Janet Aronica is the community manager at oneforty, an online community that rates and shares social media monitoring software. She was kind enough to answer some questions for us about what life if like as a community manager, and and what she does behind the scenes at oneforty. To learn more about Janet you can read her personal blog and follow her on Twitter, @JanetAronica.
RaceTalk: What sparked your interest in becoming a community manager?
Janet Aronica: Around March of last year I was doing agency PR and I knew I had always wanted to get a more strategic, digital media kind of gig. I had been blogging and into Twitter for about a year and a half or something at that point, so it was a very strong interest of mine. It was a matter of finding something that was a fit with my experience level and looked like something I would enjoy.
I didn’t want just any gig. I had heard that Laura had founded oneforty and that they had gotten funding so I kept an eye out for when they were going to make a marketing hire and applied for this. I liked that it seemed so open ended and that I was really going to have a chance to own my direction of what I contributed to oneforty. I had a ton of ideas of what I wanted to do with the role and was intrigued by having an opportunity where I could just jump in day one and be challenged to act on them. I was also considering doing social media/SEO/community stuff for a law firm in town but this opportunity ended up working out. I think everything always works out the way it’s supposed to.
RT: What are your primary responsibilities as the community manager for oneforty?
JA: I’m more of a marketing manager that does a lot of community stuff because this is a startup. I get involved in almost anything that doesn’t involve code, so PR, email marketing, copywriting, some customer development – I get involved in a lot. But my primary, most important thing that I’m currently focused on is content marketing through our blog, which we are expanding out into ebooks and now webinars. I come up with the content ideas for our blog, assign them to our fantastic freelancer and just make sure we have content up there every day. I make sure that content is promoted on our social channels. Other than that, there’s the daily stuff like running the Twitter account and Facebook page, which is basically just talking to people. It’s a lot of fun.
RT:What platform(s) have you found most useful for connecting and interacting with the oneforty community?
JA: Twitter is kind of a no-brainer because we started out as the “Twitter app store” and my CEO/Founder Laura is the co-author of Twitter for Dummies. We’ve now expanded to all of digital media tools in our directory and are really catering to surfacing the best enterprise-level solutions for social business. It’s not just a pure Twitter play anymore. But we have great conversations with our community on Twitter and we get a lot of traffic to the blog from there. I’m enjoying the conversations in our LinkedIn group as well. I feel like I’m just starting to see more engagement and traffic from Facebook in the past month, that was a slower community to develop. I’m trying to learn how to better engage those folks. I consider Facebook knowledge to be a weakness of mine so I’m literally reading a book on Facebook marketing.
RT:What’s the most difficult part of being a community manager, that most people wouldn’t think of?
JA: For me it is a very very distracting role to run a personal Twitter account and a company Twitter account. I’m constantly getting pinged with questions on Twitter or I’ll see a brand mention I think I need to do something about. I’ve had to train myself to “time box” my day and if I want to get a blog post written, I need to close out of Tweetdeck and email for an hour and get it done. I love talking to people so I could “mingle” on Twitter all day. I have a lot of search terms set up for question phrases about social media monitoring tools and I’d love to just answer people’s questions all day. But what I try to do is see the most common questions out there and turn it into content instead. I’m only one person.
RT:What do you find yourself doing more often, talking or listening?
JA: It’s 50/50. I talk a lot on Twitter but I do read Twitter a lot. On Quora I’m such a lurker. I just read questions and discussions and only jump in if I’m very confident about my answer. I would say when we are broadcasting out on the @oneforty account we are doing so with a purpose – we are driving traffic to the blog posts, highlighting community members’ blog posts or just answering incoming questions.
RT: Are you able to keep up with all the Twitter tools on oneforty? (If so, what’s your trick?)
JA: There’s so much Koolaid to drink! I’m just one chick and I can’t possibly do a trial version of every single tool that is out there – there are literally hundreds. But something I do like to do is set up Skype dates with the community managers or sales people who work at the software companies and have them tell me about their product or give me a demo. That way I have a great sense of what it is that they offer and I ask them how it is different from their competitors, but I don’t have to give my whole day to the on-boarding process of yet another social media monitoring tool. It’s working out pretty well so far and I know that if I did have further questions about the product they are just a phone call away. People are usually pretty happy to help explain their product to me if they know it’s because they are going to be featured in a blog post.
Every PR/Marketing person dreams of being the genius mind behind a successful viral video. In 2011 content creation is king and producing an entertaining and informative video to raise brand awareness is a high priority for any PR/Marketing team.
Enter this superb infographic posted by Mashable. Seriously, superb. There are several valuable statistics illustrated here covering everything from the length of the video to the best sites to promote it on. Check it out:
- Videos that clock in at 15 seconds get circulated 37% more than longer clips
- People share video on Facebook 218% more than via email and Twitter combined
- Women account for 57% of social video views
Last night Bostinnovation held a launch party to celebrate their first year in existence and the launch of their new platform. During the event – which attracted a large crowd – we were lucky enough to catch up and record a video with Alleigh Marré, a Bostinnovation contributor. Alleigh covers gov 2.0, health and running for the site, and filled us in on the type of stories she enjoys writing about. She’s also running the Boston Marathon this April, so cheer her on if you see her training through the snow this winter. To learn more about Alleigh you can follow her on Twitter and read her blog.
