Your Company Is Socially Engaged, But Do Your Employees Even Know?

Another year, another grim report on employee engagement.  Gallup’s 2013 “State of the Global Workplace Report” reveals that only 13% of employees are engaged at work.    

That abysmal number is undoubtedly related to the fact that, according to a different study, only 42% of employees know their organization’s vision, mission, and values.  That same report found that management transparency is the top factor when determining employee happiness.  Amongst other business “fails” resulting from this sort of a wide engagement gap, unengaged employees do not create engaged customers. As your company’s best brand ambassadors, your employees need to feel continually connected to the best vision of what your business can be in order to convey those principles to the world at large.  The ideals that you pursue with your corporate philanthropy are an important part of this ongoing conversation with your employees.

So how are you conducting this conversation?  And are your employees even listening?

If you’re like many companies, your corporate communications focuses on your community far more than your employees.  And when you do talk to your employees, you’re relying more on email and company intranets than the social media platforms where your employees are actually “living.”  

A recent report by LinkedIn and Altimeter Group found that a majority of engaged employees  - 54% - read content by their company through social media.  The study, which focused on the behaviors of companies that were found to the the best at engaging their employees, concluded that the top performing companies build relationships with their employees through social media and leverage their core values to empower their employees to be brand ambassadors.  “It all begins with authentic, meaningful engagement and content,” the report noted.

Other highlights of the report reveal: 

• Employees are far more engaged and optimistic at top socially engaged companies: 52% versus 41%.
• 40% of engaged employees cite their company’s social media communication as the source for keeping informed on important news
• 38% of engaged employees are more likely to share relevant company content with coworkers and customers when the company shares content in social media.
• 20% of employees are more likely to feel inspired based on how companies use social media to engage with them.  
• Socially engaged employees are more likely to feel proud about the leadership of their company.  
• Socially engaged employees are not just connected to those in their own department, they also expand their networks to include other employees, customers, and prospects.
• A full 59% of engaged employees use social media to build relationships within the company

Further, social media engagement contributes to a competitive advantage, with the most engaged companies prevailing in the never-ending battle to recruit and retain top talent.

It’s clear that social media is critical to creating and increasing employee engagement.  What’s equally clear is that a company’s philanthropic work can play a starring role in its conversations with employees on social media. 

A company’s corporate social responsibility activities should be at the forefront of its employee relationships and the dialogue that keeps those relationships energized.  Whether social media is leveraged to discuss the causes that are important to the company’s leaders and employees; share employee stories about volunteering and giving; congratulate winners of a company’s crowdfunding events; promote upcoming community events; address the ways in which the company’s people have made a difference in the causes they care about - and chart the ongoing goals they’re setting for themselves; philanthropy can be a connector, uniter and pillar of engagement.  But only if your employees understand and participate in your CSR efforts.  

Empowering and inspiring your employees isn’t optional anymore, so make sure you’re communicating in ways that are being heard by your most important demographic

Source: Ryan Scott CEO, Causecast ..

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Will Social Media Ever Rule Your Business Growth?

I believe when you went through my previous articles you found a lot of topics about social media and content marketing that we are using it as privately, and most of our business. However, there is a huge difference between these two.

If you use social media for business, you would benefit from goals, focus and consistency. It requires a thorough understanding of how social media work (and I would like to stress the word social here) and how to optimize your efforts on the various platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

You need to learn how to plan your activities and how to link them to your business goals. Besides that, you might need to learn new skills like writing inspiring blogs and catchy updates.

Learn more get more?

Last week I was lucky to attend Digital Marketing Meetup| Writing for Social Media. This meeting or session was all about tips and tricks about Digital Marketing and how you can change your business in effective way, but you will need to understand how your mind works in a change process.

Learning new social media skills and creating the habit of doing regular updates, interacting with people online and writing blog posts, all have the characteristics of a change process: it can be unsettling, time-consuming and often we give up at the first sign of a setback. At least that’s what I have experienced since I decided to make social media my core business.

The mashable.com now became the famous technology and social media online blog founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005.  The blog taught me some valuable lessons about change. Once you apply these lessons to your activities on social media, you might be better able to see the bigger picture of the changes you go through. It will help you in the process of incorporating social media in your day-to-day business activities.

