ResearchGoddess

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I 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 Daniel: “Daniel previously worked at the Chicago Tribune activating “Colonel Tribune” as a character based of the Tribune’s history which gained a large following on Twitter. Since then, Daniel has [been]… doing some interesting work with storystreaming (telling stories through lifestreaming tools such as Posterous).”

Daniel attended SUNY Buffalo where he earned his undergraduate degree in Anthropology. He then attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and earned his Masters degree in Journalism. Daniel started his career in newspaper and was a Social Media Strategy Coordinator at the Chicago Tribune, and then the social media lead with Tribune Interactive. He eventually wound up working at Weber Shandwick as a Digital Communications Supervisor, and recently joined Sears Home Electronics as a Social Media Manager. He also blogs at Old Media New Tricks and the3six5 Project, with he runs in collaboration with Len Kendall.

What interested Daniel in social media: As a reporter, he saw how digital was becoming an important part of the mix. Daniel looks to brands like Zappos, which has created tons of supporters that go out and promote for the company. If the conversation is good on a site, people will go back several times per day to continue to engage in the discussions. He says that authentic conversation starts advocacy.

Some of Daniel’s thoughts on the importance of branding through social media: “In social media, there are a lot of people who understand the space but don’t have ‘tread on the tire’ when it comes to working with brand. It’s important to know how to brand yourself! Using social media with brands, facing real challenges; it’s exciting but difficult. You have to convince your clients as well as your company stakeholders of its importance. You can have the most impact by building up client relationships and coming up with solutions that make sense.”

Some of Daniel’s thoughts on journalism and social media: Daniel believes that it is important to look for different story-telling formats, but he also believes that the long-form article won’t disappear entirely – it has to exist. For example, he says to take a look at The New Yorker and The Atlantic – not all journalism can happen in 140 characters. Journalism is journalism – whether in 5,000 characters or in 140 characters.

Where Daniel sees social media going in the future: Over the next 12 months, Daniel thinks that lifestreaming will play a major role in the progression of social media. With this, he believes that Tumblr & Posterous will help people manage their social media presence. Using tools like these as ‘hub-and-spoke’ modeling for managing your social media presence can help to center your digital activities and give others a more aggregated view of your on- and offline activities.

Connect with Daniel on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

photo credit: Chris Brogan

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I 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 Len: “I’ve worked with Len at Critical Mass but he’s already been developing a name for himself by being a prolific writer, commentator and participant in social media and communications. Len is very passionate about the space and no doubt will continue rising due to his persistence and the level of participation he puts out there.”

Len attended Purdue University where he studied Marketing and Sales. He says that studying sales was helpful in terms of learning how to network. He started his career with Starcom, a media communications agency, where he realized that digital was his passion. After spending two years with Starcom, he joined CriticalMass, a digital marketing agency. There he was involved in digital media buying/planning and started getting more involve with social media. He found that media buying/planning was valuable, but may not be leading the charge with social technologies and observed that PR was well positioned to lead the charge when it came to social media. Following his time with CriticalMass, Len freelanced for a bit, and through this work he was offered lots of professional guidance. Eventually, GolinHarris offered him a position and he currently works as an Account Supervisor with the Dialog Group there. His focus is on providing clients with expertise on digital and social media PR campaigns. In addition to his job, Len also spends time being creative via Posterous and the3six5 Project, which he runs in collaboration with Daniel Honigman

Some people who have inspired Len: David Armano was someone who inspired Len – in fact, he said that David is the reason he went to work at CriticalMass. He respected David’s work even though they didn’t work closely. They had a sort of “digital mentorship” relationship. Len also says he learns a lot from Tac Anderson, Digital Consulting Director at Waggener Edstrom, and Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer at Mullen. Of Boches, he says that there are a lot of the creative people in the business aren’t that much into social media, but he is.

What Len loves about social media: Len says that he likes to live a life of “micro empires”. He says that he gets bored doing just one thing so he enjoys having side projects that inspire him. Being a part of social media, he says there are many opportunities to be a “renaissance man”, which is part of what inspired him to start the3six5 Project with Daniel Honigman. The idea of this project was to have 365 people write a blog post every day of 2010. Each day, a different person posts an entry, so they’ll have a diary of the year written by each of these people. The project was born from the idea of lifestreaming – they want to stream the collective life of people from many different places, and social media has helped facilitate this.

Where Len sees social media going in the future: Over the next 12 months Len believes that social media will become a business priority for the Fortune 500. If a company has a customer service or PR division, then it will most assuredly have specific employees dedicated to social media. Additionally, Len believes that jobs involving social media will continue to be on the rise. If you look at job boards you will see that there are a lot of opportunities to work with big brands in the realm of social media right now. Agencies are growing social media business areas because that is where brands are in need of service.

Connect with Len on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

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 Dave: “Dave’s star is already on the rise. As a P&G brand manager he’s helped evangelize social media within the organization and become sort of an unofficial spokesperson. His writing on related topics is insightful and he balances personal with corporate brand effectively (no easy task).”

Dave Knox is a Brand Manager, Digital Innovation for P&G Productions, a new role for him in the past few months. Prior to that, he was a brand manager for digital business strategy with P&G Corporate Marketing. Dave attended college at Miami University of Ohio in Oxford, OH where he studied marketing and entrepreneurship. He joined P&G right out of college and has worked his way up in the company ever since. Dave writes a blog called Hard Knox Life where he discusses a brand manager’s point of view at the crossroads of marketing, media and technology. In addition, he has been been named by AdAge as “1 of 25 Media People You Should Follow on Twitter” and a “2010 Social Media Superstar” by Media Industry News.   Dave is also active in the marketing industry, serving on the National Council of Pi Sigma Epsilon, the Advisory Board for Brandweek’s “Cincinnati’s Agenda 360 Consumer Marketing Steering Committee”, and as a speaker at conferences such as the Web 2.0 Summit, SXSW Interactive and IEG Sponsorship.

How Dave got interested in blogging: Dave said that social media gives him the opportunity to to remain connected within the marketing communication world. When he worked with P&G’s WalMart customer team several years ago, he was yearning for connection with the marketing community and feeling part of the discussion with the team. He started blogging to fill this void and found that he was able to connect with great minds in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, and New York without actually having to go to these places.

Some of Dave’s thoughts on how social media is changing things: Dave looks forward to continuing to establish himself at forefront of how the world of marketing is changing because of social media. He enjoys driving change for the industry and leveraging technology in the right ways that benefit both brands and consumers. He says that what is going on right now is similar to what occurred in the early 90s with internet revolution, and that this revolution is not just beneficial for brands, but for people as well. When asked what the coolest project was that he’s worked on, he said it’s where he’s at right now. Dave says that P&G gives him the opportunity to think about a company that’s been around for a long time and how it can migrate its business strategies to digital environments. However, he says that social media was not meant to be a “career path” – but that digital is an enabler. He believes that the world is going to be digital within the next ten years, and that social media will be a driver for this to occur.

Tomorrow, Blogwell will be in Cincinnati, and as per Dave’s blog post, there will be a tweetup this evening on Wednesday following the conference hosted by Cincinnati Social Media. In addition, Cincinnati Social Media members who wish to attend the conference will receive a special discount for Blogwell.

Connect with Dave on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

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