In 2004, I started my first blog where I hoped that it would “last longer than other ‘ideas’ that i hav had…” and signed off all my posts with “xoxo“. It lasted for over a year and was my second big venture into social media (Neopets was my first).

After scoring a graduate job in 2009, I decided that until I started my role, I wanted to synthesise and discuss the information I was consuming and launched Cocktails and Crowdsourcing. I started talking about social media campaigns, privacy, and even World of Warcraft; but it wasn’t until I was academically referenced, presented at a conference, and has a heated discussion with a used car dealer in the UK, that I realised how important social media and it’s influence was to me.

However after starting at my new job, I got the graduate blues. I took five months off blogging and it wasn’t until I realised that I needed to HTFU and be awesome that I was able to be motivated to start blogging again. But even after I did start up again, my blogs were focused more on external content and things I am doing- such as the Telstra Social Review, Awesome Foundation, Deloitte, We Live Here Sydney, SXSW and Ignite - rather than thought leadership.

But this wasn’t a bad thing.

In 2011, my goal was that I wanted to become awesome, and I really was able to achieve most of the things I set out to do. I became a regional finalist for the Deloitte Business Woman of the Year (goal is to win it this year), gained so much visibility and amazing opportunities with senior people at Deloitte, joined Awesome and spoke at Ignite and Social Innovation Sydney, became a consultant, hugged my idol at SXSW on stage, became a mentor, met so many amazing people and generally became more confident in myself.

In the last year I have grown up a lot and looking back on my earlier blogs compared to the ones more recently, I have also grown up in the way I have been writing as well; which was one of my aims when I originally started this blog.

I feel it’s now the right time to start moving towards a new chapter and so I won’t be writing much new thought leadership content on this blog. 2012 is going to become the year I take awesomeness to the next level, and I want to be able to just do shit, rather than philosophise theoretically around the benefits. This isn’t the end of me blogging – I am still microblogging on different places, but my future blogs will be more of the story of stuff I’ve done and been involved with.

…although content around this will still remain extremely consistent.

Thanks for all of your support throughout the last year and have a totes awes 2012.

Social media is now an integral part of a brand’s online identity but it is not as simple as creating a Facebook page and expecting a community to form overnight. In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we discussed how to plan and launch your social media presence. Part 3 looks at how you continue to retain your community.

Social Media never sleeps

After a social media platform has been set up, it will be a permanent presence for your brand. Once you start posting content on your preferred platforms, it can be detrimental to your brand to stop publishing content – try to post in moderation and do so consistently.

If you start your online presence with a flurry of activity, it can create an expectation that you will continue in the same vein. So be aware of what you are unwittingly promising your followers from Day One.

Check what’s happening

Knowing what is being said about your brand on social media channels is important. Monitoring tools will allow you to aggregate records of every time a user mentions your brand on different social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. There are numerous free services that will allow you to do this. Monitoring tools can show positive and negative comments (called sentiment) about your brand.

It is critical to respond to unfavourable comments as well as positive comments from users. Regardless of the type of feedback, staying positive during any interactions with customers is important; negative responses posted by a business can reflect poorly on the brand and are unlikely to resolve the user’s problem.

Update, update and update

The most important part of managing a social media presence is to provide users with a good reason to return. Static platforms detract from user engagement; it is vital that new content is regularly published for users to view. Just as important is to keep this at a consistent level, as some users may feel overwhelmed by too much content from a brand.

Content can also be sourced externally: if there is other content that you think may interest your customers and target market, it can be used to provide a deeper understanding about your brand. Respecting copyright, declaring authorship, and linking back to the original source all play a part in any use of third party content.

Cater for different platforms

As different platforms are suitable for different types of content, it is important to try to develop content that ‘fits’ the platform it is being used on, such as:

• Facebook: Links, Images, Videos and Events
• Twitter: Text, Links, Images and Video
• LinkedIn: Text and Links
• Foursquare: Images and Location Tips

Having some content consistently represented across all channels can help ensure brand consistency – it is possible to link different platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, for specific types of content such as Text or Photo updates.

However if you develop more than one social media platform,  ensure that not all content is exactly the same on every platform – differences in some of the content on the different channels can encourage users to connect with your brand on multiple channels.

