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.

Is target marketing dead?

I’m reading a terrific book by John Berendt, former editor of the New York Magazine also known for his marvelous book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Set in Venice, Italy this somewhat autobiographical story, The City of Falling Angels, deconstructs the true events that surround the devastating 1996 fire that destroyed Venice’s historic Fenice opera house. In one particular scene the author tells a delightfully comic tale of an evening he spent reveling at a Bacchanalian Carnivale in the company of the mysterious Massimo Donovan, the creator of—in his own words—“the world’s best rat poison.”

Unlike the poison of his competitors, what makes this rat poison so effective, its culinary creator contends, is that it is concocted of cuisine that is corollary to the region where it is sold. “’My competitors approach rat poison the wrong way,’ he said. ‘They study rats. I study people… Rats eat what people eat.’” Essentially Signor Donovan adapts his rat poison to match the food preferred by the culture where he sells the poison; for Germany, he makes poison that is 45% pork fat, for France he includes a lot of butter, for India he adds curry, and for America he uses “vanilla, granola, popcorn, and a little margarine.”

This story represents an amazing adaptation of the traditional theory of target marketing: the technique marketers use to categorize their audience into demographic buckets to market to them more effectively. The methodology maintains that the more marketers understand their customers—by lumping them together into easily defined categories like homemaker, teenager, or the “Ward Cleaver” father figure—the better able a company is to make certain assumptions about them including what like what they like, listen to, or look at. This purportedly provides clues that help companies determine where to advertise and how to craft their messages so they will resonate best with each target market.

But the new internet age, and its evolution into one giant social network, calls into question this long-valued and oft-touted marketing strategy of old. As Chris Anderson eloquently captured in his book The Long Tail, the ubiquitous 24/7 online access provided by the net has opened us up to a wider variety of movies, music, and media than ever before. And because of the diversity of available content on the web and in the world around us, and the ease with which we can access it, we are no longer a generation of predictable personas.

What I mean is that very few folks fall into simple stereotypes these days and I’m a perfect example of that. For instance, I’m a mom. But that isn’t my entire identity. I’m also a thirty-something professional woman, a political activist, a writer of six different blogs, a generous non-profit supporter, a lover of New Orleans funk music, and an addict of the online “game” Second Life. So I dare anyone to lump me into a category. C’mon, I dare ya!

The point I’m making is that marketing has changed—majorly! In this post post-modern, mashed-up, media-savvy era where viral voices and mavens influence what’s hot or not, the techniques we marketing professionals practiced in the past no longer apply. Sure elements of them can still be part of our toolbox. But if we don’t think differently and acquire some new tools and skills that help us adapt in the ways we reach our constantly connected customer base, we run the risk of becoming irrelevant or worse.

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.

are social media strategies considered marketing or pr?

This question is a puzzling one. I know many marketing professionals--eyes wide and tongues wagging with the enthusiasm of a energetic puppydog--anxious to jump on the social media bandwagon to reach new potential customers; the particularly technically savvy youthful types with expendable incomes (otherwise known as the "holy grail" of target markets). Yet I also see social media plans coming down the public relations pipeline. So what gives? Is it the marketing or PR department who is in charge of a company's social media strategy?

A recent IDC report on purchasing behaviors highlights what many of us in marketing already knew: traditional advertising is out, content is king. This means simply that people (aka the market) respond better to messages when these messages are communicated in the context of content, lets say in this case an article or an influential blogger's opinion (present company included? *blush*). Consumers are generally skeptical and can practically smell it when they are spoon fed marketing messages meant to influence their buying behavior.

Given this premise, it would seem that the new social media approach to written content, like reaching journalists or influencing how companies are written about by bloggers, would fall in the PR camp; the undisputed camp of written content creation. And getting bloggers to blog about you is similar to--and just as difficult as--getting the traditional media mavens to include your company/product/service in an article. In this case add the complexity of trying to influence the readers-at-large in hopes that they Digg or Stumble you, and you've got a tough job; a job perhaps best handled by your friendly neighborhood PR professionals.

But what about many of the other content-related social media "tools" (*cringe*)? Aren't Web sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Second Life all about content too? Well, yes. However there is a significant difference between the type of content featured by bloggers and journalists and that included on these other media sites: who posted it. These sites and others like them all feature content created and posted by the public-at-large. This is also known as "user generated content." [I realize the definition of "blogger" continues to morph and that more and more of the general public are beginning to blog. Sigh, another added complexity.]

It is in this space where the question of "who owns it" becomes a little murky. One might say it is the domain of PR to influence how the company/product/service is featured in any external content, written or otherwise. Yet I can also envision a legitimate corporate marketing campaign that asks viewers to create content--like photos, videos, or avatars--and post them to these sites as part of a contest. This gets the users and the public engaged with your campaign and--pay attention, because this is your ultimate goal here--commenting and forwarding the videos to virally spread your message for you. [For example, see Intel's "What Would You Do For A Duo?" contest video.]

Another component of social media that falls a little more squarely in the lap of the marketing department are the social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These sites rely on the formation of groups to get messages out. Also, the observed behaviors of friends in your network by other trusted friends can ignite an idea and help it spread like a brush fire. (For example, my friend joined the group "Confused About Social Media" and I want to join too because I trust her and am likewise befuddled by the big idea.) Certainly companies can post traditional ads on these sites--which is not a terrible idea, by the way--but the most valuable features of these tools, I argue, are the micro-communities that culminate around the interests of its members.

After reading over this post, I realize I have failed to firmly answer your question--well, the question I posed in the beginning. Perhaps that is because the corporate world itself continues to grapple with how to and who should develop a corporate social media strategy. I would hope that any company's marketing and PR teams would work together to develop a cohesive social media plan. And that best practices learned from various teams and business groups would trickle up and down the ladder so that others can learn from your favorite feats and your most frustrating flops.