Does your engagement strategy cut the mustard?

Social media revels in Web 2.0 characteristic of real-time synchronicity. Its highly interactive media make social media a playground of engagement.

Well then, as a business enterprise – small, medium or large – your judicious choice of channels to attract new clientele, while conserving your loyalty base, has kept you on your digital toes (pun intended). Your avatars as communication manager, marketing communication specialist, digital content advisor … spend days and nights brainstorming how to get conversions. Are you yourself converting a homely equation? Book Smart + Practice Smart = Best Outtakes?

Are your engagement goals up to par?
Some companies enter the social media arena with nebulous ideas about getting conversions, setting key performance indicators, getting metrics … . Few question their office pundits if they’re going about these mantras the smartest ways. In this blog, let’s explore what do you aim to achieve with the content you prepared whether these are snackable delights for Twitter or a listicle for Facebook or more of a full meal as a blog or an editorial on your website. The common denominator is engagement. Yes, having come so far, did you define what level of engagement you can wrest from the throbbing minds of the cyber multitudes?

Katie Paine in her book Measuring What Matters writes that users consume content on multiple levels of engagement. On an ascendency scale:

• The base level rests with lurking; those who merely like or click through posts and links. Is this all you are measuring? Hmmm, ever wonder why you are getting nowhere in your “metrics” or “strategy”?
• On the 2^nd level are those who follow you on your social media accounts and those who comment on posts. How far can your strategy get you if all you see is “Nice picture!” and other inane remarks on your Facebook page, eh?
• Midway are those who retweet or repeat comments – in short, they share your content with others. You deserve better than people sharing your stuff.
• The 4^th level gets those who display positive sentiments for your organization. Now things are looking up for you.
• At the highest level are those who champion your causes, your organization and advocate for what you do. Are you aiming for this level of engagement?

Is your content segmented for its specific publics? How did audience specialization figure as part of your strategy? Does your content cut the mustard for the level of engagement you hope for?

Did you query the quality of relationships between your organization and its diverse publics?
Social media caters to relationship building in ways that traditional media cannot match. Relationship building with all stakeholders is the cornerstone of public relations. Public relations is about story telling; the value being in the retelling.

Your narratives should stimulate discussion, be credible, be relevant and generate trust. The level of user engagement that emerges is but a testimony to what you put out, when and how.

What’s your Engagement hook in the Enterprise?

Worldwide, only 13% of employees feel connected and engaged in the workforce.¹ Regionally, Gallup estimates show Canadian workforce fare a painfully bashful count of 16% engaged, 70% not engaged and 14% actively disengaged, ±3% being margin of error.² When the greater part of our waking lives is devoted to work, why then are we distancing ourselves from the hand that feeds us? Our vested interests in our own well-being should be incentive enough to learn to cultivate positive attitudes and behaviours in our work environment.

How does poor organizational health affect the work landscape? Loss in productivity, lack of motivation, low employee morale, high attrition or frequent requests for employee transfer, below average work, higher than average number of sick days … . Is the social fabric of workplaces disintegrating? Employers are well aware of the mounting high costs at stake. We’ve dabbled bravely to find solutions, and continue to do so. Common “fixes” are legion and …

                    

… Band-aid relief at best. And perhaps, an honest acceptance of a sad reality that none of the previously tried fixes neither significantly influenced nor improved workplace culture. True, the outcomes raised hopes, employees enjoyed a day of fun, the feel good aura lingered temporarily … and dissipated. The weight of day-to-day demands on productively on a stringent workforce fretfully vaporized the efforts and expenses required to process promising changes.

The root causes are rarely addressed – lack of clear communication and lack of a sense of community. Employee engagement ceased being a Human Resource dilemma; it is now a practice of shared responsibility. The time has come to turn the tide with smart technology using enterprise social network as the solution. This might well prove the glue that binds the enterprise together engagingly.

Regardless of region or industry, businesses seeking to adapt to rapidly changing global economic conditions must learn how to maintain high-productivity workplaces … in widely varying social, cultural, and economic environments.

