Beat the Inc 500 in Social Media Strategy

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The Inc 500–companies with top net sales growth in the last five years–are changing the way they use social media. The Center for Marketing Research at U Mass Dartmouth has come out with a great study to dig at the how and why.  Some interesting trends…

-Facebook use is down

-Linked In use is up, surpassing Facebook use (possible correlation: up-tick in using social to drive down cost of finding new hires)

-More use of Pinterest and FourSquare

-Inc 500’s are blogging more than their counterparts in the Fortune 500

-Almost 2/3 of Inc 500 CEO’s are contributing some kind of content for social platforms

-This almost directly matches the % of CEO’s who believe social platforms have contributed to their company’s growth (does that mean they see the connection because they are contributing content? or does it mean they have big egos and can’t imagine that their content isn’t having an impact? or are they actually measuring their impact?)

-Inc 500’s aren’t increasing social media spending (but they’re not decreasing it either)

But here’s the one stat that really grabbed me: 35% of these companies aren’t monitoring their brand in the social space.  And almost a quarter of them don’t have a social media Plan. Huuuunnh?  It’s truly hard to imagine a company not monitoring the impact of its advertising dollars or its investments in manufacturing tools, so it’s truly astonishing that companies spend time and money on social but don’t try to figure out what conversations are happening there related to their brands.  Is it that they don’t understand how to do it? That they don’t have the resources to do it? Or that they are still evolving a Plan to do it? Or…they’re not sure who should be managing this entire monitoring/planning process?

So if you want to put your company or nonprofit ahead of the fastest growing companies in America, here’s how to do it:

1. Develop a Plan for Using Social Media and

2. Monitor How Your Brand is Doing in Social Spaces.

If you can develop a list of goals as part of accomplishing #1, then you will have something to measure against when you are attempting #2.  To accomplish the first task, you may need your marketing and communications teams to build social media goals and strategies into existing communications plans.  To accomplish the second task, you may want to consider assigning–perhaps on a rotational basis–someone who’s your Chief Listening Officer. That person can begin to monitor conversations and get a sense of where your Plan is working, and where it isn’t.

Using more social platforms can be effective. Imagine how much more effective if you know your goals and your impact.

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Does Your Kid Own Artwork Made in School? Maybe Not.

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If your child brings home artwork you want to reprint on a mug, or a poetry series you may want to publish some day, think again. Your county school system may own the copyright. At least that’s what a new proposal by the Prince George’s County, Maryland Board of Education would do. Approved by a vote of 8 to 1 last month, this rule says that the school board owns work done by the school system’s staff and students–even if it’s done on their own time. The school system says it is only trying to protect its interest in digital apps developed by teachers on school-owned iPads. 

Even so, I find this proposal a major over-reach.

It’s not unusual for universities to have policies of sharing in the intellectual property developed by faculty members, particularly patented inventions, drugs and medical discoveries. To me it seems odd, though, to take this practice into the K-12 educational environment, where teachers don’t get susbstantial income from grants or publications as do their colleagues in higher ed. And if a teacher does develop a great educational app for their class and sells it (and one would expect there would be development and marketing costs associated with that), why shouldn’t they reap the benefits?

It’s even stranger to suggest that work done by students–whether in school or at home–would somehow belong to the school system. Particularly when it is a public education system paid for by those very families!

At the very least, the whole proposal seems antithetical to the mission and values of an educational system–to encourage creative and  Innovative thinking.  Maybe I’m missing something here. What do you think?  Feel free to post comments here and also email your thoughts to the PG County Board of Ed board.comments@pgcps.org  and the Superintendent of schools superintendent@pgcps.org.

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Hiring or Job-Seeking Using Social Web

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Is your company encouraging you to bring in referrals from your social networks? Are you using your social web connections for your next career move? The New York Times  recently ran an interesting story (prompting hundreds of comments) about this practice. It identified companies such as Ernst & Young who have “set ambitious internal goals to increase the proportion of hirings” from their own employees.  Accordingly, employee recommendations at that firm make up 45 percent of new hires (non entry-level ) up from 28 percent two years earlier. Wow. That is a huge jump.

My takeaways from this trend are two-fold:

  1. Employees: Get your social networks in order! If you haven’t already, be sure you are keeping up your connections, updating your resume, and getting “recommendations” on Linked In before you need to job search.  When you do search, remember that you can mine your own networks—much like these companies are doing looking for you. In Linked In, for example, you can use the “search” function to find companies you are interested in applying to. This will generate a list of contacts. Some of these will already be your contacts. Others will be one or two degrees away from you, and so you can ask for a referral from your own contact to reach them. You’ll of course need to do more than shove your resume at your new contact. Generate dialogue inside and outside social web to let them know your skills, ask them questions about the company, etc.
  2. Employers: Re-examine fairness in hiring practices in the new social web context. Today’s social networks can resemble the “good old boys” network of yesteryear. Just as social clubs once excluded the outsiders of the day–including women, Jews, and African-Americans—people’s Facebook and Linked In Networks can also be limited by race and ethnicity, but also educational background, religious affiliation, and other factors.  By asking  employees for referrals from these, are we just moving an old practice onto a new technology platform?

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

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