Is Work/Life Balance Possible In Social Media Careers?

I'll say right off the bat that this post is going to be half-baked because I'm rushing to write it because it's 9:30 pm and my husband hates when I'm blogging at 9:30 pm. But Ryan Paugh, Community Manager at Brazen Careerist, started a great discussion today in the Community Manager group there and I promised I'd write a post about it today. His question was

Ok, I definitely want to ask everyone how they maintain a healthy work-life balance, blend or whatever you want to call it, as a Community Manager. It's something Maggie and I started talking about yesterday. Can you guys share any stories, tips, etc?

I answered that I think social media/community management jobs (that's another post for another time: are social media manager and community manager really interchangeable terms?) are incredibly time-consuming and make work/life balance very hard.

Why? Because social media jobs require you to do more than one full time job. One is the job you're being paid for: social media management. Already a daunting task because you're more than likely swimming upstream--having to not only do your job but evangelize both externally and internally all the while. So your days are full just doing what you're being paid to do.

Then there's the other part of social media jobs: staying on top of new tools, trends, news, etc and managing your personal brand. Both are, in my opinion, crucial to your success both in your current job and for future career opportunities. It's no secret that the social media world is all about who you know. And who you are both online and off.

Look at all the social media A-listers. They're blogging--frequently. They're tweeting constantly. They're traveling all the time, doing speaking engagements. They're getting book deals. They're reading masses of stuff--blog posts, books, articles. They're on pretty much all the time. How do you live that life and have time to devote to family or friends or spouses or kids?

I'm nothing close to a social media A-lister, but I do have a social media career and I'm here to tell you that finding a way to work 8 hours a day, blog, read, socialize either online or off and just stay on top of the things I need not only to do my job now to the best of my ability but also hopefully ensure that I stay gainfully employed for the next 25+ years in what's becoming an increasingly lucrative and competitive field....it's exhausting. Fun, but incredibly time-consuming and hard to balance with my responsibilities as a mom and a wife.

Speaking of which, time to wrap up this post. So what do you think--is it just me or do others in my same boat feel the same way?

Things Every Parent Should Know About Facebook

Last weekend I was setting up a Facebook page for my pre-teen niece (and a corresponding one for her dad so he can monitor how she's using it). It occurred to me as I was trying to dredge up from memory various pieces of what I consider to be necessary information about Facebook that, just as companies are developing social media guidelines for employees, parents should present some form of social media guidelines to their kids before letting them interact online. It's easy enough to find information online about basic safety stuff for kids--sites like SafeKids.com and OnGuardOnline.gov are good places to start. However, now that Facebook seems to have gone from being interested in helping individuals safeguard their privacy to being interested in exploiting people's personal information in order to make money, I think it's more important than ever that parents whose kids are using Facebook have a thorough understanding of the platform themselves so they can guide their kids.

If you're a parent saying "It's Facebook--what is there to know?"--do you really know everything you think you do about Facebook? For instance:

• Those fun games and quizzes on Facebook? They're just ways to farm data which developers can then do whatever they please with. Take this quiz designed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to learn just how vulnerable you make yourself AND all your friends every time you answer a seemingly fun quiz.
• Think that you can still lock down your profile so nothing is visible to anyone other than your friends? Think again. Facebook changes stuff constantly and it's on you, the parent, to keep up with the changes so you can make sure your kids are protected. For starters, name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are now considered by Facebook to be public information and do not have privacy settings anymore.
• Scams abound on Facebook. Scam groups like those offering stuff like Ugg boots giveaways, phishing scams where your friends' profiles get hacked and you start receiving emails or chat messages that appear to be your friend saying they've been kidnapped and need money, and malware scams are all things you need to let your kids know about so they're not taken in.

The bottom line? The bigger and richer Facebook becomes, the more important knowing how your information--and your kids' information--is being used, will become. If you don't want to use Facebook, you need to at least know enough about it to help your kids use it responsibly. This requires ongoing diligence on your part, as Facebook changes things constantly, including privacy settings and terms of service.

Ignoring Social Media Cost Democrats a Senate Seat

I haven't done a rah-rah social media post in a while, but I think it's about time I did one. A few current events are proving how big social media has become and how much to your peril it is to ignore it:

• David Meerman Scott predicted the outcome of the Massachusetts election by pointing out how Coakely totally dropped the ball social media-wise; now that it happened, the Emerging Media Research Council ties Brown's win directly to his use of social media.
• Facebook and Twitter have proven to be invaluable during the horrible aftermath of the Haiti earthquakes.
• Big brands are ditching Superbowl ads in favor of social media campaigns.

Still think it's a stupid fad that you will just wait out?

Facebook Users: Get Ready for a Deluge of Spam

What's the percent chance that Facebook developers, if given the option to request or even require your email address in order to use their applications, would NOT use those email addresses to spam the crap out of you? We'll soon find out, since, effective Wednesday, January 20, Facebook's new email API will be going live. That's right, starting Wednesday, when you go to use an application, you'll be either requested or required to provide your email address.

