The Community Manager Emerges in 2010

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Earlier this week, I did a post on the Sysomos blog about how community managers will become increasingly important in 2010 as social media is embraced by more companies. The reception was so positive I wanted to share it with MET readers:

Within the social media ecosystem, the unheralded stars are the community managers who toil away behind the scenes.

These are the people who spend countless hours on the Web (seemingly 24/7), engaging with customers, writing blog posts and leaving comments, tweeting, updating Facebook, uploading videos, and answering questions from the media/bloggers, customers, partners and investors.

While the “A-List” social media bloggers capture the spotlight, community managers are walking the walk rather than just talking the talk. They’re in the trenches doing the blocking and tackling while others are getting the glory for scoring touchdowns.

That said, 2010 is going to be the year of the community manager.

As more companies embrace social media as a part of their communications, marketing and sales strategies, they are going to realize community managers play a crucial role. It’s a job that combines Web expertise with the ability to filter and create lots of content, customer service, marketing, business development and media/public relations.

It’s a job that will require people with enthusiasm, expertise and experience. As a result, community managers are going to migrate from being junior employees knowledgeable about social media to someone who has a broad set of skills and experience. For companies, this means it will be more of a challenge to find good people, and the need to pay them accordingly.

Within the corporate hierarchy, community managers will start to occupy a seat at the strategic table because they’ll have as good a handle on what’s happening within the business landscape as anyone within the organization.

This will give them a combination of strategic insight and a tactical role, highlighting their growing importance.

8.5% Yogurt & Great Tech Ideas

By Mark Evans in Main Page 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

Screen shot 2009-12-30 at 6.34.04 PMI was reading David Pogue’s 2009 “Best Tech Ideas”, and it made me think of yogurt.

Not just any yogurt but yogurt made by a Quebec company, Liberté, that features 8.5% milk fat. In a world dominated by no-fat and low-fat, a yogurt with 8.5% fat is extraordinary (and extraordinarily delicious!).

So how are “Best Tech Ideas” and amazing yogurt alike?

Innovative technology often goes against the grain by offering consumers something different or unique that makes it stand out from the crowd. In the same way, Liberté’s yogurt is different from most other yogurts by playing up its fat content in a world where fat is seen as bad.

2010: The Year of Quality, Not Quantity

By Mark Evans in Social Media 4 Comments

Since joining Twitter in late-2008, I’ve been fairly selective about who I follow, which explains why my follower-follow ratio is so high. It’s an approach based on quality over quantity – picking people who offer interesting and different perspectives rather than letting the “parade” get too busy or noisy.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been as disciplined with Facebook and LinkedIn.

My personal Facebook account is a chock-a-block with friends, colleagues and people I’ve never met. From the start it was meant for business, which meant that, until recently, I pretty much accepted anyone as a “friend”. My LinkedIn account isn’t has messy but still not has focused as should be.

To get my “social media house” in order, I’ve decided to adopt a more pragmatic, disciplined approach in 2010. Despite the temptation to follow more people, I’m happy to have about 300. It seems like a reasonable, workable number so I’ll add some people and unfollow others to keep things in order.

On Facebook, I’ve got a two-pronged attack. First, I’ve stopped accepting people as friends unless as I really know them. I have also created a Facebook Page for my company, ME Consulting, which is where my “fans” (that word seems so strange) can exist.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, will be a place where I’ll nurture a network of people who I have met (personally or digitally) or done business with. I’m not going to accept invitations to connect from people I don’t know.

I realize there are two schools of thoughts when it comes to social media networks – one suggests building as wide a network as possible because you never know where the next connection or opportunity will come; while a second involves being selective about who you follow, add or connect with.

Right now, the latter seems to be a more comfortable place to be because it marries the best of the “analog” world where a personal network consisted of real people, with the realities of the digital world.

What’s your approach to social media networks?

What’s the Twitter of 2010?

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Uncategorized 8 Comments Tags: , , , ,

newSo now that Twitter is on the verge of becoming “So last year!”, what’s the new shiny, social media bauble for 2010?

Is it Foursquare, which is pushing the “Here’s where I’m located” phenomena with a service/game that encourages people to become the “mayor” of anywhere and anything? Given the chatter I’ve seenon Twitter about someone becoming the “Mayor of The Gap”, Foursquare looks to have some potential.

What about Posterous, which captured a lot of buzz a few months ago as a cross between Twitter and blog, particularly when well-known blogger Steve Rubel unveiled plans to use Posterous instead of blogging. While Posterous continues to launch new features, the buzz seems to have died, making it a unlikely 2010 social media “what’s next” candidate.

Another candidate currently on the fringes is Hot Potato, which offer a service for real-time social collaboration among people who can share an interest in an event as it’s happening. Leveraging wireless technology, Hot Potato users can filter by location, social graph or “presence” at an event.

Then there’s Blippy, a new (and strange) social media service (in beta) that lets people share their credit card purchases. For example, instead of doing a tweet about your Boxing Day activity, Blippy would automatically announce that you had just spent $49.85 at Banana Republic.

What about Google Wave? There’s been lots of buzz given it’s another Google service but so far Google Wave has been underwhelming, mostly because few services have been created to give Google Wave some sizzle.

So, what are your candidates as the best-thing-since-slice-bread social media services for 2010?

Has Pepsi Tipped the Social Media Scales?

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media 4 Comments Tags: , , ,

For all the talk about social media marketing (and there’s been a lot of it this year), the biggest news of the year may be Pepsi’s decision to abandon the Super Bowl. Instead, Pepsi will be embracing a $20-million social media campaign called The Pepsi Refresh Project in which consumers will be encouraged to suggest projects to make a better world.

The significance of Pepsi’s decision should not be overlooked given it has spent $142-million over the past 10 years on Super Bowl ads, which costs millions of dollars to make and broadcast. The fact Pepsi has pulled out completely is stunning – perhaps as stunning as Apple’s decision to do a Super Bowl ad in 1984.

It’s also a tremendous boost for social media. To be frank, 2009 has been the year of talk in which everyone has enthusiastically extolled the benefits of social media’s ability to engage and have conversations with customers in an open and transparent way. What Pepsi has done is turn talk into walk.

The question is whether Pepsi’s decision will be the straw the break’s the back of traditional media advertising. In the words, will other companies get on the social media marketing bandwagon now that a high-profile company such as Pepsi is doing it?

My take is that looking back a year from now, people will point to Pepsi’s move as the turning point for social media marketing.

For more, check out Larry Woodard’s article in ABC News/Money.

Eight Thoughts on Social Media in ’10

By Mark Evans in Social Media 7 Comments Tags: , , ,

Here’s a post (with a few additions) that I did earlier this week on the Sysomos blog.

If 2009 was the year that social media established itself, 2010 will be how social media is embraced and leveraged by a growing number of companies. With this in mind, here are some fearless predictions about what’s on the horizon.

1. Social media monitoring and measurement will gain even more traction as companies recognize the importance of listening and understanding what’s happening so they can engage with key influencers and opinion leaders. The social media monitoring market will likely consolidate, and paid tools will attraction more attention as customers upgrade from free tools.

2. Geo-location will become a key trend as more social media users broadcasts their locations, not only to friends, family and colleagues but to retailers as well. This will give businesses the ability to send the right advertising offers to people at the right time and the right place. Look for services such as FourSquare and Twitter to drive the geo-location market.

3. Facebook’s impressive growth (my prediction is 500 million users) will continue but users will have to live with the reality that Facebook wants to make more of its – and your – information public so that more of its content will be monetized. Twitter’s user base will expand as well but not as wildly as 2009. FourSquare and Posterous will remain niche services.

4. Blogs will come back into style as companies realize they’re powerful and effective tools to  communicate with customers, potential customers, partners, investors and employees. In 2009, the pendulum swung hard to micro-messaging but expect macro-messaging (aka blogs) to stage a rebound.

5. Video will continue to grow aggressively as more companies realize it’s an effective way to communicate amid a sea of text.

6. Social media will increasingly become an integrated part of more companies’ communications, marketing and sales activities. This trend will be driven by the growing recognition that social media can build new and different relationships with customers and existing customers. As well, the continued economic uncertainly is making social media more attractive due to its low cost.

7. ROI – return on investment – will become a major issue as companies look to measure and justify their social media spending so they can gauge its success, and compare it against other marketing/communications initiatives.

8. The term “social media” will start to disappear as it becomes an established part of the Web’s overall fabric – much like Web 2.0 is used far less often.

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