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.

Keith Rankin has joined Blonde as Head of Search.

He is just back from a year travelling. His search (geddit?) for enlightenment included several months in South East Asia, including an ascent of Mount Kinabalu on Borneo. At 13,500 feet, that made him the highest Rankin (geddit?) sightseer on the island.

Prior to that Keith did lots of clever things at Fast Web Media in Manchester. His clients included The Premier League, Carling, Grolsch and PA Sport. Whilst there he picked up several awards including a “Best Use of Search” for Carling at the 2006 Revolution Awards.

Keith brings with him not just proven expertise in search engine marketing, but also a keen interest in optimising content on social platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

As well as being good at what he does, Keith is a culturally and philosophically aligned with the people-first thinking that characterises Blonde work. We all just clicked (geddit?) during the interview process.

That’s probably enough. Small prize for the best search related pun in any comments.

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…

Welcome the “Conversationalists”.

Full details of the rationale behind this addition can be found in the Forrester Groundswell Blog post. But the new category has been introduced to recognise the rapid fire, short format status update posting that is epitomised by Twitter and which is now a major part of life on Facebook.

The Conversationalists take their place on the second from top rung of the Technographics ladder as shown below.

Some of the initial commentary has focussed on the positioning of this new behaviour category on the ladder, contending that its relative importance is currently being overstated. (Check out some of the comments on this post on the We Are Social site).

But I think there are bigger issues.

We are huge fans of, and subscribers to, Forrester. And we actively use the Technographics model in planning comms strategy for most of our clients.

Thus far, the model has been very easy to explain. Each behaviour category, from Creators to Spectators, does exactly what it says on the tin. Simple, intuitive, and precisely descriptive.

And, equally important, up until now none of of the various behaviour categories overlapped. People overlapped, in that one person could exhibit more than one of the behaviour types, but the behaviour types themselves were discrete.

The Conversationalists moniker is not so straightforward. For two reasons.

1) It is neither single-minded nor precisely descriptive of the behaviours it claims to encapsulate.

2) It describes a behaviour type that overlaps with at least two of the existing categories.

Let’s look at each of these issues in turn.

Is Twitter a “conversation”?

For some people it might be. But the people whose Twitter streams are a constant flow of @replies are the exception rather than the rule in my experience.

Twitter is a lot of different things to different people. That’s why it is not easy to explain to the uninitiated. Sure there are sporadic outbursts of conversation but certainly in “our” world it is primarily an information/content/ideas exchange. And “conversation” doesn’t accurately describe the nature of that exchange.

The short format status updates of Facebook and Twitter allow you to do similar things. In fact some people annoyingly do exactly the same things at the same time on both, simultaneously posting the same content, verbatim, to both streams.

But, for most people that I’ve spoken to, the whole tone and purpose of Facebook is very different to that of Twitter, even if the status update functionality is similar.

“Conversation” is probably a more accurate description of what happens via Facebook updates.

And that brings us onto the second issue of overlap.

“Conversation” is also an accurate description of what happens in the comment threads of many blog posts. And, in a more lowbrow manner, in the comment threads that accompany YouTube videos.

So there is significant overlap between “conversing” and “commenting”.

To a lesser degree there is also overlap between “conversing” and “creating”, to the extent that regular micro-blogging can be construed as content creation.

And then we have the overlap between Conversationalists and Joiners. Joiners maintain a profile on a social networking site and/or visit social networking sites. Conversationalists update status on a social networking site.

In fact Conversationalists actually feel like a subset of Joiners, exhibiting a particular aspect of Joiner behaviour and doing it at least weekly rather than at least monthly.

All this matters to us because we actively use the model to influence communication strategy. We frequently conduct primary research to create bespoke Technographics profiles for specific audiences.

For instance, we found (perhaps not surprisingly) that people on the UK Hip Hop dance scene indexed through the roof against high-end Creator behaviour. Being able to categorise and quantify this gave us the confidence to create a community hub that largely depended on user generated content.

Hitherto, constructing questionnaires and research methodologies to generate bespoke Technographics profiles has been relatively straightforward because none of the behaviour categories overlapped. If we are to embrace the Conversationalists, this will be more tricky henceforth.

We’ve been hired by Channel 4’s 4iP fund to promote a new iPhone application called You Booze You Looze.

4iP is an investment fund administered by Channel 4 that is designed to support non-broadcast public service initiatives.

You Booze You Looze (YBYL) is one such initiative . It is the brainchild of a game developer in Dundee called Digital Goldfish. DG is already responsible for “Bloons”, one of the biggest selling games on the iPhone ever.

YBYL is an app that keeps tabs on what you and your friends are drinking. In a fun way it also informs you of the short and long term financial and health impacts of your drinking. It has Facebook Connect technology built in to allow groups of friends to be acutely aware of what everyone else is drinking. It features various sobriety tests/games that measure the effect of alcohol on things like balance, co-ordination, reaction time and concentration.

What has this got to do with public service you may ask.

Well.

One of Channel 4’s core values is “Making trouble in the public interest”. (One of my favourite brand values of all time).

The aim for this app is that it will be fun. Being fun will lead to social use in bars etc. Social use will hopefully lead to discussion.

Anyone who has read Nudge will be aware of the Amerian campus survey that showed that students tend to overestimate what their peers are drinking, and increase their consumption accordingly. Once told that their friends are actually drinking considerably less than they thought, their alcohol consumption dropped markedly.

So this app approaches the issue of excessive drinking by accepting that social drinking is fun, in the hope that it will provoke discussion. It is very different in tone from your average public sector anti drinking campaign.

Blonde is working with Stripe, Opticomm and one of our EdTwinge friends, Andrew Burnett, to promote the app through various channels, with a heavy dose of social media activity in the mix.

Read more at http://www.youboozeyoulooze.com/.

And if you have an iPhone click the Buy Now button to get one. A bargain at only 59p.

Follow @BoozeLooze on Twitter too.

This really, really good presentation by Olivier Blanchard makes the point more eloquently than I’ve seen it made before.

The tone of voice is lovely.

And the content feels like stuff that you should know.

Which it is.

But lots of people still act like it isn’t.

(Isn’t stuff that they know).