Part I
RD> The first question for you is, are you a gamer?
NR> I used to be a major gamer. Not any more—I do not have a game system at home any more. As my kids get to that age, I am sure I will get back to it.
RD> When you played video games, what were your favorites?
NR> I loved Wolfenstein games. I really liked the old games with DOS prompts. In high school I stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing Doom. I was a big Mario Cart gamer in college. I liked the war-type games.
RD> How do you learn?
NR> I learn the best “audibly.” For instance I can read a book, but if I listen to it, I can remember down to the quotes. Also, when I do it and figure it out myself—that’s when I learn. I need a bouncing board, and when I hear myself saying it—it becomes very clear. I carry a sketch pad without lines; the stuff begins to make sense. Then when I communicate or teach, the learning becomes permanent.
RD> I completely relate to what you just said. At age 15, I got my first paid job, which was to tutor a kid who was 14 years old. During that experience, I learned that teaching made the concept more clear to me. I had a big private tutoring practice from that age until I came to the U.S. for graduate school. The reason I have been in the learning business now for 30 years is because at that early age I saw its value. Also, I worked in healthcare where one of the most important learning practices is “see one, do one, teach one.” It seems yours is more like “hear one, do one, teach one.”
NR> Yes. Absolutely.
RD> How did you get into social media and B2B marketing?
NR> I got into social media because of going into game chat rooms. Then my introduction to traditional B2B marketing was through the marketing agency I joined after graduating from college. Where I saw the opportunity is that in B2B, it is still an interaction between one person in a company and one person in another company trying to make something work. (Social media) became the tool to address that interaction. In fact, among all tools in B2B marketing, social media is more powerful because it surrounds the loop of a customer as in B2C2B.
RD> When you look at social media, do you also include the online communities?
NR> Yes! I do. It is the new telephone. Most get confused between viral marketing and social media marketing. There is a sharp contrast between viral marketing and social media. Viral marketing is about ideas that spread and you are leveraging the context. Social media is any technology that allows human communication and allows viral marketing to be successful.
RD> As you work with your clients, are you seeing many businesses asking not only to implement a social media strategy and technology, but also asking how to manage the social media?
NR> Yes and no. Many businesses want to do social media but then mistakenly lump this tool into getting automated multiple directory listings, or paper advertising. This is a tool and you need humans to do it. It is sometimes very hard for companies to understand that. Some get it sooner and some don’t. It is all about the leadership—especially the CEO—understanding how to use the tool; it is not meant to displace an employee. When I see companies not getting that message, I clearly tell them they are not ready to do social media.
RD> You are absolutely right: there is a huge difference between automating a process versus using the technology. For example, while vacationing in Greece I did not keep up with my tweets, and I lost 40 followers.
NR> It is exactly what you said. In the 1990s, I think technology like ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems was about automating manual work processes, somewhat displacing the human and now the technology is about having the humans use it.
RD> Many of these are hard to keep up with in this “short attention span” generation. How do you address that?
NR> From a B2B standpoint, make it a team sport. In Hubspot they are using 50+ bloggers and then with those frequencies they get traction in getting the response. You have to figure out a source for this. Is this going to be insourced or outsourced? I tell a company if they do not want to engage with the right amount of resources, they should consider other channels such as search engine optimization etc. When a company is ready to invest the effort then the benefits are exponential for the company
RD> We decided at PAKRA, after much experimentation, that social media is where we want to place the bulk of our effort for qualified lead generation. The problem I then faced was that despite showing certain employees why they should engage in social media and maintain the effort behind it, we struggled to make them do it. First, I thought it may be age-dependent, but it had nothing to do with age.
NR> I am first-generation Millennial and I am fully immersed in this, but imagine my surprise when I was presenting once to high school kids. They were very skeptical. You could almost hear the voices of their parents stating the dangers of digital presence: of pedophiles, cyberstalkers, etc. I think the way to communicate to those who do not want to embrace this in a business where their leadership is involved and give them guidelines. For example, be professional, don’t post your cell number and address everywhere. The problem is everyone thinks they have to put everything on the web, emote about everything. People tell me that “you put everything on the web, we know about everything you do.” The answer is “no you don’t. I have a complete self outside the websphere. You don’t know what I don’t put.”
Always be yourself online, but leave out the parts of your life that have no fit or relevance to the digital self.
RD> You don’t see age as an issue?
NR> Age barriers have gone. I remember the first day Google came out: a white screen. That point was pivotal. Libraries became irrelevant and we have access to anything we want. If I need five Swahili words I can get on my mobile phone.
RD> Do you think that the Web democratized the learning process?
NR> Yes! You don’t have to be privileged and have to go to expensive schools to learn. You don’t have to get hardware to get the information. Web has enabled us to get information faster and then if you are willing to learn, it has tools and technologies that help you learn better and faster. I remember in Grade 1, I had to learn how to use Dewey decimal system to find something, now I can find something quickly with the words I know.
... Continued in Part II
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