Once down to 8 tracks, they have to choose just 1 as their ultimate desert island disc.

No doubt each variant of someone’s list represents just a snapshot, and if asked a little later, their list would sound very different. After all, your focus and interests change all the time…

This is rather how I feel about conference programmes. There are always a few sessions that are standout interesting at the time; and your standout sessions probably wouldn’t be the same as mine. Creating a set-list that’s going to appeal to as many people as possible, must be a very difficult task.

It’s time for the 3rd Communicate Reputation in Oil Gas and Mining conference, aimed at those with responsibility for brand management, corporate comms, internal comms and strategy. It’s on the 13th June, in central London, and will be looking at crisis management, digital media, employee engagement, internal comms, social media and more.

I’ve been to several Communicate conferences now, and the pick-list of sessions is always good. There are several sessions I’m particularly looking forward to, but if I had to pick my Desert Island session, it would be Behind the Scenes, looking at video.

I’ve been researching the use of video on the corporate website recently, and have watched many, many more than is probably sensible. The speaker, Stephen Golding from Tullow Oil, is going to look at video in internal comms, and it should be fascinating. Some of the external-facing videos I’ve spotted on corporate websites communicate their messages very strongly…

Here’s the IBM Diversity video, for example, which I think does a great job of ‘show don’t tell’ in communicating their corporate culture—and demonstrating just how long this has been a company value. It’s not new, but is worth watching to see how they do it. It’s on the corporate website diversity page too.

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My second pick would be the “Daimler For Me Is…” video. This is used on the corporate website too, and is a great example of combining/linking videos. You can click the video at various points when a particular individual is talking to see another video with more detail about a them and their viewpoint. View it on the corporate website for best effect.

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Do come to the conference if you can; the Communicate conferences are always worth attending. If you haven’t booked your ticket yet, it’s not too late: check out the conference programme and book — and let me know if the session you’d pick to be saved from the waves would be the same as mine. See you there?

 Communicate: the Desert Island Session

Make it about them.

This may seem fairly obvious – after all, it’s common knowledge that marketing a product in ways that relate to a target audience is certainly effective marketing practice.

But why?

The explanation lies in the Self-Reference Effect. The Self–Reference Effect is the tendency for people to remember information about themselves more than information that does not pertain to their needs, interests, or goals. In other words, memories that pertain directly to a person are held the longest and recalled the easiest.^[1] This has substantial implications for corporate website content.

The Layers of the Mind – The Mechanisms Of The Self-Reference Effect

The Self-Reference Effect actually has its roots in the work of researchers Craik and Tulving, who found that people remember (or don’t remember) things based upon how deeply their mind processes information. They explain that memory has layers, and people remember things longer, and recall them easier, when these things are processed at the deepest layer. In contrast, things that are remembered at a shallow level are quickly washed away and forgotten.^[2]

Therefore, in order for your product to be memorable, it must be processed at a deeper level. But how can this can be accomplished through website content?

The “It’s All About Me” Effect

Building upon the work of Craik and Tulving, subsequent researchers have isolated the most effective way to present products in ways that foster deep level processing. More specifically, it seems that personally relevant information is processed at the deepest of levels. The more personally relevant a piece of information, the deeper it will be processed. And the deeper it is processed, the longer it will reside in memory.^[1]

The Self-Reference Effect plays a key role in consumer attitudes toward the products and the marketing techniques that promote them. For example, research shows that an audience relates more to models that are similar in ethnicity.^[3] One study showed that Asian consumers were more likely to purchase non-Asian products when it was endorsed by an Asian model.^[4]

These two examples show the power of audience connection. In order to make a product memorable, then corporations must, above all things, make it relatable. And they can do so through the content of their website.

