What would Facebook look like further down the line? Art Director Fred Nerby, a friend of mine took on this question and created this prototype. Currently this designs have over 150,000 views and people seems to love it.
See more of his work here: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Facebook-New-Look-Concept/6504647
During my career in digital marketing and community management I’ve manage to meet (digitally and in real life) some great people in the industry. A few of these great people took some time out of their busy schedules to answer some questions to give you guys some insight on how they got where they are now. Enjoy and be sure check them out on Twitter.
Hamza Aziz – Director of Communications for Destructoid.com and all around badass shark. (San Francisco)
Hamza Director of Communications
How long have you been in the industry and how did you get into Community Management?
I’ve been a community manager for five years now, and sort of fell into the role more so than trained/went to school for it.
What’s your advice for would be Community Managers or people new to the role?
Have patience and thick skin. People, especially with the internet, expect everything right away and get easily upset when things don’t go their way.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
The most challenging aspect of being a community manager is the veil that has to be put up between the community and the product. There’s a set plan in place for getting the info out there, and at the same time the community wants to know everything all at once. There has to be a balance put in place to help get the message across, and keep people satisfied until the product is released. Fans can have a rather ravenous attitude towards something, and tend not to understand why they can’t know and experience everything all at once, thus causing anger and frustration.
What do you love about your job?
Just interacting with the community. Showing them their voice matters, we’re hearing them, working with them to make the experience better.
Where do you see the role in 5-10 years?
Hopefully relevant to every company, especially those that want to embrace the ease and direct social interaction the internet provides.
Kirstin Reilly – Senior Community Manager at Meteor Entertainment (Seattle)
What’s your background and how did you get into the industry?
Kristin Senior Community Manager
My education has absolutely nothing to do with what I do. My classical education is biology – specifically nursing. All my experience that lead to my being a Community Manager has come from volunteer experience. I started volunteering with online moderation at the age of 14 as well as being active in multiple online communities related to video games. Exhibiting consistent behavior across multiple communities helped set myself apart from the pack.
What’s your advice to would be Community Managers or people new to the role?
My biggest advice to people is to NEVER ignore a potential network contact. When you trace my path back, ultimately I got my break into the industry because I replied to a random myspace message – one that I very nearly DIDN’T reply too. You never know where anyone is going to end up and when they may remember you. Always be cordial.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
The largest challenge I encounter in a community management role is managers who don’t understand community. They’re used to getting metrics from some teams, we sold X numbers of units, we had X numbers of unique hits this month, community is harder to gauge. You can try to use sentiment and reach and virility, but it’s extremely hard to measure community impact when it’s being done right. When it’s being done wrong – it’s GLARINGLY obvious. It’s very hard to measure and put into a report.
What do you love most about your job?
I love being able to interact with the community, take their needs and wants to the development team, and watch improvements be rolled out to the users.
Where do you see the role in 5-10 years?
The community manager role is still be fleshed out. Hopefully in 5-10 years we’re able to have more standard qualifications for the title community manager, and have figured out a great way to measure success – other than going oh crap our forums/social networks are on fire we must have done something wrong.
Adam Corney – Account Director at DTDigital and Business Lead at MiniMega (Melbourne, VIC)
Adam Corney Account Director
What is your background and experience?
I’m coming at this from an account director/strategist perspective, and a commercial eye. I’ve got a bachelor’s in marketing/advertising, an internship with Seth Godin, and 4 years experience in agencyland. I’ve never run a community myself, but have worked with good people and know what I’m looking for.
What advice would you give to people new and current in your industry?
Focus on return on investment & return on attention.
ROI is important because you have to be able to justify financial investment. If you can’t provide clear links between revenue and performance, then at least be able to point out the cost of running your community, and then relate it to the next point – return on attention.
ROA is the fluffiness. What value have you provided to the community in exchange for their attention? Are you just doing insipid little “Click like if you enjoy pizza!” or depth/value of some description. That way, you can justify “The community has cost you $75k this year, but we’ve delivered 400 pieces of intense value and retention/growth rates of xxx”.
Always be measuring your metrics. They’re how your justify your successes and learn from your failures.
