Sylwia Korsak

JustDelete.me is a new project aiming to answer this question. It contains a collection of links taking you directly to the “unsubscribe” area of each site you might be on. I have suffered a lot with the fact that I could not restore my original Evernote account so when I decided to set up a new account and close down the old one I realised the pain of searching for this particular option. How good to see someone helping us all out!

I think it’s only appropriate to talk about newsletter subscriptions management in August when most of us enjoy a little bit time off work and start to appreciate the silence in our inboxes (even though I work in social media I do feel this month is a bit quieter then spring, fall or winter months). Unroll.me is a simple tool helping its users in mapping out and managing newsletter subscriptions for gmail, Google apps and Yahoo email accounts. (More here).

Why is it so important?

Well, people subscribe to many newsletters and updates for numerous reasons, of course. The majority of my readers work or happen to be interested in social media or non-profit sector so we tend to subscribe to many industry related newsletters. I used to think that managing a large chunk of incoming emails is a simple task because I happened to be blessed with a customer service job in the past. Responding to 350 emails each day is not a big deal, logging their content and completing team management tasks on the top of that somehow trains you to love the noise. Noise is good as it helps you find little treasures, I dare to say that it is noise that’s the best thing about the web. However, you need to know how to handle the noise and if you cannot do that you might suffer, a lot!

Recently I started to fall in love.

With minimalism.

With emptiness.

With silence.

With clean.

It’s strange. I did not live the phase of information overload but I did get infected with the minimalist trend probably since I started using Apple devices – I give it to Steve, he was a genius. So is his team even today. So is Google. So is IKEA. And all other companies introducing simple but functional solutions. Their products and services affect the way we live and I would like to think they do so in a good way.

I see how many of my overloaded colleagues, who did not have the opportunity to experience or were not trained to manage a higher volume of data, can feel almost physical need to switch off and de-clutter their lives. Why? Because moving away from clutter leaves space for thinking, feeling and enjoying what we have. Nothing more. And that little thing we have SHOULD be enough.

It is exactly when we leave space for less that we start to appreciate and grow what we have and choose carefully what we ask for. I like black, white and all their shades. I appreciate, digest, take in and celebrate colours more than ever before!

So I have decided to declutter my inbox of many useful newsletters to ensure that I actively go out there and keep an eye on all the amazing projects I have so far expected to update me. This way, I think, I am participating a little bit more. With a clear head;)

I have been asked recently in one of my workshops about careers in social media marketing and choices one needs to prepare for them choosing this still new path. I happen to be talking to active bloggers and social media users, not PR or marketing professionals so I was faced with the dilemma: shall I tell them the truth and risk losing some potentially amazing future colleagues or shall I try to inspire them and ignite their enthusiasm? I do not think I have answered their question fully so here it is in more detail, all challenges (or facts) of becoming a social media marketer coming from a geeky background:

1. You will work with PR and marketing professionals who have no idea about social media, learned to blog or tweeting a few months ago and dare to call themselves social media marketers.  

How to spot them: They will describe themselves as gurus, ninjas, evangelists or other abstract roles, when in the true meaning of their role they should be able to apply their marketing roots to the new landscapes of social web, meaning knowing as much about tools+content+people relationship as possible.

How to deal with them: if possible, avoid them – it’s really difficult to correct people who use “blog” term for their recent blog post without going mad and usually does not lead anywhere. Gurus do not listen, nor accept. They preach and evangelise! Just listen and move on to do your job.

2. You will work with marketers who think and speak in numbers, industry slang and acronyms.

How to spot them: if you hear your fellow marketer using following terms: KPIs, it’s not rocket science, audience engagement for planned viral video or anything else from www.whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com then you are dealing with one of them.

How to deal with them: confront them and start using made up acronyms to confuse them. You can also plan a new slang slogan in their head. I have seen someone writing up an entire dictionary of buzzwords for his colleague and distributing it across the company. Worked really well, though do not count on changing the actual marketer. It simply speeds up the process of decoding their messages.

3. Sometimes you will work with people who are not nice! 

Marketing means creating demand. It also means wrapping up nothing into something and creating a story sometimes out of thin air. By default, you can assume that many people working in this industry will not care about core social web concepts (collaboration, mutual respect, trust and personal reputation in networks, etc).

How to spot them: it’s a difficult one but often sooner or later you will figure it out. In my personal experience, one can spot a more selfish social media marketer by their lack of contributions to your or their own community, rather rude and self-centric tonality of speech and lack of good past case studies with good personal recommendations.

How to deal with them: learn to keep distance and manage just how much they know about you. Do not show your vulnerability. Maintain professional but cold relationships. I suggest you watch Brene Brown discussing happiness in this context as it tackles the fact that openness is positive but rare. So learn to protect yourself at work and, if needed, keep your sensitivity for friends, online audiences or family. Do not show it at work, unless it is directed at trusted people.

Is it all manageable? Well, I am sure it will depend on your character, but I think it is. The longer you work in the industry the easier it gets to clearly see how to establish, nurture or simply keep at bay new industry relationships. Be aware of the choices you make and remain professional at work to be able to live your personal life fully.

I would like to thank all the students who attended my course on social media for career building at the Ravensbourne in London yesterday. I am glad that you have arrived with great, quite important questions and left with few answers and de-mystified tips on the practical value of the social web for your personal branding and projects. I have really enjoyed talking to such an intelligent and ambitious group of people. Every time I talk to younger generations of creatives I feel inspired, proud and happy to see that when given the right tools they can make the web their own and shape it into amazing projects with quite substantial results. Happy, you made me happy! Thank you!

RegentTweet 2013 was my second year of discovering little treasures of Regent Street in London. I am really, really impressed with the idea and execution of this rather complex blogger engagement campaign. Last year I was joined by my son who genuinely loved the game of looking for QR codes (he is probably more of a shopping fan than I am;)) but this year I have actually enjoyed the shopping experience myself. I think there was a bit of a critic left in me because I did walk away from one of the shops (not ready to welcome bloggers before 11AM, which made me late to the Apple store lecture!) but I have enjoyed all other experiences! If you ask me for highlights I would name hand massage for ladies at Crabtree and Evelyn (perfect fit for a blogger, don’t you think? I almost  hired the lady to live with me and massage my hands every single week, but she said she would probably stay in London;)) and visit to Rapha cafe (really respect them for staying in touch in advance of the event, on the day and afterwards too). I loved the day and I really hope that my fellow bloggers had fun too!

Big hug to the organisers for a great Saturday in London!