Does Your Company Need A Social Media Guru?

The company's brand ambassadors are hot right now.

There are quite many blogs, books, and social media conversations covering this topic. It looks like everyone is talking about the relevance of the brand ambassador. The benefit of using this figure to promote your company and your products is undeniable. 

I totally support the idea of "people" (instead of "companies") taking a more active role representing the company in different events as well as on the social media channels and blogs. However, when the advice for the companies is to hire a "social media guru" to take care of this, it makes me think, is this really necessary?

Forget the external social media guru. Focus on your employees. 

First, let me clarify that I have nothing against the "social media gurus". In fact, I feel a sincere admiration for the guys out there who are able to engage masses and become influencers by giving fantastic speeches, creating catchy content, or sharing amazing pictures and videos. That requires a lot of talent and dedication.

My point here is that no all companies can hire a "social media guru". Sometimes, it does not even make sense. This can be very expensive and the company might not be "mature" enough to take this step and to make this investment. The hiring person might not understand how to start the hiring process or what kind of skills are needed for the role.

The good news is that social media management is a skill that can be developed. In most of the cases, you can develop the skills of somebody who is already in your team. By training well your employees, you can convert them into your own social media gurus and brand ambassadors.

Never underestimate the power of your employees

The advantage of using you employees as brand ambassadors is that they already know your company, your products, and your people. They will be able to network inside your organization and get the information they need to create their content. Of course, it will help a lot if your company embraces a culture of sharing content.  

Your employees' strengths and talents can be shown in different ways. Some employees might be very good writing on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Others might be better at taking pictures and using Instagram, or presenting in different shows or events. There will be space for everyone interested in being your company's ambassador. 

6 reason why you should convert your employees into your brand ambassadors

- Your employees might have already thousands of connections across multiple networks. Therefore, they might reach a much larger audience than the one you are reaching now by using your company channel.

- It is well known that the content shared by employees receives more engagement than the content shared by the company channels. People prefer to follow people.

- If your employees share content that is relevant for your brand and for the industry in which you operate, they will create a personal brand. This means they will be seen as experts, and they will be contacted for advice. If your prospects think about your employee and his/her expertise while finding a solution, they might be purchasing your product or service. 

- Employees talking and sharing content about your company and your culture will help you to create your employer brand. If the shared content is positive, this might help you to attract and source new talent.

-  When your employees participate actively sharing information on the social media channel or they participate in the industry events, they also get more information. The social media channels and the events itself are a great source for learning new skills and perfect for networking with people in your industry.

- Encouragement and new responsibilities can increase motivation. The beauty of allowing your employees to use and experiment with the social media channels at work is that at the same time you will inspire them to do something new and exciting. This will also create a positive buzz and an infectious excitement among the rest of the employees.


Summing up, it is time to start your "treasure hunting" inside your own company. Find people interested in this development area and help them becoming your company ambassador and your own social media gurus. 

SEO, Content Creation, Social Media and Courage: A Summary Of My First Year Of Blogging

A year ago I decided to start my own blog. I was missing writing so badly.  I wanted to practice my writing and to develop my marketing,  communications and social media skills. As you might know by now, my background is in marketing and in communications, however, during the last two years, I have been working mostly on sales.

Starting my own blog was something new and very personal. When you do marketing for a company, you focus more on the product, on the brand or on the corporation. In addition, you have to align your content with your company messages and you have to schedule your posts according to the company's plan. My blog is a perfect place to talk about the things that I am interested in. Here, I can focus on my own thoughts and I can arrange my own schedule.

The main goal of my blog is not to sell or to promote a company. It has been a personal experiment, a development plan. I have learned so much from my readers, and I am very thankful for that. In fact, there have been more readers than what I expected at the beginning of this journey. Some of my articles have been read around 1000 times. This is very encouraging and motivating.

I have experimented a lot and learned from each post. Here, the three most important things I have learned during this year of blogging:

1) Creating the right content for your blog

The process of creating content for my blog has been fascinating and challenging at the same time. It is good that you cannot see my drafts. At the moment, there are ca. 40 messy ideas. This blog has helped me to find a writing opportunity in almost everything in my life. Sometimes, I get topic ideas from things I see at my work place, other times, from my friend's conversations and experiences or from a book. I have accumulated a lot of ideas, however, some of those need to be very polished before I actually can publish those. Ideas are not very useful if I am not able to create something relevant from those.

Yes, content is the king, but I have learned that the way I present my content is also very important. It is not only about having fancy pictures but, more about having the right structure. SEO matters and you can see that very clearly when you have the chance to try these structures, titles, subtitles and wording, and measure the results by yourself. It is a great learning experience.

In a nutshell, a blog post should be:
- Relevant (information that matters)
- Easy to read
- With the right structures (titles, subtitles, etc.)
- With the right keywords to be found.

2) Mastering Social Media: 

To share your content on other channels is a must if you want to be found.  In my case, I use social media to promote my blog and my posts. Most of the visitors come to my blog from Twitter or from Google+. There is some organic search, too. I have used Facebook only a few times and I have gotten great results. However, I don't use Facebook so often because half of my contacts are not speaking English. It feels like I would be spamming them.

When I publish something on my social media channels, I can see the changes to the visitors' statistics. Following the Google and Blogger analytics have been very important part of the development of my blog. I have had the chance to play with many messages and content and see if those work or not.

There is something about the timing, too. I get more visitors to my blog if I promote at the right time for my audience. In my case, I write mostly in English so, half of the visitors are coming from the USA. When I tweet at the USA time I get more visitors than if I tweet at my local (Finnish) time. However, Finns are reading my blog, too. (Kiitos!)

Social media is all about interactions and getting to know people. I have noticed that if somebody "relevant" likes or share my tweet promoting my blog post, I get more visitors. If I am the one sharing other's people content, I also get more visibility. Sharing is caring.

3) Courage:
Jeff Bullas said once that "The biggest challenge for any blogger, social media marketer, content creator, and publisher is to -start- ". I could not agree more. It took a while for me to start this project, but, I am very glad I did.

Writing a blog is getting exposure. This can be very intimidating at some points. It took me a while to start my blog trying to find the perfect topic (or even the perfect language). The truth is that the perfect topic does not exist, so you just need to write and publish. I have done this experiment and I am glad about the results and the learning. Sometimes, I write and publish. Other times, I come back and edit. It is all about experimenting.  Hopefully, you have enjoyed this year on my planet as well. Thank you for be there.

Thinking Out Of The Box And Learning From Other Companies

No matter what business or industry you are in, you will always benefit from studying and listening to other companies’ experiences, even if they are working in a different industry.

I have had the amazing experience to work for different companies and in very different industries. The common factor is that in many companies they believe that their industry is so “special” that nobody from outside will be able to understand. I encourage people to see what different industries are doing for inspiration and for thinking out of the box, or better to say out of their industry. Looking around can help us to get new ideas and to find different ways to do something that can shake a bit our marketing, communications and our general way of doing things. 

It is normal that, if we stay in the same place for long, we feel like we are the best for this job, because we have developed this “specific expertise” and therefore, we believe we know what is the most suitable for the company. The truth is that somebody from outside without that much specific expertise can bring a lot of value to the company. 

Listening and Learning From Others: 

When listening to other companies we need to be very open minded. Instead of thinking that “this will never work here” we should think of the way we can take the best of their experience, adapt it and apply it to our business. It is not about copying their ideas, it’s about figuring out what we can learn from them and how we can use their experience and make it a suitable part of our development.

When you listen or study other companies ‘move, it is worth analyzing why they made that move. Do you face similar situation? Does this apply to your business? If you want to focus on products and processes, bench-marking with other companies will help you to evaluate best practices and perhaps, save money before implementing new processes in your company.

When applying other companies’ ideas, if you think to stop because this is too experimental or too risky for your business, reconsider. Being the pioneer in your industry might be very beneficial. It is great to be the first one implementing something nontraditional. If this work, somebody in your industry might be following soon. 

It is also important to take a look at what the other companies' customer are talking about. What do you see?  Do they like the company’s initiative? How do they react to e.g. the new marketing campaign? For example, if their customers are sharing comments and info on the social media channels their info might be useful for you. This is their live testimonial, you’re getting direct insight into what customers want. How this company is managing this communication? Is there something that you can learn from them or even to do differently?

Listening to other companies experience will be useful for your company and for your employees. It will help you to think out of the box and catch new movement that are not yet trendy or common in your industry. Encourage you employees to be active in learning from others, this knowledge is perhaps more valuable than any other that they can get from books or courses. 

How To Become A Good Communicator

It is truth that there are many people who are born with the talent and the right charisma to communicate. For sure you know somebody who can "hypnotize others" or who really catches your attention when talking. Or you know somebody who expresses him/herself so well that you read all the articles, columns and even all the tweets (over and over again). Communication is a skill that can be developed with training and personal effort, therefore, if you have thought that you want to be that kind of person, a great communicator, this is possible.


Some tips to become a good communicator:

Know what you are talking about: prepare yourself to express well. If you don't know what you are talking about, you will feel uncomfortable, and this will make your communication more challenging. Prepare yourself and get to know the topic well. 


Be clear and precise with your words: Less is more. I mean, use simple vocabulary that most of the people can understand and clear sentences which you are able to read without losing your breath. Select the main ideas and express those separately. 

Communicate enough, but not too much: select the main topics and the main issues to communicate. Do not try to talk about too many things at once. (This works if you are communicating by writing, too). Talking about too many things at the time only makes you confusing, and your audience will lose the focus. Say enough to keep your audience interested, but not too much to make them sleep. 

Use your strengths and combine different channels: If speaking in public is not your thing, no worries, nowadays more a more you can use different channels and tools to communicate with different audiences. If you are "forced" to talk in public you can use good visual to help you to present your ideas. Please, do not read only the PowerPoint presentation. Instead, use those texts, pictures and ideas to complement what you want to say. In case you don't need to talk in public but you are willing to communicate with different audiences, you can use different social media channels to express yourself, for example, Twitter, SlideShare, Instagram, or a blog. 

Be consistent: let's assume that you are a leader and you are managing a team. The best way to build a good team and reinforce the trust is by being consistent always when you communicate with them. Keep the same (positive, inspirational...) tonality, good attitude and your own communication style when you communicate with your employees. The same applies if you are communicating with customers. Remember, it is important that you align what you are saying with how you are saying it. Always.


Be authentic: You can see other people's way of communicate and learn from them. However, do not try to imitate others' style. Create a style that fits you well and makes you feel comfortable. To get a good audience you don't need to fake who you are.

Practice: This is particular useful if you are speaking in public. Writing down your ideas and reading those loud will help you to feel more confident about your presentation. 

Pay attention to others: If you are talking in public maintain a good eye contact with all the audience, listen to them, see their reactions and take their actions into consideration e.g. answering questions, sharing a friendly tonality, smiling, etc. in case you communicate by writing "listening to them" is also important. This means read your audience well and try to satisfy their communications needs. For example, if you are receiving feedback or comments, answer and follow-up until you feel the message has been delivered satisfactorily.


Good communications skills are useful for everything in our life -from personal relationship to business development. Do not take communication for granted and make always an effort to develop your skills.

The Year Of Change: Change Management For Real Life Situations

This 2015 has been a year of change for me. A year ago I decided to take a job offer in a new company. This had a major implication, I needed to move to another city, Kuopio, about 400 km away from where I was living previously.

  

The idea of moving to Kuopio has been on our minds already for few years as my husband is originally from this area and his family is still living around here. However, it was just the last year when we felt that it was the right time to take the chance, let everything behind and start again in a new place. After moving from Venezuela to Finland 11 years ago, moving to a new city did not feel as a major change, however, my new job meant starting something new, too. (I will go back to that later...).  

Almost a year has passed and I think that we have managed our change in a good way and we have learned a lot from this change. 

How we managed our change:

Readiness: There is a Zen proverb that says that "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear", I could not agree more with this. If you are planning a change, you need to be ready for it. When you are ready, things start to flow. Eight or five years ago perhaps I was not ready for this change, the conditions, priorities and my attitude were different then.

Understanding the change: Before you manage any project that involves change, you must understand how you react to change. You also might evaluate how people around you react to change because they will also be affected by it. Are we on the same page? Do we want the same things as a result of this change? When you understand this, you will be in a better position to plan proactively the change and be ready for the effect that change has on your life.

Implementing the change: Taking actions is the most important step. You need to consider what do you need to do to achieve the goal? Which steps do you need to take? How long does it take? How much does it cost? Does your change can be managed in different stages? Who is responsible for each stage? Who is joining the process and in which phase?

Communicate change: involving people around us was essential. When we were considering about change we informed people around us about our plans and schedules. In fact, our conversation (and “research”) about this change option started well in advance, even before I was considering taking the job here. Communicating the change helps you to see your goals under different perspectives. You will be surprised how much people are willing to help you when you communicate your goals and your change plans.

Ask for help: We have been very lucky to received help and support from the people around us. Our change would have not been possible without those people who let us join their life, helped us arranged things and also have helped to settle down here.

Resistance to change: even you are willing and ready for the change, you consciously or unconsciously will always face some resistance. The adapting and adjusting to the new routines and new life takes time. You need to learn how to do things in the "new way" so, you might consider this when planning your change.

Prepare for the unexpected: sometimes things are not going according to your plan. In fact, most of the time...This is not necessary a bad thing but, you just need to be ready to improvise and react to the unexpected challenges and situations.

I can say I have developed my change management skills when moving to different countries and cities. I am more and more ready to adapt to new situations and different kind of contexts. This skill is very useful in my professional life as I can adapt better to new situations at work and identify people and organizations who/which are resisting to change.I have learned that there is not written rules on how managing change or on how long does it takes to implement change, but attitude, planning and communication are essential to manage any kind of change in personal or professional scenarios