The best summary of The Thank You Economy comes straight from its pages:

“The Thank You Economy explains how businesses must learn to adapt their marketing strategies to take advantage of platforms that have completely transformed consumer culture and society as a whole.”

The book looks at how human nature hasn’t changed, but everything else has. The rise of social media is as game-changing as the radio and the television were, and that presents a combination of challenge and opportunity for businesses. In Vaynerchuk’s words, “What we call social media is not media, nor is it even a platform. It is a massive cultural shift that has profoundly affected the way society uses the greatest platform ever invented, the Internet.”

I’ve been “in the trenches” with SoftLayer’s social media presences for over a year now, and I realized that I take advantage of the fundamental openness of the company. Vaynerchuk urges businesses to dive into social media, and he shares some of most common reasons companies aren’t getting involved — I could list all eleven reasons here, but you’d probably recognize them all as excuses you’ve heard.* The common theme: People (and companies) fear uncertainty, and while that fear is understandable, it shouldn’t be paralyzing. The opportunity and necessity of engagement outweigh the excuses.

When you clear all the hurdles preventing your entrance to the world of social media, you need to execute. Vaynerchuk explains how “Cultural Building Blocks” of a company dictate that company’s success in social media, and while they aren’t exactly an Easy Bake Oven recipe to viral success, they are profound in their simplicity:

1. Begin with Yourself
2. Commit Whole Hog
3. Set the Tone
4. Invest in Employees
5. Trust Your People
6. Be Authentic

The “trust your people” and “be authentic” building blocks resonated the most when I thought of how SoftLayer’s social media is managed. The level of trust my boss has in me is both refreshing and challenging, and I find myself working harder to prove I deserve it. A cynic might read that sentence and scoff at its over-the-top positivity, but I’m as honest as I can be … And that’s an example of the challenge of being authentic. SoftLayer employees are passionate about their responsibilities and the company culture, and that kind of enthusiasm is so rare that there’s a tendency to assume that it’s manufactured.

If I see someone talking to us via social media about a bad experience at SoftLayer, I’m more concerned about changing their experience than I am about what they share with their social network. Often, when I follow up with those customers, when the problem is resolved, it’s amazing how surprised people are that someone actually took the time to make things right. I want to hear if someone has a bad experience because I take pride in turning it around. Are we “in control” of what people say about SoftLayer on social media? No. We are in control of how SoftLayer responds to what people are saying about us, though.

Your business needs to be active in social media.

You don’t need a “social media team” or a budget or a strategy … You need to be passionate about your employees, customers and products, and you need to make time to reach out to your community — wherever they are.

What roadblocks have you run into when it comes to your business’s social media engagement? If you’ve been successful, what tips could you share with me (and the rest of the SoftLayer audience)?

-Rachel

*If you’re toying with the idea of social media engagement or you’re working for a company that hasn’t embraced it yet, it’s worth it for you to buy The Thank You Economy to read how @garyvee dismantles those excuses.

Beyond sharing technical news and content about what’s happening in the world of cloud computing, I’m also responsible for keeping our customers in the loop about all of our trade shows, conferences and events. If you’ve been to a technology trade show in the past year, you probably saw SoftLayer. We sponsor, attend or exhibit at more than sixty events every year, and it feels like I have been to them all. I know the ins and outs of every event on our schedule well before it begins, regardless of whether that event’s down the street or in an exotic location like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Amsterdam or London (Interesting fact: In the past week, we had events in all of those locations).

Social media is one of the ways our customers and followers can keep a pulse on SoftLayer’s activity and growth. We travel the world to share how we help customers Build the Future, and as a part of the social media team, I get to help introduce that conversation. Let’s use Internet World as an example.

Last week, a group of SLayers traveled to London to attend Internet World. To prepare for Internet World, I tried to schedule and share as much relevant content about SoftLayer with the #iwexpo audience to generate awareness and drive traffic to our booth. At larger shows like Internet World, we typically have a conference session or speaking engagement, and on the expo hall floor, you’ll usually see a crowd like this one milling around our booth:

The Server Challenge generates its own social media — from word-of-mouth “you’ve gotta try this” conversations at the show to the typical “social media” channels like Twitter and Facebook. The gamifiction of rebuilding a miniature SoftLayer server rack is one of those interesting, entertaining and innovative ideas that seems to be unique to the mad scientists at SoftLayer. Invariably, the competition “ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings,” and at Internet World, we had the most dramatic competition conclusion ever … But we’ll get back to that in a minute.

From a social media perspective, the folks who stop by SoftLayer’s booth want to watch the leader board as the show progresses. The expo hall may be open for several days, so it might be tough to keep an eye on the Server Challenge leader board … Attendees then trust us to keep them informed via social media. Every day, we post the latest times to beat, and when we look at our analytics, it’s wild to see the number of people clicking through to see the current top ten times. It doesn’t seem like much, but a few hundred people at Internet World wanted to know what this table looked like throughout the whole show:

The top two times you see on the final leader board caused the late-show dramatics. Joseph Waite clocked a fantastic 1:03.68 to secure the top spot on the board in the middle of Day 3 at the show, and Rob McEwen stepped up to the challenge for his Day 3 attempts about 10 minutes prior to the scheduled close of the expo hall. With about 25 onlookers, Rob stopped the clock on his second attempt with a time of 1:02.14 … Good enough for first place.

