Maggie McGary
DC area
- 33 comments
- 12 likes given
- 36 likes received
Community & social media manager, blogger, cynic
I think that the better a woman's self confidence is and the less it's tied to her looks early in life, the easier it is to weather getting older and seeing herself change in the mirror. I know for me, my self esteem was crappy early in life (and still isn't so great) and was very closely tied to my looks, and I've fought hard to fix both of those, knowing that it will only become more difficult the older I get. I think that there's no escaping looking in the mirror and, as time goes by, mourning what's gone and what we can never get back. Yes, aging is a privilege and there's much, much more to life than looks, but I think that any woman or person who says they can look in the mirror with each passing decade and not wish she or he could freeze time and prevent any more changes either has flawless self esteem or is lying. Who do I see when I look in the mirror? Someone who has learned that she's more than just about what she sees in the mirror....but who definitely still puts too much stock into that image, even as it does change over time.
Ok, seriously--I have had that same experience EVERY time I apply for a job, and EVERY time I'm told what you were--that it's non-negotiable. If I ever found out that a man--or anyone, for that matter, had gotten more time, I'd have been PISSED! Shows how naive I am, I guess...
I love this post and honestly--you need to write the new version of Lean In...because Sheryl's version is not really cutting it for me so far.
This makes me miss my uterus even less! Although I suppose my ovaries will shut down at some point and it would be nice to know when that was happening.
Amen. I'm so sad I missed the book signing Thursday night because what I see online--thankfully, mostly online for me--truly worries me. People are so insistent on exercising their "right" to free speech...especially online, and even better, anonymously. The things I see said in Facebook comments, presumably among friends, are sad and scary, or, in a case like this week's events around women in the tech space, outright evil. Thankfully, at least in my world, people keep the nastiness mostly online..but even better if the online trolls would heed your advice.
My favorite is the blog comment spam that is all nasty and derogatory--like "this blog is terrible, the writing is horrible, etc"--it's like someone led a webinar in the reverse psychology of the old standby "Great post!" comment.
Yup. And don't forget the thing where Facebook "accidentally" sucked everyone's contacts from their iPhones one time then "accidentally" made changes to people's contacts on their phones another time, "accidentally" allowed private messages to show up in people's public feeds, "accidentally" changed everyone's default email address to their Facebook email address even for those who had previously opted NOT to show any email address...and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. What makes me happy, though, is seeing teens basically abandon Facebook. We older people may be set in our ways or have to be on Facebook for business reasons, but teens are all on Twitter or somewhere else now, which will ultimately grind Facebook's master plan to a halt when number of users and amount of time spent on site dwindles down to levels that won't be worth companies ad dollars.
We recently tried this with a promotion just to fans of the page, and our results were similar to Chad's...except we only targeted fans of the page because in this particular case targeting friends of fans wouldn't have been relevant. Our non-promoted posts' reach are generally around 1,500-5,000 (rare); the promoted post's reach was 23,547; engaged users generally average 50-150; the promoted post's engaged users: 504. However, the virality of the post wasn't as high as many other, non-promoted posts. Granted, it was a promo code for a product, not an article or something else of general interest.
Since the algorithm change, we are seeing less traffic back to our site from Facebook, which makes sense; fewer people seeing our stuff, fewer people clicking back to our site. Depending on how important referral traffic from Facebook is to an org, I could see needing to budget some for promoted posts. However, you know I hate Facebook and, luckily for us, Pinterest is fast becoming a bigger traffic referrer, so rather than spending money on Facebook I'm hoping to be able to concentrate more on Pinterest and other places. More fun AND taking traffic/revenue away from Facebook=win ;)
One last observation--while promoted posts seem to at least get content seen more on Facebook, Facebook ads have, so far, proven to be absolutely useless for us. We do FB ads based on clicks, not impressions, and a recent set of ads for a particular product was targeted at over 170 MILLION users and yielded ZERO clicks. But that makes sense to me--when was the last time you clicked on a Facebook ad? Not to mention that mobile users don't even see them.
I wish I loved baking....so do my husband and kids.
With so much lip-service given to the term "community" in this day and age of social media marketing, I have loved watching this true example of actual power of online community unfold. I, too, know Patti from Facebook and Twitter and seeing her speak at ASAE, and when I read the news about Mr. Brilliant's cancer, I gasped out loud and was as upset as if it were an IRL friend reporting such shocking news. Patti is such a giving and genuine person--it's nice to know that that still counts for a lot in life, despite daily evidence to the contrary.
@Willie_Matis Thanks Willie--really good point! Especially at really hierarchical (sp?) orgs, this can definitely come into play and can be very frustrating for the person who is the external "face" of the org to not even be a recognized face within.
