Open up your mind and say, ahh...

For years I’ve written about how the 4 Ps of Marketing, Product, Place, Pricing, and Promotion represented a dated perspective of customers and markets. In an era of connected consumerism, one could argue the merits of any of “Ps” and whether or not they’re still relevant. I suppose that’s a debate for another time. Instead, I’d like to introduce of two additional Ps that will propel a decades old concept and modernize it for a social economy.

Truth be told, there are many words that can find their way into this discussion. I’m sure we can find words that begin with the same consonant. But we now live in an era where customers are more connected, informed, and empowered, and as a result, their expectations amplify and modify. To adapt, new pillars are needed whether or not they start with the letter P. Rather than run through the dictionary, I would like to share two words that I believe are more important than ever before—people and purpose.

For those who’ve followed my work over the last decade, you’ll note that I’ve often referred to “people” as the “5th P of Marketing.” It wasn’t until recently however that I finally put all of the pieces together to consider a 6th P, in this case adding “Purpose” to the mix.

While on stage at the Pivot Conference, I had an opportunity to interview Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist at Weber Shandwick, about the real world risks and opportunities of reputation warfare in a digital age. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation people and purpose emerged as key pillars to help businesses rally teams and build communities around common interests. The importance of purpose resonated with me. I’d always pushed leaders to consider purpose as they pursued innovation, transformation and inspiration. It didn’t dawn on me until that moment however that its place amongst the other P’s was in fact overdue.

In a social economy, it’s practically absurd that this requires explanation. People should be or should have been at the center of everything. It’s been argued though that people are already at the core of each of the existing 4 P’s. But I disagree.

If we measure actions rather than intentions, it’s easy to overlook the importance of people in the mix. See, for the most part people are largely lumped into market segments, spoken to as audiences, and serviced as tickets. Honestly, we can do better. We must do better.

Understanding the needs and expectations of people inspires an important element often missing in day-to-day business strategy…empathy. It is empathy after all that unlocks ambition to do something that goes beyond the ordinary. It offers clarity to help see beyond routine roadmaps and reports. Empathy also channels aspiration to help teams strive to always do better. The result? Businesses will possess the means to develop more meaningful products and services as well as the procure confidence and resources to truly engage customers to build thriving communities.

Once you feel, really feel what people experience and what it is they need or do not know to need, innovation follows. And this is a time for innovation as people and how they connect, discover, communicate and share, is evolving. Technology continues to influence behavior and as behavior shifts, decision-making, preferences, expectations, and influence also progress. Understanding and appreciating people, and the individuals that make up our markets, teaches us how to in turn become more human…especially at a time when brands are becoming people and people are becoming brands.

At the end of the day, we are the very people we are trying to reach. You, me and the scores of people like us form the 5th P.

Purpose as the 6th P

When you work in the business of change, you eventually notice that regardless of the technology you adopt or the trends you pursue, one of the key things that’s often missing is a sense of direction or aspiration. I’m not referring to a common vision or mission statement though. Actions for the most part speak louder than words. Here, motive, objective, and resolve are paramount and they’re manifested in the leadership and its decrees to bring about real change.

I spend my time in the throes of digital transformation and as you can imagine, there’s a great deal of politics, emotion, and anxiety at work. In many cases, efforts to lead change are done so in the absence of bearing or alignment. Steps are taken simply because that’s what is supposed to happen not because a course was defined. As such, existing processes, philosophies and communications channels sometimes work against the quest to pursue the 5th and 6th P. In order to unite teams and decision makers around a common vision, that vision must be defined and it must resonate.

I’ve done my fair share of developing business transformation initiatives and seeing them through for longer than I care to count. Part of that work involves helping executives visualize and vocalize the future of customer engagement and experiences and translate this new direction as a matter of purpose. It’s imperative that this edict and the mission come from the top. For without it, change is stunted. It’s at this very point where I often see the difference between management and leadership rear its true colors. The reality is that not every executive is a leader. But like empathy, leadership is also a fundamental pillar in articulating a vision for transformation. Someone must rise to the occasion.

