Social Media Marketing Archives

Going #Rogue: Losing Control of Your Social Media

Social media plays an important role in global public relations strategies. As quickly as social media can build a global brand, it can tear one down at the hands of malicious insiders or hackers. Recently we have seen an increase in the proliferation of “rogue” social accounts across the social sphere. Attacks like these are not new. In 2013, hackers accessed both the Associated Press’ and FIFA World Cup’s Twitter accounts. A single tweet from the APTwitter handle resulted in a $136.5 billion drop in the S&P 500 index’s value in minutes. A year later Burger King’s Twitter account was made to look like McDonald’s while Jeep’s account was hacked noting that the company was sold to Cadillac.

Now, well known agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Park Service (NPS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have all fallen victim to “rouge” takeovers. Rand Research suggests that stolen Twitter accounts are now worth more than stolen credit cards. Rogue accounts attract followers by the thousands, which should be a warning signal for brands across the globe. Imagine losing control of your company’s online messaging or branding.

Crisis communication is evolving and becoming incredibly sophisticated. This session focuses on the variables involved in a new era of crisis planning and risk communication. Critical preparedness is important for the public and media when public perception becomes reality as a result of such a breach.

I was honored to present at PRSA 2017 International Conference in Boston, where I was joined by my esteemed academic collegues @GinaLuttrell and @drjamiward

In our session we shared:

How companies can be proactive and vigilant when protecting their brand in an effort to mitigate ramifications from rogue sites. Discuss the ramifications associated with the public’s blind trust in anonymous communication.
The importance of investing in and equipping the workforce with training. How to train organizational leaders to react to a crisis including appropriate responses to the public and within social media. Plus, we examined the role that PR practitioners play in damage control should a “rogue” or “alt” channel become a reality for your organization.
Participants learned about the future of communication stemming from hackers or acts of civil disobedience.
We rounded out the session with outlining the difference between social media guidelines and policies, and how to begin building the framework for social media policies. Plus, writing social media policies and developing education and compliance training on cybersecurity will help to address vulnerabilities.

Are You Prepared?
Have You Prepared Your Employees?
Registered PRSA members can access our presentation here If you’re interested in learning more about equipping your team, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

Susan Emerick, Founder, Brands Rising

Regina Luttrell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Syracuse University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

Jamie Ward, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Eastern Michigan University

Successful employee advocacy and empowerment begins with a plan

Successful employee empowerment begins with a plan, yet all to often critical planning stages are overlooked, and rushing to execution is the norm. The following 3 critical planning steps are an essential foundation for a successful employee advocacy program:

Build a plan that considers:
1. Business alignment
2. Team design
3. Role design

Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail

Business Alignment
In order to understand the current state of your employees in social media, ask the following questions:

• Which business topics will your employees discuss online?
• To what extent do your employees discuss topics related to your brand in social media?
• Do they have the expertise to discuss these topics in a knowledgeable manner?
• In which venues do they discuss those topics?
• Where do they participate most actively?
• Which target audiences engage in those conversations with employees?
• Do employees represent your brand, or only themselves, when discussing the topics that matter to your brand?
• To what extent do employees publish versus listen?
• Do they have a degree of authority among the people in their online community?
• To what extent do your competitors’ employees possess authority in the same online communities?
• How would you like the above factors to change?
• How much would it be worth to your brand to change the factors above?

Answering the above questions and creating an inventory of engaged employees helps you to understand what you need to do.

As you work to determine the organizational goals that your program will support, collaborate with the leaders of the business units or functional teams that the program supports. And help them to understand how your program can help them to achieve their goals. Then determine the order in which you will take the steps to implement social media empowerment for people in their organizations.

Specifically, you will not be able to deploy this program to the entire organization at once. Instead, prioritize internal teams for enablement, and manage expectations with their leaders. Ensure that everyone understands when you will be able to support their goals and empower their people in social media.

Team Design
Once you understand the organizational goals that you need to support, you can think about how you will organize your teams to achieve those goals.

For example:

Will you empower one person per subject area, or multiple people per subject area?
Will you empower people in one location, or across global regions?
How much time commitment can you expect from each participant?

This will depend largely on the extent to which their management supports their participation. To what extent will your organization’s marketing, PR, and brand staff participate in the program? Will they provide support, tools, or content to the people you empower?

Role Design
During this step, you will define the roles and domains of expertise that you wish to activate in social media. Your selection criteria should be based on your program requirements and the business outcomes you plan to support.

Employees must be segmented to determine which training, support, and tools they require and receive. Employee segmentation also determines the policies, rights, and privileges that apply to each employee. Some job roles may not be appropriate to activate or may require restrictions on their social media activity. For example, employees with access to the private data of your customers may need different tools than people with no such sensitive access.

