Are you interested in learning ways to increase overall business performance using social media? Look no further than this presentation from Monster.com.
In conjunction with RecruitingBlogs.com, this is an example of tapping into influencers with huge followings and social media cred with key bloggers. This event allows us to drive the conversation even further bringing traditional key influencers and up and coming influencers together in an invite-only “unconference” situation. Great oppty for us to create blog content, engage influencers.
We’ve seen 5x’s the interaction with job seekers since December.Added over 1500 fans in 3 months.
Here’s how to get started:Know exactly what kind of culture you want to create inside your company. This way, you’ll be able to identify the social media experience that will promote that culture. Do you want an egalitarian, collaborative environment? Then set up an online community in which everyone can contribute information, ideas and opinions. Draw up a terms-of-use policy. Assuming you want that collaborative community, you will want to open the social media tools up to everyone throughout the company. They should feel free to speak their minds. But that doesn’t mean they can be rude, abusive, give away proprietary information, be libelous, etc. Set the ground rules in advance, so people will know what the boundaries are. Don’t punish your people for speaking their minds. You may not always like what they have to say, but you can love the fact that they’re saying it. Trust is alive in your organization and people care enough about what’s happening to go out on a limb. This is a good sign. Limit the layers between the CEO and the “publish” button. It’s becoming fashionable for leaders to hire ghostwriters for their blogs, even Twitter posts. Big mistake. Of course, great corporate leaders may not be great writers. But to make social media really work as a culture builder, the messaging must be authentic, with a feel of immediacy. You’ll lose the advantages of social media technology if it’s ghosted and vetted into a bland mush that only your legal counsel would appreciate. Keep your promises. If your leadership has committed to posting updates and blogs according to a schedule, keep those posts coming. A stale site will dry up your culture. Operate your site according to the principles and rules that you established at the beginning. Remove abusive comments but publish all the others. (If trust is an essential component to your culture, if a comment comes to your site that feels especially hot-headed, do the contributor a favor and double-check with him or her to make sure it’s still okay to post.) Don’t spy. Other social media outlets (like Facebook) are rife with opportunities for people to show their most unprofessional selves. Their resumes may be posted on various job search engines. Leave that stuff alone if you want a trust-based culture.
One of the biggest misconceptions around social media in the workplace is the fear that employees will run amock, watching videos all day on YouTube, posting status updates with Facebook friends and Tweeting with Ashton Kuscher.Shel Holtz authored a recent article for our Monster Resource Center on the topic of Enabling your employees to be company advocates at work. Many companies are questioning the appropriateness of giving their employees access to social media at work . But the debate is getting to be a grey area. The fact is, much of the social networking that occupies employees’ online time can bring competitive advantages to the company.Organizations have long asked their employees to be brand evangelists, promoting the company and its products and services to friends and family. Those friends and family are now as easily engaged -- if not more so -- online than face-to-face. Your employees online represent the new front line of public relations, marketing and customer service. Just ask Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos who encourages his employees to spend time on Twitter to the extent that he offers classes in the micro-blogging platform.Employees can surface complaints or issues raised by members of the online communities in which they participate. They can hear ideas and gather intelligence that will enable the company to solve problems, improve customer satisfaction and adapt nimbly to changing customer needs and desires.Or talk to Jeremy Burton, CEO of Serena Software, who requires his employees to spend at least an hour a week on Facebook. Or the leaders of Siemens who have established a Facebook group for employees worldwide so employees can network with one another and retrieve important company messages wherever and whenever the mood (or the need) strikes.In the networked world, recruiting is undergoing a dramatic change. After all, birds of a feather flock together, and your engineers most likely network with other engineers. When an engineering position opens in the company, your employees already know the right people to recruit through their regular interactions with their peers in other companies.
The main thing Mayo employees need to remember about blogs and social networking sites is that the same basic policies apply in these spaces as in other areas of their lives. The purpose of these guidelines is to help employees understand how Mayo policies apply to these newer technologies for communication, so you can participate with confidence not only on this blog, but in other social media platforms.That said, we didn’t just immediately jump into blogging, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. It was a natural, gradual progression that incorporated what I like to call, “The MacGyver Mindset.” creating new solutions out of resources we already had on hand. Mayo Clinic created its “Medical Edge” syndicated weekly TV news resource in 2000 and offered local stations trustworthy health and medical news content. In 2004, we established a similar daily program for radio stations.But start slow, can’t just jump right in. This is a slow profression. Start with monitoring & listening first.
5 Ways Banks are using social media:Community Building Product ResearchCustomer ServiceMarketing & PromotionTransparency Nicolet National Bank has used social media in order to be more transparent, said Jeff Gahnz. The President of their bank answers questions directly on their blog, for example, and they have helped people with mortgage questions, business loan queries, and general finance questions. They have also blogged their thoughts on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), where the money has gone, and why their bank participated.
