The next big thing…

Posted: 23/01/2012 in Business, CRM, Employer Brand, Engagement, Job Boards, sentiment, Technology
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Working with startups has made me reflect a lot on the similarities between now and the former dot com boom period of the late 90′s.  In doing so I’m driven to speculate what the next big thing is and when the next significant shift will happen.  Lets look at the timeline.  Check out my crappographic™  below:

1995 – 2000 – So the internet made it out of the university/geekdom and into the wider world of work around the mid 90′s.  (I make no apologies for date generalisations so smarty pants date pedants look away now!).  Even though companies like ebay were already up and running they, and the other companies that became household names, didn’t really get on the radar until the late 90′s/early 00′s when the dot com bubble really grew, some 5 years later.

2000 – 2005 – In this period, (the mini economic dip aside) we moved into a period of consolidation where all the ‘me too’ products and those with unsustainable business models melted away.  In fact, the hyperventilating around the technology subsided and we all got on with business as usual, but supercharged by the internet.  As we reached the end of this period, another wave of new plays were emerging – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter to name a few.

2005 – 2010 ish – Here again, the aforementioned ‘social’ plays took 5+ years to reach market maturity to the point of being embedded in our general awareness/usage. Despite the economic downturn, many of these offerings are growing rapidly and drawing huge valuations.  We have seen a general ‘social’ boom, with the start up scene as hot as ever and many many me too products or micro variants on a theme.

2010 ish – 2015 – Despite this social boom, consolidation and hype tail off is inevitable.  We shall see key players grow to take market share, many me too’s fizzle out and a general reduction in the dialogue around the tech.  We will, again, get back to business as usual, only this time  supercharged by the social layer.

So what is to come in the next 5 to 10 years as the tech settles down and social becomes woven into the fabric of everyday lives?   Despite it feeling like a very social web right now, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet in my view.  The outcomes of the social web in terms of product innovation, enterprise adoption, creative development, hardware innovation, bandwidth increasing etc are all still to come.  Just like the period following the ‘bedding down’ of the internet.  See ‘Internet Maturity’ and ‘Social Maturity’ on the crappographic™.

When I look back at my crappographic™, it occurs to me that in terms of identifying the next best thing, it would seem logical to keep a keen eye out around 2014 ish, for a crop of new businesses, a new form of start up which again, won’t reach maturity until 5 or so years after that c 2018 – 2020.

And what will they be? Maybe i’ll know it when I see it. Maybe it will pass me by. Who knows. Answers on a postcard please. For what its worth though, here’s a couple of thought:

Big Data – Currently a hot topic, big data is big! Its also expensive to access and largely in the domain of the corporate classes. But I think that will change.  There’s an old saying about luxury goods that “everything filters down to the working classes”, and the same principle can be applied to a number of things including advancements in technology. Look at CRM. Once a purely enterprise domain, with a fitting number of zero’s attached if you wanted to be granted access.  Now, CRM is available to Bob and his corner shop, for $9.99 a month or even free in some cases. And better still, it comes with ‘integration’ with Bob’s other tools right out of the box! All nice and seamless without a consultant in sight! Big data, and the sentiment that it carries, has huge potential to change the way we currently do things.

If some hedge funds are already abandoning their traditional forms of ‘research’ on which they base their investment decisions, in favour of twitter sentiment, its not hard to imagine that this trend could spread. As I mentioned in a previous post, twitter sentiment is like having the worlds biggest focus group at your finger tips, only better. Think what implications hat has for the market research industry. I suspect that sentiment driven ‘big’ data will filter down to the consumer sometime soon.  Its not hard to imagine a consumer moving away from ‘comparison’ type websites in favour of using ‘sentiment based apps’ instead, to inform themselves on what to buy, where to go, what to do etc. Big data access for the consumer gives us the opporunitity to not just find the cheapest car insurance for example, but the BEST car insurance deal, taking into account every aspect including cost, terms, payout history, customer service and the rich ‘conversation’ that goes on our there on platforms like chatter and user/customer communities. Pretty powerful stuff when you think about it.

Closer to home in HR and resourcing, I think the power of big data and sentiment analysis has huge implications for organisations. The ‘conversation’ about an organisation is already being tapped into from a customer perspective, but internally it is being ignored. Capturing and pulling together this sentiment can create a powerful  picture about a business – inside and out – that can have a significant impact on both the brand and the employer value proposition.  Given that employees are having these conversations on platforms and technology that the organisation doesn’t own or control, its only a matter of time before this is harnessed.

