Yes, it has in fact been way too long since I’ve featured someone as part of my “People You Should Know” series. I typically use a Q&A format for these posts but this one will be a little different. I’d like to introduce you to Roland Cailles, a former intern at our firm.

We pride ourselves on the quality of interns we bring in the door at CG&A. Internships are no walk in the park as we immerse our interns in account work and challenge them to learn as much as possible about the industry from day one. As such, it’s not uncommon for some of our interns to turn their position into a permanent gig.

Roland Cailles

Roland tracked me down on LinkedIn about six months ago after graduating from Columbia College. Rather than straight up asking for a job, he smartly did his homework, took note of my interests and started a conversation about social media. Following a few email exchanges, I had Roland come in for an informational interview. Timing happened to work out where we were in need of a new intern and Roland was on top of the list. It’s true, being proactive in building relationships pays off in the end.

Throughout his six months at CG&A, I had the pleasure of being Roland’s mentor. Roland stood out for a number of reasons but here are some qualities that caught my attention that also serve as good reminders for other recent college grads looking to land that first agency internship.

Be Proactive

As a project manager, it’s easy to get bogged down in handling multiple accounts on a daily basis. On top of weekly team meetings, Roland consistently kept me updated with weekly status reports and regularly checked in to take on additional work and ask questions. Priceless.

Work Hard, Then Work Harder

I knew that when I assigned projects to Roland that they would not just be completed but thought through and revised. It’s always impressive to see an intern putting in a little OT on a Friday afternoon when he or she knows there is a looming Monday deadline. That’s a rare quality and certainly one that gets noticed very quickly. In addition, PR is unfortunately not a M-F, 9-5 gig. Showing that you’re willing to work a couple weekends for events, video/photo shoots or other projects is key.

Maintain a Quest for Knowledge

Anyone involved with social media marketing knows that it’s a full-time job just to stay on top of the latest trends. Without asking, Roland would frequently ask to participate in free Webinars, call my attention to key blog posts, white papers and other relevant research and trends he knew would be of interest to me.

Be Creative

Nothing makes a project manager happier than rolling into a scheduled brainstorm and seeing team members with printouts in hand and notes already jotted down. PR/Marketing firms thrive on creativity and it can certainly be a brain strain when you’re working to do this across multiple accounts. Having team members launch a brainstorm with fresh perspective and ideas is golden.

Get Social Savvy

All agencies are seeing a new crop of knowledge roll in the door as more and more intern candidates are recognizing the need to possess social media and Web 2.0 skills. Bringing in a social savvy marketer like Roland that gets the social Web is a huge addition to any account team.

Learn Client Relations

Often the hardest part of PR for an intern to fully digest. When you’re not on the front lines every day communicating with the client, you miss little nuances. Roland was quick to pick up on this side of the business.

I anticipate big things in the years ahead wherever the future takes Mr. Cailles. Thanks for your hard work Roland and be sure to check out Roland’s post recapping his internship experience.

-Scott

Ahhh, where does the time go?

Social Media Snippets is now officially a year old and quite a year it has been. If I had to sum up this blog’s two main contributions to the social Web in the past year, it would have to be Barack and Twitter. I had no idea there would be such a strong draw to the post I did last August analyzing Barack Obama’s social media strategy (thanks to Lee Aase for posing the response challenge). It was amazing to watch the presidential campaign evolve as both parties immersed themselves in finding the best strategies to build support online.

In addition, people seemed to find a great deal of value in my Twitter related posts. A logical outcome given the explosion of the platform over the course of the past year.

I decided to throw together a quick video below and look forward to doing more on the vlog front in the year ahead. Thanks for everyone that drops by and feel free to make any suggestions on topics you’d like to see covered. I always enjoy connecting with new people so be sure to say hi.

Here’s to an exciting year ahead!

Cheers,

-Scott

*I’ll be out on vacation through July 7 and will be back to posting after that date.

Still confused as to why you would ever use Twitter or Twitter Search to track conversations via hashtags, find new followers and keep tabs on breaking news? The fine folks at Common Craft help paint the picture with this excellent new video below.

-Scott

If you track social media news regularly, it’s hard not to come across a flurry of news and insight about Facebook and Twitter anywhere you look.

