Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community

Blogging: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide (updated)

This blogging beginner's guide is intended for people who want to incorporate blogs into their organization’s social media efforts but aren’t sure where or how to begin. Individuals interested in blogging for personal/career management reasons, as well as folks aspiring to be professional bloggers, may also find the guide useful in helping them get started. The guide focuses on external blogs, but many of the concepts apply to internal blogs as well. This guide updates and extends the original blog post published in May 2011.

To many professionals blogging is still a foreign concept. Although virtually everyone has read them and some may even comment and subscribe, when it comes to thinking about how to leverage the tool themselves, people often freeze. They feel intimidated because they think their writing skills are not good enough, pressured by the prospect of having to create fresh content on a regular basis, and/or uncertain of how they are going to manage the time commitment.

Cyberspace is full of blogging “best practices,” rules and tips. Many of these guides are great, but they are not necessarily comprehensive and/or designed for people who are just getting started. Therefore, I thought I would create my own guide based on my interactions with social media rookies over the past few years, as well as my own experience as a relatively new blogger (since March 2010). The guide was originally published as a (long!) blog post in May 2011. The updated version updates and extends the content, in addition to presenting it in a more polished format.

You can view the guide through the embedded link below or directly via SlideShare.

As always, I welcome feedback. If you disagree with one of my recommendations, have a tip to add, and/or feel something was unclear, please do not hesitate to add a comment or question to the blog post or SlideShare page, or send an email to blogtips@sminorgs.net. Thanks!

- Courtney Hunt

 

Blogging: A Comprehensive Beginner's Guide

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The Social Media Garden: A 2.0 Organizational Research Study

"What do you think are the main barriers for organizations in embracing social media practices and what ideas do you have for overcoming them?" This is the question at the heart of a public research study being conducted by Silverman Research, which uses a social research methodology rather than a survey format to capture and develop collective insights on important questions. Everyone is able to view and evaluate the responses from others, in addition to contributing their own perspective.

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As the Founder of the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community, I am pleased to offer my support to this project. I learned about the study when Michael Silverman posted an invitation to participate in the SMinOrgs LI group. Obviously, the question is one that is near and dear to my heart, but I am also very impressed with and intrigued by his approach to building a dataset and representing the results.

I invite everyone to enter the Garden, take a stroll through the responses shared by others, and plant a bloom of your own!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Study Overview and Invitation

The Social Media Garden is an open-access research project that has been designed to generate insight about the barriers organisations face in adopting social media practices – and solutions to overcome them. This new approach to online research eliminates unmanageable lists of comments and uses data visualizations to help participants navigate the conversation and develop their understanding. Algorithms then rapidly filter insightful comments based on input from other participants. Here’s a screenshot of a typical page:

 

Of course, there is already a mounting body of research on the use of social media in organizations. However, none of these studies have been conducted using social media methodologies. When one considers the opportunities provided by social technologies to share information, develop ideas and generate insight, I find it immensely frustrating that so much social research is still conducted using surveys. For all the big consultancies, research agencies and academics espousing the benefits of social media, it’s unfortunate that they have stuck to a standard survey approach. This is one the few research studies on social media in organizations to employ a social media approach. We therefore expect to produce many new insights that would not be possible using traditional survey approaches.

The study is being sponsored by Unilever to help push forward the social media agenda in organizations, and to build on their efforts to “social mediatize” employee research across the company (see below for more information on the methodology). The Garden will be open throughout February 2012 and has already received over 450 participants. A full report of the overall research findings will be publically available towards the end of March 2012. All participants will be emailed a copy of the report (containing a combined text, sentiment and statistical analysis), which will also be available on the Social Media Garden website. Please click here to enter the garden and plant your bloom.

A leaderboard of the top authors will be posted in the Garden towards the end of the project. Currently, the top author is ‘philwoodford,’ who wrote:

The two biggest factors preventing organisations embracing social media are: (1) Difficulty in measuring return on investment (2) Fear of loss of control Using social media successfully requires an investment of time and human resources. If organisations cannot see or quantify an immediate and obvious return, they get nervous. Social media is profoundly democratic. This takes power away from managers, marketers, HR professionals and others within the organisation that might be expected to sponsor its growth. Both of these factors will become less of an issue with each passing year, as social media becomes more and more embedded in the fabric of business and society as a whole. Business owners and managers who are resistant to change probably won't be convinced and there's little that can be done to shape their attitudes. The world will simply change around them.

 

Methodological Background

Despite their prevalence, surveys are riddled with problems. The most serious of which, and the one that is most often overlooked, is that they are incredibly boring for participants and consistently fail to provide participants with a compelling and engaging experience. The fact that participants complete surveys in isolation provides people with a very solitary experience. Worse still, a valuable opportunity is missed to capture the insight that comes from measuring what people think of other participants’ comments. This is where surveys really fall down. If participants knew their comment would be available for others evaluate, they would not only be more likely to write a response, they would also be more likely to write a thoughtful and considered response.

