I encourage all clients to put their social media profiles on their business cards. Here is my social media business card.

Today though I took a question from a client who had concerns. They were:

1. Does having everyone’s individual LinkedIn and Twitter feeds on their business cards leave the company and/or the brand open to individual opinion?
2. Wouldnt it be of more value to have the company LlinkedIn and Twitter address? Afterall everyone who works for the company can be linked to through these addresses.
3. If someone leaves then isnt the brand at risk of being tainted by someone’s voice outside of the company remit?

So, all good questions and no doubt anyone who is pushing a social media strategy through a company will be encountering such questions. For me this is all about the power of personal brands working in support of a corporate brand. There is more value to be had when both are strong. I went out to my network and first back was Andy Piper at IBM. I asked

@andypiper do IBM staff have their social media profiles on their business cards? looking for corporate examples. Thanks

His tweet (http://j.mp/n2N6rY) back reads

@JonnieJensen we are free to do so – certainly mine do

I’ll share more examples as I get them (please tweet them to @jonniejensen). For starters though here is @delphrb card, she is Social Media marketing Manager at IBM Software .

And another, from @steve_murg who is Internal Comms and SM Manager at KCOM Group. 

Getting Connected

In my opinion the whole point of a business card is to enable people to contact the person who is providing the business card. My first thought when putting this on my card is that it helps people communicate with me most effectively.

The question of putting the company Twitter and LinkedIn addresses on the business cards is more of a branding matter. I don’t believe it helps people get in touch with the person on the card but it does promote the companies web presence. This is really the same point as above but from another perspective.

The Value of Personal Networks

As for the brand being at risk should someone leave, well this question unfortunately is contrary to everything about a social engagement strategy. No company has any real control over someone’s views even whilst in your employment, let alone after they leave. Of course, if they speak negatively about you as an employee then you can have recourse through HR procedures but the ‘damage’ is done anyway. The way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to have a happy team who all understand the social strategy in place and are supportive of it. When your team are happy, supportive and active on social media then the value is all yours. They will have a large and engaged network through which to share their information which will no doubt include links and references to your company.

To try and curtail, limit or prevent the growth of this network is counter intuitive. Those that are that aren’t bothered will just sigh at the seemingly unnecessary rules, whilst those that are bothered will still tweet and manage their LinkedIn profile, just now with less opportunity and more frustration towards their employer. Either way their reach and the opportunity to promote the company will be less.

If they have left and are speaking badly of you and you are worried about how contacts they have built up on social networks whilst in your employment will view this, then all I can encourage is that you don’t worry. Unless you are in the habit of employing ‘bad’ people or firing them for no reason then I see little reason for them to bad mouth you during or after their employment. Even if they were, you have to consider what impact this might have on their relationship with their network. If they were found to be lying or working to a negative agenda then this would harm the relationships they had spent time forming and it would damage their future endeavours.

Even if for some unexpected reason they did have an agenda or some reason to attack you then this is even more reason for the rest of your team and your brand to be well connected online with strong active relationships. The trust and support of this collective network will have much greater reach and volume than that of a scheming individual. This is intrinsic to the value a sound social media strategy brings.

Offer Disclosure

Having said all of this, of course putting their Twitter and LinkedIn profile on their company cards means that their views could be construed as those of your company. If this bothers you and you feel the HR policy does not cover this then I would suggest that you ask them all to include a disclosure in their online bios e.g. “All views are mine alone” “Views are all mine”

So, that’s my view on all this. I believe you have more to gain than lose. Is your Twitter and LinkedIn profile on your business card? Share a picture if you have one and comment if you disagree.

A quick share for you. Last night I was invited to give a speech at the awards night of the MEBP Young Dragons Initiative. Young people 14-16 years old have set up and ran their own businesses for the past 12 months under the guidance of the Medway Education Business Partnership and their schools. 

It was an inspiring night. Around 30 young entrepreneurs represented 6 businesses. They showed business plans and market research. They talked through how they had raised capital, issued shares and managed cash flow. This wasnt some fancy school project with no real outcomes or risks. Actual products were produced with raw materials that had to be paid for – and in numerous instances had been negotiated heavily to get a good price.

Facing Your Fears

In times where economic conditions are challenging and jobs for young people hard to come by I was blow away by their vision and the confidence with which they had gone about the work. On the night they had to stand at the front of a large auditorium and speak to around 100 people including dignaturies and business owners. There are plenty of adults who are more scared of that than are scared of dieing, or as Jerry Sienfeld put it 

Surveys show that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. #2 is death. Death is #2. That means that at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.

