When I left my first job after six months I was told I was making a mistake

Henry Davis York Building, Sydney, with MLC carved on tower, Nov 30, 2011

My first real job out of high school was in the head office of one of Australia’s leading life insurance companies, the Mutual Life and Citizens’ Assurance company or MLC, founded in 1886 as the Citizens’ Assurance Company.

The office was in the prestigious Martin Place, then and now the closest thing Sydney has to a civic square.

I imagine that in Sydney at that time, someone who wanted a career in life insurance could probably not have asked for a more distinguished, solid company to be employed by.

Which surely helps to explain the Chief Accountant’s frowning mixture of disapproval and concern on the day when, after only six months of being basically an office boy although no doubt with “prospects”, I informed the said Chief Accountant that I was leaving to do something else with my life.

“You could become a rolling stone”, he said, solemnly.

He did not mean that I was on my way to becoming a famous singer in a band and could he get my autograph now. Rather that I might “gather no moss”, in the original sense of the phrase, becoming rootless and without responsibility or stability.

There is however another interpretation of the proverb “a rolling stone gathers no moss”, that if you keep moving you will not get stale or rusty.

That’s the interpretation I like.

The letters are still there in the stone, but the company has changed

Having survived the developer’s wrecking ball that in the second half of the 20th century destroyed so many of Sydney’s fine old buildings, the old MLC building is still there, although it’s not the company’s headquarters any more.

It is now the Henry Davis York building.

But as I observed yesterday on a visit to Sydney,  the letters MLC are still there on the building’s tower, carved in stone some time around 1936 when construction began.

That was surely a bold statement that the company was there to stay, and with the same initials, for at least as long as the building would stand.

In fact the company has long gone from that particular building, and has been acquired, first by Lend Lease in the 1980s and then by the National Australia Bank in 2000.

And yet the brand lives on, with some $122 billion under management as of March this year.

Not a bad look.

As for the erstwhile office assistant (the Chief Accountant didn’t like me calling myself the “office boy”) I’m glad I moved on too.

Because on balance, for all the changes in my life and career, some by deliberate choice and others because of circumstance, I have enjoyed the challenges, new perspectives, new relationships, successes and “learning experiences” those changes have brought or enabled.

Change, the new normal

As we know, change isn’t always easy, and sometimes we may feel that our future is metaphorically carved in stone.

But surely in these days of a constantly shifting, volatile, globalized economy, with increasingly rapid technological developments, being ready and even eager to embrace change is surely an essential mindset and skillset for a business or a career.

Anyway, why not go with the flow and create the futures we want, not just fit in with someone else’s ideas of what’s good for us?

I keep telling myself I won’t do it again, but there I was yesterday, having another fundamentally frustrating conversation about social media with a Baby Boomer business owner who did not really want to listen.

It started with his making a polite enquiry about what I “did” by way of business and – once I had answered – it quickly moved to his expressing what seemed to be a quite visceral hatred of anything going by the name of social media or social networking.

At least this one didn’t complete his tirade by turning on his heel and storming away, as I had experienced at a business networking event not so long ago. In fact, the one yesterday seemed to want to keep talking.

But what had brought on the tirade? Well, Facebook featured in both of those conversations. Or rather, the protagonists’ views of Facebook. Yesterday it was about the harm perceived as being done to the younger generation through being on Facebook. For the other it was the disruption of his office when their page suddenly attracted a huge amount of attention (yes, what for many would have been public relations manna from heaven was for him a catastrophe of unproductive activity).

In the conversation yesterday, being not totally deterred by the initial outburst, and with what in hindsight was a ridiculous exercise in optimism, I tried quietly to suggest ways in which some strategic engagement with social media might actually help his business.  The conversation, as you will have guessed by now, went nowhere in any productive sense.

Don’t try to confuse the issue with facts

Typically with this sort of conversation, the haranguer of the day will tell me, as a matter of objective fact, that his (usually a “his” – I find women Boomers more open to listening to the facts) customers are older and aren’t “on” social networks. I’ve discovered, through a few other conversations on the topic, that a good way to get such people even more angry is to point to research that shows the rapid growth of social network usage by older Internet users.

Such as the Pew Internet study report published in August this year that found a whopping 60% uptick in Baby Boomer (ages 43-64) participation on social networks, up from 20% of American Internet users to 32%.

So it’s not about facts. Which means that asking these business owners to just “think” about how social media can help their business may well be a futile exercise.

It’s about emotion.

