by Caroline Leach | Feb 28, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
1,030 tweets ago, I joined Twitter.
It was April 2012, the same month we launched a social collaboration platform at my employer.
In addition to a leadership blog I started on the platform to figure out what I was doing, it seemed like the right time to join Twitter too.
It wasn’t until just over a year ago that I really engaged with it, though. Dorie Clark inspired me with her Forbes article on how to dramatically increase your Twitter following.
Setting goals. One of the challenging things about Twitter is figuring out why you’re there and what you want to accomplish. At first I couldn’t articulate any clear goals, other than trying it out.
Then I realized with my voracious reading habit, it could be a way to share great content, without becoming a near spammer by emailing too many articles to friends and colleagues.
My goal became to share content related to my professional interests – corporate communications, change, leadership, human resources and corporate social responsibility.
And it’s an opportunity to promote my employer, with an emphasis on community involvement @DIRECTVSchools and talent development @DIRECTVCareers.
As always, it’s important to disclose my affiliation and be clear that opinions expressed are mine. And I follow the light, bright and polite mantra from How to Be Social.
Getting started. After opening your account comes setting up a 160-character bio. This is a chance to be interesting and use #hashtags, @mentions and links. Upload a photo. And update the bio from time to time as you and your interests evolve. Work Smarter with Twitter and HootSuite by Alexandra Samuel is a great Harvard Business Review e-book to jumpstart involvement.
Finding people and organizations to follow. Just like being social in LinkedIn, you can connect with your existing contacts to invite people you already now. Every time you meet someone new, see if they’re on Twitter and follow them. If there’s someone you want to know more about, follow them. I also follow the media outlets in my News Rituals of a Communicator.
Following people back. Early in my career, I read John Maxwell‘s book, Becoming a Person of Influence. What stuck with me was his premise that people are open to influence from those who are open to influence from them. John Maxwell was one of the first people I followed on Twitter. And I was gleefully surprised when he (or whoever manages his account) followed me back.
That influenced my thinking about who I’ll follow back. I’ll follow back people and organizations who seem professional and legitimate. Accounts that offer Twitter followers for sale or have inappropriate content? No thanks; not interested.
Tweeting compelling content. My daily news ritual as a communicator also allows me to find tweetable content to share. There’s @WSJ and @nytimes. And @latimes since I’m in Southern California. Also love @HarvardBiz, @TheAtlantic and @PsychToday. As often as possible, I look up the reporter’s Twitter handle and add it to the retweet.
Lots of favorite people – @AmyJCuddy, @AdamMGrant, @LVanderkam, @PenelopeTrunk, @MartyNemko, @brainpicker and too many more to list.
Being visual. Tweets with images get 150% more interaction than those without, so include a photo or video with as many tweets as possible. @TheAtlantic now includes an images with nearly every tweet. This is highly engaging, with an Instagram feel. Perhaps that’s one reason why Instagram seems to be neck and neck with Twitter with the number of users.
Reciprocating. Retweet great content that fits with your area of interest. Give it your personal spin by tapping “quote tweet,” and adding a few personal words, followed by “RT” and the original tweet. (If that puts the tweet over 140 characters, you can do an MT – modified tweet – by making minor changes such as “&” for “and” or deleting extraneous words like “that” to save characters).
If I like a tweet that isn’t fully relevant to my subject areas, from one of our local schools for example, I’ll favorite it rather than retweet it.
Growing followers. According to Dorie Clark, the more often you tweet, the more followers you’ll attract. At a minimum, I tweet at least once a day. Three to five tweets are better, spaced throughout the day. And try a message to new followers to say thanks and engage on a topic of interest.
Fitting it into daily life. Plan a tweet first thing in the morning, at mid day and at the end of the day. If you’re the super organized type, create an editorial calendar. Research says the best times to tweet are Mondays through Thursdays between 9 am and 3 pm. Of course, you have to factor in your own geographic location, who you’re trying to engage with and where they’re located.