Presenting at Ignite is a bit of a challenge, they make the presenters stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, giving a guaranteed 5 minute presentation. It was a fantastic experience, and thankyou to everyone, especially Stephen Lead, for organising such a great event.

Video footage should be going up in the next few weeks (and I’ll update this post when they do) but in the meantime I’ve included my presentation (with speakers notes) and the video from the dress rehersal which was presented on the night after the jump.

$1000 in no strings attached cash… what are you doing that’s awesome?

Ignite Sydney workshop from Stephen Lead on Vimeo.

South by South West (SXSW) is probably the most awesome festival/conference in the world. After my amazing experience there this year, I have already purchased next year’s badge. What’s great is that more people are thinking of coming next year (p.s. join our Facebook group to connect with other Australians) and I thought I would do a quick Q&A on some of the questions I’ve been asked. Be prepared – this is an EPIC post.

What is SXSW?

Held in Austin, Texas every March, South by South West (SXSW) is a melting pot of thought leaders from the film, music and interactive industries. SXSWi (SXSW Interactive) is known for finding the next big thing in technology – Twitter and Foursquare have both launched/become popular over previous years. The SXSW Film Festival shows upcoming mainstream and independent films and SXSW Music is the ‘place to be’ for upcoming musicians – with a lot of well known artists and bands (Kanye!) also performing.

When is SXSW 2012?

• Interactive: March 9–13
• Film: March 9–17
• Music: March 13–18

Interactive and Music run one after another, while Film runs the whole way through.

What is a badge?

A badge is your gateway to SXSW. It will get you into conference events, but will also provide you access to other parties and especially during music it will become your VIP access pass. It may look a bit unattractive at times, but you have to wear your badge wherever you go. The badges you can get at SXSW are:

• Platinum Badge – All 3 events
• Gold Badge – Film and Interactive
• Music Badge
• Film Badge
• Interactive Badge

How much does it cost for a badge?

Badges don’t sell out, but they get more expensive as it gets closer to the date. Early bird badge prices finish up at the end of September. Read more about the different costs here.

How much should I budget for the trip?

Approximately $5-7k minimum. The breakdown of my last years cost were :

•  $900 for ticket
• $1000 for accommodation
• $1300 for flights
• Around $2000 for other expenses (food, shopping, taxis etc – I wasn’t really keeping count)

There’s a lot more free events/food/drinks during interactive – when it gets to Music, everything costs money; but everything is relatively cheaper in Austin compared to Australia. Also this year’s tickets are more expensive than last year’s so keep that in mind when budgeting.

When should I arrive/leave Austin?

I arrived a couple of days before and was extremely thankful I did – you need time to get over the jetlag plus getting your bearings. It doesn’t get busy until the day before so it was good it was a bit quiet. We took a day to walk around Austin to understand where we were, where all the big venues were and where to get food from. It also gave us time to get things like sim cards. I also left a couple of days after SXSW finished – the last night of the Music part is huge, so it’s good to get a bit of sleep before flying again.

Where should I stay?

Hotels and apartments are extremely overpriced – try Airbnb or Craigslist for places. We stayed near Wholefoods on 5^th and Lamar and that was really good as it meant we were able to get healthier snacks and breakfasts which you wouldn’t be able to get closer to the Convention Centre. Prices will go up during the Music festival but are still expensive during Interactive. It can be up to $400/night for an apartment so it’s best to share when you can – both of our apartments we had 6-7 people in an apartment, which kept the costs down over the two weeks.

A couple of us are looking to see if there are any more apartments where we stayed this year, so please let me know if you are interested.

What should I bring?

