Infographic by Brendan& Brendan

If you haven’t already heard the news I’ve started a consulting firm - Brendan & Brendan - with a good friend of mine Brendan Tully Walsh. Yes, we realize it’s extremely convenient and totally awesome! I’d like to share this great quote from my partners wife:

“…it’s fate that my parents called me Brendan so that we could start a company together. She obviously didn’t consider the possibility of us meeting and starting a company called Brendan & Philbert”

Brendan and I are very passionate about marketing and we want to share the library of knowledge we’ve learned over the years working for a wide range of organizations. We want to help small businesses and startups learn from the mistakes we’ve made and benefit from our successes.

I know what you’re going to say, how is this new or different, what sets you apart from other firms or agencies providing similar services?

Nothing – except for us! We’re not your regular everyday cats. We’ve done some pretty cool stuff, worked for some really awesome organizations, and we have learned from all of this. We want to develop relationships with the organizations we work with, we want to be there for the long haul and help them get through it – if they’re successful, we’re successful!

We’ve had some recent success already and our client base is growing, if your interested take a look at what we have to offer and reach out for a chat – questions are always free

Before you read the following story, and this is no means a disclaimer, I just want to point out that I love living in Quebec and Montreal is an Amazing city! I speak both French and English but what happened this weekend is ridiculous!

The Story

A good friend of mine gave me a projector he was not using and this inspired me to build a home theater system in the basement for the family. For those of you who have done this or priced it out – I’ve been trying to convince my wife for years – you know that the biggest cost is the projector, anywhere from $1000 – $3000 depending on what you want or need. So, you can imagine the advantage of having one given to you at no cost

To save even more money we decided to build our own projection screen – lumber, hardware, and the screen itself (basically a very white sheet) – it cost just under $100 which is isn’t bad at all! We priced out screens and for a suitable home theater setup and the dimensions we wanted it would’ve started around $300.

However, the cost on the marriage of trying to build it together – that’s a whole other story

The only thing left to do was figure out how to hang the projector from the ceiling. We briefly considered DIY’ing this as well but quickly decided that since we already saved so much money why not just purchase a ceiling mount.

This is where it got tricky!

You wouldn’t think buying a projector ceiling mount from Future Shop or Best Buy would be so difficult – well, welcome to Quebec!

A quick search on both sites revealed a handful of models that would suit our needs perfectly at a reasonable cost. Just as we were about to click the “add to cart” button we noticed a small disclaimer:

Quebec residents, click here for shipping restrictions

This could not be good … the outcome:

Quebec Shipping Restrictions

Currently, our suppliers and/or manufacturers are only providing this product in English which is not in compliance with the Quebec language legislation.  Therefore, it is not available for shipping within the province of Quebec.  Customers within Quebec may still purchase this product as long as it is shipped to a province outside of Quebec.

WTF! Unbelievable! You gotta be kidding me! Just a few things that immediately came to mind.

It is absolutely ridiculous that in this day and age we don’t have the right to purchase a product from a Canadian site simply because we live in a province with archaic laws! The fact that the product does not come with a French version of the instructions is not a reason to disallow my freedom to purchase!

I could understand if it was in-store, but online – really? Don’t get me wrong, I get that many people in my province do not speak English as second language or speak any English at all, but there are other models with French instructions they can buy – or they can just follow the pictures like everybody else! Most English speakers don’t read the instructions anyways

All that aside, both Future Shop and Best buy, and I will assume other electronic stores, cary 1 or 2 models in-store that have both English and French instructions, however, the models they carry are the most expensive ones! This leads me to believe, here comes the conspiracy theory, that they do this on purpose just to make more money!

Now, I don’t want to get to political, but I asked a few of my French Canadian friends and they find this to be ridiculous as well – in fact a few of them mentioned they had the same problem.

It’s bad enough as Canadians we are already restricted to certain consumer products on other sites like Amazon, eBay, Apple, etc., but this is outrageous! The entire country minus Quebec can by this projector mount – does this really make any sense?

I did a bit of research and it seams that Quebec does not have a Consumer Rights Council, that I could find, this is based on the fact that I found one for many other provinces. However, there is a Canadian Consumer Handbook for Online Shopping. Reading through the handbook I cannot find any mention of not being able to purchase do to language restrictions. Does this mean, once again, Quebec has found a loophole around Federal policies?

However, I did manage to find a government site, in French only – don’t get me started – on online purchasing that has ZERO information – in fact the site looks like it was never even completed! You be the the judge >>> Service Québec – Achat par Internet.

