Hate Mondays? According to researchers, ‘Miserable Mondays’ are just urban legend. A recent poll of 340,000 people, found that people’s moods were no worse on Mondays than other working days Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, besides Friday. Researchers did find that as the weekend approaches, people were found to be happier, which supports the concept of the positive ‘Thanks God It’s Friday’ mood. As it turns out, the blue Monday mystery highlights a phenomenon familiar to behavioral scientists: that beliefs or judgments about experience can be at odds with actual experience. Indeed, the disconnection between beliefs and experience is common. According to the The Journal of Positive Psychology authors Professor Arthur Stone, Stefan Schneider, and James Harter, people also had better moods and less stress or worry on weekends and Fridays — as compared to weekdays — but there was no support for a ‘Blue Monday’ effect. Despite our global beliefs about lousy Mondays, should we conclude that this belief should be abandoned?” Stone states that “Cultural myths may vastly over-emphasize actual day of the week mood patterns.” But Stone also says that the contrast in mood change from Sunday to Monday could be the reason Monday seems so ‘miserable’. So, Do Mondays really affect your mood?
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“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing” - Benjamin Franklin As communication consultants, we have been "prousting" that brands need to provide directed content to their clients that will provide an engagement experience versus the need for brands to get that Like. I can't begin to tell you the amount of heated dialog this consultant and a few of my colleagues have had with clients surrounding the fact that "like's" don't move your brand! And it's the interactions that are key to success. The need for brands to move from measuring follower counts to focusing on interactions is imperative. So how does this work? The good news is that getting more interactions is pretty straightforward: Post more (compelling content). The bad news: It takes a team of people to do this well and to drive and engage with your audience. A new study from social CRM provider Spredfast found that for each message that a brand posts on social media, it gets 400 interactions from consumers on average. The study looked at 154 companies with average social bases of 1.8 million it found that top-performing brands were now publishing 4,900 messages on average (per quarter), with an average engagement of 2 million interactions. These messages, or social content, each provides new opportunities for audiences to engage with social brands. While quantity, in this case, doesn’t equal quality, most social engagement measurement tools indicate that as brands increase contributors, groups, and activity, their external engagement rises disproportionally.” So what does this mean? Brands need to hire real social teams, not just a fresh-out-of-school kid to “do the Facebook and the Twitter.” In fact, top-performing brands, i.e., Nordstrom's, General Mills — based on social structure, configuration, and activity — have 21-30 people participating in social programs within the organization. Brands have had to move rapidly beyond the time when one social manager or even a small social media team is expected to own all social activity. Social Ambassador programs are becoming key to driving this throughout organizations and buy-in, and ownership is now becoming key to one's success. The big question is: How does one move to driving interactions? Content is KING and the use the right social media platform to drive that interaction is critical. Knowing where your customers or clients live on social will influence that content. One of our recent clients posted an average of 55 times per day on Twitter versus 18 times on Facebook. Facebook yielded 580 interactions per message compared to 50 per Tweet; knowing your data is critical. When we finished our brand review, our client was able to pivot to a more tailored and focused message. Allowing the brand to measure a 50% increase in engagement, which converted coveted revenue growth, coupled with a lower cost of the customer acquisition. What is the takeaway? Think twice! Create a well-planned, well-managed program that allows for your brand and organization to connect internal resources with social customers. Coordinate internally to ensure the right messages and brand guidelines are being distributed to the correct people and accounts and that all this can be pulled together in a meaningful way. Then be sure that all of those who touch your messaging are clearly aligned and working to achieve the goal of the brand or the specific interaction you are trying to drive. We love a challenge and if you are interested in a Brand review we are here to engage. info@Look-solutions.com Author: C. Kim Brechin We have all had a leader who we didn’t respect or like. In that experience, no matter how intelligent or charming or even highly competent this leader appeared to be, you knew that placing blind trust in him or her would be a mistake. You were always watching your back waiting for the sucker punch to come. My first real experience with this came fairly early in my career during an off-site team building event put on by my senior team leaders. The task at hand was to walk across a high beam two stories above the ground with a harness, where the only person there to support me was my immediate boss. To this day, almost 15 years later, I can still feel the lurch in my stomach at the thought of having to trust this person. At that moment, I suddenly realized I did not feel confident that my boss could aid me safely cross the beam, let alone on my career path. The problem is, once fear creeps in, you become paralyzed. At that specific moment, my lack of trust allowed fear to become my primary motivation. That day, it took me three hours to finally complete the task. I've learned that it takes time to build up trust and that it only takes suspicion - not proof - to destroy it. What happens to you as a leader if your opinions are not trusted? Will your decisions and evaluations be welcomed or will they be put to the sidelines?
It’s easy to broadly categorize the term ‘social media’ as “sites like Facebook and Twitter,” which enable users to network, communicate and share with one another. But more realistically, social media encompasses a much broader range of communications. In fact, we love how PR Newswire Release put it in its article today: “For businesses the social space can be divided into two categories: public social media sites and social enterprise tools that bring social capabilities into an organization’s business processes.” Adding to that, the article points out: “Social enterprise tools incorporate the characteristics of social media into business processes, allowing for stronger internal collaboration, deeper understanding of customers and other positive outcomes,” Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis, CompTIA, said. So, here we are, with the awareness that businesses, if they don’t already, should have 1. a public social media presence and 2. the capacity to use social enterprise tools internally (to utilize communications and sharing within your company). But why should a company do so? According to a study of CompTIA’s Social Business: Trends and Opportunities, the reasons are as follows:
The likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and as of later Instagram are without a doubt the most widely recognized social media applications, so it’s no real surprise that most companies have gotten on board with them. But the disparity lies in the fact that most organizations simply still don’t know how to most effectively use their accounts… both for external business purposes and, as this article suggests, potentially for internal and business-wide communications. From the Press Release: “Confusion over terminology and hesitation to adopt a consumer-driven development inside the enterprise make the social landscape one that still requires definition and justification for many companies,” said Robinson. “Understanding the characteristics of social technologies is a critical starting point for understanding their business use.” Want help better understanding the social landscape as it exists online? Connect with us via our Facebook page if you’re feeling social media savvy or simply email us at Info@look-solutions.com and find out how we can help you create a digital strategy for your organization’s communications! |
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