Global Center for Digital Era Leadership

Help Us Pick a New Name for SMinOrgs

Creating a Digital Era Brand: 13 Key Factors… and a Request

Creating a new brand identity in the Digital Era poses a unique set of challenges – especially for a technology-oriented organization. This post suggests 13 key factors that should be considered to maximize the likelihood of success. And in true 2.0 fashion, we invite folks to participate in a survey to help us decide which of four new brand options we’ve identified is the best one for us to use going forward.

 

Over the past 12-18 months it has become increasingly obvious that the Social Media in Organizations Community (SMinOrgs) needs a new name/brand (we explain why at the end of the post). The first order of business for 2013, therefore, has been to create a new identity. Working with our Global Leadership Team and staff, I have embarked on an intensive exploration and investigation that has not only produced four viable options, but has taught us a lot about the most important factors to consider when establishing a new brand in the Digital Era. These factors are primarily relevant for organizations, but they can also be used by individuals who want to create valuable brand identities for themselves on multiple digital platforms.

This post provides a checklist of the 13 factors we used to identify four options for our new brand. In addition to sharing those factors, we’d love input from a wide range of folks as to which of the four options is best. After all, this is the 2.0 Era, and we know better than to try to finalize our new brand without soliciting input from “the crowd.” To that end, we greatly appreciate your participating in and sharing this brief survey.

The survey will be open until February 15, 2013, and we’ll publish the results in a future blog post. In the meantime, if you have other recommendations for factors to consider when (re)creating a Digital Era brand, we’d love to hear them. Thanks!

Next on the agenda, creating a logo and a tagline…

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

A Digital Era Brand Should…

Based on our experience with the SMinOrgs brand over the past 3+ years, lessons learned from the (re)branding efforts of others (e.g., Netflix and the Qwikster debacle), our internal discussions and fairly exhaustive research, we developed a list of important criteria for creating and selecting our new brand name. Specifically, a Digital Era brand should…

1. Reflect the essence(s) of what an organization and its product/services are all about rather than being a literal description
2. Maintain relevance over time, even as the entity and its focus change
3. Be unique but not confusing
4. Have an easily explainable meaning (but that meaning doesn't need to be immediately obvious)
5. Invoke positive emotions (or at least not invoke negative ones)
6. Not be used in another context with a meaning that's contrary to the organization’s objectives
7. Not appear too Anglicized or American (especially true if the target market is global)
8. Be short - fewer than 10 characters
9. Not have to rely on CamelCase to make the meaning/name clear; look equally acceptable in any capitalization combination
10. Be relatively easy to pronounce (or at least the mispronunciations should be bearable!)
11. Not end in an S (creates too many problems when trying to write in the possessive)
12. Be available as a url (.com, .net, and .org), Twitter handle, etc.
13. Be trademark-able

 

Why We Need a New Brand Identity

SMinOrgs was started as a LinkedIn group called Social Media in HR in May 2009. By the end of that year, the name had changed to Social Media in Organizations to reflect the growing community’s broader focus on all functional areas.

With the rise of mobile technology and cloud computing, as well as the increasing importance of analytics, our focus has continued to evolve and expand. Although the applications and implications of social software are still critically important, its impact cannot be considered in isolation from other major technological changes. We therefore need a new brand identity that better reflects our focus on social software and mobile devices and cloud-based computing and analytics, both individually and with respect to their interplay.

The human capital/people implications of technological change have been and will remain paramount, but in addition to classic HR considerations, our perspective encompasses interest areas such as communication and collaboration, knowledge management and innovation, training and development, organizational change, and individual career management. Woven throughout these emphases is a focus on leadership, both formal and informal, at all organizational levels – and even from organizations themselves. The notion of what it means to be a leader in the Digital Era is ever-present…

Here’s a working description that reflects our current focus:

We are a global, multi-disciplinary professional community whose members represent organizations of all types and sizes in all economic sectors. Our mission is to help these individuals and their organizations function more efficiently and effectively in the Digital Era. Going beyond marketing/branding, sales, public relations and customer service, we primarily focus on the internal applications and implications of social and digital technologies, particularly in terms of the opportunities and challenges they create for employees, leaders, and organizational functioning. Focal topics include risk management, strategy, governance, organizational structure and design, employee engagement, and all aspects of human capital management including job design, talent management, compensation, training and development, internal communication and collaboration, etc.  In addition to addressing changes that have immediate and direct impacts on organizations, we also explore general social and economic trends that have longer-term or indirect impacts.

One of the key benefits we offer is access to foresight (about the present, future present and future trends, etc.), which allows members to gain insight into how their professional lives and organizations are likely to be changed, maybe even radically transformed, as the Digital Era progresses.

We have idenfitied four possible new brand names that generally reflect this focus and - perhaps more importantly - meet the 13 criteria listed above. We’d love to know what other people think of them and will use that input to make a final decision. To that end, we hope you'll participate in and share this brief survey, which will be open until February 15, 2013. Thanks!

LinkedIn Poll: Books about Social and Digital Technology

For the past few years I have wanted to create a definitive list of books written about social and digital technologies. This year I have finally been able to undertake the project in earnest, thanks to the help of Marci Stewart and (especially) Genifer Snipes.

