Tag Archives: Levick Strategic Communications

About 1099 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Rules of Conduct on Internal Social Networks

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With an increasingly mobile workforce, and more employees working from home or other remote locations, keeping employees not only communicating, but feeling and acting like a team is an ongoing challenge. More and more companies are meeting that challenge by creating in-house social networks, using such tools as Yammer or the NewsGator Social Sites add-on for Microsoft Office SharePoint. But these new internal networks come with a certain amount of uncertainty. Does letting employees post on an in-house social network mean a company risks privacy or confidentiality violations? Probably not. “There are a lot of lawsuits over the use of external social networks, but I don’t know of any that are about internal social media,” notes Tom Bell, partner at Perkins Coie. “The risk is less. Most concerns over public social networks focus on three things: infringement of intellectual property, the posting of confidential information, and committing some sort of tort, such as defamation or libel. In all three cases, the chances of a problem are reduced when the network is limited to employees.” Anxiety about legal implications “I’ve worked with several firms to bring in Web 2.0 elements such as social networks, and there’s always a lot of anxiety,” notes Daniel Gasparro, CIO at the law firm Howrey. “Then when they actually put it in, employee behavior isn’t a problem.” There’s a simple explanation as to why employees might be better behaved on an internal social network: they’re likely to assume that the boss will read what they post, where they may not think this will happen on, say, Facebook. Even though employees are more likely to be on their best behavior when using internal networks, you still need an official policy in place to govern what your users can and can’t post there. “You’ll always have a rogue employee, so you do need to have a policy, and it should be reviewed by your legal team,” notes Sharon Carleton, president of Ervin & Smith, a marketing and PR company that uses Yammer. How can you craft an effective internal social media policy? Here are some guidelines to help you get started: Assume employee posts might get out into the world. “Don’t rely on a false sense of security that everything you’ve posted will stay internal,” advises Patrick Kerley, senior digital strategist for Levick Strategic Communications. “The one thing we know about digital media is that things can be shared, and shared forever. So a good rule is not to post anything to an internal social network that you wouldn’t want to see on Facebook.” Use your existing policy. In fact, Kerley recommends using your company policy governing the use of external social networks to your internal one as well. Gasparro on the other hand, suggests extending your company’s email policy to internal social media. Either way, take advantage of the policies you already have in place instead of starting from scratch. Decide who can post about what. Many social media policies give only one or two key employees the authority to post on a company’s behalf to a public social network. Needless to say, an internal social network needs to be open to posts from all employees. But that doesn’t mean every employee gets to post about every topic. “For instance, you might want human resources to be the only team that can post on human resources topics,” says Adam Miller, president and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, which provides learning and talent management software, including an internal social networking product. Have subject matter experts monitor posts. “In a small or mid-sized company, you can’t afford to have an employee monitor the social network full time,” Miller notes. “It’s smarter to have experts on specific topics monitor their own topic. For instance, the vice president of sales could monitor all posts relating to sales, and take down any that violate the policy. Respond quickly to problems. One key difference between an internal social network and an external one is that the internal network is completely within your company’s control. So use that control to quickly remove any posts that violate your policy. “The nice thing about social networking tools is that they provide detailed reports and instantaneous updates,” Gasparro says. “You can take something down much more quickly if it’s a problem.”  

