Has social media changed the amount you communicate face to face?

In a recent International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) pulse survey, the majority of respondents said that, despite the explosion of social media tools, the amount of face-to-face interaction in their organizations has remained the same throughout the past year. The survey was conducted by the IABC Research Foundation earlier this month and received 218 responses from communication professionals.

The survey found that:

• 63% of respondents said that face-to-face interaction in their organization has remained about the same.
• 16% said there has been more overall face-to-face interaction in their organization.
• 12% said there has been less overall face-to-face interaction in their organization.
• 8% said there has never been significant face-to-face interaction in their organization.
  

What do you think? Have social media tools changed the amount of face-to-face interaction in your organization? What about in your personal life?

Automatic Retweets from Washington Nationals — Good business practice or a big gamble?

Are companies taking a big risk by automatically re-tweeting Twitter content?

I usually try not to complain, but last night I felt like venting because it took WMATA an hour and a half each way for me to travel from the Vienna Metro Station to the Navy Yard Metro Station to attend a Washington Nationals game (and, yes, the Cubbies did win – so life was good).

When I got home, I made a vow that I would rather have to fight DC traffic and pay for parking than ever have an experience like that again. I logged into Twitter a little before midnight and tweeted, “I’m NEVER taking the Metro to a Washington Nationals game again. 1.5 hours each way from Vienna metro station to game.”

Then this morning I was really surprised to see that the Washington Nationals’ Twitter account had automatically retweeted my post an hour afterward…

Nats Twitter

At first – for about half a second – I was afraid some underpaid, bloody-eyed Nats marketing guy was up at 1am Sunday morning looking for people referring to his employer so he could retweet them. I thought to myself, “Wow – the Nats sure are committed to engaging their stakeholders through social media. And they’re so transparent that they’re even willing to retweet complaints about how hard it is to get to one of their games.” Then I started thinking they might have the evil ulterior motive of stealing WMATA’s customers in order to sell more parking spaces.

But, no, they had definitely automatically retweeted my complaint to their 750 followers (much less than the 12,000 following my Cubbies!). In fact, on the Nats’ Twitter page, they even retweeted one user who noticed this trend as well, who wrote, “If you need to build your RT file, just mention Washington Nationals!”

Is this a good business practice?

While this is transparent, is it worth the risk?

What if I said something really bad – like trying to start a Nats boycott?

Have you seen any other examples of this – or other strange Twitter business practices?

11 Questions to Ask Yourself When Writing Your Resume

I wanted to share this great article with you from Lily Whiteman — a public affairs officer at the National Science Foundation and author of “How to Land a Top-Paying Federal Job.”

This is some powerful advice on resume writing…

I was recently consulted by the communications director of one of the most powerful members of the Senate because his job search wasn’t producing pay dirt. A quick scan of his résumé identified the likely cause: Reading it was about as impressive as reading a stranger’s ho-hum “to do” list. If I hadn’t already known what a skilled, productive and creative power-broker he is, I never would have known it from his résumé.

Here are questions to ask yourself, to help you define your achievements in compelling terms:

• Why is my work important?
• How have I improved my organization’s reputation to internal and external stakeholders?
  
• How have I saved time or money, or streamlined processes?
  
• Which of my achievements am I most proud of, worked mightily to accomplish or earned recognition for, such as awards to me or my organization, promotions, bonuses or praise?
  
• How do I do my work better or differently from peers or more junior professionals? What do I offer that no one else does?
  
• How would my organization’s services, resources or morale suffer if I had never worked there?
  
• How have I shown initiative and gone the extra mile?
  
• How have I wisely used my judgment, discretion or creativity?
  
• What am I an expert in?
  
• When have I contributed to high-pressure, high-profile, high-dollar or high-priority projects?
  
• Which of my accomplishments warrant superlatives like the first, the only, the best, the fastest, the highest rated, the most or the strongest?
  

You don’t have to be the first climber up Mount Everest to have an important superlative under your belt. Automating a process, creating a new Web site, developing new training, creating a document or completing a project in record time warrant superlatives.

When writing assessments or resumes, remember to focus on RESULTS more than roles, responsibilities and processes!

What questions would you add to this list?

The end of journalism as we know it?

A blog from informationweek.com described how the Air Force recently refuted reports that its GPS technology is failing. What was interesting is that it did so by going straight to the public… via Twitter.

The author, Mitch Wagner, concludes his blog by saying:

Social media allows government to take its message directly to the people, bypassing journalists. Much of journalism has always consisted of “he said she said” reporting. The journalist goes to a government official to get a statement, dutifully transcribes it, runs to an opponent to get an opposing statement, and then brings both those statements to the readers. Social media helps put he-said-she-said journalists out of a job, because the government official — and his opponent — can get their message directly to the people themselves. That means journalists need to concentrate on going beyond the public record and provide analysis and investigation.

Is he right? Do you see Twitter — or other social media tools — eventually changing the face of journalism (and, hence, media relations) as we now know it?

Question: How do we genuinely care about marketing audiences?

