S.M.A.R.T. Blog

Social Media Experts II: Hiring Guidance for (Rookie) Buyers

Most people would agree that in these still-early days of social business, finding a bona fide social media expert – whether you’re trying to hire a consultant or fill an in-house role – is a dicey proposition, especially for people who aren’t very digitally sophisticated themselves. This post provides general hiring guidance for organizations looking to hire consultants, contractors, and/or employees to lead and help with social media initiatives, as well as specific guidance for interviewing prospective employees and service providers.

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Earlier this week I published Social Media Experts I: Why Organizations Need Them, which counters some of the most frequent criticisms of the notion of social media experts and articulates the need for social media expertise. In that post I noted that much of the criticism of social media experts is rooted in the fact that many of them lack true depth of knowledge and experience, which is a fair but incomplete assessment of the “social swindler” dilemma. Yes, there are many self-proclaimed experts who are more interested in making a buck by jumping on hot opportunities than developing their craft – and even greater numbers of folks who mean well but are simply naïve, unaware that their knowledge and skills are limited and their experience is narrow and shallow.

But this isn’t just a seller’s problem. Buyers – especially social media rookies – play a significant role in the proliferation and prevalence of swindlers and fakes as well, because they:

• Are often too eager to find a quick fix, a silver bullet, a simple, one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges they face.
• Tend to focus on the immediate term rather than viewing the acquisition of digital expertise as a long-term investment.
• Underestimate the importance of finding the right skill set, as well as the appropriate strategic and tactical perspectives.
• Assume that because the platforms and tools are free or low-cost, and relatively easy to use, the expertise required to leverage them effectively should also require a minimal outlay of cash.
• Think (often erroneously) that younger workers are inherently superior at digital engagement, weighting personal experiences with specific platforms and activities more heavily than general work experience and professional expertise.
• Believe that past successes alone are effective predictors of future performance.

Organizations looking to buy social technology services and/or hire in-house social media resources need to become more educated consumers and smarter buyers. With that in mind, this post offers general hiring guidance for acquiring social media expertise and specific guidance for interviewing prospective employees and service providers.

As always, I invite people to raise questions and offer additional insights and resources. More guidance on assessing and hiring social media experts would be particularly useful for social media rookies. Thanks!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

Degrees of Expertise

It’s important to recognize that there is no single definition of expertise and no “one-size-fits-all” model to leveraging that expertise. The most appropriate expert for a given purpose in a particular organization will depend on factors like the organization’s:

• Strategic goals and objectives, both short term and longer term
• Industry and client characteristics
• Level  of technological sophistication
• Financial resources
• Employee skill levels and capacity

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz provides a chart that offers a nice starting point for understanding different levels of social media expertise. I would argue that we can distinguish different levels of social media professionals the same way we might professionals in other functional areas: coordinators, analysts, managers, designers, planners, strategists, and advisors. Some organizations will need to acquire or develop individuals with expertise at all these levels, whereas others will only need some of them. For some the best solution will be to bring the expertise in house; for others it will be to use one or more service providers. And of course the right solution will change over time, as technology and an organization’s circumstances and needs continue to evolve.

 

General Approach

Generally speaking, an organization’s approach to hiring social media professionals should be the same as the approach it would use to hire professionals in other disciplines like accounting, finance, law, human resources – and yes, marketing too. That means there needs to be a clear sense of the service/job requirements, well-articulated evaluation criteria, a disciplined interview process, and reference checking.

More specifically, hiring best practices dictate that buyers should engage in the necessary due diligence to ensure:

• They avoid charlatans who claim to have expertise they don’t really possess.
• The people they hire have the social media know-how they need.
• Social media expertise is complemented by other relevant expertise, including
  • Specific functional areas (e.g., marketing, human resources, knowledge management, project management)
  • Skill sets (e.g., writing ability, community management)
  • Industries (e.g., healthcare, non-profit, consumer products, manufacturing)

This due diligence is necessary whether an organization is hiring a consultant to provide advice and counsel, an individual or firm to outsource work to, or an employee.

 

Interview Questions

It’s relatively easy to benchmark the requirements for social media and digital technology professionals of all stripes by looking at job board postings and requests for proposals, and by evaluating the digital engagement of key competitors, clients, and other relevant organizations. Once the requirements are identified, it’s relatively easy to do a preliminary screen of applicants to eliminate those who are clearly unqualified or misqualified.