In addition, if participants are able to evaluate others’ comments, it becomes possible to identify the authentic voice of that community and see what themes are achieving consensus. Text analysis software is great, but we often forget that we have an even more powerful text analysis tool than any computer – the combined wisdom of our brains. I like to think of this as a form of crowd-sourced text analysis.

However, linear lists of comments that are used in traditional discussion forums and message boards are difficult to navigate and soon become unmanageable as the number of participants increases. This means that many comments never get read. Coupled with the widespread use of over-simplistic binary thumbs-up or five-star ratings, lists favor early birds or those with extreme views and conceal the real diversity of opinion.

Unilever was one of the first organizations to employ this approach internally, using a pre-cursor to the Social Media Garden called “Opinion Space” (see screen shot below). This project engaged Unilever’s 1,800-strong international assignee employees in providing feedback and suggestions to improve its policies for this community. The project won two HR industry awards and has led to the adoption of this approach to employee research and collaboration in different parts of the business.

 

In addition to providing new insight into the use of social media in organizations, we also hope that the Social Media Garden will raise awareness of new ways of generating insight and facilitating mass collaboration.

Michael Silverman is Managing Director of Silverman Research, a company specializing in applying social media principles to social research. A psychologist and organizational research specialist, he was previously Global Head of Employee Research at Unilever.

 

For more information please contact: michael.silverman@silvermanresearch.com

 

Social Media Resolutions: Made Any? Kept Any?

As 2011 faded from memory and 2012 came into sharper focus, people around the world engaged in the annual “resolution ritual.” This post invites folks to share their social media goals for the year ahead, evaluate the progress they have made so far in keeping the resolutions they have made, and refocus their efforts to ensure their goals are realistic rather than idealistic.

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Although I am constantly making (and breaking) resolutions, I do view the start of a new year as an opportunity to be more focused and disciplined in my approach to change. And as someone who spends much of her time in cyberspace, a fair number of my resolutions for 2012 are related to my digital activity.

As I was formulating my plans for the year ahead, I became curious to know if other people were making digitally-oriented resolutions as well. So a few weeks ago I posted a query in a handful of places to see what kind of response I would get. Although my query was met with deafening silence in some places, I got some good responses in others, including:

• GovLoop
• Focus.com
• LinkedIn’s Q&A feature

Many of the resolutions people shared offered great food for thought and enabled me to evaluate my own goals in a different light. Because I think there’s value in public sharing (and accountability!), I thought I’d take a more formal approach to soliciting people’s 2012 resolutions. So here’s my query again:

All the talk about social media forecasts and New Year's resolutions has me wondering if folks have made any social media resolutions for themselves, with their work groups, and/or in their organizations. 

Have you created any (new) social media goals? 
Do you plan to start any (new) social media initiatives? 
What do you want to do more of in 2012? What do you want to do less of? 

I'm looking forward to hearing - and being inspired by - your ideas. Thanks! 

Now that we’re one month into the new year, we also have an opportunity to evaluate our progress in achieving our goals, and perhaps regroup and refocus our efforts. In particular, many of us have likely discovered that our initial goals may have been more idealistic than realistic. I’d love to hear people’s reports on their successes (and failures) so far, and how they have adjusted their focus to more pragmatic and achievable goals.

So, how are you doing? I’m looking forward to hearing about your goals and progress to date!

-  Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

PS - Is LinkedIn a focus of people’s resolutions for 2012? Based on the response to  7 Simple To Dos for LinkedIn Rookies to Enhance Their Profiles, it appears so!

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In the interest of full disclosure (and public accountability), here’s a brief report on my main social media resolutions for 2012:

• Promote even greater focus on the applications and implications of social media in organizations. This has been my mission for over three years, and the reason I founded the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community. For a variety of reasons (e.g., lack of knowledge and understanding, fear, the global economy), progress has been pretty slow, but as I noted in the recent State of the Community report, there has been a marked increase in interest and activity in the past 3-6 months.  I need to capitalize on that interest by promoting the growth of SMinOrgs, continuing my education efforts through writing and speaking, and helping organizational leaders focus on the most important issues and initiatives.

• Evaluation: As always, it seems, my ambitions outstrip my capacity – but I keep plugging away!  We started a member recruitment campaign for the SMinOrgs LI group, and so far the response has been great. I have generally achieved my goal of at least two (educationally oriented) blog posts per week and am pursuing new speaking opportunities. I need to be sure I stay focused on the issues I consider most important, so I don’t spread myself too thin.

• Read less (and filter more). As a content curator and someone who strives to develop and maintain a high level of digital expertise, I must read almost constantly. But keeping up with the daily deluge of information and news is more than a full time job. The more I take in, the less I can put out. So I have vowed to be more selective about the kinds of stories I focus on and the sources I rely on. 

• Evaluation: I am definitely more focused on creating my own content, which automatically reduces the amount of time I have to take new content in. But knowing that I’m missing things and falling behind is unsettling. I need to further increase my filters and rely on the delete key even more.

• Be smarter about where – and how – I engage. This is an ongoing goal for me, but I need to be even more conscious of it in 2012. I have to focus on the digital communities that are most relevant to my personal and professional objectives. And whenever I am tempted by a topic or conversation, I need to stop and ask myself if commenting is the best use of my time relative to those objectives.   

• Evaluation: As noted above, this is not easy. I hate feeling like I’m missing something or falling behind. I also feel bad when I don’t support my fellow community members by liking or commenting on things they share. But I have to get over it.

It really all comes down to focus and discipline, and I’m generally doing okay with both. But I feel like a bit of an automaton, and I hate feeling like I’m dissing people by not immediately responding to their messages, commenting on their posts, or even answering the phone when they call at inopportune times. Managing work – and relationships – in the Digital Era is not easy!

Allstate "Social Media Boot Camp" Presentation Excerpts

In August 2010 I was invited to speak at Allstate's Supplier Diversity Exchange. This video clip includes excerpts from my presentation and the Q&A session that followed. Even though a year-and-a-half seems like an eternity in "social media time," the concepts and ideas I shared then are still relevant today, especially for social media rookies.

You can watch the embedded video below or view it on SlideShare. I hope you find it valuable.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

Allstate "Social Media Boot Camp" presentation excerpts

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7 Simple To Dos for LinkedIn Rookies to Enhance Their Profiles

This post provides seven basic recommendations that can help LinkedIn (LI) rookies upgrade their profiles from anemic to respectable. These tasks can be tackled in as little as an hour (and no more than a half-day session) and will produce a solid basic presence that also lays a foundation for future development.

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Judging from the anemic LinkedIn (LI) profiles I view on a daily basis, I hope that many professionals have resolved to enhance them in 2012. I know people are busy, but if how they represent themselves as professionals is important to them (and it should be), they need to make the time. Anyone who can manage to carve out time to go to a hair stylist should also be able to carve out time to ensure their basic cyber presence is well styled too.

For many people, expressed concerns about lack of time are often code for “I’m overwhelmed.” If they haven’t spent much time on LI, the task of updating their LI profile seems daunting, and they have no idea where to begin. LI makes each individual step pretty easy, and they provide lots of online help, but the volume of choices can make the overall effort hard to manage. Taking a “crawl-walk-run” approach and breaking the project down into three parts should help.

This is the “crawl” post, which focuses on a handful of basic things people should do to make sure their LI profiles are presentable. If you’re a LI rookie with a less-than-impressive profile, this post is for you. If you’re not a rookie, it might still be worth double checking to make sure you haven’t inadvertently made a rookie mistake.

Future posts in this series will focus on intermediate and advanced issues. If there’s a specific topic you’d like to see addressed, please add a comment or question. I also invite folks to share their “recommendations for rookies,” in case I may have overlooked something.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

PS - If you want to receive parts 2 and 3 in this series as soon as they're published, be sure to subscribe to the blog.

 

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Following the recommendations below will ensure you have created a respectable basic presence on LI, in addition to laying a solid foundation you can build on later. Depending on your starting point, you should be able to enhance your LI profile in as little as an hour – or at most, one half-day session.

Set a goal to get the basic tasks done in the first quarter. Then you can tackle the intermediate tasks in the second quarter and the advanced tasks in the third quarter. By the fourth quarter you should have a fully functioning profile!

Note: Before you get started, check to see if your employer has created guidelines for you to follow. Since they’re paying your salary and you’re representing their brand, they have a say in how you represent them and your role. (see this post  for more details)

 

#1: Let Your Profile Be Public

Given the purpose of LinkedIn, it’s hard to understand why anyone would want their profile to be private or anonymous, but many people are still hesitant to let their presence be known. Here are three good reasons why you should opt for a public profile:

• If you have an externally-facing role and/or are a senior professional, people you may interact with will look for your profile to learn more about you.  As more and more people come to rely on LI as a resource, it will increasingly strike people as odd if they can’t find you. That’s not a good reflection on either your professional brand or your organization.
• With an anonymous profile, you are referred to in LI as “private private,” which can look really silly. It’s especially funny when someone with a private profile gets recommended by someone else. I’ve lost count of the number of notifications from my first-level connections that will say something like: Jane Doe has recommended private private: “I worked with Bob Smith at XYZ… (so much for anonymity!).
• If people want to find your profile, they can. I can’t reveal the trick, but resourceful LI users know how to access profiles using people’s LI member numbers. It’s a very simple workaround.

If you’ve kept your profile private because you don’t think it’s ready for public viewing yet, follow the rest of the recommendations below to get it ready.

 

#2: Add a Respectable Profile Picture

As in most social networks, there’s a normative expectation that people have a profile picture. If you don’t, people will either assume that you don’t know what you’re doing or that you have something to hide. Why let them go there? Including a profile picture avoids the speculation and lets you control the initial impression people get when they view your profile.

Depending on their jobs, industries, and reputations, some people on LI can get away with more daring profile pictures. For most of us, however, a conservative approach is best. Here are some tips that will work for most people:

• Use an image that reflects your professional identity not your personal identity
• If you use a photo of yourself:
  • Make sure it’s current and decent quality
  • Only include yourself in the photo
  • Focus on your face, not your body (i.e., it should be a headshot)
• If you don’t want to use a photo of yourself:
  • Find an image that reflects your values, capabilities or essence in some way
  • Be careful about using things that are too cutesy or may involve questionable humor

 

#3: Include a Headline

To me, the LI headline is better in concept than in reality. Personally, I’ve always struggled with what to include, and I’ve never been completely satisfied with what I’ve come up with. But since it’s something of a “necessary evil,” you have to try to make the best of it. Here are a few suggestions based on my own experience and my review of hundreds (if not thousands) of profiles:

• Short descriptors separated by bars are probably easier than trying to craft a sentence
• Focus on what you offer, not what you want (e.g., don’t say you’re looking for a job)
• Avoid bland descriptions like “experienced accountant”
• Highlight your unique professional capabilities and/or character using key words that will catch people’s attention
• If you’re currently employed, it’s perfectly acceptable to include your current job title

 

#4: Provide a Robust Description for Your Current Job (at least)

Even if you don’t have time to fully flesh out your profile, you should at least provide a robust description of your current position. This is especially true for folks in externally-facing roles like recruiting, human resources, public relations, marketing, sales, and business development. You should also at least list all your previous employers/positions – certainly the most recent/relevant ones.

Generally speaking, the description you provide in your LI profile is the same as what you’d include on a resume. So if your resume is current, you should be able to just cut and paste titles and text from that document to the data entry boxes on LI. If your resume isn’t current, this is a great opportunity to update it! They should basically be in synch…

Here are some additional tips:

• Be sure to link the job to your employer’s Company Page. If they don’t have one, suggest they set one up – pronto!
• Limit your description of the organization to 1-2 sentences. If people want to learn more, they can go to the Company Page.
• Also limit your description of the job and your responsibilities as much as possible, focusing instead on unique contributions, value added, and accomplishments.
• Remember that you’re writing for both search engines and human beings. That means your descriptions should be key word rich, but they also need to be attractive and readable by people.
• When in doubt, leave it out. The profile should entice people to want to learn more rather than try to tell your whole life story. The less relevant a job is to your current professional activities, the less you should say about it.

If you have any kind of professional certifications, be sure to list them in the Certifications section. Similarly, if they’re relevant to your current professional activities, you can also list Honors and Awards. Both sections can be completed in mere minutes.

 

#5: Include Your Education

As with some of your older work experiences, you can take a “name/rank/serial” number approach to providing information about your academic background. You should definitely list all the schools you attended and/or got degrees from, but you don’t need to provide more detail than your degree program and the years attended. Yes, I would include the years. If you don’t, people will naturally conclude that you’re trying to hide the fact that it was a long time ago, so not listing them doesn’t protect you from discrimination. Besides, if someone is going to discriminate against you based on your age, you probably don’t want to work with them anyway.

 

#6: Don’t Include Personal Information

I don’t know why LI provides these fields, but I would recommend against including personal information such as your address, marital status, and date of birth. This information is generally not relevant to your professional identity or interactions.

 

#7: Enable People to Get in Touch with You

Related to the fear of having a public profile, many professionals seem to be afraid that if they don’t restrict access to themselves they will be inundated with and overwhelmed by a variety of requests. In my experience, the fear is greater than the reality. I recommend lowering the drawbridge and letting people contact you through every available LI channel. And if you’re in a job like business development or recruiting, you own your own business or are on the job market, make it easy for people to get in touch with you outside of LI as well by adding a statement under your Contact Settings that shares your contact information. Here’s the statement on my profile:

I can be reached directly via email at cshunt@renaissance-solutions.com, or via phone at 312.225.3365.

To make it easier to manage inappropriate requests, clearly specify the kinds of opportunities you’re open to hearing about.

 

Related Resources

To access additional posts on LI, check out this Spotlight on LinkedIn email blast from last fall.

If you’re currently on the job market (or hiring), you may also be interested in my post Recruiting in the Digital Era: Updated Guidance for Employers, Recruiters, and Candidates, which provides additional guidance and resources about managing one’s professional presence in cyberspace.

Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs): State of the Community 2012

The Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community began in May 2009 as a LinkedIn (LI) group, and quickly expanded to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. In early 2010, the S.M.A.R.T. (Social Media and Related Technologies) Blog was born. The start of a new year seems like a good time to reflect on the current state of the Community and share a few goals for 2012.