Software holds the key. Bring in social technology to break the arm-lock hold of top-down communication hierarchy and silo-enamoured communication by allowing every employee to contribute and participate using social network applications accessible via smartphones, laptops and desktops to engage across departments and hierarchies— skip over tired, disinterested or overworked managers, supervisors that employees do not trust … and  allow for instant and spontaneous applause, praise and feedback from peers and colleagues.

Companies need to embrace a “human-centred, design-led mobile approach to the front-end experiences of workplace management tools”.³ Here, then are a variety of noteworthy tools proven to revitalize employee engagement. They require no advance training, are easy to install and use in hardware already in place.

Enterprise Software	What it does for you
WeThrive	Gives managers a clear picture of staff who need help, where and how allowing them to respond immediately and effectively.
TinyPulse	Peer-to-peer feedback; uses a mixture of management deployed surveys and “cheers” authored by colleagues.
Epic	Measures and improves workplace climate with weekly 360 degree mini-surveys for all employees.
Engagement Multiplier	Gets an honest assessment from teams and help track and increase engagement.
Everwise	Connects employees with mentors to give them insights to succeed at every stage of their career.
MeoCare	Rewards employees with health programs they already love such as Yoga, weight loss, Pilates, cooking, fitness, diet and nutrition.
Achievers	Employee recognition that changes the way you work.
6Q	Boosts company culture in just two minutes per week.
tibbr	Gathers employees, discussions, apps, tasks and content in one place.
Newsweaver	Improves, controls and measures the impact of every internal email you send.

Social networks let all employees shine. They create a connected community in real-time transcending institutional communication hierarchy. All of which is measurable and actionable for improvements. And that’s a welcome and refreshing change in engagement culture, isn’t it?

References

1. Dennis Sims. Lack of employee engagement can be a costly disadvantage. Nashville BizBlog. October 2015. Accessed 24 October 2015. bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2015/10/lack-of-employee-engagement-can-be-a-costly.html
2. Gallup. State of the global workplace. 2013. Report.  www.gallup.com/services/178517/state-global-workplace.aspx
3. Jamie True in How Software Will Transform Employee Engagement. July 2015.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2015/07/21/how-software-will-transform-employee-engagement/

Inclusive design in communication

Business websites regardless of size or strength of business, clientele, general or niche or specialty of focus, market or audience owe inclusivity in content to all their users. Inclusive design in communication is more than conforming to and providing standards of accessibility in content for persons with disabilities.

This article provides tips and access points of information for inclusive content design. I begin with an area that is often overlooked because we use the tool so often and pervasively that we tend to forget its function as a powerful tool — words.

Words on our websites need to be understood. We put them there in the first place to fulfil a user task. Yes, we learned so much from usability studies how people scan and not read content – the F-shaped pattern, front loading, optimizing search on browsers, fonts easy on the eye, use of bullets … all lined up for persons with non-disabilities. Well, let’s think “redesign”.

The value of common words and short sentences for inclusivity

• Sophistication is simplicity in our choice of words – use common words as it helps speed up understanding for the users to complete their task. The best written content is designed not to make users think or second guess what they have to do next.
• People with some learning disabilities read letter for letter – they don’t bounce around like other users. They also can’t fully understand a sentence if it’s too long.¹
• People with moderate learning disabilities can understand sentences of 5 to 8 words without difficulty. By using common words we can help all users understand sentences of around 25 words.¹

Images we use on our websites embrace two categories – those that carry information and those for aesthetic add-ons. Images with information for the user are infographics, flow-charts, labels, messages, speech bubbles … . The content owner (meaning you) must provide alternate text or long descriptions explaining the message in the image so that screen readers can convey the same message to persons who use such devices on their computers. This area is well discussed in the Web Compliance and Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

Images that your websites use whether informative or aesthetic should portray inclusivity in their diversity of people with all levels of ability. For example, if your website is tourism related, show pictures of people in wheelchairs enjoying a day on the beach. And employ integrity in your ads – use real-life models. This creates a beneficial ripple effect and sends ad agencies a powerful message to build up their lists to invite persons with various disabilities to work for them.

Portable document formats (PDFs) are great to showcase your creativity in the graphics, colours, design and layout when you present brochures, pamphlets and other promotional or educational material for your users. Please ensure that the most accessible format is available as the first choice – HTML or PHP pages.

