Community Managers Appreciation Day #CMAD

Some say they don’t sleep.
Some say they work 24/7.
Some say they’re on the community side and some say they’re on the brand’s side.

Being a community manager makes all the above very true. The fact that they need to take care of their community, grow it, talk to people, write interesting content, keep their community engaged and happy, meet them offline, solve issues, have some exciting promotions and be the voice of the brand online and offline and even more, makes their life a challenging one.

The dedication needed from community managers is huge, yet it will never fail to keep them excited all the time, especially if they have passions for communication and customer care.  When I used to be a community manager, I remember checking my communities all the time and before I close my eyes to sleep and as soon as I wake up. The happiest moment is when I read new comments from fans and followers and observe how they react to certain things or to others. Also it’s very exciting when I meet them offline. It’s like a reunion!

Nothing beats a good compliment from a fan or a follower, but again, it’s not always rainbows and butterflies! There are people that come to community managers with problems, there are others that are very upset and there are those who love sarcasm. The key is how to keep it all interesting and motivating.

I told a potential community manager during an interview that there are no average community managers; you’re either an excellent one or you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. You are either passionate about it or you don’t fit.

Community management is not an easy job. Needs a lot and constant research and dedication, needs someone who, again, is passionate about communications, communities and problem solving.

Today is the Community Managers Appreciation Day. The least we can do is to thank those who are there when we need them, and when we don’t. Thank you for all the hard work and commitment.

7 lessons I’ve learned from working at a startup

My entire 2011 was at a startup. It’s like one of those long relationships. We started by learning about each other and it got more exciting every day. There were moments when I was wondering what they think of me and what was next! When we thought we got used to each other, we got more responsibilities and commitments as a couple company. So we got overwhelmed at times and scared at other times. We needed to understand each other all over again and learn about each other even more, sometimes it was like we never met before! Got a few time-outs and more new experiments, where we learned new stuff together. Things that none of us knew or tried before. We got bigger with more demands and responsibilities. It seemed like it happened overnight. We freaked out again and started setting some rules AND roles, a lot of them have been changed and tweaked. Along the way, I learned not to set or accept any expectations; they can easily be proven wrong. Sometimes to better, sometimes to not. But only when it happens, I have to decide what to accept and what to not accept. I have to say it was a year that passed by like a week, made me look forward to a mature “relationship”. If I want to summarize my 2011 in 7 lessons, they would be:

- Don’t count hours or days. Don’t look for more digits on your paycheck, yet.

If you’re looking for 9-5, run now! If you’re in it for the money, I don’t think you’ll get what you want that soon. Sometimes, you will need to work overnight, other times you’ll spend holidays at work. If you’re looking for comfort, startup is not for you.

- Believe in the goal and the success story you want to create.

Never get trapped in a routine. It should always be exciting, storming and transforming! Never stable and structured, until it stops being a startup. Focus your efforts on how to make things better and how to be efficient. Always think of how to make it successful for you and your clients. Then if you fail, it would be OK. But never lose hope in what you do, and most important in people around you.

- Expect changes and be open minded.

Changes in your physical place, your position, your role, your team and everything! Sometimes, you’ll find yourself an office boy, other times you will participate in taking decisions for the CEO. Sometimes you will be supporting others and other times you will cry for support. It’s a tough roller-coaster. Scary and fun, but never boring.

- Don’t get off the bus before, at least, you get there.

First, think of what you want from working at a startup. What is it that you want to walk out with? If you’re in it for the experience, to make a difference and a success story; don’t leave before you get all that. You’ll think there’s nothing more you can give or get and you’ll think you got there but then not yet. It all happens when you’re at the peak, right before you get the best part. The best part is at the end of the tunnel, get there! Stick around in sickness and in health.

- Learn new things everyday. Watch, read, listen and teach.

Startups and those who work at a startup should believe in learning and in (smart) mistakes. Learn new things, try new things, get empowered and then give to others. Never stop learning. Never stop doing new smart mistakes and always share what you’ve done and learned.

- Engage your people and with them.

You need people, you need their commitment and hard work and they are all you got. Engage them and make them heroes of the story. Let them take decisions, sometimes. Make them feel valuable and appreciated whenever you got the chance. Always thank them for the extra effort they put. Never say it’s their task; no one’s task is to work 90 hours/week for 12 months. They do it for you and for themselves. Not for the task sake.

- Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Anything could happen, anytime and any minute. Know where you’re standing and keep good relationships with all. Work like nothing will be as successful as this. Learn like you need it all to start again. You won’t fail forever.

Internet in Jordan and My Experience With #MadaJordan

The most annoying thing about internet in Jordan is the service itself. The fact that they can give you and guarantee you the speed you pay for but for some reason it just does not happen. The mentality of “up to” needs to disappear. Sell me a speed and guarantee that it does not go less than that except for outages that I should be notified about. This should not be too hard, is it?

Mada, one of the ISP’s in Jordan, have these cool offers. I have tried the Biscuit for few months now and it is good. What I would have loved more is a better coverage. Other than that, it’s just perfect!

Mada has reached out to me to try their internet biscuit for few months and let them know how it is. They said I can be completely honest so that’s +1 to them. At first I had some difficulties with connecting it from my MacBook, called their support but they could not help me. Coming from a technical background I have figured out the DNS issue and fixed it. If I would suggest something here is a more qualified support. First -1.

Speed was amazing. At first I used to download my favorite shows then stopped and started streaming them instead of taking from the hard disk space. Another +1.

Coverage! It wasn’t great but it covered a good portion of Amman and around. I wish they had better coverage on the way to Jerash and there, had an amazing weekend there that only missed the internet connection (or maybe not ). It would be cool actually to start with attractions and where people spend their weekends. That would be a +1 but so far it’s in between.

One cool +1 about it is sharing the connection; 5 people can connect to the internet through Mada biscuit and enjoy the web! Also liked the design, easy to carry. You can check how many people are connected, their IP and MAC addresses. Just in case you felt some unauthorized person hacked into your biscuit.

Up time: They told me it lasts 4 hours but definitely it lasted much more! I even check to see if it’s still working or not. You also have the ability to check the battery status from your browser.

Easy to set up, easy to use, take anywhere and cool prices. I recommend you check them out and see if there’s coverage at your area!

The Convoy of Happiness

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

I was contacted last week by Bidaya, the Social Media Agency for Umniah‘s Ramadan initiative. Salwa, their social media manager, said they are going to Jerash to have some fun with kids and she was wondering if i would be interested to join their “Happiness Convoy” and said that couple of other bloggers will join.

That sounded interesting, almost everyone likes to see a smile on a kid’s face! So I said yes.

What I liked about this;

• They already go every day to a different city in Jordan, play with kids, dance with them, face painting, gifts, etc… So it’s not just a bloggers activity; we are being involved in an already running good initiative.
• It’s on a Saturday, I don’t have work and we were promised to get back to Amman by sunset, in case we want to spend Iftar time with family.
• They haven’t asked us to tweet or blog about it. Only mentioned the hashtag if we want to tweet. #UmniahAlKhair
• The big bus and other small buses and cars were so colorful and cheerful!
• It didn’t look like a charity activity. Umniah and Bidaya teams played, danced and laughed with kids like they were best friends!
• At the site, they asked mothers to step aside and let kids play. At first, mothers were too protective and wanted to stay with their kids, then Umniah team asked them nicely to let kids play. That was fun to watch.
• After all the fun, there were some gifts to kids! Being themselves, kids unwrapped their gifts and threw papers all around. I saw some guys from Umniah actually picking up those papers and throwing them in trash cans. Good job! It wasn’t like throw some gifts at kids and leave.
• As a thank you from Umniah, on our way back home, we got yummy cookies!

That was an amazing experience. Wasn’t the first, but was different.

We hear each and every day about how we should give to our communities, we were taught that since early ages. What was missing is the actual involvement. It’s not enough to let your CSR department go out on such initiatives and brag about it at conferences, newspapers and magazines. You need to teach and involve yourself and others to keep the wheel on goodness running.

