Company social media strategy reflects organization culture — sales

Social media is a wasted investment if the wrong numbers are valued over the right ratios. Social media is not a sales promo blitzkrieg, social media is an engagement strategy.

Culture is the way things are done. Getting something done in a culture is understanding what the culture values and how to navigate.

A relationship built on a transaction is a relationship built on perceived value; sales or otherwise. A relationship built for a sale is a relationship that starts with the end game and that end game is more transparent to the mark than you realize.

Social media strategy provides proof of involvement and the real tolerance an organization has to listen to a diverse community of voices and harness the contrarians.

4 design tools to meet persona context

In business we constantly design. By design I include that we design meetings, we design strategy, we design communication, we design training, and we design projects and programs.

Some design efforts, such as strategy, business process re-engineering, or talent engagement initiatives, may result in new processes, new standards, or new tasks, but the design goal remains: adoption and utility.

facebook, employee engagement, wrong, Toby Elwin, blog

What’s wrong with employee engagement? Ask Facebook

Praise in public, scold in private. Many are coached on this. But what happens when a single manager’s lack of self-awareness meets the level of the Facebook video a father posted to his daughter? See video below?

What, you ask, can the paternal bond of a father and a daughter offer management? The situation, I witness far too often, is a manager’s tough love, just as a father hides behind, will snap an employee or co-worker back into line. The father in this video uses tough love and tough love seems a viable option in a far too many manager tool kits, as well.

3 performance review politics that always trump merit

Politics trumps those who have shown reliable, merit-based performance.

When rewards are given to those with little merit, but through a host of politics such as cronyism, parochialism, and kleptocracy engagement is sabotagued and have little hope to achieve true engagement.

Merit-based performance would focus on the employee’s behavior that exemplifies excellence or the employee’s behavior that needs attention or improvement. When cronyism, kleptocracy, and parochialism gang up meritocracy has no chance.

Engagement needs both context and perspective

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet … “, iambic pentameter aside, I appreciate Mr. Shakespeare’s point.

However, when I look at a word that is recently trending in a lot of companies and organizations, a word such as … oh, engagement, it seems to stink of some fetid cesspool, not quite the rose implied.

The value of context relies on engagement. Context without perspective is an allusion. Without context what is said rarely meets what is delivered.