See Chapter 6 of The Most Powerful Brand on Earth for more information about protecting the safety and security of employees, customers, and your organization.

Determine which roles in your organization are able to support brand outreach based on goals of your program and the extent to which each employee is expected or allowed to participate. Then, prioritize the segments of your employees and define the order in which you will empower each role type. For example, you might choose to empower product managers first, then product development staff, and market researchers last.

Finally, based on the information above, define the roles that socially empowered employees can play within your program. Specify how a role will be different when supporting marketing goals versus supporting recruiting goals. Perhaps they will use different tools, they may need different skills or experience, and they might set different goals for professional development.

For more detailed guidance, reference Chapter 2 of The Most Powerful Brand on Earth

Social Media Engagement forces HR to update job roles and skill requirements

The Human Resources department, in most organizations, is getting a dose of reality as they come to terms with employees having their own personal brand — forcing them to rethink job role definitions and skill requirements.

Long gone are the days that social media responsibility is limited to the social media team that administers branded channels or looks after social customer care. While these teams are still essential and have their critical role to play, employees are increasingly driving engagement with customers, partners and communities through social networking, requiring them to have the skills to engage in real-time conversations, online, and often in public view. But most are not professional communicators. So they will need new skills, and you will need to help them develop those skills while taking into account considerations based on various workforce management areas, as described in Figure 2.1. below

Scaling this kind of skills development program will require that you embed social media skills into the employee development and evaluation processes across the organization. Eventually, you will need to add social networking skills to your organizational skills taxonomy; in most organizations, this helps to define role standards throughout the organization.

Some employees’ job responsibilities will change, and the Human Resources organization will need to update job role definitions and skill requirements. These new skills will dictate employee performance evaluation criteria that may be new to the brand. You might find it helpful to define different skill levels at different career levels, and thereafter, skill development plans and assessments should change to support the new job role definitions, requirements, and career advancement.

During training and education, begin by helping your people to understand the business value that can be created when employees and partners build trust and advocacy online. To help them truly understand how the realtime and public aspects of social media engagement work, provide real-life examples that illustrate the types of behaviors you want them to demonstrate.

In particular, tell employees what they should do in social media, instead of what they should not do. Demonstrate this “what to do” approach across various roles in your organization, such as sales, marketing, and product specialists. Describe the benefits that the brand expects to achieve in terms of quantifiable business outcomes. Doing so will make the training more meaningful to employees.

Given the quickly evolving nature of social and digital media, you will need the ability to quickly create and distribute training or education to your people—especially as new channels, best practices, or policies emerge or fade. This approach could easily be used to train employees who are active in social media and also to keep them continually equipped with the latest information about your brand.

Why You Should Embrace Helping Your Employees build their brand? (not to mention your company’s!)

Many brands avoid empowering their employees in social media because they do not want to dis-intermediate the marketing team from customers, or they do not want employees creating brand assets that the brand does not own. Some brands fear that employees in social media could damage brand reputation or violate regulations and create liability for the brand. Some brands just do not know how to begin.

Regardless of how a brand feels about its employees in social media, nearly every brand today has employees who are active in social media and employees who talk about their brand in social media. Those employees engage in social media for a wide range of reasons. In many cases, employees get into social media because their partners and customers demand it.

While almost every brand today can find employees using social media to discuss their products, services, working conditions, and so on, the brands that achieve the most value deploy corporate resources to empower their employees in social media.

Simply asking employees to parrot brand-generated messages through their personal social media may help the brand to gain small amounts of reach or engagement, but it is not a sustainable strategy for engaging audiences and developing relationships online. It is easy to do, so a lot of brands do it; however, that approach fails to respect the relationships between employees and their audiences, so it does nothing to help employees create a differentiated and effective presence online. At the program level, design your training and support in 3 stages: Prepare, Manage and Reinforce. From an Individual level, program participants will advance along a continuium at their own rate and pace based on what they commit to. More details can be found in The Most Powerful Brand on Earth

In general, the greatest potential value of socially empowered employees can be achieved only when the brand aligns employee activities in social media with brand goals. And you should do so across the organization.

As stated by Danna Vetter, Vice President of Consumer Marketing Strategy at ARAMARK: “Each of our businessesthat are active on social has different strategies to meet their business needs. So the metrics we use to determine success vary by strategy. We expect employees to set goals and objectives to meet their business’ needs, just like they would in any marketing campaign. Our job is to give them the opportunity to be successful and provide them the tools that allow them to be.”

Brands that build the competitive advantages of socially engaged employees quickly encounter a host of internal and external challenges, including potential conflict between brand goals and the employees’ personal goals for their own professional reputations. Often, those two sets of goals may not align completely, and it takes some effort for the brand to keep it all working together.

