For brands, social media is a relatively new marketing platform that has grown exponentially over the past few years. And investing in social media now has never been more important, as experts say social media is on target to be a $30 billion industry (per year) by 2015.
Hiring a talented social media manager to take your brand from 1 fan to 1 million is a major factor in determining your business’s success and failure. We tracked down the globe’s finest social media managers behind brands such as Virgin America, The New York Times, Gizmodo, Flavorpill, Thrillist, TOMS, NASA, Intel, Etsy, HowAboutWe, Vanity Fair, Samsung, Fast Company, ELLE and even interviewed our very own Amalia Agathou from The Next Web. These aren’t just talented individuals. These are human beings pioneering a new profession.
When an issue arises, these are the men and women that have to spring into action. Do they use Hootsuite, Radian6, CoTweet, Vitrue or Awareness for social media monitoring? Where do you spend the most time? How do you keep conversation colloquial yet still professional? How do they encourage user-generated content, commenting, gamification, social aggregation and what’s the art of content curation? And what about geolocation? Are they on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Trumblr, Gowalla, Loopt, SoundCloud, Slideshare, vYou, Flickr or even GetGlue? What do they think of Google+? Which is their fastest growing media account? And do you ever sleep? We ask them here.
Virgin America: Jill Okawa Fletcher and Nick Schwartz
Virgin America is a great example of a brand that always uses personal signage when reaching out to customers. The two-person team behind one of the world’s most loved brands knows to talk to customers like a friend, not a corporate entity.
In December 2008, Nick Schwartz saw an ad on Craigslist for a social media intern at Virgin America. Now, two and half years later he is Virgin America’s Social Media and Communications Ambassador and he shares the responsibility with his colleague Jill Okawa Fletcher.
Fletcher came onboard over a year ago from Virgin Mobile, where she was working on music marketing campaigns surrounding digital mobile. She moved into social media as it was becoming a bigger space. While Schwartz is the day-to-day voice, Fletcher works more strategically behind Virgin America’s social media and digital campaigns. The two are pictured below at Virgin America Day at the SF Giants game where they ran the Twitter Scavenger Hunt using the #FlyTheBeard Hashtag.
CBM: How did begin to develop the Virgin America brand? And what does your day-to-day look like?
Nick Schwartz: From the beginning I spent a lot of time watching Richard Branson’s interviews to figure out what kind of tonality he has. The company is a startup airline. And at the time I came on, we were working our way towards fleet-wide WiFi. We had people tweeting and Facebooking all the time. So we have to be on call, and be watching the seats at all times. And it’s still just the two of us.
Jill Fletcher: We work closely with the guest relations team as well but we don’t get a lot of sleep. We tweet a minimum of 4 push messages a day and all of the @replies, DMs. Then we post on Facebook a couple of times a day.
NS: Although, it can fluctuate with the weather.
CBM: What was you worst day ever on the job?
JF: We had a tough time last winter with all the snow and cancellations on the East Coast. Thankfully, we weren’t flying into Chicago yet and I’m glad we dodged that bullet.
NS: What can really raise anxiety for us is waiting to get in communication with operations. Basically we can only reach out to tell people, ‘We understand you’re upset,’ but we don’t have much else to tell them. We have to be that cool voice of reason and explain it in more of a human tone.
CBM: How many people have asked you for free flights and upgrades?
JF: A lot. We have random people friending us on Facebook or LinkedIn all the time asking that. Our first class cabin is still really small compared to other airlines, so it’s challenging for us to help people in special situations. We have to work closely with guest relation on all matters.
CBM: Would a person’s Twitter follower count affect how you treated them?
JF: We certainly are cognizant when that happens but we really have to stay consistent in our offerings to people who are all facing similar circumstances.
CBM: Who are the biggest celebrity fans of Virgin America?
JF: The fact that were based in Silicon Valley has granted us a lot of fortune in terms of our digital celebrities that fly with us. We’re close friends with the companies here and have a great relationship with Twitter. Our biggest celebrity fans include Dick Costolo (Twitter) and Kevin Rose (Digg). We’re really lucky to have a passionate following of people, they even help us close sales without us prompting them too.
The New York Times: Elizabeth Heron and Lexi R. Mainland
CBM: How did each of you come to work at The New York Times?
