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.

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?

Your daily Social Media Routine

When you have joined the social media movement, the real work (and fun) starts.  I am always astonished that people ask me how much time they should spend on social media.  We all know this is an impossible question to answer since everyone has a different number of accounts and a different modus operandi.  However, I think we should put the time usage in function of the goal we are trying to achieve using social media.

So, I am beginning to return this question with a few another questions: “How much time do you need to spend on e-mail daily?” or “Does anyone question the time you spend on doing emails to get your job done?”  Not! Well eventually social media should follow the same guidelines.  However, in order to get started it might be good to create an approach, let’s call it a “social media routine”.

Here is a one I want to share with you.  It consists of 3 parts: Reviewing your social media monitoring; reviewing your own accounts and posting content for your target audience; and reading and sharing content from others via your accounts.

Step 1: Review your social media monitoring results

You know people are talking about you in wide sense of the word, so you need to monitor social media.  This is true for both you as an individual and for your company.

This can be done via a number of free tools such as Google Alerts (good for content but bad for Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn) or Socialmention – Addictomatic (more focus on social networks but not always accurate).  However, when you are serious about monitoring (and you should be), you will need to pay a monthly fee for good results from all platforms.  Tracebuzz, Engagor, Attentio, Mentions.net, Meltwater, Radian6 are just a few of the platforms you could use.  It important to test drive them to see if they deliver the results you are looking for.

Your daily routine is to check the messages for sentiment and get back to people.  Simply put this means: thanking them for positive comments and taking actions to address the negative comments.

Step 2: Review own accounts and post content to your accounts

Though you have already looked at your social media monitoring results, it is important to review all your OWN social media accounts for any comments or posts. These are messages addressed to you.  These might or not have shown up in your social media monitoring.  Keep in mind that these are people talking to YOU and thus need an answer.

This is also the ideal moment to post new own content for your target audience.  This is the “valuable” information you want to share with our network. Depending on the platform you will be posting daily (Twitter and Facebook) to monthly (blogs). Content can take many forms: text, images, video or audio.  You can also run polls and post events.  Sharing is fun!

Your daily routine will consist of reading the comments, reacting to those comments and posting new content.

The tools you could use vary from the platforms themselves to social media aggregators such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.

Step 3: Reading and sharing information from others

Social media is full of interesting information waiting to be shared.  As I mentioned before some content is created by you but most is really created by others.  Sharing content from others can help you create visibility and position you as a valuable resource for your network.  This side of social media takes the most time since you will have to do a lot of reading before sharing it with you target audience. This part of social media could take 80% of your time.

There are many ways to share content through your social media accounts.  Many platforms have a “SHARE button” but I have found that Bufferapp is a great application that allows you to share information/websites on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn while you are reading the information.  Even better, Bufferapp will spread your postings during the day.

So your daily routine should be about finding the websites that contain good complementary content for your target audience, read and share it with that audience.

Finally, what I have explained is not only true for you as an individual but also for a company or organization since you are trying to become a valuable partner and resource  for your prospects and clients.  Keep in mind that information that is being distributed via company-owned accounts (fan pages on Facebook, company profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube accounts) can and should be amplified through employee personal accounts.

Any thoughts? Comments?  Best practices you want to share?  Feel free to use the comment fields in this blog.  I look forward to starting the conversation with you.

Why the political parties have no Social Media Policy?

2012 is an election year. This is not only the case in the US, but also in many other countries including my own, Belgium. There will be local elections and union elections this year. But I am looking forward, with a lot of anticipation, to how US politics will be using Social Media to rally to victory. Four years ago, Team Obama surprised everybody, but this year, many politicians and candidates will be fighting back and use the same weapons.

What I can not stop wondering about is whether the Democratic or Republican party has a Social Media Policy. I do not think so and in all honesty I am not sure they can make one that sticks. In reviewing the database of social media policies (http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php), there are a number of elements that always show up in such a policy. Maybe this is a good time to benchmark some paragraphs of these policies versus the political world. It will become apparent why it would be close to impossible to create a Social Media Policy (that would stick to) for any political party: Here are some clauses and further meaning:

• Respect your Audience: One should show proper consideration for other’s privacy and topics considered inflammatory.
• It is a Conversation: it is supposed to be a two-way conversation and not just shouting out to the audience.
• Respect your competition, do not pick fights or launch personal attacks: Seems very obvious and does not really require any further explanation.
• Be honest and transparent: do not be sneaky or devious. Do not have others go out there and say good things about you and bad things about others. Stay away from ghostwriters.
• Be yourself and respectful: Voters will see through your marketing tricks and talk. Be passionate and let that show through your personality.
• Get your facts right: Separate your opinions from your facts. How often is this not forgotten?
• Admit mistakes, apologize and correct your mistakes: do not be afraid to say that you were wrong. Admit to those mistakes and correct them.
• Think twice about posting: Before you post think about how it will be perceived since that is what people will see as the reality. The internet does not forget easy. Make sure you are allowed to post this content.
• Do not lie: Obviously since you are personally responsible for “speaking” on a public platform.
• Add Value: People’s time is valuable so do not waste it with.
• Aim for Quality and not Quantity: Offer your contribution with content and in context.
• Do not spam your audience: Respect people’s time.

As most companies and organizations are urged to create good social media guidelines and policies, I think politicians should set the example. However, I know that politicians stand on the barricade when they see these types of policies, but just like marketers they feel that their hands are tied. So I wonder if any of the political parties are even giving this any thought and would love to hear from them. Any thoughts?

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.

CEOs lack time to take part in Social Media

Close to a billion people are using social media platforms today.

Most, of them are doing it for personal use but more and companies are jumping on the bandwagon.  Though some CEOs are embracing social media most of them despise it and stay away as far as possible.  This brings up a lot of challenges for the social media champions and social media addicts to convert and convince these people.

Most CEOs do not (want to) see the benefits of social media because their mind is set on other things such as return on investment.  Social media can reap a lot of return but unfortunately, it takes time and most CEOs and executives do not have that time (to wait for results).

In a recent survey done by Vanguard Leadership, we found that a remarkable number of Belgian CEOs are present on one of the major platforms (89%). However, less than 25% are active.  So what are their reasons not to be active:

• Lack of time – CEOs do not spend, like most of us, time in front of their PC, ipad or even smart phone. Let’s be real they are not paid to do the legwork.
• Lack of peers and interaction – This is a continuation of the above point.  Since they are not taking time to read, comment or contribute to social media there is no interaction between them and others (peers or not).  No interaction means no incentive to contribute.
• Information overload and quality – Having a lot of information is good for decision making but we all know that social media provides too much information. And if you do not control it properly (and that takes time) it creates overload.  Too much (unqualified) information leads to confusion and bad decision making.  Not what a CEOs is waiting for…
• Lack of knowledge and understanding – Most CEOs are not digital natives.  So social media is not part of their DNA. Time and energy are needed to learn about a multitude of platforms.  And the speed of evolution of these platforms brings on another big problem for them when trying to keep up with these evolutions.  A challenge CEOs do not really need or want.  Additionally, they only hear the bad stories because good stories are less told so why should they invest their valuable time.

However, there are some good reasons why  you need to convince them to join.  More and more CEOs are doing it and seeing the benefits:

• By taking part in social media the CEO demonstrates his leadership in adopting new technologies and thus more members from the executive team will join.  A great starting point to get CEO buy-in is to implement social media internally first.  By using social media internally not only does communication improve (less distance between management and employees) but lessons are learned internally and no mistakes are made when social media is externalized.
• When CEOs use social media with customers, suppliers and  employees, it makes the person and company more human and you get the benefit of more opinions and easier accessibility
• It is clear that a CEO can boost the brand by using social media.  Many US examples have shown the way here.
• Finally, when the CEOs is on social media, the company is able to attract easier young people since the company is seen as a dynamic operation.

The conclusion is really that today’s CEO is far from joining actively social media because of the lack of time but once convinced he will be the motor that can shifts the company into a higher gear.

Are you being kept awake by circles, hangouts and sparks

Two weeks ago Google announced it latest effort to get involved with social media, called Google+.  Today, Microsoft leaked its efforts for yet another social media network.  Are these two efforts too late to battle Facebook and Twitter?

Google+ will offer a high degree of integration with its other social media platforms and this will be the USP to fight Facebook and Twitter.  The stream, which looks a lot like the one in Facebook, will be complemented with circles (groups in which you put people), hangouts (your favorite online places) and sparks (bits and pieces of information).  And Google claims this is only the beginning.

Microsoft leaked the story about its social network (Tulatip?) built around the Bing search engine to create a social search.  However, from the limited information available, Microsoft will not be inventing the network but use bits and pieces from Facebook and Twitter which might be a smart idea.