Mobile – Being an early adopter of most things, I thought I was abreast of all things mobile.  That was until I was lucky enough to be invited to the Freshthinking event run by Jobsite UK  in october last year.  The two speakers were Tomi Ahonen and Tony Fish. I was particularly blown away by Tomi’s grasp of the global mobile scene and some of the data he was sharing was staggering – see Tomi’s presentation here and Tony’s here.  It made me realise that a lot of smart things are happening in other continents in terms of mobile which have yet to hit these shores in any meaningful way.  Tomi is careful to classify mobile separately from smartphones but to me, it’s all converging. We are moving more and more into a ‘mobile economy’ – away from the fixed place of work or place to purchase.  Devices are now beginning to deliver, on a mass consumer scale, what has only been dreamed of before. Big thanks to @felixwetzel and @mervyndinnen at @jobsite for the invite.  If you are lucky enough to get a similar invite for a future freshthinkers event, then consider yourself extremely lucky!

Media - For the first time in 10 years my digital music collection is sorted. According to tuneup, its 97% clean including all album art, dates, song title and artist names etc.  Even better, all my old crappy low bit rate files have been replaced by high quality, rights free files. All this was made possible by iTunes match which cost me the princely sum of £20.  It was easy, painless and a once and done deal.  Now I have seamless access to all my music, on any of my devices. With high quality video and images becoming more accessible, editable and manageable I think there is more to come in this area.  Exactly what I don’t know, but some form of seamless, cross media collaboration, creation, access and management seems likely to me.  Also, the self publishing dynamic that continues to grow is another area.  Despite recent moves from Apple with iBooks Author, self publishing is still a pretty clumsy and inaccessible activity but something that has huge potential. As a final note on this, I was out with friends yesterday and their 13 year old daughter informed me that facebook was ‘yesterday’! When I asked her how she connects and shares media with friends as a lot of people do on facebook, she said “we just share it through BBM” (Blackberry Messenger).

Food for thought.  Whatsay you readers?! What should we be looking out for in 2014?

It’s all about the conversation…

Posted: 12/01/2012 in Communication, Community, CRM, Employer Brand, Engagement, sentiment, Social Media, Startups, Technology, Twitter
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Yesterday I came across a post entitled “5 things about Social Media you need to stop saying in 2012.” via a tweet by @socialhonesty by a guy called Edward Bass  An interesting post and I don’t have a big issue with some of his points (Ed would love to see email usurped by social comms so he must be one of the good guys!) But I’m sorry Ed, gotta take issue with these first two - that we should stop saying “it’s all about the conversation” and “It’s not about the technology”.

It’s all about the conversation.

Of course it is!  It’s just that a lot of organisations, marketers and ‘digital/social experts’ haven’t realised that it’s about PEER TO PEER conversation.  This is not the era of the website! Social isn’t marketing.  Social isn’t something started by marketers.  Social has been a long time in the making, driven by our underlying need as humans to be so.  One look at the bulletin board and chat room scene of the 90′s will show you that.  IThe geek in all of us has taken a long time to come out and for it to become a mainstream activity; for it to be ‘socially’ acceptable (haha!)

The empty, conversation-less places referred to by the Ed in his post are classic examples of environments/initiatives created by brand marketers in an effort to ‘engage socially’ around a brand. #fail.

Many marketers are still looking at social as yet another way to drive traffic back to ‘their site’ or ‘their place’.  But it’s not.  The rules are changing – it’s no longer about me coming to your place.  its about you coming to my place.  And the implication there is that usually, I only have friends round to my place!  And no matter how you try and wrap it up, I can see a marketing/sales message at a 1000 yards and frankly there is no place for it in my social, and very personal, world thanks!  At least not on your terms.  If it’s going to be there, and work, its going to be on my terms.

The conversational economy is growing.  Our ever increasing connectedness is going to change the way we do things significantly and this will have huge implications for marketing and brands.  Nik Halstead, founder of media sift, creator of tweet.me.me and the man to talk to regarding big data, once said, when referring to the changing way we seek content (HT @James_mayes):

“We no longer search, we follow. I predict the death of SEO within 5 years.”

