Violet Mae Lim

I haven’t been around these parts of town lately. I’ve been spending a lot of my time over at my Yahoo! Social Tumblr where I blog about social media news as it relates to publishers (as brands) and some of the cool social things that I’m working on.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are real people being Facebook pages. It’s easy to read posts, click like, share them, or even ignore them all together but every once in a while, something happens that makes us remember that there is someone (or a team of someones) sitting behind the page, carefully selecting what will appears in a Facebook stream. Sometimes that “something” is a quirky little mistake…

Yesterday, I noticed a post from the NPR Facebook page that looked a little different. Instead of the usual link to a story that they normally post, there was a block of text:

It turns out, people didn’t mind. And a quick scan of the Facebook page shows that this post is pretty active and engaging compared to some of their other posts.

This post stood out to me because it is personal, friendly and conversational… much like a note that a friend would send. Additionally, it’s pretty transparent. Somebody made a light, honest error and they fixed it. Fortunately for the producer, the picture wasn’t anything racy, pornographic or inappropriate! (If that were the case, it would be a different story!)

The moral of this story is that it’s ok to be “off-brand” and show a little personality every now and then. I wouldn’t recommend posting off-brand messages often but every once in a while, it helps people remember that there are people behind the pages.

Late last year, hoards of media brands jumped on the Tumblr wagon after reading this NYT article. Since then, media orgs have experimented with, tumbled, reblogged, liked and replied to breaking news, funny pictures, media insider jokes (with a dash of snark) and everything else under the sun. At Yahoo! News, I decided that our Tumblr would be used for videos, pictures, and buzzy stories rather than hard breaking news. Here are some of my observations so far (your mileage may vary):

The viralness of Tumblr
I’ve personally had a Tumblr account since June of 08 but I’ve been experimenting with Tumblr for Yahoo! News since November and today, one of my Tumbles (?) particularly stood out because it spread very quickly. I posted this picture of protestors holding up a banner during a demonstration against Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi outside Downing Street, in London. Within an hour, it was reblogged on Tumblr about 100x. As I write this post, it’s been about 9 hours and there have been 1000+ notes (notes = Tumblr ‘likes’ and ‘reblogs’ combined).

Understand the Tumblr community
Maybe it’s my background in marketing, but I firmly believe that you should always know who your community is online. Follow them, check out their profiles as you grow and most importantly, check out your stats if you have them. (Unfortunately, Tumblr currently doesn’t supply any demographic breakdown or audience stats so I’d suggest paying close attention and eyeballing it). Another basic tip: study the platform as a whole and understand its demographic. Experiment with content and you’ll start to understand what does well. What does well on our Facebook or Twitter account doesn’t do well on our Tumblr account.

Timeliness
The hot topic in social media right now is Libya and the deadly anti-government protests. From what I have observed, Tumblr is very trend-driven community — creating trends, spreading memes and driving them. In my experimentation, I’ve posted snippets of news that were interesting but not trending and those updates receive a luke-warm response. My tip here would be: know what’s trending on Tumblr and ride the wave.

Tumblr’s shift into news
Last July, Tumblr hired Mark Coatney, former Editor at Newsweek. Coatney was the voice of Newsweeks’ Tumblr account and now helps media companies understand and embrace Tumblr. Tumblr has also rolled out tags, editor guidelines, a news leaderboard & topic discovery. These features are small steps towards engaging the Tumblr community with media orgs and surfacing the most engaging news of the day. Yahoo! News is currently featured on as a top contributor to #Libya tags which brings visibility to our account and post:

Those are my observations thus far and as I previously stated, your mileage may vary. Every news org or brand will have a different community and rates of audience engagement. With that being said, Tumblr is proving to be a robust platform for curating and discovering the news in real-time and I am excited to see what other goodies they’ll be adding for media organizations. One thing I’d really like to see is some kind of analytics dashboard that measures impressions, engagement rate, click through and sentiment. Until then, Tumblr “notes” are a good indicator of how content is received.

