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

Over to you, David…

A good servant is comfortable putting the needs of others first. Is this how you position your business when engaging other businesses through social media?

When applying a servant attitude to B2B social media engagement, businesses must brand themselves in such a way that their entire identity, their entire voice says, “We are HERE TO SERVE YOU”. The core to any business is its people. Like people, businesses respond to a thorough, empathetic understanding of what their needs are and how to meet them.

To understand the needs of the business, study the business. To learn how to communicate that knowledge in an empathetic and other-centered way, find a good role model and strive to be like that business or that business’s communicators.

B2B Idol

Many young people who watch American Idol want to see and hear a rising star separate from the pack to become the singer they wish they could be. They are looking for a role model, someone to strive to mirror on their way to achieving their own success.

To find your B2B Idol, simply look to the business on social media that understands and relates to your business and its needs the most. Examine their social media content. What is it about their posts that you respond to as a potential business client? Perhaps the posts are more personal and less corporate in their language.

Perhaps the business knows and speaks your language, the keywords and terms of your industry. Do they express how you feel about a critical pain point? Do they invite you to participate in an open-ended, no-strings conversation? Do they reserve discussion of their solution until it comes up naturally in the conversation?

Elements of Social Media Content That Demonstrate a Servant Attitude

When a business reaches out to you with a servant attitude, social media content will already begin to serve your business in some manner. You should feel heard, understood, welcomed and comforted. The content should be all about you. The writer should express an intimate knowledge of your business and its needs.

A business with a servant attitude will make it clear they want to listen, empathize and respond as they engage you in a conversation via social media. They will build that conversation and grow a relationship, staying that course regardless of your purchasing decisions because the relationship is everything. Serving you is everything.

Because they are interested in serving you, they may sell to you as a by-product of the relationship. The moment the sale becomes more important than the relationship, the aura, the atmosphere that makes sales possible disappears.

Successful Social Media with a Servant Heart

American Express OPEN’s Facebook page engages small businesses with a number of opportunities that demonstrate that American Express OPEN is interested and listening. With links to pages such as “Share Your Story”, where small businesses can tell their success stories, and discussions about important topics such as the cost of product, the charge card company is creating an atmosphere for learning and sharing about how to grow a business.

The result is not only a service to small business customers but also a conversation that reveals business customer needs that American Express OPEN can help to meet.

Course of Action/Next Steps

To build B2B social media communications with a servant attitude, start by:

A. Listening to B2B customers through a number of avenues including their website, media releases and social media

B. Formulating an understanding of their critical pain points

C. Clarifying keywords and phrases to use in a discussion of pain points

D. Continuing to listen as you begin to engage customers

Thanks David!

David Geer understands what your enterprise wants to say and how to say it. Get to know David through http://www.linkedin.com/in/daviddgeer.

 Taking a Servant Attitude to B2B Social Media Engagement

Besides being the current buzzword, marketing automation has become a large thing, and a real thing. There are many billion dollar players in the space.

As an executive in a large corporation you’re constantly evaluating what software to invest in, and among them marketing automation software sits near the top. It has become the most in-demand tool for marketing professionals. It helps large companies turn leads into customers by nurturing them correctly, and create additional sales from existing customers.

It’s becoming undeniably useful, and helps you manage everything from landing pages, content marketing, email marketing and the list goes on!

While you’re starting off in adopting these things for your corporation, you want to make sure you avoid a few things that could cost your company some big bucks or worse – some jobs!

1st Sin – No Strategy

You can’t use marketing automation and not have a documented strategy. How do you expect your marketing team of 25+ people to know what to do?

This is where you take your company’s goals and tie it into the strategy. You have to work hard in the beginning to make sure there is good alignment. It’ll enable an easier time later managing and achieving your goals.

It doesn’t matter whether you use Hubspot, Marketo or Infusionsoft, make sure you have a strategy! The best tool can only do so much.

2nd Sin – Treating everyone the same

Even if you’re only using email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Constant contact, you’re able to segment your audience. This is one area that you can’t make excuses since it’s considered a rudimentary practice. Forgetting this, is like forgetting your own birthday.

You don’t want to blast everyone with the same content. If you’re asking why; it’s because you want to make sure your message is customized for every time of customer group. If you’re a large electronics manufacturer, your customers could be anyone from Boeing, Tesla, Northrop Grumman or Apple. Each one has a different set of needs, behaviours and interests.