I’m not a psychologist and I don’t know of any study that has been done on the role of emotion in business owners’ decision processes about social media. But I have on several occasions, not just the couple I mentioned above, been struck by the forcefulness of the resistance to any discussion about social media.

Which does suggest to me a very strong emotional undercurrent is at work.

Implications for marketing social media strategy services

Up till now, my next day reaction to these situations has been to tell myself once again that I am not really interested any more in evangelizing social media and that I just want to connect with people who are ready to roll and looking for a strategist guide and coach to help them get where they want to be, faster and more effectively.

But lately I’ve been reflecting on some advice I had once in sales training, to the effect that the person who is most resistant to your initial presentation is worth spending time on and may turn out to be a good customer, whereas the person who appeared initially more open is likely to be the one who never buys.

So in focusing my attention on those who are ready to rock ‘n roll, am I leaving some good business opportunities untapped? And thinking of those more resistant business owners and the opportunities I see them as blocking from sight and hearing, is there something different I could do, or could I do something differently, that could help them move into a more open-minded, more receptive frame of mind (and “frame of emotion”)?

Some fear about social media can be quite understandable

Of course not everyone is going to be hostile to the idea of engaging with and through social media. Others may be more or less fearful or anxious, and often with good reason, depending on what they’ve heard or read about the risks involved.

So I’m thinking that in offering my social media strategy services to Boomer business owners I will to well to take more notice of how the owner feels about social media for business, and seek to address that effectively.

I”m not really thinking here about the hardcore resisters – I’m not masochistic – but more about people who are feeling uncomfortable or even a bit fearful about social media and are ready for an open conversation about that.

If you know of any research findings, or case studies, on this topic, and you’d like to share a link to those here, I would be very grateful.

Credit: Chart from Report, “65% of online adults use social networking sites” Pew Internet & American Life Project, August 26, 2011, p. 6, http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/PIP-SNS-Update-2011.pdf accessed on October 18, 2011

Lately I’ve been wondering just how much or how little I should be talking, with clients and with groups I present to, about the still relatively new but in many ways quite fascinating service, Google Plus.

The company calls this the Google+ Project and explains it as “real life sharing, re-thought for the web”.

Ambitious concept.

Right now, I’m pretty sure my real life sharing works more simply and more effectively than my attempts on Google+ to share and join in other peoples’s sharing.

But it’s early days and many people are trying to figure out whether this is truly the Next Big Thing, or another great idea by Google that never got sufficient traction to become a serious contender in the battle of the social media platforms (remember Google Wave?).

I don’t want to overload clients and others with bright, shiny, new social media items for the sake of it, but at the same time I don’t want to neglect alerting them to things I think they should know about, so that they can keep up with the game, so to speak.

Because the fact is, when I’m talking about social media with business people who are not heavily into the topic, I find many of them feel quite overwhelmed with the plethora of social networking platforms and options. So, rather than adding to their overwhelm, I endeavour, while still sketching for them the big picture about social business, to chunk it down to digestible portions.

That usually includes providing my recommended list of a handful of platforms any business should be on or at least consider being on. I should mention that, in terms of the people I’m usually addressing, the list is focused on what I would regard as basic in terms of doing business in the USA, Canada, the UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. For China, Brazil and a number of other countries the options vary, with different platforms having to be taken into account.

With that latter proviso, the basic list was until recently: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, company blog.

Just how  and to what extent each of those or other platforms are to be used most effectively will depend on a particular company’s business and social media strategies.

So if I want people to feel confident about my basic list, as I do, would I even consider including Google Plus as part of the recommended basic kit?

Well, given what I’ve seen so far, I believe that even at this early stage businesses should know about Google+ and individuals within the business who have business management or social media management responsibilities should be aware of it and probably should join and put some time into learning how it works.

It may well be that Google+ will soon be part of my recommended “basic business kit” for social media engagement.

But at least one key factor for me, before that happens, is that the user base will need to be more reflective of the wider population. As Richard McManus observed in an interesting post yesterday, “While Google Plus has a fervent base of early adopter users, it hasn’t managed to attract mainstream people yet.”

So the short answer is no, not part of the recommended basic kit – or not yet.

As far as I can tell, becoming a Google+ user is still by invitation only. Like many others, I have quite a stack of invitations, so if you have not yet received an invitation and would like one, please email me at deswalsh(at)gmail(dot)com and ask: I’ll be happy to send until they run out.

