Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community

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

Written for both individuals and organizations, this post provides high-level guidance for rookies who are just getting started with social media, as well as those who are looking to add more structure, focus and discipline to existing initiatives. The guiding principles address topics such as setting goals, assessing the operating environment, conducting a communications audit, developing a plan of action, acquiring knowledge and skills, incremental implementation, and managing time and information.  

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Between educational and networking events, my own speaking engagements, requests for help, and responses to my blog posts, I am constantly reminded that in spite of all the media hype, the vast majority of professionals are still social media rookies. Many people are still grappling with basic questions like:

• When, where and how to begin
• How to learn and develop proficiency with different platforms and tools
• How to establish a strong digital presence and create/manage a social media brand/image
• How to manage (the often overwhelming) time and information flows

Others have implemented specific initiatives, but their approaches have been tactical rather than strategic and have produced mixed results. Both individuals and organizations have encountered challenges in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and have struggled to manage the necessary time commitments. Organizations face additional challenges because their fragmented, siloed efforts often result in stakeholder confusion and frustration, as well as frequent cannibalization of their own digital properties. In other words, they have a mess on their hands!

As much as people would love to find a silver bullet or killer app that will solve their social media challenges, one doesn’t exist. There is no “one best way” or simple formula for effective digital engagement. Like many other worthwhile activities, it comes down to dedication and hard work. But there is a set of best practices emerging, many of which reflect the same fundamental principles of success in other endeavors.

Here are my top seven “working smart” principles, which are applicable to both individuals and organizations. I also recommend taking a look at the Social Media Primer for a deeper dive into some of these principles, particularly Part 7 – The SAPLING Approach to Leveraging Social Media.

I would love to hear the rules that other people recommend and/or follow. And as always, I welcome questions and comments.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

PS –Upcoming posts will focus on Rules of Engagement and Lessons from Successful Digital Communities, as well as a couple Social Media Buyer’s Guides and two follow-ups to my post on LinkedIn Profiles. Please subscribe to the blog to be sure you’re notified when they’re published.

 

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1. Know your goals and objectives - in general, not just with respect to social media.

It’s such a basic consideration, but it is all too-often overlooked. Given how time challenged we all are, knowing what you want to accomplish is paramount to determining how you should focus your time and attention. All forms of media – including social media – are means to an end rather than ends in and of themselves. Before you can determine whether investing in social media is worthwhile, you must know why you might make that investment in the first place.

Remember to unpack your goals. It’s not enough to make no-duh statements like “I want to get a (new, better) job” or “We want more clients” or “We want to increase revenue.” For the goals to be effective, they have to be SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Before you do anything else, either create some goals or revisit the ones you have to ensure they offer the kind of behavioral guidance you need.

Finally, in identifying your goals, remember that “less is more.” Your goals should serve as a beacon, a guiding light. More than three will probably confuse you. Having one that trumps all others will help you manage conflicting priorities and make tough decisions.

 

2. Know your operating environment.

Although social media platforms and tools are available to anyone who wants to use them, their value varies widely depending on a number of factors. Make the time to understand the digital landscape in which you’re operating, by researching the answers to questions like:

• Industry. What sector are you in: commercial, nonprofit, public/government, health care, education? If commercial, is your focus business-to-consumer or business-to-business? If education, is it primary, secondary or higher education? And what kind of nonprofit – charitable, trade or professional association, issue oriented?
• Peers. How far along the digital learning/adoption curve are other individuals and organizations you consider your peers (including competitors)? How widespread are digital engagement practices? What are the emerging trends and norms?
• Stakeholders. Who are your target audience and key stakeholders? How digitally savvy are they? Do they use social media? If so, on what platforms do they hang out? How engaged are they?

 

3. Determine whether social media can help you achieve your goals.

Too often, social media is an answer in search of a question. Rushing into engagement, impulsively jumping on the bandwagon, or being a fad follower usually results in failure – or at least disappointment and frustration. Your efforts are wasted if they don’t enable you to pursue your goals and/or don’t make sense given your operating environment.

Keep the following in mind when determining whether social media makes high-level sense:

• There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Just because someone else is doing something doesn’t mean you should. You must absolutely know “why” using a particular social media platform or tool is a good choice for you.
• Don’t underestimate the power and value of listening as a reason to be engaged. Too often people focus on what they can/should say through social media rather than what it enables them to hear. Digital monitoring is incredibly powerful. Your initial investment may actually focus on listening rather than talking, and that’s perfectly appropriate.
• You may conclude from your assessment that the benefits to be gained from social media – either in general or on a specific platform – aren’t significant enough to justify the costs. Remember, though, that the ultimate question is not “if” but “when.” Plan to circle back to the assessment every few months to determine whether “not now” has become “it’s time.”
• For organizations in particular, even when the answer is “not now,” it’s worthwhile to make the minimal investment to grab the digital real estate you may want to use in the future and hang a “coming soon” sign. In some cases, if someone has already staked a claim in territory you may want (e.g., a particular Twitter handle), you may be able to get it back. Claiming, preserving, and protecting your brand identity is as important in cyberspace as anywhere else.

 

4. Assess social media’s specific value and plan a course of action.

Once you’ve determined social media’s high-level value, you will want to do a more granular assessment focused on specific platforms and tools. This assessment should also include a critical assessment of traditional media and current practices. Given limited resources, you may find that you should replace traditional approaches (e.g., snail mail, trade shows) with digital ones because they are more economical, effective – or both. At a minimum, you will want to integrate traditional and new approaches so you don’t unnecessarily duplicate efforts across multiple channels.

If you’ve already dabbled with social media but have your doubts about the effectiveness of your efforts, it might be worthwhile to conduct a communications and engagement audit. Though you can do this yourself, it’s probably better to hire an outsider who has digital expertise and can offer an objective and independent perspective. Regardless of who conducts the audit, it must be framed in terms of your goals and operating environment, and must make sense for your individual or organizational brand. In addition to critiquing current practices, the audit results should include a specific roadmap of possibilities and targeted efforts.

In addition to conducting an audit, organizations should also solicit input from their key stakeholders, both formally and informally, to ensure they understand the preferences, habits, and digital savvy of the people with whom they want to engage. Too many organizations have learned the hard way the risks of making decisions in a vacuum.

 

5. Acquire the necessary education and training.

When it comes to social media, most people “don’t know what they don’t know.” At the same time, many social media rookies are more digitally engaged than they think they are. I am reminded of both of these truths whenever I administer the Social Media Quotient (SMQ) Quiz during presentations and workshops.  

Every rookie can benefit from educating themselves about social media and/or undertaking training that is appropriate for their role/position. Although many early adopters and social media devotees will advocate “learning by doing,” that approach is neither as efficient or effective as being guided by someone who’s already climbed the necessary learning curves. It’s also fraught with unnecessary risks. Even if you already have well-developed knowledge or skills, you must remain committed to continuous learning to keep up with the constantly-changing digital landscape.

As with other aspects of your social media engagement, your efforts here should be guided by your goals and operating characteristics, as well as the plan of action you’ve devised. You need to “learn smart” before you can “work smart.”

 

6. Implement incrementally.

It’s incredibly easy to become overwhelmed by all the things you should be doing, and failures often result when people try to pursue a variety of initiatives simultaneously. An effective roadmap will lay out specific steps within specific windows (e.g., 1, 3, 6, 9 & 12 months), based on your defined priorities.  If you stay focused and disciplined, you can transform your digital engagement from anemic to robust in a year or less.

In addition to implementing a plan of action, organizations should also address related issues like:

• Governance
• Social media policies and guidelines
• Ownership of accounts, relationships and data
• Commenting and community management guidelines
• Crisis management

 

7. Develop a workable approach to managing time and information.

Discipline and focus are also critical to successful engagement. Don’t underestimate the ongoing time commitment you have to make to social media, and be sure that you are able to stay consistently engaged over the long term before you begin a specific initiative. Also remember that quality is much more important than quantity.  Don’t feel pressured to engage constantly, and make sure your engagement is viewed as valuable signal rather than noise.

Specific considerations include:

• What to share. Not everything has to be created from scratch. Most organizations are content rich and can easily identify existing content to repurpose and/or rechannel through social media. Even individuals can identify relevant and valuable content to (re)share. In an environment of information overload, there is an increasing need for high-quality content curation and unique thought leadership. Those are the best types of content contributions to focus on.
• Who should engage. You may want to outsource or delegate specific activities and tasks, but your digital reputation is your responsibility and you want to be careful about to whom you entrust it. Also remember that authenticity is especially important in cyberspace. Hiring someone to handle your social media activity for you may seem efficient in the short term, but it can backfire over the long term if/when people realize they’re not actually hearing from or engaging with the person they thought they were.
• When to engage. Generally speaking, your social media engagement should be proactive rather than reactive. To avoid being sucked into a time-sucking black hole, and to ensure your digital presence is consistent rather than sporadic, develop an editorial calendar and posting schedule for sharing content. You should also set aside a specific amount of time each day or week to monitor activity and respond as necessary. Tools like the social aggregator HootSuite can help.

