Author Archives: Shane

About Shane

http://shanelife.com
Husband, blogger, and preacher man who also does web things for AMC Theatres. All opinions are my own and are usually right.

2 Years Later

March 16th, 2013 | Posted by Shane in Social Brands - (1 Comments)

This year at SXSW, we celebrated the 2nd anniversary of the first ever meeting of the Brand Socialites. Two years ago, at my first SXSW ever, I met up with some pretty rad people from some brands that I really respected. I’m not going to bore you with the details – they’re all covered here in the first post of this blog.

What I want to talk about is where we are now.

Last Sunday, thanks to the hard work and planning of Jake from Garmin and Brooks from Southwest and the sponsorship of 4 great companies (Southwest Airlines, H&R Block, Garmin and AMC Theatres), we had our second annual SXSW Brand Social meetup at Takoba in Austin. From the meager beginnings at the Lustre Pearl where 10 met together, we now had close to 100 social media managers, brand strategists, community managers and the like all gathered together for a happy hour filled with war stories, sharing of ideas and rapping (literally).

I wasn’t able to attend last year, but I had a lot of people come up to me who knew why we started this group, thanking me for putting everyone together. I’m not doing this to pat myself on the back.

No, this is about the community.

Our community of a few has grown by 10x since it started. We now have brands from large to small…from uncool to very cool (NASA! LEGO!). The only way that this community has grown to be a vibrant place is because of the wonderful way in which we have learned to share ideas without fear. We’ve learned to respect opinions and even if our competitors are at the table, the people who actually do the work in the world of social and digital know that it’s likely that the person across the table pretty much already knows everything about you.

The truth is that my view of those in social who were actually doing the work was very small. I started by connecting with a few people on Twitter that I really respected. Through them, I connected with others and those people brought others. In the days since our meetup at SXSW, I’ve gotten more requests for access to our Google+ Community than in the entire month prior.

That’s because people see value in knowing the people behind the work. It’s not just about strategy and high-minded thinking. Understanding why people approach social the ways that they do requires you to understand the person who is actually doing the work. That helps to give you context.

Connecting with other Brand Socialites has truly been the most valuable thing that has happened in my career in the past two years. I now have a group of people that I can rely on to share with me honest opinions of my ideas. This is what we do for each other. We don’t pay anyone for it. We don’t have a lot of structure. In a lot of ways, we just DO. Like we just DO with a lot of our tactics.

So, what’s next?

Well, I’m glad you asked. The next step is to keep adding amazing people to our group and start planning our first non-SXSW event. We’re going to need a ton of help. Since this community belongs to all of us, we need volunteers to help organize, plan and speak at the first annual official conference. We’ll be discussing this a lot more in our Google+ Community, but for now, I wanted to get it out there. It’s coming. Likely in Kansas City or Dallas. One of our co-founders, Adam Evers is on point. Reach out to him on G+ or on Twitter @adamevers.

And if you’re reading this and you work for a brand and you’re thinking to yourself, I WANT TO BE A PART OF THIS, please reach out to me and I will make sure you get in.

Thanks again for making this community so awesome. I glean so many insights from so many smart people. I’m so glad I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of you in person. I left SXSW so inspired by the work that you are doing. It made me want to be better in my own job.

So keep it up.

- @shaneadams

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The First Annual Brand Social

July 16th, 2012 | Posted by Shane in Social Brands - (2 Comments)

We’ve been talking about an in-person event for a while now. Since we have an inordinate amount of brands here in Kansas City, we wanted to offer our fair city as a host for the first annual Brand Socialites conference. Having just hosted the All-Star Game, we’re feeling good about what we have to offer and we can’t wait for all of us to meet in person.

Our target is September 6-7, a Thursday and Friday, with the “conference” ending on Friday around lunchtime and possibly having some time for a fun outing in the afternoon. Many of the details are still being determined, but here’s where we need your help:

Please fill out the survey below. It will help us shape what the conference will be and who is interested. Please pass it around to folks in and outside your organization that you think would be good attendees. Keep in mind, this will be focused solely on brands, so agencies and PR firms need not apply.

Fill out my online form.

We’ve got a lot to do in a short amount of time. The more input we can get from you, the better. Thanks.

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Why You SHOULD Sweat the Small Stuff

May 2nd, 2012 | Posted by Shane in Social Good - (0 Comments)

Richard Carlson, Ph.D. became a famous author and motivational speaker behind the strength of his book: Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…And It’s All Small Stuff.

This phrase has to be one of the most overused pieces of advice that we share with one another. When it comes to worrying about tiny wrongs that people do to each other — in relationships, at work, etc. — it makes sense.

