If you work in a HR role, it’s all too easy to get caught up in daily process. It’s all too easy for you – and those around you – to forget that there’s as much discussion, development and innovation in HR as within any other business field.
Social is, of course, one of the big topics currently circulating in the marketing and HR world. How is social used and monitored in a business? What rights do employees have when using social media? There are hundreds of blogs, articles, and even conferences on the subject.
But lets take it as a given that our employees are using social media and move on to a more practical question: how we can use what our employees are already doing socially to help drive recruitment?
At its best, social media is highly individual and personal. So lets try and harness – not try and deny, resist or constrain – this insight into a tool that benefits the business as a whole.
I recently attended the #trulondon 5 Unconference during Social Media Week. Set up by Bill Boorman, #tru events take a fresh approach to the traditional conference format, offering several discussion ‘tracks’ running concurrently. Boorman’s ethos is built around the idea of people working together to explore a discussion topic, and attendees can move between tracks whenever they want to join a new conversation.
This social approach is itself a great way of involving a mixed demographic and using their sometimes-disparate viewpoints to develop more exciting collective thinking.
Social media are the ‘How’ – and there’s more to life than LinkedIn
Only 21% of recruiters currently use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter together, most opting for LinkedIn as their only platform. Understandably, LinkedIn is a comfortable fit for the recruiter, but that shouldn’t diminish the importance of other social media, especially as a means of presenting potential employees with a well-rounded view of your organisation; not just the one you want to promote from an employment perspective.
The business is the ‘Who’ – so who is the business?
People want to understand an organisation – its purpose, ethos and culture – before they start thinking about the specifics of a job. Building brand awareness (using a blend of platforms) and sharing what makes you different (and special) creates the context for the right conversations to happen.
Giving it a purpose for your business is the ‘Why’ – why are we socially recruiting?
This is where we come full circle. The crux of social recruiting is harnessing your most valuable asset: your people. If your team buys in to the social recruitment process, they’ll do a major part of the job for you. If they buy in to the business’s ethos, ideas and goals, they will become natural advocates, spreading the word through their own networks and communities in a hugely powerful way.
Social recruitment is an evolving concept, much like social media themselves, so there’s plenty more we can share. The challenge – and the opportunity – is to understand how we can use the very nature of social to our advantage as recruiters; rather than trying to change social to fit what we do.
Here at 1000heads we often extol the virtues of using human analysts to derive meaningful insights and recommendations from WOM listening. We also talk about how brands need to be more human when interacting with people in social media (and beyond). For a large organisation to achieve this, and to deal with any customer service issues that arise, there must clearly be some sort of process involved.
But what happens when that process actually makes the humans seem like robots?
Watching the recent Tesco employment story evolve, we saw a well-run and personalised customer service Twitter stream begin repeating the same message to multiple people for hours on end. But regardless of your views on the issue itself something went very wrong with the way Twitter was used to respond to people’s concerns. What’s more, I’ve no doubt that it was a human in charge of the Twitter feed. So what went wrong?
I imagine what we saw here was that Tesco has a prescriptive set of KPIs telling operators how many people they should reply to and a flowchart telling them how to respond in a crisis. These two processes perhaps worked together to make Tesco suddenly appear less human and more like a robotic call centre. Like other Twitter outbursts such as the GAP logo change, this may not have a lasting effect on Tesco’s reputation in the short term. But all brands should remember that human operators are more than capable of appearing machinelike in certain situations. A coordinated, sincere, human response to a situation like this is really hard to pull off, but a modern social business has to aspire to it.
How do you encourage the people running your social presence to come up with a better solution? For me it has to start with measuring the right things. For example, if you measure the % of tweets you are responding to as a success metric, your team is left with no incentive to demand a change to the script when it’s really needed. They’ll just keep on tweeting to hit their quota. It’s the same reason why direct marketing can become labelled as junk mail. The need to hit volumes outweighs the ambition to be targeted and relevant, and brands only entrench themselves deeper when social interactions go wrong.
This problem of blind process getting in the way of delivery has been solved elsewhere. In his excellent book “How to Measure Anything” Douglas Hubbard describes the early days of agile software development, where people measured the speed of work simply because it is an easy thing to quantify and optimise. But when these developers produced a large amount of features that no-one wanted to use, the realisation struck that a gauge closer to a consumer-facing outcome was needed.
