Mizz Information

Who "Owns" Content?

2012-05-17T07:13:00.000-04:00

Seems like every other thing I've read this past week has been about curation and/or content marketing. Call me a snob, but something about the word "content" makes the writer in me cringe just a lil' bit. Is that what writing has come down to--a delivery mode for marketing messages? Granted, in the context of marketing, obviously this moniker makes sense--but in the context of associations, "content" is a murkier notion. Associations produce great publications of many types: journals, books, guidelines, industry standards, magazines...the list goes on and on. Obviously all those things count as "content"...as does the content of emails, websites, social media site status updates, blog posts, etc. Unlike for-profits for whom such content is likely just about marketing copy, in the context of associations, content has a much broader meaning. A for-profit company produces white papers as marketing collateral to generate sales leads. Associations produce papers for education, to elevate a profession, even to save lives. Ok, yes, that's sappy, but it's true. I think that it's a slippery slope to talk about association content like its marketing collateral, destined to be overseen--the lot of it--by a "Chief Content Officer." Given the complex nature of association content, who "owns" content in an association? Where would this Chief Content Author sit?

All those things I mentioned above--the journals, books, guidelines, standards, etc--does it all come from one particular department in an association? Depending on the size of the association, almost surely not. There's likely to be a web department, a publications department, marketing, research, PR....who knows what else. So now that "content" is the new black, we're starting to see concepts like "Chief Content Officer" swirling around. While clearly a marketing function (the job description mentioned, after all, is being defined by the Content Marketing Institute)--where would that sit in an association? Would it be the director of publications? Probably not--because that person is likely not a marketing person. Would it be the director of marketing? Probably not, as that person probably doesn't have the publishing or editorial background. How about that still in-flux social media person--could they get a crack at trying this new job on for size? After all, they're curating, monitoring, creating and slotting content, right?

I think I am all thunk out on this one--what say you people? Where do you think this vaulted chief content Officer should sit within an association? Or is chief content officer a position that may do well in the for-profit wilds but not siloed world of associations?

Why I Doubt Associations Will Become Filters for Digital Overload

2012-05-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

I admit, I was surprised but happy to see the headline "Will Associations Become Filters for Digital Overload?" in the Huffington Post. Happy because I'm always glad to read things pertaining to associations outside the association bubble--or maybe I just don't read the Huffington Post regularly and they always post about associations. Regardless, if you read this blog you probably know what my first thought was when I read the headline: of course I do not think associations will become filters for digital overload! Why not? Here are but a handful of the reasons:

Associations care about their own content and are threatened by sharing content created by others. How many associations would be comfortable sharing content created by rival organizations? Or non-members?
Associations already create so much of their own content and deluge members with email--it will be hard to lose the "there's no such thing as too much" mentality. And if their own content isn't enough to drown members, how many associations also rent their email lists as a source of revenue? Will they be able to justify any potential lost revenue from less email marketing and/or list selling for the iffy ROI of content curation?
Associations are, for the most part, staffed to perform traditional publishing and marketing functions. They are not hiring for social or digital--again, for the most part--and when they are it is usually at a junior level. How will these junior level staffers--or no staffers--trump the "way we've always done it" senior staff? Or are those senior staffers the ones who are suddenly supposed to do an about-face on their traditional content backgrounds and embrace doing things a new way?
There are so many other organizations that are more nimble than associations that are doing content creation--I am highly skeptical that associations will be able to win the competition for attention. Associations are not winning at innovating now; what's going to suddenly change?

These are just a few of the hurdles that come to my mind when I think about associations as content curators--what others am I missing? Or am I wrong and associations do have a good shot at becoming filters for digital overload?

Facebook Fails are Mounting

2012-05-08T09:27:00.000-04:00

Despite the media frenzy over Facebook's impending IPO, all isn't 100% rosy for Facebook. Two things I've recently read highlight what I consider to be pretty big fails on Facebook's part, and, were I considering investing in Facebook (which I never in a million years would do), would give me pause:

Social Readers are collapsing. Wow, "frictionless sharing" is annoying people and backfiring? Who could have called that one? To me, the bigger story here is that people do not have infinite patience for just accepting whatever Facebook throws at them. Facebook is notorious for privacy breeches, constant tweaks that affect functionality that users have invested time and possibly money in, and just overall non-responsiveness to, well, just about anyone. Also that Facebook has no problems stabbing businesses in the back. The Washington Post and other publications invest time and money rolling out social reader apps. Then Facebook changes the way "trending articles" are displayed. and suddenly the magical "engagement" Facebook no doubt promised would be the result of implementing a social reader app goes up in a puff of smoke.
Facebook ad click through is horrible. 85% of Facebook's 2011 revenue came from ads. But click through rates for Facebook ads are only half the industry-standard. And as ads are performing worse, the cost is increasing. Also, Facebook is failing the very businesses responsible for their nearly $100 billion valuation: advertisers. Add all that together and it kind of seems like a perfect storm is brewing, if you ask me.

31% of Associations Have Online Communities. Where are the Association Community Managers?

2012-04-30T10:08:00.000-04:00

I just read a post about an upcoming membership marketing benchmarking report, specifically detailing the part of the report that addresses social media use by associations. The report surveyed 700 associations and, according to the summary of the upcoming report, among associations with over 20,000 members, 31% reported having a private social network.

Hm, I thought--that's a lot of private social networks....yet, as far as I know, there are still very, very few community managers in the association world. I've blogged about this before--this is an aspect of associations that I simply don't get. As you know if you read this blog or follow me on Twitter--I'm a member of The Community Roundtable, basically an association for community managers (I consider it to be a "concierge association"--basically an association without the governance stuff and dedicated to serving each individual member--in short, I'm obsessed with it!). Of well over 100 members, exactly TWO of us work for associations (ok, three, yet those two members work for the same association). Yet, according to this report, there are a lot of associations with private social networking platforms. With the cost of launching and maintaining a private social network being what it is, I just don't get the disconnect when it comes to community management. Of course, the Community Roundtable is not the only qualifying factor when looking for community managers--I'm simply using it as an example because I think my experience there being one of only a very small handful of association community managers among over a hundred corporate employees filling that role is pretty accurate with regard to the disparity between associations and for-profit companies and community management staffing.

I get that there are many small associations. I get that resources are tight and new positions are hard to justify. But seriously--if you're an association that has the money to invest in launching a private community platform, how can you NOT address the community management part? I see it all the time in action--associations who launched a platform several years ago who are now questioning whether it was worth the money and whether it's worth maintaining the community because they're not seeing the activity and resulting revenue generation that they'd been promised by the software vendor. Guess what? Without a community manager you most likely WON'T see those benefits, ever. But as I said in the post I linked to above, I think vendors don't talk about that aspect of the product much, if at all--they just want to make the sale. Actually, that's not entirely true--Socious has a fantastic blog and resources specifically about online community and community management. Avectra's blog is good too, although it focuses on more than community management, and they actually have a community manager on staff who does a lot to educate the ASAE community on community management and engagement. But I still can't help but wonder--isn't it in vendors' best interest to stress the need for community managers as a vital component of a successful online community platform?

I'm curious--if you work for an association that either has a private online community platform or have demoed one--how much focus has been on the need for someone with expertise in community management--be it a consultant or a staff person--as a critical element of the success of the community versus just purchasing the software and reaping the benefits basically by magic?