Suffice to say I still don’t have a ceiling mount!

If you live in Quebec or have friends and family that do you are probably aware of the many struggles both English and French citizens deal with on a daily basis do to an abundance of language laws that make no sense and that most people, regardless of their mother tongue, agree with, but this is just taking it way to far!

That being said I love my province but it’s time for it to grow up!

So why am I writing this?

As a marketing and social media consultant this is the first task I perform for any new client. For organizations that I have already done an audit for I highly recommend they do it quarterly to keep track. What amazes me is how often I’m sitting in a board room meeting a client for the first or second time and when I bring up “Social Media Audit” they look at me like a deer in headlights! This is nothing new, yet many organizations have never taken the time to do it!

Every audit is different and  not all clients or organizations are seeking the same results. Audit’s can be conducted for a myriad reasons – quarterly audits, brand refresh, organizational restructuring, marketing campaigns, startup strategies, etc. Here’s a list of things I look for when conducting an audit, please feel free to add any points in the comments you think should be reviewed as well.

Profiles

• Security - Nobody wants there brand hijacked! Make sure you sign up on on every network, yes every single one to ensure your brands security. Performing an audit will identify what’s missing.
• Level of Completion – No one is active on every network but you should make sure at least the basic information on your profile is complete to ensure brand consistency: logo, description, contact, important links.
• Landing Pages - make sure you are using landing pages and if your are make sure the information is up to date. Do a complete inventory of analytics on each page.

Here’s an example of how I would outline current profiles in the audit:

Branding

• Graphic Elements –  Believe it or not but this is an area where most people fail. Way to often I come across brands whose graphics are drastically different from platform to platform . For example; their Facebook cover and Google plus page cover aren’t consistent with the brands message. Consistency is key!
• Voice - If you don’t have a content style guide you should considering developing one! Take a look at all you social communications to ensure the message, the terminology, and writing style are in align with the brand.

Social Media Channels and Blog – I’ve included blog here because we are looking for similar results (this could be debated).

• Frequency - If you have a calendar, and you should, make sure it is being followed! Timing is everything and if you push fresh relavant content frequently through channels your readership and membership will grow.
• Content - Have you defined your verticals? Are you A/B testing? It’s crucial to understand what ”type” of content is driving traffic and generating leads. If it ‘s not working pivot!
• Comments - Are you getting comments? How many? Are they insightful? Comments are essential in understand the sentiment and engagement of your readers – are they positive, neutral, or negative? Measure the results and act on it!
• Calendar - This is a MUST! Without a calendar you are publishing content blind. If you have a calendar make sure it is being adhered to.

Other on-site Social Elements

• Reviews and Ratings - I there a mechanism for this? Are they being monitored? Are the reders encouraged to make to do it and if so are there any incentives?
• Forums - This is a whole other beast and it requires a lot of attention and nurturing. Make sure there is a plan in place, guidelins, moderators. Figure out who your top contributors are? How is it being used?
• Sharing Mechanisms - Sharing is caring! All you content should have a mechanism for to be shared all over the web.

Content

• Type - Define the types of content you want to publish: news, reviews, pics, polls, insight, etc.
• Schedule or Plan - see Calendar above.
• Style Guide - Just like a marketing style guide social requires one as well. Make sure the content is consistent and the guide is being followed.

Tracking

• Analytics - Take a look at the current data for all websites: visits, unique visits, retentions, bounce rate, new users, page views, etc.
• Sentiment - What are people saying about your brand? Is is positive, neutral, or negative?
• Engagement & Reaction - Are users engaged? Are they talking about you? Are they talking with you? Are they sharing?
• Impressions - Track all impressions on all social channels.
• Follows and Likes - Track the number of likes and follows and watch for growth and decline.
• Comments - Track the number of comments per post.
• Sharing - Track the number of shares per post.

Tool Sets being Utilized

• What’s Missing - Are there any tools that are not being used to track, measure, share, etc.
• What’s Unnecessary - Are there tools being used that are unnecessary, can we save money here?

Offline Presence - Merging your online and offline presence is essential. Make sure you are attending the right conferences, camps, meetups, etc. Are you applying to speak at events? Are you organizing meetups? Are you exhibiting at trade shows?

Social Touch-Points –  Is your staff socializing on your organizations behalf? If so what are they saying? Make note of everything being said.

Competitor Analysis

• Who - Who are you competitors?
• What – What are they doing? Track their campaigns, follow them on all platforms, check them out at events. You need know what works for them and what doesn’t so that you can be ahead of the game and/or not make the same mistakes as them.