10 ways to make social media an effective business habit.

1) Follow the bright spots. You might have people in your environment who have been using social media for business for a longer time than yourself. Ask what works for them, what they do and how they do it. How often do they post? What do they discuss in their blogs? How do they stay focussed? You can also look for the bright spots in yourself. What has worked for you on social media so far? How can you repeat your successes?

2) Shrink the change. Once you decide to share your knowledge and expertise in blogs and updates, you might get overwhelmed by all the choices you have to make. Is it better to write a blog? Will video be more effective? On which platforms do you need to post and how to vary your updates and tweets?

Set yourself small goals and develop a step-by-step plan. Instead of starting with two blogs a week, start with one blog every two weeks for the first half year and limit your time on social media to 15 or 30 minutes per day. This will enable you to take social media one step at a time and keep the overview you need.

3) Be proud and celebrate your accomplishments. It is easy to get distracted on social media. You will come across people in your field of business who are ahead of you, which can be really demotivating sometimes. To keep the spirit high you can better look at what you have already accomplished. Maybe you have written a few blogs since you started, and you might have created your first newsletter. Well done! Be proud, celebrate your achievements and then move on.

4) Set specific dates and times for your activities. A consistent presence is important on social media. It is better to publish a blog every two weeks, than four blogs in one week followed by four weeks of silence. Being consistent on social media is what most business people struggle with. Before the week starts, block time in your agenda to write your blog and to do your updates. Be as specific as possible, e.g. I will write my block this Wednesday after lunch time. Being specific will increase your chances of making things happen.

5) Use checklists. Checklists give peace of mind and keep you focused. Create a checklist for the promotion of your training programmers and events. And even if you start blogging, it helps to use a checklist to ensure you don’t overlook important aspects of the content, lay out and promotion of your blog.

6) Find a buddy. It helps to have a friend, colleague or business partner who is going through the same process and who you can share experiences with. This will keep you motivated and you can encourage each other when you lack motivation or don’t see where you are heading to.

7) Give yourself clear directions. This will help you to stay motivated. How many new followers would you like to get this month on Twitter? How many new LinkedIn contacts would you like to give a call this week? How often will you write a blog?

8) Change your mindset. I sometimes come across people who say that social media is not ‘their thing’. What happens if you would say to yourself: ‘as a professional business owner I embrace social media as it enables me to get in touch with relevant people. Via social media I can share my passion and expertise with my audience.’ Which type do you want to be? Who would you like to identify with?

9) Find the feeling. Social media is about connections and interactions. Posting updates without interaction might easily make you feel disconnected. Chat with people via Twitter. Engage in a discussion on LinkedIn. Find the human touch.

10) Accept your learning curve. As mentioned before, learning how to apply social media is all about change. Each change has a learning curve. It is tempting to expect direct results from your efforts on social media, as it is such a direct form of communication. Some people easily lose interest once the magic is not happening. I completely understand. However, give yourself time and accept that mistakes and frustrations are part of the process.

How easy is it to for you to incorporate social media in your business? What do you struggle with?

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Build Your Income By Creating Your Own Online Business

Today, I would like to discuss the success and fail of small business.  Approximately 65% of small businesses fail within the first year. I would ask how many of the people you know who have started a business has truly succeeded? How many of them put on a happy face yet are still at every networking meeting looking for business?

After the crisis in 2008, I spent two years thinking about the business I need to start with as self-employee to support my income. That time my starting point was to create a business plan and find out what is the sector is not substantially affected by financial crisis. And I found the answer!

The plan was to create an online business and build a hub that can deliver a greatest benefit and do have something of value to share with the world, something that can generate income for me for the rest of my life! I learned to trust myself to work hard, to stay focused under pressure, and to even enjoy the process. I have read multiple of researches and public articles about online services, and I found consumers spent £30.2bn on online goods and services in 2007-2012, according to IMRG, the industry body for global e-retailing. Over the past 10 years, the growth of the internet has resulted in the high-profile successes of many internet-related businesses. After all these researches and articles about online business I found the real success stories come from those who find a way to generate just a few thousand dollars per month, enough to cover their expenses.

I would say having the right technology in place can help online business to grow and help any small business do what they do best – but even better and with more profit – and free up time to focus on growth. In the same time if plan to start the online business, we should know our target market, know our competition, attract funding and finding a niche. 

