Inspiration in Books: Building Trust

For those who know me well, I often describe myself as a bit old school when it comes to reading. As a bit of a geek at heart, I love the library and my kindle is almost always close at hand. Old school doesn’t seem like it goes with someone who is so active in social media – does it?! I balance staying up to date with regular blog reading, internet searches, online newspaper articles & then some old school paperback books. I typically have 2 books on the go at all times: one a good “beach read” to relax my mind after a busy work day & one a work inspirational book to help me think differently.

I just finished Steven M.R. Covey’s The Speed of Trust. As son of Steven R. Covey, (think The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), he has a great background in organizational effectiveness and leadership. He states that“trust is the hidden variable in the formula for organizational or personal success” and uses the formula:
“(S x E)T = R  OR ([Strategy times Execution] multiplied by trust equals Results.” Trust is thus a function of character and competencies. Covey highlights that leadership is getting results that inspire trust. It is equally about the HOW and the WHAT. By using the right “how” that empowers direct reports or colleagues you establish trust and increase your ability to get results faster time and time again.

This book was inspiring as it spoke about the 4 cores of credibility: Integrity, Intent, Capabilities and Results. It outlines that understanding these key core skills will then allow you to demonstrate them through 13 behaviours that increase your ability to gain trust.

I’m currently moving into a new role at work & reading this book came at the perfect time. Half of my current team is continuing to report to me and I’m gaining a new USA based team. Learning how to create trust in a new team cross border is a challenge that I am up for. I won’t give away all of the tips from Covey’s book but will highlight some of the behaviours he values that I believe are key in having new direct reports. Creating transparency, delivering results, giving credit where it is due, clarifying expectations & listening first all hit the highlights. If you are going through a career change, a promotion, are managing a new team or have a new manager, understanding how to build trust will set you up for success. Empower yourself with education – look online & don’t be afraid to be a little old school & actually pick up a recommended paperback every once in awhile.

Cheers & happy reading. Do you like book recommendations? I’m considering adding a monthly hot read feature to my blog. Reading any great business or personal development books right now? Would love some recommendations myself!

Quote Reference: The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Steven M.R. Covey

Image from: http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=209028

Catching Up

Hello Regular Readers,

Thank you for your patience as life has gotten away from me with a crazy travel schedule (4 countries in 3 weeks), work has been busy & my extracurricular activities like volunteering with the TedxToronto event have also picked up... I haven't had a moment (especially my usual quiet Saturday or Sunday mornings) in order to prep my blog posts for the week and thus have been 2 weeks tardy with new updates.

I'm sitting down this evening to really manage my online properties and get back into my busy blogging self.

Thank you for your patience! Stay posted for a new blog post tomorrow - I will be back to my regular authored post on Tuesdays & Thursday's News Days with the hottest stories of the week.

Cheers,
Chelsea

"Expert" Article

Thanks to my relationship in guest blogging with a great student career website called Talent Egg (http://talentegg.ca/), I was featured as a Recruiting Expert with advice to Students on Corporate Tours in Tuesday July 12th's Toronto Metro.

Click here to read the article in its entirety: http://bit.ly/nMvzu7

It is an article about how students can stand out on corporate tours and is a build from an earlier blog post that actually received a lot of hits & garnered many comments.  Thank you to everyone for your words of encouragement on this exciting publication!

Brands: Finding Your Online Voice

Choosing the right voice for your brand is a very important step in your brand identity and building your social media efforts.

I recently spoke at a conference to an audience of University employees who are responsible for recruitment, enrollment, and student engagement in student services. I was speaking about how universities can use social media sites to boost their recruitment and engagement efforts. I started the presentation asking how many universities, by show of hands, had a social media policy. I was honestly shocked to see that only approximately 10% of 58 major colleges and universities had a policy as 100% of them were on social media sites!  Without a policy that creates a plan on your use of social media websites and helps define your values, purpose & voice, these universities are showcasing multiple personalities online as many different functions/teams within the campus are using these sites with no overall alignment.

Universities (or companies) wanting to use social media sites, must first go through an exercise of defining your brand voice.  Think of a playwright, building a character, you must think through things like Persona, Tone, Language & Purpose.

Here is a great article on Social Media Explorer by Stephanie Schwab that walks you through building your voice through the above 4 characteristics:  http://bit.ly/gTsbTS 

I hope my thoughts & the above resource help. I always love sharing a great article/resource. Don’t forget that your online voice must be a work in progress & you should visit it often to make sure you are adhering to your plan and having a consistent voice across multiple online mediums (i.e.: Facebook, twitter, blogs etc)

Handling Social Media Mishaps - the Good, Bad & the Ugly

A scary part of social media sites dominating communication channels today is that brands no longer have control over their products or the messages surrounding them. There are 2 fantastic examples of brand faux pas’s within social media recently - one the good and one the bad & very very ugly. @BPglobalPR is a twitter account mocking BP through very ‘official like’ messages. This handle has 177, 360 followers and is listed over 8,000 times meaning that the reach and WOM of this handle is out of control and yet BP has no control over the messages released by this handle. On the other hand, there’s the recent Red Cross Twitter faux pas, which is an excellent example of how a brand successful handled an ‘oops’ moment online.

Let’s talk about these examples and hopefully you will learn some things NOT to do with your brand online & then a few tips on what to DO when something goes wrong (which is bound to happen when this many people are talking about you online).

@BPglobalPR is a twitter handle created on May 19, 2010 mocking BP’s handling of the gulf oil crisis. In my opinion, it is the most professional case of newsjacking to date. BP tried to have the account shut down but twitter essentially quoted freedom of speech and took no action. As a result, the account turned up the mock factor by 10 as seen in this response. “BP wants Twitter to shut down a fake account mocking the oil company. Twitter wants BP to shut down the oil leak that’s ruining the ocean.”  BP had no control over its message and the ‘fake’ account soon had greater reach than BP’s official news releases. People were drawn to the satirical comments and the ‘real’ truths being shared mocking BP’s efforts versus the canned message BP was offering. It’s a pretty scary place for a company when a handle is set up on a social media site and you have absolutely no authority to shut it down or influence the message.

