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« LinkedIn? Twitter? Oh, no worries, we have a kid on our team who’s a real social media  pro! He’ll teach us his secrets! We don’t need a real trainer! »

As an estimated three-quarters of consumers say that social media influences their buying decisions*, companies are realizing that they simply don’t have the in-house social media skills needed to get the full benefit from their social media presence.

In order to bridge this skill gap, many companies are opting for “Do it yourself” internal training. As they often try to cut costs, they’re asking employees who they consider to be “social media savvy” to help get the others on board during internal company events such as morning meetings, annual conventions, and learning lunches. However, they soon realize that these one shot events don’t produce results and don’t always help to unlock missed business opportunities and lost revenue on social media.

So you’re probably wondering what is behind this?

Well, with 15,098 LinkedIn members claiming to have “corporate social media skills,” * amongst other factors, it’s easy to understand how business leaders are often misled.

So what does it take to organize a results driven social media education program and what are the pitfalls to avoid ??

Pitfall # 1: Asking employees who are « really good » at using social media…

We hear this in companies everyday: when we ask them to define « really good »,  they’re not able to give a clear answer. Our experience has showed us that many companies define “really good” as “already using social media and being comfortable with the technical aspects.”

→ Just because someone is already using social media, it doesn’t mean that they will be able to transfer their practices to their colleagues.

Pitfall # 2: Asking employees who have had no formal training background…

→ Understanding and using social media doesn’t necessarily make someone an experienced trainer who can handle different skill levels, generational issues, social media pushback and doubts, questions, etc..

Pitfall # 3: Asking millennials who don’t necessarily have the required business, market, or sector maturity…

→ Corporate social media education is strongly based on corporate social media strategy, which is linked to pure business strategy.

While millennials are obviously digital natives, not all of them possess the business knowledge and on the ground experience required help their older colleagues understand the business benefits of social media. Plus, seasoned business professionals might not take them seriously, thus possibly derailing your social media education program !

An example of this is a software multinational putting a twenty-something in charge of evangelizing Social Selling internally. While this person might be very digitally savvy, they have no sales experience and have been poorly received by internal sales teams. 

Pitfall # 4: Not getting their social media activities and skills validated by a social media training professional…

→ These « social media champions », what do their social media activities actually consist of? And how are they conducting themselves on social media? Before assigning this task to them, it might be a good idea to have them checked out by a social media training professional in order to make sure that your colleagues will be in good hands and avoid any future social media blunders!

Pitfall # 5: Not sharing the corporate social media strategy and vision with them…

→ If these corporate “social media gurus” don’t have any knowledge of the company social vision, this is dangerous as they’ll be passing on incorrect social media strategy to the others!  :-0

Pitfall # 6: Not having an accurate « job description » for the internal social media « trainer » role..

→ If you don’t have a reliable system of measuring social media skill expertise, how will you know if you’re asking the right people to « train » the others? Do these so-called social media gurus have objectives and are they getting results?  If they have no strategy and structure, they’re probably not getting results!

Pitfall # 7: Not having clear goals and social media skill integration KPI’s

→ Once again, just because employees know how to use social media, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have methods to measure social media ROI or even social media skill integration!

So, in short, this DIY method for building a corporate social media education program might seem like a good idea at first, but it might be better to take a more serious look at this. If you’re expecting results and change, you might want to consider training your internal social media champions…

Need some help setting up your corporate social media education program and training your internal champions/ambassadors ?  The Smartworking team can help you!  

*Source: Hootsuite
**Source: LinkedIn

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While many of your colleagues and clients are off on vacation or on ‘’summer mode », those in the office are thinking about using this calmer time productively in order to prepare for the rest of the year, complete unfinished projects, and get ahead on others.
Amongst the items on your unfinished and/or get ahead list, you might find social media.

Summer is the perfect time to work on your social media projects. As many people are off enjoying  digital detox, they’ll be checking in much less or even not at all. So why not take advantage of this slow down and buff up your social media profiles and strategy.
You’re probably thinking, « ok, good idea, but where do I start? »

Here are 3 major areas that you can start working on!

1/ Clean up !
When was the last time you had a look at your :

– invitations list : just take a quick look at each person’s profile- are they of interest to you? Have you understood the synergy you might have with them? Have you worked with them? If you decide not to accept, then don’t worry, they won’t receive an alert about this!

Remember, now is a great time to clean up your invitations list. Once the fall comes, it will quickly fill up again and you might risk losing that all important invitation because it will be swamped by the ones you should have cleaned out!

– connections list on LinkedIn and/or your following list on Twitter? Your company strategy might have changed or been slightly refreshed since the last time you worked on these things. So why not think about your strategy, objectives, partners, clients, etc for the upcoming months and :

• adjust accordingly (no, people on LinkedIn and Twitter will not receive a notification that you have removed them !)

• reach out to those you haven’t been in touch with for a long time (while you may not get an answer right away, some people do stay in touch over the summer months, so you might just be surprised !)

2/ Plan ahead!

When was the last time you had a look at your summary on LinkedIn and/or your bio on Twitter? And what about your editorial strategy? Have you thought about the upcoming events and messages you’d like to communicate?

• if your company doesn’t have a social media strategy and specific guidelines to follow, then have a look at your company website, LinkedIn corporate page or Twitter account. These pages are great  places to check for content and message inspiration for your  own profile.

• coming back to your strategy, clients, prospects, market, sector, etc.  Do your social media profiles reflect your upcoming strategy for the fall? Think about how you can tweak them in order to send out the right messages! Or, even better, have a chat with your sales, marketing, digital, and/or communications teams (see below).

