Salvaging Your Sanity as a Community Manager

by Kat French · May 23, 20130 comments

I was once fortunate enough to sit in a training session with Jake McKee, “The Community Guy.” We were talking about building brand communities, and he said something that stuck with me. I believe he was quoting Guy Kawasaki.

“If you last three years as a community manager, you’re good. If you last four years, you’re really good. And if you last five years, you’re crazy.”

I must be crazy, because I counted it up. I’ve been doing community or social media management of some sort, (albeit for a lot of different companies) for over five years.

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Kat French

About the author

Kat French is the Digital Operations Manager at CafePress. An exceptional writer both on the web and in other genres, Kat combines creativity with an agile, get-it-done attitude across a broad range of experience in community management, SEO/PPC, social media strategy and program management. She has worked with national brands like Maker's Mark, Daytona Beach Tourism, Optima Batteries and more.

Do You Understand The Mathematics Of Social Marketing

by Jason Falls · May 22, 2013

One of the advantages of having exposure to a large e-commerce company and the incredible talent within its walls is that you learn from some of the top minds in the industry. It was just a few months into my tenure at CafePress that I started to dive deep into learning from the team that runs one of the largest Internet retail operations in the world. And boy, have I learned.

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10 Business Lessons from One of the Greatest Live Rock and Roll Bands in History

by Jim Berkowitz · May 21, 2013

I was absolutely enthralled by a recent article about a band that, since 1988, has been near and dear to many of us here in my home town of Telluride Colorado, Phish. Phish ranks among the greatest live bands in rock and roll history, and a sizable subculture of Phishheads would argue that there’s been none better.

Here’s a couple of summarized takeaways from the article, The Business of Phish:

Over the past 4 years Phish has generated $120 million in ticket sales, yet by more typical measures of a band’s success (album sales – Phish’s are minuscule, Billboard Top 10 rankings – none, radio airplay – limited, hit songs – out of the 883 songs Phish has performed none have been hits, and music videos – they only have one and that was heavily mocked)  the band isn’t popular at all.

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The Hockey Foundation

by C.C. Chapman · May 21, 2013

My beloved Boston Bruins are currently working their way towards another Stanley Cup, so I thought today would be the perfect time to tell you about my friend Adam’s organization The Hockey Foundation.

A couple of years ago when I first met Adam he was working for an NHL team trying to get them to embrace social media. They never fully understood it, he left and then he started talking about how he wanted to go to remote parts of the world where they had never heard of hockey and teach it to the kids. I vividly remember him first mentioning going to India to do this and my reaction being that I didn’t even know they had ice there to skate on. How wrong I was.

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What A One-Hit Wonder Taught Me About Marketing

by Jason Falls · May 20, 2013

There’s one phone number that most people can recite, regardless of demographic. And I mean full phone number, not 9-1-1. Think about it for a minute: What’s the one phone number than most everyone you know has in common they can recite without hesitation? 867-5309.

Tommy Tutone’s hit from 1981 emblazoned the number in our minds, and while little more of the song is all that memorable, “867-5309/Jenny” has an incredible marketing lesson buried within it’s one-hit wonderness. The song is the probably drunken announcement of a man who finds the number of a woman written on a bathroom wall. “For a good time, call …” graffiti, while most often a cruel joke, is the ultimate in smart marketing.

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Highs and Lows in the Parent Blogging World

by Stephanie Schwab · May 17, 2013

There’s never a dull moment in the parent blogging world. This past month has brought new highs and lows to this group, a group I’m firmly enmeshed in both as an agency which works with bloggers and as the founder of a conference bloggers attend. (I also happen to be married to a parenting blogger – my husband blogs on his own dad blog as well as in a number of other outlets.)

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Forget about Personas. Meet some real people.

by Doug Kessler · May 16, 2013

As new disciplines emerge – like content marketing in the digital age – new jargon blossoms like wildflowers in a new meadow. Or sometimes like clods of cow shit.

Whichever category you put the term ‘Persona’ into (for me, it’s bovine-centric), you can’t deny that it’s won a permanent place in the B2B content marketing canon. “Don’t even think about doing content marketing without personas.” is Commandment Six last time I checked.

At Velocity, we’ve propagated the cult of the persona ourselves, with round-up blog posts and the occasional tirade about using personas properly. And yes, there’s a Persona section in the content marketing playbooks we create for our clients. But, to be honest, I’ve never felt entirely comfortable with them. For two reasons:

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The Trick Is Applying General Knowledge To Specific Needs

by Jason Falls · May 15, 2013

How does this apply to me?

That should be the question we ask when encountering learning about the digital marketing world. Whether you’re reading a blog, a book, attending a webinar or conference, the one thing you won’t likely get is advice and examples that are directly applicable to your specific business.

Conference speakers are generalists. People who write books are, too. Their job is to be informative and helpful but appeal to as broad an audience as possible. If I were to speak at an event about how to leverage Twitter in medium-sized floral shops, I would only help a few audience members. If the talk is how to leverage Twitter for any business — a general approach — there’s more appeal.

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SPARK – #GivingTuesday

by Marc A. Pitman · May 14, 2013

While doing some fundraising training in Philadelphia last week, I was introduced to an incredibly cool program called Spark.

Spark was founded by a 7th grade science teacher who wanted his students to see why school mattered. The premise is really simple: place 7th and 8th grade students in apprenticeships with people in their community. They’ve placed students in apprenticeships with all sorts of professionals: fire fighters, chefs, pilots, artists, and tech folks.

The results speak for themselves

Spark Program Logo for Social Media Examiner's #GivingTuesday featured charitySpark has grown to serve in students in at-risk neighborhoods in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. And the results have been phenomenal. Despite very high high-school drop out rates with their peers, 98% of Spark alumni stay in school.

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