Left Image: Vanina Delobelle, graduates from Université de Corse Pascal Paoli PhD, Management, Area of research: Social Media and online communities for Marketing in the internet space (with honors) - March 2008.

Vanina Delobelle contacted me regarding my recent On the Move series for the social media space, and I was pleasantly surprised to find finally meet a PhD in Social Media. I offered Vanina a guest post, and she’s offered her perspective on why and how the process went for her. Aside from being an academic, she’s deploying her learnings as Global Product Director in charge of social media at Monster based in United States and you can see she’s already conducting research on social media’s impact on job searches.

Vanina, how’d you get into social media?

I started to blog in 2003 and lived the emergence of social media. Behaviours were very different, tools were enabling to engage people better and this new wave was very exciting. At that time I was running a marketing consultancy company targeting SMB and I realized that these new tools could be adopted very easily for low cost strategies. I was feeling as well that social media will be more and more important in companies’ strategies. In contrary to what happened in the past, social media were emerging from SMB and could be extended to large companies. The market was very new and still a lot of people did not see the power of social media and I wanted to convince them. This new world was so exciting that I wanted to study further these new trends and I decided to take the opportunity to turn this into a graduation. I already have a Master International Business Administration from a French Top Business School but no other graduation than a PhD could help me get an intensive knowledge in such an area.

Regarding your PhD in social media, what were your goals, what were you hoping to prove?

My research was very innovative, there were not many people working in this space at that time. It has been hard to find scientific researches that could help me. This trend was mainly driven by business. I wanted to prove academically these new behaviours. I started my PhD in 2004 in France. I started to analyze how start ups were behaving with the social media and then I wanted to show the interest of both entrepreneurs and consumers in using this interactivity.

What were your findings?

Consumers want to take part of conversations happening with companies, they want to be involved, they want to share and this is the company’s interest to do the same with the market. My research was a scientific validation of Pinko marketing and social media use for companies. We could also define some kind of new marketing model for a web 2.0 company. Today we can see that companies can get so many benefits from setting up a social media strategy. I would even say that it is not even possible for a company not to consider it as the market has changed and they have to change as well to survive. They need to open their windows, they need to share, they need to communicate differently. Blogs, forums, social networks, wikis, microblogging…are tools they have at their disposal and that users are using extensively so they have to do the same. Social media are changing the company externally and internally and the benefits companies get by using these tools is huge.

How will you apply this to your day job, what’s next?

This research has been a first step as the market is changing every day. I keep on updating my knowledge in this area. I think also that the big next step for social media is going to be social shopping in the consumer area. If you simply look at the Maslow Pyramid, once you managed to build a network, the next step is to use it. I have extended my research these last months in this area in merging social media and e-business…this is for my personal life. Professionally I am working for Monster and after my PhD got the opportunity to join their HQ based in Boston in order to take the responsibility of Global Product Director Social Media. I am very happy with this new challenge and seeing that companies start to realize how important Social Media are. Social Media strategies are starting and there are great opportunities in this space.

Where can we find you online? I’m sure folks will have questions for you.

Slideshare: Presentation about Social Media Strategy:
My Blog: http://www.vaninadelobelle.com
My Twitter: http://twitter.com/vanina
My slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/vaninadelobelle

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If you know someone that’s focusing on social media in college as a major, please leave a comment, I want to know.

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Lately, a few friends of mine are making some moves in their careers, they asked me for my advice, so I decided to give them my observations. I’ll probably refer people to this post, I often use this blog to save me time. One caveat, my experience is within corporate, so if you’re of the entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t have as much insight.

