Four types of social media participation

LONDON – Although there are several models out there, it’s easy to observe clear typologies of social media participants – and a person can fit in any category at any given time:

1.  Creators – Those who generate content – ideally quality content, which is harder to find.

2.  Commenters – Those who comment on content created or shared by others.

3.  Sharers – Those who share content generated by others,

4.  Connectors – or integrators – those who take created, commented and/or shared content and turn it into something new; a hybrid of 1,2, and 3.

 

For my purposes, its the 4s who add the most value, although the whole mix can only function if all the roles are covered…

 

Meet me on LinkedIn.

Social communication, social media and talent attraction communication

Social research company Reppler recently published some findings about the use of social media in talent acquisition and hiring decisions that makes for interesting reading.  Although the sample is only 300 hiring professionals and the sample is not published, given that some professional services organisations, for example, make public pronouncements that they do NOT as a matter of principle use “private” social media in the selection process, the study nonetheless claims that a whopping 91% of hiring professionals (it is unclear if these are agencies or in-house talent acquisition and/or hiring managers) use social media to screen prospective employees.

That’s not the surprising statistic – what is surprising is the one that asserts that 69% have rejected a candidate based on what they have seen (e.g. inappropriate photographs, comments, etc.).  The opposite also appears to be true – that a positive social media presence can influence the hiring decision as well (68%).

Now I am not a choirboy.  I have been known to dance on a table in my underwear in a bar, but where do you draw the line?

CEOs and senior leaders still see attracting talent as a major priority in growing and sustaining their businesses in tough conditions, so it’s more important than ever that you hire the right talent who will come, get the job, and stick around.When you hire someone, you want to have as much information as possible when you make that decision. Where do you draw the line? Background checks are reasonably routine these days, but is poking around on someone’s Facebook profile a legitimate approach?

GE does some amazing work, while Deloitte and many others use Facebook as a recruitment channel.  Ericsson, on the other hand, consciously avoids it (and it is by design if you look at their rather stunningly sophisticated search advertising efforts on LinkedIn).  They advertise on Facebook to drive you to their careers site if you search for “Ericsson” or “Ericsson jobs” – but there are tumbleweeds on Facebook if you want to join an Ericsson group.  A far cry from Sony Ericsson.

Two issues to ponder.

First, the Equality Act of 2010 is intended to consolidate a range of legislation around employment and discrimination and  states that discrimination is unlawful when an employer is hiring a person, in the terms and conditions of contract that are offered, in making a decision to dismiss a worker, or any other kind of detriment. “Direct discrimination”, which means treating a person less favourably than another who lacks the protected characteristic (protected characteristics include things like race, religion, sexual orientation etc.).  Now while “conduct” might not be a protected characteristic, conduct observed third-hand on a social media site could well stray into some very risky territory for the prospective employer.

Second, as people become more adept at engaging with social media they are also become more sophisticated in terms of their levels of awareness of their digital footprint and their data protection and privacy rights.

In summary, I think while a lot of employers are patting themselves on the back for their clever and innovative use of “social media” to build their reputation in the marketplace, this could very, very easily backfire.  My intuition – and that is all it is – is that Ericsson is spot on, and by taking the moral high ground might well be protecting their own reputation as an employer – indeed enhancing it – as a technology company that knows where to draw the line.

London Sunday Telegraph supplement on employee engagement

Good gaggle of articles circling Macleod … including one by yours truly.  Interesting to see the different “tones of voice” taken with some of the authors … some speaking to the C-suite, others talking to their peers in the industry it seems … Sunday Telegraph Business Reporter 

Vanity commenting

We’ve all seen it:  a blog posting or a LinkedIn Group discussion amongst a community of interest, and in the middle of the discussion comes a comment – usually from an agency / consultancy to be fair – that is more for the benefit of self-promotion than contributing to the discussion.

To be fair, all of us are now in the business of managing and building our personal brands, particularly in the social media space – and part of that includes participating in the conversation economy.  I’m sure I’m guilty of “ego commenting” myself.

But I’d argue that if the “ego posters” aren’t careful, just as with any other brand and marketing communications, their attempts could be counter productive.

