An Interview with Jennifer Van Grove

By @Stephen • 6 October 2008 • Filed in: General Information

Jennifer Van Grove is a Social Media consultant in San Diego, California. We first met online via Twitter and I have been following her for a while. Recently she posted an excellent article about using Twitter, discussed below. First, a little about Jennifer in her own words:

I’m a member of, and an advocate for, the community. I get community building because I understand the why and the how when it comes to social applications, I stay current with the latest internet memes, and I learn by doing. I work independently as a consultant for companies interested in understanding how to engage with their communities in ways that make sense - developing and delivering strategies for meaningful interactions.

I was intrigued by this personal statement, so I asked for a little more background information, and she has kindly consented to answer a few personal questions.

Where did you grow up?

San Diego, CA

Tell us about your Education:

I was an English Major at UCLA, a degree I chose simply to piss off my parents who both graduated with a degree in Math from UCLA (I was actually a better math student in High School). I’ve always loved learning, and was pretty much a goody-goody throughout my youth and adolescence. I grew up thinking that I could be anything, so school was always something I loved.

How do your interests work into your life?

I’m a passionate and creative person by nature and the boundary between my personal and professional interests are completely blurred. I used to be a really quiet girl, but the more inspired I was by learning and my peers, the more I became interested in social and networking events. I’m driven by a desire to succeed professionally, and I’ve found over the years that I have to tap into my real passions to stay motivated and driven. I’m in a really fortunate position right now, where my work is really wrapped around all of my interests, professional or otherwise.

Do you have any hobbies?

Reading. I love a good novel, especially the classics. I’m also really into sports and I’m a huge fan of the UCLA Bruins, San Diego Chargers, and San Diego Padres.

What was the last book that you read?

Fiction: The Bell Jar

Non-fiction: I haven’t finished it, but I’m reading Groundswell.

What is your most important accomplishment?

Right now, I’d have to say that organizing the San Diego Tweetup group has been an unpredictable and huge professional win for me.

What is your next big goal?

My goals are pretty straightforward and I try not to get too ahead of myself. Professionally, I’d like to start speaking at conferences. Personally, I’d like to buy a condo in downtown San Diego.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

No comment. It’s strange but I never like to think about my life that far in advance. The last few years have been extremely unpredictable, and I hope the future is just as surprising.

What type of work experience led you to blogging? Just how did you get to where you are?

It sounds silly, but right after college I worked as a barista in a coffee shop. The milieu was incredibly social and that’s where I was introduced to MySpace. I really gravitated towards blogging (I was too naive to know about the broader realm of the blogosphere back then) and the response from my friends was incredibly positive. It was self-expression in the written form; since I love to write, it was love at first blog post. I’m really fortunate that a later employer thrust me into a Community Manager position. I felt like a fish out water at first and I read everything I could about community development and professional blogging in order to get up to speed.

Well, Jennifer is certainly up to speed now, and she has written a fantastic article about using Twitter:

As an independent contractor doing social media strategy, I find myself spending a lot of time explaining and training social media strategy, online community building, and web strategy. As an educator of sorts, I dedicate a large part of my professional life trying to find real-world worthy definitions and applications of Twitter, an incredibly intangible tool to wrap a traditional mindset around. If you’re not doing, you’re not getting it, and that makes you completely normal. Here are some ways that I instruct my clients to start thinking about Twitter. Take this information like a template slide in a presentation—transform the content to make it your own.

3 Ways to Twitter

The strategies that I outline below are applied specifically to traditional media as an industry (primarily because I might find myself pitching a local news media outlet and these thoughts have been circulating through my head for months), but any type of business can easily substitute a few words and make the applications transform to apply their own industry. With each strategy simply substitute your business, brand, or industry for “News” and you’ll be thinking in the right direction.

1. Break News

Twitter is the most viral way to break news. In order to break news in a way that the Twitter community will embrace, however, you have step outside the comfort zone of press releases and news articles. Of course you can use sites like Twitterfeed to automatically update your Twitter account with the latest press releases, news articles, and blog posts from your website, but if that’s all you’re doing no one will pay attention to you.

That is a very important note, something that I have told some of my own clients and colleagues that are beginning to use Twitter: do not just post your latest blog post or product/service. Twitter is a community, talk to your followers like you would to your neighbor.

2. Make News

Innovation and creative social media strategy make news. When what you’re doing on Twitter makes the news, you make the news. Here are just a few pretty amazing examples:
Comcast - Comcast is trying to reshape public opinion about their brand, and they’re using the ComcastCares Twitter account to do just that. Their Twitter behavior is being talked about everywhere, including the New York Times. A recent USAToday article chronicled their efforts by saying…

Frank Eliason, a customer service manager for Comcast, spends his day communicating with Twitterers about the company — hoping to resolve issues. Comcast isn’t on Twitter to turn around the firm’s customer service perception issues but simply to “build better relationships with our customers,” he says.

The entire post is well worth reading, as is this article about Twitter in the San Diego Union Tribune and and I highly recommend that you learn more about Real Twitter Strategies to Transform Your Brand.

Are you on Twitter? You can follow me here @the_future and Jennifer here @jbruin. Looking forward to talking to you!