Next Steps – The next steps will be different in each case. However based on the above audit you will have compiled a list of key findings that will help improve or define all areas of strengths and weaknesses. This could include building calendars, defining content verticals, creating a style guide, etc.

Every audit is different and accessibility to different data varies based on the organization you are working with. If done right and often the learning can yield great potential.Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

image credit: geek & poke

Just the other day I was having coffee with an old colleague of mine who is working for a small startup as their community manager and was seeking some guidance. The company she is working for is asking and expecting certain tasks and goals to be fulfilled by her that she feels she is not necessarily capable of achieving nor is it really the responsibility of a community manager to do. I’m fully aware that in a startup you need where many hats, but those hats should at least fit even if they don’t look good!

This is a common problem – companies are not hiring the right community manager to represent their product, service, or brand!

I’ve been a community manager for many years at various levels for every kind of corporation, startup, agency, online community, and for my own projects. I’ve made many mistakes over the years, but with mistakes comes learnings, and those learnings have served me well not only as a community manager but as a community builder, evangelist, and all around social guy. It takes a certain kind of person to fit this role “correctly” and yes there is a correct way to do it!

If you google “What makes a great community manager” or something along those lines you will come across a ton posts on the subject. Most of the information you will come across is pretty standard and for all intense purposes true, however, no one has ever really defined concisely what the roles and responsibilities are for a community manager ! It’s not like defining a plumber

The title community manger gets thrown around a lot these days and is in-accurately used in most organizations. I come across job postings daily for community managers where they list responsibilities like email marketing, search engine optimization, ppc campaigns, etc. What about community management experience, or forum moderation, or people skills … they’re not looking for a community manager they’re looking for a marketer – not the same!

I was going to list what I thought were skills that a great community manager should have, however I came across the following posted by Patrick O’keefe founder of iFroggy and wanted to share it with you.

• Attention to detail, to ensure that every moderation decision made is the right one, that mistakes are corrected and that details are taken care of.
• Strong communication skills. The written word is tricky enough and a lot of people aren’t able to communicate in a sensitive enough way. Being able to do so cuts down on the number of challenges that you face.
• A mind for policy. Writing guidelines for the social spaces that you manage is important because it helps everyone to understand what is and isn’t OK. The ability to write and adjust policy is important.
• Good reading skills, enabling good moderation. A big part of the job is ensuring that your community remains focused at it’s core audience. You have to be able to read content and determine whether or not it is a violation of your guidelines.
• Being kind, fair and consistent. You have to be able to apply those guidelines in a way that is fair and consistent. If they are violated, you have to fairly and evening apply them to everyone – no matter who it is.
• Organizational skills. You will likely have a lot of balls in the air.
  You have to be able to keep it organized and not get overwhelmed.
• Leadership capabilities are important. They need to be able to lead a team that believes in one another and can take direction.
• Technical savvy. They don’t need to be a programmer or a web designer, but some basic proficiency with the web and how it works goes a long way.
• A strong self awareness. Members of the community take cues on how to act from you. I am very careful about what I say and how I say it. You have to be a good influence.
• The ability to participate and talk with the community about things that aren’t to do with the management of it. So, participating in normal discussions, for example, that don’t specifically have to do with the community. The best community managers tend to be active participants in their communities.
• Passion for community. This is tough because everyone will tell you they have it. A passion for a topic is not the same as a passion for running a community around that topic because most everything you will do in managing a community takes you away from simply discussing and enjoying the topic.
• Patience and being able to laugh things off. People will call you every name in the book (Hitler, Stalin, Gestapo, soccer mom). You have to sort through that and not let it bother you too much.
• Comfort with being accessible to people. Members of your community will contact you and they won’t always do it through the proper channels. You still have to help them and guide them back through those channels. You can’t flip out because they found your personal email address online.
• You have to be able to make a decision. You can weigh options, ask for feedback, listen to people and consider it all carefully. But, you must be able to make hard choices in a timely fashion.

Back to problem!

Let’s say I’m hiring a community manager for an Interior Design company. I should be asking very specific questions about the industry: Are you an interior designer or do you have any interior design experience? Are you familiar with the products we use? Are you passionate about design? Do you stay current by reading magazines, blogs, or watching interior design shows on TV? Are you familiar with or know key influencers online in this area? Do you belong to any interior design offline or online communities, associations, etc.? Have you ever managed a community of interior designers? You get the point!

