Building an Organizational Social Media Policy

By Anna Mathieu  |   Submitted On November 07, 2011

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Social media as a marketing tool for spreading a business' name and mission has become invaluable in many industries. A company's social media marketing strategy aims at building the company brand, recruiting new talent, fostering collaboration and communication, and driving innovation.

When considering a social media policy, a company must consider the opportunities and threats in terms of: a) employee work-related use, b) employee personal use on-the-job, and c) employee personal use outside of work. The use of social media by employees both at work and off work can have both positive and negative consequences, ones that should be thought through by each company in light of their marketing strategy, company mission, and other individual aspects.

The risks of social media use include lost productivity, physical harm (a distracted employee could cause physical hazards by neglecting to monitor their surroundings), and electronic attack (malware, virus). The risk of injury to a company's reputation via an employee's online dialogue can happen on-the-job or off.

Work-related social media use:

Employees' use of social media at work can be a direct or indirect part of the marketing strategy. Employees may actively engage with customers and partners, building industry contacts and relationships; they may solve client problems, streamline processes, and provide services. Social media use by employees can enlarge the viral marketing efforts and reinforce the company's branding efforts and online reputation. The marketing and relationship opportunities of social media use are multiplied by the amount of employee engagement.

Policy should consider the uniformity of the marketing message and company branding. When marketing plans are put together there is obviously consistency and coordination of the visual and intellectual message, this should be extended to include how employees portray the company on social media be it content and tones of blogs, company branding and messaging on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and other sites. The power of branding is that it consistently reinforces who the company is and what they do; consistency should be maintained throughout all company external communications.

Employee personal use of social media on-the-job:

The personal use of social media at work can have benefits. Employee productivity and engagement can be enhanced by allowing a little break to be connected, creative, or humorous. People often need to get a virtual social errand done (much like taking a call during work hours to organize a carpool or child pickup) or getting a little virtual water-cooler distraction. This often allows us to return fresh to the task at hand with renewed focus and productivity. Often a little update on what is exciting at work that day may not be a formal part of the employee's job description but may help enhance the excitement around a company by promoting the company's culture or successes.

There are some risks of such personal social media use on-the-job as well. Overuse may cause lost productivity by diverting the staff's time and focus away from fulfilling orders, making sales calls, or writing software code. Physical harm could be caused by distracting or neglect; for example, a pilot texting while flying or a machine operator looking at Twitter updates could cause a hazard or accident.

Another significant threat whether the social media use is for-work or personal is electronic attack. Malware and viruses can take over an email program, infect a computer, and take down a network. The loss of productivity can be enormous, and the risk to the company's data security can be catastrophic. An IT policy should address computer protection, and should take into consideration employees' authorized and unauthorized use of the internet in the workplace or on company equipment.

Employee personal use of social media outside of work:

Outside of work people talk about work. Sometimes they catch up on work, sometimes they celebrate or lament work. Depending on what employees are doing and saying and how that may be identified with their employer, it can be quite tricky to try to control and to address in policy. An organization's social media policy should address what work-related topics are inappropriate on personal media, and what personal topics are inappropriate on work-connected dialogue - all while being cognizant of and respecting labor laws.

Where it is clear: Disclosure of certain information can be prohibited. For example, trade secrets and proprietary information, financial information, and client records and identity, are all protected information that should never be disseminated via work-related or personal social media communications.

Where it is tricky: It is very hard to regulate what employees say on their personal profiles or non-work hour discussions. Free speech protects employees griping about being overworked and a myriad of other issues that may not be desirable from the company's perspective. Some states even have laws about whether or not an employer can read their employees' personal social networking profiles. Beyond naming the clearly prohibited disclosures, consult with an attorney on writing any part of your social media policy that address non-work discussion parameters and before making any employment decisions due to a conflict of information shared on a personal profile.

Anna Mathieu,
Marketing Communications Manager

Anna Mathieu's experience as a recruiter and as a seasoned sales & marketing professional give her a winning perspective on communicating Redfish's specialized recruiting services. Her evangelization and branding continue to drive bottom line results.

See Anna's full profile and contact information at:
http://www.redfishtech.com/about_us/anna_mathieu.php

About Redfish Technology, Inc.

Redfish Technology specializes in locating talent in the IT and Clean Tech sectors. Recruiting since 1996, the company offers nationwide coverage and boasts offices in Silicon Valley, the East Coast, and the Intermountain West.

Connect with Redfish Technology on the web
http://www.redfishtech.com

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Social Media Marketing for Measurable Business Results

By Jason Bacot  |   Submitted On January 28, 2011

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Social media marketing has been a catchphrase for a few years now, and everyone knows that they're "supposed" to use social media to boost business. But how do actual businesses get a return on investment from using social media platforms like today's two biggest ones, Facebook and Twitter?

Business Week magazine did a survey of 100 mid-sized businesses and basically asked them what they were doing social media-wise, and how it was working out for them. The results were dispiriting: only 8% of the businesses surveyed said that the effort they'd put into social media marketing actually drove business results. What did this 8% do that the other 92% didn't? Let's check it out.

First of all, lots of mid-sized companies are using social media. Business Week's survey showed that 74% of them use Twitter, 71% use Facebook, 53% use YouTube, and 36% use blogging. But the survey suggests that there are three elements that appear to be common to those businesses that have reported actual success in their social marketing.

First of all, these are companies that have developed media listening skills. Listening is, of course, a very important part of social dynamics, yet lots of businesses don't listen to what their customers are saying. The ones who succeed with it are those that monitor blogs, Twitter, and various online communities to pick up on consumer sentiment, and what's more, they consider what consumers are saying and actually respond to it. Yet only about a third of social marketers even bother to monitor these media!

Second, they use a multi-step approach to figuring out exactly what consumers are saying and what their responses can accomplish. For example, media might displace some traditional consumer research. Or it might be useful in pre-emptying the spread of negative information. The companies that successfully navigate this milieu are the ones that at least attempt to measure the return on value of the components of their participation in media exposure. Rather than, for example, just counting how many Facebook friends they have, they track click-throughs from Facebook users in the company's target demographic.

Third, they rightly see social media as a way to improve their brand's competitive position by creating a whole new type of value for customers. For example, Best Buy decided to put retail staff who were competent in answering consumer electronics questions into a Twitter-based help force. This alone shifted customer expectations about the experience of buying electronics, changing the game for competitors as well.

A social media marketing strategy involves far more than just setting up accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Companies have to learn to listen to what customers are saying, and not just use these platforms for pushing their products. And they need to develop ways of measuring whether they're getting a return on their investment, and come up with novel ways to use it to give customers something competitors aren't giving. If you don't know where to begin with all this, then you should consider working with professional social media marketing services, who know the ins and outs of using these exciting new platforms to get positive, real business results.

I'm here to help you find a marketing executive for your social media marketing needs and to look no further than my friend Lee Traupel who has the knowledge and expertise to promote your website or company via social media marketing services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Bacot

Electronic Signature Law in Real Estate: A Brief History

By Walter H Chen  |   Submitted On December 26, 2010

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Samuel Morse sent America's first telegram in 1838, heralding the occasion with the words, "A patient waiter is no loser." By the late 1860s, a mere 30 years later, the telegraph had replaced the Pony Express, was in established use for commercial transactions, and had been accepted by the courts as a valid means for creating enforceable contracts.

Of course, the telegraph is sort of like an electric pen, and an electric pen is kind of like an ecclesiastical seal, which isn't far from Moses descending Mount Sinai with the decalogue written in stone. At each period in human history, we've deployed the technology available to us to memorialize important covenants in durable media for the purpose of creating reliable records of what occurred.

In those respects, the internet is no different from past media and the courts and legislatures have recognized that. As a curiosity, Silicon Valley's beginnings can be traced back to 1909 and the founding of the Federal Telegraph Company which was funded by Stanford's president at the time and several faculty members as angel investors. More on point, Congress enacted the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (conveniently, ESIGN) in 2000 whose main import was to declare electronic records and signatures equivalent to the pen and paper. Most states have passed the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, a model state law which also declares the electronic pen and ink pen as equivalents.

Commentators have pointed out, not for the first time, that federal and state legislatures acted too eagerly and wasted their efforts. Lawrence Lessig, in 1995, argued that the law of cyberspace should be developed through the common law, which is the process by which judges make case-by-case decisions drawing from past precedent. As with the telegraph, the courts were already reasoning by analogy that records could be created and signed on the internet. All they had to do was look to the telegraph! In fact, Mr. Jose Arroyo in Florida executed the first paperless home mortgage in 2000, before ESIGN had become law. The loan was closed and recorded in less than five hours down from the average of forty-five days it typically took.

Electronic signatures are now well-established as valid. The rise of electronic signatures mirrors the rise of the internet as B2B and B2C commercial transactions would be impossible without the legal foundation of the validity of electronic transactions. (Although, the, say, online mortgage space wasn't doing that great for awhile.) Nevertheless, the electronic signature is just a chapter in the long history of the writing and the signature.

Walter Chen is CEO of http://www.leasely.com, which makes the apartment rental application process easy.

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How to Promote Your Business Using Social Media Tools

By Owais Siddiqui  |   Submitted On January 26, 2011

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Business promotion can be done in a very quick manner through social media tools. Presently, it is the fastest way to reach customers as most people are regular internet users. Social media tools are not as expensive and cumbersome as the traditional marketing methods. Before hiring a social media company, you need to establish your marketing requirements. There are numerous social-media options and a prestigious company dealing with this would advise you to use a proper combination so that the maximum number of people can know about your services. For instance, you can get a streaming video uploaded on a commonly visited website or post a link on a social communication platform. In addition to that, you can post a video link on your company website instead of promoting the video directly.

It is very important hire a marketing company because you cannot market your products online on your own. Such companies are aware of the tips and tweaks which can increase the online visitors of your websites and the customers of your services. Hence, getting professional help can make lot of difference.

You should select the social-media tools according to the nature of your products and services. For instance, if your company deals in electronic gadgets and you need to promote a new portable hard drive through social network media, you need to upload a video on one of the streaming websites. In this way, your users would be able to understand the functionality of this gadget. It is hard to understand how an electronic appliance works by reading text. Hence, using a video for promotional purposes would be an impressive practice which has a lot of positive impact on any campaign.

On the other hand, if you are providing educational services, creating a video for marketing purposes would not help a lot. Instead, a social-media company would advise you to upload information regarding your services on a social community website and post the related links along with it. Thus, the social-media options vary from one business to the other. As an entrepreneur, you need to analyze the promotional requirements of your business and take steps accordingly. Social-media is much faster as compared to all the other marketing methods. Along with that it is one of the interesting options as well. Most people are regular users of social community platforms as it is one of the best ways to get in touch with known people.

For more information on Houston SocialMedia Company Visit webdesignhouston.com

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