Finding adjunct uses. There many ways to use Twitter beyond connecting with people on the platform–
- Researching people I’ll soon be meeting
- Assessing a job candidate I’m about to interview
- Vetting a speaker I’m considering for a leadership conference
- Getting quick, authoritative info in real-time a crisis situation (the 2013 LAX shooting being one example)
- Engaging with compelling content and colleagues at conferences, by sharing valuable sound bites and images. Speaking in larger venues highlighted for me the importance of preparing your speech to be shared via social media in short, tweetable statements.
What are your best Twitter tips?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 21, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Social Media
The place to start your professional presence in social media is LinkedIn.
With nearly 300 million professionals and two new members per second, it’s where to be in the work world.
Reciprocity is a key principle of social media. Think of others. What interests them? What inspires them? How can you highlight and promote their efforts?
Be a strategic giver, in the spirit that Wharton professor Adam Grant wrote about in his bestseller Give and Take.
Setting goals. On any social media platform, start by defining your goals. Why are you there? What do you want to accomplish? Two big reasons are because LinkedIn is becoming your resume and to build your professional network.
Getting started. Assuming you already have an account, refresh your profile (make sure you’ve turned off the profile notification updates to your network). Include a professional photo. Upload samples of your best work.
Get Work Smarter with LinkedIn by Alexandra Samuel. This Harvard Business Review e-book gets you started with a great profile and easy ways to update your professional portfolio and expand your network over time.
Connecting with people. To start, you can connect with your existing contacts to invite people you already know. Every time you meet someone new – whether inside or outside of your company – send them a connection request. Be sure to personalize it. Don’t send the default request. Write a short note about why you want to connect. Use it as an opportunity to differentiate yourself and brighten someone’s day.
Assessing connection requests. Generally I’ll connect with people I know. And with people at my company, even if I haven’t met them yet. If I don’t know someone and their industry or role looks relevant, I might accept the request. If a request is from someone completely unknown to me, I don’t accept it. Unless they have taken the time to personalize the request and explain why they would like to connect with me.
Growing your presence. Add something new to your profile at least once a quarter, and ideally every month. Add a new project, a video or other work sample. List speaking engagements. New awards. Something you wrote. At least once a week, post a status update about a project or accomplishment. Share a pertinent article or blog post. Consider starting a LinkedIn blog to share your expertise.
Engaging with people. Beyond building your network, scroll through the home page a few times a week. Tuesdays are especially good. “Like” people’s postings. Comment on a few. Join a discussion group and be an active participant. Offer to write recommendations for people you can enthusiastically endorse.
Fitting it into your life. Schedule a few minutes each week to post a status update. If you’re the super organized type, create an editorial calendar. Research says the best times to post to LinkedIn are early in the week. Put the LinkedIn app on your smartphone so you can access it on the go. Waiting in line somewhere? Post a quick status update (on a professional topic, not the line).
Learning from luminaries. Want help with your LinkedIn profile? Check out speaker and author Donna Serdula. You can also learn all about LinkedIn from Eve Mayer, Lori Ruff and Viveka von Rosen.
Finding adjunct uses. Jumping on a call with people you haven’t met yet? Check out their LinkedIn profiles. See what looks interesting, and what you might have in common to quickly build rapport. One of my responsibilities is to design and deliver my company’s annual leadership meeting. LinkedIn is incredibly helpful once I’ve identified speakers of interest and I want to connect with them directly.
Engaging with customers. From time to time I hear from customers. I make those requests a priority and connect people to the right place within customer care. It may change someone’s mind for the better and generate goodwill.
Engaging with job candidates. People often contact me looking for the hiring manager for an online job posting. This is an opportunity to further our company’s employer brand, we entertain the future. I’ll use my internal network with our recruiters to direct the person to the right place. It’s all part of wanting candidates to have a great experience interacting with us and furthering our corporate reputation.
Engaging with recruiters. With the economy picking up, so has the volume of recruiter outreach. If a recruiter’s profile looks legitimate, I’ll review the job description and try to recommend at least a few good candidates. If there aren’t any people I can refer, I’ll connect the recruiter with a forum group I belong to of senior-level corporate communicators.
