Why Blogging Matters to Business - Use Blogs for Information and Communication

The current revolution in personal writing and instant publishing is called blogging. A business blog is an informal, easily maintained way to regularly communicate with your customers and employees. Unlike traditional media that require lead time for publishing, blogs are frequently updated, often daily, online journals of opinions, information and links to interesting content online.


According to About’s Susan Ward, “What sets blogs apart from other online writing … is their dynamic nature (as opposed to static Web pages) and their voice (style).” The voice of the writer (or writers) of the blog, in a successful blog, is unique to that blog.


Blogging matters to business because blogging can represent your company in a positive light. Blogs can pinpoint employees you don't want to hire and help you do market research. Yet, blogs can also criticize your company and review your products unfavorably. You need to know about business blogging. There are eight reasons blogging is important to your business or organization - to start. Here are the first five reasons blogs matter:

1. A business blog is an informal, easily maintained method for regularly communicating with your customers
2. A business blog is an informal, easily maintained method for regularly communicating with your employees
3. A business blog can provide a "voice" for your company that educates and informs your website visitors
4. The business blog is a recruiting tool for your company, and 
5. Your employees may also be blogging. You want to ensure their blogs do not give away company confidential or proprietary information, or trade secrets

Want three more reasons why blogs matter to business, including tips about blogging job candidates? Click on the link above. 

full article written by  Susan M. Heathfield, About.com Guide

 

Ad Network Bizo Makes Money in Business-to-Business Market

Bizo — pronounced biz-oh, as in business — is an ad network founded in 2008 in San Francisco that caters to the business-to-business market, in which businesses target other businesses rather than individual consumers. In a press release scheduled for this morning, the company will report that December was its first profitable month.

Bizo says its revenue run-rate is now more than $5 million, a sixfold increase over a year ago. The company also says its customer base quadrupled between Q4 of 2008 and Q4 of 2009, and its number of publisher partners has increased by more than 30. In addition, Bizo completed a $6 million round of equity financing in December led by Bessemer Venture Partners, plus existing investors Venrock, Vulcan and Ascent.

“We hit the inflection point where we have enough customers, enough revenue, enough partners,” CEO Russell Glass told me in a phone call. “We should continue to see profitability.”

One important component to Bizo’s positive balance: The company has landed many of the biggest B2B advertisers as clients. At the high end of the market, the money from any one deal is a lot bigger — potentially 20 to 40 times bigger — for the same amount of work

Bizo advertisers at the upper end of B2B spending include Verizon, Sprint, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Monster, Dell, Fedex, and UPS. But the company also serves the long tail of small advertisers. “You need to do both,” Glass said.

Glass also said Bizo’s recent $6 million in funding enabled profitability rather than hindering it. “As you get bigger and bigger from a revenue persepective, you’re actually owed more and more in the short term from your customers,” he said. “You’re sort of floating a short term load to your customers.” By using the funds to build out infrastructure and pay for bigger data bills, the company was able to secure and support enough business to be profitable. Sometimes you really do have to spend money to make money.

Have You Virtualized Human Resources?

Many HR organizations are trying to improve efficiencies in their day-to-day operations. They continue to place more information and self service options, including benefits on line to streamline the HR organization that will allow them to spend more time with customers.

So where do HR professionals spend most of their time? 25% on regulatory issues and changes, 25% on employee training although in the past year this has diminished to about 15%, coordinating corporate wide meetings and orientation about 24%. All of these tasks can be put online using web conferencing and employee self service. Many HR people spend time traveling and that time and money can be saved using web conferencing not to mention efficiencies realized by the team.

To conclude, if you are not utilizing the full extent of your technology in your company you are missing the boat. If you want to continue to be a leader and mover and shaker in the business you should be virtualizing your HR tasks as much as possible pushing the envelope with your IT department.

Are You Linking Strategy to Operations Effectively

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding a new management system so if you have not heard about it here is a summary. There is also a course in Orlando on March 8-9th that will provide you with all the information you need on this key HR practice.