About 1099 days ago Blogging and Social Media

Rules of Conduct on Internal Social Networks

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With an increasingly mobile workforce, and more employees working from home or other remote locations, keeping employees not only communicating, but feeling and acting like a team is an ongoing challenge. More and more companies are meeting that challenge by creating in-house social networks, using such tools as Yammer or the NewsGator Social Sites add-on for Microsoft Office SharePoint. But these new internal networks come with a certain amount of uncertainty. Does letting employees post on an in-house social network mean a company risks privacy or confidentiality violations? Probably not. “There are a lot of lawsuits over the use of external social networks, but I don’t know of any that are about internal social media,” notes Tom Bell, partner at Perkins Coie. “The risk is less. Most concerns over public social networks focus on three things: infringement of intellectual property, the posting of confidential information, and committing some sort of tort, such as defamation or libel. In all three cases, the chances of a problem are reduced when the network is limited to employees.” Anxiety about legal implications “I’ve worked with several firms to bring in Web 2.0 elements such as social networks, and there’s always a lot of anxiety,” notes Daniel Gasparro, CIO at the law firm Howrey. “Then when they actually put it in, employee behavior isn’t a problem.” There’s a simple explanation as to why employees might be better behaved on an internal social network: they’re likely to assume that the boss will read what they post, where they may not think this will happen on, say, Facebook. Even though employees are more likely to be on their best behavior when using internal networks, you still need an official policy in place to govern what your users can and can’t post there. “You’ll always have a rogue employee, so you do need to have a policy, and it should be reviewed by your legal team,” notes Sharon Carleton, president of Ervin & Smith, a marketing and PR company that uses Yammer. How can you craft an effective internal social media policy? Here are some guidelines to help you get started: Assume employee posts might get out into the world. “Don’t rely on a false sense of security that everything you’ve posted will stay internal,” advises Patrick Kerley, senior digital strategist for Levick Strategic Communications. “The one thing we know about digital media is that things can be shared, and shared forever. So a good rule is not to post anything to an internal social network that you wouldn’t want to see on Facebook.” Use your existing policy. In fact, Kerley recommends using your company policy governing the use of external social networks to your internal one as well. Gasparro on the other hand, suggests extending your company’s email policy to internal social media. Either way, take advantage of the policies you already have in place instead of starting from scratch. Decide who can post about what. Many social media policies give only one or two key employees the authority to post on a company’s behalf to a public social network. Needless to say, an internal social network needs to be open to posts from all employees. But that doesn’t mean every employee gets to post about every topic. “For instance, you might want human resources to be the only team that can post on human resources topics,” says Adam Miller, president and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, which provides learning and talent management software, including an internal social networking product. Have subject matter experts monitor posts. “In a small or mid-sized company, you can’t afford to have an employee monitor the social network full time,” Miller notes. “It’s smarter to have experts on specific topics monitor their own topic. For instance, the vice president of sales could monitor all posts relating to sales, and take down any that violate the policy. Respond quickly to problems. One key difference between an internal social network and an external one is that the internal network is completely within your company’s control. So use that control to quickly remove any posts that violate your policy. “The nice thing about social networking tools is that they provide detailed reports and instantaneous updates,” Gasparro says. “You can take something down much more quickly if it’s a problem.”  