What are your best LinkedIn tips?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 14, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media, Work/Life
Every communicator – and every leader – has to be social.
It’s not a matter of IF you’re going to engage with social media, but of HOW.
To be effective, to be relevant and to have influence, you need a personal social strategy. Just as organizations need a social strategy.
And while your personal strategy is just that, by linking it with your company’s efforts you’ll maximize the impacts.
“Learn by doing” is a great guiding philosophy.
One of my superstar team members, Tyler Jacobson, shared this with me when my family made a college visit to his alma mater, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Students were involved in hands-on learning in whatever department we went to on campus, from agriculture to engineering and from business to communications.
It’s the same with social media. What you learn by doing in your own social involvement you can apply at your company. And you can teach others from your experience. Learning is the main reason I started this blog.
Begin with your company’s social media policy to learn the rules of the road. My comms team is responsible for company policies. So with leadership from Michael Ambrozewicz on my team, we created the company’s first social media policy a few years ago, collaborating with key stakeholders.
And we made sure to comply with the National Labor Relations Act‘s protection of the rights of employees to act together to address conditions at work.
It’s important to disclose your affiliation with your company, make it clear you aren’t an official spokesperson (unless of course, you are), and state that your opinions are your own.
Being “light, bright and polite” is a good idea. I realized I was following this mantra myself when Josh Ochs spoke to parents at our local high school this week about helping students engage appropriately with social media.
As a side note, this is an example of how I try to integrate my work life and my personal life, rather than attempt the impossible feat of balancing them. I think about how I can apply something I learned at work at home, and vice versa.
Another great speaker at my daughter’s high school this month was Tyler Durman. Although he spoke about parenting teens, his advice applied to any relationship.
He reminded me that when you want to build rapport, negotiate or solve a problem with someone, sit next to them rather than across from them. This validated a great research-based Harvard Business Review blog on presenting effectively to a small audience.
Everything interconnects. And it’s the same with social media.
In our community we’re blessed with great public and private schools. A few years ago I served as a trustee on the Peninsula Education Foundation, where we raise money for our public schools.
When our president asked me to spearhead the creation of a new strategic plan, I learned by doing. I put into practice my grad school study of Michael Porter and what I was learning in a McKinsey-led “Strategy 101” course at DIRECTV.
A key question from the course was, “what problem are you trying to solve?”
This can be the guiding principle to create and evolve a social strategy.
Some of the “problems” I’ve been solving through social media involvement are:
How do I . . .
- Advise our CEO on launching a blog?
- Find great speakers for leadership gatherings?
- Help tell our corporate social responsibility story?
- Improve my photo and video skills in our visual world?
- Build a network of interesting and diverse people?
- Pursue lifelong learning in my career?
Last year my colleague Michelle Locke asked me to succeed her as president of one of DIRECTV’s employee resource groups, the Women’s Leadership Exchange.
Its 1,000 members focus on building a culture that enhances the experiences of female employees. The group provides learning, networking and mentoring for both women and men.
One of my first tasks was to work with the steering committee on our speaker series. Our research yielded a wish list of people.
One of them was Gwynne Shotwell. She’s the COO of SpaceX, the innovative company that manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. SpaceX is shooting to enable people to live on other planets, such as Mars.
DIRECTV is also in the satellite business with the delivery of a premium video experience, and we’re a corporate neighbor of SpaceX in the South Bay of Los Angeles.
Both companies are encouraging more students to pursue STEM careers (see Gwynne’s TEDx talk, Engineering America, and the corporate citizenship work of Tina Morefield on my team). It seemed like a perfect fit.
The only problem?
I didn’t know Gwynne. And I didn’t know anyone who did.
Until I turned to LinkedIn. I searched for Gwynne’s profile. And saw we had 9 connections in common. One of them was a DIRECTV colleague, Phil Goswitz, our SVP of Video, Space & Communications, and Design Thinking.
An email I sent to Phil led to an email invite from Phil to Gywnne. Based on their connection, we heard a yes within hours. The only detail was to find a date.
That date was this week. That’s us with Gwynne in the photo – from left, Heesoon Kim, me, Phil, Gwynne, Katie Jenks, Lisa Pue Chinery and Laurie Lopez.
We had to bring in extra chairs for the unusually large group. Gwynne inspired us with her fearless approach to pursuing her passions – engineering and space.
Coworkers I see in our cafe, courtyard and conference rooms are telling me how inspired and energized they were by Gwynne’s talk. Even people who didn’t attend are buzzing about it.
And it happened in part thanks to social media. A topic I’ll explore in upcoming posts.
by Caroline Leach | Feb 3, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Social Media
An encouraging economic sign is the number of senior-level communications roles available at big companies.
It seems a week doesn’t go by without one or two CCO, SVP or VP level communications roles appearing in social media or email.
The position descriptions show how the reputation and impact of corporate communications have grown in recent years.
Common characteristics are “key member of the leadership team,” “contributing to competitive advantage” and “creating growth and sustainable shareholder value.”
One aspect that puzzles me, though, is the continuing demarcation between internal and external communications.
Position descriptions describe responsibilities such as “telling the strategic narrative of the company internally and externally,” “handling internal and external communications” and “focusing globally on all internal and external communications.”
Perhaps the intent is that there’s extensive integration between internal and external stakeholders – with employees on the internal side and customers, consumers, shareholders, government leaders, community members and more on the external side.
Yet it almost feels like a traditional church-and-state separation between employees and customers at a company or between editorial and advertising at a news outlet.
Oh sure, there are plenty of references to integrated communications among internal and external audiences, or stakeholders. And the lines are blurring between stakeholders, given the transparent and tech-enabled world we live in.
But I would argue that what’s internal is external. And what’s external is internal.
There is no longer any line, any barrier or any boundary separating them. There is no way to message only to a single stakeholder group.
All audiences must all be considered in developing an integrated communications plan. And while one audience may take precedence over another in any given sub-plan, they all must be assessed, considered and prioritized.
When a leader holds a town hall meeting with employees, it’s an internal communication, right? Well no, actually, if employees are tweeting content during the meeting or posting event photos on Instagram.
When a leader does an interview with a major news outlet, it’s an external communication, right? Well no, actually, because employees will be listening and reading too.
The natural reaction would be to focus on the negative implications in this.
What if an employee is tweeting sensitive company information during that town hall or posting inappropriate photos of it?
What if a leader is talking with a media outlet about business strategy that may come as an unsettling surprise to employees or customers?
And while those things could certainly happen, they can be and usually are mitigated by considering all stakeholders in those communications.
Beyond that, there’s a tremendous amount of upside potential in the convergence of stakeholder groups.
Employees can be the company’s greatest advocates and brand ambassadors outside the company.
They can attract new talent with their passion about why the company is an amazing place to work. They can share feedback on recruiting sites like Glassdoor, which posts an annual list of CEOs who are the most highly rated by their employees. And they can tell current and potential customers from firsthand experience what a great product or service the company provides.
Coverage in traditional media and social media can reach well beyond the primary audience too.
Employees are consumers of news and social media just like any other audience. They set Google alerts, watch news and form opinions from a variety of external sources. And they are content creators and reputation builders as well through their participation in social media. This can either help or hurt your company’s reputation and its ability to grow and create a competitive advantage.
One holiday season when consumer orders spiked and UPS had a hard time delivering packages on time, a driver posted a response to a customer complaint on Facebook. He talked about how hard he was working to get packages to people on time.
In the process he put a human face on the company and connected with customers in a compelling way. That humanization of the company is also apparent in its marketing – its wishes delivered campaign being one example
It can work in the opposite direction, showing the transparency with which we all work. Who doesn’t remember the infamous cable company call, when a customer recorded an employee’s egregious attempts to retain the his business?
This underscores the importance of building trust with all stakeholders over a long period of time, one interaction at a time. It speaks to the primary purpose of corporate communications to build a strong and positive corporate reputation, based on a balance of the best interests of those stakeholders.
It’s also important to remember that feedback can come from a variety of places – from practically anywhere these days.
Driving home from a family dinner this weekend, my daughter was checking out Yik Yak as we were near my office. Yik Yak is a geography-based social network, where you can see what people within a few miles of you are saying.
She read a comment from an employee at my company, who said they weren’t aware of a big external event the company was involved with.
It was a timely reminder to me to be thinking more broadly and more expansively, all the time, about what’s newsworthy from an employee perspective, and how we bring “external” messages to our “internal” audience.
Sure, staffing resources and such determine a certain priority to communications plans and messages. But by taking a fully integrated audience approach to planning and messaging, the positive impact of communications can by multiplied many times.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 26, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
Should you check your smartphone the minute you wake up?
As a communicator, absolutely.
And while it’s not a good life hack for most people, as a communications leader my smartphone is on my nightstand every night. The ringtone is on for calls, and sounds are off for everything else.
This is because crises don’t confine themselves to business hours (whatever those may be these days). As communicators we have to be available 24/7 if needed. And I’m happy to say the unexpected calls are very few and far between.
When I wake up in the morning, there’s a 15-minute ritual I follow.
First I tell my new Fitbit I’m awake. And see how many restless minutes get subtracted from my total sleep time. It’s been disappointing to realize I have to spend more than 7 hours in bed to get “full credit” for those hours.
Then I see what texts and emails have come in. Just a quick scan to ensure nothing’s urgent. Otherwise, no email processing first thing in the morning.
Anthony Martini on my team at DIRECTV inspired a great habit of setting Google alerts via email – for our company, key people and other timely topics.
Then it’s on to the headlines.
First I’ll look at top stories in The Wall Street Journal, and the Business, Tech, Markets and Life & Culture sections after that. (Being in the entertainment business, I look forward to the episode recaps of my favorite TV shows.) It’s valuable to observe how various reporters are covering different topics in the news.
Then onto The New York Times. I love the Your Daily Briefing every weekday with a roundup of key headlines. If I only have 60 seconds to scan the news, this is perfect. Then on to Most Emailed (for what’s trending and resonating), Business and Technology. I’ll look at Sports, too, if I’ve missed big games over the weekend.
After that I check out my Twitter feed to see what’s happening. I’ll peek at a few of the DIRECTV feeds, like @DIRECTV, @DIRECTVSchools, @DIRECTVCareers and @DTVBlimp.
And I’ll look for an interesting story from the headlines or from DIRECTV to tweet about @caroline_leach. My topics are #corpcomms #change #leadership and #CSR. And our CSR hashtag, #DIRECTVgivesback. Opinions are my own.
It was encouraging to learn that WSJ, NYT and Twitter are the top 3 “daily ‘must-reads'” of global CCOs (chief communications officers), according to SpencerStuart‘s CCO V report focusing on the changing media environment.
As the day goes on, I check out blog posts on @HarvardBiz, for quick tips and insights on strategy, leadership, comms and more.
My office TV – a great perk of working at DIRECTV – bounces around between various news channels and DIRECTV’s Audience Network. I especially love seeing our headquarters campus and colleagues in the background shots of The Rich Eisen Show.
On evenings and weekends I’ll catch up on longer-form reading with a variety of books and magazines. Whether I’m working out on the treadmill or waiting in line somewhere, I have something to read on my phone or tablet.
My relevant screen shots are in the opening photo, not including my books and blogs. I try to read from a wide variety of sources. I’m fascinated by a diversity of viewpoints and the themes and patterns that run across many outlets.
Our household went 100% digital with our news three years ago, so it’s all on our smartphones and tablets. No more waiting for printed papers to arrive with the cold morning air, encased in plastic and creating recycling bulk that has to be hauled outside to the appropriate bin.
We still get plenty of printed magazines on a wide variety of topics. As I shared in one of my Who Am I? posts, I’m a bit of a magazine and book addict.
I’d love to hear from you. What other news rituals should I consider?
1,030 tweets ago, I joined Twitter.
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