Corporate Social Media Amplified!

One of trends for 2013 will be “Amplification”. The times that companies and people rely on asking others to redistribute their posts and messages is over.  Just like with email, you as a fan are getting too many messages and notifications (many of you are turning them off) and thus ignoring these requests.

As more and more of the employees are becoming active on social media, companies are realizing that they are low hanging fruit when it comes to brand ambassadorship.  They want to enlist them as ambassadors and are setting up awareness sessions in the hope these employees will actually help spread the word.  .

Companies are also looking for new ways to get their messages promoted. Help is on the way in form of Social Media Amplification Applications.  The concept is simple: Leverage employees, partners, customers and fans to share your company’s social media messages on your behalf.  The objective is to drive traffic to websites, campaign or blogs to generate leads.

How does it work?

Step 1: Find amplication application

There are a number of these applications available today.  I predict that there will be more coming in 2013.  GaggleAMP, SocialSeeder, Spread.US and Socialtoaster are in the forefront today.  For more details, see below.

Step 2: Recruit fans

You will invite and recruit fans, influencers and employees to join your distribution community.  You might have to implement some form of gamification (2^nd trends for 2013) in order for them to join your circle of amplifiers.

Step 3: Create Messages

Create the content you want to get distributed through the community. And make it easy for your amplifiers to distribute it in their social networks

Step 4: Amplication Process

The amplification application will inform by email (or other forms) your community there are messages ready for distribution.  The amplifiers then can select which messages they distribute in which social network.

Step 5: Monitor & analyze

As with any campaign, you need to monitor the process, analyze the results and fine-tune your next steps. Continue to engage your community of amplifiers.

Who are some players?

GaggleAMP, US based company, is the social marketing platform that lets companies amplify their social media reach by leveraging individual employees, customers and partners. (source GaggleAMP)

GaggleAMP empowers a company’s stakeholders (both internal and external – employees, customers, constituents etc.) to promote synchronized messages across social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Users can share these messages on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn automatically, by e-mail notification or from the website thus giving the user full control of what is getting shared where.  The gamification option makes this tool more engaging.

In addition to the message amplification, GaggleAMP provides a myriad of unique analytics about how the messages perform in the various social media networks including message reach, clicks, comments, Likes, shares, re-tweets and more.

Pricing starts at $25/month for 50 messages shared.  There is a 7 day free trail period.

More info: http://www.gaggleamp.com

SocialSeeder, a Belgian company, unlocks the power of your true influencers.

As a company tapping into the potential of social media your holy grail is to find and identify super influencers to quickly spread news and create a buzz on new products & services.

SocialSeeder facilitates employees, clients, fans, partners & other influencers to seed the messages you want to bring across via social media and allows to measure the impact in full detail through a personalised dashboard. (Source – SocialSeeder).

SocialSeeder, is focusing on Social Media Campaigns.  You start by creating your list of amplifiers (Influencers & Ambassadors).  You follow this up with the creation of campaign which will result in an email being created where you ask the amplifiers to distribute via the networks of their choice (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or even email). The user has full control of which message gets distributed where.

A comprehensive number of statistics are available to both track each amplifier and message amplification by platform and hits.

Pricing starts at 25€ per campaign/month.

More info: http://www.socialseeder.com

SocialToaster, a US based company, allows an organization to recruit supporters to help automatically create word-of-mouth referrals and traffic through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. (Source – Socialtoaster).

SocialToaster amplifies corporate messaging on brands’ social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn), proving that there is immense value in social media engagement. Loyal fans of a brand called ‘Super Fans’ are mobilized with an email whenever the brand has blog postings, events, articles, or promotions for them to promote. With just one click, Super Fans share the brand’s content with peers across all of their selected social networking sites. The visibility of the message increases exponentially as the content is shared. (Source Socialtoaster)

Socialtoaster allows you to run in the cloud and on your own servers.  Other interesting features are gamification and viral recruitment formulas.

Pricing starts at $399/month.

More info: http://www.socialtoaster.com

Spread.us,, US based company, is a twitter-only tool that allows you to promote campaigns and blog posts. It enables website readers to automatically share and distribute newly published content from their favorite content or blog on Twitter. (source: Spread.us).

First you enlist the support of your supporters by inviting them.  You then create the perfect tweet which will get distributed automatically via their accounts.  Then you track the performance of the post through a number of statistics.  The biggest drawback of this tool is the lack of control on the user’s side.  Opting out is the list only option for the end user to stop tweets being posted through his/her account.