How To Use Website Content To Boost The Self-Reference Effect

Below are several guidelines that can be applied to website content to enhance the Self-Reference Effect:^[5]

1. Prompting – Prompt readers to think about themselves with statements such as: “Think back to the last time you…” Then follow it with relevant product information. This will generate a connection between product and consumer.
2. Slice-Of-Life Statements – Discuss a problem that is common to your audience. This will pique their interest and solidify a personal connection to your product.
3. Gender Role Portrayals – Determine which gender your product relates to and create content about your product that is tailored to their interests and reading styles.
4. It’s All About ‘You’ – Using the word ‘you’ in online content is surprisingly powerful. Refrain from using the pronoun “I” which detracts the reader’s attention from themselves. Also, writing in second person has been found to be more effective than third-person testimonials.
5. The Power of a Question – Ask the audience a question that links a product benefit to their needs. For example, a milk company may ask: “Are you getting enough calcium in your diet?”

Try implementing these simple techniques into your online content. This can be in the form of blogs, website content, Tweets, posts, etc. Doing so will make your product both memorable and marketable.

References

^[1] Rogers, TP, Kuiper, NA, & Kirker, WS (1977) Self-reference and the encoding of personal information.

^[2] Craik, FIM, Tulving, E (1975) Depth of processing and the retention of words

^[3] Martin, Lee, & Fernandez (2002) Using self referencing to explain the effectiveness of ethnic minority models in advertising

^[4] Martin, Kwai-Choi Lee, & Yang (2006) The influence of ad model ethnicity and self referencing upon attitudes: Evidence from New Zealand

^[5] Debevec, K, Spotts, HE, Kernan, JB (1987) The self-reference effect in persuasion implications for marketing strategy

 5 Proven Ways Content Can Connect With An Online Audience

We were pretty much in agreement about the implementation issues around the cookie law, but still managed to discuss them for an hour or so—we covered a lot of ground, but in particular we discussed:

• the need for education in this area: not only of website owners who are responsible for making changes, but also of the general public, who don’t, on the whole, understand what cookies are, or what they do.
• the best approach for website owners to take at this point. We were meeting in the week before the deadline, that is, before the most recent change in advice from the ICO, but our views still hold: find out which cookies your site uses and why, and explain this to your website visitors.

See what we said…

Cookie Law Education is Key

Cookie Law What should you do?

Cookie Law Top Tips

Thanks to UKFast for inviting me.

 Cookies for Lunch

Job seekers’ behaviour on corporate websites, especially graduates, is probably not what you’d expect. Listening to the research that Max has done would lead you to re-evaluate where you focus your online careers efforts. And when the job-seeker does get to your content, the thing they really value is authenticity.

It’s a brave company that allows employees to be authentically themselves while representing the corporate brand. And yet, in this new world of social media, this may be the best way to attract potential candidates, by conveying the corporate culture in the natural voices of current employees.

Max believes that social media and networking technologies are in the middle of – or perhaps only at the beginning of – changing massively how organisations connect with everybody, especially jobseekers.

He talks about actions some of the more adventurous companies are already taking, and the opportunities for firms to steal a competitive advantage by taking the next step forward.

Do listen: the interview is full of valuable pickings gleaned from the coalface of careers communication: the way candidates view companies; how they use the corporate website and social media in practice; and the reality of recruitment pressures.

I’ve broken the interview down into smaller pieces, so that you can quickly find particular points you’d like to hear about. I’ve also included the whole interview and a transcript.

Part 1: Change, choice and channels

Key topics:

• ever-increasing choice of channels
• wide-spread availability of information about people’s experiences within companies
• reduced trust in employer communication

Soundbite:

“The world has changed from one where corporate communications could control the brand, control the message… all they can do these days is really engage, participate and influence.”

Part 2: Facing the fear and doing it anyway

Key topics:

• where to start
• overcoming the corporate fear of:
  • conversational overload
  • brand-threatening conversation
• the benefits of social media for promoting employer brand

Soundbites:

“[some companies] lock their pages down so that students can’t engage… that’s actually a big turn-off and I think massively limits the power of the medium.”

“Having sat on that side, planning those activities, I know full well what the concerns are… but the reality of it is quite different”

“If you’re talking about [communicating with] university students, then really Facebook has got to be one of the primary platforms, because [of the] 650 million people […] and all university students, pretty much, using it”

“In the year that Ernst and Young began its Facebook activity, they had a massive jump up the Universum rankings, I think they got to the top, or very close to the top.”