About 1121 days ago Online Marketing

Social Media: Measuring Your Company’s ROI

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Michael Sinkin, D.D.S. practices dentistry near Grand Central Station in New York City. He took over his practice from a dentist who retired, and inherited many patients who were near or past retirement themselves. So Sinkin set out to add some younger patients to round out the practice. Reaching this age group meant going online. “No one uses the phone book anymore; everyone is Googling,” he notes. But that presented a marketing problem, because other, much larger practices in midtown Manhattan were making heavy use of Google AdWords, in which advertisers bid on such search terms as “New York City dentist.” “A lot of these practices were investing $25,000 to $30,000 a month in pay-per-click advertising,” notes Betsy Kent, president of Be Visible Associates, an Internet marketing firm that works with Sinkin. “That just didn’t make sense for us.” Instead, they devised a social media-based strategy with the goal of bringing in new patients, especially those in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Sinkin was already writing short items about amusing or interesting things he encountered in the course of his work, so they began publishing these as blog entries. In addition, Kent began searching Twitter for local tweets with the words “dentist” or “dentistry” in them. When she found someone complaining of a painful trip to the dentist or dreading an upcoming visit, she would send words of comfort and commiseration. Some of these tweeters appreciated the kind words, followed the links to Sinkin’s website, and liked what they saw. “We’ve been doing this for about 10 weeks, and I’ve already gotten four new patients,” Sinkin says. In his profession, a new patient can become a lifelong customer, as well as a source of ongoing referrals, so the increase is very significant. “And I’m not even counting two patients who just came in for emergency service,” he says. Who says you can’t measure ROI for social media? As Sinkin’s experience shows, it’s perfectly possible to set concrete goals for social media, beyond the vague “increasing visibility.” In fact, it’s imperative, says Dallas Lawrence, chair of the social media practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “Be wary of the salesperson who says social media isn’t trackable,” he says. “It’s absolutely possible to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for a social media campaign.” Here are some tips for making sure your social media efforts really do have a positive effect on your company’s P&L: Set goals, not just benchmarks. “It’s critical to establish an objective in advance,” Lawrence says. “That objective has to relate to your business model, to whatever your ultimate goal is. So setting a target for, say, 10,000 Twitter followers is not a goal in itself, though it can be a good benchmark for whether the campaign is working.” At Home Creations, a home builder in Oklahoma that caters to people building their first homes, marketing director Jan Astani recently achieved her goal of 1,000 fans on Facebook. To get there, the company offered incentives, such as a $50 Target gift card for two randomly selected Facebook members who became fans during December. But the goal serves a business-focused purpose. “For 2009, our goal was to put an emphasis on Internet marketing,” she says, noting that at least 75 percent of Americans start their search for a new home online. “We’re trying to drive traffic to our website with everything we do.” It appears to be working: Website traffic was up 50 percent in 2009 over 2008, Astani reports, and there were a record number of sales that began as Internet-based sales leads. Think long-term vs. short-term. “Decide up front if you’re trying to reach a long-term goal or a short term objective, because the approach will vary dramatically,” Lawrence says. “For instance, if you’ve got a promotion or a new store opening coming up, you can jump-start something very effective with Twitter, but it might not have a long term effect. If you want to build sustained momentum, you might want to think about reaching out to the blogosphere with thought leadership.” Whatever you do, he adds, don’t look at your various social media efforts in isolation. “A big mistake that I often see is when customers say, ‘Give me a Twitter program, give me a Facebook program, give me blog outreach, and let’s do SEO.’ They’re not separate. In order to get the impact you want, you have to intertwine all those pieces and let them build on one another.” Use the Internet’s power to reach precisely the audience you want. “People are shocked when I tell them that, with Facebook’s user applications for small businesses, I can find my key customer base right down to the block he or she might be on,” Lawrence says. “I can find the information they readily provide: age, race, single or dating status, ethnicity, parents or childless, military or civilian, based on the groups they’ve self-selected to follow. And you can often figure out income status from the other information.” Be prepared for a mid-course correction. What if you fail to meet the goals for your social media campaign? “Take another look at your goals,” Lawrence advises. “Make sure that they were reasonable.” Perhaps a different goal would be more appropriate realistic. But, he says, “Make sure your overall objectives are never forgotten.”  