1. Day bag/backpack – something you can carry everything in that you don’t mind having the entire day and night
2. Comfortable shoes – I wore ballet flats and pretty much wore them out over the two weeks.
3. Layering clothes – t shirts and cardigans and jackets plus jeans are your best friend*. Everyone wears comfy gear all day and night – the weather in Austin is very similar to the weather in Sydney and can be a bit unpredictable. However make sure you dress for your festival – during interactive everyone wears ironic Threadless t-shirts and jeans and then when it gets to music it transitions to hipster central.
4. Technology - you will not be able to live without a smart phone and/or iPad.
5. Power adapter – you will spend a lot of time looking for power, especially during interactive
6. Portable charger – something you can plug into your phone/iPad to give it a bit of extra juice when you can’t find a free plug to charge at
7. Prepaid Sim Card – make sure your phone is unlocked when you leave – T-Mobile is the service provider of choice for Australian phones, and you can purchase a prepaid sim card from a reseller near Texas University (a bit of a walk) for $10 with $2/day for unlimited EDGE data. The free WI-FI networks also get extremely clogged during interactive (35000 nerds trying to get access) so it’s best to have your own supply of internet.
8. Vitamins and Codral – you’re likely to get sick (I got really sick by the end of it) so make sure you always have some on hand.
9. A relatively empty suitcase – you will get a LOT of stuff, make sure you have enough room in your suitcase to get it home. I was 10lb over the limit coming back, which meant I had to carry it myself because it didn’t fit in my suitcase.
10. Business Cards – SXSW is a great place for networking. Moo.com is recommended

How do I know what events to go to?

I can’t stress enough how important planning is – the extremely popular panels get full quickly. You’re even best to go to the session before the one you want to go to so you can ensure you get a seat.

The schedule will start to go up on the SXSW website near the end of the year, and will never be completely locked down until March (and even then there may be last minute changes). You also get a book on registration which will have all the panellists. There is also an iPhone/iPad/Android application which means you can plan on the go and it is all linked to your SXSocial account which means you can prep on your computer and then read up on your mobile during the day/night.

Maps are also your best friend – it’s best to screenshot maps between locations so you don’t have to be continually connected to the internet to know where you are going.

What parties do I go to?

You will find a massive list of parties happening and you need to try and RSVP for as many as you can. However because there’s so many people there, sometimes you can just queue and get into places as long as you have a badge. But sometimes you need to figure out whether you’d rather queue for a few hours (I queued for 5 hours for Kanye West) or find something more underground where you’ll discover something new.

How do I know who is going?

Join our Facebook group to meet other Australians interested in attending.

SXSocial will let you search for attendees by a whole range of categories, make sure your account is up to date.

There’s also usually an Australian attendees dinner, where you can meet other Australians – highly recommend you go as I met a great range of people there. There are also a lot of ad hoc events that happen (we had a great Australian meet up this year) so keep your eyes and ears open on your social networks

What other apps should I have before I go

• Location Based Apps – All the location based apps you can find (Foursquare and Gowalla are the best) will have badges, tips and other deals you can take advantage of. You can also check which places you should be going to based on the number of people at a venue (Don’t be surprised if there are multiple places with more than 100 people)
• Bump/Contact Sharing Apps – see above.
• Twitter– all the SXSWi panels will have a Twitter hashtag where you can track the other conversation.

Hopefully that’s enough of a rundown of SXSW to get your purchasing your ticket. Here’s a range of other blog posts by me and my friends on their experiences and learnings as well.

• My SXSW Highlights
• My SXSW Takeaways – Use your Data; Users are in Control; Being a Lurker is OK.
• Deloitte Online’s SXSW Takeaways
• Stephen Colmans SXSW Takeaway – Bulletproofing Your UX Strategy; Banks – Innovate or Die
• Stephen’s preconceptions to SXSW and how they played out
• Stephen’s first day at SXSW
• Will Simmon’s SXSW Social Media experience

If you have any other questions, or if you were a previous attendee and I’ve forgotten something really important – please post in the comments!

Find more about Deloitte Online here (p.s. we’re hiring!)

Part 2 – Launching Your Social Media Presence

Social media is now an integral part of a brand’s online identity, but establishing a presence is not as simple as creating a Facebook page and expecting a community to form overnight.

In part one we discussed the four key questions to planning your presence; we now look at how you launch social media and build an engaged community around your brand.

When is the right time to launch?

There’s no set time for launching a social media presence. You should ensure you are adequately prepared for managing the platforms you’ve decided to implement. Ask yourself whether you have enough resources to manage the platforms and whether you have enough content to keep fans and followers engaged with your brand.

