Big props to Eric Leist for putting this together. Brilliant! If you want to watch this on Vidler, here is the original video. I love the description:

Who knew that Facebook’s newest feature was originally conceived by the Mad Men of the 1960s? In all seriousness the most compelling elements of Facebook’s Timeline are the ones that made Kodak’s Carousel popular. Reminiscing is a social activity. It always has been and now Facebook is bringing that activity online.

You can convince yourself that the reason you’re not the best in your industry is because you don’t have as many employees as the other guys. That may be true also.

You can even try to explain to those around you that if you had gone to this school or that, or if you had only acted upon your gut way back when, you would be ahead of the game right now. Again, this might be accurate.

The one thing you cannot hide behind, however, is lack of hours in the day.  You are given the same as everybody else.  In this area, nobody can out pace you or buy more than you, we all work with the same 24 hour clock.  It’s what you do with that time that is important.  I’m telling you this because it’s something I have to remind myself of almost every single day…I am bombarded by emails, phone calls, content calendars, sweepstakes rules, legal department hurdles, Facebook advertising optimization and a hundred other things every day.  When you add to it the fact that I actually like spending time with my family at home (yes, all four kids), I realize that it would be very easy each and every day to complain that I don’t have enough time.

That’s a ridiculous complaint, however.  I do have enough time, I have just as much as you do, and my competitors have just as much as all of us.  Instead of praying for a 28 hour day, it’s time to accept the fact that we all need to work with 24 hours; so more isn’t the answers, but efficiency and prioritization are.  It may be time for you to make a  ”time budget”.

Most people that are successful with money have a financial budget.  Usually this is figured out by looking at your total income and then subtracting expenses, starting with what is most important and cannot be done without (e.g. your mortgage, rent, food, utility bills) then working down to “nice to have” (e.g. clothing expenses) then finishing with “if there is enough left over” (e.g. video games, dining out).  Hopefully somewhere in there is a saving account, but as that doesn’t apply to time budgeting (I wish), I’m not including that.

The same rules apply to creating a time budget.  Start off with your “must have” items, following by your “nice to have” followed by your “I wish” list.  The thing with this is…what is important to you will not necessarily be important to other people, so you need to know what works for your situation.  For example, my time budget Monday-Friday looks something like this:

Must Have

• 10 hrs work
• 1.5 hrs eating (I eat many meals on the go, like breakfast and lunch but I try to have dinner with my family)
• 6 hrs sleep (this varies, but 6 hours is my minimum to be able to work effectively each day)

Nice to Have

• 1.5 hrs exercise
• 3 hrs family time (reading, watching TV, playing games, talking…anything that is NOT work and is WITH family)
• 2 hours variable (this changes…might be extra sleep, more down time or personal activities, might be more work)

I wish

• 1 extra hour of exercise
• 1 extra hour of family time
• 1 extra hour of sleep

See how quickly the time fills up? Of course, this is just my Monday through Friday routine, Saturday and Sunday I try to only do 1 or 2 hours of work, usually early in the morning before everybody in the house is awake.  For the most part, as tempting as it is to play catch-up on weekends, I really try to focus on family time or just down (non-work) time so I can come back on Monday refreshed.  Have you ever thought about a time budget, or are you just going through each week and taking things as they come? If you’ve never stopped to consider time priorities, I want to encourage you to do so now.  Start by keeping track of how you are currently spending your time, then after a couple of weeks of tracking, establish a realistic “budget” of how you want to spend your time.  If there is a big difference between what you are doing now and what you want to be doing…take the time to seriously consider how to bridge the gap.

It’s really a matter of priorities; we all have 24 hours in the day, how are you going to choose to spend yours? How is your competition spending theirs? Stop making excuses and make the changes you know you need to, it’s never too late to start getting ahead.

“Time Flies” used under Creative Commons, thanks to rubyblossom!

In business, the majority of people tend to flip-flop the decision process. Sometimes easy questions or calls to action come about, and usually they can be handled simply by giving it a little thought and making a decision. However, most people tend to slow these down by moving the decision to be made to a larger group…emails are drafted, many people are CCd and doubt is dispersed in many forms, including questions like “what do you think we should do?” and the single-word pass-off, “thoughts?” Unfortunately, making mountains out of mole holes is commonplace in today’s business world.

