Live like a Freshman

As a rising fifth year student at UGA, I have freshman envy. Even if they don't know it, freshmen are blessed. Each freshman steps onto a campus of peers that will challenge them, professors that will champion them, and curriculums that will propel them. Not to mention they sleep until noon, lay out on campus lawns all afternoon, and party like it's 1999 every night. I'm likely jealous of the life they live because I didn't realize the amazing legacy I inherited when I started my first year at UGA. As I start out to make this final year my the best of college, I reflect upon a few lessons I've learned from my first year.

Don't Lose Sight of the Silver Lining Among the Clouds

When I settled into room 913 in Oglethorpe Residence Hall (O-House Penthouse), I didn't leave my door open to meet the 50 other students on my hall or play Mario Cart until 4:00 AM with them in the lobby. I didn't plug in and explode into the college experience because the dorm was cramped compared to my house back home—I lost sight of the amazing forest I was in because I wasn't accustomed to the trees.

Life is full of different environments and the change from one to another can be jarring if we don't see all the possibility around us once the dust settles.

Mine Resources

In high school it was cool to procrastinate, slack off, and push back against teachers. Life doesn't reward that attitude and college is a great teacher of that lesson. Though I wasn't a bad kid in high school (in fact I was the stereotypical AP nerd), I didn't cash in on the mentorship my teachers were willing to provide and that pattern unfortunately carried over to my first year of college.

Lesson? The students that plug in succeed—they learn something, become better people, and gain some fans in their corner. No matter what stage of life we're in, resources are available to help us along the way and it's plain dumb to ignore them.

Figure out the Plot 

I started college with an English major but it wasn't until long after jumping to Marketing that I put literary analysis to action on myself. I spent a semester and some change at UGA looking for the popular crowd before I realized it didn't exist. The time looking was a waste because I could have spent it finding out who I was and making that person as best I could rather than shoving who I thought I could be into an imaginary mold.

Most of us labor to make a compelling what, when, and where—what am I going to do, where am I going to do it, and when will it happen? The people that are the most alive (and the most fulfilled) spend significant energy finding out the plot elements that matter. Those happy people take time to first discover who and why—who am I and why am I here? They derive the rest of the plot from the answers to those two questions and live lives the rest of us read about.

Always be Beginning 

When I walked back to that dorm from my first day of classes, I could have noticed the vibrant student body at Georgia, the gorgeous campus I walked upon, or the over 600 organizations awaiting my interest. Instead my major takeaways of the days were that UGA had too many hills and that it was a million degrees outside.  Now that I'm a little older, the most energizing part of my day is the beginning, the most exciting stage of a project is the launch. Starting is energizing.

The best part is that by being present in every moment, we can take hold of our action and mindset so that we're always at the beginning. College freshmen aren't the only ones for whom the world is an oyster, they just believe it is more than the rest of us. Once we get hyped for beginning, we lose focus on the boring parts of life and see the pearl in our stories again.

At the intersection of realizing these three lessons sits the real magic of college and the first year experience. College freshmen who understand that when they walk onto their campuses are wildly successful both on campus and after it. I can't help believing that success in any stage in life lies somewhere near that intersection as well. 

Eco-social

When does a brand that does social media change into a social brand? When an ecosystem is born. A single marketing team, especially a lone social media intern, cannot drive enough connection with consumers to make a brand social. Once every department in a company works to be socially innovative, the parts become greater than the whole and multi-platform energy creates measurable synergy. The most successful firms earn their reputation through pervasive innovation, let's take a  quick look at Nike as an example. 

Nike's brand is undoubtedly powerful because the company as a whole works diligently to innovate and connect new media to new products. Its FuelBand is a totally social product that turns every user into a brand advocate on and offline. Nike's work with Twitter campaigns, Facebook conversations, YouTube user experiences, and its own website traffic work with the FuelBand to advance its central brand message that everyone with a body is an athlete. 

