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Social Media: A Business’ Friend or Foe?
Our guest blogger this month is Angie Brown MBA, owner of Angeion Consulting. To learn more about social media and Angeion Consulting, please visit their Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/AngeionConsulting
Social media—we hear it everywhere and know we should be using it, but with business-to-business (B2B) companies many times they ask, “Why?”
Social media includes several online social sharing websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, FourSquare, and many more. Each medium was developed as a way for people to develop relationships and maintain friendships from afar; this is key to remember as a business when using social media.
Social media can help your business:
- Create a lead pipeline
- Project a brand
- Decrease turnover
- Increase attendance at events
- Sell a product
- Increase company morale
While these are a lot of options, your business should choose one or two goals that they want to reach. The following steps will help your business build their online social media journey correctly:
Develop your online personality
Just as a person has a personality, your business needs to develop an online personality as well. Many times the responsibility of posting on social media gets juggled between two people. When a business develops a personality, it allows your employee to take on that image and post as the same personality each time—your business’ personality, not the employee’s personal personality. Remember, this personality should align with your company’s the mission statement, morals, branding, and target audience. (See understanding your fan base below.)
Understand your fan base
If a business has the personality of a 45-year old man with strong environmental ties and a passion for outdoor recreation, then your fan base should reflect this personality as well to help build rapport. The reason for this is two-fold. If you post as this personality, you will attract a fan base that enjoys the same interests. Do this while simultaneously targeting your online ads to increase this target market and you will build your perfect fan base of leads. Developing a fan base that goes hand-in-hand with a business’ online personality will increase engagement and help increase the trust of potential customers; step one in developing online lead generation.
Consistency is KEY
Each social media platform has a “post shelf life” or the amount of time a post is visible to a person before another post supersedes it. While this varies according to the amount of interaction a certain post gets, a business should pay close attention to how quickly a post disappears from their customer’s view. Posting daily is appropriate for Facebook, while multiple times a day is key for Twitter. However a business decides to do it, they should remain consistent each week.
Toot THEIR horn
Don’t be afraid to brag on social media, but do it correctly. If your business recognized an employee internally, take a picture and post it! If someone in the company ate at a restaurant during your local middle school’s fundraiser, take a picture and talk about it! The idea here is to put the OTHER nonprofit, employee, fundraiser, etc. in the spotlight while making sure people know your business is supporting it. This type of support will connect your fan base to your company while at the same time recognizing your employees and bragging about them to the world. Even a small amount of recognition done correctly can go a long way with social media.
These steps give you some brief insight in the world of social media and how important social media can be to your company. Use it to develop relationships internally by encouraging your employees to take part in the conversations (#companyparty, #walkforacause –ask us about hashtags on our Facebook page–) and show them you care by talking about them online. At the same time you are developing relationships internally, you are causing your fan base to take notice, “Hmmmm, they like their employees and treat them well,” says your next online lead. While also building rapport externally in the form of understanding what your fan base likes and giving them a reason to stop and take notice of your company.
For more tips on social media, visit us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/AngeionConsulting.
A little about the author:
Angie Brown attended UC Davis where she graduated with her degree in Communications. She accepted a position as a Research Analyst at Time Warner Cable in Hawaii after graduation. Angie spread her wings with multi-million dollar companies such as McDonalds, Disney, Jack in the Box, and Outback Steakhouse as she developed cutting edge research and technologies just now being introduced on the mainland.
Over the course of her four years at Time Warner, she went back to school and received her MBA in Global Logistics while organizing seminars, developing marketing packages, and starting up Angeion Consulting in 2009. She moved back to the mainland and continued to build her company here. She is now developing an innovative employment model for her employees. Angie enjoys spending time with her two children and husband.
FOMO at the Workplace
Fear is an emotion almost everyone feels. Common phobias include fear of heights or spiders, but what about fear of missing out, otherwise known as FOMO. We all know someone who suffers from it and needs to be constantly in the loop at all times. Although FOMO has been in the mainstream through social media with people updating statuses and posting photos of activities and events, many experience FOMO at a young age. For example, as a child were you ever scared of falling asleep before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve? Let’s fast-forward a few decades when you entered the workforce—have you ever had a manager who exhibited FOMO at the workplace? Or an employee who is constantly on his/her cell phone or texting or facebooking or tweeting or blogging at work?
FOMO is not only limited to social media outlets, it can also be found in businesses and organizations. There are those managers who live for their job; they do not want to miss any aspect of their project because they were assigned or better yet, created the assignment. They treat their project as though it were their child: they want to be the only one who provides nurturing and is solely responsible for its development. They juggle many projects at once and wear many hats within the company because they fear someone may do it wrong, or they may simply want to feel superior. These individuals may be categorized as perfectionists, strong-minded, or hardworking. However, in pejorative terms, they can also be seen as egotistical, power-hungry, or greedy.
How does having FOMO in the workplace affect leaders and the overall morale of the company? When leaders designate too much responsibility on themselves, stress levels soar. They must delegate tasks and assignments to others. This will not only be beneficial for their well-being, but it will also positively enhance their leadership style and allow their employees to contribute and learn via practical and physical engagement. The employees’ will feel more motivated to work, which in turn increases productivity and overall capital growth.
We can compare this type of leader with the one who does too little. Think of the CEO who only wants to have fun at all times and attend retreats and trips. Sure, these leaders have paid their dues, but having a lax leader can leave a company running astray in multiple directions. Leaders strive to be the very best, but when FOMO ensues, it’s a different story. Be that “superstar” leader others admire as depicted in the Manager’s Oath (check it out here: http://thehumanbalance.com/2013/06/13/from-scout-to-manager-the-managers-oath/)!
Turning away from leadership roles, we can also see employees exhibiting FOMO. Email and technology are ingrained in our culture; emails and the internet can easily be assessable via smart phones. You may have witnessed a co-worker in a meeting who is constantly on his/her phone (or the culvert may be you!) checking emails or browsing the internet. And why do employees do this: it is because they want to know what is happening outside of their workplace and they do not want to miss out on anything.
Sure, some can say they are being more productive by multitasking, but that brings us back to the point mentioned above of putting too many things on one’s plate. If anything, it may be more of a cost than a gain—employees distract themselves by checking their phones rather than actually completing projects.
FOMO can happen in all forms. It starts at a young age and affects us throughout our lives. Everyone has some form of FOMO here and there, but if we just stop what we’re doing and live in the moment, then FOMO wouldn’t be such an issue.
If one of your leaders and/or employees is experiencing FOMO and there is no help, consider leadership/team training and programs. After all, a company is as only good as their management.
*e-VentExe offers HR Outsourcing, employee training and development programs geared towards the company’s needs.
The Human Balance 