It’s hard to find a company that doesn’t offer biographies of current employees these days, and sometimes they seem indistinguishable.
There’s lots to like about the Atkins careers site, and the biographies in the careers section is one of them.
For example, they include ‘search for jobs like mine’ as an option within the biography. That’s a great call to action for those people inspired by the biography – and a nice use of the ‘voice’ of the employee.
Many B2B companies use case studies to help promote their skills and / or products.
Myknowledgemap is one of these; but note that they offer a filter to help visitors find case studies relevant to them (by sector and product). If there are a lot of case studies to go through, this would be very helpful.
SGS use a large hero image on a page… but then, after a while, or as the visitor interacts with the page (scrolls down, for instance) the main body of the content scrolls up, gradually covering most of the image. The image (and subsidiary navigation) can be revealed in full by clicking on the + sign.
A small thing, but it does put the focus on the text.
Note also that they have used a popup to good effect on the links at the foot of the page, displaying a teaser for the page. Clever…
The Simply Measured Q3 2014 Instagram study reveals that 86% of the top 100 global brands, according to Interbrand’s annual ranking, have Instagram accounts. Of those top brands that are on Instagram, 76% post at least one photo or video per week. Back in 2012, Simply Measured reported that only 54% of the top brands were on Instagram.
Leading brands are spending time on Instagram for good reasons. Their audiences are growing and engagement is growing even more! During the third quarter of 2014, the average Instagram post by the top 100 brands averaged 18,822 likes and comments, which is double the number of likes and comments received one year ago and 12-times more than two years ago. The average engagement per post grew by 416% since 2012.
Engagement rates rise when posts include hashtags.
The Simply Measured study found that posts which include at least one hashtag average 12.6% higher engagement rates than posts without a hashtag. The top 100 brands are actively using hashtags. During the third quarter of 2014, 88% of the top 100 brands’ Instagram posts included hashtags.
Engagement rates also rise when posts include @mentions in photo captions.
In its research, Simply Measured found that the average caption length among posts published by the top 100 brands is 138 characters and includes one hashtag. However, only 36% of captions by the top 100 brands included another user’s name as an @mention. This is a missed opportunity given that Simply Measured found on average, posts which include at least one other user name in the caption have 56% higher engagement levels.
Engagement rates also rise when posts are tagged with a location.
Simply Measured found that posts published by the top 100 brands which were tagged with a location had an average engagement level that was 29% higher than posts that did not include locations.
Simply Measured also looked at Instagram use by the top 100 brands to determine which industries are having the most success. During the third quarter of 2014, media brands were more active with 62 more posts published per month. Media brands also had higher engagement levels with 5,084 likes and comments.
However, it’s important to put these numbers in perspective. Only 34 of the top 100 global brands have more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. Of course, this is nearly three times the number that had more than 100,000 followers back in 2012 (13 brands), but the numbers are still relatively small in comparison to what brands are getting on Facebook and even Twitter.
What do you think about these research results? How has your brand leveraged Instagram (or is Instagram not in your marketing plan)? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: Jason Howie licensed CC BY 2.0
My last post reviewed techniques some companies use to improve the technology knowledge of Board and C-Level executives. Executives need this knowledge to make effective Innovation Governance decisions.
To be sure, not every innovation fully involves some type of technological influence, however as McKinsey consultants indicate most do:
The technology lens assesses feasibility and often provides benefits that can create and sustain competitive advantage. Technology, broadly defined, is the enabler of almost all innovative products, services, processes, and business models. It can be a molecule, a service platform, or software. Too many companies define technology narrowly as an ingredient or component of a new product. Deep knowledge of the benefits of emerging technologies provides an important window into what is possible.
Younger workers grew up in years during which many innovations affected their lives. They are early adopters of new things and are full of knowledge about about how best to use them. Some enlightened companies are learning how to tap this knowledge base through a method called reverse mentoring (on my last post’s list of techniques).
Reverse mentoring involves employing lower level, tech-savvy managers to mentor top level executives on technology topics. Reverse mentoring’s history dates back to the Jack Welch reign at GE.
Welsh encouraged executives to learn more about the Internet. Perhaps Fast Company magazine co-founder best captures the meaning of Reverse Mentoring:
“Its a situation where the old fogies in an organization realize that by the time you’re in your forties and fifties, you’re not in touch with the future the same way the young twenty-something’s. They come with fresh eyes, open minds, and instant links to the technology of our future”. Source: Survey
Reverse mentoring can be a powerful approach to help mitigate the continuing lack of technology skills in too many Corporate Boards. For example, a report Digital Dynamics in the c-suite, published by UK based Sunguard Availability Services, indicates:
Without doubt, information and communication technology (ICT) is the biggest disruptive force confronting organisations and their leadership teams today. And it is not just large organisations, but organisations of all sizes, including the public sector, that are being affected by the inexorable advances in technology. …whilst acknowledging the opportunities digitisation can bring, most Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and their boards don’t quite know how to respond. And, because many see digitisation as a technology issue they, perhaps understandably, abdicate responsibility to their CIO. this is a fatal mistake.
No equivocation here and this is where Reverse Mentoring enters. It is not yet in wide use by corporations but a few trailblazers include companies such as Cox Communications, Cisco, Time-Warner, MasterCard and Hartford Financial Services Group. Future posts will look at the workings and features of some of these corporate approaches.
Some companies are realizing unexpected benefits. C-suite mentees are getting unvarnished messages, via the young mentors, about what is happening in the depths of their companies that they seldom see. Seems the mentees have not yet learned about ad hoc “the way we communicate here” (what the culture says you can and can not say) and informally give their mentees an honest assessment of what they daily observe.
Here is an example of information that mentees gain from the young mentors. Lance Perry, vice president, IT customer strategy and success at Cisco Systems says:
Working with his millennial mentors has also given Perry a deeper understanding of what millennials like and don’t like in a work environment, which is very different from his priorities when he was first starting out. “These guys come in and ask about flexibility, what the company gives back, what Cisco’s position is in the community,” he says. “I never asked those questions when I was interviewing for a job. For me, it was about money. For them, it’s more about the experience than the ladder they’re climbing.”
There is more to share on this issue.
What keeps a CEO awake at night?
Obviously there are a lot of answers to that question, but reputation and recruitment are both high on the list of worries. And they are related… Damage to a company’s reputation doesn’t only have an effect on sales, it can weaken the employer brand; a weak employer brand can mean it becomes more difficult to recruit good candidates – and where a big issue for many companies is that of skills shortage, this can become a critical problem.
Some companies have the reputation of being great employers, and inevitably receive a lot of candidate applications. This is, of course, a double-edged sword, as some of those candidates, inevitably, won’t be a good fit for that company. Dealing with a vast pile of candidates for whom there isn’t a good job-match within the company is a potentially time-consuming and expensive problem – and not having enough applications from suitable candidates because of a poor reputation is another.
Managing your reputation as an employer – your employer brand – goes together with managing the application process. Get them both right, and you should end up with a manageable workflow, dealing with (mostly) suitable candidates. And if your reputation as a good employer matches the reality of the candidate experience – and the new joiner experience – then the marriage of candidate and job is likely to be a successful one.
It isn’t easy, and, like any marriage, is more likely to be successful with good communication. It is important to clearly communicate what your company can offer and what it cannot, in order to help people decide whether they are likely to be happy; and the experience that each and every candidate has is likely not only to affect your working relationship with the successful individual, but also to affect your reputation with all those who are unsuccessful.
There’s a lot to consider, because employer brand isn’t just about managing the application process… here are just a few of the many questions that could come up:
It’s not surprising that this is such a hot topic at the moment; these are difficult questions.
At the Employer Brand Management conference, to be held on 12 December at the Royal Mint in London, brand managers, business leaders and reputation experts will discuss employer brand, including topics on:
And there’s that CEO again…
Visit Transform Magazine to find out more about the conference.
