Monthly Archives: June 2009
Donate Life America Conference
An exciting week lies ahead as I’m gearing up to head down to St. Louis to speak at a national conference for Donate Life America.
Some readers may know that I manage campaign outreach for Donate Life Illinois on behalf of Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network. It’s always a fantastic group to connect with as so much of the national effort to educate and register others as organ/tissue donors is done so in a very collaborative manner.
I’ve presented with the group in the past and many states have made incredible progress on the social media front in the past couple years, finding new strategies and tools to help tell the “donation story.”
Next week, I’ll be presenting on the following:
Power of Conversation – Using Social Media to Motivate Action in the Donation Community
I’m also conducting a Facebook workshop titled:
Breaking Down Facebook – Tips & Tools to Help Engage Your Facebook Fans.
In addition, I would encourage everyone to check out this great post on Facebook marketing from Jay Baer referencing two excellent resource guides: The Advance Guard – About Face, Hubspot – How to Use Facebook for Business.
Looking forward to it!
-Scott
USAA’s Social Site – What’s On Your Mind?
In April, USAA launched a new social site called What’s On Your Mind? to provide an open forum for discussion about the economy and finances. As a member of a military family, I’ve banked with USAA my whole life and have always been a HUGE fan of their incredible service. Much of their reputation centers around excellent customer service which is why I was excited to learn about this new site.
In short, the site is technically open to anyone (but of course tailored to USAA members as a primary audience) and allows for open discussion on everything from retirement investing to debt and auto insurance. Meant to connect members with other members for advice, they also provide a few of their own site contributors to chime in when appropriate, but these profiles are hidden under the “featured advice” section.
The idea is solid, but I do question if USAA is missing out on a big customer service opportunity. If you’re like me, you don’t like to spend a great deal of time messing with finances. It’s just not my cup of tea. When I need a transaction completed or other banking/investing help or advice, I want to make the process as simple as possible. It’s excellent to have access and response from top tier financial planners and portfolio managers but what happens when a post such as this pops up:
I cannot believe USAA takes sooo long to pay insurance claims!!!! My house was broken into 4 weeks ago and I have yet to even receive an update from USAA on the status of my claim!!!! I understand they have to do their research, but 4 WEEKS!!!??? I have family members that work at other insurance firms and they guarantee returns within two weeks!!! What is going on with USAA??
It seems that situations such as this could easily be resolved by designating two or three USAA employees to serve as social media customer services reps, featuring their photos and brief bios on the home page. The purpose of these managers would be to actively respond to complaints and concerns such as the post above in a timely manner or provide other necessary advice.
USAA also maintains a presence on Twitter and Facebook but seem to currently be utilizing both in a broadcast manner as opposed to conversation tools. One can easily argue that USAA could more actively be utilizing these tools to connect with members and provide rapid fire customer service. However, there is also a legit argument (as outlined by Brian Solis in this excellent post) for maintaining a broadcast approach if in fact USAA is not prepared to allocate resources for these channels.
Overall, I applaud USAA for taking the right steps to pay attention and help foster the online conversation. Strong online presence and engagement will undoubtedly pay dividends down the road as more and more members recognize the value of utilizing the Web as a parallel access channel. It will now be a matter of how the organization adapts to the changing role of online customer service.
-Scott
How to Create Your Social Media Policy
There is a lot of buzz right now about social media policies. Does your company need one? Not need one? What factors need to be considered in creating a policy?
To start, I’d encourage you to not get hung up on this being just a “social media policy.” Chances are pretty good that your organization already has a host of existing employee policies that provide boundaries and regulate work activity. A social media policy can really be thought of within the larger context of being an overarching “online communications” policy.
If your company is debating putting a policy in place, check out this post from Sharlyn Lauby discussing why you’d want to have a social media policy in the first place. If you’re set on creating a policy but are unsure where to start, I’ve got good news. There’s no need to recreate the wheel. As with so many aspects of social media, collective efforts are helping establish best practices.
I highly recommend checking out the following links to help guide the creation of your own policy:
Dave Fleet – Social Media Policies for Your Company
Dave has put together a couple excellent posts detailing factors that you’ll want to think about addressing in both internal and external policies.
Blog Council – Disclosure Policy
The Blog Council has put together a nice set of guidelines on disclosure and best practices toolkit. These guidelines have been reviewed by numerous Fortune 500 legal departments and are intended for anyone to utilize for their own company.
Corporate Social Media Policy
Sally Falkow identifies links to a range of excellent policy examples.
Mayo Clinic Policy Example
One of my favorite policies. Incredibly well written and easy for any employee to understand.
Jaffe Associates Policy Template
A nice template provided by a D.C. based PR firm.
The Two-Line Social Media Policy
Does your company or organization currently have a social media policy in place or are you considering putting one in place?
-Scott