Your Website

I decided to create an online platform UAEMD.NET which provides an online directory of all United Arab Emirates (UAE) physicians, practices, hospitals, clinics, medical suppliers and insurance companies. The Find Physician search functionality allows visitors to search by any health services, specialty or expertise. 

Websites will set you back varying amounts. "The cost is relative” and try to keep the site clean and simple: people will buy from you if they trust the site and can find what they want.  "Make sure you update your website's content constantly, as innovation, imagination and invention are essential if you are going to succeed in the longer term,"

Building Traffic
Running an online business is deceptively simple. Look at my web site UAE Medical Directory, for example. The structure isn’t very complicated. It’s mostly just content and some ads. But it consistently generates a nice five-figure monthly income. Anyone can do it, right?

The key factor in building a successful online business is traffic. If you can’t build sufficient traffic, you won’t be able to generate much, if any, income. And unfortunately most people are really bad at building traffic. They apply completely inept strategies that don’t work, and they usually give up within a few months after starting.

Building traffic is not remotely easy for most people. This problem isn’t unique to the web though. You see it in every field. Some authors sell millions of books, while the average book doesn’t even sell 5,000 copies. Lots of people can write a book, but relatively few know how to sell a book. Lots of people can create a web site or blog these days, but few know how to attract large amounts of traffic

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If you can successfully build lots of traffic, it’s fairly easy to generate income from it. You also have time to figure it out. If you can grow your traffic, you can maintain your traffic, and that gives you time to figure out how to monetize the traffic.

Customer Transactions
Make it fast and easy for customers to navigate or looking for a service, as a site with a difficult sales process is likely to lose customers. Websites should be easy to navigate so users don't get frustrated and leave without making a purchase. Security should also be a priority, and potential customers should be assured their details will be kept safe.  You should talk to your customers as often as possible and help them to get to know you and build confidence in you and the services you provide. Ask them what they want from you and react to what they tell you.

Start Small and Have Patience
Don't give up your day job too soon, as it will take time for your internet venture to grow – and in the meantime there may not be much incoming revenue. I have spent more than 3 years to find key drivers of traffic growth. You'll need lots of energy, enthusiasm, determination and passion; but you also need to be realistic. "Success on the web is rare," warns Cohen. "While many businesses are launched, few make a profit, and most will never see a return on investment. That said, while starting up an internet business can be one of the toughest things you ever do, it can also be the most rewarding."

Conclusion
Running an online business can be a wonderful growth experience, and the income and freedom it can provide is certainly nice too. People really shouldn’t be deprived of this opportunity for technical reasons. The self-publishing power of blogging technology has gotten us partway there, but it’s only one piece to the puzzle. I encourage you to take a good look at my website www.uaemd.net!, and then you can sketch out the picture about how to create an idea about your online business and putting online business success within reach of most people.  

I would sum up, if you want to set up an internet business, you have to convince all the people around you it's a good idea. Put in your own time and energy, but other people's money – and take as much advice from other people as you can.

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Build a Good Business Reputation Through Go Green Strategy

A growing small and big business needs a reputation, it is like a plant needs water. Evolution in technology and understanding has facilitated the transformation for more cost-effective for businesses to “go green.” Yes, going green does protect the environment, but it can be good for your company as well. You’ll gain customers, which customers? The customers who support and appreciate companies that respect the environment

From adding recycling bins to your office, to reducing your carbon footprint, there are many simple ways you and your business can reduce their environmental impact and can actually help your company’s reputation. In my previous articles I have mentioned that taking steps to green your business will not only help the environment or getting high reputation; in many cases it reduces your costs over time while attracting customers and employees who support environmentally friendly businesses.

Nowadays, business and academic interest toward green product development is rapidly growing. Green product development is receiving increasing attention as means to improve companies’ performance (Chung and Tsai, 2007). In fact, it may be a significant source of competitive advantage when it allows for either product differentiation (Orsato, 2006) or low cost manufacturing.

It cannot be done without clear vision and studied plan, organizations’ leaders are responsible to deliver plans and results to meet the enterprise’s sustainability goals. Therefore, going green will help your company to gain respect in your community. Simply put, it shows you and your organization are care. Individuals and businesses want to do business with companies that aren’t just in it for themselves. By going green, you’re showing others that you’re interested in the world and the planet we live on.

