Social Media Marketing

Help! What is Twitter?

2012-05-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

There you are, in a conference, and you see someone bent over her iPhone, typing madly. You approach and ask, “What are you doing?”

“I’m live-tweeting the conference!” she replies.

“Oh, that’s nice,” you say, suddenly very, very aware that here is another person using Twitter and you still don’t know what it is.

So let’s start at the beginning, the dictionary definition:

Twitter: a messaging service limited to 140 characters per message.

Ta-da! Is that it?

No. That’s not everything.

Twitter is a:

Tool for online chatting
Marketing channel to promote content
Crowdsourcing resource for asking questions
Recruiting service
News source
Networking pool
Search engine

But can it really be all those things? Sure. You just have to know how to use it.

The Basics

Let’s start at the beginning, with Twitter.com. Twitter starts with you setting up an account and selecting a username. (Mine is @kehutchinson, if you’d like to follow.)

Every person who has a Twitter account can send out messages, at a maximum limit of 140 characters--not words, characters. This includes spaces and punctuation. If you visit the page of any individual Twitter account, you can see a timeline of those messages.

But visiting each individual account page that you’re interested in is very tedious. So what you can do is click on the “Follow” button to subscribe to that person’s messages, also known as tweets. You can see all the messages from the accounts that you are subscribed to by visiting your home stream, on the main Twitter page when you’re logged in to the site.

Deciding Who To Follow

Depending on how you want to use Twitter, who you follow will differ. Let’s start with the idea of using it as a news source. Say you want to get local, national, and industry specific news to help you stay informed about what’s going on in the world. For an industry, let’s assume you’re a marketer in Boston, like me.

If you regularly read a news site, visit that site and look around for the little blue Twitter icon to find that person’s handle. I depend on the New York Times, so I follow @nytimes. For business news in my region, I follow the Boston Business Journal at @bbjnewsroom. Add in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, iMedia, and the Boston Globe, and you’ve set up a tidy way to follow the news. To go more in depth, looking for marketing/business authors, like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, or Greg Verdino. And once you start adding those kind of people to your list, Twitter can start recommending new people for you to follow.

I’m Following a Lot of People, How Do I Sort Them?

So you’ve decided to follow some news sources, some friends, and some random people that provide good content, plus one or two other accounts that you found. Now you’re following 100 people, and that stream on your homepage is getting awfully crowded. That’s where Lists come in.

To create a List, click on the profile icon and select Lists from the drop down menu. Then click Create List. Now you can name a list something like “Local News” and add all the people you follow related to that topic in the list. Sorting accounts into lists helps you from being overwhelmed with information.

What’s This Hashtag Thing?

Ah, the hashtag. Formerly known as the pound sign, it’s this symbol: #. Twitter uses hashtags in front of words to index messages. Since accounts can be mashed together in anyone’s stream, if you want to follow a conversation or chat group, you should search for all the chats that use a common hashtag. There are many chat groups that “meet” on a regular schedule on a particular topic, and you can search for a the chat’s official hashtag to see all the tweets in that chat. So, if you were interested in chatting with brand managers, you might search for #brandchat to see the running commentary from that group.

Or, say you’re interested in learning about the recent developments in the Middle East. You could search for #arabspring or #syria to find tweets related to those topics.

How Can I Tweet To Just One Person?

There are two ways to direct tweets on Twitter, one private, one public. If you have a message to send someone, say, you want to tweet your phone number so a new lead can call you, but you don’t want the world to see your information, you’d send what’s called a Direct Message (DM for short). On a profile page you can click “Direct Message” to send one of these, or you can type the letter “d” in front of that person’s username in the main message box. Then the message will only be sent to that specific person.

If what you want to message isn’t sensitive information, but you want to call someone’s attention to it, you’d use what’s called an @reply (spoken as “at reply”). This simply type your message and include somewhere in it @username and Twitter will link the tweet to that person’s account. I’ve modified the settings of my account so that I get a ping on my iPhone when someone mentions me in this way, so I don’t miss any good conversations.

Is That Everything?

No, of course that’s not everything. The best way to really know what Twitter is about is to actually build an account and start following people and sending tweets. It’s truly a “learn by doing” system. But this should get you started.

Do you have specific Twitter questions? Leave a comment and I’m happy to answer them!

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The Basics of Facebook Marketing

2012-05-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

It’s not new anymore to use social media as a channel in an overall marketing mix. Look around the web, and there’s a plethora of social networks available, from the general and ubiquitous (Facebook) to the niche focus and exclusive (Spotify).

So when you’re considering how to add social media to your own marketing strategy, it’s important to consider what networks are going to help your brand the most.

First off, I’m going to tell you that social media marketing isn’t free, and it takes more time to do well than most people think. You can do it in-house and pay the salary of that person, or you can hire a freelancer or agency to help you manage it. It’s time consuming, because it’s a variant on content marketing, which means generating lots of content, hopefully good content.

So let’s consider the major networks for social media, and how they might help your business. Today, let’s look at the elephant in the room

Facebook

This is the big one that people think of when they hear the phrase “Social Network.” It’s huge, everyone knows about it, it’s integrated into every corner of the Internet and it’s heading for its IPO.

Marketing on Facebook can take a few different avenues to reach an audience of potential consumers:

Pages: Previously called “Fan Pages,” these are similar to the individual profile pages of users, except that they can be controlled by more than one Administrator. Pages feature a profile image, a cover photo, and a timeline of the company or organization. You can post pictures, links, and status updates to a Page.

Facebook Ads: Like display ads, Facebook ads appear alongside a user’s News Feed and in other relevant locations. They feature a thumbnail and a few lines of copy. You can tailor the content to an audience that is broad or narrowly targeted. Facebook ads have a notoriously poor ROI in terms of clicks, but they are visual and infinitely customizable. Costs for Facebook advertising have also recently risen precipitously.

Working with Pages

Most marketers know what to expect when they buy a print ad to run in the Business section of the New York Times. You’ll get a specific block on a specific page, that you can completely control the creative for (within publisher’s terms, of course), and it will be seen by the people who purchase the paper that day. It’s a very regimented process.

