ResearchGoddess

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What David had to say about Kaitlyn: “…she’s making a great deal of headway at Ogilvy with clients and also training their global employee base.”

When Kaityn was in college, ’social media’ as we know it didn’t exist.  Social networking was all about Friendster, YouTube didn’t exist, and Napster was the latest craze. Kaitlyn graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in International Relations – not exactly what you’d expect for someone who would eventually enter the social media world. But like many others, she accidentally stumbled into it.  Kaitlyn had moved from Boston to DC, and her boss connected her with a few of his local contacts.  One was a boutique word-of-mouth marketing shop – and after a few months there she was totally hooked.  After a few years, major agencies were starting their own in-house social media teams and so she took a great opportunity with Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence Group.  She says that her default work mode is a pace that many find frenetic – so social media really suits her well.  It’s constantly changing, and you have to keep up to stay competitive.  Kaitlyn says that she really digs being on the bleeding edge – and social media is something she loves both professionally and personally because of the way it’s redefined communication between people.

Why Kaitlyn believes David recommended her: Kaitlyn jokes that it was probably because of her rock star social media karaoke skills that have been on display at bars from Austin to Chicago to multiple ports on the Eastern seaboard. (Kaitlyn, I love karaoke too, and should we ever find ourselves at the same event, I’d love to challenge you to a sing-off… hehe) Yet in all seriousness, the tweet ups/meet ups that she frequents have allowed her to take her professional passion offline and geek out with people who have similar interests as she.  At the end of the day it’s always about who you really know – and she feels fortunate to become true friends with a great group of people whom she respects, and it would appear they respect her back.

What Kaitlyn loves about social media: During the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Kaitlyn got to work with Lenovo, an Ogilvy client, on the Voices of the Olympic Games campaign.  She says one of the few things she loves more than social media is the Olympics and working on this project, where 100 athletes from 25 countries were given laptops and their blogs and multimedia content were aggregated throughout the Games, allowed her to blend the two. When reflecting on the experience, she said it was a real thrill to travel to Beijing and be one of the first people to execute an Olympic social media effort. This campaign really let her cut her teeth on executing a successful global campaign.

Where Kaitlyn sees social media going in the future: Kaitlyn specifically noted that she believes Facebook will become a ’social web outpost’. Facebook functionality has gotten to a place where brands can skillfully use the platform as a hub for all their social activities. Look for brands to really start knocking their Facebook presences out of the park in 2010. She also believes we will see enterprise change – many major corporations are ready to to adopt a social brand framework and re-think the way they approach marketing, communications, CRM and more.  She says we are starting to get beyond the pilot programs and social media ‘experiments’, though there are of course still a huge number of companies still looking for these types of programs to unlock budgets and prove effectiveness.

Connect with Kaitlyn on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

As T-Pain would say – “Never thought I’d be on a boat….” – except that I never thought I’d be on a list. Especially considering how much I really don’t care for lists. I find it ironic that I am now on one.

However, I am humbled and honored to be considered a Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiter, based on John Sumser’s latest post. I’m actually a researcher, though my colleague Chris Hoyt keeps telling me that there’s more recruiter in me than I’d like to admit (I’ll never admit it!). As such, I guess there’s no denying certain aspects of oneself, so thanks for including me in this list, John!

So while I go grab my flippy-floppies and have some santana champ, I encourage you to check out the others who made the list. Oh, and look at T-Pain On A Boat, just because it’s a hilarious video (send the kids out of the room though because the lyrics are rough!)

This post is especially geared toward students, but I think it’s important for people of all ages. Mentors are a vital part of life. You absolutely cannot make it through life successfully without input from other human beings, in my opinion. That’s why I think people, especially young people, need to put much more thought into mentor selection than a lot of them do.

