According to Adage our latest recruit has one of the hottest jobs in marketing.

Deana Burke has joined us to provide full time community management for one of our major clients.

As the Adage article states, there is a growing interest in the community management function from clients in diverse industry sectors. This isn’t too surprising given the increased emphasis on all things social. If an active presence on platforms such as Facebook is part of your digital communication strategy then community management skills, if not the recruitment of a community manager, will be a hot topic of conversation.

Wordle tag cloud of Deana's CV

Deana has moved to Scotland from New York and brings with her a strong track record of overseeing social campaigns and programmes of various shapes and sizes. This includes managing a community of influencers for TNT (US cable TV channel), plus community management for animal welfare organisation The Humane Society, the US Forest Service, Pepsi brands including Mountain Dew, and GE Appliances. She also managed a private brand ambassador community for Snapple.

With Deana on board our involvement in things social will extend beyond strategy and content provision to the day to day, sleeves-up management of these spaces.

Exciting times.

Hi Phil,
Hope you’re well. I’ve now changed my mind completely and decided that Twitter is rubbish.
Yesterday we got 50k visits on the site. Facebook sent 6,000 people and Twitter 600, but we have more Twitter followers than Facebook ones. No one clicks on the links and there’s too much on it.
It’s OK for the punters but for driving traffic and building brands I think it’s a lame duck.
There.
Have a great weekend.
Paul

Paul Stokes
Publisher
The Daily Mash

I received the above email from Paul Stokes over the weekend and subsequently got his permission to quote him.

Twitter = rubbish for building brands in his view.

He makes an interesting point about there being too much on it and no-one clicking on links.

I suggested that this might have something to do with the fact that The Daily Mash uses Twitter as a one-way, broadcast channel (see below), and that a more “engaged”, dialogue approach might yield better long term dividends.

With such a broadcast approach it’s probably not surprising that Facebook performs better as a traffic driving channel. People tend to fan/follow fewer, more considered, more personally important people and organisations on Facebook than they do on Twitter. The signal to noise ratio is higher. And Facebook is hardwired for word of mouth.

Is Twitter rubbish for building brands?

A few clicks on from another excellent Mashable update and we’re demonstrating and debating our own variance in social behaviour with chat show style banter on Google Buzz. Here’s the discussion thread…

Following an email around the office this morning, investigating what our individual thoughts were on Google Buzz, I received a few pretty cynical responses. To be fair, many people are still recovering from Google Wave: asking where and what now?

For me, it’s a bit different. Google is half my social equation. I have a Gmail account and am also a member of Tech Meet Up, Mobile Monday Edinburgh and Girl Geeks. TMU is a Google group, as is Mobile Monday and for Girl Geeks we organise information around Google Sites. I have a number of files in Google Docs, plus I’m in and out of Google Maps all the time. It’s fair to say I like Google.

Not everybody feels the same though. Here were a few thoughts from other Blondes about Google Buzz, starting with our tech team:

“It’s like twitter, but without any clients and unable to tie into any other of the microblogging/social media things…

It does follow the two people I have set up in googlemail already though.

Sadly, until they create some reason for it to exist my thoughts are:
“Just what the world needs, another twitter-clone.”

Oh it has “like” from facebook, which twitter haven’t managed to add yet.”

The bandwagon of Buzz bitchin’ rolls on…

“If everyone starts using it then it becomes really relevant. Haven’t seen a killer feature yet…

Google have been, shall we say, intermittent in their marketing of services so the jury is out about how big it will become.”

Having said that the current debate (going on around me while I’m typing this) is that if you are a heavy gmail user (I am) then it does appeal -as long as the take up is good.”

And then the rest of the planning team jump in….

“Google Buzz – initial reaction = “groan”.

Groan because as a digital marcomms professional I’ve got no option but to try it out, when my gut feel and the input (via Twitter) from people I trust are telling me that it’s going to be no great shakes.

Groan because I resolved this year to add more depth to my social graph (more emphasis on RSS, blog writing and commenting), and this feels like more breadth. That’s my personal take on the whole signal to noise issue.

Groan because there’s this stool called RSS, and there’s this other stool called Twitter, and I can’t see a valid role for anything between those two stools.

Groan because I only ever use Gmail for opening Twitter accounts. I really really can’t be arsed to have another following mouth to feed.

So I’ll watch with interest how it develops but at the moment it’s not even coming out of the box for me. “

And the tech team is still going….

“It just seems way to complex and unfocused.

Twitter
Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.

Facebook
helps you connect and share with the people in your life.

Simple. I get it.

Buzz
Go beyond status messages
Share updates, photos, videos, and more.
Start conversations about the things you find interesting.

Try Buzz in Gmail. (why do I have to do it in gmail by the way?)

You lost me at “Go beyond status messages”. Er.. not so sure I get it.

Really bad design as well. I find it really hard to scan. Twitter is so easy to just fly through and pick what’s interesting. Buzz is a mess and feels horrible to read.

Google seems to have forgotten their design roots. A million miles away from one input box to search shit.

Social network app fail.

A lot cleaner in t’iPhone though. Bordering on being useful.”

Before finally concluding…

“My friends are on Facebook (for the most part)
My friends aren’t on Gmail (for the most part) and if they are they’re not updating their status there.

So, for social/picture sharing stuff = Facebook.

I get interesting web/marketing/wotsit links by following people and searching on twitter.
I don’t get that from Buzz (yet, since there’s noone on it)

So for interesting links/finding out what random “famous” people are upto/whatever = twitter.

Buzz is only as good as the people using it – and currently noone is.

I expect it to go the way of Google Lively, to be honest. “

It appears I am the lone voice of Google Buzz support here.  I don’t think this product… this service… from Google is anywhere near complete and of course I’m aware of the privacy issues, which have been flagged up; but I need something that bridges the gap(s) between LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Social networking online isn’t this simple. I don’t want my engagement with professional communities to be confined to LinkedIn. I want meaningful, human-to-human knowledge sharing, which goes beyond the offering of Twitter and I certainly want a richer experience than Farmville updates on Facebook. I’m not arguing that Google Buzz is the solution, but given the incredible insight Google now has into our online behaviour, I’m holding out for some improvements first, before I search for a conclusion. Here’s to growing out of Facebook and Twitter…

The whole Facebook username landgrab, goldrush thing in pictures…