You Want My Social Media Password? Uh, Uh. I Don’t Think So
By · Leave a comment with your thoughtsI thought that local, state and federal agencies in the U.S. wanted to help put people back to work. As if it wasn’t difficult enough to gain employment, RedTape Chronicles of msnbc.com reported that government agencies and even colleges are now asking job seekers to provide a user name and password for facebook accounts.
The ACLU of Maryland has called on the Maryland Division of Corrections to rescind a blanket policy demanding personal social media passwords from corrections officers and applicants as part of the employment certification process.
If a password isn’t the request, it’s the requirement that you “friend” or “follow” a coach or some other authority.
I’m not a lawyer but I think it’s safe to say this is another egregious trampling of our constitutional rights. What is happening in our country when now we can’t even have freedom to assemble in social communities without intrusion? Read More→
The Secret to Telling a Story
By · Leave a comment with your thoughtsI was just browsing through the McKinsey Quarterly, and stumbled upon an interview with the authors of The Dragonfly Effect, Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, in which they discuss the secret to telling a successful story.
Create Tension
Jennifer Aaker
As a blogger, I am always telling stories. It’s at the heart of what bloggers do. So, let me lift a quote from Jennifer Aaker:
Good stories have three components: a strong beginning, a strong end, and a point of tension. Most people confuse stories with situations. They’ll tell about a situation: X happened, Y happened, Z happened. But a good story takes Y, the middle part of the story, and creates tension or conflict where the reader or the audience is drawn into the story, what’s going to happen next.
A Compelling Story
In their book, they describe a case study of 28-year-old Scott Harrison, a nightclub and fashion promoter, earning lots of money. But he felt spiritually bankrupt and gave it all up to volunteer on a floating hospital while he figured out what to do with the rest of his life.
He came back with a renewed sense of passion, and formed a foundation charity: water to help bring clean water to millions of underserved populations around the world who don’t have any.
In the McKinsey piece, they describe his story – about asking friends to donate $31 to his charity instead of buying him a gift for his 31st birthday. To date, the charity has raised $20 million and provided clean water to more than 1.4 million people spanning 17 countries.
Read the Middle
I just gave you the beginning and end of the story. If you want to find out the point of tension in the middle, go to the interview on the McKinsey Quarterly
6 Steps to Empower Your Employees as Brand Ambassadors
By · Leave a comment with your thoughtsEmployees are actively engaging on social networks such as twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, tumblr, Pinterest and others that seem to pop up every day. With the encouragement and trust of senior management, employees can become your company’s most important and loyal brand ambassadors.
Engage Your Employees
Below is a presentation (slightly revised) that I presented at a recent HR.com webinar on Social Media and Employee Communications. My presentation entitled “Empowering Employees as Brand Ambassadors” included:
- The steps your company can take to develop a corps of brand advocates – from identifying ambassadors, training them, developing a pilot program, and then launching your advocates on social media.
- How companies like IBM, Zappos, and Comcast are engaging their employees to burnish their brands and sell more products and services.
- How to develop a social media policy that works for your company.
If you would like a larger view, you can see the presentation on SlideShare.
Employee “Welcomers” are Key to Good Customer Service and Repeat Business
By · Leave a comment with your thoughtsCompanies know through research and personal experience that good customer service is the secret to retaining and attracting new customers. Yet many companies don’t do it well, as Richard Shapiro, a client retention expert, says in his new book The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business.
Richard Shapiro
They haven’t identified those employees — whom he calls “welcomers” — who are especially adept at engaging with customers so they buy over and over again.
Welcomers are essential to bricks-and-mortar retailers and to providing online customer service where it can be more difficult to provide that personal touch.
Secrets to Repeat Business
Shapiro shares his own experience as a teenager in his father’s haberdashery store. His father had the gift of being interested in customers as people. As Shapiro says in his book, “What I learned then is…customers are people first and customers second.” The Welcomer Edge describes how to make first time customers into repeat customers. Read More→
