How I spent my summer at @ButlerTill agency [video]

Over this past summer I was lucky enough to spend some time at a Rochester, N.Y. agency Butler/Till seeing how they manage an enormous volume of advertising work while still staying sane.

My visit was part of a new Academic-In-Residence (AIR) program devised by myself and company president Peter Infante with the blessing of Butler/Till’s principals Sue Butler and Tracy Till (both of whom, I have to say, are fun people to work with).

For fellow college professors and instructors I can’t recommend this type of program too highly.

Where else can you spend several days being a fly on the wall and gaining a true understanding of current challenges and how agency types are meeting them?

How else can you chat with people on all strata of the business about what they are doing and what skills they find they use every day or not at all?

It also helped that Butler/Till is a fun and creative place to be with spontaneous games breaking out, pets visiting the office and (the week I was there) the bosses at the grills cooking out for all the staff.

At the end of my time there video wiz Alex Weiser interviewed me about my experience at Butler/Till.

Here are five excerpts and what each is about:

• How I was impressed by Butler/Till’s evolution while still handling a massive volume of work.
• The volume of work and unbridled enthusiasm that makes Butler/Till a great place to work.
• How thinking about the next iteration of yourself and your business is so important.
• What goes into "the sausage" behind the scenes at an agency and how Butler/Till is making a "caviar sausage".
• The changes in marketing, advertising and public relations where the skills are combining into a virtual Swiss Army knife-approach to business communications.

So, thanks again to Butler/Till for the opportunity and I hope the program continues for many years to come.

5 Steps Before Jumping Into Social Media

Thinking before you jump will save you from ending up ‘all wet’

It seems everyone can’t wait to jump into Social Media. And for business this may present a real problem.

Think of Social Media as a giant swimming pool. Now if you have a simple goal of just getting wet, then by all means jump in.

But if you have some real goals and want a return on your time in Social Media you might want to have a plan.

Here’s a checklist of 10 Things To Consider Before You Jump into Social Media:

1. Do you have the support of all the stakeholders? Seems simple, but without buy-in from employees all the way up to the CEO and shareholders you may find yourself spending more time explaining and defending rather than engaging in Social Media. If you get commitments of time and money upfront you can focus on getting off to a good start.

2. Do you have clearly defined goals? Social Media can be a lot of different things to a lot of different users, but one thing it can’t be: A miracle worker. Muddled and confused presences in Social Media will look like everyone behind them does not know who they are and why they are there. Do you, for example, know where your target audience hangs out in Social Media? Take the time to do the research and create a plan (with benchmarks to measure results).

3. Do you know what tools will best suit your purpose? Blogs may make sense if you have someone who is a good writer and has the interest in maintaining the effort. Facebook and Twitter presences could help grow the audience or how about LinkedIn profile where you share something about your business and show off your employees and their skills? The point is: Not all tools make sense for all situations.

4. Do you have the knowledge and skill to do this effectively? The good news: Your organization may collectively “know more than it knows.” In other words there may be people on board who know different aspects of Social Media. Great! But if not then you’ll need to hire some help. You also need to consider who will maintain the effort and who will oversee it.

5. Do you understand the risks? These run the gamut from “What happens if we don’t engage in Social Media?” to “What happens if something goes wrong in Social Media - how will we react?” Will your existing policies on electronic communications be adequate to cover employees and others using Social Media tools? Ask lots of questions.

If any of these questions about Social Media efforts give you cause to pause then you may need to turn to a professional – someone who can guide the process for you: from research and planning to training, implementation and measuring success.

Resources:

Peter Kim writing for Mashable.com on The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan

Cory Treffiletti writing the blog Online Spin for MediaPost on The Problem with Planning Social Media (No Problem)

Social Media Academy is an education and research institute whose graduates work in many aspects of Social Media

For some national “heavy hitters” in Social Media see ReadWriteWeb’s postSeven Social Media Consultants That Deliver Tangible Value


Previous Posts
10 Commandments for Social Media
5 strategies to get the Boss into Social Media
Social Media Expertise Is Hard To Find
Social Media disasters

The Twitter Juggernaut

Social Media’s fastest growing platform won’t slow down

Twitter continues to tweet up a storm and seems unstoppable in its drive to be the No. 1 Social Media platform.

The latest evidence comes in a poll on LinkedIn that rated Twitter more important to business than LinkedIn! This in a time when LinkedIn is widely considered to be “The Social Media network for business.”

In his excellent summary of the survey, “Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn” Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb points out that the poll question may have been tilted against LinkedIn. As asked in the poll, the question was: “What is the most important new platform for brands to master?" And he quibbles that if the question had been "what do you prefer" that LinkedIn would have fared better. Nonetheless Twitter did come out on top in a poll on LinkedIn.