Pricing starts at $0 for up to 5 subscribers.  Between 6 to 25 subscribers (fans) you will pay $4/month with variable pricing if fans increase or decrease.

More info: http://www.spread.us

I am sure there are other programs out there.  So if you know of any please let me know and I will add them in my next review cycle.

What are your thoughts on these applications?  Good thing or not?

I look forward to your reactions, comments, feedback and input.

Participation – Amplification – Gamification

This is the time when everyone creates a list of things that were or things that will be.  Normally, I do not participate in this ritual but this year I  can’t stop myself.  The reason being that the lists I am seeing are so out there in terms of predictions that I want to bring back to pragmatism to 2013.  I see 5 major trends for 2013 and here they are!

Participation - Now that Facebook has reached over 1 billion members, it is fair to assume that in Belgium we will round the cape of 5 million in 2013.  With LinkedIn having 187 million users, we will pass the 1.5 million users in Belgium in 2013.  However, I am predicting a boom of twitter usage in Belgium with thanks to the traditional media. Inspirational is the radio with programs such as #hautekiet or #touché, TV with the hashtag #7dag or #SODD, and traditional magazines such as Flair, Humo and many more.  Slowly they are driving consumers to Twitter and thus comes the explosion of number of users.  I think we could be looking at 2.5 million accounts with 1 million active users by the end of the year.

Amplification – Many companies are setting up company accounts on social media but they are struggling to get the following they would like to have.  However, they are forgetting the “untapped potential” they are sitting on.  A fair amount of their employees is active on social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) during and after working hours (survey Vanguard Leadership October 2012).  Unfortunately, they rarely follow, like or support their company on social media.  And these would be the best ambassadors for your company.  Remember the old days when they were motivated to recommend their company to their friends in the real world…

Companies are taking notice and we are seeing that large companies are running “awareness sessions” for their employees with a number of goals in mind: provide information about the general use of social media, explain the social media policy but mostly to ask employees to become social media ambassadors for their companies.  This leads to another trends for 2013, the introduction of social media “amplification software”.  These software packages will allow companies to post messages on the corporate accounts, inform their employees, ambassadors and influencers about these messages and have them re-distributed by their employees, ambassadors and influencers.  Tap into the “untapped potential“.

Gamification = Even though this word has been on the lips of many, I think 2013 is the year when it will become real.  The gaming techniques will find their way in which we use social media, learn, or do business.  Today the emphasis  lies on badges, mayorships, free goods, etc. but the evolution is going to be quick and innovative.  A true revolution in the making.

So the biggest challenge for companies in 2013 is how their are going to use awareness building  to inspire their employees’ participation to social media to become ambassadors and amplify the corporate messages using a number of gamification schemes.

How far on this journey are you today?

Finally, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Social Media Policies in Belgium (Part 1) – Only 1 in 5 company has one!

Social Media Policies have found their entrance into large corporation but the small and especially the medium sized companies have not created and implemented  such social media policies.

Earlier this year PayScale released some results about the adoption of Social Media Policies in the USA (http://mashable.com/2012/06/10/employer-social-media/).  The conclusion was that over 50% of the companies had a formal social media policy.  But how do Belgian businesses match up to these numbers?

A recent survey (October 2012) done via Vanguard Leadership has revealed that only 1 company in 5 has a social media policy in Belgium.  And since Belgium is a country of Small and Medium sized business, we can conclude that the 20% of companies that have a social media policy are mainly  the larger companies.

The same survey uncovered that  65% of the employees accessed Facebook, 52% LinkedIn and 53% Twitter daily during work hours.  You would think that social media policies would be more common since employers are worried about their employees wasting time or damaging the reputation of their company on social media.

A first conclusion is that companies are not always aware that their employees are very active on social media.  Though these companies are aware that such a policy is a must they do not create or implement a policy or guidelines until they have an “accident” which leads to reputation loss.  Over the course of the year we have witnessed several of these examples (e.g. Ikea in Belgium – http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=GVB3M9AGE) where a social media policy is created after the reputation damage was detected.

More information to come about the results of this survey in next blog posts.

Notes about the survey:  Over 200 companies were surveyed.  About 50% have less than 50 employees, 30% have less than 250 employees and  and 20% were larger than 500 employees.

The Employee Engagement Index

Companies want to pick the low hanging fruit, but when it comes to social media, it seems they are not seeing the ‘low hanging fruit.  Many companies are creating corporate social media accounts but fail not only to communicate them to their clients but also their employees.  A lot of companies do not mention their social media accounts on their website allthough that is changing.

