Hi all,
While preparing for our debate “Social Networks will become the most important drivers for organizational success” I came along an interesting article posted by the New York Times in June 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/technology/27social.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
To summarize, the article deals with the trend of implementing technical based social networks in companies while illustrating some up and down sides of it. Generally speaking, it started with the usage of social networks in “private life” (facebook, twitter and others) and became more and more important for businesses itself. Over the last years firms who provide social networks for other companies have experienced an enormous growth and follow the trend of implementing social networks. Although someone may think people are already familiar with using social networks it can still be tricky to adapt it to the corporate level because of several reasons:
1. Mis-usage of the network (private versus work related topics
2. People interact in different ways, some may be active and post information regularly whereas others are not interested in exchanging information (complication of overall information flow)
3. Corporate secretà how to store valuable company information
Although there are clearly negative aspects of using social networks within a company, it can help to make operations more efficient.
1. Easy to exchange information with people from offices in other countries
2. Be able to make information visible to everyone which would be very difficult via e-mail
3. Less meetings necessary
Personally, I really like the article as it presents a clear overview of pros and cons of social networks in a company. Reading through the article it becomes clear how important and efficient social networks can be for a company while at the same time pointing out what aspects have to be taken into consideration when doing so. Everything always has a downside somewhere but understanding these aspects in the first place helps to find ways for improvement. Doing so, it is possible that social networks in a company can become even more successful in the future.
Hello,
I have come across an interesting article on a recent evolution in corporate strategy, the so-called social business strategy. The article presents the strategic approach of Dell on how to employ social media to a) communicate with customers, b) promote the flow of information in internal networks, and c) foster social innovation in the organization.
The index ranks companies according to their social media activity.
I strongly believe in order to be successful, organizations must define a strategy on how to leverage internal and external networks and how to effectively use social media technology. To achieve the required coverage in the organization, a social business strategy should be part of the corporate strategy definition.
Note: The article also talks about Dell’s efforts towards social responsibility (i.e. doing something for the greater good), which displays the problems in defining the magnitude of a social business strategy. Where does a company set the boundaries of its social business strategy? Is it limited to the use of social media to foster internal and external social networks? Or should it also include the corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches of a company?
You may think that Facebook profiles and sometimes MySpace pages, if they’re set as private, are available only to friends or specific groups. However, that’s not true if you use applications. On Facebook, applications can only be downloaded if a user checks a box allowing its developers to “know who I am and access my information,” which means everything on a profile, except contact info. Given little thought, agreeing to the terms has become a matter of routine for the nearly 70 million Facebook users worldwide. Now, remember when you used the social graph application, how many of you have clicked yes without really thinking about it ?
So what do these third-parties do with the information? Sometimes, they use it to connect users with similar interests. Sometimes, they use it to target ads, based on demographics such as gender and age (something Facebook and MySpace also do).
But, in the end, a researcher says there’s really nothing stopping them from matching profile information with public records. It also could be sold or stolen. And all of that could lead to serious matters such as identity theft.
Peter, M12
Hi, I just found a very interesting study from MIT and IBM reserach about the financial impact of network structures in technology consulting firms.
The study analyzes the relationship between productivity of consultants and their use of social networks. The communication patterns of over 1000 consultants were measured and analyzed over a period of three years. The research team looked at the networks of individual workers as well as project level networks.
The results for individual workers show that betweeness centrality and strong connection to managers positively impact productivity (measured by billable hours). Network size, as measured by in-degrees and out-degrees, does not have an association with performance.
Project network characteristics are overall more dominant in predicting revenue than individual network characteristics. In project teams, betweeness centrality and overall team composition can be associated with project performance. Another interesing finding is that there are inverted U-shaped relationships between gender distribution and project revenue as well as between the number of managers and project revenue.
Have a good weekend!
Nikolas
Crisis management requires timely compilation and analysis of a large number of spatial data sources for situation assessment and decision-making. Businesses and public relations practitioners must now be prepared to act at a moment’s notice, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If a business isn’t prepared to act immediately, the issue can manifest itself online, going from perhaps a minor issue to a major crisis in a matter of minutes.