Good job Bidaya and Umniah!

Tempo dancing with kids - The smile on this kid's face is priceless! <3

When a PR Agency Wins

I’m jealous of some PR agencies in other countries. The professionalism and creativeness they have is truly amazing. To say the least.

Social media and PR agencies always try to figure out best ways of reaching out to bloggers and influencers, most of the time, it’s a huge fail. As a blogger, I have been reached out and as someone who works in social media, I have reached out to influencers. It’s always a learning process and there’s always something new. Every time you meet a new personality and need to work around it.

Rules of thumb:

• Don’t be self centered.
• Give influencers incentives.
• Give them the option to be fair, not promoting.
• Learn their personalities before reaching out to them.
• Reach out to them through a customized message or call. Don’t be or sound robotic.
• Thank them regardless what the output was.

What brought all this up is a story happened about two months ago in Canada but I just didn’t have enough time to post about it until now.

Scott Stratten, president ot UnMarketing, was reached out by Duri Al-Ajrami, the Director of Social Marketing – Senior Partner at OgilvyOne Canada to join a campaign for Magnuim Ice Cream launch in Canada.

As per Scott; Duri said all the right things; to tweet or blog about it only if he wants to, when he wants to and the way he feels confortable and his audience too. Payment was cash AND Ice Cream! Isn’t this AWESOME?! Probably I’m jealous about the Ice Cream part, Scott ate a case of Ice Cream in 48 hours!

With that said, he decided to record a video about “Magnum’s False Advertising” Video is so funny, you can watch it on his blog. He said that Magnum claims this ice cream is double chocolate but in fact there were FOUR layers of chocolate! (made me drool) and said label should be changed to Quad Chocolate!

He also talked about their contest that allows participants to get a chance to win, well, 250k dollars value gifts! Isn’t this huge? And all you have to do is record a video saying why you should be the Magnum Heir!

Duri thought the video was funny too and decided to pay Scott a visit with four CUSTOMED boxes of ice cream. Take a look:

 

If you didn’t see; it says “Scott Stratten’s Quadruple Chocolate” !! Isn’t this awesome?!

Quoting Scott:

“PR doesn’t have to stand for Press Release. It can still mean Public Relations.”

Duri commented on Scott’s blog saying: “To be fair to all … The idea of the box was a team effort lead by the the AWESOME Mark Forward and Jamie George (two amazing Ogilvy folks) who planned this and blessed by our amazing clients Gina Kiroff and Joyce Kim who always drove us to think out of the box. I just delivered  Thank you all for your great words … we’re still learning”

Isn’t this cute? giving credit where due.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a PR win!

What is your experience with PR agencies ?

What’s +1 and What’s -1 about Google+

After 15 days of using GooglePlus; knowing that it’s still being fixed and improved, I would like to share my thoughts on what I like and what I’m not too impressed about.

LIKES (+1)

- Sparks! This is my #1 best feature in Google+. You can save topics and just get back to them like you have a customized website for that certain topic that gets you best articles and news on that specific topic.

- Everything is one click away. you dont have to go through different platforms to be social. you have your mail, gtalk, maps, all google on the same platform and all connected.

- Hangouts.

- I like the fact that people don’t see what circles you put them in and what circles you have moved them to.

 

DISLIKES (-1)

- Anyone can add you to their circles and see my stream? Seriously? That means, anyone who decides to add you to their circles can see your posts in their stream. Check out this cool guide: Will user A see my post?

- I can mute a post but not a person. If I want to mute a person I have to block him or remove from circles. (in Facebook: hide all from XX) I want to add some people to circles, may for future references, but I don’t want to see their posts, Cannot be done.

- Some bugs that I reported already. Like I used to get notifications of a post I commented on even after I deleted my comments. (You know how, in facebook, when you untag yourself from a post pr photo so you don’t receive notifications? )

- There’s still no application for iPhone. It’s kinda weird when I grab my iPhone to open a google+ app. Not sure how I get the feeling that I might find it installed. lol

5 things I hate about twitter

1- When people mention me on tweets I have nothing to do with and all tweeps in the tweet keep me in the conversation even though I’m not adding to it.