The functionality of the FuelBand integrates social beyond the tried and true platforms. A partnership with Microsoft's XBOX platform's Kinect system makes possible social gaming with the FuelBand as centerpiece. The product team was obviously thinking social throughout the entire development cycle. The FuelBand is making a real impact, selling out within minutes, because it works upon a dynamic ecosystem. 

Social isn't something your firm does, it is what your firm must be. Companies that internalize that can change the world. 

The Branding Game

Whoa. I just witnessed the ending to maybe the best video game I've ever played—BioShock Infinite. The game topples the typical stereotypes of the entire video game genre; it doesn't dull the player's mind, it doesn't divorce them from reality, it doesn't incorporate obvious game structure. Infinite steps out of the gamer box and digs a flag into the ground declaring itself a pioneer legitimizing the art form games can be. What makes BioShock so great are the same things that make social brands remarkable.

The basics are done so perfectly that they get out of the way. Players don't notice load screens, glitches don't freeze the game, the environment looks realistic, the physics makes sense—the fundamentals for a believable world are so sturdy that the game actually delivers a universe that immerses the player. Similarly, a socially active brand should master platforms and strategy so well that the customer doesn't even notice them and gets to business falling in love with the brand.

The characters are meaningful because they develop, they are round. BioShock only introduces characters it intends to develop and even the most shallow characters within the story are fleshed out with back stories that fit perfectly within the overall narrative. Likewise, we should imagine company a an imaginary person, a brand is their personality—the character customers will get to know. The most powerful brands are like characters within an epic: they reflect and ultimately impact the cultures in which they develop, they celebrate the legend of their founders, and they champion a core mission. Turn a brand into a character that interacts consistently with customers among social and traditional media and watch consumers fall in love. By the way, customer love doesn't just echo across Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, and other social media—it puts dollars on the balance sheet.

The story is extraordinary because it is about the player, as a person, in the real world. BioShock is remarkable because it challenges the player to reconsider their own decision making and moral barometer. Its story is always about the player. Seth Godin mentioned that the central character of the brand's story isn't the brand itself, but the people who interact with it. To relate to my above example, the customer could be the hero or the damsel in distress, but they should never observe from the sidelines.

A Great, Big, Beautiful Persona

There's no one in class. My rhetoric of written communications class is more like a scene from a Western saloon than a coveted class section at UGA. I'm almost certain a tumble weed just rolled across the front of the room. I bet the same is true of the workplace—nobody wants to get down to work.

Why are so many of my peers playing hooky? I blame the weather. Georgia is thawing from an extended Winter and people across the state are fleeing conditioned air for the warm sunshine and soft grass. Behind the indoor exodus is the assumption that work is intrinsically boring. But that's only  true if students are shackled to a desk and employees are caged in cubicles to perform mundane tasks and satisfy social constrictions. A quick step outside our work-time paradigm introduces us to a new reality in full bloom.

We can unlatch ourselves from work we hate if we redefine our jobs. Instead of a student in this classroom, I consider myself a keeper of secrets—the sole surviving scribe of a forgone people set out to preserve knowledge upon this Earth. Likewise, a public accountant could redefine her job to be a champion of fun in the office. A marketer would realize these redefinitions as new personas. Give yourself a more exciting persona, cultivate it, and see if it doesn't improve the quality of your life. 

Similarly, every brand should have a strong, identifiable, and relatable persona across online media. Just as you give yourself an upgrade with a well defined persona, consider your brand a person and give him or her a persona promotion. Users will love it and your boss will love your engagement. 

End It

Is social media the place to get your acquaintances to adopt sweeping social change? Is it the forum to  advocate human rights and environmental awareness? Should we really tell Facebook everything that's on our mind?

