Knowledge Peers

Getting business social media into gear

Having spent three years developing a web based offer for businesses, a few amateur observations on social media (from someone who has received more advice from “experts” than I can care to mention).

In a parallel life, I happen to run my cycling club’s website. We have just 120 members, and you have to be a paying member to participate in any of the forums. One of the latter covers the issue of the organisation of indoor turbo training sessions (don’t ask!).  Remarkably the forum has 42 comments, many going into great detail on things like heart rate zones and power meters. The discussion string has also been visited 1,100 times. If you don’t believe me click here and find out many strange things.

How to use Twitter and LinkedIn for networking

Much has already been written about how charities can use social media to develop their brands and build relationships with their stakeholders. I want to talk about how you can use social media tools to network and to build your own personal brand. As resources become scarcer, and the job market more competitive, I think Twitter and LinkedIn can help us all achieve more at work and widen our networks further. 

New business landscapes are emerging for charities

As 2012 austerity drives begin and generating revenues becomes an acute challenge for charities, supporter acquisition, revenue streams and looking at trading in new ways are all going to be undoubtedly key themes for the coming year.

From the vantage point that Visceral Business has as change strategists and developers of social capital value, for charities and commercial organisations, we’re involved in creating new social engagement business models that eliminate the ‘for profit’ or ‘not for profit’ conundrum by simply being ‘beyond profit’. These ‘beyond profit’ user-led social business models can make a tremendous difference to charities as they reconcile the challenges ahead and seek to improve operational performance.

The Child’s i Foundation, for example, of which I’m privileged to also be a Trustee, has a cost of donor acquisition rate of 19%, compared to the average standard of around 30%. It uses retailing channels like Shopify to develop event experiences online that give supporters a real stake in the charity that enables them to see the charity as a work in progress, happening in front of their eyes.

Is IT strategic for the SMB?

There is no doubt that large organizations today simply could not function with their IT. The cost, indeed the ROI of particular IT systems might be questionable. But empirical evidence (eg from benchmarking by consulting firms like The Hackett Group) shows that higher levels of automation do improve both efficiency and effectiveness.

But for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs – say those up to 250 employees) then this is not so clear cut. Clearly some IT is very valuable – such as a website to allow a small company to reach a wide, even global, audience for its customers. But IT can cost a lot. Without wide-ranging in-house skills a lot of time and money can be burnt on solutions that prove ineffective, or on vendor-mandated upgrades to systems that were working pretty well already. Companies can easily struggle with networking issues, interfacing problems and seemingly insurmountable bugs. Often, one hears comments to the effect that “this IT stuff is just a pain….weren’t we better off without it?”.

Cloud, riots, and collaboration - the tools of growth

With our upcoming event in September, 'Technology: transforming growing businesses?' only weeks away, we thought it would be fitting to hear from an expert on Cloud Computing. Dalbir Singh Ahluwalia, ACMA of Arithmo Accounting Software, is an ERP consultant and advocate of utilising software to manage business information. 

People and groups of people are driven to innovate to solve identified problems or to create new opportunities.

An effect of the downturn is acceleration of innovation from conception to implementation, with the aim of stimulating demand and reducing consumption as quickly as possible.

Growth in collaboration, since the global economic downturn, is one such innovation.   Collaboration allows organisations to enter new markets or provide new products through sharing of resources and knowledge amongst members.   

Cloud based infrastructure provides a platform for all parties to realise innovation through collaboration quickly as there is no requirement for unconnected organisations to integrate their internal systems to successfully manage the delivery of their joint end product / service. 

Do you tweet?

At the Fast Growth Club ‘Raising your Profile’ event last week, Yvonne Fuchs of The Branding Workshop asked a question - what works best for SMEs, new media/social media or traditional PR?

In my experience traditional PR/marketing now works in conjunction with Social Media.  Traditional PR was very much about “I will tell you”, where as Social Media is more about engaging with the end user and asking for their opinion, rather than the traditional one-way traffic.

New employees as micro-businesses

I was talking to my good friend Richard Holway yesterday (see Tech Market View). Richard is probably the most respected analyst in the IT space and was a fellow director of mine at Ovum plc (now part of Informa Group).

We were talking about emerging trends in the business/technology axis, as Richard has agreed to be on our panel for our next Fast Growth Club event on 29^th June. Subject matter will focus on how the web continues to transform the way businesses operate, but as part of that, Knowledge Peers are doing some research on emerging trends. (Get in contact if you want to be involved - michael.lawrence@knowledgepeers.com).

Anyway, without wanting to give too much away while our research is on-going, Richard was making the point that employees increasingly act as consumers when it comes to using IT kit. In fact, Richard’s ever growing team of analysts have NO hardware provided to them, because they’d rather buy what they want. Richard is a stickler for consistent delivery quality across his business, but he doesn’t really care what people are using to get there.

