How to Amplify Your Brand Voice With Employee Advocacy

How to Amplify Your Brand Voice With Employee Advocacy Although most businesses now realise that social media can play a significant role in their marketing and employer branding, few recognise they value of their employees and the role that they can play in the businesses social media efforts. The average person has 5 social media accounts, so it is highly likely that employees are already very active online and would be willing to become a social media advocate for the company. Not only are your employees a more trustworthy source than official company accounts, but getting them involved in sharing brand related content can also expand your reach significantly. Everyone Social have put together an infographic looking at how businesses can  amplify their brand voice by encouraging employees to be vocal on social media. Heres how your company could benefit from employee advocacy: How are businesses using social media? On average companies post:  1-2 times a day on Facebook;  4-15 times a day on Twitter and  20 times per month on LinkedIn 50% of employees are post about their employer on social media and of this 50% 1/3 of the posts are positive  39% of employers ask their employees to keep an eye out for social media posts about the company How are  employers helping employees to get involved on social media? 13% provide employees with 1 or more social media account 35% provide access to social media at work 55% of employers provide readily available tools for employees to use on social media How can social media affect employee engagement? Employees with the most extensive online networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues Employees of socially engaged companies are 20% more likely to stay at the organisation What are the benefits of employee advocacy on social media? Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than that shared by official brand channels Brand messages reach 561% further when shared by employees, than by official brand channels 90% of consumers said that they trust social media and word-of-mouth recommendations by friend and family more than other advertising. More on this topic at  Employee Advocacy: The Ultimate Handbook.

Black Friday and Employee Recruitment - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Black Friday and Employee Recruitment - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career All employees want to recruit the best candidate and often, small business owners complain that they cannot convince talented candidates to work for them. Well, as a small business owner, did you ever think of applying Black Friday to your recruitment? If you are asking how you are going to do this, here is how. If you ever looked at Black Friday offers carefully, you can see that all of them have a value proposition. Some of them are limited quantity or for a limited time and others have a special discount that make everyone think that it is not an everyday price. As a result, people hurry up and run to the store to buy their desired items. Now, let’s look at your company’s recruiting in terms of Black Friday. Do your job ads have a value proposition? Does it make the majority of job seekers open your job post and then, apply? If yes, that is great. Then, your company is a desired company and your recruitment department is doing its job right. If not, you should reevaluate your job posts and the message they are communicating to the job seekers. Talented candidates constantly look for new knowledge, skills and experience. That is why they generally look for another job. If you want to attract these candidates, you should market your job posts like you are marketing a Black Friday offer. First, you can start by giving a name to your recruitment initiative such as Management Trainee Program, Fast Track Management Program or College Hiring Program for new graduates. This will help you establish a brand for your recruitment effort.  Then, try to focus on the advancement theme on your job posts. Don’t forget that everybody has a career dream and as an employer, you should help fulfill that dream.   Otherwise, talented hires look for other employees which will help them fulfill their dreams. Finally, promote your job posts wisely. Try to get inside information about where your desired candidates look for job posts. You don’t need to post your job openings in all of the job sites. The important point is choosing the ones that will bring you the candidates you want. Also, run an employee referral program. Encourage your employees to refer candidates for job openings. In addition, you can advertise your job openings for internal hiring as well. It is always easier to train an internal employee for a new job compared to someone completely new to the company.

How To Use Disagreements to Build Stronger Teams

How To Use Disagreements to Build Stronger Teams Because I facilitate team sessions for a living, I’ve seen lots of team interactions. All kinds of drama, some shouting and tears, but also lots of laughter, joy, and bold action. Much about teamwork has been researched, dissected, and discussed. Yet lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about an unexplored topic: how to get team members to disagree. What do you do as a team member, if, after all the discussion and debate, the hours the team talked about a new direction, plan, or policy, you still disagree? What I see happen on most teams is acquiescence giving in or just going along. It’s hard to know the line between sticking to your views and aligning with the team. Are you a bad team player if you don’t agree? For a long time, I have facilitated team problem-solving sessions in the same way: 1.         First explore the issue from all sides, uncovering a comprehensive view of the current state and root causes 2.         Next, brainstorm options and agree on a broad path forward 3.         And finally develop recommendations and specific action plans During the first two steps, team members share their views, voice concerns, ask probing questions, debate, and discuss. I ensure people know it’s a safe environment to dissent and challenge. And then, at a certain point, when we have brainstormed and kicked around options, we agree on a future state. Then we move into action planning.   Once plans and next steps are identified, well, I deem the team session a home run. We have moved from chaos into order, from theory into action. It always feels like a triumph of team process and alignment. Until it suddenly didn’t. At a recent team session, I didn’t like the feeling in the room at the end of step 3. Everyone had dutifully done their breakout work, devising strong, meaty action plans. Yet, the energy was all off. Team members seemed deflated instead of enthused. So I decided to do a check in. I asked everyone to show, using hand signals from fist to five, how they felt about bringing this plan forward to the organization.   Here’ the fist to five criteria I used: Fist = over my dead body 1 â€" 2 = serious concerns and not really on board 3 = I can live with it but…. 4= feeling pretty darn good 5 = can’t wait to get started Based on the quality of the work they had done to develop strong plans and recommendations, I expected all 4s and 5s. What I saw around the room astounded me.   Responses ranged from 2.5 â€" 5. I couldn’t believe there were still 3 team members with serious â€" stop the presses â€" concerns. As we started talking about it, here’s some of what I heard: “I still don’t believe this project should take precedence over our other priorities. And I don’t think we can get those and this done.” “I don’t feel we have proven the ROI. I’m not convinced it will really impact our goals.” I was panicked. All eyes were looking at me with a “Now what?” stare, especially the team leader. Instead of trying to fix things, I decided to ask some questions. I asked: “Why did you do the action planning if you still didn’t agree with the solution?” “What made you feel that you couldn’t say this earlier in the day? What held you back?” I learned that team members felt swept along by the process, guilty about not going along with what the team leader so obviously wanted, and eager to demonstrate alignment and teamwork. We ended the day in a completely different place than I expected. We decided to delay any further action on this project until it could be evaluated in the context of the larger portfolio. It was disconcerting to me. If I hadn’t checked in when I had, we would have ended the day with timelines and actions that 1/3 of the team didn’t believe in, and I (and the team leader) would have left with a false sense of unity. I wonder how often this unspoken disagreement happens on teams? Maybe all the time? So what can you do to ensure team members don’t just give up too early. Here are 3 ideas you can try. 1. Create real space for disagreement. Ask good questions to promote speaking up such as: What’s a contrary view? What have we not considered? Why would this fail? What’s the one thing holding you back from full support? What has not been said that we should discuss before we move on? 2. Check in on how people are feeling. We are focused in business on facts and data. And while we shouldn’t make our decisions solely using “gut feel,” we shouldn’t ignore our intuition and our inner voice which usually expresses our fears and concerns. 3. If you are the team leader, make sure you are not skewing the direction based on your personal views. If you have already decided, then tell the team. But if you really want to hear unbiased views, share yours last. Don’t get me wrong. I love building team alignment and collaboration. But I also think we need to work just as hard to promote divergent thinking and unpopular views. Build a stronger team by getting good at disagreeing! This post was authored by Audrey Epstein Audrey Epstein is a partner at The Trispective Group and the co-author of The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor, and Authenticity Create Great Organizations. For more information or to take a free team snapshot assessment, please visit,  www.trispectivegroup.com.

How to Stop Wasting Time at Work - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

How to Stop Wasting Time at Work - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career It is so easy to waste time at work through checking social media, chatting with coworkers or doing unnecessary things. As a result, at the end of the day you accomplish nothing and feel unproductive. Therefore, in order to spend your day more meaningfully and achieve your goals, implement the below steps to your daily routine. 1.  Make a to-do list: When you come to the office every day, make yourself a to-do list and try to finish that entire list at the end of the day. Keep it small and realistic at the start. Make sure you prioritize your tasks according to their importance. When you have difficulty concentrating, work on the low intensity tasks such as printing something or archiving your files. Therefore, you can stay productive even if your concentration is low. Do not forget to revise your list during the day as new tasks show up. 2.  Stop Checking Your Emails Randomly: The email message that is popping up on your computer screen can create urgency for many to check their inboxes constantly. Checking your emails frequently can make you waste your time, since you need to refocus on the task that you have been working on. Unless you are truly waiting for an important email, you should schedule specific times to check your emails such as at the morning, after lunch and in the afternoon. The same holds for your smart phone messages and voicemails as well. 3.  Do not multi-task: If you are working on your emails at the same time you are working on your task, then it will take you more time to complete both of them compared to working on them one-by-one.   As a result, you will waste your time. The reason of this is that multi-tasking divides your attention between tasks and since each task gets less attention, you need more time to finish them. Work on one task at a time and move on to the next one when you are done. 4.  Divide Your Time into Chunks: Group similar activities together and don’t bounce from one activity to the other without finishing the one you are working on. For example, you can use your mornings to reply all of the emails from the previous day and after finishing your emails, you can do your meetings or phone calls, then, you can work on your project and finally, you can check your emails again. Do not forget that when you group together similar activities, your brain works faster.

Resume For Graduate School - Writing a Professional Resume That Gets Noticed

Resume For Graduate School - Writing a Professional Resume That Gets NoticedWriting a resume for graduate school is an art in itself. While it's true that most people who go into graduate school already have a college degree, it can be tempting to add some more information on there to make the resume look better. The point of a resume is to get you noticed and to tell a prospective employer what you are looking for. You want to make sure you do it right by sticking to the rules.To get started, you need to decide if you will apply to graduate school in your field of study. If you decide to do so, make sure you write a more specific summary to include in your resume. It should include a summary of your major, any extra majors you have taken, awards or honors you have received, internships, and the name of any organizations you are involved with. This is information that you want on your resume.The key words in your summary should include some of your personal information. These include your name, email address, and telephone number. This is information that will help you get a call back from a potential employer.You also want to include a letter to send along with your resume. This should give a brief description of your educational history, list your main areas of interest, and explain how these interests influenced your studies. It should not be too long, but it should not be too short either.Make sure the letter you use to write the letter is different from your resume. A professional writing service may write a longer letter, or you may choose to write a shorter letter that only lists the same information in a different way. Whatever you do, be sure to indicate to the hiring manager that you wrote this letter.Before you send your resume, proofread it. You want to make sure the spelling and grammar are correct. Make sure you don't have anything left out or put the wrong dates or information. Make sure your resume is complete with contact information. You never know what might come up later that you need to use.After you have proofread your resume, send it off with a cover letter. This should focus on you as an individual and explain why you are the best person for the job. This should be sent along with your resume. If you choose, you can add a separate document to your application with a resume and cover letter.Sending your resume for graduate school isn't hard, but it does take time and patience to get it done properly. If you take the time to find a professional writing service that has experience writing resumes for grad students, you will be on your way to making your future in this profession a reality.

Online Identity Are You a Digital Dud or a Digital Rock Star

Online Identity Are You a Digital Dud or a Digital Rock Star Last week I presented a seminar called Career Branding: Building Your Brand Online and Offline to members of the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA). During the presentation, a member of the audience asked Why do I really need to have an online presence? I get asked this question quite often and I can appreciate the skepticism many have towards putting information about themselves online. But the reality is that many recruiters and hiring authorities are searching for candidates online and many are making screening decisions based on the information they do (or do not) find.  According to a 2009 Execunet survey, 86% of recruiters surveyed do a “Google” search on candidates and reject 44% of candidates based on what they find out about them online. So doesnt it make sense to take control of your online identity and manage your electronic footprint? Here are 4 questions that every person interested in managing their career should ask themselves.  Do I exist online?  Is m y identity possibly being confused with others who have the same name?Is the information about me online relevant to my professional identity and is it accurate?Is there anything damaging about me online that a hiring manager could uncover?  Take a few minutes to perform an online identity checkup by putting your name in quotes into a major search engine. If your online presence is next to nothing, confusing, irrelevant, or detrimental to your career, consider branding or re-branding yourself using tools such as LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and GoogleMe to improve your career brand and better represent your unique value proposition.

The Paradoxes of Being a Servant-Leader - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

The Paradoxes of Being a Servant-Leader - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog I had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Meng at the Kaospilots chaordic conference, and he mailed out this quote, which illustrates the paradox of being a servant leader, who must be: Strong enough to be weak Successful enough to fail Busy enough to make time Wise enough to say I dont know Serious enough to laugh Rich enough to be poor Right enough to say Im wrong Compassionate enough to discipline Mature enough to be childlike Important enough to be last Planned enough to be spontaneous Controlled enough to be flexible Free enough to endure captivity Knowledgeable enough to ask questions Loving enough to be angry Great enough to be anonymous Responsible enough to play Assured enough to be rejected Victdorious enough to lose Industrious enough to relax Leading enough to serve Brewer, as cited by Hansel, 1987 Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related