Part 3: Employer differentiation and corporate culture

Key points:

• importance of people in conveying culture
• using home-grown advocates to connect
• using LinkedIn to connect: know your audience

Soundbites:

“By the time [students] have seen three or four [milkround] presentations, they can’t remember who’s who, or what’s what! And what they fall back on, and this is why face-to-face continues to be arguably the most important channel, is ‘Did I like the people?’ ”

“The reality is, if you empower an employee to speak on your behalf… they’re not going to say negative things. They’re going to be positive”

Part 4: Employer Brand and Values

Key topics:

• relationship between employer brand and corporate brand
• relationship between employer brand and corporate values
• how best to use advocates to communicate values

Soundbites:

“There’s value in trying to understand who you are, and trying to express that. But there’s a real danger that it becomes very manufactured [and that is] an increasingly big turn-off to candidates who really are interested in authenticity.”

“If you let employees talk about their experience authentically… those things [values and culture] will shine through.”

Part 5: Employer brand online: corporate website vs Facebook

Key topics:

• behaviour of students in usability tests of the corporate website
• migration of the careers site towards Facebook

Soundbites:

“[On their first visit] university students pretty much didn’t go to the careers website… They did come and visit the site for one thing, and one thing only. And that’s to make an application… They wouldn’t come back at all unless they got some kind of positive response from us.”

“There’s a number of studies that show that if you’re two clicks away from Facebook, you lose half the people.”

“The web is shrinking, apart from social, which is great. And you see a trend now where you see big employers actually moving their careers site, almost lock, stock and barrel, into Facebook”

Part 6: Evolution, ethics and expenditure

Key topics:

• evolution of the employee profile
• Facebook, privacy and ethics
• where to put the corporate budget?

Soundbite:

“The single most powerful thing is campus events… this is an opportunity with social to really viralise your content and your messages.”

“So when you go on campus, and you’re going to do a campus event, for goodness sake, take some pictures, post some pictures up, get people tagging themselves. Encourage candidates to do it. And actually, because the more authentic it is, the better, actually: shoot some video. Get some vox pops saying, ‘What do you think?’ ”

Here’s the whole interview, in case you’d rather listen to it end-to-end; and the transcript, for those who prefer to read.

Many thanks to Max for taking the time to talk to Paul.

Who were we speaking to?

Formerly Global Head of Employer Brand at Credit Suisse Max Heywood has spent the last 10 years running Talent Attraction programs for Investment Banks, previously JPMorgan, HSBC and UBS.

His experience is centred in graduate recruitment but also includes experienced professional recruitment, internal mobility initiatives, HR and employee communications, HR systems and HR transformation programs. He began his career as an account manager at EURO RSCG, and went on to successfully co-found his own digital marketing agency, before moving across to the client side to manage global agency partnerships and run recruitment marketing operations.

Max is an enthusiastic advocate of Social Media for recruiting, and has been active across all of the major social networks for some time.

 Employer Brand, Culture and Authenticity: Interview with Max Heywood

Over to you, Hattie!

The concept of social responsibility is key for corporations. For many organizations, it can make or break public relations, profits, even the company’s existence. Today, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is just as important to the people in the organization as it is the people who support it.

There are many facets of CSR and ways of promoting it. Typically, CSR is seen as the corporation’s responsibility with its business practices, from how sustainable its manufacturing might be to how it reacts to a global crisis. However, CSR is bigger than that.

Larry Parnell, director of the George Washington University’s Strategic Public Relations Program, differentiates between traditional CSR and strategic CSR in his presentation Corporate Social Responsibility. According to Parnell:

“Strategic social responsibility is this concept of doing well by doing good. That’s both operationally, in terms of how you manage your resources. And your people, but also in the community and in the world at large, what kind of activities, programs and undertakings are you involved in that benefit the market that you are hoping to serve. An example of this would be IBM or other technology companies donating used recycled computers to homework centers in cities where access to computers is hard to get for economic or other reasons. And training students on how to use computers and use computers to do science, technology . . .”

Under Parnell’s model, IBM uses employee volunteering to do more than just serve its community. The donations are paired with employees training students how to use the hardware and software, thus making the impact on the community greater and benefiting the company by encouraging the students to use computers.