If you want to succeed in your position and continue to be a leader in the eyes of your CEO, you should install this process to assist you in out performing your peer competition. Here is a summary of the five key stages you should begin to think about if you are not already in full process use:

1. Stage 1 - Develop a strategy using SWOT, PESTEL, vision, mission statements
2. Stage 2 - Translate the strategy into strategic objectives and themes as well as target and strategic initiatives
3. Stage 3 - Align your organizational units and businesses both horizontally and vertically to the strategy and cascade them through the organization
4. Stage 4 - Align your human capital and employees and fully communicate the strategy and alignment of the organization to achieve the goals. Make sure you align the employees capabilities and competencies to the strategic objectives
5. Stage 5 - Monitor, learn, and test the alignment to ensure adaption to the strategy.

I would encourage all senior level HR leaders to attend this forum in March. If you have not heard about it you can call 1-800-554-2111 or through www.thepalladiumgroup.com/masterclass by January 22, 2010.

How To: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

Sharlyn Lauby is the president of Internal Talent Management (ITM) which specializes in employee training and human resources consulting. She authors a blog at hrbartender.com.

Over the past few months, we’ve talked about whether you should have a social media policy and what should be included in that policy. It only seems logical to discuss the next step in the process, which is what to consider when implementing a social media strategy in your workplace.

Just having a policy isn’t good enough — you need a plan to put it in place. Here are five areas to discuss when implementing a social media strategy.

Determine Your Objective:
Luis Ramos, CEO of The Network, reminds us that creating a social media strategy is a complex exercise because “it includes not only looking inside the organization to establish appropriate practices, usage policies and content parameters, but it also includes looking outside the organization to determine the proper degree of engagement."

Figure out why you’re getting on the social media bandwagon and what you want to accomplish with it. This step is absolutely necessary if you plan to measure ROI or develop your own internal metrics tracking.

When General Motors put together their social media strategy, they had some specific objectives they wanted to accomplish. Christopher Barger, director of global social media at General Motors, outlined the following:

• Become more responsive to people/consumer audiences
• Incorporate audience/consumer feedback into your organization more quickly and effectively than has happened traditionally
• Make your brand a little more “human” to the outside world, and show people the smarts, personality and passion of the people behind your logo
• Increase awareness of the strength of your current product lineup, and provide perspective/accurate information about your company
  

The other benefit of defining objectives is that they can guide the timetable for implementation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an organization’s list of objectives and knew there was no way they could implement everything at once or in the timeframe they intended. Having well-defined objectives can assist in prioritization and creating the best way to phase-in a social media strategy.


Developing objectives and a timetable could also prompt a conversation about content management. Ramos suggests including in the strategy the position responsible for updating content as well as the update frequency. “Many organizations have grand plans of updating content on a regular basis only to quickly run out of topics, leaving content to become stale. As a best practice, a specific employee is typically assigned to create and manage the company’s social media pages, so he/she can respond to messages and questions within 24 hours.”

Find an Internal Evangelist:
This is a constant source of discussion right now on the Internet, but the bottom line is, some department needs to “own” social media. Lots of departments might be consulted when it comes to decision making, but ultimately someone has to be held accountable for the outcomes.



Which department ultimately gets the responsibility could be dependent upon the size of your organization and corporate culture. For example, Barger says social media at General Motors is “owned within the communications team, reporting up through the Vice President of Communications, who reports directly to the Chairman/CEO. Social media leadership has a seat at the communications leadership table and acts as an integral part of the larger corporate communications function.”


Smaller organizations might not have that amount of structure, so responsibility might simply fall to sales or marketing.

Another option to consider is using external resources (i.e. consultants) for certain aspects of the strategy and internal resources for the rest. Barger explains, “We use internal resources whenever possible; given that two of GM’s main goals are to become more responsive to the public and to incorporate insight back into the organization, these are things we can only effectively do if it is our team who are engaged. We use agency partners for monitoring/measurement, for identifying new opportunities and new influencers for us to reach out to, for video production, and for counsel on tactics/strategy.”