What is likely to be tougher for many organizations is knowing how to further differentiate candidates during the interview process. Here are some questions buyers can ask - and what to look for in their answers:

Q: How would you define or describe social media to a novice?

• Can they describe the underlying technologies – not just the most popular platforms – in easy-to-understand terms?

Q: What are the main public social media platforms and tools? What are some I may not have heard of?

• Can they name platforms besides LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube?
• Can they identify platforms and tools that are commonly used and relevant but less obvious as social media technologies than the major platforms? See the Social Media Quotient (SMQ) Quiz I developed for examples.

Q: How would you describe (pick a platform) to me? Does that platform make sense for our organization to use? Why or why not? What platforms should we be using and why?

• Can they provide a cogent assessment of what tools are best for your organization and why?

Q: How long have you been using social media and in what capacities? What have you learned from your experiences?

• Have they been intimately involved in creating and/or managing a digital presence, either for themselves or an organization?
• Can they describe their own growth and development, recognize their increasing sophistication, and acknowledge they’re still learning?

Q: How do you respond to people who say that social media is a fad, or that it has no real business value, or that it’s not worth the risks?

• Can they provide strong evidence of the permanence of new digital technologies (beyond obvious facts like the number of Facebook users and the Facebook IPO valuation)?
• Are they able to respond to the naysayers’ arguments in terms that would make sense to them and demonstrative why enlightened self-interest can lead them to adopt and embrace new technologies?

Q: What are some of the most important risks to address when it comes to social media use? What approach(es) to risk management do you recommend?

• Can they articulate some of the key risks with respect to commercial and employment laws?
• Are they aware of the specific considerations in specific industries (e.g., financial services, health care)?
• Do they offer pragmatic solutions to manage risks that balance the interests of multiple stakeholders? 

Q: Tell me about some social media failures and mistakes (either yours or others). What can we learn from them?

• Can they quickly provide examples?
• Can they explain what happened and how the mistake reflects the risks and hazards of social media?
• Can they identify the best ways to respond to and/or prevent these problems?

Q: What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you think are most critical for a social media professional? What do you consider your greatest strength(s)?

• Do they go beyond the obvious competencies like being an enthusiastic user and enjoying cyber-interactions? For more on specific competencies, check out the lists in Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up?
• Do they identify the importance of strong technical skills like writing across multiple media, knowing html, creating/editing content in multiple media types (e.g., images, videos, podcasts), and analytics?
• Do they recognize that digital engagement can be a tedious grind – hours of boredom punctuated by moments of crisis – and not consistently fun and exciting?

Q: How would you measure social media success in our organization?

• Are they able to put common metrics (e.g., number of followers/fans, Klout scores) in proper perspective?
• Can they describe the differences between short- and long-term measures of success?
• Do they talk about alternative measures for evaluating success (e.g., relative improvements over time)

Q: What are your go-to resources for social media? What books, bloggers, and/or websites do you like best?

• Do they recognize they’re still learning and that staying current via reading (not just doing) is critical?
• Can they quickly rattle off resources in each category?

 

Putting it All Together

The specific questions buyers should use will depend on the type and level of expertise they’re looking for. Buyers don’t necessarily need to know the answers to these questions themselves to judge the responses effectively. What they should look for is how the candidate responds, the same way they would for other technical jobs they may not completely understand. In addition to the specific tips above, here are a few general things to look for:

• Tempered rather than unabashed enthusiasm for new technologies
• Recognition of how different technologies can be used to meet goals and objectives and the importance of integrating them with other initiatives
• Respect rather than disdain for social media rookies
• Understanding of the challenges to social media success (e.g., resistance to change, political issues, resource constraints)
• Lessons learned from experience (theirs or others), as well as recognition of the need and a commitment to continuous learning.

 

Related Resources

Social Media Experts I: Why Organizations Need Them

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up? 

Measuring Social Media Sophistication: The SMQ Quiz

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

Social Media Education and Training: Pro or Con? Please Discuss…

Social Media Experts I: Why Organizations Need Them

Many people are critical of the notion of social media experts, falsely claiming they don’t exist – and by extension implying they aren’t necessary. These criticisms, combined with the pervasiveness, low cost, and relative ease of use of social technologies, lead many people to assume (also falsely) that DIY and “give it to the intern” approaches are effective strategies for leveraging these new tools. This post counters some of the most frequent criticisms and articulates the need for social media expertise.

