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August 2009 Archive
The following posts were made in August 2009. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.
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Posted on August 20, 2009
Do Some Good - Its Easy
BY BRANDON WHALEN
So you've got 10,000 Twitter followers. Your Facebook page is blowing up. You have a huge following and you are feeling pretty good about yourself. You have built up a great community and you have spread your message, but you are also sitting on the power to create some real positive change.
I am inspired by Mashable's latest effort, Summer of Social Good. They have made it quick and easy to donate to some great organizations and they have harnessed the power of their influence to encourage their readers to do some good.
Honestly, this is something we should all be doing as marketers in the social media realm. You may not have the cash on hand to donate, but you can easily use your influence to inspire some of your followers to donate their time and money.
I thought up a few quick and simple ideas on how any business can do some good through social media:
1) Run contests that encourage people to volunteer. (ex: We are giving away a Macbook Pro. The first person to volunteer 30 hours at the Denver Rescue Mission gets the prize.) Twitter contests are getting pretty popular. If your followers are willing to re-tweet a message or leave their house for a scavenger hunt, certainly you can get them to volunteer for a nice prize.
2) Get involved with sites like http://www.snapimpact.org or http://www.globalgiving.com and find something that inspires you. Encourage your online communities to go and check out their content and possibly donate to a cause.
3) Build relationships with local non profits in your area (only a google search away). You can help them by simply tweeting a link to their site every day, or giving them space on your wicked cool Twitter background.
Your followers are donating their time to read your updates, interact with you, and support your efforts. It is just as simple to donate some time to do some good in the world.
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Posted on August 12, 2009
How can the FriendFeed team help improve Facebook?
BY BRANDON WHALEN
I am rather excited about this Facebook/FriendFeed situation. Why? I think the FriendFeed team can really improve Facebook.
Lately, Facebook has seemed to be in a transition phase (half stuck between becoming a Twitter competitor and sticking to their roots). While it is hard to say what sort of functionality they are aiming for at Facebook., they are certainly giving us a look at the future.
FriendFeed brings a lot of brain power into the mix. Now that Facebook has acquired the know-how, there are a lot of things they can be doing to improve my experience.
Include a real-time search of status messages.
Facebook needs to become more open. I want to search status messages and see what people are talking about up to the minute. This is a no-brainer.
Be my one-stop internet identity.
This means Facebook has to adopt the aggregation qualities of FriendFeed. I want to be able to connect my Facebook with my FriendFeed, my blog, and my Brightkite. I don't necessarily want to publish posts from all of those networks, but I want Facebook to recognize all of those networks as me. If someone connects with me on one network, I would like for them to be able to visit my Facebook profile and get a more complete sense of the person I am.
I want to easily link/mention my friend's profiles in my posts.
There is no easy way to reference a friend in a status update on Facebook. On Twitter this is as easy at including someone's handle. I would like to be able to type a friend's name and have it appear as a link to his profile in my status update. Even better, if Facebook would allow us to aggregate our profiles from other networks we could easily use a Twitter handle or another username to mention each other in posts. Those links could all head to our Facebook profile pages, making them much more useful and relevant.
Make Facebook less messy.
Here is where the FriendFeed team can really make improvements. In Facebook, there are so many different places to interact with other users that it gets confusing. I think it reduces the amount of quality interaction.
Let's say you see Dave's status and you want to respond. You can:
- Post a comment on his status message, but risk the annoyance of getting notifications every time a user you don't know also comments on that status update.
- Head to Dave's profile so you can comment on his wall.
- Start a chat with Dave to continue the discussion
- Send Dave a mail message
Let say you choose to post on Dave's wall and now he sees your wall post. He can:
- Comment you back on the post you put on his wall
- Head to your profile and post his response on your wall
- Start a chat with you
- Send you a mail message
Now lets say Dave is a total noob (which is the case for a lot of Facebook users). He accidentally posts his response in another status update. All of a sudden this conversation has gone from a status update, to one person's wall, to the next person's wall, back to a status update. Needless to say, the entire process has a lot of room to be simplified.
There are things I like about both sites, and by taking the strengths of both FF and FB, perhaps they can mash together a new social media super-power.
What do I like about Facebook?
Facebook is where I can find most of the people I know personally. It is less scary and more acceptable to a wide range of users because you generally connect with more people that you know in real-life. This is partially why they have been acquiring so many new users. The problem is: Facebook has not entirely kept up with the way people communicate and connect, leaving them with one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and an interface that is equally as stuck in-between.
What do I like about FriendFeed?
All of my internet identities are pulled into one convenient location that is very intuitive and easy to use. The problem is: The average user doesn't know as many people on FriendFeed and is less inclined to spend time there, even though the interface is way better.
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Posted on August 3, 2009
Room 214 Agency Profit Sharing
BY JASON CORMIER
This blog post is written to Room 214's most valuable resources - its people. Since my recent trend in blog posting has been to provide insight at the agency level, I'm posting it here for others who might be interested in reading as well.
As many of you know, we have worked to keep a very free and open culture here. One of the ways that manifests is in Room 214 being a flat organization. That means letting natural talent and leadership emerge without forcing programmatic job descriptions and titles. As James likes to say, "job titles are for your next job."
With respect to the success generated from these kinds of practices, sharing profits regularly with employees has been the intention since forming the company in 2004. Our decision to do this (every 90 days) is about three things: driving performance, recognizing the individuals' work that helps makes us profitable, and the act of giving.
So I'll get to it: Each of you who were eligible to receive profit sharing for Q2 should have seen it in your last check. Furthermore, your quarterly profit sharing for the 3rd quarter is tied to the following actions:
1. Innovate: Your first objective is to pick any one of our current clients for the purpose of focusing on what we could be doing better for them within the next 75 days. Consider things like case studies, new applications, methodologies, best practices, creative concepts, etc.
2. Execute: Your second objective is to actually implement your idea(s). Keep in mind this is by no means a "team-me" effort. Expectations may include required buy-in from the client, in addition to coordinated brainstorming and review with your peers.
3. Share: Once you have implemented your idea, you will write a blog post about what you did. What was implemented? What were your thoughts around measuring success? Has it benefitted the client? If not yet, then when? What were the results? What was learned?
Potential Limitations:
a.) Some of your ideas may require additional budgeting from the client. File those for later - and determine what can be done with existing budgets. Proposed out-of-pocket expenses will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
b.) We are moving at the speed of social media here. That means it may not make sense to do a deep dive into application development. You know who to talk to on our team if you do... just keep in mind they should be busier than you, and October 15 is your deadline to do your blog post.
c.) Client confidentiality should be an obvious consideration. Feel free to check with me or James if you are hesitant about what can or can't be said in your blog post. If you choose to use the client's name in your post, save it as a draft to be reviewed prior to posting.
I know we didn't think of everything, so feel free to post your questions as comments to this post, and I will respond in the same. Thanks for your awesome contribution to the team, and good hunting!
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