I believe he is onto something there.  We are moving to an era of “conversational SEO” – not quite as described here, but more around how natural, realtime conversations (not optimised by marketers) between people across community and social platforms can put the subject matter right at the top of a search, without any manipulation or optimisation at all.  I believe that the advertising/branding era we have lived with for decades is over.  At least in the way we understand it today.

So yes, it IS all about the conversation.  Just not your brand conversation.  Peer to peer – remember that.

It’s not about the technology.

Of course its not about the technology!  Never has been, never will be.  John Sumser summed up our current situation beautifully in a recent post when he said:

“We are in the Compuserve-Prodigy-AOL stage of social media evolution.  It’s after Netscape and before Google in equivalent internet time.”

Sadly, I’m old enough to remember that time and the same obsession with technology existed then.  But within a few years that had changed and we got to focussing more on what it enabled us to do than the tech itself.  Solutions are springing up everywhere, with lots and lots of ‘me too’ products along the way.  But in the coming 3-5 years these will consolidate, many will go bust or just fold into a competitor and what they deliver will become pedestrian.

In other words they will become part of what we do naturally in business and we won’t be obsessing about the technology.  Tesco Bank is a great example.  It’s a bank; the fact that it’s online is totally irrelevant.  Think back to the turn of the millennium – remember ‘e-crm’ or ‘e-recruitment’? (or worse, i-recruitment!)  Now its Social CRM, Social Recruitment, Social whatever.   But that will ebb back to being CRM and recruitment and so on just as it did once ‘e-crm’ started to sound silly.  Take it from me, “social” will eventually sound silly too.

So yes, when we say it’s not about the technology, it isn’t.  No, really.

I’ll leave you with this gem of a conversation I had over dinner a couple of months ago.  One of the guys there was the CEO of what appears to be a successful and quite sizeable ‘digital agency’.  Innevitably, the conversation turned to social media and, of course, twitter.  Here’s a snippet:

Him: “No, I’m not on twitter.  I don’t think it’s really that useful or proven.  Anyway, it will be better when you can do more with it.

Me: “How so?  What do you mean?”

Him: “well, you know, when you can brand them.  Put Flash on them and stuff.  Make them creative. Thats when it will really take off.”

Me: ….?  You mean, like, embed Flash and images in the tweet itself? Like Ads?

Him: Yes!

Me: *Snorts wine out through nose*

Change is a comin’. Sadly, a lot of the people in the driving seats don’t seem to appreciate that just yet…

Merry Christmas…

Posted: 17/12/2011 in Christmas
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Christmas was the time my Dad was out of work for the first time.  I spent hours wondering why Santa had been less generous that year, listening to Ben by Michael Jackson…

Christmas was the time my first crush told me, in the nicest possible way, it was never going to be.  I spent hours looking out of my bedroom window at the snow, listening to Yester me, Yester You, Yesterday by Stevie Wonder…

Christmas was the time my first love ended our thing.  I spent hours outside of her house, standing in the snow, listening to Dreams by Fleetwood Mac…

Christmas was the time we tried a family reunion after my parents had split up.  It didn’t work.  I spent hours listening to I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreigner…

Christmas was the time I walked out on my partner, my job, my house.  My life.  I spent hours listening to Postcards from Heaven by The Lighthouse Family…

Christmas was the time that I gifted that album to my now wife.  We spent hours listening to it together…

Christmas was the time our daughter was born.  Niether of us listened to anything much at that time.  Except the sound of our daughter breathing…

Christmas was the time I lost my job.  I spent hours listening to  my own self doubt.  But then I stopped.  And started listening to my friends and family instead…

I Love Christmas… :)

LinkedIn: It just ain’t social…

Posted: 15/12/2011 in Business, Community, linkedin, Recruitment, Social Media, Technology, Twitter
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Cast your eye over any article, blog or tweet regarding ‘social media’ platforms and pretty much every time you will hear LinkedIn included in the list, especially when talking about ‘social’ recruiting.  I don’t know about you though, but I don’t see LinkedIn as social technology at all, certainly not in the same way as I would see Twitter or perhaps facebook.

LinkedIn is getting on now.  Launched in 2003 its original game plan was as a lead generation tool.  It did a great job and over the years has carved out a superb niche in the market.  It’s inevitable deep dive into recruitment has ensured its place as an industry standard.  But to me it is showing its age, especially from the ‘real time’ perspective of how social is developing.

A simple casting of the eye over the three core usual suspects and where they started helps to illustrate the point:

  • LinkedIn – May 2003.  I recall that at the time they didn’t have status updates in the more interactive form as they do now.  They did introduce groups early on, but suspended them, only to re introducing them a few years ago with enhanced functionality.
  • Facebook – February 2004.  Not the same thing obviously, but a distinct difference in communication strategy with the ‘wall’ and a much more conversationally led approach.
  • Twitter – March 2006.  Less is more.  Less features but much more ‘real time’ in its application.

At a glance its not hard to see the ‘conversational’ evolution.  There is no doubt that LinkedIn has real value for me, certainly as a more convenient reference point for my career and background, which is it’s ace card in terms of being the defacto tool for direct sourcing.  It also rather handily points to my blog and other entities that make up “brand Garelaos” (Yuk!).  But as we move to a more ‘distributed’ model, by which I mean a situation where significant parts of ‘me’ exist in other places – my blog, my own website, my video’s/presentations, other networks etc, is it going to become less central?

Perhaps the biggest influence I see is the ‘real time’ drive of our social habits, and in particular, twitter.  I don’t converse on LinkedIn.  Ok, I have ‘discussions’ in groups, but it’s not really a conversation.  For me, and for many others – especially an increasing number of ‘professional’ people – our conversation is taking place on Twitter.  In real time.  And here is the interesting thing – this Twitter dialogue is personally led, not professionally led.  Yet Twitter has delivered more for me professionally in terms of quality business relationships and commercial benefits (i.e. business and revenue) in the 2 years that I have been really active on it, than the 7+years I have been active on LinkedIn.  Better still, I have met genuine friends for life though it too. #win.  In fact, Twitter has breathed a new lease of life into my LinkedIn account as I now go back and connect on LinkedIn with people I have met in real life first through twitter.

On another front I have been talking to a number of organisation’s about LinkedIn’s credentials as a credible marketing channel.  There is no doubt the latest numbers for the Marketing Solutions part of the business are impressive – $36.8m, a YOY increase of 111% and accounting for 32% of total revenues.  So who am I to argue.  But when I consider what this consists of – the LinkedIn ’site’ real estate, banners, buttons, targeted ads, personalised content etc etc – I don’t know but it all sounds a bit Web 1.0.  Or is it just me?  I gave this a lot of thought after seeing this video interview with Adam Bain, the Chief Revenue Officer for Twitter (No doubt about his KPI’s eh?!).  Watch it, its compelling.  HT to @Chris_Dutton for the video link.  The marketer in me sure gets more excited listening to the potential wrapped up in the possibilities of reaching my client audiences via twitter than LinkedIn.  Particularly when you hear that 50% of all twitter activity is on a mobile device.

Now, I appreciate we are not comparing like with like here.  But Facebook has moved from a no go zone from a professional/career perspective to a hot spot for every corporate talent strategy in less than 2 years.  And given I spend so much time engaged (There’s the magic word!) with Twitter , if they suddenly upgraded their platform and provided me with a richer, more integrated personal ‘profile’, would I use/complete it? Well, yes I would.  The lines, ladies and gentlemen, are blurring.

So what of the future?  What happens next?  It Occurs to me that whilst the Twitter adoption curve is now climbing rapidly, it is already nearly 6 years old and the fundementals of how it works and what it does have not changed much or been significantly enriched.  Is it time for a new layer?  Is twitter about to about to unleash a new matrix?  Who knows.

But if I was in the strategic team at LinkedIn HQ, I know what I would do.  I’d take the brightest minds I could find across the business – forget seniority, focus on imagination.  I’d throw them in a room with some creative development types, give them an unlimited budget and scope, and a piece of paper with the following three things written on it:

Real time. Personal First. Mobile (HT @felixwetzel)

The future is bright.  The future is personal…

Community: It’s not just for Christmas…

Posted: 13/12/2011 in Business, Community, CRM, Engagement, Social Media, Technology
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So lets imagine for a minute that you are a business that cares about it’s customers (and employees hopefully!) and you are thinking of running a large scale event for your customers to get feedback on how you are doing.  You might have already run a customer survey and want to bring a representative group together to dive deeper into the initial feedback.  If you are ambitious you might want to get around 100 customers there, representing all the services you offer, which means in terms of logistics, this will be no small undertaking.  To make such an event go smoothly, there are a number important things you will no doubt be considering:

  • Venue – you need quite a venue for 100 customers + reps from your company.  If you are getting direct feedback, you will probably need discrete break out rooms too
  • Location – the best and most central location for convenience of the customer base is important to ensure a good cross service line representation
  • Agenda and input – you might want to consider asking the customers ahead of time for their input so the day is relevant
  • Participation – from key members of staff in the discussions and to organise the event.  Clearly, with such an important gathering the executive team should be well represented, including the CEO.

A significant investment in time, energy and resources I think you will agree.  Now, consider doing that exercise every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  You wouldn’t?  Well think again.  If you are one of the growing number of businesses that are considering using online “community” for customer engagement then that’s exactly the commitment you will be making.  Technology might make some of the process easier, but the logistics and (more importantly) the responsibilities of engaging this way are no less onerous than they would be if you were holding the event on a face to face basis.  In fact, they can be more so.

With a face to face event, there is a subliminal understanding that the event will end.  Not so in a virtual customer community.  Also, participation from the executive team and other core employees is just as critical in my view in this emerging ‘online engagement’ environment.  I speak to many organisations about this trend and the number of CXO’s who assume that it will allow them to push customer interaction down to the lowest common denominator is quite shocking.

But it is not all bad news.  Engaging through community with your customers is a very powerful initiative which can deliver enormous benefits including significantly reduced support costs and increased levels feedback on how you are doing.  If you are open minded, are prepared to take feedback on the ‘virtual chin’ and enter into a true dialogue with your customer base, you will find that they can become a significant and valuable extension to your product and service development teams too.  Innovation from collaboration – it doesn’t come any better than that.

Onne further thing; don’t assume you can engage in this way with your customers and not do the same internally with your employees.  An open, socially interactive and collaborative based customer engagement strategy will fail without a similarly based employee engagement strategy too.

Remember: With great community comes great responsibility…

#CIPDSocial11: The Stats…

Posted: 08/12/2011 in CIPD, Community, Engagement, Social Media, Twitter
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A quick post from me following the excellent CIPD Social Media Conference that took place yesterday. Great to see so many of the #connectingHR folk there too.

The initial stats and wordcloud

Key stats I ran off this morning:

1,000 tweets generated 4,026,401 impressions, reaching an audience of 353,689 followers within the past 24 hours

The wordcloud created from tweets dring the day – I only took them from the duration of the conference, not the aftermath!

More from me later but a HUGE thank you to the CIPD Events team for putting on the event and for letting me be part of it.  A watershed moment methinks.

HR: Your community needs you…

Posted: 28/11/2011 in CIPD, Communication, Community, Engagement, Uncategorized
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Since qualifying 23 years ago, my involvement with the CIPD throughout the duration of my career could be detailed on the back of a postage stamp with room to spare. I was completely indifferent to the Institute, paying my dues (or rather my employer did) and getting on with my career.  A familiar story amongst my professional colleagues too.  This changed in 2005 when I wrote a “Disappointed member from Amersham” letter to People Management over something or other, and Duncan Brown called me out on it.

He asked me to come in, tried to understand my frustrations and talked to me about what the CIPD was trying to do.  We shared a lot of views, and it changed my mind.  Duncan eventually left and it all went quiet until Jackie Orme took the helm.  During a catch up in July last year we discussed challenged business models and the potential future shape of the HR community – the word community being key here.

The CIPD, like most membership organisations faces significant challenges in delivering to the future needs of the profession, notwithstanding the 98-year heritage and the conflicts of a charitable structure. But change takes time and more importantly, input.  Specifically, input from the membership.

For the last few months I have been working with the CIPD on a number of initiatives, membership engagement strategy being a central theme.  Along the way we have facilitated conversations and introductions between my HR peers, in particular my fellow HR bloggers, and the CIPD and I know all individuals involved are better off for it.  Indeed, reflecting back on the last 8 months with some of the digital team including Natalie White, Natalia Thomson and Johanna Ratcliffe last week, attitudes and approaches have changed dramatically.  A good example of this was the participation of a good number of these individuals in the Annual Conference this year.

But not everyone is convinced.  There are many who are indifferent to the institute and its journey.  Worse, there are others who stand on the sidelines throwing rocks, doing little to influence the body that represents the future of the HR community.  Yet this is their membership body, their community and change requires objective input from everyone.

So, here is my challenge to members.  If you are an indifferent member like I was – paying your annual dues but largely indifferent to the institute in general – I would encourage you to get involved.  The CIPD represents a massive network of people who can add a lot of value to each other – including you.

If you are one of those members who spends a lot of time actively complaining about and criticising the CIPD then perhaps it is decision time.  Standing on the side-lines, throwing rocks but not being prepared to get involved changes nothing.  Either cancel your membership and move on, or jump in and get involved.  Speaking from personal experience I can wholeheartedly recommend the latter.

Sure, as a member I can see that there is still a way to go on the journey, but I got involved and shared my views.  And the level of openness and genuine commitment to change has been inspiring.

If membership bodies didn’t exist and were being created today, they would be communities with a purpose.  Conversation, participation and input are central to the success of a community and ultimately a membership body needs involvement from those community members to secure its long term future. 

Employee surveys out. Employee sentiment in…

Posted: 22/11/2011 in Communication, Community, Engagement, sentiment, Social Media
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At the beginning of June I attended the Inspire Conference, London, a great event organised by a the very smart and thoroughly charming Adil mohammed, whom I have the pleasure of working with of late.  It was a great day that lived up to its name. There were many great presentations but one that stood out was by Nick Halstead, CEO of MediaSift and creator of Tweetmeme. His presentation was called Big Data and centred around growth of data and how important and valuable ‘Big Data’ management is. You can see the video here – watch it if you have time, it’s very interesting.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things he mentioned was that it has now been proven that the average sentiment of everyone on twitter correlates ahead of the stock market to an accuracy of 87%. Consequently an increasing number of hedge funds are now using twitter sentiments as their guide to investment.   This was news to me so I feverishly tweeted it.   Now on the face of it, it seems ludicrous – fund managers speculating with my pension fund based on the global ramblings of a load of social butterflies talking about what they had for breakfast?

But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense.  The ‘sentiment’ of millions of people, with their varied networks, individual views and collective intelligence, all flowing naturally and broadly and incorporating influence from all sources. Most importantly, freedom of expression and thought.  It’s realtime market research on a massive scale, with the most comprehensive and diverse research pool to draw from.  Contrast this with the average bunch of analysts and financial ‘experts’, sitting in their financial institutions, surrounded by other financial experts, in the centre of the financial district.  For up to 18 hours a day.

When you consider that a good number of these chaps probably spend the little recreational time they have left snorting cocaine, quaffing champers and chatting up lap dancers its not that difficult to appreciate that they live in a bubble and are probably far too close to the numbers and too engrossed in their world to tap into the broader collective intelligence.  All of a sudden, betting on twitter starts to make sense.

I didn’t give it much more thought until recently when I came across a conversation going on amongst some of my US HR friends at the Ohio SHRM conference.  Charlie Judy sent out a tweet that caught my eye:

I think he has a point and I tweeted my agreement.  For me, surveys are a tool that were once the only real way to get an understanding of what is going on inside the organisation. But for many years I have questioned their value and results.  Ask a leading question and you will get a leading answer.  See this recent article in HR magazine by Michael Silverman who challenges the current status quo on employee surveys.  He talks about “distilling the essence of conversations” which is exactly my point about sentiment.  Things have moved on and whilst I can see annual surveys playing a useful role in benchmarking, the emergence of social and community tools allow us to “open up the watercooler conversation” and get a real sense of what is on the mind of our fellow employees. Better still, for the small number of companies that are adopting these technologies internally, there are additional benefits including significantly increased engagement and product/service innovation.

Measuring employee sentiment rather than surveying them across a number of structured questions would appear to unlock far more than the traditional survey route and I’m hoping to see a much wider use of this approach as more and more organisations realise that the watercooler is where the insight is.

Social media hysteria part 2…

Posted: 14/11/2011 in Communication, Engagement, HR, Leadership, Social Media, Technology, Twitter
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I recently Chaired the HR and Harnessing the Power of Social Media session at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester where Neil Morrison, Group HR Director for Random House and Matthew Hanwell, HR Director, Community & Social Media were sharing their thoughts around the opportunity presented by social media.  The session was well received but has caused a bit of debate, some of it ill informed such as this one from XPertHR’s John Read called “Social Media Policies are not Stupid. Here’s why.“  It seems that john is not alone in this view but I particularly took issue with his stance and was compelled to write this blog in response.

Most of the fear around social media in organisations comes from those who do not understand – and that means actively use – social media.  I totally disagree with John’s analysis which comes from an uninformed point of view.  And a legal view is not necessarily an informed one.

Social media has not suddenly unlocked a new human “Stupid” genome.  All the threats he mentions including confidential information leakage and defamatory statements are all possible in existing media.  We already have policies coming out of our ears to deal with behaviour in the workplace.  If the law is such an ass that it needs a separate policy to remind people they cant say “F*** You” on social media when its already covered in general behaviour then the law needs to have a word with itself.  Which it probably does.

I thought this statement, taken from a comment by a John Eccleston on the blog was particularly wide of the mark:

“Also, letters and phone calls do not have the same potential as social media to cause long-lasting, broadcast brand damage. Once written, a tweet or a wall post can be around the world in seconds – leaving a digital footprint that can be impossible to erase. An ill-considered social media activity can cause far more harm than a bit of old media – this deserves to be reflected in how employers handle it.”


Sorry John (Eccleston) but this is simply not true.  Tweets may have greater reach, but there is only so much damage you can do in 140 characters.  And they disappear very quickly.  Compare that to letters, faxes, emails and phone calls – often rolled out in legal cases.  Try and find a recorded phone conversation, or an email or a letter you wrote 12 months ago.  Not that difficult actually.  Now do the same with a tweet.

Neil wasn’t suggesting that we ignore it – he was suggesting we embrace it.  He was suggesting we have a conversation with our fellow employees and take an adult, realistic approach.  He can do this because he is informed.  And he is informed because he is immersed in social media himself unlike most of the HR, media and legal commentators we hear from regularly.  As a result of his informed positon he has a realistic grasp of the risks.

Too many HR professionals are tackling this subject when they themselves are not involved in social media, and instead are being advised by lawyers or taking guidance from commentators who are similarly ignorant.  Fanning the flames of fear around the subject is too easy and serves only to drive fees for lawyers, column inches/unique visits for journalists and the day job for HR.

I have searched the social media landscape for John and have come up with little evidence that he is active in social media.  He appears to have 2 linkedin profiles both of which are inactive and I can’t find him on twitter at all, unless he has an anonymous profile.  One thing I do know about this social stuff is that unless you are actively immersed in it, you cannot fully understand it fully.  And unless I’m mistaken, John is not immersed.  Which means he is not engaging with the audience around which this debate centres, on the very tools which he is commenting about.

My final point would be that if you look back, the number of CEO’s and Exec team members who have brought a company into disrepute FAR outweighs the number of rank and file employees who have done so.  As I said at the conference in my closing comments, ultimately, this is less about social media and more about authenticity.   It’s really about an organisations ability to become more comfortable with transparency, openness and trust.

UPDATE 

Fair play to John Read he has come back to me and asked that I reconsider my verdict on him being ill informed.  On reflection, he is right to say that he is very informed on the legal issues – much more so than me obviously!

Social overload…

Posted: 07/11/2011 in Communication, Engagement, linkedin, Social Media, Technology, Twitter
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LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Twylah, Empire Avenue, WordPress, Klout, Peer Index, Twenty Feet, Kred, Path, Instagram, Foursquare etc and 100 other lookie likies.  Many of these didn’t exist a couple of years ago – or more importantly didn’t vie for my attention.  Having just returned from our second ever camping trip where connectivity is non existent, it occurs to me as I wade through my inbox that the ever increasing noise from these various platforms is becoming almost unmanageable.  I hate email as it is, but now my inbox seems to swim with more and more “you got this perk” or “see who unfollowed you” messages that frankly i care less and less about.

Being away and without connectivity has made me re think the way I’m living my online life.  Seriously.  And question the value of these various platforms to my, and more importantly perhaps, my family’s life.  Being unconnected for a week was bliss – we walked, we talked. We played air hockey (Want a table in my house!) we played scrabble and monopoly.  We bonded. We had time for each other.  We were present.  Or should I say “I” was present, not just physically but mentally too.  And thats the main point for me – at times its easy to be ‘half present’ – half in a conversation with someone in person, but half engrossed in a conversation online, or flipping through updates.  It has become painfully obvious to me that this half presence is a cancer in families, especially those with young children like mine.

Maybe its just me.  Perhaps I’m getting old and my bandwidth is shrinking but I’m questioning whether I’m richer for a lot of this stuff.  Ultimately, the problem is the landscape is still very immature despite how it might feel.  It’s like the early days of the internet with website after website, solution after solution all coming at you at 100 miles an hour.  But that eventually stopped when we realised a lot of them couldn’t monetize the offering or there were just too many lookie likes.  It will happen in this new social tech world too.  Its just that I don’t have the bandwidth anymore to entertain all the contenders.  At some point it will burst and things will get back to normal – consolidation and competition will clear out some of the social clutter and we will get on with doing normal business with the new tools but without the hyperventilating over IPO this and that.

So. In anticipation of this streamline future I’m having my own cull.  Im making space in my head and in my life.  Shrinking my social footprint, not expanding it.  Here’s the plan:

Twitter - Im sticking with Twtter.  It’s a great blend of personal and professional and Ive made more great and productive relationships (Nay friendships) through twitter in 2 years than I have through LinkedIn in 7.  However, my twitter habits are changing.  My wife and children deserve better than a half present husband and dad – they deserve my full attention.  So until such time as my kids find their mates and their own smartphones more interesting than their crusty old dad, and or my wife does the same, i’ll be spending most of my evenings and weekends outside of the twitterverse.

Blog - Im sticking with that too.  I’ve always been a writer.  Before the internet it was my own journals, articles for magazines, then pages for websites,  and now my blog.  So I shall continue to inflict my opinions on the world.  Sorry about that @neilmorrison ;)

LinkedIn – The chaps at LinkedIn actually owe a huge debt to twitter.  In fact many of the core social platforms out there do, especially the blogs.  I had been getting tired of LinkedIn’s spammy groups and lack of realtime interaction – there is only so much tweaking of ones profile one can do.  However, I find all those people I’m meeting face to face through twitter etc, I’m now connecting with on LinkedIn.  It is also my ‘living CV’ so I’m in no hurry to walk away from it and go back to producing endless Word versions of the same thing.

Facebook – I’ve never been big on Facebook but it has put me back in touch with people from my past in a way that friendsreunited never could.  So I’m keeping it, but I don’t have the bandwidth to sit on it for hours checking updates and commenting in groups.  I know I’m missing out on some great banter, but my kids are funny too.

Instagram – I’m really starting to like instagram.  Not sure why, but it appeals to the inner writer in me.  It takes me back to the pre internet days when I wrote travel journals and peppered them with photo’s of my exploits.  An online record of moments in time, captured for all to see for as long as the servers keep humming.  And I’m continuously knocked out by other peoples ability to capture and share some fabulous snapshots of their lives too.

Thats the keep list.  So what of everything else?  Well, I’m a serial early adopter, and I’m still very interested in how some of the things are panning out so im not going to erase them totally from my life, especially if I think they may have legs in terms of marketing or engagement.  But a couple at the top of my list of things to spend very little time in or on are:

Empire Avenue – Our obsession with shares, especially the magic ‘earnings per share’ number have brought us to a very ugly economic place globally so I’m struggling with applying the concept to individuals.  I barely have time to consider share prices in relation to my pension fund so I simply don’t have time to think about it in terms of “brand me” (Yuk) or anyone else.  Yes its actually nice to “invest” in someone – its a great way of giving them kudos and sharing the love you feel about them.  But I’ve always been able to do that online and more importantly, offline.  Face to face.  Either by telling them so or by recommending them to others. So ill continue to do just that.  Its cash in my shares time!

Klout, Kred et al. - Im not convinced that Klout is really going to make a difference to my life and certainly at the moment it is not credible enough to be of any value.  I recently conducted an experiment with it – I added my other social footprints – Facebook, blog, flickr etc, took up the perks, “shared the news” with my friends via twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and generally increased my activity levels.  And of course my score went up.  It’s the same with Foursquare – if you tweet or “share” your check in, you get more points than if you don’t.  To me, all this is bollocks and there is a lot of work to do before any kind of scoring algorithm can make a call about me, if ever.  This article, whilst I don’t agree with the bread analogy, sums it up nicely.  Although i’d say be you, not your personal brand.

I think I’m not the only one to be considering the same – I’ve picked up other similar thoughts through my contacts and I would be interested in your views.

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