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In the context of new social technologies, “expert” is often perceived as a four-letter word, and many people decry the label “social media expert." Certain critics have decided there is no such thing as a social media expert or social media expertise, offering arguments like the following to support their positions:

• It’s too new. False. The underlying technologies have been around for almost 20 years, longer if you consider some of their digital precursors. And the core characteristics – such as user-generated content and social sharing – date back to our earliest days on the planet.
• Things change too much and too often. That’s true, but the truth isn’t unique to this set of technologies and/or related disciplines. Professionals in many areas will quickly attest to the dynamism in their own fields, companies, and industries.
• Only a small elite can claim expert status. If we define expert in very narrow terms as a pinnacle achievement, then yes, only a few people can claim it. But if you look up the definition of the term and rely on its denotation, you’ll find it applies to a much broader group of people. Plus, I think it’s important to recognize that it’s a relative, as well as absolute, label. I may know a lot about employment law, for example, but I would defer to a labor law attorney as an expert in the field.
• It’s not just about the tools. Of course it’s not, but understanding how the technologies, tools, and platforms are used is critically important to success in using them. There are countless people who are “experts” in their core disciplines who would fail miserably in 2.0 spaces because of their lack of social media expertise. More on that in the next section.

Ironically, in an effort to minimize the importance of social media expertise, these critics are effectively holding social media to a higher standard than other professions, functions, and disciplines - where expertise is not only respected, but sought out. But the criticism is understandable to some degree: too many people convey false impressions of their expert status, presenting their knowledge and skills as being more comprehensive and/or in-depth than they are. I regularly encounter people who are

• Overly enthusiastic about new digital technologies;
• Lacking depth of understanding of today’s technological changes and their implications;
• Content to think in narrow, shallow and simplistic terms;
• Too eager to follow fads and try/promote every new thing that comes along; and
• More tactical than strategic.

More often than not, when people make sneering references to social media experts and/or disdain the use of the term, what they’re referring to is the proliferation of charlatans in response to the dramatic growth of digital social media in the past few years. This proliferation may be unfortunate, but it’s hardly surprising and hardly unique to the Digital Era. Charlatans, swindlers, hustlers, hucksters, quacks, frauds, snake oil salesmen, and mountebanks are endemic to the human condition.

It is wise to be wary of “false prophets,” but concerns about being misled shouldn’t cause organizational leaders to not seek out valuable guides to help them move forward in cyberspace…

 

The Need for Social Media Expertise

Regardless of whether we use the “expert” label, there are many reasons why organizations should invest in people with social media expertise:

The road to social media hell is paved with ignorance. Cyberspace abounds with stories of social media failures, often by people who should have known better:

• Experienced journalists and public relations professionals who “tweeted without thinking”
• A CEO who set up a fake blog to disparage a competitor
• A teacher who blogged disparagingly about her students and a principal who friended students on Facebook using a false identity
• Community managers who fanned the flames of a Facebook attack
• Marketers and advertisers who underestimated the social media backlash to their companies’ campaigns or actions, or who created fake social media-based commercials and/or endorsements
• Human resources and legal professionals who developed overly-broad social media policies
• Hiring managers who engaged in unethical practices using social media

I could go on, but the point is that contrary to many critics’ core argument, social media isn’t “just” anything. Yes, it’s a set of tools and technologies, but it’s a very powerful set that can cause significant harm if used incorrectly. As I wrote in Social Media: From Novelty to Utility:

Saying social media is “just” a communications tool is like saying
a nuclear power plant is “just” a way to turn on the lights

Simple doesn’t mean easy. It takes less than a minute to set up a Twitter account. And perhaps another few seconds to send the first “is this thing on?” tweet. But the simplicity of the user interface hardly ensures one’s effectiveness in using the channel. There’s a new language and norms to learn, as well as hazards and mistakes to avoid. The same is true for other public platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr, and tools like blogging and wikis and videocasts and podcasts. Social media rookies regularly underestimate them, often to their own detriment.

Strategy trumps tactics. The ways in which an individual or organization can leverage social media are virtually limitless, but the ways in which they should leverage the technologies need to be driven by goals and objectives, industry and stakeholder characteristics, and a host of other factors, including a sophisticated understanding of whether and how social media would be more effective than traditional tools.

Change is hard. For most rookies – including organizational leaders – social media is threatening, intimidating and discomfiting. Bringing about the necessary changes to leverage social media successfully requires in-depth understanding of the technologies and their applications and implications, as well as the ability to translate that understanding into language lay people can understand and the ability to help them connect the dots.