 

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!

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

 

12 Hopes for 2012: Enhanced Adoption of Digital Technologies

As the Digital Era progresses, technological capabilities continue to outstrip our willingness and ability to address the opportunities and challenges they present. In this post from the Digital Era Thinkers Blog, I offer 12 hopes for 2012 that are rooted in the psychological challenges we face and are built on our willingness – both individually and collectively – to tackle them in thought, word, and deed. As always, I welcome input from others.

Click here to read the post.

via www.gcdel.org

The “End” of Email: Reflections from a Digital Era Thinker

A recent statement made by Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, about the "elimination" of email at the company churned up quite a bit of controversy in cyberspace. Many of the pieces sharing the news included misinformation, and much of the commentary reflected misunderstanding. This post clarifies what Atos is actually doing, offers insights on why it’s the right move, reflects on some of the reasons for resistance, and highlights the importance of strong leadership in enabling organizations to move ahead in the Digital Era.

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Last week there were a number of articles and blog posts about “the end of email” after news of a statement by the CEO of Atos (a large French technology company) went viral. Almost all of these items generated a number of impassioned responses rejecting the use of “social” tools and defending the use of email for a variety of purposes.

Unfortunately, many of the pieces written about the announcement included sensationalistic headlines and/or misinformation, and many people took the news quite literally – which seemed to cause much of the harsh, knee-jerk reactions. So let’s start by clarifying what CEO Thierry Breton was really referring to:

• His decision was focused on internal email only.
• Atos will not be using a public platform like Facebook for internal communication. Rather, they will use similar tools that are designed for private social networking.
• Atos will not replace email with internal social networking and instant messaging exclusively. The idea is to leverage a variety of 2.0 tools to improve employees’ ability to communicate and collaborate.

Expanding on the third point, many of the comments I read seemed to reflect a poor understanding of the kinds of communication and collaboration tools that are now available for organizations of all types (not just large, high-tech firms). Social business platforms can certainly include social networking and real-time chat features, but those are just two of the many capabilities most of them offer (for more on social business technologies and their applications, check out slides 7-19 in this presentation). With respect to the replacement of email in particular, the key features to focus on include asynchronous chat streams (including status updates and microblogging), discussion forums, wikis, file sharing and editing, and the ability to create centralized group and project worksites.

It’s probably unfortunate that terms like social business, social enterprise, and social intranet have emerged to describe the application of 2.0 technologies inside organizations. Many people interpret words like “social” and “chat” to indicate frivolity, shallowness, time wasting and a lack of professionalism. Arguing about semantics can be such a distraction, but relabeling and reframing the tools may help skeptics get over their resistance and focus on their “work value.” We could, for example, refer to:

• Private Digital Networks r/t Internal Social Networks
• Quick Collaboration or Quick Exchange r/t Chat
• Announcements and Queries r/t Status Updates

 

Email’s Inefficiencies

In many respects, email can be considered the granddaddy of today’s social business tools – it certainly meets the basic definition of social media I shared in Part 1 of the Social Media Primer (updated here). But, relatively speaking, it’s fairly unsophisticated and clunky. And, more importantly, it’s often misused and abused.

Given its inefficiencies, the goal behind shifting away from email is a valid one. For example:

• Lots of exchanges (e.g., when/where do you want to meet?) don't need to be preserved, and each message in the back and forth gets saved, causing lots of unnecessary duplication. Having a centralized chat feature - which can be asynchronous - can eliminate that.
• For cases where the conversation should be preserved, a centralized discussion thread is probably more appropriate than dozens of email exchanges with duplicate – and often disconnected – content. Not only does a single discussion thread save resources and minimize confusion, it's also easily accessible to/by others for whom the discussion may be relevant.
• Exchanging documents via email is a colossal waste, and it can create a lot of confusion. Rather than passing a document around, it's better to put the document in a central, shared location and let people come to it. Doing so is not only more efficient, it also better enables people to know what the latest version is and can prevent two people from attempting to revise the document at the same time. History on the document can also be tracked.

