A ll Posts

Your Workforce is Disengaged: Here’s What To Do About it

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Change is in the air. With disruptive technologies hitting businesses from the outside in and the inside out, how companies invest in technology and ultimately how people use it to get work done is under significant re-evaluation. At the same time, the rising workforce clash between older and younger generations is also pushing HR to radically reform management processes and education programs.

Indeed, change is the air. In fact it’s imminent. But change is never programmatic nor is it ever easy.  And, all too often, change is a reactive response to areas of disruption rather than a proactive step to head it off.

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Real Trumps Perfect… Stop Worrying so Much and Engage!

There are several reasons why I think businesses hamstring their social efforts. First, there’s an overriding, if misguided, pressure to get things “perfect” on social, which is sometimes used as an excuse to avoid getting involved at all. The permanent nature of anything that’s posted on the web tends to freak out the “control the message” crowd who has their fingers poised over the delete button to instantly erase ill-advised comments or content. We’re never far removed from the latest social snafu by a public figure, or the next one to come, and that fear can be paralyzing.

Second, there’s a certain amount of mistrust of employees by corporations on social channels. What if they say something stupid? What if they take a photocopy of their posterior at the company Christmas party and post it on Facebook? What if our perfect reputation is trashed by one Tweet? What if, what if, what if?

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How Duane Reade Leads it’s Industry in Content Marketing

Co-Authors: John Andrews and Ted Rubin

AMA recently published an article that I reposted yesterday, The Retweet that Never Sleeps, about Duane Reade’s highly successful content marketing approach that has helped the tiny (in terms of store count) retailer outperform much larger competitors in terms of social media engagement (National Drug chain CVS has just 10% of the Twitter audience of Duane Reade for Example). The Tri-State area only retailer (256 Stores) which is a subsidiary of Walgreens uses a content marketing platform that is powered by a group of influencers known at the Duane Reade VIP Bloggers.  This unique model leverages the local knowledge of brand advocates along with their individual audiences to deliver highly relevant organic content across a wide spectrum of social media channels. Twitter studied the approach and created a great case study about it.

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The Retweet That Never Sleeps

Originally posted by Molly Sloat at American Marketing Association

John Andrews and I, along with Duane Reade’s Calvin Peters, devised this strategy when we were running Collective Bias. This is all about Return on Relationship, #RonR… 

Duane Reade; Twitter strategy; Molly Soat; Marketing News; American Marketing Association

New York-based drugstore chain Duane Reade launched a localized, influencer-led Twitter strategy to boost followers and store traffic

 

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Developing content to build an engaged Twitter audience for your brand can be tough, and the potential payoffs can be hard to define. People might sign on to read your witty one-liners or to see your compelling visuals, but can a robust Twitter following result in direct sales impact, particularly for a brand with no e-commerce presence? Duane Reade Inc. thinks so.

Via a localized and photo-heavy Twitter campaign, the 54-year-old New York-based pharmacy brand grew its Twitter following by more than 6,700% between 2012 and 2013, and also drove results at the register, says Calvin Peters, PR and digital communications manager at Duane Reade. “The challenge was to increase our community across the board, from New Yorkers to tourists. We are lucky to be able to leverage New York in our social media. With the landmarks, the buildings and the city itself, many consider New York to be the capital of the world. We’re a brand that started in New York, and because of our vast footprint in the metropolitan area, we get to leverage that.”

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The New Networking: How to Be a People Curator ~via @OPENForum

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Though social media makes it easier for us to connect, there’s something to be said for being more human when we network

Social media is the handshake of our generation, but it can also be a splendid vehicle for giving warm business referrals, or just introducing two people you know have something in common.

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Thirty Years of Projects

I realized the other day that most people grow up thinking in terms of professional affiliations. “I’m going to be an accountant.” “I’m going to work for General Dynamics.”

Somehow, I always thought of my career as a series of projects, not jobs. Projects… things to be invented, funded and shipped. Sometimes they take on a life of their own and last, other times, they flare and fade. But projects, one after the other, mark my career. Lucky for me, the world cooperated and our entire culture shifted from one based on long-term affilitations (you know, ‘jobs’) to projects.

I had a two-part approach to building a career about projects. The first was to find a partner who was willing to own the lion’s share of the upside in exchange for advancing resources allowing me to create the work (but always keeping equity in the project, not doing it merely for hire). Publishers are good at this, and it enabled me to bootstrap my way to scale. The second was to grow a network, technology and the confidence to be able to take on projects too big for the typical solo venture. Complicated projects, on time, is a niche that’s not very crowded…

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Do Brands Apologize Too Much? ~via @InsideCXM

 

Social media is a great tool to help build brand visibility and interact with customers on a public platform. However, keep in mind that it’s a conversation medium—not a place to whitewash your image. People expect brands to be human, which means the occasional mistake is bound to happen, yet there is still an inherent fear of permanent reputation damage on social channels. Companies are afraid that something bad will be forever captured via a screenshot or a social update, bringing down a firestorm of bad press that ruins the brand’s reputation for all time. As a result, knee-jerk apologies too often are the first response.

Take airlines, for example. Data gathered by Unmetric shows US Airways and American Airlines lead in the number of tweets that contained apologies. But when trying to engage with customers and humanize their brand, businesses may be doing more harm than good in constantly apologizing. When companies issue an apology for a split-second decision made on social media, they admit culpability. If they apologize too soon, they may be drawing negative attention to themselves from people who otherwise would have not paid attention had a friend not retweeted the apology or shared blog posts criticizing the response.

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Tips for Small Business on Building an Engaged Social Presence [video]

The Magic @ Ball of Social Media with Special Guest Ted Rubin

 

In this episode of “Magic @ Ball of Social Media,” our video series in which experts answer small business social media questions, we sit down with Ted Rubin, a leading social marketing strategist, brand evangelist and keynote speaker. Rubin provides actionable tips about building an engaged social audience.

About the Author: Derek Overbey is the Senior Social Media Manager at VerticalResponse.

Derek Overbey
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