The problem: One of the drive trays was not installed all the way.

Because we want to make sure the winner has everything installed correctly in the fastest time, we had to add 5 seconds to his time for the mistake, and we gave him one more chance to complete the challenge to be fair to him. Unfortunately, the final attempt didn’t beat Joseph’s 1:03.68, so the new iPad was destined for Joseph. While Rob was a little bummed, he understood the reasoning for the decision, and he committed to stopping by our booth next year to win his iPad outright.

I was a few thousand miles away from all of this activity, but I felt like a major part of it given my social media involvement in tracking and sharing the latest updates. The best part of my job is when I get to interact with our customers, whether it be face to face or virtually. I want the messages you see on @SoftLayer and facebook.com/SoftLayer to be entertaining, interesting and helpful. We want you to feel connected to what’s happening at SoftLayer and what we’re all about.

Speaking of giving you insight into “what we’re all about,” I can’t wrap up this blog about Internet World without sharing a little “insider” information about the SLayers at the booth: They’re pretty competitive. They ran their own internal Server Challenge:

And if anyone is curious about the fastest time we’ve ever had in the Server Challenge, you can see it right there at the top of the list. Though to be fair, Kevin’s probably done it a few thousand times.

-Rachel

Easy-To-Make Brisket Ingredients

• 1 Brisket – I’d recommend having the majority (not all) of the fat trimmed off at the store
• 2 1/2 Cups of Ketchup – Buy the largest ketchup bottle and plan on using a little more than half
• 1 1/2 Cups of Water
• 1 Packet of Onion Soup Mix
• 1 Can of Tomato Paste (Optional, adds flavor)

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees
2. Mix all of the non-brisket ingredients and pour them on top of the brisket in a large roaster (one with a lid would be preferable)
3. Make sure the entire brisket is covered. Pick it up to get your other ingredients underneath.
4. Pop it into the oven for four hours at 300 degrees.
5. Take it out, let it cool, and enjoy!

That’s the basic, original recipe, but I’ve found a few ways to make it juicier along the way. One tip is to pull the brisket from the oven after about three and a half hours and slice it against the grain. If you have an electric knife, this is the perfect chance to use it, and if you don’t, this could be an excuse to get one. Put the brisket back in the roaster for another half hour, and you’ll love the results. Because ovens differ, just make sure it’s moist before you take it out to serve.

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself what a brisket recipe has to do with SoftLayer. If you’ve used our Build Your Own Cloud wizard, you might already see the similarity: You can put something together that seems dauntingly time consuming quickly and without breaking a sweat … And the end result is amazing. There are a few simple steps to making an impressive brisket, and it takes a few clicks to build a customized cloud instance with all the benefits of SoftLayer’s global network and support.

Too often, selecting a cloud instance involves more limitations than it does choices, so we wanted to make sure the BYOC service enabled customers the granularity to choose CPU, RAM, and storage configurations on newer, more powerful servers than our competition. Just like my tweak of the original recipe, we want customers to have the ability to tweak their cloud platform to provide the best application performance, cost efficiency, and availability for their specific needs.

If this blog left you hungry, you’ve got everything you need to make an amazing brisket. If you don’t have the ingredients (or the four hours) you need to make one now, you can try the quicker BYOC recipe:

SoftLayer Cloud Ordering Ingredients

• The device you’re using to read this blog.
• A list of what you want on your cloud instance.

Instructions

1. Visit SoftLayer’s Build Your Own Cloud page.
2. Select the options you want and submit your order.
3. Start using your custom cloud instance in less than 20 minutes!

Happy Building!

-Rachel

In a HUGE upset, the Mustangs beat the Horned Frogs 40-33 in overtime to break a four-year losing streak. The past four years have been “rebuilding” years under June Jones, so this win over a quality, ranked opponent was even more significant … Which is clear since I’m still talking about this game in particular a few weeks later. But this lingering buzz is nothing compared to the roar of attention to SoftLayer’s international expansion.

We’re not exactly the “underdog” anymore, but October marked a huge step in the growth of our company when our Singapore data center and network points of presence in Tokyo and Hong Kong went live. The SoftLayer passport is starting to fill its pages with stamps.

As we put the finishing touches on Amsterdam, we have Softlayer staff on three continents, so day-to-day operations get a little more complex in some areas of the business. As a member of the social media team, I’ve been watching the clock a lot more these days … And that’s not to suggest that I’m counting down every day until 5pm (which isn’t really a “stop time” for me anyway since social media doesn’t turn off at the end of our time zone’s business day). What I mean by “watching the clock” is that I’ve had to start thinking about reaching customers on the other side of the world with relevant SoftLayer messages. I feel like I need five clocks above my desk like what you usually see in newsrooms.

