Archive for the ‘Corporate Communications’ Category

Through the Looking Glass

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

This article of ours was first published in Business Today”s 20th Anniversary edition

It was only in 2008 when social media took its fledgling steps in India. 2011 was the year social media got truly established with Indian corporates as 20 million Indians went social! In 2015, we foresee, an exponential growth and significant innovations as 500 million Indians log on given the high mobile penetration and $35 tablets!

With so much happening, social media promises to be like the plot of a Bollywood blockbuster in the coming years – full of drama, triumphs and twists. Let’s take a quick peek into some of the future trends.

  • Emergence of Rural Social Media:

Airtel believes that 700 mn rural Indian Internet users exist that remain untapped. Given that, Indian businesses will have to think rural in all aspects – social communication strategies, customized content as media consumption will be drastically different from urban centers, and rural workforce. Companies will have to divert advertising resources into creating content that is both captivating, relevant and ultimately building brand affinity with the users – be it in the form of videos, applications or plain text.  Also companies will need to educate and nurture rural workforce. After all a 24-year old executive in Gurgaon will not be able to write content for a farmer in Warangal!

  • Community Development:

There already is a shift in advertising spends as more monies are being diverted to BTL activities. This trend will see as significant boost as going forward companies will have to start investing in creating and maintaining social ecosystems for their brand. Ecosystems would involve building community of individuals who will spend their time and effort by being not just customers for the brand but also product innovators and ideators! Brands especially those operating in passion-led sectors like photography, bikes, etc will need to identify these individuals and panelize them to seek their ideas from product development stage to marketing and distributing it!

Few brands in India that have taken first steps in this direction are Royal Enfield and Canon. Both companies have built a social ecosystem that helps them leverage it not just for sales but also engage in a more profitable and wholesome manner! By doing that, they are betting that the collective social presence of this group will endorse and influence a much wider and larger audience towards their products as close to 40 million Indians today base their purchase decision based on online reviews.

  • Profiles of brand managers:

The biggest change that we anticipate will be a change in the profile of the brand manager. Today, several corporates have global brand teams that manage the larger nuances of brand building and the local teams are involved with execution and activation work around the brand. The profile of the local brand activation team will undergo a drastic shift as social media gains significance. In order to operate successful online communities as mentioned in the previous point, corporates will seek out individuals who exhibit and follow their hobbies & interests that are in sync with their business. A clear case in point is Red Bull that has individuals on board with specific skill sets and inherent passion who lead their various sports & cultural initiatives! Hence an employee list that boasts of former cricketers and sports journalists!

  • Social Media for Senior Leadership:

As Indian companies go global, it will be imperative for the senior leadership to build their presence in the social space. Global media would want to know more about the company and its team and would look at social media presence for the same. It is not uncommon today to read CEO tweets as newspaper headlines.

Also senior leadership will have to address other stakeholders – employees, customers and shareholders to help build connect with the company, receive direct feedback on their brands and assure safety on the monies invested respectively. Few good examples of this that come to mind are Mr. Anand Mahindra’s Twitter presence, HCL’s Mr Vineet  Nayyar’s blog and GE India’s CEO Mr. John Flannery’s internal blog meant for employees.

  • Individual Celebrities:

Brand endorsers will change completely. Gone will the days where the Bollywood and Sports brigade lapped up everything! Brands will sign up more real life individuals to bring in relevance and connect with their customers. These real life celebrities will be specialists in their own field and hence influencers on social media platforms. Offlate, various writers such as Chetan Bhagat (Revolution 20-20), Ashwin Sanghi (Chanakya Chants) and Sidin Vadukut (Dork & God Save the Dork) have successfully leveraged social media to gain celebrity status! Given that, Huawei India signed Chetan Bhagat so that they could connect with his fan base for their mobile and tablet offerings.

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Social media and social responsibility

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

Over the past few years, social media has become an important tool of marketing. Big brands have invested in the new media hoping to hook the audience to their products. And, with the success of the platform, the brands are now looking to leverage the tool for enhancing their brand equity via social causes’ route.

Social responsibility goes social

With growth of Facebook and twitter and the rise of social media marketing, it is no surprise that then this medium would now be used to promote corporate social responsibilities (CSR). While the brands are slowly starting to embrace this route, many social causes have already been promoted to good result via Facebook and other social platforms.

                    IAC

Social Causes Promoted via Social Media

Not just local public cause, social media has played key role in national causes. The public led campaigns against issues in countries like Libya, Egypt and India has shown what this medium is capable of. And if harnessed properly, the medium can deliver like none other.

