Eric Schwartzman

January 27 2014

Mobilizing Your Social Media Workforce

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Have you thought about the potential of mobilizing your entire workforce through social media rather than one or two individual voices? What are the steps to harness the power of social media within the organization? I’ve been doing a lot of work in the area of social media policy development, training and governance over the past few years. A friend and colleague, Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman), CEO of social media training provider Comply Socially, shares my passion for educating companies on how they can leverage social media effectively.

I recently connected with Eric for a couple of reasons. First, it’s always great to catch up with friends. I also wanted to check out a demo of Comply Socially and discuss with Eric the best ways to mobilize a workforce to scale social media engagement. Here’s the Q&A with Eric who shares his insights on the topic.

1. Why is it important for companies to not only develop a social media policy but to also provide training and governance?

Lawful social media policies are important because they give organizations a basis for governing how employees use social networks for work. They play a role in how employers manage social media risk and compliance. But most social media policies are unlawful.

In 2013, there were 28 National Labor Relations Board cases of wrongful terminations at Costco, EchoStar and other companies based on unlawful social media policies. So if you want to make sure your social media policy is lawful, don’t include any language that could be seen chilling workers rights to discuss wages, hours and working conditions. We have a free white paper on drafting social media policies for those who want to steer clear of the land mines.

But even if your social media policy is lawful, don’t expect anyone to actually read it. According to an NYU study of how many people actually read end user license agreements online before accepting them, only one or two out of every thousand retail software shoppers even open the license agreement when they make a purchase, and those few who do spend far too little time to read more than a small portion of the license text.

So if you want them to comply with your social media policy, they need social media policy training.

2. There is a lot organizations should be doing, but resources are always an issue. Why is social media policy training something they should do now?

What’s crazy is we spend so much time on crisis management and barely any time at all preventing them from happening. And crisis management is so much more expensive and so much less effective than preventative measures.

The first question you’ll be asked in a legal dispute is, “Was the employee trained?”

When there’s a case where the social media compliance issues weren’t discovered or where they were ignored, the consequences are exceedingly severe. Now’s the time to get in front of this because government regulations have spiked under the Obama administration. The new SEC chair Mary Jo White and the new FTC chair Edith Ramirez are more aggressive on enforcement.

Social media policy without training is lip service, because you can’t comply with a policy you don’t understand. You can’t protect yourself, or your organization, if you don’t understand the risks. That’s why we introduced a self-paced social media policy training curriculum with assessments and certification management.

3. What do most companies “fear” when it comes to employees or members of their organization participating in social media on their behalf?

They fear social media risk because it’s unmanageable. The risks are real. Their fears are warranted.

Damaged reputations can result in lost sales, lowered perceived value and long-term financial instability. You don’t have to be malicious to damage your employer’s reputation. Just choose an easy to hack password or fall for a social engineering scam, and you can obliterate brand value.

When the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the AP’s Twitter account and sent a bogus tweet about explosions in the White House, the Dow plunged 140 points.

Leaked proprietary data can jeopardize competitiveness. Think of how easy it is to your reveal your customers or suppliers by syncing your social networking connections with your web mail account. All it takes is a few clicks.

Being out of compliance with the increasingly complex rules and regulations around how companies can and can’t use social media can result in fines, investigations and complaints, draining worker productivity and lowering morale. It’s really easy for discrimination, harassment and defamation to creep out onto social networks.

Viruses and malware can cripple productivity and be very expensive to purge. And increasingly, as employees bring their own devices to work, access their employer’s wireless network and charge their batteries off the USB ports of employer owned hardware, the likelihood of security breaches and industrial espionage increases as well.

4. Why did you launch Comply Socially and how will your platform help companies to be more compliant in their social media communications?

After training thousands of communicators at federal government agencies, military commands, multinational corporations and non-profits and seeing them all hit the same brick wall, I thought there has to be a way to leverage eLearning to manage social media risk.

