I+A is excited to announce the first “White Board Wednesday” session. A normal meeting for us involved a lot of forming ideas and working through them on our trusty white board. We are always working to find new ways to connect with people and solve problems so why not take it live to the people?
Who? – Zachary and Chris but most importantly YOU! We couldn’t go a single day without our amazing community at I+A.
Where? – Our U-Stream page right here! It is really easy, you can even login with your Twitter name.
When? – Wednesday May 6th @ 2 PM.
Why? – Collaboration and the sharing of ideas are what make social media such a strong and exciting force. You will be able to ask us questions about anything business or social media related. We are an open book.
I+A looks forward to learning with our community! Come out and say Hi!
Don’t think we don’t hear you because we do. It might frighten you to know that social media folks listen even more than they talk. The next guy that says your company needs to be on Twitter? Be nice to him, don’t kick him repeatedly in the neck because he means well.
The hype is out there in full force, and it is natural for people to push back. That is alright because I can take it. I will sit and listen to all the reasons you think social media is a fad. I will smile patiently while you talk about all the train wreck scenarios that could come about from the freedom you are giving to the people in the trenches representing your company.
After you have had a chance to lay out your justifiable concerns I will ask you about the goals of your company. Then I will try and understand your current marketing practices. Here is one of the tough things for me in this situation; I am not the smartest guy in the room. I will never be as knowledgeable about your business as you are, that is why I am working so hard to understand your current practices.
After I compile all the information you had enough trust in me to give I am going to get with my business partner Chris and we are going to map out a strategy. Maybe I should apologize right now because the way some people are talking up social media you may think this strategy will be made of gold or comes with a serving of cracked lobster with drawn butter. The strategy is actually a list of actionable items that we create to work with your business. The plan will be simple and effective, taking as much time as you are comfortable with spending per day and per week. You will also get a guide of “best practices” to be sure everyone involved is consistant and empowerwed to act within the best interests of the company. The whole deal is custom tailored to the goals you already have as an organization.
Going forward you are set. I think you will be a little better equipped to cut through the noise of all the “experts” that just talk about social media. “Get a blog” or “get on Twitter” is not the answer to every question. You are about showing your expertise and creating trust. You are about relationship selling. We really appreciate you allowing us to listen in on the inner workings of your company. If there is anything I can do to be of assistance going forward my contact information is below.
Zachary Cobb
816.876.1870
zach@zcphotography.com
P.S. Maybe we can follow up with a BBQ lunch in a few weeks?
Social media is maturing. This is a great thing! You see Twitter showing up on TV and in conversations of people who are not very tech savvy. Everywhere you turn people and companies are connecting and conversing.
Ideas and Angles has been involved in countless events and projects in Kansas City promoting, using, or discussing the merits of social media for business use. Through the Kansas City Social Media Club we have met a lot of great people who share our vision of companies communicating in new ways to their customers. People that are drawn to this kind of thing come from very different backgrounds and career fields but all share a passion for learning. The social media community is filled with people who enjoy sharing the knowledge they come to the table with to help others. When all the boats get raised everyone benefits.
What is going to happen when there are more sharks in the water? Right now the social media universe (especially Twitter) is a lot like the town in the movie Pleasantville. Everyone gets along and is encouraging. Most the people involved share the same passions of technology, innovation, ideas, and sharing knowledge. Sure there are some troubles here and there but not enough to effect the average discourse in most Twitter communities.
We are in this quaint gated community right now but what happens when the masses bring a different kind of mentality?
Agents of social media will be tested and attacked. We are creating a world where the integrity of a company is being represented by people working in a fashion that can be risky and involves a lot of trust. For social media to work a brand’s representative needs to be able to communicate and react instantly. This means no time for for double checking and approval by the head honchos. One single slip up can be a big deal. It only has to happen once. I think social media practitioners need to prepare to be targeted. If you can get a single person representing a company to “flip out” in the social web it can be seen by all and a company could look very foolish very fast. Even things that seem simple and harmless can be blown out of proportion and drug out for the whole internet community as we saw with the recent FedEx\Memphis debacle. People that test social media agents have nothing to lose.
The biggest challenge the social media community will face is their ability to reach out and provide quality engagement to users who are seeking it while understanding their involvement in certain conversations or communities will not suit any of their goals.
If the social media community doesn’t go out and show its worth the leashes will be pulled and the effectiveness of customer engaging strategies will die.
Here are some things to remember for the people in the trenches representing yourself or your company.