According to Facebook, developers will be prohibited from reselling user email addresses, will be required to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, and will need to have privacy policies in place. They will also not be allowed to mention Facebook in subject line, "from" line or body header, nor will they be able to use Facebook's logo--which means you'll probably have no idea who these emails are from because who remembers what all those crazy applications' names are anyway?

This is great for developers, who will no longer be limited to contacting you via Facebook (or even allowed to contact you that way anymore), and of course great for Facebook, who will undoubtedly make more money through this latest change geared towards businesses instead of individual users--but how will it affect users? Will they happily comply with these email requests and just deal with the inevitable deluge of new emails? Or will they balk and stop taking those fun quizzes or playing those riveting games?

Just sayin'--you might want to set up a dummy email address before Wednesday.

Why is it News That Twitter Search Sucks?

A few days ago I saw several social media "influencers" tweeting links to this post about how Twitter doesn't archive tweets. Is this news to anyone? I know I've blogged about it before.

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again--I don't understand how a platform that is so unreliable and has such limited archival capabilities is worth a purported billion dollars.

Why does nobody seem all that bothered by Twitter's horribly limited search capability? With more and more companies deciding that social media is something they're willing to spend money on, as evidenced by more of them hiring staff to handle it or contracting various activities out, they are going to be looking for that all-important ROI--a calculation for which Twitter's archives being searchable is critically important.

Take the tragedy in Haiti. Mainstream media is featuring Twitter as an integral part of the Red Cross's efforts to raise an amazing amount of money in record time and through previously untapped channels. So what happens a month or six months from now when a reporter is tasked with researching the total number of tweets containing the words "Haiti" or "Red Cross" in the weeks after the earthquake? I'll tell you what will happen: nothing, as in "no results," because those search results will be long gone. Ruh roh. Ditto for the agency that runs a campaign for a company, one of the components of which is a specific hashtag on Twitter. After a month when they sit down to prepare the analysis of the campaign and go to count how many people used the hashtag they're going to be in for a rude awakening. Trust me, I've been there, done that many times over and it's frustrating as hell.

What if Google only archived search results for a week or two? Guess we wouldn't have been able to get rid of encyclopedias. Somehow they've managed to figure out a way to capture an infinite amount of information without having their search index run out of room. I can't imagine this isn't a problem that can't be fixed by throwing some money at it--so Twitter, PLEASE throw some of those millions at this search index deficit and fix it.

Bulltwit

Swiped from my personal blog

I know I already posted about this on my other blog, but it's still grating on my nerves today so I figured I'd  continue the rant over here. Not the kind of ranting that's already going on, though; I mean, come on people--"Why does Vanity Fair Hate the Women of Twitter?" Really? According to this post, the article "paints them as attention seeking, pom pom wielding, phone sex operators for the internet."

Seriously? Vanity Fair is the bad guy here? Many women seem to think so--and some men as well.

Excuse me but come on--not to be a bitch but pick one: either use your sexuality to get ahead or don't. You can't have it both ways; complain that "the media" is portraying women in a negative light while you have a website that looks like this.  Granted the woman in the article who most resembles this remark, Adventure Girl, isn't the one griping about how disappointed she is with the way she was portrayed--but before the masses continue whining about how Vanity Fair portrayed the lot of these women as flighty, leggy airheads, have a good look at Adventure Girl's website. Oh, wow--you can become one of her "Sweet Tweets." Then scroll down the page and check out the "fun gifts"--you can choose a mug or poster featuring her tits--complete with "XO, Stefanie Michaels", or you can go with the cartoonized version of her in Daisy Dukes and huge porn star-esque boobs.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not lumping all the women into the same category as Adventure Girl--but let's call a spade a spade. If a magazine wants to feature you in a group of women that include, say, porn stars, and you accept--you can't then complain that you're being lumped into the same category as porn stars. You knew who else was being featured; you had the choice to pass on being glammed up, photographed in nothing but pumps and a trenchcoat and blithely described as a "tweetheart"....but you didn't. I'm quite sure there were about a million other women who would have relished the chance to be featured in the article and enjoyed the resulting thousands of new followers.

Is Self-Deprecation The New Formula for Success?

I know there have been a bunch of blog posts about buzzwords for 2010; even though I haven't actually read any I'm pretty sure "authenticity" is one of them. Judging by the amount of kudos Domino's is getting for their new "Pizza Turnaround" campaign, apparently self-deprecation is also a hot trend. Creativity called the campaign "a transparent journey of self discovery;" others applaud the "great effort on their part to bring back a better image." Instead of trying to brush nasty consumer comments under the rug, Domino's took the "we know we suck" approach--you know, authenticity and all that. Works for comedians; must work for advertising, right?



I have to say--it's not really working for me. Where's the line between exposing your vulnerabilities and patting yourself on the back? How many points should a company get for acknowledging that they suck and doing better? Makes me question whether the whole Domino's-workers-putting-boogers-in-the-food video was just a staged part of this "comeback" plot.

I personally loved Domino's old crust...maybe I'm just bitter that they changed it.