Facebook is anything but regimented. Let’s start with Pages. Like anything else on Facebook, a Page is a living, breathing section of the site, and it requires you to constantly monitor what’s up there. If you don’t put up any content at all, no one will visit the page, or interact with it. So first of all, you have to put up a cover photo, and write in some information about your company/cause/product. In traditional advertising, this would be the end stage, where you’d sit back and measure. But in Facebook, you can’t let anything sit for too long.

If someone “likes” your page, any information you put on that page will show up as an item in that person’s news feed. Depending on how many friends/pages that person subscribes to, your update will be part of a flood of information. Studies have shown that after the initial “like,” most people interact with brands via the news feed updates, rather than returning to visit the page. It’s important to remember not to flood your subscribers with updates, but also not to leave the page completely alone. In the 24 hour cycle of Facebook, leaving a page without any updates for over a few days gives the impression of abandonment, and often users will flee, like rats off a sinking ship.

When using Facebook Pages as part of your marketing mix, treat it as you would your email program. Set up a schedule for posts (some social media tools like Hootsuite even let you schedule posts for the future, automating the process), and also consider what types of posts you will make. Keep your content focused on your brand/product—those are the most effective ways to engage your users. (Stay away from “How was your weekend?” prattle. Users will already hear this over and over from their friends and acquaintances, and doesn’t give them any value from your page.)

A 2011 study found that posting 5-7 times per week on your brand’s Page will only reach 16% of your fans. Remember to keep your content current and on-message.

Working with Ads

Building a Facebook ad is simple, and can be done in minutes. These ads can be hyper-targeted, but are not very customizable. As pictured here, ads are limited to a small square of text and thumbnail image on a white background, in Facebook’s branding style. So you need a picture that will look good in a tiny size; compare the Pop Salad “video” shot with so much going on it’s hard to make out the context with the bright red, simple image of the Dansko clogs in the Zappos ad.

I pulled this screenshot from my Facebook profile, so you can take a guess at what these advertisers are targeting. Elizabeth Warren already knows that I “like” her page, and is hoping to get me to join her campaign on a more active basis. I don’t shop at Zappos.com, so more likely those shoe ads come from targeting women in their early 30s, possibly in the US. The “Approachable Paris” ad most likely targets people who have listed Paris in their interests. (I also have an app listing all the places I’ve been in the world that has Paris tagged.)

So when you are building your ads, and you consider who totarget, think hard about who your audience is. Facebook offers a truckload of information about its users: the site could tell you that I’m married with no children, two advanced degrees, live in Boston, MA, and I love bicycling. It’s hard to get so much data on your email list recipients.

That said, Facebook ads can be very expensive, and aren’t a good match for every business/product. I work for a domain registrar, and I spent half a year tinkering with Facebook ads before realizing I was just wasting my budget. I didn’t get any more clicks that I did from just having a Facebook page in the first place. And also, those ads get expensive very quickly. If your budget is small, you might want to skip Facebook ads and focus on the content development for a Facebook Page instead. Even big budget firms have begun pulling Facebook ads, citing poor return, like General Motors, who yankedtheir $10 million budget for Facebook ads last year. And keep in mind that half of Facebook users never even click on ads at all.

Deciding How to Use Facebook

Like any marketing channel, Facebook has to be carefully examined for your audience in order to be used effectively. Start with the basics:

Define your audience (age, location, gender, interest)
Is your audience on Facebook? (Even if you don’t buy any ads, you can use the Ads tool to estimate the size of your targeted population on the network.)
What kind of content does your audience like? (Look at past efforts to see if they respond more to sales/offers or information or something else)

Once you have this information, start building a plan for using Facebook, first with a Page, and then, if you want to spend the money, on display ads. Make sure to watch those ad campaigns very carefully to make sure you’re not wasting your budget!

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Cheesy Lesson Time

2012-04-20T07:18:00.001-07:00

I watched Dangerous Minds for the first time last week. You know, that (eep!) 20 year old movie with Michelle Pfeiffer teaching inner city kids the joys of poetry.

It's not a bad movie, but it lacks a lot of the edginess that I remember seeing in the trailers when it first came out. (Or maybe it was way edgier back then, and I'm just jaded now.)

Anyway, one of the central themes of the film was choice. Do you choose to stay in a bad situation? Or do you choose to do something about it? Do you choose to accept curent circumstances?

Certainly, I'm not a high school student in the bad part of LA, but the idea of choice has been sitting on my shoulder since last week. What do I choose to do? I have chosen to get an education. I have chosen to live in Boston. I have chosen to get married, to not get a driver's license.

Right now in my career I am facing new circumstances, and for a week I have been looking at the situation in a new light: I can choose to accept the new order, or I can choose to change things. I suppose I could even choose to find a new circumstance.

But I am learning that I am not "stuck" with what's going on. I have a choice. The next step is making the choice.

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Writing That I Don't Do

2012-04-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

I do my best writing in the sauna. Lying there in the heat, after a vicious workout, words float through my brain and form the most beautiful sentences. Novels, essays, blog posts converge, not to mention the snappy comebacks that I wanted to be able to use hours or days before.

But too often, all that writing evaporates with the heat when I exit the sauna. That magical 15-20 minutes is the sweet spot, and then I get out, and get dressed and go home. Very rarely do those words get down in a physical (or digital) format.

It's disappointing for me not writing. I write for my job, and certainly I write emails, but rarely do I actually write just for myself. I used to write all the time, in a journal, on my laptop, on this blog. And now I'm held back.

Some of it comes from my perfectionist tendencies. I don't want words out there that aren't perfect. That aren't sourced and cited. I don't want some Internet troll to hack apart my premises.

Some of it is from self-censorship. I've had plenty of things that I wanted to discuss, but they're of a personal nature, and I know for a fact I don't want any future employer to read about these things. Nor do I want family members reading them. (So why would I write them on a public medium? Because I know so many wonderful people over the web and I'd want them to read it.)

So this is a post about the writing that I don't do. I don't write poems anymore. I don't write stories. I haven't even gotten around to writing about the amazing customer service letter I got from the Dremel company a few months ago.

And here's to the writing that I will hopefully do, when I find the right time, topic, and medium.

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Conscious Shopping

2012-03-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

I am a bleeding-heart liberal (my father's term). This should put all of this in context.

