social media marketing Archives - Page 56 of 66

A new global workplace study has found that more than 70% of employers report having to take disciplinary action against employees for social media misuse – up from 35% in 2012. Wow. That is a lot. Should we just shut social media down and block it from our employees? What kinds of misuse are happening and does this mean we need to clampdown on employee social media efforts?

What kinds of employee social media misuse?

Misuse of confidential information (80%)
Misrepresenting the views of the business (71%)
Inappropriate non-business use (67%)
Disparaging remarks about the business or employees (64%)
Harassment (64%)

What is interesting is that while employee social media misuse is up, overall workplace misconduct is down. Only 41% of employees observed misconduct in 2013, down from 55% in 2007. Why? Researchers found that 81% of companies are proving ethics training and it seems to be working. Yet other research has found that only 25% of companies offer social media training to their employees.

I believe misuse is up because employee social media use is up and many have not followed suit with employee social media guideline and training. Even the courts and law are playing catchup.

For example, a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, has determined that it is legal to vent about your employer on a personal social media account if you’re speaking on behalf of a group of employees and your intent is to improve the conditions of your job. This ruling was in response to employer social media policies that were seen as too restrictive.

Research has found that 31% of companies still have no social media policy in place. Do you have a social media policy? Does it need to be updated? One place to start is to look at what others have put together. Here are over 100 Social Media Employee Policy Examples thanks to Social Media Today.

WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association also has resources to help you understand the responsibilities brand have in complying with the FTC Guidelines in their Social Media Marketing Disclosure Guide.

When it comes to training, companies like Unisys, Sprint and HP are creating social media training programs to avoid social media crises, but also show employees how using social media can be a valuable business tool to increase performance and productivity.

At the end of day it comes down to employee trust. Jeff Bezos’ employee Pay To Quit program for Amazon.com makes a lot of sense.

6% of companies block access to social media sites in their workplaces. Should you lockdown social media? Or should we provide our employees with the proper guidance and training to use social media properly?

Upcycling isn’t just for crafts or Pinterest. It is simply a concept where old products are given more value. Upcycling in social media it is a way to optimize your time and effort.

Here are four ways you can reuse and repurpose for social media content:

1. Underutilized parts of your website. Are there valuable parts of your website that if you are honest with yourself no one really uses? Today people want content brought to them.

I used to work for a bank that had an excellent small business toolkit. It was valuable information from finance and HR to marketing tips. The problem was no one used it because they didn’t know it was there. How often do you surf your bank or other banks websites?

Our idea was to divide the long form website content into short chunks and push it out as small business tips on social media. Upcycling already created content to social can build awareness and drive traffic to the website, but it also helps build relationships in social media.

What valuable information is on your website or hidden in a brochure sitting on a shelf that you could repackage as valuable social media content?

2. Play By Play Of Live Events. Public Relations professionals have used events as a powerful publicity tool since the last century. Today you can multiply that power by bringing the event to many more than can attend in person.

For a regional airport client we planned a live contest where two local radio DJ’s flew to Chicago and back in one day. One took a flight from our local airport and the other took a flight from the farther big city airport. We demonstrated that you could save money, distance and time flying from our client’s airport when most people thought it was too expensive.

The airport received enormous buzz online as we updated Facebook, Twitter and UStream videos of each DJs progress. The event would have been successful with just the live reports on the radio, but Upcycling the live traditional media content to social media upped the awareness.

Do you have a live event coming up where you could up the exposure by reporting it on social media channels?

3. B-Roll Video And Photos. Producing a TV Commercial can take up to month and cost a lot of money. The average 30 second spot cost $350K. During a day long shoot you collect a lot of footage that doesn’t make the 30 second final cut.

Why not leverage extra footage as social content? A director’s cut, alternative version, or “making of” video can really draw fans. We all love to get a look behind the scenes. You could also share still photos online during the shoot via Instagram, Pinterst or another photo site for a sneak peak.

Either way you get more for your investment by upcycling video and photo content being produced for other uses. For more engagement you could even post different versions of the TV ad and have your fans vote on the final cut.

Do you have a TV or video shoot coming up that you can leverage as social media content? What about a still photo shoot?

4. Front Line Employees. Remember the small business tips for the bank example above? Our second idea was to empower branch managers to send out the small business tips via their LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts as a way to generate leads for new accounts.

These managers were tasked with signing up new business accounts anyway. Why not give them another tool besides cold calls and post cards?

Unfortunately their response was that they blocked access to social media in the offices for employees. Some upcycling requires an open mind and may require some new guidelines such as an employee social media policy.

Is there a way you can upcycle your employees? Best Buy leverages their blue shirt in-store associates’ knowledge and down time to answer people’s tech questions on Twitter building awareness and goodwill for the brand.

Can you think of other ways to upcycle existing efforts into fresh social media content?