Back to Google+.  As it is fitting for social media platforms, memberships are handed out in small amounts which has lead to a frenzy to get access in the first week or so.  Many people were looking for such an “invite”.  Getting such an invite meant you are someone in social media land or had the right friends (what a good time to test the “give and receive” attitude).  I did not get one till 3 weeks into the process thanks to Roland Legrand from De Tijd.

Though I was disappointed that I did not get an invite, it made me think and ask a number of questions.  First of all, is this not just another gadget which we are not waiting for?  We are already part of so many social media platforms and networks.  Why add another?  After which we will complain that we have a lot of work to keep our social media profiles up to date… How much can we kid ourselves?  It seems we are looking for more work.

Second, all those people that are looking for such a special “invite” will not be the users of tomorrow.  These people are going to “test” Google+ to either break it down to the ground or praise it into the heavens but few will be (active) users in 6 months.  Many profiles will die very quickly even if Google claims they have 100 million profiles in less than a month.  Who wants to rebuild his/her Facebook/Twitter or even LinkedIn  network again on yet another platform.  Not me!

As far as I am concerned I am really waiting to see where Google+ will be making the difference with Facebook and the others before I switch.  The integration with tools such as  Tweetdeck and others will define if and when I switch to Google+.

So I will let Google convince that switching to Google+ will be worth my while and bring VALUE rather than just more work.

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).

Social Media Policy unites Social Media initiatives

As social media is being used by different departments in larger companies, we tend to see that all the efforts are undertaken in somewhat isolation of each other. Call it social media chaos. Marketing uses it for brand awareness; HR for recruitment; Sales for lead generation; etc. All might be using different media, different approaches, and different rules. Sounds familiar?

The ultimate solution, of course, is that companies hire a social media manager. Hopefully, this person can sit at a corporate level as to not be driven by one type of function but we all know better, right! However, we all know that few companies are willing to invest in an FTE for social media because of cost, lack of strategy and no real view on time and effort needed. So why not use the social media policy to unify the different social media initiatives within the company.

How? One of the key building blocks in the acceptance of a social media policy is that is created by multiple departments otherwise you end up with a unilateral policy. Marketing will make it as minimalistic as possible as to not have any limitations, HR will make it restrictive in line with the other policies, IT will close down as much as possible, legal will have it so unreadable, etc.

Putting together a team to create your social media policy is more than a good idea. The first step in the creation of a social media policy is to raise the awareness of the topic to the same level for all the participants. So in this step of the every department makes an inventory of what it is using, why and how. By presenting this to the team, it will not only create a better understanding of what social media means to everyone, but also where the company is active (you will be surprised to see the results). It will also reveal possible synergies. Why evaluate and set up 2 different monitoring systems (one for marketing and one for customer service, and yes, it happens!).

By understanding everyone’s efforts (call it their social media goals), the policy can be created with the necessary flexibility and more importantly, it be will be endorsed by everyone in the organization which is another stumbling block when implementing such a policy.

Or how the social media policy unites company social media efforts!

hospitals and their social media policy

I did not think I was going to write so quickly a follow up to my last week’s post on social media in the hospital area, but my interest was peaked this week by a poll I saw via Twitter (@reedsmith).

The polls asked the question whether the organization/hospital had a social media media policy.  The result was somewhat amazing.

72% of the people who answered (25 answers) the poll said they did have a policy.  This number is very high but due to the fact that on average only 1 in 3 has a policy.  The fact that this poll was run through Twitter probably skewed the results.  The users are already on social media and thus somewhat likely to have a policy.

Looking at some publicly published policies, the areas that are covered can be summarized as:

• Clear definition on where the medical facility stands when it comes to social media and what usage during and off work-time.
• Commenting guidelines and rules
  • Focus on positive comments
  • posts with abusive and offensive language will be removed
  • posts with personal attack  will be removed
  • All spam-like posts will be removed
• Blogging guidelines including the use of disclaimers in both directions (medical facility and the commenter)
• Identity and affiliation with the medical facility
• Use of code of ethics including all other applicable policies
• General rules of conduct (add value, be smart, be authentic, etc.)

Though it is great to see that there are good examples of social media policies being put in place?  There are in my opinion 3 major components missing in these types of policies:

• What are the clear guidelines to deal with negative comments?  What is the plan?  Who is the go-to person/department?
• What monitoring is being done to make sure this policy is being “enforced”?
• How has the policy been communicated to the employees?  Just put on the intra-net does not do it.

So as a conclusion, I think that having guidelines for your employees is great, but they need to communicated and monitored effectively so. People must know what can and can not be done and what to do in cases of emergencies.