And if you’re looking for more evidence that Twitter will be the Social Media App of the Year in 2009 and likely the No. 1 Social Media platform in 2010 (if not sooner), here's the latest:

- Twitter is the fastest-growing major website in the U.S., according to USA Today in its May 25 story Twitter has millions tweeting in public communication service. It had 17 million registered users in the U.S. in April — up 3,000% from a year ago, according to market researcher ComScore

- Twitter founder Evan Williams points out that in a single year Twitter has gone from 1.6 million to 32.1 million users. In a CNBC interview Twitter's growth 'just getting started he says: "We think we can grow a long term sustainable valuable business here, and we're just getting started."

- A Squidoo lens called Twitterapps lists 275 Twitter applications and believes it does not have anywhere near all of them covered.

- When an old school media publication such as Time magazine devotes space to 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business you know the Twitterverse has reached into every corner of our existence.

And on the subject of Twitter’s universal reach Brian Solis has posted an excellent visualization of the Twitterverse on his blog PR 2.0. I highly recommend it.

Whether Twitter is the No. 1 Social Media platform now or later, one thing is certain its rapid growth and adoption for all kinds of purposes will not slow anytime soon.

Related posts
Twetiquette: 10 basics for Twitter politeness
What Twitter isn’t

Communications Schools and Teaching Social Media

Which communications schools are teaching Social Media integration?

The use of Social Media continues to explode.

News organizations, advertising agencies, marketing firms and public relations businesses are working mightily to add Social Media to their arsenal of weapons and tactics for reaching the unwashed masses.

And yet universities in the United States seem slow to grasp the significance of the changes in the world of communications.

A Google search on the terms “social media” and “communications school” brings a little over 900 results. But less than a half dozen of these links take you to a four-year college that teaches classes in Social Media. None offers a four-year degree in a subject area such as Social Media and Public Communications.

While there are very good schools offering one-off classes and add-on labs it's fair to say that generally American academia has not been sufficiently impressed by Social Media to offer in-depth academic course work in its various elements.

A notable exception is American University’s Center for Social Media. With its mantra of “Helping people make media that matters” and a mission to “investigate, showcase and set standards for socially engaged media-making” it is a shining example of what a higher-learning institution can do. And yet …

Somehow, it seems to me, Social Media will only have “made it” when classes such as “Twitter 101: How Twitter Fits Into the Public Communications Spectrum” and “Twitter 201: Using Twitter to Add Meaning and Value to Public Communications” are among those in a four-year curriculum in Social Media.

Clearly American academia (and the people who fund it) have yet to grasp the colossal change going on in Public Communications. Still content to teach “push” media such as television, radio, newspaper and magazine, they may offer one class on the “new Social Media” here or there.

Ironically many students graduating from communications schools in the next few weeks will know more about Social Media than their professors – a lot more – and they will have learned it on their own.

As they look for jobs in real world media it’s a very safe bet their knowledge and abilities with Social Media will set them apart from those who simply stuck to the curriculum.

When will the majority of communications schools wake up?

Social Media vs. Old Media

If the two world views met on the street, here’s what they might say …

First a visual: As much as I think the Mac-PC TV commercials have both upsides and down, for the purposes of this exercise imagine that the actors are representing each side of the argument.

I’m sorry, but Old Media gets the PC actor John Hodgman and Social Media gets the Mac actor Justin Long


On Customers:
Social Media:
“We need our customers.”
“They are our best source of information.”
“They are the best judges of what they want.”
“Our role is to try to provide the information they want, when and where they want it.”

Old Media:
“Our customers need us.”
“They depend on us for information.”
“We are the best judges of what is news.”
“Our role is to provide information on the platforms we have on a schedule we can manage.”


On Communication:
Social Media:
“We believe worthwhile communication happens on any platform, anywhere.”
“And it should be free or nearly free.”
“We will pay for delivery of services only if we see value.”

Old Media:
“We believe no worthwhile communication can happen in 140 characters or less.”
“You get what you pay for … therefore freeloaders won’t ever get any good stuff.”
“We need money from advertisers and subscribers … or we don’t have a business.”



On The Future:
Social Media:
“We believe that vast collective knowledge will help everyone.”
“And those with the best information will gain the most credibility.”
“We see a future that is a bright information-sharing and interconnected age.”

Old Media:
“We believe only our expertise can help you sort through all this information.”
“Who better to judge the best information than the people who have done it for more than 100 years?”
“We see a bleak future without a clear information-sharing structure … a future without us!”