Well its high time that I start posting the SMBMSP podcasts, as we continue to crank them out every month. A visit to good friend and fellow SMB organizer Mykl Roventine’s blog got me thinking I should start. So below are the show notes and podcast.
I’d like to mention that we’re holding a contest for a podcast theme song, and we discuss the details in this show. Along with Mykl Roventine is our producer, Brad Bellaver of Bellamedia and special guest Amy Bryant who wrote a fantastic Thanksgiving post on her blog last week.
We talk a bit about giving thanks and what we’re thankful Social Media has brought into our lives and experiences, so I hope you give it a listen. As always, feedback is very welcome.
You can find the podcast home page and information and feed links here.
Sometimes I get tired of telling the same story, but very often, that’s exactly what it takes to induce change. That change is the very root of social media and its associated tools, networks, and concepts. Since everyone learns at a different pace, and in different ways, it becomes necessary to relate the concepts of something new, multiple times.
Take the many layers of an organization for example. You have the executive level, the management level, and the worker level. There are several variations on these, some unique to different industries and professions, but bare with me for a moment.
Each of these levels requires the same information to be related in different, unique ways. Sometimes it could be adding or removing detail, in other cases it might be exchanging case studies to make the point more relevant to the person listening or reading. In any case, being able to read your audience and recognizing how the recipient needs to digest the information is part of the puzzle of a good communications professional.
This is but one of many skills the social media professional needs to have in their toolkit, and goes back to being a multi-disciplinarian, what our grandparents used to call “a jack of all tradesâ€.
Doesn’t it seem like we talk a lot about social media as a tool for sales or marketing? It certainly is a great channel for that in the right context, and the right usage. I’m curious how many folks who talk about building a community for their customers have thought about building community for their employees. Take that external viewpoint and turn around… apply it internally… what do you think could happen? The idea is nothing new, and actually pre-dates "social media" by a long time. We’ve all been part of special groups within other organizations. I’m sure the companies you’ve worked for have had groups that range from bowling leagues to cross-functional project groups, to cost-reduction purchase management councils. Groups take many different forms, but these examples don’t really represent "community" as we use the term for social media. I was reminded during the "Behind The Firewall" chat on Twitter last night (#btf every Thursday at 8pm CT) that IBM had done a lot of this work in the late 90s using Lotus Notes. That was probably one of the first packaged tools available that allowed for both free form and structured interactions. Businesses have been looking for ways to build more productive teams. Social Media, er… I mean collaboration, (no they’re not the same, but many folks confuse the issue – we’ll roll with it for now), is one of those methodologies that can accomplish multiple tasks. If you remove the technology portion for a minute, and the marketing perspective, you can start to focus on solving business issues. This is where social media can prove it’s adaptability to an organization.
Building community inside most large organizations is difficult, but no more so than building community in a public forum. You have several different interest groups, and numerous points of view in every organization, these aspects and others make up the great diversity that companies can draw on to power their internal communities. Building collaborative environments that allow for socialization of profiles and interaction enables employees to find like-minded folks elsewhere in the company. These folks are having conversations about work, life, projects, challenges, problems and much more. These conversations already take place at the "water cooler", in the cube farms, on the loading docks, in the lunch room and anywhere else employees feel comfortable talking.
That’s the key to it too, comfort level. Providing an environment that people can speak their mind can be a larger productivity boost than a time waster. Create that space using social media tools & ideas, and let folks have a venue for conversations about work, conversations about non-work life, and a anonymous sounding boards that let folks give feedback and even vent frustrations a little bit.
Collaboration is a key piece of the puzzle to be sure, but make sure to include the social part too. "Social" is not a four letter word, and is not exclusive to non work life. We all socialize professionally at work, collaborating on increasing sales, and satisfying customers in one way or another. If everyone is "on the same team", how effective is that team without getting to know each other better? Let those relationships grow organically within the employee population rather than trying to mandate it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Sometimes it’s the simple things that we overlook the most. For Personal Branding, this is occasionally the email signature. If you look over the most frequent and pervasive communications tools we have, email is still a top contender for the vast majority of folks.