Here are my 5 interesting reads of the week:

Social media plays role in Egypt some expected in Iran
Today, Hosni Mubarak stepped down as the president of Egypt, after nearly 3 weeks of anti-government protests. Michael Calderone, media blogger for Yahoo! News writes about social media’s role in the country’s democratic uprise. There’s a lot of background behind the “social media revolution” debate but I think he sums it up quite nicely when he says, “dictators are toppled by people, not media platforms.” (Disclosure: Calderone and I both work for Yahoo! News)

Cracking the scratch lottery code
A fascinating read on how a geological statistician figured out how to crack lottery scratchers and a peek into the lottery business.

What stops female founders?
Jessica Livingston, founding partner of seed stage venture firm, Y Combinator, gives her thoughts on what’s stopping women from founding their own companies. She also talks about what stopped her from starting a company when she was in her mid-20′s. Though Livingston is writing specifically about women, I think her insight would be helpful for any aspiring entrepreneur.

The 4-hour startup: marketing it
Loren Burton writes about how he capitalized on the Snowpocalypse 2011 through internet marketing and riding a trend… all in 4 hours (according to him). Not too shabby.

20 SXSW Interactive panels that journalists should attend
I’m really excited to be going to SXSW this year (third time) and I’m also looking forward to hearing more about social media, journalism and news. This is a long list of panels so I’ll be pruning down and listing out some of the panels I’d like to go to very soon.

photo credit: MoneyBlogNewz

What makes something “go viral?”

That may be a question for  “Jenny,” an attractive girl who quit her office job through a series of photos with messages on a dry erase board. The photos were originally posted on theCHIVE.com (known for their viral hoaxes and pranks on the media) then spread like wildfire throughout the Internet, taking down almost every Twitter-er, blogger and Facebook-er on the web. By the end of the day, it was settled that the whole thing was a hoax. But, the brothers behind theCHIVE.com will be clearing the air and revealing more details about Jenny tomorrow.

I’m not so much interested in whether or not the story is a hoax but rather the marketing virility of Jenny and her whiteboard – the idea, components and execution that not only got the attention of tons of people on the web but is, what I believe, a beautifully executed viral campaign. Here are some of the components that I think made this story so viral:

1.  Attractive girl: This one is a no-brainer. Jenny is an attractive girl. Who doesn’t like looking at attractive girls? Next.

2.  Relatable: Almost anyone can sympathize with Jenny. She had high aspirations of being a broker and put up with her obnoxious boss’ temper, bad breath, and [insert any negative quality here]. Who hasn’t been in this position or at least had to listen to a loved one moan and groan about being in this position?

3.  Riding the trends: After yesterday’s theatrical JetBlue flight attendant meltdown, dramatic job exoduses are top of mind. Jenny was the cherry on amongst the sprinkles on top.

4.  Targeted seeding: In one of Jenny’s pictures, she notes her boss spent 5.3 hours a week reading TechCrunch, one of the most popular blogs about technology and startups. It’s only natural that TechCrunch would blog about it, which would lead to related blogs picking it up.

5.  Shareable: One of the most obvious components of viral videos but often overlooked – Jenny’s pictures on theCHIVE.com were highly shareable. Anybody who came across this blog post could seamlessly share it within a second and never look back.

Not only did those components make headlines today but they’re also a perfect example of any successful marketing campaign. It should be noted that the two other companies in Jenny’s slides were Farmville and Scottrade. Did the two companies have anything to do with Jenny and would I be surprised? Maybe and no.

Stay tuned for an update!

Photo courtesy of: quinn.anya

I’m publishing this at about 11pm so it’s not really happy hour… but doesn’t the title of this post sound fun? Humor me.

Here are 5 things I found on the internet this week that stood out to me. Hopefully, you’ll find them just as interesting.

[Balance]: The Secret to Happiness? Routines

[Business]: What I Learned from Anna Wintour

[Leadership]: Why Good People Skills Matter in a Recession

[New]: Oh, the things people will do for $5

[Visual]: From The New Yorker, Finger Painting: Evening Walk

Cheers!

photo credit: Bermico

People who don’t understand social media often think it’s just a bunch of “stupid status updates.” Well, sure… I guess you could look at it that way but it’s also a huge change in the way we read, understand and communicate with each other. It’s a change in the culture of content consumption.

Two parts of Cory Doctorow’s “How to Say Stupid Things About Social Media” reminded me of two things. First, the underpinnings of social media as linguistic anthropology. In other words, the internet, social networking and social media have changed the way some of us talk to each other and  switch between our online language and offline language. In the same way some people are bi-lingual, the switching of languages reflects and emphasizes identity. By this, I don’t necessarily mean acronyms like LOL or WTF; I mean words that are specific to social networks like “tweet”, “retweet”, and “OH:” (overheard) on Twitter.

