Social Media Headhunter

Five Lies I'm Tired Of Hearing About In Social Media

Mikal Belicove writes a thoroughly banal post at Enterpreneur Magazine on the Five Lies About Social Media Marketing, and after reading through it, I just can't hold my tongue.  The column lists five of the most common complaints about social media, without actually digging into them at all.  And while Mikal applies the "absolutes" argument as cover, no one I've ever read or heard has ever made the claim that these "lies" are absolutes.   

I'll give him kudos for writing a numbered list that plays well on Twitter, but his post deserves a response.  His five lies, with my responses below. 

1) Size matters.

 From the number of connections on linkedin (allowing you to see more full profiles) to comparing conversions against email and PPC, Size can absolutely matter in social media.  It matters as least as much as other channels, like television or email lists or calling lists. This is one of those feel good statements with no analysis behind it. 

2) The medium is the message

 Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Ning, Forums, email lists and television have different community expectations.  You can't be successful if you don't know those expectations and work with your community.  And it's another general comment with nothing on it.  Here's an example of how it's wrong.  Customers looking to get answers now look for Twitter and Facebook for company responses.  Prospects will often surf to a home page and click on links to social sites.  In both cases, the message is the medium.  They want to talk to you on those mediums.  The message is not important. 

And btw - young people weren't the first to use Twitter.  They also weren't the first in blogs, which really kick-started this whole thing 10 years ago.

  

3.) Social Media Gurus Do Exist.

This is one of those really bad statements that is never backed up. Name a fraud in social media.  No one wants to, so they go vague.  Better yet, name a guru in any field, outside social media, and we'll show you how they're not, really.  There is plenty of experience in using social media successfully.  Social media has no more problem with experts than SEO, marketing, PR, TV, politics, science (yeah, you heard me), or child raising. 

4) Social Media is "new media"

Social media started out being called new media because we differentiated blogs and social networking sites from "digital," which itself was differentiated from "Creative."  Aside from that, there's the truth that social media represented many-to-many communication, as opposed to one-to-many communication.  It was new because it enabled an audience to talk back, and to each other.  

5) Social Media can be effectively outsourced to a PR firm.  

On what basis is this considered a lie?  Successful PR firms don't brag about their work when they have confidentiality agreements, but it happens all the time.  What is needed is full client access, but outsourcing works fine in many cases.  It works better than internal work if you're being brutally honest.  It doesn't work for everyone, but this is another example of a general statement that is nonsense, unsupported by fact, and generally harmful.  Mikal knows this, which is wh he backtracks in the comments, but if you have to clarify yourself, it's because your column was poorly written.  

Mikal is no goofball, but he deserves to have his nose smacked on this one.  The column has no value, and instead is counterproductive in that it rehashes general arguments without an ounce of specificity and a number of arguments divorced from their historical context. 

We'd have been better off if he tossed this first draft, and instead published his comments defending his work.  

Social Media Case Studies Mean Jack Squat

Case Studies.  They are the new buzzword after "engagement" and "business metrics" grew stale.  As social media matures and splits into more familiar territory (customer service, marketing, PR, Sales, recruiting, operations), the cry for case studies is now spoken at every conference, and written in the blogs and tweets of charming consultants everywhere.

Blech.  

Case studies are not science.  They are marketing tools written by copywriters to help a client make a sales decision.  They are a risk management tool for buyers that can be compared to a reference check on a company.  Half the point is to show the prospect that other companies they recognize have paid you, the second half is to prove that you're not just making this all up. Most important, case studies are written to persuade, not explain. 

So why the fetish?  Why do so many people write blog posts where it's assumed that having case studies gives authority?  Mostly it is because they don't understand the purpose behind case studies.

  

Let's assume you watched that, which I strongly urge you to do.  After making the claim, this is the point where I'm supposed to back off it and say that case studies are actually important.  I'm not going to do that.  I won't deny that prospects often demand them.  I won't deny that some prospects have case study requests embedded in their RFP's.

