At 1000heads we pride ourselves on authentic communication. We never tell audiences what to say when they take to social channels. And we’re immensely proud of our ethical stance. But it’s amazing how often a client will expect us to do precisely that: to control what is being said.
This is old-style reputation management. It comes from the PR discipline, where the whole raison d’etre involves controlling corporate messaging and ensuring that slogans and ideas are repeated, and parroted back by the throng. And because recall of brand messages has been a focus of market research, the perception among clients is that controlling the message should be a priority.
What such businesses fail to understand is that classical PR messages are no longer in control. Conversations happening online are not abiding by messaging guidelines, and this is a *good thing*. Audiences are interacting with brands on the basis of authentic experiences and impressions, not in accordance with a script, thus the information they share is a useful source of research on brand understanding and engagement. The response may not always be the desired one, as we’ve talked about before, but it’s all part of the process.
In the Social Age, reputation management is a matter of listening and responding to interactions, not a matter of controlling conversations. And the scale of responses varies from taking part in conversations, to knowledge aggregation, influencer engagement, problem solving, product optimisation, and supply chain monitoring. It’s not just for externally facing operations either. Social reputation management can involve learning from a firm’s own employee and service relationships.
From a PR perspective this is a revolution; no longer is the act of brand management a broadcast function. It’s not entirely reactive either. It’s more facilitative, and as such, requires sophisticated strategic thinking. Creative scenarios need to be established that will generate data that can inform how a business should develop. It’s not about controlling conversations, but rather about providing a safe, supportive space in which questions may be posed, suggestions can be made, and ideas can be cultivated. As a function, social brand reputation management bears a closer resemblance to objective audience research than traditional PR or advertising. But as such, the return on investment for social business reputation management is potentially much higher than old-style message control, because the output of interactions is designed to improve business processes, and to develop more genuinely constructive and mutually beneficial relationships. While all businesses have to sell their products to stay in business, they are more likely to achieve this end if all stakeholders are engaged, having an interest in the production process. Rather than “customer loyalty”, social reputation management generates audience investment.
As social business professionals, it’s our job to uphold this distinction and to educate our clients about the differences between old-style corporate message control and social reputation management. It can be easy to slip, quietly, into old-style PR in our dealings with clients, just to keep them happy. But that way be dragons. Authenticity requires trust. And any kind of messaging control involves artifice.
Or social business. Or social theories, whitepapers, stats or case studies.
It is to get stuff done. The stuff that your business is made of; be that selling shoes or healthcare provision or delivering fish.
We don’t call our colleagues on the telephone to discuss how awesome it is to talk on the telephone and brainstorm all the creative things we could do with the hold music. We don’t use email to tell our customers that we’ve redesigned our email signature. So why do we spend so much time using social platforms to talk about social platforms?
Sure, if – like us – your business relies on a sophisticated knowledge of this technology and the behaviour behind it, it makes sense to ponder these themes. However, in most companies the tools are best used when they disappear and become effortless conduits for better sharing, better innovation and better engagement.
For example.
Nurturing a company’s existing ‘social stars’ is an important first step in driving uptake of internal social tools, but in his recent blog post ‘Mr Popularity and Your Enterprise 2.0 Community‘, Steve Radick reminds us that “those very active champions who are so critical to the early growth of your community may also be the cause of its downfall.”
‘Mr Popularity’, the early adopter who is super comfortable with the technology , may also be skewing the agenda towards discussions about social itself, and inadvertently discouraging less confident and knowledgable staff from speaking out.
This indicates a wider issue. For most businesses, ‘social’ now brings with it such an aura of specialist knowledge and skills – usually accompanied by earnest company announcements, laborious workshops and promotion of predictably young digital natives to positions of guru-dom – that people forget it is an innate human instinct made up of familiar concepts such as openness, warmth, listening, quick reactions and word of mouth.
Every single person in a business, whether they’re a tech whiz-kid or still mistrustful of email – should understand that they have the ability to be social in what they do -whether they make tea or run the company – using whatever tools they find best fit their own personality and role.
