Communication strategy

22nd November 2011 / Posted in: Communication strategy, LinkedIn

If the answer is credibility - what is the question?

One of the LinkedIn features I particularly enjoy is the well-considered, thought-provoking questions and answers about subjects in which I have an interest - both in Groups and Answers. The different viewpoints have expanded my horizons, knowledge and interests.   My perception of many contributors - most of whom I’ve never met - has been enhanced by their on-line contributions and I feel I’ve benefited from them sharing their knowledge and experiences. 

There’s a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience I know I can tap into through LinkedIn if I need an opinion or expert knowledge, but I'm cautious how I use it.  Why? Because there are people in some of the Groups I follow who are happy to post trivial, or poorly constructed, questions without realising the damage it does to their credibility. I’m wondering if they've heard that asking questions on LinkedIn raises their profile so ask anything rather than stopping to think whether their question is more appropriate for Google?

Recently I received a recommendation request from someone I had met, only briefly, at a networking event.  Despite being from someone working in marketing the request was full of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and mis-use of capitals.  I politely turned it down saying my reputation is at stake when I make a recommendation and my policy is not to make recommendations without first hand experience. The sender understood so I then decided to take a risk and give them some feedback about their e-mail for the simple reason I'm a giver and I was likely to come across them again at a networking event.  I read and re-read what I wrote quite a few times before I pressed send as I didn’t want my feedback misinterpreted by the recipient.  The effort paid off as the recipient responded immediately expressing considerable thanks for the feedback particularly as I’d bothered to take the time to do it just after 6pm on Friday evening. They now understand a bit more about me and I know they’ve spent time reading my profile.

LinkedIn can be a very powerful tool, and whether you work for yourself or within a company you will have skills, knowledge, expertise you may wish to share. It takes time to climb on top of the metaphorical pedestal, but a stupid question, or ill-considered answer, can send you plummeting to the floor. Understandably some companies get jumpy about their staff being active on LinkedIn, but investing in decent guidelines (rules are there to break) and training about the brand will deliver great benefits all round.

In short, LinkedIn builds trust, relationships and credibility and can be a valuable part of your marketing mix, but like everything worthwhile it takes time and effort to get results.  On the other hand destroying your credibility takes just seconds.

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5th September 2011 / Posted in: Communication strategy, Marketing strategy, Social media, Social networking

Is that what you mean?

If you inadvertently say something upsetting, or unkind, to someone’s face you can usually see in their expression, and in their eyes, that you’ve got it wrong. Because you’re there you’ve seen what you’ve done and you’ve the chance to eat humble pie and put things right.

In today’s world of instant electronic communication where speed is everything short, rushed messages are becoming the norm.  As messages get shorter and shorter the scope for misinterpretation can grow. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty poor electronic communications.  Some have been irritating, some have been rude, some have upset me.  If they’re from people I know I’m usually too nice to say anything - I just think they’re busy or having a bad day.  Others have been poorly constructed, use bad grammar, use capitals incorrectly and have spelling mistakes.   Last week I received a number of e-mails, and an attachment relating to a specific project, from an organisation that formed earlier this year and spent a fortune on their corporate identity. Amazingly none of the e-mails had a sign off saying the name of the organisation or the contact details for the sender, never mind a logo or consistent use of colour and typeface.  The attachment didn’t even have a title, reference to the project to which it referred or a date. Unbelievable!

I wonder how many people read what they are about to send before they send it, think how it looks and consider whether the words they have used could mean something other than what they want to say.  What do you do and what horrors have you experienced?

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27th July 2011 / Posted in: Branding, Communication strategy, Marketing strategy, Social media, Social networking, Social networking policy

Social Media - a Brand Building Force

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8th April 2011 / Posted in: Blogging, Communication strategy, Marketing strategy, Social media, Social networking, Social networking policy, Strategy, Tweeting, Twitter

Unravelling Social Media

As a result of my social networking I was invited to the Payroll World Spring Update Conference (www.payrollworld.com/springupdate/) to demystify social media, and as an effective user of social media the following is a blog of the presentation.

Unravelling social media

The presentation was a whistle-stop tour covering:

• what social media is and what makes it different
• why people and companies use it
• how companies can use social media and how business professionals can use it in a business context.
• the benefits of using social media
• why lots of companies, particularly the HR department, get worried about social media

Many people think of Facebook when they think of social media those with kids probably wonder why they’re chatting on Facebook with their school friends when they only saw them half an hour ago.  It’s no different now from how kids used spend time on the phone.