With that in mind, anyone who has built a specific brand for themselves or for companies that are very brand aware, a custom email signature should be a “no brainerâ€. I’m surprised at how often folks tend to forget about this most basic of branding options. An email signature doesn’t have to be overly complex, or designed by a professional designer, though these are sometimes options.
On the simple side, just having a standard email signature in plain text can do wonders. It can have the basic contact information, including social network URLs if that’s desired. This works equally well for corporations as it does for individuals. For a large organization, it can allow for different telephone, cell, and fax numbers, but keeps a consistent layout and message to the recipients.
For more advanced or adventurous users, the ability to utilize HTML formatting and images makes for very impressive and robust brand statements. Going this route also allows for a picture for individual email accounts as well.
I’ve also found that having more than one custom signature is a plus. The number of sigs I use changes during the course of a year, but there are basically two that I use. One for personal emails and one for business emails. The personal one is quite simple, as I’m corresponding with people that already know me well and don’t need a constant reminder that I’m so-and-so.
The business signature is more professional and has contact information for practically any way a person can find to interact with me. Variations on the business sig for me range from the company I work for, a sig for “Social Media Breakfast†related emails, and a personal business sig. This allows me great flexibility to communicate specifically what I’m representing in that email.
Whatever route you choose to go, don’t hesitate to create your own customized email signature. Use your favorite search engine using “custom email signature†and you’ll have a number of options to help you through. So don’t leave this “low hanging fruit†on the tree – go get your sig together today.
Some say that plain text is best. Who am I to complain? When something as simple as 140 characters is enough on Twitter to convey a message, or 160 characters for a mobile text message? We can communicate a lot with very little – and a very simple medium: plain text.
So why are there so many contrasting opinions about using rich text in communications? Especially email?
Email has become one of those communications tools that seem to raise the ire of the “plain text is best†crowd. Some folks just don’t appreciate the HTML emails or fancy formatting others put into their signatures. I’ve seen some folks get downright angry towards these emails, and you can always tell who these folks are as their replies always come back in plain text.
While I won’t pretend to understand the controversy, I do think the plain text crowd is more “no nonsense†and just likes to get about their business. Whereas the rich text crowd probably tends to be heavier on the creative side, and likes to communicate with a bit of aesthetic value.
As we move further into the future, of course, rich text becomes easier to integrate into more communications mediums. The utility of plain text will remain though, as the lowest common denominator for any publishing platform as their job is to simply distribute information – and all that really needs is text.
It struck me today while using my netbook that economy computers have reached that baseline of being good enough at more than the minimum set of tasks. With their very portable size and impressively growing battery life these minimally powered laptops can meet the needs of many folks.
The interesting thing to me is how we continuously discover how we really only need the basics. In the age when we’ve pushed computing hardware to levels that we never imagined, the utility of a basic computing platform is quite impressive. Because we’ve pushed the upper end so aggressively, the side affect is the low end has benefited in reductions in power requirements and size.
Making these low end systems so useful is the way they’ve been packaged into great “mini†laptops. Whether they’re a 9â€, 10†or even the larger 12†models that stretch the definition of “netbookâ€, the ultra portability of a 2 to 3 lbs. laptop is a game changer. It’s just another case of less being more.
Of course, they can’t do everything. In fact, they really are only good for the basics as I mentioned. Anything more than web browsing, email, reading, and some light office apps like spreadsheets, word processing, and presentations. If you need much more than that, you’ll quickly find the limits of these systems.
However, therein lies the catch, the majority of the work done is in this basic range of computing tasks. Writing ideas out, answering email, reading news and information, keeping in touch… the bulk of what we do can be done with a netbook. Especially if you’re a web worker since most everything one does is web-based anyway.
While I’m not suggesting that netbooks will be the main computer for the majority of folks, I know some will be tempted to try.
Good enough. This is where good design and reasonable feature sets reign. The benefit of a simple, cohesive design with a feature set that meets the expectations of the user can be quite successful.
You must be logged in to post a comment.