Reaching the masses

In India, there are 31 million Facebook users, while the total number of active users on social media is expected to be 45 million by year 2012. This platform is growing and how. There is no denying that social media provides the easiest, and most cost effective route of reaching such an audience.

                      Causes 

Engaging the influencers

A key tool for any cause based program is to have the experts opinion put forth. A doctor talking about a health related issue makes the cause look that much more credible. Social media provides this opportunity to all the brands.

With over 40000 active bloggers who have built a major clout with their writing, brands can engage with these writers while talking about the cause and make them understand their fight. They in turn would then promote the cause and bring credibility to program.

                     Philips

Philips LinkedIn Innovation in Health

Not just blogs, lot of professionals are on social media, who can be engaged through their inputs and dialogues with general public in order to make the cause support that much more real and beneficial for normal people.

Key Benefits:

It also provides key benefits that any brand looks from a CSR or cause promotion. It helps brands in:

  • Improving Social Welfare
  • Establish differentiated brand positioning
  • Create strong consumer bond
  • Enhance brand equity
  • Boost internal morale
  • Drive Sales
  • Drive market value of firm

Acceptance of the campaign

A lot of skeptics have questioned the acceptance of a social media campaign. The fact that it is perceived as a youth platform makes them feel the whole seriousness of the issue would be lost. What they are not realizing that in a country like India, 66% percent of the population falls in the youth category. Thus, addressing them on their choice of platform is key to making them talk and think about the cause. And that’s not about it. 

End Cause

The result of a social media campaign can be gauged through response generated either through number of people who have registered for the cause or amount of money donated through the program. Also, the success of the program can be gauged through how well the program has been able to improve the lives of people who supported the campaign. There are no shortages of examples of the same in India. Brands like Fair and Lovely have contributed majorly towards growth of the society via this platform. The Fair and Lovely Foundation has reached out to over 300 girls in just 7 years and changed their lives.

FAL Foundation               Aircel

Brand led campaigns

Similarly Aircel has managed to build a support of over 300,000 people for save the tiger campaign. The major highlight of this campaign was making people believe that they can contribute to a cause which previously they though they can’t do much about.

And that is the victory that social media can lend to a corporate social responsibility or a cause promotion by a brand. It can make people feel important; it can make them feel like a responsible citizen. That they can make a contribution to any cause that they feel for through this channel makes it that much more powerful.

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Socializing with your employees: Part II

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Continuing from where we left of, we shall now see how social media platform can be used to improve the structure and efficiency of an organization.

Collaborating for Success

With help of any given platform, an organization can help teams work

      ● More effectively and efficiently

      ● Ensure teams have access to most accurate and up to date information

      ● Enable remote working

                IBM

Collaborative blog from IBM

This not only leads to better work output but also builds connection. When employees feel connected to their organization, a unified purpose and each other they will be more engagement and more efficiency. Also, this reduces the scope of internal crisis as most matters are resolved via two way communication over an informal discussion.

Social Brainstorming

Social Media is also budding ground for good ideas to be sowed and germinated. Once someone proposes an idea, others can contribute to it and over a healthy discussion, the idea can take shape. Since it’s available over a platform at any given time, the constrain of a brain storming session in a closed environment and in fixed time span is eliminated, thus, giving it a feel of an open session.

A spontaneous idea that leads to a thread of comments on a Facebook group may prove to be far more productive than spending hours inside a meeting room trying to solve a problem.

Peer Recognition

Another important aspect of using social media is recognizing and highlighting achievers and the ease with which they can be rewarded. Any individual when recognized in front of his/her peers feels special. Social Media is just the right place for an individual to be recognized by his organization in front of his friends and colleagues. This builds a sense of pride and also inculcates a healthy rivalry amongst the workers.

               People

Sharing profile of employees in internal communities can boost
confidence amongst employees

Getting Personal

Social media also gives big organizations the opportunity to show their human face. Wishing people on special occasion via a personal message can go a long way in building a lasting relationship which would prove very productive. This will hold well during a crisis. When you want that extra mile from employees, then as an organization, you also need to walk that extra mile.

Giving Voice

A social media strategy to handle employee grievances is an effective tool for online reputation management. While it may be difficult how an employee conveying their grievances in front of other employees can help, but it is better than them going public in front of external clients. Being heard is the first and almost entirely the most critical step in complaint resolution. A heard employee may equal to a satisfied employee.

Chain of communication

Social media tools such as blogs can be a great way of educating people about new products and giving detailed reviews. Bring in YouTube with video demonstrations of new products and you have an attentive employee set readily willing to understand and discuss new products. Make it innovative and your employees themselves will make it go viral thus not only giving the brand an internal viewership but also the possibility of garnering millions of eyeballs from external audience.