- Know what you are talking about because your users will.
- Everything you say will be out there forever in some form. There is no delete button in the social web.
- Being right is not always the most important thing. If you get into a discussion or argument with someone who has no idea what they are talking about and finally prove them wrong after a long back and forth? You were still wrong. No matter how right you were. Nobody wants to see a company lowering themselves to pissing matches online.
- Help the people who want to be helped. Some people are dedicated to being unhappy and nothing you can do will ever change that. Try and help people who need it while filtering out people who only like to hear themselves complain.
We don’t want to scare anyone away from the great things new media has to offer but as time goes on our big goal of appealing to the masses is going to bring new obstacles. Go forth and do wonderful things with the trust your companies have in you.
What obstacles do you see looking ahead for the social media community?
What advice do you have?
Marketing plans can take many shapes. Depending on the company, targeted consumer, goals, and many other variables a plan takes on its own life and has its own set of actionable needs.
The beauty of social media has always been its flexability. You don’t have to burn down your old marketing plan to incorpoate social media successfully.
Things like relationship selling, media buying, and good person to person customer service can all be boosted and made more effective by the use of social media. They could also be the most effective outposts you have for reaching engaged customers to your new media points of focus.
Contests/giveaways, meet n’ greets, direct mail. All of these things can be helped and help a social media campaign.
We trust the expertise of business owners and entrapanuers. Going in and telling you to throw out everything you have been doing is counter productive and foolish. We love all the chances we have had to show businesses new ways to communicate with their customers and build their brand. New ways will be made and the old ways can be enhanced.
Whitney provides an excellent breakdown of a recent campaign to show off the opening of the AMC Fork and Screen Theater in Olathe. There was a lot of effort put forth to reach out to local bloggers and the results were very positive. Be sure to check out her post and the interesting way in which the metrics for success are presented by Spiral16’s software.
AMC took a bold step and realized the way to communicate the excitment about their new facility was in opening the place up and letting it speak for itself. Instead of forcing marketing speak on customers and having to control the conversation they put local influencers in a position to create the conversation and were rewarded in rich content that they didn’t even author and targeted exposure of their brand to customers.
Team I+A has been gearing up for Highlight Midwest for some time now and we were so excited at what came from the event.
There are recaps posted below by a number of people that give you a good feel for the event as a whole. Be sure to read up on thoughts from Lava Row, Swindlr, Jeffisageek, Social Lites, Troy Rutter, Andy Brudtkuhl, and Silicon Prairie News just to name a few.
With the happenings of the event so well covered we wanted to post a few thoughts on other things that we took from the experience.
We are not alone. Sometimes in this journey we feel like we have been speaking another language. Bringing these emerging technologies to new people is a fun process but it can be tedious at times. It was comforting to see that others are passionate about social media and ideas to ignite companies new and old. Other people are going through some of the obstacles Ideas and Angles faces as an upstart technology firm.
Even better than being energized by people that have the same loves and interests we do was seeing those synapses fire for people who were not previously exposed to a lot of the ideas presented at Highlight Midwest. During the presentations at the evening session I stood towards the back of the room keeping an eye on some of the people I had met who were there as outsiders looking in. You could see the light bulbs go on, and the gears start to turn.
The post event chatter has focused a lot on the excitement in the relationships built between all the attendees from the different cities and how to keep those relationships strong. Using our shared experiences in a supporting role to lift all boats up at the same time. As amped as we are to have all these smart people as allies we would like to encourage everyone to keep striving to find ways to connect with people who don’t know about emerging technologies. Work to be the bridge that lets someone discover the power of social media and upstart entrepreneurship.
Thanks to everyone for the conversation, laughs, ideas, and inspiration.
Still gathering some different media to show everyone what a giant success Highlight Midwest was, expect a post soon. We have been busy collaborating with insanely smart people from around the country to keep on top of what is happening in the world of social media and emerging technologies so we can pass on that expertise to businesses and people in Kansas City. There has been a lot of positive feedback from the presentation Chris gave at the Kauffman Foundation about the great work by Kansas City technology start ups as well as the expert panel discussion Zach was a part of.
No matter how busy everyone gets social media’s expanding role in this city keeps showing itself…
Kansas City based heavy hitter HR Block gets some serious love for its work in using social media for brand positioning across many networks. Below are some of the results of the campaign.
- 43% more awareness of H&R Block’s digital products from 2007 to 2008.