Our data collection efforts are winding down, and we are getting ready to start sharing some of our findings. Before we do, I'm curious to know people's perceptions of the number of titles available, so I've created a quick poll on LinkedIn. I appreciate your taking a minute to respond to the poll (below or directly on LinkedIn) and reshare it with your social and digital networks.

Interested in learning what the poll reveals, as well as the correct answer? Check back in about a month or subscribe to the SMinOrgs S.M.A.R.T. Blog to be updated as soon as they're published. In the next few weeks we'll be sharing a post that presents our "Wordle analyses" of the titles and descriptions of the books we've found so far, and in early 2013 we'll be presenting infographics with some fascinating statistics.

Don't know what a Wordle is? Read this post to learn more.

You may also be interested in a related poll we conducted in 2011: Paper or Digital? The Results are In... And it's a (Virtual) Tie!

And speaking of polls, you may also want to check out: Leveraging LinkedIn Polls: 21 Quick Tips to Maximize Success

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

Tumbln into Tumblr I

A sample of the activity on the SMinOrgs (and GDCDEL) Tumblelog, this post shares recent entries about social and digital technologies ranging from photos of old school social media... to reblogs of social network demographics... to links to SMinOrgs resoures... to Digital Era humor. A little something for everyone...

===//===

SMinOrgs recently established a presence on Tumblr, and I have become an ardent convert. Though we've never experienced much success withou our FB page and still haven't done much with our G+ page, I was immediately enthusiastic about both Pinterest and Tumblr and have committed to full engagement on both platforms.Our Pinterest presence and engagement have both grown steadily since last spring, and we're off to a good start on Tumblr so far too.

I detailed some of the reasons for my Tumblr enthusiasm in a recent post entitled Tumbln into Tumblr: 7 Reasons it Hits a Social Media “Sweet Spot”. As a follow up, I'd like to demonstrate the platform's versatility by sharing our recent activity as a regular feature on this blog. I hope you enjoy the entries as much as we do.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

Here, in reverse chronological order, are the items we "tumbld" from September 7 through September 14, 2012. Scroll down or click on the links below to check each entry out.

• Social media is multi-media.
• SMinOrgs on Pinterest and Tumblr - And More!
• “Sometimes I feel like I am Charlie Brown to Facebook's Lucy."
• Retro hipster chic… or just plain silly? You decide.
• Tumbln into Tumblr: 7 Reasons it Hits a Social Media “Sweet Spot.”
• Reblog courtenaybird: Report: Social Network Demographics in 2012
• Allstate Social Media Bootcamp Video Excerpts
• The Kindred Spirit Mailbox on Bird Island, NC: THIS is Social Media

If you'd like to be notified of our Tumblr content as soon as it's published, you can follow us if you have your own Tumblr account (we follow back!), or you can subscribe to our Tumblr posts via RSS feed or email. We also share regular “Today on Tumblr” posts via some of our other social networks, and of course you can visit our page whenever you like!

===//===

Social media is multi-media. Posted: 14 Sep 2012 03:31 PM PDT Social media is multi-media. This old-school bulletin board in Chicago includes websites, phone numbers, and QR codes… And the posters include individuals, small businesses, civic and neighborhood groups, religious groups, and a local politician. So much going on in a small - and free - space. Love it! Ironically, there are no references to any digital social media spaces. Love that too. ===//===

SMinOrgs on Pinterest and Tumblr - And More! Posted: 14 Sep 2012 04:55 AM PDT SMinOrgs on Pinterest and Tumblr - And More!: The proliferation of social media platforms can be overwhelming, but when you find one that is a great fit, it’s very exciting - and two just doubles the fun! We’re very enthusiastic about the ways in which Pinterest and Tumblr add to our social media portfolio. I’ve shared news about our Pinterest presence previously. In our latest email blast I also talk about how we’ve “tumbld” into Tumblr. Yes, all that alliteration was intentional. : ) ===//===

“Sometimes I feel like I am Charlie Brown to Facebook's Lucy." Posted: 13 Sep 2012 02:53 PM PDT “Sometimes I feel like I am Charlie Brown to Zuckerberg’s Lucy ;).” - Matt Kruse. This cartoon made me “Chuck”le, and I’m sure many of us can relate! Thank goodness for Matt Kruse and Social Fixer (SFX), though - they’ve saved the Facebook experience for me. Are you an SFX fan? - csh ===//===

Retro hipster chic… or just plain silly? You decide. Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:19 AM PDT Retro hipster chic… or just plain silly? You decide. I took this shot on the streets of New Orleans in March 2012. - csh ===//===

Tumbln into Tumblr: 7 Reasons it Hits a Social Media “Sweet Spot.” Posted: 12 Sep 2012 09:14 AM PDT Tumbln into Tumblr: 7 Reasons it Hits a Social Media “Sweet Spot”: If you haven’t considered adding Tumblr to your social media portfolio yet, this post offers seven reasons why it hits a “sweet spot” for established individual and organizational users, complementing and augmenting engagement on other platforms in unique and effective ways. Additional reasons are welcome. There’s something “meta” about sharing a blog post about Tumblr on Tumblr… : ) - csh   ===//===

Reblog: courtenaybird: Report: Social Network Demographics in 2012 Posted: 11 Sep 2012 07:48 AM PDT courtenaybird: Report: Social network demographics in 2012 17 out of 24 sites (71%) have more female than male users. Most male-dominated site? Slashdot then Hacker News and Stack Overflow. Most female-dominated site? Pinterest then Goodreads and Blogger. Facebook and Twitter have the same gender distribution: 40% male, 60% female. The only sites in this survey with more male than female users are Quora, Reddit, Orkut, Github, Stack Overflow, Hacker News and Slashdot. Click on the image to see all the demographics Pingdom collected and reported. - csh ===//===