Influence And Social Media

I gave a speech on the Importance Of Creating An Influential Online Presence Using Social Media to those in attendance. The experience that the Young Dragons will have gained from the process will serve them for the rest of their lives. If they had shared in online it would now be accesible to litteraly billions of people. They have no idea where that could lead and right now they dont need to worry about that. So long as they are building up their social capital, telling a story that adds value to others and building an engaged and influential audience their futures will look much more positive than those who are not. 

Are you building this for yourself? In just a couple of years you may be up against one of these young people. I hope you are ready. Because they are!

The Digital Business Britain Manifesto is a drive to push and support UK businesses to make better use of digital media. It is manifesto I am supporting.

The iniative is gaining momentum in Government, Corporate and Local business communities. As a business owner and entreprenuer it is all our responsibilities to utilise digital media effectively. We have an opportunity to use the people who know these tools best – the 16 to 24 year olds – and drive our businesses success forward. You can listen to my speech on influence and social media and view the Digitial Business Britain Manifesto, then get behind this movement.

Adding social media links to your business cards is vital for networking and helping people connect with you. As a bare miminum I suggest that you include Twitter and LinkedIn links on your business cards. You could use things like a QR code and links to your YouTube channel if you have one as well. Prioritise based on where people can best see your content and most importantly, where they can contact you. Lets keep it simple for now.

Here is a link to various downloads for social media buttons. I place the relevant icon in front of the text. You can do as fits your card and branding.

My suggestion for Twitter is that it reads

Twitter @jonniejensen

For LinkedIn I suggest the full url. Each person should create their own vanity URL / personal URL. If you have set this up the link to your LinkedIn page will read something like

www.linkedin.com/in/jonniejensen

or

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jonniejensen

Although they put the UK bit at the start it is not actually needed. I prefer the www version.

To set it up:

1. Log-in to LinkedIn
2. Click Profile>Edit Profile at the top near left of your page
3. In the public profile line of your profile click ‘Publish’ or ‘Edit’
4. On the right hand side of the page is a box titled ‘your public profile URL’ or ‘edit your public profile’
5. Click ‘customise your public profile’
6. Try to get 1^st ‘your actual name’ and if you can’t, go for 2^nd ‘your twitter name’
7. Click ‘Set your custom URL’
8. In ‘Customize Your Public Profile’ click ‘Make my public profile visible to everyone’

Your profile will read http://uk.linkedin.com/in/username but you can also use as www.linkedin.com/in/username

So my recommendation is that it will look something like

www.linkedin.com/in/jonniejensen

Twitter @jonniejensen

Trust that helps you get some new business cards created.

Just how relevent is social media to business to business companies? I get asked and even challenged on this regularly. The benefits are actually very clear and especially when you look outside of pure marketing goals. Simply knowing what your customers and target audience needs is priceless and the perfect place to start.

To get some further insights take a look at this survey conducted by the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn earlier this year. The survey generated over 270 responses from B2B marketers who were asked to consider the rapidly changing landscape of social media in the context of B2B marketing. 

SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS

• Social media shows the biggest increase in use among all B2B marketing tactics over the last 3 years
• B2B marketers cite using social media primarily for raising awareness (76 percent), then for lead generation (58 percent)
• The single largest roadblock to social media success is the inability to measure results 
• The most effective social platform for B2B marketers is LinkedIn, followed by Twitter, and then blogs

Download the complete social media survey report here.

What is your experience with social media in B2B?

I got asked this question today by someone replying to a social media training event invite. I respect the question as too many business simply stop there. Why should you let your staff use social media at work – surely they will just waste time talking to friends? In recent B2B social media survey it was found that 63% of UK businesses actively discourage the use of social media at work  - 48% ban it completely. 

The problem with this is that it acknowledges all the concern but fails to recognise the benefits. I’m not even going to look at the impact this may have on staff morale but happy well connected people can only be a good thing. This was my response to the email:

Firstly, whether you wish to use social media or not it would be advisable to acquire your business name across all succeful social networking sites. Even if you never use them it prevents issues later if another company gets them. I register for all new services I see.

Social Media HR Policy

I will now try and address your concerns about members of your team wasting time on social sites instead of working. From an HR perspective, permissible use of IT systems and the internet at work can be defined in HR policy. Breach of these terms should be just as serious as poor time keeping, misuse of telephone or sharing company knowledge outside of the office. An effective inclusion should be made to all staffs terms of employment. Some companies keep it simple, others run to two or three pages. I can provide suggestions on both if you wish. You should be able to log through your IT systems all the time that people spend online and what sites they visit and enforce this.