It’s not easy of course. It takes courage to see what others can’t and do what others cannot or won’t. You’re setting out to shock and reshape your company’s culture and to do so takes leadership, vision, and alignment to bring about sustainable change.

Start by asking and answering a few important questions:

1. What does are business stand for and what does it mean to a shifting consumer landscape now and five or ten years from now?

2. How does evolution in customer behavior and expectations affect our current business priorities and investments?

3. What are the challenges that hold back the organization from pursuing our existing and emerging goals?

4. What initiatives are underway within the organization that we can plug into, align, or reassign to pursue transformation?

5. What does the future of exemplary relationships with people (employees and customers) look like and what it is we want them to do, feel, share, and love about us?

I often think about a conversation that I had one night with good friend Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. When I asked him about his inspiration for “delivering happiness” to customers, he turned and in a calm but assertive voice explained, “Companies that focused on customers and on a higher purpose outperformed those that focused on market leadership and profitability in the long run.”

I then asked him about the importance of vision and creating a supportive culture as he set out to deliver happiness. “Your culture is your brand. Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company,” Hsieh revealed. He then shared the importance of unity in bringing about change and marching collectively in a new direction, “Customer service is about making customers happy, company culture is about making employees happy, so let’s just simplify it and at the same time, amplify our vision for our customers, employees, vendors, and peers.”

Whether or not you agree that People and Purpose officially earn a place among the traditional set of Ps is certainly open to discussion. But the impact of these two pillars in undeniable. By investing in People and Purpose, we will spark a revolution in not only business philosophy and supporting processes but more notably in the shift from a culture of management to leadership.

Service matters. We know this in our guts, and yet, most companies make service an after-thought, and a cost center. They say, “We value our customers,” quite often on their pre-recorded 6-8 minute long hold message tape. Service has always mattered, but it’s coming to be a vital competitive edge. With that in mind, I wanted to offer you 9 starting points for improving your service craftsmanship.

Cure Your Amnesia

If someone buys from your organization and then later communicates with you about some matter, it would be good to know that they are a customer. Though we’re not really supposed to treat people differently, you would be foolish not to treat your best customers with the utmost of care. Remember that “most money paid” isn’t always the criteria for best. You’ll know the difference. To cure this, simply be sure that every system that requires one to know a name also gives that file some kind of nod to the fact that the customer is a repeat patron of your organization. Want to go a step further? Remember what I did last time and ask me if I want more of the same.

Consider The Extra Touches

In almost any business transaction, there’s an opportunity to add an extra nice touch. Quite often, this makes a powerful impact on your customer. What can you do? It can be simple, inexpensive, or even free, if it’s timely and shows a level of connectedness with your customer. Christopher Lynn from the famous Hotel Colonnade in Boston knew that Jacq and I were out at a Black Keys concert. He ran over to the mall across from his hotel, picked up a copy of the latest CD, and had it on our pillow when we came back. It was a perfect little touch that cost about $15 and 20 minutes of his time, but that strengthens my commitment to staying at the Colonnade any time I’m in Boston. What extra touch can you give? Can you draw smiley faces on my sales slips? Even that’s nice.

Communicate Simply, Clearly, and Almost Often

Airlines seem to have mastered the art of vagary, especially lately. As I experience more and more delays on flights, I’m getting answers like, “we’re just waiting on some paperwork.” First, it’s 2012. Do we really use a lot of paper? Evidently so. Second, why are you holding up my flight 10-15 minutes for a piece of paper? Answer: that’s not really why they’re delayed.

People want to feel informed. This improves outcome, even if the response from a company is a bit negative. It’s better to know that you’re not going to get your package today than it is to say, “Well, we’re tracking it and there haven’t been any updates to the status.” Be simple, be clear, and communicate fairly regularly (but not too much- if you over-communicate, it’s showing fear).

Reduce Friction Everywhere

Most processes come about from past experiences, and rarely from current circumstances. They almost never come from “what’s best for the customer.” If you have a process that makes it harder for people to do business, why would it shock you that people won’t do business with you? Policies are meant to facilitate business, not hamper it. Revisit every policy frequently to determine whether it’s giving you or your customers/clients a problem. It’s amazing what you’ll turn up. Sometimes, fixing this kind of friction costs money, but often, it’s as simple as crumpling up a piece of paper and starting with a new perspective. The rewards are magical.

