Lava Row

We had the pleasure of hosting Lava Row's Nathan Wright and Norah Carroll in our last #drakesocial class. We learned about their business and views on social media trends.

Lava Row is a social media consulting, strategy and education firm based in Des Moines. I found the practices of the company interesting and liked how they focused on working with clients on the strategy of social media campaigns as opposed to actually being the ones implementing the plans for them. I think this is the ideal way to manage clients in the social media world, as implementing multiple plans could easily become overwhelming for a small staff.

(10 minute pause)

I just found myself four blog posts into Nathan Wright's blog before remembering that I need to write this reflection, oops! They just drew me in.

Anyway, another point that Nathan and Norah made that I found interesting was how important it is to be yourself on social media platforms. They said they were hired by companies for who they are as people, not just the company itself. That makes complete sense, especially in the nature of their work. But it applies to job searchers today as well - companies want to hire people for who they really are, and most are searching the internet for information they can find about you. It will be inevitable that your social media platforms will come up in the search and the company will look through them. Like so many wise have said, you cannot separate your personal life from your professional life on social media. You are who you are, and having multiple accounts or locked down privacy features gives off the message that you have something to hide. That's the wrong message you want to give to the company looking to hire you.

Pinterest is a hot topic these days, as it is rapidly growing and has become a dominant social media platform. Recent statistics show that Pinterest is retaining and engaging users two to three times as efficiently as Twitter was at a similar time in history. Pinterest is also driving serious traffic for some major brands - it drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace combined. Lava Row agreed with Pinterest supporters and said it is a platform that all companies need to evaluate to see if it will be beneficial for them to use. What I'm looking forward to figuring out about this platform is how to engage male audiences - approximately 97 percent of Pinterest users are female. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, eventually drives them there. But first, the content has to be present that appeals to them.

Overall, I enjoyed hearing from Lava Row and am thankful they took the time to come in and speak. It was fun to hear about how a social media business works with clients first-hand and their views on today's social media trends... that change by the second.