I will state that good salespeople don't need them.   If you buy the proposition that case studies serve as an informal reference check, then you can recognize that a request for case studies after a presentation is a vote of non-confidence in your presentation or your company or in you.  Asking for more information on how you worked with another company is known in sales parlance as an objection.  The case study company is different.  It's structured different. It has different communication and market advantages.  How relevant is a case study written to showcase your success?

Do you know when case studies are useful?  It's when they are written internally as part of an after-action report for a project.  Self-evaluation, which includes critical analysis, is as important for a company as it is for an individual.  A Case Study that explores where you succeeded and where you failed is of more use in working with a client because it suggests a willingness to learn from past mistakes.  It shows an interest in how things get done, instead of a marketing tool intended to ease fear. 

In evaluating candidates and companies, my goal is to find out what they know and how they approach problem solving.  A case study, like a resume that shows sales numbers without explaining how they achieved them, is only a tool to filter applicants. Let's quit pretending they are more than that. 

 

 

You Have A Lot Of Experience In Your Head

Sitting down with a client, my marketing firm brandstorming was asking questions about where the client stood on a new marketing plan for a new product. 

Of interest was the messaging they were going to use, and in the discussion, it became clear that their marketing messaging in their main business was very strong personally, but was not clear online.  Like many businesses, the quality of their work was much better than their online presence.  

They didn't need me to create a new way to market, they needed me to pull the right answers out of their heads and put them online.  We reached a point where we all started nodding, and realized that what we really needed was to give the owners the time to think about how good they really were. 

I got the idea from blogging. It's always been my idea that blogging is good for introspection.  It forces you to write more than you know off the top of your head, which forces you to think about what you do and why.  Many qualified people don't think about what they're good at, and instead look for slogans to short-cut their way to explanations. That's the whole point of a job title.  Job titles are marketing of people. 

Why does this matter to you, especially for social media?   One, you need more introspection about what you really do. Two, you need to slow down with the promises and instead figure out what you've done in the past that would be useful to a client or employer.  And three, you need to do a better job of finding people who need your particular skills.  If you don't know what those skills are, how can you figure out how to apply them to clients? 

I beat the drums quite a bit about experience being more important than social media skills, but that's just word play.  Social media is something that lets you do what you've done in the past, better.  If you can discover what you did, and why that might be of interest to a prospect or prospective boss, social media is easy. 

It's when you try to make social media the destination that you fail, and sound like a fraud.  Is there a social media future where "social media" changes everything?   Yes.  But you have to get there first, and if you're broke and unemployed, you won't be the one they trust. 

It looks like this.  $$$ now ='s success later.  

Or maybe look at it on this timeline.

We May Not Be Experts, But We Know Frauds When We See Them

There's an old joke about how to win an argument.  When you have the facts, stick to the facts. When you don't have the facts, make your argument louder.  When you're losing the argument, bang your shoe on the table.  We have no tables in social media, but we see this kind of behavior way too often. 

Social media is hard.  In addition to having to learn at a breakneck pace, much of what you say and do is obsolete shortly after you produce the content.  I know this in a painful way, as my training DVD's had a shelf life of less than six months, as Twitter, LinkedIn, and especially Facebook altered their look and functionality so much, my content was no longer relevant. 

And because that functionality changes, old pronouncements can come back to bite you, as in when I said Facebook was worthless to recruiters not serving the college graduate crowd.  When that changed, I changed my mind, and wrote about it, fessing up to my mistake.  

I've had to eat crow, update, confess to rushing before I got facts right, and I've even had to apologize.  And it was good for me.  It's a sign of character my parents taught me, and it's more important than ever in understanding social media (or really any expertise). 

I want to give you four examples in recent weeks of people making outrageous statements.  All four have a large online presence.  All four have been called experts by others.   All four reacted differently, and it's my contention that their reactions were more important in the determination of their expertise (and their character), then their initial statements. 

Number One: Peter Shankman And Social Media Experts

   In a blog post that got picked up by the Business Insider and tweeted and shared thousands of times, Peter Shankman said you should never hire someone who calls themselves a social media expert, and he joked they should all burn in a fire. 

First, I'd like to refute the argument visually.  

Note Peter spoke at an event in October where he is listed as a social media expert. By his own words, we should not hire him, but instead should give him a book of matches. 

But hey, we all say things we come to regret. Shankman was trying to make the relevant point that social media has to be tied to business goals (actually he said revenue, which is only part of the picture, but the argument is a valid one).  Where he made a mistake was punching down and insulting a broad swath of people with little more than innuendo. 

When called on it, Peter did three things. First, he argued with people on his site and doubled down on his comments.  He refused to acknowledge that he smeared a group of people unfairly (and no one specifically).  

Second, he contiued to argue with people on other sites, but he did so in a mocking manner.  The one that sticks in my mind is the guy who found this picture and asked about it on Twitter.  Peter insulted him, mocking the guy's personal website for having broken links.  Not exactly a classy move.

Third, and the worst part, was Peter's failure to address the substantive issues in a forum online.  He let the original column stand, and then moved on.  For a guy claiming to be a social media expert and worldwide connector, he sure seemed to miss the point about engaging critics in an honest manner.  

In short, Peter acted like a jerk, and his personal reputation deserves to be measured against those actions.

Number Two:  Gary Vaynerchuk, and the social media clowns.

Gary made a comment in an interview that almost all social media people don't have a clue how business works.  the interview title was provocative, and so Gary came out with a video backing up his statements, but explaining what he meant.  The argument was very similar to what Peter Shankman was hinting at, that social media has to produce a result, and that requires expertise and hard work.

The difference was in how it was handled.  Vaynerchuk is no shrinking violet, and he clearly loves a good fight, but his responses, from the video to face-to-face conversations were intended to move the argument forward, not take pot shots at people who dared question him.  

What a difference.  Two similar statements, and yet my impression of the reactions determined which person I would call expert, and which I would call a fraud.  

Number Three:  Chris Penn and Empire Avenue

Chris Penn wrote a post calling Empire Avenue a virtual Ponzi Scheme.  Chris had his facts wrong, and that led him to a conclusion that was very wrong. People across the net quickly called him out on it.  Chris's response?

I'll look into it, and get back to you. 

At first, I thought that was dismissive, but within a day, Chris had updated the post and his Twitter page to acknowledge that his column may have been wrong, and he was looking into it. He even listed me by name (I criticized the column in the arguments).  In doing so, Chris earned an enormous amount of respect from me.  He didn't need to backtrack and apologize - he just needed to look into it further and then make a new judgement.  He owned his words.  How can you not like a guy like that, and more important, trust a guy like that - give him the benefit of the doubt in the future if you think he makes another mistake?  Owning up to his mistake, makes he think he's someone worth listening to because he's not afraid to be wrong.  Chris doesn't know me, and could have ignored comments, but instead, he displayed intellectual curiousity and honesty, a trait any online expert needs.

Fourth Example: (Still Pending)  Dan Schawbel and Job Boards

Dan is a personal branding coach who has been out in front for Gen Y pitching reputation management, wrote a column in Forbes about LinkedIn replacing job boards. In the column, he displayed a shocking amount of ignorance about the employment process, as well as gratuitously insulting recruiters who use job boards as "lazy."  The column was a trainwreck, one that many big names in the online recruiting industry quickly eviscerated (Recruiters were some of the first to use social media, and we've been doing it as a community for 8 years).  

The column was not researched well, poorly thought out, and quite frankly should  be retracted (yeah, it's that bad).  Dan answered a few comments at Forbes, but has now seemingly moved on, going so far as to delete a Facebook wall post from Paul Debettignies (MNHeadhunter.com), claiming he prefers to have his own content on the wall.  Hey, it's Dan's wall, but failing to engage critics who know more than you are is the same sort of nonsense Peter Shankman was peddling.  It's weakness, and cowardice, to simply run from arguments made by people with substantive claims. 

Look, I'm not saying that every person writing online has to engage with every single person who disagrees with them.  I get it.  But when you occupy a position of prominence, and you really screw up, you should be willing and able to face the music.  You can ignore trolls and people picking fights with you, but when you ignore everyone after writing a provocative piece, then you're a media whore, not a serious business consultant. 

Dan still has a chance to come back from the abyss, but he's seriously damaged his digital relationships with the online recruiting community, many of whom have spent the better part of four years applauding him for his initiative.  He burned the very bridges he speaks of building to his audience. 

And so you have four examples of social media pundits, whose reactions helps us understand whether or not the emperor has any clothes.  Those you can trust, back up their arguments or admit a mistake. Those you cannot trust, run away from arguments, mock detractors, and pretend their social media fame is some kind of shield from honest criticism. 

If there was a test for social media expertise, owning your words would be on it.  

 

 

 

 

 

I Can Measure Social Media ROI. Why Can't Everyone?

Simon Salt, a specialist in location based marketing and good guy, points out that people measuring Social Media ROI tend not to understand it's a financial device. 

"Let’s clarify here, while I do not deny that there are returns to be made from making an investment in social media, social media ROI does not exist in the terms that it is usually couched in. ROI or Return on Investment is a financial term, usually defined in the following way:

"

Simon identifies a real problem, which is misuse of terms, but these types of measurements aren't difficult to come by.  In fact, I find Simon's title to be innaccurate, even though his reasoning is sound. 

Here's the Title:  Why There Is No Social Media ROI

Here's my response. 

• Count Likes on Facebook
• Survey Facebook Likes for money spent per sale/month/quarter/year. 
• Run Social Media Campaign to boost number of Likes 
• Survey Likes post-campaign for money spent per sale/month/quarter.year.
• Compare data on a per customer basis (recognizing a Likes campaign may dilute that share with fake likes). Contrast per person data for success of campaign inside social media (revenue per customer)
• Analyze email list, or in-store visit list for similar per-person data.  This is your control group. 
• Crunch data to find increase in per person sales during the campaign, based on the number of likes and the baseline data. 
•  Contrast to control group to determine if the social campaign was more effective than the email list. or general in-store customer. 

Problem solved? 

Back In My Day, We Didn't Have Experts, Just Moderately Experienced Marketers

Is it bad to call yourself a social media expert?  There sure seems to be a lot of anger about it. Hard to tell if the knee-jerk response to snort at a social media expert is honest derision, or a superstitious attempt to to ward off evil, the 21st century version of "There but for the grace of Google go I."

Given how big an area the definition of social media can cover, one can either throw up their hands and say it's not possible to be an expert, or one can accept that social media is a preference layer that has more to do with our target audiences than the discipline itself. 

And make no mistake, social media is a discipline.  It's not enough to call it a tool in a tool box.  It's a skill set that is distinct from marketing, PR, and customer service.  Do you know how we can tell?  Experts with decades of experience in marketing, PR, customer service, and sales are often completely clueless when it comes to using social media to bring value. 

If social media is as easy as taking a piece of bread out of a refrigerator, why do so many people foul it up on their own?  Why are there so few true examples of social media success, if it's so easy?

It's because it's not easy, and we're not driving it.  Social media is the public's way of learning. The mass communication and connectedness of our audiences is driving change that companies cannot keep up with, and they know it.  It's simple math. There are more of them, than of us.  Because there are more of them, they learn faster.  So why do they need someone who is an "expert" in social media?  it's the same reason they need a recruiter. 

Here's a dirty little secret about the recruiting industry. We're not that much better than internal Human Resource departments.  But we don't have to be.  We just have to be a little better, a little faster, than internal departments.  And we are, because we have structural advantages, from representing multiple clients to being sales-oriented to spending more time searching and calling candidates and less time on paperwork.

Some people hate recruiters, but the industry continues to do well, because the marketing of the industry says we're experts in hiring.  Some of use are, some aren't, but the industry has a reputation of solving problems a little faster and with less hassle than internal departments (on average).

Do you know what you don't say as a recruiter to a client?  You don't say, "I'm slightly better than your internal people." You say, "I'll do the job, with my massive database, and I'll be accountable solely to you because I'm an expert."

That's mostly true, but it's still marketing.  We're marketing ourselves to sell our services, just like every other industry.  Do you know what we call ourselves?   Headhunters.  Staffing experts.  Talent acquisition experts. National Account Executives.  It's title inflation, common to everyone from teachers (educators), to Senior Digital Communication Vice Presidents for Advertising and Messaging, International Markets. 

Thus, the social media expert, or whatever they call themselves, from consultant, to strategist, to connector, to integrated marketers, to social business analyst, is engaging in a form of marketing called personal branding. Everyone does it.  Everyone does it. 

Calling yourself an expert in an area is an attempt to convey the idea that you are worth paying for your advice.  It's a rookie move, when you can call yourself better terms like Digital Integrated Director, Social Business Communicator, but it's all the same.  And mocking it is disingenuous.  

There is no difference between calling yourself a "social media expert," and describing a product you sell as a "revolutionary step forward in household disinfectants."  It's just marketing.  We can complain about it, we can mock it, we can judge it, but let's not lie to ourselves that making fun of someone for marketing themselves is authentic criticism, if we ourselves do any form of marketing, or if others do it for us (so no ducking if your job is help desk.  Someone markets your services for you).  

We have nonsense titles in most companies.  We have training programs that have little value to anyone not sorting resumes.  We have college degrees for people who can't write or speak in public.  We have Master's and Doctorate programs for 2nd grade teachers who now call themselves "educators," but whose children can't read when they leave the classroom.  We all market, from fake hair and nails to car leases we can't afford in neighborhoods where are house payments are based on no interest loans.  

Social Media Experts don't get special passes because of their titles, but do we really think they're horrible people?  They tend to be small fish trying to sell (and often failing), but sometimes they are people who recognize that social media is sexy, and thus it gets attention.  When attacking social media experts, why is there so much venom?  Is it because we're mad about title inflation?  Or is there something else? 

 

My Two Cents On Flattr And Their Twitter Micropayments

Flatter is making news announcing a new micropayments initiative for Twitter users.  You can now give small amounts of money to the people you follow on Twitter, in addition to RT them, replying to them, or quoting them. 

It's laid out here at mediabistro, the program expansion that moves from users with a payment button on their blog to any Twitter user. 

If you find great, compelling content that you love online, you can still retweet it, like it, share it around. But now you can also Flattr it easily. As a Flattr-er, you simply enter the creator’s Twitter handle into your Flattr dashboard, and it will store you pending micropayment to that individual until they get their own Flattr account. You can tweet to that person to let them know that you Flattred them, and when they join up the pending payment will go through.

The problem is an old one - people purchasing content don't mind paying for content. If I'm willing to pay $.20 for a song, I'm willing to pay $1.00.  If I like getting the paper each day, I'll Pay $10 a week, and $12 a week won't change that.  If it's online, I have to decide if it's worth it to pay for something I can find elsewhere. 

Micropayments have been talked about for some time, and they assume the problem of the world is price.  The problem of my world is time. I pay for all manners of things that i could do on my own, but who save me time.  My whole business is based on this principle.  

Micropayments don't take into account the time people spend consuming, and try create a market out of the goodwill of others.  But we know what's going to happen.  It's called a TipJar. 

Really, this is what the tipjar on blogs was all about. If you like someone's blog, you give them some money.  The vast majority of people who did so merely pushed money around.  Small amounts between blog communities was moved around, but only a few people profited.  Those were the ones like Andrew Sullivan who launched full scale blegging campaigns, and netted tens of thousands, and sometimes over hundred thousand.  Of course, Andrew was already a writer with an audience.  How many people match his output and had his audience?  Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a tipjar, and asks on occasion, but these are both top ten blogs. Glenn makes a little, but not nearly enough to compensate him for his time, and much less than he makes on Amazon affiliates. 

Micropayments to Twitter users is a natural extension for Flattr, but I'd be surprised if they make aas much as any decent Google adwords program or even a jobamatic job board.  It's a nice idea, but if you're good enough to get paid in micropayments, you're good enough to get paid in macropayments. 