Then there are decisions that should require more attention and research, and often are appropriate to bring to a larger group. Decisions that, if made to hastily, can negatively impact a campaign, or even the company’s reputation. Very often, instead of seeking wise counsel, people tend to pull the trigger quickly, often resulting in a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

It fascinates me that so many people are wired to do the opposite of what is required in a decision making process.

Many years ago, I read a Colin Powel Leadership Primer in which he referenced the timeliness of making decisions. He said that if you make a decision without being 40% sure of yourself then you are jumping in too hastily and mistakes can be made. Conversely, he said that if you wait for more than 70% certainty then you have likely missed an opportunity. Get inside the 40-70% range, then go with your gut.

This concept of knowing when to make a decision right away or when to seek more input or do more research can apply to many areas of life, but I want to point out how it applies to social media. You see, social media is a strange hybrid of real-time conversations and historical archive. A Facebook conversation that is started by consumers may require immediate attention, but do not forget that it will be permanently seen in various places on the internet. A tweet that is offensive may be removed, but chances are that those that saw it have taken screen shots and spread it around by Twitpic, blogging and Facebook before your finger can even get to the delete button. Particularly in crisis or reaction to something negative, remember that what you say from your official brand page will be brought up again, so you need to make sure that what you say is what you mean.

It’s very easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to something that is said about you or your company online, and the immediacy of a smart or even sarcastic reply can be tempting…after all the keyboard is in front of you and the only thing standing between you and what you are sure is an authoritative and smart response is the “post” button. Remember the old adage in this case that it is best to keep your mouth shut and suspected a fool than to open it up and prove it. The vast majority of situations that arise online, even the most critical, really do not need a response within minutes if you are not quite sure that the response is appropriate. Back off the trigger, consider all options and their possible outcomes, and then post when it is time, but not before. In all of this you must remember…do not wait too long or opportunities will be lost, or in the case of social media your community can turn on you.

There is so much pressure from pundits to “immediately” respond to things. Success can be found when cool heads prevail, so make sure that you are putting the proper weight (and timing) on the decision you are about to make, or the post you are about to write, because on the internet, nothing ever truly goes away.

Awesome decision making photography used under Creative Commons, courtesy of s~revenge

All I want for Christmas (besides this creepy photo) is on my Social Media wish list

The holidays are upon us! Some celebrate Hanukkah, some celebrate Solstice, some celebrate Christmas. No matter your preference, I think we can all agree it’s a great time to reflect on the year behind us, be thankful for what we have today, and look to next year with hope and expectations.  Given the spirit of the season, I’ve put together a little list of things that I’ve asked Santa Clause for this year…in social media.  It’s a crazy list for sure, but if my 5 year old son can ask for a trip to the moon (and expect it to happen) I can dream big too!  I’m going to put out a plate of extra-special cookies and hope that ol’ Saint Nick brings me…

