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 Jennifer had to say about Ken: “Ken is a stellar blogger, though he still flies slightly under the radar and he shouldn’t. He is a master in the practical application of social media and is also a growing thought leader, as evidenced by his blog posts and tweets. He’s definitely a rising star.”

Ken works at Ernst & Young and  heads up social media practice  as their Director of Social Media. They provide advisory services to brands globally in a variety of areas. He helps his clients better understand the digital space and use web analytics to better strategize. He was originally approached by Ernst & Young recruiters about this position via LinkedIn.

Ken attended college at Central Michigan University where he studied Psychology. He ended up spending more time in the computer lab where he taught himself programming and started doing this as a freelancer. This ‘sidetrack’ turned into twelve years of working with agencies doing ditigal marketing and advertising. Ultimately, Ken began running digital operations and analytics projects and found himself moving away from the nuts and bolts of the tech side. Of his formal education, he says that his time studying psychology has helped him be a good communicator. It helps him with management – when you’re working with many different people all day long you need to understand different personalities.

Why Ken believes Jennifer recommended him: Jennifer is a very “pay it forward” kind of person. Ken does alot of this through sharing posts and links – he reaches out to people to learn about others and find ways he can help out. He tries to positively promote data and analytics professionals and help people understand and champion the analytics of social media. Not a lot of people spend time in this area, and Ken believes that’s what caught Jennifer’s eye.

What Ken loves about social media: Ken got involved in social media primarily to focus on brands and clients with regards to strategy and analytics. He hopes to help blaze some new trails with thought leadership for analytics, namely how to standardize and formalize it, and how to use this data to make good business decisions. Ken also believes in developing the use of social media for internal purposes. While working with a consumer healthcare company at one point, he helped them develop an internal social network for the company’s employees. This particular company primarily had an older demographic of employees who were not very comfortable with the tools, but had a lot of knowledge and wisdom to share. They wanted to create a culture of innovation, and Ken worked with the company’s leadership to help them understand the audience. Ultimately, he assisted them with selecting the appropriate technology to reach the audience, actively engage them, and develop community.

Where Ken sees social media going in the future: Ken says that we’re past the “what is social media” question now, and over the next year, companies big and small will start getting serious about this in ways that make sense to them. Companies will begin exploring the right social media ‘prescription’ for them based on industry, culture, customer base, and so forth. The ‘Why’ and the ‘What’ will be replaced with the ‘How’, best practices will be brought forth, and we will see niche uses evolve.

Connect with Ken on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog