Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 30: Home Depot FTW

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When I received the call from my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, late in the day last Thursday, I knew something was up. Jennifer is a pro at picking her communication channels and she and I normally communicate via direct message on Twitter. Occasionally we escalate to e-mail but we rarely ever talk on the phone save for our post-Quick-n-Dirty podcast calls where we do a post-mortem of the show.

My instincts were right and Jennifer’s call was to let me know that she might not be able to do the show Thursday due to a tidal wave of work that landed on her desk. Fortunately, Jennifer and I plan for these things and I knew immediately to go into backup plan mode. Within 20 minutes of her call, I had my good friend and former colleague, Rachel Happe, on the hook (HT to Jim Storer for the assist). And while I missed the usual chemistry I’ve developed with Jennifer over the course of 30 shows, Rachel was a pro and helped keep the show running smoothly (even spending a healthy dose of time in the chat room engaging our regulars).

As always, you can hear an audio archive of last week’s show (along with all our other archives) here.

Our social network/app of the week was CauseWorld. I think Rachel summed it up best when she said that it was like FourSquare but for social good. That about says it all. I’ve downloaded the app on my iPhone and intend to play around with it a bit (what’s better than checking in to venues while earning “karma” points that can be translated into real dollars that help causes like victims of the Haiti earthquake). There’s a good write up of the service over on TechCrunch.

Next up was our featured guest, Sarah Molinari of Home Depot. Sarah is actually the person that Tweets out of the Home Depot Twitter account so if you’ve ever asked Home Depot a question, chances are you’ve talked to Sarah. During our conversation, the ever so graceful Ms. Molinari talked about Home Depot’s approach to engaging customers. She was also willing to talk about how they “listened” and admitted that they didn’t pay as much attention to competitors’ or industry keywords as maybe they could but only because they were so heads down focusing on all the existing customer conversations about Home Depot. We even got to talk about Home Depot’s Nascar race team [link updated on 2/2 – thanks Sarah!] on Twitter — a topic that Sarah was very well versed in. All in all, she was an absolute joy to have on the show.

Our “Tweet” of the week was none other than Mr. CC Chapman. If you don’t know CC, there are a few things you’ll quickly find out about him 1) he’s a great blogger and podcaster (focused on social media AND daddy blogging) and 2) he’s a teddy bear of a guy. So helpful and humble. In Rachel’s and my opinion, he is a MUST follow.

Last but not least came our point / counterpoint about tactical vs. strategic community management. Rachel and I did less debating since we haven’t spent a lot of time taking sides on issues but spent more time outlining the benefits of the different approaches one could take when it came to community management. Rachel in particular made some excellent points on the strategic side so it’s worth a listen (check out last 5-6 minutes of the show).

I’m looking forward to getting back to business with Jennifer next week. Details about the show will be on the Quick-n-Dirty site.

Pluralitas Non est Ponenda sine Necessitate

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For those non-Latin speakers out there, you are asking yourself right now, what the hell does “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” mean? Literally, it means “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” It’s a theory made popular by 14th century friar, William of Ockham, and is better known as Ockham or Occam’s Razor.

Why am I thinking about 14th century friars and Latin phrases about plurality and necessity on the day after Thanksgiving you ask? The short version of the story is that my friend, Kyle Flaherty, recently shared a great post with me by analytics wizard, Avinash Kaushik. Avinash writes a well known blog called — get this — Occam’s Razor. After reading his lengthy, but thought-provoking, post on social analytics, it got me wondering about the inspiration for the name of his Avinash’s blog.

Now I think it’s mandatory that we all learn about Occam’s Razor at some point in high school or college but of course that, along with billions of other pieces of knowledge that don’t fit into our everyday lives, somehow fell out of my head along the way. But after reacquainting myself with this concept of seeking the “simplest answer,” I’ve been thinking a lot about streamlining my work and personal life these days. In particular, slimming down my information sources and my day to day work flow.

