Community Guy – Jake McKee

Social Media Revolution

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

Ant’s Eye View acquires Wabash & Lake

It seems hard to remember, but it’s only been a year since I merged Ant’s Eye View 1.0 with Sean O’Driscoll’s CGT Consulting to create Ant’s Eye View 2.0. This time last year, Sean and I were just starting to talk through the details of our pending merger.

Flash forward to today: Sean and I have built an amazing time, truly world class people generating world class results. Our team is growing rapidly, and today I’m incredibly proud to announce yet another landmark in the short, but rich history of our organization.

We’ve acquired Wabash & Lake. That’s right, we’ve completed our first acquisition less than a year after our formation.

So, who is Wabash and Lake?

You may not know the company name, but I’m almost certain you know its principals, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba. Ben and Jackie have been recognized as two of the web’s most influential marketers with over 120,000 daily readers of their Church of the Customer blog and best selling Word of Mouth Marketing books, “Citizen Marketers” and “Creating Customer Evangelists”. Forbes has described their work as “the word of mouth gospel.”

When Sean and I were still at Microsoft and LEGO, respectively, Ben and Jackie were an inspiration to both of us. We couldn’t be more proud to have them join us as we guide organizations through the process of transforming customer experience and brand engagement by activating and embedding customer voice in every aspect of the business.

Sean and I have always wanted to build the strongest, smartest, most experience team of social nerds on the planet, and today’s announcement (live from the WOMMA Summit in Vegas) is yet another way we’re making that vision a continued reality.

If you aren’t already, you can follow Ben and Jackie on twitter at @benmcconnell and @jackiehuba respectively.

And by the way – if you’re in Vegas for the WOMMA Summit, be sure to stop by the Risque Lounge in the Paris hotel after 7:30p tonight. We’re buying the drinks as a way to celebrate this great news. We’ve even created the world’s newest and most amazing drink: The Antini.

Ant’s Eye View is hiring!

Here we go again! One of my colleagues at Ant’s Eye View just posted a new job opening on the Community Guy Job Board. That’s right, we’re hiring a Senior Consultant. Interested? Check out the job post, or see the details below.

Ant’s Eye View continues to grow and we are looking for the next ant to join our colony. The open position is a Senior Consultant in the Seattle, Washington area to lead client engagements, build out project deliverables, and contribute to internal business operations/processes.

Successful candidates will meet the following criteria:

• 5-7 years experience in Product Management, Product Marketing, and/or Strategy Consulting.
• 1-3 years experience with online community management/strategy (specifically experience with applying social media and/or web 2.0 technologies to solve business problems)
• Experience project managing medium/large scale, multi-phased client engagements or product/service launches.
• A base level of knowledge in business strategy, marketing, finance, operations, and data analysis techniques Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Need to be able to present comfortable to executive audience.
• A bachelor’s degree in Business Management, Marketing, or some related discipline is required. MBA is a plus.
• Ability to travel – TBD on exact frequency, but expect 1-2 trips per month, could be more or less.
• Approximately 50+% of work can be accomplished at AEV office and via conference calls with clients.

Benefits include:

• Healthcare plan
• 401K
• Fun and collaborative work environment
• Bragging rights to be part of the ant colony
• Chance to become an expert on Ant trivia

Visit us at the Social CRM Virtual Summit

Ant’s Eye View is sponsoring a pretty cool event next week. It’s all virtual and it should be all awesome. From the official AEV blog post, here’s the details:

This year there have been a lot of online discussions on Social CRM – what is it? can it work? who is doing it? Now is the time to hear from the informed and thoughtful on how Social + CRM enable new business opportunities.

The Ants are proud to be a sponsor at the Lithium Social CRM Virtual Summit on Tuesday, November 11 – the largest online conference for Social Media and CRM professionals. The Social CRM Virtual Summit is a five-hour online conference, which includes webcasts by industry leaders in an interactive exhibit hall, a resource center with extensive materials for download, and a virtual networking lounge to chat live with speakers and prospects.

The virtual event is featured in two time sessions on November 11th:

• 5am to 10am PT / 8am to 1pm ET / 1pm to 6pm GMT
• 10am to 3pm PT / 1pm to 6pm ET / 6pm to 11pm GMT

Check out the full post for more info on how to register and what the agenda looks like. Hopefully we’ll see you there!

Apparently I’m a Supergenius

If you’re a fan of awesome conferences and events, never pass up a chance to go to one put on by Andy Sernovitz. He’s a master of the fun time.

Andy invited me to speak about my LEGO experience at Word of Mouth Supergenius in December, and it’s sure to be one hell of a good time.

Here’s the official event description:

Word of Mouth Supergenius is where you’ll learn to be a fantastic word of mouth marketer with 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant authors. You’ll learn practical, hands-on techniques to get started, grow your program, and earn amazing word of mouth.

Taught by masters of word of mouth from Starbucks, Maker’s Mark, Domino’s, LEGO, Coca-Cola, and many more, you’ll gain the knowledge and skills you need to get people talking about your brand. Captivating speakers like Jason Falls, Mitch Joel, John Jantsch, Saul Colt, Spike Jones, John Moore, Rod Brooks, and our own Andy Sernovitz (to name a few) will take you through a day jam packed with innovation and intellect.