Yes, some basic tool training is needed so that everyone has the full raft of options, and keeping on top of developments in social media can be inspiring. But the sooner the internal comms platform becomes a space to do deals, share ideas and tackle problems rather than being seen as an ‘innovation’ in itself; the sooner customer-facing social platforms are used to give better service and forge deeper relationships, rather than being considered social by simply existing – the sooner we’ll see results.
Results that everyone can take credit for and celebrate.
Today I’d like to share a really useful social business deck created by Michael Brito for Edelman Digital, promoting his new book ‘Smart Business, Social Business’.
Then I’d like to make some suggestions about how we can broaden that concept of social business to become something a little more, well, physical.
Brito’s slides provide an admirably clear and comprehensive overview of the evolution and anatomy of social business. They outline the industry’s progression from social customer to social brand to social business, and include some good basics around social organisation models, governance and training frameworks.
However.
To be a fully social business, you have to be social on and offline. There is an assumption in these slides that ‘social’ means ‘social media’ (whether you’re using it as an internal tool or for consumer engagement), when of course social media is just one channel businesses can use to be social, both inside and out. Take a look:
Brito makes a great start here, but don’t forget that a fully social business will also have to look at things like:
Helping staff to be more social offline – getting them regularly interacting face to face with consumers and each other
Embedding a knowledge of what ‘being social’ and ‘word of mouth’ means beyond social media so that the attitude and effort that goes into the virtual presences and intranet translates into every area of the business
Understanding and using social catalysts such as observational learning, authenticity, gaming and disruption in everything you do – be that in the retail store, in the staff kitchen, or on Facebook
Another important qualification I would make to Brito’s definitions is that social businesses facilitate people being social with each other, not just with the business itself. This is essential because the most valuable, trusted and behaviour-changing sharing occurs between people and people, not between people and brands.
That’s our take on social business. Questions? Thoughts?
Is your business ready to be mobile? Because your workforce is.
Social contact manager Gist has put together this infographic on the rise of the mobile worker and, as you can see, productivity is no longer synonymous with desk-bound nine-to-five. A mobile business culture is going to be very important to the next generation of talent.
However, it is important to remember that mobile working does not necessarily equate to working virtually. We have had the tools to work remotely for decades now, and we still rely on water coolers and meeting rooms. We still travel thousands of miles just to share the air with a colleague; video conferencing is as disappointing as it ever was.
This is because the fact remains that nothing beats face to face contact when we’re getting a job done. It brings energy, challenge and emotional investment to our work, prevents misunderstandings, ensures quicker resolutions, and allows much more chance for serendipity to surface.
Yes, working socially means using the best social technology available – but it chiefly means working by engaging with people. And that’s still generally best done in the physical world.
Of course, it’s great to opt out of the rat race. Some focused tasks are much better done in a room of one’s own, where we can put the outside world on silent. When we feel like we have the freedom to move where we wish, that sense of empowerment often brings more passion and ownership to our work.
But when we’re not tethered it’s also much easier to be social, as well as solitary. We can go and see people, rather than always talking on the phone. We can mingle on the shop floor while we’re creating that customer service strategy. We can dip between different regions, departments and desks, ensuring that we’re not solely sharing with and learning from the one guy who sits next door. This is where I think the real value of mobile working lies.
Mobile technology is a gamechanger; I couldn’t work effectively without it. But make sure you’re using it to be more social in the real world, as well as online.
I spent yesterday afternoon in a 4-hour Developing Social Business workshop, hosted by the excellent folks at LikeMinds and attended by sterling social practitioners such as Lloyd Davis and Benjamin Ellis and a variety of brands from Stardoll to Investec.
What was most interesting to me was the fact that, although we covered a broad range of topics from organisational models to social media guidelines, internal comms platforms to leadership styles, the conversation kept coming back again and again to the frightening tendency of social to collide the personal with the professional.
How careful should you be when posting opinions online? What are you liable for as an employee? Should employers interfere with personal venues, providing positive guidance and encouragement, or simply step back?
When does a personal opinion have professional impact?
This has become a big roadblock of fear that companies get stuck behind when thinking about becoming social, and there are no easy answers. But it’s essential that we make some kind of peace with this uncertainty . This issue exemplifies the fact that people-centred business necessarily brings a host of ethical and cultural challenges, and often trust, common sense and giving permission to act and yes, maybe fail, are our only enablers to move on.
Benjamin Ellis made the excellent point that this is a relatively new dilemma; in the past our work and personal selves were one, as we lived in geographically bound communities where our identity embraced both. Thanks to the transparency of social media, we are in some ways going back to this state where we have to consider our whole selves as visible to colleagues, bosses, potential employers, competitors and family and friends.
I have three main thoughts.
Basically, this is a good thing. People should not be hiding or masquerading their real selves at work, and employers need to start accepting that for most of their customers or colleagues, discovering that Mark guy cross-dresses at weekends or that Jane hates the HR woman is not going to matter one iota. If someone is moaning about you with good reason, focus on tackling the problem and treating them better, not restricting what they say. If they’re just moaning, fine, it happens. We all do it. It won’t collapse the business.
Online word of mouth may be more widely and permanently visible, but the same principles should apply as offline WOM. Do not libel, do not betray confidences, and do not stand up and yell something in a crowded pub (or Facebook page, or blog, or Twitter feed) you aren’t willing to defend. Even more so if you’ve invited your boss or clients along to that pub (or platform). Otherwise, go ahead and be yourself. But if you want to criticise other people, you have to give them the right to do the same to you.
As Lloyd Davis pointed out, this heightened transparency and accountability means that businesses are going to become increasingly conscious about who they hire. If you don’t think that a candidate truly reflects your values as a business, then why would you want them in your team? Again, to me this is a positive development.
The legal situation around employee word of mouth continues to develop with all the halting contradictions you might expect, but Andrew Gerrard did highlight one important development I was unaware of: a case last year between American Medical Response, who sacked an employee after she criticised her boss on Facebook, and the US National Labour Relations Board, who in response asserted for the first time that employers break the law if they discipline workers who post criticisms on social networks under the First Amendment for free speech.
Of course, there are exceptions. The NLRB’s Facebook page asserts that Facebook comments can lose protected status depending on where the discussion takes place, the subject matter, the nature of the outburst and whether the comments were provoked by an employer’s unfair labour practice. But in general, people simply have to be allowed to speak their mind, even if it is unpalatable to you.
There is so much more to say on this, but it is clear that businesses simply have to stop being afraid of their people, and vice versa. Micro-monitoring and disciplining of word of mouth is not sustainable, and ineffective. Approaching the issue with honesty, realism and a willingness to try is the only way past the roadblock.
Should the leader of your business also be your social media star?
High profile ‘social CMOs‘, who use social platforms to express their opinions and connect with their customers and the general public, have received a lot of attention over the past few years – as shown by this recent infographic from Mark Fidelman and Henry Min.
But how important do you think it is that a leader within your business – be they the CMO, CEO (such as Zappos’ Tony Hsieh), COO, MD, or other high-ranking individual – has a social presence when building a social business?
Doubtless, there are clear advantages.
It shows a commitment to social that starts from the very top. If your busy boss thinks it’s worth investing time to listen and connect, you’ll be much more likely to value social too.
It gives the brand a clear personality – and by definition indicates certain traits such as openness, sociability and accountability. If this is the person ultimately running the show, knowing how they think and what they love can generate an emotional connection with consumers that translates into big brand loyalty.
If your leader is being exposed to the conversation out there, they are more likely to be led by what people really want, rather than their own preconceptions or pipe dreams, and to filter that through the business.
However, there are also a number of dangers.
The voice of the CMO or CEO can overwhelm the others in the company and give the impression of a very autocratic model. Empowering people across the business at all levels to engage online results in a much more eclectic and groundswell feel.
Not all leaders have what you might call, um, engaging characters – no, not even heads of marketing. If people simply don’t like their personality, it can reflect badly on the brand.
Other less senior team members may feel intimidated – at a recent conferenceGavin McGlyne, who got employees at TGI Fridays blogging, admitted that they would be horrified if the boss joined them on the blog.
It takes huge commitment; especially if they are not from the marketing team, the leader must collaborate with PR, customer services and HR to answer the inevitable questions thrown their way – either by quickly sourcing the right answers or redirecting people to appropriate profiles.
