Monthly Archives: July 2012

July 30, 2012 · 4:07 pm

Add Social media strategies to your organization’s change initiatives for a more effective CHANGE

What is CHANGE?  Ask my friend Jim Graham at Felix Global, he knows all about it and shares it with you personally here.

How can Social Media strategies improve communication during an organizational CHANGE?  Here’s the top five:

1 – It provides a dialogue instead of a monologue.

2 – It provides a real-time transparency which builds trust.

3 – It empowers customer and employee  involvement through personal discussion. It’s people communicating with PEOPLE.

4 – It provides consistency in message with ONE dialogue to customers and employees.

5 – It’s low up-front investment, lower on-going maintenance and communication costs, and completely measurable.

Today’s environment of constant change means more than just mergers and acquisitions.  It’s the changing of platforms, communications and traditional business ideals.  Social media introduces community, transparency, authenticity, real-time responsibility and organic growth.  The one thing that hasn’t changed is the basic principle that “business strategies must be founded in PEOPLE, and the RELATIONSHIPS they create.”

Give your community the power to promote the CHANGE happening inside your organization themselves. It’s a good change.

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July 22, 2012 · 6:10 pm

The advantage of circumstance, is no advantage at all.

At some point in your life, a moment comes that breaks you. It’s a break that you can hear. It echoes through your body like the metal gears of an old clock suddenly snapping loose from its tight wound precision. It’s the sound of a mind coming apart. It’s the swan song of idealism, the undoing of a lifetime of beliefs, the disassembly of romantic notions, and the silent surrender of the last of your youth.

The moment before this sound, you were presented with a choice. Not an everyday choice, but one of those choices that sneaks up on you in a moment of opportunity. It’s a panicked choice that gives you only seconds of consideration, praying upon the weak and flawed curious nature of your fears. It’s not enough time to battle the selfish advantage that opportunity brings—and it has little regard for even the most principled of minds. Good… just needs more time to battle evil. And so sometimes, weakness wins.

The moment you’ve made the choice, you can never undo it. Regret and shame settle in like a new blanket of skin, and a profound loss battles your guilt for centre stage. The consequences of your choice seep deep into the nooks and crannies of your thought centers, like the silent flow of lava cementing the dry, cracked plains of the earth. It traps you. Crippling you from the inside out.

And that’s when you hear it. The grinding gears of an old clock.

Suddenly quiet. Void of animation and life.

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July 19, 2012 · 1:37 pm

Beware—vanity metrics is a social media marketing meme

Most people don’t get social media.  Social Media marketing is about relationships first, selling second.

It’s a tough nugget to swallow, especially when the pressure from the c-suite is asking for the ROI.   Social media is not just a bolt-on tool or marketing channel with tried-and-true metrics.  It is fundamentally re-defining the relationships between consumers and brands.  Social media integrates PR, customer service, human resources and marketing into the digital space.  The social presence defines the brand–whether you choose to believe that or not.

The challenges lie in measuring and feeding the Social success back into the traditional measuring tactics.  It’s a square peg in a round hole.

Most organizations struggle with this concept because they don’t know what Social success looks like.   (I have sat in a long list of boardrooms and witnessed many interested organizations be led astray by the misinformed marketer who is in the business of inventing business—for themselves.)  This is the unfortunate validation of vanity metrics that perpetuates the meme.

Focusing on vanity metrics (numbers of fans, followers, likes, etc.) is the quickest way to watch any social media program tank before it even grows legs.  I’m not suggesting that they should be ignored, but they don’t represent reality and can easily mislead a brand in gauging meaningful performances in these channels.

The number of ‘followers’ you have does not make you better than anyone else. Hitler had millions, and Jesus had 12.

Focus instead on actionable metrics such as engagement and share of voice, which are currently the two major trending metrics for measuring success in social media.  Determine your piece of the total conversation pie and set realistic benchmarks to increase that percentage.  Track and measure that growth.  And then do the same for your competitors.  You can’t control what you don’t measure, and you can’t measure what you don’t understand.

When you prioritize the wrong measurement tactics, you’ll get poor results and squander your resources all because you’re either a) reaching for a recipe that doesn’t match up to your business objectives, b) getting bad advice from a social media “expert” or c) you’re trying to impress your boss.

Cultivating a loyal, quality audience who opt-in is much more effective than pushing strict marketing objectives in a ‘spray and pray’ philosophy.  You may have initial success with numbers, but the program will not be sustainable.  Invite Social Media into all corners of your business and build a strategic plan from the inside-out.  Be realistic, be honest, and set social and digital goals that you can measure.

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