Are Bosses Right to Ban Social Media? | Sterling Performance | BNET

Mike,

I think corporate America has got it all wrong. They are shutting social media down because
1.They don’t understand it
2. They want to keep doing sales and marketing just as they have been
3. They don’t track marketing now to see how poorly its performing

The biggest question that anyone is asking right now is “Who would you recommend?”
The sales process has fundamentally and forever changed with the availability of information on the Internet. It provides access to easy word of mouth referrals into the recommendation chain. Customers don’t call and ask to talk to sales anymore. They have already researched and made a decision who to talk to. If you are making a cold call in, you can probably forget it.

If a company takes the time to assess where the people in their market are, builds a strategy to attack business goals, defines staff and budget resources, selects appropriate tools, creates guidelines and policy for the users – there wouldn’t be an issue with the “right” people using social media.

LinkedIn and Sales go together like peanut butter and honey. Likely the recruiters would say peanut butter and chocolate.

Wendy Soucie
http://www.xeesm.com/wendysoucie

Mike-I think 100% yes. In the office/workplace environment block it 100% unless you can legitimize your need to access Linkedin/Facebook during work hours. While there are handful of cases where it has been legitimized, it’s foolish to just open the flood gates.

I’ve spent time with friends/clients fixing problems created by supposed “Social Media Experts/Gurus” (Aka Modern day snakeoil salesmen) and the thing is you cannot create enough extra business in a modern workplace that only can be gotten by Social Media to justify the amount of time wasted. Can’t. Sorry.

So you are a salesperson huh and you think you need to be on Facebook during work hours? Why? You don’t. And anyone who can show me what they can do in one hour with Facebook or Linkedin I can probably show them how to have bettter used that hour to get 5x the results or have gotten it done in 10 minutes. You think your really good? That hour wasted still on Facebook will be better spent using CRM tools like Salesforce or InfusionSoft which focus efforts.

Linkedin? Well if you are serious about your job you work past 5, you come in early, you work on weekends. Take the time to manage your relationships on Linkedin (or other social media platforms) after hours is not only a better time to manage such (you can often catch clients on Chat better this way when you missed them all day otherwise) and impress people.

Wendy-You have some good points but none of them are applicable to a whole workforce or even towards Social media. There is a lack of correctly applied tools from Act!, Salesforce, Infusionsoft, Filemaker, and so forth even at corporate levels (often worse there) which can help. There is software and processes that are ignored by many that can help them do a better job.

Also your reference to the fact that customers interact via the web is accurate…but they don’t do it via Social Media they do it via contact forms and chat clients which help with the customer service. It’s not the same thing at all. There are other tools like Codebaby (based in Colorado Springs) which are tools that companies can employ but once again…they aren’t Social Media based.

I have used Social Media to my advantage and then some over the last 15 years (yes, it goes back that far). I do know how to use my Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Asmallworld, Hyves.nl, Brightkite, Youtube, and other accounts to my advantage….but it’s not something I learned by studying some Social Media “Exeperts” Twitter. It’s from years of just learning to build sincere relationships with people, knowing how to interact with people, and applying my networking skills.

I’ll end with this one example of one client I helped understand and use Social Media. Some “guru” had told the client they needed to update their companies Facebook page every day. I had the client give me an idea of how much time they spent on Facebook alone a week. Reality was they spent 3-4 hours a week that we really couldn’t monetize being applied to Facebook. After talking with the client, I figured out a way they could actually get significant results with that 3-4 hours a week being applied elsewhere in their business.

You know what companies really need to focus in on? People skills. Sending employees to classes on how to understand personalities, situations, customer service, and so forth. Social Media management should be handled by a dedicated staff member, there should be a set plan on how to use it, as well as how to manage the companies image along with integrating it where it fits with current marketing programs (if applicable). But be sure to use a business consultant and stay away from self proclaimed “experts” in the industry.

Jon Severson
Linkedin.com/in/jontoseverson

So, the question is whether blocking access to Social Media on company networks is advantageous or damaging to the bottom line. Once you take into account the people are not robots, then you can realize that periodic mental breaks can increase productivity by a noticeable margin. Whether the break is getting up and taking a short walk, checking the local news, chatting with a friends, checking personal or voice mail to remove a concern from the employees mind, or other non-work activity. When the person returns to work they will have a more focus and energy for their tasks.

The potential for abuse it huge, but, giving an employee the benefit of the doubt that they are a responsible adult, you can trust them to be ethical in their usage or Social Media. Putting monitoring tools in place will balance this trust with the warning that “big brother is watching” to help reinforce the expectation of responsibility. In this way, the employer can take advantage of the increased productivity, while keeping abuses in check. After all, if you can’t trust them with with Social Media, why can you trust them with financial data, HIPPA protected data, employee records, marketing campaigns, etc…

Guess what? If the employee is determined to be unproductive, they will be, Social Media access or lack thereof will not alter this. So they won’t post “hey guys, I am bored at work” on Facebook, instead they’ll stare blankly at the screen, pretending to type. Big improvement.

Several of my friends post links to Fan pages, product pages, and videos that promote their respective companies. In fact, there are several products I now purchase regularly as a result of an employee posting information about them on Facebook. And they weren’t directed to do so, not are they in sales or marketing. In addition, I’ve promoted these products by word or mouth, and now they are popular in my area.

If you treat your employees like children, then they will behave like children. Or leave. I remember one employer who started monitoring my lunch breaks, I was working 60hr weeks( salaried,btw ) but took an extra 10-30min on lunch breaks 2-3 times a week. Once they started enforcing the one hour lunch break, I honored it and stopped working the extra 15-20hours that I did previously. Who lost there?

I’ve been using Social Media for 20 years , and once your name has entered that market, you have a leg up over