3rd Sin – Just using the email marketing function

Most marketing automation tools are more than email marketing tools.

Traditional form of email marketing (or as I call it blasting) is dead. Now you have to be smarter, you have to segment and you have to customize your message based on the audience receiving it.

Today’s marketing automation tools will let you send specific emails based on the pages they visit on your website, or if they complete a specific sequence of events they perform such as visiting your website, downloading an eBook and signing up for a webinar. Make sure you use these tools to the full extent to gain your competitive advantage!

4th Sin – No good content

Content is king. This has been true for the last decade and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future. Think about it for a second. What else would you be sending your audience besides content?

Don’t just churn out any old content, put some deep thought into it and make it useful! If you’ve segmented your audience, you should also define a buyer persona for each group. This will give you an idea what type of content to create them. Additionally look at gaps in your content, and fill them! This way you won’t have difficulty turning visitor to a customer.

5th Sin – Absent marketing and sales process

If you’re like most companies, you’re using your marketing automation to generate leads for your sales team. This requires you to have an effective way of managing everything. If you don’t set up a process, then you might as well not use these tools.

Of course, this doesn’t substitute for an efficient sales team. You need closers still. Marketing automation will guide them, educate them and spark their interest, but it is still up to your team to close the deals.

6th Sin – Not nurturing

Lead management is key to help your sales team close deals. Lead nurturing is essential to keep them warm throughout the buying process, and to make sure your competitors don’t sneak in!

When your prospect comes to you in the beginning, you want to nurture them by sending useful content in forms of blog articles they should read, email notifying them of webinars, etc… This way you lead them out of the “interest” phase of the purchasing funnel right into the “desire” phase.

Thanks, Ryan!

Ryan Chester is a digital marketing connoisseur who loves anything related to search engine optimization, growth-hacking, pay-per-click, analytics or email marketing. He works at AnnexCore.com , developing digital marketing strategies for enterprises worldwide.

 6 Sins of Marketing Automation

Once upon a time…more like Once upon a click: video narratives are increasingly the medium in which people choose to tell their brand stories. The power of narrative storytelling transcends different media, but storytelling and video particularly thrive in the digital marketplace. The power of online video as endlessly interactive and shareable content is a no-brainer. Video storytelling is here to stay and here’s why…

Why is telling stories so effective?

Brand analysts have been telling us for years that to engage with our audiences we need to tell stories. Storytelling knows no bounds and transcends industries, from Fortune 500 high-tech companies to pet stores: everyone is doing it. But what makes storytelling such an effective way for brands to interact with consumers? Here’s the lowdown on telling stories:

• Basic instincts: Stories take us back to our primeval roots, to the origins of speech, language and culture. In earliest human societies, bards and storytellers were responsible for weaving everything into comprehensible language. Stories were used to explain everything from the beginning of the Universe to childbirth and the four seasons. Storytelling is hardwired into us.
• Supremely sharable: The story format, with its beginning, middle and end is a format that works. People understand it, they inherently ‘get’ it, so they are happier to share it with friends and family. Which is great news for brands. After all, why spend hours crafting something, only to let it sit in a hidden corner of the internet?
• Emotionally compelling: A story format often makes dull things like data and facts more emotionally compelling. For example, human interest stories are often used to raise awareness and build up a research and development community for a whole range of rare illnesses and conditions. Emotions are a powerful tool, and when there is solid data behind, the possibilities are limitless. Just check out Skype’s emotional video on two girls born with the same congenital condition. Here a branded online video hits all the emotional buttons, as well as educating viewers on a rare congenital condition.

Why is video the perfect medium for storytelling?