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Scroll down to view the embedded SMinOrgs State of the Community report or click here to view/download the report on SlideShare. The report includes brief updates and goals for:

• LinkedIn
• The S.M.A.R.T. Blog
• Twitter
• Facebook and Other Platforms

Our primary goals for 2012 are to: 

• Grow the LinkedIn group to 5000+ members 
• Increase website traffic by creating more blog content, promoting the blog, and optimizing search engine results
• Increase blog subscriptions

If you would like to volunteer to help SMinOrgs achieve any of these goals, please email volunteer@sminorgs.net. We welcome and appreciate the help.

Here's to a fabulous 2012!

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD
Founder, SMinOrgs

PS - I'm curious to know if anyone knows of other similar reports that focus on things like "social engagement," "digital engagement," "community engagement," "social enterprise," "social learning," "social recruiting," or "government 2.0." It'd be great to see what other organizations are doing along these lines. Thanks!

 

State of the SMinOrgs Community 2012

View more documents from Courtney Hunt

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Feb. 8 - 2012 Educational Conference on Social Media - Northeast Circuit Clerks' Association

Feb. 23 - Faculty and Staff Development Workshop on Social Media - Parkland College

Feb. 26 - Guide to Private Social Networks - Club Manager's Association of America

Mar. 13 - Workshop on Using Social Media Internally - NELLCO Symposium 2012

Apr. 17 - Social Media Strategies for HR - The Conference Board

Apr. 19 - Social Media Panel at Northern Illinois University

June 8 - Developing a strategy/plan for leveraging 2.0 tools and technologies inside organizations - GSLIS Corporate Roundtable

The Social Workplace: The Future is Now

In this SMinOrgs S.M.A.R.T. Blog guest post, Jerry Carducci offers his thoughts on the future of the social workplace. Building on the ideas in the latest S.M.A.R.T. News Digest – Social Media and the Workplace - What’s In Store for 2012? – he anticipates the impact of new digital technologies on organizational culture, employer branding, consumer listening, and organizational policies.

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As a follower of social media in the workplace, one thing remains clear: many organizational leaders are still apprehensive about social media’s potential to enhance operational effectiveness, increase stakeholder value and engage employees. 

We’ve seen how the global community used social media to connect and gain support for humanitarian and political issues. What if your organization could generate that same strength of internal community to enhance its value propositions for current and future stakeholders? What if your organization could unleash its hidden talents and creativity through an open, engaging and collaborative environment that increases value and competitive advantage? 

Looking at 2012 and beyond, more organizations will start using social media as a way to optimize the power of consumer-based networks to increase productivity, communications and collaboration. We should see changes in four core areas:

• The “Social Workplace.”  The “social workplace” constitutes the next generation of organizational change, combining social technical tools, culture and physical design to enhance communications and create a structure that is flexible, collaborative and connected to the organization’s mission, values and goals. Geneca, an IT consultancy in Chicago, provides one example of how this can be done (see: Corporate Culture Meets the Digital Era).

• “Employer Branding.”  Employer branding connects the organization to the talent market by providing not only a realistic view of the culture, expectations and work-life within the organization, but also the social and community involvement aspects. Organizations will begin to heighten their focus on employer branding through LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to create a community of followers and attract the right talent.  Involvement will grow to extend beyond Human Resource roles to include front line leaders and employees in all functional areas.

(Editor’s note: for more on social media and recruiting, see Recruiting in the Digital Era: Updated Guidance for Employers, Recruiters, and Candidates).

• “Social Listening.”  Consumer review sites are replacing formal “Focus Groups” in providing continuous qualitative feedback. Social listening represents analysis of feedback from these sites and using it as a source of continuous improvement, innovation and a means to identify hidden opportunities to increase value.  As a result, the role of the “social analyst” will evolve to include not only technical and intuitive analytical skills, but also product, process and internal operational savvy in aggregating, organizing and communicating information in a way that is meaningful throughout the organization.

• Formalization of Social Media Policies. As use of social media grows internally, formalization of policies, etiquette and training will become more prevalent. In her blog post entitled, A Matter of Policy: Protecting Employees and Your Brand on Social Media, Jaya Koilpillai Bohlmann provides a practical, commonsense approach.

(Editor’s note: for more on social media policies, see Social Media Policies: Necessary but Not Sufficient).

The term “Value” has evolved to represent the total experience for consumers and employees alike. And creating value in today’s environment is a strategic imperative, requiring organizations to be continuously connected, engaging and transparent in ways that generate loyalty and a positive experience. Social media provides the means to establish the necessary formal and informal connections.

However, understanding how social media can change the way an enterprise does business and engages employees is a complex undertaking.  Leaders must fully understand their culture, mission and value system – and how their organization really works. Most importantly, they must select the right social media platforms to support and achieve their organization’s objectives.