Colour contrast. Yes, you chose the colours on your website to match your logo, to complete one another, to look distinctive … . All of which is worthy rationale. Did you include “inclusivity” in your checklist? Check out the hexadecimal colour codes you used to find out how you match up using this colour contrast analyser – pass or fail?²

In our work world of diversity, our challenge is inclusivity. And it’s a challenge that only takes a few steps to go a long way.

Reference
1. UK Govt. Content design: planning, writing and managing content. Accessed 6 November 2015. http://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk

 

Gone with the viral wind?

What’s your social noise?
Of course we all want our voices or of those we represent to be heard online virally. To begin with, the question and paradoxically, the first of many, begs itself. By whom? And why?

Social media channels make it easy for us to throw our voices into the howling cyber winds. The powerful digital domain allows our message to be encrypted in a space that time and technology can resurrect long after the establishments have faded, causes forgotten and we’ve moved on.

So who is listening? The delightful aspect is that engaging messages, quirky, compassionate, witty, trendy, unintentionally brilliant are responded to, pick up the pace and create powerful firestorms. The power of new media messaging lies in those numbers easily measured even by the simplest and the lowliest scale of engagement metrics ─ Likes. What we hope for is some action going beyond the skin deep. Vanity metrics matter to those in the entertainment industry and in the political landscape, where there’s strength in numbers. Others are well advised to look at conversion rates and how this translates to economic values as factors to test the listening waters of their communication products.

So is your strategy to make any variety of noise and hope to be listened to? Or do you craft your messaging so that even the few who hear, respond in ways you want them to? Your business profits from a few, say 500, followers who are so tuned to your communication products that much of their engagement is a positive conversion to boost your business. The draw of the Pull. Isn’t this way better than friending a couple of thousand other sites who will unlikely convert their interest, faked or bought, to dollar value for your business no matter what you push out to them. Pull over Push.

Yes, you need to track how each communication product fares that you put out. Set up Google Analytics or buy Adobe Analytics and engage trained staff that track customized metrics for you.

Your messages can’t be gone with the wind.

 

 

Fenceline communities – friend not foe

Fenceline communities; why they matter in corporate communication

The best of PR strategy would dare not ignore the value of fenceline communities. The neighbourhood and communities physically in the vicinity of a corporate office, manufacturing unit, or its operational base should be the best asset you can have in your PR corner. However global corporations expand, the worth of those little guys adds sterling value to your communication strategy.

Groom your PR with these smart tactics:

1. Set up Town Hall meetings each month at public libraries and let the fence-line communities know of these dates and the agenda.

• Question and answer sessions by senior staffers to general public. Easy to access venues with free public parking are key to success.
• Get statements from public with permission to use them in press releases.
• Meet the “hot button” topics head-on with clear and brief outlines about the ways your company is addressing these issues.
• Aim to strengthen your position by providing audiences evidence based understanding of the issues at stake (jobs, environment, air quality, improving work safety …)

2. Issue updates on website and newsletters. Use multi-modal ways to address these updates – pictures, short videos on YouTube or even on Vine, post infographics, textual and audio messages from corporate seniors.
3. Conduct on-site tours inviting press personnel and key external stakeholders (NGOs, public, investors, for example) on site. Get your own pictures and videos of these events.
4. Offer bi-weekly prize draws (even a $50 gift card) to sign up on your corporate website to receive email. Send personalized emails using Mail Chimp. It also allows you to track metrics without invasion of privacy.
5. Send out public surveys to fenceline communities and use those results to drive further action or to change your course of action.
6. Learn from competitors in the same field or similar problems from different corporations. There are both good examples to follow and poor choices to avoid. Mould your messages.
7. Issue Google Ads and install Google Analytics on your website. Track and measure the success of your campaigns. It will help identify heat maps of activity and interest that will help you in targeted PR campaigns meaningfully. Use A/B testing and cohort testing in your messaging.
8. Integrate PR campaigns with corporate marketing (energy companies are masters of this tactic).

Measure, evaluate and analyze all outcomes of effort. PR doesn’t have to be expensive, slick spin doctoring; audiences are savvy and see through glibness. Follow best practices and elevate the little guy to being your most powerful ambassador. And friend.

It works.