About five years ago, I embarked on a little experiment: to not buy anything made in China for six months. This was a reaction to the news at the time about our Chinese trade deficit. I can't begin to describe how annoying it is to need to buy a desktop calculator and not being able to find a single one not made in China.

Essentially, the experiment failed because it's impossible to buy nothing made in China. But what grew out of the experiment was the decision to shop consciously. This meant more than trying to avoid buying something made in China. It meant choosing a small, locally owned shop over a big chain store, because they are at a disadvantage in the market. It meant buying things in person rather than over the Internet, because that would mean I would pay sales tax, which goes toward providing state services I depend on, like public transit. Also, buying something in the store that I bicycled to reduces the carbon load of the purchase.

Recently, I read in Mother Jones about how Internet mega-retailers like Amazon and Walmart use third party logistics providers to do all the actual order filling and shipping. And the workers they hire work in sweatshop conditions:

One suggestion for minimizing work-related pain and strain is to get a stepladder to retrieve any items on shelves above your head rather than getting up on your toes and overreaching. But grabbing one of the stepladders stashed few and far between among the rows of merchandise takes time. Another is to alternate the hand you use to hold and wield your cumbersome scanner. "You'll feel carpal tunnel start to set in," one of the supervisors told me, "so you'll want to change hands." But that, too, he admitted, costs time, since you have to hit the bar code at just the right angle for it to scan, and your dominant hand is way more likely to nail it the first time. Time is not a thing I have to spare. I'm still only at 57 percent of my goal. It's been 10 years since I was a mover and packer for a moving company, and only slightly less since I worked ridiculously long hours as a waitress and housecleaner. My back and knees were younger then, but I'm only 31 and feel pretty confident that if I were doing those jobs again I'd still wake up with soreness like a person who'd worked out too much, not the soreness of a person whose body was staging a revolt. I can break into goal-meeting suicide pace for short bouts, sure, but I can't keep it up for 10.5 hours.

Go and read the whole article: I Was A Warehouse Wage Slave

I am distressed that this sort of employment is even legal in the US, and that because of the third-party temp-labor hiring, companies like Amazon aren't held liable for the working conditions.

This has really soured me on shopping at Amazon, or any other online retailer that I can find using similar third-party logistics for order filling. But today, I found a new wrinkle in my conscious shopping. For years, I've used the "wish list" function of Amazon to keep track of books I'd like to read, although I often just get them from the library. And yet, there are a number of people who actually, sweetly, buy me books and things from that list... from Amazon. Am I encouraging them to use Amazon if I keep my wish list there?

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Getting Political: Haters Gonna Hate

2012-02-21T08:11:00.000-08:00

Note: I've been aiming to have my latest set of posts focus on marketing and social media, but something happened recently on a social network, and I want to write about it, even though it's super political.

It began with a romantic thought for Valentine's Day. My husband and I are fairly demonstrative about loving each other, and since we say "I love you" at least once a day (usually 20 or more), neither of us really gets into the whole candy and flowers part of Valentine's.

This year, Nate asked me if he could give me a different kind a present: a donation in my name to a feminist organization. This was thrilling to me. I originally asked for a donation to Planned Parenthood, but Nate asked to pick one himself. After researching several different organizations, he chose NARAL.

Who is NARAL?

We are made up of pro-choice women and men across the United States. Together, we protect a woman's right to choose.

How do we protect the right to choose, exactly?

We lobby Congress to convince your elected representatives to support your right to choose.
We organize women and men to make sure that lawmakers hear from the pro-choice people they represent.
We connect what happens in Congress or in the states to how it affects your ability to make private decisions, like choosing legal abortion.
We work with our state affiliates to advance ideas that are good for women's freedom. We fight back against the bad ideas that threaten our privacy.
NARAL Pro-Choice America uses the political process to elect lawmakers who share our pro-choice values and defeat candidates who don't.

We are passionate about our work—and we couldn't do our job without the great people who stand with us.

That's why Fortune Magazine has described NARAL Pro-Choice America as "one of the top 10 advocacy groups in America."

I am very much pro-choice, and so are many people. One in three American women has had an abortion. It's a very personal choice for a woman to make, but it is important to keep the option open.

I was proud of Nate's gift, so I tweeted about it:

I was thrilled when NARAL's twitter account re-tweeted it.

And then the torrent of anti-choice tweets directed at me started. Lifepeeps accused me of funding the ripping of limbs from babies, Toupsfamily told me that I was lying when I said NARAL promoted contraceptives, saying that the only "birth control" NARAL supported was abortion. Then led to many anti-choice myths being spewed, such as abortion causes breast cancer.

I've been trying to engage these people in conversation about reproductive health, and eventually it comes down to the fact that these people believe in God, and what they really want is to keep women from having access to contraceptives. In fact, MateoDHoffman has spent the better part of this morning telling me that sex is not necessary and no one needs to have it. He does not agree with my point that sex is a basic biological function, and it offers many health benefits, not to mention psychological benefits.

I've also been informed that doctors never tell women the risks of birth control, which I find odd, since I have to answer questions every year and undergo tests for blood clots, heart function, etc in order to be prescribed my pills. I get a big pamphlet of information when I pick up my prescription that outlines those risks. They're mentioned in the ads for contraceptives on TV, along with all the scary risks for taking any medication.

These anti-choice folks insult my intelligence. I accept that we're not going to agree, and I'm not going to convert them, but I am compelled to let them know that they do not speak for all women (in fact, I'm pretty sure none of these people are women).

I read a few posts recently from some feminist writers that I truly respect, talking about the exhaustion of being a feminist, in having to constantly be ready for action and to defend women's rights and choices. I'm not the most active feminist in the world, but this anti-choice stychomythia makes me tired. I have to take a break at some point, but I'll come back. I don't want these people to think they've beaten me with their obsfucation and religious rhetoric. Because they haven't. I will continue to fight for women's rights, 140 characters at a time.

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Komen's Bad PR Decision

2012-02-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

It's not breaking news anymore, but since it's still a major topic of discussion in my household, let's talk about the Susan G. Komen (For the Cure™) Foundation and the defunding of Planned Parenthood debacle.