So if our supposition is correct the first thing Tesco needs is a shift from speed-of-work based reporting to measurement based on outcomes. In doing so its Twitter team would be empowered with the flexibility to identify an issue and elevate it internally (with the benefit of a linear organisation structure to provide the speed and level of authority needed), which would ultimately allow the brand to respond in a human and empathetic way.
Last week, my boiler broke down (bear with me I do have a point here). For two full days during one of the coldest weeks in the year I had no hot water or heating in my flat, and when I called British Gas I was quickly assured that an engineer would be round imminently to fix the problem.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the person on the other end of the phone was charming, personable and efficient. I hung up feeling like a valued (albeit rather cold) customer, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be left to freeze. But no one turned up. Then, after waiting for more than ten hours, I had a call from the British Gas engineer to say he couldn’t make it that day and would come the next.
As a result, British Gas found its way into my bad books.
The point I want to make (see, I said I had one) is that despite the very good customer service I experienced from one part of the company (in this case, its call centre), the no-show and rather dismissive attitude of another part (the engineer) succeeded in tainting the whole of the British Gas brand for me. I even tweeted about it:
We at 1000heads are strong believers in the fact that in order to become successfully social, brands need to become more human. This is true both on and offline, whether the point of contact between a brand and an individual is someone sitting in a call centre, standing behind a counter or updating a Twitter feed or Facebook wall. People want to be able to put a face to a name, and a personality to a brand. That is what being social means.
But companies are often so preoccupied with ‘humanising’ and engaging people with certain aspects of their brand that they forget that for the average person, the brand is seen as a single entity; if they have a bad experience with one aspect of the organisation, then it will taint their perception of the brand as a whole.
The trick is to get the balance right. Being human should not mean losing sight of the overall message you want to promote, and being professional should not mean coming across as unapproachable or disconnected.
British Gas made the mistake of believing great call centre experiences are the key to customer loyalty, rather than customer service as a whole (although I should mention that it has since apologised and offered me compensation for the extra day I spent feeling like a polar bear in an ice storm). Others have cottoned on to the fact that maintaining a personable, human side to every aspect of their brand is crucial in making people believe and trust the services on offer. Take a look at this little gem. The sign could easily read “Please use other door”, but in saying so much more, it (ahem) says so much more about the brand beyond the doorway….
This week, I claimed that companies like ours are the agencies of the future but somebody put me in my place by pointing out that 1000heads is a child of the last century. Day to day work normally gets in the way of reflection, but this made me pause for thought and consider the journey we’ve been on and the journey that lies ahead.
It was indeed in 1999 that plans to launch 1000heads were first laid. To put this into perspective, there was no Facebook (can a $100billion business really grow that quickly?), no Twitter, no YouTube, no MySpace, and social media meant no more than sharing a newspaper in the park.
We may not have partied like it was 1999 ever since but it’s been an action-packed, white-knuckle ride from our early days in a (thankfully converted) cowshed in rural Oxfordshire. We now have around 75 talented and inspiring people working out of our offices in Soho, we have a dozen more in New York under the leadership of North American CEO Mike Davison, plus growing teams in Australia and Germany.
As the grizzled veterans of social media, we have seen a global industry grow up with us, and around us, and we are proud to be a part of it.
In addition to clients such as Nokia, whom we have had the pleasure of working with for the last seven years, we are delighted that Mars Petcare, Skype, Toyota, Rebel Sports and Gala Bingo, to name but a few, have recently joined the 1000heads family.
Social media is in our DNA but today brands want so much more. We talk a lot about social communications, helping brands’ stories to travel further and faster. People talk and share information wherever they are, whatever they are doing, and whoever they are with.
Meeting that challenge is sometimes scary but always exhilarating and I’m delighted that we are able to welcome some fantastic new ‘Heads’ to the fold, as well as promotions for existing Heads, who together will be part of the leadership team taking 1000heads forward.
Joanne Jacobs takes up a position as Chief Operating Officer in our Sydney office from March 1st. Joanne describes herself as a ‘geekgirl’ and has a passion for all things social. A former lecturer in the MBA program at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business at Queensland University of Technology, Joanne is returning to Australia after a four year stint in London during which time she was Client Director for Xenial and more recently Chief Operating Officer for Hibrow, an online arts offering from British-based film-maker Don Boyd.
It’s a real coup to have Joanne join us and I know she will build on the great success we are already starting to see in the Australian market.
Here in London, Phil Borge has been appointed to the newly created role of Strategic Planning Director. He joins us from PR agency Eulogy! after 10 years of service, where he was most recently Senior Account Director and strategic lead within its marketing services division.
In short Phil is a guy who gets things done and he will be responsible for developing the agency’s approach to client strategy, working with the insights, project management and creative teams across multiple projects and campaigns. He will also spearhead the addition of PR activation within client campaigns.
He will be working alongside Frank Grindrod, previously Group Account Director, who has been promoted to Client Services Director. Frank has been with 1000heads for six years and while ‘social media guru’ is a term he would shrink from, we call him it anyway.
Simon Adamson, another long-serving ‘Head’, has been promoted to Group Account Director and will continue to keep calm while all around him ‘chaordic’ enthusiasm reigns.
We also shortly hope to be announcing the appointment of our first Community Director, another key hire for the business. The Community Director will be responsible for our 20-strong Community team, running social presences, advocacy programmes, and community events.
Our journey may have started in the last century, and it may feel like we have been travelling 100 years at times, but the reality is that we have only just left the station and the tracks are infinite. We are delighted to welcome our new travelling companions on board.
Social media are all about the spread of information through networks of individuals. In other words, WOM: people talking.
But what happens when these conversations are curtailed, constricted and controlled?
There has been a fierce debate raging over the past few days – both online and offline – about the relative pros and cons of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in America, and it could have big implications for the future of the WOM industry – not to mention our everyday online lives.
The bill, originally presented to the United States House of Representatives in October 2011, is intended to pre-empt the problem of Internet piracy in the US by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyrighted material.
So far, so simple.
(Flickr: spaceninja)
But what SOPA and its sister bill PIPA (the Protect IP Act) have done is effectively turned a debate on piracy into a pitched battle between two cornerstones of Liberal ideology: free speech and free markets.
The disagreement pits Internet giants such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia against businesses such as television networks, record labels, book publishers and the film industry. The latter want to be able to protect their copyrighted material from illegal distribution over the Internet, while the former wish to enshrine the right of their users to upload and consume content according to their will (within certain legal parameters, of course).
Although the vast majority of law-abiding citizens agree that Internet piracy is A Bad Thing, many equally believe that it is not the place of government – any government – to control and restrict what they can access on the Internet.
On the other hand, companies, brands and individuals who produce copyrighted material do not want to see their goods trafficked and bandied about (either on the internet or in the so-called ‘real world’) by others who are not them.
Which puts us somewhere in the middle.
As a word of mouth company, we are committed to the spread of information and ideas around the world. Equally, we are committed to our clients and their very real need to keep their goods and services protected from those who wish to abuse them. The question here, then, is whether the proposals put forward by SOPA and PIPA will help protect both agendas. This is a question that does not as yet have a clear answer.
What is clear is that by limiting the number and type of interactions a web user can experience, the checks and controls proposed by these bills may inadvertently stifle the sort of innovation and creativity that is such an integral part of the online world.
But then again, SOPA and PIPA have got people talking – and this itself may help drive change where it is most needed.
First up, our resident Kiwi and HR person, Lucy Armstrong, wanted to share this awesome piece of Rugby World Cup inspired Lego-based wonderment -
When we asked ‘Why is this cool?’ to the rest of the office, the simple answer was ‘BECAUSE IT IS LEGO!’
However, one thing that did come out of this was the amount of time and effort that goes into some of these cool things. The above stop-motion video leads quite nicely into another high-effort delivery, aka: cool thing number two -
Regular readers will know that we like our big Follow Fridays here at 1000heads and last Friday was no exception. The Nokia community team were in the office helping to create the above #FF message out of post-it notes. @My_E72 was over the moon with our message and well, we thought it was pretty damn cool too.
Our third and final cool thing came from one Joel Diamond. Joel had managed to locate what is being labelled as an ‘Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment.’
Every day our teams across the world work extremely closely with the community team at Nokia and it is this great working relationship that allows us all to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, to turn around creative ideas quickly and ultimately to do awesome stuff like this:
The World’s Biggest Follow Friday!