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Gerald E. (Jerry) Carducci is the President of Carducci & Associate,; an organizational consultancy that helps small and mid-sized businesses energize their workplaces through a supportive culture and progressive people practices. He is a widely published author and guest editor for the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) S.M.A.R.T. Blog, where he explores the use of social media as a means to enhance internal communication, collaboration and processes. He is also a frequent guest on WGN Radio.

Don’t Just STOP SOPA: Fix It!

The issues related to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) are not as simple or black-and-white as many individuals and organizations are portraying them. There is consensus that online piracy is a problem that must be addressed, as well as general agreement that some kind of law is necessary. There are substantive – and important – differences, however, with respect to what the law should include and how it should be enforced. Rather than engendering unproductive hysteria through grand standing, dramatic (but hollow) gestures and rhetoric, leaders in both the private and public sectors would better serve their stakeholders (and themselves) by working together to develop a viable solution.

This post in the GCDEL Digital Era Thinkers Blog shares my initial formal thoughts on all the SOPA hullabaloo that's been brewing and erupted yesterday. Since so many people are posting anti-SOPA sentiments, I wanted to offer a different point of view. I will write a follow-up Digital Era Food for Thought post as well.

Click here to read the complete post.

via www.gcdel.org

S.M.A.R.T. News: Social Media and the Workplace - What’s In Store for 2012?

Projections for social media in 2012 reflect three core themes: privacy, performance insights, and value creation. The pieces selected for this News Digest by guest blogger Jerry Carducci provide thought-provoking perspectives on these themes, as well as the anticipated direction of social media and its growth potential when applied to the workplace. 

Please feel free to share your thoughts on the items in this News digest directly via the blog, or join the dialogue on LinkedIn. We especially welcome other examples of social media predictions for 2012. We also appreciate your bringing items on other topics to our attention via LI, Twitter, or FB, or by emailing a link to news@sminorgs.net. Thanks!

You may also want to check out Jerry's follow-up post: The Social Workplace: The Future is Now.

Click here to learn more about the SMinOrgs News Digest feature and how you can leverage it to meet your goals and objectives.

If you'd like to receive a notice each time a new post is published, you can subscribe to the SMinOrgs S.M.A.R.T. Blog by clicking here or on the link on the right side of the website.

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Projections for social media in 2012 reflect three core themes: privacy, performance insights, and value creation. The pieces selected for this News Digest by guest blogger Jerry Carducci provide thought-provoking perspectives on these themes, as well as the anticipated direction of social media and its growth potential when applied to the workplace. Specifically: 

• Beverly Macy brings forth her predictions from a corporate governance perspective and discusses how social media enables companies to compete better in a global marketplace.
Dan Kehrer discusses his predictions for small businesses in our stagnant economy, including the need to use of social media to target customers, manage on-line reputation, and create an innovative environment to bring more value.
Sarah Meij brings some insightful perspectives focused around content management, digital influence marketing and socially enabled CRM from a next generation point of view.
Sam Fiorella speaks to the future of social privacy, the evolution of social networks as “feeder sites,” and influencer outreach.

My observations regarding workplace applications and implications of social media are as follows:

• Privacy policies have come under scrutiny, as exemplified by the settlement requiring Facebook to obtain user approval of changes to privacy policies before they go into effect. As job seekers and employees clean-up their digital activities and/or create alternative pages that are more professionally oriented and have restricted access, it will become increasingly difficult for employers to look into and/or monitor social backgrounds. (Note from Courtney Hunt: this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.)
• Organizations use profile and other data from social sites to gain insights into web preferences and other online habits, enabling them to target marketing campaigns. Even more important are the qualitative comments from customers, vendors and others about their experiences with the organization.  Understanding qualitative information gleaned from such an analysis can provide valuable insights that impact every aspect of the organization, from talent acquisition and development, to processes, to product/services.
• Consumer review sites are increasing, providing insight into the experiences of others.  Organizations will need to be better “social listeners,” which emphasizes the need for deeper analysis and understanding of what is being said and using it as a source of continuous improvement, innovation and identifying hidden opportunities to increase their value proposition.

Conceptually, social media sounds simple. But as conveyed in the selected articles, understanding how it can change the way an enterprise works, conducts business and creates value for customers and employees is a complex undertaking.  Leaders must examine and fully understand how their organization works before deploying social media to support business objectives.

Categories: applications, benefits, best practices, challenges, leadership, opportunities, strategy

For additional articles that address related issues, click on terms of interest in the category cloud on our website.

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Title: Social Media -- 4 Trends to Watch in 2012

Source: Huffington Post

Author: Beverly Macy

Lead Paragraph: I am on a mission to help Fortune 500 companies answer the question, "What is social media and how can it help our company?"…. Senior executives and managers cannot make decisions or allocate budget to something they know very little about. You are at a competitive disadvantage if you do not embrace the power of social media and understand how it applies to the enterprise. Your competitors are already there. Your incoming digital native workforce is there. In fact, 2012 is the year companies will move from social media to social business.