A recent blog by Jason Falls entitled, “Marketing without faking it – A case study” describes a visit Jason made to Austin, TX. One of his followers on Twitter — a restaurant marketer — offered him a free lunch at his restaurant when he heard Jason was in town.

Jason writes:

“I anticipated I would have a really nice case study to write about relative to targeted outreach. For a restaurant to target 20-30 influential bloggers, filmmakers or musicians in Austin for SXSW and invite them in to try the food, is pretty smart. Even if only five or six take them up on the offer, they’re going to post Twitter messages, invite some fellow attendees who will do the same and so on. If the restaurant were able to land someone with a vast network, they could literally have lines wrapped around the building to get in just to eat with a cewebrity.”

But it turns out this wasn’t a marketing gimmick. The marketer was buying Jason lunch because she genuinely wanted to.

“She said she thought to herself, ‘I know that I guy. I follow his tweets every day.” So she invited me. That’s it. There was no real strategy behind. She was just being nice to someone whose blog she reads and Tweets she follows.’”

From this experience, Jason said,

“The learning we can take from this is that when a business communicates like human being, connects with a customer and treats them like they would treat a friend, even the smallest gestures can reap the biggest rewards. Deborah’s outreach wasn’t a carefully planned strategic effort orchestrated to drive buzz. There was no market research involved. Deborah took off her marketing hat for a minute and provided a social gesture of thanks to someone whose blog she read and Twitter stream she followed. Even though the gesture ended in someone trying her product, she did it out of basic generosity.”

So my question is this… How can we genuinely reach out to people on a human level without them feeling like they’re one of our “targeted stakeholders?” It’s time to bring back face-to-face (F2F) communication where possible. What are some ways we can do this without making people into metrics for our clients?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Are you kidding me?

So there’s a new website out there that unravels the long spaghetti strands of cc’s and attachments between groups of people emailing one another.

According to Mashable.com:

Whether you use Gmail, Outlook, or some program in between, email threads can become long and unwieldy, especially when there are multiple people involved and attachments flying back and forth. CcBetty, launching today at DEMO, looks to untangle messy email threads into an easy to follow webpage, that can by created simply by adding betty@ccbetty.com to any email you send.

After you’ve cc’d Betty, everyone on the email thread is sent the link to what’s called the mailspace on the CcBetty site. In the mailspace, you’ll see the email thread itself, with tabs that break it down into its different parts. For example, there’s an “images” tab showing any pictures that have been attached, ‘places’ that plots any addresses on a Google Map, and “links” that break out any URLs that have been shared.

Huh? This is a perfect example of improving current processes when instead we should be changing to smarter processes by using Web 2.0 tools

Any groups that use this website need to spend an hour learning about how they can move away from email and use a wiki for collaboration instead!

I’m a social media penguin. Are you?

I’m a social media penguin. Are you?

Are the words “mashup,” “tweetup,” “feeds” and “tagclouds” meaningless to you? When it comes to social media, there’s a growing throng that stays on top of the latest and greatest technology and websites. That’s not me.

In a roomful of social media experts, you’ll hear a lot of “geekspeak” and “technotalk.” If you’re not part of that group, it’s like a foreign language. During the Intellipedia Unconference last May, social media expert Chris Rasmussen even brought a sign with this photo to raise up high when he needed to remind people to stay away from such talk. That way we “regular people” in the room could be a part of the discussion too.

I think of myself as a “social media penguin.” Let me explain…

In Runner’s World magazine, 90% of it is dedicated to being the best you can be, winning races, cutting a minute off your mile pace, etc. Then there’s a monthly article by an author named John “the Penguin” Bingham. He’s proud of the fact that he “waddles” through races. He’s not out to win — he just truly enjoys running and takes advantage of the benefits running brings to enhance his life.

I’m like John when it comes to social media. As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t jump on board with tools until I see how they will benefit me or my clients personally. I take my time and make sure there’s truly going to be value. Otherwise, something new and neat could just end up being a timesuck.

So for those of you “regular people” who feel lost around all the technical geniuses, I’m there with you. Precisely because I don’t have a technical background, I feel that helps me speak in plain English to folks about Web 2.0 tools. When I see something good that can specifically help you do your job, we’ll talk about it. If not, we won’t.

To quote John, “Waddle on, friends.”

I’m finally a believer with social bookmarks

It took me a long time to jump on the bandwagon, but now I’m there.

When it comes to social media, I don’t go chasing every new tool that comes out. Rather, I only spend my time using the tools that are recommended by friends and benefit me personally. Wikis are great for collaboration. Blogs are great for easy publishing and getting feedback. Putting photos online is a million times easier than emailing them to friends and family a few jpgs at a time and hoping they don’t bounce back. But I’ve never actually used social bookmarks for myself until about a month ago because I never had a reason to.

On behalf of my clients, I would tout how great social bookmarks (e.g, Delicious, Intelink’s Tag|Connect) are for groups to share links by subscribing to each other’s tags. That elimiates the constant “Hey, check this link out” emails.