Finding people who understand the love-hate nature of a community. You always want perfection in both yourself and your members, but sometimes you just gotta work hard to get it to the way you want. It’s important to share that vision with your core community members too – this isn’t a lone wolf job
What do you love about your job?
How rewarding it can be when people understand why they’re engaged with what you do.
Where do you see the role going in 5-10 years?
I see it morphing from a text-based medium into a visual communication. The language of digital and the internet is evolving to a visual language, which transcends cultures more easily than written language. Communicating emotions/directions with visuals is going to be key to moving forward in CM. So upskill in photoshop, whore yourself around Reddit, understand imgur/tumblr/etc, and then start implementing those practices into your work.
Oh, and read feverbee.com. Rich is a freakin’ genius.
Special thanks to all of the industry folks mentioned in this blog.
Got any questions, comments, or thought? Comment below!
Renelly Morel
Check out Facebook’s very own infographic covering the power of Facebook ads.
Here’s another blog topic that I’ve gotten a request to write about. Currently there are several social media sites that are available online for people to take advantage of and understanding how to use each of them in the right way can be challenging. Here’s a look at it from my experience as a Digital Marketer.
Before you think about signing up for every single social network ask yourself these few questions:
– Where is my target audience primarily spending time on the internet?
– How is my target audience using social media?
– How much time, money, and resources can I commit to social media?
– What are my short term and long term goals for social media?
Working out the answers to those questions will help you narrow down what you’ll need to focus on how much time you can spend growing your social media presence. I personally don’t think you need to be on every single social media channel unless you’re a massive company with a lot of resources. There’s nothing worse than seeing a page that has not been updated in weeks or even months.
Now, on to the top social media sites. Let’s briefly talk a bit about them and how they are beneficial for your business or service.
The good: Facebook is an obvious choice in creating a community for your business. By the end of 2012, Facebook will reach over 1 billion users worldwide. This provides companies with a platform to cast a wide net for recruiting fans. Facebook also features helpful insights such as demographic breakdown of your existing fans, weekly interactions, and fan growth. Facebook insights also give you information on how engaging the content on your Facebook page is. This is essentials for building a better line of communication with your audience to convert them into brand advocates.
Another added bonus is that Facebook gives you the tools to help grow your audience by targeting consumers by age, sex, marital status, education, and most importantly interests. This can be done with Facebook advertising tool.
Facebook also allows companies to build sites within Facebook pages to run promotions, competitions, and much more!
The bad: The downside of Facebook is their mobile app. Most consumer use Facebook via their mobile devices. Facebook page apps are not mobile friendly meaning if you have a mobile device and you want to participate in a promotion or competition featuring in a page app you won’t be able to access the page.
The good: Twitter is fantastic for communicating short sharp messages to your followers in 140 characters. The audience here wants you to get right to the point of what you are trying to say. It’s also great for encouraging your audience to help amplify a message by retweeting. Twitter also allows you to follow like minded organizations, consumers, or companies to share information.
Twitter is also constantly evolving by making tweet more interactive featuring videos and images.
The bad: You only have 140 characters. Sometimes it can be challenging getting your message across with this limitation. Also Twitter does not have built insights to give you feedback on which tweet are more effective than others. If you really want to get information on how your tweets are doing you’ll need to use a 3rd party website or service like Klout, or Sysomos.
Part two of my blog will cover YouTube, Instragram, and Pinterest.
Hope this is helpful!
Got any questions or blog requests? Send them on through!
With so many different social media sites on the net, it’s become challenging for community managers and social media strategists to keep up. How do we maintain a company’s presence across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google +, and now Pinterest? I believe it can be done with a strategy, preparation, and using the right tools available to you. 
Having a solid strategy means figuring out what role each of the social network sites you manage for a company will play. Figure out how to communicate your message on each site to ensure that it’s well delivered and genuine.
Also starting with a primary social media site early on is a good way to begin. For instance while at Ubisoft we began the social media marketing plan for Just Dance by focusing mainly on Facebook. We knew our target audience was there and we wanted to build the community there first while of course keeping a presence on Twitter and YouTube. We hosted most of our video content on YouTube and used Twitter as a secondary channel to engage with fans. Once we felt that we had a strong community on Facebook, we then focused on Twitter by running campaigns and eventually moved to YouTube.