Brief Commentary from Jerry Carducci: Leaders who don’t believe social media can have a huge impact on the performance of their organizations are missing huge opportunities.  As Macy points out, every area within the organization can benefit.  “Going Social” represents the next generation of organizational change in creating an inclusive environment that empowers, encourages innovation, and creates a source of market differentiation.  As exemplified in my case study about a consultancy that has embraced social media (Corporate Culture Meets the Digital Era), leveraging new technologies involves taking the culture of an organization to the next level. 

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Title: 10 Small-Business Trends to Know about for 2012

Source: Arizona Business Gazette

Author: Dan Kehrer

Lead Paragraph: As 2012 unfolds and small-business owners continue to face an anemic economy, knowing the trends that will reshape how you do business can give you a critical edge. Here are 10 top small-business trends for 2012 and beyond…

Brief Commentary from Jerry Carducci:  Small business historically has been the economic growth engine.  Because of their size, niche orientation and limited resources, entrepreneurs tend to be more receptive to innovation and finding ways to employ technology cost effectively.  They must be more savvy and continuously connected and engaged with their customer base and targeted in their campaigns. Web-based or "cloud" computing, mobile commerce and social-media marketing are three fast-growing mega trends that are reinforcing each other at the same time. There are lessons to be learned from these enterprises in terms of how they employ social technology to build value that flows both from the inside-out, as well as outside-in. 

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Title:  Five Social Media Trends for 2012

Source: Sara Meij blog

Author: Sara Meij

Lead Paragraph:  If you Google ‘social media trends 2011′, the first page will consist of a list of web pages which all provide you with five, six or ten social media trends for this year, 2011. If that image on your laptop screen hadn’t made it clear: everybody is talking about (the latest trends in) social media. We all think we are doomed if we don’t stay on top of the newest online developments. Do we have a point there or are we just running out of breath for no reason? Well... yeah, it is fairly important to keep updated so you will know what to expect from the Internet, your clients, your privacy and, to say dramatically, your future.

Brief Commentary from Jerry Carducci:  As Meij sums up in her post, the sharing of voice/views and building community influence will be important going forward.  Her perspective represents the next generation of consumers, influencers and leaders that, in numbers, exceed that of the Baby Boomers.

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Title: Trend Currents: Social Media in 2012

Source: Sensei Blogs

Author: Sam Fiorella

Lead Paragraph:  The speed of evolution in digital communications and technologies has created a curious conundrum for marketers and business leaders alike. With such rapidly advancing technologies, even the early adopters are too busy trying to understand what is happening now to be capable of looking into the distant future to see what’s coming. Further, they’re so focused on the technologies, networks and platforms that they lose sight of the fact that they are merely small contributing factors to much larger trends.

Brief Commentary from Jerry Carducci:  Retaining focus on the “big picture” and how it will impact how and where a firm does business is imperative to meeting business objectives.  Social intelligence and social listening are the keys.  Why? Because they not only keep an organization focused on the here and now, but also on evolving opportunities.

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

This post offers a different perspective on the social media ROI (return on investment) challenges put forth by organizational leaders and other experienced professionals who resist increased digital engagement. Playing off the ROI acronym, it provides alternatives for interpreting the ROI argument. It then articulates – and counters – seven assumptions on which the resistance arguments are often based. The post concludes with a call to move away from specious arguments and to balance concerns about ROI with the equally important COI (cost of inaction).

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Last week I wrote a post for the Digital Era Thinkers Blog entitled, “12 Hopes for 2012: Enhanced Adoption of Digital Technologies.” Recognizing that technological advances continue to outstrip our willingness to address the opportunities and challenges they present, the post focuses on the psychological challenges we face and our individual and collective ability to tackle them in thought, word, and deed. 

In the post, I expressly stated that I wanted to focus on the positive rather than the negative. But after I shared the post, I got some classic pushback in a response from a person who runs a company that provides management and leadership training. She wrote, in part: 

We are constantly asked about the time/value, pros/cons, and cost/benefit of social media. These folks who ask barely have time to do everything they have to do for their jobs, let alone figure out the most effective way to use social media. We network and ask those we trust what we can use (and tell clients to use) to get relevant info quicker, faster, better. The key word is RELEVANT. The vast majority of social media is full of useless, time wasting verbiage that lacks filters. The key to figuring how to best utilize the best of it and get rid of the worst of it, would be some form of easy to use, customized and targeted data mining. Until this comes to the fore I don't see how it can provide the ROI on a leader's or executive's time. I am sure that most people in busy jobs feel the same.

 

ROI is Code for...