However, when you start to add up these small things, they tend to pile up into huge issues, especially when you consider there are 7 billion people in the world with “small stuff” bogging them down.

But what if we treated the small stuff like big stuff? Especially when it comes to the problems facing the world today. Issues that may seem small to us can have a massive impact when solved on a macro scale.

Take the example of Blake Mycoskie and TOMS Shoes. Several people don’t like what TOMS has come to represent or maybe they just don’t like their shoes, but Mycoskie saw a small (to us) need that he wanted to do something about — getting access to shes for people in need, particularly in third world countries.

The results can be astounding. Scott Harrison, the founder of charity: water had a similar experience. He saw something small (OK, access to clean water isn’t exactly small…maybe specific is a better term) and he created a charity solely focused on solving this specific problem. Once again, we saw remarkable results

This week, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to use his amazing influence to solve another very specific problem: organ donation. And by enabling Facebook users to easily register as an organ donor within the confines of Facebook, he saw staggering results overnight. The state of California saw an over 5000% spike in their organ donor registry in less than one week.

This small-issue problem solving can be applied to business. I work in the retail industry and I know the massive effect that something as simple as a clean bathroom or new seats can impact a business.

Oftentimes, we hear our leaders talk about “solving big problems.” We look for the next “game changer.” The phrase “Go Big or Go Home” gets bandied about. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it is like trying to eat an elephant. Now the common answer to the joke is that you do it “one bite at a time.”

But what you’re left with is a belly stuffed full of elephant and it can take an awful long time to choke down those tusks.

Perhaps we should try to solve smaller problems first. Smaller problems are more digestible and not nearly as overwhelming (and they don’t make you fat like eating a full elephant does).

See, unfortunately, when all we do is focus on the big problems, the small problems can get worse. Have you ever been in a movie theater with someone who is texting or talking really loudly? In the scheme of things, it’s a small thing. But anyone who has experienced that knows that it can have such a detrimental effect to your movie-going that it has the potential to become a “big problem.”

I’m not saying we should ignore the big stuff entirely. I am saying, however, that small, specific problems like texting in a theater are much easier to solve than something bigger like: “less people are going to the movies.”

Take a moment to look at your life or your business or your relationships with others. Are there small specific problems that you can solve? I truly believe that if you would actually sweat the small stuff a little, you might actually start to find some solutions to the bigger problems.

So what is your small stuff?

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Hello world!

February 16th, 2012 | Posted by Shane in Social Brands - (9 Comments)

What Social Media Managers Really Do

A couple years ago, I started realizing that the industry of social media was rife with people who:

  • had no idea what they were talking about,
  • were full of it,
  • had no idea how to scale to a business, and/or
  • hadn’t actually done any social media, but had only talked about it.

This presented a problem to me as someone who has been “doing” social for a while and was looking for other people who were actually in the business of social media as a profession, particularly as it pertained to representing a brand. I began to get more and more frustrated with the world of social media clubs and the like that I almost just gave up on a professional community entirely.

Then, I began to discover that all of these people who were running and executing the social strategies and tactics for their individual brands could be found online. I actually started in a place where I spend a lot of physical time, Chipotle. Through Chipotle, I got connected with Colin, who connected me with a whole slew of other people in the very active Dallas social media community that is rife with people who represent their respective brands in social spaces, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, blogs or what have you. Then, I got connected with Adam from Famous Dave’s. We reached out to the people that we knew to invite more and more people.

Those connections begat new connections and so on and I thought to myself, “I really want to talk with these people about business approaches to social media — tactics, ideas, etc. — but I don’t want to really do it in a public forum like Twitter.” The risk of giving away a competitive advantage, the desire to keep somethings in a gated community and my experience as a community manager for AMC Theatres made me want to create a place where we could talk freely without worry of SEO bombs dropping on us every time we wanted to discuss our social strategies.

That’s really where Brand Socialites was born.

Many of us actually met in person last year at SXSW and we continued to figure out ways to grow and improve our group.

Initially, this site was intended to be that closed community, but we found an alternative way of doing that and since I  bought the domain, I thought, why don’t we start a blog? I floated the idea to my new friends at other brands and there were lots of folks who wanted to contribute. So I guess this marks the start of that. Several of us will be sharing our thoughts on various topics (we won’t focus solely on Pinterest, I assure you). We don’t claim to be social media experts or ninjas or rock stars. We are just the people who actually do social media at the brands you know and love (or don’t). We’ll bring practical and tangible ideas. I hope you enjoy.

- Shane Adams, February 2012