Even when it’s your mountain to climb, having a Sherpa can help. I’ve been immersed in social media for over three years, not just as a practitioner, but as a student and teacher. I can say with confidence that it’s impossible for someone just getting started to quickly match the knowledge, skills, and understanding of someone who’s been intimately involved with new digital technologies for some time. More importantly, these “experts” can help rookies climb their learning curves more efficiently and effectively and provide guidance to increase the likelihood of success and minimize the risks of failure.

 

Degrees of Expertise

It’s important to recognize that there is no single definition of expertise and no “one-size-fits-all” model to leveraging that expertise. The most appropriate expert for a given purpose in a particular organization will depend on factors like the organization’s:

• Strategic goals and objectives, both short term and longer term
• Industry and client characteristics
• Level  of technological sophistication
• Financial resources
• Employee skill levels and capacity

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz provides a chart that offers a nice starting point for understanding different levels of social media expertise. I would argue that we can distinguish different levels of social media professionals the same way we might professionals in other functional areas: coordinators, analysts, managers, designers, planners, strategists, and advisors. Some organizations will need to acquire or develop individuals with expertise at all these levels, whereas others will only need some of them. For some the best solution will be to bring the expertise in house; for others it will be to use one or more service providers. And of course the right solution will change over time, as technology and an organization’s circumstances and needs continue to evolve.

In my next post I’ll provide hiring guidance for rookies who need to acquire social media expertise. Please check back or subscribe to the blog to be notified when the post is published.

As always, feedback is welcome.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

Related Resources

Social Media Education and Training: Pro or Con? Please Discuss…

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up? 

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

Measuring Social Media Sophistication: The SMQ Quiz

Social Media Education and Training: Pro or Con? Please Discuss…

Questions about social media education and training often result in passionate discussions about the relative value of formal and informal learning when it comes to acquiring the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for effective digital engagement. Most of the participants in these discussions are early adopters who have successfully bootstrapped their own education and therefore believe that “learning by doing” is the right approach. This post revisits the question in an effort to gather current perspectives on the issue, not just from early adopters but also from folks who have just started climbing their own learning curves.

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About a year ago I observed and participated in a number of debates regarding the best way for people to acquire knowledge about and develop skills related to using social media (see this post for links to some of them). Many people argued (often vociferously) that learning from experience was not just the best way to learn, it was the only way to learn – and they rejected the notion that social media skills and abilities can be developed through training. A number of people also asserted that credentials such as social media certificates are useless, and that the offerings behind them are generally worthless.

Earlier in 2011 I had done extensive benchmarking to identify current offerings in social media education and training while I was developing a social media and online communities specialization for a Master’s degree program in communication (see this post for details). There wasn’t much out there then, and not much seems to have changed in the fifteen months since. Lately, however, I’m seeing more buzz about formal offerings, and I’ve learned about two companies – one a well-established business media company, the other a technology start-up – who are making social media training a core service offering. Are we seeing a shift…?

Below I share my updated perspective on the value of a formal approach to developing and increasing not just social media expertise, but digital sophistication more broadly. I invite others to share their points of view as well, and to engage in dialogue and healthy debate.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

My Initial Perspective

Here are my thoughts on some of the common objections to and concerns about social media training and education that have been raised in previous debates:

Social Media is too new. The basic argument here is that it’s too early to have created a body of knowledge and/or best practices about what social media is and how it should be leveraged. Specific platforms may be relatively new, but as I stated in my post about social media experts, the underlying technologies have been around for almost 20 years – longer if you consider some of their digital precursors. Even with respect to specific platforms, there’s a wealth of “how to” advice from experienced practitioners. And the core characteristics of social media technologies – such as user-generated content and social sharing – date back to our earliest days on the planet. Finally, when I benchmarked related offerings in 2011, I identified at least 170 ideas/topics that fall into six competency categories – clear evidence that there’s a substantial body of knowledge that can provide the focus for a variety of social media training and education programs. 

Things change too quickly. Because “social media time” often seems to be moving ahead at warp speed, people believe that specific knowledge gained through formal education will become stale in short measure. That can be true with respect to specific platforms and their features, but the underlying concepts and principles don’t really change. And when the courses emphasize foundational skills that have broad applications, the training should provide a solid base for future refinements.

Certificates are meaningless. Many people are rightfully concerned that any charlatan can offer a certificate program that has no substantive value, and that naïve buyers will waste their money on them. They’re also right to be concerned that certificates alone are no definitive marker of achievement. I’d like to see us get beyond the concern over labels. Certificates may provide a credential that can help in a variety of settings, but it's the training itself that's important. Most people in a variety of professions are still social media rookies, and high-quality training can provide the kickstart they need to develop their knowledge and skills (check out this post for thoughts on how to evaluate the quality of a certificate program).