Some examples: Bob responds to a post about X with a tenuous link opening door to a monologue about his experience as a general manager in the defence industry – a thinly veiled attempt to demonstrate high level trusted advisor status.  Janet sends a hilarious email to several people who know Bob and his (ahem) propensity for self-aggrandisement – “Good thing we have Bob around so we can all sleep at night.”  Just like with a business or consumer brand, your brand exists in the minds of your audience.  Everything you say or do has an effect, sometimes not the intended one.

Another example:  A client (Davina) gets a glowing write-up in the trade press spurring a discussion about the way she’s dealt with a challenge. The discussion is by and large about the technique at hand and exploring the idea – but of course there are a couple of posts from Niall (and the group is well aware of Niall’s combination of sanctimonious lecturing coupled with delusions of competence) that seem more interested in (a) subtly knocking down Davina and (b) implying that if Niall had been in charge, things would have been done a lot better and more effectively.  Once again, the emails do the rounds and Niall’s brand is further damaged.

On the other hand, there are examples where someone shares a really insightful personal story.  For example, the discussion on topic X is heading in one direction when Gary puts forth a simple and quite touching remark redirecting the conversation into totally new territory.  Gary’s brand equity rises exponentially with a single, sharp intervention.

Now these might be a slightly apocryphal, but that’s how communities communicate and social communication happens.

What are your comments and posts like?  I’ve got it wrong plenty of times (no shortage of self promotion, vanity, or ego here I’m afraid).  But I do now strive to think – Is this comment for them, or is it for me?

Employee communication is too important to leave to the professionals

LONDON – Mikkel Wiese, a Danish communicator on the LinkedIn Group from whom I stole the headline with permission, got it right. Enter Harlequin, ranting under a jingling of bells.

It’s a drum I’ll keep beating so long as professional associations from IABC to IoIC to Melcrum to CIPR to CIPD ad nauseum keep missing the point that while inward focus on the “how to” competencies, so-called “best practices” and tools is a threshold issue/hygiene factor, the real beef is in what CommScrummers call the “top of the T”, not the downstroke.  Award submissions “judged” by people one wouldn’t hire to work for you … expense-paid trips to exotic destinations to hear the same presentation given 10 years ago (by a different person, if you’re really lucky) …  presenters who pay a fee to get on the speaker’s platform, but neither they nor the conference organisers disclose this clearly … so-called gurus who earn their money selling seminars, not by delivering client work … positions awarded based on how long one has hung around the association, not on merit … the list goes on and on. As busy as I am I did a back of an envelope spreadsheet of recent conference topics and the results were, well, deeply disappointing.  We are repeating ourselves and have been for 10 years.  Why hasn’t anyone cottoned on to this? Is there that much turnover and career change in the industry that the conference platform and training agenda remain unchanged? For surely by now competence in these 11 topics has been well documented and you don’t need to go to a conference to learn about it?

For those who see the benefit in the above approach, that’s wonderful and I do not wish to rain on your parade. I, however, shall continue to attend non-communication conferences and take non-communication training from non-communicators to learn more about how people in business communicate to get results.

It’s simply too important to listen to any more reheated practices from a profession hell bent on ever increasing scrutiny and debate of meaningless minutiae.  Anything with sponsorship from a communication agency, a human capital company, a recruitment advertising firm, or a social media guru shall be unceremoniously binned.  Oh, we might pay to play and promote to play the game, but expect fireworks, not the same old crap.  I will confer with CMOs, CTOs, CIOs, CEOs, CFOs and then apply my craft.

In for a penny, in for a pound – I plan to make myself the world’s happiest pariah and persona non grata.

Lyndon, I am on the outside of the tent…

Exit, pursued by a bear.

The exception proves the rule…

LONDON – I was excited to receive an invitation to an upcoming conference on communication.  I dove straight into the conference session list and my enthusiasm was dampened … I couldn’t find any sessions that had much to do with tackling the challenges my FT100 multinational clients are facing.

I felt a bit deflated.  It was a bit late, I was slightly irritable and had had a drink.  I then had a panic attack: my God, am I really that out of touch with the marketplace and professional practice?

Well, no.  I think it’s indicative of the chasm that has widened between the practitioners who have made the leap across to the “new world” and those who cling to the security and certainty of the “old world.”