Tell me if any of these scenarios happened to you:

• Scenario 1: Your sophomore or junior year in high school, you went to your school counselor to ask about what colleges to apply to. Your counselor referred to you by the wrong name, or mispronounced your name, and hardly looked up from his or her desk while reeling off the names of some local or in-state universities.
• Scenario 2: You ask your parents what you should study in college. Your mother or father suggests that you do either the same thing or something similar to what they’ve pursued professionally, even though you’ve never expressed interest in it.
• Scenario 3: You’ve gotten yourself a job after completing school. While sitting in your cube, one of your older co-workers starts chatting with you about the fact that it’s a buyer’s market right now and it would be a good investment for you to buy a house right now.

Guaranteed that at least one of these has happened to all of you, if not all of them. While people can have good intentions with the guidance they give you, remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When considering your life, you need to be very selective about who you go to for guidance. And students especially listen up here: it doesn’t always have to be your parents.

Before anyone gets offended by this statement, I want you to take some things into consideration:

1. With the area of life in which you are seeking guidance, does the person you currently go to have ‘fruit on the tree’?
2. Do you go to different people for mentorship for different areas of your life?

If you answered no to either one of these questions, I would suggest you rethink your mentorship situation. Let me share some of my own situations with you:

• My parents are divorced. I would not go to them for marriage advice. Instead, I look to several couples in my life who have great marriages – including my brother and his wife, and a couple of family friends who’ve been blissfully married for almost 15 years. When I get married someday, I have great examples to model.
• Though I wouldn’t go to my mom for marriage advice, I most certainly will ask her for parenting advice when I decide to have kids. She was an awesome mom.
• I take fitness and health advice from my personal trainer. He knows what my body is capable of currently, and he knows what goals I have for myself and thus what needs to be done in order for me to accomplish them.
• Over the last several years, I have taken financial advice from my friend Jeff, who is a successful independent sales consultant, public speaker, and business owner. Because of his thoughtful advice, I own my vehicle outright and was able to pay off 4 credit cards that had amassed over $15k (obviously I made some bad choices early in life!). I also know, through counsel with Jeff, that it’s not the right time in my life to purchase a house, even though many others around me did. I see many of those people struggling to make home payments today.
• I have three or four people I go to for career advice. Some work in my industry, and some do not. But each has a niche area of expertise from which I want to learn. Some are excellent public speakers, some are fantastic managers, and some are brilliant industry leaders.
• For spiritual mentorship, I lean on my church and a couple of friends who truly walk the walk and aren’t simply Sunday morning pew-warmers.

Please don’t misunderstand – I have advice given to me by lots of people, just like everyone does. But there is a big difference between getting advice from a friend or family member, and seeking out a mentor relationship. One is typically offered without being requested, and the other is a relationship you deliberately seek out. Also, advice can often be given by someone who doesn’t know the whole story. When you are in a mentoring relationship, your mentor typically knows about external factors that may come into play with regards to the things they suggest for you. Make sure your mentor has all the information necessary to guide you on a path toward achieving your goals.

So make sure you check for fruit on the tree before entering into a mentoring relationship with anyone, Make sure that person has your best interest at heart and has actually found success in the area in which you seek guidance, because, as the saying goes, if you take financial advice from your neighbor, chances are they’ll be your neighbor for a long time.

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

What Chris had to say about Keith: “He’s got a big heart, a strong eye for using media tools to build relationships, and a sense of how brand sensitivity and corporate culture interact with the new social space.”

Keith has quite an interesting background. He started attending Medaille College to study business, but life had some other, more important things in store at that time. With a child on the way, Keith said he ended up finishing at the ‘School of Life’. He worked as a chef for a few years, but was deeply interested in the arts. That’s how his love of social media started – he had been making wood sculptures for his house and decided to start blogging about it at www.magicwoodworks.com. This led to doing some livestreaming of carving sessions, during which he used the interaction to take cues from the audience. Keith was able to take this experience and convert to a career as a Community Manager at Best Buy. Shortly thereafter, he set out on his own and now runs Keith Burtis Consulting.

Why Keith believes Chris recommended him: He has known Chris since the first podcamp, about six years ago. He was one of the original helpers. Keith said that Chris has been a mentor of his, and from him he learned to never approach a network or person with a greedy, one-sided agenda. By blogging, he is learning through the things he writes, the comments he gets back. Chris knows that he’s the type of guy who’s doing it right and that it’s not quid pro quo with him.

