Social media positives and pitfalls

Social media positives and pitfalls

Introduction Social media, through their user generated content and interactivity, are becoming established as a routine way of communicating directly with colleagues, clients, stakeholders and customers. This raises issues for the working manager: how to take advantage of what social media has to offer, how to exploit the benefits and avoid the pitfalls, and how access should be managed. This leaflet explores these questions. What is social media? Social media are media for social interaction which use highly accessible web-based and mobile-based technology. An important distinction between social media and traditional media (newspapers, TV etc) is that the content of social media is controlled by the people that use it. Types of social media include: blogs, discussion forums, question and answers, podcasts, professional networking and wikis.

Why use social media as a manager? Using social media effectively gives you the opportunity to make direct contact with customers, stakeholders and peers, and for them to directly contact you. This can provide a number of benefits to yourself as a manager and to your organisation Listening to your customers and markets Social media monitoring will help you to learn more about your target audience by tracking customers and seeing what they are saying, where they are saying it and why they are saying it. This ability to identify and target specific individuals or groups is one of the most powerful business aspects of social media. Networking Establishing a personal presence in social media enables an online professional network to be established. This allows for the sharing of advice and support between peers, and also opens up the opportunity to meet new clients and employers. Consideration should be given to your own personal branding online, and how you want to be perceived by those who may access your profile. Interactivity Direct contact with your clients, customers and stakeholders can enable conversation and ideas to flow, and feedback to be given to improve existing and new products and services. Sales If you connect to potential customers, you can send them updates regarding new products, special offers or events that will drive interest. The aim is to create a sales pipeline. This starts with the connection point which is social media and carries on until you receive payment either online or offline. Marketing A comprehensive social media strategy could act as a partial replacement for traditional advertising and marketing at a fraction of the costs. Why avoid social media? Social media also has some perceived drawbacks. Some of the common reasons for not wanting to be engaged in social media and some rebuttals are set out below: The website is our online presence Most organisations now have websites some are static, some are dynamic. But having a website and waiting for customers/stakeholders to visit it, is a one-way platform. This approach of passively attracting customers is no longer successful. Social media allows for interaction with stakeholders and customers which otherwise may not have happened. More than ever, customers want companies to do a better job of putting out a steady stream of fresh, relevant content if they want to engage with them. The effectiveness of social media cannot be measured Social media can be so effectively measured that you can pin-point every single user, comment, update or even a tag. It can be measured by programmes such as GoogleAnalytics for example. Before and after metrics can be kept to evaluate the benefit of a shift from a passive website to a socially engaged one. We are on these sites there is no return on investment There is a difference between having a web presence and being heard, or hearing what your customers are saying. Presence on social media platforms is one thing; the messages that are sent out are another. Spending a lot of time focusing on which new social media platforms to launch, rather than focusing on how to produce better content, is not a sustainable way of operating. Focus should be applied to differentiating content and strategy.

Audience Using social media well takes time and effort. Not everyone in your target audience will be engaged, and with some social media platforms there are a lot more people reading rather than actively participating. This is because there may be a number of different types of user such as: Scene breaker: an early adopter, using social network sites to discover and be part of new communities and movements Collaborator: uses social networking sites to create events ideas and activities with others Connector: passes on interesting links and information to others Therefore, while everyone may not be actively engaging, it doesn t necessarily mean that you are failing to communicate your message to your intended audience. Additionally, the interest in your social media efforts is likely to ebb and flow, with differing benefits being provided back to your organisation depending on the maturity of its social media activites. The opportunity for focus group feedback and idea generation for cross-sales or up-sales should not be ignored. Risk & Control what are the impacts of managing or not managing social media? The advent of social media has brought up the dual issues of engagement and control. The positioning of social media in relation to these factors, sitting alongside traditional elements of communicating, can be seen in the chart on the next page.* The quadrants represent different scenarios in the workplace. Traditional face-to-face communication (bottom left) here knowledge and skills are something to be bargained over. Often knowledge sharing doesn t take place, as tacit knowledge is the main source of power to enhance careers at work. Modern face-to-face communication (top left) typical of most organisations. Engagement is through top-down initiatives and not necessarily accessing what really matters to employees/clients. People often do not disclose their true feelings in a corporate setting and underlying motivations are hard to distinguish. Laissez-faire web (bottom right) communication is virtual and bottom up, but using a media that is outside formal employer control (but not necessarily the ability of an organisation to monitor). There is a possibility of loss of focus or simple time-wasting with the platforms that are used in this arena (Facebook etc). Enterprise 2.0 (top right) development of a virtual Web 2.0 within organisations, this is often prevalent where employees are geographically dispersed.