As social media is an important communication channel, one approach is to create an advertising campaign around the platforms, or use a pre-existing campaign to advertise links to the social networks. If you want to associate the launch with a campaign, ensure that there is content for the campaign available on the social media platforms you are promoting.

How do you advertise your launch?

Regardless of the way that you advertise your social media launch, it is important that there is an existing business website or other verified locations that the social platforms can link to. This reassures users that the social media platform is legitimately associated with the business.

If you have a bricks and mortar business – a store with a physical presence and address – you can leverage social media by promoting your product on business cards or posters in store. Some social media organisations provide stickers or other merchandise to businesses that use their services.

If your business only has a virtual presence, promoting your new social media platforms can be emphasised on your website through links or by including an advertisement on your next email newsletter.

How do you get Followers or Fans?

It may frustrate some business owners that they aren’t seeing rapid increases in their fan base straight after launching their platforms. This is not unusual – good things take time!

The most effective way of increasing your base is to find communities of your target demographic – your consumer base already exists online. There are discussion boards and forums for almost any topic or interest on the internet. Find prospering groups online and engage them with your brand. However a word of warning: advertising directly on a forum is typically considered spam and may negatively impact your brand.

To be truly successful in social media, you must be able to retain the fan base you have built. The final part of this blog series will discuss how to continually manage your social media presence.

If you would like to know more about The Awesome Foundation go here or here or follow us on Twitter.

We have both a Trustee and Dean of Awesome position available. For more information about how to apply, check out Steve’s blog post here. 

For more information about the Awesome Foundation check out my blog posts here and here.

Looking forward to checking out your applications!

It’s really frustrated me with a few brands (and especially today with Vodafone) is the lack of a cohesive multichannel experience across their organisation. I’ve defined multichannel, but it means that during the customer lifecycle, your data is able to be cohesively transferred between channels – and you can perform all the same tasks, regardless of what you’re using e.g. if I wanted to buy a product, I would get the exact same experience in researching the product online; compared to going in store; compared to going over the phone.

Although this sounds like common sense, for some reason so many brands can’t seem to comprehend this – but why? It comes down to fragmentation in the business. Different people in the business are managing different channels or different content; and because the business is so siloed, they’re not talking to each other. This leads to inconsistencies in content and marketing ‘voice’, which isn’t very good for businesses who are trying to come across as a singular entity in the market.

But why is this so important for customers?

• They’re unique – although you can do customer segmentation work and personas, customers are all going to do things in different ways because that’s what they’re either familiar with or more comfortable doing it in that way.
• They don’t usually impulse purchase – customers will usually go back to a store, or different channel, multiple times before a purchase so the information needs to be the same wherever they look.

Let’s go over my experience with Vodafone today.

Today I decided that I wanted to cancel one of the products on my contract; so I decided that the most efficient way for me to do this was to go to my closest Vodafone store. I went to my nearest store in my lunch break, and although it was quiet; all the staff were currently busy. I waited 10 minutes for one of them to become free.

After I told them that I wanted to cancel one of my products, she said that they don’t do this in stores and that I needed to phone up their support number. Walking back, I complained to the @vodafone_au Twitter account and received an inital response from one of their reps.

After getting back to the office, I went to the Vodafone website, looked up the support number and called it. After spending another 5 minutes going through the IVR and then chatting to two different representatives I was finally able to cancel my product. I then received another response from the Vodafone guys on Twitter offering to cancel my product.

There are four different channels in that scenario (In Store, Social Media, Online and Phone) and I spoke to five different people to solve my problem. Way too many people and too complex processes for any customer (FYI, I’ve been a Vodafone customer for 2.5yrs). The way that the customer experience has been structured is that it matches the business needs, not what the customer wants.

If this was a good customer experience – I would have been able to go to any of those channels to solve my problem. If for some absurd reason, there was a technical/legal limitation – I should have been able to have smoothly transitioned to the relevant channel with the support of the current channel I was at (i.e. if I needed to make a phone call, an in-store rep would let me use their phone).

And this experience isn’t unique – there are many organisations and brands out there, with a lot of customers who are focusing more on doing the things in the way they want to do rather than listening to their customers.

