I’ve worked from home, on and off, since 2000.  The total is something like 7 years over the last 13, and I think I can safely say that working at home works for me. It doesn’t work for everyone, though, and I think one of the reasons why is that working from home is something many need to learn to do successfully rather than something that comes naturally. For me, its the following:

1. Having set office hours – While I work part time, for the most part, I have a set time I’m either working or take meetings. “Winging it” does not work.
2. Having childcare – Working at home is not a substitute for childcare, especially when they are mouthy and under 5.  A report written whilst Thomas the Tank Engine plays in the background is a crappy report.
3. Making it like a regular workday – Getting dressed, scheduling breaks, and making sure I eat on a normal schedule.
4. Have goals & reporting set – Set your goals (report due by X day, weekly updates, ongoing project deadlines) so that you keep yourself on track.
5. Getting out – occasionally getting out of the office to go to meetings, educational events, or lunch with clients.
6. Turning off – Making sure I delineate between “Work” and “Not work” by turning off my email, social networks and other stuff for family time. (This is the one I struggle with because checking email is SO EASY.)

While there are differences between working for yourself from home and working from an employer from home, I honestly think back on the past decade plus and realize that all the best practices I use now are things that formed while I was working for an organization. Has anyone else done both? (And what works for you?)

This isn’t the first time someone has asked me about how organizations that deal with sensitive issues (for example: at-risk youth or individuals in crisis situations) can use social media without risking client information being shared (either by staff or the clients themselves).  Since this was the third or fourth time I’d been asked something similar in the last few months, I decided to pick up the phone and call an old friend.  Shari Allwood is the Director of SMART Recovery, an organization that helps individuals’ recovery from addictive behaviors.  SMART was a client of mine when I first started consulting back in the dark ages, and over the past four years, they’ve incorporated Facebook, Twitter, and a blog (with comments) into their communication strategy.  Because SMART works with individuals at all stages of recovery, I figured Shari would be able to give me the skinny on what they do to ensure that the information of individuals who participate in the program stays off their social channels.

“Our solution to the issue is to monitor our channels heavily – we have a team of individuals dedicated to not only running our social media accounts, but also to monitoring them for problems,” Shari says.  “While we haven’t had too many problems over the years, we have had instances where monitoring our channels has helped prevent participants from oversharing in a public space. Monitoring Facebook is particularly important, because most people connect with their real names, rather than on Twitter or on a blog, where individuals are likely to use pseudonyms.”

If you are an organization that deals with sensitive issues, and are considering starting a social media channel for communication, here is what we recommend:

1 – Have a social media usage policy for staff & volunteers ­ ­- While I’ve talked before about social media policies, it is very important for organizations that deal with sensitive issues to have one in place.  This includes outlining specifically what can and cannot be said about clients, and, in some instances, providing guidance whether or not staff, volunteers & clients can (or should) connect on social media sites.

2 – Before you start, clearly outline what types of content you will share – For example, if you do share success stories in your offline communications, how will you share them online? Do you share pictures of events? Do you only provide “need to know” information or do you want to share the organization’s viewpoint on key issues in your industry? Identifying the types of content that will be posted on your social media sites can help you overcome some of the risk associated with using social media.

3 – If possible, educate participants – In the case of SMART, there is a message board for participants to join, and SMART educates individuals signing up to not use their real names and recommends against sharing identifying information.  Your organization could include some standard disclaimers against posting specific information for individuals.

4 – Have a monitoring plan –Have a team in place to monitor your channels.  If you use volunteers, it may be easier to have more than one person keeping their eye on each channel.  If you just have staff, try to have more than one individual in charge of monitoring – asking one person to keep their eye on multiple channels all day, every day, is setting them up for missing something when life steps in.

Do you run a social media channel that deals with sensitive issues? How does your organization approach it?

Really great, timely messaging from Oreo.  For a great look at how they did it, take a look at this CNET article. Note the key takeaways here: everyone was on board, the people manning the account had agency, and they seized an opportunity.

…and I think my feelings on the rest of the ads is left unsaid, because I am a horrible old grump.

1) You can’t.

2) Ok, you kind of can, but you need to be really, really specific. Things like “Don’t talk about work” don’t really fly. Things like “Don’t release confidential data like client records, account numbers, or the recipe for the secret sauce.” There are changing standards every single day.

3) Then I provide them with some great examples of social media policies, many of which come from here.  I also look to see if there are other organizations in their industry with policies available to view.