Easier for organisations to control Modern face-to-face communication Conventional recruitment media In-company wikis and blogs Employee questionnaires Knowledge management systems Enterprise 2.0 Employee reps on working parties/ joint-consultation Project team meetings Online discussion boards Easier for employees to engage and identify with Difficult for employees to engage and identify with Traditional collective bargaining Open source employee blogs Traditional face-to-face communication Traditional technologies of learning and collaboration Facebook, YouTube, Flickr etc Laissez-faire web Difficult for organisations to control * Source: CIPD report Web 2.0 and Human Resource Management, 2008

Risk To achieve the full benefits of social media for your organisation, one of the key things is to allow it to become people-centric, ie not to over-manage it but to allow it to be free. There are legitimate concerns to be raised with this approach, which exists in the laissez-faire scenario and to a lesser extent the Enterprise 2.0 scenario: Risk Management comments made via social media could fall well outside the defined messaging approach of a PR department. There could be issues of libel, reputation management and data protection. Employee Management Employees may be tempted to waste time in the office using sites which are not work-related. Research* shows that just over half of managers believe social networking is valuable for engaging job-seekers and learning how the organisation is perceived. However 62% are concerned about damaging comments on social networks and blogs. Control There are various approaches when it comes to controlling the risks inherent in social media such as online message boards: Self policing No organisational formal oversight. The community regulates itself, with members speaking up when views are deemed unacceptable. Semi-moderated All comments are published but a moderator will view most comments that are put up, or ones that are reported by the community as inappropriate. Fully moderated Comments are approved by the organisation before they are placed on public display. Social media exposes your organisation, its brand and reputation to a cross-section of your stakeholders. Reputation can suffer quite severely if it is mismanaged. If social media is to be accessed by your wider workforce rather than just those with specialist IT knowledge, then guidelines or a code of practice need to be established. Establishing a code of practice for staff on acceptable and unacceptable online behaviour can establish benchmarks and indicate consequences for non-compliance. This approach should be developed in consultation with staff, as it gives them a sense of ownership over the rules and makes them aware of the responsibilities that come with online engagement.

Guidelines for using social media to promote your business 1. Listen Social media are about communicating, not just a one way stream of information from you to your audience. Listen to the responses that come back, and respond quickly, openly and honestly to them. 2. Pick your internal social media team They have to be passionate about your organisation and its offering. Ensure that they understand the responsibilities attached to engaging with social media, and are aware of what is inappropriate behaviour and what the consequences of this will be. 3. Put value into your social media Consider an 80/20% mix of business to non-business information; people are seeking a different type of information through social media than they might get from accessing your organisation s website. It is not sufficient to just be on a social media platform; the content produced, frequency and quality of the communication have to be of high value too. 4. Focus on what matters Focus on outcomes and not outputs eg improved brand awareness figures, or number of people re-tweeting your message, rather than the number of people who are following your tweets. 5. Face-to-face still has its place Social media can open up a number of new avenues and methods of working to an organisation, but this isn t to forget other methods of communication which are better suited to certain situations, eg negotiation, disciplinary proceedings. Conclusion There are many ways for social media to be used in an organisation, however, the key to success is the need for high quality content, which is directed to the right audience in methods that they wish to receive the information. Without this your messages and online presence will get lost amongst the chatter of the Web. If the quality is achieved, your audiences may join you in creating the high quality content and generating those productive discussions which can help add value to your organisation.

Further Reading CMI web forums www.managers.org.uk/forums CMI s own web forums and blogs Web 2.0 and HR www.cipd.co.uk/research Research report on the relationship between social media technologies and the management of people Transformational Communities www.collaborationzen.com Thoughts on the transformational Web 2.0 Engaging through social media www.coi.gov.uk/documents/engaging_through_social_media.pdf Semantic web www.mfauscette.com Consideration on the evolution of the internet and the development of the semantic web Business use of social media www.honeytechblog.com/10-best-social-media-case-studies/ Case Studies on successful use of social media CMI Management House, Cottingham Road Corby, Northamptonshire NN17 1TT Tel: +44 (0)1536 207 307 Fax: +44 (0)1536 400 388 www.managers.org.uk Incorporated by Royal Charter Registered charity number 1091035 Charity Registered in Scotland number SCO38105 ISBN: 0-85946-477-6 4190 06/11