Why I Joined Jive Software

I suppose I should begin by coming clean. Yes, I realize I haven't posted here since 2009. No, I have not spent the last several years training to swim the Panama Canal or some such aspirational feat (although it does sound intriguing). I have spent the last few years heads-down trying to figure out this whole social-media-for-business thing. And, I found you don't have a lot of extra time to write about it when you're busy actually doing it. So please accept my sincere apologies for the radio silence.


Now that's out of the way I can get to the good stuff. I am thrilled to announce that today I began my new professional adventure with Jive Software (NASDAQ: JIVE). I have been a fan of Jive and their community platform and collaboration software since I was a strategist and external community manager at Intel back in 2008. This was before Jive expanded from their corporate offices in Portland to the bay area and before the excitement of their IPO back in 2011. And, even though I haven't necessarily been an active user of their tools all this time, I have remained an ardent admirer of their software and an outspoken advocate of the importance of social collaboration and community marketing for business in general.

After having been in marketing for nearly twenty (cough) years, I have spent the last six years or so learning, experimenting, failing, succeeding, and overall cultivating deep knowledge and a true appreciation for how businesses use social media--specifically community and collaboration--to transform the way they engage with their customers, prospects, partners, and peers. And what excites me so much about this new opportunity is that it allows me to pull from all I've learned and discovered in this area and utilize that knowledge and those experiences to help Jive customers realize concrete business value from Jive software. (Sorry, buzzword alert).

What that really means is, as a Senior Strategy Consultant my job will be to sit down with some of the greatest and most innovative brands around and help them craft business strategies that make the most of their investments in the software and in the practice of social engagement/collaboration itself. Sounds glorious, right? I know!

Those of you who know me well know that I am nearly singularly focused on abolishing what has come to be known--even if only by me--as "checklist marketing." That's the practice of checking off marketing to-do lists, instead of focusing on the business results of your efforts. (Facebook page....check! Twitter account...check! Blog...check! Sound familiar?) So you can be certain that I will pay great attention to the results Jive customers will see by adding external communities to their marketing toolkits.

I have a lot to learn. Over the past few years Jive has attracted some of the sharpest brains and social media do-ers in the business within their proverbial walls--perhaps better known as "spaces" in Jivespeak. And I'm ecstatic to join such an impressive team of social super smarties committed to helping Jive customers succeed. So from where I stand the future looks very bright, even if it doesn't include a trans-Atlantic swim.

will the real social media expert please stand up?

I've been in several circumstances lately where the subject of social media expertise has bubbled to the surface of conversation. There appear to be some diverging opinions on this subject so I thought I'd pose the question to you, my loyal readers. But first a deep dive into the idea.

One of the facets of social media I find most fascinating is how many flavors there are to the concept. To some folks participating in social media simply means using an RSS feed to get their daily fix of news stories or other content they've chosen as personally relevant from an aggregate of sources. Others take it a step further by posting their own MySpace page, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, or some combination thereof. Some--and this number continues to grow steadily--take it even further and become *gasp* bloggers themselves.

Being a blogger personally--yet arguably far from an expert on the subject--I will say that blogging alone doesn't necessarily deliver a deeper familiarity with social media, other than experience using blogging tools like Blogger (which I use for this blog, obviously) and Wordpress (yes, I write another blog using that tool as well). But if the blogger is working diligently to increase his or her blog traffic, more than likely he or she is also taking one additional step to include every button or widget possible--tools like Technorati, Digg, Stumble--meant to drive the maximum traffic to their site.

So whom of these folks would win the coveted title in the battle to become a social media expert? To claim "guru" status in this growing field, would one need to be an avid blogger blogging about the social media movement while featuring their blog on their Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace pages which also include YouTube videos of them sitting and writing their blogs? In essence does just checking the box marked "all of the above" catapult you into the realm of virtual social media virtuoso? I can hear the collective exclaim of glee as all you bloggers start polishing your bios in hopes of starting that coveted career on the conference speaking cirtuit.

You want to know what I think? Probably not, but I'll tell you anyway. I think that it is virtually impossible to become an expert in a field that is as ever changing as Britney Spears' hair color. Sure someone can know a lot about what it takes to successfully drive site traffic through a well thought-out SEO, tagging, and linking strategy. And that same person could also be skilled at contriving creative concepts to ride the viral marketing waves that ebb and flow on Facebook. But to be an expert in a field that changes from one day to the next is akin to placing your hand in a running river; you can trap a small bit of water for the moment, but once you lift your hand again the river rushes on.

IMHO, there is a bit of a social media master in each of us. We all probably know more than we realize as we attempt to stay on top of concepts, software applications, and methods that are meant to make marketing "easier" by facilitating our ability to have deeper connections and conversations with our customers (a vague term that could mean readers, consumers of media, purchasers, etc.). Experts we may not be, but afficionados we probably are. And that's ok with me. Because as long as what I'm doing works at the moment, that's what counts. That is until "Whatever 3.0" comes along and the process--and my learning curve--begins all over again.