There was an active debate around having a separate TED conference on women – largely sparked by some awkward text that was used to introduce the notion of the event which is now resolved.  I was torn less by the existence of such a conference and more by whether or not I would actually enjoy attending.  God help me for admitting this, but I reacted very negatively to Eve Ensler’s performance at TED 2010.  The work felt like it was directly pandering to the guilt of the powerful and largely male audience (who gave her an instant standing ovation).  I sat and clapped politely.  It was similar to the cringey feeling I had when watching the I am Woman karaoke scene in Sex and the City 2 and wanted to yell at the screen “I am NOT like you”. Meanwhile, lots of woman at TED 2010 inspired me greatly – including games researcher Jane McGonigal , the unique perspectives of Temple Grandin, and grand dame ocean-pioneer Sylvia Earle.   Gender had nothing to do with their work or what they spoke about.  So, am I uncomfortable with women who use their femaleness as a “hook” for work, artistic expression, or popularity?  For whom it is their “shtick”?  Am I a self-hater who wants to be a man deep down?  No, indeed.

Being a woman in the workplace comes with its own unique set of opportunities and challenges.  I am now of the mind that not discussing it or attempting to ignore its differentness is fruitless and is not going to help me or anyone else excel.  From the trivialities of navigating the minefields of workplace dress to gracefully handling assumptions and double standards of others, it is just different.  Whenever I get the at-least-weekly well meaning comment “it must be hard to be away from your son so much”, it takes every ounce of decorum I have to maintain a normal tone of voice and reply that while it is, it is also difficult for my male colleagues who have similar schedules and families, but we love what we do and are lucky have strong support at home.

It is this minor epiphany that sparked me to apply.  Could I do a better job of understanding, coaching and growing those around me?  Could I do more to give back to other women in my community at large and in other cultures?  And could I do that more adeptly with more knowledge and ideas?  Without a doubt.  Regardless of whether or not I make the grade on attendance for this event, the process has certainly made me a bit more thoughtful about who I am as a woman in business and how I choose to handle myself and invest in those around me.  I firmly believe there is an authentic path that is neither Devil Wears Prada nor Mary Poppins and, while I am bound to stumble upon it innumerable times, it is a path worth travelling.

1. Employee Social Media Guidelines – You’ll have to keep revising them and they’ll never be complete, but without them, employees won’t know what they’re allowed to do, whether they’re a spokesperson for your company, etc.  These are not one size fits all, but for a template or inspiration, check out Social Media Governance.
2. Corporate Social Media Strategy – You may remember a (small sample) report from earlier in the summer stating that more than half of companies actively engaging in social media had no strategy and no agreed upon success metrics.  While you might be able to pull that off with a couple of voices online, it will not scale.  A strategy will create the justification for future guardrails of what activities are in an out of bounds, roles and responsibilities, and success metrics.  This is where you should also define what adding more voices online will accomplish for the company so that everyone knows why they’re getting involved
3. Cross-Functional SM Working Group – Whether you call yourselves a committee, task force, or the Bay City Rollers, you will need a cross functional internal working group to create and socialize strategy and policy as it evolves and to handle anything that pops up.  For bonus points, don’t just include product, marketing, care and communications – you will benefit from talent acquisition, HR, and legal being consistently at the table as well.
4. Documentation of Goals, Roles, Responsibilities, Response Guidelines  – Knowing them is not enough.  As your organization grows and as customers find you in social spaces, you’ll want to have crisp external definitions of your mission in social places and the type of service or responses that customers can expect.  Internally, you’ll need to know who is responsible for what spaces and have a documented, agreed upon way to handle inquiries or comments from customers and escalation paths for things that could potentially go wrong.
5. Process for Initiating NEW SM Projects – If you are fighting the tide of proliferation of handles and pages using your brand, create a way for marketers in your organization interested in starting another social project to think through all the necessary elements of adding a new project to the ecosystem and ask them to explain why their needs can’t be met through existing social channels.  Letting growth happen totally organically could lead to a maze that makes it difficult for customers to find the “real” you.
6. Training on All of the Above – Figure out how you can train and engage your organization on the elements above.  Maybe some can be done in person, but for items impacting all employees, you may want to look to on demand video training to make sure everyone has full access.
7. Regular Communications of Performance to Metrics – Once your expanded organization is up and running, close the loop with communication with how you are performing to the metrics in your strategy.  Honoring standouts and accomplishment can keep your expanded social media crew rowing hard in the right direction.

This is formulated based on my experience in house and on the agency side helping multiple organizations with this transition.  What did I miss?  What’s your checklist?

Product Offering w/ Story, Ritual, & Explanation – Chicago is a food town, but steamed Asian Buns aren’t the most common offering by far.  The product itself provides the opportunity for Word of Mouth to be exchanged – in location or on their website in the “the Way of the Bao” video.

Sauce-Up Your Brand Voice – @BaoMouth - Their brand voice on Twitter is the disembodied Bao Mouth.  The spicy Bao Mouth’s location and identity remain a closely guarded trade secret (even when I pressed Mr. Alexander on stage).  It is interesting to note that this is usually counter to what we think of as a best practice in terms of building relationships through transparency, but here it truly adds to the Bao mystique.  What we do know is that he/she is not only listening for mentions of Wow Bao, but ready to comment on other seemingly irrelevant, but fun tweets.  My favorite today:

“I’m gonna walk in through the out door all day today RT @CarolBlymire: Prince turns 52. How will YOU be celebrating his birthday?”

Surprise & Delight with Innovation – Despite (or maybe because?) Wow Bao is in Chicago and only rocking a handful of locations, they are innovating their marketing at light speed.  They know that young, digital, early adopters are their bun eaters, so they have experimented by being one of the first restaurants in Chicago to offer Foursquare deals (in fall 09), they have an iPhone app, remote ordering and shipping anywhere in the US, Facebook weekly “secret word” deals, Foursquare Mayor rituals that walk the walk in store (this talkability has to manifest IRL after all), and mobile single-use barcoded coupons with Mocapay.  Even if 75% of these fail, they’re worth remarking about and, while experimental, that probably justifies the ROI on its own.

What other brands are challenging their audiences by pushing their marketing bounds vs. being dragged into the future?  Or using the complexity of their product as a WOM advantage?

Today, I blogged about marketing lessons from the Man in Black over on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Fresh Influence blog.  Give it a visit or go straight to The Johnny Cash Project to let your inner artist loose!

For a while, I was one of “those” Foursquare people.  You know… rushing to document each and every place I visited, interrupting conversations with real life people to look down at my phone and find the appropriate check-in location, and generally Type-A about becoming the Mayor of SOMETHING for goodness sake.  I truly felt sadness at my recent ousting from the Mayorship of the Hotel Triton in SF earlier this week.

I liked Foursquare because it was turning my nomadic life into a real life video game.  On top of my Kimpton stays and frequent flier miles, I was getting electronic cred for criss-crossing the country every week and I liked it.  Now, I’m approaching done.  3 reasons why:

1) Frustration – The quick proliferation of users has taken the definition of “location” from geo to nano.  As the user-define locations on Foursquare have gotten smaller and smaller, the user is overwhelmed with options for where to check in – none of which may seem “legit” or correct.  I won’t pore through 50 different options figuring out where to check in.  The only plus is that this allows for more “Mayors”.

2) Loss of Utility – The “nano” problem above also reduces the utility of the tool.  I’m interested in seeing who else is at the Austin airport – not who is at gate 18 or at the Auntie Anne’s pretzels by Delta in Concourse B.  This means I can really only look at where my current friends are and that’s it.

3) Now What? Once you’ve opened all the badges for your normal activity, whither thou goest your Foursquare experience?  This phenomenon is relatively well documented – quite amusingly as “Apathy” in this “From Addiction to Apathy” post from Fast Company (h/t @KaiMac).

I hope there is a plan – a deeper level of engagement?, maybe “verified” locations a la Twitter?  I hope so, but I may have to read about it in Mashable because I’m not sure I’ll still be a user when they figure it out.

Cross posted on the 360 Digital Influence blog

Yesterday I ran into an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen IRL (in real life) since 2005.  He had, however, recently reached out through social networks to ask me to become a fan of a band I had never heard of – Coventry Road.  The fortuitous in-person encounter allowed me to ask about the motivation for the “become a fan of” request.  He told me that the first question club owners now ask is not “where’s your demo” but “how many Facebook fans do you have”?  Far from the upstart organizing tool of 4-5 years ago, building a digital audience is now a requirement for a band starting out – not a nice to have or an advantage.  Questions this raises:

1) Where is your local music loyalty? Venue owners are passing the buck of responsibility of cultivating loyalty through to the “talent”.   Venues like the DC’s 9:30 Club or even the 100 seat Cactus Cafe (under threat of closing) on the

UT Austin campus have amassed thousands of fans and are successfully booking the types of bands that their community wants to hear.  I still remember the closing of the Flood Zone in Richmond 12 years ago like a death in the family.  Venue matters big time and owners have a chance to double dip on loyalty – attracting 2 sets of fans (Note – big announcement about the future of “fan” vs. “like”ing brands).

2) Is Facebook “Fans” a proxy for audience? I don’t really think its that relevant for local, IRL music.  If venue owners are trying to attract new venue loyalists by bringing in fans of bands that don’t currently patronize their venue, the question is not how many fans do you have, but how many live here?

3) Is there a better way? The opportunity to crowdsource your band lineup awaits.  What if the venue actually tested competing tracks with the venue’s loyal facebook fans?  Or asked them to suggest new bands to bring in or the bands they like enough to stray from their favorite venue?  Great opportunities that we’re just starting to see develop.