What Keith has to say about social media: People want to be connected. They don’t care about products any more, they care about the process around it, the service, the interaction. By keeping people up to date, it keeps them interested. If you’re going to get involved in social media, get involved before you need it. Some bigger companies are trying to grab onto the tail end of this, and it’s not easy to do. For Keith, it’s about adding value to the system so you will ultimately get value back. He puts value in all the time – the thing for him is that the more he adds, the more he gets out of it anyhow. He believes that a lot of people  still worry too much about their number of followers/friends, yet they’ve never really gotten anything out of it except for an ego boost. What’s important is encouraging other people in this space who are doing great work.

Keith’s thoughts on the future of social media: Keith believes that Twitter and Facebook are the “everybody’s there” places right now. Deeper conversations do happen, but companies will begin to learn how to leverage these tools to build intimate one-on-one relationships with their customers and fans. Whether they move in this direction or not, it’s where the value is. While there is value in numbers, where you’ll get the most bang for your buck is whittling things down with focus on project-specific items.

Some people who’ve influenced Keith:

• CC Chapman – Keith said he took a similar career path as Chapman. From him, he learned to do what you’re passionate about, and hope it converts for you.
• John Meadows – a great friend to Keith who has been there for him on the tech side. If something got broken on his blog, John would help out.
• Steve Saylor – podcast-audio bookwriter. Keith mentored Steve from a business standpoint, but they ended up mentoring each other.

Connect with Keith on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

Olympic athletes are tweeting from Vancouver, sharing first-person accounts of what it’s like to be on a world stage as a competitor. I think it’s a good indication of the impact of social media and micro-blogging on instant access to world events.

For those of you who are like me and enjoy watching world-class athletes compete and put multiple injuries, failures, and successes, and years and countless hours of training to the test – here is a collection of many Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Athletes who are on Twitter: Winter Olympic Athletes on Twitter. These Tweeps are broken out by their respective Olympic events, and you can take a look at the tweets coming from each sport’s athletes collectively. (You’ll also notice that there are various other professional sports categories in the left menu)

I think this is a fantastic way to get a personal experience of the Olympics through the eyes of the athletes who are actually competing. It’s one thing to attend an event; it’s an entirely different experience to actually compete. I don’t think this has ever been possible before – estimations are that over 1/3 of the US Olympic team in Vancouver is on Twitter. Even during the Beijing Games in 2008, Twitter was still relatively unknown except by early adopters, and thus much of the limited buzz came from spectators. This will present an entirely new way to experience the Olympics. For example:

• On Saturday, Ryan Bedford, US Olympic speedskater, tweeted: “Great day on the ice this morning! Off to cheer on @ChadHedrick! He is a big reason why I’m here today, he’s the best teammate ever! GO CHAD”
• Scotty Lago, US Olympic snowboarder, shared: “Me and @louievito and @gregbretzz are moving over to a house closer to cypress [one of the outdoor venues], I’m going to miss all the hott Russians though.” (lol)
• Kristi Leskinen, US Olympic freestyle skier, lamented: “Olympic tape delays are already killing me! It’s far too easy to stumble upon results online. Guess I don’t need to finish watching moguls..” (guess they share the same frustrations as the casual observer!)
• Ben Kilner, British Olympic snowboarder, after training: “just back home from practice. Halfpipe kinda lost it’s shape due to the rainy weather but managed to get on ok”
• Jeremy Teela, US Olympic biathlete, after competing: “9th place today… Not podium but ok start to the games.”
• Chandra Crawford, Canadian Olympic cross country skiier, in response to the first Canadian gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau: “YEAH ALEX! The nordic crew is so stoked for you!!”

Other collective lists to check out:

• Twitter’s verified list of Olympians (not broken out by sport)
• Sportsin140.com’s Olympians on Twitter Google doc (current and former summer & winter Olympic athletes)
• AssociatedContent.com is following Olympic athletes (looks like it’s manually updating…)
• Hashtags: #vancouver2010, #Olympics, #van2010
• Official Vancouver2010 Twitter account: @2010Tweets