2- When people keep repeating the same news over and over again. Nothing new. Next time, check if someone said it before you, if so, twitter invented the retweet option, check it out.

3- Being listed in lists I have nothing to do with! absolutely nothing! even worse, in a language I don’t speak! lol (I do appreciate my international friends though )

4- Hashtags that mean #nothing and no one use them except their creator. Check out this definition of a hashtag.

5- People who link their twitter updates with facebook. I once found a status update in facebook’s timeline news feed that has something below like “65 similar posts” here I use the “hide”

Happy tweeting ya’ll !

التغير في الاردن

صراحة هذا أحلى اشي قرأته من ألف سنه ! مش لئنو اسامة ما راح يكتب سياسه .. بس يا رايت الكل يستوعب إنو مرات كتر الحكي بخرب ما بصلح .. والبدّو إصلاح يبلّش بحالو .. لو كل انسان فالأردن بلش يشتغل على إصلاح نفسه ، عيلتو، الناس الحواليه كان الحكومه طلعت منيحة.. كان أصلاً ما حدا إحتاج حكومه .. وكان لمرة وحده بنصير زي الشعوب المنظمه .. مش ضروري ما نمشي خطوه غير بقانون …

لن أكتب في السياسة بعد الآن 

منذ أن بدأت التدوين منذ ٣ سنوات وأنا أكتب مقالات معظمها سياسية لكنها لا تسير على طريق واضح، فأنا لا أملك فِكراً سياسياً وليس لي في السياسة باع، ولأكون صريحاً أكثر، أنا لا أعرف عن ماذا أدافع وماذا أريد، شأني شأن الكثيرين ممن ينضمّون إلى المظاهرات أو الاعتصامات وهم لا يعلمون لماذا هم هناك، شأني شأن الكثيرين ممّن يجتمعون على طاولة تملأها “كاسات الشاي” وفناجين القهوة يتجادلون بالسياسة بنقاشات متداخلة لا يعي منها المُستمع شيئا.

ولكي أرد على كثيرٍ من الأسئلة التي وصلتني، نعم لقد تابعت لحظة بلحظة ما حدث في تونس ثم مصر ثم اليمن ثم البحرين ثم سوريا فالأردن، ولم يُسعغني قلمي أن أكتب كلمة واحدة حينها لسببين، أولهما ذهولي مما حصل وما يحصل، أما ثانيهما فهي الحيرة التي وقعت فيها بين فاعلية “المقال والتغيير” ورغبتي في التغيير نفسه وأي تغيير نريد ولماذا وكيف.

ما حدث في الأردن مؤخراً من اعتصامات لا يعي الكثيرون ممّن شاركوا فيها أدنى فكرة عنها وعن أهدافها جعلني أتساءل: هل نحن فعلاً نريد تغييراً سياسياً في الأردن؟ يُطالبون بالملكية الدستورية التي قد تأخذ الأردن إلى هاوية الإنهيار، يُطالبون بإسقاط مدير المخابرات الأردني لمجرد أنه “مدير مخابرات”.. نحن لسنا بحاجة لتغيير سياسي أبداً بل نحن في حاجة مُلحّة إلى تطوير وعينا الذاتي وحياتنا الخاصة حتى نصل إلى مرحلة نستطيع فيها فهم الأمور فهماً دقيقاً وبتخطيطٍ سليم وبدراسة لعواقب كل حركة نقوم بها.

