Social Media in Management

CIO Magazine's Sue Bushell has written an interesting article, called 'Management 2.0? That'll Be The Day', on the challenges that CIOs -- and companies, in general -- are facing with the advent of social media technologies in the workplace.

In his book, The Future of Management, Gary Hamel suggests that organizations today face a new set of business challenges that the existing management model does not match. The drone worker of yesterday is giving way to the engaged and vocal employee of today who expects a company culture that replicates the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 — in other words Management 2.0

The name Gary Hamel will, of course, be very familiar to anyone who has done any MBA and has studied the (frequently incorrectly-used) Core Competency concept.

The article is long but useful as it gives managers a lot to think about and hopefully look into:

Managers have a general sense of what Web 2.0 tools are — especially when it comes to applications they’re familiar with like YouTube, Facebook, or Linkedin. But they still struggle to understand these technologies, discover their real business value, address the risks and figure out how to best use them.

This, by the way, is where someone like me would come in: I know both management (theory and practice) and technology (uses and implementations) and can help senior management come up with an implementation of social media that enhances project management, decision making, and internal communication and collaboration.

The trick is that social media integration in an enterprise needs to be a long-term project and not something you hire a consulting firm to do for you in a few weeks. It needs to grow experimentally, possibly slowly, and from the ground-up. And while it will probably change a number of times as it develops -- which means it's not something you can really plan for in advance -- you can start with a few basic governance rules (who does what and what everyone is in responsible for), some content guidelines (that cover privacy, security, and intellectual property), and a simple usage policy (like the two-word "be careful" policy that is often a good start).

Speaking of governance...

Challenges of the Multi-Generational Workforce

The discussion on how to manage a multi-generational workforce -- which is an issue for many managers these days -- reminds me of a blog post on banning Facebook that Toby Ward wrote on the Intranet Blog about a month ago:

Beware of Facebook! It will crush your productivity and hijack your employees!

[...]

Employees prefer to be treated as adults. Judge their performance and actions instead of counting their minutes spent doing "productive work."

Trust me, the threat and problems stemming from a ban far exceed the embrace option. Prescient Digital Media’s Julian Mills last week highlighted the findings of one recent survey that warned of the perils of banning Facebook:

  • 39% of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube
  • A further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban
  • The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16% would consider leaving and 13% would be annoyed

Of course "consider leaving" doesn't mean they actually will leave but it does mean that they probably won't join your company in the first place. Especially if they announce your blanket banning policy on the Facebook group about your company that you didn't know existed.

I know that I, for one, wouldn't want to join a company that bans sites like Facebook or doesn't let you blog, read blogs, pay your bills, read the news, check your e-mail, or basically have a life outside work while you're at work. Limiting YouTube usage makes a little more sense since there's a bandwidth cost associated with online video but, even then, it shouldn't be banned outright.

As Ward said in his article, companies shouldn't be taking the Taylorist approach to management. Of course you'll get employees who'll take 30 minutes to make themselves a cup of coffee or spend an hour on Facebook every now and then -- but that's okay as long as they (a) get their jobs done, (b) don't stop others from getting their jobs done, and (c) don't use-up too many freely-provided company resources (like bandwidth or, for that matter, coffee).

I guess all I can conclude with is that, with the advent of social media and the existence of a multi-generational workforce...well, the next five years are going to be really interesting

Online Community Compensation Study

The Online Community Report just released its Online Community Compensation Study.

Most of the study's key findings shouldn't come as a surprise to people working in this space: the community team employs more women than men, most team members are between 31 and 50 years old, and most have over five years of work experience. However the compensation figures are a little higher than I expected at an average of US$81k (approximately AU$95k).

I also wasn't expecting women to be earning 91% (on average) of what men are earning. Assuming that factors like experience, industry, average company salary, position in corporate hierarchy, department within the company, importance of community role for company, etc. have all been statistically removed from this analysis -- and they probably haven't all been removed -- then the lower salary for women is most disappointing.

Meanwhile, the most heartening result from the study is, of course, the job satisfaction rating which is an average of 4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5 :)

FYI: OCR's Key Resources blog post category is a great place to look if you want to start or further develop your online community.

Social Media in the Enterprise

Toby Ward writes on the Intranet Blog about a survey conducted by Robert Half Technology that found that over 70% of US CIOs don't plan to use social media tools -- such as blogs and wikis -- in the next five years.

That number might sound a little daunting but, really, it isn't.

Issues with the Survey Itself

Because these are aggregate numbers, they're too generalized and don't give us much information. In fact, they're pretty useless: so what if 70% of US CIOs don't plan to use social media in the next five years? What does that "70%" actually mean to you and me and to our company and its social media adoption decision? Not much.

A breakdown of the results by industry and company size would have been better...but even that wouldn't have been enough. Had each social media tool included a follow-up question that asked "Why will you not be using this particular tool?" the survey may have been somewhat useful.

Also, "next five years" in technology or Internet time is ages! How can CIOs realistically predict whether or not they will be using a particular tool or technology five years from now? The question should have asked for a one-year prediction and the survey should then be conducted annually. Which is why Forrester's surveys, or the annual Enterprise 2.0 survey conducted by McKinsey (which I wrote about earlier), are much more useful.