4) And then I remind them that I’m not a lawyer, never have been lawyer, don’t ever want to be a lawyer, and that if they institute a policy they really, really, really need to clear it with legal just like they would any other policy.

As lines between “home” and “work” and “public” and “private” blur, we are already all butting up against navigating work & home in public. The recent article in the New York Times highlighted some changes that have emerged as the National Labor Relations Board has made some rulings on cases in which individuals have been fired for talking about work online. The gist of their decisions is that employees have a right to discuss working conditions both on and off line.

For anyone interested in this subject, I highly recommend reading the NYT article. I’m also trying to dig into the NLRB reports, but I haven’t had time yet to read them in depth. It is SUCH a fascinating topic, and one I think we’ll see major changes with over the next year or so.

It’s not really the world of tomorrow, its the world of today, but if you don’t start off the first blog post of a year with a Futurama quote, you don’t start a year off right.

2012 was good to me, in that I:

• Got to speak at some excellent events. Though I didn’t write about it at the time, my favorite was when I went down for a Lincoln AMA luncheon and ended up being the speaker because a close friend (who was the real speaker) had her flight canceled at the last minute. It was fun, because it proved to me that if you know your topic, you can wing it if necessary. Notes aren’t needed.
• Got to go to some even more excellent events. I attended my first BarCamp Omaha, I went to the TEDxOmaha event, and, for the third year in a row, I got to get a behind the scenes look at ICAN’s Women’s Leadership Conference. Even though I only help with a tiny, little part of it, I’m always amazed at how a small team can put on such a great event.
• Relaunched this website…and then got too busy to update it much.
• Worked with clients (old and new) and got to learn about entire new industries.  I think my favorite client experience this year was sitting with the customer service team of a new client, listening to them take calls. Customer Service is a hard job, and often a thankless one.  Next time you talk to someone in customer service, be nice to them. Say thank you. They need it.
• Joined the Omaha Chamber of Commerce like a normal business person.

As I look into 2013 (even though I hate resolutions), I have three goals for 2013 as far as they relate to work:

• Market myself and my work a better. They say the doctor’s kids get sick and shoemaker’s kids go shoeless. Well, sometimes marketers are the worst at marketing their work.  I plan to take some time in January to start looking at how I can tell my own personal story a bit better. My biggest goal is how to do it without looking like a total cheeseball.
• Get more involved in the Omaha business community. I used to be very active in the Omaha AMA, and when I had my son in 2009, I stepped far back from any sort of community involvement. I was burnt out, and motherhood was almost too much. Now that he’s a bit older and I have a somewhat normal schedule, I would really like to get more involved again.  Joining the Chamber was a start, but I feel like there is a lot more out there if I could find the time. If anyone knows of some good networks for women in business, let me know. I’d really like to start there.
• Do more mentoring. Back when I worked for a regular company, I mentored all the time (though goodness knows why ANYONE felt I could give decent advice about anything). I loved doing it, and on occasion I’ve given advice to colleges & friends who were looking to work for themselves, do what I do, or even figure out what they want to do.  I really like doing that, so again, if you know of anyone (or any organization) that does that kind of stuff, let me know.

All in all, I’m looking forward to 2013.

Names hidden to protect That Guy.

It was oddly compelling and (evidently) convincing.  I saw former colleagues – who work with Facebook regularly – fall prey to the trend.  And it is easy to see why – legal language, empowerment of the individual, and everyone else was doing it, so it must be right, RIGHT? Not at all (and if you want to know why it won’t work, read this Mashable article).

The second was the photo of Nolan Daniels, the Facebook user who alleged he won the Powerball jackpot, and promised to share $1 million with a random user who posted his photo. Again, it wasn’t true, but over 500,000 people shared the photo, according to All Facebook.

Why do we keep falling prey to untrue stories shared via social media? And how can you fact check stuff you see so you aren’t contributing to a false news cycle, and looking like a dingdong?

I think the answer to the first question is simple – false stories can sound legitimate on first read, and social media doesn’t incite introspection or even close reading.  You see something, you have an emotional reaction, you hit share, or take action, and then you move on.

To answer the second question, I would say that you need to take another step between having an emotional reaction to something and hitting share or taking action.

Fact check. 

Oh my gosh, I know, you aren’t a journalist, and it sounds like a lot of work, and you just want to SHARE SOMETHING, darn it. But do you really want to share something that isn’t true? Do you want to pass on misinformation?