Blog

Sharing on internal community gives a chance for employees to interact freely irrespective to their position in the ladder

Payoffs

While it may look that bringing internal communication and HR issues on social media is a risk, with organizations having to give up on lot of control, but no policing is in fact a very good method of inculcating self control and restrain.

When people know there is someone out there to listen to them, they are less disgruntle and more constructive. They may even take the effort of using their bad experience to come up with innovative solutions to tricky problems.

This is where true employee empowerment can be achieved. This will not only help you strengthen your organization but also give you the best word of mouth publicity of them all. Employee Advocacy.

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Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 3

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Now that you have read part 1 and part 2 of ‘Who is afraid of social media’, hope you enjoy the last and final part of the series as much as the earlier ones.

  • ‘We don’t know if our workforce will be excited about social media’

A very valid concern. Sometime employees might just not be ready to embrace social media and its toolss. However, one needs to remember, that most of the younger workforce have already embraced social media to a large extent and the others will too, given time and encouragement.

It might make sense to start the reluctant workforce on some simple social media tools, hand hold them and provide continuous encouragement and demonstrate the value. Tough isn’t it… but who said life was easy?

Other ways to ensure participation would be to encourage top management to actively use social media and be ‘visible’ in their efforts. Develop internal ‘evangelists’ to demonstrate the benefits and spread the good word on your behalf.

Make sure any successes achieved from the use of social media are celebrated. Incentivise the use of social media internally. For e.g. reward and recognise top bloggers in the organisation. It won’t take long for others to follow and see the benefits. Promote interesting themes and spark of interesting discussions that pique the curiosity of reluctant employees.

  • ‘We don’t know if it makes business sense for us’

Defining a quantifiable value using social media is the toughest part of being a pro-social media internal communicator. The management is not interested in ‘increased dialogue’ and ‘community building’ unless there is a tangible attached. Sometimes you really need to show them the money.

To help deal with sceptical bosses you can pitch it as an inexpensive way for teams to collaborate and for cross-learning to take place. Draw attention to the fact that social media project can help achieve specific business and communication objectives.

Start with a pilot and get internal champions to participate and share their positive experiences, so you have something tangible to report back to management.

  • ‘But will we be able to measure success?’

Yes you will, provided you give it even time and effort. Help yourself by quantifying the value of social media tools that you put into use. Decide what you want to achieve and how social media is going to help the organisation.

Include well-thought out goals, build in guidelines and rules and you should be able to measure success. Gather quantitative and qualitative data to support your claims. Some things you can use to measure success are – has employee satisfaction gone up, have innovative business ideas and solutions come out of the use of social media, has employee productivity gone up, have more issues been identified and resolved due to use of social media.

Hope this will help you start on the path of using social media in your internal communication plans. Keep in mind the golden rule of communication – ‘Communicate, communicate, communicate’

Start the dialogue and keep listening to and analysing the comments. Spot opportunities within the organisation where social media could provide a good fit. Start small and learn from your mistakes. Understand management concerns and address them. And get some internal influencers on your side before you start. After all, everybody needs a little help!

Here’s wishing you a very Happy New Year!

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Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 2

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

In the second part of the series on – ‘Who is afraid of social media?’ – we continue to focus on the concerns that stop social media from playing a key role in internal communication.

  • ‘Our culture is very different’

Yes it’s true that social media works better if the organisation has a young, tech-savvy workforce with a flat structure and a democratic and open culture. But there are enough examples across the world where conservative companies with an older workforce have met with social media success. All it needs is time, patience and consistent efforts.

It is important to recognise the company culture and customise your social media plans accordingly. You might have to tweak your plans and phase out in a manner that makes it more acceptable and easier to adopt. One needs to pay heed to the fact that even if the organisation has been traditionally conservative about communication, in the future the Digitally Advanced will form the ranks and their communication needs will be better met using social media.

  • ‘What if the employees misbehave or worse leak information’

Read behind the words. Is it just another way of saying, ‘we are not ready to lose control’? The idea that employees can say what they want is often scary to most organisations. This is the biggest obstacle in the way of social media entering an organisation. Management is often scared that employees will not have the maturity to handle social media. It is often feared that employees will say the ‘wrong’ things, use bad language, insult top bosses, complain… the list is endless. There is a bigger, and maybe real, fear of information leaks taking place.

Wake up Mr Boss! Grapevine, gossip, rumour mills… call it what you like… have been around much before Web 2.0 came on the scene. Social media, at least, allows for the so called ‘unpleasant’ things to come to management’s notice than remain something that is discussed and allowed to fester around water coolers.