Planning ahead weekly is another great way to properly manager your social media sites. When you have a better idea of what is going up and when, it will make things much more manageable. I recommend creating a weekly calendar of what you’re going to post on your social media accounts (even having an idea of what will be posted works). Using excel is ideal for this type of approach. It will save you a lot of time to be prepared.
Leveraging third party management tools is a great way to have your Facebook and Twitter accounts under one roof. Several large companies use paid services (such as Involver and North Social) which allows them to import their Facebook and Twitter accounts, track them with detailed analytics, schedule posts, and reply to consumers for better customer service.
For those who’d prefer a free service Hootsuite is the way to go. Hootsuite allows you to:
There are more best practices but this gives you a great start. All of the above methods can help you organize your social media management to focus on other things such as content creation, building campaigns and reporting.
Got any specific questions on social media management or got tips of your own? Post them in the comments. I’d love to hear them. 🙂
Renelly Morel aka Nelly Morel
Recently I attended an interesting luncheon hosted by Bond University with one of my coworkers. The topic discussed was “How to blog and tweet without getting sued”. Nobody wants to get sued, but if you’re working for an organization with an online presence or are known as an influential online figure, you’ll need to know how to stay out of trouble. Just like G.I. Joe says “Knowing is half the battle” (yes I quoted a cartoon).
During the luncheon, the speaker Mark Pearson gave several examples of companies and celebrities who were in hot water because of something they tweeted or wrote online, some of which were sued and had to pay big bucks to settle matters. Essentially this can occur when you write something that is “defaming”. Defamation is defined as a statement or comment made about a person, product, service, or organization to more than one person which creates a negative image.
I think the most surprising thing that I heard during the discussion was that companies can be held accountable for user generated content posted on their sites or social accounts. This means that you can get into trouble for something that someone else posts! The reality is that people rarely sue but it is definitely possible so it’s best to be prepare.
This shows the importance of having a community manager or social media strategist who can properly monitor and maintain a company’s social media presence as well as someone who is PR savvy with experience.
What are your thoughts on this? Leave me a comment and let me know!
For more information on this visit Mark Pearson’s site: http://works.bepress.com/mark_pearson/
Here’s a guide on how to design your Facebook fan page based on the dimensions of the new Timeline format.
The Cover Image [851×315] – Make this a striking image that can capture your audience’s attention. This is the first thing that they will see so make it count.
The Profile Picture [160×160] – This is where your logo or company name should be placed.
Facebook App page [810 width] – The length is up to the designer but the width is locked at 810. This is where the former tabs now live and where companies host their Facebook contests, competitions and key campaigns.
Facebook App thumbnail [111×74] – This is the gateway to your Facebook App page, which means it should be simple and clearly label. Give people a reason to click on the thumbnail without making it too cluttered.
As for Facebook posts to the Timeline (wall) I’d recommend making the images large, similar to the cover image dimensions if you plan on making them into Milestones or highlights.
Being visual is key on Facebook so make it count and give people a reason to talk.
Got questions? Send them my way!
Renelly aka Nelly
As a social media strategist or Digital Marketing Manager knowing how to leverage Facebook advertising to give your online campaign some fuel is essential. It can take your campaign from community only and expand it to a wider more relevant audience who’s yet to connect with your company.
I’ve worked on a number of products that used Facebook ads and when done right they’ve worked wonderfully. Here’s some knowledge and pointers to get you started. First off you need to know when you’re ads are preforming well and who you want to target.
using Facebook ads
Ideally you want to use “CTR” (click through rate) to measure how well your ads are preforming. The clickthrough rate of an advertisement is defined as the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of times the ad is shown. The higher the CTR, the better your ad is preforming. Here are some benchmarcks to help you better understand what a good CTR looks like:
Another important factor that you need to consider is what type of ad campaign you’d like to run. You have two to choose between. Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Impression. I prefer to CPC because you only pay when someone clicks on the ad. Cost Per Impression is good when you are solely focused on getting awareness.
Now that you know the two types of ad campaigns and you have an idea of what success looks like let me take you through the things you need to work on to set up a proper CPC Facebook ad campaign.