Call it my 

Seth Godin, Selling, And SXSW Douchebags

Seth Godin is no douchebag, but he gets the fundamental disconnect between selling and marketing.  In an another post, I lamented the idea that selling at SXSW was like, so uncool. 

People who market at SXSW are douchebags.  There was even a whole panel devoted to it.  Being a douchebag covers all manners of sin, including looking at someone's badge to see where they work, spending too much as a company instead of participating in engagement, and even trying to get into a cool party or checking in too much on Foursquare.  Also, don't introduce yourself to people you don't know.  That whole meeting turning online contacts into real world contacts?  That's out of line, buddy!   

Seth pitches it differently, in that it's the difference between inviting and selling. 

If I invite you to a wedding, or a party, or to buy a $500,000 TV ad for $500, there's no resistance on your part. Either you jump at the chance and say yes, or you have a conflict and say no. It's not my job to help you overcome your fear of commitment, to help you see the ultimate value and most of all, to work with you as you persuade yourself and others to do something that might just work.

He ends with this comment, which is very important to social media marketers. 

But please... don't insist that the hard work be removed from your job to allow you to become an inviter. That's great work if you can get it, but it's not a career.

This is the fundamental disconnect most social media consultants have in generating results.  They've never had to sell, or alter internal habits, or cut costs using their tools, so they mistake social activity with business activity. This is one of the primary reasons I pound the drum on not hiring people with little business experience to do your social media.  If they don't understand how things get done, how can they understand social media's impact on how things get done?  That's why metrics can seem hard in social media - they're not tasked to what you're paid to do. 

But wait, there's more.  Someone I met at SXSW, and with whom I now carry on a Twitter conversation, gave me a fantastic idea for how to look at social media, that solves the essential problem of how to measure social media.  Felix Wetzel called social media a "preference layer." And in doing so, he opened up a new way of speaking about it without inducing a gag reflex. 

Look at it as a layer. 

Think of social media marketing as, well, marketing. 

Think of social media selling, as, selling. 

Think of social media customer service, as..okay, you get the picture. If we treat social media as a layer on top of other skills and departments, it loses its mystique, and also the negative connotations beginning to develop around the practice.  We can stop some of the silly squabbles, like, don't sell with social media, if we agree social selling is different than social PR is different than social branding.  Social selling is about selling.  Social recruiting is not. 

If we can narrow our focus to what someone as an individual is trying to do (get hired, increase mindshare of a product, selling tshirts through Twitter), then social becomes a tool to be discussed, tested, and then applied, and not a "new way of thinking."  

Is Social a new way of thinking?  Yes and No, but of more importance is that you can't get there, until you first walk through our current systems and connect social to their goals.  More to come, with visual displays and pretty graphs. 

 

 

Is Social Business Scalable?

A couple of posts by industry stalwarts dovetail nicely into the recognition that social business is hard, because it seeks to change the modern corporation. 

When swept away by numbers like 600 million Facebook users and the belief that social media really does change everything, it's easy to adopt an attitude that change is inevitable.  Change may very well be inevitable, but the timeline for it doing so might not fit into your persoal goals. 

First, the two articles. 

Tac Anderson, who has twice now led me into new thoughts with his posts, asks how social can be scalable when it involves human interaction.  It's very nature demands a team of people rather than one invidividual. 

1-2 years ago social media strategy was one of many jobs the social media strategist had to do (even though it was the job title we preferred). Today most of you are doing social media almost exclusively and several of you may be a part of a team running social media.

If you’re the lone social media strategist who also does some other marketing or if you’re running a small team of people you are likely feeling the strain of scale.

Yes scaling the results of your social media efforts is challenging but I’m talking about the challenges of scaling the strategists themselves.

This is an interesting post on its own, as it suggest building a hub to help you, rather than trying to change the business yourself.  This, of course, is much harder, as companies looking to get into social media aren't ready to launch pilot programs with multiple headcount, especially as they don't know quite where to locate the program (what title, who do they report to?).  What Tac suggests, though I believe is it correct, is much harder than hiring one person or tasking a current employee to run social (not to mention that everyone thinks they can do social, so there's always infighting). 

