ARTICLE: Trust and Social Media

CEO’S, Trust and Social Media – CEOs can no longer ignore the potential of social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to support business growth. A company’s policy regarding these sites can be the difference between engaging staff, customers and prospects and leaving them cold. Are you missing out on sales and staff retention opportunities by limiting your staff’s access to these sites or, worse still, giving them access without knowledge?
LinkedIn is the biggest business-to-business online networking site in the world. More than 52 million businesspeople are registered, with a new one every second. LinkedIn is a database of individuals and companies that includes current and past employment details and recommendations, and more elaborate professional information such as links to recent blog posts and presentations.

At the time of writing, the New Zealand LinkedIn user base was 154,243, and of special interest to CEOs should be the fact that 76,568 local users have ticked the box indicating that they are open to discussions of new employment. This sizeable group represents both an opportunity and a risk for companies and their managers.

This doesn’t benefit only the recruitment industry – it can also work in the employer’s favour. With so many businesspeople not actually in the open market looking for a job, but willing to meet up for a coffee to find out more about a position, it changes the dynamic of how you deal with the best performers in your organization.

As chief executive, embracing the social media sites yourself and educating your top sales and client-facing staff about how to use LinkedIn (or Twitter) can significantly benefit your company.

How can CEOs support their staff in the social media area – specifically regarding LinkedIn and Twitter?

1. Rather than leaving the decision to your IT department, work with teams to ensure that these sites are not blocked and that people in roles that would benefit from it can access them.
2. Work with your teams and people who understand these platforms to ensure that a) the systems are not abused, and b) the teams understand their responsibility to the company and themselves around usage of these media.
3. Encourage creative thinking by trusting staff to ‘network’ with suppliers, staff, their customer base and even your competition. The likely result will be an open-minded look at how you are currently operating and, often, answers to questions such as, What do my customers really want? and What’s missing in our offering?
4. Encourage teams to join LinkedIn Groups. There are many professional groups giving access to businesspeople all over New Zealand and the world in many different industries. One such group is New Zealand Business and Professional Network, which has 2,264 members, of which 1,180 are looking to make a deal. Brain Storm New Zealand is another, and has set itself apart in being solely for brainstorming. If you need help figuring an issue out, give it to the group and let the members bounce the problem around to help you find a solution. Any opportunity to think and develop your business through idea-sharing should be encouraged.
5. Do teach your staff (or organize people who can) how not to spam people and businesses in these groups by trying to sell your wares at the first opportunity. Commonsense rules of networking apply here.
6. Have a crisis management plan in place in case things go wrong online, just as you have for problems in the offline world. How will you respond? Who is responsible?

How will this approach benefit the CEOs objectives?

1. Key performers will feel trusted and valued as employees and will give 100 per cent.
2. Sales-oriented and client-facing staff in particular will have an opportunity to use the LinkedIn.com contacts base and the Updates section as a rolling newsletter to stay in touch with their professional contacts. The updates provide a perfect excuse to pick up the phone and congratulate your contact after a win or to engage them on a specific problem that they raise.
3. The LinkedIn platform enables your performers to be recommended and referred on to other potential clients. Technology is an enabler of better business practice and positive word-of-mouth.
4. These social media are another good excuse to set up a coffee catch-up and engage people around ideas. Often this can lead to win-win deals, and at the very least they help to build relationships in the offline world. From a sales point of view, of those 154,243 New Zealand LinkedIn members, a whopping 105,125 are businesspeople looking to make new business contacts or do a deal. A compelling reason for your company and staff to be represented? Or still too big a risk?
5. There is also the Answers resource, which all 52 million users can access and which enables users to get ideas on how to solve just about any problem you can think of. I recently spoke with a local company owner who wanted to sue a US firm for infringement of the copyright of his product. As he didn’t have a spare $2 million or sufficient time, he spent several weeks searching Google for a US-based lawyer who would take the case on on a no-pay-unless-you-win basis. After a fruitless search, he asked the question on the Answers section on LinkedIn. Within a day he had more than 30 responses, mainly from US-based lawyers. He did a background check on his shortlist, selected one, and within a week his problem was well on the way to being solved at no cost to him.

Trusting your employees and having supportive policies in place to encourage employee engagement through social media will be one of the building blocks to sustainable differentiation in 2010.

- December 2009, Original source The New Zealand Herald

Linda Coles founded Blue Banana to train other professionals in the expert use of social media tools as a viable strategy to grow their brand or company online and develop an additional way of doing business. Linda runs various workshops and seminars on how to use the various tools effectively and productively.

You can find recommendations for Linda’s work at her LinkedIn Profile or on her website www.bluebanana.co.nz . You can also follow her on Twitter . http://twitter.com/bluebanana20