Posts Tagged ‘Collaboration’

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.

Deconstructing the New Facebook Page

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Facebook has changed (upgraded, as they call it) the layout of its Pages  once again and these changes will be rolled out all across Facebook by March end. With current set of changes, page owners now have more reach and better utility across the platform.

The Looks

The new Facebook page layout has changed to how the individual profile looks. This gives the page a sense of familiarity and helps in easier navigation.

Tabs

The tabs seem to have got lost in the new design evolution process, moved to the sidebar with smaller fonts from their earlier top of the page location. This might cause a significant drop in their visibility.

Benefits

Although the Tabs have been moved to the sidebar, the increased number of visible tabs along with longer tab names will help in communicating the exact nature and content of the same. This means that

  1. In the previous version, only four tabs could be visible, while the others feel in a drop down box. But with the new setup, all the tabs can now be seen one below the other, therefore no tab gets lost.
  2. Also, with name restriction of 15 characters no longer applied, tabs can now communicate exact message to the page viewer. Earlier, with this restrictions, a campaign tab had to have altered name to fit into the tab size and also to follow the guideline. But with no restriction on character limit, the tab name can now be as per the requirement.

        New Page Profile 1

The New Page layout

 

Photos and Post & Information Visibility

The recent photos get featured on the top of the page and the order of the visible photos can be edited. The most recent wall photos or photos that have the page tagged in them will appear here. This area will not include any photos posted by fans.

The other cosmetic changes that the page has been incorporated with are the ability to have the info section right on the top of the page, post selection criteria made to “Page” and “everyone” and a right hand sidebar that shows administrators and fans.

Benefits

Like all Facebook platforms, photos will become more vital and important in brand communication. Already, creative usage of this tool is being talked about. Also with the default setting of the posts being set as “everyone”, a lot more exposure to their posts.

The Works

More than anything else, the functionality changes that has happened with the new format has some real business implication. Brands are now in a position exploit their presence on the platform and reach out to as many of its 600 million users. Also, collaborating becomes easier along with the much touted “giving face to the brand” promise.

Exposure

One of the key features with the new Facebook Pages is that administrators of a page can switch back and forth between their personal profiles and essentially the profile of the Page. They can also leave comments on various Facebook platforms as the brand itself.

Benefits

This gives the page that much more opportunity to engage with audience, not just on their page, but also anywhere on Facebook, thereby increasing the exposure the page, and hence the brand, gets drastically. It can also mean, that the brand can engage in meaningful discussion on other pages, and direct the traffic from that page to their own, there by leading to in-organic growth.

                   Page Commenting Feature

Page Commenting Feature

 

Page Collaboration

With page commenting feature, opportunity for the pages to interact amongst each other come calling. Since the page can now like another page as it is, there is more possibility for mutual page promotion. Instead of “featured pages” these now comes us “likes.” Also, since a page has liked the other page, the news feed will be populated with the updates of the liked page when logged in as page on Facebook.

Benefits

This will help in crowd sourcing for relevant information. Page collaboration can help in establishing brand reputation by association. Also cross platform exposure for multi brand umbrella can also be contrived through page collaboration.

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Page Collaboration

Notification

Being logged in as a page will help people to receive instant notification when people leave a comment on the page. With the new notification system in place, the page administrators will be alerted the second someone comments.

Benefits

This will eliminate the need to regularly check the page for updates and help in giving a quick response, making Customer Relation Management process much more efficient.

clip_image002

Instant Notification

Face behind the Page

The promise to make the brand more human is finally seeing the light of day with the changes that have been incorporated. With the feature to show who the administrators for the page are, the faceless page has now transformed to a more human personality. Finally the friend next door promise will become a real deal.

Benefits

The advantage of such a move will have to be weighed out over a period of time with a lot of brands treading a careful path since the administrators would want to safe guard their privacy, but as of now, the idea seems quite an inviting one, since a human personality associated with the page can make it appear much more approachable and also give the administrators the sense of recognition, there by promoting higher commitment towards the page.

clip_image003

Displaying the Page Administrator

The Overall Impact

The new Facebook changes have almost completely made every area of Facebook uniform. Also it has given the businesses a chance to be more vocal across the platform and hence in better control of the brand communication on Facebook.