Why Facebook Timeline Will Continue to be Bad For Brands

2012-04-24T12:19:00.001-04:00

What--Facebook Timeline hasn't performed as well for brands as Facebook led them to believe it would? Say it isn't so!

I am not at all surprised--here's why:

Timeline is a UI nightmare. Where the hell are you supposed to look? With so much emphasis on images, pages take forever to load. There are two columns--except when there aren't when an image spans both columns. And don't even get me started on the way the admin panel takes up an entire screen. My eyes don't even know where to look when a page finally loads; apparently I'm not the only one who is confused.
Timeline totally discourages fans from commenting. It used to be that Facebook Pages were equally about the brand and the fans--for better or for worse. Now, instead of getting equal billing and visibility on a page, fan comments are all rolled up and relegated to the tiny "Recent Posts by Others" block on the right half of the page. This is nice for admins who don't have to worry about those glaring negative comments splashed across their pages anymore, but in terms of "engagement" it's a huge step down. You want authentic engagement? It's messy and it's a give and take, not something that can or should be relegated to a tiny, easily-missed segment of the page.
Timeline doesn't work on mobile devices--or at all half the time. One of the biggest mysteries in the world is why Facebook, the richest company in the world right now (yes, I realize that's not an actual fact--but with its crazy valuation, cash flow is obviously not an issue), can't manage to figure out the app thing. Yes, I know they just bought Instagram, primarily because clearly there was no other way to develop a usable mobile app other than spending a BILLION DOLLARS to purchase an entire company that happens to include some crackerjack app developers. But for now, if you use Facebook via an app--as 40% of users do you are not seeing much of anything, because much of the time posts and/or comments that show up on the Timeline don't show up in the app version. Not to mention brands who have now changed their Facebook posting strategies to capitalize on the awesomeness of Timeline have done so without realizing that 40% or more of users are not seeing their fanciness--or possibly anything at all much of the time. Hopefully this has smoothed out now that all pages have been migrated to the Timeline version, but I can tell you that during the time between when Facebook announced that all business pages would be migrated to the new version as of March 30 and when March 30 finally came, managing a page was an absolute nightmare with half of your posts and/or fan comments not showing up, then showing up, then not showing up, willy-nilly. I'm sure that didn't do great things for brand's engagement numbers. As recently as today I had issues with posts not appearing correctly on the page I admin.

Those are the main reasons that come to mind for me--did I miss anything?

What Does a Washington Post Blogger Resigning Say About the State of Digital Publishing?

2012-04-23T07:55:00.001-04:00

While reading Sunday's Washington Post, I came across the headline "The Post fails a young blogger." This should be interesting, I thought, and read it. It was not only interesting but scarily familiar to me.

The article describes how the Post blogger responsible for blogPost just resigned because of the no-win nature of her job. Her job entailed writing an average of 5.9 blog posts per day approximating 500 words each with a goal of attaining 1-2 million "hits" a month (don't get me started on the term "hits"). She was a one-person operation, presumably making far less than "seasoned" journalists (the article makes reference to Post bloggers hoping to one day "graduate" to covering a beat). When she resigned she cited the great pressure involved in producing a huge quantity of high-quality, error-free content in such a pressure-cooker style with no training, little guidance or mentoring, and sparse editing. All I could think when I read that part was "yup."

As someone who manages the blog for a large organization, as well as runs their social media activities, I can absolutely feel this blogger's pain, and I know there are tons more just like me who share this same experience. Your job is to do something new that most people on staff don't understand and/or see value in. There is little or no guidance--after all, they hired you to show them the way with this newfangled digital/social media stuff. While traditional publications have whole staffs of writers, editors, graphic designer, if you are a blogger for an organization, chances are you are a staff of one with a lot tighter turnaround time than a print publication. There is likely pressure on you to prove that your job is not a waste of time. A clear career path that involves promotions--probably not in the cards, as your whole job is likely seen as an experiment which could be ended at any moment. Most people don't understand your job so mostly steer clear of you, unless you make a mistake--then, I assure you, you hear about it.

In the article, the writer goes on to say that not only has this one blogger resigned, but he spoke with several "young bloggers" (because everyone knows only young people are digital-savvy enough to blog) at the Post and all shared the same sentiments about lack of guidelines and training in the face of incredible amounts of pressure to attract web traffic. Apparently several bloggers have already left and several more are thinking of quitting. Apparently the Post is just now coming out with the genius idea of cross-training journalists, giving digital journalists instruction in street reporting and traditional journalists training in social media and digital.

All I can think when I read stories like this or hear of similar experiences from my professional peers is "I don't get it." Everyone knows that the traditional publications model is dying. Print ad revenue is down and continuing to diminish, while online ad spend is up and projected to continue to rise. But the investment of time, resources and talent is still focused on the traditional model. Digital publications and staff with talents to support and grow those publications are not optional if an organization wants to be able to accommodate the digital ad spend their advertisers are budgeting for. People talk about flipping the publishing model all the time--when are people going to start looking at flipping the publishing STAFFING model to reward digital journalists instead of marginalizing them?

Karl Rove at ASAE? I Wish I Cared More

2012-04-12T16:30:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, a storm started brewing over the announced opening keynote speakers for ASAE's annual conference: Karl Rove and James Carville. As I'm avidly anti-politics (I don't even vote), I immediately got fired up upon hearing the name "Karl Rove" because I know enough about politics to know he bashed my hero Elizabeth Warren, so I automatically hate him. James Carville? I admit I have no idea who he is, beyond that he's apparently the polar opposite of Karl Rove. Yes, I'm that apathetic and out-of-touch with reality when it comes to politics: I do not give a shit and wouldn't waste five minutes watching people argue on TV. Ok, well at least watching people argue about politics on TV...people on reality TV arguing about nonsense? I plead the fifth.

On one level, I think having these two clowns do a live version of what I could watch on TV but choose not to at the opening session is so reprehensible and shows that ASAE is so out of touch with what I find interesting, relevant and/or educational that I honestly thought about not attending at all. On the other, do I actually care that much? Enough to raise a stink about it or even rant about it in a blog post? When push comes to shove, somehow I'm finding that it's the latter...while I think it's stupid and there's no way in hell I'll be attending that opening keynote, at the end of the day I mostly feel "meh" about it.

Does that mean that I'm just apathetic about politics and am tuning it out like I do any and all things political? Does it mean that my attitude towards ASAE has softened and I'm loathe to criticize them? Does it mean that acupuncture has turned me into a more temperate person who doesn't get worked up about much of anything? I honestly don't know. I am reading great, passionate posts about the issue, and all are persuasive and resonate with me, but at the end of the day, I feel oddly less upset about this than I would have thought I'd end up feeling. Or maybe it's that I'm so upset I've just blocked it out. Who knows...I guess I'll see how I feel when I'm skipping that session in Dallas.

Ashley Judd & Misogyny--I Call BS

2012-04-10T23:18:00.000-04:00

Warning: rant that has nothing to do with social media ahead.

If you're on Facebook (and who isn't?--my hat's off to you if you're not) you've probably seen about a billion women posting "you go girl!" type of comments about this piece written by Ashely Judd in which she "slaps the media in the face" for presuming to think that her dramatically different-looking face of late is the result of plastic surgery. I know I'm probably in the minority, but seriously? My reaction to her diatribe about misogyny is the exact opposite of all the "go girl!" sentiments--I say shame on her for trying to turn this around on the media, and if anyone is to blame for distorting views of women, it's her and her fellow actresses in Hollywood, on TV and in magazines.

