Community Guy – Jake McKee

Friday Fun Thoughts

I got the list of random thoughts below via a forwarded email. It’s OK, it came from the one friend who actually sends over funny stuff. This is a fun read.

MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f*ck was going on when I first saw it.

How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

Was learning cursive really necessary?

Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

My brother’s Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, “Cuz we beat you, and you hate us.” Classy, bro.

Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and

said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”

What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

Bad decisions make good stories.

Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damnit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

I think that, if years down the road when I’m trying to have a kid, I find out that I’m sterile, most of my disappointment will stem from the fact that I was not aware of my condition in college.

Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?

I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

Linchpins and Community Managers: The artists of the business world

My colleague, Jackie Huba interviewed Seth Godin about his latest book, “Linchpin“. It’s a great interview, but in particular two things stand out to the community guy in me.

Q: You talk about linchpins being artists. What’s the difference between a conventional marketer and one who thinks like an artist? Can you give an example of a marketer who is an artist?

A: Art, by my definition, has nothing to do with painting and everything to do with connecting with people in a generous way and causing a change to take place. A movie director is making art when she makes you cry. A product designer creates art when the UI is better than it needs to be and it creates efficiency or even joy. Marketers can find plenty of Dummies books and manuals and insider PDFs that demonstrate, step by step, how to follow the rules. That’s easy and not particularly valuable. A marketer becomes an artist when she goes out on a limb, does the unexpected or the risky and makes a difference. I’d argue that you two do art when you stand up and give a talk about the 1%. Or Biz Stone was an artist when he figured out how to launch and scale Twitter’s marketing. Or Scott Monty at Ford when he does a car show rollout that bypasses the cocktail parties at AutoWeek in favor of individual interviews with social media mavens. The second time someone does something, it’s a copy. The first time, it’s art.

Social engagement/community building work is absolutely an art form. You’re taking complex, deep seated business practices and personal emotions and bending them into something new and amazing. As Seth mentions above, Scott Monty is doing something pure, unique, and quite amazing. Art doesn’t “just happen”. Art takes work, work that may not be obvious. I recently attended a lecture by a well-known art curator who talked about a number of projects that he had overseen. At first glance, the projects seemed obvious: create a theme, open a space, invite artists in to fill a theme. But as he explained the details that went into the creation of each project, it was obvious that there was years of skill, hours of thought, and months of preparation that each event was based on.

And nearly all of that time was impossible to track, much less apply an ROI calculation to. And that’s OK. Look at how Seth describes the idea of quantifying this art:

Q: We love this quote in the book: “The easier it is to quantify, the less it’s worth.” Can you tell us, and our MBA friends, why this is true?

A: If you can quantify it, then probably someone before you figured out a why to grind it out. And if you can grind it out, someone can grind it out cheaper than you can. On the other hand, the really valuable stuff, the stuff we pay a lot for, is unquantified. Things like creating joy or security or happiness. No easy measurements for those, thus they are art, and art is always worth more than the predicted. We measure the quantified because we can. But we should create the unquantified because it’s so rare.

To be clear, branding something “art” and therefore giving the artist an excuse to create junk is unacceptable. I went to design school, so I know that far too many artists get away with saying “You just don’t get it” when people rightly look at a lazy piece of junk and wonder “WTF??” Amazing art is the distillation of a complex concept into a unique and emotionally satisfying form. If I don’t “get it”, the artist has failed, not the viewer.

Community management is a tough gig because it’s primary function is to create art in the form of experiences, products, or relationships that satisfy an emotional need. Even though a customer might not understand their own emotional needs enough to ask for them, the Art of Community Management is understanding customers enough to distill that emotion into an amazing form. Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Alice.com, and many others understand this and have succeeded because of it.

As with truly great artists, community management is about way of thinking that allows you to find beauty in a variety of places. It doesn’t end when you walk out of the office, nor do you ever really stop thinking about projects (or relationships or programs or interactions) you’ve built in the past.

Community management and interaction, like art, doesn’t have to always be “good” or immediately understandable. It doesn’t always have to have a specific objective beyond the process of creation. And it most certainly doesn’t discount passion in the face of measurement difficulty. Community management, like art, is simply the process of showing enthusiasm for giving joy where you can and explaining the process you attempted when you can’t. Most importantly, it’s about picking up the brush and giving it a shot.