Two key components of any successful crisis management are
Once a crisis is upon the company , there is little time to think, much less to plan. Crisis plan needs to reflect on how the company will communicate about the crisis and deal with it.The good news is, it’s not that hard to create a plan. In fact, the most important things you need to know were modeled for you in kindergarten. Remember those fire drills? The simple but critical idea was that everyone should know exactly what to do and where to go when a crisis happens, and to practice it even when the possibility of an actual crisis seems remote. Same idea applies to social media. While standard crisis communication tools like press releases, press conferences, and video press releases are still important, social media has its own resources that can help you get the word out in a crisis.
Example: Two Domino’s employees engaged in several health department violations, recorded their activities and posted them to YouTube. The videos quickly “went viral” and consumers all over the web were exposed to Domino’s employees doing a variety of unseemly things to their pizza.
Domino’s Response: Domino’s, in an effort to not draw attention to the video, waited days to respond, and did not bring on additional resources to help. Eventually they started a Twitter account and published an apology video on YouTube, but the damage was already done. Domino’s eventually was able to get the videos removed from YouTube, but did not realize that a majority of the dialogue related to the story was actually happening on Twitter.
Damage: Domino’s stock price dropped 10% over the week costing shareholders millions.
Key Takeaways
1. Quick Response is crucial
2. Address all available channels
3. Have an employee policy on Social Media
Preliminary Assessment of the Crisis
1. If you’re monitoring social media, and you suspect a crisis is emerging that you don’t already know about; start by gathering information about the source and content of the crisis.
2. Is it a customer complaint on a blog?
3. Is it a post by an influential analyst getting picked up on Twitter?
4. Is it one person shouting out to the universe, a percolating dialog, or a raging fire?
5. Is it an opinion: someone hates your company, or a fact: your product blew up and hurt someone? You don’t want to go into crisis mode on every customer complaint that can be managed by engagement.
6. If the emerging story is unclear, and you have the authority and opportunity to engage, take an approach of discovery.
7. Diffuse Customer complaints on blogs by early engagement.
8. If you have an internal crisis that has not yet become public, work with your PR team to craft a traditional pre-emptive disclosure. Then consider how social media can best be integrated into the approach.
After the Crisis Hits
1. Deploy / buy a keyword across major search engines
2. Create and optimize a variety of multimedia content to help tell your story in multiple ways
3. Advertise online with crisis messaging (as appropriate)
The Proactive Approach:
1. Start getting engaged now: Build social relationships with business communities.
2. Build agility among the key departments in company to react.
3. Real time Intelligence: The more sophisticated your tracking experience, the more you’ll be able to discern real threats from fire drills.
4. Create landing pages with neutral and generic language to optimize search traffic. When a crisis hits and someone Googles it, you’ll already be ready with a page in the top results.
5. If you have a blog, write posts that point to your news item and your dedicated page. If you have a Facebook group, and Twitter handles, do the same.
6. Some SEO experts recommend buying search terms, and even domains, with generic crisis terms to ensure search engine positioning when something goes down.
7. Maintain a Facebook, Twitter Crisis group id which is different from the Corporate id. This would ensure that focussed attention from the Company during crisis.
Conclusion: A simple way to approach a crisis situation is to be forthcoming and honest. Communicating to your internal audiences in a timely matter is equally important as employees, board members and shareholders are frontline communicators and need to be reassured that the crisis will be overcome.
References
http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/staff/hart/pubs/40%20Rosenthal,%20t%20Hart%20&%20Kouzmin.pdf#page=7
http://www.igi-global.com/article/factors-influence-crisis-managers-their/47325
http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2009/04/20/dominos-response-offers-lessons-in-crisis-management/
This article “Working in the Connected World” by Valdis Krebs states that not the sum of individual employees that provides an organizations competitive advantage. According to Krebs, the unique interconnectivity of the individuals will provide some economic players with an advantage over those who are not so well connected.
Krebs assigns the role of managing these networks to the HR department of the organizations. In order to do this, HR must not only consider the vertical, but also horizontal and diagonal relationships within the organization. The focus is shifting from strictly internal connections to internal and external connections to all stakeholders. The article states four key areas where HR will need to map, monitor and mold social capital: Identification, Development, Retention and Enhancement.
Even though this article was published in 2000, I believe it still holds true today. I just wonder how many HR department have seen this chance to significantly contribute to the competitiveness of the organization and have reacted accordingly. What have HR departments done to adapt?
Holger
http://orgnet.com/HumanCapitalSocialCapital.pdf
