If you live in the Raleigh area, I’m sure that you are familiar with bombshell that the Media Two Social team dropped a few weeks ago when they announced that their social media team of Morgan Siem and Stacey Alexander were going to shave their heads for St. Baldrick’s Foundation on April 7th.
I recently was able to share a few emails recently with Stacey about her time at Media two, her thoughts on Social Media and how exactly she got talked into shaving her head.
Photo courtesy of Stacey Alexander
While most people are familiar with you as a member of the social media team at Media two, how exactly did you fall into marketing and social media field? Is online marketing something you’ve always wanted to do?
I majored in Communications with a concentration in PR at NC State. I picked that major because it had nothing to do with math or science. The last semester of my senior year, I interned at a traditional PR agency, and decided it wasn’t for me. The way I got into social media is a pretty cool story, [actually]. I have a lot of customer service experience, and I really enjoy working with people. While at one of my customer service jobs, I started designing t-shirts with a couple friends and trying to market them on Facebook. It didn’t really work, but I learned about Facebook pages and ads. A few months later, my dad called me and told me he had found a summer internship at SAS that was in social media. I got that internship because of a few key factors: I had a background in PR, I was active in some social media, I owned a couple of blogs, and I had experience with Facebook for business (from my t-shirts). That internship was under the awesome and hilarious David B. Thomas. He got me started on Twitter, and introduced me to a lot of cool people. It was through Twitter that I found out about the local SEO meetup. At my first meetup, one of Dave’s friends introduced me to Morgan Siem, who brought me in for an interview at Media Two, and ultimately gave me a job, where – among other things – I perform customer service for clients on social media platforms. And that’s my favorite thing about social media, the reach and the relationships. I love my job and I like to think I’m really good at it. But you’ll have to ask my boss to be sure.
You mention that the relationships is the one thing that you like about social media and I agree with you, but how do you convince someone that social media is worth it? Not just on a client but a personal level as well. I mean, I know I have friends who arn’t on Twitter, so how do we convince these people that they should be on it.
Well, to a client I would say: We’ve moved to a more personal level. People don’t want to have to jump through hoops to talk to a company. With social media all those walls are broken down. When someone tweets about a company and that company responds, it’s a really cool experience. The customer feels important just from that connection. In the professional social space, we’re all familiar with case studies like Comcast, Best Buy and Zappos. I don’t know the exact numbers, but all three have seen a huge benefit to their business because of their social media presences. People are on social media talking about you whether you’re there or not. Beyond that, there’s tons of opportunity for you out there.
To a person, I would say: I didn’t “get” Twitter either. And honestly, if I didn’t do it for business, I probably still wouldn’t be into it. But I’ve made some really good friends through Twitter. People that I never would have met otherwise. I learn things from Twitter, like the subsequent earthquakes in Japan. I saw a story last summer about a triathlete who crashed her bike after taking a wrong turn. She couldn’t move and no one knew she was there. She didn’t have enough signal on her phone to call anyone, but she had enough to tweet. One of her followers across the country saw her cry for help and called the hospital. And you know, Twitter helped start a revolution in Egypt. It’s valuable. I don’t see social media as something that every individual has to be on. It’s your choice. But social media is a lot of fun, and sometimes it can do really big things in the lives of real people.
Traditional PR was a great experience for me and it led me to where I am today. But wasn’t fun for me. No offense to anyone in the field, but I felt like it was a lot of watching your back. It was writing boring press releases and begging media outlets to read them. Social media isn’t stuffy. In fact, being a fun, creative and sincere person is valued above all else. I feel like it makes us better in a way. I love that I get to make friends with people on Facebook and Twitter for a living. I love that a big part of my job is figuring out what makes people happy and giving it to them.
The real time aspect of Twitter, it is what impresses me as well. Hell, it impresses me more and more every every day. You seem to agree that social media is all about relationships, however analytics is a part of it as well. No matter what we tweet be it something personal or a tweet for a company we work for, a part of our brain wonders will this tweet be picked up. What are your thoughts on analytics and how it affects social media? Sometimes tweeting something personal, might not be the most linkable material.
For business, analytics are critical. It’s the same as every other initiative a business starts. If your approach isn’t working, you need to know about it so you can change directions. Without analytics, you don’t know if you’re a wild success or an utter failure. There are some things the platforms themselves already give you. For instance, Twitter tells you how many followers you have and how many lists you’re on. Facebook shows you how many fans have liked your page and has a whole insights feature on the back end. For our clients, we use both as well as other tools that can go deeper – link tracking, conversation monitoring, Google Analytics. Each part is important to the success of your social media efforts, making sure that they align with your business goals.