You’ll ask questions, discover new ideas, and get answers from people who have been there, done that — and learn it all in just one day.

If you’re interested in going (and really, why wouldn’t you be?), use this discount code to get $101 off your registration.

JAKEISMYHERO

The lineup of speakers is truly impressive, including Ant’s Eye View clients Rod Brooks (PEMCO) and Kira Wampler (Intuit). What are you waiting for?

The Amazon community team is hiring

Sometimes a job description comes across the Community Guy Jobs Board that I simply can’t help but share it’s so cool.

As a long time Amazon fan (I remember when the site was a solid tan background and only sold books), I’ve been so very impressed with the way their site and their community efforts have developed over the years. It’s disappointing that they don’t get more credit for the sheer volume of community/social features each and every page of their site has.

If you’re looking to be part of an impressive team and an impressive product, check out this job listing:

Amazon’s Community team is looking for a seasoned Community Moderation Manager to help shape our vibrant online community of reviews and discussions. As a key member of the Community team, you will have the unique opportunity to define the kind of community that Amazon creates on our websites around the globe. You will drive the definition and guidelines for all community based content, with a direct and visible impact on Amazon’s core customer experience.

The position will require working closely with the business managers and technical leaders on community direction and goals. You will also be responsible for managing moderation activity by our customer service teams. Above all, candidates must have excellent judgment and project management skills coupled with a passion for customers and community building. Ideal candidates will have five years equivalent demonstrated work experience, great analytical skills, strong customer experience judgment, superb communication skills, excellent interpersonal skills, the ability to resolve conflicts and set priorities, and outstanding customer insight.

Specific responsibilities include the following:

• Work with business and product teams to define the tenor and character of community activity that we would like to cultivate.
• Establish the policy and guidelines that will shape the large online community on Amazon’s global websites.
• Collaborate with our customer service groups around the world to ensure consistent and clear moderation.
• Acting as an advocate for all participants in the community from customers to authors to vendors.

For more open positions, or to post an open position, head over to the Community Guy Job Board!

Community Job Openings Update

Times are tough, no question about it. If you’re in need of a new gig and are interested in community development work (which I assume you are if you’re reading this blog), be sure to check out the Community Guy Jobs Board. It’s free to use both for employees and employers, and has quite a few tasty new openings. Here’s a quick run down of some of the latest jobs. Good luck!

Customer Service Manager
Hollywood, CA

Community Manager for a B2B IT Community
Austin, TX

Program Manager (Word-of-Mouth / Social Media Marketing)
New York, NY

Social Media Program Manager
Minneapolis, MN

Community Manager
Brisbane, CA

Director of Community (Managing 20+ Employees)
New York City, NY

Community Manager for Teen Social Networking Site
Los Angeles, CA

Wikia Community Manager
San Francisco, CA

Community Manager / Tech Evangelism & Support
Mountain View, CA

Community Manager
New York City, NY

Community Manager @ Communispace
Watertown, MA

H&R Block – VP Marketing – Digital
Kansas City, MO

Using your eyes to listen

My Ant’s Eye View colleague, Jennifer Hughes is blogging at the AEV blog and her first post is awesome!

What I have learned is – online listening to your customers is about reading. There is no tool that is going to eliminate the need for you to truly listen to your customers. The tools just make it quicker, easier, and even a little fun! Listening only to influencers will not tell you what your customers are saying. You need to listen to all discussion on different media types (forums, blogs, tweets, tags). Forum discussions can give you a very different view than blogs alone.

Be sure to read the rest of Jenn’s post.

What’s Jake doing in Austin??

If you’ve been watching my tweets lately, you’ve probably noticed quite a few mentions of my presence in Austin, Texas.

I’m am proud to share the news that after having an informal presence in Austin, Ant’s Eye View has opened our second official office here! With the hiring of Jennifer Hughes, our second Austin employee, our need to formalize our Austin office took on greater necessity.

My business partner, Sean, and I talked through options on how to make this work and coupled with some significant personal life changes, it made a lot of sense for me to move back to Austin and oversee the growth here.

And yes, I just moved to Seattle. And yes, I love Seattle. But hey, I also love Austin, so I feel like I’m hitting a double jackpot. Austin, after all, is the Live Music Capital of the World ^TM

We have a great office space here, and we’ll soon have an open house event. I’m even considering re-instituting an age old tradition: the NVD Nooner. Years ago when I worked at NVision Design in Dallas, we held an afternoon event the last Friday of every month. We’d get a keg, invite industry friends, hide our confidential materials and open the office up. Since we have a great deck at the office, the AEV Nooner is a moral imperative!

I’m stoked to be an Austin resident, have already discovered I live down the street from Hey Cupake!, and am trying to readjust to October humidity and heat. I’m baaaack, baby!

The Social Media Guru [video]

This video is absolutely hilarious! (FYI, the language is a bit salty)