Monday, March 07, 2011

Two new jobs at 90:10 Group

London-based social business consultancy 90:10 Group (UK) is seeking to recruit both an Executive and an Associate to help us change the world - niche by niche. Both roles are based in London, UK.

EXECUTIVE
The Executive role is a first step on an exciting career path for someone with a passion for the tools and techniques of social media and the desire and ambition to join a vibrant, fast-growing organisation in a sector bursting with innovation and opportunity.
During your first year you'll receive exceptional training and guidance, preparing you for promotion within 12 short months. We recruit into this role with your long term development very much front of mind.
We expect the successful applicant to be capable of becoming a share-holding partner within three short years and a director of their own arm of the business within 5-6. On joining you will have a clear career development path mapped out with rewards and incentives marking the way.
Our career structure is designed to recognise and reward the work and experience our employees gain at 90:10 and give each member of the team more to inspire and aspire to.


The role:
The Executive role functions as the one-year entry point into the 90:10 Group business.
The Location:
Our London office at 88 Kingsway, Holborn.
Function: You will provide vital day-to-day support to the London office and its team while gaining an understanding of how the office / business operates. You will gain hands-on experience in community culture - the 90:10 platform approach to delivering business efficiencies through social technologies and techniques of co-creation.
You will be trained in the best online community auditing/monitoring and data processing tools and techniques with expert leadership. You will also be supported in responding to day-to-day client management issues.
You will be required from time to time (with any necessary training) to update our own web resources, take notes in meetings and support the senior team in a variety of administrative roles.


Essential: Excellent written and communication skills in English. Computer and web literacy. Business and client focus. Excellent eye for detail and accuracy. Must have the right to work in the UK (you will be based at our office in Holborn, London, right next to the tube).
Advantageous: Knowledge of/experience in social media monitoring technologies. As a multinational, multilingual business, additional languages are also clear advantage as is evidence of effective personal participation in social media. A qualification in Research or Communications OR equivalent working experience will make you stand out, too.

ASSOCIATE 
THE ROLE:
The role of associate is a client-facing role which requires a year’s experience within 90:10 Group or equivalent skill sets. We expect the successful applicant to be capable of becoming a share-holding partner within two short years and a director of their own arm of the business within 4-5. On joining you will have a clear career development path mapped out with rewards and incentives marking the way.
It is a continuing development role in which you will perform the following functions and develop the following skills: 
Functions: Support the Group and the London office in the following ways:

  • Create report documents, coordinate meetings and provide clients day-to-day service. 
  • Manage the delivery of social media monitoring reports, audits and local accounts.
  • Attend presentations to clients
  • Interpret industry news for your local office.
  • Develop hands on experience in community engagement (outreach etc)
  • Perform Data processing/Social media monitoring
  • Support executives in their training in data processing/social media monitoring
  • Identify and share best practice both in London and throughout the group.
  • Monitor development of social media activity in relevant markets 
  • Monitor developments in the brands and orgs we work for with specific focus on accounts you are responsible for.
  • Identify and share, and where directed, pursue new business opportunities
Demonstrate and develop an interest in and understanding of :
  • Managing large local and / or multi-regional accounts.
  • Leading all listening and audit presentations to clients and their agencies
  • Using audit and listening outcomes in marcomms planning processes, idea creation and strategic support.
  • Co-creation initiatives and workshops through all their phases.
  • Creating and sharing slide-decks and demonstrating strategic capability.
  • Costing of projects and invoicing of clients.
Further your interest in and understanding of :
  • Ninety10's approach, products and services
  • The businesses, brands and organisations we work with
  • Your blogging and other areas of expertise to demonstrate thought leadership in social media.
  • All aspects of our social media monitoring processes - from commissioning to delivery - including technical and client-relationship aspects.
  • Business transformation through social technologies
Essential: Experience in and off social media monitoring and reporting is essential for this particular Associate role. Must have the right to work in the UK (you will be based at our office in Holborn, London, right next to the tube) and have excellent communication skills in English.


Advantageous: As a multinational, multilingual business, additional languages are a clear advantage as is evidence of effective personal participation in social media. A qualification in Research or Communications OR equivalent working experience will make you stand out, too.
 
We intend to appoint to these roles immediately - there is work waiting to be done! If you or anyone you know would like to discuss these rare opportunities please email me david@ninety10group.com with your CV, current salary details and availability today.





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Saturday, March 05, 2011

Spitfires and the history of the Internet

It was the 75th anniversary of the first flight of the Supermarine Spitfire today.

That made me think about our perception of technology, of newness, of cutting edge.

I started school in 1970. Around that time I would have become aware of the Spitfire - it's iconic role in the post second world war British landscape.
The Spitfire - despite its association with the war - was in service with the RAF late into the 1950s. In fact it was only retired by the Irish airforce in 1961.