As far as adding personal posts to your accounts, I tweet personal things to portray myself as a real person on Twitter. If all I did was tweet social media articles, I may get a lot of retweets, but I wouldn’t have any real connections on there. Just this morning, I tweeted about an event in the area tonight that’s sending profits to Japan relief efforts. That was retweeted more than most of my other tweets. Not about my field, but it was something people care about. And knowing that I care about it too may make them more likely to listen to me about other things, including business, because of our connection. In short, social media analytics measure how well your relationships are working to support your business.
I agree that analytics are critical at the end of the day. We all need something to show our boss that we’re doing our job. For someone getting into social media for the first time…are there any tools that you recommend them exploring and playing with? Obviously in today’s day and age I think the one’s that are overlooked the most are analytics applications such as Google Analytics, but are there any in particular that you prefer or you would recommend someone in social media to start playing with now.
Obviously, if you’re in social media for business, you need to be into Facebook and Twitter. They’ve both come out recently with new advertising options, so be familiar with those. And know how to use them for business. Then there’s YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging. These are all things you should be comfortable with if you’re looking into social media as a career. Like you said, analytics is important. All social media careerists must be able to prove their work is worth the money they’re being paid. Monitoring tools like Sysomos or Radian6 will show how much your brand is being talked about online, demographics, sentiment and more. Tracking tools like Argyle Social will help you track the links you’re putting out in social media so that you know which sources are bringing in the most visits and transactions, and know which posts are clicked most. Google Analytics will show you tons of things – top content, conversion rate, bounce rate, traffic sources, keywords being searched, etc. Unfortunately, all these tools, with the exception of Google Analytics, are paid tools. You can’t just sign up for Sysomos and start playing with it for free, which makes it hard to get familiar with it. There are some free tools that will give you a glimpse. Like Social Mention for monitoring, and Bit.ly for tracking number of clicks. Oh, and Facebook Insights. They’re free, and will show you lots of things about your page.
Okay, before I let you go, I have to ask about St. Baldrick’s and shaving your head. How exactly did this get started?
What led me to the decision was actually a joke. The men in my office did it last year, and we were in a meeting talking about how it was coming up again. One of my co-workers, Phil, said “Stacey’s doing it.” I had no intention of doing it. But then later on, I started thinking about it. I want to be that girl that will shave her head for children with cancer. So the next morning, Phil (still trying to convince me) told me that Morgan was doing it. She, not knowing I was considering it, said “Yeah, I’ll do it right after Stacey does.” We both thought about it that night, and tried to figure out how to convince the other to do it. By the next afternoon, we had a conversation and decided to do it together. And to set a ridiculously high goal to motivate us to pull out all the stops.
The farther down this journey I go, the more reasons I find. The kids that already have cancer. The ones that don’t have it yet, but will. I have a niece that will be 3 in May. What if she got cancer? Wouldn’t I want to help find a cure? Well she doesn’t have cancer, but there are 160,000 each year that are diagnosed with some form of it. They need our help too. But that’s not the only direction this decision is taking. I’m scared to lose my hair. I’ve never not had hair. I was born with hair. Lots of it. Having hair is a part of my identity. How stupid is that? I’m way more than my hair. Morgan is way more than her hair. And so is every other person out there. So many people, girls especially, have told us what an inspiration we are. Not only are we overcoming our own fears, but we’re challenging the definition of physical beauty. So I’m shaving my head to find a cure by raising funds. I’m shaving it to, as St. Baldrick’s puts it, “stand in solidarity with kids being treated for cancer”. To encourage others to participate and make a difference. To inspire others to overcome their fears. And to show others that beauty doesn’t have to follow some rule book created by fashion magazines and the red carpet.
For those interested in finding out how they can donate money to Stacey and the rest of the mediatwo page, please visit their St. Baldrick’s page and don’t forget that every little bit helps.
Check out the following links for more information on Morgan and Stacey’s journey to shave their head.
http://www.mediatwopointoh.com/morgan-siem-stacey-alex-go-bald-forst-baldricks/
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/28/1018815/theyll-clip-their-vanity-to-help.html
http://blogs.sas.com/socialmedia/index.php?/archives/181-The-next-bald-social-media-guru-in-the-making.html