• Hyperlinks within Tweets. Can you imagine having an extra 20 spaces or so (that’s what a typical bit.ly link takes up) to say whatever you want? Instead of a tweet looking like this: “Check out this post I wrote about the upcoming Facebook Page Admin Controls and let me know what you are looking fwd to http://bit.ly/g7B3Zc” (exactly 140 characters) it would look like this: “Check out this post I wrote about the upcoming Facebook Page Admin Controls and let me know what you are looking fwd to the very most y’all!” (still 140 characters but with more room to chat!)
• Robust Admin Controls for Facebook Pages. I saw a sneak peak of them a while back when Facebook accidentally rolled out some new changes (you can see what I saw here) and it was definitely a step in the right direction.  Still, I would like better Insights (analytics) and the ability to ban users from a page without just flagging them.  I don’t want to wait for somebody at Facebook to *maybe* get around to it at some point. I get REALLY tired of the “first” and “gay” comments that go up on large pages all the time, but I have no tolerance for users that use hate language, attack individuals, constantly swear or link to porn
• Overlay for YouTube videos. No, not just annotations, I want to be able to overlay the videos with graphic images.  You know…put a floating logo in the bottom corner (clickable of course), insert a graphic in the background…neat things like that. Sure, I can do this in a video editor then upload, but I would like to use full controls within YouTube proper so I can make cool SWF commands happen
• Lists for friends in Foursquare. I treat Foursquare in a similar way as Twitter but with slightly tighter control.  Knowing that, I have a lot of “friends” on Foursquare that I would like to break into smaller groups so I can check on them in a more controlled and manageable way.  Kind of like Twitter Lists, but for Foursquare.  Foursquare Lists, anyone?
• Dynamic backgrounds on Twitter. Everything else with Twitter has advanced over time…why not the backgrounds? Since the redesign, putting together a nice background (within the whopping 40 pixels on the left for people that view the page on a 1024×768 screen) has been a challenge to say the least.  Instead of outdated CSS and a static image I would love some basic HTML function so I could put up links to my other pages

We’ll see if I’ve been naughty or nice, I’m hoping to get these simple gifts under the virtual Christmas tree this year.  As you head into the weekend (hopefully with loved ones), I will leave you with a paraphrase of a famous work:

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And wrote up the meta tags, then turned with a jerk,

And laying his mouse aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his keyboard, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all coded like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he uploaded out of sight,

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

Facebook is up and down today as they roll out new features.  I logged in just in time to see some of the very promising admin controls for Pages…needless to say I was excited! Then moments later it was all taken away, presumambly to tighten up features.  I cannot imagine that rebooting a service that hundreds of millions of people use is easy.  Before it went down though I got some great screen grabs, seen below.  I’m pretty excited about having more control as a page admin! I’m guessing some of these features will change by the time they are back up, but here’s your look at what I saw (click on an image to see it full-sized):

1. When you go to a Page you now have the option to “Login as Page”.  This is straight up AWESOME.  Instead of going to another page and commenting as Matt Singley, I can comment as any page that I’m an admin of.  This really helps out with partnerships, as I can now comment directly instead of hot-linking to the page in a post.

2. I can switch accounts on the fly! I am the admin of a lot of pages (100+) and being able to one-click log in (as mentioned in point 1) is invaluable.  Thank you Facebook!

3. Interestingly, I couldn’t go to Page Insights when logged in as the Page…I had to switch back over to my personal account.

4. Once I was in Insights a lot of the function and filters were gone…as were the Likes! Check out this screen cap from a page that has a couple of million Likes: they’ve all disappeared! I’m sure this will be resolved soon.

5. Filters are gone (for now) so even when I set the Wall to display ONLY posts by the Page, it still shows all.  Hopefully this will get fixed really quickly, some of the pages I oversee have several million fans, and if we can’t move those to an “Others” tab/column then it will be REALLY hard for visitors to the page to see what we are saying as the brand.

That’s as far as I could dig before Facebook took it all away.  Hopefully it will be back soon, but from what I’ve seen initially I think this is a MAJOR improvement for page admins and marketers!

____________________________

Did you enjoy this post? Consider subscribing to the RSS for future updates delivered straight to a feed reader, or come over to Twitter and say hi…that is where I do most of my one-on-one engagement

____________________________

I’ve seen a similar ad previously but won’t ruin the surprise of this one by telling you what it is.  All I can say is, I like it.

This morning  the power in my neighborhood went out, and I got a report that it wouldn’t be restored until later in the afternoon.  This took away my internet and my ability to drive anywhere (car is in a garage that requires power, and thank you for the suggestions of a manual override but unfortunately it’s not an option in this case) which really leaves me stuck, as my job is to create and oversee online social media campaigns for Fortune 500 companies.  I live in a beautiful neighborhood, and one of the things that makes it beautiful is the lack of businesses.  I have two coffee shops that have wifi and good tea, practically across the street from each other, 2 miles away from my house.  I put on my backpack and started the hike.