The loneliest job in business

While perhaps not the loneliest job in business, a Community Manager, especially the strategy building/implementing type is certainly at the top of the list of lonely career choices. Day in and day out the customers and community members you work with yell at you for being too company-focused, while your colleagues more often than not tell you that you’ve gone native, thinking too much about the company and not enough about them.

Former Community Manager Jeremiah Owyang calls out a few more challenges to being a Community Manager:

• Many challenges are internal: Most companies want to hide customer issues, and shuffle them into existing support systems. Additionally, measuring ROI in new media when a company wants to keep the kimono shut, increasingly becomes a challenge.
• Seemingly never ending job: Customers never stop having problems, and with the global internet, the questions, complains, and inquires never stop.
• Emotional drain impacts lifestyle: The sheer emotional strain of dealing with a hundreds of yelling customers and the occasional trouble maker will take a strain on anyone.
• Privacy risks in the world of transparency: In an effort to build trust with customers, they expose their real name exposing their personal –and family– privacy forever on.

These last two really stick out to me. I’ve been trying to dial back my public data access for a number of reasons, not least of which is general concerns around my 3 year old daughter. It’s nearly impossible. When I signed up to do community work in 2000, I had no idea that it would be a permanent state that I’d basically never be able to quit.

But perhaps the most challenge aspect of the job for me was the sheer time involved. When do fans and customers tend to actually do stuff related to their communities of interest? Evenings and weekends… i.e. when they’re not at work. When do they put on events? Holidays, when there’s plenty of time off to enjoy them. When I was at LEGO, I rarely had a holiday weekend at home – most of them were spent on the road, attending and supporting fan events. I’m not complaining, but I’d bet my family certainly would have.

When I was considering leaving LEGO, I had lunch with the always genius Guy Kawasaki. We were talking about my general confusion about leaving a company as great as LEGO and a job as amazingly fun as a LEGO Community Manager. When I asked how long someone can be productive as a CM, and his answer was brilliant and spot on: “If you make it to 3 years, you’re good. If you make it 4 years, you’re amazing. If you make it to 5 years, you’re stupid.” Guy was rightly pointing out that that much stress, 24 hours a day, being caught in between two parties who never truly believe you’re looking out for their interests has a shelf life.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job and I’d do it all over again without thinking twice.

As a way to celebrate this vastly underrated job, Jeremiah has kicked off a novel concept: Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD – a day focused on recognizing those in our companies, communities, or daily contacts that have done great work at keeping positive in the face of a very tough job.

So head over to Jeremiah’s site and call out someone you think is doing great community management work. Or use the comments here. Or post on twitter. Or send a postcard. Just thank a Community Manager. It really does help.

What’s the ROI of the phone?

My genius business partner, Sean O’Driscoll talks about social, ROI, and other genius points. This one is well worth the watch.

Life is funny. Enjoy it.

Most of the time, pain and suffering isn’t something you want to see on display. But let’s be honest: sometimes misery is funny… assuming you’re only observing someone else’s pain.

The internet is a great tool for helping to remind us that we’re all going to hell for laughing at said misery. Here’s a few of my favorite tools for fast forwarding that journey to the fire-filled great beyond.

• Post Secret – The original “put raw emotion on display” site. People send in postcards anonymously with some sort of information about themselves, often sad.
• Texts from last night – a running display of text messages sent to people who then share with the world. If even have of this hilarity is real, I’m saddened by our place in the evolutionary cycle. I’m laughing, and it’s funny, but it’s also a bit sad. But funny. Really, really funny.
• It was over when – a collection of stories about when people knew their relationships were over.
• FMyLife – If you’ve seen tweets or status messages that include “FML”, you now what it’s about. It’s short for: F*** My Life and is basically a collection of reasons people claim that’s true.
• Passive Aggressive Notes – We’ve all seen those notes people put up in front of cash registers or on the fridge at work. They’re annoying when they’re in our own workspaces, but hilarious when viewed out of context.
• People of Walmart – Photos of the craziest people that shop at Walmart. Ouch.
• Lamebook – A collection of amusement from facebook status updates and conversations.
• Tweeting too hard – “Where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve”
• The “blog” of “unnecessary” quotes – When quotes go wrong.

While these things might seem pointless, or even cruel, they’re anything but. Well, at least partially so, anyway.

These sites provide amusement in the mundane, the every day, the stories that we can identify with. The humor isn’t just that we look at other people’s lives and say “oh geez, at least I’m not that bad!” We’re also seeing ourselves reflected back by these mini-stories. Whether we like it or not, the snark provides a connection to the world around us. Whether we laugh at it or feel better by it, it’s the world we live in.

And damn, are some of these funny….

Bonfire Builders Interview

Over at the Feeding the Puppy blog, John has baked up an interesting concept to describe the social stuff vs. traditional advertising: Bonfires & Fireworks.

For whatever strange reason, John has branded me a Bonfire Builder and interviewed me for his blog. Here’s a snippet.

How do you persuade others of the need to build social bonfires alongside setting off advertising fireworks?

The answer to this question is a bit different if you’re talking about being an employee of a company working inside the enterprise towards change versus working as a consultant helping those folks see change through to completion.

Looking at the work that needs to be done inside the organization (since that’s where the buck stops), I’ve always talked about the strategy of “Success by 1000 paper cuts”. Start with the smallest element you can effectively do with minimal budget, little managerial approval, and minor legal team approval.

Nothing breeds acceptance like success. Even tiny successes excite people to see more. Succeed, expand your efforts a little, succeed again, rinse and repeat. Before you know it, you’ll be launching huge programs but with far more support than if you tried to launch a big program straight away.

Check out the post for the full interview.

GasPedal Interviews Jake

In advance of my upcoming speaking gig at the Super Genius conference, GasPedal interviewed me about what I’m going to be talking about. The interview is embedded below!

Bad service kills amazing products

Have you ever offered cold drinks to people laying telecom lines outside your house? Have you ever pulled over to talk to telecom contractors to find out when their work in your neighborhood will be completed? Have you ever counted the days until you can have Verizon FiOS service activated?

I have.

I was literally cheering on the Verizon workers laying the fiber optic cable outside my house that would allow the FiOS service to be activated, giving me wonderful HD television, phone, and smokin’ fast, insanely reliable internet access. I convinced neighbors that they too should sign up. When I moved to Seattle, I chose a house to move to in some part based on the availability of FiOS. I check the Verizon site weekly to see if my place in Austin stands any chance of getting it any time soon. I’ve blogged, commented, and tweeted about how amazing the service is. I’ve literally convinced at least 10 people, probably more to sign up.

I’m what we in the business call a “Customer Evangelist”. I’ve been working my tail off for years to help Verizon expand their FiOS customer base because it’s an incredible product.

Despite my unwavering love for the product, I’m done.

You see, twice I’ve had to cancel their service as I moved cross-country. The first time I had to cancel my Verizon Texas account and open a Verizon Washington account. The second, I was moving to an area without Verizon FiOS service.

Twice, Verizon’s third party equipment return house lost my equipment. Twice they received the cable boxes fine, but not the modems. Twice I used the prescribed return method of self-addressed envelopes dropped off at the UPS store.

This time around, I continued to get healthy sized bills, despite having been told by Verizon agents that we wrapped up. I called in and was transferred seven times to four different departments (yes, some of them more than once) simply trying to figure out what the number was I actually owed. After two hours on the phone, they gave me a number, I paid it, then got another bill. During this time, I also received two call from the third-party return house asking if I’d sent my equipment back. Twice I gave them UPS tracking numbers. Twice they said they would clear it from their records and that I’d be done getting calls.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received another bill for $134.86 rather than the $0.00 I’d been promised by the last Verizon employee I’d talked to. After another hour phone call, it was discovered that only two of the three returned pieces of equipment had been logged into by the third party house. Which means Verizon thinks I need to buy my missing equipment.

Here’s the thing – I finally threw out my UPS tracking numbers, so I literally have no recourse here. Verizon is literally demanding I pay for equipment that I’ve returned, but was lost in a system that clearly sucks or I’ll end up in collections.

When I explained the situation to the agent who saw notes on my account that things had been insane after 3+ hours of phone calls, he had sympathy but told me my only option was to provide tracking numbers or pay my bill. He all but said that we were in a game of “he said, she said”, and they’d never believe me.

The lesson in this is really quite simple: If your service sucks, it doesn’t really matter how great your product is. In my case, there’s no chance I’ll continue to be a FiOS customer evangelist. I don’t want my friends to curse me for getting them into a situation like I’m caught in, no matter how cool the product is.

And the inverse is true as well: If your product sucks, it doesn’t matter how great your service is. This isn’t a new observation; it’s been made time and again. Marketing includes service. Your customer service is a marketing function, not a separate department. Marketers all too often steer clear of the call centers, and that’s unfortunate. Imagine if the FiOS brand manager had been on the phone with the agent and me throughout these 3 hours of madness. Do you think they’d be focused only on launching new features as a way to acquire and retain new customers?

My Sincere Thanks

WARNING: What lies ahead is a sappy, lovefest of a blog post. While it might be all squishy, it’s entirely heartfelt. Consider yourself warned.

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2009 has been an interesting year. I’ve moved across the country twice, seen my (now) three year old daughter blossom into an even more amazing person than ever, began to get to know my little brother as an adult, and undergone some absolutely devastating personal relationship issues.

Through all this, the one constant of this year has been the amazing, and frankly, mostly unexpected rise of Ant’s Eye View. In just under a year, Sean O’Driscoll and I went from “hey I have an idea” to “well look at that, we have 10 employees!” Our business is extremely healthy, our clients are happy, our team is fantastic, and we’re having more fun than we ever have before.

This Thanksgiving, as I consider what I have to be thankful for I’d be absolutely remiss if I didn’t specifically call out four groups.

The Ant’s Eye View Team
When Sean and I first started sketching out the type of company we wanted to build, our primary goal was simple: to build the best team in the world, a team of practitioners who had real life, real world skills in helping companies become more social.

Not only did we build that team, we’ve built it faster and stronger than either of us dreamed possible. Literally every day, I am more impressed with the team than the day before. As each member of the team finds their footing, they’ve launched into true individual and industry powerhouses. In the management philosophy of surrounding yourself with people smarter than you and then helping them get smarter, Sean and I have nailed it. Seeing you all in action at WOMMA last week was truly amazing.

Ant’s Eye View Team: Thank you! From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Sean and I will be working even harder next year to provide you the room to run even further, to have more fun than ever, and to achieve results our team and our clients could previously only dream of.

The Ant’s Eye View Clients
No matter what how great the individuals on the AEV team looked on paper, we were (and are) still a brand new company. The list of clients who gave us a shot this year is truly astounding. The two best assets we have as a company are our people and our clients, and we’ve scored in a big way on both fronts. We wouldn’t have been able to fly like we have if not for our clients putting significant trust in our team.

AEV Clients: Thank you for your trust this year. We sincerely hope we’ve delivered on your expectations and promise you that every day we’ll be better than the day before. If you think we did great work this year (and we hope you do!), then just wait until you see what we have in store next year!

My friend, my partner, Sean O’Driscoll
Sean, this year we’ve smiled with glee, hugged, and shook hands in vigorous celebration many, many times. I will always remember our breakfast at the Marriott in Redmond as the first day of one of the most amazing adventures of my life.

I am counting the days until we raise our glasses at the company holiday parties (yeah,that’s right, we’ve opened not one office this year, but two!), and toast to this year and dream of next. Thank you, Sean not only for your friendship but for the volume of knowledge I’ve already gained by working with you.

Sean: We have much to be proud of, my friend.

CommunityGuy.com Readers
It’s been a tough year on my blogging. Travel, business, and personal life have conspired to make my blogging a bit thin this year, but you’ve stuck around. For that, I simply must thank you. (I should mention that our team is also blogging at the AEV Blog too, if you have a thirst for great content)

Here’s to a happy and safe holiday season, a successful year end, and all of us having an impressive 2010!

Social Media Revolution

The sheer volume of amazing stats in this video makes my head hurt. Seriously, seriously hurt. This is a must watch.