Social media lobbyists within the EndIt movement and the same sex equality camp argue yes to all of the above. They envision a bright tomorrow in which the collective shout of social statuses whirl the gears of Congress to action. But do social campaigns hurt or help their parent cause? How should human rights activists inform an unfamiliar public or how should gay-rights supporters encourage their peers to relax their views on traditional marriage?

As social media allows everyday interpersonal and group dynamics to enter a huge stage, the choice for x-rights movements to take that huge new audience by storm and at little cost seems obvious. The councern is that the social space cheapens their meaning.When seventy five red equal signs pop up on a news feed within an hour, sure they get our attention but do they get our respect? And when our friends silence their online activity fro a day with a blacked out profile picture but still "like" a Spring Break album, do we really take their cause seriously? We don't because we assume that hey don't either.

As easy as it is or social movements to take well formulated and heartfelt stances upon new media, it is just as easy for the uniformed and minimally involved masses to adopt their slogan. These late-comers may not care about the issue enough to do more than change a profile puictue and post a status—while that does plenty for the campaign's reach, those individuals' personal brands and haphazard social advocacy could create negative sentiment for the previously respectable campaign.

So Dr. Seuss's old message is again made clear—"be who you are and say what you feel. Because the people that mind don't matter and the people that matter don't mind." As social movements ebb and flow through social media, we should resist the urge to "like" them or adopt their slogan unless we are real advocates. Those causes deserve informed support and if we instead give indifference, we cripple their brand. 

The Brand in the Mirror

Social Media is at its core a mirror, it gives us a great chance to see ourselves as we are. It's a proving ground for character; the individual shows his integrity, humility, self-concept, and compassion on his posts, tweets, updates, and checkins. But so do companies. Whether they realize it or not, consumers expect companies to be good people. The consumer/producer relationship must move from a series of transactions to a web of relationships and experiences—within that space brands become meaningful statements of self and build profitable brand advocates.

Companies too often focus on dollars as the drivers of business, but customers open their wallets only to companies to whom their also open their hearts. As companies discover new ways to push products to their markets, they may become tempted to, as Jeff Berrezny describes, become used car salesmen. Brands that post BOGO deals, "Like This Page Now," and similar pleas for business to their social media sites repel customers because they betray our trust—ignoring a brand's potential for long lasting impact for the sake of a quick sale is a short-minded strategy. Powerful brands are built upon the backs of solid ethics. We like to do business with good people, and any brand can position itself as a good person but simply being ethical and intentional. Don't be a product peddler, be a relationship visionary.

Getting to the point

We all want a voice. Faded, simple antelope still linger on cave walls from long past eras. The printing press legs to our ideas. Social media fills our need to communicate to whomever we want, whenever we want. And it's free.

But how do we get people to listen? Just like entering a conversation or managing a project at work, be intentional and know who you're talking to. We have all progresses a few levels in Angry Birds as our partners in meetings babble on a stream of consciousness. Our listeners are the same way—if we don't get to what mean in time we'll lose them.

Communication drive us, it always has. Social media has out a microphone to your thoughts. You can create an audience of a hours and followers—but first you must compel them to listen.

Content Marketing, A Procrastinator's Story

It's 4:00 AM and my mind's bouncing around the grave I just dug for my GPA—my social media addiction has claimed another potentially productive night. I need help. Someone stage an intervention.

As it's heaped around me, the rubble of my productivity still has a few lessons up its sleeve for me and one big, golden content opportunity for socially conscious brands: content marketing. There's a great big tomorrow for any blogger, entrepreneur, or executive that can save me from myself. If I'm in your market, consider me a person not a consumer—I'll bring you some dollars and I'll even like you when I do it.

The fact is that I'm going to use social media; I don't really mind it. What I hate is wasting time. That's why content marketing is golden and why I want to consume material that helps me be a better, more competent and effective, person. If your company provides a service, don't sell it to me—teach me what I can do to help myself and I'll be knocking at your door when I'm in over my head.