About 1121 days ago Blogging and Social Media

Social Media: Measuring Your Company’s ROI

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Michael Sinkin, D.D.S. practices dentistry near Grand Central Station in New York City. He took over his practice from a dentist who retired, and inherited many patients who were near or past retirement themselves. So Sinkin set out to add some younger patients to round out the practice. Reaching this age group meant going online. “No one uses the phone book anymore; everyone is Googling,” he notes. But that presented a marketing problem, because other, much larger practices in midtown Manhattan were making heavy use of Google AdWords, in which advertisers bid on such search terms as “New York City dentist.” “A lot of these practices were investing $25,000 to $30,000 a month in pay-per-click advertising,” notes Betsy Kent, president of Be Visible Associates, an Internet marketing firm that works with Sinkin. “That just didn’t make sense for us.” Instead, they devised a social media-based strategy with the goal of bringing in new patients, especially those in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Sinkin was already writing short items about amusing or interesting things he encountered in the course of his work, so they began publishing these as blog entries. In addition, Kent began searching Twitter for local tweets with the words “dentist” or “dentistry” in them. When she found someone complaining of a painful trip to the dentist or dreading an upcoming visit, she would send words of comfort and commiseration. Some of these tweeters appreciated the kind words, followed the links to Sinkin’s website, and liked what they saw. “We’ve been doing this for about 10 weeks, and I’ve already gotten four new patients,” Sinkin says. In his profession, a new patient can become a lifelong customer, as well as a source of ongoing referrals, so the increase is very significant. “And I’m not even counting two patients who just came in for emergency service,” he says. Who says you can’t measure ROI for social media? As Sinkin’s experience shows, it’s perfectly possible to set concrete goals for social media, beyond the vague “increasing visibility.” In fact, it’s imperative, says Dallas Lawrence, chair of the social media practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “Be wary of the salesperson who says social media isn’t trackable,” he says. “It’s absolutely possible to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for a social media campaign.” Here are some tips for making sure your social media efforts really do have a positive effect on your company’s P&L: Set goals, not just benchmarks. “It’s critical to establish an objective in advance,” Lawrence says. “That objective has to relate to your business model, to whatever your ultimate goal is. So setting a target for, say, 10,000 Twitter followers is not a goal in itself, though it can be a good benchmark for whether the campaign is working.” At Home Creations, a home builder in Oklahoma that caters to people building their first homes, marketing director Jan Astani recently achieved her goal of 1,000 fans on Facebook. To get there, the company offered incentives, such as a $50 Target gift card for two randomly selected Facebook members who became fans during December. But the goal serves a business-focused purpose. “For 2009, our goal was to put an emphasis on Internet marketing,” she says, noting that at least 75 percent of Americans start their search for a new home online. “We’re trying to drive traffic to our website with everything we do.” It appears to be working: Website traffic was up 50 percent in 2009 over 2008, Astani reports, and there were a record number of sales that began as Internet-based sales leads. Think long-term vs. short-term. “Decide up front if you’re trying to reach a long-term goal or a short term objective, because the approach will vary dramatically,” Lawrence says. “For instance, if you’ve got a promotion or a new store opening coming up, you can jump-start something very effective with Twitter, but it might not have a long term effect. If you want to build sustained momentum, you might want to think about reaching out to the blogosphere with thought leadership.” Whatever you do, he adds, don’t look at your various social media efforts in isolation. “A big mistake that I often see is when customers say, ‘Give me a Twitter program, give me a Facebook program, give me blog outreach, and let’s do SEO.’ They’re not separate. In order to get the impact you want, you have to intertwine all those pieces and let them build on one another.” Use the Internet’s power to reach precisely the audience you want. “People are shocked when I tell them that, with Facebook’s user applications for small businesses, I can find my key customer base right down to the block he or she might be on,” Lawrence says. “I can find the information they readily provide: age, race, single or dating status, ethnicity, parents or childless, military or civilian, based on the groups they’ve self-selected to follow. And you can often figure out income status from the other information.” Be prepared for a mid-course correction. What if you fail to meet the goals for your social media campaign? “Take another look at your goals,” Lawrence advises. “Make sure that they were reasonable.” Perhaps a different goal would be more appropriate realistic. But, he says, “Make sure your overall objectives are never forgotten.”  