Know you target audience – The more targeted you are the better. Figure out which target demographic you want to focus on and what interested (relevant to your campaign & brand) you’d like to target. Here is an example of what I mean. The interests targeting is very important because it helps you build an audience who would be already inclined to be interested in your business (if done right). So if you have a product that is gluten free you should probably target people who eat gluten free.
Here’s an example of audience & interests targeting. For a dance game like Zumba Dance Fitness you’d probably want to target women between the ages of 17 – 35 who’s interests in include, dance, fitness, latin music, Wii games, Kinect games, etc.
Please note that targeting a large number of people does not work well. Start small within the range of 100,000 – 700,000 Facebook users.
Having a set budget is also essential. You can create a set a daily budget for your ad campaign. When you’re running a Facebook ad campaign you will need to bid against other companies for the ad space. The goal for your ad campaign is to spend less per click. Facebook gives you a suggested bid range to help you choose how much you should bid. I strongly recommend biding high especially because you won’t always spend the amount you bid. You’ll post likely spend less for the click and ad placement.
Another important aspect of a Facebook ad campaign is the creative and the copy. The creative needs to really stand out & capture people’s attention. The copy needs to be very clear, short, & to the point. It’s also recommended to have several different images to test when running ad campaigns & stick to the one that preforms the best. Ideally you’d want to test 3 different ads for the same campaign & choose the one that preforms best. This is how you optimize. It’s recommended that you do this weekly for Facebook ads.
There’s more important information to cover on Facebook ads but I’ll leave that for another blog (sponsored stories ads, Facebook offers, poll ads etc.) but this should give you a good understanding of how they work.
Got questions or comments? Let me know!
Renelly aka Nelly
Whether you love it or hate it Facebook Timeline is on it’s way & change is coming, Especially for brand fan pages. Facebook announced this month that all fan pages will be updated to the new Timeline design. This means companies will have to change the way they market on Facebook & rethink a few things. Before we get into how to restructure your marketing approach let’s discuss the changes.
Dove's Facebook Timeline
What is changing?
Now that we covered the changes, let’s talk about how to run social media campaigns with the new timeline format in mind.
Your Facebook Cover image & profile picture are going to play a big role in gaining organic followers to your Facebook fan page so think of ways to be creative yet relevant to your brand. Keep in mind that you are not allow to have a call to action (Like this page or Share this post.), web address, email, or retail prices on the cover image. This is clearly stated by Facebook.
Restructure your custom pages for the new app format. You are going to have three visible apps to play around with so make them count & make them stand out. The photos app cannot be moved.
If you are running a promotion or contest be sure to pin a post about it. It will stay visible for 7 days. Take advantage of this new feature.
Give fans a reason to dig through your companies timeline. This can be done in several creative ways. See what Fanta is doing for example.
Facebook ads are even more relevant than ever! If you are running a campaign be sure to budget some Facebook ad money to help support it.
Another important point is to promote your Facebook page using your other online channels such as newsletter, website, & video content. These do help drive traffic & will build your community on Facebook.
Got any thoughts on this blog or would like me to cover another topic on social media? Leave a comment to let me know.
Renelly AKA Nelly
I’ve found that the role of a Community Manager has evolved in recent times. Years ago, the role just required someone who was passionate about a product & a member of several online communities. Nowadays it takes a lot more than that & experience is key. Community Management is a great role that can launch your career from entry level to marketing rock star! Since the online world has evolved outside of a website & forums, Community Managers need to have experience in the following areas:
– Strong writing skills & knowledge of writing online to consumers.
What you need to know - Community Management
– Extensive understanding of social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest etc.)
– Experience running a community or fan site.
– Experience in creating digital content.
– Experience in analyzing community sentiment & growth.
You can get this type of experience online in a lot of different ways. Becoming apart of a tech, gaming, or fashion community (depending on your preference) is a start. Websites are always looking for volunteers & experience counts. Once you feel like you have some experience under your belt work your way up & aim for paid gigs.
I’m a big believer in getting a University degree & I’ve noticed that the demand for Community Managers includes a Bachelors degree. It’s not always required but it can definitely help you move up the ranks within a company.
Got any specific questions or insights of your own on Community Management? Are you a Community Manager yourself? Post your thoughts.
Renelly Morel 