ومن الأمور التي أصابتني بصدمة، مطالبة البعض بأن يكون سمر الأمير الحسن بن طلال رئيساً للوزراء أو رئيساً للحكومة، ألم يُفكر هؤلاء أنه لو أصبح الحسن رئيساً للحكومة فإن حرية الإعلام ستقبع في غرفة موصدة لا مخرج فيها؟ فكيف لكاتب أو لمدوّن أن ينتقد الحسن إن أصدر قراراً شاع أنّه خطأ وهو “أمير” ؟

الكثير من الأمور التي حدثت مؤخراً جعلتني أعيد ترتيب أفكاري في رأسي، ووصلت لقناعة بأنّ التغيير لا يأتي من رأس الهرم بل من قاعدته، التغيير يأتي منّي أنا ومنك أنت أيها القارئ.. وبالنهاية، فالهدف من التغيير هو “حياة أفضل” لك ولي وللجميع، أليس كذلك؟

لا يُصدقنَّ أحدكم أن حياتنا تتوقف على الشؤون السياسية فحسب، فهناك أمور تُبنى عليها السياسة ونسيناها، وهي الأمور والقضايا والشؤون الإجتماعية الخاصة بالفرد والجماعة.. أخلاقنا التي ضاعت في مسيرات التأييد في عمّان خلال الأسابيع الماضية التي بسببها أغلقت معظم شوارع عمّان حتى الصباح بشبّان اعترضوا طريق السيارات التي لم ترفع العلم الأردني بعبارات لا تليق، وعينا الذي دُفِن في ألوان العلم الأردني الذي أصبح يُباع بـ 20 ديناراً على الإشارات في تجارة واضحة بوطنيتنا، عقولنا التي أثبتت أن فيها خللاً حين اعتقد الكثيرون أن جلالة الملك سيشعر بالفخر حين تسير “جاهة” من السيارات باتجاه القصر الملكي بإطلاق نار في الهواء تعبيراً عن “تجديد الولاء” للملك، ثقافتنا التي لا تتعدى صفحات فيس بوك أو “Fan Pages” حين انضم الكثيرون لاعتصام دوار الداخلية على أساس “بدنا عزا نشبع فيه لطم”.. وهناك المزيد.

استناداً إلى ما سبق، أعلن أنني لن أكتب في السياسة بعد الآن.

أسامة الرمح

18th of April, 2011

Top 5 Inventions in History

5- Toilet and plumbing: without explaning why or who, just imagine your life without it.

4- Washing Machine. By William Blackstone as a birthday present for his wife. So cute!

3- Water heater. By Benjamin Waddy Maughan. May his soul RIP.

2- Photography. By not sure who, but my most favorite photographers, below, were invented by God and their parents. (Click on each photo to visit their gallery)

1- Food, By God. and cooking as an art of food by people.

The Nokia C7 Challenge

I’m not a Nokia fan. Although appreciate the variety of options in terms of design, price and features they offer.

I was given a Nokia C7 to try, and since I’m not a fan, I thought I would take this “challenge” and try it.

I’ll start with what I liked:

- Camera Quality is great. Check out Pic1, Pic2 and Pic3

- GPS is really helpful. except some mistakes with the latest maps downloaded but the ability to use GPS for free and find your way especially for people like me keep getting lost, is really amazing.

- The big screen is cool.

- Different desktops and the option to drag some stop on the desktop is really cool. like contacts, etc.

- It’s good sometimes to have all the social networks in one place instead of multiple applications for each.

- I liked getting my new emails on the desktop rather that going inside the mailbox and check and also liked how I can be too specific when scheduling the updates. very good for those who do not have an unlimited plan.

- It gives easy access to different things, like mail, messages, music, etc.

- Liked the tips popup that are actually relevant to what you’re doing with your phone.

- Design.

- Sharing photos and content with social networks is pretty easy.
Now what I did not like much:

- The way you answer the phone, it happened many times that the phone was in my purse and why getting it out to answer, I either reject or answer the call by mistake.

- Too many options, could be because I got used to less option in my iPhone. But made me find out that some people are not concerned about most of the options they’re given.

- I used the wireless connection to connect to internet but without me knowing all my credit disappeared. Could be my wireless connection got disconnected so the phone automatically used my credit and phone network.

- When sending an email, it does not remember the previous emails I sent to like iPhone.

- The keyboard and symbols are not as easy as iPhone.

Sorry if I keep comparing with the iPhone, I’m just so used to it.

Over all, it’s a great phone for Nokia lovers and iPhone haters