3/ Team up!
Social media success is attained through collaboration. You can increase the linkage from your profile to company presence via content, strategy, links, contacts, etc. By doing this, you’ll not only get a digital boost from your colleagues, which will bring you more visibility, but it will also help you to achieve your performance goals…. So how can you infuse more collaboration into your social media profiles?

• check in with your marketing, communication, and sales teams. What is the social media strategy for the fall? Have they shared it with other departments? Summer is a great time to plan informal coffee meetings with them. People tend to be more relaxed and will be happy to share with you what they’re working on!
• and what about your own team? When was the last time you had a look at their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles? You might just be surprised to find some early adopters working right alongside you! Have a look at your team’s profiles and activities. They could be a great quick-win business case to show to your management if you’re trying to get ahead in the fall on your social media strategy, digital budget, etc.
• and, finally, don’t forget to pop in and say hello to the boss ! And why not schedule a time to talk about social media with them.

Summer time is social time 

Need some social media help this summer? Plan ahead and team up with Smartworking!

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L’article Business leaders: 3 steps to successful summer social media projects est apparu en premier sur Smartworking.

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Directors and business leaders: You’ve finally convinced management to provide digital training for your teams and, as in usual management style, they’ve set the bar high… So now you’re probably wondering what can you concretely expect when providing your managers with digital training?

First of all, it’s important to remember to have realistic objectives! Yes, digital transformation is strategic for all companies and businesses, but it doesn’t come without a few bumps in the road and certainly doesn’t happen as quickly as management would like it to happen!

We can safely say that digital training KPI’s will definitely depend on which managers are getting trained, their role, their digital needs, company digital strategy, your clients and their needs…

So, will digital training magically transform the company? No, probably not. Will digital training push revenues through the roof? No, probably not. Here is what you can realistically expect from digital training!

KPI 1: At least 50% onboarding of your staff

By training your employees on digital, you’re fulfilling your employer duties of providing them with knowledge that they need to keep their skills updated.

Checkpoint 1: Yes, you’re providing them with important skills they need for their career, and they should definitely be thanking you for it. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they will see things the same way you do! Some of your employees will go along with it and agree to use social media on a daily basis in their jobs, be brand ambassadors. This will depend on how its presented to them, the company strategy and objectives, their incentives, plus a myriad of other things such as age gap, company seniority, etc.

KPI 2: 30%-100% increase in brand visibility

By asking employees to be brand advocates, or brand ambassadors, they will most likely “dress up” their social media profiles with your company branding. This means they’ll be driving traffic from their profiles to your corporate Web sites, social media company pages… which will automatically result in an increase of visibility! Plus, every view of your employees’ profiles will mean an infinite amount of brand visibility!

Get on board the digital train!

Checkpoint 2: Getting your staff to agree to wearing your brand involves strategy, on boarding, clear guidelines, and just plain common sense! Not all of them will agree to this! But those who do and do it right, will not only be on boarded, but they’ll be massively contributing to a positive online brand image. They will also be helping other employees to board the digital train!

KPI 3: 5%-100% increase in savings

So by now you’re probably saying, “Ok, onboarding and visibility are great, but management is putting pressure on me to convert these digital results into revenue! So how do I do this?”

You’ll definitely reduce budgets that were previously allocated to marketing, headhunters, customer retention programs, after sales service, new business development…. So you should first start calculating these savings to keep your management happy!

Checkpoint 3: Finally, measuring revenue brought in by social media is indeed possible and highly recommended if you want to measure the ROI. So, yes, there is a method to this madness! But, again, knowing what you want to measure and how to measure monetary ROI depends on your business, corporate strategy, sales objectives, client base, etc.

*Key Performance Indicators: We measured these KPI statistics through the Smartworking® Digital Maturity Evaluation, which has already been taken by approximately 1000 managers working at 40 multi-sector multinationals in 5 countries.

For more information on evaluating employee digital maturity, digital KPI’s, and KPI and ROI based digital training

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L’article Social media training: 3 realistic KPI’s* est apparu en premier sur Smartworking.

While Social Selling is the new hot buzz word, most people tend to associate Social Selling with LinkedIn. So what about Twitter? Can you turn communicating with prospects and clients on Twitter into sales?

With 320 million users on Twitter, you definitely don’t want to be missing out on the Social Selling possibilities that Twitter offers. So the answer is obviously YES.

Here are 3 ways to use Twitter to up your Social Selling game!

1/ Follow. If your clients and prospects are using Twitter for professional purposes (meaning they’re communicating on work related subjects during the business day), then there is no better way to learn about what is important to them than by following them on Twitter.

→ The Social Selling Plus:  Your clients and prospects will receive a notification that you’re now following them, so you will definitely get onto their radar screen!

2/ Inform. Twitter is the perfect place to show your business community what you’re about. Show that you’re an expert in your area by sharing relative information, tips, your opinion, etc. about subjects that matter for your clients and prospects.

→ The Social Selling Plus:  Social Selling is about being social.  By being active on Twitter,
you’ll contribute to a serious and value rich online presence that your clients and prospects will not be able to miss, plus you’ll be enhancing their customer journey… (well hello Google ).

3/ Reach out!  Mentioning your clients and/or prospects in a tweet that will interest them is another great way to get their attention. This type of reach out is more direct than mentioning them in a LinkedIn share (which is also less of a common business practice). This type of direct contact can also help you to be in touch with them and get them engaged in regards to a specific subject.

→ The Social Selling Plus: If your clients and prospects follow you back, you will have the possibility to be in direct contact with them via Direct Message. Now that could be even better than having their telephone number!

If you have any questions about social media, Social Selling, etc, please don’t hesitate to send them to us and we’ll be sure to provide you with some answers in this Smart Questions series.

Social Selling

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L’article Smart Question #3 : Can you use Twitter for Social Selling? est apparu en premier sur Smartworking.