Six Career Tips To Help You Grow

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Learn something new every day
When I was a lowly intern right out of college doing grunt work IT application clean up and light UI design, I asked harassed, my dear colleagues to teach me something every single day. They thought I was bright-eyed, cute, and naive and I ended up learning a little about each of the web developers, system integrators, project managers, web managers, web architects, computer support teams. Although this was clearly outside of the scope of an intern, bit by bit, I soaked in each little morsel about web in the enterprise and it fueled me to learn more. Leo Cheng, Jason Martorano, Oliver Cheng, Dave Giffen, John Perera, Kunal Malik, Jeff Cavano, Aileen Cheng, Robert Cartelli were so good to me, thanks guys.

Often, the fastest way Up is Out
Often, the fastest way up, for those who enjoy working in companies, is out. In most cases, incremental raises are often single digit changes (keeping you above the inflation waterline), and the occasional promotion will be low double digits. For those that I’ve met and move to new job positions, outside of their company they can often expect a 20%-40% increase in salary as they join a new company. It’s interesting to see that firms may value outside talent as more important than inside experience talent, in some cases, a fresh skillset or experience may be what’s needed.

Reverse engineer the job you want
Another useful tip is to reverse engineer the position that you desire to be in. Earlier in my career, I aspired to be a web manager, so I took job descriptions of web strategists and looked at all the skills and experiences needed. I printed out the job description (circled the salary) and taped it to my bathroom mirror, I saw it every morning and night, a double dose of self-reflection. Over time, you start to piece together the projects, programs, and apply new skills to learn how to do this. With time and perseverance, your resume will catch up to where you want to go.

Education matters, but not as much as you thought
For very specialized jobs, where in school training is essential (law, medicine, sometimes programming) this bullet doesn’t apply to you. More and more executives I meet have degrees in something they didn’t study in school for. For most jobs, they hire you because of what you can do for them, not what school you went to. There’s a reason why education falls to the bottom of the resume, and the ‘value statement’ is at the top, quickly followed by real world experience. Don’t get me wrong, education is very important, a bachelor degree is really expected in today’s workplace, but I often lean on the broad, theoretical knowledge I gained as a primer (or glossary) for me to dive in deeper in the business world.

You are a company of one
The other observation I share with my friend (and now you) is that you are a company of one. Even though your paycheck is being delivered through your employer, you are solely responsible for your direction, what you learn, how you perform, and how much you’re paid. I firmly believe that you are paid what you’re worth, so when I hear people complaining “they are underpaid”, in my mind, I translate that as you’ve “undersold yourself”, get skilled, spend time on weekends or early mornings to learn more, and apply new projects, programs and skills –or leave. Therefore, you are your own CEO, CMO, CFO, COO, CTO, you’re in control of your destiny. As you can tell, I don’t believe in fate, you are driving your ship of one.

Develop your plan, and put it in writing
If you’re with me so far, develop your own plan, both short term and long term plans, and set goals on how to reach them. Often, these goals don’t have titles or companies in them, but they describe the environment, or the end outcomes of which you want to reach. Over time these goals will change, and that’s ok, but at least you’re looking forward. I learned this from my buddy’s dad when I was growing up, he had several businesses, and one of his dreams was to have a Ferrari –he achieved it.

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Wishing you all the best! (really) I want to see you succeed. I get emails about once a month, where someone has said they’ve achieved more, party due to this blog, (but the majority due to their ambition of course) If you’ve other tips, please share in the comments.

Update: Connie Benson reminded me to post up my mantra of “pay yourself first” and “Manage your time as you do money“.

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For us web strategists (those who make decisions for web sites) time is a precious, limited resource that we’ve come to cherish. Here’s a few tips on how to manage your time effectively:

[Time is Like Money: You never seem to have enough, and everyone wants a piece of it]

Time is Like Money: You never seem to have enough, and everyone wants a piece of it. As a web decision maker within a company, you’ll have many touchpoints, since web is one of the most important mediums for business, you’re going to be in heavy demand.

Remember the limited quantity: Cherish your time as you do your wallet or purse, this is yours, and unlike money, you can’t invest and grow new time, you can only manage the existing time you’ve got, cut into other areas, or hire someone under you to do it.

