My Best Buy Contest Submission

The following job description is my submission to the Best Buy job description contest... nothing to win but for a lil' writing fame.

RESPONSIBILITIES
The Sr Manager, Emerging Media Marketing must be able to, first of all, create an acronym for his or her title because saying the “Sr Manager, Emerging Media Marketing” each time the position is referred to will contradict one of the qualifications below: Efficiently manage one’s time. For the purpose of this job description, we will use “SM,EMM”, it’s up to you whether you wish to recognize the pause dictated by the comma in the title (however, please reread the qualification about time management).

The SM,EMM must be responsible, as this section suggests. Responsibility means being relied upon to make sound decisions on one’s own in accordance with the company message and be accountable for such decisions in the areas of strategy, budget and management. It also means that the employee mustn’t @ reply when the tweet called for the privacy of a DM. In emerging media, it is important to be authentic and accountable or someone will bust you. It is also important to remember that an organization has fewer than four hours to respond to any misleading or improper information posted online (such as videos taken by employees in the back of the store), therefore the SM,EMM must be available 24/7 in case of such emergencies.

This employee is required to understand as much as possible about the brands, products, initiatives and services of the company or, when in doubt, leverage the general public for the correct information since the internet has more information and has proven to be quicker to report it than any other medium.

There are a billion people in the world that can use the tools that the SM,EMM will have to use and there are a many who can tell a story, but few that can do both. The SM,EMM must be a master in the art of persuasive non-fiction through the channels of emerging media. Long gone are the days of epic public relations fables, today’s communications specialist must be eloquently pithy.

The SM,EMM must not only be virtual, but must interact with real people, as well. This position will serve as the liaison between the company and our agency partners. Developing a network to accomplish tasks is a must in this position and the SM,EMM should be an inspirational manager for all direct reports (a box of donuts goes a long way).

Be creative.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
Basic qualifications are like the sign at the amusement park, “You must be this tall to ride.”

• Equally be able to speak and write in proper English, but squeeze a message into as few characters as possible without sacrificing comprehension.
• Understand the difference between dialogue and monologue; in other words, the difference between conversation and broadcast.
• Efficiently manage one’s time. We realize that it’s very easy to get sucked into comments on status updates, so avoiding it when it isn’t in accordance with the company mission is a necessity.
• The internet is the best place to lie—you can be anyone you want online—therefore the SM,EMM must be real and truthful. The “Poke in the Arm” test may be administered at the interview.
• Be able to work with the following sites/tools: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Plaxo, Google, Alltop, Backtype, Blogger, Ning, Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Squidoo, Twitter Grader, Friend or Follow, delicious, Slideshare, YouTube, Vimeo, StumbleUpon, Digg, PRWeb, Scribd, Flickr, WordPress, TypePad, Technorati, IceRocket, Tumblr, TipJoy, Alexa, Wikipedia, and BaseCamp (this list may change, in fact will change, with daily frequency).
• Understand the following acronyms: RSS, SEM, SEO, PPC, CPM, CPC, LOL, IMHO, WTF, API, B2C, B2B, CTR, IM, PV, RON, WWW, TTYL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, WYSIWYG and, most importantly, RTFM.
• Own a smartphone (at least one) and have a bountiful data/text plan.
  

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Preferred qualifications are like paying for the picture that was taken at the end of the roller coaster ride; they’re nice, but not necessary.

• The Triple Crown of social networking: 1000 Twitter followers, 500 Facebook friends and 250 LinkedIn connections.
• Finalist in the speed-juggling of tasks across multiple browsers, browser tabs, desktop applications and devices.
• Nimbly tactile; no fumble-fingers will be hired.
• Understand and be able to operate under both intended and emergent strategies (be proactive and reactive).
• Viral, but not contagious.
  

OTHER
It is a common misnomer that multi-tasking is a desired job requirement. We are looking for someone who realizes that multi-tasking means that nothing is getting your full attention. Therefore, we prefer that the SM,EMM be able to transition between tasks quickly and fluidly without loss of energy or heat.

Being in “the now” is a must in this day and age. Pavlovian responses in meetings to texts, cell phones calls, instant messages, email dings, Skype bloops or calendar alarms will not be looked upon with favor. We recommend the SM,EMM be able to show up to meetings with paper and pen.

Have read the following: Made to Stick, The Tipping Point, Good to Great, Cluetrain Manifesto, New Rules of Marketing & PR, Groundswell, Tribes, Here Comes Everybody, Naked Conversations, Freakanomics, and Wisdom 2.0 (applicant will be asked to provide a book report for each).

Please vote for my job description NOW! The contest has ended, but feel free to visit the Best Buy IdeaX web site.

1 Email = 1 Thing

I follow about thirty RSS feeds, not many, but a mixture of friends and well-known professionals. Add to that about another twenty email newsletters and I think I get a healthy smattering of what people think works best for their readership.

Lately, I've noticed some things that FAIL for me.

1 EMAIL = 1 THING
My friends in Silicon Valley, the Seminoffs, once said, "You can save a whole lot of money and skip a business education if you just do this... when sending an email, make it about one thing."

Not three things, six things or four things--ONE THING. We like to read in bite-sized nuggets. This concept applies to many forms of communication: email, blog posts, advertising, web site copy. The attention span of multi-tasking humans is very short because we're not reading the paper at the breakfast table anymore. We're skimming the feed reader or checking out the first paragraph of the shared link on Facebook. The USA TODAY is a prime example of bite-sized nugget news, as is the full day's worth of news every half hour that you can find on the various 24-hour news channels.

I've recently started following a blog called "Newspaper Death Watch" because I've been speaking to a fascinating gentleman in the KC area that is working hard to re-invent the dying industry. This blog is making one post per day, great, but the problem is that their solitary post is really 4-5 posts rolled into one post. Unfortunately, I know this, but I still rarely read past the first nugget in my feed reader for their daily post. If they were to cut those additional items out and paste them into multiple posts, then I'd be more apt to read them.

It's not 1 Post = 1 Thing; it's 1 Post = 5 Things.

Why? The problem is that reading their daily post is kinda like reading the bill and then the earmarks added to the bill. A headline captures my eye and prompts me to read more. When I discover that there are additional, unrelated items at the end of the item that captured my attention... well, I get annoyed and I opt out. If you break them up into their own posts, then I can scan the headlines and choose to read the other items that interest me.

The second problem is that if I share this post on a social network, like Facebook, then my friends only see the first paragraph of the lead item. In fact, if I thought a friend was interested in a sub-item I'd have to cut and paste it into an email instead of leveraging the ability to share it because it's buried in the post. Newspaper Death Watch is missing out on an opportunity for me to send specific bite-sized nuggets.

In the business world, I've found that I can get a quick response if I use the 1 Email = 1 Thing philosophy because I also try to make the email short and to the point. Recipients have stated that they like getting short emails even if there are several of them to address. Humans inherently want to check off tasks and they will address the easy ones before the hard ones, so take advantage of that by making your emails quick, understandable and easy to answer.

Move to the top of the pile, 1 Email = 1 Thing.

OWWWyang & Social Media Questions

I'm not a fan of Jeremiah Owyang because his writing style is quite pompous... and since I don't know him then his writing style gets translated to his character (If you're a cool dude, sorry man). However, I pay attention to his blog RSS feed (I couldn't stand following him on Twitter anymore) because there are some interesting nuggets that pop up once in awhile... like today.

Four Social Media Questions You Must Answer During an Economic Downturn

"Must" answer is exactly what I'm talking about when I say "pompous." No one has to answer anything and I'm not convinced that these 4 questions are the right 4, but that is a post for another day.

1. Is social media usage going to increase or decrease?
   Increase. If for no other reason than that technology gives brands better tools each day to monitor what is being said by consumers about them online which, in turn, gives them a low-cost opportunity to carry a 1-to-1 conversation.
2. Will brands and marketers increase spending and will the economic downturn force efficiencies or vetting of unproven business models?
   I combined his second and fourth questions because advances in technology can actually help to keep cost down by providing ways for us to optimize our time spent tracking and responding to social media opportunities.
3. Will social media improve comm within a business?
   This is a question that doesn't seem to fit the "must answer" part of his blog entry, but sure... forming groups that bring together certain stakeholders in a business can help, but nothing thus far has approached the effectiveness of what you can accomplish in one hour of face-to-face meetings.

I don't think I have too many social media / influence marketing folks reading my blog, but if you have an opinion, I'd love to hear from you.