To authentically engage at a personal and local level, organizations are becoming less interested in enabling one or two voices to manage their corporate social media accounts, and much more intent on mobilizing their entire workforce to scale social media engagement. I wrote a white paper on this topic as well that you can download here if you’re interested.

5. What are some good resources for companies who want to be frequently updated on social compliance?

You can sign up for the Social Media Compliance Newsletter at http://www.complysocially.com and follow the company on Twitter @complysocially. (Eric was also kind enough to set up a link for my blog readers to access one of their self-paced social media compliance trainings courses for free: http://inter.viewcentral.com/reg/complysocially/deirdre)

I hope you will check out Comply Socially and share your thoughts about social media policies, training and compliance with us.

July 4 2011

Book Review: Social Marketing to the Business Customer

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My book review of Social Marketing to the Business Customer is long overdue. I read the book in preparation for the #PRStudChat April session when we asked the authors, Eric Schwartzman and Paul Gillin, to be our special guests. This book is really good and deserves a review. Of course, I have to disclose that I consider both Eric and Paul social media friends, yet other than the #PRStudChat session, I have no other work or business affiliations with them.

Social Marketing to the Business Customer is a valuable guide to strategic social marketing. I also appreciate a focused book, which stays on course from start to finish. I know how difficult it is to remain on track and to strategically thread your message throughout the chapters, so the reader does not get lost in a sea of information. This book guides you through a purposeful course; one that introduces social marketing to organization, provides the ways to listen to the market, discusses how to generate leads and how to build stronger B2B relationships.

Although many of the chapters provide excellent insight, a few of my favorite chapters include:

Chapter 5: Creating and Supporting Social Media Policies – It’s no surprise that this is one of my favorite chapters! When you set the table for social marketing, it’s critical to make sure that policies are set in place and supported within the organization. The authors do a great job illustrating how different areas of the organization have risk and opportunity through social media and how it’s imperative to have a policy in place. The chart on page 60 of the book reveals the agendas of different departments within the company.

Chapter 12: Lead Generation – Lead generation takes on an important function through social media, where generating the lead comes from getting involved in conversations and being helpful. Chapter 12 discusses the key success factors that are common through the stages of the social funnel. The authors focus on: content to make connections, leaving the sales speak behind, how to share your expertise and spanning the buying cycle (as they put it, “building a library of content that matches buyer interests at each phase”). The bonus in this chapter is a chart with the nine stages of the buying process and the differences between the traditional media tools vs. the social media tools.

Chapter 14: Return on Investment – ROI is always a tough subject to tackle especially in 14 pages. However, the authors take a complex topic and break it down for the reader. They realize that ROI is still a huge concern for executives and don’t use the term loosely. They clearly point out that outputs in social media have to be measured financially. And, they also teach the reader how many of the intangibles can be translated into financial terms. Other bonuses in this chapter include the section on metrics, which is very informative and illustrates how to focus on the more relevant metrics beyond traffic and unique visitors. The other section that helps the reader to apply ROI is “Putting it All Together” which gives a solid example of comparing the ROI of webcasts vs. whitepapers; seeing the example and breaking it down with an ROI calculation, so you can apply the formula to your own ROI scenarios.

Overall, Social Marketing to the Business Customer is an informative B2B guide, with relevant examples. There is a tremendous amount of information presented in the book. Good organization of focused content transitions the reader smoothly from setting the stage for a social media organization to taking a strategic social media program to market.

April 14 2011

Announcement: #PRStudChat April 20th Session

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We’re gearing up for a dynamic #PRStudChat discussion on April 20^th at 8:30 p.m. ET, with Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), the authors of the book, Social Marketing to the Business Customer. Our discussion will focus on how B2B companies are finding success with new strategies and how they are effectively using social media communications. As an emerging subject of interest, we thought that a discussion regarding the growth of B2B social marketing would make a great topic for our April 20^th chat session.

Here are a few of the questions we will be asking our authors and the #PRStudChat community that night:

Q1: What are the major differences between B2B and B2C social marketing?