Today's social business platforms offer both individuals and organizations more efficient and effective ways to get their work done. For me the key advantage of these platforms is that rather than having the work distributed to the workers, the work is centralized and the workers come to it. That reduces unnecessary duplication, confusion about what version of something is the most current or what the latest word/decision was on a particular issue/conversation, and many other benefits.

Email won’t go away, but that doesn’t mean we should continue to use it the way we do today. Instead, we should recognize where it has the most value and where another tool can be more effective. We should all be open to using new technologies to help us work smarter. And yet…

 

Email Attachments
(and I’m not Talking about Documents)

One of the most powerful realities of the world we live in today is that the capabilities of the communication and collaboration technologies available to us far outstrip our human ability to harness them. It's not that we can't use these tools – they are widely available, inexpensive, and relatively easy to implement and use – we simply don't. This list of reasons is long, and include

• Our tendencies to resist change, stay inside our comfort zones and take the path of least resistance
• Fear (of the unknown, of failure...)
• Our unwillingness to risk learning something new
• Our short-term focus and tendency to be in a hurry ("get it done now" rather than "do it right")

Another key element that is too often overlooked is the fact that we're still using Industrial Era models and modes of working, even though we're well into the Digital Era. For example, rather than collectively creating and refining a single repository of relevant knowledge/information using wiki technology (think barn raising), we prefer a more linear, assembly-line approach of passing around a document that we "manufacture."

There's also an ironic contradiction in how we function in our personal and professional lives. On a personal level, many of us are very comfortable working in a divergent, non-linear fashion – which I would argue is natural for our brains – but when it comes to work we kick into structured, Tayloresque factory mode. Why? Because this is what we’ve been taught throughout both our academic and work lives. The habits are deeply ingrained and tough to change.

So what’s a Digital Era worker to do?

 

It All Boils Down to Leadership

I commend Thierry Breton and other business leaders who recognize the value in leveraging new digital technologies to enable their employees to work more efficiently and effectively. As demonstrated by the reaction to his recent comments, however, this type of Digital Era leadership is still extremely rare. Most leaders do not understand the potential power and uses of new technologies – or how important it is to educate themselves about both their applications and implications (both external and internal). Those who do recognize they need to:

• Make the increased use of digital technologies a strategic and operational priority
• Support the creation/adoption of new tools and technologies
• Allocate necessary resources (both money and time) to enable employees to use these tools effectively

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in 2012…

-  Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

Much Ado about Klout

Recent changes to Klout's algorithm, as well as revelations about some of its practices, have generated a powerful backlash against the company and its business model, as well as the tool itself. The latest Digital Era Thinkers Blog post provides access to a set of pieces that provide a comprehensive look inside the issues, in addition to offering insights about the utility of all the furor.

Click here to read the post. I welcome your comments and questions.

via www.gcdel.org

Recruiting in the Digital Era: Updated Guidance for Employers, Recruiters, and Candidates

Targeted primarily to “social recruiting” rookies (both individuals and employers), this post provides an overview of how employers can and should incorporate social media and other digital technologies into their talent acquisition processes. Questions and comments, especially from recruiting professionals, are welcome.

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This summer I wrote Social Media and Recruiting 101: Overview and Recommendations, which was an extension of some earlier pieces I had written on the topic of “social screening” (see this post, as well as this white paper). In it, I recast the “recruiting funnel” to reflect how social media and other digital activity can and should be considered during the hiring process.

After participating in SIOP’s Leading Edge Consortium on the Virtual Workforce, and attending HRMAC's Social Media and Recruiting - It's Not Just About LinkedIn, I was inspired to update the “social recruiting funnel” I had created and expand the discussion beyond my initial focus on candidate evaluation.

Like the first piece, this post is intended to be a primer of sorts. Targeting individuals and employers who don’t have a sophisticated understanding of how social media activity can be incorporated into recruitment and selection processes, it focuses on providing a high level overview and basic best practice recommendations for both hiring organizations and job candidates.  

I don’t purport to know how all employers and service providers (e.g., third-party recruiters, screening companies, software vendors) are leveraging social media and other digital technologies in their talent acquisition processes. I can, however, offer my understanding and insights on how social media can and should be incorporated into these processes. And I invite others – especially recruiting and HR professionals – to join me in developing a set of resources and guidelines for Digital Era recruitment practices that enable employers to hire the best possible candidates in the most appropriate ways.

