Are you working for a company that blocks social media sites?

We love to hate them. Especially if you are the senior executives, IT manager, or business owner who is worried that your staff will spend more time socializing versus working.



The trouble with this perspective is that business owners need to empower employees to develop social business skills, and social business relationships. We need to have more varied touchpoints with clients and people we wish to have as clients. This audience needs to trust the business but since its very hard to trust an entity, we instead must realize the relationship must be a trust of our people.



Let your people use social media. Note that all 400,000 + employees are trusted to be on any website or social site at IBM.

Amplify’d from www.hreonline.com

Access Denied

A new listing of the top 10 most-banned websites by businesses in 2010 prompts the question: Who decides which sites get blocked? And, as social sites are most often blacklisted, it's ironic that experts say such decisions should be made by a cross-functional group, not by a single department.

Facebook. MySpace. YouTube.

Three of the most popular websites on the Internet are also the three most-blocked sites by businesses in 2010, according to a new industry report.

The report is based, in part, on the firm's 30 billion queries it receives daily from users.

OpenDNS, a San Francisco-based provider of Internet navigation and security services, recently released its list of the top 10 most-banned websites by businesses in 2010 as part of its first-ever in-depth report on the topic, entitled 2010 Report on Web Content Filtering and Phishing (PDF). Read more at www.hreonline.com

 

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Lets figure the ROI of transparency and authenticity in social media

When the Red Cross made a mistake and tweeted something on the @Redcross account that was meant for another (benefits and challenges jof using multi tasking tools) They reacted according to a plan that understood something like this might happen someday.



Thanks for showing us what transparency, authenticity looks like in social media. We hear about acknowledging mistakes but more companies need to see what that looks like in practice.



Funny, you should track the ROI for the mistake by noting the number of Comments on this blog post (96), the number RT helping you correct, the surge in mentions of @redcross, and the related surge in blood donations and dogfish beer sold across the county during the same time. If you do that I can use that in all my social media presentation as an example of "when" not "if" something goes wrong in social media, the right action and the ROI that any company can really buy into.



AND I am going to donate some tweets and real blood to @redcross to help out here and in NZ for the earthquake.

Amplify’d from redcrosschat.org

Twitter Faux Pas

We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake:

In the meantime we found so many of you to be sympathetic and understanding.  While we’re a 130 year old humanitarian organization, we’re also made of up human beings. Thanks for not only getting that but for turning our faux pas into something good.

You immediately embraced this mix-up and many of you have pledged donations to the Red Cross:

See more at redcrosschat.org

 

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Tales of the Bike Commuter: Episode 7: Just Coffee

 

NCP Model at work. This video is a great example of the NCP Model of the  Social Media Academy  by Wendy Soucie Consulting LLC. 

NCP stands for Network, Contribute, Participation. I connected with these wonderful people at Bike Wisconsin. I share with them several presentations to help their Wisconsin Tour Directors better understand how to use social media.  Giving presentations and posting online is one of the things I do to contribute value back to the social ecosystem.  

BikeWisconsin  (Eric Schramm and Mark Evans) in turn became more engaged and active on social media. They contributed back to their social ecosystem with this very fun blog with video pictures and text on bike commuting. I commented on the blog and asked questions and offered some suggestions. 

Bike Wisconsin shared the content back on this video which mentions me again.  I am enjoying sharing their succcess and fun blog back with my network. 

NCP Model works!

Related articles

• Pedal Power: Save Cash on Your Commute (turbotax.intuit.com)
• Cycling commuters react to new bike lanes (charlestoncitypaper.com)
• Student Again with Social Media Academy (deswalsh.com)
• Why Do People Bike Commute? (theatlantic.com)
• Social ecosystems tracked by Xeesm social graphs (wendysoucie.com)
• Eyes on the Street: Breakfast in the Bike Lane (streetsblog.org)

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest Pt 2 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo. http://bit.ly/fiRO4U

Latest recap for Social Media Breakfast Madison

Doug Tangwall of End Result Marketing puts us all to shame in writing this recap of the Feb SMB Madison event. If you have some questions about creating eye catching headlines and sub heads, Tangwall is a knowledgable local resource for writing, reearch, whitepapers, and nurture marketing which uses educational content to build business relationships.

Amplify’d from www.socialmediabreakfast.com

Kovi rides tandem with social passion and product research | Recap February 2011

Guest post by SMB member Doug Tangwall of End Result Marketing This week Robb Zbierski, director of manufacturer relations for Kovi —a consumer validation and product research company based in Madison, Wisconsin—shared his company’s business model and strategies with members of our local Social Media Breakfast-Madison. A Bicycle Built for Two Now in its second year of business, Zbierski says Kovi’s founder, Patrick M. Walters, chose bicycles as the initial focus of its research “because it is a passion-pursuit industry that was missing opportunities to connect customers and manufacturers.” He says, “Bicycle enthusiasts want the latest and greatest…want to be on the inside. [We discovered] there is a huge appetite to be part of the product design process.” So much so that Kovi now has a team of members each paying as much as $3,500 per year to participate in the company’s research studies. Read more at www.socialmediabreakfast.com

 

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