Should customers be punished by thinking differently to businesses?

I’ve been a part of the Awesome Foundation Sydney for a few months now… and I always get asked two questions.

1) “What happens if you’re funding terrorism?”

2) “What exactly makes something awesome?”

The answer to question 1 is that we have an application process where we use common logic, and sometimes checking out the project in question, to ensure we don’t fund terrorism. But at the end of the day, it’s a no strings attached grant to do something awesome, and terrorism isn’t really that awesome.

However, I thought I would give 6 quick tips around what makes something an ‘Awesome Foundation’ worthy idea.

1. It’s your love - you live and breathe your project, and are extremely passionate about it. You could talk about it for days. Looking at you entrepreneurs, artists, designers and students!
2. It’s creative - you know that not many other people are doing it.
3. It’s not a charity - charities are always a worthwhile cause (and I personally donate to charities every year) but we’re not going to fund something that can already get funding from more official sources. We want to fund things that can’t get funding from anywhere else.
4.  $1000 would make a difference to your project - it means you can buy that extra thing that will make your project complete, or pay for the entire thing. We don’t want our donation to be a drop in a pool of money.
5. Random and fun - We all love smiling, make the rest of Sydney smile too. [Include quote about why smiles are awesome]
6. It makes Sydney better than Melbourne - as much as I love our fantastic Melbourne AF team… we all know that Sydney is so much better – your project really puts Sydney on the map. And who doesn’t love a little bit of interstate rivalry?

So you’re applying – here’s a quick FAQ to the process:

• Apply here and select ‘Sydney’ as the chapter
• Our applications close at the end of each month, and we announce our winners a couple of weeks later.
• You can apply for multiple months if you don’t win the grant in a month.
• You are more than welcome to ask for feedback!

Hopefully that clears up a few of the questions you may have. If you’ve got any more, feel free to tweet @awesomefoundsyd or leave a comment.  Can’t wait to read all your applications!!

It’s frustrated me since I started working online the exponentially high level of ‘experts’ around social media. I believe that there’s no such thing as an expert just in social media as it is a channel, so it’s always part of a broader digital or marketing strategy for an organisation.

People have begun to realise this, but it’s led to more marketers being responsible for social media; with some of these marketers branding themselves as social media experts just because they hold a marketing degree.

A big part of being able to consult on social media in an organisation is the understanding you get by having your own social media presence; but I’ve discovered that more and more of these marketers have zero presence. This led me to question – if part of your job is to manage social media should you eat your own dog food – i.e. should you be active on the platforms?

I asked my awesome Twitter community and received a ton of responses; however three themes came out:

You need to be on social media to “know your product“

If you want to be able to sell a product, you need to “understand the space through experience”; not having experience in using the platform “removes a central piece of essential context”.

Being on social media gives you “authority and credibility”

Using Social Media is a “tool of the trade” for those that want to sell it – if people try to search you on Google, you would want them to see that you’ve been able to successfully implement a social media strategy for your personal brand.

If you’re not an active participant you need to be a “keen lurker” 

Groundswell has shown us that people use social media in different ways and you shouldn’t need to be actively posting content but need to have a close eye on the platforms and “engaging with the community”.

If you want to be able to sell social media products, you need to use the key platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn at a minimum. It’s up to you how you use it (lurking/posting/aggregating) but you need to have some level of presence over the platforms to prove that you have hands on understanding.

And it’s more than just following Britney Spears and other Hollywood celebrities. You also need to understand what they key brands (organisations, people and competitors) are doing on social media – whether its external or internal (i.e. using Yammer).

Why are there so many marketers/social media consultants out there that have idle Twitter accounts, don’t understand the concept of a check-in and are still able to get jobs to improve other organisations presences?

What do you think should be the minimum requirements for someone to eat their own dog food in social media?

Shout out to @CarlaLindarte, @DanielFisher, @getbiglittlekid, @Kimota, @lisa_lintern, @MconnBlog, @nedwin, @shortino29, @showmethesun, @Taybenlor, @TonyFaccenda, @zaana and @zacdavies for your awesome Twitter responses and the inspiration for this post.