Happy Monday in the Great Austin Texas!
Today we are on step #7 of the Top 10 Best practices for Social Business Adoption!
As a reminder, here are my top 10!
So here’s the best practice on Motivation!!
Category: social branding (Page 2 of 2)
One of the emerging trends my clients are telling me about — as they adopt social business and really embed social in their business processes — is the idea of a “Smarter Workforce.”
One attribute of an organization with a Smarter Workforce is the way they build their teams.
The way we recruit people has certainly changed. It wasn’t that long ago that the Sunday newspaper came thick with job want ads, since recruiting in those days meant lots of expensive advertising and endless rounds of interviews. The advent of online job postings streamlined that process for sure, and saved a lot of trees, but there’s an even newer trend we’re seeing, as social business works its way into the business processes of leading organizations.
Especially at one end of the job market — when you’re after recent graduates and people in the earlier stages of their careers — newspaper ads won’t reach them, and even online job postings are just “meh.”
My most successful customers tell us they need to attract talent, not recruit it, and there’s a big difference. I think social is that difference. Do you agree?
Attracting top candidates is more than just awareness — sure they know you’re hiring, but now what?
The trick is to attract the right candidates, who have the strengths, career aspirations and personalities your org needs to succeed — and them match them with the right roles, the right parts of your org, and the right place in your organization’s culture.
What do you do at your company? How do you find the right candidates? How do you use social to match the people you attract with jobs you and they want?
The Marbles have 300% more surface area!! So what does this have to do with Social?
Your voice gets magnified the more people in your network. Your POV and listening impacts the best solution.
Take a look at this picture where you have a tiered Marble impact. The upper tiers have impact and have direct linkage and work with a Social Business Manager. The term “brand ambassador” has been a round for ages, but do we really want to create brand ambassadors? The analogy isn’t quite right. Nor do we want to put pressure on people to mindlessly share content on their personal networks. So you need a bit more of a nuanced approach. An intentional social enablement system!
IBM has been working on a bunch of different enablement tiers that create an ecosystem of social enablement for IBMers. Starting with a foundation of guidelines and policy – see our Social Business Coffee Break from yesterday blog post! – and moving up to general education about social media, cybersecurity and reputation for all IBMers in the Digital IBMer hub. From that tier, IBMers can move into the Forward Thinker Program which enables them to be surfaced on ibm.com and other external experiences – and also to be identified for the IBM Select program, which is a small group of high-tough, bespoke plan enablement for the top tier. All of this is managed by people from many different areas within IBM – the social business managers…we’re not suggesting that we create a whole department of social business managers, but this is definitely an emerging set of skills that people need!
I’d love your thoughts on this approach!!!
Once upon a time, there was a world where social reigned and where a teacher extraordinaire visited. His name was Jeffrey Gitomer and he constantly declared simple points in a powerful way. Then one day at Connect 2013 a magical thing happened. At the Disney Complex , Jeffrey Gitomer reminded me about the wonder of the ducks at the Peabody Hotel.
So I tweeted about it … “What’s your duck?” meaning what’s your brand like Peabody has done with the Duck!
Don’t know the story? For over 80 years, in 3 hotels throughout the US, they have branded themselves with the ducks that march from their “palace” down an elevator to a “lobby pond” and back out again daily! People from around the world have their ducks on their desk and on the tubs! (See mine!)
Now after I tweeted comes the magic.
I was “engaged” by the Peabody in Orlando. The ‘people’ aka Kate, tweeted me personal messages and invited me to come for a behind the scenes tour.
Of course i said yes as I was already going to take my kids that night! Now, there were non believers with me. They said “that’s an automated message” and “there’s nothing special about that!” until we arrived and as directed in the Tweet went to visit Donald the Duckmaster.
Now a Duckmaster leads the ducks in and out. He is magical. I came up to him to ask about the behind the scenes tour and — wait for it — he knew my name, my twitter profile,, and my social graph that linked to his!!! (He used to be the AT&T account manager on the IBM account a few years before. Now retired, he joined the Duckmasters!)
He invited me to be an honorary duck master for the night (my daughter said “Mom you are the coolest mom in the world”). As I marched behind the ducks to the Duck palace, I thought about the power of the people .. the power of the duck .. all linked to social.
My conclusions:
- The Peabody is a hip hotel with the right level of social engagement. Kate rocked it by being personal, and meeting me in the person as well!
- The Duck is going Social! They know live not only in the pond, but in the twitter stream and blogosphere. It is powerful. You do need a duck. What is yours?
- The Peabody listened and responded. And they knew my social graph. Do you know your influencers Social Graph? Do you know who your influencers are/
- The Peabody demonstrated that the next generation of organizational productivity is based on unleashing the power of people. It’s about leadership. Culture. Trust. Transparency.
So, I end where I began. What’s your Duck? Do you engage? The Peabody did. I did. And as a Result I am now an official Duck Master! And the coolest mom in the world!
Thanks to:
Kate Thomas, Sherri Wallen, Tatum Jay Delia , and Donald Tompkins