Kmh social media top eight

C-Suite: It’s Time to Step Up

© January 2013 KMH Associates

Sandi Hester Kathleen Holland Katherine Magee

Don’t Be An Ostrich!

Executives have a critical strategic role to play in guiding social media across their organizations

Do you know why? Do you know how?


Why Social Media? Why Now?

LinkedIn is the 36th most visited website in

the world

There are 465+ million Twitter accounts

57% of businesses plan to increase social media spending

But…only 38% of CEO’s label social media as a

high priority

Each FaceBook user spends on average

15.5 hours / month on the site

YouTube has 490 million unique users

who visit every month

Google+ has more than 25 million users

Wikipedia authors total over 91,000 contributors

Source: www.jeffbullas.com and *simplymeasured.com 2012

95% of the top 100 companies use Twitter; 23% of these use it as a

customer service platform*


http://www.jeffbullas.com

People use social media every day without thinking about it. Think about it!

It’s time to stop relegating a critical business lever to the most

junior people in the company.

It’s time to step up and provide the oversight to effectively link social media with your corporate objectives.

Why Social Media? Why Now?


Eight Things to Think About

1. Keep your eyes on the prize 2. RIP: Silos 3. Make social media part of your culture 4. The bigger the reward, the greater the risk 5. The power is shifting: Your corporate reputation is in the

hands of many 6. Make the customer your Chief Content Officer 7. The Earth loves social media 8. What’s old is new again


What are your corporate mission / vision / values and objectives? How are you measuring them? How does social media impact, enhance or detract from your achievement of those key performance indicators (KPI’s)?

1. Keep Your Eyes On The Prize!


Marketing Objectives

Traditional Activity

Marketing Strategies

Marketing Implementation

Social Activity

Traditional KPI

Social KPI

Research Objectives


Research Strategies

Research Implementation

Social Activity

Traditional KPI

Social KPI

HR Objectives


HR Strategies

HR Implementation

Social Activity

Traditional KPI

Social KPI

Customer Serv Objectives


Customer Serv Strategies

Cust Serv Implementation

Social Activity

Traditional KPI

Social KPI

Total Results/Insights

Corporate Mission/Vision/Value/Objectives

Note: applicable to all corporate departments

1. Keep Your Eyes On The Prize!


Results/ Insights

Results/ Insights

Results/ Insights

Results/ Insights

2. RIP: Silos

Social media is not a strategy, and it does not belong to the marketing department alone. To drive meaningful business results, social media must be integrated across the whole enterprise.

Customer Service

Research Marketing Human Resources


RIP RIP RIP RIP


2. RIP: Silos Silos inherently create inefficiencies, inconsistencies in messaging and confusion both internally and externally. Bring together senior representatives from HR, Legal, IT, Marketing, Risk Management, PR, Sales, Customer Service and any other affected functions to ensure consistency and clarity around your messaging and alignment to corporate goals.

Marketing / Sales

Human Resources

Customer Service Legal

Find your point of social media optimization!



3. Make Social Media Part Of Your Culture Social media is a powerful communication tool that should be

embraced across the organization External Platforms Corporate Brand Building. Beyond the official spokespeople, employees can play a critical role in building your corporate brand. It is very powerful for customers to hear an employee endorse where (s)he works and/or stand behind the products they make. This helps you not only sell more product but also attract great talent. Internal Platforms Employee Engagement. Social media enhances internal communication objectives. It is especially powerful if the employee is encouraged to comment and is heard. Innovation. Social media enables greater innovation within the organization by encouraging ongoing collaboration and ideation.


Things to think about:

1. Policies and training. A social media policy should clearly outline the “do’s and don’ts” as well as why social media is important to the organization and its role in achieving the corporate objectives. Then train, train and retrain.

2. An internal social media network. Building internal tools that mimic well-known external tools will facilitate the social communication in a protected and confidential environment.

Examples: • on line profiles (think LinkedIn) • blogs • chat rooms (by topic or function) • recognition boards (think Pinterest) • webinars • games

3. Make Social Media Part Of Your Culture


4. The Bigger The Reward, The Bigger The Risk

Success in social media is measured by greater visibility for your company and your employees; however, as the number of “eyes” on your organization increases, so does your need to manage the potential risks that come with greater transparency

REWARD (Audience/Klout)

RISK (Reputation/Security/Legal)

EXPOSURE


4. Mitigating Potential Social Media Risk Things to Think About: 1.Before embarking on your social media initiative, perform a risk assessment & identify controls that could mitigate a portion of the risk.

2.Establish clear policies that dictate what can and cannot be shared. Create the capability to capture and log all communications and monitor on a regular basis.

3.Make sure you have the resources (human, financial and digital) in place to handle the social media attention

4.Implement safeguards: social media is a channel unprotected by typical information security safeguards

5.Have a plan to monitor social media channels on an ongoing basis: your company needs to stay current on social media chatter


5. The Power Is Shifting! Your corporate reputation is in the hands of many

Employees as Ambassadors

Customers

Balance of Power Less than 5 years Ago

Balance of Power Today

Corporate Communications

• Carefully crafted messaging • Selected targets and media

Employees as Subject Matter

Experts Building Their

own Brand

Corporate Communications Carefully Crafted

Messages

Corporate Communications

Social Conversations

Suppliers Opinion Leaders

Networkers

Your Brand

Etc, Etc, Etc


Social media facilitates the inclusion of all stakeholders in forming a brand. It can be highly beneficial as advocates are more credible than corporate spokespeople. Be Aware: 1. Consistency. This means “living your brand” or practicing your brand values when dealing with all stakeholders. Treating a supplier unfairly becomes part of the collective discussion with customers.

2. Transparency. People expect it. Everything you do is up for discussion, from employment practices to material sourcing to production methods. Be prepared to talk about all aspects of your business.

3. Engagement. Ensure that you are part of the conversation in a meaningful way. Don’t let your brand image develop by default, but remember – be social.

5. The Power Is Shifting!


Customer retention and attraction are key business drivers. Social media plays a role both in reacting to any potential issues and proactively engaging customers, ultimately creating brand advocates. Content is the top challenge faced by social media experts today. Both the quality (engaging) and quantity (maintaining an editorial schedule in perpetuity) of content keeps them up at night. To tackle this challenge, think of your customer as your Chief Content Officer. Create content that speaks to their agenda not yours. Seek out content in areas where they have interests and passions. But…make sure you know how it links to your objectives.

6. Make The Customer Your Chief Content Officer


Consider setting your objectives from the customer’s perspective:

I want to be treated with respect

I want to be more environmentally conscious

I want “no hassle”, a simple, easy buying process

I want more value

I want…….

“Focus on how to be social not on how to do social”

Jay Baer, Author The Now Revolution



Critical Success Factors: 1. Understand your target market – their passions and interests. 2. Engage experts / influencers in areas of interest / internal thought leaders. 3. Leverage content across multiple platforms & communication touch points. 4. Encourage customer participation. Ask for comments, feedback, ratings, etc. 5. Make it shareable. 6. Have a content plan that includes all touch points. A customer interacts with

a company through many touch points. It is critical to ensure consistent messaging AND not to inadvertently create over messaging.

7. Have a rolling content plan (know what you need for the next 6-12 months). 8. Monitor & Listen. Ensure you are using effective social media monitoring

tools. This will allow you to not only respond to issues but also to learn more about your customer base, its needs, and potential content topics.

9. Write the unexpected.



Social media supports the planet in numerous ways:

• Social media is ALL digital (no paper) • Companies can operate and sell on a global basis with reduced travel (lower carbon footprint) • Companies and employees can actively engage local and global communities in their CSR initiatives (increased impact for CSR initiatives) • Companies create a conduit for those that may not otherwise be heard (ie. whistle blowers)

7. The Earth Social Media


8. What’s Old Is New Again

Social media has entered our world with a bang - there is much hoopla about it changing the face of business. It’s complex, it’s dynamic, it’s highly reactive, it’s decentralized and ROI is elusive. It is often not underpinned by proven best practice business principles and processes. It’s time to go back to basics and ground social media in solid strategic processes to make it less daunting, elusive and more connected to delivering growth and profitability.


A proven disciplined business process that hasn’t changed

2. Vision / Strategy / Plan

3. Organizational Development

4. Effective Implementation

5. Measuring Results

1. Insight/ Foresight

K Tailored to address social media in your corporate plan.

•What are your stakeholders saying about you and the competition?

•What are they talking about and what sites are they on?

• Integrate social media into your corporate & departmental plans with purpose.

•Clearly define it’s role & success measures.

• Properly resource.

• Build into your corporate culture

• Mitigate risk with corporate policies, best practices and staff training.

•Regularly publish engaging/relevant content that inspires connection and sharing.

•Listen and respond.

• Evaluate results, gaining insight into what’s working, not working and where to focus efforts for greatest return.

8. What’s Old Is New Again


There’s no magic bullet.

Just as it takes time to deliver long term sustainable corporate growth, it takes time to build a solid social media reputation - internally and

externally - which will result in long term profitable growth.

KMH Associates can help organizations effectively integrate their social media practices into their corporate strategies and objectives.



Strategic business consultants with a triple bottom line approach.

The KMH team helps inspire organizations to develop and implement sustainable growth plans that deliver results.

www.kmhassociates.ca

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Kmh social media top eight