Michaelbox

I don’t have much to say for intro­duc­tion other than thank­ing Cheryl for agree­ing to par­tic­i­pate on such a short notice as well as being very timely with her response. She is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gist in Colum­bus, Ohio with focus in social media tech­nol­ogy. She is also my social media inter­view can­di­date for the series. She serves as the Tac­ti­cal Lead for Social Busi­ness Strate­gies and has been actively using social media for more than 10 years, hav­ing worked pro­fes­sion­ally as a com­mu­nity man­ager and inter­ac­tive strate­gist. Hope you enjoy get­ting to know her.

Who are you and what do you do? Where can we find you online?

Cheryl Har­ri­son: I am a good idea! I’m work in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion space with a focus on using social media tools. I’m cur­rently work­ing as the Tac­ti­cal Lead for Social Busi­ness Strate­gies, con­sult­ing with com­pa­nies to develop an inter­ac­tive strat­egy and estab­lish­ing inter­nal teams to imple­ment that strategy.

And where CAN’T you find me online?! I blog at Being Cheryl, Great­est City Of All, Tapped In TV (the last two being Columbus-centric). I’m also active daily at cheryl­har­ri­son (Twit­ter), cheryl­har­ri­son (Face­book), cheryl­har­ri­son (Linkedin) and cherylharrison.yelp.com Though frankly, if the net­work exists, I prob­a­bly have/had/will soon have an account on it.

Obvi­ously twit­ter plays a huge part in your daily life any­more. Who would you recruit first for a twit­ter army to fight the bad prac­tices of the social web?

Cheryl: I would recruit Red­Head­Writ­ing (Twit­ter) because she’s sharp, snarky and offen­sive as hell. Our smar­tass red­head­ed­ness com­bined, we could rule the world. Or at least the interwebz.

Over the past year, loca­tion based social media has grown in leaps and bounds. Where do you see this going in the future? What are some of the ben­e­fits of loca­tion based social media vs. the notion of privacy?

Cheryl: I love the trend towards loca­tion! For indi­vid­u­als, loca­tion is great for know­ing where your friends are, dis­cov­er­ing new busi­nesses, meet­ing new peo­ple, get­ting sweet dis­counts and just plain ol’ fun — gam­ing mechan­ics like badges for collector-types and leader­boards for competitive-types make the game a good time.

For busi­nesses, loca­tion is great for adver­tis­ing — and free, at that (the “nearby spe­cial” noti­fi­ca­tion that pops up is free for small busi­nesses to set up cur­rently), con­sumer insight and tak­ing advan­tage of the influ­ence your cus­tomers have within their social networks.

If you were to write your twit­ter pro­file url in the sky, what font would you have the pilot use for the task?

Cheryl: Tahoma. Sim­ple and understated.

How­ever, If I were to write my MySpace URL in the sky… Comic Sans. Any­one still use MySpace? Seri­ously. Anyone?

Say you were given the chance to work with and help improve any top name brand for one month, which brand would you choose and why?

Cheryl: Woot.com. Not that they need me to improve their stel­lar brand, it would just be seri­ously fun. Hey Woot, did you hear that? Call me up to con­tribute some of your bril­liant copy, cool? Send me some free wine.woot while you’re at it.

The social web is in an ever chang­ing state at very rapid paces. Where do you see social media in 6 months?

Cheryl: Every­thing is trend­ing towards local­ized and niche con­tent — even broad net­works like Twit­ter and Face­book are inte­grat­ing geographic-focus fea­tures — and I think that trend will con­tinue. It’s cool to chat with some­one from Aus­tralia while in Ohio, but it’s really cool to con­nect with like-minded peo­ple who live around the cor­ner and can meet up in real life.

Do you go sail­ing on the high seas as a social media pirate or do you stick to stealthy social media ninja moves?

Cheryl: Arrrgh matey. I have no idea how else to respond to this. Next.

It shows that you truly love your city of Colum­bus, Ohio. What are some of the city’s strongest assets, espe­cially as it per­tains to peo­ple in your career line?

Cheryl: Colum­bus has a very cre­ative, tech-savvy cul­ture, which is a per­fect fit for me. Oh, and uh, we have a lot of readily-available craft beer… which is a per­fect fit for me.

What is your favorite social media stereo­type? Why?

Cheryl: The whole idea of work­ing in “social media” has been tainted by douchebags who want to make a quick buck and scam small busi­nesses out of a few grand to “set up a Face­book page.” I cringe every time I see another smarmy sales guy/gal who signed up for Twit­ter last week and is qual­i­fied to TOTALLY CHANGE THE WAY YOU DO BUSINESS FOREVS!!!11!!

…some poor sap is gonna hand him/her a bag of money, too. (Speak­ing of which… any and all bags of money can be sent my way via Pay­Pal or FedEx.)

In your opin­ion, what is one of twitter’s pri­mary weak­nesses that could dethrone it in the longrun?

Cheryl: Aside from the big “WTF is our rev­enue model” issue, Twitter.com is Twitter’s pri­mary weakness.While they have been slowly unrolling fea­tures to make it bet­ter (lists was a great one) the site pales in com­par­i­son to third-party ser­vices like Hoot­suite, Tweet­deck and Seesmic for func­tion­al­ity and usability.

Would you con­sider your­self an android or do you lead an iLife?

Cheryl: I’m an Apple fan­girl fo’ sho’, but I use Google so heav­ily that it would real­is­ti­cally make more sense for me to do the droid thing. Mostly, I’m stubborn.

What web­site, with any focus you want, do you want to pro­mote here and now because you believe it deserves more users and more peo­ple know­ing it exists?

Cheryl: Haha, this is such a ran­dom answer, but when I read this ques­tion I thought of King­dom of Loathing (kindomofloathing.com. It’s a MMORPG…kinda? With stick fig­ures. And sar­casm. And meat as cur­rency. And absurd char­ac­ter types like “tur­tle tamer,” “disco ban­dit” and “seal club­ber.” It’s seri­ously hilar­i­ous. I used to play it all­lll the time, but haven’t really touched it in a year (which is why it is such a ran­dom response) — but occa­sion­aly when I get sad or really, really bored, I go back for a cou­ple hours of poorly drawn laughs.

Is the Colum­bus beer stein half full, half empty, the glass is too big, or “wtf, who drank half of my awe­some Colum­bus beer?!?!?” ?

Cheryl: MY Colum­bus beer stein is always half empty, but it’s ok, because there’s always a freshly brewed refill wait­ing for me at Colum­bus Brew­ing Com­pany or Barley’s or Ele­va­tor

What job has been the one you have liked the least since enter­ing that whole “work­ing world?”

Cheryl: My last job as the Dig­i­tal Con­tent Man­ager for three local radio sta­tions. But it was also my favorite! The dis­con­nect was in the way that sta­tions are struc­tured — the on-air staff and the pro­gram­ming direc­tors were awe­some. I was totally invested in the sta­tions’ brands and enjoyed com­mu­ni­cat­ing with lis­ten­ers online and com­ing up with cre­ative new ways to do so. I wish the energy had been the same on the sales and busi­ness side of the organization.

At the end of the day, how much of a good idea is being Cheryl, really?

Cheryl: I’m not sure, but have some­one else claim “I am a good idea” and watch how fast I slap their ass with a law­suit! Ha, yeah right, like I afford to file a trade­mark or hire a lawyer. I’m just ok.