I would say, creating green processes to the workplace make a healthy environment for employees. Also, it reduces the majority of the unnecessary waste. On the other hand, getting employee input can be one of the most effective ways of finding innovative solutions to reducing costs and becoming more eco-friendly. 

As I am interesting in IT industry and digital field, I will input my example about go-green from IT aspect. Green computing strategies challenge the common misperceptions that green computing will cost more; however, these strategies actually improve an organization's bottom line rather than shrink it when adopted. By integrating green computing strategies, organizations have a clear path to create savings that will improve IT, free up capital for other investments, generate goodwill with their constituency groups-all the while exemplifying good stewardship of the economy and environment. 

Now is the time to make a positive impact on your community, on the environment and on your profit margins by implementing go green strategy, less wasteful green solutions in your business, these strategies should be viewed as part of a broader initiative to reduce the cost of doing business.  I would therefore say, green IT takes advantage of cutting-edge solutions that keep you connected and improve reliability, while reducing energy consumption.
 

For instance, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is also something to be skeptical of when it comes to green IT. So moving 50 desktops from 250-watt computers to a single 2,000-watt computer might seem like a 10,000-watt energy savings, unless of course you’re going to keep those desktop computers to use as VDI endpoints. If you are, then you’re actually adding another 10,000 watts of energy consumption and working toward the opposite of green IT.

In American University of Sharjah (AUS) we have adopted Citrix (A new approach to desktop deployment) in all AUS colleges and schools which is also VDI technology to improve business continuity and data security, reduce university power consumption; the result then AUS can be greener. 

In AUS IT data-center, we have created new virtual machines. The plan is to select machines that provide the most computing power for the least amount of energy consumption. The strategy is to ensure that every watt is being used to full advantage by moving older, lower-efficiency servers into virtual machines running on newer, higher-efficiency ones.

Going green is important for the future of the economy and our civilization. Companies going green can provide necessary leadership in the green movement, work wonders for the environment, significantly improve their bottom lines and show they are excellent corporate citizens

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How KPI Can Keep You Ahead Of The Competition

I attended Computing Technology and Information Management Conference this year, and I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with one of educational institution participant who was one of Keynote Speakers and he is working in (Rochester Institute of Technology) to discuss some approach to defining and measuring attribution, a practice that leads to sustain educational sector in terms of different aspects. While we covered a variety of topics, one of the most fundamental attribution challenges that we discussed was that many services in universities do not define, own and measure their key performance indicators (KPIs). It seems that many organizations are thinking about KPIs, but don’t really know how to begin defining them. 

In fact, I have been asked by some of participants there, “What should your organization KPIs be?” As a believer in letting the data drive decisions, the fact that KPI definition is a question scares me to my core. 

I had refreshed my memory and reached a point says whether we are using loosely defined KPIs or established ones or not using KPIs at all, I have talked about reviewing the requests and metrics that drive university IT services was a great exercise and example. Creating IT helpdesk Ticketing System was my input in KPI discussion and the valuable contribution to the bottom line.

What are KPIs?
Key performance indicators are things that we can measure in our business or organization to evaluate the success of either the business as a whole or a component or activity within the business. "KPIs, or key performance indicators, help organizations achieve organizational goals through the definition and measurement of progress. 

Therefore, tracking performance is a vital way for service providers to ensure their businesses are moving in the right direction. However, identifying the right KPIs for your organization isn’t that straightforward. The reality is that there isn’t one single metric that a business can look at to measure success. Further, there are a lot of measures to consider, and no single metric or set of metrics is going to be right for every service provider. I would say considered time, cost and quality as the predominant criteria for measuring project performance.

For instance, at AUS - IT Department and Media Department have developed and created a set of Key Performance Indicators for multiple Information Technology Services areas in order to best provide reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) metrics.  These areas currently include Help Desk, Web Services, Network and Systems Availability, and Educational Digital Media.  

Choosing the right KPIs requires a good understanding of what is important to your business and the customers that you deal with. This latter component is a key because most KPIs are tied to service delivery, and what’s important to internal teams may not matter to the customer. What do you think?