The truth is that outside the US, and the obvious brands, social CMOs, CEOs and other senior spokespeople are more rare; many businesses still rely on the savvy intern to run their social show. Social engagement is either not valued enough to warrant the big cheese’s precious time, or they are simply not confident enough to take on such a prominent and apparently high-risk role. For more insights into what CMOs in particular think of social, this 2011 BazaarVoice survey is an interesting read.
But what do you think?
Does the effectivness of the social CMO/CEO concept always depend on the size, style and staff of the company, or should all reluctant leaders pull up their social socks regardless, and get to grips with what becoming an essential part of business leadership?
Since the start of the year, I’ve been heading up our Social Business Consultancy here at 1000heads, and I’ve been spending a lot of my time this month listening rather than talking; seeking ideas from a huge range of people on what a ‘social business’ of the future really should look like and the challenges in implementing some of those changes now.
Our social consultancy clients include Mars, Heineken, Nokia, Cancer Research UK, Veria and LocateTV, so we well know that being social can mean something very different depending on what sort of company you are – the approach has to be bespoke.
However, I’m also a believer in starting with what the ideal social business might be and being bold in challenging businesses to question and evolve themselves as radically as possible.
Last week’s #trulondon Social Recruiting Unconference provided some provocative insights. Far from just looking at social recruitment, the discussions ranged from corporate culture and internal blogging to personal branding and legal issues. One of the best (and most divisive) sessions looked at The Future of Work, where we discussed whether (and which) businesses really will move towards a decentralised, networked and mobile way of doing things.
A particular inspiration was Kevin Wheeler, whose Future of Talent Institute has some valuable insights on working culture, structure and tools in a social world. Browsing his site, I was reminded of this Clay Shirky video on Institutions vs Collaboration presented at TED in 2005.
Yes, 2005.
The ways in which work is going to change have been obvious to many people for a while, but businesses are only just starting to take baby steps towards implementing them. It’s time to accelerate the rate of change. Businesses have always been slower than people, but that excuse is wearing increasingly thin.
I am, as you can, tell, on a mission. Get in touch if you want to join in.
Word of mouth and social media events remain vibrant in Paris on the run up to Christmas. Recently I had the pleasure of participating in one of two panels organized by L’Atelier (@AtelierNetwork, a BNP Paribas subsidiary). The aim was to stay aware of disruptive innovations in business and technology and how to stimulate conversation around them – a perfect fit for 1000heads.
In the first panel, the speakers included myself; Antoine Sire, Global Head of Communications at BNP Paribas; Nicolas Bordas, President at TBWA France and author of “L’idée qui tue” (a book on disruptive ideas); Philippe Gérard, Inter-Enterprise Training Product Manager at Cegos; and Pierre Chappaz, Founder at Wikio & Kelkoo
Me with the contributors on the first panel – photo credit @Fadhi’Live
The place (and the use) of social media within business was, predictably, heavily discussed. Most of the largest French companies still block access to social networks, highlighting the importance of getting focused on a cultural and behavioral acceptance first. At the end of the day, when done well, spending time on social networks is a long term investment in gaining knowledge and competitive advantage, building connections, and even shifting sales.
Two main concerns emerged for the companies attending : the issue of brands ‘losing control’ of their reputation and image, and the need to put an authentic (and human) touch on each interaction.
A few obvious lessions have been learned when it comes to guiding employees in their social interactions without limiting them. Once it has set clear goals, a company need to have have flexible and evolving guidelines. Although there needs to be a strong ethical consensus, employees need to be empowered to learn, adapt and yes, even make mistakes as they progress.
Unscripted messages, spontaneity in communication style and trust are important components to succeed.
This test and learn approach was widely agreed to be the best. Iterating and feeding collective knowledge capital is vital for an active learning organization, so everyone must share their discoveries of what works and what doesn’t on an ongoing basis.
Nicolas Bordas of TBWA shared the story of a company splitting their employees into two content-creating teams : proactive and reactive. This is in fact an approach we have used for years at 1000heads – not by splitting teams but by helping clients clearly define their social content and engagement as proactive or reactive to ensure an even mix of the two.
Another important point is that personal branding shouldn’t exclude the less visible employees, if they have the inclination to participate. The challenge is to be both inclusive and strategic; to create an internal consensus about external engagement.