Please let me know of any content I may have missed and/or any additional recommendations you may have. Questions are also welcome. Thanks!

-  Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

Disclaimer: I am neither an attorney nor a professional recruiter, and I have no connection to any of the companies mentioned in this post.

 

A Few Reminders to Start

It’s important to reiterate at the outset that there is no single set of practices, platforms, tools, or techniques that can satisfy every employer’s recruiting objectives. The best approach will be determined by an employer’s unique talent management requirements and circumstances, including:

• Size of organization and its growth trajectory
• Geographic location(s), industry, target markets
• Number and type of available positions
• Level of turnover
• Required skills and experiences
• Candidates’ digital sophistication and access

Although it’s tempting to jump on the social media bandwagon, each employer needs to think carefully about which social media investments are likely to produce the best returns for them. Some employers may even find that the benefits of leveraging new technologies are not justified by the costs, particularly in terms of the human capital required to make them worthwhile.

Employers who decide to incorporate more digital technologies in their hiring processes should benchmark against the efforts of earlier adopters and learn from both their successes and failures. There are lots of examples and plenty of information and guidance available, so there’s no need to repeat other people’s mistakes.

Finally, employers shouldn’t try to do everything at once. At the HRMAC event, for example, the representative from Nalco talked about their “crawl-walk-run” strategy, and the fact that they took a deliberate, phased approach to enhancing their recruitment efforts. A strategic and methodical approach is probably better in the long run. To ensure employers work smart, not just hard, they should:

• Clearly define their recruiting goals and objectives
• Create a social recruiting strategy
• Assess current practices and identifying opportunities for improvement
• Develop a “social media system” that identifies a home base and satellites and specifies inter-connections and communication flows among them

For more on leveraging social media smartly, see Part 7 of the Social Media Primer: The SAPLING Approach to Leveraging Social Media.

 

How Recruiting Goes Social

Most people are familiar with the recruitment and selection “funnel.” I’ve created a version that illustrates how social media can be incorporated into the overall process (click to enlarge):

In the sections that follow, for each stage in the process, I provide a brief overview as well as information about the types of jobs for which the activity is relevant, who typically engages in the practice, how the process is conducted, and recommendations for employers. In reviewing this information it’s important to remember that although cyberspace adds a new dimension to the recruitment and selection process, the rules are generally the same as before. It's incumbent upon the employer to ensure that the criteria they're using to select candidates are job relevant, non-discriminatory, and legally defensible. For more information on these responsibilities, please refer to the original social screening white paper and my previous post.

 

Social Recruitment

• Overview: Employers can use social networking platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter) and digital communities (e.g., talent communities, alumni networks) to share information about their organizations as well as career opportunities, specific jobs, etc.  Objectives include enhancing employer branding, offering realistic job and culture previews, sharing job postings, and developing a pipeline of potential candidates. Third-party recruiters can also use these networks to identify candidates for the positions they’re trying to help their clients fill.
• Job types: All. Different platforms may be used for different job types (e.g., retail, IT) and to target different groups (e.g., recent college grads, experienced candidates).
• Initiators: Internal HR/recruiting staff, hiring managers, third-party recruiters, and maybe external communicators like marketing.
• Process: Information sharing and interactions are usually handled individually, to reinforce the human element, but some aspects can be automated (e.g., announcing new jobs via Twitter using a tool like HootSuite).
• Recommendations for employers: Resist the urge to casually “check out” people who’ve connected with your organization on public social networks, especially if they’re likely to become candidates. Although managing their digital identities and privacy settings is their responsibility, the risk and responsibility shifts to the employer once representatives start to dig deeper into an individual’s activity. Employer representatives should also resist the urge to connect with candidates individually via personal social networks like Facebook or even Twitter. Professional connections via a network like LinkedIn are generally acceptable, but even those connections should be made with care, especially by internal recruiters.

 

Social Sourcing

• Overview: Employers and third-party recruiters can search the internet and/or social networking platforms (e.g., LinkedIn) using specific key words (e.g., accountant, CPA, joint venture, Brazil) to find individuals who meet pre-defined job criteria, regardless of whether they are currently on the job market.
• Job types: Generally hard-to-fill positions, or those for whom the candidate pool is fairly small.
• Initiators: Internal HR/recruiting staff, hiring managers, and third-party recruiters.
• Process: The searches are often conducted manually, but they can be automated or facilitated by software (e.g., a tool like eGrabber).
• Recommendations for employers: On any site that’s professionally oriented (e.g., a blog by an IT professional about cyber security), the content is likely to be fair game, but on sites that are likely to contain personal content (e.g., Facebook), sourcers should conduct searches only if they’re vital to filling the position and are focused on job relevant information. As with social recruiting generally, sourcers should limit their review of the digital activity they discover and should avoid connecting with candidates on personally-oriented networks.