About 1162 days ago Online Marketing

For Hire: Social Media Rep for Businesses

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You’ve heard it over and over: Social media is essential for preserving and enhancing your brand in today’s market. So you tweet. You post on Facebook. You link on LinkedIn. And in your few remaining spare moments, you wonder whether you ought to be posting on Google Buzz as well. You know that all this is important for your company, but you also need to spend time actually running your company. So you decide to take the next step and delegate the care and feeding of your social media presence to someone else. Who should that someone be? Here are some considerations that can help you make the right choice. Inside or outside? Facebook had more than 111 million visitors in 2009, and chances are some of them were your employees. “We did a social media survey for a finance company with 42 employees,” recalls Dallas Lawrence who heads the social media practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “Twenty of them told us that they regularly use social media and/or read online news.” That company can likely find an effective social media representative among those 20 employees, he says. “Before you go outside the company, look inside at who you already have.” In fact, you may have one or more employees who would be eager to use social media on your behalf. That was the case at junk removal service 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, where Travis Dudfield, public relations manager, approached top management about a year ago, proposing that he add social media to his duties. At the time, he says, the company’s leadership was aware of social media and saw its potential, but wasn’t sure how to start using it. “I said, ‘Let’s give it a try,” Dudfield says. “‘I’ll set up an account, find some people to follow, and see how this works.” Today @1800GOTJUNK has 1,583 Twitter followers and 1-800-GOT-JUNK has 570 Facebook fans. Some of these are customers who report how pleased they are with the service. “One woman loved what we did so much she posted pictures before and after we came. In the ‘after’ picture her car was actually in the garage,” Dudfield says. “That’s an interaction with a customer I never could have had otherwise.” He’s since passed the pictures on to others at the company and to its franchises. “That kind of thing is great for morale,” he says. Who controls the message? There’s no need to limit yourself to a single social media representative. If a formal or informal survey of your employees turns up a dozen people who are interested in tweeting and posting your company’s behalf, consider inviting all of them to do so. “If you’ve decided you want a Twitter presence, you might ask each of them to give you one tweet a week with a link,” Lawrence says. “They may all have different expertise that would all be interesting to your customer base.” Even when you have multiple employees representing you on social media, one executive, perhaps from corporate communications or public relations, should be responsible both for making sure the posts and tweets actually happen, and for a vetting their content. “You want someone who will give something a lot of thought before they post it,” notes Steve Birnhak, CEO of Inwindow Outdoor, which creates promotional displays for its clients in urban unused storefronts. “Even though social media evolved as an outgrowth of friendships, you have to be very careful what gets posted from a business standpoint.” Birnhak started out handling social media himself, but soon found the time demands overwhelming, and so hired the company’s public relations representative to handle social media instead. He appreciates the PR professional’s expertise about what to say and what not to. “Remember that everything that gets posted lives forever as part of your online reputation,” Lawrence says. “A mistake can have a devastating impact on your brand.” On the other hand, he notes, “It shouldn’t be a 10-step legal approval. If your company’s nature is that everything must go through multiple approval processes, and it would take two weeks to approve a tweet, then Twitter may not be the right medium for you.” Can your social media representative make a human connection? While it’s important to keep tweets and posts in line with your company’s image and goals, it’s just as important that your social media communications show transparency about your company, and convey a human connection. “One mistake we often see is that a company assumes it must either be the corporate communications director or the CEO who posts on social media,” Lawrence says. “In many cases, the CEO is the wrong person, because he or she isn’t good at providing transparency.” “I think it’s a red flag if someone has a sell, sell, sell mentality,” Dudfield says. “Or if someone values metrics over human engagement. I believe there’s nothing more important than creating that connection with another human being. If that’s not your primary goal, then that’s a problem.” He adds that human-to-human contact is especially important for 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, because of what the company does. “What we do is very personal,” he says. “We go into people’s homes, pick up their possessions and take them away. They need to trust us to come into their homes and engage with them on their turf, so we need to make a connection with people.” And, he says, in the social media world, “People don’t talk to brands. They talk to other people.” In fact, Dudfield says, he stopped automatic direct messaging on Twitter precisely so his followers would know they were always conversing with an actual human being. “I’ve been blown away by how responsive people are,” he says. Does your social media representative truly understand your company? If Dudfield were hiring someone else to handle 1-800-G0T-JUNK?’s social media, he would look for a representative who understands the company as well as he does himself. “I’d want someone who has passion for what we do,” he says. “It’s about helping people get their space back, and handling their stuff with environmental sensitivity. You need to really appreciate the ethics and principles we operate by so you can speak with a voice that makes sense to our brand as a whole.” “A lot of top executives believe social media is a good job for an intern,” Lawrence says. “But that’s not effective at all. You shouldn’t put an intern in charge of social media, just as you wouldn’t have an intern handle your relationships with NBC or the New York Times. It should be someone who has a full view of your company’s agenda.”  

