Bosses 'should embrace Facebook'

Thanks to the BBC for this insighful post on why social networks at work are, could be, a good thing:

Social networking: not just for organising parties

Companies should not dismiss staff who use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo at work as merely time-wasters, a Demos study suggests.

Attempts to control employees' use of such software could damage firms in the long run by limiting the way staff communicate, the think tank said.

Social networking can encourage employees to build relationships with colleagues across a firm, it added.

However, businesses are warned to be strict with those who abuse access.

'Intuitive interaction'

Firms are increasingly using networking software to share documents and collaborate in ideas, the research found.

And while more work-specific systems, such as LinkedIn or bespoke in-house software tended to be used for work matters, the likes of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace still had a place, said Peter Bradwell, a Demos researcher and the report's author.

Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact Peter Bradwell Demos

"They are part of the way in which people communicate which they find intuitive," he said.

"Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships."

Using technology to build closer links with ex-employees and potential customers could also boost productivity, innovation and create a more democratic working environment, Mr Bradwell added.

"In today's difficult business environment, the instinctive reaction can be to batten down the hatches and return to the traditional command-and-control techniques that enable managers to closely monitor and measure productivity.

"Allowing workers to have more freedom and flexibility might seem counter-intuitive, but it appears to create businesses more capable of maintaining stability."

'Business goal'

The popularity of social networking showed that there was a desire to connect with others and socialise, said Mark Turrell, chief executive of Imaginatik, which develops bespoke networking software.

"Being able to see a photo of colleagues, or knowing what they are up to, can be incredibly useful for businesses, especially if a firm employs thousands of people," added Mr Turrell, whose firm took part in the study.

By focusing the minds of a group of people on a specific task, you can find a solution much more quickly than you would do otherwise Mark Turrell Imaginatik

But he argued the use of networking sites "must be tied to a business goal".

He said his customers used the software to set out problems which they faced and then threw them open to employees.

"The first people to respond might not know the answer, but they could suggest somebody who does," he said.

"Within a few days, they are able to get enough people from across the organisation with the right expertise to work on it.

"And by focusing the minds of a group of people on a specific task, you can find a solution much more quickly than you would do otherwise."

Staff should be told if their use of social networking sites is excessive

Younger employees who have grown up with e-mail, mobile phones and social networking want their employers to adapt to new technology, he added, saying this put pressure on older employees to adapt.

"The key questions are, how do you get the brightest people to work for you, and then, how do you get the most out of them," Mr Turrell said.

"Organisations need to give their employees physical and virtual space to grow and explore their ideas.

"In today's new world, employees expect and require sophisticated enterprise social networking tools to shine."

'Aware of tensions'

The report's authors said that clear guidelines needed to be set out about appropriate use of social networking.

And there should be no hesitation in telling employees who spent "unreasonable" amounts of time using technology for non-work related activity that their behaviour must change, they added.

It is good for companies to be aware of the tensions and look at deploying practical guidelines which will protect the positive impact of networks, not hamper it Robert Ainger Orange Business UK

Mobile phone and broadband firm Orange, which commissioned the research, is currently building its own in-house social networking platform for staff.

"The profile and significance of social networking is increasing now, because of the proliferation of new technologies that enable us to connect to each other in our personal and professional lives," said Robert Ainger, Orange Business UK.

"But it is also good for companies to be aware of the tensions and look at deploying practical guidelines which will protect the positive impact of networks, not hamper it."

Follow the path of the unsafe

Here's some inspiration and a relevant quote for our times, for those thinking about the future, about where to invest their energy and time in the coming months ahead:

"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of crackpot than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost."

Thomas J Watson

Thanks FurtureLab. Original Post: http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/follow-the-path-of-the-unsafe.html

Don't forget to play at work

I'm posting this because its fun.

Thanks FutureLab: http://blog.futurelab.net/2008/09/the_death_of_creative_director.html

Employees can be brand builders too!

Thanks to Pete Blackshaw and AdAge - this is an interesting article about motivating employees as brand/company ambassadors. Some great thoughts for BMF and their clients... I wonder what a BMF culture book would entail?

Zappos Shows How Employees Can Be Brand-Builders
Is This 'Overlooked Resource' as Important as Paid Ads?