Benefits Of Social Media At Work

Secondly and slightly less draconian/more constructive is that the benefits of having your staff positively representing themselves online will benefit your business. If I have an online network of 1000 people and they all know what a great job I do at a company I love working for, then there is a positive effect there. Just as you rightly consider the use of LinkedIn to be beneficial there are other benefits that could be gained certainly through Twitter and possibly others (I don’t know enough about what your staff do to say which).

I encourage clients to see the benefit of having strong personal brands all supporting a strong corporate brand. In my eyes tpsconsulting is the sum of all its people and those people should have an online voice. What it takes for this to happen though is a strategy and plan that everyone is part of. This also enables suitable training to be put in place for those that don’t know how to do it (or how to do it effectively). Social media should be part of how they do their work.

With a strategy your team are part of and a clear HR policy that they have agreed to I see social media as a positive to the business. If any member of staff wants to fly against that positive objective then I question whether they are an asset worth having.

Andy Piper of IBM, said at an event recently “If you cant trust your people, maybe you are employing the wrong people.”

Design Your Own Social Media Strategy

Of course every business has its own structures and needs it’s people to do specific jobs which may not be relevant. You need to create a strategy and plan the fits your business. Whatever you do though it would be wise to run some sort of seminar and introduce a social media HR policy. Not everyone appreciates just how public social networks are and the last thing you need is a fed up employee moaning about your company.

Do you have a social media policy? How did your staff react to its introduction? If you dont have one I can help you set it up.

In one of my LinkedIn Groups today Jo James of the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce likened using social media to going to a health club. I thought I’d expand on it…

The Health Club analogy is a good one. Reason being is that if you don’t have a goal and a strategy to get there then it is likely that you will lose interest and momentum. Let’s carry the analogy forward:

Gym tour = Social Media Monitoring

Have a look around social media and monitor your clients, competitors and target audience. Get familiar with what is happening so you can prepare your business. Set up some Google Alerts. Do some searches on SocialMention.

Fitness plan = Social Media Strategy

Ttake the information you found in your monitoring and create a plan. What do you want to achieve? What do people need and what are you going to do for them?  Where will you find them and how often will you go there? What knowledge can you share? Who will deal with the questions, problems, suggestions and acknowledgements? It’s going to be a conversation remember – not a sales pitch.

How to use the machines = Social Media Training

You need to know how to use the machines in the gym, just like you need to know how to use the social media tools at your disposal. Search on Google or YouTube for “How to…..” or come on a training session. Get more than just your marketing team trained. This is not a marketing conversation this is about your business being social. You are going to have a blog and use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Slideshare and possibly others.

Do the exercises = Social Media Content & Participation

You’ve got to put the work in to get yourself fit. For social media this is about creating great content and being in the conversation. You need to do it regularly and consistently. Vary it and involve others who can help you or it will get boring to do. Follow the plan and review what you have done to make sure its following a pattern. Create great content, optimise it with your keywords, be active in the communities where your target audience are present and be of value. Flex your social muscle!

Compete =  How To Measure Social Media Success

Participation in a competition is a good way to measure how fit you are. For social media you need to monitor your activities against your goals to see how you are doing. Followers, views, fans, subscribers, retweets, comments, replies are all measurements of how much your audience is engaging with you. Use URL shorteners like Bit.ly to see how many clicks your links get and monitor your web site analytics (Google Analytics is free) to see how it is effecting the traffic to your site.

That’s it – you are now socially fit. Remember though, if you stop you will soon get unfit. It’s about being present in your communities, so keep it up.

Twitter has opened up huge opportunities for businesses. Never before has it been so easy to quickly target people by their location, interests and conversations. All you need to do is understand how.

Twitter Success for Business – social media training

This full day training event will get you started on your way to success. You may already have started, in which case this will be a shortcut to your Twitter Success. During the event you will cover

• Strategy planning
• Tool use & Automation
• Effective following
• Copy writing
• Time management
• Using #hashtags to promote your content
• Integration with other social media sites
• Promotions and competitions
• Customer service
• Measurement and results tracking

Half Price offer – all attendees will be given the opportunity to bring a colleague or guest for half price.

We run our full day training in the relaxed atmosphere of the Detling Coachouse, nr Maidstone, Kent. For full details visit the Accelerated Twitter Success page or go direct now to reserve your place on this amazing course. Click on the dates to reserve your tickets for just £167 now. Details of price reductions for early ticket purchase  and half price offers are on the event pages.

January 27th – Accelerated Twitter Success – early bird price before 10/01/10

February & March dates in London and Kent to be announced shortly

Register below to be the first to find out dates, limited early bird offers and all the latest Twitter Tips: