When people think about ‘social media’ they often envision reckless employees fumbling around on Facebook and Twitter. In many cases this wouldn’t be too far from reality if we were examining a group of employees without any leadership.

But what a minute…

when was the last time employees did
everything the way you wanted without any leadership?

Leadership defines how an organization will succeed or fail.
Knowledge defines whether a leader can make educated decisions.
Communication defines if your team will understand your decisions.

Your Social Media Policy serves as a channel for your leadership: communicating business fundamentals and actionable goals to maximize opportunities.  A good social media policy also involves educating and motivating your team to find the best possible uses for new tools and avoid potential pitfalls.

The evil part of social media consists of the large numbers of business leaders who have failed to create a business benefit driven process that *good* employees can follow and participate in.

This lack of leadership has compounded “career fear” at the mid-management and executive level. These corporate leaders are hesitant to adopt new ideas, explore unchartered territory, or take risk in something they do not fully comprehend.

Yet the real evil of social media shows itself when amazing, positive, committed, and thought-leading employees are forced to find alternative ways of doing things when they know the BEST WAY to do it would include some utilization of ‘social media’

Imagine this scenario

You have a team of contractors building a house. Most of your team is stacking wood up and gluing the frame together. One of them is sitting in the corner using a hammer to drive these pointy little things into two pieces of wood to hold them together (I.E. hammer & nails.)

The foreman hasn’t seen nails before, but he remembers stepping on something pointy as a kid and he simply doesn’t like pointy things.

As a manager the foreman come comes to you (the boss) and tells you he has an insane employee ruining the wood by driving pointy things into it with a hammer. He advises you tell all the employees that hammers and pointy things are banned from the worksite.

You could jump the gun and simply agree with the foreman. You could even go overboard and fire the employee as an example of how dangerous pointy things are.

Or you could develop a process of examination and ask questions that allow you to be a leader.

Beyond Hammers and Nails

Those are some of the highlights of using a  Social Media Policy to communicate your corporate management and ask fundamental benefit questions.

As a leader have you enabled your team members with balanced social media policy and process questions or do you fall in the group that chastises employees for bringing pointy things into the office?

Recent research,found that 90% of British consumers use a different travel provider every time they book a holiday, and that only 12% of respondents said they book with the same operator every time.

The results show that when it comes to booking holidays online, British consumers have little or no loyalty to travel operators. Is this diminishing brand loyalty just a natural result of a more open web or is it because brands are less adept at building relationships with web savvy visitors?

Do you believe the erosion of brand loyalty, the increasing frustration with using the web and the increase in openness to use offline travel agencies is more related to technology or trust issues?

Personally I am certain the erosion in brand loyalty is due to the overabundance of travel providers, the oversupply of capacity, the multiple ways in which a traveler can buy the product, the aggressive nature of how price our products, and simply failing to make te traveler feel as though their business matters.

A case in point: When checking into a hotel a years ago, a front-desk trainee was about to hand me my welcome packet when a colleague who was training her said “oh, he doesn’t get that, he’s just a basic.” I asked what happened, and the trainer replied “You were about to get some stuff you’re not entitled to.” Do you think that experience made me felt as though I’d want to become loyal to that hotel – especially since I held gold status in two of its competitors at the time?

I am certain that the frustration with the Web, and the resulting increase in travelers willing to consider working with traditional agencies, is related to technology, as well as Web site design and a desire for more attention and context.

The travel planning and booking process today is nearly the same as it was 10 years ago, when I joined Forrester. The way availability information is presented is, likewise, also very similar to the way we presented information a decade ago. We don’t have shopping processes that reflect “non-traditional”  methods, such as helping customers discover destinations or properties based on criteria like their budget, a theme like beach or family-friendly, or how they want to feel when they’re on that trip.

We do a terrible job of educating the traveler so he or she can make a well-informed decision. Do customers really understand the differences between your different room types or rate types? If not, regardless of what they opt for, they may always wonder “was there anything that this hotel offers that is “more right” for me?” This is why written and visual content is so important.

When shopping online (not just for travel), we usually have a set idea in our minds about what we want: the product, the brand, the colour, the delivery timescale and, of course, the ideal price. Meeting these expectations as quickly as possible is absolutely crucial for brands.

Trust

But, while it is crucial, fulfilling a need is not the only box that needs to be ticked. Trust is extremely important online. There are three key ways that online brands can increase the amount of trust that we, as consumers, have in them:

1. Trust indicators – the first is by including elements on the site that indicate that a site can be trusted. This includes registered addresses, customer service details and even SSL padlock indicators.
2. Social proof – then we have what we call ‘social proof’. This is closely connected to the central theme of the social web; that we trust our peers. Recommendations and word of mouth can be powerful drivers of trust.
3. Reliability – the final element and perhaps the most crucial, is trust in the website itself.

This last point can encompass anything from having a site that is easy to navigate to ensuring there are no errors or glitches on the site at any point that cause the customer to struggle, or question whether the site behaviour is “normal”. How many times have you left a site (possibly never to return) when you’ve been stuck in an endless loop or had an issue entering personal or payment details?

These kinds of incidents don’t only result in loss of revenue for the brand, they also have an impact on the second trust driver when the person in question heads over to Twitter to vent their frustration to likeminded social connections.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that the second most important aspect of a positive online experience, cited by 44% of consumers, was the feeling that a site was easy to navigate, while 23% wanted an error-free experience when booking online.

And so it came to pass Twitter has launched their first official "Twitter" branded client for the mobile platforms. Android is the first to get the Twitter love but of course Tweetie 2 for iPhone has been bought and will be rebranded as Twitter for iPhone in a few weeks time.

So how does Twitters first application measure up... in a word Brilliantly a slick presentation with the features that the average Twitter users will be fine with.

The first screen provides access to each of the core features of Twitter such as your Tweets, Retweets, Lists, Mentions and the like, at the very bottom the current trends float in. It's all rather pleasing and just a bit nice.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.