Issues with the Conclusion

That said, even the implicit conclusion -- that most CIOs don't see the benefits of social media in the enterprise -- isn't all that worrisome because true social media adoption rarely starts at the CIO level. More often that not, it's bottom-up instead of top-down.

That is, employees first start to use social media on their own and among each other. Over time, the business begins to benefit from this. Once usage crosses a particular threshold -- and the benefits become more obvious and more measurable -- management (finally) realizes what's going on and has social media (or just the particular tool in question) implemented across the entire organization.

This is pretty much the conclusion that Toby Ward reached as well. Read his complete post (with conclusion) on the Content Matters blog.

So What's My Point?

Surveys like this provide neat sound bytes and are used as justification by senior management for not looking into social media.

So be careful when you talk to senior managers about social media usage and adoption in the enterprise: they usually don't have a clue but, sometimes, they do have a little bit of knowledge (such as this survey) but turns out to be dangerous.

Chris Brogan on Social Media

Over the last couple of weeks, Chris Brogan has been writing a series of fantastic primer/best-advice blog posts about social media on his blog. Make sure you read them:

Oh, and here are a couple of more of his posts that are really good:

Awesome work, Chris! Thanks.

McKinsey's 2008 Social Media in the Enterprise Survey

McKinsey recently published the results of its second annual survey of social media [1] usage in the enterprise: 'Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results'. (You need to register with the McKinsey Quarterly website to read the article, though).

The results, in one sentence, are encouraging: "Companies have adopted more Web 2.0 tools this year than in 2007 and are using them for higher-value purposes". For a good overview of and commentary on the results, read Hadley Reynold's article on this topic on the FASTForward blog.

[1] The term 'Web 2.0' is just plain silly. It's like saying: "We now ship frozen food in refrigerated trucks via our road network so we should start calling it 'Road 2.0' because that's an extension of what the network was originally created for. Regular warehouses are 'Roads 1.0' while refrigerated warehouses are 'Roads 2.0'." And so on.

Standard Format for Online CVs in Australia

ITWire's Stan Beer reports that a number of Australian technology recruitment companies have signed on to make the iProfile their preferred CV template for candidates applying through them.

This sounds like an interesting idea and will probably make life easier for recruiters. I don't know how it'll work out for candidates, though. If candidates can retain their individuality despite the standard format -- as the 'The CV is Dead - Long Live the iProfile' video seems to indicate -- then it should be okay. If not, it'll commoditize them and that's not good.

Since I haven't actually seen the iProfile template -- you can't unless you sign up and they don't have any samples you can view -- I guess I'll just have to wait and see (or, of course, sign up and take a look).

That said, the good thing about the iProfile standard is that a whole bunch of recruitment companies have signed up to work with it. Without that, it'd be no better than your standard Seek, LinkMe, or SixFigures online profile: good but maybe not as widely available as you'd want it to be. Also, the privacy and viewing controls that this system seems to have are really nice too.

More generally, I like the fact that this announcement evangelises the use of online CVs to the Australian recruitment industry. So while all recruitment agencies won't be using the iProfile, maybe they'll start to pay more attention to things like LinkedIn profiles and other social media attributes of their candidate pool. Here's hoping.

2008 List of Forms of Web Marketing by Jeremiah Owyang

I meant to post this...well, months ago but I completely forgot. I found it in my Windows Live Writer's draft posts lists this afternoon and figured that, even though I'm late, its' still well worth posting.

Jeremiah Owyang maintains 'A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing' which he updated for 2008:

This document catalogs the many tools and tactics available for corporate web strategy in 2008. Even if your strategy or resource limitations restrict you from entering all spaces, awareness of the changes in our digital landscape are critical. This document is intended for decision makers roles such as CMO/VP/Director of Web and Marketing.

It's an awesome and hugely important list of, well, everything you need (or could possible want) to think about for web marketing. You must take a look at it.

Online Reputation Management

Laurel Papworth wrote an excellent post a few days ago about reputation management in social networks. I highly recommend you read it.

I'd actually go a step further and say that most of what she said is also true for your reputation on the Internet in general -- though that's a little more scattered and is therefore a little harder to gauge. Still, if you've been online for even a short amount of time and have participated in almost anything, you will have left a trace.

People can (and do) search the web for your name, e-mail address, phone number, alias/handle/nickname, and so on. And the deeper they dig, the more they usually find. For example, you can search for me using the following queries and can learn a little more about me each time:

Cool, isn't it? Or scary...depending on how you look at it. And the best (or worst) part of all this is that, once your information is up there, it's pretty difficult (read: darned near impossible) to get down.

To quote an already oft-quoted quote, Sun Microsystem's CEO Scott McNealy way back in 1999 said: "You already have zero privacy (on the Internet). Get over it."  Yup. Get over it and, since it follows logically: manage your online reputation really well. Particularly since your online and offline reputations are increasingly crossing over -- that too in both directions.

Links: Marketing, Web 2.0, Management Blogs

I don't usually do link posts but I've been so busy these last couple of weeks I haven't had time to write about the following useful links in any detail:

  1. Samuel Dean from Web Worker Daily wrote a post called 'VTC: Killer Online Tutorials, Mostly Free'

  2. HR World wrote about the 'The Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark' [via Trevor Cook]

  3. Jeremiah Owyang presented 'A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008'

  4. Ross Dawson, writing in BRW Magazine, listed the 'Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications'

What Community Managers Get Paid

The Community Manager role is still relatively new and somewhat hard to pin down:

  • Does it fall under marketing communications, PR, brand management, HR, internal communications, or IT?
  • Is it an operational, tactical, or strategic role?
  • Should the person be a junior, middle, or senior level employee?
  • Will the role be managed by one person or by a team (e.g. manager, moderator, tech person)?

Because of its newness, the confusion surrounding its place in the organizational hierarchy, and the many different ways in which companies are engaging their customers and employees, this role is handled in different ways by different companies.

However, increasingly, the Community Manager role is becoming an entirely separate job position. That is, as social media has increased in usage, importance, relevance, and impact, community management tasks can no longer be simply added-on to a communications person or marketer's job description.

Okay, Now What?

But now that companies are creating these roles, they want to know how much they should pay Community Managers and, more fundamentally, what the job position's ROI is.

The latter question is harder to answer and, even if you work through the numbers, sometimes the best answer is "If you don't have someone dedicated to engaging your customers or employees, you will get left behind." Which is much like the answer to a question that a lot of companies were asking themselves in the 90's: "But why should we have a website?" :) 

Of course, all this depends on how strategically important customer interaction is to your company. Theoretically, the more important customer interaction is -- and assuming your customers are increasing their social media usage -- the more you should be investing in a social media manager.

Theories aside, however, Connie Benson recently conducted a social media-based survey on what Community Managers are being paid these days and how companies are arriving at that figure. She wrote that all up in a blog post which concludes that, in the US, Community Managers are paid anything from US$60,000 to $110,000 (about AU$64-117k). Presumably this variation represents the amount of strategic importance placed by companies on customer engagement and the social media usage of customers.

What About Australia?

However, based on the few (and far between) community management-type job openings I've come across over the last few months, I can safely say that the Australian salary range for Community Managers is significantly lower. That's mainly because social media still doesn't figure in most Australia companies' strategies. Oh well.

Hmmm...I wonder how much Telstra's Now We Are Talking site or its competitors' Tell The Truth Telstra site pays its community managers :)

Enterprise 2.0 Still Mostly Misunderstood

Awesome (but very long) article by CIO magazine's Sue Bushell called Enterprise 2.0 - What is it good for?:

Canberra-based knowledge economy and social computing evangelist Stephen Collins heard a quote earlier this year that perfectly describes the Enterprise 2.0 dilemma: "If you want to find out what tools your staff are finding most useful at the moment, just go and see what your IT department is blocking."

What a Community Manager Does

Since I've been busy these last few weeks, I've missed writing about a couple of good blog posts that I recently read.

First we have Chris Brogan who wrote an excellent post on what a community manager does:

Depending on the organization, I imagine the role of a community manager would be different, so I’m going to walk through what the role might entail for a media and events company (like mine), and see what comes to mind.

And second we have Tac Anderson who writes about the razor's edge that social media people have to walk every day:

Social media workers walk a dangerous line everyday. Everyday they walk into a battlefield not knowing what fate awaits them. One wrong word, one misinterpreted email, a delayed response to a blog comment; any of these things can start a fire storm that could ruin the reputation of the company or the social media worker.

Both are interesting and I highly recommend you read them.

I Can Haz Dream Job?

I would move to Seattle for this job:

I Can Has Cheezburger? is looking to hire a moderator to work in our Seattle office (Lower Queen Anne area)! You too can works for Happycat!

Moderators screen all submissions, moderate comments and help our users with the dangerous world of lolcats. This is a paid part-time (or possibly full-time position). Due to the nature of the site, moderators work non-standard office hours. You will be joining our team of 3 moderators in enjoying all the fun the Web can offer.

We’re looking for someone who lives in Seattle with a great sense of humor, a deep understanding and love of the Internets and a strong work ethic. Cat ownership is not required.

If you’re interested, email us your resume and/or cover letter at lol@icanhascheezburger.com

*sigh*

[Via Yahoo! News, via Digg]

Benchmarks for Social Media Experts

Great post yesterday by Chris Brogan: What I want a Social Media Expert to Know. Great comments too.

To expand on his post: What a social media expert should also know is that the answers -- if you re-frame Brogan's list as a set of questions -- can be different in different situations, with different companies and industries.

The social media expert might not be able to answer the questions correctly -- and with a high degree of certainty -- in all those situations but at least s/he should know (a) that there will be differences, (b) where to look to find the right answers for that situation, and (c) if there are no right answers, make a pretty educated guess as to what they will be.

I know this to be true, by the way, because I've worked both on external-facing web portals and internal-facing intranet portals and some of the answers to Brogan's questions are vastly different in those two cases.

Still, like he says, social media experts should have answers to all those questions. In fact, I'd expect a good social media job interview to cover most, if not all, of these questions as well.