She claims that she usually ignores what people say and write about her, but in this case, she's chosen to address the current swirl of "has Ashely Judd had work done? Her face sure looks different" comments because "the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day."

Um, let me just say this: you know why we women are under constant scrutiny, by ourselves and others? Why we feel we have to look eternally youthful and impossibly thin? Because of female celebrities just like...you, Ashley Judd! After all, isn't Hollywood responsible, at least to some extent--a pretty hefty extent, actually-- for the unrealistic expectations women place on themselves in terms of looks?

Frankly, I think it's kind of crappy for her to get all huffy that people's first assumption upon seeing her "puffy" face is that she's been pumped full of fillers. After all, take a look at any actress or model or celebrity...a whole lot of them look plenty puffy and line-less,and they're usually the first to admit it's because they've had work done. We've become so accustomed to faces like Madonna's or Sharon Stone's or...basically name any actress over the age of, what, 25, being surgically enhanced--of COURSE our first assumption when she shows up onscreen looking "puffy" and line-less is that she's had work done. So she allegedly was on steroids for a month and/or gained some weight and that's why, in her ONE case, she looks puffy. Good for her. How about the other hundreds of actresses of her approximate age--or decades older or younger? Have all of them gained weight--only in their faces--or been on steroids? No, they've been to visit the plastic surgeon so Hollywood casters (or whatever they're called) will pick them for roles or tabloids will marvel over how great they look....and the rest of us mere mortal women who hold ourselves up to the standards set by the entertainment industry are made to feel imperfect and faulty because we can't possibly live up to the perfection these stars maintain either through the magic of plastic surgery, airbrushing, clever camera work, or all of the above.

So to Ashley Judd I say this: cry me a river, and shame on you for trying to turn this conversation around to be our fault rather than Hollywood's. You want to point a finger and go on about "The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification [of women]"? Then talk to your employers--Hollywood--and your compadres--women who make millions of dollars and live lives us mere mortals only dream about in exchange for looking impossibly youthful and beautiful. Tell them THEY need to stop perpetuating the myth that women never age or gain weight or look anything other than flawless. The media and the people you're calling out in your diatribe? We're merely following the example you have played a part in establishing--so don't blame us and cry misogyny when we assume the most logical explanation and don't give you the benefit of the doubt when you're looking puffy and flawless.

Spring Break

2012-03-31T10:34:00.001-04:00

Source: katiearmour.tumblr.com via Holly on Pinterest

Guess what time it is? Blogcation! For the first time ever we're actually going away for spring break. So no blog posts for a week or so.

In the meantime, here's the post I recently wrote for SocialFish: The Perils of Pinterest (yes, I'm slightly obsessed with Pinterest lately.)

On spring break yourself and looking for non-work book suggestions? Here's what I'm reading and have recently read. My favorite recent read? We Need to Talk About Kevin. The Audible version. (Wish I was an Audible affiliate but I'm not so that's not an affiliate link.) A creepy contrast to all the recent interest in archery spawned by the Hunger Games movie....which was a disappointment, if you ask me.

Speaking of movies, need movie suggestions? 21 Jump Street. Loved it.

Have fun! And keep your fingers crossed I come back tan.

5 Cool Pinterest Tools

2012-03-21T19:53:00.001-04:00

Source: thisisblythe.com via Maggie on Pinterest

After an initial honeymoon period with Pinterest where I used it strictly for fun, pinning pictures of English cottages, bee stuff, and all manner of cute things like Blythe dolls, tiny things, and...sorry...got distracted there looking up those boards to link.

Anyway, after my initial honeymoon period where I used Pinterest for the sheer fun of it, of course reality came knocking and Pinterest became a work thing instead of a fun thing. Sigh. But there you have it...Pinterest is now part of my job and I barely use it personally anymore. The good news is that I'm starting to find all sorts of cool Pinterest-related resources that I can share here.

PinReach --Pinterest influence and analytics tool that shows cool stuff like your most popular pins with the number of times each has been repinned.
Url2pin-- No images on your website? No problem! Url2pin creates a screenshot of any url, which you can then pin.
Want to see if anyone is pinning your site? Just type "http://pinterest.com/source/[url you want to check]" in your browser and voila--any/all pins of that url will be displayed.
Pinpuff-- Even though I think the concept of "pinfluence" is BS, I'm including this.
Pinerly-- Looks like really cool third-party tool but unfortunately the only way to access it now is to get others to sign up for it, which I have not yet done, so I'm stuck on the waiting list. Regardless, the promise of being able to schedule pins sounds cool, so consider yourselves invited so I can check it out.

Huge hat tip to my friend Heidi Kay, power Pinner at PediaStaff, a pediatric therapy staffing company--I got several of these tips from her Pinterest Tips & Tricks board.

I'm sure there are lots of other tools either out there or currently in-the-making--know of any I missed?

If Your Members Organize Their Own Committee, Are You Failing Them?

2012-03-13T16:36:00.000-04:00

Sadly, I did not go to SXSW (mom, that's not "S-W-S-W" but South by Southwest). But I may as well have been there based on how many times I've seen it mentioned online over the past week. Sigh...maybe next year.

At any rate, one of the thousands of SXSW things that flowed through either my Twitter stream or Facebook news feed caught my association eye--the announcement of a new Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation, a "committee aiming to establish standards for (content) aggregation." Cool, I thought--I always like seeing associations get media coverage and the article was in the New York Times. But wait...the article goes on to state that the council is a self-organized effort, not the purview of an association:

"[The organizer of the council, Ad Age Editor at Large Simon Dumenco] compares his effort to the editorial rules promulgated by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), which have come to shape how magazines distinguish editorial from advertising. It’s an imperfect system with a fair number of outliers, but over time the magazine group devised guidelines that had significant influence and at least set standards that people could argue about"

He "compares the effort to" something an association would do--develop guidelines for an industry--yet the effort is not tied to an association. The committee is made up of a group of editors-in-chief, all of whom are presumably members of ASME--in fact, one (James Bennet) is a member of ASME's board of directors.

Is it just me or does this seem like either a missed opportunity or a failure on behalf of ASME? Granted, it's not like the effort is necessarily a great one--while this council is purporting to establish standards for bloggers, no actual bloggers (who are not also magazine editors) are involved, and some are criticizing the entire venture as unnecessary and worthless. Yet, to me, this self-organized "trade group" effort smacks of the larger issue of the relevance and sustainability of the association model.

What does does it say about associations when members organize their own committees or councils independent of the association? Or is this nothing new and nothing to worry about?

Facebook Timeline For Pages: It Is Not That Serious

2012-03-06T12:27:00.001-05:00

If the past few weeks in the blogosphere have been a blur of the word "Pinterest," the next few will undoubtedly be the same thing--except instead of posts about Pinterest you'll be drowning in posts about Facebook Timeline for Pages. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing--there are a lot of useful posts out there already--precise specs for Timeline images, free or cheap resources for those who don't have the luxury of hiring a designer to create a show-stopper of a cover image, and warnings about what you better not include in your cover images.

But while you sort through all the hype and how-tos, I think there's one thing that's important to remember: most people will never look at your page after they like it. So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if your cover image is so gorgeous it makes people's eyes bleed....for the most part, nobody will be looking at it. So before investing countless hours reading posts about how to optimize your Page's cover image or perusing Pinterest boards of the best cover images EVER, please take a deep breath and remind yourself that, in the grand scheme of things, Timeline for Facebook pages is not that big a deal.

Two things that are a bigger deal, Facebook-wise, IMO:

Facebook has a vested interest in making sure brand pages are, in and of themselves, not that useful. If you're a Facebook page admin, you've undoubtedly noticed that the reach of the content you post to pages has plummeted since last fall when Facebook changed to the new "top stories" model. Signs are indicating that if you want your content to reach fans, you'll have to pay.
Come March 30, people will be able to send private messages to pages. Unless your member service staff are prepared to basically open up an outpost of your org's member service center on Facebook, I'd recommend disabling this (Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page > Manage Permissions).

Yes, Pinterest is Driving Traffic to Women's Magazines. Your Org is Not a Women's Magazine.

2012-02-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

I am trying to keep my love of Pinterest alive despite the ridiculously overwhelming influx of marketing hype about it--really, I am. But it's getting increasingly hard, as just about every other tweet, blog post, and/or email I see contains the word "Pinterest." Seriously? Just because it's driving traffic to women's magazines does not mean that it will magically drive that kind of traffic to every business's content.

There's a reason people buy women's magazines: to look at the pictures. And, of course, to read the articles, but images are what glossy magazine pages are about. So when it comes to an IMAGE SHARING site, is it surprising that the same images that people are willing to spend several bucks a month to page through are being pinned and re-pinned? Does it mean that all you have to do is stick some stock photographs or clip art images onto your company's web content and BAM! your stuff will see the same level of pinterest? NO!

Not to be a hater but seriously people, can we stop for one minute to look beyond the hype and actually think things through before jumping on the "WE HAVE TO BE ON PINTEREST BECAUSE IT'S DRIVING SO MUCH TRAFFIC" bandwagon? I don't mean to yell, but honestly, I just feel like people are losing their heads over this whole Pinterest/web traffic craze without stopping for one second to think about WHY Pinterest is driving traffic to certain sites (cooking, fashion, home decor). Not because Pinterest is magic, but because people like to pin pictures of food, clothes and home decor. Period.

I readily admit that I, too, am being sucked into the hype; as I typed this post I was all set to go search for an image to add to it--so that it would be Pin-ready. Then I thought "Are you even listening to yourself? Will you adding some image you find in the Creative Commons part of Flickr to this post really cause people to pin it?" The answer is: probably not.

So You Think You Want to be a Community Manager?

2012-02-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

Even though this article is recent, the fact that community management is one of the hottest jobs around isn't news--after all, 2010 was the "Year of the Community Manager" and the past few years have been all about talking about the hottest job around--community manager (aka social media manager or about a dozen other titles). I mean, who doesn't want to be a rockstar, right?

One thing that continues to strike me more and more as I get further and further into my career as a community manager (going on four years now) is how the job really is essentially a customer service rep job in many ways. A job I have always said I would NEVER want. I have always thought there are few worse jobs than dealing with angry phone calls and emails all day, and just dealing with customer service reps depresses me because I know what a defeating job it must be. It's no mystery that customer service jobs have a very high turnover rate, and, although I've never worked in customer service, I can imagine that a decent amount of time and money is spent trying to help employees deal with burnout in an effort to decrease this costly turnover.

I could be totally wrong, but I can't imagine many young professionals want to be call center reps--it doesn't seem like a job with much glory and definitely seems like a job with lots of stress. Why, then, is community manager such a hot job for young professionals? Because they think it means getting paid to "do" Facebook and Twitter? I doubt it. I mean, I get it--community manager means so many different things--one look at the recent social media salaries infographic by Onward Search makes that abundantly clear if it wasn't already. But seriously, when you get right down to it, community management shares a lot of elements with customer service rep. Dealing with complaints. Trying to resolve conflicts between angry customers and the brand you're representing. Trying to convert haters into evangelists by providing exemplary service. Being unflappable in the face of ongoing negativity. Especially now that there's such a blurry line between the traditional call center and a brand's social media outlets--one could make a very strong argument that community managers are no more than call center agents (by the way, I do recognize I'm using the terms "call center agent" and "customer service representative" interchangeably; I'm assuming they're the same but I could be totally wrong, in which case I apologize) who, instead of using phone or email as platforms for receiving and responding to customer complaints use Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

Before you jump down my throat saying that there's MUCH more to community management than just dealing with complaints--I know that. As I said, I am one and have been for almost four years now. That said, though, I maintain that there is a large element of customer service to the job, and that's the part that does take a toll over time. Jeremiah Owyang talks about this "social media help desk" syndrome and gives tips for avoiding it; however, in my opinion, it's likely not something a community manager has much control over. The issue is much broader and more complex than something a junior level employee is likely to have much control over--or even a middle management level employee--and I think it's fair to say that most people who find themselves in "social media help desk" roles probably are not empowered to make the deep organizational changes Owyang suggests they make to get themselves out of the situation. Or even if they are, changes like those he's suggesting would not be quick or easy, and to a person already facing burnout, I doubt they'd offer much solace.

My point? Community management can be great and fulfilling and certainly a career worth considering. But if you're a person who can't imagine him or herself in a call center role, you may want to think twice before leaping into community management.

(photo by topgold on Flickr)

Pinterest Can Monetize My Links All They Want

2012-02-08T10:16:00.001-05:00

The big news of the week is that Pinterest is apparently monetizing links without disclosing the practice to users. I was going to write a post about why I'm ok with that, but Allison at BlogWorld already wrote basically the exact thing I was going to write so I'll save myself the trouble and just link to her post. In short--Pinterest making money in a way that costs me nothing? Have at it...but a little transparency and disclosure would serve you well in the long run.

Then again, maybe not--god knows Facebook doesn't do it and it doesn't seem to be hurting them any. Path, the darling of social media people, isn't doing it and I doubt their users will be deserting them en masse upon learning about the breach. Mining data is common practice for social networks and people are ok with that--why should we not be ok with Pinterest doing nothing but making a buck where there's a buck to be made? I'd much rather Pinterest's method of monetization over stealing and selling my personal data. If I'm too lazy to add affiliate links--which I 100% am--Pinterest is welcome to take the time to modify my with their affiliate info.

(Photo by AaronPatterson on Flickr)

Want Traffic? You Need Images

2012-02-01T09:56:00.001-05:00

Source: Uploaded by user via Maggie on Pinterest

While checking out Google Voice I landed on their blog and was intrigued by the Dynamic View theme, so I'm trying it here on Mizz Information. See those tabs across the top of the blog now--"Classic" "Flipcard" "Magazine" etc? You can click on those to view this blog in those formats. Granted, it doesn't look very great because I seldom use images--something which, if I am serious about optimizing traffic, I need to start doing more because images are the new sharing vehicle--just look at how much traffic Pinterest is driving.

I'm conflicted about this because, while I am a visual person, I'm not great at pairing images with blog posts. Or, I guess I should say, it's not something I used to spend any time on because frankly, I didn't care that much. I still don't know if I do, but I do know that while it used to matter some, now I suspect it's going to start mattering a lot more.

So take this post, for instance--obviously, I should include an image in it. Why? Because I have just witnessed how crappy this blog looks in this new format because of the lack of images in posts. So I should start including images in each post from here on out, if for no other reason than to make the blog look decent in these new formats. My challenge with this is, how literal do you need to be with images? Do you just include an image that you like and that you think is visually appealing, or do you try to match the image with the content? I'm solving this one by experimenting with embedding a Pinterest image in a post--way to kill two birds with one stone, right? ; )

(Update: after realizing that the Dynamic Views theme doesn't work for people trying to read this blog on an iPad I switched back to the boring old theme. Who designs a blog theme that throws an error message when accessed from an iPad in 2012? Blogger, that's who.)

Why Having Staff Be Facebook Emissaries Is a Bad Idea

2012-01-27T12:24:00.001-05:00

Lately I've been seeing social media pros suggesting that, in light of recent changes to Facebook's algorithm, organizations start focusing less on Facebook Pages and more on having staff members use their own Facebook profiles to promote the organization's agenda. Call me cranky, but I think this is a terrible idea.

The rationale behind this suggestion is that, as Facebook changed its news feed algorithm last fall, admins began to notice that posts from pages were appearing in fans news feeds less frequently than posts from individuals to whom people were subscribed. What does that mean, exactly? It means that where a year ago, Facebook Pages for brands were where it was at in terms of Facebook success; now, not so much. I personally have noticed that the effectiveness of the pages that I admin has tanked, at least in terms of Facebook's own metrics. Facebook used to display impressions per post; however, since the algorithm change caused that impressions number to universally plummet, they conveniently replaced "impressions" with "reach," to try to convince brands that they didn't just cripple the functionality of pages with these algorithm and insight changes. They spun it as "impressions are down but engagement is up." But now more and more page admins are starting to notice the dip in page effectiveness and the clear favoring of subscriptions by Facebook's weird algorithm. And since, at this time, only personal profiles and not pages have this snazzy new subscription capability, the concept of brands/organizations having staff people use their own personal Facebook profiles to get their org's content back into people's news feeds was born.

Here's why I think this is a terrible idea:

Once upon a time companies Facebook Pages were inextricably linked to an individual profile. Which meant if that person got fired or quit, the company was SOL. Facebook finally realized tying a brand's whole Facebook presence to an individual was not a good/workable idea, and added the ability to make more than one person the admin of a page. So now going back to tying your org's Facebook presence to individuals....still not a good idea for the same reason it wasn't a good idea back then: people leave companies. And if they leave, all their subscribers go with them. Do you really want to encourage your company's customers/members/constituents to follow an individual who, for all you know, six months from now will be working for a competitor?
Especially in this day and age, jobs do not last forever. People have personal lives then they have jobs--the two are not the same, unless they own the business. Asking them to mix their personal Facebook presence with your company's Facebook presence is, in my opinion, taking advantage of them and presuming a lot--that they'll forever be in your company's employ, that they personally endorse all aspects of the business, and that they are, essentially, paid spokespeople for the business. Sure, there are people who feel passionate about their jobs, but there are equally many for whom a job is a job. They are getting paid to do that job, not advertise the company on a social networking platform--there is a difference, IMO.
Facebook's privacy settings are a moving target. You could recommend to these staff spokespeople that they adjust their Facebook profile settings so that if they post personal stuff they make it visible to friends only, and they set privacy for company updates to public. That, in my opinion, is playing with fire. You're really willing to risk your employee not accidentally setting those drunken photos or political private updates to public, and having them seen by all your company subscribers? That's asking a lot of technology (Facebook's iPhone and iPad apps are horrible and setting any privacy settings when posting from them is a bitch) and human error, not to mention Facebook's own constant breeches in terms of "oops" moments where they "accidentally" display content that's supposed to be private to a different audience, or when they, without warning change their settings so that previous privacy settings are wiped out.
Facebook's Terms of Service forbid multiple accounts for individuals. I know you were about to offer the suggestion that you just ask staff spokespeople to create a new personal account, one that just represents them as a spokesperson for your company, so all these pesky privacy settings are a non-issue. Right? Wrong. Facebook's Terms of Service specifically forbids individuals from having more than one account:

Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts. (from Facebook Business Account FAQs)

My advice? Hold steady with your Facebook Page. Chances are that within a few months, the situation will change yet again and pages will either be granted subscription capability or some other magic bullet that will again propel your page's updates into fan's news feeds. Analyze the content you're posting on your page--what's working, what's not, and tweak your strategy accordingly. Or focus on building your company's presence on Google+--maybe your time and money is better spent doing that in light of their new search algorithm changes.

Honestly, the situation is not that dire--your company will not go out of business because of Facebook's algorithm changes.

Community Manager Appreciation Day

2012-01-23T11:56:00.003-05:00

Photo by elkokoparrilla, on Flickr

Unless you are a community manager (and maybe not even then) you probably don't know that today is Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). Well, guess what? It is! Two years ago Jeremiah Owyang suggested that the fourth Monday of January be a day to "take the time to pause, recognize, and celebrate the efforts community managers around the world to improve customer experiences."

Three and a half years into my career as a community/social media manager, I can attest to the fact that it's a demanding, exhilarating, exciting, and life-encompassing job. It's customer service and marketing and content creation/curation/management and who knows what else, all rolled into one job that, in most organizations, is new and often not well understood. It's at the same time an established profession, as there are community managers who have been at it for over a decade, as well as such a new one that there's a ton of confusion still about what tasks the role includes, what pay grade it should be, which department it belongs in, and even whether it is a role worth paying someone to do in the first place.

In honor of CMAD, here are a few links about community management--the fun of it, the trials it involves, and just some fun resources:

Ok, those are just a few--please feel free to add others in the comments.

And, if you're a community manager--happy CMAD!

Movie Recap 2011

2012-01-15T14:59:00.003-05:00

Photo by ToastyKen

(I originally posted this on my other blog but am reposting here)

It's that time of year again...time for my movie recap. In case you don't know this about me, I'm obsessed with going to movies. Not watching movies at home--too many distractions. But going to the movie theater. In 2008 I saw 50 movies. In 2009, I saw 53. Last year I made it to 57. So my number to beat this year was 57. Did I make it?

Of course I did! This year's total? 64 movies. Gulp. Next year is going to be a bitch having to top that.

Let me just preface this by saying that if you didn't go to a lot of movies in 2011, you really didn't miss much. It was a pretty crap year as far as movies go, especially the second half of the year.
Ok, so here we go. In case you haven't read my previous year's movie recap posts, this is my rating system: sucked, rocked or meh, followed by best and worst movies of 2011.