Next week, as part of my monthly free Social Media Strategy webinar series, I will be focusing on Google+ for business, going through the various features and indicating where I see possibilities and limitations for this platform in the business context. If you have not yet registered for these webinars, you might like to do so at this link (recordings of all the previous webinars are available for registered participants).

How I Discovered I Have a Local LinkedIn Network of Over a Quarter of a Million

While I certainly don’t share their negative or sceptical attitudes, I think I understand. It’s fair to say Facebook, Twitter and maybe even the new one on the block, Google Plus, are more fun and more interactive. On the other hand, LinkedIn has a lot to offer – such as the averages in income, educational and decision-making levels of its members compared to the averages for other networks.

And the fact that it is still in its fundamental structure and mode of operation a trust network means that for those who use it well it can be a very powerful way of building business.

But what about locally, if you don’t live in the USA or in a big city anywhere? There are, I believe, still opportunities. At the very least, I believe it makes good sense to check out the possibilities.

In that vein, and as part of preparing for a presentation on LinkedIn for local business people at Terri Cooper’s business networking breakfast this coming Friday Sept 16th at Mermaid Waters here on Australia’s Gold Coast, I did some searches to get a view of the size of my network in my part of the world.

I found that within a 120km (75m) radius of Mermaid Waters, I have over a quarter of a million connections, and connections of connections, going out to the third level. That’s 9.58% of the population of the region (South East Queensland). My guess is that in amongst that quarter of a million plus there is business waiting for me and I need to put my mind to checking that out.

For those of you in the neighbourhood, as mentioned above I’ll be sharing LinkedIn info, tips and insights at Terri Cooper’s business networking breakfast this coming Friday September 16th, at the Quality Hotel, Mermaid Waters.

Have you searched on your LinkedIn profile, using the location search? Have you found interesting results you would care to share?

Whether it’s the long established (1759) mega brewer Guinness with its worldwide celebrations of Arthur’s Day (for founder Arthur Guinness) and fan page attracting over 276 thousand “likes” or the much younger (est. 1991), much smaller New Belgium Brewery of Fort Collins CO with – at this writing – a very competitive 191,167 “likes”, it’s clear that brewers large and small are embracing social media with gusto.

Why I spent probably far too much time in the past week researching this subject

Just over a week ago I was asked what I knew about beer companies using social media. Knowing nothing about the subject at that point, my response was “I’ll get back to you”.

I thought, just a few enquiries and I’ll have something to share.

Little did I know how much there was to know and how many questions I was in the process of generating for myself!

Because, while I freely acknowledge that I’ve never had to have my arm twisted to savor a good ale, pilsener or the occasional stout, the fact is I don’t profess to any serious knowledge of the brewing and beer marketing industry.

Crowdsourcing to the rescue

In response to some online enquiries, a number of people around the world have shared generously with knowledge and links, especially by way of responding to a question I uploaded to LinkedIn Answers.

And I have now come to realise this is a huge industry – according to Wikipedia a 294.5 billion dollar one worldwide – with a number of very large, dominant companies and many thousands of smaller regional and local brewers.

So how engaged, or not, are these companies, via social media?

The short story is that I have a lot of facts, but only the beginnings of a bigger picture.

Too much information for one post

The number of examples I’ve been given, of brands and their social media engagement, has grown to the point where the blog post I originally envisaged as a quick overview with some examples, has had to be split into two – this one focused on big companies and a second post on smaller ones.

Examples of social media engagement by big, global companies

Please note that this listing does not pretend to be in any way comprehensive, either in terms of companies and brands or in terms of the examples mentioned of social media engagement. Comments providing further examples will be welcome.

Heineken

The Heineken social media story is particularly interesting from a social media strategy viewpoint because there are available:

• a media release, on the occasion of Heineken’s signing a deal with Google, that gives some insight into the company’s strategic thinking about social media – specifically “to reach our target groups of 20-somethings”
• an interview with Cees van Lede, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Heineken NV, who talks about social media in terms of corporate decision making and a “substantial shift” in strategy: again, targeting social media “because that’s where the younger generation, today’s generation, spends their time”.

MillerCoors

This company was suggested as worth looking at.

According to a blog post I read today, the MillerCoors corporation itself is not directly involved in social media but its SABMiller and Molson Coors Brewing companies are.

I’ve found it a bit frustrating to get any clear idea of the SAB Miller social media story, but there is clear indication that there is a story. For example, a blog post I read today highlighted the fact that SAB Miller is one of only 7 of the FTSE 100 companies to have an active presence on all four nominated social networking channels, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogging.

