Culture is what people do when no one is looking

Doug Williamson

President and C.E.O. at The Beacon Group

For decades, organizations have conducted formal employee surveys and, until recently, these have been geared to measure employee satisfaction and opinions. These types of surveys have helped organizations gauge a number of elements within their organization, however, they were rarely tied back to the organization’s culture. In other words, the questions on these surveys measured the parts, and never the whole.

Today, with increasing appreciation of the importance of culture (and the concept of organizational DNA), the time is right to shift the focus of employee surveys to the health and fitness of the organization. With a tested value set as the foundation, coupled with a desire to develop a strong culture, these sophisticated tools allow leaders to measure trends across a number of key areas affecting their employees, and ultimately, the organization itself.

Here are Some Tips to Getting your Measurement Tool Right:

The survey, and its administration, must be created with purpose, or the results will not be useful.

Content. There are indeed right and wrong questions that can be asked on Organizational Culture surveys. To effectively measure their culture, organizations must spend an extensive period of time crafting their values, and then developing appropriate questions to assess them. Further still, it is important to understand that employees at different levels have different vantage points on the organization, and it is wise to create subsets of questions to be delivered to these targeted groups. This ensures that the survey process gathers as much relevant information as possible from the employee population

Get the right feedback from the right places.

Third-party administration. It is basic human nature to be reluctant to deliver harsh news directly.  Therefore, it is particularly important for organizations to consider the use of a third-party organization to administer the survey, collect the data, and present the comprehensive results. This will not only reassure employees that their views will be kept anonymous, and confidential, but it will allow them to provide truthful, unfiltered feedback.

Maximize the likelihood of full disclosure.

Delivery. The goal of any survey is to get honest and candid feedback from employees. Therefore, ensure your organization embraces technology in any way possible to distribute and collect the surveys in as short a timeframe as possible. Be sure to seek out third-parties who can distribute and collect information from your employee population in a secure and protected manner. And reassure employees, at every step of the process, that their “candid” feedback is what is desired to help grow the organization.

Corporate culture is a powerful force. If an organization is fortunate enough to get it right, and has a culture that promotes effectiveness, and growth, it can move at pace through the challenges of the business world. If, on the other hand, its culture hinders progress and holds the organization back from reaching its true potential, it is critical to be able to turn this around.

Either way, being able to identify where your organization’s culture is, and where you want it to go is an important factor for achieving long term success.

Leadership, Feedback and the Art of Listening

How to listen and help your people to grow

Why feedback makes sense
Leaders are supposed to give feedback. That’s part of their obligation when it comes to people development.

Feedback is one adjustment approach to help people to reach their highest potential and fulfillment. Reaching that, the business is very likely to profit, because their people love what they do, and they are great at doing it. 

Who is in charge: leaders or managers?
Leaders often don’t lead. They manage. They have to. There are millions of things that have to get done. That’s what management is all about. Getting things done. Doing the business.

Leadership on the other hand means: being good at dealing with the human side, dealing with people.

Managing towards high performance processes is one thing you would have to get right. Leading people towards engagement and high performance is the essential human part. Without that your great high performance processes won’t come to life.

Let’s repeat what makes sense. The benefit is strikingly clear: giving feedback helps people to tap their highest potentials. That leads to high levels of engagement, to high performance people, which leads to high performance business if you got your processes right. 

Why listening is the key
So, giving feedback is one part of the leaders’ obligation.

My question is: feedback based on what? What do we see when it comes to our employees? Do we really see the person in its entirety? Or do we see our image of that person, through our management lenses, with our desire to get things done? Do we see our image of them, not performing the way we want them to?

Here is the catch: if you want to give valuable feedback and help them to grow, you have to look at the person’s bigger picture. A good way to see the bigger picture is to get good at listening. Seriously: how can you give feedback when your mind is all over the place?

When you look at your Blackberry or iPhone all the time? When you think about the next appointment already, and about all the other things on your to-do-list? When you feel guilty that you didn’t see your boss before this meeting, as he asked you to? How can you be here and now, with this employee in front of you, listening, when you are occupied with the future and the past, but definitely not with what is going on right now, and now, and now again? 

Intention drives observation
If you want to give feedback, the question is also: what did you observe, and in what mode were you during that observation? Did you primarily see yourself and your perception, or did you really see the other person, her needs, his state of being at that moment?

What was your reason again for giving feedback? Was it to make sure that some task gets done, that a presentation is held in a particular way, that a deadline is met? Or was it that you want to understand where in his or her stage of development your employee is right now, how well s/he is doing in terms of the desired development, and how you can support the growth and how you can find the best fit in this team or group or organization? 

The managing – leading dilemma again
You might say: “Well, we do have this annual review or people development process in place.” or “I strikly follow this six step feedback tool we were introduced to in our last management seminar.”

It’s great to have these processes, tools and guidelines. Every company must have those rules of conduct in oder to oblige to the need of treating people equally and assure a certain level of quality. The catch is that when you are merely following policies and procedures, applying tools and techniques, with compliance as a response to controlling – you are back to management, dealing with things, with business, loosing focus on the people. 

How to really listen
Great feedback starts with good listening. Good listening starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness starts with being in the present moment, 100% available for that person sitting in front of you. Mindfulness starts with making sure that the time of listening is not interrupted by your phone, or by disturbing noise or by people running in and out of your room. And it starts with your stopping to try to achieve something, to get something done here.

Your job right now is to listen, without judging, with an open mind, ready to experience the other person with all the wonderful facets, listening to his/her story. 

The mindful listening experiment
I would like to offer you an experiment, a practical exercise that we practice with leaders in our seminars.

Here is how it works: 

The role setting
You work in triads (a set of three people).

1. The first person is the speaker. Let’s say, Paula takes that part. In the business world, she could be the employee.
2. Jack is the second person. He listens, and later on repeats what the speaker said. In real life, he would be the leader, boss, parent, whatever.
3. Anthea, the third person, listens and carefully observes all the time. She has a special assignment in this exercise. In real life, she would not be part of the listening and feedback giving process.

Detailed instructions follow further down. 

The content setting
Jack, being in the leader role, wants to find out about Paula’s development so far. He listens her to talk about the following stuff Just listening, no conversation. This is what Paula might want to talk about:

• What did her professional and personal development look like?
• What was it that she always liked to do or to be in her life?
• What provides meaning for her, and what values does she see behind this meaning?
• What are the driving forces?
• Who were key figures, institutions, heroes or whatever that had a driving impact on those values?
• What kind of path developed out of this drive?
• What did she actively choose to do?
• What type of work or activities does she passionately do?
• Where does she see herself right now?

There should be no mentioning (yet) about the future. This part of the overall exercise is just about the past. 

The task and the timing

• Paula, Jack and Anthea have 15 minutes time to think about their lives, along the content setting as described above.
• Then Paula talks. She has 10 minutes time. If she uses only 5 minutes or so, the rest is silence.
• After the 10 minutes, Peter repeats what he remembers. No “Oh, that is difficult, let’s see … what I remember is …”. – Just the plain content of Paula’s story: “you were brought up in … what you valued most is … ” and so on. If Peter is finished after let’s say 6 minutes, the rest is silence.
• Anthea just observes mindfully. No judgement, no thinking about her role later on. Just 100% concentration and being with the other two people. And she keeps track of the time, sending the signal after each of the 10 minutes that the time is over.
• Then the triad shift roles. Anthea becomes the talker, Paula the listener, and so on.

 

The conclusion

After the end of the whole session (3x 20 minutes), the triad(s) come together and talk about their experiences, answering the questions:

• How did you experience the silence (if there was any)? How did you deal with it? What ant through your minds?
• What did you experience as the listener?
• What did you experience as the talker?
• What did you see as the observer?
• What did you learn from this exercise? What do you want to take with you into the daily life and practice?

Have a mindful day. 

Posted by:Peter Dilg

A Complete A to Z Guide To Personal Branding

9 Ways Social Media Marketing Will Change in 2014

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News

From the decline of Facebook use among teens to Twitter's IPO, if there is one thing we know for sure about social media, it's that few trends hold on for long — so marketers need to stay on their toes.

With that in mind, we asked nine successful entrepreneurs how they are planning on altering their social media marketing strategies in the next six months, based on their predictions for the new year. Here's what they had to say. 