Consider Your Employees:
This is a biggie. Organizations need to understand their employees’ level of knowledge and interest. Offer training. And one noteworthy item for non-profits is to think about your volunteer base. Diane Gomez, public relations manager for the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), mentions that not only is PRSA staff involved, but volunteers are as well. “This includes monitoring and interacting with members (and nonmembers) who reach out to us via these channels, and is in addition to pushing out information of interest to our members.”


In addition to posting GM’s social media policy, Barger explains several things the company did to convey the company’s approach. “We posted a 45-minute ‘Social Media 101’ interactive training course on the intranet that gives employees the basics on how/why/where to engage in social media. Additionally, we developed a ‘201’ level ‘train-the-trainer’ course that introduces more complete tools and tips. Those who’ve taken this course are authorized to train others within their departments on the basics of social media.

Finally, we have an internal blog, ‘Making Conversation,’ that focuses on sharing lessons we’re learning through social media outreach.” Though she’s the president of a smaller firm, Crystal Kendrick used a similar approach with The Voice of Your Customer. “Our employees are very social media savvy and understand how to technically use the sites. We discussed the spirit of the policy and reviewed examples of ineffective social media policies. Training for our employees focused on the strategic and professional applications of the social media sites. We use ‘key word rich’ content, approved messages and in some cases, scheduled time for posting.”



Gomez added they are encouraging staff to participate in social media on behalf of the organization. “We are looking to establish an overall strategy that departments will follow when deciding when and how to use social media.” I’ve found many companies developing job aids, such as flow charts or decision trees, to help employees determine when and how to respond to blogs and inquiries on other social networking sites.

Check Your Tech:
While most social media doesn’t need a huge technology investment, you should still take a look at the technology capabilities of your company and make sure the system can support the strategy.



As Ramos reminds us, this includes making sure social media applications aren’t hidden behind firewalls. “Before any social media components are engaged, there needs to be an understanding across the organization of the following:

• Who will have access to the sites?
• Are there any firewalls that would prevent access?
• What are the rules about time spent and content posted on the sites?

Listen First:
A lot can be learned by watching others. Don’t be afraid to ask questions on and offline so you can learn more.



Barger encourages companies to remember “that few ideas should be rejected out of hand; not everything is going to work, but in 95% of the cases, even if something doesn’t work there is value to be gained and lessons to be learned from the ‘failure.’ The only exceptions to this rule are efforts that would contradict the basic etiquette and/or rules of social media – transparency, openness, authenticity, and avoiding ‘pure traditional marketing’ plays, etc.”


According to Kendrick, “The first few weeks were a bit hectic.” Like GM, they began to share best practices among employees, identify expert users to follow and recommend connections. She notes, “We matched our target customers to the demographics of our connections and identified gaps in our networks. From there, we began to focus on making connections with persons in target companies, industries and geographic regions and joined groups and lists of industry groups to ensure that we maximized our exposure and business opportunities.”

Conclusion:
During 2010, more companies are expected to explore and engage in social media activities. While some might categorize using a social networking application as easy, that doesn’t mean developing a strategy is simple. Proper planning and execution is the key to integrating social media into your organization.



What are some other key factors in developing a social media strategy? Be sure to post your thoughts and ideas on this blog.

Happy New Year 2010

           Happy New Year to All

How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile Is Effective

Is your LinkedIn profile as effective as it could be? While you can see your “profile completeness” score on your profile page, it doesn’t measure profile effectiveness — how good your profile is at attracting contacts, generating leads and showing off your skills. Use this checklist to ensure your profile is thorough, effective and updated.