And with that indication of SABMiller having a pro-active approach to social media, I’m quite tantalized by what the story might be about SABMiller, social media and the best selling beer in the world, Snow – a China brand owned by SABMiller. Again I’m confident there is a story there, given the extent of social networking in China, with something like 221 million blogs, 117 million BBS and 176 million social network users (blog post from presentations at last year’s SXSW).

As to Molson Coors, at the Socialbrite.org site there is an interesting blog post, 4 examples of corporate social responsibility done right, on the company’s social media endeavours and the issue of responsible drinking. In his book Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighbourhoods, author and social media specialist Shel Israel devotes several pages to stories of how Molson “uses generosity as a key component of its social media strategy”.

Budweiser

The Budweiser “Bud House” project, via YouTube for the FIFA World Cup 2010, drew over 4 million views on YouTube and 1 million plus likes on Facebook.

The Budweiser Facebook page, with its 1,231,042 likes, is quite active, with contributions from fans predominating, rather than the corporate promos and attempted “conversation starters” from the company, as are noticeable on some other big brewers’ Facebook pages.

A couple of people in Ireland mentioned Budweiser, with reference specifically to the Budweiser Ice Cold Ireland beer promotion and a “Budweiser blogger outreach” exercise in 2009.

Guinness

Guinness have had an apparently very successful social media powered engagement from 2009 on, with its Arthur’s Day celebrations (video link). Proceeds go to “social entrepreneurs” around the world, which is an interesting aspect in terms of a “giving” component of a social media strategy – compare the Molson Coors support for responsible drinking, mentioned above.

From a strategic viewpoint, there is a very interesting video interview from that first Arthur’s Day year, 2009, by Irish social media expert Krishna De with Grainne Wafer, Head of Marketing for Guinness in Ireland, looking at the bigger picture of the company’s social media engagement, helpfully recorded in bullet points by Krishna in the accompanying blog post.

Carlsberg

In Belgium, Carlsberg created an app called Tournée Digitale (Digital Tour), which encourages users to step away from their computers and meet their friends in person and share beers instead of links. Via Simply Zesty.

Corona

I hadn’t previously come across the Yomego Social Media Reputation Index, for which I was pointed to a top 50 companies in a “snakes and ladders” image - Corona is the only beer company included there, for what that’s worth (I don’t know the date that infographic was done or when it was uploaded, but as at February 2011 Corona was listed on the same “league table” at 49 out of the 50.)

XXXX

The number two beer in Australia and number one in the northern state of Queensland, XXXX (“Fourex”) is a beer produced by Castlemaine Perkins, not itself a global company, but owned by Lion Nathan, which is a subsidiary of Lion Nathan National Foods, itself fully owned by Japan’s Kirin Holdings Limited, and thus part of the definitely global Mitsubishi keiretsu.

XXXX used the Holler agency to develop a site to build connection with fans in an “ongoing and sustainable way”. A video explains how this was done, aggregating content from sites such as YouTube, flickr, Twitter and blogs and with a community manager serving content. Results in 2009 alone included 1 million visits to the main site. Of particular interest is that the video outlines the specific steps in developing the strategy.

A few general observations

Although I still don’t have a clear big picture view (and haven’t yet found anyone who claims to have that), a couple of things seem pretty clear:

• of the several big corporations in this industry, at least some are investing deliberately and  strategically in social media
• the big brewers have deep pockets to finance national and even global socially-empowered campaigns

My impression, admittedly quite subjective at this point, is that big brewers pursuing social media engagement seem to focus their social media efforts more on campaigns and events rather than on the building, care and maintenance of genuinely interactive, long-term relationships. That’s probably understandable and for the most part not atypical for how big corporations in any industry are using social media, compared with the smaller companies.

More on the smaller brewers in the post to follow. In the meantime, in case I’ve not yet heard of your pick for a good story about social media and small breweries, please share the link in the comments here and I’ll check it out.

My thanks to all the people who shared links and leads for this topic, especially the twenty four people who responded to my question on LinkedIn Answers.

Image credits:

Heineken  by md-2 CC BY 2.0
Molson Canadian Sixpack  by Like_the_Grand_Canyon CC BY 2.0
Pint of Guinness – Stephen Edgar – Netweb  CC BY-SA 2.0
Corona Extra   Tim Hill CC BY-SA 2.0
XXXX bitter  Jeremy Eades CC BY-SA 2.0