The Bottom Line – “Using social media to capture people’s attention is different from traditional advertising, and companies that measure the effectiveness of these new channels by simply counting Facebook fans should rethink their approach,” according to Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, authors of The Dragonfly Effect in a recent McKinsey Quarterly interview.

The authors cite an example of charity:water, a nonprofit launched three years ago on the founder’s 31st birthday with $31 friend contributions totaling $15,000. The nonprofit has now supplied clean water to more than 1.4 million people.

Best practices – here are the authors’ four nonprofit social media best practices:
• “Tell a Story” that exemplifies your mission and tells it in a very personal way. A key is to create “a point of tension” about what’s going to happen in the middle of your story that draws in the viewer.
• “Empathize with your audience” – charity:water captured the hearts of viewers through photos and videos that begged the question: what would it be like to go without clean water?
• “Emphasize authenticity” – as part of this hearts and minds campaign passion is contagious and should be buttressed by explaining the results of the donors’, volunteers’ (or customers’) engagement.
• “Match the media with the message” – create specialized messages for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This nonprofit got a well-known director to produce a spot that lucked out on American Idol.

What stories are worth telling?
• Who am I – your start-up story.
• Vision – your future direction.
• Apology and recovery – a screw-up example and how you responded.
• Personal – stories from your clients and employees.

How to measure success? – Counting hits or fans provides activity measures that don’t add up to much. The authors recommend setting brand goals and measuring against them. Since an estimated 95 % of people delete requests from causes (and skip through ads), the challenge remains — how can you break through the clutter? The above suggestions provide useful clues (see mckinseyquarterly.com for the full interview; membership is free).

Success lies in building relationships with your audience. So, don’t get too wrapped up in the social media technology, focus on truly and emotionally engaging your audience.

What are employee workplace concerns, how broadly held are they and how strongly are they felt? One way to gain a better, more         comprehensive grasp is to conduct an Employee Climate Survey. Such a survey can assess employee perceptions and concerns, identify positive changes and lead to higher job satisfaction and increased productivity. Better productivity can drop benefits directly to your bottom line or further your cause.

Key Model – FedEx’s people-first corporate philosophy is an integral part of their People-Service-Profit goals. A key part of managing this effort is annual use of an Employee Satisfaction Survey built around a Survey-Feedback-Action approach. Any employee survey is only effective if feedback on the major results is shared with employees and management identifies areas for action.

Case Example – We helped an organization tailor an Employee Climate Survey to meet their needs. To gain employee participation and help employees feel comfortable providing candid answers, it can help to have an external firm design, conduct and communicate overall survey findings.

Work Groups - It can also be helpful for departments or natural work groups to assess their survey results compared to those of the organization as a whole. In addition to supporting organization-wide actions, is there an area or two that deserves attention within the smaller group?

When to Test Your Climate? - It can be helpful to assess employee climate when major changes are being made in strategies or organization or when new processes, products or services are being introduced. Even better, annually assessing the climate makes sense to help effectively manage an organization and to give voice to employees on changes they think could improve attainment of organization goals or their own job satisfaction. When combined with an assessment of customer survey feedback, any disconnects between the views of stakeholders can be identified.

Critical success factors are to commit to survey anonymity, share feedback of summary results with employees, act on key findings and then periodically communicate progress. It can be sunnier where you work. Most of us spend too much of our lives there for it not to be.

I bet you’ve heard the age old expression, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you!” In today’s business climate, “not knowing” will slow you down in the short-run and in the long-run it could limit success. Understanding the customers and stakeholders that make your organization successful is a critical component to your communication and marketing efforts.

One major city United Way conducted research to get crystal clear on the attitudes, perceptions, and expectations of their donors before starting their annual campaign. The study targeted top donor companies and included seven focus groups of about eight employees each. The research was done in phases so the results from the first phase could enhance the development of the second phase. The following highlights give you a snapshot of what these top donor company employee focus groups said.

Do They Hear You?

Most professionals are multi-tasking at work and have very little time or focus for campaign materials. While glossy photographs are nice, the majority want concise information and images of local recipients, not stock photos.

Do They Care?

Most business professionals were emotionally involved with the United Way and the issues they represented. And, almost all were pleased with the campaign staff assigned to their companies.  

Do They Champion Your Org.?

A significant number were committed to meeting fund raising goals and to advocating for United Way inside their corporations. Many were willing to be champions because of personal stories from co-workers or family members about how the United Way had assisted them in their time of need. Volunteer experience was also a giving motivator and almost all who volunteered were interested in having the United Way assist them in identifying volunteer opportunities.

What Else Do They Want?

While many charities lead with warm fuzzy stories and pictures of smiling children, today’s professionals want statistics and hard data about the effectiveness of their donor dollars. Across the board, people voiced a desire for more outcome-oriented and results-based information shared in formats that made it easy to receive, read and react.

Whether you are a local nonprofit, small business, or corporate giant, tapping into your target audience’s needs before you communicate can pay huge dividends. By conducting research customized to your organization’s needs and your customers’ wants, you can create communications that propel your success!

If you’ve done the strategic work to position your business and to identify potential industry segments on which to focus, how can you identify prospective companies that meet your business criteria?

I recently met a Telecom New Business Development professional, who’s an expert on fishing through business and government data to catch new business development prospects.  Thomas Jackson is an ardent researcher who freely shares his approach and the underlying data.

Target Industries – The first step, says Tom, is to target industries of interest.  You can do that by identifying a company of interest in that industry and then determining its NAICS (North American Industrial Classification System) code, which in 2004 replaced the old SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) code and provides greater detail.   Then you can identify other companies which share the industry code of interest.   Tom shows how to do this for 1,400 companies in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but his approach can be used anywhere in the U.S. (see www.thomasjackson.info ).

Lead to Target Companies – Dun & Bradstreet data for the companies in both your industry of interest and geographic area of interest can show you company contact info, the names of some senior executives, the numbers of employees (both total and in your area), sales total, year established, public/private ownership and line of business.

Lead to More Details on These Companies – Once you’ve identified companies of potential interest, you can find additional details about them in www.manta.com especially for small and mid-sized companies; via your local city business journal in 40 American cities (see www.bizjournals.com) and through the specific company Web sites.     

Then Fish for Contacts in These Companies – The key outcome of the above research is to identify contacts in the companies of interest to you as potential customers, so that you can reach them and begin to develop a business relationship.  In addition to the above major city business journals and a company’s own Web site, try LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/search) and do an advanced search for contacts.  Through the LinkedIn system, you can then determine if any of your own LinkedIn contacts have those in whom you’re interested as contacts and make a connection.

Abundant Fish – There is more data available than can be imagined to help you identify potential customers and contacts that meet your strategic criteria for potential customers.  So do a little homework and go fish!