1. Use the name you’re known by. Perhaps your name is Robert, but most people know you as Rob or Bob. Or, for women, perhaps you worked under a maiden name for years. Use the name that most people know you by professionally. Cover all your bases by using your main name in your basic information and mention any other names elsewhere such as in the “Professional Headline” field, or in your recommendations.
2. Upload a professional photo. It’s worth the price to use a professional photographer.
3. Create an effective Professional Headline. Add a “Professional Headline” in the “Edit My Profile” page. This is a short bio that sums up what you do. Mine says, “Content Maven aka writer and editor behind meryl.net.”
4. Pick the industry that best represents what you do. Alternatively, you could use your clients’ industry if they all come from the same one.
5. Enter details for current and past positions. Highlight the activities that represent what you do or want to do by mentioning them first.
6. Write a summary that highlights your most important business information. Keep your summary clear and to the point. Remember you can list details under “Current Position.” The point of a summary is to give people instant information on what you do. I’ve looked at various summaries, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. I used to have a bulleted list, but switched to a short paragraph. When I come across long paragraphs in the summary, I find them hard to read and follow. The shorter ones hold my attention and get the point across fast.
7. List your web sites and blog. Rather than using the name of your web site and blog, use keywords that describe what you do. For example, I use “Writer for hire and blog” instead of “your own name notes,” the name of the blog.
8. Add your Twitter ID. If you haven’t already, add your Twitter name.
9. Request recommendations. It’s OK to ask people to recommend you, but make sure you ask the right people.
10. Write recommendations. Writing recommendations can lead to receiving recommendations.
11. Add applications to enhance your profile. If you have a blog, feed your blog entries into your LinkedIn account with one of LinkedIn’s applications. You can also turn LinkedIn into an online document collaboration platform.
12. Send selected Twitter tweets to LinkedIn. While you can connect your Twitter account to your LinedIn profile, many of us tweet too often or tweet about things that would be irrelevant to our LinkedIn contacts. Instead, select just the tweets you want to show up in your LinkedIn profile by adding the hashtag “#in” to the tweet. You can turn on this feature in Twitter Settings.
13. Select what to display in your public profile. People not connected to you can only see what you allow them to see by setting your Public Profile options. The more you reveal, the easier it is for people to know if they have the right person. Here, you can also set up your Public Profile URL, which shows up as to http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname.
14. Review your settings. Though I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, I still run into new features and settings. Settings cover everything from profile views and email notifications to personal information and privacy settings. You can provide advice on how people should contact you on the Contact Settings page. Mine says, “Email is the best way to reach me.”

I have been a strong and forceful proponent of social networking and self promotion in this new world order. I hope that this post will help you in truly distinguishing you from the millions of other HR professionals.

from Web Worker Daily by Meryl Evans

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All

I would like to wish everyone a very merry holiday season and a joyous New Year. 2010 should prove to be a much better year than 2009 and I hope that my blog content will be even better and more informative for you.

Bill Stevens

Goals vs. Objectives and Strategy

First, lets give a quick clarification of definitions. Goals are your general intentions, the big picture aims or you or your company.

Your objectives are the outcomes that represent achievement of that goal. Things you can actually observe. In order to be classified as an objective, you have to measure them. You need a way of defining whether you have or have not completed them successfully.

Strategies are the action plans you’ll execute to reach the objective. Tactics are the pieces and parts of the strategy:

• GOAL: To increase our company’s footprint through participation in social media.
• OBJECTIVES: Increase our blog subscribers by 15% in 6 months. Grow our LinkedIn connections by 250 members (a 25% increase) by the end of the year. Establish a Facebook Page with 500 fans within 6 months to 9 months
• STRATEGIES: Develop a strategy or set of strategies for each one. It is a roadmap for how you will get there.

So that is the set hierarchy. Set these rules in place for 2010 to increase your exposure to the world and build your social media portfolio.

Skipping the Four Key Elements of HR

I had a discussion with a former colleague last week and I must say it was a very interesting and spirited discussion. My former colleague said that she was tired of trying to persuade people to think in HR terms. Yikes I said to myself, thinking in "HR terms". Where was she coming from?
She went on to say that she felt that HR was losing its' edge in the company. Yikes, I said again to myself, what has she been doing from a leadership angle yet alone from a business prospective?

Well, I am sure there are a lot of HR professionals thinking like her given the economy, job losses, pay freezes, and training all but abolished. I look at this as an opportunistic time to really show wheat you as HR professionals are made of: strong business instincts, financial expertise, interpersonal relationships at all levels of the organization, and leadership acumen. If you have forgotten these key elements of HR then you really need to rethink your profession.