But there’s a lot more to social media than Facebook - particularly from a business context. It’s no longer the “new” thing - it’s here to stay, so we can’t ignore the changes going on around us and whilst we need to adapt, the needs of the business must come first.

What is social media?

According to Wikipedia social media is: “a blending of web-based or mobile technologies and social interaction for the co-creation of value”
In essence it’s how we use todays web-based technologies - at home and on the move to communicate,  and this interaction creates value by enriching our lives in some way. 

Examples of social media

In the same way the marketing mix is made up of a number of different communication channels such as advertising - TV, radio, press etc, PR, direct marketing, to name a few, social media is made up of 6 broad categories.  As with advertorial  -  which is paid editorial - there is a cross over between some of the core types of social media and as technology advances the cross overs will probably become greater.

In the same way an organisation would use a combination of press and TV advertising supported with PR, if the marketing strategy defines that social media as an appropriate tool to reach their market then they are unlikely to find that using one communication channel will meet their strategic aims.

One of the problems encountered with social media is people focus too much on the tools rather than what they are trying to achieve.  I often come across businesses and individuals who say ‘I must start tweeting’ rather than I’m tweeting, blogging and using LinkedIn to build relationships with my target audience.

There are 6 broad categories of social media:

• Social networking sites: are probably the ones that come to mind when someone mentions social media eg.Facebook, LinkedIn.
• Facebook is predominantly B 2 C (business to consumer) and conversely LinkedIn is professional business networking. Since 2002, LinkedIn has been building the world’s largest professional network on the Internet. It now has more than 90 million users in 200 countries, who conducted nearly two billion people searches last year.This group includes sites with a variety of functions such as finding stories based on your interests - Reddit and StumbleUpon, recommending stories to others - DiggIt, sites that tell followers where you are - such as FourSquare. The list is endless
• Sites for images: still or moving - such as YouTube, Picasa, Flickr.  As well as being a site for uploading films and music, YouTube has become the second largest search engine after Google
• Blogging - is the publishing of a short article on the internet either through their own website or use blogging tools such as Wordpress or Blogger.
• Microblogging - is the publishing of a a very short article - only 140 characters (although there is software to extend) and the most well known platform is Twitter. Twitter is a a network devoted exclusively to microblogging. It’s predominantly B2B although there are many B2C successes.
• Group forums: Those of you that use LinkedIn will be familiar with the groups, forums and discussions.
• Web based sources of information: web based sources of information to which anyone can upload information - the best know of which is Wikipedia

I must stress these are only a few examples in each sector as there are many, many others you may have heard of.

What makes social media different?

Firstly - unlike other, traditional media social media is free whereas traditional forms of media used to take products or services to market have all had a cost - both in terms of media space and in preparation of the communication for that medium. It’s also immediate and can have very little or no lead in time. 

The biggest difference is that social operates on three levels:

1. As you’d expect - the corporate message - in my case SFM Consulting
2. Next is a corporate message from an individual. Historically you only expected this from a spokesperson - but many companies allow their staff to communicate as say Sarah of SFM Consultiung
3. Finally you as whoever you choose to be.

Social media is simply a communication channel but where social media differs from other communication channels is that any member of staff can set up accounts on various social media platforms and blog or chat away. It operates in real time so there aren’t the lead in times with most forms of social media as there are with traditional forms, and communicating in real time social media can add value to a business.

Conversely, whilst you may think that because it’s real time, it’s instant therefore it’s out of date or forgotten very quickly. However everything posted on the web can be found at a future date so there are other risks and benefits.

Why use social media?

From a business point of view, the main reasons people use social media are for:

• Finding or meeting people: old colleagues and friends or people with a particular skill or expertise
• Finding out things, information and learning: It’s an enormous, and quick to use,  source of information which provides learning and development opportunities.
• Sharing, collaborating and influencing: Sharing information such as blogs and articles which is often done to drive traffic to the website. It enables people with similar, often specialist skills and knowledge to communicate and collaborate with similar people.  IIt provides exposure to the great people who work in a company and the great work done by a company. Using social medial can raise your profile.
• Socialising and keeping in touch: To socialise - this doesn’t only apply to Facebook - I use Twitter for keeping in touch with business friends and contacts.
• Marketing: It’s a new platform for amplifying communications,  a source of client or customer insight and it facilitates the customer experience - internally and externally - and provides direct, two way engagement. It also levels out the playing field as the cost and accessibility is the same whoever you are. The choice of social media used by an organisation should be driven by the marketing strategy not the desire to have a presence on Twitter, however companies need to watch whether their competitors are using social media as if the your clients or customers are reading about your competitors not you, you have a problem.
• Recruitment: We have a generational change. School and university leavers communicate on Facebook so it’s appropriate to communicate with them on the same platform. Many large organisations are successfully using social media for recruitment. There are conferences dedicated to it - and it’s not just school or university leavers using social media for job hunting, and as with marketing it levels out the playing field.

