Gavin Baker

The Social Media Bubble Part 2 of 3 from Hive Awards on Vimeo.

In a two weeks I’m going to be joining a few friends on the stage at Social Fresh Nashville.  It will be great to see @jasonfalls @djwaldow @genochurch @katadhin @waynesutton @GregCangialosi and meet some new friends from Home Depot, Radian6, Newell Rubbermaid and Southwest Airlines at Social Fresh aka @sofresh conference in Nashville, TN on January 11, 2010.

After being an attendee at the original Social Fresh in Charlotte, I’m excited to be able to speak at round two.  I found the first conference an action packed few days – while the conference is actually one day, the pre-party and post-party are things I wouldn’t miss – and when you show up, come find me and say hello.

Here’s a bit on what’ s being presented:

• The ROI Of Community
• Social Media In The Music Industry
• Corporate Blogging Is Your Social Media Home Base
• B2B Innovation In Social Media
• Real Twitter Results
• Word of Mouth Marketing form the Bottom Up
• Moving The Needle: Social Media For Your Bottom Line

That’s all I’ll say as Jason Falls has already written up a great post about the conference on his site.  If you’re an organization that is looking to learn more, this is a great opportunity to dip your feet into the social media and at $315 a ticket, it’s quite reasonable.  There will be great minds covering almost all the bases you’ll need from start to finish.  You can register for the event using this link to the Social Fresh registration site. (Disclosure: As a speaker, I am an affiliate of the conference and get a commission on any sales made from the link. Non-affiliate link register here.)

PS if you can’t make Nashville and you’re in the Tampa, FL area then you’ll want to be on board for the next Social Fresh on Feb. 8.

So register, show up in Nashville and I’ll see you there.

Last night I attended the Winter Panel put on by Social Media Club – Knoxville which was focused on social media liability, ethics and policy.  The featured panelists were Erin Donovan of WBIR, legal and marketing consultant Jeremy Floyd and Chad Parizman of Scripps Networks who did a great job representing a few perspectives on social media, and entertaining the crowd with funny quips. The evening covered a broad range of topics from the local liability story of The Pizza Kitchen (link to News Sent) to understanding the line where policy ends and ethics begin. If you missed the event checkout the tweets about the evening #smcknox.

One thing that wasn’t covered in depth that I wanted to shed some light on is the difference between policy and guidelines. Often the term “social media policy” is used to cover a document that is both policy and guidelines but they are very different documents and serve very different roles.  Moving forward in this post I’ll use the terms policy and guidelines to represent different pieces of that social media policy document.

When we talk about policy, we’re really talking about a document that is going to largely drafted by legal and HR professionals. It’s essentially about what employee’s SHOULDN’T do.While a very important piece of the puzzle if you’re a in marketing role this part of the document will seem very dry.  This document will detail who can can be a spokesperson for the brand utilizing these channels, what other policies they must adhere to in this sphere and the repercussions for not following the policy.  This document will read like a legal contract because, well it is.  Ultimately the role of part of the document is to protect the company, also known as CYA.

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Image by doug88888

David Armano makes a three predictions for 2010 on social media and business.

1. Scale

2. Integration

3. Policy

I think he’s right on for 2 and 3.  I’d add an additional prediction – that social networking sites and tools will begin to add offerings that appeal to business.  I’m not talking about CoTweet ramping up it’s twitter tool, while it’s a good product.  I’m talking about product design BY the sites themselves.  Sites building out tools and frameworks that not only support businesses but invite them.  Let me be clear, I’m not sharing insider information, I just know what I think would help us and other companies like us.

Most social sites are designed for the individual and rightfully so as relationships are what create and grow these sites.  But now that organizations are starting to join the fray – their needs, our need are different.  Take for example any national retail company in any vertical.  Walmart, Best Buy, Ruby Tuesday, P.F. Chang’s, Moe’s, etc. the list goes on and on.  The commonality with all these organizations is that they are national, if not international companies, but ultimately serve customers locally.

Each of those customers cared for locally visits a store, where there may be 10-10,000 locations and those local stores together create the global brand.  The tension is that social sites know how to serve the local – they are even set up for that in most cases (i.e. requiring a geographic area) but they haven’t quite figured out the global range yet. Global brands need the ability to set parameters to maintain control while allowing for local flexibility.

I’d also add that this need “could” be filled by third party developers if the platform API’s allow deep enough access.

Exciting to see how this plays out.

After I presented at the SMC- Greenville meeting I was approached by a college student and asked an interesting question, “what’s the best background to get into a social media job?”  at the time, I mentioned that my background was business and marketing, so I could speak to that but not social media in general.  I decided to tweet the question since I knew I’d get quite the mixture of answers. Here are a few responses, each with a different viewpoint – technology entrepreneur, marketing consultant and in house technologist.  (All who are worth a follow by the way).

from @jpatrickhunt trial by fire. on the job training. offer your services for nothing and dive in. learn and adapt. you will be assimilated.

from @jfloyd journalism, photography, video production, advertising, english, web design…what does Seth call it…a multipationalist?

from @BJ_Emerson Great question, may depend on the needs of the org. My opinion: Don’t skimp on the tech skills, be good at relationships.

I expected the answers to be all over and I wasn’t disappointed.  So where does this leave us?  Ultimately while a background in in PR or marketing has an upside, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I don’t think it really matters for hiring.  To be clear, one should have some manner of understanding of the basics of communication and if the job has a strategy component you’ll need to understand the social landscape.  But what matters the most is that you be customer focused. Which may seem to be a no brainer to some of you, however it’s not to everyone.  Customer focused means thinking of yourself as the advocate of the people your organization exists to serve.  So you are approaching problems with the mindset of it you were the end user.

This is important because at the end of the day, social media is about people.  It’s a set of tools that are allowing customers the ability to connect with and give feedback to their friends and the public – and we as organizations have the ability to be part of that exchange.  To learn and respond and share. If you want to work in social media, you’ll be well on your way if you can be that voice of the customer.