Make it strategic and personal
I just spent the last two days at eBay in San Jose at the “Corporate Communications and the Social Media Revolution” conference put on by Ragan and eBay. Lots of great presentations and exciting examples of the use of social media for corporate comms, employee communication and PR. I’m going to run through some of the key themes in this post and use a separate post to show off some of the examples we saw. (Here’s the conference brochure.)
Social Media Conference Brochure
Over and over again, we heard this point: Social Media must be strategic and further your business goals. The advice from the presenters was very similar to my article on Social Media and HR Comm strategy: Don’t jump on the social media bandwagon just because everyone else is doing it, make sure it is going to create business results and is aligned with your overall strategy.
Social media should also be at least a little entertaining. We heard over and over again, get out of “corporate speak” and start talking like real people. Finally! And, social media is inherently personal. Let it show off the personalities of leaders, connect people to real stories happening and connect the business to people’s real lives. The companies that will be successful will be authentic.
Let social media open up the conversation. The whole point is to create dialog and let your audience (whether employees or customers or media) contribute to and—in many cases—drive the dialog. Don’t be scared to “lose control” of the information. Enabling and encouraging the conversation your audience wants to have, and is having already, will further your reach, your brand loyalty, your business. (And, of course, when you get nervous, remind yourself that no organization ever really had total control of the message—that’s an old-school marketing and PR myth.)
Measure. Measure. Measure. You can’t tell if social media tools and your communication strategy are doing their jobs unless you take the time to look at what is actually being accomplished. eBay took us through the details of their employee communications measurement practices, which are super impressive—a combination of engagement surveys, communications auditing, ROI benchmarking and Pulse or snapshot surveys. Other examples linked the campaigns to business results—improving recruiting, increasing sales, etc.
