Community Guy – Jake McKee

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)

Mommy Madness: The power of a single influencer

Last week on the Ant’s Eye View blog, I posted an interview with Amy Krause from Velocity Marketing. Velocity, together with CBS Radio and the North Texas Chevy dealers built a very cool outreach program to get the word out about the new (and highly awesome) Chevy Traverse.

To find out more about the program, check out the AEV blog post.

I had a chance to get a few questions answered by Donna, one of the Mommy Madness mommy bloggers.

1. How did you find out about the Mommy Madness program?
I heard about the promotion on the radio, and had every intention of going to the website to apply but I forgot. Then a few days later, I got a message via Facebook from the contact at CBS Radio who was running the program for them. I think they found me via you actually.

2. Tell us about how you were immersed into the program?
We had a meeting a few weeks before the program kicked off with the CBS Radio and the agency contacts, we got to meet each other and swap blog names and emails. The day of the kick off we had a big meeting with the people from Chevrolet and the North Texas Chevy dealers, as well as the CBS Radio personalities who would be talking to us and about us throughout the program. We were given cards to hand out, a video camera, and documents on how to blog our adventures. We also were given gas cards and the materials for our first Mommy Mission. Then we got to spend a long time with our dealers going over all the details of the cars.

3. What was your favorite part of the program?
I loved the Mommy Missions – they were fodder for our blog entries and created stuff to talk about.

4. You were able to drive a new, cool car for 8 weeks – was it hard to give it up at the end?
Horribly painful to part with it. I still miss that car every day. Especially when I am at the store or loading and unloading. I really want the auto liftgate back.

5. You were given “mommy missions”, specific tasks where you were asked to generate and share content. Did you like doing those?
I loved them. I wish we had had more of them to do!

6. How did you explain the program to friends and family who asked where you’d gotten a new car from?
I explained how Chevy was rolling out the perfect family vehicle and I was lucky enough to be chosen to test drive one and write about its features and how versatile it is.

7. Did you befriend the other moms? Do you still talk to any of them after the program ended?
I did. We were all very friendly with one another during the project. I started doing “unofficial” mommy missions with Brooke and her daughter (although we invited all the other moms, we were the only two who seemed able to get together at the same times). We both have left Dallas but we still keep in contact. Also Jen and I met up at BlogHer and had some fun chatting.

8. If you were running Mommy Madness 2, what would you change? What would you keep the same?
I would make more Missions, and I would make them more formal. For example, sending us to the Rangers game was nice, but they could have made some arrangements with the Ballpark to make a fuss over us, maybe set up a table so we could talk to people and show them around a parked Traverse, give away the gift certificates for the massages. Same with the outing to Six Flags. Those were opportunities to reach a TON of people who would totally have stopped at a table and a parked car for freebies. We could have convinced them to go test drive more cars. Also at the very end, they came up with the idea of asking us to throw a party for our friends, and have a Chevy dealer bring a Traverse and let people take test drives. That was great, but it was so last minute that I couldn’t pull it off. They should have come up with that at the beginning and more of us would have been able to have the parties and attend each others’ parties. As it stood, only one of the five of us was able to host a party. Also, I think we should have been on the radio more. We did one group recorded interview, but we could have scheduled a call in interview once a week to do something one on one and in more detail.

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Don’t forget to check out the interview with Amy!

AEV @ SXSW

The Ant’s Eye View team has four sessions in the SXSW 2010 Panel Picker this year. We need your help! Can you vote us up?

It’s Never What They Say, It’s What They Mean
When someone yells online, it’s easy to get caught up in the negativity, seeing visions of doom and gloom. But more often than not, negativity is a form of passion. This session will introduce you to the fine art of translating community discussions into actionable decisions.

Ensuring Everybody Goes Home Happy
This session will convince you that any company/community relationship that is not built on the belief that success doesn’t exist unless “everybody goes home happy”, company and community members alike. You’ll learn how to find the right balance between serving your community while also delivering business results.

Social Business Vitamins
Discover the overlooked, but essential mental vitamins necessary to prepare the social body to function inside the Enterprise. Case studies that showcase what needs to in place to operate and benefit with the myriad of social tools and content.

Watch Out For The Ugly Babies
Everyone has seen an ugly baby, but no one has given birth to one. Online Communities are similiar, a lot of online communities are ugly and need help, but the parents who gave birth to the online community site are last to realize. Learn some ways to prevent ugly babies and if you believe you have one, get ideas to help your community become more attractive for your audience.

The United Breaks Guitars Effect

Last week I wrote about the United Breaks Guitars story and the reaction that because it wasn’t directly responsible for a drop in United stock price, it was still significantly problematic.

So you can imagine my reaction when I saw the photo below last week while standing inline at the American Airlines check-in desk.

I asked the woman who owned this bag if the “I <3 baggage handlers” tag was about the United Breaks Guitars story, and she said that it was and that she is really scared now about traveling with United because of that video.

Like I said last week: literally everything helps and everything hurts a business. If this isn’t proof, I don’t know what is.

USS Green Bay, here I come!

A few months back, some bloggers were invited to fly onto the USS Nimitz, a working aircraft carrier. Reading the stories of the trip (here, here, here), I was jealous beyond belief. You see, one of my life goals is to visit (hopefully via an arrested carrier landing) such a ship. I saw Top Gun in the 7th grade and was convinced for years I was going to go into the Navy. Growing up in Southern California, it was common practice to head to San Diego to see ships come and go, tour ships, tour NSA Coronado, and watch F-14 touch-and-gos at Mirmar.

So you can imagine my delight when Jenn recommended me for the next Navy embark to the new ship, the USS Green Bay. That’s right! In September, I’ll be boarding a Navy helicopter and heading out to tour the Green Bay for the day. (Thanks, Jenn, I owe you one! Sorry about all those nasty things I said about you getting to go to the Nimitz when I didn’t… )

I am really excited to take this trip and will be posting photos, videos, and stories before, during, and after. I apologize in advance for my probable gushing. Hopefully it won’t turn the Navy team off of inviting me to the next USS Nimitz trip! (Life dream, folks. Help a blogger out!)

Here’s the skinny on what the mission the USS Green Bay will focus on now that it’s going into service:

The USS GREEN BAY will be used to transport and land Marines, their equipment and supplies, by embarked air cushion or conventional landing craft or Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles, augmented by helicopters or vertical take off and landing aircraft. USS GREEN BAY will support amphibious assault, special operations, or expeditionary warfare missions throughout the first half of the 21st Century.

Healthcare Reform Explained by Dan Roam

Thanks to Lee, I stumbled on this incredible presentation by Dan Roam, author of “Back of the Napkin“, a great book about visual thinking and explanation. Dan explains the current healthcare debate in great detail, yet utter simplicity. This is a must watch (must click?) for all of us.

Great Presentation: Social Media Strategy Instead of Tools

Very nicely done presentation on how to best approach social media.