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Bad Language Writing about business, technology and marketing
As our professional and personal lives become more connected through social media, it’s common for organizations to have some employees representing their brands on social networks away from the office.
As these overlaps take root, it’s important to implement a social media policy so both the employer and employees understand what’s expected with respect to roles, responsibilities and behavior.
This visual was inspired by the observations of Jeff Arsenault, a colleague that was in attendance with me at a local business event recently. He noticed people meeting for the first time inquiring about each others Twitter handles as well as folks being introduced in conjunction with their Twitter name…I’d like you to meet Mark/Intersection 1.
When social media types gather, this type of behavior goes unnoticed. We get so immersed in the culture we often don’t take the time to think about what we’re actually doing.
Has feeding our social media stream become an obsession? How might this impact our ability to be “present” and really connect with people online or face-to-face?
This visual was inspired by some great tips I read in Sociable, a new book written by Vancouver entrepreneurs, Shane Gibson and Steve Jagger.
The book offers up some excellent examples of how to take online relationships to the next level by bridging the social media gap through face-to-face interaction.
Findings from the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer have caused a bit of a stir across the social media community – the report states that peer to peer trust levels have dropped from 47% to 27%.
There has been some great dialogue and insight regarding these findings:
Personally, I still have a high level of trust when it comes to the opinions and recommendations of my friends and close colleagues. But I can see how trust might erode as our social networks stretch. For those that have huge 2nd and 3rd generation networks, trust probably would decline across higher degrees of separation.
“Democratizing” social media allows organizations to leverage employees, customers, vendors and other brand influencers to stretch social capacity – expanding the content and communication base to help nurture awareness, influence, engagement and action.
This visual was inspired by an interview with Scott Monty, social media trailblazer at Ford. He brings up a great point about the challenges presented by time and scale – to be successful, social media needs to be channeled across the whole organization…not through just one person or department.
Sometimes we get so engrossed with the social tools that we forget about the quality of the content we add to the stream. After getting called out on Twitter for my use of Foursquare, I decided to produced this video tip about adding value to your online conversations.
This visual illustrates the way I describe opposing Social ROI “parties” to clients.
My personal opinion is that metrics are important. But I also believe that not everything you do needs to have a firm number attached to it to make it beneficial to your business.
This most recent point was pounded home in a classic Social ROI rant by David Meerman Scott. Two things David said really resonated with me:
Most companies don’t measure ROI (actual return on investment) with their existing marketing programs. For example, how many organizations know the real return of print ads, PR campaigns, press releases, trade shows, brochures, etc?
The ROI chatter masks a fear of the unknown. Businesses that don’t (or choose not to) understand social media discount its value based on the ROI argument – while continuing to spend on old marketing that, in most cases, is not measurable either.
This short video visualizes 10 social media concepts including social capacity, social tools, social media strategy, engagement, social listening, etc.
A special thanks to A.M. for permission to use “Aldwych Ave.”, a great tune off “Today is…” Check him out at http://www.musicbyam.com
One of my plans for 2010 is to start adding some video content to the blog – simple productions like the one here, video posts/rants/comments, interviews, etc.
I’d love to get your comments…are you interested in seeing this type of content? Any other suggestions?
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