Vote for My Panel at SXSW!

SXSW Panel Picker season is upon us again! Last year, I was privileged to be on a panel with friends from FUNimation, Capcom, and some other great companies discussing how we speak to our niche audiences.

This year, I corralled some friends (and they corralled some friends) to put together a panel about some of the issues that we face as community managers. The darker side of community management, if you will. Here’s the description of us & the panel:

This is the true story of five community managers picked to work on a brand, fixing problems and engaging with the community to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. Katie Morse is the music-loving technology geek. Active in the dubstep scene, she snagged a role a Billboard only to learn you do not cross Lil Kim fans and live to tweet about it. Nick Ayres is happy-go-lucky, and potentially the nicest guy on the interwebs. He’s also been one of the social media voices behind two big brands that really like orange (like, a whole lot) – The Home Depot and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The question is: can the man with the million dollar smile keep a cheerful grin when things go awry? Kellie Parker is the ragtag rebel ruling the male dominated world of gaming. When you think Sega you think blue hedgehogs, but Kellie gets to see the darker side of gamer behavior– like all those penis photos. Sam Haseltine can commonly be found standing on a chair at a football ground orchestrating hundreds football fans in glorious song. The ultimate in community management. The same can be said for him online, but without the chair. Anna OBrien is the typical left of center creative girl, with a background in numbers and web analytics. She once made waves in community management for Citibank, but can she survive the challenge of managing brands in a new country? Welcome to the The Real World, Community Management.

We’d really love to make it to SXSW so we can share our stories and advice. I also personally really want to hear Katie’s story about Lil Kim. So please take a second and vote for us, won’t you?

Hashtag-a-Palooza

Television is starting to embrace Twitter. Hallelujah! But not everyone is doing it right.

For a lot of us, talking on Twitter while we watch TV isn’t new. We’ve been talking on Twitter about televised events for years now. The 2008 US Presidential elections, sporting events, season finales, and more were all discussed among fans online using Twitter and hashtags. Then it started happening not just for major events, but for regular episodes of shows. We used to gather around our TVs in person to experience and discuss television shows together. Now we do it via Twitter and hashtags. And what’s perhaps most interesting is the mainstreaming of hashtags. In the examples that have below, nobody is going out of their way to explain what hashtags are or to specify that they are for Twitter. Consumers are just expected to know, and most of them do. Given how slow mass media can be to embrace technology (how long was it before people stopped v e r y  s l o w l y pronouncing the http://www. in a URL on TV?), this is a major moment.

So while talking on Twitter while we watch isn’t new… what *is* new is that the networks and shows themselves are starting to embrace and even instigate it themselves.

Doing it Right: MSNBC, Fox, Logo, TNT

Rachel Maddow from MSNBC is on Twitter. Her show and staff have several accounts that they update. Conversations about the show while it’s airing (and sometimes for hours after) happen at #Maddow. So when the show was putting together their iPad app… what’s the next step? A “watch party” function, of course. You can tweet directly from the Rachel Maddow Show app. You can also read the tweets made from the app, tweets from the “All Stars” (TRMS staff and frequent/notable guests), and all tweets with the #Maddow hashtag. They’ve taken what was an organic third party experience and found a way to make it not only easy and convenient for their fans, but to bring it under their own branding.

Content on the left, conversation on the right.

It hangs there, all spooky-like. Must be from the other universe.

But even when shows embrace what fans have created, well… fans keep on creating. One example of this is the show Rizzoli & Isles on TNT. (Wow, you are really getting to know a lot about my TV watching habits, huh? Sorry about that.) If you’re not familiar… go immediately and watch all of Season 1 and the first two episodes of Season 2. Notice anything? Like maybe how the two lead actresses — Angie Harmon (Jane Rizzoli) and Sasha Alexander (Maura Isles) are… well… close? Like, really close? Like, your gaydar is WHOOP WHOOP WHOOPing like crazy… close? Well, you’re not the only one who noticed. The lesbians, we went mad insane for this show (which besides featuring two beautiful and kick-ass ladies, is actually a really good mystery/crime show) in a way that we haven’t since Xena. So when the new season of Rizzoli & Isles started up this summer, just having #RizzoliandIsles was not enough. The wonderfully brilliant and hilarious Dorothy Snarker from AfterEllen decided we needed a more… specialized hashtag for all the lesbian sub-text and discussion about the show. So she created #Gayzzoli, and it’s a very lively conversation each week. The stars and people who do social media for the show know about it, and while they don’t participate, they also don’t interfere. Which is just the right thing to do.

Ms. Snarker might be a complete genius.

Doing it Wrong: Lifetime and Project Runway

So all of those are great examples of TV embracing fans and Twitter discussion. But can you take it too far? I saw one example last week that just made me cringe. And that’s the new season of Project Runway on Lifetime.

But first, a short lesson in hashtags. The value of a hashtag is that it organizes content from many different sources but about the same thing in one place. So, logically, you’d want everyone to be using the same hashtag in order to create a conversation that is active, rapidly updating, and has as high of a usage spike as you can get. You want to centralize your efforts on one hashtag and drive all your efforts toward a single goal.

And that is not what Project Runway has chosen to do. Instead of pushing #projectrunway or even something as bad as #projectrunwayS9 (for “season 9″), they created an individual hashtag for each of their 20 designers and promoted all 20 hashtags on the show. Which, to me, is just way too much diversification. They are in essence creating 20 smaller conversations instead of one big conversation. They are dividing their audience into silos instead of bringing them all together to talk about the show. They are making it about the individual contestants, not about the show.

And the format of the hashtag is awful, too. Hashtags should be short and easy. They should be accurate and representative of the subject and nothing more. So using the format #pr9<designer name> is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Project Runway is not commonly abbreviated PR, so they are basically taking all the value out of their brand name by doing so in their hashtag. I get that the 9 is for season 9, but honestly I couldn’t have told you this was season 9 if you asked, and I’ve been watching every episode since the very first one. Even to a pretty big fan, that means nothing to me. And we already discussed that each designer has their name in their own hashtag. #PR9Becky (for example) is just a horrible hashtag (but I think the designer is cool, despite the fact that I keep accidentally calling her Betsy Ross instead of Becky Ross. (Get it? Because she sews? Oh never mind.))

Hey #pr9becky, can you sew me a flag dress?

They are using it as a way to use Twitter for “fan favorite” voting, which is a cool idea. But they missed a huge issue with the conversational aspect of Twitter in doing so. It’s probably too late to change it this season, and while I applaud their effort to embrace Twitter and hashtags, I hope they adjust their strategy next time.

All in all, I’m looking forward to seeing what the fall season brings with Twitter and hashtags and online viewing parties (oh my!).

Tacky Marketing in a Tragedy

Greetings from SXSW! The conference is over, and my panel is done. I spoke today on “Speaking to Geeks” with some friends from Capcom, Funimation, and other cool companies. It sucks to have the last panel of the last day, and we really appreciated the folks that delayed their end-of-conference partying to hear what we had to say.

I saw a lot of great stuff in the last few days. The “Worst Website Ever” panel was definitely a standout. (I really hope those slides get put on slideshare, because “the fap store” and “40 chan” were truly hilarious.) I got to see Matthew Inman, who writes and draws The Oatmeal, a site that I read nearly every day. He’s just as funny in person, and I’m glad I stayed even though I was in the beginning stages of a bangin’ migraine. My friend Kelly Feller from Intel also did a great presentation about using contests for social marketing. But the most validating and one of the funniest presentations I saw was from Gary Vaynerchuk about the same subject as his new book, The Thank You Economy.

I have been a fan of Gary’s for a long time. He’s an engaging and energetic speaker, he knows his stuff when it comes to community and social media, and he swears a lot… just like me. One of the reasons his session was so validating for me is that his new book is about how brands need to be humanized, and genuinely interact with their fans instead of just shoving marketing down their throats. This is so much of what I do in my day job, and it’s something that my team and I are really dedicated to. We work really hard to be human — we respond to comments, we make small talk, we share behind-the-scenes of our offices. We know the fans that interact with us by name, and our fans know us by name, too. We let our personalities shine through and we have reaped the rewards for it. Yes, we market too — it is part of our job, after all. But brands that think of Twitter as 140 character press releases are simply doing it wrong.

One of the things Gary mentioned in his session… something I truly thought was not an actual thing that would ever happen… is brands exploiting the tragedy in Japan for their own gain. But as I am catching up on my social media streams from the last few days, I was shocked to see that this really is happening. It’s incredibly tacky and crass. And (hopefully!) it’s about to bite these brands in the ass in a big way.

Bing (and Microsoft) have already apologized for their RT campaign wherein they pledged to donate $1 per RT of their content/link, up to $100k. And they just donated the $100k. Mastiff, a video game developer, is pledging to donate $100 for every 100 people that “like” them on Facebook, up to $25,000. Voskos yogurt is also pledging to donate $1 for every “like” they get on Facebook. And I sort of get where they are coming from. Especially in the current economy, not everyone can afford to give money. A lot of people want to help out, and beyond giving money, they don’t know how. So it’s easy for a brand to see it as a win/win — they get to donate money to a great cause, they get new people to market to (or, in the case of Bing, get their name and content out), and people get to feel like they did something to contribute without actually paying out money.

But what’s really easy to miss is how incredibly tacky this is. It smacks of opportunism, of holding relief dollars hostage for selfish marketing purposes. Because essentially, what a company like Mastiff is saying is that they are willing to donate $25,000 to the Red Cross, but if they only get 500 new fans, they’ll only donate $500. So, you know, it’s our fault that the Red Cross (and the people of Japan) missed out on $20,000 because we didn’t click the “like” button. That’s why Bing did the right thing with their apology — they gave the full $100,000 they had pledged.

If you are going to give money, give money. If you want to donate profits from sales of your product, do that. All of those things are perfectly noble and acceptable. But exploiting victims of a terrible tragedy for your own marketing purposes is just reprehensible. These companies should be ashamed.

OK, now that that’s out of my system, I need to go pack. Since, you know, I have to get up in 5 hours to go the airport.

Southwest Fails Kevin Smith and Themselves (Now with Update!)

UPDATE: Both Kevin Smith and Southwest have made more blogs on this situation. Please see the end of the entry for the links and updates.

Many people have probably heard of Southwest’s controversial Customer of Size policy. And a lot of people have probably heard of the recent issues with Kevin Smith getting booted off of one of their planes for (according to them) violating this policy. Kevin laid out the entire story in a recent SModcast, but here are the highlights.

Kevin Smith is flying to Oakland for the day. He buys an extra seat because they are cheap, and he prefers not to have someone in the seat next to him. (I think anyone that has been on a plane can understand that feeling.) On the way home, he arrives early and asks to get bumped to an earlier flight, which is pretty common with Southwest. He gets put on standby for an earlier flight, and gets on it. However, there’s only one seat available for him, as it’s a nearly full flight. No problem, he says, I only really need one seat. He gets on the plane, buckles his seatbelt (no extender), puts the armrests down, and is approached by a flight attendant. The flight attendant pulls him aside to say that the captain has deemed him a risk because of his size. Despite falling within Southwest’s policy, he was not allowed to fly. Kevin tweets about it, and here we are.

If you’ve met me in person, or maybe seen photos of me, you know that I’m a large girl. This is a complex, and sometimes emotional situation, that I think has 3 separate facets. I want to look at it from all three.

The Policy

The idea behind the policy sounds logical. You paid for a seat, you should have the space that you bought. It’s to make sure that other people are safe and comfortable. But while that sounds good in theory, there are several problems with it in execution.

First, I do think it’s discriminatory. I fly a decent amount (~25 times a year) and I have had to endure a lot in those flights. Just yesterday, I flew from JFK to SFO and sat next to a young man who had a wild time the night before. He smelled like booze and was clearly hungover. I’ve sat next to people with really bad body odor. I’ve sat next to drunk people (both that boarded the plane drunk and got drunk on the plane). I’ve sat next to chatty people who won’t shut up. I’ve sat next to babies with dirty diapers. I’ve sat next to kids who can’t sit still and smear jelly and other sticky snacks all over the place. I’ve seen people in wheelchairs, people who have casts, and other medical ailments. The point is that while some larger people do take up more than one seat, there are other behaviors, situations, and physical issues that also make people take up more than their allotted room, make passengers uncomfortable, and pose potential safety issues. Yet there are virtually no policies about people in those situations. And the policies that do exist focus on behavior (such as getting drunk before boarding a plane), not on physicality (people using crutches, etc). Large people are easy to spot, easy to single out, and don’t garner as much sympathy from people as someone who needs a wheelchair or crutches. We’re easy targets, both physically and morally.

And if you’re supposed to get all the square inches that you paid for, what about people who recline their seats? Seriously, I’ve had people in front of me recline their seat so far that I could do dental work on them. I’ve nearly had my laptop screen destroyed by people who recline suddenly and without regard to what is going on behind them. Their seat encroaches on the space I paid for, so by the same standard as the Customer of Size policy, the recline function on all seats should be disabled. (I actually do hate when the person in front of me reclines their seat, and I do think it should be disabled. But I know lots of people who vehemently defend their right to recline their seat. Probably some of the same people who would defend Southwest’s Customer of Size policy, which is interesting.)

Second, the policy leaves too much open to personal interpretation. It’s just too subjective. Many people fly on Southwest and are never approached by anyone asking them to buy a second seat or checking to see if they fall within the Customer of Size policy. And then one day *bam* they get hit with it. Whether they violate the policy or not, it starts with one employee’s judgement of that person, and whether to talk to them and investigate their size or not. A policy that starts with individual judgement cannot be uniformly enforced.

Third, and something that thin people probably don’t notice, is that not all seats, not all armrests, and especially not all seat belts are made equally. All three of the planes listed on SeatGuru (a site that helps you pick the best seat on the plane) show that the seats in the back of the plane are narrower than the seats toward the middle. What if a person fits in one of the seats toward the middle, but ends up sitting in the back of the plane and gets kicked off because of it? The armrests on exit row seating usually don’t lift up, and are instead a solid piece of plastic all the way to the bottom of the seat. This can make the seat narrower by a few inches. For some people, this is the tipping point. Finally, and the thing that is so wildly divergent, is the length of the seatbelts. It can vary from seat to seat on the same plane. I’ve had times where I can easily buckle the seat belt, and times where I struggle. You just never know what you’re going to get. I have an extender that I take with me just in case I need it simply for this reason — you just never know. But if your policy is predicated on seats, armrests, and seatbelts, how can that policy possibly be fair when all of these things vary depending on what seat you are in?

The Social Media & PR

Let’s turn from the policy aspect of what happened to how this is being played out online. I first learned about it because I follow Kevin Smith on Twitter. He was obviously angry and the tweets were hard-hitting and coming fast. As the main Twitter person for the SEGA US team, I know what it’s like to have angry customers coming out of nowhere on Twitter. I also know what it’s like to have that situation be something you didn’t know about, can’t control, and/or can’t discuss. So I have empathy for the woman that was on Twitter duty for Southwest when this thing blew up. I will say that I think she did a great job, quickly letting people know that she had seen the tweets, that she had read them all, and that a VP would be following up with Kevin Smith personally. (Whether that actually happened or not is another story. Last I heard, he says he has not been contacted.) But so many companies’ first instinct is to clam up and don’t say anything. No comment… a resounding silence while they scramble to work up a statement. Southwest jumped right into the fray to let people know that they heard and were aware. So thumbs up from me to Christi Day, the Southwest Twitter person, as I think she handled the situation as best she could as it was breaking.

Unfortunately, that’s where my thumbs stop pointing upward and start pointing downward. Southwest then issued a statement (I don’t really think you can call it an apology) on their Nuts About Southwest blog. Straight from the title, I think it’s a little disingenuous. I get that Southwest likes to be quirky and put personality into what they do. But there’s a time and a place, and this is not it. Making a joke upfront just says that you don’t take the situation very seriously. Especially when the joke is somewhat of a negative play on the person that you’re supposedly apologizing to. Yes, Kevin Smith’s character is of Silent Bob. But using “Not So Silent Bob” as your headline implies that he’s being a loudmouth… which is true, but probably not an insinuation it’s okay for Southwest to make. The rest of the statement is just a classic non-apology apology. It’s a “We’re sorry” followed by all the reasons that what they did was right and justified.

I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes there, obviously. I am friends with Paula Berg, who until recently was the leader of the PR/blog/community/social media team at Southwest. She is a good and reasonable person who is very knowledgeable about this stuff and really does care about customers. So I do know that not all Southwest people (or at least former Southwest people) are bad. I also know what it’s like to have to stand behind a company statement or communication strategy that you don’t agree with. So I don’t assume that Christi Day (who wrote the Southwest blog entry and manages their Twitter feed) wrote or agrees with that blog, even though her name is on it. I’m guessing that the statement was scrutinized, agonized, modified, and approved by several people before being given to her to post. And it’s a shame, because it’s a sharp downturn from the positive (well, as positive as it could be) trajectory that she started on via Twitter.

I hope Southwest can go back to a proactive, people-oriented, customer-centric path in resolving this issue. I’m not sure that anything they could do would make Kevin Smith (or lots of other people) fly their airline again, but they have got to try. Stop trying to defend yourself and start making bold moves to take care of your customer, and by extension all of your fans and customers.

The Personal

Anyone who has met me in person knows that I’m a large girl. So I understand all too well the emotional and personal aspect of this issue. I have never been subjected to Southwest’s Customer of Size policy, but honestly I try to avoid Southwest because I figure it’s just a matter of time before I’m asked to demonstrate that I fit within their policy.

There is no one way to be fat. It’s easy to lump all fat people together as the same thing, but it’s just not true. My wife is about the same weight as me, but we carry it totally differently. I have wide hips. I generally wear tops that are 1-2 sizes smaller than my pants. I never have problems with things fitting over my neck, shoulders, or arms. I always seem to have a hard time with things fitting over my hips. I am pear shaped, and I carry my weight on the bottom. My wife is apple shaped and carries a lot of weight in her arms and upper body. She worries about necklaces being too small and sleeves being too tight. Consequently, although we weigh about the same, she rarely has a problem with seat belts and arm rests, and I am more likely to. Even in the fat world, we come in all shapes and sizes.

In his podcast, Kevin Smith said that as a fat person, you have to navigate the world differently. And it’s so true. You always have to think a few steps ahead. And almost nothing is as easy or simple as it should be. I am constantly aware of my size — getting into a car, riding a crowded bus, or trying to get in an elevator. There’s always a thought of disaster in the back of my mind. What if I sit down on that chair and it breaks? (I saw it happen to someone once… they sat down on a wooden folding chair and it crumbled to the ground. My heart broke because I know that’s the nightmare scenario.) Even simple things like fashion are complicated, because there are only 4 stores in the entire city of San Francisco where I can buy clothes. So if I’m told that I need something at the last minute, even if it’s fairly basic, it’s a mad scramble to find it. If I show up to an event and someone hands me a T-shirt to wear, there’s a good chance that it will be too small. (Especially when the largest size is a large.) It’s just always something.

When you’re not dealing with that, you’re dealing with people constantly judging you. It honestly gets a bit tiring to hear how if I would just put down the Big Mac and pick up a carrot everything would be fine. If it was that easy, don’t you think we would all do it? And just like there’s no one way to be fat, there’s no one way to get there, either. Yes, some people do over eat and under exercise. But some people (like me) have medical conditions that lead to larger frames. Some people (like me) have genes that pre-dispose them to being overweight. Some people have had to take medicines that cause weight gain. I shouldn’t need to pull out the medical condition card to make it okay or excuse my size. And people really need to stop assuming that I’m fat because I eat an entire buffet table twice a day. I’ve had people moo at me when I’m exercising. I’ve had medical technicians take my blood pressure 5 times in a row because they just can’t believe that it’s lower than the standard for normal. I’ve had waitresses passive-aggressively bring me diet soda when I asked for regular. Some days, it feels like the whole world is against you, and it’s not paranoia if they really are after you.

If we’re going to focus on health (which I think we should), then let’s do that. But the first step is to get rid of the ridiculous notion that skinny = healthy. As big as I am, I have none of the medical conditions that one assumes I have because of my size. As I mentioned, my blood pressure is below the standard for normal. My cholesterol is fine. My blood sugar is rock solid. Except for a few minor things (that are in no way caused by my weight), I’m healthy. But I’m not skinny. If I stopped eating, started purging, or got addicted to crack, I could get skinny. But would that mean I’m healthier? Uh, nope… I’d be less healthy. We need to focus on helping people be healthy regardless of their size.

This opens the door to a whole other complicated set of issues. I won’t get into them here, but they include access to healthy food (something my friend Kristie just did an amazing video/blog on when she tried to find healthy food in her district in Boston), designing cities and neighborhoods to be walking-friendly instead of relying on cars, and eliminating discrimination in health care. I am lucky that I live in a place where I have access to fresh organic produce and the money to purchase it. I live in a city that’s fairly friendly to walkers and outdoor exercisers. I have health insurance and can pick a doctor who listens to me and understands me. Not everyone is so lucky. If we really want to solve the problem instead of just bitching, judging, and pointing fingers at people, these are the things we need to start working on.

Finally, there’s the issue of dignity. Kevin Smith said this in his podcast, and it really struck a nerve with me because it’s so true. As fat people, we are constantly being put down, made fun of, and generally told how awful we are as people. But when you’ve been humiliated — be it from someone mooing at you on the street, a chair breaking under you, or getting kicked off of an airplane — you have two choices. You can go in the bathroom and cry, or you can own the moment. And at the end of the day, for your own sanity, dignity, and self-esteem… you HAVE TO own it. I know that it can’t be easy for Kevin Smith to share his Southwest story, no matter how much he makes jokes about it. I heard the story at the end of his podcast about the girl he sat next to on his flight home and it broke my heart, too. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see news stories, comments, and headlines about such an embarrassing and humiliating moment, and about something so personal. It reminds me of Joy Nash and her great series of Fat Rant videos, particularly from the video below. She said that fat hate is one of the only forms of prejudice where the people being subjected to it think they are getting exactly what they deserve. And it’s so true.

I know that this was somewhat of an epic and wandering tome. But it’s a complicated issue that needs to be dealt with from a few different angles. I hope that Southwest revises their unfair and poorly implemented policy. I hope they get back on a customer-centric communications strategy that gives them a chance to turn this into a huge positive for everyone. I hope that people start focusing on issues of health instead of just painting all fat people with the same brush of ignorance. I know that the internet affords anonymity that people use to say whatever mean and hateful thing wanders through their mind and out their fingers. I ask you all to please be better than that. Please treat others with the dignity and respect that all people deserve.

Update:

Southwest rep Linda Rutherford finally reached Kevin Smith to talk about the issue. Unfortunately, from what I can tell by reading the blogs on both sides, Southwest is closer but not quite there in terms of making it right.

Kevin’s blog says that Linda did actually sincerely apologize, and admitted that the situation was handled poorly. He says that she also told him that the pilot did not single him out as a safety risk or ask that he be removed from the flight. She said she would update the blog, and all he asked for was that Southwest admit the mistake that they made, and tell the truth that he was not “too fat to fly”.

Linda’s blog says that the captain did not make the judgement call to remove him, and that their staff made a “quick judgement call” that he “might have needed more than one seat”. But she never says that they were wrong, or that he was in fact NOT in violation of their policy. (Something that would have taken ~ 30 seconds to verify.) And then basically reiterates their policy again, and that they stand by it. Like Christi earlier, Linda apparently started off well, and then couldn’t quite stick the landing. All Kevin wanted was for Southwest to admit that they were wrong, and say so in public. Which is really not that much to ask.

Remember earlier when I talked about dignity, self-esteem and needing to own the moment? I think we can all agree that Kevin Smith has a healthy self-esteem and confidence. And he’s not been shy in owning this and discussing it. But I suspected how much it hurt to talk about this experience and have it splashed all over the news, even though it was important. Well, Kevin ends his blog entry talking about “grasping at dignity straws” and how this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Even for someone as self-confident and self-actualized about his physical being as Kevin is, there are still deep-running emotions here. These types of situations leave lasting scars.

Behind SEGA’s Free Stuff Friday

One of the questions that I get asked most often about SEGA’s community outreach is how we build and maintain our Twitter audience. My first and best piece of advice is to have a conversation, not just push marketing out to them. Notice the “just” in that last sentence — we do push marketing, either in direct tweets or through linking people back to our blog. We are giving updates on our games and corporate activities. But we also re-tweet fan photos, tweet about fun stuff going on in our office (free donuts!) and sometimes not-so-fun stuff (another fire drill!). We reply to most everyone, even when the answer is “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that”. We try to be as, well, human as possible.

But the program that helps us grow the most, and most community managers are interested in, is Free Stuff Friday. It started as a way to get rid of swag that was for older games that was just going to be thrown away, as it had little PR value. We started rescuing these items because we couldn’t bear for them to be thrown out. We needed to do something with all of this, so we started the Free Stuff Friday program. It’s been wildly successful, and has gone from a way to get rid of stuff to a planned part of our strategies.

How the Giveaways Work

The SEGA Twitter feed is run by the community teams in the US (that’s my team) and the UK. We each update the feed during our normal business hours. In order to make the administration of the giveaways easier, as well as give more opportunity for people around the world to participate, the US and UK team alternate Free Stuff Friday weeks. Last week’s giveaway was done my me during US business hours, and tomorrow’s giveaway will be done by the UK team during their business hours. There are generally 6 prizes per day. For each giveaway, we’ll tweet an item, a number, and a phrase. For example: “Giveaway! Sonic the Hedgehog T-Shirt, size L. 5th person to DM “Sonic rules” wins!” And, as you would expect, the 5th person to DM “sonic rules” to us will win the shirt. We follow everyone who follows us, so all of our followers can send us DMs.

Where We Get Stuff From

The items that we give away really come from all over. Some things were created for promotional use and we get some of those. Sometimes we partner with other organizations, and we get free items through that. (For example, in the video I have below, I’m showing off some shirts and coupons that we got from Chiquita through our partnership with them on Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll.) Sometimes we get samples and other items from our licensing group, who handles relationships to get Sonic on a t-shirt, for example. We sometimes give away copies of games. We also sometimes pick stuff up on our own to give away. For example, one of our community managers was in Chicago over the winter break and found some old SEGA Visions magazines at a retro games store there. So he bought them, and we gave them away. As you can imagine, we get a diverse pool of prizes because of this, but I think that keeps it fresh and interesting for our followers.

The Preview Video

To promote the week’s giveaways, my team makes a video each week to show off what we’re giving away. It’s also a chance for our community to see and hear us, and that makes us more human. We’re not the big bad faceless corporation, we’re people.

We generally do the videos in one take. This is mostly because I am not a very skilled video editor. But it’s also because the video is supposed to be a little homemade looking. It’s not supposed to be a slick, shiny trailer-style video because that might make it seem less authentic. We generally leave the camera running while we are setting up and deciding who is going to say what about which item. We’ve captured some really funny moments by doing this. Then we film the main segment, where we describe the items. Finally, we’ll leave the camera running while we’re done if we’re still milling around playing with the items or if we’re in need of anything funny.

In terms of editing the video, I use iMovie on my Mac at home. I put some titles on it, put some titles at the end with some music, and add a funny (we hope) bit at the end just to leave people with a laugh. Sometimes they are outtakes, sometimes they are jokes… whatever we had that week.

Here’s the video that we did for last week, and this is fairly typical of our videos.

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We upload these videos to our YouTube account. We also blog them, and that blog link gets sent to our Twitter feed. We were putting the blog link on our Facebook page for a while, but we found that our Facebook fans (at least the vocal ones) had some animosity toward Twitter, so we stopped.

Results

Once we started doing these giveaways, word spread pretty quickly. We started gaining lots of new followers. We’ve been doing these giveaways for about a year now, and we typically gain 500 – 1000 new followers per week. And although I have no metrics to back it up, I feel pretty confident that we get more new followers on Fridays than any other day. The giveaways are a win for everyone — our fans get some free stuff, we have an outlet to create content and connect more directly with our followers, and we have a way to giveaway stuff that’s of little value to the company but tremendous value to our community. It takes just a few hours of my time every other week, and we see tremendous return on that investment.

How You Can Implement This

Not every company has fun T-shirts or toys to giveaway, and I understand that. But nearly every company has a product. And nearly every company has people who are fans of it. Even just your company logo on a keychain will excite people. But do you have free product you can pass out? Can you feature someone on your website? Basically… what can you give back to your fans? I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll come up with a few things you can give away.

Take these ideas and make them your own. Mold them to the needs of your company and your fans. But it’s a way to use Twitter that’s made us pretty popular with our own fans, so I wanted to share this great idea.

Questions?

I am happy to answer questions about our Free Stuff Friday giveaways in the comments, so please ask away!

New Year, New Conferences, New Discounts

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged, and I sincerely apologize for that. It’s not that there’s been no news that has grabbed my attention, it’s just that it’s sometimes hard to carve out a cohesive idea and blog post based on news or an article when all I want to do at the end of the day is lay on my couch and watch American Idol.

That said, I do have some updates! First, I’ve added some new speaking engagements for 2010. I’ll be at the New Communications Forum in San Mateo from April 20-23rd, and at the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference in Boston from May 3-5th. To see all about my past (and future) speaking engagements, including quotes from conference participants and video, head over to the speaking page.

If you’re planning to attend the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference but haven’t registered yet, I’ve got a discount code for you! Just use the code SOCIAL10KP when you register for the conference. Hope to see you there!

Social Media “Experts” are Killing Us

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/ / CC BY 2.0

You’ve probably seen them all over Facebook or Twitter. It seems like nearly every other person these days is calling themselves a “social media expert” with little to nothing to back it up. They have no professional work experience in community or social media. (And no academic education either, because it doesn’t exist.) Their main qualification is that they have a blog, a twitter account, and 500 Facebook friends. It’s annoying, and frankly it’s insulting, to someone like me with over 10 years in the business.

In my reading the other day, I came across a link to this article on Social Media Explorer by Jason Falls. It’s about the explosion of so-called “social media experts”, and Jason’s opinion is that we all just need to get off our high horses and stop being worried about them and what they are doing to our industry. And I don’t think he could be more wrong.

I’ve never really been engaged in a serious business conversation with one of these folks, as I’m usually pretty good at scaring them off once they realize that I actually do know what I’m talking about. But I’ve always imagined the conversation to go something like it does in this video.

Jason opens his article by asking “can we please get off the ego-driven, high-horse pedestal and shut the hell up about “social media gurus?” to which I can only answer… NO. Because this is important.

These so-called experts are giving all of us a bad name. The problem stems from the same problem that caused them to want to hire an expert in the first place. They don’t understand social media. At all. So they don’t know what to look for in an expert. I mean, I don’t know a thing about accounting, so I doubt that I’d make a great hiring decision on our next corporate accountant. So they hire an “expert” that looks good on paper (and the internet), and uses all the exciting buzzwords. And they probably do a few things — make a Facebook page, set up a Twitter account — and that’s it. The company may or may not feel ripped off… but they basically were. These “experts” are preying on people’s inexperience with social media and their fear of getting it wrong (because they’ve seen others do a big painful bellyflop and want to avoid that at all costs).

Jason’s point is that we shouldn’t attacking (or in his words, “whining” about) these people because they are young and trying to make their way in the world. Well, yes but no. In some ways, the influx of “experts” is inevitable because there is huge demand to hire people who are knowledgeable about social media, but there’s no formal education in the field. You can’t (to my knowledge, and I’d love to know about it if I’m wrong) get a college degree in online community or social media. The only way to get experience is to do some stuff ad-hoc (be a moderator on someone else’s forums, for example) or to get on-the-job experience. Take that small bit of experience and combine it with the hiring manager’s inexperience with social media, and you get where we are. So I don’t mind young people trying to make an honest start into the field. In fact, I try to help them along as much as I can. But I think a lot of these “experts” aren’t trying to make an honest start into the field, they are trying to make a quick buck preying on inexperience and fear. I also have an issue with taking on the label “expert” right out of the gate. It was only after 10 years of experience that I started to feel comfortable with that label. Thinking you’re an expert because you have 500 Facebook friends is like me saying I’m a doctor because I’ve seen every episode of ER. It just doesn’t work that way.

So how do we solve this problem? There are a lot of components, and it’s more complex than it seems.

1. Academic education. We need to start seeing actual academic degree programs on an undergraduate level, so that young people can get the background they need to make a solid start in the industry. I have beaten this drum often before, but it’s because I think it’s so important and nobody else is talking about it. The program could probably take from existing business, public relations, and marketing courses, but will need some custom-designed courses. Things like reputation systems and metrics could make for whole courses in and of themselves. Until we start giving people proper education and training for the jobs that are out there in community and social media, they will continue to invent their experiences out of thin air to compensate.

2. Corporate education. Someone, somewhere in every organization needs to know enough about community and social media to make a good hiring decision. They don’t have to be experts, but they need to know enough to spot the actual expert in a field of bullshit buzzword artists. Companies need to stop hiring the first person that sounds like they know what they are talking about because they are so afraid of doing nothing. Until companies stop hiring these “experts”, they will continue to burn companies and sour them on the idea of social media expertise at all.

3. Mentoring programs. Until we do implement the academic programs needed to make this career path sustainable in the future, we need to do something with the new people filling the demand for social media expertise today. Because there is no formal education available in the field, most people’s stories start like mine, with “I fell into it by accident when…”. We all have to start somewhere and climb our way up, and we’re working without a net in this industry. The more experienced among us need to work with people who are just starting out to help them get established, get experience, and get a solid foundation that will serve them (and their employers) well into the future. Until we start sharing our knowledge and experience with up-and-comers in the industry, we won’t have any growth of actual experts in the field. And that hurts all of us in the long run.

4. Certification program. I was at the Online Community Summit last week. During lunch, I was sitting with a group of friends that I do consider to be experts in this field, and the conversation turned to all of these faux experts. One of the things proposed to help solve the problem was some sort of certification system whereby people get accredited as experts (or knowledgeable or whatever) and can use that as currency when interviewing for a job or taking on new clients. I think that this idea has a lot of potential, but also a lot of pitfalls. It would be great to have something that companies and hiring managers can see and rely on when hiring someone. It would also help up-and-comers have something solid to put on their resume. And it’s a decent stand-in for pre-employment education. But who oversees and administers the program? How to they and the program gain the respect necessary for the certification to carry real weight and meaning? These are all things that would need to be worked out.

So yes, I do think that the influx of social media “experts” is bad for our industry. That someone with so little experience calls themselves an “expert” is insulting to the years I and many others have worked in this industry. That companies are falling for their schtick is a big problem. I agree that we can’t be afraid of the new wave of people in this fast-growing industry, but I think that us first-wavers have an obligation to differentiate actual experience and expertise from anecdotal expertise. I also think we have an obligation to continue making the pathway more smooth for others who follow in our footsteps.

Unjust and Ineffective Sex Laws Move Online

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrix_feet/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I was in the doctor’s office last week (I injured my shoulder) browsing the magazines, and the cover story of The Economist caught my eye. The story was “Sex Laws: Unjust and Ineffective” and it’s an in-depth look at how we classify and punish sex offenders in this country. And, as the title suggests, we don’t do it that well.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I have a BA in Criminal Justice. Although it’s not the main focus of my work these days, I maintain more than a passing interest in the issues regarding the law, the courts, and the prison system.

It’s never been popular to be against sex offender laws. Certainly, no politician could ever get elected (or re-elected) by being against them. But thankfully I am not a politician. And I am, for the most part, against the current laws most states have regarding sex offenders.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of terrible stories about children being harmed by real predators — including Megan Kanka (for whom Megan’s Law is named after) and Adam Walsh. But just as real are the stories of people who are branded sex offenders for what most people would believe are minor offenses. According to the Economist:

A report by Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch, a pressure group, found that at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers.

These are not violent offenders. These people are not harming others. And they are certainly not harming children. Yet most people automatically assume that all sex offenders are violent child rapists and molesters. And why wouldn’t people paint all sex offenders with the same big brush? Their government and laws certainly do. Again from the Economist:

The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous.

Yet there they all are, lumped into one big pile and treated as if they are all the same. And in most states (and thanks to a 2006 law passed by the US Congress, soon all states) these registries are available online for anyone to peruse, map, and generally freak out over. This is also ultimately ineffective. More from the Economist:

Publicly accessible sex-offender registries are intended to keep people safe. But there is little evidence that they do. A study by Kristen Zgoba of the New Jersey Department of Corrections found that the state’s system for registering sex offenders and warning their neighbours cost millions of dollars and had no discernible effect on the number of sex crimes. Restricting where sex offenders can live is supposed to keep them away from potential victims, but it is doubtful that this works. A determined predator can always catch a bus.

So, at this point you’re probably asking yourself why, outside of just stating my opinion, this is on my blog. It’s because of all the hysteria surrounding sex offenders on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. It’s about Facebook removing registered sex offenders from its registrations. Which, on the surface, sounds like a good idea. We want to keep kids safe online, right?

Well, no. Because again, it’s very easy to get on the registered sex offender list for something as simple as urinating in public. And most of the offenses that land a person on the sex offenders list have nothing to do with children. And most of the people on sex offender lists pose little threat.

But it’s more than that. The bias and fear-mongering are right there in the words they use to describe the situation and the reasoning for it.  From MSNBC:

“The message … is [that] Facebook has an equal stake in solving this problem of protecting children,” said Blumenthal, who along with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has led an effort remove sex offenders from the social networking Web sites.”They have an equal stake in the predator problem and its solution.”

What they won’t tell you is that registered sex offenders make up approximately the same percentage of Facebook and MySpace registration databases as they do the general population. Barring all registered sex offenders from social media won’t protect children any more than requiring someone who was caught visiting a prostitute to live 1000 feet away from a school protects children. But none of that sounds like good PR.

I think we all genuinely want to keep children safe from predators. But we have to do what reasoned research tells us is right, instead of taking the shotgun approach that we have in the last few years. We need to act logically, not out of panic or outrage. Treating all registered sex offenders like lepers and cutting them off from the online world is just not the best way to achieve the goal, and it’s incredibly unfair to the people who get lumped in along the way.

Homophobia in Gaming Communities

Anyone who has spent time in an online community, on virtually any subject, has experienced hatred. Almost all kinds of hatred grows wild and multiplies quickly on the internet. The internet is phenomenal for helping people find others who share their interests and views, and helping those groups to organize. This is the driving force behind every online community, from knitting communities to white supremacist communities. My friend Jessie Daniels has just published a book called Cyber Racism about how racism has made the jump from offline means (print and in-person organization) to the online world.

Homophobia is no different. From seemingly innocent comments like “That’s so gay” to explicit “I hate gay people” comments, it’s everywhere. But homophobia on the net is often more innocent-looking, and more difficult to recognize, than other forms of hatred. I’m not just talking about forums that are obviously dedicated to homophobia. Remarks like “that’s so gay” pass by in most every community without anyone blinking an eye. And many communities have cultures that don’t discourage that, even if they don’t encourage it. As managers, culture-makers, and rule-setters in our communities, we have an obligation to make sure our forums are free from homophobia, but we have to do it in a way that’s fair for everyone. Lots of attempts have been made, and I’m not sure anyone has found the silver bullet answer yet.

GLAAD is working to fix that. They’ve recently launched a project to combat homophobia in virtual communities, and they’re starting with a panel discussion on homophobia in the gaming community. The panel will take place from 11am-1pm on July 18, 2009 at the Electronic Arts campus, just south of San Francisco in Redwood City, California.  To RSVP, please email digitaltickets@glaad.org or visit www.glaad.org/digitalevent. You can also join the Facebook Event Page.

From GLAAD’s blog:

I really wish I could attend this panel, but I have a prior obligation next weekend. (My wife is having thumb surgery on Friday.) If, like me, you can’t attend the panel, don’t fret. It will be recorded and distributed for everyone who can’t make it. I’m really looking forward to the DVD of the panel.

In addition to promoting the panel on Facebook, Twitter, and the GLAAD blog, they’ve taken it one step further. Justin Cole, the Director of Digital Media for GLAAD, wrote an Op-Ed this week on Kotaku, a very popular video games blog. This is most definitely not “preaching to the choir”. As I’ve written before, the gaming industry can be a very male and hetero-oriented place. Kotaku, and its readers, are no exception.

In the Op-Ed, Justin cited this video as an example of homophobia in gaming.

From the YouTube description on that video:

Other than maybe a quick “hello” to the chat room or a request to “veto”, I didn’t say anything first or taunt anyone. What was said by these players was done with no provocation on my part. The vast majority of the times I wouldn’t even respond back so the audio would be clear. Things I didn’t include in this video are the betrayals (people on my team killing me), players asking me NOT to party up, or all leaving mid-game so that I’m all alone.

Justin also cited some startling statistics from a 2006 study from the University of Illinois “the social and behavioral demographics of gay video game players” as well as “the role of sexual orientation on gaming habits.” (Emphasis mine)

52.7% of those surveyed said the gaming community is “Somewhat Hostile” to gay and lesbian gamers, 14% said “Very Hostile.”

When asked what forms of homophobia people have seen in the gaming community, here are some of what the surveyed said:

87.7% – Players use the phrase, “That’s so gay.”
83.4% – Players use the words “gay” or “queer” as derogatory names.
52.3% – Stereotypical representations of gay characters in games.
42.5% – Refusal of game designers to include well-developed gay characters.
49.4% – Invisibility of gaymers and/or the gaymer community.
When asked how frequently players experience homophobia, those surveyed who responded “Always” or “Frequently” equaled 42%. Add in “Sometimes” and it brings up that total to 74.5%.
When asked how often those players respond to the homophobia they witness – 50.9% total responded “Never” or “Rarely.”

Given these statistics, it’s no wonder that Justin and GLAAD have chosen to focus on the gaming community first in their battle against homophobia among all virtual communities.

To see how much of an uphill battle this is, one need look no further than the comments on that YouTube video or, more realistically, on the Kotaku article. YouTube comments are notorious for being horrible, obnoxious, profane, and homophobic, and the comments on that video certainly live up to that reputation. The comments on Kotaku are at least more intelligently written, even if the majority of them are still homophobic and unapologetic for it.

