Social Media at Work: Yes or No?

Even accounting for duplicate and inactive account logins, collectively, there are 750,000,000+ registered potential users (that’s 750 million for  those of you that got dazed by the zero’s) that are spending time online frittering away their lives looking at what other people do and commenting about questions or circumstances that affect each of us. Or so our corporate parents within Corporate Communications, Human Resources, Management or the Executive would have you believe.

A quick snapshot of the registered users for each of the below social networks yields some serious numbers.

Facebook: 200,000,000+
My Space: 260,000,000+
Linkedin: 42,000,000+
Twitter: 25,000,000+
Windows Live Spaces: 120,000,000+
Bebo: 40,000,000+
Flixster: 63,000,000+

And these are only the ‘big ones’ as cited by Wikipedia’s Social Networking websites list on 25th June 2009.

Depending on the medium in question, accessing any sort of social networking website whilst at work is generally construed as a time waster and as such sites like this often get “blocked” by the IT Dept. And in all seriousness, your erstwhile corporate guardians do have a point, as it impinges on productivity and has a monetary cost both from internet bandwidth as well as the loss of efficiency in your staff.

However the problem is one of understanding around the use of such networks correctly, both at work and in your private time. I’m constantly taken aback by the number of people who complain about unfair treatment because they’ve blown off some steam and made a comment about their workplace, a colleague or some sort of negative reference to their place of employment, the place they are paid to do a job and act in a professional  manner reflecting their organisations values. Since when was blasting out in a public forum considered an appropriate means of self expression and immune to the influence and rules which govern your workplace? You’re asked not to swear, dress inappropriately or be dishonest whilst at work, why is it any different to when you are out of work? There is a massive difference to having a whinge to your buddies down at the pub on a Friday night, verses publishing on the web for all to see, comments about the eating habits of the guy 3 cubicles up, or the appalling dress sense of the girl over in X department.

Or worse.

As @danwwilson Twittered recently: “I’m amazed that some people continue to think that twitter has a magical privacy cloak.”

Social Media sites are very important, as has been shown because of the groundswell of popular/negative opinion that can race across your screen with your friends endorsement/derision, your work colleagues recommendation/warding off all driven off just good old fashioned crowd dynamics. Doubly important in recent times, it has become readily apparent that responsible use can yield useful information and influence peoples thoughts and behaviours because of the common thread of what is a “trending topic” emerging for people to critique and access. Responsible use by everyone, both at work and privately needs to be governed by the businesses in the first place, so that employees are encouraged to elicit a sense of responsibility and ownership for their employer and their place within the organisation.

Simplistically put, if an organisation respectfully manages the staff, the staff will in turn respectfully manage the organisation.

To this end, I often advise business to articulate a clear Social Networking policy, around access, acceptable  and expected behaviour with clear guidelines as to the conseqences and outcomes of misconduct. This is no different to 15 years ago when Email started to enter the workplace and personal emails were initially frowned upon. Or 10 years ago when doing online banking. Or 5 years ago when you wanted to book tickets to something. Anyone who has a computer with Internet access in the workplace is likely to have a role where there is some amount of time where they wait for something to complete, are having lunch or doing research online.

It is nowadays quite common and reasonably expected that in their lunch break, employees may do some online banking, check the online news or book a movie/aerobics class/plane flights. Access to Social networks should fall under the same umbrella, with the encouragement of responsible usage, behavior and ownership. The other side of this is with an older workforce (think the Baby Boomer or Builder Generations) having to learn the computer skills such as typing and just basic navigation around the computer, if they are encouraged to use it in a social context on their lunch break, there is a very real advantage around increasing their familiarity and comfort level with the equipment. Anyone under the age of 30 will likely use a computer naturally – type quickly, understand basic navigational functionality and key concepts like saving and archiving files. This basic concept of technology use is severely misunderstood by IT Depts and many large organisations and the result is poor productively, decreased efficiency and often cost intensive training programs and “work” endorsed and targetted training. Employers who shift the culture and thinking to use of computers as a tool for getting your job done more quickly and allow access to the spread of social networking functions will reap the benefits of a happier and more satisfied workforce.

Employees are a valuable part of your workforce – that is why you pay them. Being responsible adults, structured and clear governance of their access to such facilities with clear guidelines will be reflected in how they treat their role – with a sense of pride and ownership. The ultimate outcome will be a workforce which has less to complain about, and will have a deeper appreciation of their role within the organisation, as critically, they will be offered a sense of ownership and respect within the business.

Social Media at work? Yes.

With appropriate communication, you will have a happier and more productive workforce, who will feel valued and respected for their contributions.

SEO Seeding – Electronic Arts Website

What a fascinating (and logical) way to gain higher volume traffic to your newly designed website – Electronic Arts www.ea.com – jumped right onto the Ashton Kucher vs CNN battle, publishing this press release on 16th April 2009:

In supporting Ashton in his efforts, EA is offering Kutcher’s 1,000,000th follower on Twitter a copy of every game EA makes in 2009 for the gaming system of their choice and, to have a character based on them that can be played in The Sims 3 if Ashton wins.  The Sims 3 will also donate 5,000 mosquito nets in the name of the 1 millionth person who follows Ashton on Twitter (REGARDLESS of a win).

Earlier this week, actor Ashton Kutcher announced via YouTube that the number of his Twitter account followers rivaled that of the CNN Breaking News Twitter feed, and that upon beating them to the 1 million member milestone, he would punk CNN founder Ted Turner if the Internet made it happen.  (Click here to watch the video that started it all.)

Specifically, he said he would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner’s house and post the video of it if he won the showdown.  To sweeten the deal, Ashton also promised to donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day on April 24.

Check out this update on EA’s offer by Ashton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma8AcfKGaEI

Follow EA on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/EA
Follow EA on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ea
Follow EA on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/EA/68678914189
Follow The Sims 3 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thesims3
Join the race to be Ashton Kutcher’s millionth follower: http://twitter.com/aplusk

The above content, whilst short and succinct, hits every hallmark of good SEO & wider marketing/public relations:

• Keywords – Ashton Kutcher, CNN, Twitter, were some of the hottest search words around at that point in time. Relevance.
• Cross linking to high volume, highly spidered sites like www.wikipedia.org and www.youtube.com and linking to the cross promotion points on Twitter & Facebook and EA’s own Twitter pages
• Inserting the title [Sims 3] of a game which in itself is under high search keyword scrutiny and offering the coveted position of having an avatar of yourself created in one of the most popular games of of ALL time – the modern day equivalent of immortality personified – i.e. the 100 story skyscraper, with your name on the plaque at the bottom.
• EA throwing in themselves and donating 5,000 mosquito nets in the name of the millionth follower to the www.malarianomore.org campaign. Another chance of immortality and celebrity.
• The incidental prize of all 2009 EA Titles, is really just appeasing the products division – on the weight of the other PR & promotional activity, this pales in significance.

Full coverage and the new EA site here:

EA Supports Ashton Kutcher in Twitter Showdown - http://www.ea.com/news/ea-supports-ashton-kutcher-in-twitter-showdown
Malaria No More - http://www.malarianomore.org/news/features/twitter_aplusk.php

And for the record, I personally prefer the look of the older EA site…. the new white background is a sorry trade off for the cool black of the preceding site, although funtionality wise, the execution of the new site is outstanding. Maybe it’s because I spend alot of time looking at MS Word doco on the screen today, my poor eyes prefer the soft tones of black….

www.twanalyst.com

My first reaction was to laugh. The second was to frown. The third response was: “Damn it! Since when have I been described as bloody UNREMARKABLE?!”

My excuse is that I’ve been onboard for only 2 weeks. So there.

Once I was over my fit of apoplexy, I went back and Twanalysed a few other well known peeps, celebrities, friends and random. I don’t feel so bad now considering some of the descriptions that @aplusk, @oprah and others have got and most importantly the recommendations which were offered are actually relevent, useful and pertinent.

	PERSONAL INFORMATION:
	Name:	TheCultureMind (Colin Yeung)
	Location:	Melbourne, Australia (Time zone: Melbourne)
	Description:	Active – mountain biking, digital at www.areeba.com.au, house renovating + family: wife / baby son.
	URL:	http://www.theculturemind.com
	STATISTICS:
	Account Created:	09 Apr 09
	Status Updates:	38
	Followers:	19
	Following:	39
	ANALYSIS:
	Tweets per day:	2.7
	Readability index: (?)	10
	% conversations:	24
	% links:	14
	% content:	62

(This page for theculturemind has been viewed 7 times)
Your Twitter personality (click to tweet it!)
Personality: ordinary sociable unremarkable Style: chatty coherent VOYEUR

Tips for your tweeting…

• Work on making your tweets more interesting to attract more followers
• If you retweet others, hopefully they’ll retweet you back
• Use hashtags to join in popular discussions or online events

Ashton Kutcher vs the World; Arena: Twitter

Not following aplusk as such, recently he’s gone on the record for challenging everyone from Ted Turner & @CNN across to a bunch of nobodies, with far less publicity cred to hit the iconised 1,000,000 mark from a followers point of view. Sounds like an opportunity to register yourself as a religion and avoid a whole hell of a lot of tax to me.

If I had a million peeps following me, I’d be pretty chuffed with things in general. A million people. Wow.

The summation of activities to date are reported here: http://www.lalawag.com/twitterbattle-ashton-kutcher-vs-larry-king/

Twitterholic tracks the most popular Twitter Accounts.

Web Trend Map 2009 – Information Architects Japan

Hard on the heels of my post a few weeks back, Information Architects Japan has just released Version 4 of its Web Trend Map. The full version can be viewed here at http://www.informationarchitects.jp/wtm, or click on the below image for a full size 6740 x 4768 (JPG 2.56Mb) on Flickr. As at time of writing the Map wasn’t up on IA Japan’s website yet….

Information Architects Japan – Web Trend Map 3

This is very cool. Using the Tokyo Subway as an overlay, the uber smart dudes at Information Architects Japan have listed out close to 300 of the WWW  most visited and influential websites. Each train line represents a trend which the site portrays i.e. social network, news etc.

Interactive version here: http://informationarchitects.jp/start/

Information Architects Japan - Web Trends Map 3