How, then, do you go about promoting CSR through employee volunteer programs (EVPs) like IBM’s?

Find Your Experts

Chances are, you already have a number of employees who have spent years doing volunteer work or giving their time to a nonprofit. If you don’t know, or don’t know who they are, put out a call via internal communications, letting your organization know that an EVP will be built.

Seek out the employee volunteers who do the most but seek the least personal publicity. These are your true EVP ambassadors. When your EVP is built, these are they people you want to be the face of your company.

Their participation in the EVP serves a dual purpose. It builds participation by drawing like-minded employees to the program, and it builds external PR through the example set in the community by the participants.

The expertise of these volunteer ambassadors is also needed to build the EVP because they are the ones most experienced with this type of CSR, even if they don’t realize it.

Find Their Skills

Once you’ve identified your volunteer ambassadors and created your EVP planning committee, it’s time to decide how you’re going to structure how employees give their time. Corporations that are large and niche-based, like IBM in Parnell’s example, are set up for large-scale volunteer days, or even weeks.

Private organizations that can offer employees paid time off for volunteer days can partner with a single nonprofit. This deeper relationship with a charitable organization is a great way for your business to get involved, as it can last years.

However, if your organization is smaller or encompasses multiple business units, building a skills-based EVP can prove more beneficial for your employees and your community. Skills-based volunteering matches individuals and groups of individuals with charitable endeavors that match their personal or professional skills. If you’re a large engineering and architecture firm, you can, for example, encourage one business unit to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and another to complete environmental clean-up.

This model EVP will attract more employees to the program, as pairing your EVP with one nonprofit partner can alienate employees who would otherwise participate. Employees want to care about their volunteer experiences as much as their jobs. Letting them choose how they interact with the community. Suggest to the legal team that it volunteer with community justice programs. If, however, they choose to use their skills for a different nonprofit, herein lies the beauty of the model.

Find the Recognition

Employees participate in an EVP for a variety of reasons, but they’re rarely about recognition. Just building an EVP in your organization can go a long way to recognizing their efforts and to boosting CSR within the company.

However, that doesn’t mean your EVP should be without recognition or reward of any kind. Leaving it at, “They do it because they care,” is not enough. Incorporate participation in the EVP into the corporate reward program. Look to the example of how nonprofits recognize their volunteers, and begin a Volunteer of the Month award in your company. Publicize this internally and externally.

If your organization can afford to do so or is allowed to do so, offer employees paid time off to do their charitable work. Offer the financial reward of matching any monetary donations made by the employees. Not only are these matches tax write-offs, they can be communicated to the public as a sign of CSR.

Find Your Voices

Once your EVP is built, it’s time to roll it out within the organization and the community. Plan your roll-out strategically. Depending on your location, find out when volunteers are celebrated nationally, and use that as your rollout month or week. In the U.K., National Volunteers Week is being celebrated for an extended period this year: June 1-12. In the U.S., National Volunteer Month is celebrated every April. Create your own organizational volunteer week to highlight both facets of the EVP and volunteer opportunities within your community.

Share any information via social media channels so that your community can see what you are planning. Once employees begin volunteering as part of the EVP, encourage them to share with Public Information Officers their own pictures and stories.

During large-scale volunteer days, media officers should be made available to document the efforts of employees. This documentation is key to the promotion of CSR among employees and to the community at large. Without it, no one knows what efforts are being made.

Writing for inc42, Kevin Kruse defined employee engagement as, “People give loyalty and discretionary effort to those who foster growth, show appreciation, share a compelling vision and are trustworthy.”

This extends to efforts to engage customers as well as potential employees. Both customers and recruits care about how corporations are impacting communities, not just about products and money. Planning a thorough EVP will be key to CSR and employee engagement.

Thanks Hattie!

Hattie James is a writer and researcher living in Boise, Idaho. She has a varied background, including education and sports journalism. She is a former electronic content manager and analyst for a government agency. She holds an MBA and enjoys local ciders and the outdoors. Follow her on Twitter: @hejames1008

 Promoting CSR & Employee Volunteer Programs