Awesomesauce

My new gig? Rocking Social Media Events & Sponsorships with Porter Novelli

Karen Hartline

Porter NovelliI’ve recently been thinking about what I enjoy and what my dream job would look like. If you know me, you know that I only want to do things I am passionate about. I love producing events and thinking of ways to add “special sauce” so they stand out from others. I’ve also learned from my work with Mashable and Whuffaoke that I enjoy creating sponsorships that offer something more for the sponsor. All of these passions are about to go into overdrive. I’m excited to announce that I am joining the Porter Novelli team as Manager , Social Media Events & Sponsorships.

As I look back on my life since being introduced to the social media community a year and a half ago, I am truly amazed at the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had. I produced the Community Next conference in L.A. that has been said to have introduced many of the L.A. tech community friendships that are so strong today; I’ve done not only one, but TWO, cross-country tours (The Mashable SummerMash tour & Whuffaoke); I finally got my passport and made my way to London while working with Blurb; I’ve worked with the brilliant Brian Solis; and have rocked the world with Midomi.

This position will allow me to continue working with major Social Media events, including BlogWorld, LeWeb, Web2.0 Expo, SXSW, Internet Week & BlogHer, just to name a few. I’ll also work with the Porter Novelli office in San Francisco (which will be my home base) to offer some exciting community events and Influencer Series, which will benefit all. I think what excites me most about this position is working directly with Stephanie Agresta (@stephagresta) who has been a mentor and someone who I greatly respect and admire. I am looking forward to learning, and working, with the best.

I have to offer huge thanks to Pete Cashmore (@mashable) and Adam Hirsch (@adamhirsch) for reaching out to me to join the Mashable team over a year ago. These men are wise beyond their years and are great friends. Excited to see where Mashable will go next! Many kudos to Brian Solis (@briansolis), who is truly passionate about changing the PR world. On a personal level, much love to Tara Hunt (@missrogue), my BFF Tiffany, and Grant, who have been on this ride with me for a long time, tell it to me straight, and cheer me on when I need it. To my parents (all 4 of them), thank you for believing in me and supporting all of my crazy ventures, including moving to California.

And of course, thanks to all of you for your support. I can’t tell you how much your encouragement and conversations have meant to me. Thank you!

Now, time to get to work…

Twitter Thoughts

What do you REALLY do?

Karen Hartline

If I’ve ever asked you “What do you do?”, consider yourself part of my social experiment. Often, people respond with their job. Wait a minute…I didn’t ask, “What do you do for work?” or “What do you do to make money?” So why do people respond that way? Are we so defined by what we do for work that we automatically answer that way instead of really thinking about what we do…and even who we are?

I’ll admit, I answer with my work. Why? Because it’s easy. Well, that’s not entirely true as of recently. I usually stumble over my answer as I’m doing contract work. You’d think I’d have a great answer to this question, or at least practice my answer, as it’s one that is usually asked first when meeting people. Yeah, not so much. :S

So how would I answer “What do you do” if I really thought about it? I’d say:

I think @avflox has a great point to compliment this thought:

What do you do?

Following @avflox’s suggestion, help me get to know you and tell me, “What do you REALLY do?”

Twitter Thoughts

Trust as the new currency

Karen Hartline

Trust

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust lately as well and immediately favorited this quote from @thomasknoll when I saw it. There is so much to be said about trust…how it’s built, how it’s broken and how one person can screw it up for many others.

I’m a very trusting person. I like to trust that people are good until I know otherwise. Does this make me naive? Maybe, but I’d rather trust people than have my guard up 24/7 and never trust anyone. I feel like, even though there’s a risk in trusting, it’s one to be taken. 

Now, let me say that I believe there are different levels of trust. Trust in relationships is tricky and that’s a place where it takes me a while to really trust people. When I do, it means a lot. And when that trust is broken, it hurts a lot…for both people. Some of you know this, but when I moved to CA just over a year ago, it was to start a non-profit for young entrepreneurs with a person who I trusted very much, both as a friend and business partner. He knew a lot about me and for me, trusting him was worth more than the crappy salary we agreed on for me to move out here. (If you want a good laugh, just ask me how much it was.) 

We were business partners for 8+ months before I moved out, yet as soon as I got here, something was different. Working together was difficult and I wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t feel like he trusted me anymore and I’ll be honest, my guard was up as well. I was miserable. Yet, continued to work on the company and eventually got excited about it again. 