Let’s talk about a good example of a brand owning up to a mistake. Recently the @RedCross account mistakenly tweeted something that should have come from the tweeter’s personal account via a mishap on hootsuite. The tweet read:

Oops – not exactly the message you expect from a 130 year old humanitarian organization. What the American Red Cross did well was own the issue, apologize and move forward. The discussions across twitter no longer mocked the mistake but complimented the Red Cross for owning it.  The Red Cross responded on their website with: “We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake:”

They turned this blooper into a powerful social media moment showcasing that the organization is run by “real” people. The twitterverse’s respect only increased for the organization. If only more companies were like the Red Cross and confident to show their human side and have a little laugh at their expense.

Ensure you don’t wait for messages about your brand to go through a thousand and one PR official channels; remember you have to be timely in using social media as if you aren’t someone else will!

Red Cross Twitter Faux Pas: http://bit.ly/dIW65p

@BPglobalPR on Twitter: http://bit.ly/i7tmna

Read more about BP asking twitter to shut down the “fake” BPglobalPR account: http://aol.it/cCDqf3

Interesting article about the man claiming to be behind the @BPglobalPR handle and his motives: http://bit.ly/9HmQot

A New Year and Some New Goals

Hi All,

It has been about a month since I have dedicated some serious time to my blog as I was on a whirlwind travel schedule speaking at the Campus Recruiting Forum in Waterloo, Calgary and in San Francisco. December is always a busy month wrapping up the work year, the holidays and planning 2011. As I did some professional planning, I also sat down to make some personal social media goals. I'm not a big person for resolutions as it seems that so many people have these huge overwhelming goals that are most likely to be broken within a month of the New Year. Instead, I am about purging what isn't working and updating goals that are truly SMART - yes, I like that silly acronym that stands for smart, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals.  My online life exploded last year with the LinkedIn Group I manage about social media & campus recruiting, my use of twitter, following of blogs and trying to come up with material for my own blog in addition to building presentations about social media for conferences.  

As I move into 2011, my goal is to not only participate in social media but really showcase my own voice by posting a minimum of 1 blog post a week. I will be kicking it off with the upcoming series I spoke about in how to use the different social media sites for recruiting young adults. As referenced above, I have some great new research and presentation material from the conferences I spoke at throughout December from both a Canadian & US perspective that I just can’t wait to share with you!

I hope you stick around, read my latest updates, and comment on some of my new posts. I’m committing to this goal as I was recently reminded that goals are more likely to be fulfilled when written down & shared with others as you have actually committed to them. I would love to hear about some of YOUR 2011 social media goals!

All the best as you build your goals for 2011,

Chelsea

Personal Social Media Policy

You have heard me talk about how using social media to build a brand – be it a product, employment brand or personal brand - is important. I often speak at conferences that companies are absolutely behind the times if they don’t have a social media policy as they current have no control over what’s happening online and believe me, it is happening!  As an active social media user, I wanted to take the time to review my vision & what my goals are online. I Googled social media policies and used a whole bunch of template to create one that is just all me. I’m not going to give all of my secrets away but will give you a sneak peek!

VISION: My Vision is to use social media to learn online & build my professional expertise through the following values:

-          Knowledge – educational and well thought out information sharing and learning

-          Passion – sharing my personal passion for marketing, talent acquisition, onboarding and employment branding with others

-          Consistency – have a consistent message throughout social mediums

-          Transparency – be transparent and open about my message and my goals

-          Relevant – posting relevant information that others in my space will find interesting

-          Timely – time is relevant to building my following and I need to provide posts that are timely and relevant

-          Integrity – be true to myself through the use of social media & my posts

In my Social Media Policy, I then go on to outline what are my goals, target audience, boundaries & use of each forum (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc).

Do you have a personal policy? Do you make it up on the fly or do you actually have it written down? If you don’t have one, I recommend taking 30 minutes to at least review the social mediums you are using and decide what are your personal boundaries and uses on each.  Good luck! Let me know how it goes!

Am I a Blogger?

I know it's ironic I am asking “Am I a Blogger?” through a blog. Here's my rationale - I am "test driving" this medium as a way to find the voice of "Chelsea Newton." I feel I have a lot to share about spaces I am interested in - be it Employment Branding, Social Media, Marketing, or HR. Currently, I use LinkedIn & Twitter as great forums to engage with other professionals but want something I can really shape to express myself. A blog is a way for me to create my personal brand. Creating a personal brand is an interesting tight rope. I want to share information and my opinion but don't want to be overly confident or cocky. To me, sharing information is about creating a 2 way conversation - a dialogue. It is my hope that this is the beginning of the adventure of defining my own voice in my professional space. It was while writing my notes for speaking on the Social Media panel at the 2010 Recruiting Innovation Summit (Toronto) that I realized so much of what I love is public speaking, networking and sharing ideas. I love preparing for conferences and then feel a high when I am up there speaking. I wanted to interject that passion into my life more than the every 3-4 months when I am preparing for a conference... so here's me, exploring, sharing my opinions, & finding my professional voice.

Though it is a blog, where I am essentially, pushing information out to followers/readers, I do want to create a dialogue so please comment on my posts or contact me via twitter @Chelsea_Newton. I expect my voice to grow and evolve as I 'figure' out this blogging thing and I hope you will stick with me throughout my journey!

Food for thought - have you found your professional "voice?" How are you choosing to "speak?" Cheers & thanks for reading!