Companies, especially the marketeers, are struggling to get engaged fans/followers/connections, etc.  A lot of effort is put in creative marketing to be able to attract clients and have them become ambassadors. Through these fans/followers they hope to get their messages amplified.

But what about engaging your employees as ambassadors and amplificators.   During a series of awareness sessions in different companies, i could not help to see that few people were actually following their company on platforms such as twitter, facebook or linkedin. The main reason being a lack of information and awareness. Companies expect their employees to follow these account automatically. There are a few simple solutions to address this situation and could include:

• Social media awareness sessions
• Mention all  accounts in the social media policy
• Training program includes following all company accounts
• Email and intranet campaign to increase account awareness
• Adding links to intranet and website

How do you measure if you are successful? Why not create an Employee Engagement Index.   The number could reflect a ratio such as:

1. # of employees  following corporate accounts divided by total employee count
2. # of employees that follow corporate accounts divided by the employees on social media (or specific platform)

This number by itself is not so important. It serves as a baseline. Tracking the progression as you undertake social media awareness building is more important. It will provide you with insight of how well you are doing.

The next challenge is get corporate messages amplified by these people. Here too there are several scenario’s. The best of all worlds is that your employees take the initiative to share message by themselves but we all know this is the most difficult route.  the WIIFM factor has to big. Alternatively, you could offer tools to re-publish but that is really a bad idea. People want to be in control of what they share with their network.  And then there are some tools available (www.gaggleamp.com) that allow users to select what they forward. In any case, the network of your employees is the first step to client engagement and conversation.

Which innovating techniques and tools are you using to use your employees as amplificators and ambassadors?

The Social Media Alphabet

There was a time when the phonetic alphabet (Cfr. Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet) was used to spell out letters.  Remember the “T for Tango” or “C for Charlie”.

But today we live and work in a world with a whole new generational language and fairly soon there will likely be classes on, “how to speak Social Media”. But any language starts with an alphabet.  So here is my take on how to teach the alphabet.

The benefits of using this alphabet is that many generations can relate to these platforms and the usage of these names increases your “coolness” factor.

Which other platforms would you use?

The anatomy of a good social media policy

Whether your company is active on social media, your employees probably are.  So you should have a policy.  Over the course of the last few years I have been involved in writing and reviewing a lot of social media policies around the world.  It is becoming clear that social media policies have some kind of anatomy.

Of course, there is not “one fits all” solution since every company has its own needs and wants.  I would like to share with you what I am seeing as best practice components in social media policies.

Here are the different section one could have in a policy

1. Why do you have a social media policy?

In general employees do not like policies.  But protecting the reputation of your company is every employee’s duty and that is what a policy should attempt to achieve.  You can carve your policy in such a way that your employees are your ambassadors

2. What is social media?

Most of your employees have a limited view of what social media really is.  It is more than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  A good definition of what you as company understand under social media will help you set the scene.

3. Which social media and networks are we talking about?

It is good idea to name the major different social media platforms, what they are best used for and what the benefits and dangers are.

4. To whom does the policy apply?

Different types of people are working in companies.  Of course you have employees of which some are spokespeople.  Many companies also employ contractors or free-lancers and you need to decide whether your policy will also apply to these people.  You might need a subtract for them.

5. How to get access of social media?

In some companies you still need to ask permission to access the internet and/or social media. We tend to think that this practice is becoming extinct but still many companies block access to social media for the majority of their employees under the umbrella of productivity loss.  That is what the social media policy is trying to address.

6. Definition of Terms

In this section you will define the difference between policy and guideline, personal vs professional use, employee vs spokesperson, etc.

7. Social Media Policy

It is clear that some items must be policy (use of logo’s, spokepeople, disclaimers, creation and ownership of accounts, etc.)

1. For spokespeople
2. For employees
3. For contractors

8. Social Media guidelines

The social media guideline will help your employees protect their own reputation and thus also the reputation of the company.  In this section you will find items such as authenticity, correct errors, honesty, suggestion of identity and email addresses, etc.

9. Where can you your company on social media? And how are you using it?

Do not assume that your employees know what social media you are using as a company.  A lot of companies do not mention their accounts on website and leave it up to their employees to discover where they are.  This practice will make sure that all your employees know what the official accounts are.

It is also a best practice to tell your employees what you are using these social media accounts for.  Let’s call it leading by example.

