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Showing posts from June, 2013

The Four Cs of a Social Media Strategy for Business Communication

M any businesses now embark on a social media campaign (often also referred to as social influencing) to reach their target audiences in the thousands of different social media networks. In addition employees are also increasingly using social media for different business reasons.  In fact, a social media strategy has now become almost imperative in today’s business communication milieu. But what makes a good social media strategy? Is it enough to only decide which of the different social media networks to use or may be used by employees? As a social media strategy becomes more imperative, it is perhaps also time to consider the following four Cs when planning the strategy. The four Cs are circumstances, contribution, communication and consequences. These can be explained as follows: Circumstances A good social media strategy should always consider the  circumstances  of the target audience(s) of the business. What are their needs? Who are they? Why are they in that p

An Honest Impression of 360 Peer Evaluation and Feedback

Have you received an invitation, especially on LinkedIn to evaluate one of your peers via the 360 evaluation process?  I recently accepted a colleague's invitation to be peer reviewed in this manner and in this post I want to give my honest impression of this evaluation process. But first how does it work?  It is a web-based peer evaluation system where the reviewer has to drag the 18 most positive attributes of the colleague to another box, then those most likely to be associated with the colleague, and then lastly those least likely to be associated with the colleague.  In addition you have to single out attributes needing attention.  You have to drag 18 attributes for each category and are then left with all attributes not dragged over and thus being forced to associate them with the least likely to be associated with the colleague.  The process seems quite fine until you reach the least likely category.  Even if you do not necessarily agree with the attribute you are fo

Branding should also consider Customer Service

Branding a company is important for distinguishing it clearly from the competitors through planned communication strategies but it also expands to other functional areas in the company, for example, a   reliable customer service   when dealing with customers’ email, written, personal and telephonic enquiries and basically all instances where customers come into contact with the company. A reliable customer service is also applicable to effective brand administration in that customers can benefit by the whole administration process.  As indicated in previous posts, the role of happy employees in this regard is of utmost important.  The happier the employees, the better the customer service will be. But how should it work?  A   brand communication strategy , as part of an internal communication strategy ,   should include strategies how to offer value to the customer in all areas of service delivery, including administration. When a company has inefficient administration, it often res