21st Century Philanthropy - The importance of showing impact

As the UK economy recovers from one of the deepest worldwide recessions and steep cuts in government funding begin to bite, 160,000 registered charities as well as countless tiny community groups are trying their best to help the poor, sick, disabled, old, young and others, not to mention causes as wide as the planet itself.  Charities are having to compete for the donor pound against other discretionary spending – as well as each other. 

In exchange for making tough choices for their donations, donors are developing high expectations of their chosen charities, including the donations that charities should accept, as shown by the outcry over the Royal British Legion‘s decision to accept the proceeds of Tony Blair’s memoirs.  Donors increasingly want accountability. 

How are charities responding to this trend?  In a number of ways:

Does your company need a personality?

Quite a lot of the businesses that I work with ask me for my opinion on the use of Social Media. Whilst I love what it can do, I do fear that a lot of businesses rush into it simply on the basis that they feel it is the current ‘must-have’ in any business plan; a bit like the need for a “.com strategy” 10 years ago. 

Before answering the questioner I usually ask how well they know their business model; 

• Who are their highest earning customers? and 

• Is the business cash flow positive? 

Those that can answer this neatly and precisely deserve an answer to the Social Media question and those that can’t need to be encouraged to prioritise a little more. 

Once past this little hurdle I can then ask, “Does your business need a personality?” as that is what I believe Social Media does for you. It can generate revenue as a result of having a personality but usually it is more about how you connect with your customers and the outside world i.e. the personaility that your business portrays. 

In a nut shell, here is my view on the current three principle social media tools; 

Twitter – some industries use it a lot e.g. the events industry, others don’t. Great for spreading branding messages, news and offers. Spend some time following others in your industry first before setting some guidelines as to how your business should use it. It needs to be updated at least daily. It’s quick fire and instant but requires constant attention to create an ongoing personality 

Facebook – essentially a branding presence. Link your Twitter messages to appear on both platforms at the same time. A useful place to add some photos of your product, Awards parties and staff pictures. Can also create a forum for debate and to gather feedback on ideas. Needs to be updated at least weekly. Has a longer viewing time frame than Twitter so allows you to develop your business’s personality over time. 

Blogs – possibly the most time consuming but also one of the best ways for a CEO to create the business’s personality – whether they actually write it or not! Keep the pieces short and too the point and make it easy for readers to see examples by embedding links. 

A few final words of warning though; 

• these tools take time and effort to be effective; 

• whatever is posted is online for perpetuity; and 

• don’t lose sight of your underlying business model. 

Matt Honey

 

'There are Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics'

I am not sure whether or not Disraeli coined this phrase after thinking about the relevance of ratios but I am sure he could have done. It was a favourite phrase of mine when studying my Maths A-Level when statistics could be used to bolster arguments in a myriad of situations and pure maths by contrast proved an answer beyond a doubt. Q.E.D. 

Hutton’s recent review of the executive pay in the public sector has prompted great debate about ratios - what the top earner in the organisation earns compared to the lowest earner and assessing David Cameron’s view that no-one in any public sector organisation should receive more than 20 times that of the lowest earner. 

Gareth Jones, in March’s Charity Finance Magazine, manfully takes on the challenge of trying to apply this to the charity sector, stating that “gratifyingly, the findings are positive”, noting that those who took part in the survey from the sector have a 4:1 ratio, with the Charity 100 index averaging 10:1. 

Are these ratios meaningful in anyway? Well, they are good for headlines but digging below the detail, Hutton himself admits the difficulties when applying such ratios, particularly when deciding which option to take when defining the base. Should it be the national minimum wage or the lowest paid employee? What if the lowest paid employee is in fact a volunteer or intern paid only expenses? Then the ratios get murky, and transparency or comparisons become difficult and indeed, can be used to bolster diverse arguments. 

The key to this debate isn’t about whether we should expect charities to adhere to an artificial ratio to determine salary levels but is rather about efficiency and running any charity as effectively as possible. With my Charity Finance Directors hat on I echo the thoughts of our CEO, Caron Bradshaw, in a recent Charity Times article. Focusing in on charity executives’ pay takes the focus away from the real issue, the efficient use of funds and the need to identify the costs and value of activities and not just cost cut across the board. 

Leading an organisation in the not-for-profit sector in these difficult times takes skill and most Trustee Boards work hard to balance the need to attract the right skill set to run their organisation with a clear and fair remuneration policy. Charity SORP requires charities to disclose in their accounts the number of employees earning over £60,000 and in what pay band they fall. So the sector leads the way in transparency and does indeed strive to attract great people to help run the sector as efficiently and effectively as possible. 

Gill Gibb, Director, Charity Leaders' Exchange