10. How do you handle mentions (positive and negative)?

We all know that companies and people are talked about.  Many companies have some kind of social media monitoring but many more do not.  So if your employees who can be your eyes and ears in social media (provided they are your ambassadors) see any message, they need to know what the procedure is to handle these mentions or posts.

11. Where do you get help for your Social Media

As companies are gearing up for social media, it is also a good idea to setup a help desk or a social media help account (which could be any employee within the company).  Indicate in your policy who these people are and where you can get the necessary training.

12. Tips and tricks

Nothing works better to create ambassadors than provide tips and trick so you should include examples with tips and tricks.

I understand that including all these sections can lead to a long document that people might not read which brings me to a final point about a social media policy.  The key to success is the roll out phase. That’s the moment where you can create a simple hand-out or give-away that supports the introduction and announcement of the policy.  You can really get creative with this and get a lot of support for your policy.

I would love to hear your comments and feedback.

Is LinkedIn running out steam for recruiters?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had many recruiters in my social media classes and every time they focus all their attention on LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.  When I come to Facebook, they seem to be shutting down. It seems they do not take Facebook seriously as a recruitment environment.  Maybe, they should think again.

One reason is that there are over 880 million people on Facebook vs the 147 million on LinkedIn.  Secondly, more and more companies are active through a fan pages on Facebook and using it for employer branding.  Fan pages allow much more flexibility and functionality to companies and recruiters than the LinkedIn Company pages.

And then there are several applications that have started to give LinkedIn a run for its money.  They listen to names such as Glassdoor, Beknown, Talent.me and BranchOut.  These apps bring LinkedIn functionality to Facebook making it the next best environment for recruitment.

Glassdoor is a free jobs and career community that offers the world an inside look at jobs and companies. Using the Inside Connection product lets you find companies and what connections inside you might have.  Additionally, you can find interview questions, salary ranges, company reviews, and job openings.  In true social media style the content is generated by the job seekers.

Beknown is a Facebook application by Monster.  There is a lot similarity between Beknown and LinkedIn: create a profile, you connect with people, get recommendations, find jobs, and follow companies. Beknown will let you see the 1st and 2^nd line connections like LinkedIn. As you accept people in your network, you earn badges like in Foursquare.

Talent.me is a professional networking app on Facebook which answers the questions where your friends worked and who your inside connections are at companies.  The goal of Talent.me is to help you leverage your friend network and make it work for your career advancement.  You can also endorse your connections and build communities around specific talents.  This social media network seems to be very US focused.

And finally, there is BranchOut.  On BranchOut, users leverage their Facebook friends to find jobs, find sales leads, recruit talent, and setup relationships with your professional contacts. BranchOut also operates the largest job board on Facebook with over 3 millions jobs in 60 countries.  Recruiters from all over the world are joining BranchOut and taking advantage of lower priced recruitment packages to find and attract new talent.

Of course, LinkedIn is still the standard when it comes to recruitment, but I am convinced that Facebook will take over very soon.  Today, it seems that BranchOut is the forerunner but it is still early days.

Do you know any other tools?  Feel free to share through the comment field.

To Be or Not To Be on Social Media?

Many companies and professionals are already using social media to promote their products and services, connect with their clients and prospects and manage their reputation.  However, there are even more skeptical people in this world (working in smaller companies or as freelancers) that think of 1000 reasons why they should not be present.  Let me give 10 reason why they should reconsider.

Looking for new clients and prospects?

1. We live in a knowledge society, so sharing our knowledge is best done through a blog which will increase your visibility.  You will be able to provide your clients and prospects with relevant information and score higher in Google Search (SEO).

2. Your Blog will help you demonstrate your expertise in your field.  You will become a source for information for both your existing clients and your prospective clients.

3. Social Media allows you to be on top of things.  You are able to spot questions in your field of expertise and answer them quickly.

Looking for new contacts?

4. The power of social networking lies in the 2nd degree (the contacts of your contacts).  Social Media allows you to reach out to these 2nd degree contacts easily to establish new connections.

5. Social Media allows you to identify the Influencers in your domain of expertise.  Connecting with these Influencers will allow you to (possibly) use them for introductions, recommendations, and feedback.

6. Storytelling  is very powerful, so you should tell a good story!  Clients and prospects alike will get to know you better and this will lead to more trust.

7. By now you know you can not do everything yourself.  Creating a strong network is thus a must.  Social Media allows you to find Freelancers, Consultants and new business partners quickly and efficiently.

Looking at new products and services?

8. Social Media allows you to creatively promote your Products or Services.  Using video or photo you can lift the customer experience to the next level.