Budget your time like you do money: Set aside time for you, for work, and for passions. I do this before I check my personal email (second priority) then any work email (third email). As soon as you answer emails, you’re now paying for someone else’s time. The same principle should apply for your workout time, reading time, or personal reflection time. Allow a certain percentage at time for writing reports, meetings, and other tasks at work, and defend that calendar.

Pay yourself first: I don’t let anyone cut into this time, as I budget 2 hours every morning to do online reading (to get smarter) and to blog (increase my long term value, and connect with others). Like the advice from most financial advisors, they encourage you to pay yourself first by investing in your own funds, paying your bills, and making yourself (reasonably) happy before paying off your creditors.

Manage incoming web requests: As a web strategist, you’re popular, but will need to manage your fame so you and your team doesn’t burn out. Within your web team, develop a process and tool that will track and prioritize all incoming requests for your web team. Force business stakeholders to justify the need for projects or programs, and seek the ‘cover’ of an executive sponsor who can help prioritize and push back.

Manage meetings with software: Try to avoid meetings, instead use collaborative software of social software after initial the initial kick start meetings. Use the tools that are native to us, I know you shouldn’t have any problems handling this.

Responding to emails leads to more emails: The more you respond to emails, the more you will receive. Keep in mind what your core goals are (why is your employer paying you) and try to manage and budget this.

Instant Messaging control: I avoid using 1:1 communication tools until really needed. I look for one-to-many publication tools or collaboration tools to use, as I can be more effective with my time. The only place I use IM is at the workplace, and in limited quantities. Selfish? yes, but I’ve been doing this for two years, and noticed an increase in productivity without it.

Ironically, I’m spending a great deal of my day online managing for the day job and this blog, while I think I have my budgeting portions right, I’m going to try to trim my overall online time down. I’m actually a bad case for this, so this post is as much of a self-reminder as it is a how to for you.

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I often get asked “How to you publish so much content on your blog?” or “Do you ever sleep?” Here’s some of my tips that I do.

Pay yourself first
I pay myself first. What does that mean? It means before I get bogged down in email hell, and feedreader hell, I focus my priorities on the tools that will maximize my time. A blog is a broadcast tool (with community features) that let’s me communicate to many people at once. It’s the most efficient use of my time, and it saves me time. For every email you write, you’re likely to get more in in return, and that’s not efficient. I look for efficient communication tools, and a blog is right for me, (A social network may be right for you) but that’s how I pay myself first. I hope Tim Ferris sees this.

This isn’t a new concept, many financial advisers will suggest that you invest in the future (funds, roth, 401) before paying down your debt, because in the long run, you’ll survive with debt, but to retire you’ll need quite an egg in today’s modern world.

I think about my focus area Web Strategy all the time. I want to be a resource to people that are making decisions on websites, or are responsible for what happens on the site. I keep a notepad on my (moleskine) near me most of the time, and write down ideas for posts whenever I can. These often go into my drafts area on wordpress. I currently have 131 drafts that I’m working on. Some will never make it, and that’s ok with me. If you check out my blog birthday stats, I’ve done an average of three posts a day, with a return of 4 comments per post on average.

[Every morning, for about 2 hours, I pay myself first by researching, reading, and writing blog posts…before I dive into email hell]

One things leads to another
The last thing I wanted to share is that one thing leads to another. I had a great time in Singapore, I was a speaker, met a lot of people, and blogged the hell out of the event. When I got back home, I now have three invites to go overseas to speak, one thing leads to another. So remember that even the smallest thing will lead to something bigger, and it will snowball.

Overtime, paying yourself first will add up. Whether it’s on Myspace, Facebook, a Videoblog or your blog, all kinds of interesting things will happen. As it ends up, by paying myself first on my blog, it actually pays me employer, as they reap the rewards of my network, increased knowledge, and thought leadership. I’ve done some quantification on my ROI for my employer, and it’s a positive number.

So pay yourself first, and remember that one thing leads to another.

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