Analytics Is King

A Look Back at One Year in Austin

13 Feb 2011
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AMD Austin Dell Facebook General Posts Google SXSW WCG Whole Foods

My grandmother always used to tell me that as we age time seems to go by more quickly. Of course, I was in my mid-20's and thought she was off her rocker. By the way, I'd never tell her that to her face. I'd always agree with whatever she said. She may have only come in at 5'1" (on a really good day) and 100 pounds, but she could've kicked my ass five ways to Sunday. Anyway, it turns out that once again grandma is right... Time does fly as you age... I woke up this morning and realized that I have been in Austin for exactly one year. Crazy, right? Hard to believe that a year ago yesterday I started the 21 hour trek down from Cleveland with just my clothes, some electronics, a few books and only a few pieces of furniture stuffed in the back of my car. Not only was I starting a brand new job with WCG, but I was basically beginning a brand new life in a city where I knew MAYBE 10 people. Whenever I'm speaking to a group of students or young professionals I always encourage them to look for the most challenging job even if it means moving away from their friends and family. After a year of being here, I can now truly appreciate how terrifying those words most seem to those kids...and that's realizing I have more experience than most of them. YIKES! After you get over that initial period of feeling totally alone and terrified you begin to truly appreciate why you've made the move you've made. Suffice it to say that it didn't happen in the first week, first month or even the first six months. As is the case with everything in life this kind of move is a process. Over the holiday break I had an opportunity to go home (to Cleveland) and enjoy time with the family. I absolutely love spending time with them. However, at some point during the trip I realized that Cleveland was no longer home. It is my hometown, sure, but it isn't the place that I identify as home anymore. I don't know what caused it to click in my head, but now everytime I leave town for work or pleasure I miss being in Austin. Before you make any jokes about the weather (though it is amazing - 75 and sunny today) this has a lot more to do with the people and the area than that. Instead of going on and on with introspection, I figured it might be more interesting to talk about what I know now that I didn't know before moving here... First...about the area....

The marketing talent in Austin is incredible. I'll admit that when I first typed that line I said "social media." However, I knew how my friend Kyle Flaherty would react to that so I changed it to marketing. I'll save whether social belongs in marketing or another communications discipline for another post. Before I made the jump to Austin I had heard rumblings about how great the marketing/technology scenes were here, but that was mostly through the grapevine. After being here for a year I can now attest that it is 100% true. In addition to having a large corporate presence from heavyweights like Google, Whole Foods, Facebook, Dell and AMD, Austin is also home to some seriously talented professionals. We're talking about people like Aaron Strout, Kyle Flaherty, Tim Walker, Bryan Person, Tim Hayden, Richard Binhammer, Andy Sernovitz, Peter Kim, Virginia Miracle, Lionel Menchaca, Susan Beebe, Bob Pearson, Greg Matthews, Colin Foster, Aaron Brazell, Spike Jones, Stephanie Wonderlin, Brendan Lewis, Sydney Owen (even though she's now leaving us) etc... etc... etc... How's that for a who's who? I'll go to war with that crew any day of the week.
The people are nicer than you think. Before making the move I had visited Austin a few times and knew how nice the people were down here. What I didn't fully appreciate was just HOW nice these people are. Trust me...when you are moving to a new city the last thing you need to be surrounded by are people who are cranky with life. There might be people here like that, but I've not met them yet.
The BBQ really IS that good. I think this statement kind of speaks for itself so I'll just move on...
SXSWi is a better event than people give it credit for. I wasn't sure what to expect of SXSW now that I was living here. I'll say that it is definitely unfairly trashed as an event. Is the quality of the panels as high as it could be? No. Are there good speakers? ABSOLUTELY. Is it the definitive networking event of the year? 100% no doubt. Are there plenty of brands here to network with during the event if you're an agency? 100% no doubt, and if you believe otherwise you're a flat out idiot.
Traffic sucks - Again, if you live here or have visited here you know the traffic is horrific. It's almost ridiculous seeing as how this city isn't that big. Anyway, that's one downside to an otherwise glorious place.
The weather. It's supposed to be 75 and sunny for a week. In February. I can leave it at that I think.

Finally...what have I learned about myself...

Comfortable tackling any challenge. No, that's not meant to be an arrogant assholic statement. I truly believe that after making this move, taking on a new job and then trying to write a book at the same time I can tackle just about anything. If I hadn't made the move would I know what I know about myself now? Probably not.
Still plenty of growing to do. There are things over the last year that I didn't handle as well as I could have, and I know it. There are people who are a million times smarter than I am in this area and in this field that I can learn PLENTY from. I'm looking at all of the people I listed above as a great starting point for that continued learning.
We're on the front lines of the social media revolution, but there's still a ways to go. You can't go anywhere in this city without overhearing someone talking about social networks. The enthusiasm is great. However, even though we're on the front lines in this city (I'd argue we're second behind Silicon Valley in this field) we still have a significant job ahead of us in terms of educating on how to use this stuff within large enterprise. It's nowhere NEAR deep enough.
I don't hate UT sports as much as I thought. Don't get me wrong I think Mack Brown is still terribly overrated. Rick Barnes likely falls into the same camp. However, the people here genuinely love their UT sports and that's something I can admire. Plus, they throw an AMAZING tailgate party. :)

There's probably more I could talk about but this post is ridiculously long as it is...Don't the "experts" say no more than 500 words? Well, that's shot to hell. Anyway, thank you Austin (and the people I've listed above and then some) for an amazing year. Here's hoping for plenty more where that came from!