Komen describes its work as:

Today, Komen for the Cure is the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists fighting to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all and energize science to find the cures. Thanks to events like the Komen Race for the Cure, we have invested more than $1.9 billion to fulfill our promise, becoming the largest source of nonprofit funds dedicated to the fight against breast cancer in the world.

As part of that work, Komen grants funding for research and prevention, including "Community Health and Outreach":

Our community health grants ensure quality care for all by funding breast cancer education, screening and treatment projects for those who need them most. Through community needs assessments, more than 75,000 volunteers working through local Affiliates identify unmet needs in their communities and provide Affiliate community health grants to fill these gaps. Komen’s Global Headquarters also administers the National Capital Area Grants Program to address breast cancer disparities in the medically underserved in the capital area. And to ensure quality care and access around the global, our Susan G. Komen for the Cure Global Promise Fund works with local communities and International organizations to develop innovative education and outreach programs.

As part of those screening projects, Komen provided funding to Planned Parenthood to provide breast cancer screening. PP is often a resource for low-income women without access to regular health care. And cancer screenings make up about 16% of what Planned Parenthood does:

Recently, Komen decided to not fund grants to any group under investigation by "local, state, or federal governments." This included Planned Parenthood, under investigation by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who is "seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions."

Planned Parenthood was temporarily blindsided by the defunding move, and then the Internet began to rally around the cause of providing cancer screenings to women in need. Soon, the anti-abortion stance of a VP at Komen emerged. Karen Handel, it was alleged, designed the new rule in order to exclude Planned Parenthood from receiving funding because the group also provides abortion services (a mere 3% of PP's output).

After major outrage across the Internet and among donors:

Why Komen Yanked PP's Funding - Delusions of Grandeur
Komen's PP Decision: Seems Like it Was About Abortion - Mother Jones
Komen Decision Results in Spike in Donations to PP - Washington Post

Komen decided to apologize. And reinstate funding. And accept Karen Handel's resignation.

Time for a small disclaimer: I have never supported the Komen Foundation, and never given it any money. Mostly my perception of the Komen Foundation has been as a purveyor of Pink Kitsch:

Yours for only $20! Not smartphone compatible.
http://www.shopkomen.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=1723&catID=327

However, I think it's important to respect an organization that provides funding for cancer research and screenings, and generally works to prevent and cure cancer. It's a lofty goal, and I respect that.

Looking at the Komen incident from the perspective of a marketer, there are multiple mistakes to consider here. Leaving aside the political arguments, there are some valuable lessons to learn in terms of public relations:

Never underestimate the power of the Internet, particularly social media sharing. In the digital age, it only takes a few clicks or a copy and paste command to share bad news. And we all know that people are far more likely to share a bad story than a good one. Combine that with auto-sharing, auto-tweeting, and you have a massive echo chamber to contend with. Consider about how your audience will perceive your action and how they will react.

Know your audience, and know your industry's audience. Certainly Komen knows its customers, donors, patients, and researchers. Any good foundation will know the position of its stakeholders. But when you consider that Komen is in the business of providing health services to women (industry grouping), it's astounding that the foundation didn't realize that it was also in the same industry as Planned Parenthood. They're not competitors, but they serve an overlapping audience. You have to consider if you are going to make a radical change that affects a stakeholder (PP), you need to consider how that will affect your supporters who also support that stakeholder.

This video neatly encapsulates both these points:

Be transparent in your governance, and stick to your principles. People can find all kinds of information about your organization these days, so if you make a radical shift, don't make up a silly cover story. If Karen Handel honestly wanted to defund PP because it provides abortion services, she should say so. She should stand up for her anti-abortion stance and be honest. No one, especially donors, likes to be lied to. Once you've obsfucated, it's ridiculously difficult to re-earn the trust of the public. But additionally, the Komen foundation should stick to its principles of serving people in need, providing breast cancer screenings. Moving away from its original principles and lying about it will keep the Komen foundation in the doghouse for a while.

Be alert and be prepared. The real winner in this showdown is Planned Parenthood. By playing off this issue, it's pulled in a lot of funding, including a $250,000 match grant from Mayor Bloomberg plus $100,000 from the anti-cancer LiveStrong group. PP used its vast network to spread the word of the defunding to give itself a back up plan to continue to provide cancer screenings, a key service it provides.

Do you think Komen can recover? I'd like to see a major retooling of its organizational structure, including ditching the pink kitsch.

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Just the Same, Only Different

2012-01-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

My dad is full of great phrases, like the classic "Don't do that... it only does that so many times." As in: "Don't zoom the lens in and out on your camera, it only goes in and out so many times." Or: "Don't play with the automatic locks on the car door, they only lock and unlock so many times."

Another one he likes is "Just the same, only different." This phrase works wonderfully when explaining why you should try spinach, when you already like lettuce.

Currently, in my line of work, I'm immersed in new gTLDs. What are they? Put simply, a gTLD (generic top-level domain) is the part of a URL at the very end, to the right of the dot. You probably know about .com, .net and .org. Well, this year, corporations and organizations will be allowed to apply for new gTLDs. It's starting to push into the mainstream media coverage, but mostly I read about this issue in domain industry media and IP law media. And there are a lot of people who oppose this expansion. To sum up the basic arguments:

IP attorney: "Creating new domains means that we'll have to protect all of our trademarks from cybersquatters across hundreds of extensions and that will cost us a lot of money and time so don't do it!"
Domain investor: "New domains are always worthless, we can't make any money off them, so don't do it!"
Businesses: "No one will ever learn to type anything other than .com at the end of a name, so don't do it!"

And I look at all these arguments against new gTLDs, and I want to say:

It's just the same, only different.

You already love and know .com. So why can't you love .web? Wikipedia relies on .org, but surely the Clinton Foundation would look nice on .ngo.

Another gem of wisdom from Dad: "Put it where it belongs." This also applies for new gTLDs. Shoes belong in the closet, and hotel websites belong on .hotel. We have complicated classifications systems for libraries to sort our information, why not classifiers online?

What I see is a lot of people not wanting to change because "it's always been like that." Well, I'm telling you, don't stick to the same old thing and get the same old result. It only does that so many times.

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Slouching Toward Feminism

2012-01-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

Nate: "I had a feminist moment the other day."

Me: "What do you mean?"