Liz (pictured right): I came to The Times a little over a year ago to work on an incipient social media team, after a short stint covering online trends for ABC News and five years at The Washington Post. I fell in love with the journalistic power of social media during my time as the Foreign Innovations Editor at The Post, where I directed our online coverage of several major stories — the Iran revolution, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the war in Afghanistan, and the devastating earthquake in Haiti, among others — that relied heavily on nontraditional sources like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Lexi (pictured below on right): This is my sixth year at The Times. Before I came here, I wrote, produced and edited news and documentary TV and Web content at PBS. At The Times I’ve worked on several desks, but for four years was a Web journalist embedded on Metro. My time there spanned three different New York governors and the dramatic downfall of Eliot Spitzer, but two of the projects I’m most proud are the launch in 2007 of City Room, which has consistently been one of The Times’s most popular blogs, and the creation of One in 8 Million, a yearlong multimedia and print series that won The Times its first Emmy last year.
CBM: What’s your day to day like and what tools do you use?
LL: The first thing we do every day is try to get a sense of what stories — both from The Times and other sources — are percolating on the web. We each use Tweetdeck and sites such as LikeButton.me to monitor our own feeds as well as the wider conversation. We attend the morning news meeting to hear what’s coming down the pike and identify which stories will spark conversation or afford us opportunities to do something special on Twitter and Facebook. Throughout the day, in between our many other responsibilities, we’re trying as much as we can to lend a personal voice to the main @nytimes Twitter feed and to amplify the voices of our journalists who tweet. A typical day could include helping a reporter crowdsource a story, creating a hashtag game and blogging about the results, or working with desks to live-tweet a major news event.
CBM: How has your work affected Twitter and Facebook growth?
LL: @NYTimes on Twitter is what we call a “cyborg account,” meaning it’s a combination of automated homepage headlines and manual tweets, retweets and replies done by Lexi and Liz. Since we became the social media editors, we’ve put a greater emphasis on humanizing the main account. Anecdotally, interacting with the @nytimes community more heavily has increased the level of engagement and the reach of our journalism on social media. We’ve also learned a lot from curating the @nytimes account that has informed how we strategize with individual news desks. In this time, we’ve seen our follower count grow to over 3.6 million on Twitter. On Facebook, The Times’ strategy of posting the most shareable stories of the day to our main page, asking a lot of questions, and closing the loop with subsequent stories based on those interactions has helped us grow that community to over 1.5 million fans.
CBM: Which of your accounts is growing the fastest?
LL: We don’t think follower counts are necessarily the best measure of engagement. We prefer to look at the quality of interactions we spark among our fans and followers, and by that metric, the main Twitter and Facebook pages are growing nicely. Where we have seen a big uptick in followers is to our section-specific Twitter accounts, such as @nytmetro. We believe the increase is due to the fact that more of those accounts are being actively curated by journalists throughout the day.
CBM: What have been your biggest struggles and how have you overcome them?
LL: Twitter is a 24-hour medium, and there are only so many hours in the day that two editors can do the kind of thoughtful tweeting we believe it deserves. So, time can be a struggle. We’re overcoming that by thinking of ways to build smart tools in the newsroom and involve other editors in our social media efforts. Another challenge is the sheer volume of content we produce a day — more than 200 individual pieces — much of which would do well with our Twitter and Facebook audiences. We handle this embarrassment of riches by choosing the most shareable and interactive content for the main accounts, while thinking of smart ways to surface other content with section-specific accounts.
CBM: What tips and tricks have you learned in your time working in social media for The Times?
LL: Always cite your sources, even (or especially) in 140 characters. Think before you retweet. Don’t be afraid to correct the record or admit you made a mistake. Respond to people who tweet to you — you get from social media what you put into it. Even though social media is a virtual medium, never underestimate the journalistic value of putting a reporter who uses social media well where the story is actually unfolding.
Gizmodo: Christopher Mascari
While an editorial assistant for Gizmodo in New York City, Christopher Mascari organized the epic 5-day Gizmodo Gallery event in September 2009. Later that fall, he noticed Gizmodo wasn’t doing much with its Facebook and Twitter profiles, and that the brand was seriously missing out on traffic and a connection with readers. He started to build up Gizmodo’s Facebook page and use it to promote their biggest stories and event coverage. At the time, it had just 1,000 fans. Mascari, who had moved back to his L.A. homeland, pitched then editor-in-chief Brian Lam and said, “Hey, what are the chances I could do this for Giz as a solid part-time job and over see all of Giz’s promotional efforts?
He flew back out to New York City to discuss the position with Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, who offered him a full-time job doing just that– but for all of Gawker’s properties. Gizmodo now has over 250,000 Facebook fans, a quarter of the 1 million Facebook fans that Gawker currently boasts across all its sites.
CBM: How did last night go for you? (When Steve Jobs resigned.)
Chris Mascari: That was fun! I was just about to transition into slowing down my day and then I started to see all the news and instantly went into promotional mode. I know what needs to get done and I do it and before you know it, 5 hours are gone. It’s fun, and reminds me of live blogging a key-note for Gizmodo. It’s more about just instantly knowing what you need to do. There’s no part of my brain that’s complaining. It’s more about keeping my head down and pushing through.
CBM: How would you describe your role as Gawker’s Editorial Marketing Manager?
CM: I oversee all of our social integration and social outlets for Gawker Media. I don’t have a hands on approach for all their sites as we allow sites to push their pages on their own. When a Gawker site has an exclusive or breaking story, we hand-pick writers who we know would enjoy seeing a link to that story before everyone else. So like, “Hey, Gizmodo had this story that might be worth checking out.” We do it very sparingly, maybe once a week, many none in one week, sometimes 5. But I’m highly against doing PR emails.
I usually worry about the post story stuff. I make sure it’s on their social pages and put it front of the right people. In the last year, sites have gotten much more involved with their own Facebook and Twitter pages. When I started almost two years ago, sites didn’t embrace their social pages and social outlets like they do now. So it was my job to ask, “How do I get editors to worry about these things?”
In short, I make sure a story doesn’t get left behind online.
CBM: Which Gawker property does the best job at promoting its stories on social media?
CM: Lifehacker does the best job. If you look at their Facebook page, you’ll see the manually enter updates. They have really good connection with their readers, which is apparent when their readers respond to them.
CBM: Can we talk about the new design’s share buttons?
CM: Sure, one of the most important things to me in terms of social buttons is to have tracking on button clicks to see what is being clicked on each story. This way, we can actually see what’s worth having in a share module. Facebook Share is always the highest. Most surprisingly, the email button is clicked 2nd or 3rd on the list.
CBM: What was your life like post-iPhone 4 theft last year?
CM: It happened a few months after I started as Editorial Marketing Manager at Gawker Media. Since I’d been at Gizmodo I was close with Jason Chen and Jesus Diaz so we had a plan about how we would package the story and promote it. Minutes before the story broke, I sent out emails to every major tech journalist. We didn’t expect there to be this huge nationwide coverage.
We were inundated with media requests at a time when we didn’t have a PR manager. My phone was ringing non-stop from booking editors for TV spots. It was an unbelievable week and a half of non stop action. We didn’t have to do anything, everyone coming to us and saying, “We want you on TV.”
CBM: Did you keep your cool?
CM: Yeah, Yeah. It’s just work. Anything I do, I relate to working an Apple Live Blog. I always thought Gizmodo had the best live blogs. As soon as you shoot an image, you have to know if it’s good or not and you’re uploading an image in seconds. You have to be writing faster than real-time. Nothing can be as hectic as that ever.
CBM: How would you describe your best day ever?
CM: Ha, I don’t know. Any day when we’re eating Torrisi for lunch is usually my best day.
Flavorpill: Russ Marshalek
Flavorpill is a city guide for those who like to experience new and exciting things.
Russ Marshalek got his start as the marketing and PR director of a large-scale bookstore in Atlanta, Georgia. In search of the big city, in March 2009, he decided to moved to New York City as a social media freelancer. When the opportunity to work at Flavorpill arose it seemed like a dream come true.
“I’ve always been into art, music and culture so my interests directly line up with Flavorpill,” he says.
CBM: Are you glad you moved to New York City?
Russ Marshalek: I love living in New York, above and beyond. Every day there’s another reason to love living here.
CBM: What’s your daily routine like?
RM: Regardless of how much I’d like to have everything standardized, it really depends. Essentially my life is plotted out by my Hootsuite dashboard. I’m interacting with our readers and followers most of the day and it’s a lot of communication in Gmail.
CBM: As Flavorpill’s Social Media Director, what are your tips and tricks?
RM: You have to be sincere and you have to know your audience. People think you can just broadcast to your audience what it’s going to like and avoid conversation but it’s really not the case. In social media for a media company, you really have to do something new that sits within that framework.
For example, we use Tumblr, we avoid only posting our own content or reblogging what thousands of people have already seen. We take great posts on Flavorwire or an interesting event on Flavorpill and translate that to Tumblr. We also post a lot of weird art. The weirder, more obscure art pieces that always bear a 2nd, 3rd or 4th glance. Currently, Tumblr is our fastest growing social account.
Our eventual goal is to make the entire Flavorpill experience social. When you interact with our Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, you’re going to get a live human. We actively care and actively know that our social accounts need to act like the ears and eyes for our audience.
“Don’t miss David Pessah of Thrillist’s social media. It’s super smart. It’s in such a voice that when you read something by Thrillist, you know you’re reading a Thrillist post,” says Flavorpill’s Social Media Director Russ Marshalek.
Thrillist: David Pessah
In 2006, David Pessah started his career as a strategic web consultant. While at a Mediabistro party in 2009, he ran into the guys from Thrillist and convinced them to hire him as an intern/consultant a couple of days a week. Two years later, Pessah is now engaged in a full blow social media career and is fulltime at Thrillist.
CBM: How do you distinguish Thrillist’s James Dean meets Frat boy voice from competitors like Flavorpill and Urban Daddy?
David Pessah: We’ve always had a unique voice. It began as a blend of Ben’s and Adam’s* personalities. One of the reasons I stuck around is that I can write in that voice. I’m not sure how to describe it, it’s kind of something I’ve always gotten it. It’s the way I talk and the way my friends talk. Just like 28-year old dudes.
*Thrillist founders Ben Lerer and Adam Rich
CBM: What’s your day to day like?
DP: It’s fun. It’s a lot of work. It involves everything from interacting with customers on Twitter, updating Facebook posts, writing Foursquare tips, Tumblr posts and setting up promotions that run across all of our social media channels. For example, right now we’re giving away an iPod loaded with Blink 182′s entire catalog to promote their cross-country tour. It’s really about connecting with fans engaging with our content. I do my best to connect with everyone that mentions Thrillist on Twitter.
CBM: Thrillist’s Foursquare presence is really impressive. Tell me how that started.
DP: We were in there pretty early. In fact, we were one of the first major brands on Foursquare. We take our best content, all the super tip worthy, interesting and notable stuff about a venue and put it out there to reach a different audience and get people interested in the brand. We’re nearing 1,000 tips all over the country in every market that were in. We even have a street team now helping us to publish Foursquare tips.
CBM: What tools do you use on a daily basis?
DP: Hootsuite, 100%. The rest I use through the browser, for example, I keep everything inside of Google Docs.
CBM: What are your favorite apps?
DP: Foursquare, Venmo, GroupMe, Uber and Dropbox. And Spotify, which I didn’t think I was going to dig.
CBM: Why?
DP: I am a huge music fan, but I never really hooked onto music social networks like MOG or LastFM. Anything that tried to be super niche-y lost to Facebook. But I love the social stuff in Spotify- the ability to create playlists with your friends is awesome. I also love Google Music.
CBM: How much of your job as a Social Media Manager bleeds into real life?
DP: A ton. I’ve met really random and interesting people just by tweeting about things and I really like meeting those people in real life, especially the ones that I talk to frequently online. I try to do coffee meetings at least 2-3 times a week. Also in real life, David is launching a sweet new t-shirt company, check it out here: “Children of Privilege“.
CBM: How awesome is it to work at Thrillist?
DP: We have Nerf Gun Fights. In fact, we have an entire arsenal. There’s so many awesome, awesome people. Seriously, everyone is the best at what they do. And a few weeks into the job a baby lion came to our office. No joke.
Article source: TNW http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/FwamerWk2gY/