 

Social Advertising

• Overview: Employers can post advertisements for positions on social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn) that are specifically targeted to the types of candidates they’re interested in. Facebook in particular offers tremendous granularity in specifying the kinds of individuals who should receive ads (e.g., age ranges, education level, geographic location, interests), and the ad prices are based on a pay-per-click model.
• Job types: Can be any.
• Initiators: Internal HR/recruiting staff, and maybe third-party recruiters.
• Process: Once the ads are created, they are automatically generated and posted by the platform using criteria provided by the employer.
• Recommendations for employers:  It’s probably wise to focus ads on platforms where it’s evident that targeted candidates congregate. For entry-level positions in the hospitality industry, for example, Facebook is probably a good advertising platform to pursue. For CFOs, however, it’s probably not. Employers should also keep in mind that the effectiveness of the ads is dependent on how much information people share about themselves through their profiles – the more anemic or private their profiles are, they less likely it is that an ad will reach them. And though the “pay-per-click” model makes social advertising seem like a cost-effective strategy, employers could end up paying for “curiosity clicks” if they don’t craft their ads effectively.  

 

Social Referrals

• Overview: Usually in conjunction with an employee referral program, current staff are encouraged and/or given incentives to share job opportunities with their social networks and refer potential candidates for specific jobs.
• Job types: Can be any.
• Initiators: Any current employee.
• Process: The referrals can be made using individual communication channels (e.g., email) or facilitated by software (e.g., tools like those offered by Jobvite and SelectMinds).
• Recommendations for employers: Make sure employees understand the practice is optional. If sharing is done manually, provide clear guidance regarding preferred channels, timing, presentation, etc. If a referral tool is used, employers should reinforce that using it doesn’t compromise any privacy settings they may have on their personal social networks, or the privacy of their connections.

 

Social Assessment

• Overview: This can take two primary forms: (1) Reviewing a candidate’s social references and/or validating resume details and (2) Evaluating the quantity and quality of a candidate’s digital engagement based on his/her public activity. (In the future, this may also include assessing a candidate’s skills and abilities via “social simulations,” but to my knowledge those applications haven’t really been developed yet.)
• Job types: The first form of assessment can be done for almost any type of job. The second form should be conducted for those jobs for which digital engagement is relevant (e.g., marketing, communications, business development, some IT and HR positions).
• Initiators: Internal HR/recruiting staff, hiring managers, and third-party recruiters.
• Process: For the first form, employers and recruiters can review recommendations on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. They can also compare details on social networking profiles with other web-based information to verify details, and search the web for evidence to support claims made. These reviews are generally conducted manually. Reviews are also conducted manually for the second form, based on information and links provided by candidates. There is a new service called Rabble that may help in automating the process.
• Recommendations for employers: As with social sourcing, care must be taken when conducting social assessments to ensure that personal information that is not job relevant is not inadvertently accessed. For the first form, it’s imperative to verify the accuracy and validity of the information discovered. And for the second form, the nature of the engagement that is relevant to the position should be clearly defined in advance, the review should be based on information provided by the candidates, and sound criteria for evaluating the engagement should be developed in advance and consistently applied across all candidates.

 

Social Screening

• Overview: Once the pool has been narrowed and the final candidates identified, a search of their public activity in cyberspace can be conducted to reveal any potential risks they may create for the employer.
• Job types: Can be any.
• Initiators: Internal staff who are not involved in the hiring decision, or a third-party service provider (which invokes the FCRA).
• Process: The searches can be conducted manually or via software algorithms (e.g., the proprietary method employed by Social Intelligence).
• Recommendations for employers: Although it’s important to mitigate the risks associated with a bad hire, employers should not assume there are no limits to their ability to dig for “digital dirt.” Generally speaking, the social screening process should not be conducted by a hiring manager or someone involved in making the final decision. If an employer is going to do the searches in house, they should designate an independent group to conduct the searches and evaluate the results. The searches should focus ONLY on publicly available information. Employers should NOT ask candidates for their login credentials for their social networking accounts or ask them to log in during an interview and share their activity in person. For a host of reasons, which I articulated in my previous post, it may be better to use an FCRA-compliant third-party screening service and incorporate social screening into the regular background checking process. Even if a third party is not used, employers should provide candidates with advance notice and have them formally agree to the search. They should also consider creating a process for verifying negative results and giving candidates an opportunity to respond before adverse action is taken. 