The Rite-- rocked
True Grit--rocked(ish)
No Strings Attached--cute and better than meh, but can't really say rocked
The Company Men--rocked is a bit strong, but I did like it
Country Strong--sorry but this movie rocked. Have seen it three times.
Just Go With It--rocked(ish)
The Mechanic--rocked. I mean, of course Jason Statham rocks.
The Eagle--rocked(ish)
Unknown--actually Rocked, with a capital R.
Battle:Los Angeles--action parts rocked, and if you like loud movies, you'll like it.
Insidious--ROCKED--if you like scary, this is a must-see.
Limitless--Rocked--I love this movie, although it starts great and kind of peters out.
Soul Surfer--Better(ish) than meh, sort of. Cute for teens/tweens.
Hanna--Sorry but this looked like it was going to be great but in reality SUCKED.
Scream 4--Ok, yes I saw this and of course we all know it SUCKED.
Prom--Utterly forgettable so I'm going to go with cute for teens. Yes, I have one, which is why I saw it.
Thor--Meh plus.
Bridesmaids--HILARIOUS. ROCKED.
Hangover 2--Meh plus. Nowhere as near as good as the first, but some funny parts.
X-Men--I want to say "ok" but that's not a rating, and meh is a little low, so I'll go with rocked(ish)
Pirates of the Caribbean 3--the mermaids ROCKED; the movie was rocked(ish). First Pirates movie I've seen, btw--I only saw it for the mermaids.
Midnight in Paris--Rocked. Even my kids liked this.
Super 8--rocked.
Cowboys & Aliens--Meh. What did you expect?
The Help--ROCKED. I was worried this wouldn't be as good as the book, but it really was.
Captain America--can I just give this a sigh? Patrick (my husband) loves those Marvel movies, but I"m personally over them. This was actually pretty good, but please, 2012, no more Marvel movies, ok?
Crazy, Stupid Love--Meh. Maybe I'll throw a plus on there for Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--I'm giving this a meh on principle--seriously, can we stop with the two part movies Hollywood?
Rise of the Planet of the Apes--ROCKED. Ceasar better win an Oscar.
Bad Teacher--ROCKED. Raunchy but hilarious.
Friends With Benefits--Meh plus. I liked it but can't bring myself to say rocked. Cute though.
Green Lantern--another sigh. And a meh.
Horrible Bosses--Meh. Jennifer Anniston as sexy just does not work for me.
Transformers 3--Meh.
Contagion--Meh, and a big disappointment--this looked like it was going to be good.
I Don't Know How She Does it--I'm going with Meh, because I can't remember one thing about this movie.
Drive--fun if you like action, but meh if you are looking for a great movie.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark--SUCKED. This was just freaky and creepy and sucked. AND had Katie Holmes in it, who is meh personified.
The Change Up--Rocked.
Sherlock Holmes 2--Meh. Yeah, really.
Young Adult--Meh plus. Was really slow, but decent if you don't mind really slow and some random details just thrown in there with no real tie-in.
The Sitter--Meh, and a big disappointment--this looked like it was going to be awesome.
Mission Impossible 4--ROCKED. Especially in Imax, something I'd never shelled out for before but now I'm a convert.
Dream House--Meh.
Jumping the Broom--rocked, if for no other reason than the house. But even my kids liked it.
Paranormal Activity 3--Call me crazy, but I thought this rocked, and even saw it twice. I like scary.
Twilight 3--There is not a big enough font in the world to convey how much this movie SUCKED. But I need to find out what happens so of course will have to go see the second part, which just makes me hate it worse. And no, I'm not going to read the book.
Fast Five--Meh
The Dilemma--Meh minus--this was another big disappointment--looked like it would be great and totally was not.
The Roommate--Fun in a Single White Female kind of way, but Meh.
The Ides of March--Yet another disappointment--they're getting really good at making great trailers for not great movies. Meh.
Immortals--Rocked-ish for action, but as with Marvel, no more greek god movies in 2012 please.
Sanctum--Meh minus. Utterly forgettable.
I am Number Four--this was actually pretty good, but I can't really say it rocked. How about enthusiastic Meh plus?
Hall Pass--rocked. I've seen it at least three times and would see it more.
The Lincoln Lawyer--rocked--this was pretty good, but not so good that I actually remember much about it other than that I liked it.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules--I had low hopes for this movie after the first one, but this was actually pretty good. Can I just go with Good?
Sucker Punch--HORRIBLE. SUCKED. But the girl was super cute.
One Day--Long, drawn out....Meh.
Moneyball--not as great as I thought it would be but still pretty good. Too long, though, and slow. But rocked. With a small r.
What's Your Number?--Cute and funny--but I don't know if I'd say rocked. But better than meh.
Jack and Jill--Sigh. Yes, I saw this, and it was bad as I thought it would be. Could be fun-ish as a rental.
New Year's Eve--Cute, if predictable. Meh.
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--I had high hopes for this but have to give it a solid Meh. WAYYYYY too slow. Just read the book. I haven't seen the Swedish version, but I would imagine it's better.

Ok, so worst movie of 2011? It's a close race between Sucker Punch and Twilight 3. The girl in Sucker Punch is so cute....but ultimately that movie was just BAD. So Sucker Punch.

And best movie of 2011? I have to say that I hardly want to name one because the year as a whole was so meh, movie-wise. I will give a nod to Midnight in Paris because it was Woody Allen and cute, and another to the Help, because it was pretty good, but for sheer movie enjoyment and pretty tight plot, I'm going with Unknown. Patrick said I couldn't say Mission Impossible 4 was the best movie of the year, but it was pretty awesome.

So there you have it. Here's hoping 2012 will be a better movie year.

I Will Stop the World From Ending in 2012

2012-01-07T11:01:00.000-05:00

Ok, sike, but I couldn't resist that headline, because the subject of the world ending in 2012 has been a hotly debated subject in my house for the past three or more years, ever since my daughter (now 15) saw the trailer for the movie 2012 on YouTube and became obsessed and freaked out. Did I mention she's a little OCD? All I know is that the world BETTER NOT end in December, or I'm going to have hell to pay for assuring her, time and time again, that she has nothing to worry about.

So enough beating around the bush--I was really, really hoping to hide from this meme about what I'm going to do to change the world in 2012 because I had no idea how I'd respond if tagged. I figured, ok, if I do get tagged I'll just write that I'm not going to change the world. But then Jeffrey Cufaude scooped me (awesomely, I might add) so there went that option. Then Elizabeth Weaver Engel tagged me and here I am, racking my brains to come up with some way that I'm going to change the world in 2012.

Somehow lists seem to help when I can't think of anything to say, so let's try the "three things" thing and see what bubbles up:

In 2012 I'm going to:

Take it offline. In case you haven't noticed, I tend to spend a lot of time online. A LOT of time. Which obviously can interfere with the rest of life that takes place offline. If the world does happen to end in December, I don't want to have missed friendships or opportunities because I was busy blogging, playing Plants vs. Zombies, or sitting on Facebook. So I'm going to work hard to foster relationships offline. Call my sister more than once every many months. Finally arrange that monthly movie club with neighborhood friends that I've been thinking about for two years now. Make the trip down to DC for various social or professional events.
Be a stigma buster about mental illness. 2011 seemed rife with cries for help within the social media bubble--the suicide of someone in the social media big-wig bubble, several instances of other social media types using their Facebook pages or Twitter accounts to announce, in essence, "goodbye cruel world"--thankfully usually met with an outpouring of support from friends and family to get the person the care they needed. And of course The Bloggess's recent post about her ongoing battle with depression and self-harm--a beautiful, heartbreaking post. She points out "When cancer sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we laud their bravery. We call them survivors. Because they are," but that those who battle depression mostly battle alone because of the stigma associated with mental illness. I know I do, and I know that there are many others out there who do too. I'm a veteran at this battle--I've been fighting for over 20 years now, yet mostly people don't know that about me. So I'm putting it out there, just as I'd put it out there if I were a cancer survivor or victim of some other disease--if you are depressed and don't have anyone to talk to or don't know where to turn, feel free to connect with me. I'm not a shrink, obviously, but if you feel like you're the only one who has ever not known how you'll make it through another day or not known where to turn for help, you're not. Sadly, there are plenty of us out here, fighting with you, and it sucks--but having to suffer in silence only makes it suck worse.
Embrace change--or at least shake hands with it. It's hard to make changes, especially when a situation is comfortable and works well enough. But sometimes comfortable isn't actually comfortable. It may work and it may pay the bills, but is that really all we want to ask of life? Is ok good enough, or is amazing out there waiting to be had? And how will you know if you don't try something different? So this year I'm going to go beyond my comfort zone and see if I can't find amazing, or at least beyond comfortable.

Ok, there went my Saturday morning....now it's someone else's turn to grapple with this meme--I'm tagging these five people (and ducking their ire at being tagged):

Jessica Smith-- who said she wants to get her blogging mojo back--what better way to start? ;)
Cassie Soofi-- my sister, who hasn't blogged in ages, but who is an awesome writer and, as a speech language pathologist, is doing a lot more to change the world than I am.
Janet McNichol-- my friend and coworker, as well as fellow association person.
Mandy Stahl-- I know she doesn't have a blog (or maybe she does and we don't know about it?) but maybe she can do a post on Acronym--or a guest post here?
Kem Foley-- another association peep who is active with a very underappreciated set of professionals, in my opinion--administrative professionals.

If This is What Being an A-List Blogger is, I'm Happy to be on the D List

2012-01-02T12:53:00.001-05:00

I swore I wouldn't write about this and send traffic to her blog, because that's the last thing I want to do. But I can't stop thinking about it and feel stupid for being so affected by something written by a person I don't even know--or at least barely know (I did meet her once). I'm sure people will accuse me of linkbaiting, but honestly I don't care--the last thing I feel like is getting into a debate about whether or not it's ok to post pictures of practically your genitals (and I'm not kidding, so be forewarned before clicking that link) on what's supposed to be a business blog. Or whether it's ok announce to the world that you're in a violent marriage--you and your two kids--but are ok with that and are sticking with it.

In my book, it's not ok. To share it with the world and profit off it, that is--"it" being domestic abuse that involves children. You want to stay in a relationship with a guy who leaves bruises on you? That's your choice. But sharing graphic photos on your blog and explaining how it's partially your fault and maybe your kids are actually better off if you stay in the marriage? And promoting that rationale as career advice? No thanks. It's not like she's the first women to rationalize abuse--but most women who do it probably are not making money off sharing that opinion. But Penelope is--she runs ads on her blog and offers an online course "Secrets of an A-List Blogger" for $196. Several of her posts are sponsored by the American Cancer Society (ACS), which is very weird because those posts had nothing, really, to do with cancer. I'm wondering if ACS has pulled their advertising from her blog, though, because the blog used to feature banner ads for them and they don't appear to be there now. In fact, originally that's what this post was going to be about--is it a bad PR move for associations to run ads on blogs which feature controversial content--but when I went to check out the ACS banner ad on her blog I saw, instead, the A-List blogger ad, which prompted the title of this post.

I get that the blogosphere has gotten increasingly crowded and to get traffic you need stand out from the millions of other bloggers. I get that Penelope's old standby--being controversial and oversharing stuff like her miscarriage at work, her sex life, the abuse she endured as a kid and a teen--has been replicated many times over by other bloggers. I get that she's gone from career woman making tons of money to mom homeschooling her kids and is conflicted about it. I get how her identity is tied up in being a farmer's wife--not to mention her income, as her blog now pretty much centers around photos taken on the farm. I even get how her self-worth has become tied to the amount of attention she gets from readers--she readily admits that her closest relationships are with her kids and with her blog readers. But what I don't get is how the company she founded and is still part of in some way--Brazen Careerist--still wants to have anything to do with her or wants pictures of her bruised ass in any way associated with their professional brand.

Mostly, though, I'm sad. I used to revere Penelope. I can't even count the number of times I've blogged about her because the search feature on my old blog doesn't work anymore. I loved that she wasn't conventional, and that her brazen-ness was what was responsible for her success. I didn't mind reading her overshares about getting Brazilian waxes or posing for nude for her dad. It made her human and, somehow, likeable. Maybe it made her strong in my eyes, for surviving so much abuse and craziness, and succeeding in spite of it. But this new tangent--her as farm wife homeschooling her kids and making excuses for staying in a physically abusive marriage? There's nothing inspiring about that. Women like that are a dime a dozen--women who marginalize themselves and allow their husbands to degrade and demean them, and who tell themselves that it's better for the kids to have two parents and to live in a beautiful house and have a mom who is home instead of toiling away in an office. I used to be one of those women--not the abuse part--except for one time--but the dependent part. It sucked.

I'll digress, because I don't even really know what it is I'm trying to say--other than that if being a successful blogger means becoming so dependent on the attention and pageviews that you'll do anything to get either or both, I'm happy to be a crappy blogger.

Association Swing and a Miss--CEA Tech Enthusiast Membership

2011-12-14T11:53:00.002-05:00

Last March, I got an email from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) informing me of a new member category they had just created: Tech Enthusiast. I believe the dues were $30 a year and the benefits included the following:

As a CEA Tech Enthusiast (TE) member you will receive hot deals and incredible opportunities from our corporate partners. These include free and discounted products, advance product launch information, access to industry events, and beta testing opportunities. As a TE, you are privy to some very exclusive information.

What the hell, I figured--it was an interesting concept, and for $30 I thought I'd give it a try and see how great the "hot deals" and "incredible opportunities" were, not to mention "beta testing opportunities." I paid up and....crickets. A few emails...and by few I mean really few. No beta testing opportunities that I recall. A circa 2000 online discussion board. That's about it.

Last week I got an email from them announcing that they are ending the new membership category effective January 31, 2012. Wow, really--not even giving it a year? I guess on one hand I applaud them doing what few associations do--cutting an ineffective program. But on the other hand, it feels like they just threw it out there to see if people would pay and devoted basically no staff or resources to it succeeding--what did they expect?

In my opinion, there are a few things they could have done to make this program more of a success:

Technology--I know I'm possibly more the exception rather than the rule, but IMHO, it's 2011--why would you launch what is basically an online membership category and use online forums instead of an online social networking platform? It's one thing if your members are old-school or not that interested in online discussion, but for the demographic they were targeting, why did they think members would want to interact with each other on an online bulletin board while their other online interactions are likely on Facebook or something similar? Yes, it would have cost more but it also would probably have been a lot easier to use, and would have hopefully fostered better member engagement. That said, there are absolutely some successful discussion forums out there--having a Facebook-esque platform is definitely not a guarantee of success. But in this case...the forums were just a fail.
Communication--We've all heard of "build it and they will come" syndrome when it comes to social media, but a whole member category basically built on pay your dues to join then figure it out from there? Obviously it didn't work out so well in this case. Not that people necessarily want to be inundated with even more email, but seriously--this was the total opposite of too much email: barely any email or any other communications. No newsletter. No magazine. Pretty much no anything, period. How are people supposed to feel part of something if they forget they're even a member because nobody is driving the bus? I heard more from people I haven't seen in 30+ years on Facebook this past nine months than I heard from CEA about the thing for which I was paying to dues to belong to. How about a Facebook presence driving me to the website or reminding me of the "incredible opportunities"? Oh, wait--there is one...which I never knew about until I happened to look it up when I was writing this post. How about a phone call from someone there checking in to see how I was liking my membership and what I felt was lacking? A survey? How about something, anything, other than crickets?
Advertising/Revenue--I have to admit I'm kind of sad to see this thing fail because I think it could have been a success. I get that CEA is a huge association with much bigger fish to fry than some lowly "tech enthusiasts" at $30 a year per, but I thought a consumer membership was a cool idea and could have been a great way for them to connect sponsors and corporate members to consumers like me who spend a lot on tech products. What if they had gotten sponsors/partners to offer free membership to their customers, or had stores like Best Buy or RadioShack offer free memberships in stores or fliers? They could have potentially gotten a lot of members and, in turn, could have probably made decent money through advertising opportunities. What if they had offered some kind of weekly or daily deal concept to members? Granted, I'm the first to admit the daily deal world is already pretty saturated, but something that hooks in members on a recurring basis and both offers them a great deal and reminds them of the organization they're part of? Seems like it could have been a decent source of revenue and a good direct-to-consumer way of advertising.