Every year Zappos.com, one of the fastest-growing e-commerce sites, publishes a "culture book." Three hundred pages in length, the book includes written -- and often gushy -- testimonials from employees about what it means to work at Zappos.com.

"Our Zappos culture is truly the best work experience I have ever encountered," writes Chris V. "As a new employee of the company, I was blown away by how amazing the company really was. When I started I felt so unreal," notes David J. And on and on and on -- you get the idea.

Not by accident
If you talk to Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh or his marketing chief Brian Kalma, you'll find a plan and a strategy, not to mention powerful, validating numbers to boot behind all this group love. Indeed, the vast majority of trial and repeat at Zappos.com is driven by word of mouth, and employees -- their motivation, their attentiveness to customers, their handling of feedback -- are foundational to that approach.

Mr. Kalma, director of creative services and brand marketing, employs the term "people planning," arguing that each employee needs to be a great point of contact with customers. "We invest the time and money into hiring and nurturing the right people, as many other companies do in their media planning," he said.

It's worth asking, Are employees a de facto ad channel? It might be a crude way to frame the question, but if in fact there's a tangible, measurable relationship between employee behavior and buzz, we can't ignore that free, high-impact employee-generated media -- EGM, if you will -- affects the broader media mix.

Hidden power
"I do think that a well-trained, highly motivated workforce that understands the brand, their role in making it successful and who feels empowered to do just that, is any company's most powerful and most underutilized asset," says Rick Murray, CEO of Edelman Digital and board member of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).

Leslie Forde of Communispace, a firm that builds and manages online communities for brands, emphatically agrees, noting that employees are the "overlooked resource." She asks, "How many times have we extended forgiveness or patience to a brand that 'messes up' in a customer service interaction, because the individual employee that we've dealt with is impressive and professional?"

If Murray and Forde -- and countless others -- are right, shouldn't all of us in marketing be dialing this up in importance? Of course, getting this right is easier said than done. You can't just increase employee loyalty and advocacy overnight the way you can with media spend, and not everyone will want to go the full distance of Zappos.com.

To be sure, this is a long-term proposition. "ROI metrics for employee loyalty and education are more complex and require a long-term view," warns Forde. Moreover, employee training isn't necessarily within the scope of the CMO, and the HR department isn't necessarily incentivized to think about employees as brand-building billboards.

Then we have the risk factors. One downside of the employee-as-relationship-builder model, notes professor Tim Heath of Miami University in Ohio, "is employees leaving the company and taking 'their' customers with them, a threat that can be mitigated to some degree with non-compete clauses in contracts."

Worth a try
It's a reasonable concern, but hardly a good excuse to sit idle. Indeed, there's a growing list of excellent reasons why we can start connecting dots to at least establish a beachhead to a new model:

Measurements: Let there be no doubt, but today we can quantify the conversation in such a way that we can pinpoint specific "talk drivers" around all aspects of employee behavior. Thanks to consumer-generated media analysis, we can now determine with high statistical significance why employee behavior at, say, Burger King or Taco Bell creates positive or negative conversation. We can even assign "reach" value to the conversation. We can determine just about every nuance related to customer service, which in the vast majority of cases implicated (or rewards) employee training or behavior. Smart listening always sets the foundation for better business processes.

Social-Media Experiments: Social-media tools provide brands with a broader spectrum of "test and measure" tools to pinpoint opportunities to better understand the impact of employee loyalty and advocacy. These tools also provide powerful windows into the character and personality of the employees. Just think about Frank Eliason and Richard Binhammer, the guys who Twitter for Comcast and Dell, respectively. (Disclosure: Comcast is a client.) There's a spirit and enthusiasm in their posts and commentary that reflects both their character and their employee advocacy. Corporate blogs are bringing the same opportunity and value to the table.

Online Video: The rock we've yet to truly uncover around online video is how it can enable brands to bring the character and authenticity of employees to the forefront. The "sight, sound and motion" benefits of employees talking across the video airwaves may well open up a powerful range of opportunities for companies to reap the full benefits of employee advocacy. Just think about Microsoft's four-year-old experiment with Channel9, the video-based employee blog. High authenticity, high impact.

The "New" Customer Service: As Zappos.com would readily tell us, the customer-service channel is perhaps the most critical brand-building arena, and employees are clearly central to this area. Brands should be conducting large and small experiments in this area to understand how a little extra "touch" can impact the game. Social-media tools can clearly help get brands started, but the learning might also start with the good old-fashioned phone scripts.

Rewards and Incentives: If the conversation is so measurable, and the outcomes of employee advocacy are more tangible, perhaps now is the time to create more data-grounded incentive and reward models. If, for example, only buzz directly calls out an exceptional contribution by an employee, perhaps this should be rewarded. Online consumers constantly call out Southwest or Nordstrom employees for going the extra distance. If it's measurable, it's rewardable, right?

I'm not suggesting that every company adopt the Zappos.com culture book. But if conversation is the new gold standard, and employees are consistently at the heart of the conversation, we have a big compelling reason -- and tons of upside -- in rethinking the importance of employee advocacy.

Full article at: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=130646#correct

You talk, they hear on Web

Companies are reading and listening to what is being said online as they seek to take advantage of new marketing opportunities evolving on social networking Web sites
By Eric Benderoff | Tribune staff reporter | November 23, 2007

You may never hear a word from a conversation analyst, but there's a very good chance one is paying close attention to what you're saying on blogs, in Web forums or in product reviews on sites that sell books or blenders.

Somewhere, someone is reading and analyzing your words.

"I pay attention to what people say online," said Leah Jones, one of these so-called conversation analysts, who works for a recently formed division of public relations giant Edelman called Me2revolution.

She is part of a growing practice at such companies as Kraft Foods Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. that listens closely to what people say as the Web continues to morph from a medium of static sites to a place where dialogue and interactivity dominate.

The companies are adding positions like community manager, new media strategist or blog strategist, and are actively engaging on the Web.

"If you have a social media strategy, you need the right people," said Jeremiah Owyang, the recently hired senior analyst for social computing at Forrester Research.

He and Jones are typical of the types of people paying attention to how people interact online. Both are active bloggers and social networkers (Owyang counts more than 1,500 friends on Facebook, for instance) and well connected to an assortment of communities online. "My job is research and education," Jones said. "I do a lot of small group training on social media."

Behind this tidal wave of new positions in companies and consultancies is the explosion in popularity of social networking sites and online conversations opening new potential marketing opportunities to companies looking to interact with consumers.

One example is that Facebook and MySpace, two of the Web's top destinations, have introduced new advertising platforms to reach the millions of users at each social site. According to a November survey from eMarketer, advertisers are expected to spend $900 million on social networking sites this year, but by 2011 that is expected to reach $2.5 billion.

Northfield-based Kraft is actively engaged in social networking. This year it opened a grocery store in the virtual world of Second Life (www.second life.com), and it is conducting a contest on MySpace asking people to submit a short video on why they love Kraft Singles. MySpace users can vote for the winning video, which will be announced at the end of December.

For consumers, social media "gives them an opportunity to tell us exactly what they want and what's important to them in an uninhibited environment," Andy Markowitz, Kraft's director of digital media, said in an e-mail. "We're listening and learning as we go."

Owyang said 2008 will be a key year. "For the first time, you will start to see budgets set aside for social media strategies and processes," he said.

But companies have to tread carefully. Unlike traditional advertising messages, Web ads and social networking strategies that try to covertly blend into the mix often backfire, leading to severe consequences.

"To get a true sense of what people are saying on blogs or in forums, we don't get involved in the conversations," Jones said. But if she or someone else from a company she counsels inserts themselves into a conversation, there should be "full disclosure. If I e-mail a blogger, I tell them I'm Leah, I work at Edelman and I'm writing you because ... ," she said.

Fake blogs can hurt brand. In the past, there have been so-called fake blogs set up by companies that were exposed as frauds, including one by Sony Corp. last year to promote its PSP hand-held game player, that can potentially damage a brand.

And not all social media is being used to pitch products. "It can be used for building better products or used to support products," said Owyang, who was hired at Forester after serving as Hitachi Ltd.'s first community manager. "As customers get more involved, expect their feedback to shape new products."

Deborah Schultz, who consults on social media strategies for Procter & Gamble, calls the emerging social practice "conversational marketing." "I'm actually thinking of calling myself a 'digital anthropologist,' but there's more money in being a 'social media strategist,'" she said. "It's absolutely a good time to be doing this, because how companies need to relate to the customer is completely changing."