When engaging in the world of social media, timing is everything. Whether it’s a matter of coordinating with a press release, trying to reach people in a completely different time zone, or just responding to issues, being where you need to be when you need to be there is 90% of the battle. When you think about it, everything in life comes down to that!

Sometimes events can be planned like SoftLayer’s global domination. Others catch you by surprise … like the SMU Mustang victory. As I get close to my three-month mark as a SLayer, I’m glad I was in the right place at the right time to join the SoftLayer team. I’m excited to see how our business is going to grow, and I’m looking forward to having to invest in more time zone clocks to keep track of the local times in all of our new data center markets.

Oh, and GO MUSTANGS!!

-Rachel

As it turns out, incubators programs like Tech Wildcatters and TechStars do the same thing … only with startups (and fewer egg shells).

As Paul mentioned in Fueling Startups with TechStars, TechStars has a series on Bloomberg TV that follows a few startups in TechStars New York from the application stage through their 3 month program and Demo Day. While I understood the basic premise of the incubator programs, seeing the way they documented it was like a crash course … So much so that when I talk about it with family and friends (and see their confused faces), I just pull up the first episode:

Just like a science class incubator that provides an egg with light, movement and an environment to mimic conditions required for growth, startup incubators give young businesses seed money, opportunities to pitch businesses to investors, and access to mentors and sponsors who are all there to provide support. In the short program term, the companies get exposure, guidance about funding and access to every other service a they could need to succeed. Piecing together that experience outside of the dedicated incubator environment would require a lot more time, effort and capital.

These incubator organizations are also referred to as startup accelerators, and they’re like a golden ticket to entrepreneurial success … And that’s why it’s so difficult for a startup to get accepted to participate in one of them. The value a startup brings to the table is not just in the idea; it’s also in the people behind the idea.

Recently, I attended the kick-off party for the new class of Tech Wildcatters startups, and I got a chance to meet some of these passionate startup owners. Their energy is contagious. My first-hand experience immediately reinforced to my why SoftLayer is so interested in helping foster companies that could redefine and reinvent the future.

All of these comparisons between about incubators and eggs have made me pretty hungry … If you need me, I’ll be down the street getting an omelet.

-Rachel

On the plus side, comparing what I know now with what I thought I knew then shows how much a person with zero background in hosting can learn in a short period of time. To give you an idea of where I came from, let’s look at a few theoretical conversations:

Pre-SoftLayer

Present Day

That would be a little bit of a cookie cutter explanation, but it gives a lot more context to the business, and it would probably soar above the head of my non-technical inquisitive friend.

During my first week on the job, I visited one of SoftLayer’s data centers … And that “data center” term turned out to be a little tricky for me to remember. For some reason, I always wanted to call the data center a “database center.” It got to the point where Kevin challenged me to a piggy bank deal.

SoftLayer is raising money for the American Heart Association, and everyone has a little piggy bank at their desk. One of the piggy banks essentially became a “swear jar” … except not for swearing. Every time I said “database center,” I had to put a dollar in the piggy bank. The deal was extended when I was trying to remember that 1 byte (big B) = 8 bits (little b):

With money on the line, I’m happy to say that I haven’t confused “database centers” or bits and bytes again … And the piggy bank on the left-hand side of the picture above proves it!

Back to the DC (data center!) tour: I learned about how CRAC units are used to pull air underneath the floor and cool the “cold aisles” in the DC. I learned about the racks and how our network architecture provides private, public, and out–of–band management networks on the back end to customers in a way unique to SoftLayer. Most importantly, I learned the difference between managed, dedicated, cloud and hosting environments that incorporate all of those different kinds of hosting. This is a far cry from focusing on getting the terminology correct.

I’m still not an expert on all things SoftLayer, and I’m pretty sure I’ll end up with my very own acronym dictionary, but I must admit that I absorbed more information in the past month than I thought possible. I have to thank my ninja sensei, Kevin, for taking the time to answer my questions. It felt like school again … especially since there was a whiteboard in use!

Kevin, enjoy your empty piggy bank!

-Rachel

This blog is my first major contribution to the InnerLayer, and when I was asked to write it I must admit I was very excited. On literally my 6th day of work, my hope was to make a major impact or at least prove that a ninja-in-training (that would be me) can hold her own with a full-fledged ninja … but I digress. The real reason I’m here is to talk about our move from SoftLayerTube to SoftLayer. With a little YouTube wizardry and some help from our friends in Mountain View, CA, we’ve been able to take the help of the better-branded /SoftLayer account.

Don’t worry, you are not going to lose any of your favorite SL videos … They’re just taking a permanent trip to the SoftLayer channel.

TL;DR Version
Old and busted: /SoftLayerTube

New Hotness: /SoftLayer

Subscribe!

-Rachel