Say Thank You

Companies have a strange history with saying thank you. Sometimes, they get the words out, but follow them up with, “And I’d love you to buy THIS item, too!” Other times, they say thank you only when they’re ready to hit you up in the sales process again, or when they need something. Get in the habit of thanking your clients and customers. It’s a magic secret to creating good service.

Service Craftsmanship

Service Craftsmanship is part of the Human Business Way, a set of guiding principles and practices we’ve assembled for professionals in companies of any size – solo to mega corporation – so we can help you build a sustainable, relationship-minded business. If you want to learn more about the Human Business Way, I’d recommend checking out my weekly newsletter (it’s FREE).

In today’s changing work environment, it’s important for leaders to provide clarity of direction. If they don’t, fear, frustration, and inefficiency start to creep in.

In the same way that a bicycle is wobbly when it’s standing still and becomes more stable the faster you pedal, the same is true with personnel issues at work. It’s when the organization is standing still that people start to squabble.

Three leadership strategies can help. The first is having a clear sense of where you’re going. The second is having a plan for your people so they each know their role going forward. The third is having the tenacity and stick-to-itiveness to make that plan sustainable.

Fail in any of these three areas, and the result will be lackluster financial performance and the creation of an atmosphere where negative human dynamics will begin to grow. Humans cooperate best when they are all moving toward a common goal. When an organization is standing still, the pushing and shoving starts. Parents know this. When do the kids start fighting in the car? When they are sitting still with no place to go.

Clear direction is especially important when dealing with people who’ve been with the organization for an extended period of time. Leaders and organizations generally do a good job of clarifying goals as they are getting new people up to speed. With long-time employees, however, leaders often assume that the employee instinctively knows what’s important. As a result, leaders generally don’t spend the same amount of time and energy communicating clear objectives to seasoned employees that they do with new hires. When this happens, it’s not unusual for veteran employees to lose the focus and discipline necessary to achieve their individual goals.

Three strategies for leaders

Good performance begins with clear goals. That’s job one. If you don’t know where you’re going–as the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Wonderland–any road will get you there. Leadership is about going somewhere, and clear agreements are the first step. It’s a process of creating clarity about why we’re here, what we’re doing, and how we’re going to work together.

We did a study a number of years ago with a large petroleum company in North America that shows how rarely this clarity occurs. We asked more than 2,000 employees and their managers to share their goal expectations with us. To begin, we asked the employees to rank the top five things they felt they were responsible for. Then we asked the managers to list and prioritize the five things they were actually holding each of their direct reports accountable for. We saw only a 19% agreement across the population of 2,000 people!

After clear goals are set, leaders must use strong communication skills to make sure everyone’s eyes are on the ball. This includes regular one-on-one conversations with direct reports that include feedback and evaluation of how each person is doing against established targets. This helps employees understand how their role impacts the larger picture. It also allows people to have a say in the actions, decisions, priorities, and goals that are subsequently set. Leadership is done best when it is something you do with people instead of something you do to them.

The third step is for managers to help people notice and experience the incremental successes they are having. In the past, this was accomplished through extrinsic reward and recognition. Today we use a more intrinsic approach that focuses on discovering the incentives that are meaningful to individual employees to fuel their passion for the task or project they are working on. It’s about creating an environment that leads to sustainable performance.

A little structure goes a long way

On the surface, producing effective results can sound like it’s about driving performance and cracking the whip–but, when it’s done right, it’s more about moving people in the right direction. You can begin by answering these questions: What are we trying to accomplish mutually? What is the organization trying to accomplish? What is our department’s role in accomplishing that? And what are individual contributors being held accountable for?

Your role as a leader is to use your management skills to place a certain rigor and clarity around goals. When performance is not what it should be, first ask yourself whether goals have been made clear. Goal clarity helps reduce issues regarding relationships and personnel that plague so many organizations. Set a clear vision and show people how they can contribute to it. When folks are moving in a common direction with clear goals, most workplace struggles will take care of themselves.

Image: Flickr user Paul Joran

I’m a self-confessed entrepreneur with all the trappings of bootstrapping, scaling grand ideas, and being an early adopter. And I am also a big believer–in interns.

Internship programs have gotten a lot of flack of late. They are not free labor. They shouldn’t be treated as such, and quite frankly, they aren’t anyway. Management is time, which equals money. ”Returns” (people seeking second careers) and interns can be an amazing, long-term asset to your company. They can save you thousands or even millions of dollars.

We have more than 10 returnships and internships at UniversalGiving, and we’ve found it to be a very positive experience. It’s our goal to provide them a great work environment, ownership, management guidance and a positive atmosphere. We also achieve many of our goals through them. It turns out to be very productive for both.

First, interns are not about age or recent grads. These days, people are soul-searching. We’re talking about forty- and fiftysomethings wanting to find a way to contribute with impact, and ideally meaning, at your company. We call these “returnships.” Some are not sure what they want to do and would like to try out a new skill. Others are trying out our industry. Some simply need a kind, structured, productive environment while seeking employment. Some just need a break.

Our solution: We give them all great experience and put them right to work. Even if they eventually decide it is not for them, they have learned a lot, and we have benefited. We organize the tasks so that they build to our goals. Those who move past “Level 1″ of marketing research, for example, might be advanced to handling marketing partnerships. In essence, whether it is employees, interns, or volunteers, good management and proper delegation per each skill level is essential.

Yet what’s really critical is that often our interns are a feeder to employment: They might “graduate” to consultant and then to employee. We see this often, and it’s mutually determining the following: Is this a good “professional marriage”?

It allows both parties to see if the skills fit, and if the values fit. Someone could be talented yet not enjoy our culture, or we might not feel alignment. Rather than try to determine a good fit by interviews (and some people are great at interviewing, but not necessarily great for the job), we both get practical experience working together.

If you aren’t convinced interns are the way to go, or you think they are too much time, you might want to rethink. The cost of a wrong hire can be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars. You’ve spent the time training, then there is a vacuum in your organization when they go. You’ve spent 3, 4, 6 months of your employees’ time (= expensive) getting someone up to speed. Then your employees need to get someone new up to speed. But first, they have to begin the rehiring process, again. More money. More time. More weight on the organization.

And don’t forget the morale cost. This is where it is most heavy on the team, and we have to be considerate of our people. We should respect the energy and investment of their time.

To spell it out, the typical costs of recruiting and hiring, according to GradStaff, are:

$5,700 – $8,900: Average amount to recruit for an entry-level position

$1,000 – $1,500: Average amount to train a new employee

$5,700 – $8,900: Cost of second recruitment round

$1,000 – $1,500: Cost of second training round

The total morale cost depends on how many people were affected, but suffice it to say it’s significant.

So contribute to the bottom line by cultivating returnships and internships as part of your team. Grow these contributors, embrace them, and help them succeed. Within a matter of weeks, they can be inspired and reach their goals, while also making a measurable impact on your work. For proof’s sake, our top two leaders started out in “returnships.” They were seasoned executives returning to a new career path, and are now fully on staff.

Statistics Source: GradStaff

Image: Flickr user Blip ou Bruno Veloso

Time to cut someone loose? Even if it’s long past time for them to go, firing an employee can be difficult. Follow these five tips and you’ll be on the road to happiness again.

Parting is such sweet sorrow–unless you’re saying goodbye to an employee who should have been gone a long time ago. Here are five tips to make firing someone easier on the both of you.

Get to the point. Long goodbyes are painful, so be brief. This isn’t the time to remind the employee about every conversation you had regarding his performance, nor is it the time to tell the employee how talented he is as you are showing him the door.

Prepare a brief statement and stick to your script. It’s those who veer off course that find themselves driving over a cliff.

Expect the worse. This isn’t going to be one of those situations where you come together and sing “Kumbaya.” This is going to be a tough conversation, even if you suspect the employee knows it’s coming. Be prepared. If you think there is a chance the employee will go crazy, then have someone from HR sitting by your side or another manager who can help diffuse what may be a hot situation.

Terminations are fairly standard. Anticipate questions that may be asked and have an answer ready. This will prevent you from having to get back in touch with an employee who may try to pull you back into the conversation you just had.

Don’t try and have the last word. Okay, so you wanted to say the words, “You’re fired,” and you’ve finally gotten the nerve. You may be thinking that you aren’t going to let anyone take this satisfaction away from you. Be open to the possibility that an employee may ask to resign.

Consider this request carefully and if asked, say yes. The objective is to remove this employee from the organization. It’s better for all, if the employee leaves with his dignity in hand and it may save your organization from having to go through a nasty unemployment hearing or worse yet, a wrongful discharge suit.

Find a quiet place. In workplaces where everyone works in the open, this may sound easier than it is. Look for a conference room with shades so you can shield the employee from having others observe his last hour at the office.

If no such place exists, look for a quiet table in a coffee shop where you can have a conversation. Or, wait until others have left the office so you can take care of the business at hand.

Just do it! I know business owners who are still talking about people they should have fired years ago, yet these employees are still with the firm. Pick a date and move forward.

If things haven’t gotten any better in a year’s time or more, they certainly aren’t going to improve anytime soon. Do yourself and your employee a favor. Say sayonara so you both can get on with your lives.

Image: Flickr user Vicente Villamón

Reading this, you may have just clicked away from Yammer, NationalField, or another enterprise social network. All those status updates are creating major shifts in the way we work, say Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim in Social Business by Design, available now from Jossey-Bass. Fast Company talked with Hinchcliffe about how social media is blurring the line between company and customer, killing off status reports, and making the activity steam the new center of work–and why that’s a good thing.

FAST COMPANY: Why do businesses need to become social businesses?

DION HINCHCLIFFE: Because their customers have moved: Where they used to be visiting their website, watching TV, or reading the newspaper, they don’t do those things so much anymore. The developed world primarily uses social media, and it’s been that way since 2009. A billion and a half people, and they use it more intensely than anything else that they do.

What does a highly functional social workplace look like?

One in which people narrate their work. The organization finally has visibility into what people are really working on, and it also enables the process to be open and participative. We’re talking about a natural and open process of collaborating that looks just like a Facebook feed: You see what’s going on in your company, in your department, or with your team all the time. You gather information that you need and you share the information that others need.

What are the other elements of the enterprise social ecosystem?

A fully social ecosystem has the marketplace, everyone out there that you potentially want to connect with, the customers that you already have and need to support, or want to sell to, or need to communicate with;  your business suppliers in your entire supply chain; the whole B2B story around social; and it’s of course your workers themselves. The ecosystem consists of all the connections and all the conversations happening between all those constituent pieces.

I imagine that this creates a ton of data.

This is the famous thing that Clay Shirky said, “Information overload is not the problem; you want all the information. It’s filter failure.” You can’t listen to everything that’s going on in your company all the time. You want to filter it down to what matters to you at the moment and help you get your job done. You want to be able to find it all when it does matter. Later on, you say “I know they were working on this last week and I just realized I need to know what they were doing because it affects my work.” You can go find that. You can go find that conversation, that collaborative scenario, catch up on how its going, and maybe even join in on it, or start it back up if it’s not going.

If I’m a manager of company that’s not the most technologically nimble, what should I do to move toward becoming a social business?

The farther you are away from the technology industry, the less likely you’ll find social networking to be a natural thing for you to do. There’s more work you have to do.

You can try and find out what others in the organization are doing, because I guarantee you, if you’re a medium-sized business, or a large business, your organization is already doing social in some way. Don’t duplicate it, go and find out what’s going on, and see if you can join in and adapt your part of the organization.

Other than that, you can start looking at doing something locally. We know there’s really good tools for social CRM–customer support and care. It’s a really good scenario: high value, easy to do, and it’s something you can pilot without involving the whole organization.

Involved in this is a dissolving of the barrier between business and customer, is that right?

The customer wants more control. I think companies are uncomfortable with that, but if the customers really like something, they want to tell you how to improve it and change it.

For customer care, we find a bunch of examples in the book of companies that allow customers to talk to each other, the customer ends up being the best support people. They usually know more about the product collectively than the company does.

We see a blurring of when does the company end and when does it start, because customers are actually providing many of the most valuable functions, not the company itself, in this new model.

What’s the next trend?

We’re really seeing social moving to the center of work–right now it hangs around the edges, it forms the narrative fabric of what we do, but more and more we see evidence that over the next five years, with more companies, it will be the center of work.

You can wire in all the systems you use and have one activity stream, where all your collaborations are happening, all your records that you’re working on are right there, and they’re kept in the right place. You have this place that you’re working in that also involves everyone that you need to work with, wherever they are in the world, inside or outside the company. That seems to be the grand unified vision.

Why’s that such a good thing for managers?

They could keep track of what’s going on better than they ever could before. Often managers have to ask for status reports–can you imagine status reports going away? A lot of the traditional processes we have are highly duplicative: You do the work, and then you’ve got to describe it again in a status report, and then your manager has to look at it again–all that process goes away, you eliminate that duplication. You just acknowledge the work and the conversation. You don’t need those extra pieces. It will simplify what we do and improve the cycle times.

If I’m an entrepreneur, what’s the most important thing for me to keep in mind regarding social business?

We open the book with forward from Jeff Dachis, “everything that can be social will be,” and we also say that “everything that can be mobile will be, too.” I would really look at the hot areas as those that enable that vision, and we have a long way to go of making it simple, easy, and delivered the right way in terms of user experience on the right devices. There’s a lot of work left to be done.

The hottest area right now is social analytics. The data explosion has happened. We have the collective intelligence of the company out on display–now we have to do something with it, so there’s literally hundreds of startups focusing on mining that so we can get better decisions made faster than the competition.

And avoid that filter failure.

Yes, exactly.

To get a bigger glimpse of social-to-come, read our excerpt from Social Business by Design.

Image: Flickr user Andreas Levers

Guest post by Danna Vetter, VP, Consumer Strategies, ARAMARK

People laughed when we began talking about putting resources towards building a social structure for a company like ARAMARK. We heard it all:

The standard -
“We can’t open ourselves up to this kind of risk.”

The mean -
“You’re just trying to manipulate company perception.”

The ridiculous –
“No one wants to read tweets about hot dogs.”

If you don’t know, ARAMARK is a private, $13 billion global company that provides managed services (food, facilities, uniforms, etc) for clients in just about any imaginable environment and industry, including sports and entertainment, higher education, healthcare, as well as other general businesses and beyond. You might know us as the people that run the food service at your kid’s school. Or help manage your stay at a conference center. Or clean your room when you stay at the hospital. Or maybe you just know us from that aforementioned hot dog at the ball game.

In whatever the case, our employees work day and night to meet the needs of our clients and we meet them well. Sometimes we are tested by natural disaster or human tragedy like the trapped Chilean Miners. Or it could be any old fire drill our clients run us through –we are there for what our clients need and we make sure it happens. And as an “ingredient” brand that constantly works to get it right, we blend into our client’s environment and deliver on their mission with service results.

While our level of commitment has never changed nor has the expectations of our clients, what has is the consumer. Providing for the needs of today’s Connected Consumer has turned the service game on its head. It’s unlike any challenge we have ever seen. Sure, our businesses had dabbled in social media. Facebook page here, Twitter account there. But by not having a concerted social media effort and structure, we were striking out with an important segment of our consumers without coming to the plate. Ignoring the Digital Age, which has the consumer connected 24/7, would represent a huge opportunity cost. As Brian Solis often says, Digital Darwinism looms for all businesses. And by not connecting with this new consumer, we would be failing to deliver on those client expectations.

Coinciding with all this is the large, complex structure of our businesses, which are organized by industry segment. We have thousands of client locations and over 255,000 employees that work in different environments to meet different client goals and objectives. To create an enterprise strategy to connect with our consumers through social media would require a very thoughtful approach.

Social media, by nature, is alive, personal, and engaging. Anyone who has worked at a large, multi-business company knows that those descriptors of social media sometimes fly in the face of the more formal corporate culture. We are innovative, sure, but it’s a structured innovation. So, ARAMARK was never going to adapt to social media. We were going to have to adapt social media to ARAMARK.