Q2: What are the best ways for B2B brands to use social media?

Q3: Name some great examples of B2B brands using social media effectively?

Q4: How do you determine the right platforms for B2B social marketing

Q5: New standing #PRStudChat PSA Opportunity– What handle or hashtag would you like to share with the community?

Q6: How are B2B brands profiting from social marketing?

Q7: What advice would you give to B2B brands that want to increase their use of social media?

Q8: What’s next for B2B social media?

You may have noticed that question #5 is different than the others. We started a new PSA question, so that everyone can tweet out a favorite cause, when this question is asked.

We’re also planning a book giveaway during the chat session. We will post a question on the PRStudChat blog for students, educators and professionals to answer. When they answer, they will be automatically entered into our random drawing to a book. We will randomly select a community member to receive Eric and Paul’s book, Social Marketing to the Business Customer.

Hope you will join us on Wednesday, April 20^th to discuss the subject of B2B social marketing with the #PRStudChat community and our special guests!

A Little More About PRStudChat:

It began with a simple question asked by Angela Hernandez, then President of PRSSA at Central Michigan University (CMU). “Is PR Right for me?” A follow up blog post by PR 2.0 expert Deirdre Breakenridge inspired a series of direct messages on Twitter between Breakenridge and fellow PR industry pro, Valerie Simon. This was an important question and one that should be explored beyond one student or one blog post. Why not build a community to help students across the country, and even the globe, learn from the experience and perspective of industry professionals… A community where everyone could learn and grow together. Read more

March 28 2011

Special Announcement: #PRStudChat April Session

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Years ago, the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) brands were in the lead when it came to the use of social media communications to connect directly with their customers. However, today, the Business-to-Business (B2B) brands are finding opportunity and value by interacting with customers and other constituents in their social communities. As an emerging subject of interest, we thought that a discussion regarding the growth of B2B social marketing would make a great topic for our April 20^th #PRStudChat session at 8:30 p.m.

What’s even more exciting is that we have the two authors who wrote the book on this subject. We’re excited to announce that Eric Schwartzman and Paul Gillin, the authors of “Social Marketing to the Business Customer” will be joining us for the April #PRStudChat session to chat about several of the hot topics in their book, as well as many of the questions asked by our community. A few of the topics that we will discuss that evening will include:

The difference between B2B and B2C social marketing
The best ways for B2B brands to use social media
Determining the right platforms for B2B social marketing
How B2B is profiting from social marketing
What is next for B2B social media

For those of you who don’t know Eric and Paul, here is some background information on our special guests:

Eric Schwartzman:

@EricSchwartzman is coauthor of Social Marketing to the Business Customer, the first book devoted exclusively to B2B social media communications. He has been conducting monthly social media training programs for PRSA since 2006 and works as an independent online communications consultant to businesses, the US Military, government agencies and nonprofits. Eric specializes in online communications strategy, social media policy development and accelerating social media literacy within organizations. He is a frequenter speaker at professional conferences and has been producing the award-winning podcast “On the Record…Online” (@ontherecord), which focuses on how technology is changing the way organizations communicate, since April 2005.

Paul Gillin:

@PGillin is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is a popular speaker who is known for his ability to simplify complex concepts using plain talk, anecdotes and humor.

His award-winning 2007 book, The New Influencers, chronicles the changes in markets being driven by the new breed of bloggers and podcasters. It earned more than 100 favorable reviews from outlets that include The Wall Street Journal, the San Jose Mercury News and the BBC. His second book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, has also earned wide critical acclaim. His third book is Social Marketing to the Business Customer published by Wiley in 2011.

We hope that you will join us for a dynamic discussion on B2B social marketing and how brands are fully taking advantage of social communities to enhance business and increase customer loyalty. If you have any questions that you would like to ask our special guests that evening, please post them on the #PRStudChat LinkedIn group. We look forward to “seeing” you on April 20^th!

A Little More About PRStudChat: