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Top Ten Pitfalls to Avoid When Going Social in the Business World

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Businesses can gain a lot from building a “Social Nation,” but only if you’re networking smart.

If you were to make a list of up-and-coming business trends, social media strategies would probably be near the top. Actually, scratch that “up-and-coming” part – social media is already here. However, thousands of companies are rushing headlong into the profile-creating, news-tweeting, blog-posting frenzy…only to find that their valiant efforts are not getting the results they had hoped. If you’re looking for fans, followers, and friends to build a Social Nation around your business, don’t panic. There is simple advice that will help businesses avoid the pitfalls and make a strong online impact.

It’s true: there are countless benefits to joining what I call the Social Nation revolution – but just like any strategy for growth, social media isn’t foolproof. If you don’t want your company’s social strategy to fall flat, there are some guidelines you’ll need to follow.

As the Chairman and CEO of Mzinga, a company that provides social software to businesses. Quite literally, it’s my job to be social media savvy. And before you start building your own Social Nation, you need to have a well-researched game plan.

When it comes to building a successful social network for your company, you need to understand that there’s a lot of prep work to be done. You can’t just set up a Facebook profile for your company, tweet once or twice a day, and expect public interest in your company to shoot through the roof. Far from it, actually.

Think about it this way: if you were in charge of your company’s booth at a trade show or conference, you wouldn’t just slap your company’s logo onto a piece of poster board, place your business cards on the table, and hope for the best, would you? Of course not. Yet that’s exactly how some companies approach social media – and that’s why so many of these initiatives fail.

If you want to become a meaningful part of social conversations and interactions, you’ve got to know who your target “fan base” is, where they spend their time online, and what sorts of content and programming is valuable and relevant to them, and will foster their continued interest and participation. You also need to make sure you have the wherewithal to commit to growing and sustaining your Social Nation, and you’ve got to make sure that you have buy-in from within your company. And that’s just for starters.

Sure, it may sound intimidating, but don’t give up yet. Half the battle is knowing which mistakes not to make:

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About the Author

Barry Libert is the author of Social Nation: How to Harness the Power of Social Media to Attract Customers, Motivate Employees, and Grow Your Business. He is Chairman and CEO of Mzinga®, the leading provider of social software, services, and analytics that improve business performance. Barry has published five books on the value of social and information networks. He is a regularly featured keynote speaker at industry associations and for leading companies on the power of social media. He has been published in Newsweek, Smart Money, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, and he has appeared on CNN, CNBC, and NPR. Barry currently serves on the Board of Directors at Innocentive and The SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. To learn more about Barry, click here.

Leadership Inspirations – A Better Tomorrow

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“You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.”

Charles F. Kettering (1876 – 1958)
American inventor and the holder of 140 patents

Set the Stage for Engagement

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Low pay is a dissatisfaction for employees but high pay by itself won’t keep the best people around. Transactional leadership might be a motivator when money and better benefits are available, but today’s climate seems to lend itself more to transformational leadership where a caring leadership can stimulate innovation, creative thinking, and productivity.

In Healing the Wounds, David A. Noer writes how the emotional impact of downsizing and the subsequent extra workload disturbs employee morale and productivity long after the fact. The study found that such feelings of stress, fatigue, and depression can last five years and more, imposing a strain on organizations’ competitiveness. Not only was there a sense of unfairness and anger over top management pay and severance, but symptoms of insecurity, anxiety, and fear that discouraged innovation and creative thinking. As Noer wrote, “There seemed to be a much stronger feeling among lay-off survivors that the organization was not in the business of looking out for its employees and that their loyalty was to themselves and to their unit, not to the overall organization.”

Clearly, after as much as five years, employees still suffered from the “survivor-blaming phenomenon,” as Noer called it. Managers and their staffs were unhappy and could be easily tempted to check out other job possibilities if they surfaced. New recruits heard stories that made them question their decision to join the company ranks.

Gallup, one of the world’s top research organizations, has always found the ratio of engaged to disengaged employees to be problematic. The recent economy would suggest the situation to have become more severe. This would suggest a review of corporate management practices to see that these 12 elements as proposed by Gallup are supported within the organization:

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About the Author

Florence Stone is editorial director for AMA and editor of MWorld, AMA’s quarterly membership journal. She is the author of Coaching, Counseling & Mentoring, The Manager’s Question and Answer Book and The Essential New Manager’s Kit.

