February 2017 | Social Jack | It's ALL About Who You Know

If you missed the webcast that launched on August 9^th that featured Miri Rodrigues, lead of community and social support at Microsoft Office. In this session, we learned about trends in social care and what customers want from brands, understood key internal players that impact the social space and how to partner strategically with them to deliver a unified social voice to customers. And finally, how to hack social content to leverage multiple sources within the organization to take the customer through their anticipated journey in social channels.

You can listen to the podcast version here.

2016 Social Media Trends:

Real Time Engagement: consumers want you to engaged with them. Your customers are now looking for a response time of 30 minutes or less, this number went down significantly from last year when customers expected a response in an hour or less. This contributes from the fact that our attention spans are “like that of a tree frog,” says Miri.
Live Streaming Video: There are so many outlets and platforms where live streaming is now an option and consumers are now looking to not only follow a brand, but their employers also. It gives consumers a feel that brands aren’t robotic.
The Passionate Consumer: Consumers begin following company employers because “people follow people” says Miri.

2016 Customer Experience Trends:

Retail Stores Aren’t going Anywhere: Consumers want to be able to physically handle products. Think about Amazon Prime stores that are starting to pop up all over the country. Why would consumers wait if they could have it right now?
Say Goodbye To Call Centers: The call centers we know of today will be a thing of the past soon. With phones decreasing as a communication channel, chat (instant messenger, etc) are becoming the new way of communication. Consumers prefer this because of the lightning fast responses from IM. Which websites have you been on recently that have a “chat with an associate” now button?

Don’t be a Social Media Watermelon

The definition of a social media watermelon is simple: One the outside you’re green, on the inside you’re red. The assumption here is that by the look of it, watermelons have it all together but in reality they are a mess. When you cut open a watermelon you’ll notice the seeds are scattered all over, we think of these as employees who are not on the same mindset. In order to not be a social media watermelon you have to follow the 3 steps.

Connect Internally
Define Your Goals
Unify Your Message

Another way to connect to your followers on social media is to take a risk. Your audience will take notes on the type of content you are posting. Miri says that she often does polls on Twitter. Some are personal and some are work related. But in the end you are testing your audience and seeing what type of content they reply to.

You can follow Miri Rodriguez on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn. And as always, if you’d like to be watch these videos live—sign up for Social Jack today! See you online, and stay social!

Growing your company from in the inside out might be one of the easiest things you could do for your company. In today’s world of employee advocacy, social media, leadership and transparency, companies are beginning to change the way that they act and feel in front of their clients. This is also changing the way we do business.

One of the most important shifts that we see is a new commitment by companies that have been talking about becoming a social business. We’ve seen this take on many different meanings.
But what does all of this have to do with culture? In order for us to be social, and in order for our clients to feel connected, we have to be connected internally first. The way we look at it, is that this is where the application of our Social Jack system and social teaming come into play. When we go into an organization, whether it’s from marketing, sales or culture side, we look to see how the company is connected together, before we start connecting them externally.

This allows them to begin to work together as a team but also be transparent together. This works best when there is a top down initiative, and the leadership is bought into the fact that the company will not operate in this fashion.

The great news about this is that you can be any size company, what matters is that you operate as a cohesive team internally, working together so that clients are connecting to you but also the brand. We also see this as a marketing incentive that we call “humanizing the brand.” All of a sudden, we’re bringing the brand alive with people from within the organization. So this does promote a couple of great things as we begin to take this shift and make this happen.

It builds a stronger internal trust between the team members and the culture.
It allows us to connect to each other’s networks for resources and visibility.
It helps support employee retention, recruiting, and career development.
And ultimately it helps marketing the brand through the people to the rest of the world.

So when we look at building a social culture from the inside out it has a lot of benefits although it has to start with training the core employees making sure the brand and the people operate in concert with each other as they begin to communicate externally. This we see as culture changing for any size business. Here are seven tips to build the social culture within your own compa435ny.

Top Down Initiative-leadership buy-off: Without support from leaders within a company, social culture cannot strive in the business atmosphere. To make this work, you must be enlightened and a reformist CEO. Another way is to make the business care internally by reverse engineering out of the company’s business goals. By doing this, you are showing how social practices can help achieve social culture.
Corporate Mission-: Quit overlooking the pages of the annual reports, today mission statements must be influential and inspire employees at work. Does this support the effort?
Policy-: Remember to educate your employees on what can and cannot be said on behalf of the company. What type of rules do you have in place at your business? A known social media policy is also important, remember what goes on the Internet, stays on the Internet.
Roles: Within a social business, roles become an important dynamic between how the employees help the business operate. Social media isn’t just for the younger employees, today it is key for all employees to utilize social media. Get online, get to tweeting, posting and snapchating away! Who are your internal champions?
Rewards and celebrations: Employees are the root of expanding the brand and the story your company tells, remember to recognize and reward employees on their efforts. It is important to create a culture of socially sharp employees.
Contribution: When employees show extra effort in volunteering to make the company thrive forward, it shows customer’s that the brand displays an authentic commitment.
Measurement: Every marketing company knows that they have to measure levels of engagement among posts. What are the metrics that your company is using? Which KPI’s (key performance indicators) work best and how do they tie back to business? A productive business will help employees become hard working brand ambassadors.

So no matter where you are in the journey, start changing your culture today so that you can reach more business from the inside out. Let us know if you need any support around getting started, we would love to help!

Miri Rodriguez from Microsoft reveals, “Don’t be a Social Media Watermelon”

Miri Rodriguez from Microsoft reveals, “Don’t be a Social Media Watermelon”

7 Steps That Will Excel Your business and Build Social Culture