Not too long ago, the use of social media by corporations was considered a novelty. Visionaries such as Morgan Johnston at JetBlue and Frank Eliason, then of Comcast, were among the few who responded to customers online early on, and customers were pleasantly surprised to get a response. (Disclosure: JetBlue is an MWW Group client.)

Today, any company that doesn’t actively monitor and engage with consumers online is seen as a dinosaur that doesn’t care about its customers. But social media pioneers know that while this basic “blocking and tackling” of customer engagement is now essential, it’s no longer enough.

To build trust in this new world, companies must understand the new challenges they’ll face:

• An empowered public – Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has called writing online reviews a patriotic duty. New technologies and social media are catalyzing a great power shift in society from large institutions to individuals. The same technology that enabled citizens in the Middle East to organize and overthrow their governments are allowing consumers to band together and speak out against corporate practices or products they don’t like. As David Kirkpatrick recently wrote in a great article in Forbes, “We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves.”  Unhappy customers, who once would tell a handful of friends and family members about their bad experiences are now able to broadcast to the world as part of a permanent online record.
• A cynical public – Thanks to the financial crisis, a growing skepticism of the media, corporate and political scandals, trust in large organizations, from governments to corporations, is at an all-time low.
• Less control of brand – Until a few years ago, companies owned their message and their brand. Today, brands still spend billions of dollars pushing out carefully packaged, focus-tested messaging points. But customers no longer believe or put much stock in these messages. A recent Nielsen study found that 76% of consumers believe recommendations from friends are the most trusted form of advertisement, and increasingly, they’re sharing with their friends using social media.

So what can your company do to be successful in the social media space?

Unless you’re about to come out with the next iPhone model, customers on social media likely aren’t interested in your canned marketing messages. If you think of social media as another way to advertise, you’ll only be tuned out.

To be relevant and part of the social conversation, your messaging must reflect and reinforce that social media is all about community – and that you are an essential, beneficial member of that community. Old-style corporate philanthropy – writing six-figure checks without any engagement – is seen as buying good will (or political favors) rather than building it. Tellingly, many leaders of the biggest web and social media sites – Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Chris Hughes of Facebook, Ev Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter, Pierre Omdiyar of eBay – are now focusing on efforts that benefit the community.

Here are a few ways your company can do this and generate social media buzz:

• Show how your daily operations are important to society.  As one example, with the continued employment crisis, any company that is currently expanding its workforce should actively use social media to recruit candidates.  Of course doing so will not only help show the important role you’re playing in the community by creating jobs but will also help find top candidates.
• Adapt your business to benefit society – but be genuine. Though Wal-Mart has received much criticism in recent years, many environmentalists recognize the enormous positive impact of the retailer’s move to stop selling incandescent light bulbs and switch to more environmentally-friendly packaging for their products.
• Use your company’s unique skills and resources to help. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, Google’s scientists worked with the State Department to build a “People Finder” database. The company also released Google Earth satellite images to help rescue workers. Similarly, my former employer AT&T as well as Verizon and other U.S. phone companies made all calls to/from Haiti free in the weeks following the earthquake.  Two other examples just announced at the Clinton Global Initiative that are sparking positive online conversations are Pepsi’s public-private partnership in Ethiopia to increase chickpea production, and Microsoft’s “Shape the Future” 3 year initiative to bring computer hardware, software and internet service to 1 million US students from low-income families.
• Find ways to help your community. While a number of companies encourage employees to volunteer, more companies can do well by developing programs that help their customers volunteer and reward them for doing so.
• Don’t think you’re the exception to the rule. As management guru Gary Hamel said in the Kirkpatrick Forbes article, “I don’t think it’s crazy to ask if your CEO is the next Mubarak…. The elites—or managers in companies—no longer control the conversation.”

Your company can be a part of the social business revolution – or get left behind.

About the Author

Richard Robbins, MWW Group Vice President, Senior Digital Strategist, provides senior-level expertise on using digital and social media as an integral part of any successful communications program. He can be reached at rrobbins@mww.com or @rich1.

admin Social Media Craiglist, Employee Engagement, JetBlue, Pepsi, Social Media, Walmart

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey isn’t afraid to speak his mind. And in his latest YouTube missive, he expounds on the ever elusive topic of trust – how to earn it and how to make it part of your culture. At the core of his argument – you need to bring love and care into the workplace in order to achieve trust.

If you are thinking this all sounds a bit kumbaya, you wouldn’t be alone. But a quick Google search of caring for employees (not “love in the workplace – that is for a different kind of blog!) informed me that Mackey isn’t alone. There is a Florida furniture company that offers spiritual care to its employees with Company clergy available at work. People are writing their graduate thesis papers on the advantages of caring in the workplace. And the recruiting section of virtually every company website talks about how the organization cares for its employees.

But is that the same as love? Is there room for love in the workplace? And does it translate into trust?

