MackCollier.com

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Social Media is Toxic, Broken, and it Needs to Go Away

Adversity doesn’t create character, it reveals it.

I had my first exposure to what could be called a ‘social network’ when I joined Prodigy.net in 1991  I have two main memories of being a Prodigy member:

  • The users were insanely nice and courteous
  • There were very few users

I remember there being many message boards and forums, organized by interests. Some of these had decent activity, others had little to none. But if a forum had posts, there were friendly and civil discussions to read and join. As I said, it was a wonderful environment, and I had no qualms about reaching out directly to users and it was quite common to share a physical address with members and continue conversations via mail.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about those online conversations some 30 years ago, the civil tone as a stark contrast to the toxicity that many social media sites swim in these days.

The Rise of the Shame Culture

In theory, 2020 should have been social media’s finest hour. Never before have we needed to have conversation, communication. Never before have we needed to listen to each other, to understand each other, to learn from each other. So at a time when we all needed to listen to each other and understand each other, instead these social media tools are being used by many to shame others. If you don’t hold a certain opinion, you are being shamed for it. If you don’t hold a certain opinion on a certain issue, you are told to unfollow that person.

I’ve disconnected from probably 25% of my online network simply because these people were being judgmental assholes. And we are talking people I have been connected to for years, some over a decade. But all it took were a few hot-button issues, and suddenly these people turned into tyrants. And they used social media to do it. Many of these same people have advised clients to NOT do the very things they were doing every day on Twitter and Facebook.

Why is This Social Media’s Fault?

It’s easy to look at what’s happening on social media sites right now and say that you can’t blame the tools, you have to blame the people using the tools. I can’t completely agree with that. The reality is that social media sites aren’t built to facilitate conversations, they are built to facilitate engagement.

Let’s look at Twitter. I’m a bit of an outlier, in that I started using Twitter back in the social media stone ages of 2007. If you talk to any long-time Twitter user that joined prior to 2010, they will tell you that Twitter was a completely different environment ‘back then’. Organic conversations that were CIVIL sprung up like kudzu in the South in the Summer. If a day went by where you didn’t get sucked into at least one engrossing 30-minute conversation on Twitter, then you probably didn’t get on Twitter that day.

So what changed?  The celebs discovered Twitter:

And those of us that had been using Twitter before they arrived began to notice something: Literally every silly thing these celebs tweeted got hundreds, even thousands of Likes and Retweets! And they gained thousands of followers every day! If you’re using Twitter every day and you only have 237 followers and nothing you tweet seems to get a Like or Retweet, well it’s natural to envy the huge engagement numbers the celebs were getting!

Which often led to a change in behavior. Many Twitter users stopped focusing on engrossing conversations, and started trying to drive higher levels of engagement.

The Birth of the ‘Twitterbyte’

I was speaking at a conference in 2008, and at one point found myself chatting with my fellow presenters. One of the speakers had come up with what they felt was a brilliant idea that they had to share. The speaker remarked how as the audience was tweeting out our talks, they would condense our ideas into 140 characters or ‘Twitterbytes’, So on the fly, this speaker had bought that domain name. But this story is a great example of how we, as content creators, were working within the parameters of the Twitter platform. We were trying to distill complex ideas down into 140 chars so they would be easily memorable and…drive engagement.

As Twitter’s growth exploded, the sheer volume of tweets went through the roof as well. It made it increasingly hard for each individual tweet to stand out.  So again, content creators adapted. They started working on how to make their tweets stand out in a stream where dozens of new tweets are coming in every second. So of the changes were innocent enough, like simply adding a picture or a link.

But somewhere along the way, we all figured out a basic truth of social media: If you say something inflammatory, it’s more likely to have higher engagement. Everyone stops to watch the trainwreck. If you are yelling, people will pay attention. So again, user behavior adjusted. Yelling and being outrageous resulted in higher engagement levels.

Notice that we continue to get further and further away from the one thing that made social media so appealing from the start: The power of organic, civil conversations.