I spoke with Justin from GLAAD this week, and we had a great conversation about these massive cultural shifts that are so obviously necessary. There are so many moving parts — the rules we implement about what is and isn’t appropriate in our communities, the consistent enforcement of those rules, and the people who are tasked with setting a positive example in our communities. But it’s also about the development of games (diverse and non-stereotypical characters), and the promotion of games. I also strongly feel that we need to have more diversity in the workforce of the gaming industry in order to really bring about change from the inside out. I know that’s easier said than done — at the end of the day, companies need to do what they can to sell the largest amount of games they can, and hitting that demographic sweet spot (ie: the young, straight, possibly homophobic male) is really tempting. But all of these things need to come together to move this ship forward.

Justin and I had a great conversation, and he asked me to help out with GLAAD’s initiative beyond the panel. I’m so excited and honored to be working with them on this important issue. He is interested in hearing from community managers from all types of communities, so I’ll probably be pulling in many of the people I know in the CM world to help with this project.

In the meantime, I urge all community managers to re-examine your approach to fighting homophobia in your communities. If you’re a member of a community, especially a gaming community, I urge you to re-evaluate how you treat people in the communities you participate in, to see if you can do more. If you live in the SF bay area, I encourage you to sign up for GLAAD’s panel on this issue. I urge all of you to treat people with kindness, fairness, and equality.

Tags: glaad, homophobia

Class and Social Media

I have been a big fan of danah boyd for a while. When I think about my own aspirations and what I’m interested in learning more about, her name routinely comes up in my reading. Her work looks beyond the norms in online community research — how to be a better marketer, get more followers, get better ROI. Her research delves into the architecture, the politics, and the culture of communities and social media.

At the end of June, she gave a speech at the Personal Democracy Forum called “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”. In it, she shared her research on exactly who was using MySpace, who was using Facebook, and why. The results were interesting and sometimes surprising.

Before I read her talk, I would have told you that hardly anyone uses MySpace anymore. I would have told you that most people have transferred over to Facebook. After reading her talk, I understand why I thought that, even though I was wrong.

The talk started with danah asking the audience to raise their hands if they used Facebook, and then again for MySpace. 90%(ish) of the people used Facebook, but only a few used MySpace. This reflects my experience (I was never a heavy MySpace user, but I don’t use it at all now. 90% of my friends, business associates, and acquaintances use Facebook and not MySpace, too). However, danah points out that while we’re touting Facebook’s growth, we’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle — that just as many people are now using MySpace as they are using Facebook. While Facebook’s numbers have been growing exponentially, MySpace’s numbers haven’t changed.

Two weeks ago, comScore released numbers showing that Facebook and MySpace were neck-and-neck in terms of unique user visits in the U.S. The meta-narrative was that Facebook was winning in the States and that MySpace was dying. I would argue that the numbers can be read differently. The numbers show that MySpace has neither grown nor faded in the last year while Facebook has expanded rapidly and has finally reached the same size. Of course, this is not to say that Facebook isn’t doing tremendously. In a business environment where monetization is shaky, the only definition of success is “growth.” Given that, it’s reasonable to see Facebook as more successful than MySpace this year. But we still need to account for the fact that as many people visit MySpace as Facebook and that, as exemplified by the people in this room, that’s not because there’s a complete overlap of users. Even if you think that Facebook is winning the game, we need to account for the fact that *70 million* people in the US visited MySpace. That’s not small potatoes.

When danah dug deeper, asking teenagers which site they were using and why, the answers were astounding. Some cited feature differences, but many of the answers were around culture, and by extension, class. One teenager called MySpace “ghetto”, while others said that Facebook was more high-class, more adult.

Craig (17, California): The higher castes of high school moved to Facebook. It was more cultured, and less cheesy. The lower class usually were content to stick to MySpace. Any high school student who has a Facebook will tell you that MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious. Like Peet’s is more cultured than Starbucks, and Jazz is more cultured than bubblegum pop, and like Macs are more cultured than PC’s, Facebook is of a cooler caliber than MySpace.

If this language seems harsh, danah says that’s with good reason.

In looking through my data, I found that teens who prefer Facebook are far more likely to be condescending towards those who use MySpace than vice versa. Teens who use MySpace may lament teen Facebook users as “stuck-ups” or “goodie two-shoes” or the “good kids.” But they’re not nearly as harsh in their language as Facebook users are of those who use MySpace.

I agree with danah’s characterization of what happened when people abandoned MySpace for Facebook — it’s a modern-day, internet-based white flight. Whites, the educated, the suburban, the wealthier were all more likely to leave MySpace and go to Facebook. Given this, descriptions of MySpace as “ghetto” and Facebook as “more cultured” take on a whole new light here. To help illustrate this, danah talks about the sociological concept of homophily, which basically means “birds of a feather stick together”. You are most likely to know people like yourself. And how this is one of the driving forces behind why people choose MySpace or Facebook — they are attracted to the spaces where the people they perceive to be like themselves are.

This concept of homophily also shows why I would have told you that nobody is really looking at MySpace anymore. I don’t, and most of the people that I know are like me. Although my group of friends, acquaintances and associates are fairly diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, they are almost entirely liberal/Democrat, well-educated, and wealthier. Because of who I am, and because of homophily, the people I know are less likely to choose MySpace over Facebook.

The implications of this, as danah rightly points out, are increased social divides.

We can accept when people choose to connect to people who are like them and not friend different others. But can we accept when institutions and services only support a portion of the network? When politicians only address half of their constituency? When educators and policy makers engage with people only through the tools of the privileged? When we start leveraging technology to meet specific goals, we may reinforce the divisions that we’re trying to address.

If you want people to connect around politics and democracy, information and ideas, you need to understand the divisions that exist. Many of us in this room see social network sites as a modern day incarnation of the public sphere. Politicians login to these sites to connect with constituents and hear their voices. Campaign managers and activists try to rally people through these sites. Market researchers try to get a sense of people’s opinions through these sites. Educators try to connect with students and build knowledge sharing communities. This is fantastic. But there isn’t one uniform public sphere. And if the ways in which we construct the digital public sphere reinforce the divisions that we’ve been trying to break down, we’ve got a problem.

I can’t recommend enough that you read the entire text of danah’s talk. It is just this kind of research and critical thinking that we need to understand where we are, why we are where we are, and where we are going. We need to consider a world outside of ourselves and our own experiences. Until we understand it, we can’t compensate for it, let alone work to make it better.