While the language Mackey chooses in this video sounds a lot like a Sunday School teacher, the concept that people who know that their Company and its leaders legitimately care about them are more likely to trust is grounded in the kinds of lessons we all learned from our Depression era grandparents (or for the youngest members of the workforce, great grandparents). And intuitively that kind of culture would translate into care and concern of customers and communities.

So why don’t I buy it? I am a true believer in some of the underlying concepts here of respect for others, the importance of being passionate and the value of a leader who really speaks his or her mind.

I don’t know much about the culture at Whole Foods – and maybe this video will really resonate with the people who work there. But by posting it on YouTube, it seems Mackey is trying to speak to a broader audience…and for a cynical, spin-sensitive person like me, the saccharine nature of the message makes me suspicious.

The moral of this story? Choose your words carefully. Even when the message is good, the tone still matters.

cwinters General Corporate Employee Engagement, Whole Foods

This guest piece in Forbes about the importance of culture and employee communications at the new United Airlines just hit my inbox. It’s true that the majority of mergers fail due to post merger integration problems. While experts often focus on systems and back office, the issue of culture should not be overlooked.

Airlines are particularly vulnerable to the impact of culture on reputation. In any given customer flight, there are a multitude of opportunities to muck it up – oversold seats, security lines, weather and air traffic delays, lost luggage – and none of these involved direct employee customer interaction yet. Add a surly flight attendant, a prickly gate agent or baggage handler who just doesn’t care that it takes forever for your bag to arrive, it seems miraculous that airlines – who live and die by their DOT statistics – ever have a good reputation. Let’s face it, they pack hundreds of humans into a flying tin can, with not enough personal space (unless you know which seat to pick or choose to buy more leg room!) and nothing to do but tweet from the tarmac.

Employees need to have a common goal, and a shared vision of how to reach that goal. And they need to understand HOW TO DO THEIR SPECIFIC JOB in order to contribute to that goal.

Continental Airlines has a great track record in building a culture to optimize performance. Some of my greatest years were spent working with them on that very project. United, by reputation, not so much.

It should be an interesting case to watch.

Bob Silver can be reached at bsilver@mww.com.

bsilver Employee Engagement, General Corporate Continental, Employee Engagement, integration, mergers, United

One of the trends of 2009 that is sure to continue in 2010 is the emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility as a critical element of success for organizations of all sizes. And while history has shown the tendency to seek a silver bullet – CSR = philanthropy, or more recently, CSR = “GREEN” (a topic for an entirely different post, I think) I am pleased to see more companies and more clients taking a substantive approach to CSR that is comprehensive, authentic and pardon the already over-used word, SUSTAINABLE.

People are taking notice of citizenship, on Main Street and in the media — Target’s commitment to education and its communities (full disclosure – an MWW Group client), Starbuck’s Shared Planet and Best Buy’s eco-responsibility platform come to mind. Recently, Chipotle’s support of the “real food” and “slow food” movements was enough to score them the holy grail of PR – an Oprah endorsement.

All great issues. All authentic to the brand and the business. Makes you feel good about spending your hard earned dollars there, doesn’t it? That’s the idea.

That’s why I am so disappointed that so few of the leaders in CSR talk about CSR as it related to workplace, culture and employees. Clearly, some of them are thinking about it, and even building their programs with employee input. A Fortune magazine article about Best Buy tells me that their entire platform was created because it was meaningful to employees – long before it was meaningful to customers. But it is more than that…

Citizenship and responsibility begin at home. You can’t be a good corporate citizen – no matter how well you treat the planet or support the arts – if you haven’t created a culture of citizenship within your organization….responsibility to and for your employees is key to the sustainability and authenticity of your “Citizenship Story” – and the ability to sustain communities is rooted first and foremost in the creation of good jobs for its residents. And in this era of high unemployment and mistrust, I thought I had found someone who “GETS IT” when I started reading about the Coca Cola Live Positively platform….defined as living positively for their people, their products and their planet. BINGO.

Except that PEOPLE is defined as the customers who buy and drink Coca Cola products…not the people who make them, sell them, deliver them or discover them. What a missed opportunity – to make this platform meaningful to the employees, who go to work every day in the face of public outcries against soda in schools and the big bad soda companies. And what a missed opportunity to engage and activate those employees to demonstrate and communicate the values of Coca Cola in their interactions with their colleagues, business relationships and in their communities.

If you want to be a “good citizen” what could be more important that your interaction with employees, and your inclusion of them in your external CSR story.

Citizenship isn’t just about the big external programs – it is about the careers you create, and the opportunity for people to sustain their own lives. It is about a reputation earned through the word of mouth in the community – which often begins with the words of your employees. Citizenship begins at home. Or it can’t be sustained for long.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters CSR, Employee Engagement citizenship, CSR, Employee Engagement