Secondly, the “banality” of our online conversations as they relate to small talk in the office or an elevator. On the surface, awkward small talk. As a greater whole in the American culture? A way of building networks/alliances through recognizing personal details and emphasizing casual solidarity. Small talk is a huge part of how people understand and perceive each other.

People who are perplexed by how social networks often completely overlook these points. The points of social networking and small talk are so seemingly simple that they’re complex.

photo credit: jonny2love

As more brands are jumping on to Twitter, I’m starting to notice one thing: how poorly their Twitter bios are written. This is a detail that is often overlooked, which means brands are missing a big opportunity.

Let me give you an example: Say I casually mention that I happen to like Brand X over Brand Y. Brand X is active on Twitter, monitoring their brand (as all brands should be). Brand X sees I mentioned them, and they reach out to me by tweeting something back. I see Brand X in my @ replies tab, click on their name and check out their 160 character Twitter bio. Their very short bio says something like:

We are Brand X, the best something something. Founded in 1820, we’re the oldest Blah Blah Blah, serving original Blah Blahs to over 500,000 people.

Basically, Brand X just gave me some copy they took from the “about us” section on their website. I’m completely uninterested and that’s the end of that. Brand X just missed a huge opportunity — the opportunity to gain a vocal follower who shows an affinity for their brand. What would have been a better Twitter bio for their brand? Something along the lines of:

We tweet about blah blah, our exclusive discount codes,  and give away blah blahs every Monday and answer all customer service questions. We’re funny too!

What’s the difference? The second example entices me. I read the bio and I know right away what Brand X is offering, what value they will be adding to my Twitter stream and what kind of tweets I should expect to see.  Sure, I want exclusive discount codes. Yes, I want to learn more about office supplies and tips on how to clean my house organically; so yes, I will follow your brand’s Twitter account. If a brand simply writes a short bio on their history, their location or nothing at all, the chances of someone following that brand may dramatically decrease. I imagine that the average person glances over a Twitter bio for a couple seconds and either clicks “follow” or clicks the little X in the upper right hand corner of the browser or tab.

Soooo, in conclusion…Be clear with what your brand or business is offering through Twitter. Entice your followers. Take some time to think about it. Answer one question: Why would anyone want to follow my brand? And please, oh please, don’t just use pre-approved copy off your company website.

As social media is being adopted as a channel of communication for brands, consumers and no longer consumers and brands are no longer brands. Everybody is a somebody and we’re all just people. But one aspect of social media that businesses often forget is their corporate/employee social media policy.

Take for example, a waiter in Los Angeles who was fired over a message he sent on Twitter. Sure his tweet was a tad on the snarky side. Was it necessary? No. Was it his opinion? Yes. Do we now live in an age where one tweet or status update from an employee could cause a domino effect of angry customers and stakeholders? Yes. Even on their personal accounts? YES!

Having a corporate social media policy will not only protects a business from anything an employee says online but also can protect reputations. I also think having a social media policy can also empower employees to adopt social media because employees know where the lines are drawn and understand what they explicitly can or cannot say — no confusion = more confidence.

photo credit: Tim Morgan

photo credit: a4gpa

If you haven’t already heard, I have big news! I have left my role as Community Outreach Manager at Heavybag Media and accepted a position at FIJI Water as Marketing and Social Media Coordinator. Above everything, I am grateful for the opportunities, learning experiences and fun I had at Heavybag Media.

The opportunity at FIJI is a very exciting one and I can’t wait! As the social web changes, businesses are trying to find a way to meaningfully connect with their customers and build communities around their brands (through PR, customer service, marketing, sales etc). FIJI is a brand that understands this and strives to find innovative ways to stay relevant and connect with their online communities. Because of this, I am excited to be part of their online communication strategies as well as their traditional marketing efforts.

Additionally, I will continue to be active on the social web – tweeting, blogging, flickr’ing… etc. I also plan to still attend the LA technology, startup and social media events, so don’t you worry!

You can read more about my move here. Thanks to LA’s Lalawag for the kind words.