With numerous organisations grasping the nettle and discovering the joys and challenges of navigating a world where “internal” and “external” communications lines have blurred into near invisibility – the possible exception being deeply operational communications – it’s interesting to note that the conference has split into “internal” and “external” tranches.  Now, clearly one has to start somewhere when organising these things but the “conference by numbers circa 1995” approach seems to lack vision and creativity. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Again.

What is it with me and conferences?  I am obviously well into pariah territory, refusing to lower my standards, and have completely unrealistic expectations of what they can and should be. 

But, the good news is, I am not alone. It is another reminder that the CommScrum Manifesto is on the money. 

I suppose you can be judged by the company you keep…

2011 Predictions

Dateline Bayswater, London, UK — 2010 was a healthily schizophrenic year. 

A remarkable amount of fragmentation ran alongside consolidation in the world of communication and technology.  An identifiable chasm began to open between the “old world” and “new world”, with many “old worlders” taking a look left and right and saying “Bugger this!” and making the leap across.  Many didn’t. 

The chasm widened. 

Those on the other side seem content that they’d dodged the change, that it was all a bunch of hyperbole and we can now return to originally scheduled programming.  Oh, wait … where are they?  Those specks in the distance?  I can barely hear them now, faint voices on the wind …

What lies ahead?

1)  The concept of the ‘segmented audience’ will die – long live tribes!  In more than a semantic sense, (i.e., not just the emperor’s new clothes) decade-old tribal theory will come to fruition.  Some have been there for a while … in a consumer marketing and branding sense …  but this will cross over into employee communications and even corporate branding and communication.   (Yeah, I ‘got it’ when it came out … only now I think we can believe it.)

2) People will wake up that “social media” that isn’t … isn’t.  Taking my cues from sources ranging from Mike Klein’s upcoming 55-Minute Guide; to Fortune and Fast Company; forgetting Wired and technology rags … and to-remain-unnamed “gurus” … now that the smoke is clearing companies and their “social media” leaders will realise that if it’s about a specific platform or technology, it isn’t technically social media.  The technology is an enabler.  It’s more important to get it to work to deliver the social side that matters.  Which leads to …

3) … a return to short, sharp, interruptive ‘campaigns’.  My colleagues at SAS will debate this with me, but I think given a world where “tribes” are the centre of focus and media must be social … there’s still presence and content to be considered, on which community and dialogue are built.  Tribes (which are a new and improved kind of audience, right?) want to be communicated with on their terms.  I’m not saying 30 second spots or internal branding initiatives.  I’m saying focussed and issue-driven “365 micro-campaigns across platforms aimed at the base-jumping billionaire spelunker” set.  (Thanks Batman)… and yet …

4) Big ideas will still matter.  In utter contradiction to points 2 and 3 in particular, and against the zeitgeist of the brand literati, organisations (and potentially Tribes too) will still hunger for the bigger, unifying idea.  It might be at the END of the conversation as an outcome we are led to – a destination rather than a vision – but we’ll still need it.  we’ll hunger for it.  And that big meaning will need to be authentic.  Hmmn.  Watch this space.

5) Sell your shares in big employee survey companies.  Invest the proceeds in analytics.  The data machines of yesteryear will have to give up the ghost and breathe spirit into shorter, sharper, smarter (and much, much more complicated – while at lower cost and higher speed) solutions.  The 24-7 conversation economy waits for no annual employee opinion survey.  Buh-bye!

6) HR process outsourcing will continue apace.  A no-brainer, perhaps, but the outsourcing pendulum (scythe?) continues its swing in this particular discipline.  But … and it’s a big but … HR (having morphed into Talent Acquisition and Management) will get its hands firmly back around Employer Brand and EVP as a strategic, joined-up business process.  Cue Employer Brand 2.0… which leads to …

7) … an (potentially misguided) emphasis on the ‘EVP inside’.  The message has been received: Employer Brand is not just about external reputation and Talent Attraction.  The risk: leave unfinished as “too hard” cracking the external manifestation of the EVP and instead put all of your energy into making sure it is working internally with your existing employees.  It’s both!!! 