One of the coffee shops is a locally owned and operated cafe, the other is Starbucks.  I try to support small businesses whenever possible, and though it was a bit more inconvenient, I trekked to the local cafe.

Once inside, I saw I wasn’t alone.  About a half dozen people were in there with their laptops, probably trying to escape the same outage that I was.  I ordered a croissant breakfast sandwich, a skinny latte and sat at a table to start my work.  Although I got online right away, about 30 seconds later I lost connectivity.  A few minutes later it came back, then went off.  I went through this cycle for about 20 minutes, hoping that I would be able to keep a connection long enough to download a report.  No such luck, and I noticed my fellow patrons were having the same problems.  Another gentleman and I went up to the counter at the same time and told the person there that the wifi was going up and down.  His reply? “Yeah, it does that sometimes.”  My counterpart asked if he would mind simply restarting the router, and his answer was, “I can’t right now, but somebody will probably get to it before too long.”  To paint the complete picture, he was making a coffee for himself for his pending break.

So what happened? No surprise, everybody packed up and walked across the street to Starbucks, myself included.  As I sit here typing this, most of those people are still here, and I’m guessing this group of nomads has spent close to $100 on food and drink so far.  $100 that would have gone to the local cafe if one person had cared about the what the customers needed at that moment. We told him, he just didn’t listen, or didn’t care. (By the way, if you want to know how this ties into social media, check out this recent post)

Perhaps your company can’t sell your goods or services as cheaply as the big corporation you compete against. No doubt you cannot spend the money on advertising they do.  It is likely you cannot buy the newest machines and the fanciest fixtures, even though it’s just a line item for the giant company across the street.

But there is something you can afford.  There is something you MUST afford.  You need to make sure that you and your employees, no matter if you are brick and mortar or digital, care about each and every one of your customers. People want to do business with you, they really do.  They want to give you their money. But when you don’t care, or at least put forth the appearance of not caring, there is always a corporate giant just a few steps or clicks away that will welcome them with open arms.

It will cost you nothing to do this, it will cost you everything if you don’t.

Flickr image licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy of drp

Sometimes what you need to help you make decisions is right in front of you, you just don't want to see it.

You Just Can’t See It. Or you don’t want to see it.

Over the roughly two decades that I’ve been involved with business, either as an entrepreneur, an executive director or a social media strategist, I’ve heard the same frustration voiced over and over again, in almost every market I’ve worked in.  After hours, weeks or sometimes months of seemingly endless meetings, late-night war room strategy sessions and presentation after presentation of focus group reports, eventually the people in charge of making the decisions for the direction of an organization bury their face in their hands and declare in frustration and defeat, “if only we knew what everybody wanted from us, we could just give it to them“.

This has applied to product development, marketing campaigns, service implementation…anything and everything a company (for profit or not) could possibly put together to offer a group of people.  ”If only we could find out what our customers want…”

Studies are ordered.  Thousands of dollars…or millions…are spent on consultants and burned up in labor hours.  When the senior management team meets to discuss, debate and dissect the data, 20% of the organization’s labor dollars are being paid out for each hour they cannot figure out what their audience wants.  At some point or another, late into the night, one of the people around the tables feels the frustration of a seemingly insurmountable task.  They want to be home with their family, they want to get back to the work they were hired to do instead of trying to figure out puzzles…they want to solve the mystery of how to move forward.  But how? And then the idea is presented:

“We should try social media. I know we already have a Facebook and Twitter page, but instead of just posting something once a week, why don’t we ask the people that follow us what they want, and then listen to them? Also, why don’t we pay for a monitoring service so we know what people are saying about us and even our competitors? People are already telling us what they want, we just need to listen, reply and implement”

The silence only last for a moment, before a chorus of “we will lose control of the message” and “we can’t create a forum for negative comments” starts. The boss makes an expression that is a combination of fear and patronization and simply says, “that’s too risky, we’re not doing it” before starting a discussion about when the best time to meet again will be to tackle this impossible chore.

Sometimes what you need is right in front of you, you just can’t see it…or worse yet, you don’t want to see it.

Hope your work week is wrapping up well!

“Tech Support” by xkcd