I encounter someone I know at an event.  I want to be able to do the following from my computer, and preferably my BlackBerry (sorry, no iPhone, AT&T’s network doesn’t cover where I live), in order of priority:

• Immediate and easy access to my contact information and core information about each
• Quick access to their most recent contributions online, making a distinction between things they publish and those they just shared/liked/favorited
• Quick access to my communication history with each contact, across all mediums like email, twitter, phone call notes, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc.
• The ability to quickly tag when I’ve seen people (esp. at an event) and add notes about our conversation
• Mine my data to find more connections *among* the people I know
• Distinguish between my “work”, “personal projects”, “friends/family” connections — assuming some may overlap.
• Be able to share contacts/groups of contacts with others in my account.
• Possibly share a subset of my information with a work CRM like SalesForce.

I think what I want would be the love child of something like BatchBook and Silentale.

+

=  ?

I am one person managing my connections, but some are work professional, some are personal professional, and some are just good friends.  Having to switch systems for each category kills the productivity.  At some point I may want to share some of this data with others – or maybe a CRM like SalesForce, but I’m looking for something that will help me to really manage my personal/professional connections, for me.  Isn’t the social web, in part, all about the blending of personal/professional?

Is my dream social CRM already out there just waiting to ask me to to the Sadie Hawkins dance?

-k

Everyone needs something.  We listen, we may even understand what we’re being asked — but it that what they really need?  If you’re engaging online, make sure you’re actually addressing the need.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently after a discussion with a support rep.  A customer on Twitter asked if the upload timeout could be increased.  The rep very diligently found the answer to her question — “Unfortunately, no.”  I asked the rep why the customer was asking for this.  A little investigation showed that the customer was trying to upload a file and it was failing.  Was file size the issue?  No, it wasn’t.  So she really didn’t need someone to increase the timeout, she needed someone to figure out why the upload was failing for her.  Armed with that, the rep was able to work on addressing what the customer needed, not just what she asked for.

(if you missed it, see Rule #1: Be Real)