Size Doesn't Matter...In Social Media

2 Aug 2010
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AVEs Dell Influence amber naslund bob pearson impressions social media social media influence

Stop me if you've heard these before:

We're going to calculate the total number of impressions
Then we're going to apply the famous PR multiplier to the total number of impressions
Maybe we can apply advertising value equivalencies. Because, you know, advertising and PR carry the same value for a brand (sarcasm)
Lets find the total number of fans a person has
Then lets find their total number of Twitter followers
I'm also interested in how many posts have been written about my brand/industry
They write for the New York Times, or Wall Street Journal so they must matter to my brand.

Guess what? All of that is bullshit. OK, maybe just PR multipliers and AVE's. The rest aren't total BS, when placed into context. We know that a brand engaging in social media, at its core, is attempting to influence a consumer, or potential consumer, into doing something. Most often it is buying your product, but you could be using it to respond to customer service inquiries. Or maybe you are using it to just gain market intelligence (read: listening only). Or maybe even using it as an employee recruitment tool. Or, finally, using it as an internal communications vehicle. No matter what your purpose in using social media is, looking at raw numbers (like the ones listed above) is pretty meaningless (just like in traditional PR, actually). I mentioned during the #DellSTU SMaC Unconference last week that one day I hoped we would get over our love affair with size. The anecdote I used was that just because Amber Naslund (she was sitting next to me at the time - I wasn't picking on her) has 20,000+ followers on Twitter doesn't mean she's relevant to your brand. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, the magic word: relevancy! If Amber has written 10,000 tweets, or 500 blog posts in the last year, how many of them relate to my brand? If only a handful are related, then how is she influential for me/my brand? On the other hand, if you take Joe Smith who has only 5,000 followers, half as many blog posts and half as many tweets but is writing more on topic content than Amber isn't he more influential? I would postulate that he is. Taken another way in traditional communications.... We love the big name writer from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or Forbes, but what we're not taking into consideration is how much they write about us, or our industry. Just because their content is widely syndicated, or their publication has several million impressions (gag me, please), does not make them influential for you. My boss, Bob Pearson, is fond of saying that there are likely only 50 or so people shaping your brand online at any given time. Underlying that is the notion of relevancy. Just because they have a lot of followers, impressions, etc... doesn't mean they are relevant. Before your boss asks you to reach out to someone via traditional media or social media, take a second to figure out whether or not they are relevant to your brand. It might just save some swings and misses down the line

Reflections on Dell's SMaC Unconference - #DellSTU

29 Jul 2010
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Dell General Posts ROI SMaC measurement social media social media listening

How many conferences have you been to in the last 12-24 months that have utilized Dell as a case study for the adoption of social media? Probably somewhere between a bunch and more times than you'd care to count, right? Well, I can tell you that all of those case studies applauding their adoption of social are true. I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in Dell's first Social Media and Community (SMaC) Unconference with several people from outside of the organization, including Kelly Feller (Intel), Shel Holtz, Amber Naslund, Chris Barger (General Motors), Katie Paine, Jordan Williams (REI) and Andy Sernovitz. It's hard to encapsulate an entire day of talking about social media with such smart people in a single blog post, but I'm going to give it a try.

Dell's commitment to listening - This is probably one of the biggest takeaways for me, given the role I currently hold with WCG. During our panel discussion to start the day, there were a couple of questions specific to metrics/listening. Dell's commitment to doing listening correctly really showed through in the afternoon sessions. I had the privilege of sitting through probably 2-3 sessions on listening where we talked about everything from categorizing conversations to setting up profiles to filtering through noise. All great discussions, but what really struck me was how committed everyone was to listening to the voice of their customer. Even Dell's Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell, made it a point to mention how important listening was to the organization. NOW THAT IS COOL! If there are brands still on the fence about listening (and I know there are) it's time to get off!
Scaling social media - No surprise, but Dell's social media team is large. Given the size of the group you would think it would be very difficult to coordinate. However, after spending the day with a large chunk of the team it appears they are more coordinated than I could've imagined. Major kudos to Manish Mehta on building a fantastic team.
Measuring social media - Again, no surprise. Everybody is wondering how you measure this stuff. One of the points I made during the opening panel discussion was that a focus on ROI is great, but don't lose sight of other metrics. Categorized more as awareness or assessment metrics. When given the opportunity it's absolutely imperative to show direct linkage to sales, but relationship and trust metrics are just as important when trying to demonstrate the value of social activities. I think that's something the folks at Dell understand, but it's something I worry about for the industry-at-large.
Commitment from the top - Everyone in the audience was excited to hear from Michael Dell at the end of the day. He had a lot of great things to say, but his dedication to social technologies that help the company get closer to its customers was the biggest takeaway for me. C-level executives who are still skeptical about the value of social should spend 30 minutes talking to him. They'd instantly be turned around.
More brands should pull together teams in this format - It doesn't matter how big your social/digital/community team is in this case. Bringing them together to recognize their work (an excellent point made by Shel Holtz early in the day) is critical, but it also helps in building team comradery. That's all in addition to bringing together ideas that someone in another business unit may not have thought of previously.

I could probably go on for days about what I learned yesterday, but i'll stop there. Before I go, I wanted to thank Manish, Bill Johnston and Richard Binhammer for inviting me to participate in the event. It was a great experience for me to talk with so many smart people in the space. Wish you, and your team the best of luck moving forward.

A Look Back at One Year in Austin

Size Doesn't Matter...In Social Media

Reflections on Dell's SMaC Unconference - #DellSTU

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