To learn more about the American Management Association, click here.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 50 – An Interview with Marshall Fisher, co-author of The New Science of Retailing

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 50 – An Interview with Marshall Fisher, co-author of The New Science of Retailing examines the use of analytics to improve an organization’s supply chain performance in a way that ultimately enhances the bottom line. During our discussion, Marshall Fisher, co-author of The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • actions business leaders can take to improve their forecasts
  • what a ‘Flexible Supply Chain’ is and the benefits it provides
  • capabilities an organization needs to possess and steps leaders must take to develop a ‘Flexible Supply Chain’
  • methods to determine the amount of supply chain flexibility needed
  • how leaders can align their supply chain operations with the organization’s goals
  • key factors executives should consider when making decisions regarding which technologies to pursue in order to enhance their supply chain operations

Additional Information

Marshall’s book, The New Science of Retailing, that he co-authored with Ananth Raman, the UPS Foundation Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Marshall Fisher, co-author of The New Science of Retailing, is the UPS Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and co-director of the Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management. To read Marshall’s complete biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:11 — 36.0MB)

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Corporate Diversity Still Coming Up Short for Women

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Review of S&P 100 Shows Women Account For Fewer Than 1 in 10 Top Paid Executives, 1 in 5 Board Members.

Women may make up more than half the workforce1 but continue to be significantly underrepresented on corporate boards and in C-level executive positions, according to a major new study released today by Calvert Investments, a long-time leader in advocating for corporate diversity.

Examining the Cracks in the Ceiling: A Survey of Corporate Diversity Practices of the S&P 100 shows that out of the 100 CEOs represented in the survey, 92 were Caucasian males. Women make up approximately 18% of director positions within the S&P 100, and only 8.4% of the highest paid executive positions within the same group of companies.

Four Key Findings From the Report

  1. The C-Suite is Still Hard to Reach – The study shows that non-white, non-male officers are rare. Over half – 56 companies – in the S&P 100 have no female and/or minority representation in their highest paid executive positions and only 14 companies have two or more diverse officers in these positions.
  2. No Disclosure = No Accountability – The report found that 37% of the S&P 100 companies disclose no demographic data on employees, such as race, ethnicity and gender. Only 8 companies disclose full EEO-1 data, that is, a full breakdown of the workforce by race and gender across employment categories.
  3. Integration and Innovation Abound – According to the report, 30% of the S&P 100 companies include some oversight of diversity issues at the board level and 34% of companies include diversity measures within their compensation plans.
  4. Corporate Commitment Remains the ‘X’ Factor – Overall, 38% of the S&P 100 companies demonstrate a robust commitment to diversity, both internally and externally.

As an investor, Calvert recognizes that those companies that combine competitive financial performance with fair and equitable working environments where diversity is not only tolerated but embraced are likely to recognize gains in both the workplace and marketplace and be better positioned to generate long-term value for their shareholders.

“We are very concerned about the fact that women and minorities continue to be under-represented at the highest levels of management,” said Barbara J. Krumsiek, President & CEO of Calvert Group, Ltd. “Without a pipeline of female and minority executives in highly-paid, highly responsible positions, it will be very difficult to achieve board diversity, which is critical to strong governance and good management.”

Calvert’s study, published in October 2010, evaluated S&P 100 companies according to ten indicators, including: EEO Policy, Internal Diversity Initiatives, External Diversity Initiatives, Scope of Diversity Initiatives, Family-Friendly Benefits, EEO-1 Disclosure, Highest Paid Executives, Board Representation, Director Selection Criteria and Overall Corporate Commitment.

The study showed that companies of this size have a significant commitment to diversity. None of the companies scored zero, and 65 out of 100 companies scored at or above 70 points. Moreover, a few of the companies emerged as genuine leaders in the diversity movement, setting an example that other companies could emulate. Among the top-scoring companies were Chevron Corp., Citigroup Inc., Coca-Cola Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Sara Lee Corp.

Still, the study also demonstrated how difficult it remains to measure progress, given major gaps in disclosure.

“We are concerned about the lack of disclosure, because data is critical to demonstrating progress in female and minority representation,” said Aditi Mohapatra, lead author of the report and analyst specializing in diversity issues in the Sustainability Research Department of Calvert Asset Management Company, Inc. “It is also important in evaluating the effectiveness of diversity initiatives. With better data, we could more readily compare the impact of various programs – such as dedicated management training for women and minorities, diverse employee resource groups, and recruitment and outreach initiatives – and recommend best practices.”

Calvert released the first edition of Examining the Cracks in the Ceiling in September 2008. That edition analyzed the corporate diversity practices of the companies held in the Calvert Social Index®. The 2008 report found that while nine companies within the survey showed no public commitment to diversity, only 3 percent demonstrated diversity excellence.

For a full copy of the 2010 study, click here.

Source

  1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2010 Report

About Calvert

Calvert has long been a leader in advocating for corporate diversity. In 2004, the Calvert Women’s Principles® became the first global code of corporate conduct focused exclusively on empowering, advancing and investing in women. In 2008, Calvert partnered with the City of San Francisco’s Department on the Status of Women and Verité to adapt the Principles for the Bay area and launched the Gender Equality Principles (GEP) Initiative. Last week, the three partners officially launched the companion website and self assessment tool available at www.GenderPrinciples.org. This launch was the culmination of a series of roundtables over two years which brought together companies and issue experts to translate the Gender Equality Principles into practical policies, tools, and indicators for direct implementation into the workplace.

To learn more about Calvert, click here.