The National Labor Relations Board is increasing employee rights to discuss their employers online….and making some companies rehire employees dismissed for their Facebook and other Internet commentary.
Steven Greenhouse reports that the Board is requiring many companies to revise their social media rules to protect employee rights when it comes to discussing work-related matters on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
He discusses the issue in today’s New York Times. Every CEO and HR manager should read it…and the National Labor Relations Board’s three case studies referred to by Greenhouse.
Three notable points:
“The general counsel’s office gave high marks to Wal-Mart’s social policy, which had been revised after consultations with the agency. It approved Wal-Mart’s prohibition of “inappropriate postings that may include discriminatory remarks, harassment and threats of violence or similar inappropriate or unlawful conduct.’ ”
“…in assessing General Motors’s policy, the office wrote, “We found unlawful the instruction that ‘offensive, demeaning, abusive or inappropriate remarks are as out of place online as they are offline.’ ”
In a ruling last September, the board also rejected as overly broad Costco’s blanket prohibition against employees’ posting things that “damage the company” or “any person’s reputation.”
Companies can apparently benefit by collaborating with the National Labor Relations Board on their social media policies to ensure both their and employees’ rights are protected. At the least, reading the case studies in full should help.
Sallie Krawcheck is a top candidate to become the next head of the SEC, according to Dealbook, but it’s not just her record and resilience as a Wall Street executive that’s put her in the running.
Since she began tweeting last spring, Krawcheck has gained more than 11,000 followers. On LinkedIn she’s attracted an even larger audience—75,000 and counting. “She has drawn a significant following with her conversational style and posts on investment issues,” Dealbook says, referring to an earlier article in which Krawcheck called her move “part of a larger effort to style herself as an industry analyst” and “lend her Wall Street experience to the broader debate about the industry’s evolution.” Already among LinkedIn’s top “Thought Leaders” and Business Insider’s “101 Finance People You Have To Follow On Twitter,” she’s clearly had a great deal of success with her strategy.
Social Media Savvy
A big part of that success comes from Krawcheck’s deft use of social media to take ownership of her image and message. In the past, she would have had to rely on a public relations intermediary to arrange interviews and keep her name out there, as many prominent figures do. However, she has used social media to take more direct control of her voice and reach a larger audience at the same time. In a recent RIABiz.com article Dina Hampton examines how Krawcheck “used those months of technical unemployment to cultivate a distinct and intimate online voice that may, industry watchers say, deftly position her for her next move.” Speaking to Hampton, Gregory FCA Communications’ Joe Anthony adds that Krawcheck’s strategy has “broadened her footprint to where more people are recognizing her beyond the financial services space” and “gone from being seen as a sharp mind within wealth management/banking to a thought leader and business titan.”
While she may describe herself in her Twitter profile as a “current mom” and “crazed UNC basketball fan,” a closer look at Krawcheck’s online presence shows that her approach is far from amateur. In addition to regularly sharing useful links and poignant thoughts on both Twitter and LinkedIn, she has self-published popular posts like “Lessons Learned in Leading During a Crisis” and “What I Learned When I Got Fired (the First Time)” and penned op-eds for outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Politico.
Those posts have given her a chance to share her own perspective and narrative regarding her previous experience, while the op-eds appear to be setting the stage for her next move. “Lately Krawcheck has been peppering the media with her thoughts and strong recommendations about how to address, if not solve, the gigantic, chronic, almost genetic, ills of the global financial industry,” The Daily Beast’s Allan Dodds Frank wrote in October. “If she can continue her nonpartisan stance,” Frank observed, “she might be the ideal person to be in charge of consumer protection, be nominated to the Securities & Exchange Commission or to a Treasury Department job.”
Setting the Stage
Her undergraduate degree at the UNC School of Journalism has likely helped Krawcheck communicate effectively, but perhaps more important is how she has applied the same strategies that made her one of Wall Street’s top female executives to her social media endeavors. “The secrets of Krawcheck’s success, however, hinge on her social skills,” Heidi N. Moore wrote in 2009, adding that “she has built a reputation as Mrs. Clean” and combined “a warm interest in others’ feelings, an obsession with preparation” and with “frank talk and open ambition.”
Speculation about where she’ll end up next will surely continue, and there’s no guarantee that she’ll be tapped as the next SEC chair. But one thing is certain: as one of the first major names in the banking world to dive headfirst into social media, Sallie Krawcheck has reaped the vast potential of an open and savvy online strategy.
Social media is a transformational communications tool. It enables anyone to broadcast a message to the global community free, easily and instantly. That makes it an empowering agent of change.
If you are interested in a topic and have a social media monitoring system in place, you can follow nearly everything that is said about a topic in real time – and participate in the conversation. (I say “nearly” because no monitoring system is infallible.)
The influence of social media on public opinion cannot be overemphasized. It is also changing the power balance in the Hollywood industry, as this article about the rush among celebrities to hire social media managers suggests. (The more followers a star has, the more fans, hence more negotiating power.)
Social media an important human rights tool
As the Arab Spring uprising showed, social media may be one of the most important human rights tools of our time. Yesterday, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (GC) confirmed that when it announced that the Ford Foundation has enabled GC to launch JustPublics@365. The initiative will bring together journalists, academics, activists and policy advocates who are working to address social inequality — economic, housing, race and ethnicity, immigration, health, and education — through digital media. The program’s first Summit will be held at the GC on Thursday, March 6, 2013.
