Week 7 Response

Hi everyone! Hard to believe we're rounding the home stretch for the semester!

This week Erica Jordan posted a blog on measuring the success of a social media campaign and evaluating ROI (check Erica's blog out here). First, Erica asked us to determine the "best practices" of high social media performance, followed by the most effective ways to track that performance.

For starters, I honestly believe you could ask five different people what the best practices of high social media performance are, and get five different, but right answers. In Return on Influence by Mark Schaefer, he discussed some things to keep in mind for powering high social media performance, a few of them being having a controversial brand, having a strategy, relevance, keeping it real, and making it shareable (Schaefer, 2012).

In order to have high social media performance, a brand (whether it's a person or company) must actually be something that is sought out on the web, because in order to engage there must actually be an audience to engage with. Having a strategy is probably one of my personal key points on this topic. High social media performance is a goal-if there is no strategy to reach that goal how will you ever expect to succeed? Relevance can be comparable to the first point I mentioned- having a controversial brand. As Schaefer stated "you have to ensure that the product is pertinent to each individual and her audience" (Schaefer, pg. 150). Keeping it real is important ethically-if you don't you can't expect to have a positive reputation or feedback. And finally, making it shareable. High social media performance can be acquired rather quickly these days, if the content is shareable. You never know how many followers or likes can pop up over night just from a few shares.

As far as tracking high social media performance, I believe the most effective ways are through analytics and feedback. How many followers, likes, @tweets, retweets, shares, and analysis of feedback are all indicators on where social media performance stands. As mentioned in Return on Influence, many brands use Klout scores to gauge their social media performance across several social media platforms all at once. Klout scores are much more advanced than basic analytics. They not only include what I mentioned above, but also the probability that the content will be acted on in the future as well as the overall influence you have on the network. Needless to say, they are a great, effective way to track social media performance.

-SB

Reference:

Schaefer, Mark W. (2012) Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing. San Francisco, CA. McGraw Hill.

Week 6 Digital Leadership Questions

Hi everyone! I hope you're having a great week so far!

This week we've read up on social media policies, security, and privacy. Our assigned readings spanned from setting guidelines for employees in the workplace, to Facebook privacy settings, and a step-by-step social media handbook. 

For this weeks blog post, let's focus on the article posted on the National Law Review about the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) nine most important principles and how they can impact your business. 

source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chairs_of_the_National_Labor_Relations_Board

The article points out very contrasting points between what employers can legally prohibit employees from posting: company logos in labor related discussions, company trade secrets, and sexual harassment/work place violence (Halpern, 2012). Employers have every right to try and protect their businesses from garnering a negative reputation and maintaing a positive work environment. Especially in this day in age, where one comment can ricochet into a national headline in the blink of an eye.

But even with all these legal prohibitions, employees still have legal freedoms. Employees can openly discuss workplace conditions, wages, and company performance. They are also legally protected if if they post personal opinions that are not factually correct (Halpern, 2012). It seems that with every legal restriction employers can place in the workplace, employees are also protected to seemingly say what they want, too.


With that being said, here are my questions for you (please provide specific examples and citations to support your points):

Discuss why (or why not) you believe it is important for employers to have social media policies.

Out of the nine principles discussed by the NLRB, chose two that you either agree or disagree with implementing in the workplace, and provide specific examples on why.


Reference:

Halpern, S. (2012, Dec 3). When is Your Company's Social Media Policy an Unfair Labor Practice" Recent NLRB Decisions offer Long-Awaited Guidance for Employers. Retrieved from http://www.natlawreview.com/article/when-your-company-s-social-media-policy-unfair-labor-practice-recent-nlrb-decisions-