In these trying times this is were the true HR professional steps up to the plate and helps the CEO drive the business through the economic storm. Remember these key essentials and build on them each and every day:

• strong business instincts - see and drive innovation and execution
• financial expertise - help the CFO on true business cost relationships and justify your budget that helps build the organization
• interpersonal relationships - without them at every level of the organization you will not understand what is really happening at the grass roots level
• leadership expertise/acumen - drive change and help all employees through the paradigm shifts that will drive business change and revenue growth.

So what are your thoughts on these key elements? Drop me an email at wgstevens2@gmail.com or through my Linkedin address.

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

Every day, I wake up excited, inspired, and driven by the experience and brilliance of those people who shape the world around me. Every day, I wonder in anticipation what tomorrow will hold. As much as I appreciate the past and present, I am reminded, that today is our time to create the future. We have a choice to either push forward or hold back, realizing that there is no manual and no assurances and that we need to walk to the edge of a cliff and jump into the unknown to create for tomorrow to make life better for everyone.

Leadership and Everyday Excellence

A friend in the consulting business wrote an article on "Leadership and Everyday Excellence". Here is just a excerpt from the article that I thought was most important for business leaders and HR executives.

Everyday practical leadership does not require flawless execution of management skills, but rather, an intentional pursuit of excellence. As you pursue excellence in your choices, relationships, tasks, planning and even general thought processes, leadership development will surely follow. Living your life and performing your life’s tasks with distinction and quality is a noble quest. Excellence is the state of excelling. It implies superiority and eminence, according to the dictionary. When someone or something is excellent we believe that there is a quality or feature that stands out in comparison to others.

Does your leadership translate to everyday excellence?

Current Trends Influencing Recruitment and Retention Efforts

Ask any company what issues are high on their priority list these days and most will invariably say “attracting and retaining qualified workers” is one of them. In today’s highly competitive labor market, traditional recruiting and retention strategies just don’t seem to be as effective as they once were. National and state workforce studies indicate there are several primary reasons for this: (1) social networking,(2) changing work demographics.

I have attached a PowerPoint presentation I made last week to the HR Executive Round Table Group. I certainly had sidebars on recruitment, trending, and how the new generation of workers communicate.

Update on Employee Engagement

Business units in the top quartile on engagement had 18% higher productivity, 16% higher profitability and 49% fewer safety incidents compared with those in the bottom quartile, a Gallup study concluded.* (Workforce magazine article)

Check our the lead story in this months issue of Workforce on "Troubled Engagement"

So based on the post of November 15th you should be shoring up your employee engagement activities so your company can get into the top quartile.

Employee Engagement - Not Really

I have posted several articles on employee engagement over the past 2 years and what companies needed to do to retain and grow their human capital. Well, in the past year the recession has hit almost every company except for IBM and McDonald's (at least from a stock standpoint). Because companies have pared down their workforces, reduced costs etc, employees have become disillusioned with their employers. So what have been the driving factors for this decline in employee engagement and retention? Here are some current numbers to reflect on and digest:

• pay and bonuses - only 41% feel this is fair*
• managements' ability to grow the business - only 29% agree they can*
• advancement opportunities - 28% feel they can grow with their current company*
• retention - only 14% said they will stay*
• high frustration level with company politics
• recessional issues have caused employees to become nervous about job security
• high executive pay - more issues with spreading the wealth down stream

Are these factors that you face in your company and as a human resource strategist how are you dealing with these issues and are you driving the executive team to look deep into the organizations culture on how to manage people?

Your thoughts on this subject would be appreciated to share with other HR practitioners.

* US Strategic Rewards Survey 2009

The Future of B2B Media - Creating Unique Value

Are you collecting data, or are you actually understanding the needs and behaviors of your audience? Those are the real questions in building unique value.

A huge challenge facing most B2B and B2C media brands is commoditization: that when you search Google News on a story, you are presented with HUNDREDS of sources for the same story.

This affects commonly held differentiators between competing brands. Nowadays, "breaking" news is often mistakenly referred to as the person who posts it to their website 5 minutes before their competitor does. And even in the established media, "journalism" is more rare than most would have you believe. There is a huge difference between sharing news that is more and more easy to find, and offering a truly unique service that will enable business and career growth in your market.