Your employees are your best brand ambassadors so set them up to succeedThe social media policy will guide the actions of everyone in your organization who will participate in social media.It’s also critical to monitor what’s being said and provide guidelines on how to respond appropriately without making employees feel the need to self-sensor.How would you respond in an email or in a face-to-face conversation? That’s a good barometer for how to respond via social media, with the exception that in social, everything is live, in real-time for the whole world to see simultaneously.A social media policy is a formal document to help protect you and your employee in a legal sense and it also keeps people on message.Define what social media means to your company. It’s more than Facebook and Twitter. Any place you can share content, including blogs, needs to be defined. Set up a basic set of ground rules that are focused on what you want your employees to do, rather than scaring them away from all the things they can’t do. Keep it simple…the best policies are always simple. When you engage & rules of engagement. It’s all about common sense. Are you a global company, then you need to roll out globally working with your legal team to work alongside councils outside the U.S.Employees need to know the same corpcomm policies that apply to them in the offline world apply in social media. So manage social media conversations as you would manage any conversation happening in public.Be sure to cover social media participation from consultants and contractors as well as employees
Who owns social media is a common question. The answer: everyone. But when it comes to who manages and oversees the role of social media within an organization, PR/Corp Comm is where it most often and should reside. Your legal team needs to have input when creating any corporate policy, and that is no different when creating a social media policy. But that’s pretty much the extent of it. If your company says legal must review every single social media point of engagement, then you need to re-think your decision to engage in social media. This cannot succeed in a vacuum and it gets even more involved when you are a global organization. When new hires are brought on board, educate them in social media policies just as you would in corpcomm policies.
Early adapters/adopters are the employees who are already blogging, engaging on Twitter and Facebook, but have not begun to engage on behalf of the brand. They know how to bring value to the community and they can help you educate others within the company, so identify who they are and bring them on board.Sure, your marketing department has a thorough understanding of the brand (at least, they'd better!) but others in the organization, further removed from the behind-the-scenes marketing strategizing, need -- at the very least -- a general awareness of the corporate brand and what it stands for. You can use existing communications vehicles and tools like new-hire orientations, all-company meetings, corporate e-mails, training videos, corporate newsletters, the company intranet, newsgroups and other internal communications vehicles to generate greater employee awareness.This internal group should be some part of the planning process for your social media strategy, so they can be aware of the environment your organization is about to be exposed to, and so they can work through any pre-conceived notions of how to speak with this audience. For pharmaceutical companies, for example, this of course should include the regulatory group. “What are most social media strategies missing?” They are missing organizational alignment with the overall communications strategy“What are most social media strategies missing?” They are missing organizational alignment with the overall communications strategyBelow I’ll list out the 10 Principles for Online Spokespeople & a link to download the new social media policy from Coca-Cola. Be Certified in the Social Media Certification Program.Rewarding employees for social media that led to something great – we got a sales lead from your last Tweet, we saw a huge spoike in registrations from your Tweet about our Webinar.Continue to grow your brand evangelists community, you don’t want your social media mojo to leave with your microcelebrity.
But there are other important KPIs you should consider including sentiment around your brand. Are we moving the dial at all with key influencers in our industry. Are the same people who were either negative or neutral about us now speaking in more positive tones; are we included in more industry conversations as a bigger part of the story.Monitoring data is only valuable if metrics relevant to a company are being tracked, analyzed, then applied to improving a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy. Each company may have some specific requirements, but here are ten important social media metrics to measure:Social media leads. Track web traffic breakdowns from all social media sources, and chart the top few sources over time. If members of your social media networks are sending referrals, consider measuring this data as well. Engagement duration. For some companies, engagement duration is more important than page views. For example, if you have a Facebook application, how much time are social network members spending using it? Is per-member usage increasing over time? Alternately, if people visit your your company websites from SM (Social Media) sites, how long are they spending? (Also consider tracking which pages they visit.) Bounce rate. Are visitors coming to your site from SM sites but quickly leaving? Maybe your landing page needs better, more relevant copy. Maybe the information they’re seeking isn’t easily found. Membership increase and active network size. This is the portion of your company’s social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) that actively engages with your social media content (e.g., Twitter, Facebook Pages, etc.) Is your collective members, followers, fans network growing, and is there interaction with your content? Activity ratio. How active is your company’s collective social network? Compare the ratio of active members vs total members, and chart this over time. There’ll always be some social network members who are inactive, but if you initiate a campaign to increase interaction, you should also measure the resulting data. Activity can be measured in a variety of ways, including usage of social applications. Conversions. You want social network members to convert: into subscriptions, sales (direct or through affiliates), Facebook application use, or whatever other offerings you have in your overall sales funnel and that can somehow be directly or indirectly monetized. (E.g., subscription to a weekly e-newsletter can be monetized by giving other companies access to your list in the form of advertising.) Measure all types of conversions and chart them over time. Brand mentions in social media. So, you have a highly active social network and members are talking about your company or the company’s brands. Measure and track both positive and negative mentions, and their quantities. Loyalty. Are social members interacting in the network repeatedly, sharing content and links, mentioning your brands, evangelizing? How many members reshare? How often do they reshare? Virality. Social members might be sharing Twitter tweets and Facebook updates relevant to your company, but is this info being reshared by their networks? How soon afterwards are they resharing? How many FoaFs (Friends of Friends) are resharing your links and content? Blog interaction. This is actually more than one metric lumped together. Blogs ARE part of an SMM (Social Media Marketing) toolkit, but only if you allow comments and interact with readers by responding. If you’re doing this, encourage responses either directly in the comments section of blog posts, or via Twitter. (Use a blog widget that allows this.) If your blog’s content is suitable for social voting (Digg, Propeller, Mixx, etc.) or social bookmarking (Delicious, Stumbleupon) sites, install a blog plugin that displays the necessary sharing “buttons”, then track referrals back from those sites.
Establish a baseline and measure progress before and after starting your social media strategy & execution.