Allstate Social Media Bootcamp Video Excerpts. Posted: 10 Sep 2012 06:25 AM PDT Allstate "Social Media Boot Camp" presentation excerpts from Social Media in Organizations This video clip includes excerpts from a presentation on social media I gave at the Allstate Supplier Diversity Conference in August 2010. It’s still relevant! - csh ===//===

The Kindred Spirit Mailbox on Bird Island, NC: THIS is Social Media. Posted: 07 Sep 2012 07:51 AM PDT   Now over 30 years old, the Kindred Spirit mailbox on Bird Island in Sunset Beach, NC is another great “THIS is social media” example. Click here to learn more and check out additional entries.

Tumbln into Tumblr: 7 Reasons it Hits a Social Media “Sweet Spot”

If you haven’t considered adding Tumblr to your social media portfolio yet, this post offers seven reasons why it hits a “sweet spot” for established individual and organizational users, complementing and augmenting engagement on other platforms in unique and effective ways. Additional reasons are welcome.

 

Tumblr. Follow the world’s creators.

That’s how Tumblr presents itself. On its About page, it goes on to say:

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme's HTML.

Although Tumblr is over five years old and has more than 70 million blogs, it’s still relatively unknown – and probably even less understood. I confess that my initial experiences with it weren’t positive, and I’m still trying to figure out its vibe (yes, it’s the kind of platform that has a “vibe”), but its potential value became clear once I started to work with it.

Because images seemed to predominate Tumblr content (or so we thought), we originally assumed it would be a good place to reshare some of the original content from our burgeoning Pinterest presence. With that in mind, SMinOrgs’s Assistant Community Manager (who is also our Pinterest maven), Marci Stewart, took the initiative to create an account. When I then went in to do some basic set up of the SMinOrgs Tumblr page, I realized that Tumblr offered many more possibilities than we initially thought, and I decided to establish a full presence and commit to regular contributions.

There are seven main reasons Tumblr hits a “sweet spot” for SMinOrgs, which are described below. Can you think of other reasons why Tumblr is worth adding to an individual’s or organization’s social media portfolio? We’d love to hear from you!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

1. Tumblr is designed for multimedia sharing.

Sure, other platforms allow for multimedia sharing, but none of them do it as comprehensively, seamlessly, and easily as Tumblr does. As the icons in the graphic below depict, there are seven options for types of posts: Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, and Video. Not only are these options clear for post creators, they’re also clearly indicated for post readers: not only does the post itself immediately convey its content, but each one has a visual tag indicating what type it is.

 

2. Tumblr enables sharing of posts that are longer (and richer) than tweets and status updates, but not as long as regular blog posts.

From the blogger’s perspective… Tumblr posts require more thought and effort than a typical tweet or status update, but the investment required to create a high-quality Tumblr post is significantly lower than the investment required for a typical blog post. That balance enables the creation and sharing of more content while avoiding information overload or posts that get lost in a high-volume, fast-moving stream.

From the reader’s perspective… With only 140 characters, tweets can’t convey a lot of information beyond headlines for content-oriented posts. If you want to see an image or see a synopsis of a post, you have to click on the link. Posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ can provide more information, but the format is generally restricted to a thumbnail image, a title, and a brief description. With Tumblr, however, the “at a glance” view can either share a complete story or provide stronger indications that a deeper dive is warranted. At the same time, because the posts are short form, they don’t require as much of a time commitment as a blog post to review and absorb.

To share a food-related analogy… Tumblr provides a nice “small plates” balance between the tastings offered by Twitter and the full meals offered by blog posts.

 

3. Tumblr allows for a better balance between personal and professional identities than other platforms.

Many early adopters and social media enthusiasts believe it’s okay to blur the boundaries between their personal and professional networks and activities, but most people don’t share that view. They see Facebook for personal use, for example, and LinkedIn for professional use, and often create separate accounts for their personal and professionally-oriented Twitter activity. Because of the types of posts that can be created on Tumblr, as well as the way in which engagement works on the platform (i.e., following is asynchronous, and direct interactions are relatively limited), it’s easier to convey individual personalities while still maintaining a high degree of professionalism and not getting too personal. I especially appreciate the fact that I can be a little more informal and cheeky with my Tumblr posts than I can on places like LinkedIn – or even this main blog.

 

4. Tumblr provides a unique balance between flow and permanence.

The main feed on a Tumblr page is a stream, similar to what you would find on Twitter, a Facebook or Google+ page, or a LinkedIn group. Unlike some of these other streams (especially Twitter), the stream can flow fairly slowly. SMinOrgs on Tumblr may have one to two posts a day, but it is unlikely to have more than that. In addition, each post can be tagged, like in a full-form blog, which allows bloggers to aggregate content on specific topics. Visitors to the page can then either view the stream in reverse chronological order, or they can click on a tag to see all content related to a topic of interest.

 

5. Tumblr blends subscription options, offering readers more flexibility.

Like many social media platforms, readers can “follow” a tumblelog (yes, that’s what they’re called) if they have their own Tumblr account, which means that posts from that blog will show up in the feed on their own dashboard. They can also subscribe to a tumblelog using the RSS service (with or without having their own account), including receiving posts via email, a reader, or a social media aggregator. And of course if a tumblelog is public, anyone can view it by visiting the page.

 

6. Tumblr facilitates differentiated sharing and resharing of content better than other platforms.

All social media platforms allow sharing and resharing of content, but what I like about Tumblr is that each type of sharing is clearly indicated. On the SMinOrgs tumblelog, for example, reblogs are clearly marked in our main feed. In addition, posts we’ve liked are listed in a separate section of clickable snapshots. And for readers, sharing options for each of our posts are clearly indicated, making it easy for them to reshare via multiple platforms.

 

7. Tumblr can serve as a great aggregator of content from other platforms.

This may be my favorite reason for leveraging Tumblr. Although it probably can’t serve as a sole or primary platform, it can be a very powerful and effective secondary platform for individuals and organizations that are well established in other places and can capitalize on and benefit from Tumblr’s unique characteristics. Its multimedia format in particular makes it very easy to channel content from other platforms (e.g., Pinterest, a main blog, SlideShare, YouTube) into a single, well-differentiated feed that is both more appealing and easier to digest than the feeds in other platforms.

 

SMinOrgs on Tumblr

The SMinOrgs Tumblelog is still very new, but it was fairly easy to define how it fit into our overall portfolio of platforms. Here’s how we describe our focus on our About page.

To complement our presence on other platforms, SMinOrgs uses Tumblr as an informal mixed-media channel for sharing images and ideas from everyday life that involve social and digital technologies in some way. Some of the content we share here will also be shared via other channels (e.g., the S.M.A.R.T. Blog, Pinterest), but much of it is unique. Our focus here is on highlighting things we think are novel, humorous, cool, and particularly thought provoking.

Here are some samples of how we’ve created posts using the six of the seven types of posts (we haven’t shared audio files yet):

• Text: SMinOrgs is SFW (sharing an observation about Tumblr)
• Photo: The Kindred Spirit Mailbox… THIS is Social Media (an original image, also posted to Pinterest)
• Quote: I’m beginning to think I should list “technospeak” as a second language (from internal SMinOrgs communication)
• Link: Recently on @SMinOrgs VIII (a recent S.M.A.R.T. Blog post)
• Chat: Why We Still Need Print Media (resharing a joke someone sent me via email)
• Video: Allstate presentation video excerpts (embedded from SlideShare)

If you have a Tumblr account, we hope you will follow us (we follow back!). If you don’t, you can subscribe to our Tumblr posts via RSS feed or email. We also share regular “Today on Tumblr” posts via some of our other social networks, and of course you can visit our page whenever you like!

We’ve developed some lessons learned from our initial experiences with Tumblr, as well as some best practice recommendations. We’ll share those, along with other reflections and guidance, in future posts. Please subscribe to the SMinOrgs S.M.A.R.T. Blog to be notified as soon as these posts (and more) are published.

The “Tweets per Day” Sweet Spot: Key Research Findings

The results of a recent LinkedIn (LI) poll (n=482) offer strong evidence of people’s preferences for quality over quantity when it comes to Twitter. For 58% of the respondents, the “sweet spot” is 0-5 tweets a day, and a cumulative 79% said that ten per day should be the max. The quantitative results are enriched by dozens of comments that offer best practice insights via three universal themes.

===//===

Back in June I created a LI poll to see what people think is the optimum number of tweets from an organization (versus an individual). My original goal was to gather input to help us refine the approach to our own Twitter feed (@SMinOrgs) (see this post for an explanation), but it quickly became evident that the poll results could also be valuable to other organizations that use Twitter, not just as a newsfeed but in other ways as well.

By the time the poll closed in late July, we had almost 500 votes and dozens of comments on the poll itself, and dozens more comments on the various LI groups and other digital communities where we shared the question/poll. The results were enlightening and even a bit surprising.

This post shares the poll results and the themes that emerged from people’s comments. Although the poll is closed, I invite people to continue to share their insights by commenting here or on the poll itself. And, of course, I hope you’ll share the results via Twitter. : )

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

The Survey Says…

Click here or on the image above to view the poll results and read the comments. The consensus for fewer tweets is very strong, with 58% of the respondents indicating a “sweet spot” of 0-5 tweets a day, and a cumulative 79% saying that ten per day should be the max. A quick examination of potential demographic differences reveals the following:

Age

• All age groups were fairly evenly represented, with relatively more respondents in the youngest (18-29) and oldest (45+) age brackets.
• The preference for fewer tweets was stronger among older respondents. Whereas the ratio between 1-5 and 6-10 was roughly 64:36 for respondents in the younger age brackets (18-36), it was 80:20 for respondents in the 37+ brackets.

Seniority

• The overall group was fairly senior, with about two-thirds being managers or above.
• People who were not identified as managers or above appear to have a higher tolerance for more tweets.

Gender

• The respondents were well balanced between male and female.
• The male/female ratio across the difference responses was fairly even.

 

Consolidating Comments

In addition to the comments on the Twitter poll, I consolidated the responses on the various LI groups and other digital communities where we shared the question/poll:

Click here to open/download the "Tweets per Day" comments

As the comments started coming in, it became apparent that the question was like a Rorschach test. The assumptions, projections, and preferences respondents shared revealed a great deal about them  and their views of the Twitterverse, which in turn reinforced the fact that Twitter is many (often opposing) things to many people. Individual comments were influenced by factors such as:

• An assumption that the question was focused on for-profit enterprises
• A lack of awareness of how Twitter can be used in non-commercial ways, even by for-profit entities
• A lack of understanding of what a newsfeed approach to Twitter is
• Limited awareness of how a newsfeed approach can be deployed by non-media organizations

Even with these varying perspectives, strong themes emerged in the comments that complemented the quantitative results. These themes can be organized into three major categories. If you’ve been involved in social technologies for a while, you’ll recognize how universal these themes are, not just with respect to Twitter and other forms of social engagement, but as a general set of best practices.

 

Quality trumps Quantity

• If the quality of the content being shared is good, people will tolerate high quantity.
• Inappropriate tweeting can quickly undermine overall perceptions of quality. This can include:
  • Over-tweeting (i.e., tweeting too much)
  • Excessive repeat tweeting (i.e., resharing the same content multiple times)
  • Cluster tweeting (i.e., posting a bunch of tweets in a row without spacing them out)
  • Self-oriented tweeting (i.e., marketing, advertising, sales, promotions and other “it’s all about us” tweets)
  • One-directional tweeting (i.e., only talking “at” followers without responding or engaging with them)
• Curating content based on quality helps followers deal with information overload and increases your value to them.
• If you’re viewed as a noise-maker rather than a signal-provider, people will tune you out, which means even your best content will be missed.
• If you don’t have something substantive to share, don’t tweet.

 

Context Matters

• The quantity/quality balance for an individual organization depends on a variety of factors, including:
  • Goals and objectives for engaging on Twitter
  • Characteristics of the organization, industry, and key stakeholders
  • Characteristics and preferences of followers
• Remember that there are two ways people view your tweets: via their own activity stream and directly on your Twitter page. Think about the impression you give off through both views.
• Time is important, in a number of ways:
  • Knowing the time zones for most of your followers
  • Tweeting during peak and off hours
  • Tweeting at a consistent pace
• In certain situations, like live tweeting during an event or responding to a crisis, people’s tolerance and appetites for greater quantity increase.

 

Be Mindful in Your Approach

• There is no “one best way.” Each organization should define its Twitter engagement based on the context factors noted above.
• There is also no need to simply “guess” at what might work. Actions like the following can help define and refine specific best practices:
  • Soliciting feedback from followers
  • Using available tools to monitor and manage Twitter activity
  • Reviewing metrics specific to your engagement

For a deeper dive into these themes – and to derive your own take-aways – I encourage you to read the comments on both the LI poll and the uploaded Word document. If you think I’ve missed something, please let me know.

 

Related Resources

Twitter for Rookies (and More): 4 Guides (and More) includes

• Twitter for Rookies: Simple Guidance for Getting Started
• 15 Twitter "Worst Practices" for Rookies (& Others) to Avoid
• 6 Tips to Avoid Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags
• To Hash or Not to Hash? A Decision Making Guide

Sorry, Marketers, You’re Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT]

The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Social Networks

 

Coming Soon: A Case Study of how SMinOrgs uses Twitter

Just as we’ve recently done with Pinterest, we’re developing a case study that illustrates how we’ve developed our Twitter engagement over the past three years.  Although we’re a small, start-up professional association, we believe the lessons learned from our experiences can be valuable to others. Check back and/or subscribe to the blog to be notified when the case study is published.

 

Human Capital and Career Management in the Digital Era: Three Foci

I recently gave three presentations (two free webinars, one conference session) that focused on the intersection between social media and other digital technologies and human capital management, from both individual and organizational perspectives:

• Recruiting in the Digital Era: Guidance for HR Professionals, Recruiters, and Hiring Managers (HR.com webinar, June 14, 2012)
• Career Management in the Digital Era (Forte Women MBA's Conference, June 30, 2012)
• Social Media Policies and More: Checklist Guidance for Managing Digital Era Risks (HR.com webinar, July 10, 2012)

The sections below provide brief introductions to and comments about each session. You can view the embedded decks directly or access (and download) them via the SMinOrgs SlideShare channel.

As always, I hope you find these resources valuable, and I welcome your feedback.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

=============================================================================

Recruiting in the Digital Era

On June 14, 2012 at 1:30 pm ET, I led a free webcast for HR.Com enttitled Recruiting in the Digital Era: Guidance for HR Professionals, Recruiters, and Hiring Managers.

You can vew the slides below or on the SMinOrgs SlideShare channel.

I'm happy to report this webcast was very successful. Here is a link to a recording of it. You must join HR.com to access the recording, but membership is free.

 

Recruiting in the Digital Era: Guidance for HR Professionals, Recruiters, and Hiring Managers

View more presentations from Social Media in Organizations

=============================================================================

Career Management in the Digital Era

On June 29, 2012 I gave a presentation at Forte Foundation's MBA Women's Conference entitled Career Management in the Digital Era. The attendees were extremely engaged and asked lots of great questions.

You can vew the slides below or on the SMinOrgs SlideShare channel.

After I uploaded the deck to SlideShare, it was "hot" on both Facebook and LinkedIn and was featured on SlideShare's home page for a while. It was also reshared fairly widely on both platforms, as well as Twitter, and continues to be viewed and downloaded regularly. I'm glad folks find it valuable!

 

Related Resources

Dressing for Success in Cyberspace:Giving Yourself a Digital Make-Over (S.M.A.R.T. Blog post)

Dressing for Success in Cyberspace: Giving Yourself a Digital Make-Over (Forte blog post)

Additional related resources are included in both of the above posts, as well as at the end of the slide deck.

 

Career Management in the Digital Era

View more presentations from Social Media in Organizations

=============================================================================

Social Media Policies and More

On July 10, 2012 I presented a free webcast for HR.com entitled Social Media Policies and More: Checklist Guidance for Managing Digital Era Risks, which I'm happy to report was very well received.

You can access the archived recording of the session here. You have to join HR.com to view the recording, but membership is free.

You can also view the presentation deck below or on the SMinOrgs SlideShare channel.

After I uploaded the deck to SlideShare, it was "hot" on both Facebook and LinkedIn and was featured on SlideShare's home page for a while. I'm glad to see the topic resonated with folks!

 

Related Resources

This presentation was adapted from this S.M.A.R.T. Blog post by the same name, which was an updated version of my 2011 post entitled Social Media Polices: Necessary but not Sufficient. Additional resources are also included at the end of the slide deck.

 

Social Media Policies and More: Checklist Guidance

View more presentations from Social Media in Organizations

Twitter for Rookies (and More): 4 Guides (and More)

Four S.M.A.R.T. Blog posts offer guidance about how to use Twitter most effectively. Although these posts are targeted primarily to social media rookies, they offer best practices that everyone who uses Twitter can benefit from. Strong positive responses to and intensive resharing of the individual pieces indicate the importance and value of this kind of guidance.

===//===

I've written a number of S.M.A.R.T. Blog posts that offer guidance about how to use Twitter. Although these posts are targeted primarily to social media rookies, they offer best practices guidance that everyone who uses Twitter can benefit from. Based on the number of times these posts have been shared, as well as the positive comments I've gotten, I'm happy to report the guidance has been well received. 

Scroll down to read more about: 

• Twitter for Rookies: Simple Guidance for Getting Started
• 15 Twitter "Worst Practices" for Rookies (& Others) to Avoid
• 6 Tips to Avoid Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags
• To Hash or Not to Hash? A Decision Making Guide

Keep scrolling for some bonus features:

• Finding the Tweets Per Day Sweet Spot: LinkedIn Poll
• The Pin of the Day (POTD) and #SMOPin
• Last Week on @SMinOrgs

As always, I hope these resources are valuable to you, and I welcome your feedback.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

 

Twitter for Rookies: Simple Guidance for Getting Started

Still not certain whether you should take the Twitter plunge? The best way to determine its value is to give it a try. Focusing on using Twitter professionally rather than personally - including staying current with local, national, and global news - this post offers simple best practice suggestions for setting up your profile and getting started.

Click here to read the post.

According to a recent Pew study, only 15% of internet users are active on Twitter. There's still an awful lot of prejudice against Twitter, which Hollywood and mainstream media don't do much to reduce. That said, I think the upside potential of Twitter is huge, and if Twitter plays their cards right they could create a future in which it's as common for people to have a Twitter account as they do email and mobile phones. To do that Twitter needs to reinforce its value as an information network (not a social network), promote its serious applications (beyond the banality that's still prevalent), and emphasize its utility as a listening channel. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

15 Twitter "Worst Practices" for Rookies (& Others) to Avoid

Although Twitter continues to grow and mature, many users still engage in some questionable practices when leveraging it. Targeted primarily to Twitter novices, this guide helps people maximize their ability to maintain a high signal/noise ratio and avoid making mistakes that can hurt their individual professional and/or organizational brands.  More experienced Tweeters - including mavens - may want to consider the advice and reconsider some of their own assumptions and activities as well.

Click here to read the post.

This post updates the original 13 Worst Practices post from 2011. Since it was published I've added another worst practice - and it looks like I have to update the list again! I'm happy to report that people will no longer be able to automatically cross-post their tweets to LI. I felt so strongly about that bad practice that I devoted a whole post to it: Twitter Cross-Posting to LinkedIn: Stop the In-spam-ity!!!

6 Tips to Avoid Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags

Though the hashtag has been around almost as long as Twitter itself, many people still do not understand what it is - or more importantly, how to use it appropriately. This post offers six tips to enable Tweeters to not only avoid looking like a Twitter rube, but to maximize the value of hashtagging for both themselves and others. Additional tips are welcome.

Click here to read the post.

Like the 15 Worst Practices and Hashtag Decision Making Guide posts, this post has been heavily reshared via Twitter. In fact, it's still being shared regularly a month after it was published.

To Hash or Not to Hash? A Decision Making Guide

Using a decision-making flowchart, this post helps people determine whether they should include one or more hashtags in their tweets. This guidance is offered as an extension of the previous post, 6 Tips to Avoid Making a Hash of Twitter Hashtags. The post also provides links to additional resources that enable both rookie and more experienced Twitter users to maximize their tweeting effectiveness.

Click here to read the post.

This post was featured on Social Media Today, and the resharing on Twitter and elsewhere was swift and intense! It obviously struck a chord with folks...

But Wait, There's More!

As part of our ongoing efforts to maximize the value of @SMinOrgs, we recently created a LinkedIn poll to elicit people's input on the ideal number of tweets per day (TPD). We have already received over 350 votes, as well as dozens of comments both on the poll and in other forums. A clear consensus has emerged, and the results may surprise you.

Finding the Tweets Per Day Sweet Spot: LinkedIn Poll

Do you use Twitter for professional purposes? Do you follow organizations that use Twitter as a news feed? If so, please participate in a LI poll focused on determining the optimal number of targeted tweets per day. The poll will be open until July 24th, and the results will be beneficial to anyone who tweets on behalf of an organization. We'd love to get 500+ responses, which is absolutely possible with your votes and sharing help. Thanks in advance!

Click here to read the post and participate in the poll. You can also access the poll directly here.

We've also introduced two new Twitter features we'd love feedback on...

The Pin of the Day (POTD) and #SMOPin

To promote and share our growing Pinterest content, we recently started a regular daily feature called the "Pin of the Day" (POTD). Every day around noon ET we feature a specific pin based on the following themes:

• Movie Monday (#moviemonday)
• Tech Tickler Tuesday (#techtuesday)
• What We See Wednesday
• Tech Over Time Thursday
• Thank Goodness it's Infographic Friday (#TGIF)

Intern Marci Stewart is doing a bang-up job populating our Pinterest boards and developing this feature. Want to see what you've missed so far? Just search Twitter for our POTD hashtag, #SMOpin. And of course you can always visit us directly on Pinterest. 

You can also see our POTDs on our Facebook page and our Google+ page.

Last Week on @SMinOrgs

In an effort to share the @SMinOrgs Twitter activity more broadly and entice more folks to follow us, we thought we'd experiment with a weekly blog post that recaps some of the most interesting and exciting activity from the preceding week. This is the inaugural post, written by Twitter manager Lizz Farmer. We welcome your feedback.

Click here to read the inaugural post.

Click here to read the second post.

 

Stay in the Loop

This post is excerpted from the latest SMinOrgs email blast. Are you on the mailing list? If you'd like to join, please send a message to email@sminorgs.net or enter your email address in space provided in the right-hand column of this page.

You can also subscribe to the SMinOrgs S.M.A.R.T. Blog by clicking here.

4 Big Barriers to Social Media Adoption in Organizations: Key Research Findings

The results of a unique and ground-breaking research study (n=644+) indicate that there are four main barriers to increased adoption of social technologies in organizations: lack of knowledge and understanding, unprepared leadership, fear, and the absence of a well-grounded business case. This post highlights those findings and offers recommendations for overcoming the barriers. It also provides a link to a free report with details on the research and its results.

===//===

Earlier this year Silverman Research initiated a unique and groundbreaking research study that asked people to weigh in on an important Digital Era question: What do you think are the main barriers for organisations in embracing social media practices and what ideas do you have for overcoming them? SMinOrgs quickly embraced the project, called the Social Media Garden, becoming a supporter and advocate. With over 640 participants, the study’s results are both enlightening and edifying, offering great food for thought for both leaders and laggards.

In this guest post Michael Silverman highlights the key findings of the research and provides a link to a free report that offers more details about both the results and the 2.0 research methodology that generated them. I hope you find the results and the report as valuable as I do, and that you’ll share them with others in your organizations and in your professional networks. You can also explore the Social Media Garden directly to get a sense of how the methodology works and the detailed responses people have shared. You can even participate by evaluating the responses of others and adding your own insights. The Garden will remain open indefinitely.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD 

 

Introduction

The advance of social technologies is making organisations slowly wake up to a harsh reality: the control they have enjoyed over communications for so long is diminishing and this poses some difficult challenges. The objective of this research study was to provide some helpful advice to people who are developing, or expanding, the use of social media in organizations. The study was sponsored by Unilever to help push forward the social media agenda in organizations, and to build on their efforts to “social mediatize” the way they work across the company.

The study identified four main, interrelated barriers to social media adoption in organisations:

• Lack of knowledge and understanding
• Fear
• Absence of a well-grounded business case
• Unprepared leadership

This post provides a brief overview of the research methodology and highlights the key findings. A more detailed analysis is provided in the full report, which can be accessed and downloaded for free via SlideShare. You can also obtain more background on the project from the original SMinOrgs Blog post.

 

Methodology and Participants

There is a mounting body of research on the use of social media in organizations; however, none of these studies have been conducted using social media methodologies. Capturing people’s interactions through social technology, and applying the latest text analytics, offers a new and rich source of insight.

The Garden is a collaborative environment that displays comments using data visualisation instead of a traditional list-based format. Conversations displayed in lists can quickly lead to information overload, so the Garden employs advanced statistics to produce an intuitive graphical map. In addition to allowing participants to navigate the discussion more easily, the visualisation also ensures that each participant has an equal chance of being heard. Participants’ ratings of each others’ comments are used to give prominence to the most insightful comments without the need for a moderator.

Once you enter the Garden, it works like this:

1. You begin by evaluating three comments by other participants, which you select from the existing “blooms.”
2. After evaluating these comments, you express your own agreement on five broad statements about social media (e.g., Productivity: I believe that allowing the use of external social media sites at work makes people less productive). Your responses to these statements determine the position of your own “bloom” in the Garden.
3. You then write a response to a discussion question, in this case: What do you think are the main barriers for organisations in embracing social media practices and what ideas do you have for overcoming them?
4. Through The Garden’s visualisation, you can see where you stand in relation to other participants.
5. You can then read, rate and respond to the comments of other participants – and see which comments are resonating with the community.

