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Archive for July 2009
Via the Plaid Summer Tour:
“Think that social media is just for your customers? One of the many things that we learned while visiting the Sprint World Headquarters in Kansas City was how they’re using social media to communicate with their employees.
If you’ve got thousands and thousands of employees spread across the world, chances are you’re going to need something better than an employee newsletter. Sprint has found that some of the same tools they use to communicate with their customers have also been super effective at spreading the word with their employees.
Sprint employees have internal blogs, communities and other tools to learn about what’s happening, what’s working, what’s popping and what people are chatting about. Social tools happen to be an effective way to get these messages out quickly.”
I can tell you from personal experience that this works on a much smaller scale as well… my company (JoesWork) has nearly 300 employees in 19 Eastern-US cities. I found out about two years into my tenure at JoesWork that a monthly 6-page newsletter (designed properly) was taking up a full week of my time each month. So, I did what any technologically-savvy person would do- I built a blog. This allows me to publish in minutes what previously took me a week to produce (but hey, we all know the benefits of blogs). This also allows me to operate more efficiently and take on other tasks with the time I just saved myself.
Not only has JoesWork’s blog become an information center for my coworkers, it has been presented to potential financiers of our company, as well as insurance underwriters, customers, and developers who wish to engage in business with us.
- The employees get to see what’s happening in other cities via videos, pictures, and brief blog entries.
- The insurance underwriters get to read our weekly company-wide safety topic/article (and our safety-first culture shines through).
- The developers and financiers get to read about our company, the services we provide, and have a better idea of our culture than they would if the were handed a printed-out newsletter.
- Finally, the blog, our twitter account, and our website create a sense of virtual community for our customers.
The bottom line? The blog (social media) is an absolutely invaluable resource for any company in business today.
Gabrielle Hennessey at Brand-Yourself.com explains that there are three primary qualities that make up your personal brand: competencies (skills), personality (your goals, morals, and identity), and your value (what you can contribute to an organization).
With that said, I decided to write a short post here as a worksheet of what my three qualities consist of:
1.) Competencies:
- I am skilled in graphic and web design.
- I am skilled in the necessary computer programs that facilitate my design skills.
- I have a thorough understanding of color theory, typography, print process, and design.
- I have the ability to brainstorm design and strategize marketing/advertising plans, to be carried out across multiple types of media.
- I have strong written and verbal communication skills.
- I have an ability to carry projects through all phases of implementation including: concept, budgeting, design development, and resource allocation/ management.
2.) Personality:
- Honest
- Hard-working
- Loyal
- Organized
- Detail-oriented
3.) My Value:
- I can contribute my experience in building a marketing/design department from the ground up, as I have in my current position, over the course of four years while my company doubled in size.
Gabrielle also mentions not to put too much thought into a job title, and I couldn’t agree more. I’m a fan of those companies where you can pick your own title (Joe Ribaudo: Supreme Chancellor of Awesome), because really- do titles matter outside of the Human Resources department? If I’m looking to hire you, do I care if you were an Associate Vice President or an Assistant Vice President? I’ll be looking at how your three qualities match up against those of another applicant.
Perhaps this stems from the countless orders of business cards that I’ve had to design where the client made it a point to tell me that he was the “Regional Director of such-and-such”, not just a “Director”?
…getting back on topic, Gabrielle goes on to stress the importance of “getting your name out there.” As far as I’m concerned, you need to use any tools you can to brand yourself. This can come in a multitude of ways, but I’ve found that having this blog has been effective for me. I’ve also had business cards produced (for past job searches) with my personal “elevator speech” printed on them. Still, for others, it may be attending networking events, joining professional organizations, or volunteering for speaking engagements.
Last but not least, is consistency (employers love this). If you’re a blog owner, or have accounts with twitter, facebook, or LinkedIn, make sure that your personal brand is the same throughout- you never know where your next job offer may come from!
Via Gabrielle Hennessey at Brand-Yourself.com.
Via the New York Times’ Corner Office column. David Novak is Chairman, Chief Executive, and President of Yum Brands.
“The best leaders I’ve known really take an active interest in a person. And once that person demonstrates they have skill and capability, they try to help them achieve their potential. That’s always been my thinking about management. If you have someone who’s smart, talented, aggressive and wants to learn, then your job is to help them become all they can be.
What I think a great leader does, a great coach does, is understand what kind of talent you have and then you help people leverage that talent so that people can achieve what they never thought they were capable of. The only way you can do that is to care about the people who work for you. No one’s going to care about you unless you care about them. But if you care about someone, genuinely, then they’re going to care about you because you’re making a commitment and an investment in them.
…You show you care by really taking an active interest in the people working for you, and you care enough to give them direct feedback. People are starved for direct feedback. People want to hear how they can do better. Too many leaders don’t provide that feedback. So if you take an active interest in someone, you take an active interest in sharing with them your perspective on what they can do to improve.”
Flickr user spacesick designed several 60’s-era covers of “novelizations of the major motion pictures” of several popular movies. Via “I Can Read Movies” on flickr. For more design-goodness, check out spacesick’s photo stream!
Now in its third year (and kicking off in 6 days), the creatives at Plaid are heading out on the road again to no doubt evade several branches of state law enforcement as they make their way through the Midwestern United States.
Leap-frogging between Waffle Houses and 2-Star Motels, the gang will be stopping off in several cities between Detroit and New Orleans to meet creative folks all over the Midwest. I did blog about their tour last year while my company (which has been renamed to “JoesWork” on this blog) was on an 11-city tour of our own. The longest three weeks of my life, as I now affectionately refer to it as, helped us (corporate-level people) spend some much-needed getting-to-know-you time with the folks who made each of our bases special.
Take the same idea, apply it externally, and you’ve got Plaid Nation 2009. JoesWork used our road trip to cross-market our company internally; to teach our locations about what our other locations have to offer our shared customer base. The Plaid Nation tour accomplishes their cross-marketing by simultaneously marketing their agency and the others they visit. Sharing ideas and their spotlight, Plaid just keeps getting this right; create goodwill by visiting other agencies in your industry; showcase what today’s social media tools can do; learn new things and meet new people; market your own agency (and strengthen your brand); and have a little fun while your at it.
So to all of you creatives out there, do yourself a favor and follow Plaid Nation next week- you just might learn something! Check out their dashboard site, which is home to all of the tools you’ll need to follow their Ford-sponsored Flex trough the tour: feeds of blogs covering the event, twitter feeds from the Plaid gang, daily schedules, update videos, and live cam feeds from the Flex.
Now just to clear this up, RJ from “the Greatest Agency in all the land” was nice enough to send me a bunch of swag- but I would’ve blogged about this anyway. I believe in 100% transparency here at joerib.com, and I’m a nice guy.
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