I would therefore say, to push your KPI evaluating in right direction and be effective, managers need to assess the alternatives available and pick the metrics that make the most sense for their business and organization.

Key Considerations for Managing KPIs:-
Tactics for tracking KPIs will vary substantially according to the metrics being assessed and the specifics of the business. However, following are some key strategic considerations that cut across all organizations and KPIs:
 

Consistency. On a consistent basis, whether daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on the metric, service providers need to be gathering performance data and continue to do so over time. It is only by gathering this multi-interval data that managers can start to spot trends and truly understand the trajectory of the business.

Communication. The best KPI tracking is meaningless unless it is communicated to the right audiences. Both with customers and among internal teams, KPI reporting needs to be useful, relevant, consistent and timely. 

Actionable. KPIs need to help identify problems and strengths and inform actions that can improve performance

Customer or Employee Satisfaction and Sentiment

Customer or Employee satisfaction is critical for any business, and is a vital KPI for the service provider to track. Unlike a lot of other KPIs, which are more objective in nature, when it comes to customer satisfaction, the only thing that matters is the customer’s perception of your business and its services. Consequently, it’s critical to do surveys on a consistent basis to track how customers feel about your company. It’s simple, without customers your organization wouldn’t be here. Any organization has customers it has to satisfy. 

In the same time, we can safely say that employees are still the most important ingredients in any business. We all know that companies don’t do well if their employees are not happy and this again applies to all enterprises.

To sum up, we should determine the KPIs that are the most meaningful to our business. Taking the time to identify an organization’s most important KPIs, and tracking those KPIs consistently, is a critical success factor for every service provider. So it can be interpreted internally or used to benchmark the organization against competitors. If done properly, KPI will provide clear results of an organizations performance and strengthen its ability to improve it’s performance

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Think Like A User And Let Your Business Grow

Understanding your customers and their buying habits will help your business to sell products effectively, compete with other suppliers, target new customers and identify new opportunities. Generating demand for your product requires more than simply releasing it onto the market. You need to conduct research, determine what consumers' needs are, establish yourself as a leader in your industry and repeatedly prove your products' worth

From my perspective, there are many factors can help your business to grow and differentiate from other competitors, creating a website for your business consider as one of these factors. But do you think only the website has a positive impact on your business image and reputation without having a good content or web strategy? Without strategy, you might just get a great looking website that doesn’t work.  I would therefore say any successful website begins by first understanding client’s business and brand strategy, their objectives, and the market. 

On the other hand, when you created your business website did you ask questions below?

What do visitors do on your site?
What would you like your audience to do?  

These simple questions relate directly to your overall website (and business) strategy.  When you have a well thought-out strategy, that is executed well, you’ll also have more engaged visitors. But how, specifically, do you get engaged visitors?

User experience (also known as UX) has direct impact in visitors’ engagement in your website and it can mean many things to different people, depending on who you ask and the type of business they conduct. At its core, UX is the process of creating equilibrium between consumer needs and business needs.

The consumer wants to find information, make comparisons, purchase something from a website, or comment on your company’s blog. The business wants to create awareness, increase user participation, make a profit, and keep their clients happy. Each of the aforementioned activities takes the same basic concept into account – to create the best user experience.

Therefore, user experience (UX) is an important part of any startup website journey, and providing a great customer experience is critical to the viability and profitability of any business. From my point of view; applying UX method will lead to better business growth and generally facilitates faster new customer acquisition. This leads to dramatically lower customer acquisition costs, increased revenue, and a massive competitive advantage. It also keeps customers happy, and reminds them that your organization never needs a second chance to make a first impression.

For instance, recently, I went to the website of a Emirates Airline to find out good package journey to Europe. The website was amazing because it has a massive online services, was valuable content of data, and latest features in their website. While waiting for the Skywards cards to be delivered to my P.O Box, I received status email messages that have clear information about the package and the journey.

This “customer experience” was decidedly great and positively impacted my overall impression of the company, which will lead to my spending more money with this company to do other reservation.

Today, Emirates says its passenger traffic is rising at 20 percent annually and it generated greater traffic for the this year compared with markets in airline serves

To conclude, user experience (UX) will not only drive new leads and opportunities, it will enable you to nurture long-term relationships that are fundamental to growing your business.

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