Social Media staffing: The beginning of a trend?

Dallas developer devotes staffer full time to blog and tweet

08:59 AM CDT on Tuesday, April 27, 2010

By SHERYL JEAN / The Dallas Morning News
sjean@dallasnews.com

Kendall Shiffler spends hours each day on blogs, Facebook andTwitter.

Also Online

Link: Lower Oak Lawn blog

It's her job as social media maven for Lower Oak Lawn, a new residential and retail development in Dallas' Design District between the Trinity River and Interstate 35 East.

Through a blog, loweroaklawn.com, and other social media, Shiffler has quickly become the voice of the Design District. By focusing on what's going on among the area's many design showrooms, art galleries and denizens, she hopes to attract people to Lower Oak Lawn, which has 1,000 apartments and plans for five restaurants (the first one opens Wednesday), a boutique hotel and trails.

Developer Mike Ablon's research showed the target resident was a tech-savvy, 20-something urbanite. So he shortened Lower Oak Lawn to LOL, which means laughing out loud in the social networking world. He also added built-in flat-screen televisions and iPod docks and speakers to the apartments at Alta 1900 Lofts, one of three apartment complexes there.

It's unusual for large companies and even rarer for small businesses to have a marketing person devoted to social media. Ablon's company, PegasusAblon Properties, has 20 employees.

"There isn't anything like this in the industry, so we had to invent it, and to do that you have to be committed," Ablon said. "We hired Kendall on LinkedIn. You want someone who lives in that world."

Shiffler, 25, worked in the city of Dallas' international economic development office for two years before joining PegasusAblon in September. For the job, she had to write a blog post about why she loved social media, submit how many social networking friends and followers she had, and post a blog item about LOL.

Small businesses have lagged in using social media because they don't have the staff or time, said Janet Wagner, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Excellence in Service. That's changing: A study by the center found the use of social media by small firms doubled to 24 percent last year in the U.S.

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESS

1. Know your target audience or customer.

2. Develop a social media marketing strategy.

3. Make sure your website or blog has the best search engine optimization.

4. Find the right voice for your business.

5. Join Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

6. Join LinkedIn and other professional networking sites.

7. Start a company or personal blog.

8. Integrate social media into your traditional marketing.

9. Research what your competitors are doing.

10. Address negative feedback immediately. Don't ignore it.

An Economic Recovery without Job Growth?

Is it possible we're headed for an economic recovery without significant reductions in unemployment? Scott Burn's column in today's Dallas Morning News makes a case for it. Read on:

Sometimes a single statement can be so loaded with import that it just stops you.

That happened recently when I interviewed economist David Ranson. A consulting economist for H.C. Wainwright, a research firm serving investment managers, Ranson has spent years examining how markets tell us things – if we listen. I've learned to take his anticipation of our economic future very seriously.

I asked him three questions. His answer to the third question opens the door to possibilities that few are prepared to think about, let alone discuss.

What kind of economic recovery will we have?

"I can see double-digit GDP growth, and I strongly believe the recovery will be V-shaped," Ranson said. "We'll have positive growth but weak employment.

"That's not the conventional wisdom, which is often shaped by mood. Recent growth figures, for instance, were greeted with worry by journalists and many economists. But I think we'll get even higher growth figures in the next two quarters.

"Unfortunately, that doesn't mean employers will hire new workers. Productivity is rising, but much of it may be because employers aren't hiring. This is very bad socially.

"You see, employers have choices," he said. "They can choose a large workforce of average workers. Or they can choose a smaller workforce of above-average workers. An employer who sees employment as a losing game – more government regulation, more taxes and more hassles – isn't going to be eager to hire. I think that's what's happening now."

That sounds like an increasingly winner-take-all economy, I said.

"Yes, that's the way we're going," Ranson said. "The economy will recover lost output. But it will sputter out. We'll go back to subaverage growth as the government takes up more of our economy.

"That's the message of history. We had our best growth after demobilization following World War II. But government was smaller then. In the future, we'll have a larger government and perhaps growth of only 1 percent [a year], down from 2 percent.

"Unemployment will stabilize at a pretty high rate."

How can people protect themselves?

"In recent history, we've depended on stocks and bonds to securitize wealth. But those are both vulnerable," Ranson said. "So now we're at sea. David Swensen's answer is tangible assets. [Swensen is the highly regarded manager of the Yale University endowment.] We can now see capital flowing to the real – to productive assets rather than paper assets."

The important thing to remember here, he noted, is that human beings have relied on other stores of value at other times – things such as gold, silver, commodities and real estate. After relying on paper assets for more than a century, he said, we may be revising our notions of safe ways to store wealth.

If he's right, we're heading for what some will call an "asset quake."

--

Scott Burns is a syndicated columnist and a principal of the Plano-based investment firm AssetBuilder Inc.

Leadership in Tough Times

The burden of the economic recovery extends beyond unemployment statistics, business failures and the erratic financial markets. It forces us to modify our behavior on several fronts, personally and professionally. How it impacts the leadership role was a topic of discussion at a recent industry association meeting. Here are the highlights:

Communicate (more often)

• It’s not enough to simply communicate with your team– for maximum effectiveness it must occur frequently. This goes a long way to curbing speculation and helping team members stay focused.
• Withholding relevant information leads to speculation, rumors and hearsay. If bad news lands on the doorstep, better to share it than not.
• Share only what needs to be shared; don't over-inform. People deserve to hear the truth, but not beyond the facts that pertain to them.
• Take internal audits to gauge team members’ state of mind: what are they feeling, what are their needs, what can you do to support them?
• Tip: It’s perfectly fine to not have answers to every question or comment; listening is the first step to being an effective leader (and probably the most difficult for people in leadership!)

Model the Right Behavior

• You don’t have to be the first to arrive and the last to leave every day, just make sure you’re not a LIFO– Last In, First Out.
• Do more than is required and not just in your area of responsibility. Pitching in to help others– above or below your rank– is the at the heart of servant leadership.
• Remember, nothing kills morale more than a leader labeled as “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Engage the Team

• The ability to adapt to changing environments or market demands is critical to the success of any business. The same is true of the people on your team. Help them break free from the routine by encouraging feedback.
• Step 1: make certain everyone understand the basics well and are pursuing those standards consistently. No need to try building on a weak foundation!
• Step 2 : keep everyone focused daily on the “work at hand” or in Zen terms, “being in the moment”. This helps minimize distractions, gossip and needless speculation.
• Step 3: ask for input, ideas and feedback then, actually try some of them. Celebrate the successes (loudly), no matter how small the impact. In times like these, your team needs every win it can get.