Original artwork by Elina, Elisa, Vilja, Mala and of course JP
We think this is the biggest #FollowFriday the world has ever seen, in the sense that the ‘FF’ itself is written on a massive wall in Helsinki!
Last week, we heard from the guys at Nokia that some of their team were attending this half day course on “graffiti art” and they wanted to know if there was something they could do with their new found skills that they could show off on Twitter or Facebook. As it was a Friday we thought it would be awesome to physically reward some of our community members with a HUGE #FF from a brand they advocate!
It’s important to note that we didn’t choose the guys with the biggest reach (anyone can build something for Scoble), we made a real genuine effort to select those fans who fell more into the category of nascent advocate or in fact those that had just produced some really great content – we feel it is important not to just focus on ‘the big guys’ but to give love to the grass roots too.
I think it is safe to say the guys loved it, aside from this blog post from Christy here are a few choice highlights:
So there it is, not a huge campaign or an expensive activity but merely a great example of group thinking (combined with a quick turn around) to reward some of Nokia’s great community members out there today.
Plus, any excuse to do something fun and cool on a Friday afternoon always makes us happy.
What do you think? Have you seen any bigger #FollowFridays or should I call the guys at Guinness World Records?
Summer is coming and – between the torrential downpours – the sun will be shining once again.
Last weekend, while queueing up* for Adventure Island‘s RAGE rollercoaster on Southend Seafront, I began wondering how theme parks could use social media and further engender positive word of mouth.
To my mind, theme parks and attractions have a fantastic opportunity when it comes to social media. Standing in line amongst the other would-be screamers, my brain started buzzing. So much so, I made notes -
‘Wouldn’t it be cool if each main attraction at a major theme park had its own Twitter account broadcasting not only for ‘on brand’ messaging [ie: ‘Boo!’ for the haunted house] but also – and much more importantly – up to date queue time information. As a guide for the more socially-savvy guest, this service could prove invaluable.’
“On Friday 18th February 2011, the Alton Towers Theme Park opened a day earlier than planned for the Half Term holiday, offering exclusive use for anyone who checked in with Facebook Deals on that day. Guests were able to enter the Theme Park with up to three friends, completely free. 100 lucky people will also claimed a hotel stay on the night of 18 February 2011, completely free!”
Very swish.
As with any industry, it really does depend on how much time and money theme parks want to invest in making this a success; is it a case of a simple Facebook promotion [Like ‘Thorpe Park’ on Facebook and get 10% off your ticket entry] or do you want to go the whole hog and have Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare integrated across every branded touch point [including your entrance ticket].
My advice?
As ever, choose an objective and stick to it -
Want to increase footfall? Great, run an online ticket promotion
Want to sell more gifts + toys?
Offer Foursquare deals at specific stores across the park
Want to help control traffic around the park? Introduce ride-only Twitter accounts which tweet when the queues reach over an hour
One last idea from me -
Why don’t theme park ride photographs post straight to Facebook?
This is such an obvious and quick win. Photos get uploaded to Facebook, guests like the page and then are able to tag themselves post-visit. Ultimately, sharing branded experiences with their Facebook friends using branded photos.
It’s certainly better than forking out £8.00 for an old school photograph that you’ll probably get crumpled up on the way home…
All of that aside; as an avid theme park fan myself, if Twitter was used as an information service for each ride? I’d be there like a shot.
*Yes. This is how my brain works even on my day off
Well, if you chow down at Giraffe and love what you eat, you’d be able to tell all your friends. The popular restaurant chain has always used social media well: their Facebook page is crammed with regularly updated news, photos and demographic-relevant chat, their Twitter feed is both relevant and gorgeoulsy engaging (with a healthy 6,000 followers), and they’ve got 200 photos from around the UK on Flickr.
But I’ve also noticed a very nice, simple extra touch: every one of their online menu items includes a Facebook like button, and shows you other friends who like the same dish.
Oh, sure, it’s not rocket science. But this attention to detail reminds us that creativity doesn’t just lie in big engagement campaigns, but in making every tiny detail of your consumer touchpoints as conversational as possible.
In a similar vein, I also love The Breakfast Club, not just for their scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, but for the clever way they use their Twitter feed: replying quickly with personal responses, suggesting collaborations and creative ideas, and seeding in little challenges and activities to win kudos and freebies.
What brands have you noticed who really pay attention to the little elements that provide a personal or conversational experience?