- 52% increase in awareness of the TaxCut product
- 1 million unique visitors to Digits since its creation
- 60,000 interactions through widgets and tools created for the campaign
- 6 million impressions in the blogosphere
We can’t help but cringe (just a little bit) at the emphasis in bean counting to measure the reach of a social media campaign. We wrote recently about some different ways to measure effectiveness but those are still some eye opening numbers and we applaud HR Block for their ability to implement such a program in such a large corporate structure.
In other news we were really pleased to show up on the radar of a really influential figure in the Kansas City social media scene. Jeff added us to a list of companies to watch for businesses looking to dip their toe in the waters of emerging technologies.
Remember, keep creating and keep sharing. Your customers are begging for you to connect with them in a genuine manner to help them use your products and services.
Welcome to all of our new readers from Highlight Midwest. We look forward to your contributions.
Ideas and Angles cofounder Chris Culbertson speaks with Highlight Midwest Conference attendees at the Kauffman Center. Kansas City, MO.
Twitter has shown itself to be an important tool for fun, business, or anything in between (always best when you don’t have to choose between the two). The folks at Twitter have been nice enough to let everyone use a custom background in addition to some of the new designs they have provided with their recent update.
This gives you a great chance to extend your personal branding (examples here and here) abilities to a place where a lot of people could be taking in your message for the first time. We have no problem with the default look of Twitter but take that extra step and throw your logo or company name on there. We have put together a simple Photoshop (PSD) file to use as a guide. It is plenty big to make sure people with large resolutions don’t see any abrupt ends and has a guideline on the left side showing how much space you have for your own creativity before the twitter box begins.
Once you are in photoshop delete the layer with Ideas And Angles stuff and make the image your own.
Download the .zip file containing the .psd twitter background template.
For extra assistance…
How to change your twitter background image. (Via Twitter’s Official Support Page)
Chef Ramsey (more info via wikipedia or his official website) has shown excellence in the kitchen in addition to a controversial, but well liked personality outside of it.
But what does serving up ginger poached Maine lobster with herb linguine have to do with social media?
Keep it simple. Quality > Decoration. Chef Ramsey reminds aspiring chefs time and again that simple fresh ingredients will always stand out above dishes that are drowned out by overwhelming seasoning or fancy sauces that hide the taste of the actual dish. Is your content strong? It is great having all the bells and whistles on your website but users’ opinion of the content will be based on its merit and not the crazy design or shiny widgets around it.
If you don’t communicate you are dead. The line needs to know when the salads go out so they can fire the meat. The vegetable station needs to know when the meat goes on so they can time the arrival of their side dish. The waiter needs to know when the meal has been put together so he can take it out when it is fresh. When different phases of your social media strategy can’t communicate properly your message can be come disjointed or confusing to your customers or followers. Social media can be used in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, and the information and conversation from customers needs to find its way to the proper place to be handled in the best way for the company.
Know your s***. There can’t be a Ramsey post without a few four letter words thrown around. A chef without a firm knowledge of all the different variables that make up a dish is doing their customers a disservice. There is a reason for everything. Don’t start a Twitter account because that is what people are doing. Understand the reason that conversations on Twitter have meaning and what a company can get out of monitoring and taking part in these discussions.
Love what you do. It takes passion and dedication to build up one world class restaurant let alone a whole group of them. If a company and its employees show a genuine love for what they are doing people are drawn to that and everybody wins. There is so much to gain personally and professionally by engaging people with shared interests. They are and will become your best customers.
This is the first in our “What it can teach us” series of posts that explore how everyday things correlate with social media.
Basketball, in my not so humble, opinion is the ultimate team game. The coach comes up with a plan or strategy and the players work hard to prepare and then execute.
This is also true for companies and social media. In order for social media efforts to be effective, their must be support from upper management, there must be a strategy or plan, and the employees need to be well informed and execute. All departments have to work together in order to put each other in situations where they can succeed. The research and development team needs to work with the marketing team who needs to work with customer service, each tied into social media to discuss with customers in order for each to do their respective jobs well.
This is just like a play that the coach draws up in which one player must handle the ball, another sets a good strong pick, and then the ball is delivered on time and in a manner that allows their teammate to get a good shot off.
Basketball is one of the few sports major sports in which each player is required to play offense and defense. The game is fast paced and players must adapt quickly.
This is true with anything regarding technology, especially the newly developing social media. You must be a creator of content, but then respond to existing conversations. You have to be able to push things forward, but know when to slow down and let things develop. The better you can see the entire floor, the easier the game will seem.