So to clarify why it is as it is, you turn to Amber Naslund, and her stages of social media grief. 

The people stewarding this change are often right in the thick of these phases, and experiencing these emotions throughout. It’s unpopular sometimes to talk about emotion in context of business, but the reality is that change is emotional. It challenges people’s assumptions, understanding, ego, comfort and familiarity, and tangible experiences. All of those things bring up emotional context that, in turn, affect the processes we build and the decisions we make.

In context of someone like a social strategist or someone engaged in shifting the culture and design of a business, it’s important to not only recognize the stages and their characteristics, but their role in helping guide the organization from one phase to the next, and shorten the time from denial to acceptance. If you can identify where you, your clients, or your organization sit now, it’s easier to plan for what might be coming next

The two identify the main problem with social business.  It's not hard to figure out, but it's very, very hard to do.  It's hard because it's a grind. It's hard because you get tired of doing work constantly while questioned about what you're doing. It's hard because you're afraid it doesn't matter.  You get Social Fatigue. 

Now Craig and I have our own ideas about how to manage the problem of how to hire staff in social media, but it's important to state the problem is the same.  The common goal is socializing a business so it can catch up to its customers.  Pretending a Facebook page or Twitter contest will bring business is a bit like pretending an employee handbook will teach salespeople how to increase their margins. 

So is social business scalable? Of course it is.  The scale, is not the social media department.  It's your entire organization, and the system that supports it from vendors to customers.  That's what we should be working towards.  Training groups of people inside the company, and like a virus, spreading the gospel of connection and communication through the company until we're all smarter, faster, and more responsive to a fast moving world.

 

 

 

A Trial For How Empire Avenue Can Improve Employee Performance

Metrics aren't that hard.  You determine what you're trying to measure, you measure it, then you look at the data.  You run into problems when you can't measure the full impact of something, or when you don't know what to measure, or when you can't gather data. 

In that case, you run trials, just as they do in other complex systems.  I'm a big fan of trials in social media contexts because they are easy to sell, easy to track, and the data speaks for itself.  Take two groups - train one with social, compare the groups. 

Rather than focusing on tasks or individual, unrelated results that can be gained, you focus on outcomes.  

Group 1:  50 Sales people using LinkedIn. 

Group 2:  50 Sales people not using LinkedIn.

You split two groups up based on their average sales. To make sure there is no cheating, you have assign one person with a stake in the matter to split up the groups, and another to pick the group.  This ensures the split is on level ground. 

You run a test, and compare the increase over the baseline, for both groups, but you also look at the individual performance.  The winning group is the one you move forward with.  If the control group wins, but certain individuals excel - you at least have data that helps you determine if the training is bad, or if only certain salespeople can be effective. 

Hard to argue with a test like that. So how would you do this for Empire Avenue?  

I maintain that Empire Avenue is best as an individual training tool for a group.  Sign up your trainees, and let them use the system to track themselves.  Don't focus on stock price for an individual, and make sure they know that stock price and portfolio wealth won't have any effect on their salary or commissions or performance.

In other words, don't use it as a game.  Let the game work in the background, but use the tool to train.  And like the previous examples, set the site up as group trial. 

Click on the image for a full-size pop-up, but what I've drawn is a trial on how to teach social media to a group using Empire Avenue, with an outcome that help you understand the most effective method for your team. 

I see this for people with sales teams, remote retail locations, franchises, dealers, recruiters, customer service departments, PR firms, and for associations looking to help their members.  Any group willing to implement a training system for social media can use Empire Avenue to track the results, in a way that decreases monitoring cost and training personnel costs.

Is it easy?   Of course not.  But I could do it. I've trained dozens of people at the same time, and thousands in shorter sessions.  One of the things that makes Empire Avenue so attractive is how it could have helped me have my clients train themselves. 

Which means small-business consultants can use it now, one-on-one, and see results. 

Thoughts?