The other week, I came across this excellent post by Jason Baer over on Social Media Today discussing two excellent resources that offer tips for marketing on Facebook. Whether you’re a business, PR pro or other marketer, I echo Jason’s recommendation to take a look at both free resources:

The Advance Guard – “About Face: Thoughts on how brands can leverage recent changes to Facebook pages, to better socialize their presence and engage their Fans.”

Hubspot – “How to Use Facebook for Business”

Facebook can be an excellent brand engagement tool for your company or organization but you need to have a full grasp over the basics of the platform before you jump into using pages. Be sure to check out both guides!

*Reminder, if you already have a page that had less than 1,000 fans prior to May 31, 2009, be sure to mark June 28 in your calendar so that you remember to soak up your page’s vanity URL. Great for SEO and general page reference!

-Scott

An exciting week lies ahead as I’m gearing up to head down to St. Louis to speak at a national conference for Donate Life America.

Some readers may know that I manage campaign outreach for Donate Life Illinois on behalf of Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network. It’s always a fantastic group to connect with as so much of the national effort to educate and register others as organ/tissue donors is done so in a very collaborative manner.

I’ve presented with the group in the past and many states have made incredible progress on the social media front in the past couple years, finding new strategies and tools to help tell the “donation story.”

Next week, I’ll be presenting on the following:

Power of Conversation – Using Social Media to Motivate Action in the Donation Community

I’m also conducting a Facebook workshop titled:

Breaking Down Facebook – Tips  & Tools to Help Engage Your Facebook Fans.

In addition, I would encourage everyone to check out this great post on Facebook marketing from Jay Baer referencing two excellent resource guides:  The Advance Guard – About Face, Hubspot – How to Use Facebook for Business.

Looking forward to it!

-Scott

In April, USAA launched a new social site called What’s On Your Mind? to provide an open forum for discussion about the economy and finances. As a member of a military family, I’ve banked with USAA my whole life and have always been a HUGE fan of their incredible service. Much of their reputation centers around excellent customer service which is why I was excited to learn about this new site.

In short, the site is technically open to anyone (but of course tailored to USAA members as a primary audience) and allows for open discussion on everything from retirement investing to debt and auto insurance.  Meant to connect members with other members for advice, they also provide a few of their own site contributors to chime in when appropriate, but these profiles are hidden under the “featured advice” section.

The idea is solid, but I do question if USAA is missing out on a big customer service opportunity. If you’re like me, you don’t like to spend a great deal of time messing with finances. It’s just not my cup of tea. When I need a transaction completed or other banking/investing help or advice, I want to make the process as simple as possible. It’s excellent to have access and response from top tier financial planners and portfolio managers but what happens when a post such as this pops up:

I cannot believe USAA takes sooo long to pay insurance claims!!!! My house was broken into 4 weeks ago and I have yet to even receive an update from USAA on the status of my claim!!!! I understand they have to do their research, but 4 WEEKS!!!??? I have family members that work at other insurance firms and they guarantee returns within two weeks!!! What is going on with USAA??

It seems that situations such as this could easily be resolved by designating two or three USAA employees to serve as social media customer services reps, featuring their photos and brief bios on the home page. The purpose of these managers would be to actively respond to complaints and concerns such as the post above in a timely manner or provide other necessary advice.

USAA also maintains a presence on Twitter and Facebook but seem to currently be utilizing both in a broadcast manner as opposed to conversation tools. One can easily argue that USAA could more actively be utilizing these tools to connect with members and provide rapid fire customer service. However, there is also a legit argument (as outlined by Brian Solis in this excellent post) for maintaining a broadcast approach if in fact USAA is not prepared to allocate resources for these channels.

Overall, I applaud USAA for taking the right steps to pay attention and help foster the online conversation. Strong online presence and engagement will undoubtedly pay dividends down the road as more and more members recognize the value of utilizing the Web as a parallel access channel. It will now be a matter of how the organization adapts to the changing role of online customer service.

-Scott

There is a lot of buzz right now about social media policies. Does your company need one? Not need one? What factors need to be considered in creating a policy?

To start, I’d encourage you to not get hung up on this being just a “social media policy.” Chances are pretty good that your organization already has a host of existing employee policies that provide boundaries and regulate work activity. A social media policy can really be thought of within the larger context of being an overarching “online communications” policy.

If your company is debating putting a policy in place, check out this post from Sharlyn Lauby discussing why you’d want to have a social media policy in the first place. If you’re set on creating a policy but are unsure where to start, I’ve got good news. There’s no need to recreate the wheel. As with so many aspects of social media, collective efforts are helping establish best practices.

I highly recommend checking out the following links to help guide the creation of your own policy:

Dave Fleet – Social Media Policies for Your Company
Dave has put together a couple excellent posts detailing factors that you’ll want to think about addressing in both internal and external policies.

Blog Council – Disclosure Policy

The Blog Council has put together a nice set of guidelines on disclosure and best practices toolkit. These guidelines have been reviewed by numerous Fortune 500 legal departments and are intended for anyone to utilize for their own company.

Corporate Social Media Policy

Sally Falkow identifies links to a range of excellent policy examples.

Mayo Clinic Policy Example

One of my favorite policies. Incredibly well written and easy for any employee to understand.

Jaffe Associates Policy Template

A nice template provided by a D.C. based PR firm.

The Two-Line Social Media Policy

Plain and simple.

Does your company or organization currently have a social media policy in place or are you considering putting one in place?

-Scott

By: Anne Helmond

Current trends show that there are now over 19 million users on Twitter, up from 3.4 million last October.

Twitter has gained incredible momentum as a key social media platform to say the least. The big question is whether new users are sticking around and using the site or visiting once and not returning after drawing blanks on how to churn up a 140 character update.

Last month, Nielson posted their research showing that Twitter currently only retains 40% of its users (Andy Beal addresses a plausible reason why this may be inaccurate). In the past I’ve posted about why Twitter can seem intimidating which still rings true for a lot of new users trying to understand the purpose and potential of the site (Facebook seems to be facing a similar ordeal with 55+ users).

Looking back, one item I would add to that post is the overwhelming number of Twitter applications that can be used to help with a range of services from tweeting to monitoring and trend analysis. There’s a lot out there and getting a grasp on overall tool utility can be a detriment to someone who wants to fully understand the platform right away.

The guessing game continues with Twitter’s next big move, but I do love the recent step they’ve taken in internalizing Twitter search on twitter.com. They do limit you to only 10 saved searches, but that’s usually plenty for personal use or for setting clients up with solid daily snapshot monitoring.

It does seem that Twitter would take as many steps as possible to keep traffic on twitter.com for accurate data capture and user trend analysis…not to mention creating appeal for potential advertisers. As Steve Rubel notes, Twitter search is booming and social search is here to stay as a major player. How Twitter capitalizes on the growing traffic has yet to be determined but adding more internal features on the site and providing a basic user/best practices guide to keep new users coming back could help their efforts.

Personally, I would prefer using twitter.com over my current use of Twhirl if Twitter moves on incorporating the following essential items:

• A shorten/trackable URL tool such as budurl.
• Notifications for replies and direct messages
• Addition of a simple RT button
• Follower grouping and ability to privatize a tweet to a particular group (sounds like this is a possible consideration)
• Basic stats analysis and tracking

What other functionality would keep you on twitter.com or what do you think will motivate more people to remain engaged on Twitter in general?

-Scott

$21 billion. Billion.

That’s the amount of revenue that Google Ads generated last year. If you’re like me and 60% of all Internet surfers, you rely on Google everyday as your search engine of choice. Google has become such a reliable knowledge portal that it’s hard to recall what served as “home base” on the Web prior to their existence.

As critical as the Web is to my job, I’ve never thoroughly understood Google’s advertising structure beyond my basic involvement and research of pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Organic search and search engine optimization are of course crucial to understanding the Web, but the advertising aspect has always seemed a bit foreign to me.

I’ve never been one to give much thought to clicking on the sponsored links listed at the top and on the right sidebar of Google’s search results. Maybe it’s been my instinctual fear of viruses or phishing scams, but I’ve always viewed organic results as the “safe” play when determining where to navigate next on my search path.

Steven Levy’s Secret of Googlenomics article in the latest issue of Wired magazine opened my eyes up to a whole new understanding of how Google’s sponsored ads end up where they do. Aside from bidding on select keywords that connect ads to specific dates, time and geographic locations, Google also assesses the quality of an ad, examining how well the ad matches a search query, the load time and quality of content on an ad’s landing page, the ad’s past clickthrough rate and other key criteria. An ad’s rank on a search result page is then determined through a formula that multiplies the bid by the assigned quality score (1-10).

Aside from gaining some additional technical knowledge about PPC, Steven’s article speaks to the larger economic trend and overall impact of how Google’s auction-based marketplace creates a new “auction” each time a new search is processed.

It’s mindblowing to think about the wealth of data Google and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter (obviously on smaller scales and with Twitter having yet to capitalize on this data in a monetary fashion) are capturing on any given day. If you’re on Facebook, you’ve likely seen tailored “social ads” for products or activity on facebook that reflects your friends’ activity. The friend endorsement is a huge step forward and I’ll admit that it makes me far more likely to check out a particular link on Facebook.

Where does search and social network advertising go from here?

I’d love to hear any SEO/PPC or other online ad experts’ thoughts and  insight on where they see search and social network advertising going next.

-Scott

We all know “viral videos” are rarely the result of a a crafted creative plan. It’s not to say that it can’t happen as we see big brands rolling out new videos every week that garner hundreds of thousands of views. The recent Snuggie phenomenon is a perfect example.

However, I’ve found that the viral videos that stick in my mind usually result from some form of  surprise activity that catches people offguard or in the case of today’s post subject, immediately uses pathos to drive viewer attention.

Over the past month, I’ve been tracking the video below posted by Lee Aase, social media manager up at Mayo Clinic, that shows an older couple playing a song in the Mayo atrium. Lee posted the video on April 7, 2009 on their Sharing Mayo Clinic blog after the video had been viewed 1,005 times on YouTube during the six months prior. Since posting the video and using Mayo’s various social media outlets to spread the word, the video has tracked as follows:

April 7 – 1,005 views
April 13 – 26,973 views
May 3 – 187,956 views
May 4 – 228,055
May 10 – 555,675
May 11 – 608,141
May 13 – 776,352
May 17 – 1,170,609
May 19 – 1,352,890

Wow. This is the content marketers dream about.

David Mullen and I have both shared similar thoughts about how PR and marketing firms need to relinquish the notion that firms can create viral videos on a whim for clients. This is a perfect example of how outside elements and timing typically work together to cause videos to become “viral” in an organic fashion. This is not a video concept Lee or someone else sat around trying to drum up to leverage attention around Mayo. Rather, Lee was smart about quickly identifying solid content and finding the right channels to tell as many people as possible about the video.

Let’s break down a few other elements that have made this video go viral.

1) It’s Heartwarming. In digging deeper into the backstory behind this video, we come to learn about Sharon, her reconstructed jaw and extremely positive experience as a patient at Mayo. Sharon was on cloud nine that special day and stumbled upon Fran and Marlow Cowan churning up some tunes on the piano. The Cowans have been married for 62 years (Marlow is 90, Frances is almost 84). The couple grew up entertaining crowds together.

Despite your age or how much bad news is being thrown your way about the economy, crime, etc. you can’t help but smile after watching the Cowans remind us all how important it is to embrace the day.

2) It’s Raw. No special effects or creative video work here, just a good capture of a very special moment that adds to the honest, personable nature of the video. In watching, you feel as if you’re part of “the moment.”

3) It’s Short. Clocking in at 1:14, it’s a quick view which is critical to engaging new viewers who come across the video via email links from friends, coworkers, etc. A small psychological factor but one that plays heavily into the decisions we make in consuming online video.

4) Social Savvy. Lee is one smart man. I’m going to bargain to say that he immediately dispersed this video to the entire Mayo staff after posting on Sharing Mayo as well as took advantage of using their social media platform to spread the word through Facebook, Twitter, Mayo’s own YouTube channel and other outlets. And then he told them again.

5) Bridged Online With Offline. Lee also knows media relations and there’s no better way to spread the word about a good story than by letting as many people as possible know about it. The Des Register Star recently ran a story about the Cowans and bloggers (count me in) have run with sharing the video as well. UPDATE: The Cowans were also featured on Good Morning America!

I’m quite excited to continue to watch the views shoot upward. Given the significant proportion of people that choose to go to Mayo as a result of word-of-mouth, this video will continue to be a huge marketing tool. Just take a quick glance at the feedback comments on the original blog post as a great example of where to find Mayo’s biggest advocates and supporters. I would also imagine Lee is working with closely with Sharon to track YouTube Insight info on the video to analyze trends around who is viewing the video and how they are discovering the spot.

Congrats to Sharon on her new health and capturing this great video and congrats to Lee and Mayo for smartly pushing things along to help tell the Mayo story.

-Scott

UPDATE:  Also see Lee Aase’s post providing a full internal case study analysis.