I wrote about taking steps in this direction several weeks ago following my brief retirement from Twitter. But the place I’ve really fallen down is on keeping up with my Google Reader. I know some people like Bob Scoble have abandoned their readers altogether but I realized the other day that there are a dozen blogs, mostly written by friends, that I haven’t been keeping tabs on as closely as I would like. And the reason was because their quality content was getting drowned out by the 50 plus other blogs that I was keeping in my Google Reader, many of which contributed to my reader consistently registering 1,000 unread posts mark.

Maybe I’m unique in this fashion (although I doubt it) but thinking about 1,000 unread posts is just too daunting. Instead of going in and chipping away, I tend to ignore my Google Reader and thus miss out on dozens of great posts by people like Kyle, Peter Kim, Rachel Happe,  Tim Walker, Greg Verdino and others. So in a fit of “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” (which is really more about the concept of “the simplest solution is usually the correct one), but inspired me to “simplify” or slim down my reader to about 15 blogs.

The result is a much more manageable, 137 posts, all of which I was excited to read. The downside is that I will miss out on the good posts on ReadWriteWeb, ChrisBrogan.com and the HBS blog. But the way I look at it, it’s better that I read a few blogs all the time then have lots of great blogs that I never look at.

What about you? Are you able to keep up with it all? If so, how?

Experts in the Industry: Rachel Happe (17 of 45)

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Rachel Happe, Social Media/Product Guru and former IDC Analyst focused on social technologies, is not only a former colleague, she’s also a great friend. I’ve known Rachel for a year and a half and am more and more impressed with her every time I spend time with her. Not only is she funny but she’s also an “outside the box” thinker. At the same time, she’s not full of herself and always willing to share (if you happen to be looking for a rock star product leader with hard core social experience, she’s your gal).
Let’s see how she answer the five questions from the Experts in the Industry: 45 Interviews in 45 Days series…
In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I solve application and organizational problems well because I am adept at synthesizing a lot of disparate information together with human intent which leads to the uncovering of an issue’s structural root.
How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
I started working with social media and online communities while at a startup in Silicon Valley in 2003. There we used blogs internally and externally for content management. I helped to build a social networking site for independent music (before we called them social networks) where we tried solving the content surfacing and recommendation issue in a variety of ways. It was a great way to cut my teeth on the problem of content abundance and filtering through social connections and recommendations (virtual mixed tape anyone?!?).
If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
SAP because it understands the fundamental shift happening in markets and are moving aggressively toward a networked model of doing business. While they have not incorporated much in the way of ‘social’ tools into their own products I believe they are making SAP as a company much stronger because of their ecosystem approach to their markets.
Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
John Chambers because he understands that ‘social’ is more than a new way to communicate but also a fundamental shift in the way we do business. Under his leadership, he is dramatically reorganizing Cisco to make it a stronger, network-drive business that is not so dependent on its senior management team. He has the courage to not only believe it is not about him but also to, in effect, make his role less important to the long term success of Cisco which is a dramatic new approach to CEO succession planning.
Not likely unless some toothpaste manufacturer decided to give away toothpaste to foodbanks and shelters in exchange for discussing organizational and system dynamics in its web community…which is really very unlikely so I guess that means No 🙂
Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
I am passionate about social media and community because the most fulfilling thing to me is enabling people to reach their full potential – both in terms of productivity and happiness. I think rigidity and control keep people from exploring their passions because rigid structures disincentives that behavior. In those environments people turn off their passion and curiosity. I think as organizations we can do better. The transparency brought on by social media is shining a light on the gap between motivations and execution and driving toward an environment where those two things are better aligned. I believe that alignment will enable people to find their ‘tribe’ (to use one of Laura Fitton’s terms) and the increase in productivity and personal fulfillment that will result will be good for individuals *and* for businesses.
I want to help change the world because I see a better way to work – its both achingly simple and extraordinarily complex.
NEW FEATURE: I’m going to start adding in Twitter handles for any of the folks I interview. Rachel’s is @rhappe

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