A short instructional video can be seen here

As an open-access study, the project was publicized via various Social Business, HR and Communications channels and communities. A convenience sampling approach was appropriate given the question asked in the study could be adequately answered by people with an interest in, or experience with, the use of social media. However, this does mean that participants are more likely to be involved with social media than the population at large.

Note: Although the Garden remains open, the analysis reported here is based on the first 644 responses.

 

Results

Responses to the five positioning statements are shown in Chart 1. The data for these questions was collected using sliders (a visual analogue scale). Each bar shows a histogram of responses, as well as the distribution curve, so that both the spread of opinion and percentage agree/disagree can be seen.

 

Chart 1
Overall responses to positioning statements (n=644)

The main points to note are that only around a quarter of participants agree that allowing the use of social media sites at work makes people less productive. There is strong consensus that leadership is more important than technology in embracing social media, yet it would appear that there is still uncertainty about exactly who should be taking the lead – only a third think HR should take the lead.

All comments were included in a text analysis from which 16 themes emerged (see Chart 2 below).

 

Chart 2
Main barriers for organisations in embracing social media practices

There is strong consensus around a lack of knowledge and understanding, as well as leadership, being the main obstacles to moving forward with social technologies. Conversely, generational differences and the issues of trust and employee abuse were not frequently mentioned.

We can add further insight to these findings by grouping participants based on the content of their written comments and then looking at how those groups score on various quantitative measures – in this case, how involved those people are with social media, how much their comments about these issues resonated with the community and the sentiment contained within those comments. This is shown in Chart 3 below.

 

Chart 3
Prevalence of barriers by overall rating, involvement with social media and sentiment 

While there were many comments about the lack of knowledge and understanding of social media, these tended to be written by people with relatively lower levels of involvement with social media. People who had the highest levels of involvement with social media were more likely to make comments about the challenges associated with creating a compelling business case. And, more importantly, comments about the business case were rated most highly by the community. Increased involvement with social media also correlated with the identification of the barrier of inadequate leadership, as well as trust, fear, communication and culture.

Looking at the analysis as a whole, the four most important of these were explored in more detail: Difficulties in creating a robust business case, lack of knowledge and understanding about social media, a failure of leadership to accept new ways of working and fear of the unknown.

 

Chart 4
Interconnectivity between the four main barriers

It must be recognized that there is overlap and interconnectivity between the barriers. For example, in the four barriers outlined above, a lack of knowledge and understanding might well be considered an antecedent of fear, leadership apprehension and business case shortcomings. Likewise, leaders can lack knowledge and understanding, which makes them overestimate risk and become dismissive of, otherwise, valid business cases. People who are looking for support in facilitating the adoption of social technologies should review these barriers and consider the relationships between them with regard to their specific purpose and organisational context. It’s important to note that none of the barriers work in isolation.

The research question also asked participants to suggest ideas about how these barriers could be overcome. This allows highly-rated practical suggestions to be identified, for example:

Conclusion

The main message to take away from this study is that there are 16 barriers that prevent organizations from embracing social technologies (see Chart 2). Although there will be lots of overlap and interaction between these barriers – 16 barriers is a lot of issues for practitioners to think about and navigate. However, all of these barriers appear to have one thing in common: a resistance to change (or put more bluntly, excuses for maintaining the status quo). With the occasional exception of resources and security issues, perhaps the only genuine barrier to embracing social technologies is leadership. The barriers identified in this study exert their influence either as causes or consequences of leadership inaction – it is, therefore, with leadership that opportunity knocks. To make strategic decisions, leaders must grasp the wider implications of these technological advances. The ability of leaders to recognise organisational and environmental shifts, and educate themselves accordingly, will help organisations deal with these sociocultural changes.

The Social Media Garden will remain open for participation and exploration. Please have a look around and add your insights to the mix. We also welcome your feedback on the Garden methodology and the results to date.

Michael Silverman is Managing Director of Silverman Research, a company specializing in applying social media principles to social research. A psychologist and organizational research specialist, he was previously Global Head of Employee Research at Unilever.

 

For more information please contact: michael.silverman@silvermanresearch.com

 

Building a Social Media Bookshelf: What Do You Recommend?

As part of SMinOrgs's ongoing effort to provide resources to folks regarding the organizational implications of social media and other digital technologies, we'd like to collect and share a list of books that people have found valuable. We appreciate your letting us know your favorite(s) and/or must-read recommendations, adding a few words about why you like it/them.

Some of you may recall that I had put out a similar call a couple of years ago. I got great responses, but I was never able to compile all the results into a usable format. Now, with help from Marci Stewart, we can actually get it done! 

I'd like the list to be as comprehensive as possible, including "classics" as well as the latest reads. Works like Groundswell, Wikinomics and Enterprise 2.0 will definitely be on the list, as well as more current books like Digital Leader and Engage!.

What else would you add? Please list your favorite titles below, and/or provide links to resources you think offer definitive lists. Thanks!

We'll be sharing the final list via the S.M.A.R.T. Blog and on SlideShare, in addition to adding all the individual titles to Pinterest. Please be sure to subscribe to the blog and or follow us on one or more of our social media platforms to be notified about the final results (and more!).

- Courtney Shelton Hunt