Think about this for a minute: How would the way you use Facebook and Twitter change if you had no idea how many Likes a Facebook update received, or how many RTs a tweet on Twitter had received?  I suspect you would spend more time actually reading the content and paying closer attention to what was said in order to decide if it was worth your time. I saw this coming years ago and began arguing that social media sites should remove all public engagement metrics.  Don’t tell me how many friends or followers someone has, don’t tell me how many Likes or RTs their content gets, don’t tell me how many comments it has.  FORCE me to judge the content’s value on the content itself, not on engagement metrics, which can easily be inflated.

Are Blogs Also Social Media? Should They Go Away As Well?

I’ve always had a problem with classifying blogs as being social media. Yes, I get that in simple terms, it probably makes sense to call blogs social media. But I’ve never really felt comfortable with the description. I think the reason why, is that blogs are a space that YOU control. And they are a place where you have the ability to clearly and completely explain your opinions. Whereas social media sites are geared toward engagement, blogs are geared toward conversations. Think of the mess it would be if I tried to take this same post, and put it on Twitter. I’d have to create a thread of probably 50+ tweets that would end up being a jumbled mess that most people would never read all of. A few tweets would get some engagement and shares, the majority would be ignored.

We need less engagement-driven content, and more conversations. I’ve reached a point where I would be fine if Facebook and Twitter went away today. But don’t take my blogs, don’t take my conversations. That’s what we need. We need more opinions, we need less shame, we need more humility, we need fewer closed minds.

At one point, social media was offered as the solution to our problems. Now it IS the problem. And we need to solve it.

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Twitter Begins ‘Fact-Checking’ President Trump’s Tweets

I try to avoid discussing politics in any shape, form or fashion here, but this story is too interesting to pass up,

For well over a year now, Twitter has been tip-toeing toward adding functionality that allows the platform to censor the content of tweets. Much of their ‘managing the conversation’ initiative was building toward this, and the suspicion was that one of the end goals was to limit President Trump’s ability to tweet. Love him or hate him, President Trump’s ability to use Twitter to get his message out is masterful, and it’s really interesting that most of the sites and blogs that cover case studies for great social media usage have completely ignored it. The President is able, via his tweets, to all but manipulate mainstream media into (accidentally) covering stories and issues that it would otherwise ignore.

And to be fair, a lot of what President Trump claims on Twitter is an exaggeration at best, and falsehoods at worst.

So yesterday, Twitter began ‘fact-checking’ President Trump’s tweets:

 

Note the ‘Get the Facts About Mail-In Ballots’ that Twitter has added to the bottom of the tweet. This is a very interesting development for three reasons:

1 – If Twitter is going to ‘fact-check’ President Trump, it will have to fact-check all politicians. Otherwise, it will lead to charges (rightly or wrongly) of election interference. And let’s be honest, an even application of its rules to all users has never been Twitter’s strong suit. This will simply lead to more yelling and screaming every time ANY major politician has a tweet ‘fact-checked’, but Twitter has backed itself into a corner where it almost has to start ‘fact-checking’ all politicians, in order to not give the impression that it is only targeting the President.

And already, there are questions about the objectivity of the person who is ‘fact-checking’ the President’s tweets:

2 – This opens the free-speech debate, as well as the discussion about if Twitter is a platform, or a publisher:

3 – President Trump is arguably the most influential Twitter user. The reality is, a lot of people are on Twitter mainly to read and follow the President’s tweets. And believe it or not, many of these people are his detractors, not his supporters. If this reaches a point where the President is either banned from Twitter or decides to move to another platform, it’s going to be a massive hit for Twitter, and a boon for whatever platform the President moves to. Which honestly might not be a bad thing for those of us that hate the political sniping that constantly plagues Twitter.

 

And just this morning, the President said he is revisiting the idea of regulating social media platforms like Twitter:

As you can see, all of this has created a huge mess for Twitter. Unfortunately, social media and mainstream media have become completely interwoven over the last few years. I remember around 2010 or so thinking how cool it was to see a CNN anchor reference what was being said on Twitter during a segment. “Look, they are showing actual tweets! How cool!” But over the years, the mainstream media has started to use social media posts as a proxy for public opinion, and that’s an incredibly inaccurate and potentially dangerous leap to make. It’s led to people rushing to Twitter and other social media channels to try to make a name for themselves by basically screaming the loudest about politics. It’s greatly polluted the entire Twitter community and it has made everyday interactions far more toxic. In the last few weeks I’ve started unfollowing people on Twitter, some that I had followed for over a decade, based on their political rants. But media is rewarding the voices that scream the loudest with coverage, and then says those voices represent what you and I think as well.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from this episode is: Social media sites need to create simple, clear-cut rules for its users, and apply those rules evenly to all. As I said earlier, Twitter has been building up to this for well over a year. They began to talk about ‘managing the conversation’, or ‘taking into account the user’s intent’, or ‘how some people might be offended by certain topics’, and all of this sounds like code for ‘how can we make it so we can get rid of the people who say things we don’t like, but make it seem like we are still following our own rules?’

That’s not how you create trust among your users, that’s not how you build something that lasts. Twitter has had little to no direct competition for almost a decade. The days of also-rans like Identi.ca or Plurk are long gone. Perhaps it’s time for a new ‘micro-blogging’ site to enter the space.

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How Bear Bryant Cultivated Lifelong Alabama Football Fans in the 1960s

One of my hobbies is collecting autographed footballs from former Alabama teams. Often, former teams will have a 25th anniversary or even 50th anniversary reunion, and I like to attend these when I can and get members from that team to sign a football for me.

I attended one of these reunions for a team from the 1960s one time, and as the players were signing my football, I noticed how neat the signatures were, and how they stacked on top of each other as you see in this picture:

As one former player signed my football, I mentioned how neat and organized the signatures were. The player then told me why that was the case. He said that every summer, Coach Bryant would take the entire team to the cafeteria, and have everyone sit down, and they would spend all day signing footballs. So these players that signed my football so neatly, were simply going back to what they had done years ago when they were in college! Those footballs were then sent to fans who had written to the University requesting autographs!

If you think about it, this was exceptional marketing for the Alabama football program. The media landscape in 1960 was obviously far different than it is today. Many people in the Deep South at that time still didn’t have a television, radio and newspapers were how most people got their news.

Also, think about who would most likely write to the University of Alabama asking for autographs. It seems likely that most of the requests would come from children. The parents probably helped their son or daughter write the letter, and they probably expected a signed photo of Coach Bryant at best, as their reward. Then to receive a football signed by the entire team? It must have been a huge thrill for both the young fan and their parents!

This would have cultivated lifelong fans of the University of Alabama. These footballs and likely the letters accompanying would become display pieces that would spark admiration and the owners would recall how they acquired the football for years to come. Even today, brands do things like give children a small gift on their birthday. The idea is to create a devote to the brand early on, so that these people grow up to become adult customers.

Whenever I talk to companies about how they could better connect with their customers and grow advocacy efforts, I always stress that the WANT to connect with your customers has to be there. The tools and the tactics and programs are great, but you have to want to create and cultivate better relationships with your customers. It needs to be in your brand’s DNA to value your customers and to want to better understand and connect with them.

In the early 1960’s, Coach Bryant was still building the Alabama football program. He’d already had some success, but at the same time, in-state rival Auburn University was enjoying its own level of on-field success. So if we go back to the limited media landscape of the early 1960s, think about how important it was to create fans of your program at an early age. In the state of Alabama, most college football fans pick either Alabama or Auburn at a very early age, and rarely do they switch allegiance later in life. Most people are truly lifelong fans of one school or the other.

Coach Bryant was smart enough to know this, and that’s why he made sure that he surprised and delighted young fans with team-autographed footballs.

Knowing how to better connect with your customers is the easy part. But you have to WANT to do so, as well.

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The Difference Between a Brand Ambassador and a Brand ‘Spokesperson’

brand ambassador, brand spokesperson The terms ‘brand ambassador’, ‘brand spokesperson’ and ‘influencers’ are used almost interchangeably these days, so let’s talk about how each group is different. Once you understand the differences, you will have a much better idea of how to use each in your marketing strategies.

A brand ambassador is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand ambassadors are often current customers who were already advocating for brands before they started working with them. Brand ambassadors have a working relationship with the brands they represent, and are given instruction on how to interact with customers in the marketplace, based on the business goals for that brand. Typically, a brand will have multiple ambassadors, and their involvement with the brand is organized and executed via a formal brand ambassador program.

 

A brand spokesperson is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand spokespeople are typically chosen because they have a following either online or offline. Often, these people are viewed as ‘celebrities’ and are often known outside the industry where the brand exists. The term influencer is used almost interchangeably here with brand spokesperson. An influencer is more often someone who has built a following online, whereas a spokesperson is more often someone who has built a following offline. In either case, whether a brand is working with a spokesperson or influencer, there is typically a financial relationship in place. In short, the spokesperson or influencer will leverage their following to promote the brand and drive attention to the brand.

 

How to Select and Work With Brand Ambassadors

In my experience working with companies to help them create brand ambassador programs and in talking to companies that have launched their own efforts, the ultimate success of the brand ambassador program is typically impacted by the selection process for the ambassadors.  Your brand ambassador program will be more successful, all other things being equal, if the people you choose as ambassadors for your brand are currently fans of your brand.  Existing brand advocates make the best brand ambassadors.  Brand advocates have a higher level of understanding and passion for your brand.  They are already actively promoting your brand to other customers, you are simply going to better organize and empower their efforts by making them part of a formal brand ambassador program.

Another option is the so-called ‘open cattle call’ approach to finding brand ambassadors.  Typically, anyone is accepted (first come, first served), and the incentives offered are a chance to make money or get free products, etc.  Often, it can be positioned as a chance to get free products from major brands, and maybe even be paid for creating content that promotes the brand.

The problem with the ‘open cattle call’ approach is obvious.  That person’s prime motivation for wanting to become an ‘ambassador’ for a particular brand is to get free products and to be paid for creating content that promotes the brand.  Basically, they aren’t participating because they love the brand, they are participating because they love getting paid.

When money is the primary motivation for being involved in a brand ambassador program, it changes the behavior of that person.  The ‘ambassador’ will typically create content that isn’t authentic and based on actual opinions, but instead will focus on creating promotional content that the person feels the brand will pay them for.  And readers of the content can easily see the disconnect, it would be odd if I suddenly started blogging about how amazing Luv diapers are (as someone who has no kids), and noted at the end of my post that I was paid to write said post.

On the other hand, existing brand advocates want to become ambassadors for your brand because their motivation is based on seeing your brand succeed.  They literally LOVE your brand and will usually jump at the chance to work with it to better connect with customers and help move the brand forward.  Although compensation is involved with them as well, brand advocates usually prefer more direct access to the brand and maybe advance access to upcoming products versus simply getting paid.  Brand advocates prefer access over cash in most cases.

So if your company is thinking about creating a brand ambassador program, carefully consider who you want to be involved as ambassadors for your brand.  Do you want to bring in existing customers that love your brand, or ‘brand spokespeople’ that have little to no natural affinity for your brand?  The smart bet is on your existing customers that love your brand and want to see it succeed just as much as you do.

 

How to Select and Work With Brand Spokespeople and Influencers

Over the last 15 years, I’ve worked with many companies on their influencer and spokesperson campaigns. In fact, I’m in a bit of a unique position as I have ample experience working with brands to help them create and launch influencer programs, and I’ve also worked with brands AS an influencer in their influencer programs. So I can speak to this topic from both the brand and influencer perspective.

The biggest mistake I see brands make in choosing an influencer to work with, is the brand only looks at the size of the influencer’s following. The second biggest mistake I see brands make when choosing influencers is to ignore how much engagement the influencer can create around their content. These two areas work in tandem, because it is very difficult for an influencer to have personal interactions with their followers once the influencer’s following reaches a certain level. The influencers ability to connect individually does not scale very well. (Note: the one exception to this rule seems to be Twitch streamers. They have found a very unique way to reach a mass audience, at scale.)

When I work with companies to select and vet influencers to work with, I tell them to focus on the following:

  • Always select influencers who are actual customers of your brand. The importance of this cannot be overstated, as you want to work with influencers that already use and love your products if at all possilble.
  • The influencer’s ability to drive engagement is always more important than their following. What is influence? It’s a person’s ability to create a change of behavior in someone else. If an influencer can’t create engagement around their content, then they likely don’t have much influence over their network. In other words, their ability to create engagement is a great indicator of their ability to influence others.
  • When possible, select influencers who have a long history of working with brands. These influencers are more familiar with the process and more likely to understand what the brand wants from the arrangement.

 

The Key Differences Between Brand Ambassadors and Brand Spokespeople/Influencers

  • Compensation: An influencer will typically be compensated financially. An ambassador can be compensated financially, or with other perks such as products or early access to new products, access to key executives at the brand, etc.
  • A brand ambassador is typically a current customer of the brand, an influencer often is not.
  • Brand ambassadors often have a long-time working relationship with the brand that’s organized via a formal brand ambassador program. Most brands work with influencers on a more limited or specific amount of time.

 

Hopefully this helps you understand the differences from the brand’s perspective when it comes to working with ambassadors, spokespeople, and influencers. I’ve worked with brands since 2008 as both an influencer, and in helping brands craft amazing ambassador and influencer programs. If you have a question about how these processes work, feel free to contact me:

 

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Twitter is Not a Social Network

I was listening to a recent episode of eMarketer’s Behind the Numbers podcast when the host made a claim that I cannot source, but still believe. He claimed that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that he doesn’t think of Twitter as a social network, but rather as an ‘interests’ network. As a place where everyone comes to discuss their interests. Such as TV shows, events like the big Wilder – Fury fight this weekend (Go #BombSquad).

Two points. First, Twitter has always been uniquely situated as the one social site that can best facilitate live ‘in the moment’ conversations around breaking news. Whatever the event is, planned or not, Twitter is where you go to learn what’s happening and what people are saying about what’s happening. No other social site can match Twitter’s ability in this area.

Second, Twitter has always tried to push its users toward using the platform to discuss events and interests rather than as a direct communications or networking tool. Twitter’s users have been smart enough to figure out ways to leverage the platform for their own needs, but Twitter’s leadership has always attempted to re-position the site away from simply being a platform where we go and talk to each other. They have always wanted us to be using Twitter to talk about someone or something else. That’s been how they view many of their monetization opportunities.

I mention all this because it’s important for any company using social media sites to consider two things:

1 – How are users engaging on the site? Why are they there, what are they trying to do?

2 – How would the site like to see its users engage with each other? How does Facebook want users to use the platform?  How does Pinterest? How do these sites want to position themselves as being different from the competition?  What unique experience do they want users to have?

 

Too many companies view social media sites as an homogeneous pot where every platform and user is the same. Nothing could be further from the truth, and one of the biggest reasons why most companies have lackluster results with their social media strategies is by not having platform-specific strategies as well. Social media is not one-size-fits-all at either the user or platform level.

Smart companies know the users are different, but I don’t think enough thought is given to how these platforms want to position themselves as being different and how they want to encourage different user behavior. It’s worth considering and factoring into your social media strategy.

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Individuality is Fine, as Long as We All Do it Together

I was going through my WordPress app on my phone (BTW if you publish with WordPress, you really need this app, it’s great to keep up with your site, especially when you’re mobile), and came across this world map while checking my stats. This shows every country in the world that sent a visitor to this site in 2017. As you can see, almost every country in the world had at least one visitor come here in 2017.

I think we sometimes lose track of just what an amazing communications tool a blog can be. When I first started blogging in 2005, one of the very first people that linked to my blog (tracked with Technorati, anyone remember them?) was a 13 year-old girl in China. That opened my eyes to the enormous power of a blog to spread your message on a truly global scale.

The reality is, we’ve given up on the promise of blogging. Blogs give everyone a voice. As long as you have access to the internet and the blogging platform, you can share your voice with the world.

But over time, instead of sharing our unique voices, perspectives and personalities, we’ve become better at sounding like everyone else. We study blogging ‘best practices’ and try to ‘improve’ our writing to increase engagement, stats and visitors. It’s enticing, but if you aren’t careful, we all end up sounding like everyone else.

I’m just as guilty of it as anyone. I tell myself I can’t talk about certain topics here or in a certain way, because I always have to be mindful of who my audience is, and what they want.

But lost in that, is the fact that your audience wants to know YOU. They want to hear your unique take, your personality. They want to see something different, that’s how you catch attention. And if the content is good, then you hold it.

I love reading business success stories, learning how a particular company came out of nowhere to stand out in a crowded marketplace. More often than not, the founder or CEO’s explanation for what worked is simply “I zigged, when everyone else zagged”.

Here’s to more ‘zagging’ in the year ahead.  And a gold-star to whoever can be the first to tell me what TV character said the title of this post.

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Case Study: Patagonia’s Brand Ambassador Program Focuses on Product Design and Development Over Sales

Did you know Patagonia has a Brand Ambassador Program? Probably not, but the brand has had an ambassador program since at least 2000. This makes sense when you consider that Patagonia has never made advertising of any kind a priority for the brand. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has often proudly proclaimed that the brand only spends one half of one percent of revenue on advertising.

Patagonia’s effort is a bit different from most brand ambassador programs in a few notable ways. Most brand ambassador programs, much to my disappointment, are structured largely to drive sales. Most brands view their ambassadors as potential promotional channels, with little or no thought given to how else these ambassadors could be leveraged to help the brand.

To be fair, Patagonia does use its ambassadors to promote the brand. But that’s not the only or even most important function that Patagonia’s ambassadors serve.

When you view Patagonia’s ambassador page, you’re immediately struck by how the ambassadors are organized based on the outdoor activities they excel at:

  • Climbing
  • Fly-fishing
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Surfing
  • Trail-running

These are athletes, and typically athletes that are well-known and respected among their peers. So in that regard, you may consider this as more of an influencer marketing effort than a true brand ambassador program. But Patagonia has an ongoing, working relationship with these ambassadors, and they are paid a salary for their involvement in the program.

So when you consider that Patagonia is working with athletes who are well-known and influential within their respective disciplines, a working relationship based on sales promotion is assumed. Which makes this quote from the brand on the role and responsibilities of its ambassadors very interesting:

"Patagonia's ambassadors are known for not only being athletes, but for being integral to the company's product development and product testing. The company's ambassadors work closely with the design department to test, refine and validate products in the harshest and most remote locations on the planet."


I loved seeing this because as I've often written about here, leveraging brand ambassadors as a product feedback channel is one of the smartest things a brand can do. I'm sure Patagonia's thinking here is to put its products in the hands of elite athletes with the thinking being that they can give better feedback on how the clothing functions in their typical activities. Patagonia then can take this product feedback and leverage it to improve the product's design, durability, and function.

It's really the best of all worlds for Patagonia. They've created a program where the ambassador have real input into the products they use. This means the ambassadors will be far more knowledgeable about the product and how it functions, which also helps them better promote it to other customers. Which is beneficial for Patagonia, since it's ambassadors are elite athletes who are well-respected and who are very influential among their peers.

Now How Do You Apply This to Your Own Brand Ambassador Program?

When it comes to the influencer vs fan debate, I've always said that the best of both worlds is to find an influencer who is also a fan of your brand. In a way, this is what Patagonia has done. They aren't just asking the ambassadors to promote Patagonia's products to their following (as you would with an influencer), they are also stressing that they want the ambassadors to use their products and give them feedback after they have done so. In addition, they've also carefully picked ambassadors who are already engaging in the same type of activities that Patagonia's customers are when those customers buy Patagonia's products. So the products are getting a real-world testing, which results in better feedback.

For your efforts, follow the model that Patagonia uses and focus on ambassadors who either already use your products, or who live a lifestyle similar to that of your current customers. Basically, you want to make sure that the ambassadors you pick are people that will be using your products in the same way that your customers would. This means that your ambassadors can give you better feedback and it means your brand can apply that feedback to improve the product. 

Remember, leveraging your ambassadors to promote your brand is fine, but that's hardly the only way you can work with them in order to grow your brand. 

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Buzzwords Are Ruining Careers and Destroying Companies

Have you heard of the latest buzzword, ‘Emotional Intelligence’? I hadn’t either till I saw marketers using it all over Twitter last week.

What is ’emotional intelligence’?  Or rather, what other idea or thing has been co-opted by this buzzword?  As soon as I heard the term, my first thought was ‘Wait, they mean empathy, right?’

So I looked up the buzzword ’emotional intelligence’. Google tells me it means: “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.”

Now apparently, this buzzword has been around for at least a decade or so, but it seems marketers are now discovering it and it is the latest ‘it’ concept that companies, and the agencies that consult them, are rushing to. Marketers do this every year or two, they rush to the latest buzzword/concept in an effort to better connect with clients and position themselves. I get why it happens, I just get irritated that we sell buzzwords over concepts. Years ago it was ‘social business’ then it was ‘digital transformation’, now it is ’emotional intelligence’. I even got some industry peers upset with me years ago when I said they needed to stop marketing the buzzword ‘social business’ and actually start educating companies on what they think the concept is, and how it would impact a business.

As we did with ‘social business’ and ‘digital transformation’, we will now start to see a landrush of consultants branding themselves as offering to teach your company how to leverage ’emotional intelligence’ into all facets of your organization. And we will no doubt begin to have many executives that will start to see all these articles about the importance of ’emotional intelligence’ popping up and think they are missing the boat if they don’t get them some of that ’emotional intelligence’!

Look, I get it. It’s a tough world out there for consultants, agencies, and the executives they want to work with. Those of us on the services side need every advantage to stand out and get noticed. It’s not enough to just be talented, I know that better than anyone (#humblebrag #buzzwordbingo). And for executives and even mid-level managers, you don’t want to miss the next wave. You see your peers suddenly talking about a buzzword like ‘digital transformation’ or ’emotional intelligence’ and you think ‘Is this something I need to know about?’

It’s not about the hype, it’s about the solution.

Seriously, if you were a VP of Marketing, which sounds more interesting to you?

A – “I’m going to show you how to improve your marketing efforts with #emotionalintelligence

B – “I’m going to show you how to improve your marketing efforts by better understanding your customers.”

 

I’ve been blogging for 15 years. I think I can safely say that I can count on one hand the number of posts I have written about ‘social business’, ‘digital transformation’ and ’emotional intelligence’. Because I think discussing concepts and solutions has more value than discussing buzzwords.

Hype or solutions. Which is more important to you?

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Understanding the Tool Doesn’t Help If You Don’t Understand Your People

I’ve often been told that I could make a nice career for myself just by advising companies how to start and maintain a blog and social media channels. I sometimes do such consulting, but not that often. One of the reasons why is because too many companies are focused on learning the social media tools moreso than learning to understand the customers they want to reach via social media. They want to talk about what is the best CMS, what’s the best way to schedule and automate content distribution. What’s the best way to tweak a tool’s settings to get more engagement and shares?

It really gets to be depressing sometimes.

Understand yourself, and your audience first, then you can focus on the tools. Too many companies focus on the tools and ignore their customers, which defeats the purpose.

Start by asking and answering these questions:

1 – Who am I creating content for?

2 – What impact will that content make on their daily lives?

3 – What action do I want these people to take after interacting with my content?

 

Notice those questions are focused on the audience for your content and have nothing to do with the tools you could use to reach that audience.

Know your audience first, then that will help you understand which tools you can best use to reach them. THEN you can dig into understanding the tools.  But it makes no sense to learn the nuts and bolts of Twitter, if your audience is on Pinterest.

BONUS: Understand yourself. How do YOU like to communicate with your audience? The content you create has to be interesting to your audience, but it also has to interest you. Granted, this is more of an issue for a solopreneur or maybe an executive versus a team, but the fact remains that if the content creator doesn’t enjoy the process, it will be more difficult for them to create their best content. If you love writing and your audience is reading blog, write a blog. If you think better on the fly and are comfortable in front of a camera, look at shooting videos. Or if you can better explain yourself by talking, but hate being on video, try a podcast.

The point is, understand who your audience is and what you are comfortable doing before you even consider which tool is best. The people decide the tools, not the other way around.

 

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Case Study: Why GE Started an Employee Brand Ambassador Program to Solve One Specific Business Problem

GE employee brand ambassador program

Proper planning is the easiest way to improve the efficiency of your campaign, program, or project. It’s imperative that you develop a clear strategy so that everyone involves understands precisely what they are doing, and what business outcomes they are working toward. In short, “Here’s what we are doing, here’s why it’s important”.