Experience – and results – are more important than training and education. Countless social media professionals, many of whom are early adopters, believe that the best way to learn how to leverage social media effectively is by jumping in and using it. But learning by doing is a time-consuming process. Given that demand for social media skills and expertise is likely to rise much faster than available supply in the near future, there's value in participating in courses that can enable people to climb their learning curves more quickly and effectively. Plus, the notion of training OR experience creates a false dichotomy. Training alone is never sufficient for developing expertise, but that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. If we can recognize the importance of both in other disciplines (e.g., engineering, accounting, human resources), we shouldn’t unfairly bias one over the other when it comes to social media.

Continuous learning argument. Given the rate of change, many people emphasize the need to commit to learning constantly, which is as true in social media as it is in any other dynamic discipline. Those who use that argument to reject certifications and degrees seem to be assuming that they represent some kind of end state or pinnacle achievement. It is more accurate, however, to view certification as a beginning or a middle, something that can jump start lay the foundation for hands-on experience. As things continue to evolve, formal and informal learning can offer powerful complements to one another.

 

My Expanded Perspective

The traditional social media education and training debate has focused on professionals who need to leverage public social media platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, bloggin, YouTube - and now Google+  and Pinterest) as an integral part of their jobs, which would primarily include marketing, sales, customer service and public relations folks - especially those in BtoC for-profit enterprises. Increasingly, however, Digital Era knowledge, skills and abilities are becoming a critical component of the competencies for professionals in all functional areas and all industries (see my Digital Era Competencies post for details).

But as I note in my Digital Divide post, people are not keeping pace with technological advances and the opportunities and challenges those advances create. As someone who speaks to and interacts with social media rookies regularly, I am constantly reminded that the hype surrounding social media and digital technologies overstates not only the pervasiveness of their use, but also our collective capacity to harness and leverage them to achieve our personal and professional goals and objectives. Most people are still at the very beginning of their learning curves – and for many of them, the anticipated climb seems very steep. My most popular blog post this year, for example, was 7 Simple To Dos for LinkedIn Rookies to Enhance Their Profiles, and my “how to” posts routinely drive more traffic to my website than the other pieces I write.

Given the shifts that have taken place over the past year, especially the growing digital divide, I think formal approaches to social media education and training are more important than ever - and the need for them should only increase in the foreseeable future.

 

Related Resources

Social Media Education & Training: Where We Are. Where We’re Going.

Digital Era Leadership: The Role of Business Schools

Guess How Many Top 25 Business Schools Don’t Teach Social Media/Business

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up? 

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up?

Do you have the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for success in the Digital Era? Regardless of the sector you work in, your professional discipline, your place in the organizational hierarchy – and to some extent your career stage – there is a core set of competencies necessary to effectively leverage new technologies to achieve your goals and objectives. This post highlights some of those competencies in four general categories – concepts, platforms, tools, and skills – in addition to identifying unique competencies for managers and leaders.

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Last week I published The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards, which was inspired in part by my efforts to help individuals and organizations adapt to Digital Era realities and adopt new social and digital technologies and tools. At the end of that piece I highlighted the importance of leadership – including self-leadership – in bridging and crossing the divide. As new technologies increasingly permeate every aspect of our personal and professional lives, it is incumbent upon all of us to prepare ourselves to be successful in the Digital Era – not just as workers, but also as citizens and community members. No matter what our starting point may be, we must take it upon ourselves to understand new digital technologies and make educated and informed choices about which technologies we will embrace and leverage. We must also commit to learning and excelling at the competencies necessary for Digital Era success.

This post focuses on those competencies. It’s an extension of some of the ideas I shared in a presentation I gave last fall at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business entitled Social Media: Beyond Marketing, Throughout Your Career.  It also builds on the benchmarking work I did when I created a master’s degree specialization in social media and online communities for Northeastern University.