Remembering Robin Carey, founder of Social Media Today

I had the good fortune to meet Robin several years ago when I began serving on the Social Media Today (SMT) Advisory Board to help her advance engagement with Social Business Leaders and extend the Social Shake Up event programing to feature such leaders. It’s hard to believe what she was able to accomplish in such a short number of years. Always on the vanguard of what’s new and emerging in the industry that was coming of age. Robin was not only brilliant; she was fun and incredibly interesting. She was sincerely interested in knowing you, as a colleague as well as a friend.

She loved her boys and was so proud of their accomplishments. She joyfully shared updates on their progress as any doting mother would. She was open about the reality of building a business while balancing the demands of being a Wife and Mother. She had a special knack for helping aspiring women. I was a beneficiary of her generosity, for which I’m forever grateful. She was the quintessential Master of Ceremonies, bringing business leaders together from all over the world to advance the Social Media industry through knowledge sharing and collaboration.

No one could host an event and make it fun like Robin. She would light up a room with her energy and elegance. She knew how to prepare the “run of show”, she owned the stage with her glamorous style. So many times she’d break into dancing to her favorite tunes in between event segments. She embraced good times and welcomed all to join in … and we did. She made you feel special for being a part of what she was building. Always giving with her time and intellect, she was a connector from the heart.

Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 7.01.42 PM — Robin Fray Carey visits IBM Design Lab in New York

She shared the stage with so many. Not just the event stage, the editorial stage. She wrote incredible pieces highlighting bleeding edge work from brand leaders who were in the trenches making it happen. She wrote this post featuring the work of my IBM team, showcasing how we were using Agile practices to transform marketing as well as featuring the foundational work of the IBM Select program that I championed.

Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 10.34.46 PM — Employee Advocacy Summit 2014 Left to Right: Jeanne Murray, Constantin Basturea, Tammy Wagner, DeShelia Span, Denise Holt, Liz Bullock Brown, Sabrina Stoffregen, Michael Brito, Susan Emerick, Michael Ambassador Bruny, Chris Boudreaux and Robin Fray Carey

I’m especially grateful for all that she did for my co-author Chris Boudreaux and I. From hosting a book-signing event for our book launch in 2013 to allowing us to share the W Hotel venue to launch the Employee Advocacy Summit in 2014 as a half day pre-opener to the Social Shake Up.

The most moving post she wrote was this one about our book The Most Powerful Brand on Earth. While I was moved by the accolades she included and the hard hitting facts on the integrity of our content … that wasn’t what moved me most. It was the date that it was published and how I came upon reading it that really moved me. You see, Robin had a sixth sense. She knew that my mother was dying and I was her primary care giver. We talked a lot about our Mothers over the years and the kinds of role models they were to us and how we hoped our children would reflect on our legacy some day. So it was … the morning my Mom passed, as I was walking out of her room, a notification appeared on my phone of a new SMT post. When I opened it, this was the post she wrote. It was postmarked the same date my Mom left this world, January 27, 2014. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of Divine Intervention that my Mom was proud of me, while at the same time, so was Robin Fray Carey.

Thank you Robin and the SMT Family. We’ve created a movement, together.

Employee Advocacy Lead Generation: An “always on” marketing channel

Nearly all brands struggle to remain competitive and are seeking ways to do more with lower budgets.

Lower budgets along with the growing trend that people are more skeptical about messages and content that comes from official brand channels. So, what’s a marketer to do?

Sound familiar?

Enter your Employee Advocacy program

The good news is, people are more receptive to content that comes from a network connection. In fact, people trust regular employees as credible spokespeople more than official brand sources like the CEO, as shown by the 20 point gain since 2009, in Edleman’s 2014 Trust Barometer study. In addition, the study reveals that employees rank highest overall 36%, as the most trusted influencer to communicate across 4 out of 5 topic categories including: Engagement, Integrity, Products & Services and Operations.

Because content from a connection is inherently more trustworthy or “valid”, it’s more likely to be opened, clicked, shared, and ultimately converted into a lead or sale. And since employees use social media around the clock, your Employee Advocacy program becomes an always-on lead generation channel.

Leading brands are increasing investment in digital marketing and Employee Advocacy programs that create business value through equipping and empowering employees.

The most common sources of value from such programs usually include increased revenues from employees who generate more leads and conversions to a call to action as compared to paid media.

For more on this and other ways to drive business value from employee advocacy, download the eBook: Making the case for Employee Advocacy, 5 winning use cases that enable consensus and collaboration

What’s the #1 incentive employees seek from an Employee Advocacy program?

Nearly every event I speak at on Employee Advocacy, I’m asked by business leaders, “What incentives do you find work the best to motivate employees to engage?”