Content Creators Must Get Paid – If you braved the distraction of a fire alarm and came back into the building, you were privy to an educated man’s verbal smackdown the likes of which I had not previously seen in public – Marc Cuban vs. Boxee’s Avner Ronen. Cuban artfully beat the drum that pay tv is going to continue to dominate (and that cash is king –  jabbing at Boxee’s “revenue free” model again and again). Avner had a bit of a “home audience” advantage being surrounded by self-admitted geeks who don’t like paying for anything. But if stolen internet content wins – who will pay for great content to still be created? TV shows do not have the same tour-for-cash out that music artists have used to weather the a la carte iTunes model. Later speaker Ze Frank also mused this same dilemma – being unable to monetize his awesome web content, but unable to break into the Hollywood revenue model in a meaningful way. I have no idea what the future holds, but someone needs to get paid or the only shows being made will be for the least common denominator.

Publicizing Public Information is a Violation of Privacy – If you followed the tweetstream from Austin this weekend, you probably saw that the most substantive traffic from any session seemed to come from the very meaty presentation from MSFT-based social network researcher danah boyd (@zephoria). This is a talk that will be worth watching in its entirety (read the transcript here), but if I was struck by one takeaway it is the difference between “public” information – information that can be obtained in some way – and information that we want publicized. danah boyd strongly believes that taking something that someone has written on a public site – say a forum about travel – and using it an ad or republishing it on an aggregator – is a violation of the author’s privacy because it violates the social norms and reasonable assumptions under which the author originally shared. It was a great reminder to begin all digital strategies with the purpose of adding value to all audiences – readers and content creators alike.

QR Codes are Coming – Previously categorized as “big in Asia”, SXSW badges boasted QR codes that, with the addition of an “app for that”, allowed users to share their information with the capture of an encoded 2D barcode. The advent of this technology is just another reason to think about danahboyd’s talk and what you decide to keep private, public, or publicize in social media.

Geolocation is a Foregone Conclusion – While pre-SXSW discussion seemed to be dominated by “geolocation is the new Twitter” discussion, by the time we got to the event, it was simply accepted as a given and everyone was on to the next topic. The only discussion I did hear was a bit of debate between hometown fave Gowalla and Foursquare.

Career-wise, this move is part of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence’s continued growth.  As we have added more digital strategists, teams and projects around the country, we have developed a need for someone to be able to move freely about the country to focus on the development of people and processes and I managed to bamboozle John Bell that I am just such a person.  As such, I am thrilled to continue with the team as the Head of Digital Strategy, North America.

And what does this mean for you?   If you live in Austin, it means I want to buy you a margarita.  If you’re coming to visit for SXSW, look me up.  If you are looking for an opportunity with 360 Digital Influence, it means you have come to the right place as my first priority is to add new talent to our ranks around the network.   What I hope it means for you as a reader of this little corner of the web is that there will be years to come of continued learning from a passionate WOMM practitioner working with an amazing team.

Post 1: Transformative Transparency

Post 2: Id and Identity Online

Post 3: Innovation Now

Please also check out the first published technology-related talk from this year’s conference- a demonstration of some amazing new Bing maps 3D capabilities:

This week I participated in a Social Media Week New York panel “Putting the Social in CSR” along with Bonin Bough from Pepsico, Deb Berman from Just Means, and Chrysi Philalithes from (RED). Its an extremely timely topic and one we have been thinking a lot about from a number of different angles. The great news? Social media provides the media for corporations to leverage their Corporate Social Responsibility investments to yield greater fruit for both the customer and the beneficiary.

The time-worn model of CSR of “Purchase X and we’ll contribute to Y up to $Z amount” can leave all parties feeling a little empty. Consumers know the company has already earmarked the money for the cause and is now trying to blackmail us into unlocking it by picking their brand over the equivalent. That similarly does little for the cause beyond the actual money donated – there’s little room on a package to tell the charity’s story and there’s no way for the consumer to choose to become more involved. To paraphrase John & Yoko, “EMPTY CSR IS OVER if you want it”.

Social media allows for the type of participation that can provide better return on CSR investments to all. Just a few:

* Connecting Customer and Cause – Activating around a CSR commitment in social spaces allows the customer to choose to go a step beyond just the purchase for token donation to donating themselves, connecting to the cause’s social space or promoting the cause to there social nets.
* Inspiring Meaningful Involvement – Social media allows companies to set up infrastructure for their customers to be the connection that makes the biggest difference. For example, Time Warner Cable (Disclosure: Ogilvy client, but we are not responsible for CSR), has made a 5-year $100MM commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through their Connect a Million Minds initative. They are measuring success not with number of $$ donated, but number of minds connected – a function not of their donation, but the number of people they have inspired & empowered to take advantage of the infrastructure they have created.
* Platform for Awareness & Promotion The much publicized Pepsi Refresh Project is taking a huge step in CSR – providing $20 million in grants to individuals and small organizations with good ideas to improve their local communities. Pepsi provides a platform to tell your story, promote your idea, and is doling out 32 grants per month to the democratically selected winners. The impact for these causes will go far beyond a microscopic logo on a box.

To reference Ann Charles’ Mashable piece on CSR 2.0, the new way to look at CSR is the “triple bottom line of people, planet and profit”. Maybe social media adds a fourth P – participation – that could be a goal in itself. Participation benefits the brand, beneficiary, and consumer alike and will fuel the type of CSR that will hopefully increase the efforts and investments of corporations in some of society’s most serious challenges.