That can be tricky to manage, Schultz said, and partly explains why companies want to tap into people who have experience interacting online to implement the strategies. "Relationships take time, and they are messy," she said. "There is a give and take, and companies have to realize it can take a long time. "You wouldn't show up at dinner party you weren't invited to and suddenly start selling Tupperware."

Building social media strategy
Jones said Me2revolution's clients include Microsoft Corp., Nissan Motors, Unilever PLC and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., all of which are trying to tap into the conversations about their products that are happening online.

"Everybody knows social media is important, and they want to move the conversation forward," she said. Next year, she said, most of her clients will have a social media strategy "as part of their program, not as an add-on." "When we look at 2008, we're asking, 'What's our news? What's our online strategy? What are our conversation strategies?'" Jones said.

But Schultz cautions that tapping into social marketing is so new that measuring things like brand equity and customer engagement is hard to determine. "That's what we don't know yet," she said.

That thought was echoed by Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst for eMarketer. The group's forecast that ad spending will nearly triple by 2011 is based "on the idea that the proof will come, and that marketers will see solid [return on investment] from delivering a brand message to one person and having that person pass along the message to friends," she wrote in a November report.

The Digital Skills Job Seekers Need to Survive Now

Five Types of Hires Organizations Claim They Crave
By Abbey Klaassen Published: November 12, 2007 - AdAge

It used to be so simple.

Back in the day, agencies and marketers seeking great creatives and account and brand managers had a pretty straightforward sense of what they were looking for. Likewise, job seekers could safely ensure they had the key skills with which to populate their résumés for maximum effect.

But now, as new technology has spawned unprecedented complexity in the advertising, marketing and media landscape, so too has it forced the need for greater complexity in new hires. The digital skills that job seekers must have and that hiring organizations demand are varied, nuanced and cutting-edge. And they're required assets if digital professionals want to get ahead in this industry.

Here are the five types of hires organizations claim they crave:

1. HACKERS Not the law-breaking kind, said Organic CEO Mark Kingdon, but "Web 2.0 junkies who live on Del.icio.us, TechCrunch and Digg and peruse ProgrammableWeb.com looking for the latest mashup. ... These people signed up early as Facebook developers, trade the latest apps and regularly hack around on Organic's own social network (called Organism) to add new functionality, change their template, hide Easter eggs and leave us special 'surprises.'" While technology has always been important to firms such as Organic, those companies are no longer just looking for people who know how to build sophisticated and complicated content-management systems but people who like to tinker, who understand how to build on top of application programming interfaces, creating Google Maps mashups and Facebook apps. And passion for these kinds of tools is a must, said Jenny Wall, president-interactive at Crew Creative.

2. TECHNOLOGICALLY CURIOUS OK, it's not necessary for everyone to be able to build the next great Facebook app, but everybody needs to be curious about and aware of what kinds of digital innovations are cropping up and where marketers might fit into them. Crew's Ms. Wall said her account team "needs to be on top of the Facebook open application program or the new [Apple] Leopard blogging software."

3. ONLINE EAVESDROPPERS Conversations are going on all over the web about brands and products -- and agencies and marketers are increasingly looking for people who can help mine those insights, which can be used to help identify emerging problems. That chatter can also be a source of campaign ideas. For example, Mr. Kingdon said, look at the community groups that have formed on Facebook because of their affinity for Jeep. He called it a "great source of inspiration."

4. DATAHEADS "Most marketers aren't quants," said Steve Rubel, a senior VP in Edelman's Me2Revolution who's chronicled industry changes for the past decade. He said the companies that are able to use data to their advantage, building relationships and unearthing trends, will be the big winners. "Marketers need to at least have a good grounding in how to use new kinds of data, even if they leave the crunching to others," he said.

5. TRAILBLAZERS A trailblazing attitude is less a digital skill and more of an inherent quality that the digital age requires. And it was this quality that Greg Schwartz, VP-sales at Zillow.com, was seeking as he built his staff. "I was looking not just for folks with a talent for internet advertising but those that flourish in a non-structured start-up environment," he said. Start-ups often can't compete on dollars -- but they can compete by having environments that foster and require innovative thinking and challenges to conventional wisdom. Start-ups also require a little extra acumen because they often don't have the scale of the giants.

Trailblazers are, however, fairly easy to pry out of large media companies, said Mr. Schwartz: "Slinging banner ads leaves a lot of people uninspired."