Nate: "I was working on a project and pulling a list of all the town planners, firefighters and police in a certain region and I noticed they were all men. There weren't any women at all."

This led to a discussion about why that might be, beyond general hiring sexism. That part of the conversation isn't what I wanted to write about.

I wanted to write that I am so proud of Nate's ability to notice the issue, and willingness to acknowledge there was a lack of women in these types of leadership roles.

Not everyone takes the time to look around them and see these things. For myself, I see a huge gap between the number of male leaders and female leaders. I don't worry about this so much for myself, as I do for women and humanity in general. Half of our country's population is made up of women, and yet the majority of the decisions about women's health issues, including birth control are made by men.

The way toward progress is for people to recognize the gap, and to ask themselves, why aren't there more women leaders? This goes for the local level up to the White House.

Look around you today. Do you see women in powerful positions? Who are they?

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Does the Government Really Care How Much Time I Spend At Starbucks?

2012-01-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

Fast Company reported last week that the government is tracking my iPhone usage. [Link:
Use An iPhone? Yup, The Government Tracks That]

I have a few friends online, mostly that guy from college who really, really wishes he could go be a student protestor in the late '60s, who have been posting about the same topic, claiming that the government is out to get us, tracking our every movement, etc.

But I seriously doubt that the government is interested in a detailed log of my iPhone's whereabouts:

7:00 AM - on the kitchen counter
8:00 AM - on the MBTA
9:00 AM - in my office
10:00 AM - in my office
11:00 AM - in my office
12:00 PM - in my office
1:00 PM - in my office
2:00 PM - at Starbucks
3:00 PM - in my office
4:00 PM - in my office
5:00 PM - in my office
6:00 PM - at the gym
7:00 PM - on the MBTA
8:00 PM - on the kitchen counter

You get the picture. It's entirely possible that President Obama could decide to look up my iPhone locations and determine that I spend too much time at the office and call my boss and tell him I need a vacation. But plausible? No.

I do not object to the government having access to the cell phone GPS data for people who are suspected of criminal acts. And if that means they are going to have access to everyone's data, but probably only use it in criminal investigations, I'm on board.

Technology keeps advancing and at some point we could all have GPS chips implanted in us, for all we know now. In comparison, a little data storage from cell phones seems pretty innocuous.

Or, you could all just unplug and stop carrying your cell phone around with you everywhere you go.

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Sound Bite: Scoreless

2012-01-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm a hip social media player, and while you'll find me bopping around Twitter, LinkedIn and G+, you won't find me on Klout. Or Kred. Or Empire Avenue.

Today I got an invitation for ProSkore. And you know what, I'm not going to join that one either.

I am a real person and I engage on social networks in my own way. I don't want to be standardized, because I use every social network differently. It's not possible to objectively score my social media presence, because there's no objective way to use a social network. Twitter is not an SAT. G+ is not the GRE. Even the power players on social media are doing radically different things, and scoring them is useless. Lady Gaga uses Twitter one way, and President Obama uses it another. Both are pretty darn influential and have a lot of followers, but there isn't a way to score that.

If you want to engage with me on social media, great. I'm open to meeting all kinds of people online, and I love those I meet that are writers, marketers, political activists, photographers, technology fans, and everyone else that I talk to and hang out with.

Just don't tell me I need a number by my name for that.

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Sound Bite: Why I'm not a top blogger

2012-01-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

Are you a high schooler looking to establish a personal brand? Fast Company can tell you how to do that: U R What U Tweet.

After spending literally years learning about personal branding, I've decided I don't want a personal brand. If you're Dan Schwabel, and you've got a solid brand, I applaud you. But I don't want to narrow myself into a core mission or elevator pitch. I am a complex person, with complex thoughts, and while my day job is marketing, my weekends are packed with history, art, science, and a whole host of other topics. In fact, I love my weekends so much, you won't find me on Twitter on the weekends. Or Facebook, Google +, or even on a laptop. That alone is enough to make sure I'm not a top blogger.

In a lot of my online reading, I encounter people who have to admonish themselves to step away from the screen. I am not one of those people. I enjoy a good cuddle with a cat and Law & Order reruns. I love bicycling in the warm weather, and helping my husband build his model train layout.

I know yesterday I was complaining about being "old" and not accomplishing anything. But today, I realize that if I wanted to be in that whiz kid group, I'd have to stop having a life offline. I'm not willing to make that trade.

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Sound Bite: Age shouldn't matter

2012-01-17T14:43:00.000-08:00

Glancing through this evening's HARO requests, I see one journalist looking for "Tech/Social Media Professionals Under 30 in the DC area."

I don't fit this profile, mostly because I'm not in the DC area, but also because I'm 31. It's irritating to think that I work hard and achieve good results in what I do, but I'll never make that list, because I've hit my "Sell-By" date.

But hey, I'm sure I can still make a 35 Under 35 list. I have 4 years to nail that one.

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Mobile Marketing: QR and Snap Tag

2011-11-29T07:08:00.000-08:00

My new favorite online marketing resource is iMedia Connection. It comes to my inbox with a list of very relevant articles and the community has a lot of active discussions. It's almost as good as chatting with the #UsGuys on Twitter.

Yesterday, I read Sean X Cumming's piece: Why the QR code is failing.

An excerpt:

In my informal "on the street" survey of 300 people last month, I held up a sign with a QR code on it and the phrase: "Free gift if you can tell me what this is."I was not asking them to decipher it, just tell me what it actually was. Here are the results:

11 percent correctly answered QR code or quick response code

29 percent responded with "Some barcode thingy"

Seven percent guessed some variant of "Those things you stare at that get 3D when you cross your eyes. What picture is it? I can't seem to get it"

The remaining 53 percent tried everything from a secret military code, Korean (uh really?), to an aerial street map of San Francisco

My survey was conducted in San Francisco, the veritable Mecca of the planet for tech, so it only goes downhill from here.

A lot of this echoed my own dislike of QR codes: they're ugly. They're not intuitive. They break up good visual design. They DO look like secret codes, not something designed to bring you helpful information.

So today, iMedia delivered this piece by Jeff Hayzlett: TrendWatch: Why SnapTags are replacing QR codes.