When giving career management presentations to professionals of all types, I’ve increasingly found myself highlighting the need to think about a new set of core competencies required for success in the Digital Era.  As social tools and other digital technologies become more integrated into our work lives, it has become increasingly evident that developing certain knowledge, skills and abilities is important for a wide range of professionals in multiple disciplines and at all levels (see, for example, slides 6-15 from the Ross School presentation, as well as the SMinOrgs Social Media Primer). These competencies, however, seem to get short shrift in articles and discussions about social business and enterprise 2.0 applications, which tend to emphasize the importance of cultural values like openness and transparency. As I have argued in different ways elsewhere (like this post), it’s possible to successfully leverage new digital tools and technologies even in organizations with more closed, traditional cultures. But it’s almost impossible to be successful if people don’t understand what those tools are and how they can use them. Culture may eat strategy for breakfast, but when it comes to digital technology, competencies eat culture for lunch.

 

Digital Era Competencies

When I developed this social media and online communities curriculum in early 2011, I created a core set of competencies to organize specific study topics. Many of these competencies are relevant even for folks who don’t have a professional focus on social media and community management. By their very nature, 2.0 technologies promote a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach to a variety of tasks that used to be delegated to people with specific technical skills. With more sophisticated and user-friendly tools at our disposal, we’re more autonomous and able to get work done more quickly and accurately – but only if we know what we’re doing!

It’s not the case that everyone has to embody all the competencies or master them to the same degree, but the stronger people’s working knowledge is in each of these areas, the more effectively they will be able to leverage new technologies to achieve their goals and objectives. This is as true for an organizational leader, who has to set strategic direction and allocate resources, as it is for a middle manager who wants to communicate with staff via an internal blog, a marketing or sales person who wants to identify new revenue-generating opportunities, a human resources professional who wants to interact with employees efficiently and effectively, and a new hire who needs to acclimate to a new operating and cultural environment.

Here are the main competency areas I have identified, along with brief descriptions and examples (all listed in alphabetical order) that are relevant for a wide range of professionals:

Concepts:  Ideas unique to the Digital Era, or that take on new meaning in the Digital Era.

• Anonymity
• Calls to action
• Channel
• Cloud computing
• Communities of practice
• Digital integration
• Ethics
• Gamification
• Influence
• Levels of engagement (i.e., consumer, contributor, curator, creator)
• Location-based services
• Multi-channel communication
• Network
• Online/digital community
• Privacy
• Social bookmarking
• Social commerce
• Social learning
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Transparency
• Usability
• User ratings and reviews
• User-generated content
• Virtual reality
• Web 2.0 and applications like Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0, Health Care 2.0

Platforms: Environments in which 2.0 technologies are leveraged for specific purposes.

• Public information networks like Twitter
• Public social media sites like Flickr, Quora, Wikipedia, YouTube
• Public social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+
• Private social and digital networks, including social intranets, private digital communities, social business applications (see Ross School presentation slides 16-19 for specific examples)

Tools: Specific enabling technologies or applications of technology.

• Aggregators
• Badges
• Chatting
• Commenting
• Content management systems
• Dashboards
• Discussion forums
• Infographics
• Mashups
• Mobile apps and location based services
• Plug-ins
• Podcasts
• Portals
• RSS feeds and subscriptions
• Tag clouds and word clouds
• Videocasts and vlogs
• Web analytics and social media metrics
• Widgets
• Wikis

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The Social Media Sophistication (SMQ) Quiz
tests people’s knowledge of 2.0 platforms and tools.
Click here to learn more and take the quiz

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Skills: Capabilities unique to the Digital Era, or that take on new meaning in the Digital Era, including specific means of leveraging 2.0 technologies to achieve goals and objectives.

• Benchmarking
• Blogging: design, writing, promotion, commenting, management
• Calendar and event management
• Community management
• Content sourcing and validation
• Crowdsourcing
• Digital collaboration
• Digital design and publishing (e.g., Adobe’s Flash and InDesign)
• Digital etiquette and communication effectiveness
• File sharing and document co-creation
• Group creation and management
• Information management
• Microblogging and status updates
• Online research
• Photo editing and sharing
• Project management
• Social sharing
• Tagging and searching
• Time management
• User profile creation and management
• Video production, editing, sharing
• Web page design and coding (content, layout, keywords, links)
• Web page navigation basics
• Writing for multiple media

In addition to the above general competencies, there’s also a core set of management competencies that people in leadership positions need to effectively leverage and manage new digital technologies. These include:

• Championship and change management
• Community management, including engagement guidelines, moderation, and discipline
• Governance principles, rules, and guidelines related to digital technologies
• Human capital management applications and implications of new technologies
• Knowledge of investment concepts like COI (cost of inaction), ROE (return on engagement) and ROI (return on investment)
• Measurement and monitoring of digital activity
• Risk management, including legal and policy considerations
• Strategy and planning, including resource allocation and organizational design

And of course our definition of effective leadership itself may be changing, as articulated in another recent post: What Does it Take to be a Leader in the Digital Era?