1. Graphic software will rise.

 

Posts on Facebook with photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs than text-based posts, according to Kissmetrics. With the rise of Pinterest and Tumblr, it's going to become increasingly important to produce content in visual form, whether it is infographics, images with text overlay or pretty quote graphics. We'll be using more graphic software to turn our written content into visual content to make it more shareable on social media.
- Laura Pepper Wu, 30 Day Books 

2. Social won't be used for sales.
 

People love to buy, but they hate to be sold. Companies currently celebrating the most success in social media focus on engagement, nurturing relationships and sharing value through their social outreach. Customers and prospects will seek out companies offering value, entertainment, discounts, help and engagement.
- Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits 

3. Automation will explode.
 

 A lot currently rides on the shoulders of social media marketers. They have to be on top of brand voice, any current company promotions or marketing campaigns, the tools they measure social media with, the various communities on the platforms, etc. It's a lot, and it's more varied than most people are capable of doing well. In 2014, we'll see a lot of automation of the tactics (think timing, platform, structure, etc.), so social media marketers can focus on the content and the genuine social interaction. Autonomics is being adopted now and will only explode as more technologies come online in 2014.
- Brennan White, Watchtower 

4. LinkedIn will become the most important publisher.
 

Imagine a publication with more than 100 million captive readers and writers, such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, all natively hooked into and targeted to a social network. LinkedIn will become a premium destination for industry news, and you need to take part in that ecosystem early and often. Publish original content, network among peers in groups and raise your profile now.
- Trevor Sumner, LocalVox 

5. Content will be bigger and better.
 

Simple messages and simple questions aren't enough anymore. To achieve a deeper connection with your customers, a company needs to engage on a deeper and more intelligent level. Short videos, infographics, quality imagery and polls are all ways to engage deeper. Companies need to look at the content they put out and ask themselves, "Is this shareable?" An example of a huge company that's doing this really well right now is Wal-Mart. Its content is smart and engaging, and the fan engagement is very high by comparison to its competitors. Also, companies need to focus on the fans they have and not the fans they want. If your message is always trying to reach out, you'll bore the fans that have chosen to connect with you.
- Andrew Howlett, Rain 

6. Social will need to stand out.
 

Social media has really started to mature. Therefore, it will be a lot harder to stand out. To win big in social media, you'll have to think outside the box and find ways to get your content to stand out in all the noise.
- Wade Foster, Zapier 

7. Social media campaigns will have to be paid.
 

 I assume that the most effective social media campaigns in 2014 will be paid. The key is learning how to use Facebook and Twitter's paid tools now so that you'll have an edge on the competition. For instance, are you using Facebook's advanced audience tool? It allows you to upload your email database and send specific response messages directly to your focused audience. Imagine being able to segment both email marketing and Facebook ads to your target audience. Facebook already offers these types of advanced tools, and they will become more mainstream in 2014. Similarly, Twitter is now public and has been making an aggressive push into paid advertising. If you are a brand and want to succeed on Twitter in 2014, get ready to pay for it.
- Kristopher Jones, ReferLocal.com 

8. Interactive content will trump static content.
 

Creating static content is too easy. In 2014, the bar will be raised on the type of content people choose to engage with. Expect to see content become more interactive (think software-like). The year 2013 was the year of "Top 10" lists. To get users to engage to the same degree in 2014 and subsequent years, publishers will need to make it increasingly engaging, and one effective way to do that is to make your content interactive.
- Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors 

9. Google+ will merge into the social scene.
 

As Google continues to merge its products, it’s becoming more and more important in the social media landscape. There are so many benefits to using Google+. It creates a strong community that allows you to use your brand and identify consumers who share an interest in your products. It also allows your brand to become more social with like-minded consumers. They provide like-minded consumers a platform to connect with one another.

This builds a strong community, which is a great way to get feedback on new and old products from real-time consumers.
- Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net

Scott GerberScott Gerber is a serial entrepreneur, author (Never Get a 'Real' Job), TV commentator and founder of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneur...More

14 Stats to Inform Your 2014 Social Marketing Strategy

As 2013 draws to a close, brand marketers and social media strategists have the opportunity to reflect on learnings from the past year.  While no single industry statistic should stand alone in informing future plans and strategies, a broader snapshot of social network trends, social consumer behaviors and brand social media results can help inform the big picture of social going into 2014.

 

Here are 14 statistics and trends from 2013 to inform your 2014 social marketing strategy. 

Growth, Usage and Trends of Social Networks

1.) Facebook users spend 6.35 hours each month on the social network via their desktop
When it comes to sheer usage, Facebookstill reigns supreme, accounting for almost twice as much time spent monthly by users on the social network over Google. And while mobile usage is on the rise, the majority of this time is still via a desktop experience. (Facebook)

 

2.) Instagram has more than 150 million active users
Now a part of the Facebook family, Instagram has surged in growth and has more than 150 million active users. One third of that numbergrew in the last 6 month time period, underscoring the growing interest in visual content creation and consumption. (Instagram)

3.) 15% of Internet users are on Pinterest 
Nearly one in every 6 people who use the Internet are on Pinterest. What’s more? These users are well educated and 18% have an annual income of $75,000 or more. (Pew)

4.) Tumblr and Pinterest outperform Twitter and LinkedIn when it comes to share of time spent, in minutes
They may not have as large a user base as giants Twitter and LinkedIn, but visually-focused social networks Tumblr and Pinterest win out for time spent on their sites in comparison. (ComScore)

Social Consumer behavior

5.) 33% of consumers cite social networks as a way they discover new brands, products or services 
One in three consumers are discovering new brands and products via social networks. That may not lead to direct attribution on the brand side, yet, but it’s as indicator that brand awareness and reputation are powerful in the social consumer lifecycle. (eMarketer)

6.) 60% of LinkedIn users have clicked on an ad on the site 
2013 has raised much discussion on the effectiveness of social advertising. If LinkedIn’s advertising performance is any type of indicator, relevant social advertising is going beyond awareness building through impressions and driving action. (lab42)

7.) 100% of business decision-makers use social media for work purposes
Social networks are huge, but does that mean they are being used for business purposes? Forrester Research confirmed this year that, yes, statistically every business decision maker is both using social media and doing so in part for some type work purpose.(Forrester Research Inc)

8.) 47% of Internet users share photos or video they found online
Active usage is great in understanding where people spend time, but understanding consumer actions is an even more meaningful way to get insight. Pew reported in 2013 that nearly half of all Internet users share multimedia they discovered somewhere online. The learning here? Resonate with your consumers’ interests, and they will share and propagate your content.(Pew)

9.) 25% of consumers who complain about products on Facebook or Twitter expect a response within 1 hour
Listening without action is no longer an option for social brands. The expectations of consumers have shifted to make brand responses a mandate. A non-response now risks a disappointed customer, at the least, and a negative brand perception. (American Express Open Forum)

Brand Intentions and Results

10.) 91% of executives are planning a more programmatic approach to audience segmentation in the next two years
Two trends are highlighted here: the rise of audience segmentation and the intent to scale social media through a programmatic approach. 2014 will likely bring with it more, personalized content and a strong concentration of building internal infrastructure to make this strategy repeatable and successful. (eMarketer)

11.) 70% of marketers say that content marketing has increased their brand awareness
Content marketing is on the rise for a very important reason: social is an always-on medium and it requires compelling content to consistently reach and resonate with audience members. The good news? iMedia reports that brands are seeing positive results as it pertains to content raising brand awareness. (iMedia)

12.) 65% of marketers cited an increased social media ad budget in their 2013 plans
To advertise on social, or not advertise on social is no longer the question. Two out of three marketers planned to increase their social advertising budget in 2013. And with greater stringency placed on Newsfeed placement, this number will likely rise in 2014 for marketers to reach their intended audiences. (Nielsen)

13.) 79% of Marketers have integrated social media into their traditional marketing activities
2013 solidified the year of social media earning a seat in the integrated marketing mix. Going beyond Paid, Owned and Earned social, brands are now actively integrating social with traditional marketing and creating a full view of social’s integration within CRM systems.  (Social Media Examiner Industry Report)

14.) Pinterest drives twice the website referral traffic of Twitter, LinkedIn and Google – combined
Conversions are a marketer’s best friend. As it pertains to social media, Pinterest proved its power in driving users from the social network directly to corporate websites, second only to Facebook. (Shareaholic)

 

* A bonus stat and parting thought – social media is the top driver for relationship building
52 percent of enterprise brands say social media is the top driver for relationship building/ brand engagement, more than twice as much as email, and quadruple that of corporate websites. Why is this significant? Marketers are realizing and embracing the inherent value of social media – building relationships – and working to create programs that deliver great experiences. The impact: happier, more loyal customers and increased awareness and demand. (Spredfast)

Happy Holidays and best of luck in your 2014 social media planning.  We can’t wait to see how your social brand strategies evolve in the next 12 months.

Authored by:

Jordan Slabaugh

Jordan Viator Slabaugh is the Director of Social Media at Spredfast where she leads the company's social strategy, execution and interactive marketing, as well as consults with clients on using social media to help achieve social business goals.

The Perfect Tweet

A formula for making those 140 characters count

By: Mira Shenker 

While many a post has been devoted to this subject, what makes people click through to your content from Twitter is still up for debate. It's never going to be a perfect science, but there are ways to increase the chances that your 140-character nuggets will draw people to your website.

Neomobile has created an infographic showing the best construction for a tweet. Most of the advice has been given before (keep it to 100 characters, don't overuse hashtags) but it's useful to see it all in one place. Order matters, and this formula has every tweet starting with a call to action and ending with the URL.  Follow that last piece of advice with caution: placing the URL at the end of a tweet looks neater, but it also means that's the first thing to get cut off if someone adds their own commentary when they retweet you.

The Company Website Is Making a Comeback

For years now, companies have been vying for attention on social streams controlled by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Hundreds of millions of people flocked to those streams, and corporations figured they had to follow. But now businesses are realizing something has been lost in the transition, that there’s nothing like being able to control exactly how they speak to customers, and the humble website seems to be surging back.

The comeback is bolstered by new interlinks that make it increasingly easy for websites to suck in and selectively repurpose some of the very social content that diminished the open web in the first place. These tools are typically used to highlight particularly interesting online conversations, to aggregate responses to a question posed by a consumer goods seller or media organization, or to facilitate question and answer sessions. So while the content comes from social streams controlled by outside companies like Facebook, it’s reshuffled and re-prioritized in a way that makes sense to the owner of the website.

This allows companies with products to sell to pull off a neat trick: Captivating potential customers by talking about those potential customers, rather than about the product. Everyone likes to hear about themselves. This means that, as cheesy as it might sound, Twitter and Facebook users get an ego boost on seeing their opinions, words, and even faces reflected on a corporate website, even if it’s through a silly contest, poll, or roundup.

“What we do is what I call marketing with a mirror – we hold the mirror up to the audience and they respond to it,” says Sam Decker, whose company Mass Relevance helps companies like Patagonia and HBO sift and repurpose social streams on their own websites. “You know when the camera in the football stadium shines on some people, and they stand up and say, ‘look at me, look at me?’ You just got engagement and participation. And that’s exactly what we’re doing, we’re playing back their own participation in the brand experience. That’s what you can do with owned media, with a website.

Decker says Mass Relevance has grown to 100 employees and 300 clients, doubling its business in the past year. It is riding the same wave as RebelMouse, a New York startup that helps media companies like Time Inc. and Fox and retail partners like Shopify repurpose social data on their own websites. CEO Paul Berry, formerly the Huffington Post’s chief technical officer, says he started the company last year because friends in the media business were constantly asking him to help better showcase fast breaking news from social streams on the websites that generated their advertising revenue.

Now the company is launching an ad product that does the same thing for advertisers, helping them place their Facebook and Twitter posts on other people’s websites, for a price. Those advertisers have been pouring effort into their Twitter and Facebook streams, only to realize it’s not been earning them much return, driving neither traffic nor sales.

“Company blogs and websites are missing their own best stuff,” Berry says. “The people who actually care about you are the ones who come to your site.” 

And with the right content, as fresh as a status update but polished like a magazine ad, those hard-core customers might return again and again.



RebelMouse CEO Paul Berry. Photo: RebelMouse