 

Additional Recommendations for Employers

Digital Era recruiting involves more than just social media platforms and activities. There are many other tools, technologies, and applications employers can leverage to enhance their talent acquisition efforts, including:

• Recruitment marketing platforms like Jobs2Web
• Social talent community management tools like Find.ly
• Services like Skype for conducting video interviews
• Virtual job fairs
• Client relationship management (CRM) systems for managing contacts and communications with professionals before they become candidates (and enter the Applicant Tracking System)

In addition to incorporating social media platforms and other digital tools into their ongoing efforts to identify and evaluate candidates, employers should also do the following to enhance their overall effectiveness:

• Put your best (digital) foot forward. Make sure your website is current, inviting, and a strong representation of your employment brad and experience. Also be sure the brand is consistently and positively reflected in the following:
  • Company profile on LI (every organization should have one!)
  • Individual profiles on LI (especially for recruiting and HR staff and hiring managers)
  • Proprietary groups on LI
  • Facebook pages
  • Twitter accounts
  • YouTube channels
  • Wikipedia (often overlooked)
• Engage in social benchmarking. Stay abreast of what your competitors are doing and benchmark best – and worst – practices. You can easily identify and follow them on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, in addition to setting up Google alerts to monitor their activity.
• Engage in social monitoring. Set up Google alerts or use other tools to monitor how your employment brand is being discussed in cyberspace. Also check sites such as Glass Door and Vault.
• Live the candidate experience. Everyone involved in the hiring process should follow the organization on its social platforms to help them see what candidates see and how they engage. Whenever possible, they should also go through the process of applying for a job at their own organization so they know first-hand what it’s like. If possible, they may want to test the system by having “simulated candidates” – similar to mystery shoppers – pose as candidates and provide feedback on strengths and weaknesses.

 

Recommendations for Individuals

My basic recommendations for individuals are laid out in the original social screening white paper and in this post about the Digital Hall of Shame. To these I would add the following:

• Think long and hard about your professional identity and how you want to manage the boundaries between it and your personal identity in cyberspace. If you’re comfortable with fuzzy distinctions between the two, then you will probably feel comfortable using a platform like Facebook for both personal and professional activity (e.g., by engaging in the Social Jobs Partnership initiative or using the BeKnown app). If you like to keep them separate, however, be sure you set up and manage your activities in a way that protects your personal life while promoting your professional brand.
• Remember that you are always on the job market, even when you’re gainfully employed with no intention of leaving. Especially if you have a unique set of skills that are in high demand, you are always fair game as a passive candidate. And as many people can attest, you can involuntarily become an active candidate at any time.
• Do not provide a prospective employer your login credentials for any of your social networking sites. The only activity they should be concerned with is that which is publicly available. If they wouldn’t expect unfettered access to your home, photo albums, personal correspondence and diary, they don’t need to see your private digital activity.
• Similarly, you should respectfully decline to log in during an interview and share your activity in person. Even if you are willing to share your accounts with them, the people in your networks haven’t agreed to have you share information about them without their knowledge/consent. With your social networking activity, it’s not just your privacy that’s at stake.
• Don’t connect with people from prospective employers/recruiters on your personal social networks. For that matter, you should limit your personal connections with any people you only/primarily know professionally (e.g., bosses, colleagues, clients). It’s best to have a high threshold for allowing a professional connection to become a personal one. Even with professional connections, it’s better to wait until after the recruiting process is complete to connect with representatives from a potential employer.
• Do your “digital due diligence.” Learn all you can about a potential employer, boss, and colleagues by searching for and studying publicly-available information on social media platforms, including LI (individual and company profiles, groups), Facebook (pages), Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. Setting up Google alerts for companies you’re most interested in working for is probably also a good idea. And check out the information available on sites like Glass Door and Vault.

For more on digital due diligence, check out this LinkedIn poll. Please feel free to vote, add comments, and share the poll with others in your networks. The poll closes November 18.