Mark Tosczak's Blog» Business

Four tactics to take corporate social media to the next level

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:40:04 +0000

In most companies, social media lives in marketing and/or corporate communications. That’s fine for brand and corporate efforts, but if your company’s social media activities are restricted to just those two functions, you’re not getting everything out of social media that you could be.

Photo credit: Dell (which has successfully used social media for more than just marketing and public relations).

Companies should think about social media at two levels:

The brand level, which typically involves tactics such as corporate Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, corporate blogs and formal social media campaigns.
The employee level, which requires empowering as many of your employees as possible to engage with the outside world using social media tools with the goal of doing their jobs better.

If your company has on-staff recruiters, a sales force, R&D specialists and customer service staffers who are not using social media, chances are they’re not as effective as they could be.

So how do you go about implementing something like this? Here are four steps I’d start with:

Write (or, if needed, revise) your social-media policy so it is simple and clear for employees to follow, and not only protects your company, but also encourages employees to tap social media tools to do their jobs better.
Deliver training in social media for employees in sales, business development, human resources, customer service, R&D and other nonmarketing, non-PR functions.
Provide ongoing support for employees using social media in their professional capacity. That could include everything from arranging for professional photographs for LinkedIn and with other social media profiles to paying for social media apps for employees’ smart phones. You might even think about retaining a social media coach to work with individuals.
Develop a formal process to help new employees understand how they can (and should) use social media. Chances are they won’t have gotten this training in their last job.

If you have other ideas about companies can move their social media activities to the next level, I’d love to hear them. Please leave a comment below.

Why you should attend ConvergeSouth

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:15:16 +0000

Blogs and social media are great, but you can often learn more, meet more people and have a richer experience attending conferences, seminars and other events in person. There’s a big difference between skimming a blog post in your RSS reader and the immersive, interactive experience of a conference.

That’s why, if you’re interested in social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and doing business online, you should attend ConvergeSouth 2010. (Disclaimer: I am one of the volunteers helping to put the conference together. I’m involved because I’ve attended several past ConvergeSouth conferences and I think it’s a great conference.)

So far, this year’s line-up of speakers includes:

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
Elyse Porterfield, of quitting a job via whiteboard fame, on viral video marketing
Will Carroll, Sports Illustrated’s Fantasy League writer
SEO pro Brent Payne (who’s in charge of SEO for 50+ Tribune Co. websites)

There’s a full schedule over there on the right-hand navigation menu of my blog. Want to learn more? More importantly, want to register? You should. Visit the ConvergeSouth website and sign-up today. It’ll be worth it. I’ll see you there.

Six tips for getting more out of conferences

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:41:25 +0000

Don't just sit there. Make sure you get the most out of attending a conference or seminar. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/211097)

I recently attended Ragan’s Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta (which was excellent — the folks at Ragan did a great job finding speakers and putting on a great event). For 2½ days about 500 of us met at Coca-Cola headquarters and heard first-hand how some of the country’s best known companies are using social media.

In addition to getting a lot of good ideas about social media, I also came away with some thoughts — some new, some old — about ways to get more out of a conference or seminar.

1. If it is a social media event or if people will be tweeting about it, find out the hashtag (or designate one if no one else will) ahead of time. Bonus: start tweeting before the event to make yourself known to other attendees and meet them before you actually arrive.

2. Find other ways to organize attendees online. I started a Twitter list of conference attendees. After the Ragan conference, a fan page for conference attendees was started on Facebook and another attendee started a LinkedIn group.

3. Write your Twitter ID on your name badge. Even if it’s not a social media or marketing event and you’re the only Twitter user there, this still could be a great way to start conversations.

4. Camp out close to the walls and the power outlets in the conference room. It sucks to have your laptop battery die in the middle of a presentation as your taking notes or tweeting or whatever. Bonus: Bring a power strip with you to share the outlet with others — you’ll quickly be the most popular person there.

5. Decide which social events around the the conference you’ll attend. If you’re an introvert like me, you have to pace yourself a little bit, so decide what’s the most valuable to you and make plans to get the most out of that.

6. Bring back notes, copies of slide presentations and other materials to share with your colleagues. You can provide your employer and clients more value if you share what you learn after you return.

Everyone has their own tricks for getting more out of conferences. What are your tips? Please share them in the comments below.

Why you should stop trying new social media sites

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:17:57 +0000

Google Wave. Google Buzz. Farmville. Foursquare. Gowalla. Yelp.

Don't get lost in the maze of choices social media offers. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1093677)

The list goes on and on. There are more social media sites, social media apps and cool online things that people are talking about than I will ever have time to fully explore. Even though I make my living in part by helping companies use social media, I can’t commit enough time to explore every new thing to come along. Chances are, you don’t have the time either. And that’s OK.

It’s easy to get caught up in trying the latest and “greatest,” easy to worry that you’re going to miss out on the next Facebook or Twitter if you don’t jump on a new site right away. In other words, it’s easy to forget why we’re here in the first place.

We’re here to have conversations, to learn, to market and brand ourselves, our businesses and our causes. Actually doing those things requires work, attention and focus. But the siren song of Google’s latest project or the newest game that all your friends seem to be playing on Facebook can be all too alluring sometimes.

A better strategy might be to focus on just a handful of sites and activities, to spend real time building real relationships, creating real content and establishing a real presence. It’s OK to not be everywhere. Instead, pick your places and really BE there. For me, these days, that means I’m spending a lot of time focusing on this blog (my home base on the web), on Twitter and on Facebook. I spend less time on LinkedIn and a private forum or two.