How organisations can use - Internally

However a company chooses to use social media it should be driven by their communications strategy and not something they fall into.  An attitudinal change is probably needed for social media to become an intrinsic part of the communication internally and externally. 

• Communication:  Having no voice or being unheard is the main contributor to breakdowns in relationships and working relationships are no different from personal ones in this respect.  Social media is an open form of communication and encouraging openness is to everyone’s benefit.
• Breaking down silos & geographical barriers:  Where social media differs from other communication channels is that any member of staff can set up accounts on various social media platforms and blog or chat away.  They are collaborating, communicating and building relationships. Harness that to the organisation that employs them and think how powerful it can be.
• Influence: People that communicate well tend to get listened to and it is no different on social media.  Influencers are not those at the top but those that connect with the maximum number of members in a community. They can make change happen, so it’s important for every organisation to know who is a key influencer.
• Learning:  There’s a great deal to be learned from social media - from information that is circulated, comments people make, by watching your competitors - the opportunities are endless. Probably the most difficult thing is being selective and disciplined about your use of time. Information sharing and distribution using social media platforms are a useful training resource.
• Collaboration:  Collaboration using social media within an organisation is like a staff survey going on all the time.  Comments are a great gift as they aren’t hearsay so can be acted upon, whereas office gossip can’t.  Social media tends to enhance the perception of HR as  they are seen to be doing something.

How organisations can use - Externally

Social networking should be part of the communication and marketing strategy which is driven by business strategy so it’s essential that whoever writes the social media strategy understands what the business needs, and if it is to be successful there is board level buy-in.

• Marketing: Remember, if it’s only your competitors, and their staff, using social media to talk about the market sector in which you operate - you are in trouble. Not only is your company invisible to your target audience, but if your staff are inspired by what they read don’t be surprised if they join the competition. It also allows interaction with existing and potential clients/customers and drives traffic to your website
• Influence:  Influence operates at three levels: the company. the individual on behalf of the company, the individual.  As I mentioned earlier it is those that have the greatest number of contacts and followers in a community that are the biggest influencers.
• Collaboration: Collaboration isn’t just something that happens internally. Many organisations with niche roles encourage collaboration externally to increase knowledge and job satisfaction.
• Expertise: Companies can position themselves as experts by giving exposure to the great people that work for them and the great things they do.
• Recruitment: I’ve already mentioned that social media is a rapidly growing tool for recruitment and also has the benefit of being far less costly than traditional media. Last year Oracle did 99.8% of their recruitment through social media.

Who should own?

Marketing,  Human resources and IT need to work together to develop and implement a social networking strategy to ensure the brand is communicated accurately, internally and externally, in everything they do.

The benefits

• Free:  As well as social media being free, your employees are brand advocates - your best form of free advertising.  It’s a leveller as companies of all sizes have equal clout.
• Improved communication: Positive communication culture and this invariably has a positive effect on innovation and learning. 
• Real time: It has brought corporate communication into real time.
• Breaks down barriers - geographical, communication: The combination of social media and smart phones can remove geographical separation in multi site organisations.  Internal social networking systems get staff collaborating and working together - the cumulative strength of this is usually greater than the sum of the constituent parts.Social networking brings out the influencers - and this link can make things happen.
• Feedback mechanism: Feedback is the most valuable asset - internal or external. As it’s ‘written’ it can be acted upon. From an internal perspective you can’t stop employees being negative about their employer or colleagues - they’ve always done it - in the coffee room/pub, out with colleagues/friends. If these negative comments are on social media they may be quashed by colleagues. If they stimulate others to join in - you know there is a problem and because the comments are in writing they can be acted upon.  Historically gossip was hearsay and HR couldn’t address - the business benefits if these conversations are in the open.  Curiously people who don’t like to speak out in public are often happy to “speak” via social media.

The concerns

I’m sure everyone has concerns about social media or works with colleagues that do, however if you start looking for negatives - you’ll never stop finding them.