Video storytelling success is due to its immediacy, accessibility and endless flexibility. Here are some key reasons why video storytelling works:

• Emotive Medium: Its ability to intimately explore human and animal faces, sounds, and fully immerse the viewer in a specific surrounding, makes video the perfect vehicle for carrying an emotional message. Behavioural psychologist Susan Weinschenk has outlined the main reasons why people emotionally respond to video content:
  1. Human Face – If/when presented by a human face in a video, information becomes more credible.
  2. Human Voice – Hearing a human voice in a video instantly increases the meaningfulness of the content.
  3. Body Language – We are sophisticated interpreters of body language; the right body language helps us create a relationship with the video.
  4. Movement – By engaging our eyes and minds, movement helps to keep our interest levels high.
• Clarity and Directness: It’s not true to say that spoken word is always more simple than text (just ask the Ancient Greek rhetoricians), but there is a level of clarity and directness that comes with spoken language that makes it attractive. As a medium that doesn’t heavily rely on text, video is supremely direct and clear.
• Personal and Accessible: Online video is reaching more people than ever before; in the UK it reaches up to 80% of the population, and it’s almost 75% in the US. Online video has also been adopted by a lot of niche community groups, as well as being part of millenials’ everyday life. Online video is where people go to tell their stories; it’s also a genuine conversation starter- creating new stories all the time.
• Supports Many Characters: Dialogue in written text can be tricky- something even accomplished writers struggle with. In video switching to a new speaker or topic is easier as visuals guide the message. This means a video story can be comprehensive and complex, without being too confusing or the messaging becoming too diffuse.

Video technology and storytelling

One way in which video has the edge over other traditional mediums is its immersive quality. Video’s ability to overlay music, sound, text and integrated motion graphics means that one video can tell many stories at once, weaving different narratives. Animation is also a great way to tell stories that can move between different audiences and industries easily.
Remember, even a very simple story needs a whole raft of technological expertise before it becomes a compelling online video.

Other stories online video can tell

Online hair tutorials, grassroots stop-motion clips, vlogs, gig videos – the ways in which online video can help marketers, people and communities tell stories are endless. Stories aren’t always big and flashy; they can also be fleeting moments of everyday narrative you just have to capture.

***

Hi, I’m Joseph O’Brien, and as a writer the culture of storytelling and its digital afterlives fascinate me.

Find out more about me and my freelance writing on my blog.

 Digital Stories: Unlocking Online Video’s Narrative Power

Over to you, Cathy…

Technical Writing for Non-technical Audiences

Technical experts whether in IT, engineering, scientific or other specialist fields are not always well known for the simplicity of their communication. More often than not their spoken presentations or written reports risk baffling their audience or ‘blinding them with science’. Full of jargon, confusing and/or irrelevant charts and graphs, and lengthy technical explanations, technical reports in particular, can seem like a labyrinth of unfathomable concepts and assertions to the uninitiated reader.

It is the responsibility of the writer and not the reader to ensure that the message is understood. And furthermore, technical experts are increasingly required to write to persuade, convince and inform decisions and making the need to create impact even more imperative.

Below are some simple tips that any good technical writer should have at the forefront of their mind when communicating complex subjects to audiences that potentially have less knowledge than they do.

1. Consider your Audience

   For any writing to be effective it needs to have its reader at the centre and this is paramount when it comes to technical writing. What is the point if it doesn’t make sense to the reader? Wherever possible engage with the reader to find out what they require and how much they already know. Why have they requested the document and what will be its end purpose? Speak in language you know they understand and make reference to their context.

2. Say What’s Important First

   Your audience will not thank you for leaving the best until last. The reality is that many readers will not reach the end of a lengthy technical report and if you want to create real impact it is much more effective to make your most important points first.

3. Talk Benefits not Features

   Technical experts often have a tendency to spend more time describing the ‘what’, giving detailed descriptions of the product or process rather than explaining the ‘why’, focusing on the benefits or added value of what is being described. It is only human to want to know ‘what’s in this for me?’ or ‘how will this add value to what I do?’ and so to be an effective technical writer you should focus on providing answers to these questions.

4. Avoid Jargon, Acronyms and Technical Language

   Make sure your language is user friendly and accessible to your reader. Using jargon and expressions that our audience doesn’t understand risks alienating and confusing them. If you need to use very technical language make sure that you define your terms.

5. Resist the Temptation to Show off

   Writing a successful technical report is not about showing how much you know about the subject but more about how well you convey your message and convince your audience of its value. Again, keeping it simple will be more effective than using overly complicated language and structure. And you certainly don’t want to run the risk of making your reader feel less intelligent.

So, the message is clear. Keep your audience at the forefront of any technical writing and make sure your document gives them what they really need rather than what you think they need.

Thanks Cathy!

Cathy Wellings is Head of Communication Skills at Communicaid a communications skills consultancy offering business writing courses and other business communication skills training.

 Successfully Communicating Your Technical Expertise