Ok, I'll stop there. I don't know--I guess the "fail fast" thing applies here and they were just trying to cut their losses, but as someone who thought this seemed like a cool concept and was willing to pay to see how it panned out, I'm surprised how bummed I am to see this fail so fast. As a member, I feel kind of discarded or something. Is there such a thing as failing too fast?

5 Predictions; 5 Resolutions

2011-12-12T16:20:00.000-05:00

What would December be without the obligatory predictions post? Or, for that matter, the new year's resolution post? I'm kicking it FIO style and combining the two into one post.

Predictions:

Hiring for community and social media managers will continue to rise. And confusion about the differences between the roles will persist.
Burnout and disillusionment among social media/community management professionals will rise. All those new hires? Will have to work their asses off to justify their existence and will realize that the job is more than rainbows and unicorns and will decide that the job sounded a lot funner than it is. (And yes, I know perfectly well that "funner" is not a word. I choose to use it anyway.)
Google+ will not be a game-changer. Facebook is where the traffic is and their pages offer more functionality. Sure, some brands/organizations will do great on Google+, but ultimately it won't be worth the time or effort for most orgs to set up shop on one more social network.
Facebook will abandon Timeline. Ok, this may be more wishful thinking than prediction but I HATE the Timeline design.
Foursquare will flourish. I was *this close* to being a Foursquare quitter after I reached 1,000 checkins and, instead of a free t-shirt, got a coupon for 40% off a t-shirt. Seriously?! I was DONE. But strangely, checking in 1,000 times was apparently the magic number of times it took for me to admit my addiction to Foursquare. So despite lack of free stuff or even any decent specials, Foursquare has become a social network for me, as well as probably just a nervous habit, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. Also, now that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook and will be shutting down in January, all those Gowalla users will have to go somewhere, and who wants to give Facebook access to their checkin data?

Resolutions:

I will commit to the Social Sanity Manifesto. I love this manifesto, and have already taken step 1--deleting my Klout profile. I've already experienced the anxiety and overload Rachel Happe talks about in this awesome post and I think the 10 commitments laid out in this manifesto will go a long way towards helping to roll back the anxiety and overload caused by spending too much time online on too many sites connecting with too many people.
I will read more--and not for business. Business books are great, but especially in the social space, everyone and their brother either has written, is writing, or plans to write a book in the near future. That's great and all, but let's be honest--not everyone was meant to be a writer and many of these books are crap. Some, of course, are not, but they are few and far between. So I will spend more time reading books I want to read and less time reading books I feel I'm supposed to read because some social media A-lister is marveling about them.
I will not be sucked into the numbers game. This basically is a replay of #1, but think it bears repeating, if for no other reason than to drum it into my own head. I hate it that I thought twice about deleting my Klout profile because I had bought into the idea of being graded on at least some level. Seriously--who gives a shit about "online influence" except people trying to sell you shit, or who want you to sell their shit--for free?
I will try yoga. I tried it once--about 20 years ago--and the teacher told me, basically, that I was too hyper and/or spastic for yoga. So I never tried it again. But I'm kind of into the idea that people shouldn't limit themselves based on narratives they just play and re-play inside their heads (e.g. "I'm bad at math") so I'm willing (sort-of) to try yoga again. Even as I type this every fiber of my being is saying "seriously?" and laughing, but I'm going to resolve to try it anyway.
I will try not to be this person. Because, sadly, I can own at least half of those 54 things. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but let's be honest--I'm a 43 year old woman who lives in the suburbs. My chances of socializing IRL are not enhanced by being this person. (Or, frankly, by saying stuff like "IRL.") Although I admit that my favorite new friend of this year was someone I inadvertently insulted in a blog post a few years ago, actually met in real life last spring and now am good friends with offline. Even if much of what we talk about is stuff that happens online ; )

Klout Still Suggesting Users Invite Minors

2011-12-06T20:23:00.001-05:00

So remember when I wrote about how Klout had created a profile for my 13 year-old son? And how the story made it to the New York Times? And how Klout apologized and "rolled back" the changes, and vowed they had "no interest" in attracting minors to their site, and had supposedly set up some kind of safeguards ensuring that the same thing wouldn't happen again?

Well, it's happened again.

This is a screenshot of my Klout profile yesterday:

In case it's not clear from the picture, it's a snapshot of my "influence network"--including one mystery head. The mystery head, when moused-over, as depicted in this screen shot, is my 15 year old daughter, and Klout is urging me to invite her to Klout (I have scribbled out her last name--that's the black scribble).

To be perfectly clear: my Facebook profile is PRIVATE, not public. My daughter's Facebook profile is PRIVATE, not set to public. Yes, I have opted into Klout--something I'll be remedying soon--but where are the "safeguards" ensuring that Klout users aren't being urged to invite minors to set up profiles and link up their accounts, thereby giving Klout access to their data?

Here's the thing: parents need to be friends with their kids on Facebook to protect them and ensure they're not doing anything they shouldn't be doing, and to teach them about using social networks safely. But Klout is making it so that, in fact, by friending their kids on Facebook and not expressly opting out of Klout (a complicated and convoluted process), parents are actually providing Klout a direct pipeline to their kids.

How hard can it be to set up some kind of parameters ensuring that profiles of people under 18 will not be included in people's influence networks?

I'm about to make it easier by a factor of one: I'm off to delete my Klout profile.

Book Giveaway: Humanize!

2011-12-02T08:01:00.001-05:00

What better way to kick off the holiday season than with a giveaway? And not just any giveaway--an awesome one.

My friends Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter recently published Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World. I was fortunate enough to review a few chapters while it was still being written and was totally bowled over by how smart and awesome it is. And seriously--I'm not just saying that because they're friends; this book goes well beyond the now run-of-the-mill social media book. Humanize addresses the deep organizational changes that companies need to make to become more human not only to succeed in social media but to succeed in business. The book is chock-full of ideas about why and how organizations can become more human....and it doesn't just stop at ideas. It includes detailed action plans--including dowloadable worksheets--you can use to explore where your organization is now and where it could be in terms of being more human, and concrete steps on how to get there.

Seriously--don't just take my word for it--check out the reviews. Or, better yet, read it for yourself when you WIN A FREE COPY! ; )

Here's all you have to do. Leave a comment with your name and either Twitter handle or email address so I can contact you if you win. That's all. I will pick a winner Tuesday evening, December 6 at approximately 9 pm. Why then? Because Wednesday, I'll be at the ASAE Technology Conference & Expo, as will be Jamie and Maddie, so if the winner happens to be there too I can bring the book, thereby not only saving myself from having to mail it BUT giving you the opportunity to get it autographed by the authors. And if you're not there, well, I could get it autographed anyway before I send it.

Don't want to wait? You can buy it on Kindle or Nook today (not affiliate links or anything--you know I am too lazy for that).

Thanks and good luck!

Update: And the winner is...

Commenter #9: girardster (sorted in order of date/time posted)

Thanks for playing everyone!