mike manuel

Mike Manuel

mike — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:01:34 +0000

I’m an overly caffeinated consultant that’s been living and working in the Silicon Valley for the past decade. By day, I’m the General Manager of Voce Connect, a services team within Voce Communications focused on social media marketing and web development. At Voce, I’m lucky to say I manage social media projects for some of the biggest brands in the business, including Comcast, Disney, eBay, Intel, PlayStation, Yahoo!, VeriSign, and several others.

By night, well, let’s be honest, I do much of the same, but I also occasionally share my experiences, insights and opinions on digital media and communications on this blog, and increasingly on Voce’s company blog, Voce Nation.

The best way to contact me is via email at mike (at) voceconnect (dot) com. And yeah, I’m on Twitter too: @mmanuel.

We've Scooped Up Doug Haslam

mike — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:29:59 +0000

The new year is off to a very good start, much of which I hope to share here shortly. That said, over on the Voce Nation, I just published one of our initial highlights, which is the news today that Doug Haslam is joining Voce and will be working along side myself and others on our social media marketing programs. My post has a little more detail, but for now, it should suffice to say we’re all looking forward to digging in with Doug and collectively kicking butt this year. More to come…

Data Analytics, The New Marketing Engine

mike — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:25:37 +0000

So two interesting articles worth pointing to here, also an opportunity for all social media marketers to consider as we march toward a new year: First off, earlier this month, IBM’s Rob Ash posted this great piece on business analytics, and how various companies are trying to squeeze more value and insights from the growing piles of data that they sit on. And then there’s this second story from Spencer Ante at BusinessWeek, which coincidentally, is about IBM too, and how the company’s putting a lot more muscle and money behind the hiring of data analysts.

While both stories are about Big Blue and big business, the big opportunity is front and center — company’s today have access to friggin mountains of data and intelligence, and those that can make the most sense of it, stand to gain considerably from it. Period. This is particularly true for social media marketing teams who are increasingly responsible for making sense of a messy, yet amazingly insightful social web. Those teams that can collect the right data AND wrap the right performance analytics around it, will be the champions of the standout programs we talk about this time next year. This is why I think stronger web analytics, tighter measurement models and better intelligence tools will be such an important part of this discipline’s maturity in 2010 (a topic for a separate post).

Three Types of Social Media Measurements

mike — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:09:24 +0000

I’m continuing to post thoughts on social media measurement over on the Voce Nation. With this latest post today, I’m digging a little deeper into what I’m calling “spot measurements,” which are single values of program performance and health. Also, in my attempt to not be the guy that just says “you need to measure things like ‘discussion volume,’ m’kay?,” I’m providing three ways that you can take what would otherwise feel like unrelated data sources and start making sense of them thru some basic calculations. Take a look, let me know what you think.

"Shifting from Promises to Results"

mike — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:55:34 +0000

Stephen Baker’s latest (and unfortunately, last) BW story seems timely in the context of my previous post on social media measurement, especially his comments toward the end:

“The risk is that a backlash against the consultants’ easy promises could reduce social media investments just as the industry takes off…The best way to avoid a similar backlash today is for social media’s practitioners, including thousands of consultants, to shift the focus from promises to results.”

How to Measure a Social Media Program

mike — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:42:20 +0000

So over on the Voce Nation I just published the first of several posts I’ve been cooking up on social media measurement. If you’ve got the time to give it a read, know that it comes from two places: 1) My own observations and experience working with our account teams and clients on measurement methodologies — we’ve been doing this for nearly a decade now, so we better have some insights and opinions at this point; and 2) My own growing frustration with expert-itis and the people who perpetuate the notion that “you can’t measure” this type of marketing or worse, those who insist you can, but would have you infinitely fidgeting and fussing with the pieces and parts of measurement instead of answering the big-ticket questions at the tip of most marketers’ tongues. So there you have it, let me know what you think.

Marketers Frustrations With SocNets Growing

mike — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:26:43 +0000

I see a backlash brewing. I can’t tell you how many marketers I know are pissed off these days at A) the big social networks; and B) the community software providers. With the prior, it’s frustration over the big 3′s increasingly stringent terms of service and a general ambivalence toward brands unwilling to commit to big-budget deals and exorbitant media buys. And with the later, it’s frustration over the high costs and technical limitations of this software which I can only best describe as the “I-don’t-want-to-use-your-f*cking-’kudos’-system-for-feedback!” feeling. Yeah, everyone wants some sort of community strategy these days, but as marketing folks hit hard brick walls with the social networking cos and the big box software providers, the temptation to roll-your-own community creeps back into the mix. This is why projects like that which my colleague Nick shared today, may in fact be indicative of an early shift in thinking and spending. We’ll see….

Soundbite 2.0

mike — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:40:08 +0000

Often it’s the small twists and tweaks to ‘established practices’ that can really take things in a new direction — case in point, I was recently reading your run-of-the-mill-mega-company-internal announcement, however, this one was followed by several supporting points pre-packaged in 140 character tweets with all the shortened links and hashtags served right on top. It was one of those moments where your natural reaction is to just gag on the silver spoon working its way down your throat, but after a closer look at things, it really wasn’t over-the-top-type-stuff that this company had pre-defined, it was actually all fairly basic. It was the type of stuff I might, if I was an employee, just retweet for lack of a stronger opinion on the matter. My takeway was this: framing the company news in snack size chunks was helpful for A) holding attention; B) summarizing the news; and C) enabling people to actually do something with it — quickly, at the point of comprehension. I can’t see this working well for every company, but it’s interesting nonetheless…

On Domain vs Off Domain Strategies

mike — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:42:46 +0000

So I’ve noticed a strange sort of tug-o-war taking shape among those managing social media programs and without going into all the details here, I’ll just say the tugging typically gets down to this question: where should you put your time, energy and money? Should it be with” on-domain” strategies (e.g., brand communities, business blogs, corporate video, etc., basically any sort of effort that folds into a company’s existing website)? Or should it be with “off-domain” strategies (e.g., microblogs, social networks, monitoring projects, etc., basically any sort of third-party platform or service that could be ‘officially’ adopted to help the company participate with the larger web outside its walls). I guess the ‘strange’ part is that this split, this tug, really shouldn’t exist at all, because it’s not an either-or situation. The best programs will inevitably be those that strike a balance between how social media is used on-domain to communicate and connect with people, and how it’s used off-domain to accomplish this exact same thing. I think finding the perfect blend between those two experiences is where every marketer ought to be focusing their time, energy and money right now.

Voce Adds Web Dev Team, Forms "Voce Connect"

mike — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:23:19 +0000

So I just ‘broke’ this news over on the Voce Nation, thought I’d share it here too, the short of it is this: 1) Voce has scooped up the entire cnp_studio team, a group of web developers that specialize in social media design and development work; 2) We’ve formed a combined (social media marketing + web development) service team within Voce that’s now called “Voce Connect;” and 3) We’ve been quietly working together for months now, winning a mix of social media marketing and web development projects with some of the biggest consumer and business brands in the world, much of which we’ll be showcasing and sharing on our new company site which we rolled out today too. Our press page has all the details, and I’ll be posting more on this shortly, but suffice to say, it’s a big day for our company and a good measure of how our firm’s thinking about the changing landscape for marketing and communications. There’s much, much more to come.