Special thanks to @EricaFrank for her great camera work.
The following is a guest post by RJ Bardsley, a SVP based in Racepoint’s SF office. If you like this post, check him out on Twitter (@rjbardsley) and his blog, BrandFiller.
By now you’ve all read that Steve Jobs is taking an indefinite leave of absence from his post as CEO of Apple. The news was hard to hear – for both technology enthusiasts and the financial community. Many are questioning Apple’s ability to innovate in the absence of Jobs. After all, it was Jobs who stepped in and not only rescued the company from the brink of extinction, but propelled it to greatness with game-changing products like the iPod and the iPhone.
It is fascinating to me that so much of this company’s image and respect hinges on one man’s name. Jobs is brilliant, but there are two reasons that I think Apple will continue to innovate.
First, there is and always has been a team behind Jobs. He is brilliant, but he has not been brilliant alone or in a vacuum. Success breeds success and while I am not deeply familiar with the personalities behind the Apple brand, I am sure there is a cadre of great minds already working on the next innovations in consumer electronics.
Second, Jobs built a culture of “design comes first” within Apple. This culture has set Apple apart from many of its competitors in the consumer electronics market. While Creative, RCA and others had MP3 players on the market as the Napster age swept the country in the late 1990s, Apple was the first to come to market with a sleek design for all three elements of consuming digital music: hardware, software and a commerce model. A corporate culture is bigger than one person – even the founder. It’s not impossible to dismantle that culture, but in my opinion it is unlikely to happen. Continue to expect beautiful things from Apple: they will probably deliver.
One other thing to consider with regards to Apple: over the last decade or so they have not been outside of the mainstream of ideas in consumer tech – they have just executed better. What I mean by that is they didn’t invent the digital music player with the iPod; they didn’t invent the idea of a lush mobile user interface with the iPhone; they didn’t invent the idea of a tablet computing device with the iPad; they just figured out how to deliver the most elegant products.
All that said, let’s hope Jobs is back at work and healthy in the near future.
*This is a guest post by Nidhi Mathson, Account Executive at Racepoint Group. Follow her on Twitter @NidhiMathson.
If you watched the Golden Globe awards this past weekend, you know that the film “The Social Network” snagged a number of the big awards including “Best Film,” “Best Director,” “Best Actor” and “Best Adapted Screenplay.” Watching the awards show reminded me of my initial reaction when I first watched the film. I thought to myself, “Wow, I already knew Mark Zuckerberg was smart, but now I think he’s a genius!” At the time, I posted this re-tweet:
Telling it like it is! @toadmeister: After seeing The Social Network, I’m now a huge fan of Mark Zuckerberg: http://bit.ly/9SKLDC
Later I spoke with a few friends who’d also watched the movie, and I soon realized that not everyone had the same reaction. In fact a majority of the viewers of the movie began to despise Mark, calling him “conniving” and a “back-stabber”. But I don’t know if any of these people realize that Facebook would probably never have reached the global success it enjoys today if it wasn’t for MZ. Do you think the Winklevoss twins had the drive and fierce ambition that Zuckerberg had to make Facebook what it is today? I doubt it.
Without Mark Zuckerberg, I doubt that Facebook would have achieved any of the following:
48% of 18-34 year olds checking Facebook right when they wake up
71.2% of the US web audience as members
A record breaking 750 Million photos uploaded over the new year’s weekend
More Facebook success stats can be found in an infographic recently posted by RaceTalk.
You can hate Mark Zuckerberg all you want, but if you’re addicted to Facebook then you have to give the guy credit. Facebook has almost single-handedly ushered in a new era for social media, encouraged real-time global communications and changed how people connect with each other —and that’s an end that most certainly justifies the means.
While Groupon is practically a household name at this point, we learned today that other group buying sites are not content to sit in the background.
LivingSocial, a group buying site with national reach, today launched an unprecedented deal. It’s not the discount that was amazing, it was the place: Amazon.com.
As of 4:45pm ET, over 823,000 people had purchased the deal, which was $10 for a $20 Amazon.com gift card. Buyers were limited to one gift card each. The deal has certainly given LivingSocial significant publicity and put Groupon on notice: there are two big group buying site now.
What’s really interesting about this deal is is the fine print: “Amazon.com is not a sponsor of this promotion.” LivingSocial purchased these gift cards directly from Amazon.com, and is now selling them on their own. Clair Cain Miller at the New York Times has more details:
LivingSocial’s Amazon discount has an unusual wrinkle. Unlike with other deals, LivingSocial might be losing money selling the Amazon coupons.
