Many companies find that outsourcing is an effective way to achieve objectives while keeping a sharp eye on their bottom line. But here is where a lot of them miss an opportunity to outsource more effectively: they don’t match up their outsourced staff with their demographic. And this leads to miscommunication.
Have you ever called a customer service line and find yourself speaking to someone with a heavy foreign accent (yet who also assures you that her name is “Sue”)? Right off the bat you have trouble understanding and being understood. This is a communications failure, which should be concerning to customer service managers across the planet. Yet the outsourcing continues.
Many outsourced jobs are also offshored, which means that they are jobs that are sent to people in other countries. Social Butterfly Marketing is an outsourcing option for social media. But we homeshore jobs, which simply means that we use American people to provide social media support to other American consumers. Further, we match up our Social Butterflies interests with those of the target demographic of our clients. We do this because we believe that makes them much more effective at understanding and communicating with our client’s audience.
For example, if you have a Parenting magazine and want to hire a social media person to engage with your audience, you probably wouldn’t want to hire a college kid who doesn’t have any kids because he won’t understand your target demographic. In those situations we find a “Butterfly” with parenting experience who also fits the target demographic (35-45 years old, certain socio-economic level, etc). Every time I call customer service and speak to “Sue” in Bangalore, it makes me wish that more companies put a little bit more thought into it.
In other news, I’m SO excited to be attending the SoCon12 conference at the Center for Sustainable Journalism at KSU this weekend!! You can follow along by monitoring the event hashtag, #SoCon12. There will be a lot to learn!!
So I was busy today doing my usual creeping around on Facebook when I saw this post from the fiancé of a foreign exchange student who stayed with us…omg…like 20 years ago (am I really that old?!!!). Anyway, she said:
Ummmm…gesundheit?!! Considering I’m not even sure what language that is, I surely don’t know what it means. Then I noticed two beautiful words under her post: “See Translation”. Could it really be that easy??
Yes, it can be and is actually that easy. Turns out they’ve gotten married over the last 24 hours and she was overcome with gratitude for her friends and family.
What does this mean? Say what you will about Facebook; I think that it’s pretty cool that I’ve reconnected with the nice Swedish kid who crashed at my pad all of those years ago. And I love that Facebook has come up with a way for us to communicate even though we don’t speak the same language.
The world just got smaller in a pretty cool way.
Two blog posts in one week. Don just might do a cartwheel across the office.What can I say…it’s hard for me to write when I’m not inspired. But when I am…..
Have you seen us? Neither have our parents.
Those of you who know me well know that I’m very interested in a problem referred to as CSEC, the commercial sexual exploitation of children. My interest began when my little brother fell in love with and then married a wonderful Russian woman. We flew to Russia for the wedding (it was seriously off the chain…in a palace…copious amounts of caviar and vodka…wish you could have been there with us!). On the plane I read an article on human trafficking and was horrified at some of the stories of women and children (some as young as 5) being stolen and then sold into the sex trade. In addition to being horrified, I was left with the impression that I’m glad that I don’t live in a place where this is commonplace. I mean, really. IMAGINE.
So fast forward a couple of years and imagine my surprise when I learn that it’s very common in the USA as well. In fact, my beloved Atlanta is, in fact, a hub for this monstrosity. Minor girls are sold on average of 350 times each and every month in metro Atlanta. Do you think it doesn’t happen near you?? Well…guess again.
What are we going to do about this?? Slavery isn’t dead in our country, not by a long shot. We have to do something.
I noticed a group on Facebook called MN Girls Are Not For Sale who apparently feel the same way. They post fantastic content, discussing all types of issues related to CSEC. They recently posted an article about a man who was sentenced to probation in a child trafficking case. What interested me most about the article is that this guy went to a prostitute and asked her to find him an 8 year old girl so that he could have sex with her. The prostitute was so disgusted that she literally risked her life by flagging down a policeman and reporting this guy.
Most prostitutes are under the heavy hand of a pimp who beats her, takes her money, etc. I’m amazed at this woman’s bravery that set the right eyes onto a sexual predator. The police went to his house where they found (surprise) child porn. He lived across the street from an elementary school and he had binoculars sitting by the window (shudder). Based on the porn that was found only because of the prostitute, he’s in federal prison for seven and a half years. And he got an additional 20 years probation for trying to buy an 8 year old.
I love how social media plays such an important role in social problems. It allows me to be informed of a topic that I care deeply about…and it allows me to easily share the message.
Want to know more about CSEC and what you can do to help? Check out these links:
Have you ever attended one of the SoCon events? The next one is coming up on February 3rd and 4th. From a networking party at SweetWater Brewing Company to an all day conference at KSU, there is something for everyone! I find that it’s a great way to stay on top of the constantly changing landscape of social media. It’s also great for networking.
Check out the break out sessions. How will I ever choose???
10:30 – 11:30am Break out session #1
Sessions:
• Always On: Will Traditional Computers Survive the Mobile Revolution
• Augmented Reality
• Lessons in Video PR
• Socializing Local Store Marketing (LSM)
• The Future is Now: Social TV and What Consumers Want
• The Great Unfollow Experiment
• The War On Stupid
• Educating (Dr.) Rita
• Social Service: Cultivating Responsible Fans
• The Value of Incorporating SEO-friendly Content into Web content
1:15 – 2:15 pm Break out session #2
Sessions:
• Be a Big Fish in a Small Pond: Growing Your Venture Overseas
• Connecting Georgia Greens – Real World Examples
• Creating and Leveraging Sustainable Social Media Communities
• Crowd Financing 101
• The Creative (not creepy) Use of Social Media Analytics
• Social Media for Advocacy: Using Next Generation Tools to Spread Awareness and Influence Policy
• Quit the Daily Grind: A Former Newspaper Reporter’s Social-Media Journey to Freelance Success
• The Social Journey
• Designing for the Mobile Age
2:30 – 3:30pm Break out session #3
Sessions:
• Create, Connect, Collaborate: Words that work online
• The Intersection of Social Media and Communicating Sustainability
• The World Has Gone Mobile: Use Your Basic Web Skills to Build iPhone and Android Apps
• Why Time Consuming Blogging, Twitter and Facebook Strategies May NOT Work for Your Business: Consider These Alternative Social Media Strategies
• Mine! No, Mine! : Who Owns Social Media?
• Would You Like A Badge With That? Event Organizing In A 2.0 World
• Building Web-Based Augmented Reality Experience
• She Said, He Said
• Crowdsourcing content: The social consumer as a source for content and dialogue
• Social Media Mistakes and how to handle them (Dealing with Online Reputation Management)
If you would like to join us, use discount code “CSJ15″ by January 20th and get 15% off SoCon12′s already low price. Seriously…it’s a steal!!
Here is a link to their Facebook Event and for my twitter peeps, the hashtag is #SoCon12. Hope to see you there!!
You’re sitting at your desk, pondering what message you should share on your company Facebook page. For whatever reason, you decide to include the word “Christmas” in your post. And keep in mind, context doesn’t matter. You could love it, hate it or anything inbetween. But you’ve mentioned it and that’s what gets it categorized and sets the ball rolling.
One or two lucky individuals or companies will have their sentiment shared…but the rest of us will be relegated to the doomed “…see 17 more posts about Christmas by clicking here.” I’m sorry to say that even Buddy the Elf doesn’t love Christmas so much that he’s going to click on something like that. So be careful when posting about current events in Facebook. It doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t do it…just be mindful that the number of impressions you’ll get for that post is likely to be smaller than other posts.
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