I would also tell their stakeholders about how social bookmarks are helpful if you need to access your favorite URLs from different computers/worksites.

Finally, I would talk about how you can identify experts in certain topics on Intelink by seeing what other folks were bookmarking and then contacting those people to form relationships and collaborate on similar issues.

However, because I was working in one location and rarely sharing links with others, I didn’t personally see the need to practice what I preached.

Now I’m on a new project where I travel back and forth between work locations (with different shared computers). And because I’m on a team where we often share links with one another, my teammate recommended our team all get social bookmarking accounts and subscribe to one another’s links tagged as “Web2.0.” This has really made life much easier.

A couple months ago, I would email myself 1-2 links a day from a shared computer, then go on my laptop at home to open the email, click on the URL and then save it to my computer’s bookmarks. What a pain — I can’t believe I didn’t jump on this bandwagon sooner.

Yes, I know I’m late to this — but I’m here and enjoying the ride. If you’re like me — and I know I am — you’ll be much happier if you come aboard.

P.S. You can check out my Delicious bookmarks here

Social Media Timesavers #2: Dump your e-newsletter TODAY

How do you measure the ROI for social media tools? By the amount of time saved.

This is the second part in a continuing series aimed at helping people convince the powers that be of the benefits of social media.

Timesaver #2: Replace electronic newsletters with a blog

Remember back in the day when people read hard copy newsletters? It consumed a lot of your organization’s time and money to lay out the content in the right format, then print and deliver copies to stakeholders. Then it was a joyous day when most orgs made the switch to electronic newsletters that could be emailed or posted to a website.

Now’s the time for the next evolution in efficiency: switch to a blog instead. Why?

Content is king
Yes, we’re all human and our eyes dance with delight as they soak in a nicely laid out e-magazine. But for most organizations, the ROI just isn’t there to justify the extra time and skill required to create such beauties.

With a blog, you can take the time you would have spent doing layout and focus on better writing. Come up with that creative headline that readers just have to click on. Write your articles in a way that draws readers in and addresses how what you’re saying will benefit them — or at least interest them.

And just because it’s a blog doesn’t mean you can’t add photos, graphics or even video. You’re just not wasting your time with layout since the framework is already permanently in place.

Old news doesn’t matter as much as the fresh stuff
With a blog, you can post quick articles (even as short as 2-3 paragraphs) when the news first comes out. No more waiting until you’ve got enough stories to put together an entire newsletter.

And, let’s face it, people have short attention spans. One timely, relevant, interesting article at a time is more digestable by your stakeholders than a newsletter full of many articles that sits in the in-box for when the reader “has time to go through it all.”

A great example of this is the National Geospatial-Inteligence Agency, which converted their electronic newsletter to a blog. Articles came out much faster, in bite-sized chunks, and blog readers posted many positive comments about the change.

One caveat
As a consultant, the answer to everything in life is, “It depends.” While this advice is good in the majority of cases, there may be specific situations where an electronic newsletter is still the best tool. One example may be if your organization puts out many articles per day. If’ that’s the case, you don’t want to email 10 stories a day to your stakeholders or they’ll unsubscribe from your list faster than TV fans stopped watching Heroes.

Bottom line: As always, choose the tool that’s right for you and your organization. But closely examine the social media alternatives out there that could save you time and money with regard to your specific situation.

Blurring the line between home and work (and vice versa)

I just read a blog called “Online social networking: The productivity paradox” which discusses whether or not management should allow access to social networking sites like “Facebook” on work computers.

One commenter wrote that although people may be losing time in the short term by logging on to such tools at work, they often increase the quality in their work from collaborating with teammates.

Personally, I was glad I was able to log into Facebook last week because the instant messaging service my team uses to communicate wasn’t working; so my coworker and I were able to use FB’s chat function to discuss our project.

Yes, there may be issues with some workers who abuse social networking sites while at work. My theory is they would be spending time chatting around the water cooler anyway.

But what’s become more prevalent lately is the opposite side of that coin: where people at home have a hard time pulling themselves away from work.

I’ve read several articles recently about today’s workforce has a highly blurred line between work and home. They may check personal Gmail and and Facebook at work, but then often check their work email account while away from the office.

Ten years ago it seemed that only top executives checked emails through mobile devices (i.e., Blackberries). Now with the popularity of the iPhone and other smart phones, it’s becoming more common for workers at all levels of the organization to constantly be plugged in to each other. This is especially the case where coworkers are also within each other’s social networks in their personal lives.

For myself, I don’t have a smart phone; but I have my laptop on all the time when I’m at home and have a hard time resisting replying to emails in my in-box that only require a quick response. Note the irony that I’m posting this on a Sunday afternoon

What about you? Let’s take a quick, one-question poll on which statement best describes you:

A) I am connected to work nearly all the time (through mobile devices, laptop, PC, etc.)

B) I am sometimes connected to work communications when at home

C) I am only connected to work communications at home when I have an important task I’m working

D) I keep my work life and home life completely separate I’d be curious what your responses are.

Post your comments if you’re willing to share. There are no right or wrong answers.