I've heard these - and similar - arguments more often than I can count. In my experience, when organizational leaders and other experienced professionals talk about the ROI of social media, they’re not just referring to Return On Investment. ROI, in fact, is often code for: 

• Ridiculous Online Indulgence. In their disdainful dismissals of social media, people still highlight the (over)abundance of vapid and banal social media activity (e.g., people sharing what they had for lunch) and characterize the people who engage in it as shallow and narcissistic, with too much time on their hands.
• Real professionals Only Interact in traditional ways. There is a clear bias among many professionals toward how things have “always” been done. Email, the phone, and in-person exchanges are seen as inherently superior to digital ones. More importantly, the different types of exchanges are viewed as mutually exclusive rather than integrated and complementary.
• Resist Out-of-the-box Ideas. In spite of all the media hype surrounding social media and digital technology, people are not particularly quick to adopt – let alone embrace – new ideas and thinking.
• Reserving Our Interest/Investment until we see what others do. And for better and worse, most senior professionals tend to follow more than they lead. Though there may be a strong desire to “keep up with the Joneses,” very few people actually want to be the Joneses.
• Risk aversion Over Innovation. Even when they recognize that they probably need to move forward, fear – of the unknown, of failure, of unintended consequences – holds them back. The risks of engagement are always clearer than the risks of inaction.
• Respect Our Idiosyncrasies and Inconsistency. If pressed, leaders and other experienced professionals would have a hard time defending their negative positions on social media and other digital technologies, especially relative to other positions and decisions. But many of them seem to expect others to accept their arguments at face value and not question or challenge them.

 

7 Faulty Assumptions Underlying Resistance

Generally speaking the resistance arguments contain a number of implicit - and often faulty - assumptions, including:  

1. Social media technologies – particularly the public platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – represent the complete range of digital technologies available today. 

• Today’s digital capabilities are far greater than most people realize – and they’re expanding every day.
• People need to think about both hardware and software. When it comes to software, they need to think beyond specific platforms to the tools and technologies that comprise them.

2. Organizational leaders know the ROI of current practices for marketing, branding, selling, etc. - and it's good. 

• The links between many current practices, such as advertisements and trade shows, is difficult, if not impossible, to measure.
• The costs of traditional approaches can be much higher than comparable digital efforts. 

3. Current communication and collaboration practices are efficient and effective and cannot be improved on by leveraging new digital technologies.

• The limitations, challenges, and frustrations of email are well-known.
• Many in-person meetings are considered an avoidable waste of time.

4. It's appropriate to hold new practices - particularly new digital technologies - to higher standards than existing practices.

• People need to be willing and able to critically examine current approaches. There should be no sacred cows.
• The relative value and utility of different approaches should be determined based on a fair assessment.
• It’s unrealistic to expect any approach to working to be “drag free.”

5. Leveraging new technologies requires adding them to rather than integrating them with or substituting them for current practices.

• We should all be open to identifying ways to work smarter, not just harder.
• The best approaches to achieving goals/objectives should be pursued.

6. It will all settle down (or maybe go away?) at some point, so why bother engaging and suffering through all the chaos before it does.

• The only constant in the Digital Era is change. Expecting things to settle down is unrealistic.
• By the time the laggards choose to engage, it could be too late. At a minimum, they will have missed out on a number of potentially great opportunities.

7. It's better to wait for a "silver bullet" solution than to invest in the necessary hard work now to climb the required learning curves and lay a foundation for future success.

• As in other aspects of running an organization, there are no silver bullets.
• Success in the Digital Era requires a new mindset, as well as new knowledge and skills. Learning new ways of working is unavoidable.  

 

Let's Get Real

I'm perfectly fine with any individual or organization deciding not to take more advantage of the digital capabilities that currently exist, as long as they make an informed decision. In my experience, however, that's generally not the case - and when it comes to organizational leaders in particular, I would say that they're neglecting their fiduciary responsibilities by not making a stronger commitment to understanding the new realities in which their organizations operate so they provide the proper guidance, both strategic and tactical. I recognize there are a ton of good reasons why many people haven't done more with digital technology to date, but those reasons - which are anchored in the past and the present - are lousy excuses for not giving greater focus to the future. 

As a practical matter, digital  technology is only going to continue to advance, and the longer people wait to understand and embrace it, the more risks they take with respect to creating and maintaining their own success. In addition to being concerned about the ROI, in other words, they should also be thinking about the COI – the Cost Of Inaction.

As always, I welcome comments and questions.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Related resources from the SMinOrgs Social Media Primer

• Part 1: What is this “Fire” of Which You Speak?
• Part 1a: What is Your SMQ (Social Media Quotient)?
  • The Revised Quiz
  • Updating the Quiz
• Part 2: The Juggernaut is Bigger than You Think!
• Parts 1 and 2 Updated: Revisiting the Fire and the Juggernaut 
• Part 3: Reality Check – Four Mental Shifts Organizational Leaders Need to Make
• Part 4: Ante up! Organizational Factors Relevant to Joining the Social Media Game
• Part 5: You Can’t Outsource Leadership
• Part 6: Human Capital Management Challenges 
• Part 7: The SAPLING Approach to Leveraging Social Media
• Part 8a: It’s a Brave New World … Even if You Want the Old One Back