Thursday, June 2, 2016

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Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Engagement transcends manager/employee relationships

Conventional wisdom has led companies to spend countless billions of dollars in an effort to turn supervisors into communicators.

The conventional wisdom is that the relationship between employees and their supervisors is the key to engagement. Bolstering the argument that the relationship is vital is research from Gallup—the organization that, for all practical purposes, invented the concept of employee engagement. It found that about half of people who quit a job do so “to get away from their manager.”

The employee-manager relationship is a key to engagement, but it’s not the only one. It may, however, be the hardest problem to fix. We have been banging our heads against the wall trying to turn people managers into good communicators for as long as I have been in this business—40 years next May. I don’t think the needle has moved much in all that time.

When engagement surveys reveal a problem, CEOs generally turn to their human resources department for solutions. Eleven percent of the time, HR responds by launching training programs meant to help managers improve their communication skills.

The first of these programs I ever saw was from (if memory serves) Pacific Bell. It was an entry in an IABC/Los Angeles Gold Quill competition that consisted of a box filled with training materials. I have seen or heard of at least 100 similar programs since then. Despite these efforts, we’re right where we were four decades ago.

There are good reasons for that. Ultimately, it comes down to this: All the music lessons in the world won’t make a good musician out of someone who is tone-deaf.

The promotion process is broken.

Employees who are promoted into manager positions are rarely elevated based on their people skills. Nearly always they have been performing well in a technical job but have reached the highest pay grade for a non-supervisory job. Seeking to reward them (and keep them from bolting for a higher-paying competitor), the company bumps them up the hierarchy to where they suddenly are managing people.

Some may well be naturals at it. Most, though, not only want to keep doing what got them the reward in the first place; they don’t want to have to deal with their new reports.

Research cited by Harvard Business Review found that two-thirds of managers are generally uncomfortable communicating with employees. In addition, 37 percent are uncomfortable giving direct feedback, 20 percent don’t like recognizing their staff’s achievements, 20 percent don’t like delivering the company line, and 19 percent are uncomfortable giving instructions.

This is a real problem, especially if you subscribe to the notion that employees prefer to get company news and information from their supervisors. If you ask employees where they prefer to get their news, that’s probably how they’ll answer.

If you ask where they prefer to get their news and information about something in particular, such as benefits or long-term strategy, you’re likely to get a very different answer. (As Angela Sinickas has said, if you ask people where they prefer to shop, they may answer “Tiffany,” but that doesn’t mean Tiffany should start stocking produce. Asking where they prefer to shop for groceries will get you a very different answer.)

Training is not a panacea.

Training is unlikely to change much. A few managers might come around, and even fewer may thrive, but in general, you can’t train a tiger to change its stripes.

Of equally dubious help is distributing support materials or deluging supervisors with resources about how to be a better communicator, all of which takes time they would rather spend on the work that will help them reach their targets and earn them bonuses.

Some companies hold people managers accountable for communicating, another questionable tactic. After all, no company is going to weigh communicating more than it does meeting performance targets. Given a choice between a 90 percent weight for reaching targets and 10 percent for communicating, there are few managers who would invest time and energy in the 10 percent at the expense of the 90 percent.

There are businesses that nurture good people managers. In nearly every case, these organizations have baked good management into their cultures; that is, it’s just the way things are done in those companies. They most likely support their people managers with training, resources and communication, but none of it is a program.

Programs have defined beginnings and ends. In organizations where the culture supports people management, senior leaders model the behavior, recognition both formal and informal (also part of the company’s cultural DNA) shines a light on those who engage in great people-manager practices, and the company is more likely to elevate those employees who demonstrate solid people-manager skills.

You can’t create a program to make this happen in your organization. It requires a full-blown culture change initiative supported and embraced at the top.

Ideally, businesses would stop promoting into supervisory roles those employees who don’t have great people/leadership skills. Instead, they could create alternative promotion paths for technical high-achievers to let them perpetuate and expand their skills without requiring them to devote time to managing a staff.

Concentrate on other equally important engagement enablers.

Should companies stop trying to get communicators to do a better job communicating with their staffs? Of course not. They should, however, stop focusing on the employee/employer relationship to the detriment of other engagement drivers.

Consider an employee who believes she and her colleagues have a voice in the company’s decisions and direction. She is excited to come to work every day, because her values and the company’s are closely aligned. She is stoked about working with her like-minded team members to achieve something bigger than herself, and they all see the company’s leaders walking the talk. What’s more, she knows where the company came from, where it is headed, how it will get there and what her role is in making that vision a reality.

Is she likely to quit because she doesn’t feel that she can approach her manager with a question? She might not like it, but the rewards of her work would most likely outweigh the fact that her boss isn’t comfortable communicating with her.

As I noted earlier, the employee-manager relationship is just one cornerstone of employee engagement. Employee voice, company integrity and a strong leader-driven company narrative that helps employees identify their role in that narrative are each equally important. When we focus most of our energy on fixing the (mostly) unfixable, though, we also have less time to build up engagement enablers that are much more easily addressed.

If we direct most of our engagement efforts at new programs to make unwilling managers better at communicating, someone undoubtedly will revisit this topic in another 40 years.

A version of this article first appeared on Shel Holtz’s blog.

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Instagram rolls out brand profiles, analytics and promotion tools

It’s official: Social media marketers can get more from Instagram.

On Tuesday, the Facebook-owned platform announced that it’s giving business owners the chance to have a different type of presence, similar to its parent company’s offering.

Business profiles will roll out in the coming weeks and offer analytics tools that give brand managers a better sense of how well their posts are performing.

[RELATED: Get the scoop on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram developments at Facebook headquarters.]

In a company blog post, Instagram explained its push to offer marketers more:

With so many companies using Instagram, and many people on the platform interacting with them, there was a desire from our business community to do more. So we listened. And, after hundreds of interviews with businesses, three key needs became clear—stand out, get insights and find new customers.

First, businesses want the ability to stand out on Instagram. Many companies, including a furniture store in San Francisco, shared that it would be easier for customers to email questions because comments are hard to track and take time to sift through. Second, businesses want a simple way to get insights. A retailer in Austin explained that many analytics are overwhelming and hard to apply to its marketing. And third, businesses want to reach even more customers. A do-it-yourself craft shop in New York City mentioned it’s always looking for quick ways to fill seats in class.

The changes include a “Contact” button on the profile page, which enables consumers to get directions as well as email or text a business. Instagram is also offering metrics for follower demographics, engagement and impressions, along with the ability to quickly and easily promote posts within the app.

Brand managers might like the added features, but recall that Facebook once took a similar approach.

Facebook first made all posts and profiles equal, then it rolling out brand pages, later changing its algorithm to suppress brand posts. Ultimately, Facebook made it easier (and more necessary) for brand managers to pay it money to have more people see posts.

To use the new features, brand managers must convert their existing Instagram account to a business profile, which is free.

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6 common grammar mistakes to avoid

Proper grammar seems to be a thing of the past. Why stress about tiny technicalities, right? Wrong.

You should be a grammar stickler for many reasons. Do you want to risk turning off potential clients, employers and connections because of grammatical mistakes?

Many people are so concerned with what they are saying in an email or text message that they completely forget to pay attention to how they are saying it. If you chose to turn grammar mode off when you are communicating with friends, that is one thing, but there is absolutely no reason to send a professional communication that contains errors.

[WORKSHOP: Learn advanced techniques for corporate storytellers and writers in this event hosted by Mark Ragan and Jim Ylisela.]

Here are six grammatical errors that are so simple, yet such common offenders. Make sure you aren’t making them.

1. Your/You’re

This is probably the most common mistake I see on social media, in text messages and in emails.

This one is simple—if you are trying to say “you are” then “you’re” is correct. If you are talking about something that belongs to you, such as “your car” then you use “your.”

2. Too/To/Two

Many people confuse these and don’t even realize they are doing it.

It’s easy—“two” is a number, “too” is an adverb that means “also” and “to” is a preposition used to express motion, direction, limit of movement, contact, a point of limit in time, purpose, intention and destination—to name a few.

“I would like to become an entrepreneur.”

“I too would like to become an entrepreneur.”

3. There/Their/They’re

What should have been squared away in third grade continues to haunt grammar police on a daily basis. The there/their/they’re mistake is common—but it’s really simple to avoid.

