What does a social media consultant do?

I've been asked this several times as people try to figure out how iJump makes money: what do we actually do?

It's a constantly evolving field, but here's our current take on it - we help businesses understand and ultimately use the tools we call social media. We don't make the tools, and we don't sell them on behalf of others (although we are open to commissions and kickbacks - transparent, of course - from suppliers).

Ultimately, what we do is consultancy, helping businesses change their culture. Because the technology's the relatively easy part to implement. What's hard is the mindshift from broadcast, top-down control to a more democratised marketing message getting out.

So the short answer is - we get paid to understand how corporate culture changes, and how to use technology to facilitate that positive change.

Of course that's wordy management jargon at the moment - it'll take a bit more clarifying and thinking and more thinking to get it into plain English. But it's a start. And I think it's a pretty unique space that we can pursue, while everyone else focuses on the technology.

Update: Stephen Collins from AcidLabs has his own take on the question.

It just takes one

Last night, after the Rob Kozinets lecture, I caught up with Marketing Association CEO Sue McCarty, and she told me an amazing story about change.

Before AT&T made Catherine Coughlin their global marketing officer, they were a provider of bandwidth. After she got on board and brought a global perspective to AT&T's operations, she organised for the staff to get an iPhone each, and said "play with them, and figure out what people do with them".

Want to build empathy among your staff? Help them have the same experience as your customers.

(Very similar lessons in the book Marie's reading right now, Branded Customer Service, and the book I'm chewing through, The Game-Changer. But I digress).

Sue's point? One person with a strong vision changed AT&T in six months. New Zealand is about the same size as AT&T ... and we need a global marketing officer too!

I agree! And I think it will be very difficult, when we don't even have one single government department representing NZ Inc when overseas, we have several agencies and non-governmental organisations, all with different aims and goals.

But the challenge is there. Can we do it? Do we even know what our brand is? Or are we destined to become Fiji with snow?

Over to us, I think.

By the way, the title is taken from another book which is on my Amazon wishlist: It starts with One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations

just one

Why you shouldn't live as if today was your last day

Sometimes people lay that out as an instant key to know what's important in life. It's not ... if today was my last day, I'd probably try to do everything ... and not do anything well.

More inspiring for me is ... what would you do, if you had 50 years, and could only do one thing? Even forgetting 50 years, what about if you could do only one thing TODAY... ?

Of course, life's not like that, and neither is business. Businesses especially have to diversify their operations in ways that don't always feel comfortable or make brand sense. That's why we have brands - for ourselves as much as for others - to know what it is we're about. And why we do the things we do.

But having that thought - what if I could only do ONE thing? - is a great place to start. Who knows, you might actually get something done, and in a lot less time than 50 years!

When big is too big

SimonYoungWriters is doing a couple of jobs for large organisations at the moment, and I feel a real sympathy for anyone involved in corporate comms.



Marketing has it slightly easier - they get to be all strategic most of the time, while comms have to know both strategy and detailed tactics.

Comms people have to keep in tension three big factors: the overall business goals, each department's competing goals, and finally the needs of the reader/viewer/consumer of the content they're producing!

That last one can be quite tricky. Not tricky to understand - just spend a day in your customer's shoes - but tricky to translate into strategy that all the competing elements in your organisation understand.

I'm not sure I have an answer. One could be to think small - I used that phrase when talking about advertising, but perhaps that thinking applies to other areas as well. Think entrepreneurial, while leveraging the scale of your organisation. That's what Air New Zealand and TVNZ are trying to do, and they seem to be doing pretty well with that. (By the way, check out our interview with TVNZ's Jason Paris on Jump In, where he goes into that aspect of TVNZ in some detail)

And then there's what Deloitte calls "Services Thinking", which I heard a podcast about this morning. Similar in concept to Service-Dominant Logic, but with an operational focus instead of marketing. Worth a listen.

Focus

I have been intending to do a blog post on focus for some time, but ironically, there's been too much on for me to ... well, focus.

But the more I read and hear lately, the more I'm convinced that focus is a key to success. Better to do one thing exceedingly well than ten things averagely.

Easy to say, but for me currently heavily involved in two companies (SimonYoungWriters and iJump) and with an oversight role on another (Looksy.org) it's getting pretty tricky spinning the plates sometimes.

There's also two cultural factors that come into play. Kiwis have traditionally been generalists because they need to be. And as a journalist, I'm expected to know everything about everything that's happening.

So why am I convinced focus is important? A blog post by Jim Donovan started it all off, and then a conversation with Craig from Cyberglue added fuel to the fire. Cyberglue are evolving from a content management system company (which would be a good field to get out of, given the relative awesomeness - and freeness - of systems like WordPress and Drupal) to a niche provider of Membership Relationship Management systems to associations and industry organisations.