And that’s what we did. We created a team that leads social media from the center of the organization. Our goals are to connect users managing social, consolidate resources, and share information. As you start to think about how you can fit social into your large organization, here are five areas to concentrate your efforts:

1. PEOPLE/COLLABORATION

Many of today’s corporations present fewer gaps of need wider than the one of collaboration. Getting internal employees to communicate and share information with each other is essential for success in today’s global workplace. To help champion social media across our organization, we turned to collaboration by creating a team of “social delegates” from across our businesses. The delegate was made responsible for helping draft their business’ social strategy, act as a point person for their community managers (those responsible for managing our social presence at each location) and become a social media expert.

We regularly hold social delegate meetings to discuss what is going on in social media across the company, what big industry issues have arisen, and to just connect and communicate about what we are all working on. To further the communication, we also have workspace on an internal social collaboration network that allows us to blog about best practices and thought leadership, share files and information, and create wikis to build a library of knowledge about this ever-changing media.

By having our social leads in tune with each other, they can work together to help solve problems, come up with better strategies, and learn new and important skills.

2. OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES

Social is not a one size fits all initiative. And a social media strategy, like any campaign effort, needs to be tied back to the business needs and objectives.

We started getting our businesses aligned with this thinking through needs assessment meetings with each of our business’ marketing leaders. As they built their objectives, we had them consider the audiences they are targeting and the goals they’re trying to meet. What comes out of this is the strategies needed to implement a consumer campaign, and then the social channels best capable of achieving success.

3. TRAINING

Developing social media strategies for all of our businesses made obvious a wide range of learning needs. So you can imagine how difficult it can be to train employees across the dispersed enterprise, considering we’re looking to empower thousands of employees from VPs of Marketing to front line managers, cashiers, cooks, etc. What we did was bucket the organization into three categories: Awareness users, Active users, and Expert users.

Awareness users are primarily the highest and lowest ranking members of the company that need to know the company is using social media and how and why this is becoming a part of the way we do business. Active users are the community managers that will represent the company on social channels. And Expert users are our social delegates, who represent our businesses in social and help develop social strategies.

We are working towards a comprehensive online library of “101” modules that focus on general social media and the primary social channels that make sense for our company (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc). Our initial module, Social Media 101, was used as introductory training for all members of the company. More in-depth training, including live sessions, is developed based on the individual strategies and needs of the business. But we try to sustain the materials we create and use as much content across the enterprise as possible.

4. TOOLS AND RESOURCES

For a large segment of our company, social media was something they wanted to get involved in – they just didn’t know where to start. As we formed our center-led team, one of our primary goals was to provide the tools and resources so that the businesses could concentrate on doing their job, specifically creating the content that was going to help drive engagement within social channels.
We created a handbook on how to use social media for the organization, developed guides to build a social voice, and also put together a listening framework that identifies and manages conversations from the top to the bottom and vise versa.

We also got an enterprise license for a social media management system that allows our businesses to publish content, access analytics, and simultaneously manage multiple social channels. For the businesses, this really helps them manage their social users and campaigns. For the community managers, it allows them to operate their social channels in one place as well as share content, develop content calendars, and work within a hierarchical structure.

But the key theme here is rather than having multiple businesses in our company create their own resources and purchase their own licenses, we are able to centrally develop sustainable tools and resources that everyone leverages.

5. TEST AND LEARN

In a large company, you may only have one chance to prove a new idea is worthy. If it doesn’t meet or exceed expectations, that may be it. And as social media constantly evolves around us, getting it right is that much harder. At ARAMARK, we are a big believer in testing through pilot programs before larger rollouts. It’s not just the technology or the strategy that you’re testing out – it’s how your employees are able to adapt and implement those strategies with those technologies.

Once you find the right people to test with, create the goals and benchmarks that will give you the information that will demonstrate you met or fell short of success. And when the pilot is complete, you need to document your learnings and make adjustments to your strategy before you’re ready to launch.

That’s just a quick overview of the way we approached tackling the difficult process of organizing social media for a large company. We’ll go deeper into each of those five targeted areas in future posts here.

Always remember, if it is the right idea for your company, there’s a way to make it happen; no matter how crazy the idea or challenging the environment.

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