Twy Me A River

Chances are, if you're not busy reading articles and blog posts about the Facebook bra meme, you've come across more than one post about Vanity Fair's "America's Tweethearts" article. How it's a big disappointment to the women featured in it because it portrays them as, well, babes wearing nothing but trench coats and heels.

Disappointment how? Because they each got thousands of new followers as a result of the article? Because they got to get dolled up and treated to a professional photo shoot? Because out of the millions of women on Twitter--many of whom are doing awesome stuff--the six of them were somehow picked to be showcased as "twilebrities"?

You know what I say? Vanity Fair, feel free to tart me up and take pictures of me--if you can make me look that good in a photo, you can make me sound as vapid as you want.

Link Time

Lately I'm not only not feeling particularly inspired to write anything, but I am reading lots of cool stuff but not taking the time to leave comments. So lucky for all of us--here are links to some great posts and the comments I would have left, had I not been lazy.

• Elizabeth Weaver Engel on social media measurement and where it's headed. Very cool slidedeck pointing out how much social media measurement sucks now, but hopefully some cool things are on the horizon. 
• Lynn Morton on being a responsible Foursquare user. I am a half-hearted Foursquare user since I live in the burbs where hardly any places are already in Foursquare and I don't feel like taking the time to manually add them. Supposedly Foursquare has made some significant changes/enhancements including making it much easier to add new places but I haven't seen any changes yet via the iPhone app (tapping my foot waiting for that new iPhone app to be released...). I personally think Foursquare will be HUGE for businesses. I envision mash-ups between apps: you check in to the local movie theater on Foursquare and receive a coupon (on your phone, of course) for a free popcorn, then are asked if you'd like to review the movie you've just seen, taking you to Flixster. Local restaurants will have seen your check in when the movie started so when you leave you'll be presented with a few deals, then led to Yelp to give a quick thumbs-up or something to the restaurant. The emphasis will be on it being super easy for the user to interact with these places/apps, encouraging participation and, of course, increasing business. But I digress...now I have something to blog about next time, I guess.
• Jeff Hurt's posts are always freakin' brilliant, yet I almost never take the time to leave comments. This one on social conference strategy is particularly interesting; he hits the nail on the head saying that conference organizers need to begin to start thinking like community managers. 
• Even though we've all had it up to hear with year-end wrap up posts and 2010 predictions and resolutions, Angela Connor's five new years resolutions for community managers is worth reading. I particularly like "share great stories up the chain." Yes, it can feel like tooting your own horn, but as Angela says, how are they going to know about what's going on in your online communities unless they know about it? 

I could keep going but better get on with my day...feel free to leave links to posts you've found interesting in the comments. By the way, I hate the way comments on this blog work now--long story short, once upon a time I started using Haloscan for comments because with Blogger's comments you couldn't leave trackback pings. Haloscan got bought by  JS-Kit, who now got bought by Echo and rather than figure out how to export all my old comments back into Blogger I paid to "upgrade" to Echo comments. I hate it--I think it's total overkill as far as how many bells and whistles they incorporate, looks horrible, and if I can ever manage to block out a day or so I will be trying to figure out how to get out of Echo.

Oh, and speaking of changes that suck, can someone PLEASE tell me where spellcheck is in this new Blogger CMS? While I appreciate the new features like bullets, I NEED spellcheck!

If the FTC Wants to Keep Bloggers Disclosing, They Need to Fine Kim Kardashian

I'm having some problems connecting the dots about this whole Kim Kardashian $10k per tweet thing. According to Advertising Age digital and a million other sources, she gets paid $10k per tweet (see slide 8 in of online ad rates.) There she is, at the top of ad.ly's home page. Yet, not only is she not disclosing any material relationship with sponsors, she directly stated on her blog that she is NOT being paid to tweet about Carl's Jr.

So is she or isn't she? And if she is getting paid to tweet about products and not only not disclosing the relationship but lying about it on her blog, why isn't the FTC doing anything about it? Since their revised guidelines pertaining to endorsements and testimonials went into effect on December 1, 2009, every non-celebrity getting so much as a free lip balm in exchange for blogging about it must go to great lengths to clearly disclose what the FTC is calling a "material relationship."

The FTC needs to realize that their reaction to her non-disclosure will set the tone for whether or not these new guidelines will be taken seriously or not. There could not be a more perfect case for them to use as an example; we're talking big money here, and a clear intent on Kim Kardashian's part to deceive people into thinking that she's only tweeting about Carl's Jr. because the salads are so orgasmic. Isn't this the exact thing these guidelines are supposed to be protecting consumers against? Shit, I've never heard of Carl's Jr. but if I go out of my way to find one because their salads are so legendary that a "celebrity" feels compelled to tweet and blog about them because they're THAT good...and they're not? I'm pretty sure the FTC owes me $11,000.

Seriously, though, I feel strongly that bloggers should be disclosing and if the FTC lets this slide, they're sending a really bad message and basically giving their go-ahead to totally ignore the regulations they seemed to care so much about mere months ago.

*Totally unrelated but I just upgraded to the newer version of Blogger and there appears to be no spell check. HOW can that be right? So sorry if this post is riddled with spelling errors; without spell check I'm lost--even though I was an English major.