Quick Hits: Notes From The Social Media Meetup

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April 17, 2010

Who’s up for some interesting weekend reading?  Ok, if you’re like me, then you are ready to get out of the house today and enjoy the nice weather.  Before you do though, I’d like to share some of the notes I took at The Conference Board’s ‘Social Media Meetup’ this week.  I’ll keep them direct and to-the-point because there were so many interesting sessions I’d like to mention.  Keep in mind, these were just some of the ideas I found most interesting from each presenter.

Social Competencies of Highly Effective Leaders

Jim Lavoie (CEO Rite Solutions)
  • If you’re a knowledge worker, you will hate it when you’re irrelevant.  The older, “boomer” generation needs to continue to learn so they can remain relevant in today’s workforce.
  • Jim talked about the idea of “knowledge tethering”.  You can’t expect the “old” leaders to want to give their knowledge freely. They won’t.  You have to inspire young workers to contribute to the future of the company then tether them to the historical knowledge sources.  Collaboration can be that bridge to capturing the historical knowledge and bring about the innovation of the younger generations.
  • You  (leadership) need to accurately describe the problems the organization is facing to the younger generation so they can bring their energy to possible solutions.
  • Employees bring perspective.  It’s not just about their degree.  Where have they traveled? What are their hobbies?  Maybe they can play a “puzzle piece” you can’t because they have a different perspective from you.  If you don’t share because there is 10% of your employees that will leave, maybe if you share, only 5% would leave.  Cut down on turnover by increasing your communication.  Change your tactics.
  • Grassroots done  individually does not make a lawn.  I absolutely loved that point!  Capitalize on small groups who are being innovative.  Band them together, recognize their efforts, promote it organization wide.

Findings of What Hyper Social Organizations Do

Francois Gossieaux  (Partner, Beeline Labs)
  • How can your customers trust you if you don’t trust your employees?  If you do not trust your employees, are you hiring the right people?  If you have faith that you’re bringing the right people into the organization, you should trust them unless they prove to be untrustworthy.
  • Social interaction is the “warm and fuzzy” we all crave.  We need to bring that sharing mentality back to business.
  • Just about any process can be turned into a social one.
  • Look into “design thinking”.  How can that help your organization?
    • Define- What’s the issue?  Who is the audience?
    • Research
    • Ideate- Brainstorm.  What motivates your end user?
    • Prototype- Begin pulling all your ideas together in a way that makes sense for the users.
    • Choose- Without emotion, select the most powerful solution.
    • Implement
    • Learn- Gather feedback and measure success
  • Bring your legal team to social media conferences.  Get them comfortable with the positive uses of social media in business.  The risks are no different than giving your employees access to a telephone or e-mail.

    Social Analytics and Measurement

    Christopher Frank-  (VP, Global Marketplace Insights, American Express)

    • When you are trying to measure effectiveness of something like Twitter, look at the number of tweets about your company vs. the number of tweets that are serviceable (where you can work to resolution).  This is your service ratio.  Now, of those where action could have been taken, how many were actually engaged by your customer service?  This is your engagement ratio.
    • One way to approach measurement of social media effectiveness is to make it relevant for the business unit, not the whole company.
    • Effective analysis will look like
      • Evaluating the absolute position (are we getting good traffic?)
      • Assessing the position relative to your competitors
      • Tracking the change over time
    • Make this your mantra- There is too much focus on counting.  There needs to be more on outcomes.
    • Who are your advocates?  Find them and get them on board with the mission first.

    What Makes Great Business Videos?

    Daniel Blackmon (COO and co-founder of Howcast)

    • Dan facilitated a good discussion of what makes a good business video.
    • One tactic is to provide less serious,  information via video to potential clients.  You don’t always have to take your company so seriously.
    • Really exploit YouTube to get your message out.
    • Set up a YouTube channel for your organization.
    • Use popular You Tube “celebrities” to help sell your services and raise awareness of your product or service.
    • You get built in distribution when you combine the YouTube subscribers and the followers on Twitter.

    So there you have it.  Some of the great sessions at the Social Media Meetup. Stay tuned because on Monday I’ll be sharing a more detailed look at my favorite session that was presented by Greg Matthews from Humana, Inc.

    One Comment

    • Re: knowledge tethering

      Management should look at the passing of institutional knowledge from one generation to another in terms of how valuable the information is. In some cases, the knowledge contained between a retiree’s ears walks out the door at age 65, but that retiree was paid to gain that knowledge and is therefore company property. Precious little progress will be made by a younger employee who has to re-learn what the company already paid someone to learn. I am currently training to take over for my boss, who will be 65 in two years. That means I have 2 years to learn how he does his job, which he’s been at for 40 years. Honestly, who would say that 2 years is enough time? If you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t think so.

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