I don’t, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either.

Here’s the deal: It’s 2012, and we’ve got Google.  You don’t have to be a journalist or a paid fact checker to use tools available to you to make sure what you post is legitimate .  When I see something that pings my spidey sense, here is what I do:

• Google it – Before you share anything that seems too good to be true, Google it. In the case of the Facebook privacy language, I copied and pasted the language, and searched for that.  After doing a bit of reading, I also did a search for “Posting privacy language to Facebook,” which came up with several articles about the trend.
• Visit Snopes.com – Long before Google was even a verb, Snopes was collecting urban legends and righting misinformation.  Before the rise of social media, Snopes was the place that you could go to see if that email your aunt forwarded you was real or not. Snopes doesn’t just cover urban legends – it also covers spam, email forwards, social shares and other trending items.
• Check Mashable – For the last several months, my Google searches have brought me to Mashable.com.  I’ve been a huge fan of their updates in the social media world, but they also do an excellent job of finding, identifying and telling the truth on some of the crazy viral rumors that can start on sites like Facebook & Twitter.
• Tell people – If you find something spreading via social media, and have evidence that it isn’t true, tell people about it.  The more you know, the more others know.

Will you get it right every time? Of course not. But taking a few moments to identify if a rumor is right or wrong, and then sharing that information with others, will go a long way to correcting misinformation.

Do you have a resource for fact checking what you see in social media? Let me know!

I really like public speaking.  About six times in the past year, I’ve gotten up in front of people and given talks on a bunch of different subjects related to what I do. I don’t use notes, I move around the room as much as possible, and I occasionally make totally unrehearsed references to 30 Rock.  Talking about what I do (in public) is one of the things I love about what I do.

While I love the talking itself, I do not enjoy making the slide deck that goes along with the talk.   I’ve grown to view them as supplemental to what I’m talking about as opposed to the focal point. I really think that a good deck supports or shows what you are talking about rather than containing your ENTIRE presentation. Over the last several years, I’ve noticed I follow a pretty particular pattern in crafting my slide deck, which I thought I’d share:

Step One: Outline – I typically make my outline have one line for each slide, with the point I want to (hopefully) make on the slide. The order rarely remains static, even during the initial outline.

Step Two: Transfer to slides – For years, I started off making index card slides between outlining and making the presentation. I’d write each line item down on the index cards, make notes on what visual I wanted on each slide, and then flip through them a few hundred times, adding a card in, or taking a card out when I realized it wasn’t flowing right. For my last presentation, I used an app called Haiku Deck that I highly recommend. It keeps you to two lines of text, which makes you really think about what you want to say.

Step Three: Assemble – Start building your slides. Try not to fall prey to the dreaded bullet point flu and try to pack your slides with as much information as possible. Instead, pick one (or maybe two) key points and tell the rest of what you want to say with visuals. Lay it out how you want it. If you have supplemental material you are DYING to share, do it verbally, rather than dumping everything you know into the slide.

Step Four: Rehearse, decide you hate it, throw it out and start over – I can’t speak for anyone else who presents a lot, but I cannot think of even one time that I boldly charged into my presentation with the first draft of my slide deck.  In my most recent presentation, I did my initial run through and threw most of it out the window.  On my second run through, I realized I was giving the director’s cut version – it was about 45 minutes too long. So I did another edit that became the final version.

Step Five: Rehearse again. – There is nothing worse than watching someone read a paper from the podium, or watching them read off their slides and say “Any questions?” after each slide is read. I rehearse with the final presentation until I know it pretty cold. I try to avoid a script, and instead work to make sure I achieve consistency between rehearsals.  The good part of going note-free is that I don’t feel like I’m giving my 5^th grade book report and the audience is much more engaged when you talk to them rather than your notes. The bad part is that you can forget a key point you wanted to make. However, if you have a follow up or takeaway, and if you have given your social accounts to the audience so you can connect further, you can always make sure to share afterward.

Of all of these steps, I think step four is where I spend most of my time.  It’s also a total roller coaster. I love my presentation! I hate it! It’s going to be the best thing I’ve done this year! I am so going to bomb! However, usually when I go through the existential crisis that is step four, is when I hit something that I can feel confident of when I stand in front of a bunch of people.