If you take the label & brand name away from your product, is the quality and the brand distinction painfully obvious to your customers?

Moving Forward

Has your company begun a recovery plan that will distinguish itself from its competitors as the economy rebounds? Think about it, if you continue to stay in a recessionary mode when the economy recovers you will be left behind. So how do you begin this process from contraction and cost savings? Here are some helpful hints that should be driven by the HR leader:

• Make sure you have the right managers in place, match your talent to jobs needed in recovery, if not recruit them;
• Make sure your products are in line with your customers needs; survey your customers, gut check the competition, and blind test your products;
• Begin to change the cost savings environment to a more risk tolerant culture. You need a more risk agile company during recovery;
• Place more emphasis on your employees and what they need. Remember without them you HAVE NOTHING;
• Adjust budgets especially in the IT sector so your systems are easy and intuitive to your customers. Drive more revenue from the web;
• Place an HR person on your product management assessment team, use that person as if he/she were a customer.

So where are you in the recovery spectrum?

Innovation Needed Even In Recessions

NEW YORK - A theme is emerging from the flood of recent corporate earnings reports: Cost cuts are boosting profits. Investors are cheering, but they shouldn't. Even in these tough times, more CEOs should be talking about how they are seeking out investments, developing new technologies and making acquisitions.

That's what will set their companies up for a stronger future.

Intel Corp.'s former CEO Gordon Moore had it right when he said years ago that "you can't save your way out of a recession." He meant that even in the toughest times, companies have to spend money on new ideas.

"Customers don't come out of recessions spending the way they did before," said Chunka Mui, who has studied how companies can capitalize on opportunities during crises at his Chicago-based consulting firm, The Devil's Advocate Group. "They demand something different."

Surprisingly few companies are following Moore's advice of innovating during recessions.Companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index cut 25 percent on average from their capital expenditures expenses and 5 percent from research and development costs between the end of the third quarter last year and the second quarter this year, according to S&P.

Many have been crippled by the pullback in consumer and business spending as well as tight credit conditions, which is making it harder for companies to get loans to fund their operations. That's driven some to hoard cash and make drastic cost cuts. They're slashing jobs and wages and closing stores and factories.

"A downturn like this should force people's hand," he said.At Intel, Moore's philosophy has been used consistently since he led the chipmaker starting in the late 1970s. Over the years, the Santa Clara, Calif., company's top executives continue to openly discuss the company's strategy of investing heavily in downturns.

I expect your company has cut spending and limited its innovation process to save the bottom line correct? Is it prepared for the upturn?

This is an AP reprint

Virtualizing Human Resources

Have you migrated your HR group to "on-line" yet? What I mean is have you continued to build your HR information and content on the web or company intranet. So what does this really mean and what should or can go on-line:

• benefits information
• employee self-service data such as address changes
• payroll information and electronic deposit receipts instead of paper
• virtual meetings with managers and outliers/web conferencing
• regulatory and compliance information
• all-hands company meeting information
• new hire orientation

The future of HR is going to be more on-line and web related information and conferences rather than expensive paper intensive information, travel, and compliance reporting. I would suspect that most large companies have already done this but I am specifically targeting the middle to small organizations that really are in the backwater of HR technology.

Company Training & Development

Rather than post a survey on the site I thought I would ask one of the most important questions directly to my readers. How many dollars have you allocated in your 2009-2010 budget for training and development?

I am sure that in late 2007 and in the 2008-2009 budget you saw cuts in this area because it is always one of the first line items to go when the economy changes or the company numbers are not what they should be. But if you look at the many years where training has been cut you can also see a correlation in the turnover rate of your very best performers or your high potentials. If they do not see you investing in them they will seek out a company that will.

If you can't see this then you are blind to the issue of employee investment even in bad times. I have been an advocate of keeping T & D off limits during budget cuts. It has worked.

So, what has your company done in your current budgeting process? Send me your comments to wgstevens2@@gmail.com .