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Archives for April 2010

Who Moved the Chairs?


chairs' shadows

I stumbled across Rearranging the Chairs as an Act of Leadership and got to thinking.  The gist of this intriguing post (by management consultant CV Harquail) is that “how we sit is how we interact.”  People sitting in a circle interact differently than people sitting in a square, or on two sides of a desk.

That feels true—but not in a simple way.  I can remember being in a group interview (three team members evaluating me as a potential fourth) at a round table. In that instance, the circle didn’t feel communal a bit.  In fact it seemed like my three interviewers had me surrounded and were closing in for the proverbial kill.  Would it have been different without the table?  Possibly.  Or it may be that three against one is always unbalanced.  Or it may have been the personalities of those three people.

(Although I did get the engagement, my sense of unbalance wasn’t wrong.  I learned later that I was a hit with two team members, a wide miss with the third.)

In any event, “moving the chairs” may not be about physically arranging the seating.  Maybe it’s just a way of putting some thought into the environment, and the dynamics you want for a group situation.  Does anyone really think about the best space for an interview—or just the convenient (i.e., available) space?   A large proportion of interviews seem to take place in empty meeting rooms, with interviewer and interviewee perched on two of twenty chairs; or in a cubbyhole with two chairs and a bare table; or in someone’s imposing office, with a big chair, a little chair, and a yard of desk in between.

None of those arrangements seems very conducive to authentic communication.

It’s likely that most companies could do a better job of arranging the interview environment if they just gave it a little thought.  Which would only happen if they thought it was important—so we’ll have to wait for a study that shows better hires come from better interview ambience.  Until then, there’s the phone.

Seriously.  Many companies are concluding that first (and often second) interview rounds are not only more efficient by phone, but also more productive.  As noted entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki points out in a New York Times “Corner Office” conversation, “when you interview in person, many variables come into play that have nothing to do with competence.”  Since lots of factors can “sidetrack” the interviewer in a person-to-person meeting, Kawasaki favors a process that begins by asking every candidate a checklist of questions on the phone.

So moving the chairs could also be removing the chairs.  There’s not one perfect seating plan, but it does matter who sits where.


(Thanks to globevision for the charming chairs.)

Survey Shows CSR Websites Work

Do something good every dayLast week, my fellow blogger, Susan Gunelius, highlighted the 2010 Social Responsibility Branding Survey.  This shows that consumers want transparent, honest, socially responsible brands, with 75% of consumers supporting socially responsible businesses and 55% preferring socially responsible products.

Digging through the report there are further figures which deserve to be highlighted within the context of improving CSR websites.

For starters, despite this high preference for socially responsible companies and products, only 11% of consumers report having heard a CSR message from any company in the past year, and only 13% have ever read the CSR content of a corporate website.

This shows beyond any doubt that companies are not communicating their social responsibility credentials as well as they could be, especially with 50% of consumers prepared to pay a premium of at least 5% for socially responsible products.

However probably the most telling statistic is that of that 13% who have read a company’s CSR website, 75% were then more likely to buy that company’s product over a competitor’s.

The overarching message of these figures cannot be denied:

  • customers want to hear the message of social responsibility from companies about the products they buy
  • customers are prepared to pay an extra premium to ensure they buy socially responsible products
  • customers are 75% more likely to buy the products of a company whose CSR website they have read

With only 13% of customers having visited a CSR website, this leaves a huge untapped market for companies to promote their online CSR content to.  It almost makes you wonder why more of them don’t.

Picture Credit: Do something good every day by HowardLake from flickr under Create Commons Attribute Share Alike License.

Brands Gaining Credibility on Social Networking Sites

A study released by Insites Consulting reports that brands are finally gaining some credibility on social networking sites, which leads one to believe that companies are finally figuring out how to leverage the tools of the social Web to effectively build brands.  Of course, there is still a long way to go and a lot of learning to be done, but the results of this study are promising.

The chart from eMarketer shown below shows that 32% of people surveyed in the study believe that brands are the most credible source for information about a brand on social networks while 38% still believe that consumers on social networks offer the most credible information about brands.

 

emarketer_brands_social_networks_credibility

 

Not only are people trusting brands on social networks more these days, but they’re also actively becoming fans of brands on social networks.  35% of the people surveyed as part of the Insites Consulting study claimed that they have become fans of brands on social networking sites in the past.  That’s not bad considering that 40% of respondents to the survey reported they have become fans of celebrities and 44% reported having become fans of bands on social networking sites.

It appears evident from this report that brands can find success on social networks.  Naturally, brands that listen to consumers and offer valuable, interesting content to their social network fans are the ones that will find the most success while those brands that try to control the online conversation and interrupt that conversation rather than enhancing it will find far less success.

In other words, brands that are backed by executive leadership teams that understand and embrace the new form of marketing required on the social Web will succeed and those that continue to attempt to make traditional marketing work on the social Web will fail.  Considering over 950 million people around the world participate on social networking sites, it seems like a strategic imperative for businesses to shift their marketing plans to focus at least in part on social networking sites for brand building.

Has your organization embraced the new rules of marketing on the social Web?

This Is Not the Post I Meant to Write

I started out to write about the role of print media in employer branding.  Then I followed a link to the website of an industry group.  Let’s just say the association has something to do with publishing/communications.

There is no content on their home page.

Let me repeat.  No content.

There are links.  There is a (rapidly) revolving banner.  There is a navigation bar.  There are icons.  There are images.

But there is no information at all about the organization or its purpose.  In fact, there is not a single complete sentence.

My reasons for devoting a post to this?  As follows:

  • This may be an emerging trend that I just haven’t noticed before.  Maybe a new approach designed to make the visitor curious.  If so, it seems like a terrible idea.
  • This may be an example of no one watching out for the visitor experience.  If so, it’s a cautionary tale.
  • This may be an example of companies participating in an association but not bothering to check up on how they are being represented.  If so, it’s another cautionary tale.
  • This may be an example of web developers driving a website—focusing on gimmicks without understanding the fundamental responsibilities of the site.  And that’s one of the most common hazards in online corporate communications, whether development is inhouse or outsourced.

The takeaways for those in charge of corporate sites (careers and otherwise) are fairly obvious.  Pay attention, take or assign responsibility, remember the visitor.

But I have to add one more painful point.  I went through several pages of the site referred to here, and every one of them contained serious errors in grammar and syntax.  Not nit-picky stuff, really obvious mistakes.

A reminder:  This site belongs to an organization that represents companies in the communications/publishing industry.  Plus:  The organization is located in an English-speaking country, has been around for more than ten years, and claims to represent dozens of companies.

So I really wanted to track down the apparent gap.  I followed the “site designed by” footer link and made my way to the portfolio of the web design company.  I won’t overcomplicate this story, but I will say that more than a third of the sites shown in their portfolio had the very same sort of language errors.

I’m not sure what to make of all this, except to say . . . it’s easy to lose track of quality in online communications.  Tech wizards think they can write and nobody stops them.  Approvers look at the site but don’t read the words.  And tight budgets prioritize fast and flashy development over well-written content.

In some quarters (discount merchandise, extremist propaganda, etc.), marginal website quality might not make much of a difference.  But in professional associations and employer branding—there’s just no getting away with badness.

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 14: Engaging the Individual Investor

One of the Holy Grails for many investor relations departments is to achieve more ownership of their company’s stock by individuals. There are various and sundry reasons for this, including the fact that individual investors tend to keep their stock holdings for longer periods, become proponents of the company’s brands and advocates for the companies they own. One of the problems companies have is getting information to individual investors. They are dispersed and prefer their information in plain English as opposed to the dense technical prose and financial data most companies tend to use when delivering financial information. This makes getting information to individual investors expensive and requires extra effort, which usually means it doesn’t get done.

At least one of these obstacles can be overcome with the judicious use of an investor relations web site. Shareholder newsletters are a great way to reach out to individual investors, but in the past have been expensive to produce and distribute. The web and some publishing software now mean that almost any investor relations department can produce a shareholder’s newsletter at minimal cost. Time and effort still have to be devoted to writing and editing the newsletter, but you no longer have to write big checks to printers, designers and postal authorities.

Below, I’ve included samples from Total, the French energy company and EADS, the European aerospace company. The two companies take differing approaches with their newsletters, with Total focusing more on descriptions of the company and its employees while EADS spends more space discussing financial results, but the point is that they are both geared towards non-technical investors. They both help individual investors understand the companies.

EADS Shareholder LetterTotal Shareholder Letter

Both of these newsletters have the look of being professionally produced, but companies with smaller IR budgets than either Total or EADS can also produce good looking newsletters and distribute them via the web and email at minimal cost. The reward should then be a more stable and diverse investor base that supports your company.

In this series:
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Toyota Turns to Digg to Change Negative Brand Perceptions

toyotaThe widespread Toyota recall that dominated much of the news in January 2010 did not go unnoticed by Toyota’s leadership team.  In an effort to regain trust among Toyota customers, the Toyota marketing team rolled out an integrated plan that involved both traditional marketing and social media marketing tactics.

The Toyota team launched a number of television commercials and placed ads online.  The company also made sure its side of the recall story was told on news outlets.  In terms of social media, Toyota turned to Digg, with whom the company already had an advertising relationship.  Toyota bought out as much ad space as possible on Digg and managed to book Toyota Motor Sales USA president Jim Lentz for the Digg Dialogg Interview Series.

During the live online interview on February 8, 2010, the ten most popular questions submitted by Digg users were asked of Lentz.  Interestingly, the majority of questions were about future Toyota plans related to gas-free cars and car design.  In fact, according to an article on BrandWeek, the most common question was “what do you drive?” which shows even though a certain topic might dominate the online conversation at any given time, that might not actually be what consumers want to talk to your business leaders about.  There is clearly a disconnect between what consumers really want to hear from executives and what company marketing and PR teams think customers want to talk about.  It’s also a good reminder that one of the most important aspects of successful social media marketing is taking the time to listen to consumers and not trying to control the online conversation.

Toyota seems to recognize that social media offers an amazing opportunity to converse with consumers and appear more human, but the trick is talking to them about things that add value to their lives.  Let’s face it.  All companies are trying to figure out how to successfully leverage social media to build businesses, and Toyota’s recent experience adds one more piece to the puzzle.  Even when it seems incredibly obvious what people want to talk to your business about, that might not really be what they want to talk about at all.  In other words, nothing can be assumed in social media marketing.  Instead, you need to be able to make changes on the fly and quickly respond to the ever-changing needs of consumers.

Consider this — the online buzz about the Toyota recall reached its peak quickly in January 2010 and was already tapering off by February 2010.  By the end of March 2010, the online conversation about the Toyota recall had already gotten much quieter as other news took over in consumers’ minds and discussions.  That’s another piece of the puzzle to add to your social media marketing strategy file.  People get bored talking about the same thing for an extended period of time.  Unless new information is added to the story to stir the pot, people move on to the next topic.  That’s how it works in face-to-face conversations, and that’s how it works in online conversations.  Businesses have to keep on top of the conversations that happen across the social Web so they know when to stir them and when to let them fade away.  Unfortunately, unlike science, there is no known boiling point to guide you.  The fact is, much of social media marketing success is still based on instinct and subjective analysis.  But that’s what makes it so interesting and keeps us on our toes!

Image: Flickr