If you agree it’s just the tools or tactics or knowledge then I would ask you to answer the following questions.
I’m going to stop here because questions 3 or 4 are usually the stumbling blocks for most companies. Question 3 is a really hard one to be quite honest. The wording of the question tends to trip people up. Your not just asking is social media is right for this effort. Your also going to be asking where does social media fit into my overall digital strategy. This is by far the hardest question to answer because you need to go down the digital strategy rabbit hole to even begin to answer this question.
If by some glorious event you can answer question 3 then you are hit with question 4. What does engage mean to you? What does engage mean to your customers? What does engage mean to the big brains you consult with? This is yet another rabbit hole that is going to take time to figure out for your company.
Question 3 and 4 are what I like to call the Knock Out (KO) questions. KO questions are meant to find the hole in your thinking or logic behind why social media is the best option for your customer and company. These 2 question if you are not prepared to answer them will stop your effort dead in its tracks.
There is a reason we have to ask these question. If you don’t then you are setting yourself and your effort up for failure from the start. Please do yourself and your customers a favor and answer these questions.
]]>Yesterday Meet Minneapolis had a 3 hour workshop for some of its employees dealing with customer service. To facilitate the workshop Meet Minneapolis brought in Tom LaForce. During the break twitter was mentioned and well with me being a twitter addict and all I had to ask what Tom’s twitter account was because I like connecting with other local tweeters. After our company workshop I went back to my desk and found a DM from Tom. This small DM session lead Tom to ask the question “Do you have a goal in mind for your writing?”
Sure I have a goal. I think I have a goal. Do I have a goal? My response was:
a few years back I did have a goal in mind. Then the real world came knocking and I had to give in a bit. Now I’m getting back to my roots…
by blogging more and reaching out to like minded people who are from a diverse community.
Is this really my goal? No not really because it doesn’t capture the essence of what I see as the goal of my writing. Reading through this blog you will see passion and drive mentioned a lot. What you might or might not realize is you also see a caged lion ripping at the bars of his own cage.
As I mentioned to Tom I did have a goal a few years back. That goal was to improve my writing skills and most importantly to connect with a group of peers who I could collaborate with. That goal was set to the side back in 2007 when life was hitting home.
Now though that goal is staring me right in the face almost mocking me. I have figured out that goal is critical to my personal and professional health and well being. Ignoring that goal seems more and more like an option that is not available to me any longer. Ignoring that goal would do more harm than good.
So my goal for my writing is to write about the subject matters I am most passionate about. In most cases this is social media, personal development, organizational development or culture, and collaboration. These subjects make the caged lion in me feel as though it’s roaming an open plain that it rules and it governs by using passion, confidence, humor, relevance, and humility over all who are within the its bounds.
]]>This weekend I had some time to think while I was working on a laptop that just wouldn’t work right. Surprisingly my thoughts were not on this laptop but on my general situation at work. I had agreed to come in on a Saturday because a group renting out our conference room needed IT support. So I thought why not work on the machine that is being such a problem child. This got me thinking and when I get thinking boy oh boy it’s hard to stop sometimes.
My official role here is Systems Administrator for the company I work for. As systems administrator my job entails everything from rebuilding a PC to configuring a switch to setting up and checking backups.
I have unofficial roles like systems administrator for a spun off company. My role there is just about the same although I don’t rebuild computers as much as I do for my primary company. I also have become an unofficial CMS asset for our company. By unofficial I mean they ask and I answer and that’s the end of that for a while. I am also an unofficial social media asset for our company.
The amount of time I spend doing any of these roles varies from day to day. Take today for example. This morning I setup a new computer for a new employee as part of my primary role. I then went into the all staff meeting and found out I am the go to person for people who don’t have Facebook accounts in the company per marketing proclamation. Then I had a short meeting about some events taking on later this week at the spun off company. Finally I scheduled time to work on a Drupal training for marketing at 1 this afternoon.
In contrast last Friday I had planned on doing to Drupal training and working on a few sites. That all went out the window and I spent 6 hours working on PCI compliance checklists for the spun off company. Both of which allotted me next to nothing time wise to focus on my primary role. The scary thing was I enjoyed not focusing on my primary role.
Again I thought about this. Why is it that I seem to enjoy the two unofficial roles that lean towards marketing more than the one official and one unofficial role that is straight IT. Well the only two things I can come up with is farming & the Marine Corp.
Yes you read that right FARMING & the Marine Corps. Organic Farming to be more precise. See I spent about 6 months working for a CSA called Fresh Earth Farms before I started working where I am currently working. I worked at the CSA because I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something so different that it would be almost like a shock to my system. Well I got the shock I was looking for and then some. Best part is I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything else in the world.
The Marine Corps was the same. I was a introvert through and through when I joined the Marine Corps. I was also a nerd through and through. At that point in time I decided against the urging of my family to do something drastic. I went for the heart of the Marine Corps. I joined as an Infantryman. I was a hard charging, ground pounding Grunt. Again I did this because I needed a shock to my system. I needed something to break through to me. Those Drill Instructors sure know how to break through. They are like artists or surgeons.
I received the training and the discipline I was looking for. I also received one other thing that I wasn’t looking for; a fractured hip. This unfortunately got me a one way ticket out of the Marine Corps.
My point is this. If I wanted to be a systems administrator all my life why would I take time off to become a Organic Farmer or a US Marine. I wouldn’t really. So I looked at this a bit.
When I was a Organic Farmer I noticed I was still thinking about Social Media and Content Management. I was still thinking about the web. When I thought about it while farming I was thinking of how to incorporate Social Media and Farming.
I was thinking about Fresh Earth Farms and how to use the web to assist in the core business functions. I thought about how to create a CMS for the farm. I thought about app’s that could be helpful to the farm. I thought about Facebook, YouTube & twitter for the farm. I did one thing that I didn’t like though I kept all of this to myself. It wasn’t mentioned to the owner. It wasn’t mentioned to the other farm hands.
I still think about Fresh Earth Farms and the Marine Corps but now I also think about Meet Minneapolis & Social Media as well. It’s one of the few high points of working here.
]]>On Nov. 15 I started a new job as Systems Administrator for Meet Minneapolis. This is the official visitor and convention association for the City. As the systems administrator I work with about 75 end users. There are also 10 server on site and about 30 servers off site. The office itself has a nice Cisco VoIP system and about 2 terabytes of data storage. It’s a mix of desktops including PC, Macs, and Thin Clients.
I have found that my job is something of a status quo for the types of positions I gravitate towards. In this case it has to do with my passion for social media and how it can integrate into the business. This isn’t my primary role but I can’t seem to help the fact that I see business processes and I see how social media can integrate into the process.
Like most companies this one has a mix of people from those who have limited computer skills to those who are technologically savvy. However, most of the people don’t have social media savvy yet. They have heard the term but don’t really understand it. This is what I find in most companies still. This is also what allows me some inroads to describe the use of social media and how it can affect business processes.
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