I won’t go into details, but I was contacted by another company soon after I moved out who had a better offer. I told the company I owed it to my partner to discuss it with him first. And I did…and he was not happy. I can’t blame him, but I hoped as a friend, he would want what was best for me, even if that meant ending our working relationship. We tried discussing options, but in the end, I had to make the choice that was best for me and that was to move on to a new company.

Now…with all that being said, I hoped we could remain friends. Not the case. We haven’t talked since May 2008. And that hurts. I couldn’t believe that he would erase me as a friend from his life, which is what he did. However, as I’m recently going through similar things, I can see where it was probably easier to totally erase me from his life than to try to trust me again.

And yes, we trusted each other and I broke that trust. Was I wrong for breaking it? I don’t think I was as I was looking out for myself, as we all have to do. But he did trust me…he trusted me to rock this dream of his and make it a reality…and I bailed.

I was hurt too through all of this. I lost a very good friend who, as frustrating as he may have been at times, has a certain charisma about him that makes up for it. Was he always a good friend…that’s debatable. We all have our days, right?

Because of that experience, I’m careful of who I trust personally as friends and in relationships. Why? Because it hurts too much when that trust is broken and honestly, I can’t handle that, as I’m learning again at this very moment. The pain that comes from broken trust is too much to bear. Sucks that it sometimes keeps me from experiencing new things, but it is what it is. I’ve been hurt too many times to think otherwise.

Trust…the new currency. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?

Geeky Love

Is Social Media a Fad?

Karen Hartline

Amazing video from @equalman (Erik Qualman) and Socialnomics.com. Looking forward to more from Erik.

**The following was posted on August 11, 2009 on the Socialnomics site as Statistics Show Social Media is Bigger Than You Think. Wow–

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

  1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
  2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
  3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
  4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
  5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
  6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
  7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
  8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
  9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
  10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
  11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
  12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
  13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
  14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
  15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
  16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
  17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
  18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
  19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
  20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
  21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
  22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
  23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
  24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
  25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
  26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
  27. Only 14% trust advertisements
  28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
  30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
  31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
  32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
  33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
  34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
  35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
  36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
  37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser
The above statistics and “Social Media Revolution” video tell the story, social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.  Please feel free to share with any non-believers!
Bookmark and Share
Huge Thanks to These Outstanding Sources
Below are the sources I used to compile this video.  Keep your feedback/questions/challenges coming as it will collectively make video #2 that much better – you know leverage this whole “social” thing.  Thanks to all below:
  1. Source: Grunwald Associates National Study – Info highlighted on Trendsspotting Blog
  2. Source: Huffington Post
  3. Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka
  4. Source: First Stats: United Nations Cyberschoolbus Document
    Facebook Stat: Mashable
    iPhone Stat: Apple
  5. Source: Facebook
  6. Source: TechCrunch
  7. Source: comScore
  9. Source:  Attempting to relocate
  10. Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey Note: 80% will use social networks in their assessment.  95% will use LinkedIn in their assessment.  When we revise the Video needs to be updated changing “their” to “a” primary tool need to see if we bump 80% to 95%
  11. Source: Inside Facebook Blog
  12. Source: Twitter & World Population Data
  13. Source: Attempting to relocate
  14. Source: Metro Newspaper
  15. Opinion, not a statistic
  16. Source: TGDaily
  17. Source: www.wikipedia.org – calculated based on # articles per language category
  18. Source: China Internet Information Center, Technorati, Wikipedia
  19. Source: ClickZ Stats SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
  20. Opinion, not a statistic
  21. Calculated based of Wikipedia article data found at www.wikipedia.org
  22. Source:  TechCrunchThis says 4 weeks so I may have been a little off here as my source at Facebook had said 2 weeks adjusted above
  23. Source: Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
  25. Opinion, not a statistic
  26. Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (actually 90% now – updated above but video still shows 78%)
  27. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing  2007
  28. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing  2007
  29. Source: Starcom USA-TiVo
  30. Source: Nielsen
  31. Source: Solutions Research Group
  34. Opinion from Socialnomics
  35. Source: Facebook

If anyone sees any inaccuracies or has better source information please let Erik Qualman (equalman@gmail.com) know.