That’s why I love the reason for the creation of the GE employee brand ambassador program; because it was created to solve a specific problem the brand was facing.  The brand found that it was having difficulty recruiting for open positions. GE determined that a big part of the problem was a negative brand perception. Applicants viewed GE as a sort of monolith corporate entity, and employees weren’t very active online and weren’t doing a very effective job of telling the brand’s story. In short, applicants didn’t understand why they should want to work at GE.

What is an employee brand ambassador program?

Before we discuss what GE did, let’s define an employee brand ambassador program:

An employee brand ambassador program is similar to a brand ambassador program for customers, but instead, it focuses on the brand’s employees. The employees are the ambassadors, and they are given a way to connect with each other, as well as the brand’s management. Typically, employee brand ambassador programs are used as a way to give the employees the tools they need to better promote their brand to others, often via social media.

Here’s why GE decided to invest in an employee brand ambassador program:

A few reasons led us to create the brand ambassador program – like many change initiatives, they were rooted in limitations.

First, we had a $0 budget starting this adventure with GE. I looked around and asked ‘what do I have?’. One of the key assets we had was access was 350,000 colleagues around the globe.

The second challenge was our lack of polish in online profiles. I looked around at what our recruiters and hiring managers looked like online (not great). Many reacted with shocked expressions when I mentioned that candidates were doing their homework and googling them ahead of time. Connecting these dots for them helped set this initiative in motion.

Note that $0 starting budget. Unfortunately, this is a situation that brands, even global brands like GE, often find themselves in when launching a brand ambassador program. However, note that GE leveraged its employee brand ambassador program as an initiative to take what the brand was already doing, and make it better. The initial focus was on aiding HR in filling job applications more effectively. In short, GE was having to spend too much time trying to recruit employees, and it wanted to shift perception about and knowledge of the brand so that applicants were instead targeting the brand for employment. This would result in GE being more in demand among applicants, which would mean the hiring process would become easier, quicker and less expensive. Plus, the quality of the hires would improve.

Also note, since the core function of the GE employee brand ambassador program was to aid hiring, HR managers and talent acquisition was heavily involved from the start. HR managers were trained and then worked with employees to train them on how to improve their online profiles and how to better ‘humanize’ the brand:

We started with a small group of recruiters (that were in most need of help but also a group that I would call skeptics – I knew we would get all the feedback we needed). Then we incorporated their hiring managers. We held these sessions live and learned a LOT just from facial expressions. Of course there was no shortage of direct feedback as well.

We post-training surveyed through a quick online tool we have a GE. It included rankings for each part of the training as well as some open form fields for feedback. We maintained the same survey after the pilot to ensure data continuity/integrity and be sure we continued encouraging feedback. The open feedback helped us iterate and refine the training so it is highly tailored to our audience.

Also note that by having HR involved, it helps ensure the progress and growth of the employee brand ambassador program as a whole.  But note in the above quote the importance on collecting and acting on feedback from both the HR managers and the employees they were training. This is vital to the success of any brand ambassador program, collecting and acting on feedback, whether the ambassadors are customers or employees.

So What Were the Results?

Within the first month of leveraging its trained employee ambassadors to better tell GE’s story, the brand saw an 800% increase in applicants. Additionally, what GE has found is that since its employee ambassadors are more engaged online, it’s creating organic engagement that’s eliminating the need for purchasing traditional advertising to support the initiative. In Q1, 2017, social amplification from GE’s employee ambassadors created engagement worth $3 Million for GE, which reduced the amount of money spent on traditional social advertising to support the campaign to $0. Remember, if you smartly structure and execute your ambassador program as GE did here, it should improve your existing business processes and save you money.

One Final Note

This employee brand ambassador program was a vehicle for GE to take control of the conversation happening about the GE brand, among job applicants. There were several misconceptions that job applicants had about GE as a workplace and employer, so GE empowered its employees to tell the brand’s story through relating their own experiences working for the brand. This greatly enhanced the brand’s reputation among job applicants, and made it easier for applicants to relate to the brand and see themselves working there.

The program worked for GE due to proper planning, and focusing on how an employee brand ambassador program could take what GE was already doing (hiring), and make it better.

Want to learn how your company can create an amazing employee brand ambassador program as GE did? Then email me today.