Use “they’re” when you are trying to say “they are.”

“Their” should be used when you are indicating possession.

Finally, “there” needs to be used when referring to a location.

“They’re going to love working there. Their company culture is amazing!”

4. You/U

This one is just pure laziness rather than a grammatical mistake.

Texting has completely ruined grammar, and you/u is a perfect example. I understand that “u” is perfectly acceptable if you are texting a friend and are in a rush, but it’s not acceptable in a professional email.

Related: How to Avoid 7 of the Most Humiliating Proofreading Mishaps

Here is an excerpt of an email I received last week from a C-level executive who is in charge of a company that does business worth several hundreds of millions of dollars every year:

“that would be gr8! Talk to u soon!”

He managed to nail two text slangs back to back like a champ. Again, if it was a text message, fine—but a professional email is no place for this. This email is actually what sparked me to write this article, so thank you, grammatically challenged C-level executive.

5. Then/Than

When you are talking about time, you use “then,” and when you are making a comparison, you use “than.” It really shouldn’t be that difficult to distinguish what one to use:

“We are going to grab a quick bite to eat and then head back to the office.”

“This new software update is much better than the previous version.”

6. It’s/Its

This one confuses a lot of people, mainly due to the apostrophe, which typically symbolizes possession. Use “it’s” when you are trying to say, “it is” and use “its” when you are looking for the possessive form of “it.”

“I looked at its owners manual to get the correct settings.”

“It’s a beautiful day outside.”

What are other grammar mishaps that drive you nuts?

Related: Weird Al’s ‘Word Crimes’ Could Actually Make You a Better Communicator

Jonathan Long is the founder and CEO of Market Domination Media. A version of this article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com. Copyright © 2015 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.



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AP makes its (lower)case for internet and web

Ding-dong: The 2016 AP Stylebook tolls.  

If you’re using a 2015 AP Stylebook, you’re a year behind, and if you’ve capitalized internet at some point today, you’ve already made an error.

So says The Associated Press in its 2016 Stylebook revisions, effective today. 

The “definitive resource for journalists, and a must-have reference for writers, editors, students and professionals” has put a decades-long debate to rest with one seemingly simple shift:

Associated Press editors made this change—and several others—known in their review of the 2016 Stylebook at the ACES conference in April.

Editors, reporters and PR pros tweeted a mixed bag of reactions to the initial announcement. Here’s a sampling:

Since the announcement, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune have jumped on board.

Tribune editors alerted employees to the change in an internal email.

“A reminder that effective Wednesday, June 1, we will begin lowercasing “internet,” as well as “web” for the shortened form of World Wide Web (which remains uppercase),” it read. “Our change complies with a change in AP style that takes effect that day.”

So far today, many Twitter users expressed their contentment with the AP’s decision. From celebratory cakes to exclamation points galore, here’s a roundup of reactions from the first day of lowercasing internet:

A slew of digital newsrooms—Buzzfeed, Vox, Quartz, The Verge, Gawker—chose years ago to go against the AP style grain in not obeying the formality of capitalizing the tech term.

Here’s how the head of U.S. English Dictionaries’ at Oxford University Press explained the Internet’s red tape to the New Republicin 2015:

We use “the” when we talk about the internet, and that perpetuates the usage of the uppercase. It’s the difference between an internet and the Internet. The word’s origins date back to the 1970s, when an “inter-network” was just a collection of smaller networks that communicated using the same protocols. Functionally, the internet of today is just the largest example of an internet—which, incidentally, means that the word entered our vocabulary in lowercase.

Now—as such has happened with many conventional wisdoms in the internet age—the general thinking has changed.

RELATED: How to create an intranet that employees will love (free download).

In response to the AP’s shift, here’s how The Verge described initially lowercasing the term:

The idea of treating internet as a proper noun came about from the beginning of internet communications. As some argue, the distinction is that the internet we know and use today is just one internet out of many possible internets. It just so happens that the internet we use is also called the internet. It’s like the Sun that we orbit and the sun of another planetary system.

The 2016 AP Stylebook includes nearly 250 new and modified entries.