Coincidentally, Amnesty International executive director, Suzanne Nossel, has called on President Obama to use his second term to advance human rights and dignity, starting with restoring the United States’ own credibility on human rights issues.
Jon Rimmerman writes a wry, witty, entertaining daily email extolling the pleasures of wines – recommending some, panning others. “The Pied Piper of Wine” built Garagiste — a $30 million a year wine sales business – after a series of such emails sent to his inner circle attracted fans through word of mouth. (The subscriber list now exceeds 130,000.) After reading about wines he recommends they can order bottles directly from him.
His story illustrates what can result from pairing passion, authenticity (his personality and writing style) and the Internet culture.
Once upon a time, entrepreneurs would spend a year or more planning such a business. They would line up investors. Mortgage the house. Work two jobs while building it. Not anymore. As writer Daniel Duane explained in yesterday’s NYTimes Magazine:
“Garagiste, which gets its name from a French winemaking movement, has not advertised since its creation in 1996. Rimmerman built a Web site only two years ago. Before that, you had to hear about his list through a friend, copy the e-mail address, then send in a polite request to join — analogous, in some ways, to the nightclub without a name, creating desire precisely by its disinterest in attracting you. Even today, the Garagiste Web site — through which you can now sign up for the e-mail list — has no e-commerce function nor even a blog post of Rimmerman’s daily offers. You get the memo or you don’t, and Rimmerman rarely offers the same wine twice.”
Anyone wanting to glean insight into how the online culture is helping to build the independent entrepreneur culture should read Duane’s excellent article. What differentiates Rimmerman’s business from many others is that his newsletter is genuinely written in his voice. Readers trust it – and like it. They know he will not praise wines he is paid to sell, including those with fillers and unappealing chemicals. It is all about authenticity. Authenticity is a key driver in establishing a trustworthy reputation – whether you are an entrepreneur, a politician or a CEO.
Coco Rocha is one of only a few contemporary fashion models that has a very strong online brand—one of the few whose name is well known outside the fashion industry because of her social media strategy. This New York Times article examines advice she gives to young models on establishing a brand using her techniques. Early in a career, a key challenge is distinguishing yourself from your peers. Building a brand can be the answer, and social media is most often the most accessible platform to use.
Most any brand will benefit an emerging career. Ms. Rocha’s advice to a young model creating a Tumblr content: “I don’t care if it’s about cats, just make it the best cat Tumblr out there.” And any audience you can muster is a clear asset you can offer clients. Her savvy is very likely to extend her modeling career…because of the added value her large audience brings to the products she is hired to showcase.
Of course content is king, and the best, most informative videos rise to the top. But interestingly, the next two factors have nothing to do with video. The first is the title you choose and the second is the description. Create text that is accurate and search-friendly but compelling. Simply put, you want your audience to be able to find your video, and you want them to want to watch it.
Social media has played a central role in several of the most successful reputation management campaigns of the last few years.
In a recent Forbes.com article Scott Davis described how Toyota repaired its reputation following the bout of recalls that sent it plummeting in 2009 and 2010. The automaker employed a series of innovative social media strategies to engage with its customers on a personal level.
One of Toyota’s strategies was a series of Digg Dialogg Q&A sessions, which allowed the company to respond directly and candidly to customers and critics. Mashable’s Todd Wasserman said those sessions, “gave Toyota the appearance of achieving social media branding nirvana: Transparency.”
Transparency Paid Off
That approach clearly paid off, as Harris Interactive’s latest Reputational Quotient survey, published in February, ranks Toyota as the company with the most-improved reputation.
Harris Interactive’s survey reveals that few companies have seen their reputations improve lately. Joining Toyota in that small group is BP, which embraced social media in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Strategy Matters
Simply building a presence in social media isn’t enough. AT&T, for example, implemented an extensive social media customer service strategy aimed at rehabilitating its tarnished reputation.
The factors that separate an effective strategy from a failed one can be difficult to generalize. The best strategies seem to be tailor-made for a company, its customers, and the problems it is facing. Davis summed it up nicely: “Reputation is something that is both fragile yet resilient. The ability to spring back when it’s damaged takes a keen understanding of the factors and attitudes that shape a reputation to begin with.”
Dyan Machan has an insightful piece in Smart Money about how Lady Gaga used her personal story, empathy and social media to become the most Googled person of all time (and earn $100 million this year). Her article is based on the business school case study, “Lady Gaga, Born This Way?,” coauthored by Martin Kupp, program director of the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin.
From the “If the Rules Don’t Work, ReWrite Them” section:
“Germanotta knew talent wasn’t enough to draw attention in a crowded music landscape…. perhaps most important, she worked at first without help from a very skeptical recording-industry establishment. One label turned her down; another dropped her, reportedly after one of its executives made a cutting-his-throat gesture while listening to one of her tracks. So Gaga fed her music and promotional info directly to her fans, via social media. An early-adopting Twitter user, she communicated with her followers an average of five times a day and used the service to announce the release dates of her new albums. Kupp says it’s all an example of how upstarts need to ignore the standards set by large, risk-averse corporations: “If you don’t break the rules, you won’t make it,” he declares.”
Another example of how social media has eliminated the need for many of the middle-men once necessary to launch and build a career, business and brand.