SnapTags are 2-D barcodes that include a brand's logo (or a Facebook logo) in a notched circle design. Contrasted with the familiar QR code, the result seems minimalist and polished. But it's not just a new design. The interactivity and analytics are updated, as well.

Here's a quick visual for you:

SnapTags

QR code

Which one of these images makes you want to engage with it?

There's still the general point that neither is effective unless the person looking at it has a smart phone, and an application to scan the code, and knows what the expected outcome will be. However, I'm glad someone has come up with a solution to the visual problem posed by QR codes.

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On Knowledge, or My Nickname is Google

2011-10-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

My dad, a terrifically clever man, has taught me a lot of things. How to ride a bike, how to mow the lawn, how to change the spark plugs in my moped. How to work hard, how to fish, how to use a lathe, vertical miller, drill press, and various electric saws. He read me stories about archaeology and mythology and helped me build model pyramids out of clay. And if you had a question, whether it was "why is the sky blue" or "how can I reassemble this jumble of bones into a raccoon skeleton," he would know the answer.

(A favorite story was when my Aunt took me and my cousins to the beach, and my cousin asked her something about a shell or creature she found in the sand. My Aunt didn't know the answer, and my cousin sighed deeply and said, "I wish Uncle were here. He knows EVERYTHING.")

Now that I'm a grown up, I like pursuing the idea of knowing everything. Socrates said, "All I know is that I know nothing," and Oscar Wilde said "I am not young enough to know everything," but I treat pursuit of knowledge as my job. (Just not one I get paid for.)

On one of my favorite TV shows, Bones, Dr. Brennan sometimes employs an assistant Mr. Nigel-Murray who has a love of spouting out random facts. His habit gets on the nerves of most of the rest of the cast, but I love this character, because often times his random knowledge provides a vital clue to unraveling the mystery at hand.

I find that while my collection of knowledge is useful for trivia night, it often helps me in other ways. I enjoy discovering shared intellectual pursuits at networking events. Learning about foreign cultures has been very useful in navigating my current role in an international industry, from etiquette on accepting business cards to deciphering idiomatic speech patterns.

But the sheer joy of knowing something is its own reward. As we are so often told, knowledge is power. Power to master statistics or analyze current economic and financial trends. Power to immerse yourself in another language and read all the nuances of a culture. Power to know exactly where you have come from, and to determine where you are going.

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IMBO: Being a Feminist

2011-10-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

Though she doesn't like the word feminist because the term is so loaded within her community, she's a staunch egalitarian in a world in which there's an ongoing debate over whether husbands are the masters of their wives.
--Ruth Graham, writing on Rachel Held Evans in Slate

Why can't we like the word "feminist?" Is it because Rush Limbaugh recast feminists as "feminazis?"

In the religious world, Christianity is a huge umbrella religion. It includes Catholics, Protestants, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Evangelicals, and many, many more sub categories. Well, Feminism is a lot like that as well. There are conservative feminists, second-wave feminists, third-wave feminists, grrl power feminists, liberal feminists, Catholic feminists, Jewish feminists, socialist feminists--there are all kinds of feminists. Why must we all shy away from this word?

I'm not shying away from this word. I am a feminist. Feminism, and the notion of pushing for women's equality, and for that matter all kinds of gender equality, informs my daily life. When I vote, I vote for the candidate that will best promote women's rights, whether that's a man or a woman. When I have looked for jobs, I try and consider the one that is most fair to its women workers. When I shop, I look for items that come from companies that have women in leadership positions, or employ women fairly at least. When I have conversations, I tell people about women's issues, I point out that rape jokes aren't funny, and I let people know that I won't let others talk in ways that bring women down.

I'm proud to be a feminist. I know this designation gives people all sorts of pre-conceived notions about me, but that's not important. What's important is that I continue to be a feminist, and to use my daily life to make the world a better place for everyone, a more egalitarian place. Whether that means shrinking the political gender gap in Congress or just succeeding at having one less person tell dumb blonde jokes, I am making a difference. IMBO

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Juxtaposition

2011-07-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

A quick hit of something that sparked in my mind through some of reading.

First from New York Magazine: What Happens to All the Asian-American Overachievers When the Test-Taking Ends?

This is a thoughtful piece on the "Bamboo Ceiling," or how rote memorization can hamper Asian-Americans' advancement in a socially-interactive corporate setting. It also touches on Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and the stereotypical expectation that Asian-American children will grow up to be doctors, lawyers, and bankers.

Then today, from the New York Times: New for Aspiring Doctors, the People Skills Test

Again, it's a push about the social skills lacking in doctors that make them poor team members and how to teach them to inject more emotion into their work. So, I have to wonder if this catches on, if we'll see fewer Asian doctors.

There's so much more to this conversation, so please feel free to add your own thoughts.

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Loving What You Do

2011-06-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm typing gingerly, because I have blisters on my fingers. I have blisters because I spent 8 hours yesterday reupholstering my dining room chairs. The old upholstery was held in by thousands of tiny staples, and my husband and I worked side by side, prying them out with screwdrivers.

And though it was hard work, and the staple gun didn't always cooperate, and the dust from the decaying foam under the old upholstery got in our noses and eyes and we sneezed and coughed, I wouldn't take back that day spent working on this project. It's important to me that I can do this kind of work.

At my real job, my output is measured in abstract things, rows of numbers in excel spreadsheets, bytes of emails answered, phone calls made. At the end of the day, there's nothing to hold up and say "I did this."

In my own life, my husband and I do a lot of things for ourselves: bake our own bread, jar our own jam and pickles, bicycle for groceries, repair holes in clothes, rewire light bulb sockets. I really can't imagine living a life where I didn't do these things.

At the end of my Sunday, we ate dinner at our kitchen table, in our newly cushioned and clean chairs. That is far more of a personal reward than any row of numbers will ever be.

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Life Without Headphones

2011-05-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

When I first bought my iPod in 2005, I can remember people saying that soon after I started using it, I would begin to wonder how I ever lived without it.

I don't think I ever got to that point, but I did begin to rely on it to avoid those people on the street who accost you ask ask you to give money for charity. And then it was important for blocking out the squeals of the subway system. The iPod drowned out people talking near me on cellphones, whiny children, and any noise I didn't want to hear. (I confess that I am not very good at tolerating small repetitive noises, particularly when I can't identify the source.) They became my own little haven as I walked the streets of my city and rode the subway. Since I tend to walk the same routes, it was easy to autopilot and focus on the latest KT Tunstall album or my favorite Mozart Symphony #30.

I went to San Francisco recently, and while I was there, I had to focus more on where I was, since it's not a city I'm very familiar with. I left the headphones in my purse, and spent more time looking at the people around me, spotting costumes from the Bay to Breakers run. I looked at the plants that are common there that aren't so common at home. I listened to the voices, street singers, casual conversations, other out-of-towners.

Not surprisingly, I found all of this very calming. Instead of trying to decipher whatever the heck Tori Amos was singing while I walked, I could focus just on the moment in front of me.

It's amazing how plugged in I am all the time. I sit in front of two screens every day, pop on and off my iPod Touch and BlackBerry on the subway, and Tweet constantly. So after discovering the joy of hearing what's around me, and seeing it fully, on the West Coast, I'm leaving my iPod in my purse here while I commute. (Of course, I'll still use it at the gym, because I can't stand the techno music they play there.) Today, I was able to stop on my way to lunch to give someone directions.

If I'd had my headphones on, I probably would have walked right by.

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Building Professional Networks Online

2011-05-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Let's say you are a recent college graduate, looking at a terrible job market, and you are very tapped in to the online world like most whipper-snappers these days. So you decide to set up a LinkedIn profile.

As one of those aged Gen Xers, I want to tell you, do not think LinkedIn is Facebook without games. Because it isn't. It's the online version of going to a real networking event. People talk business, check out your experience, follow up with leads on Facebook.

And please, don't just start your LinkedIn network by dumping all your email contacts in and asking them to connect with a generic message. Just don't.

This afternoon, I got an email from "Jessica Powers" (not her real name), asking me to join her LinkedIn network. I was just at a conference last week, and met a ton of people and I'm still following up, so I thought maybe this was someone I met there.

But the name didn't match any of my notes, so I ran the name through my email inbox at work. Turns out Jessica had applied for a job with me, when I was hiring two months ago. I still had her application filed in the folder with all the other people I sent emails to saying "Thanks for applying, but you're not what we're looking for." I hadn't even phone screened this person, and it was only because I'm an email packrat that I had a touchstone at all to remember who she was.

This is what I wrote back to Jessica:

Hi Jessica,

Thank you for inviting me to join your LinkedIn network.

I use LinkedIn to only connect with people that I know personally or professionally, so please do not be offended if I do not accept your invitation.

I would recommend that you start building your network by reaching out to only those people that you work with or network with personally. Once you have built a good network in real life, you will find it easier to build a professional network online.

Best regards,

Kate Hutchinson

It's good advice, so I thought I would share it. Build a network in person first, and then take it online. You can't build credibility if no one can remember who you are beyond an email address. Networking is very hard work, involving attending events, calling people, writing emails, and remembering details about people and making deals that help everyone get something they want or need.

Networking is not an address book dump into a website.

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I Wear A Watch

2011-05-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin writes:

Nobody wears a watch any more.
Nobody wears a tie either.
Nobody shops at a bookstore, at least nobody I know.
The market of nobody is big indeed. You can do really well selling to nobody if you do your homework. In fact, most companies selling to nobody outperform those that are trying to sell to everyone.

News flash: While a lot of our commerce has become e-commerce, there is still a market for watches, ties, and books from bookstores.

I appreciate that Godin works hard to analyze the trends of online life and marketing, but this brief soundbite gets my dander up.

Maybe I'm biased, since I won't leave the house without my watch. I'm not a Luddite, since I also carry a BlackBerry, an iPod and a MacBook on a regular basis. But I will always check my watch for date and time before I pull out a cell phone.

Godin's making the point that companies who do not move forward and embrace change will end up losing their market, or any market. But he's overlooking human irrationality. My daily watch is an Invicta, but on fancy occasions, I wear my husband's grandmother's wind up silver Gruen model, or my own grandmother's gold Hamilton. I buy a new watch every now and then, and I have one in chocolate gold, one powered by a solar cell, and one that's old and battered that it's okay to scratch and beat around.

Do I really need so many watches? Do I need a watch at all? Certainly not. Everywhere you go there's a clock, on your phone, on your laptop, on the wall, scrolling on subway announcement boards, on whatever electronic gadget is in your hand... you don't need an extra time piece on your wrist.

But the watch is a reminder of routine. It's something that keeps me grounded. It's got enough dials to remind me what day of the week it is when I'm so busy I forget. And really, there is a market for this. There is a market for watches. There will always be a market for watches. Just because it won't be made of the same people doesn't mean that the market disappears.

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Is Imitation Really the Highest Form of Flattery?

2011-03-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

An invitation to a Investment Management and Hedge Fund Roundtable plopped in my Inbox this afternoon. It wasn't a relevant topic for me, so I was on the verge of just trashing the message when I noticed in the preview pane a familiar logo. I thought it was from the Boston Business Journal, but no, it wasn't. It was the logo for Pepper Hamilton, LLP.

Huh, I thought. That really looks like the BBJ logo. So I checked the BBJ site. No, they had a new logo. So I searched Google Images. There it was. So you can see the comparison, I put the two logos next to each other:

This really struck me as odd. Pepper Hamilton has been around since 1890, has offices nationwide, and seems to be a fairly well-off firm. Couldn't they hire a graphic designer to create a logo for them? I'm also curious if perhaps no one at Pepper Hamilton read the BBJ when their logo looked like this, so maybe they didn't notice. For me, it conveys an image of laziness; it looks like they saw the BBJ logo, liked it and only modified the name to suit their company. (Although, I'm willing to think perhaps the BBJ stole the Pepper Hamilton logo... if anyone knows someone at the BBJ or Pepper Hamilton, feel free to pass the info on.)

Logos often serve as the first visual introduction to a company. Think of all the hoopla around the recent logo updates for Gap, Starbucks, and JCPenney. Now granted, a law firm does not target the same demographic as major brands like Gap, Starbucks, or JCPenney, but I'm willing to bet that the folks that the Pepper Hamilton Boston office work with do read the BBJ, and would recognize the logo.

If you were shopping for a law firm, and found a similar situation, would it impact your impression of the firm?

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Customized Customer Service

2011-03-04T09:51:00.000-08:00


Image (c) 2010 Matthew Inman aka The Oatmeal

I had a quick watercooler chat with a friend this morning. He asked me how my morning was going, and I replied that it was a good morning, because I had managed to clear my queue of customer emails. And I mentioned a small bug in our system was causing a small problem, so most of the emails were about the same thing.

"Yeah, that's when you hit copy and paste," he said, grinning. I smiled back as I picked up my water bottle and headed back to my desk.

But my real answer to that is: I don't copy and paste.

I work for a small company and we are establishing our niche in a mature market with some very big dogs. Last year, after surveying the landscape, I began building a strategy around competing on service and experience. (Not to mention that my personal business principle is based on the highest standard of service.) Part of this strategy is that we never respond to customer emails with a cookie cutter answer.

This means that if you purchase a domain from my company, and you have a problem and you send me an email, I will actually read your email. I will look at your problem, and you'll get back a real email written by me just for you. Sometimes, I include a link to our FAQ section, but I'll always explain my answer personally. Not only that, but if I wrote you back, and I didn't have a complete answer at the time, I'll write you another email when I have more information.

All of this grows out of my personal vision for business: high quality customer service. I pay attention when I am shopping, and I notice good and bad customer service. Yesterday, I bought a microphone for my office computer to record voiceovers for a video tour I was building. I got it back to my desk, and found the adapter wasn't the right kind, so I walked back to the store and returned it for a different model. The whole time I was there, the clerk didn't say a word to me, except for "Can I see an ID?" Instead, she chatted away on her headset to another clerk somewhere else in the store about weekend plans. This had the effect of making me feel like I was invisible. Sure, I got my replacement without hassle, but it would have been nice to have my existence acknowledged during the transaction.

Now, when I consider that my customers will never actually see me, since I work for an online company, it becomes even more important to write those personalized emails. I won't have the opportunity to smile and greet them the way this clerk did. In the online world, everything seems to be automated. We have automated emails to confirm purchases, but I want our customers to know that there is a real person behind those emails, someone who cares about their concerns and wants to help them.

Yesterday, I got a customer call with questions about a new program we have on our site. I spent a long time answering his questions and explaining the program to him, and then he said, "On one of your FAQs at the bottom, there's a lot of marketing fluff in the answer, but no real answer." And I admitted he was right, because he was. I spent the afternoon rewriting the answer.

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RJFSPSHY5M8M

In My Brazen Opinion

2011-02-04T13:40:00.000-08:00

In my brilliant courses at Simmons School of Management, I had more than one professor who noted that women often being their sentences, particularly in larger groups with "I think" or "I feel." In fact, Debbie Kolb, who taught my negotiation class, wouldn't let us continue speaking if we started our sentences that way. She'd interrupt and say "You think?"

Since then, I've made a conscious effort not to start my sentences with discounts like "I think." Since most of my work and networking takes place on line, where I can see what I'm typing, it's fairly easy to catch myself from writing it out. (Also, the brevity of Twitter makes it difficult to add in those extra 7 characters!)

So today, I thought about another self-inflicted put-down used so often on the Internet: IMHO. This acronym translates to "In My Humble Opinion." Go search Twitter right now for these four letters. You'll pull up a string of tweets on everything from Colin Firth's performance in The King's Speech to the complexity of bioethics... all of them qualified with "IMHO."

(Interestingly enough, IMHO is not limited to women users. I'd love to have the time to sample a cross-section of tweets and find out which gender uses the acronym most.)

I'm fed up with people not taking responsibility for their opinions. As I posted today:

Eric Andersen brilliantly replied with:

ha, I like that, maybe IMBO (in my brazen opinion)?

And so, I'm lobbing this out there. Let's make it a movement, a hashtag! #IMBO

Stop qualifying your opinions, and be brazen about them. If we can't lay claim to our own opinions, what can we lay claim to?

PS: Thanks to @Lipsticking and @DowntownWoman for helping to push this!

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Social Engagement for Small Business

2011-02-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

Recently, I was explaining to a friend what Etsy was. Mostly, this was because I wanted to show her the blog Regretsy, which makes no sense if you don't know what Etsy is. Quick summary: Etsy is a site for small time crafters to sell their wares, like a giant online art market, and Regretsy is a great blog that highlights some of the weirdest, wackiest, and funniest stuff on the site. Because it can't all be beautiful.

So, once my friend saw Regretsy, she wanted to know, does anyone sell anything good on the site? And I had to say, "Why yes!" It's entirely true. For every misspelled greeting card or taxidermied squirrel with a fish head, there is a gorgeous photographic print series or hand knitted lacy scarf.

But my favorite Etsy retailer is LotusPad. I first became acquainted with her on Twitter, following her tweets about daily yoga practice and battling Boston weather on her commute by bicycle. And then I noticed she would tweet links to items in her Etsy shop.

This is a great way to connect with potential shoppers on Twitter that a lot of big companies miss. Some companies simply tweet over and over again about their product, but LotusPad is selling handmade jewelry and eco-friendly yoga mats. These items are very personal, and the people who buy them, the demographic wants more than just a "thing" to buy, they look for relationships. So it's nice to read LotusPad's tweets, and talk to her about what she does, reads, or thinks, and then see the product of her handiwork.

The night I showed my friend some of her jewelry, I realized that I really wanted to buy another necklace from the shop. When I got home, I went to look for the item, but for whatever reason, it wasn't popping up. So I used Twitter to write to LotusPad to ask if she could find it in her inventory. My description was a little lacking, but LotusPad kept searching until we found it. That's an amazing level of customer service, something every small business should aspire to. It's especially amazing, considering she was answering my tweets after 9:00 pm! This is a time that I would expect her to be home from work, and taking a break from the "office."

Most of the time, buying things online is so impersonal. Amazon has an algorithm to tell me that I should try Patricia Cornwall books because I like Kathy Reichs books, but it's just a computer. It's nice to meet someone I can have a conversation with, who makes a great product to boot.

Image from LotusPad's Etsy shop--I love this necklace and own a similar version of it.

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