About 1162 days ago Internet and Online Business

For Hire: Social Media Rep for Businesses

our beautiful site

You’ve heard it over and over: Social media is essential for preserving and enhancing your brand in today’s market. So you tweet. You post on Facebook. You link on LinkedIn. And in your few remaining spare moments, you wonder whether you ought to be posting on Google Buzz as well. You know that all this is important for your company, but you also need to spend time actually running your company. So you decide to take the next step and delegate the care and feeding of your social media presence to someone else. Who should that someone be? Here are some considerations that can help you make the right choice. Inside or outside? Facebook had more than 111 million visitors in 2009, and chances are some of them were your employees. “We did a social media survey for a finance company with 42 employees,” recalls Dallas Lawrence who heads the social media practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “Twenty of them told us that they regularly use social media and/or read online news.” That company can likely find an effective social media representative among those 20 employees, he says. “Before you go outside the company, look inside at who you already have.” In fact, you may have one or more employees who would be eager to use social media on your behalf. That was the case at junk removal service 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, where Travis Dudfield, public relations manager, approached top management about a year ago, proposing that he add social media to his duties. At the time, he says, the company’s leadership was aware of social media and saw its potential, but wasn’t sure how to start using it. “I said, ‘Let’s give it a try,” Dudfield says. “‘I’ll set up an account, find some people to follow, and see how this works.” Today @1800GOTJUNK has 1,583 Twitter followers and 1-800-GOT-JUNK has 570 Facebook fans. Some of these are customers who report how pleased they are with the service. “One woman loved what we did so much she posted pictures before and after we came. In the ‘after’ picture her car was actually in the garage,” Dudfield says. “That’s an interaction with a customer I never could have had otherwise.” He’s since passed the pictures on to others at the company and to its franchises. “That kind of thing is great for morale,” he says. Who controls the message? There’s no need to limit yourself to a single social media representative. If a formal or informal survey of your employees turns up a dozen people who are interested in tweeting and posting your company’s behalf, consider inviting all of them to do so. “If you’ve decided you want a Twitter presence, you might ask each of them to give you one tweet a week with a link,” Lawrence says. “They may all have different expertise that would all be interesting to your customer base.” Even when you have multiple employees representing you on social media, one executive, perhaps from corporate communications or public relations, should be responsible both for making sure the posts and tweets actually happen, and for a vetting their content. “You want someone who will give something a lot of thought before they post it,” notes Steve Birnhak, CEO of Inwindow Outdoor, which creates promotional displays for its clients in urban unused storefronts. “Even though social media evolved as an outgrowth of friendships, you have to be very careful what gets posted from a business standpoint.” Birnhak started out handling social media himself, but soon found the time demands overwhelming, and so hired the company’s public relations representative to handle social media instead. He appreciates the PR professional’s expertise about what to say and what not to. “Remember that everything that gets posted lives forever as part of your online reputation,” Lawrence says. “A mistake can have a devastating impact on your brand.” On the other hand, he notes, “It shouldn’t be a 10-step legal approval. If your company’s nature is that everything must go through multiple approval processes, and it would take two weeks to approve a tweet, then Twitter may not be the right medium for you.” Can your social media representative make a human connection? While it’s important to keep tweets and posts in line with your company’s image and goals, it’s just as important that your social media communications show transparency about your company, and convey a human connection. “One mistake we often see is that a company assumes it must either be the corporate communications director or the CEO who posts on social media,” Lawrence says. “In many cases, the CEO is the wrong person, because he or she isn’t good at providing transparency.” “I think it’s a red flag if someone has a sell, sell, sell mentality,” Dudfield says. “Or if someone values metrics over human engagement. I believe there’s nothing more important than creating that connection with another human being. If that’s not your primary goal, then that’s a problem.” He adds that human-to-human contact is especially important for 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, because of what the company does. “What we do is very personal,” he says. “We go into people’s homes, pick up their possessions and take them away. They need to trust us to come into their homes and engage with them on their turf, so we need to make a connection with people.” And, he says, in the social media world, “People don’t talk to brands. They talk to other people.” In fact, Dudfield says, he stopped automatic direct messaging on Twitter precisely so his followers would know they were always conversing with an actual human being. “I’ve been blown away by how responsive people are,” he says. Does your social media representative truly understand your company? If Dudfield were hiring someone else to handle 1-800-G0T-JUNK?’s social media, he would look for a representative who understands the company as well as he does himself. “I’d want someone who has passion for what we do,” he says. “It’s about helping people get their space back, and handling their stuff with environmental sensitivity. You need to really appreciate the ethics and principles we operate by so you can speak with a voice that makes sense to our brand as a whole.” “A lot of top executives believe social media is a good job for an intern,” Lawrence says. “But that’s not effective at all. You shouldn’t put an intern in charge of social media, just as you wouldn’t have an intern handle your relationships with NBC or the New York Times. It should be someone who has a full view of your company’s agenda.”