Here are a few other noteworthy style changes—highlighted by Thomas Kent, the AP’s standards editor:

exponential growth : Used when something has grown by increasing amounts. For instance, a population might increase by 5 percent from 1980 to 1990, 10 percent from 1990 to 2000 and 15 percent from 2000 to 2010. Not simply a synonym for a large increase.

accident, crash : Generally acceptable for automobile and other collisions and wrecks. However, when negligence is claimed or proven, avoid accident, which can be read by some as a term exonerating the person responsible. In such cases, use crash, collision or other terms. See collide, collision.

L: The name of the Chicago train system. Not El.

mescal : Clear liquor from Mexico made from a variety of agave plants.

normcore : A fashion trend that combines “normal” and “hardcore” and is characterized by unpretentious, unisex, average dressing.

What do you think of the changes, Raganreaders? Will you adjust your “house style” to reflect the AP’s?

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The hows, whys and why-nots of scheduled tweets

Scheduled tweets are my jam.

They also keep me servicing several clients 15+ hours a day, seven days a week. Without scheduled tweets, I’d be shackled to my phone or computer and spend countless hours tweeting.

Not productive. Not scalable. Just not fun.

Automation can certainly make those tedious tasks much easier, but how far can we take automation (such as scheduled tweets) before it becomes spam?

How I use automation to manage scheduled tweets

Let’s start with how, because I know that sharing processes can help those who are starting out.

Last December, I wrote a post on the exact process I use for distributing content. If you’ve got the time, I encourage you to take a peek.

There are three main tools I use to schedule my tweets (personally and professionally):

1. Klout

This tool may surprise some of you, but here’s what I like about Klout:

  • It curates content for me based on my needs/keywords.
  • I can search for content labeled “hidden gem” in Klout, which means I’m not sharing the same overshared marketing articles from Inc. and Mashable (nothing against those sites).
  • I can jump on trending content with “hot off the press” content.

I can also share directly (immediately) or schedule my tweet(s) to go out at later times.

[WEBCAST: Learn social media “next practices” from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.]

2. IFTTT

I use “If This Then That” to schedule trusted blogger content. Certain sites generate consistently amazing content, so I automatically share their new posts to my Twitter stream.

IFTTT enables me to plug in an RSS feed and share any new posts upon publication. I don’t even have to think about sharing the content of my favorite people. I can also send out my own blog posts to my business and personal streams.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is my social media dashboard; I’ve been using it for more than four years.

I love the “Sprout Queue,” which enables you to pop tweets in and “queue next” or “queue last"—which is cool, but it’s not the best part.

The best part is ViralPost®, a premium option that determines the best time to publish content to a brand’s social media channels. It doesn’t consider when your followers are publishing. Instead, it recommends times when your audience is actively engaging and identifies when others are least active. Pretty sweet, huh?

For myself (but mainly for our clients) I can ensure we have a steady stream of scheduled tweets going out-and that they’re going out when they’re most likely to be engaged with.

When scheduled tweets become spam

Because automation makes it easy to "be present” (seemingly) that we often forget to, well, be present. The difference is that I make an effort to respond within a certain amount of time.

I see plenty of accounts with a firehose of content going out and little to no interaction or engagement. Once someone “likes” it, comments on it, mentions it, retweets it, you’re supposed to respond. Right?

There are many schools of thought:

  • Some people don’t thank people for sharing their content. (I do; call me crazy, but I am thankful when people think my content is worth sharing.)
  • One well-known social media expert told me she thanks people during a certain window, and once that window is gone she doesn’t thank any other people.
  • Some on Twitter don’t respond to straight retweets but do respond to retweets that have a comment or add thoughts. (I fall into this camp.)
  • Some people don’t respond at all.

So, doesn’t that mean the non-responders are using Twitter as a broadcast platform? If they’re scheduling tweets but not following up, isn’t that spam?

As automation and robots take over the human “doing” of things, where do we draw the line with what’s real, what’s worth connecting with and what’s spam?

Scheduled tweets are still representative of your brand. Shouldn’t you be doing more than simply broadcasting?

What do you think: Are scheduled tweets with no follow-up just spam? Please offer your thoughts in the comments section.

Brooke B. Sellas is a digital marketer and the owner of B Squared Media, a blossoming blogger and a purveyor of psychographics. Give her a shout on Twitter . A version of this article first appeared on Mark Schaefer’s grow.

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