Rather than take the cup half full approach, embrace the positives and have sensible guidelines to protect against the negatives.  Having reams of strict rules won’t work as most people have an inner child - telling them something isn’t allowed makes them rebel and they give it a try.  The fact that many staff will have smart phones means they can access social media throughout the day if they choose to.

Kodak have been actively using social media for 4 years & Thomas Hoehn, Director of Interactive Marketing says that the fears people used as reasons to avoid social media just never materialised. (http://www.kodak.com/US/images/en/corp/aboutKodak/onlineToday/Kodak_SocialMediaTips_Aug14.pdf)

• Reputation: A leap of faith is needed to let staff embrace social media and start connecting, and because social media is relatively new, and the media only like bad new stories - there’s a long way to go before we eradicate the fear. The fear is: fear of the unknown, fear of transparency, fear of the immediacy and fear of employees damaging the company’s reputation. Coca Cola’s on line social media principles can be downloaded from the internet (http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/socialmedia). They are short and they encourage their staff to have fun, be smart, to use sound judgement and common sense and follow their Code of Conduct.  People aren’t aware, or forget, that the Internet has a long memory. Don't publish anything if you aren't confident about as  it will still be on-message in 12 months time.
• Damage to the brand: In addition to reputation damage can be done by an inconsistent approach to the brand. Everyone within an organisation is a brand ambassador so everyone should understand the brand. Many companies already have inconsistencies with their brand - whether it is internal policies not reflecting the brand or recruitment methods not reflecting the brand, to name but two, so good education and understanding of the brand is essential if staff are to use social media and their message is consistent with the brand.
• Time wasting:  Firstly we can’t and shouldn’t assume staff are wasting time, however many organisations still judge staff by what they are seen to be doing and Tweetdeck or LinkedIn on the screen suggests they aren’t working.  However, there will always be lazy staff or time wasters.  There was a time when they stared out of the window and day dreamed - today there are just different distractions.  Management and HR can be unnecessarily worried about distractions. Performance is the issue - culture needs to be output driven rather than driven by rigid rules.
• Lack of trust: If you don’t trust a member of staff I would ask why you are employing them? An over-controlling culture will cause rebellion and disengage staff. Social media won’t engage disengaged staff. If your employees are engaged, and they believe in the values of your company, and can operate in a transparent culture in which they are trusted to do things the right way, then you have nothing to fear from them embracing social media.
• Lack of understanding:  Staff need to understand the aspects of the communication strategy that affect them, how and why the company uses social media, the brand and what they are encouraged to do. In my experience if staff understand what you are trying to achieve and why, rather than being given set of rules saying ‘you mustn’t’ they feel involved, empowered and are more likely to get involved in the way you want them involved

To summarise

• Social media isn’t a new fad - its here to stay.
• When a company adopts social media - internally and externally - will be driven by it’s strategy and the needs of the business. 
• For social medial to be an effective tool internally and externally a positive approach to educating those involved and understanding the aims are essential.
• Integrating social media into the internal and external communication strategy will be influenced by the organisation’s culture and the ability of diverse departments - namely marketing, IT and HR to collaborate.If the culture is negative and one that looks for problems the outcome will be negative.

SFM Consulting can provide training for individuals and companies to help them get started with social networking.

Read more on Unravelling Social Media >

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25th March 2011 / Posted in: Blogging, Communication strategy, Marketing strategy, Social networking, Social networking policy, Strategy, Time management, Tweeting, Twitter

Blogging 4 Business

An invitation from Sussex Enterprise to present a case study about my blogging experiences at their “Blogging 4 Business” breakfast networking event was proof that my blogging is working.

I gave this presentation on 15th March 2011 following Richard Smith of the Internet Consultancy (www.theinternetconsultancy.com) presenting “A handful of fundamentally important things you need to know about blogging for business” and James McLeod of Narvi Digital Media (www.narvi.co.uk) presenting “Your blog, how to get started.”

Summary of the presentation

I work in the B2B sector as a business consultant advising business directors on making their strategy reality through:

• managing their resources effectively
• brand alignment
• management of significant projects

It involves getting inside a business, so building trust is an integral part of winning client business.  When I reflect on where my clients come from, and the collaborative opportunities in which I have become involved, none have come from cold calling.

They’ve all come from:

• Face to face networking
• Personal recommendation
• Social networking

In essence all my business opportunities have arisen from people getting to know me as an individual - either face to face, or through the personality (my brand) that I have developed through social networking. Consequently my marketing strategy focuses on putting myself in front of people - physically and through what I write.

Blogging is just one of the tools I use to deliver my marketing strategy and I try to blog every couple of weeks.  The other tools I use include:

• face to face networking. I have to admit being a “poacher turned gamekeeper” as I used to hate face to face networking in the days when I worked in London and always used to find myself trapped by weirdos and not knowing how to get away. Now I understand the principals, I enjoy it and my business benefits from it. So much so that  I’ve gone the other way and  provide training about how to network and run and participate in role play sessions. I regularly attend Chichester Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Sussex Enterprise, First Friday, South Coast Design Forum and a number of less regular or ad hoc events
• social networking - tweeting and LinkedIn.  I tweet and contribute to discussions and questions on LinkedIn regularly and have found that social networking has speeded up the “getting to know you” process. I don’t use Facebook as it’s more appropriate for B2C businesses.
• giving presentations
• writing guest blogs

If networking is something you do to grow your business - whether it’s face to face or social - it’s important to remember that the golden rule - give before you take!  Help someone else first. If you don’t comment on their blog - don’t be surprised when they don’t comment on yours.

All these activities also drive traffic to my website - and the reason I want traffic is that my website is where you find the detailed information about my business skills and experience. It underpins “the real me” which I present through my networking activity.

How I started blogging

I have to admit that my first foray into blogging was my husband’s idea. His career has been in corporate and financial PR so I reckoned he knew a thing or two about communications.  He suggested I interview CEO’s of SMEs about their business experiences and publish the interviews on my website as “lessons learned”  For anyone familiar with McKinsey Quarterly you’ve spotted where this idea came from.  At this point I should add my husband works with FTSE 100’s .... and I don’t.

The first was an interview with an outgoing CEO and incoming CEO - both of whom had worked together and would continue to do so after the changeover.  It was a very interesting interview. It took many hours of work from preparation before the interview to publishing but I achieved it in less than 4 weeks. This first blog was 2433 words and when I saw very little traffic to my website my husband was very supportive and said I just needed to do more interviews. So I did. The most recent was a staggering 5482 words. The first part of the interview took place in April 2010 and I finally published it in October 2010. Again, a fascinating process, hours and hours of work but the results were the same.  Checking Google Analytics was depressing - the Lessons Learned hadn’t driven traffic to my website.

The changes I made

Before I set up another lessons learned interview I decided to take stock, look at what I was doing and try something else.  I was aiming at a different market from my husband so I decided to make use of  the contacts I’d made through networking - many of whom blogged.  I read their blogs, I asked lots of questions and the turning point was an invitation to a social networking event organised and hosted by a451 (www.a451.co.uk).

There were two speakers at the event who used social networking in contrasting ways - Francoise Murat an interior and architectural garden designer (www.francoisemurat.com) who had grown her business using social networking and Dr Tony Mobbs from IBM who talked about how social networking enabled collaboration and learning within IBM.

After hearing what other people did, reading other blogs and listening to Francoise I decided that “lessons learned” was not right for me and what I needed to do was write short, punchy and relevant blogs as the market to which I’m appealing hasn’t the time, or inclination, to read 5,000 words.  My brand is me - not what my husband thinks it should be, so it’s essential that this comes across in everything I do and write. One of the phrases I use to describe branding is “your brand is like the words in a stick of rock - the same all the way through.”

Making technology work for me

I used Wordpress to blog, which had been embedded in my website by my designer, and to speed up Tweeting I took a step outside my comfort zone. I needed something to link Wordpress to Twitter so asked and read about plug ins then downloaded one that linked the two so my blogs would be tweeted automatically.  I also published my blogs on LinkedIn and circulated to relevant LinkedIn groups. As the tweeting of a blog is a moment in time I’ve learned to circulate more than once - but not to the extent my followers think I’m milking it!

In Summary

• Review your marketing strategy and if social networking is part of it then you need to work out which are the most appropriate tools to use and how you will use them. Remember that all your social networking must be consistent with your brand
• Time is an important consideration - everything takes time but the most important thing is to schedule your priorities NOT prioritise what’s on your schedule. If blogging is a strategic marketing tool you need to be scheduling time to blog.
• Be committed - this comes back to scheduling. If your blog is on your website, you blog regularly for a period then nothing for months it sends a message.  Your marketing strategy should  be driven by a time schedule not a personal whim.
• And finally - the most important rules - remember the Golden rules of networking: - give before you receive - comment on other blogs and they will comment on yours

Read more on Blogging 4 Business >

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