What types of services?  One of my favorite examples which is understandable to many people is Goodreads a social network for readers.  They let users track books they’ve read, keep lists of books they want to read and read & review books so their friends can see their recommendations. It doesn’t matter if you’re into sci fi, YA, or romance – the service works if you like to read and keep track of it while you do.

Last time I wrote about niche social networks, I promised that we would look at two sites – Ravelry and Untappd. Both have provided excellent services to members of their communities, while also working to connect businesses and members of their network.

First up is Ravelry. Ravelry is a site for knitters and crocheters – with about 2 million members worldwide. I’ve been a Ravelry member since 2007, and I’ve watched the service grow exponentially over time.  They have message boards and community galore, but what they really do well is help the knitter or crocheter organize their stuff.  From a place to list all the yarn you own, to a place to help you figure out what patterns you want to make next, Ravelry specializes in making their site useful.  It’s helpful for those who want to use the typical networking tools – friends, a place to chat, groups to join – but it also helpful for those who just want to get down to business and keep track of things of their hobby.

Just one of Ravelry's helpful tools

The helpfulness of their services don’t stop with the individual knitter or crocheter.  Ravelry offers a way for yarn companies, pattern designers, publications, and independent businesses relating to knitting & crocheting to connect with these consumers. Some of the offerings are standard (i.e., banners that live on certain pages) and some are really innovative.  A quick review:

• The Pattern store – Allows designers (large and small) sell individual patterns.  This has led to a huge growth in independent pattern design as both large and small designers can sell patterns.
• The Marketplace – Allows members to search for advertisers – from specialty stores to local vendors.  Ravelry has over 1,500 advertisers of all sizes, and they work to ensure that all ads are relevant to the community.  You aren’t going to find an ad for Clorox or Omaha Steaks on Ravelry. What you will find ads for yarn, tools and patterns.
• Groups – While anyone can create a group, many stores, online retailers, yarn companies and designers create groups that allow them to interact with Ravelry members. This allows them to share information, pass on relevant deals, and provide customer support within the Ravelry community.
• Profiles – Yarn companies (called “Yarnies” on Ravelry) can have profile pages where they can add and update yarns and information.

Ravelry's marketplace

As a business, Ravelry is incredibly transparent about how they make their money, and they have many options for both large and small businesses.

Do many of the organizations who use Ravelry’s services also use Facebook, or Twitter? Many – both large and small – do. However, what Ravelry offers businesses that want to target knitters & crocheters is a direct line to individuals interested in their products in a highly personal way.

• Twitter/LinkedIn partnership coming to a close – I don’t know about you, but I’m so glad that this is happening. I got incredibly tired of seeing people’s personal stuff show up on LinkedIn.
• What should we call social media – A Tumblr devoted to gifs that every person who works in social media thinks about, but don’t say out loud.
• The IRL Fetish – Interesting look at what it means to be “offline” and “online” and whether or not those distinctions are important.

Simply put, a niche social network is a social network that exists to connect people with a particular interest – a hobby, a religion, a lifestyle – with other people who share their interest. Most typically, they are community focused and provide tools that help members of their communities organize, learn about their interest or connect with others locally and globally who like the same things they do.

When I talk about niche social networks, I often ask if anyone in the audience has a hobby that their friends/significant other/family are just plain tired of hearing about.  Inevitably, a few hands go up, and I encourage those people to see if there is a niche social network for their hobby.  Note that not every special interest or hobby has a social network.  More typically, we see multiple sites & blogs devoted to the topic that have social network like features.

It’s one thing to talk about niche social networks, but what really clicks for marketers is when they see a niche social network in action. In the next few posts, I’ll be highlighting two of the niche social networks we use around our house, as well as a few others that have caught my eye.  In part two, I’ll look at Ravelry, a social network for knitters, crocheters and other fiber enthusiasts.  Since its inception in 2007, Ravelry has grown to over 2 million members of all skill levels and has kept them by providing services that most knitters & crocheters feel they can’t live without.  Most impressive for this marketer is how they balance taking care of their community with working with businesses.

In part three, we’ll look at  Untappd, which is a mobile social network for beer enthusiasts. (You’ll often find niche social networks using the phrase “_____ enthusiast”.)  They’ve taken a growing market and created a way for beer lovers to track what they drink, what they want to try, meet with others who share their love of all things hoppy and connect with those who make the beer.

Finally, in part four, we’ll look at how an organization or a business might go about using a niche social network in their own market, including finding them, learning the ropes and making them part of your overall marketing strategy.