Because so many of my family, friends, friends of friends, etc. came out in hordes to support my Vanns Community Manager role video application, I felt it was important and appropriate to write a follow up for everyone.

I turned down the opportunity to be in the Top 5.

Some of you might wonder why in the world would I do such a thing after going through so much effort to win a spot.  Well, it unfortunately came down to something that had I known from day one, might have deterred my involvement in the first place.  The salary was WAY WAY too low to consider moving and supporting my family for.  I received a call the morning of the Top 5 announcement telling me I was being considered as a Top 5 finalist, but they wanted to share some job details with me first.  I was told the salary range first, and I was floored.  It didn’t make sense to me.

From their site:

So how much will you make? Let’s say for the purposes of starting a conversation that you’ll make a wage that is commensurate with your experience level in a job of this nature and get to live in what is probably the most incredible place to live in the Mountain West – Missoula, MT.

I was offended that a role as important as this one, and one that was so highly publicized and recruited for, was as low as it was and/or they were implying that’s what they thought my “experience level” was worth.  I know Community Manager and Social Media roles are still working on gaining credibility for themselves, but I was very surprised regardless.  Especially considering the great lengths Vanns went to hire someone for this role.  Yes, the cost of living in Montana is less then many areas, but I did my homework.  Missoula is not a small town, and the cost of living isn’t that low.  At least not for those newly finding their way there.

I have no ill will towards Vanns, the process, or any of the wonderful candidates that made the Top 5.  They seriously are a group of talented, passionate, deserving individuals, and I’m sure Vanns will have a winner on their hands regardless of which direction they go.  And everyone is different in their needs, cost of living, personal circumstances.  Perhaps their range is well within other people’s situations.  It just couldn’t work for me and mine.

Of course, I can’t help but offer some feedback on the whole process being as passionate as I am about community managment.  Especially some misses from a community perspective that Vanns really missed out on to capitalize on the great idea:

1. 1. Be more transparent. Vanns really should have disclosed a salary range from the get go.  I don’t know; maybe I was the only one burned on this one, but if you are going to do a nationwide search for candidates to this degree, AND put people through a ton of work just to apply, you need to disclose this to negate those that can’t consider the offering. “Commensurate with experience” was not entirely accurate.
2. 2. Be more involved. Besides a few Twitter updates notifying followers of new videos, there was no company interaction with the site.  Nothing to continue the momentum, encourage dialogue, or get people excited about the milestones.  Yes, they obviously are hiring someone for these things, but it certainly wouldn’t have been too difficult to be more engaged.
3. 3. Be more efficient. The whole process took to long.  Interest waned during the down times.
4. 4. Media execution. The process of the video portion of the application was a patch work solution.  It was too confusing for many users to figure out how to vote on the videos, and many of the applicants didn’t get the system working correctly from day one.  Don’t reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to.  YouTube (and Vimeo for that matter), offer robust, fully featured video hosting solutions that could have accommodated all the videos and voting mechanisms without requiring any registration to do so.
5. 5. Involve customers. Vanns already has a community site up and running.  Why not have involved them in the process?  Put out questions or poll the community to get feedback on what they would like to see in their community manager.  Offer prizes, incentives.  Something to turn the experience into something more viral.

I can’t give the constructive feedback without the good.  Here’s what I loved:

1. 1. The platform. By far one of the most innovative, slick presentations on recruiting a position in your company.  It’s obvious the idea was a winner.  I personally scored two news stories based on their innovative approach (here and here).
2. 2. Social Media. Great use of Twitter and Facebook to evangelize the opportunity.  There was plenty of chatter going on throughout the campaign.
3. 3. Vanns Site Integration. Not only did the publicize the role on their main website.  They prominently featured it frequently on the front page.  Bold and shows how important they view this role.
4. 4. Bottom line…it worked. Despite my criticisms, let’s be honest, the idea worked.  They may not have gotten as many applicants as they would have liked, but at the end of the day, I assure you they will come out much farther ahead from the process as opposed to if they went the traditional route.

So another chapter closes.  I loved making the video, I loved evangelizing it, and if anything, it’s provided quite a bit of visibility for me in other areas.  Good luck to Vanns, their future Community Manager and continued success.  In the end, it all works out as I have some exciting things in the works that will involve doing my own thing.  That’s always who I’ve been anyway.

More to come…

No matter the time, place, platform, or technology, having people talking about your company, products or services is a good thing period. Of course you want those conversations to be of positive nature, but if you’re doing your job in delivering a great product or service, in most cases, they are. The real question is how can you get people talking about the things you want them to talk about?
Now just to be clear, I’m not talking about telling people what to talk about. Arrogance has no place in this space. It’s about the strategies and methods to incorporate in your communities and social
spaces to facilitate mutually beneficial conversations.

Be Everywhere
The first step that any business needs to take is establishing themselves as a company that embraces community. What I mean by that is companies that have active, real people engaging with their customers on multiple channels on a regular basis. It’s not enough to just have a Facebook page or Twitter account. You have to be using those channels as true two way communication options for your customers. By answering questions, solving customer issues, and engaging in numerous conversations related to your business, you will establish trust and admiration of your customers and customers to be.

Create Community
Next you need to consider having a “controlled” community environment in your world. In other words, a community platform that lives on your site. A place that you can offer your customers/audience a place to communicate in addition to external channels. While it’s great and necessary to use the external channels, it’s important to establish yourself as a true community champion by having your own community presence. It also allows you to control the platform, and metrics making it easier to turn those conversations and data into actionable resources.  For information on how to build your own community platform inexpensively, check out my previous post on the subject.

Drive Mutually Beneficial Conversation
Once you have built that trust, it’s time to take advantage of those connections and not only participate in conversation, but create them. Let me start with a personal example.
As part of the Vanns Community Manager job application, I needed to create a 60 second video to promote myself creatively. The 2nd part of the mission was to demonstrate my ability to drive traffic, build awareness, and utilize my networks to drive views and votes of my video. So of course I tackled the usual major players, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. But I also didn’t want to ignore the traditional media outlets (more on that in a future post).

Rather then fire off an email to the newspapers about “my story”, I came from a special interest angle about how companies are coming up with creative ways to apply for jobs and it’s requiring applicants to do more then just sending in their cover letters and resumes. Of course I included my situation and how it applied, because while I did genuinely want the article to be more broad, I certainly wanted to benefit from being a part of the article to increase awareness of my video.

Two papers responded and one will be running the story in the next week. Both reporters explicitly said they wanted to run with the story because I pitched it from a perspective that was reader focused then just a self serving one. They also said that 90% of their story requests are all self serving most from companies.  So if you use this tactic, you’ll have a much better chance at getting a response.

The point of the story is that when you engage with your customers/audience in ways that benefit them as much as you (and often times more them then you), you are going to be in a much better position to “control” the conversations or at the very least guide them to where you want them to go.

So to recap:

• Build your digital street cred by being where your customers are and engaging with them a lot!
• Create an environment in your world where you customers can go, converse, and more easily allow you to use that information in ways that help you grow your business.
• Approach conversation creation from your customers/audiences perspective. What angles will promote meaningful conversations that can benefit them as well as the business.

Good luck!