I have dipped my toe into Google Buzz and Google Wave, am intrigued by FourSquare but not ready yet to focus on it, and I keep an eye on the news, apps and sites that keep social media enthusiasts talking. But that’s all. And that’s OK. It’s better to pick your places, focus and have an impact. Trying to be everywhere is probably a formula for being nowhere.

So I don’t really mean that you should never try a new social media site. It just means that you should do so carefully and with some consideration as to why you’re doing it and how it fits into your overall goals.

What say you? Where do you spend your time online and how do you figure out what’s valuable? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

How to strengthen your relationships

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:30:36 +0000

Have you reached out and touched people in your network lately? (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/616726)

In social media it’s easy to get caught up in mechanical ideas of what building and maintaining relationships is about. Are you pinging your network regularly? Are you sharing content, creating value? Are you thanking people? In marketing, we start quantifying these things: How many tweets, how many retweets, how many followers or subscribers or fans?

And that’s fine. Except that it’s all just a way of dancing around the real issue: relationships.

I got an email last week from an old acquaintance (which I haven’t returned yet — sorry Jamie, I will). We’re connected via LinkedIn and she wrote to tell me what was going on with her life and to ask what was going on with mine. She said that she was trying to do a better job this year of connecting with her network. Good for her.

All of us should steal that idea and do the same. It’s not numbers of friends, followers or subscribers that are ultimately important, it’s relationships. That’s why it’s called social media, and that’s where its power lies.

This isn’t just a soft and fuzzy “well isn’t that nice” issue either. The strength of your relationships and the strength of trust can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Many sales people understand this instinctively — they’ve always operated on the basis of relationships, trust and communication. Marketers are trying to take old mass media ideas of brand and integrate them with social media concepts around trust, reputation and relationships. It’s still a work in progress.

Dave Navarro published an interesting case study last week looking at short sales letters vs. long sales letters. It’s worth reading. The bottom line there with Laura Roeder‘s webinar is that she has spent a long time building trust and relationships with her community. That includes pushing out content for them (she publishes an email newsletter and a blog), but it also includes lots of interaction (look at her Twitter stream). Interaction is the bedrock of relationships.

So, let’s bring this down to some actionable stuff. Ask yourself these questions. Based on your answers, you should know what to do next to strengthen your relationships with your community.

Do you routinely say happy birthday to people? Facebook makes this easy.
Do you congratulate people in your community when they get promoted, get a job, win an award or achieve something noteworthy?
Look at your list of Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections. Who haven’t you talked to in the last few months? What’s stopping you?
Who do you need to meet for coffee or lunch or a drink?
You just read something interesting. Who in your community could benefit? Instead of sharing it as a status update (maybe in addition to), have you just sent it to that one person via email? Do this for one or two people a day and watch your relationships tighten up.
Are you being human? Are you sharing with your friends and colleagues what’s important in your life? Are you asking about and listening to what’s important in their lives? This might have nothing to do with what you or your friends actually get paid to do every day.

What else? How else can we all do a better job of connecting and reconnecting with people in our communities and networks? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

What's your purpose?

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:33:07 +0000

What's your purpose? (Photo source - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/867083)

I recently listened to an interview with author Daniel Pink (via Elizabeth Marshall’s free Author Teleseminars) about his new book Drive. (Confession: I haven’t read it, so I’m basing this blog post on the author interview, which ran about an hour. If you want to learn more about this, you should read the book, which has exercises and, I’m sure, a lot more detail and insight. The book is going on my to-read list.)

Drive examines decades of research on what really motivates people. Pink says that there are two kinds of activities — algorithmic and heuristic. Algorithmic work is anything that can be broken down into a set of rules. Heuristic work is more complex, more nuanced, and requires judgment, creativity, intuition and analysis. Heuristic work is what many of us spend a lot of time doing.

Pink says that the overwhelming evidence from decades of research on motivation was that carrot vs. stick type approach to motivation (penalizing people for mistakes, rewarding them for successes) work well in motivating algorithmic work. But for heuristic work, penalties and prizes have the opposite effect. So long as people are being paid at a level they believe is fair, paying them a lot more in hopes of motivating them for heuristic activities doesn’t work.

What does work to motivate people to accomplish heuristic work? Three things: autonomy, mastery, purpose.

Autonomy, obviously, is the ability to make your own choices about when and how you do things.
Mastery is the desire to achieve a high skill level.
Purpose is the belief that you’re acting in service to something greater than yourself (not money).

It’s the last one I’m particularly interested in. If you have a purpose, it can bring fresh reserves of motivation into your daily life. And that’s a good thing. Worthwhile things are frequently difficult to achieve, and achieving the difficult requires motivation.

Which brings me to — What is your purpose? Have you ever thought about that question?

For that matter, what is the purpose of your company? Your brand? Your blog? Your social media activities? Your marketing?

Are you doing it just to make money? Or is there something else that motivates you?

Google, a company that has made lots of money, says its mission is to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That is a grand purpose, and I wonder if it doesn’t play a role in motivating people at the company. A cynic would say that words like that are just clever PR, spin designed to pretty up Google’s real purpose, which they would claim is to make the founders and shareholders rich. Google has made its founders (and many shareholders) rich, but I don’t think that excludes the company having a purpose beyond that.

Most marketers (myself included) would urge the typical company (or product/brand/service/whatever) to clearly define its USP, its unique selling proposition. That’s the one thing that makes that product or brand different from everything else and desirable to some group of buyers.

But before you ask yourself what your USP is, maybe you should ask yourself what your purpose is. You with me? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.