What does that look like? Every consultant sells smarts, but Bain, McKinsey, and BCG sell knowledge first and smarts later. Similarly, plumbers configure pipelines with advanced industry and practical knowledge, but the plumber that teaches his clients enough to make his expertise dispensable should expect many more checks in the mail. We trust our friends because they help us—content marketing makes for very friendly brands.

Make the effort to sow knowledge among your markets and you'll reap brand love, loyal customers, and hefty sales. I speak for the world's chronic procrastinators, we're online and we're willing to learn.

Views? Everybody got time for that

Shortline Dental is flexing its social prowess with an online video capturing millions of views and demonstrating that online platforms truly level the playing field between corporate big wigs and the thrift shop down the road. 

How did the dentist office do it? A big budget production? Disruptive, sloppy make out sessions? To our relief, no. It simply rode the wave of Sweet Brown's famous "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That!" news remix video. With a quick jingle, a short video, and a happy demeanor, Sweet Brown once again connected with millions of online viewers—as a sort of celebrity endorsement for the quick preview dentist.

With one video, the dentist office gave Youtubers back their happy Cold-Pop Queen and stood their ground, intentionally or not, against heavy hitters whose Super Bowl Ads were more easily forgotten (I'm looking at you, Busweiser). David's slingshot still works and its firing pebbles right at Goliath's intimidating face—leaving a social imprint two million views wide in the process. 

Success—how bad do you want it?

I'm inspired by Heidi Cohen's article, "Vince Lombardi Gives Social Media Advice." I love quotes; there's magic in snippets of wisdom from history's great achievers and we can all take those bits of motivation to fuel our fire in pursuing perfection.

Here's a quote from my father, "There's always room for improvement." Consider that mindset in social media  strategy—chase untapped audiences, make deeper connections, and uncover the real, relatable personality within your brand. Your consumers are as human as you are, so a brand can come to life in the social space when we apply principals of personal excellence to strategic consumer engagement.

Here are a few quotes to fuel your fire.

1. "Confidence is contagious, so is lack of confidence." Vince Lombardi. If you're a leader in your organziation or you make sure there's enough creamer for the coffee, your personal confidence will grow into a winning team attitude. Everyone benefits from your belief in yourself
2. "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Walt Disney. The world is linked on social media, there are markets you might not have explored or even identified yet—find them and engage them. The social space has brought natural human community into a huge arena but ten years ago that was all radical thinking. Think big, bold, and courageous thoughts
3. "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." Dale Carnegie. Plans will fail and projects will be scrapped—never lose enthusiasm through failure. 

Let's be friends

Did I start 2013 expecting to start a blog? Oh no. Did I start 2013 stretching my legs and ambitions as I stand on the starting ling to becoming a better me? Oh yeah. So I'm going to just be myself. I'll talk about what comes to mind and hopefully shed some light on the blind spots in my life. 

An interesting idea was introduced to me in class (of all places) this week by an unusual professor: Jennifer Osbon, new life coach at the Terry College of Business. I say life coach because Ms. Osbon isn't a professor, a lecturer, or a researcher. In fact, at Georgia's premier public research university, she seems a little out of place at the front of the class room. I think she likes it that way. She's interactive, informal, engaging, and informed--she's a social media aficionado. And she's seeing to it that the eighty students in her classroom enter the workforce ready to add value and build brands one impression at a time.

What Ms. Osbon told me is a new framework for interpreting the role of social media: the platforms aren't the main goal, they're the means. Like a company doesn't say, "Boy do I want a thirty second TV spot of static!" neither should they assume that it's enough to post to Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, or any other social media platform without a strategy. To companies looking to enter the social realm, platforms are gathering places, living rooms where consumers can meet as friends and the brand can be the informal host. We're all tired of brands that treat social as they do traditional media--like a high chair in which consumers are strapped in and spooned content whether they like it or not. Connection is the key, because if a consumer can't connect with a brand where they connect with their peers, they'll leave.