And yet, my whole life through it has been a very distinct piece of history to me. Not part of my life more part of a past - one shot in black and white where different people lived under different rules and did different things.
And yet that plane existed only a few years out of synch with my own history.

So I wonder how my daughter, who started school in 2009, views screens she can't touch, mobile phones with no internet capability... The world before the Internet even.

What must she think of the world before broadband - of the time before the low-cost ability to connect with each other and organise around things that matter to us.

And how will she consider organisations which are unchanged by the impact these changes have made?

Perhaps she won't need to consider them at all? By the time she leaves school they may be retired. Like the Spitfire.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Monday, February 14, 2011

Scaling Passive and Active Customer-Centric Innovation

Those familiar with my approach to 'social media' will know I think the marcomms element is a happy outcome rather than a primary objective.

The marcomms-first approach - best characterised by the phrase 'using the channel of social media' puts the cart very much before the horse, in my view.
You get efficient, contagious and joined-in with marcomms as an outcome of the really juicy value creation bit of our digitally enabled socially connected lives.
But the juicy bit is better-fitting innovations. (Image courtesy RachelVoorhees)

If you involve the people for whom the product or service is intended you get a product or service which is a better fit with their needs. And that's customer-centric innovation.
The outcome is better for the customer and since better fit equals more sales that means better for the producer (assuming you can maintain margins, of course).

Working with small groups of customers to co-create is not new. Scaling that is.

For example just three or so years ago no one would have written a blogpost to tell the world they were having a cup of tea. Too much effort to go to.
Now, with tumbling technical barriers to entry for anyone to publish their thoughts (no matter how 'trivial' when viewed by traditional criteria) 135k conversations about tea are published in a single month in the UK alone.

All those tweets and Facebook status updates, (forums and blogposts too) reveal how people are using a product, why, where and when, and what they do and don't like about it. And how they'd make it better - if only you gave them a chance.

Gathering what they have to say, analysing it and sharing the resulting data and strategic insight with the right part of any organisation (for action) can be described as Passive Customer Centric Innovation.
You ask no questions. You require nothing more of your customers and potential customers. But from their open publication to their peers and the world, they provide you a low-cost fast track to innovation to mutual advantage.

The second, Active Customer Centric Innovation, takes the same gathered data, identifies (through nodal network analysis) the most appropriate members of communities and invites them into a process of co-creation with key stakeholders. This requires their active engagement; and rewards for their skills and knowledge.

In both cases the key outcome is a better product - one your customers like more.
The marcomms benefits are a happy bonus - and all the better for being derived this way.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone so I may have to tidy it up later ;-)
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Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Of silos and serendipity

Silos are no friend to serendipity.
They make excellent recommendation engines - peer to peer in the likes of Facebook and twitter.
But in order to be discoverable within those silos someone within the silo must make the discovery outside of it, 'like' it (Facebook) or share the link (Twitter etc).
Then, if the thing is relevant and useful, peer-to-peer distribution through networks of trust does the rest.
And that delivers us a filter based on those we follow and friend. Which is excellent. The best combined crap detector and relevancy generator I've ever known.
With a little wisdom, we choose to add a sprinkling of folk with whom we may not agree, whose interests do not match our own. This is us acknowledging the value of serendipity. A sprinkling of it.
Twitter is relatively well placed for this. Facebook, because it's more closed and far from easy to connect with those you don't have huge amounts in common with, is not. Its resolution of the serendipity issue is to provide a search of the web alongside its internal search (powered by Bing - shareholder Microsoft's search engine).
The fact it is there at all acknowledges a simple truth - one that is true of all silos, no matter how adhoc or fuzzy edged (yes, Twitter too): Not everything you need to know is available here. Not every connection awaits you here.
The future is without silos. And that cannot be reached if we entrench within silos and wait to be fed.
Do your bit. Go discover something beyond. Add to the network.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone so I may have to tidy it up later ;-)

Monday, February 07, 2011

AOL isn't future-proofing with HuffPo and TechCrunch - it's standing still


First TechCrunch, now the Huffington Post. How hip, radical, transformational even, AOL suddenly appears. (ah hem...)

It's almost as if AOL is seeking to reinvent itself as a successful web-based media company through acquisition.

Companies acquire for two key reasons - a short cut to growth or a short cut to skills that equate to competitive advantage.

AOL badly needs the latter. And if it's able to retain the services of the likes of Huffington and Arrington (any other web entrepreneurs ending in 'ington' you can think of?) then it gets to learn.

It gets to learn how to exploit the low cost distribution model of the web. But essentially both TechCrunch and HuffPo are large scale broadcasters powered by very traditional ad models. So that's what AOL gets to learn: How to maximise old models.

These are not the best-fit with the network (rather than broadcast) nature of the web but I have no doubt they will continue to be successful in traditional terms (ie with traditional advertisers) for the short term. (image courtesy)

But make no mistake; this is not AOL preparing for the future, it's simply getting by in the present.
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FasterFuture.blogspot.com

The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?