Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

I’ve been very busy so have not had a chance to mention two studies related to reputation that are worth reviewing.

The first one is about industry reputation which continues to intrigue me. The Harris Interactive Poll found that the most credible industries among 2,152 adult Americans are supermarkets, hospitals, banks and electric and gas utilities. They have been doing this research since 2003. Not too surprisingly but disturbing nevertheless was that when asked this question about 17 industries, a large 48% said “none of these” industries are trustworthy. This was the highest number of people saying this since 2003.  Overall, no one industry is doing particularly well and this speaks to the overall downturn in perceptions of business over the decade.

The second survey that should be on your radar is research by Nora Ganim Barnes. She has been diligently surveying Fortune 500 companies with regard to their social media usage.  Social reputation is a growing component of reputation which is why I am writing about this. This is the third survey that she has done on this topic at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Here are some of her key findings for 2010 (conducted in August/September 2010) which are great to track over time.

1. One quarter (23%) of Fortune 500 companies have a public-facing corporate blog with a recent post over the past 12 months. Two years ago, only 16% had blogs so this is a healthy increase.

2.  When it comes to industries, the industries with the most blogs are computer software, peripherals and office equipment. This includes companies such as HP, Microsoft, Apple. There have been increases in blogs in the specialty retail industry (Best Buy as an example) and telecommunications as well (Verizon, AT&T).

3. About one third (32%) of top 100 ranked Fortune 500 companies had a blog, a slight dip from 38% in 2008. 

4. A whopping 90% of  Fortune 500 blogs take comments, have RSS feeds and take subscriptions. That is good news to see that these blogs are interactive and not one-way.

5.  They looked at corporate Twitter accounts (had to have tweeted in the past 30 days) and 60% had Twitter accounts, a jump up from 35% in 2009. Nine of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies had accounts and consistently posted.  Specialty retail companies were the most likely to have Twitter accounts. Since they are so consumer-facing, makes sense.

6. A fairly large 56% of the Fortune 500 companies are on Facebook. Not bad but not up to the level it should be and will be over time.

Industry reputations are still failing but social media seems to be exploding (Twitter and Facebook) among the top companies in the US.  We are witnessing the Great American Reach Out. Industry reputations could begin the climb upwards if there was greater adoption of interactivity. No doubt industries will take this seriously and jump onboard. CEOs as well will become more socialized in the years ahead.

  In an interesting take on reputation damage control regarding the new movie (The Social Network) about Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg in the Wall Street Journal today, I came across the following quote by the producer Scott Rudin about Facebook’s involvement.

 ”They were trying to figure out a way not to tie Mark’s personal identity to the identity of the company. Because they were and are talking about an inevitable IPO and clearly want the company to be bigger than Mark Zuckerberg.”

There is no way that Zuckerberg’s personality is not tied to the company. When it comes to founding CEOs and when it comes to companies in the technology industry, the link is inextricable and unbreakable. It is a double whammy when the product, in this case Facebook, is so stupendously successful. It would be nice if this were not the case but there is no arguing about this. Think about Steve Jobs and Apple, Bill Gates and Microsoft, Larry Ellison and Oracle and Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems, to name a few.  That’s the way it is. Each of these is endlessly interesting in how these young men started these colossally large firms and changed the industry forever.

Yes, the company is bigger than Zuckerberg, technically-speaking. But as I have said so many times before, the CEO or founder is the public face of the company and no more than it is in this new and exciting social media age. It has a storyline with grand proportions which is why a book has been written and a movie made.

I thought that the New Yorker interview with Zuckerberg added further dimension to the founder’s personality and probably counterbalanced some of the negativity that is in the newly released movie.

Go with the flow.

As I mentioned in my last post, our new research on executive placement at the right conferences covered some interesting information on social media. It would be difficult not to explore how executives were using or not using social media to tell their company story in addition to taking the podium.  Not surprisingly, the results show that online channels are not being used as effectively as they could.

• The tool most widely used to communicate externally by the C-suite is posting written messages on the company web site (66%). And that is a big step from a few years ago, so this is good news. Despite its widespread usage, executive communications professionals surveyed do not regard C-level web statements to be among the three most effective ways to communicate externally. Instead, the #1 most effective channel, according to respondents, is recorded video on the Web site, followed by live webcasts and blogs.
• Among the social networking tools, Twitter is considered more effective (25%) than Facebook (19%) and LinkedIn (16%) for external C-suite communications. Yet Twitter is woefully under-utilized by executives as a way to connect or communicate. It is reported by only 6% as a means that the C-suite uses to communicate now with external audiences. There is alot of debate about whether execs and CEOs should spend time on Twitter and Facebook. The best answer to the question is “Depends.” It depends on the industry, the regulations governing the industry, whether the company is customer-facing or not, and whether the executive has the time. Few execs have the time to commit and after talking to CEOs, they do not usually have the time. I keep wondering if there is an in-between but have not found one.

Video, on the other hand,  is a preferred communications channel today because of its ability to viscerally humanize executives. Right now, video of CEOs or other execs talking, interacting, and engaging can go a long way to attracting candidates, putting a human face on the company and just saying, “I’m showing up.”

According to the New York Times, potential candidates for Senator Hillary Clinton’s Senate soon to be vacated seat have to fill out extensive background forms for Governor Paterson. All the typical requests appear on the form such as tax returns, spousal business, educational background, arrests, hiring of illegal immigrants, investments (with Madoff, hope not), etc.  But apparently now candidates need to provide urls for their children’s Facebook or MySpace pages. Perhaps the news about VP candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy caused politicians to be more careful in their vetting process.  No one likes surprises. I doubt that McCain’s campaign dug into Bristol’s boyfriend’s Facebook entries at the time. That is now the past but the future clearly indicates that family social media networks will increasingly become an important element of a candidate’s reputational baggage.  I imagine for some of these candidates, they have never been on their kids’ social media sites.  Who wants their parents as friends?

We can soon expect that candidates for high-level business slots will have to provide information on their children’s social network pages as well.  After all, a company officer’s reputation impacts the reputation of the company and his or her family can cause some collateral damage. Why wouldn’t a board ask a CEO-to-be to provide that information as part of the background check on whether they have the right stuff or not.  [Actually board members should be asked to do the same.] Headhunters may already been doing this background checking as a matter of course but fairly soon, it will be SOP (standard operating procedure) at Fortune 500 companies. Poor kids.  They will all need online reputation managers and coaches soon.