Yes, all the skills listed above are crucial and experience as a “real” community manager online is essential, but that is not good enough! The right community manager should be passionate and knowledgeable about the industry they are representing – otherwise the community will see right through scripted responses and sales pitches. A strong community manager needs to earn the trust of the community they are managing.

I’ll borrow another great quote from Patrick:

Great community managers work at great companies that believe in the idea and value of community. Companies that ask their community managers to routinely and repeatedly prove the value of community don’t offer the environment where a community manager can flourish. Community is a long term game and you can’t build long term if you are concerned that they’ll shut you down short term.

Above and beyond – community managers need to take risks, be adventurous, and most importantly they need to constantly ask them selves what’s best for their community and the company they are representing.

I don’t have any hard sats to prove the following but from experience this is why most companies fail in their efforts to build, manage, and maintain successful communities – they don’t believe in or understand the value of community and hire the wrong community manager!

I hope this helps!

I’m interested in hearing your stories or thoughts on this subject.

Recently I came across yet another social aggregator app for iPhone, Undrip, like other apps of its kind it pulls feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Path, Pinterest, etc., into its elegant interface. However, it doesn’t show you every single status update like ridiculous checkins, invites, what movies you recently watched on Netflix, and how big your farm is. It’s an intelligent aggregator that reduces all this noise and only brings you the content you want from your friends, colleagues, and other interesting sources you have chosen!

What I love about Undrip is it’s elegant and minimal interface: easy to use and understand, clean design and intelligent. They’ve also made it a lot of fun by creating their own Undrip lingo:

• drip = share
• ripples = who’s talking about it and where
• flow – personal timeline
• downpour = global timeline

… and they’ve added some quirky design elements like a Mr. Rogers loading icon:

and my personal favourite the Mr. T unlock screen:

Let’s face it we all download tons of apps each year to push data from our various social accounts to our phones and tablettes – why bother if you can get what you really want  in one place and with cool features like “downpour” which deactivates filters and shows you content from all over the web or an “interesting people” tab that suggests top content curators on the web this is easy!

Since downloading Undrip I find my self using Facebook and Twitter less often for sourcing, it’s just mush easier. Undrip also allows you to take advantage of features like retweeting direct to Twitter or liking and commenting on Facebook from within its interface.

So, if you have not heard of Undrip now’s the time to fix your fossett and reduce the noise – go check it out!

On a side note – when I first downloaded Undrip and started playing with it I Instgram’ed a photo of the dashboard, almost instantly I received an RT  and thank you from @mickhagen founder of Undrip, which lead to an interesting twitter conversation – that’s a company who understands community and it’s pretty cool to see them reach out like that!

Last month I was contacted by Marketing Magazine to discuss a potential article on Social Media guy’s like me – grass roots off the cuff no holds bar community manager branding lone wolf – leaving the world of startups and freelance to climb the corporate ladder as the “in-house” Social Media guy – about a year ago that’s exactly what I did when I left Vanilla Forums and joined the Mega Bloks team as their Sr. Community Manager!

Looking back, it was a balsy move to leave the world I knew so well and had built a reputation for my self  in and to naively think I could apply all those learnings to the corporate world of retail. It was not failure by any means, it was a massive hurtle and an everyday learning curve to survive – and I did!

… back to the point of this post …

So, the guys at Marketing Magazine wanted to interview me for a piece they were calling “2012 Salary Benchmarks Are You Worth It?” and explained I was one of 3 other guys like myself they were interviewing for this article – so being that I love the limelight and I considered it an honour to be in their magazine I graciously accepted.

What I did not know is that I would get a full page spread of my hairy mug surrounded by Mega Bloks shot in my home – pretty AWESOME! I also did not know it would be a 3 page article mostly focused around my interview, suffice to say my mommy  is very proud!

It was a great experience working with the team over at Marketing Magazine and I truly do feel honoured to have been chosen for this and ego aside – well not really – it’s a great piece and turning point in my career.

What’s Ironic about this is that the day it hit magazine stands across Canada was my last day at Mega Bloks – I’m now a free agent!

The article is not available online, hard copy only, so go grab one at magazine stand near you!

Photo by EvaBlue

Hello world!

Yes it has been a while since I have posted on my own blog – I know, ridiculous!

Well, I have a good excuse – the last year of my life has been – a roller coaster – to say the least. As many of you know just over a year ago I left Vanilla Forums to join Mega Bloks as their Sr. Community Manager, I had my second child, and I co-founded PressWork.

In the past year I focused my efforts on helping Mega Bloks build their social identity from the ground up. I had the opportunity to work in an industry I had never been a part of before, I met some amazing people, and travelled to some incredible destinations all in the name of toys and construction – it was wonderful!

In my spare time I was working on PressWork, I quit smoking and started a new blog about vaping, continued to help lead the Montreal WordPress community and organize WordCamp Montreal, and most importantly grew as a husband and father!

The knowledge and experience I have gained over the past few years far outweighs the many mistakes I have made in this industry – we all make mistakes – and I am ready for the next adventure – after all being a grass roots marketing brand social blogging guy I have learned to expect the un-expected and embrace change -because if you do I what I do you know that the road can be very long and tiring or just suddenly end and you need to jump off the cliff – yes a paragraph of cliches

Ok, so what does the future hold for digibomb?

Stepping down from WordCamp Montreal

Yes it is true! After 5+ years of leading and organizing it is time for me to pass the baton. You can read the official post here.

I’m a free agent!

If you didn’t figure out it out from the opening of this post or if you have not heard the news yet I am no longer with Mega Bloks as their Sr. Community Manager. The last year has truly been an eye opener and I have grown immensely as a community manager, social media strategist, blogger, brander, etc … I’m happy about the change and I’m looking forward to getting back to my roots – as in not the in-house guy for a corporation not that there is anything wrong with that.

Another side project – BigVapers 

When I quite smoking over 6 months ago I used an electric cigarette – it worked! However, it opened up a whole new world to me – vaping – yes there is a massive global  community of ex-smokers who are now vapers, like me! I started a blog about vaping called BigVapers and as the community grew I decided to start my own side business and become a vendor of eJuice – the stuff we vape!

I’m not exactly sure what the future holds for me, but I know it will be excellent, all my journeys tend to end that way!

I have lots of free time these days so if your looking for a good chat over a coffe or beer or if you have an interesting offer for me hit me up on twitter, facebook, or here on the blog!

I have been a WordPress developer, designer, blogger, enthusiast, fan, leader, organizer, and community member since version 1.8 – yes I’m using version numbers to lay out my timeline

I’ll try to make this post as short and sweet as I can – as many of you know that is difficult for me – but here we go!

WordPress changed my life - literarily! In the beginning I was a simple vb, java, c+, php, css, html, etc developer working freelance and teaching part-time at Seneca College in Toronto. I was teaching a PHP class to designers – yes I know – and I needed a simple way to help get them started and I came across WordPress. This was my first real delve into the world of open source, community, etc. I decided to use WordPress as a way to teach these students by building simple themes. Not only was it a success we started the first WordPress meetup in Toronto. The following semester we offered an official WordPress class, because it had become so popular with the students. Now, as far as I have been told this was the first official WordPress class taught in a higher learning institution in Canada – pretty cool!

This changed my life! I started building themes and plugins for fun and eventually turned it into a business. I started speaking at WordCamp’s around North America and was even called “the un-official WordPress evangelist” by some. Eventually I became an organizer and that led me back to Montreal.

Like I said short and sweet – I cut out a few years and tons of cool moments, people, stories, etc. Want to know more? Buy me a drink sometime

Moving forward …

I have decided to step down as one of the organizers of WordCamp Montreal! It is not an easy thing to do, but I have been a WordPress community leader and WordCamp organizer in 2 major Canadian cities for 5+ years and though my love for WordPress has not wavered I feel it is time to let other passionate community members take a go at it -after all – community is not owned it is shared!

I would like to thank all the amazing people over the years who have helped contribute to the success of many events and a growing community of passionate, motivated, and vocal community members. I have had the pleasure of working with some exceptional sponsors, volunteers, and organizers.

I would like to send a special thank you to Jeremy Clarke for giving me the opportunity to become a BIG part of the Montreal WordPress community – for those of you who don’t know the story I met Jeremy at WordCamp Toronto 2009. I had invited him to speak (I was the organizer) he retuned the favour by asking me to speak in Montreal that year. We became friends and 4 moths later I moved my family to Montreal, started a new life, and joined Jeremy to help organize WordCamp Montreal 2010 … the rest is history!

Being a community leader and camp organizer has taught me many things about the industry, WordPress, and people and these learnings will only help strengthen my personal and professional lives – thank YOU!

I’m am still passionate about WordPress and will continue to remain a vocal member of the community and look forward to another successful WordCamp in 2013.

Ok … I’m getting teary eyed

WordPress Montreal is in good hands with Jeremy, Karl, and Shannon!