You have a chance to identify issues and soothe disgruntled employees, which is better than living in a Fool’s Paradise. Just because you don’t hear negative feedback from the employees, does not mean it does not exist. If not given a platform to be aired, in the long run it will be detrimental for the company.

Instead define communication guidelines that will help employees use social media better and offset the worries regarding information leaks. IBM came up with an innovative solution in this regard and created a wiki to get its employees to create social media policies themselves.

Organisations also need to keep in mind that they have employed professionals and just because communication has moved online, professionalism and basic respect will be forgotten. Most of us are already aware that inappropriate use of email in the workplace is not acceptable and the same behavioural standards will transfer to use of other Web 2.0 tools.

  • ‘Will the organisation’s productivity come down’

Another common concern is that social media will eat into the employees’ productive time. Time needs to be invested by an employee in participating in blogs, discussion forums and wikis. Is it going to keep him away from his regular job?

No it is not. Social media tools allow information and knowledge to be shared more freely in the organisation, allows for virtual meetings to take place and saves time and costs, boosts overall productivity and is a useful way to cut down on time consuming internal mail traffic. Employees are only going to read or take part in what is their area of interest.

Click here to read about the rest of the concerns that plague internal communicators.

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Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 1

Monday, December 29th, 2008

I find most corporate communicators are wary of social media when it comes to Internal Communications. While they are more than happy to embrace social media otherwise; when it comes to marketing to the internal consumer, a very important constituency in any good communicator’s plan, they will not touch social media with a ten-foot barge pole.

Today, I will try to help you understand what stops most internal communicators from using social media to increase and strengthen relationships with their consumers – the employees.

In the old way of doing things, companies make use of intranets or websites as static tools. Employees can search and find, but have limited ability to participate and contribute. In the new way of doing things, things are interactive and collaborative and use social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs, collaborative research, discussion forums and wikis.

It is a pity that companies have failed to realise the potential of social media in internal communications given that it can significantly increase employee engagement, help start a dialogue with employees and build relations, increase collaboration and democratise the organisation in the true sense of the word.

It also helps to collect qualitative feedback and let you know what exactly is on the employee’s mind.

What are some of the common concerns existing in the mind of internal communicators regarding social media? How can they be addressed? You must wonder, what makes me an expert to answer these questions. Well not too long ago I used to have similar concerns. By virtue of having been there and done that, I think I might be able to provide some solutions.

So here goes…

To begin with one needs to understand that in any organisation two sets of people co-exist and I like to call them the Digitally Challenged (who think the scope of the Web is limited to emails and the occasional search) and the Digitally Advanced (who have grown up with the Internet and understand and harness the power of Web 2.0 tools in their daily lives).

The Digitally Challenged don’t perceive social media tools the way the Digitally Advanced do – as extensions of themselves. The latter understand well and harness fully the power of Web 2.0 in their daily lives. They like to be engaged and like to be involved, a fact that was strategically deduced and used to his advantage by Barack Obama. Most people joining the workforce today are Digitally Advanced and one needs to make an organisation ‘social media ready’ for them.

Is the reason behind the unpopularity of Social Media when it comes to Internal Communications, the fact that most decision makers are Digitally Challenged? Is it because they have got so used to a hierarchical and controlled form of communication that they are simply afraid of losing control?

Most decision makers fail to understand that today people prefer a environment where they can be heard, where they can participate, where they can act. Today’s workforce are great communicators and networkers themselves and want internal communications to mirror the same.

There are multiple concerns behind internal communicator’s apprehension towards social media, but a few common ones are:

  • ‘We simply don’t have the resources’

Most companies have concerns about overloading overworked communicators and also about the cost of implementing and running a full-fledged social media programme for their employees.

The only way to lay rest to this concern would be show management how social media tools are not only inexpensive but take very little time to set up. For an organisation, rather than worrying on the ROI in monetary terms, the focus should be on how much it can gain by harnessing the power of social media.

  • ‘We have other communication tools to focus and don’t have the time for social media’

An excuse if I have ever heard on. How can we ignore social media when we can see that Web 2.0 tools are already an integral part of the lives of the employees? Will it not make more sense to communicate to them in a manner that they understand and enjoy rather than a seldom-used-and-often-ignored Intranet?

There are many smart companies who have seen the sense, economic and otherwise, of incorporating social media tools in their communication plans. Your chances of convincing your management will significantly go up if you can show them how social media will support the business goals. Arm yourself with case studies of companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems and other Fortune 500 companies that are using social media successfully.

Look out for more such concerns and their solutions in the second part of Who is afraid of social media?.

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