They were helped in their quest by Tony Seba, whose book (apparently, I haven't read it) demonstrates how focus has paid off for companies like Google, LinkedIn and others.

It's all pretty compelling, but how to get focused without smashing some of the many plates suddenly spinning?

And of course there's the fact that having multiple projects can be kind of fun, when they're not so stressful.

Will keep you posted!

(a hearty thanks to ihtatho for the photo!)

Maxnet, you suck - or why I got interested in management

I'm writing to you from the Booklovers B&B where the internet is slow but the atmosphere is faanntastic. (And, of course, interesting books line the shelves)

Wellington is groovy as always, and my presentation this morning was another step in finding my best presentation style. More on that later.

But for now, a constructive grumble.

It was on my fifth support call to Maxnet that I realised why I'd become interested in management all those years ago.

I started in advertising. If you think a little bit about advertising, you want to learn about marketing. Marketing is about making promises. If you make promises, you want to keep them. If you want to keep them systematically, you have to have a system in place. Hence, management.

Maxnet is experiencing systematic problems right now that are preventing it from fulfilling its potential.

Since Saturday night I've been trying to switch my domain to a new registrar before launching our new SimonYoungWriters' site (I won't link because there's nothing there at the moment!).

I could bore you with a long story, but I'll summarise what's up with Maxnet, and how they (and every business) could do a better job:

• Do the thinking for me. When I phoned late on Saturday night, and then again on Sunday morning, I got the same recorded message: "Unfortunately our operators can't take your call at this time". I didn't have the presence of mind to check their hours of operation, or I would've saved myself a lot of stress. But why don't they put their hours of business in their answerphone message?
• Get the staff you need. My righteous indignation hit a high when I waited on hold for 10 minutes, only to get automatically put onto an answerphone. Not what I want as a customer!
• Give staff the tools to help. When I finally talked to someone it was using my cellphone, calling from Auckland airport. It was a relief to talk to someone, but they couldn't help. The webmaster's in tomorrow, he said. Great.
• Don't be so frickin' cheap. And that's another thing. I had to pay for the call, even though it was Maxnet's system that wasn't delivering the results I needed. They have an 0800 number, but you can't call it from a cellphone or from within Auckland.

I think that's all, and it looks a lot less when I see it in bullet point. But each of these bullet points caused me a lot of grief, and it got worse, the less responsive Maxnet appeared.

Tonight I spoke with a helpdesk guy named Stephen. From him I discovered that my issue was a priority, that several members of the team were aware of it, and that there had been other, similar issues on rare occasions before.

That's great, but why didn't anyone email me or phone me? I want to know something, even if that something is "we're working on it".

Even then, I had to prod and poke Stephen. He would've been quite happy to let me wait until morning to talk to an expert. This is my business, I told him. Is there anyone who can help me right now, because right now is when I need help.

Then the helpfulness came. Stephen plumbed all the knowledge he had on the subject, and shared possible scenarios, used his creativity and imagination. We didn't get there, but we got further than we had been.

Why is it so hard to get people to be completely present to help you in these service situations? Why do I have to be more assertive than I feel comfortable with to get what is simply my due as a customer?

All questions to ponder. And I don't completely blame Stephen or his colleagues for the bad service they've given me. It's a systemic problem that must be dealt with in a systemic way. Not a mechanical system, but a growing, learning organic system that gets better over time.

More on Generations in the workplace

I'm really enjoying Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results. After posting the other day about Generation C, this paragraph in the book caught my attention.

It is no accident that quality of life - a second issue of the new era - is a key factor in how a mobile workforce of the 'best and brightest' chooses to live and work. As more and more baby boomers retire, there will be a period where the smaller Generation X population will not be big enough to fill all jobs. This will eventually subscide with the maturation of Generation Y, which is actually more numerous than the baby boomers. However, there will be major challenges filling key jobs in the interim, making the need to recruit and retain key talent more critical than ever.

Logistics Viewpoint: Generation Y

Logistics Viewpoint: Generation Y

Some interesting data on Gen Y from an employment point of view. See also my comments around Generation C.

Come to New Zealand if you're smart

It's out now: the article I worked on for three months.

New Zealand has an opportunity to passionately participate in the global economy - by seeking out and welcoming talented people from around the globe.

It's a story of stories. While there are many facts and figures out there that point to the value of diversity, I found more powerful the stories of creative individuals who used their outsiderness to help themselves and their new country.

Vincent Heeringa talks more about immigration (though, sadly, not my article!) in this week's Kiwi FM Idealog podcast.