Typically, retailers sell the coupons directly to consumers for the discounted price, and LivingSocial takes a cut, generally 30 percent. But for this deal, LivingSocial bought the gift cards from Amazon and is selling them itself.
LivingSocial declined to say how much it paid Amazon for the gift cards. Amazon also said it would not disclose the terms of the deal.
If LivingSocial paid Amazon $20, then LivingSocial is absorbing the losses. If it paid Amazon less, then Amazon is losing money.
It should also be noted that Amazon.com recently invested $175 million in LivingSocial.
The big news today is that Starbucks has launched a mobile payment app, where customers can make purchases with their Starbucks card directly through their phone (a short video from Starbucks provides an overview on how this works – it’s very simple).
While this app made a lot of news today, the long-term use of mobile payments will likely look much different, because consumers aren’t going to want 25 different mobile payment apps for various stores. I’d also add that it’s not good to become completely dependent on your phone for payments (they got lost, broken, etc.), but that’s a separate topic for another post.
While Starbucks is the innovator right now (as they usually are with social media), it will be essential for credit card companies to develop mobile payment apps so consumers can have one app they make all mobile payments through. This simplifies the purchase process, and also keeps financial statements organized. I’ll also predict that in 18 months, mobile payments will become so common that consumers will be annoyed when stores don’t accept mobile payments through their Visa, MasterCard or American Express mobile payment app.
Another way mobile payments can be advanced is to not even make it an app. Phones should have buttons that, when pushed, flashes a bar code on the screen for scanning. This way someone that’s on the phone, checking email, or using an app, doesn’t have to be interrupted for more then a second.
With these advances, security will also become a chief concern, as people often misplace or lose sight of their phones. This could take form of a pin code for the phone or the app, but it’s vital that some security is in place.
If individual businesses are insistent on developing their own mobile payment apps, it’s going to require reward systems that are similar to opening a store credit/rewards card that makes having another app and payment system worthwhile for consumers. I have no doubt Starbucks will be ahead in this development, again.
The following is a guest post by RJ Bardsley, a SVP based in Racepoint’s SF office. If you like this post, check him out on Twitter (@rjbardsley) and his blog, BrandFiller.
This year is shaping up to be the year of the rich – at least for marketers. New numbers out from a variety of sources show demand for luxury products growing but mere mortals (Walmart calls them “everyday Americans”) are just getting by. But what does this mean?
According to Federal Reserve economist Michael Feroli, there is uneven progress in the growth of household expenditures; he estimates that the top 20 percent of the wealth in this country is responsible for 40 percent of consumer spending. Feroli is quoted in BloombergBusinessweek as saying, “the heaving lifting is being done by upper-income households.” These numbers are important because household spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy.
Now you can argue all day about the social implications of all this and the issues of right and wrong. You could even get in a really good Marxist conversation if you tried hard enough and maybe grew a beard. And you would be justified – this pattern isn’t good for us as a nation.
But when Tiffany diamond pendants and Gucci bags are lifting the economy – we’re talking about some pretty profound social implications. What’s immediately interesting to me from a professional perspective is how this persistent shift is going to change marketing. How do you market to a nation that is increasingly divided into two camps: one that needs pampers and one that needs Chistian Louboutins? What happens to national marketing, advertising and digital and traditional media campaigns?
We could be running the risk of losing the “splurgers” – the groups that like to treat themselves to luxury items once in a while. But, the truth is that over the long run I think that the marketing industry won’t change significantly because of this shift. I think we’ll see an uptick in high-end marketing dollars spent as Gucci and Maserati ramp up campaigns around new products. But, we will also see continued spend on commodity goods campaigns as brands compete harder for consumer dollars. If anything, we may see more innovation in digital campaigns as brands look for new ways to extend marketing dollars.
The following is a guest post by RJ Bardsley, a SVP based in Racepoint’s SF office. If you like this post, check him out on Twitter (@rjbardsley) and his blog, BrandFiller.
Joos Rietveld from Gamasutra.com has a great blog post on three pretty cool things that are inadvertently shaping the social gaming segment. His article is great, and you should read it if you’ve got the time, but, here is an overview of his post:
Mobile Gaming: The overwhelming popularity of smartphones is pushing social gaming to new levels of popularity. An awful lot of those smartphones are Apple or Android devices and according to Rietveld, “both operating systems offer app stores that stimulate data usage as 94 percent of iPhone users downloads apps (games included) and 89 percent of Android users do so.”
LBS and the Gamification of Where You Are: The second trend Rietveld discusses is the impact of location based services. The drastic increase in LBS-related applications is probably best illustrated by the skyrocketing success of FourSquare this past year (growing from 100K to 4.5 million users). LBS technology enables social games to pass through that membrane between digital reality and physical reality; expect way more innovation here.
Marketers Want a Piece of You: The third trend that Rietveld touches on is what he calls “advergaming.” This has evolved from relatively weak product placements to rich media experiences with features, plotlines and characters shaped by brands. Marketers are finding that games provide a great way to deliver significant value to the consumer while getting a product message across to them.