What other competencies would you add? How about specific examples you think are worth highlighting? Any questions and concerns? As always, your thoughts are welcome.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Related Resources

In addition to the related resources in the Digital Divide post, check out:

Social Media Education & Training: Where We Are. Where We’re Going.

A Master’s Degree Specialization in Social Media & Online Communities

Digital Era Leadership: The Role of Business Schools

Social Software Implementations and Change Management: A Judokan Approach

The principles of judo should be applied to the change management efforts necessary for successful social software implementations, including enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) systems, social intranets, and digital communities. The core idea is to recognize and accept individuals and organizations as they are, rather than as they should be, and to work with current realities rather than against them. This post offers food for thought about better approaches to achieving social software goals and objectives and invites others to share ideas and examples to further the dialogue.

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Many social software and enterprise 2.0 ( E2.0) discussions focus on certain underlying cultural values that are critical to successful implementation of new technologies and tools. These include openness, empowerment, innovation, and engagement. Related discussions on the change process often emphasize the need for leaders to embrace these cultural values before the change process can begin. I agree those values are important, but I wonder if it’s in our collective best interest to emphasize them so much. Even if they’re not willing to admit it, many organizational leaders find ideas like openness and empowerment threatening, and their views on notions like engagement can range from “touchy-feely” to “a nice luxury we can’t afford.” And even if leaders themselves espouse and embrace these ideals, existing organizational cultures, structures, systems, and staff may not allow their enactment.

So what’s a change agent to do? Try to force change? Wait until the organization is really ready before moving forward? Perhaps, rather than thinking of approaching E2.0 initiatives and the cultural changes associated with them directly, we would be better served by an indirect approach.

Judo is a “soft” martial art; literally translated from the Japanese, it means “gentle way.” Founded by Kanō Jigorō in the late nineteenth century, it embodies many principles that can be applied to the change management process – not for the purpose of winning in a competitive sense, but to achieve mutual welfare and benefit. The core idea is to achieve maximum results with minimum effort by applying principles such as:

• Yielding, leverage, balance, momentum
• Open-mindedness, self-reflection,  empathy, respect
• Intense concentration, discipline, mindful flexibility

Recognizing and respecting the true starting point for both individuals and organizations, and yielding to it and working with it rather than fighting it, could significantly increase the likelihood of success. As E2.0 initiatives gain momentum, smaller successes breed larger ones. In addition, cultural values associated with social technologies can become integrated into the fabric of the organization and internalized by individuals. In other words, even if they’re not an input, they can become an outcome.

Too often, because of anticipated resistance (perceived or real), we take an adversarial approach to change. In truth, however, the best way to influence and move others may be to change ourselves first.

What do you think? Does a gentle or yielding approach to change resonate with you? Do you know of any organizations where these principles were applied successfully? Please share your thoughts, examples, and questions to create and further the dialogue.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD 

Image: Microsoft clipart

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

The digital divide has increasingly become about knowledge and adoption of new technologies rather than access. Which side of the divide are you on - are you a leader or a laggard? This post offers insights into the factors contributing to the growing chasm between those who have embraced and leveraged new technologies and those who haven’t. It also offers suggestions for bridging and crossing the divide. Dialogue is encouraged and insights and questions from others are welcome.

For most of the early part of the Digital Era, we viewed the digital divide primarily in demographic terms such as geography, socioeconomic status, and age (see this Wikiepedia entry for details). But as digital technologies continue to improve, get less expensive and grow more widespread, those gaps are closing or becoming less relevant. Gaps based on knowledge and use, however, remain strong – and in fact may be getting larger. Over time it seems – and especially with respect to the adoption of social and 2.0 technologies in organizations – the digital divide is defined less by “we can’t” and more by “we don’t wanna.”

In this post I share my thoughts on six key realities that help put the current divide in perspective and offer food for thought, particularly for later adopters and technology resisters. It’s not intended to be an indictment against laggards and luddites – rather, my intent is to offer a practical assessment and generate dialogue about the challenges we face as technology increasingly outstrips our willingness and ability to embrace, adopt, and master it. To help us figure out how to move forward, I also share a few ideas on what it will take – both collectively and individually – to bridge and cross the divide.

What other realities and challenges do you see? What questions and concerns do you have? What additional ideas would you offer for bridging and crossing the divide?