I'm in Mitch's camp and glad to see I'm not the only one who feels like that. I write because I love writing. Period. I don't get paid to blog, I don't do it to generate business or leads (I have a full-time job), and I'm not on any lists nor do I aspire to be. I write when I have time, and while I occasionally try to respond to comments, most of the time I just...don't. I sometimes feel guilty about it and worry that I should do better...then I remind myself that blogging is a hobby for me and the people I need to worry about interacting with live in my house, not on the interwebs. I'd rather get it wrong by not optimizing the community I could have through my blog if I were more interactive than get it wrong by spending even more time online than I already do at the expense of my husband, kids and IRL friends.
I don't have Klout anymore, but back when I did, I was noticing that a lot of the perks seemed to be pretty crappy...as in, a discount or "free" sign-up to an email newsletter or something. My sense from your story and Jeff's is that the companies buying Klout perks don't seem to have any grasp of what it is exactly that they're buying into when they do a perk. E.g. are they even looking at who they're targeting, are they following up with Klout about the execution of the perk (stuff like perks arriving with no information or call to action, or the stupid one addressed to "teen influencers")....seems that they're content just saying "we reached out to influencers by doing a Klout perk!" rather than actually expecting any return from it.
Count me as one person who doesn't care about personalized Linkedin invites. I hear a lot of people complaining about this, just as others complain that every @ tweet should receive a reply, as should every blog post. I'm of the "pick your battles" school of thought--e.g. I put effort into what I personally feel is important. To me, Linkedin is a rolodex of professional contacts and my level of interest in connecting with someone doesn't usually warrant me spending time customizing the invite. Sorry if that offends people; if it means the person doesn't accept my contact request, I'm ok with that.
The other side of the "personalization" coin is that I find that most personalized Linkedin invites are from sales people--the more personalized and friendly the request to connect, the higher the chances are that person is just looking to spam me.
I can't imagine how this guy wouldn't be liable for discrimination. What if she was a stutterer or had some other speech impediment? Would it be ok to not hire her in that case? Granted, of course I'm hyper-aware of these issues because I work at an association that represents communication science and disorder professionals, but honestly--publicly acknowledging that you didn't hire someone because they "talk funny" seems pretty disingenuous to me.
Sadly the reality is that even when you do exactly this, it still may not work--even when you can prove ROI on social media spend, execs who have been reluctant to buy in will probably still be reluctant to buy in. And even when it does work it takes years, not months--longer than a lot of community/social media managers are in a job. #justsayin
The thing that I found ironic about that USA Today article is that you still need content to post on Facebook and Twitter. And unless you want to perpetually be sending your customers and potential customers to other sites, you want at least some of that content to be on your website. And to have enough dynamic content on your website that's interesting and engaging enough to power engagement on Facebook and Twitter, you pretty much need a blog! In fact, the main reason my org launched a blog was BECAUSE of the success we were having on Facebook and Twitter--we didn't have enough content to keep it going and that's why we started the blog. That was a year and a half ago and, while it is hard work, the blog is what has fueled the continued growth of our public social presences.
Hi Lisa--it's interesting that you say that because I do hear a lot from community managers about gamification, and Badge Farm in particular. I almost wonder if the concept of gamification makes it less likely that badges will become something on par with degrees because of the whole "game" concept--as in, when we think of digital badges we think more of social games or something light-weight like that--will it be possible to turn the same thing around to something as respected as a degree? Also, because badges seem to be a monetization option for many social networks--for example, GetGlue--the badges are all sponsored by networks. Will that affect the possible credibility of badges down the road if we wanted them to be seen as marking actual achievements? Or am I over analyzing? (probably!)
I could not agree more with this post! I'm not a member of PRSA and never have been, but I've been paying attention to this conversation specifically because it is a prime example of an association playing with fire and potentially alienating even more members than they already have. I can't tell you how many PR people I know who have dropped their PRSA memberships in recent years; now as you point out they're alienating the potential next generation of members. Who will be left?
In my opinion, associations who say stuff like "Regardless of what you think of the final candidate definitions, you can rest easy no one is forcing you to adopt the “winning” definition. PRSA will, and if you’d like to do the same, great; if not, that’s fine too" are setting themselves up for extinction. Will it also be "fine" if the people who don't care to adopt their nonsensical definition of PR also don't care to renew their memberships or join in the first place? Will it be "fine" when people decide that, since the PRSA's definition of PR is bogus, their professional credential, the APR, is also not worth maintaining? Will it be "fine" if the PRSA ceases to exist? As an association professional and an association member, I sure wouldn't be "fine" with those outcomes, nor would I ever make such a glib statement on behalf of an association I worked for or with. Associations exist because of members. Telling them "we're doing this whether you like it or not" isn't super smart, IMHO.
Go Heidi! I love the idea about pinning an image then editing the link and description to pin content that doesn't have its own images.
I maddiegrant think you're right!! ;)