This question was raised when I was honored to speak at the Social Media.Org Brands Only Summit, where there over 300 brands were present.

So,“What incentives do you find work the best to motivate employees to engage in an employee advocacy program?”

Do you suggest paying them?

Do you provide prizes?

Do you use leaderboards?

What about gamification techniques?

While these may provide a limited lift in engagement for some brands, I would say none of these are what employees are truly seeking. So what is it that motivates employees to engage in a committed way to share their expertise and great news about their companies? Two words:

Visibility and recognition

Top most is visibility amongst coworkers, managers, but most importantly Senior Leadership. Followed by recognition for their commitment and dedication. It’s truly that simple!

So what are you doing to integrate visibility and recognition types of rewards into your Employee Advocacy program?

Here’s a few ideas you may want to consider:

Start a column to recognize the most dedicated employees that are the most committed to regularly engaging to drive the program and company goals forward. Run this column in your company newsletter and create a feature story series on your intranet or company blog.
Create a monthly opportunity for Senior Leaders to recognize employees verbally on a management call. A simple mention of the employee with examples of how their efforts are driving results is a fabulous way to motive employees and spread the good word to management and the C-Suite as well as inspire others to engage.
Take advantage of company events where leaders can recognize the efforts of the top most engaged employees publicly amongst their coworkers. There is nothing more gratifying that public recognition.

You will find more on this topic during the Q&A of this video where I’m asked this question and more. Also, there is a whole section about rewards and recognition in my book, The Most Powerful Brand on Earth see Chapter 2: Help your people do well

Best selling author and founder of Social Media.Org the one and only Andy Sernovitz pictured with me. What a great event!

“The Most Powerful Brand on Earth,” presented by Susan Emerick from SocialMedia.org on Vimeo.

This isn’t Margaritaville. You can lose the parrot head, my friend.

What’s the most common Employee Advocacy mistake brands make? Many brands have given their employees permission to use social media, published a social media policy, and offered training on the use of social venues. But that level of support leaves a lot of potential value on the table.

Simply asking employees to parrot brand-generated messages through their personal social media may help the brand to gain small amounts of reach or engagement, but it is not a sustainable strategy for engaging audiences and developing relationships online. It is easy to do, so a lot of brands do it; however, that approach fails to respect the relationships employees and their audiences, so it does nothing to help employees create a differentiated and effective presence online. Specifically, when people simply repeat brand-generated messages, they lose the ability to attract people like me, thereby diminishing their ability to build trust and advocacy online, or worse irritating their network and causing abandonment.

Here’s a hilarious example of the effect of parroting messaging featured by CONAN, to demonstrate the point:

See what I mean?

All joking aside, this kind of parroting can do huge damage to your brand. Not only is irritating your followers, it’s likely driving them away in droves.

A preliminary study that I’ve been working on, with my colleagues in IBM Research Watson Lab, has found that more than 50% of the 230,430 followers of a certain branded social account is also following more than one of the company’s branded or employees accounts. Given this, there is a risk of creating more spam than value for our constituents, if parroting messaging and distributing through multiple accounts continues. Resulting in the opposite of creating value.

My team has coined the phrase “Ecko Gecko” to describe the phenomenon. We’ve created guidance to help our employees understand what negative affects parroting messages has when they simply copy & paste the same message and share it across multiple accounts. There is significant risk in damaging brand reputation.

Leading brands monitor social media and use social media analytics to observe and evaluate the effectiveness of their employee’s who are engaged in social on behalf of their companies. It’s scary what you might find. Especially when it comes to the practice of copying & pasting the same message over and over then distributing via social accounts, both branded and employee accounts. Are you monitoring in this way?

There is an important opportunity here, a teaching moment. Don’t let it paralyze your efforts, use the insights to create new education and training to course correct. Share the findings from your analysis and provide clear, concrete incentives for behavior modification. If you share examples of what not to do, backed by quantifiable and substantiating evidence based on data which demonstrates the negative impact such actions have, such as:

driving “un-follows”
encouraging “opt-outs”
causing “removals from lists”, (just to name a few)

Who can argue or ignore that?

For more on how to “Help Your People Do Well”, read chapter 2 of The Most Powerful Brand on Earth.

Enter your Employee Advocacy program

Nearly every event I speak at on Employee Advocacy, I’m asked by business leaders, “What incentives do you find work the best to motivate employees to engage?”

I had the pleasure of sharing my experience of co-authoring a book about building a successful employee advocacy program, The Most Powerful Brand on Earth, on Bryan Kramer’s popular podcast series ~ “From an Author’s Point of View”.

What’s the most common Employee Advocacy mistake brands make? Many brands have given their employees permission to use social media, published a social media policy, and offered training on the use of social venues. But that level of support leaves a lot of potential value on the table.