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

PS – I’ll be following this post with one focused on how everyone can increase their digital competencies. Be sure to check back and/or subscribe to the blog (via RSS feed, email and more) to be notified as soon as it’s published.

 

Understanding the New Digital Divide

The more I speak to and work with individuals and organizations to help them adapt to Digital Era realities and adopt new social and digital technologies and tools, the more clear certain realities become. Here are some I’m reminded of on a daily basis.

It’s never been so easy to do so much with so little. The technological and financial barriers to adoption of incredibly powerful tools and platforms are generally very low. Free and low-cost options are abundant. In addition, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud-based networks reduce (or eliminate) the need for large investments in hardware. New software and hardware also dramatically increase the ease of design, drastically reduce the time to implementation, and significantly enhance long-term system flexibility.

New technologies create a “people paradox.” Although the idea is counter-intuitive to many, people are much more central to the Digital Era opportunities and challenges we face than technology. As I discuss in Social Media: From Novelty to Utility, digital technology is an enabler – a means to various ends rather than an end in and of itself. We must view these new technologies as sources of power and recognize the importance of human beings in determining the effectiveness of our ability to harness and manage that power.

The (r)evolution is bigger than we think. Many people falsely assume that new technologies only impact organizations in certain sectors (e.g., consumer goods and services), specific functional areas (e.g., marketing), and individuals in certain types of jobs and professions (e.g., IT) or at particular stages in their work lives and careers (e.g., digital natives). The reality, however, is that new technologies potentially impact every type of worker, in every sector, at every career stage and every organizational level, throughout the world.

We get in our own way. Though technological and financial barriers may be low, psychological barriers to new technology adoption are very high. These barriers are both cognitive and affective, and each type of resistance reinforces the other. The foundation of the resistance is a lack of conceptual understanding of how new technologies enable the pursuit and achievement of traditional goals (i.e., they’re new tools for doing old things (in new ways)). This lack of understanding leads to:

• Underestimating opportunities
• Overestimating challenges
• Misestimating risks

We live in the past and like to play it safe. Temperamentally, most humans have a tendency to look backward rather than forward. We concentrate more on “how things have always been done” rather than what’s possible. We’re also generally risk averse, especially when evaluating options that can produce potential gains. Given a choice, most of us prefer the “devil we know” to the “angel we haven’t met yet.”

We’re conditioned to be Luddites. Another significant barrier is that most organizations – from schools to public sector entities to for-profit enterprises – are dominated by Industrial Era thinking and operations. Ironically, even though our natural tendencies are cognitively subjective, procedurally relational, and interpersonally social and collaborative, most of us learn and work in environments that emphasize objectivity, linearity, and (isolated) individualism.

Bridging and Crossing the Divide

To me, leadership is the key to bridging and crossing the new digital divide. And it can occur in multiple forms:

Thought leaders and champions need to not just trumpet the “cool” aspects of new technologies, but also their practical benefits. They need to frame their arguments from the perspective of what people need to hear rather than what they want to say. And they themselves need to think bigger and more broadly about the phenomena they’re touting.

Formal organizational leaders need to educate themselves about new technologies, their applications, and their implications. Doing so will enable them to provide the strategic direction and the capacity – especially in terms of human capital – their organizations need to move forward. It will also enable them to adapt their leadership styles to enhance their ability to be successful in new operating environments.

Educators at all levels – and especially in higher education – also need to educate themselves about new technologies and their applications and implications. They need to then use their new-found knowledge and understanding to update their curricula and pedagogical practices, as well as their research questions and methods.

Informal leaders who understand new technologies and their benefits and challenges can help others make the necessary transitions by being champions and cheerleaders, leading by example, and offering guidance, instruction, and encouragement.

Self-leadership means we will all take it upon ourselves to understand new digital technologies and make educated and informed choices about which technologies we will embrace and leverage. We’ll also commit to learning and excelling at the competencies necessary for Digital Era success.

 

Related Resources

10 Digital Era Truths

12 Hopes for 2012: Enhanced Adoption of Digital Technologies

The Social Media ROI Challenge: What it Really Means (and 7 Related Faulty Assumptions)

Social Media: From Novelty to Utility

Social Media Engagement: 7 Rules for Working Smart, not Just Hard

Social Media Engagement: 5 Guiding Principles

Social Media: Coping with Time and Information Management Realities

What Does it Take to be a Leader in the Digital Era?

Digital Era Leadership: The Role of Business Schools

Social Media Education and Training: Where We Are. Where We’re Going.