8)  Smartphone apps applied to internal communication.  No brainer, but you saw it here first.  I hope.  So that smart-arse who just beat you on a pitch by waving around an iPhone … might have had a point. It’s the tribe, stupid.  See 2 & 3 above…

9) More face to face.  Leave your Smartphone at the door.  Good old-fashioned a-talkin’.  Leader and managers in particular will be required to invest the premium effort and time required to face to face communication (conversation, not broadcasting, and including listening and intelligent responses), and they will need support.

10) External channels for internal communications . Perhaps a no-brainer, but using YouTube for internal comms is already well underway (I’ve just done it with a big, arguably “old world” organisation … let’s see how it works …) but why invest in platforms when they already exist?  It’s the tribe, stupid.

Thanks to Mary Boone, Mike Williams, Geoff Barbaro, Adam Hibbert, Indy Neogy, Dan Gray, Soli Townsend, and especially Mike Klein for inspiring me this year – even if they don’t realise they have.

Has it all been said already?

I suspect it has and the debate is mostly about semantics and definition of terms.

Blog vs. Community

It’s been interesting to watch as CommScrum and the CommScrum LinkedIn Group establish themselves, grow and indeed seem to fluorish.  It highlights that so-called social media (or really technologically-enabled social communications) mimic their bricks and mortar counterparts.

Blog = newspaper. And comments are just faster “Letters to the editor.”  With a blogroll.

LinkedIn Group = a community of people who come together to discuss and debate and hopefully enjoy their association and are richer for it.  For free.  In a virtual 24/7 coffee house.

The same rules are true:

– Say something that is relevant and interesting (to them, not you)

– Let people talk about it

It isn’t that complicated.

Busy week in media coverage of the “people agenda”…

First up, Personnel Today on a PWC (see their re-brand by the way?) report saying employee turnover costs the UK economy £42 Billion per year.

Marketing Week on aforementioned pwc rebrand.  My comments below: 

PWC REBRAND

Marketing Week raises the issue of “building the brand from the inside out” in the context of PwC’s re-brand as if it is a startlingly new idea, and that PwC doesn’t seem to have learned from it’s MONDAY: experience – only offering employees a “sneak peak” at the new brand, rather than a more thorough and comprehensive employee brand engagement effort.

Scratch beneath the surface, though, and there is always more to these things than meets the eye.  It’s interesting to note that MONDAY:, for all the flak it took, was arguably a stroke of genius.  It would have been the first time one of the Big 5 (now big 4) had put something thicker than a cigarette paper between itself and its competitors.  It stood out – and while any laughed, well … people also laughed at some other brands when they came out, too.  “Orange is a Lemon” said the FT headline after that brand launch.  Amazon, Penguin, Google.  Silly names!  All the brand and marketing literati laughed and scoffed and threw rocks (while actually making more noise for the new brands). When the laughter died out, brand equity was firmly established, thank you very much.  If not for market conditions that made selling to IBM more profitable to the partners than an IPO, MONDAY: would be with us.  And I suspect they’d be every bit as successful, too.

More concerning of course is the “sneak peak”.  But trust me, these things are more challenging to manage than it might seem to a Marketing Week pundit in an ivory tower – more than “sneak peak” with 150,000 global employees is likely to spell L-E-A-K. 

One can only hope that employees, partners, clients and key stakeholders were thoroughly engaged in the process that helped the brand agency arrive at the new positioning, promise and identity.   The biggest bet will be – have they gone far enough?  Given my experience with professional services firms, the final result will be a pale, watered down shade of what was a powerful idea at its core.  Partnerships, let alone those in professional services in accountancy, tax, finance and advisory, are notoriously difficult to rebrand for precisely this reason.

 If PwC are smart, they’ll spend the next 3, 6, 12 months ensuring that every employee, from client-facing to back office support functions, has the opportunity to get their hands on the brand, talk about it, engage in action planning around what they’re going to do, or do differently, as a result of the rebrand.  Will it lead to changes in the way talent is sourced, recruited, hired, on-boarded? Changes to performance planning, competency frameworks, reward and recognition?   That’s when a re-brand actually becomes “inside out” instead of “lipstick on a gorilla.”

 It will be interesting to see what changes – if anything.