9. You have many good ideas but will they fly?  Crowd sourcing will allow you to test the waters without spending much money.  People love to help and contribute.  But remember, treat them special whether your product or service flies or not.

Finally, the last point (and in my opinion the most important one) is that you should be present in social media to listen what is being said about you, your company, your products and your people.  As is the case in the real world people talk about you in the widest sense of the word (just think when you were at a network meeting and someone was talking about you behind your back… What did you do?). You need to start Monitoring Social Media for mentions (both GOOD and BAD) today!

Have other ideas, concerns, blocking factors, etc., then I look forward to your comments to this post.

Are CIOS lost in the social media cloud?

Introduction

source: shutterstock

Cloud Computing is one of the hottest topics in IT.  As more non-IT business people are getting tech and internet savvy, they are bringing in cloud applications into the enterprise to solve their specific problems.  A lot of time this is even done without support from IT.  This is known as stealth cloud computing.   CIOs under the pressure of shrinking budgets are struggling to embrace the cloud computing concept and trying to figure out how to integrate this into their product offering to the business.  Some are succeeding, but most are struggling.   But the biggest cloud application to enter the enterprise today is social media and this is being ignored by a lot of IT managers. More and more social media applications are being used by different departments in the enterprise thus requiring IT managers to chain their point of view.

To understand social media the statement “practice makes perfect” stands out.  But how much practice are CIOs putting into to understanding social media.  Are they becoming a social media champion or hiding in the basement?

Research

In an independent market research exercise, over 100 CIOs of top companies in Belgium have been analyzed for their social media presence.  The research has focused on the business side of social media which includes LinkedIn, Twitter and Blog presence.

As could be expected nearly all CIOs have a profile on LinkedIn (97%). When it comes to Twitter 67% has no account.  21% has a clearly identifiable account.  The remaining 12% are accounts that could belong to a CIO but no picture or clear reference is made (only a likely similar name of the CIO was found).   Finally only 7% seem to have personal website of blog page.

Digging a little deeper in Twitter (all 33%), it reveals that 32% have never sent a tweet, The next 26% less than 5 tweets from which we can conclude that twitter is not really used.  There is one CIO in the list of 100+ analyzed that stands out with over 3000 tweets.  The same picture comes up to when looking at the number of people CIOs follow, 16% have no followers or follow someone and 70+% have less than 50 with the majority under 10.

Recommendation

Sticking your head in the sand and ignoring social media, as some large enterprises have opted to do, probably isn’t the solution. Whether it is internal use of social media or external branding and sales, CIOs have a critical role. CIOs should help HR, marketing, sales, product to leverage social media for company’s advantage. CIOs are expected to provide the technical strategy and tools to execute social media strategy and provide results on its effectiveness while avoiding security breaches or a social media meltdown.

Now that CIOs have conquered social networking using LinkedIn , the next step is to demonstrate they understand social media by starting a blog (add value by sharing) and a Twitter account (info sharing and traffic generation).

Are you being monitored?

Courtesy istock

It has been a great week for the followers, including myself, of social media news in Belgium.  Several stories hit the press.  It’s fueling the debate on social networking in business and the need to create awareness and policies..

I love it when companies say that allow their employees to use social media.  This is great and encouraged till criticism, not so good news and negative comments are published.  Then there is a crack down like this week at “De Lijn”, the Flemish bus company.  Immediately, the spokesperson refers to an internet policy that is in place but I can’t stop wondering whether the employees have read it or even know about it?

I love it when companies want to block social media.  As I have mentioned in previous blog posts that social media, including Twitter can not be blocked.  Business is seeing the dangers (information leakage, hacking opportunities, or posting career and company damaging messages) and beginning to see that awareness building needs to be done.

Two interesting articles in the educational sphere poked my interest this week.  Firstly, 2 students were dismissed after creating a Facebook group to ridicule their teachers. This is of course not the first time this happens in our small country.  Secondly, the educational staff is reluctant to participate to social media for a number of reasons such as privacy, contribution to the educational track, lack of guidelines, etc.  Here too, there is a loud cry for guidelines and it is great to hear that it is being worked on for next schoolyear.

There is one thing that catches my attention in all of this: how are companies keeping tabs on their employees?  Do they überhaupt know in which social media their employees are participating?  How much time are they spending to monitor their employees? And do they know? Is this a breach of privacy? To me these issues seem the biggest challenge of all.

Even though I have some answers, any and all thoughts are welcome!