January 12, 2010 Linky

Leadership Characteristics as Key Success Factor For Change

Leadership Characteristics – The 5 Practices of Excellent Leadership

By Stephen Warrilow

Leadership characteristics are extremely relevant as a key success factor in change management. They have been extensively researched by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. Their groundbreaking studies, commenced in 1983 with the driver to identify the characteristics of good leadership.

They devised a leadership characteristics survey consisting of thirty-eight open-ended questions designed to capture “Personal Best” stories of peak leadership experience.

The leadership characteristics research was conducted over 15 years with 75,000 people, on a worldwide basis and included middle and senior level managers in private and public sector organisations, community leaders, student leaders, church leaders, government leaders, and hundreds of others in non-managerial positions.

The last study was conducted in 2002 and the prioritized list of leadership characteristics is as follows:

1. Honest 88%
2. Forward-Looking 71%
3. Competent 65%
4. Inspiring 66%
5. Intelligent 35%
6. Fair-minded 47%
7. Broad-minded 40%
8. Supportive 42%
9. Straightforward 34%
10. Dependable 33%
11. Co-operative 24%
12. Determined 20%
13. Imaginative 23%
14. Ambitious 17%
15. Courageous 28%
16. Caring 21%
17. Mature 20%
18. Loyalty 14%
19. Self-Controlled 8%
20. Independent 6%

It is interesting to note that these figures have remained largely consistent over the full 15 years of research. The results of this research and subsequent analysis of leadership characteristics has led them to the defining of the 5 practices of excellent leadership and which are crucial in change management.

In summary they found that despite differences in the circumstances and details of people’s individual stories, their “personal-best” leadership experiences revealed recurring and similar patterns of behaviour in their descriptions of the characteristics of good leadership.

1. Showing the Way

Leaders define and establish principles about the way people should be treated and the way goals should be pursued. Leaders set the benchmark by creating standards of excellence and then demonstrate these standards in their own behaviour and thus establishing an example for others to follow. They create the environment in which people can succeed.

2. Creating a Shared Vision

Leaders have a clear and passionately held vision of what the changed organisation can become. They have the skills and energy to enthuse and inspire people to share that vision, and get excited about the future possibilities.

3. Challenging the Way Things Are

Leaders are challenging and seek out opportunities to challenge and change the status quo. They seek innovation and improvement in the organisation, are prepared to experiment, to take risks and to accept the inevitable failures as part of the learning experience.

4. Empowering and Encouraging People to Act

Leaders are enablers and empower people by involving them and believing in them. They engender mutual respect and trust and in so doing motivate their people to extraordinary effort and achievement.

5. Addressing the Emotional Dimension

Leaders know that extraordinary achievement in an organisation is very hard work. They also know that emotional dimension is extremely important. So they regularly acknowledge their people’s achievements and celebrate team and individual accomplishments, and is so doing they make their people feel good about themselves.

All of these are qualities and practises that make up the leadership characteristics for successful change management initiatives.

About the author:Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, England, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments. Take advantage of his 7 FREE “How to Do It” downloads that will take you through all of the key stages of “How to manage change” – and show you how to manage change successfully.

NOTE: I was fortunate to discover the work and writings of Stephen Warrilow at end of 2009. It was apparent that his extensive Change Management knowledge and experience would add value to my project management blog. It will equip readers with knowledge and skills to manage change successfully.

Enjoy the Change Management articles from Stephen Warrilow.

I trust that you will find great value and I encourage you to download Stephen’s free material to implement in your own change projects.

January 7, 2010August 25, 2022 Linky

What is Project Management Best Practices?

Are you following project management best practices?

Project Management Best Practice audio

When I started out as a project manager, I always tried to apply project management methodologies and practices in a technically correct way. In that sense, I had a natural tendency to find and use best practices in project management before I even knew that such a term existed or what the proper meaning of project management best practices is.

According to Wikipedia, a best practice is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive, or reward that is believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. when applied to a particular condition or circumstance.

Best practice can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.

Project management best practices can and should evolve to become better as improvements are discovered. It is about developing and following a standard way of doing things!

I would summarize it to say that project management best practice is a standard approach to follow that has been proven to work within a business industry or environment and then gets adopted by most people within that specific context.

Some consulting firms specialize in the area of project management best practices. A key strategic talent is required to provide good “best practice” consulting to organizations: the ability to balance the uniqueness of an organization with practices it has in common with other organizations.

Make-Up of a Project Manager

The make-up of a typical project manager consists of a person’s natural abilities or talents, learned skills and project management knowledge.

In the Project Management Paper: ‘Still more Art than Science’ by Kate Belzer, it has been stated that project management is both an art and a science. Understanding processes, tools, and techniques are the hard skills, also referred to as the science of project management.

For successful project delivery, project managers also need soft skills, referred to as the art of project management. Soft skills help to define the business value, clarify the vision, determine requirements, provide direction, build teams, resolve issues, and mitigate risk. Communication is quite simply the most important soft skill. The ability to apply soft skills effectively throughout the life cycle of a project will enhance the success of a project exponentially! Often projects fail because of a project manager’s inability to communicate effectively, work within the organization’s culture, motivate the project team, manage stakeholder expectations, understand the business objectives, solve problems effectively, and make clear and knowledgeable decisions. These are the skills that take time to acquire through experience, coaching, and mentoring.

To me the art and science of project management requires the intuitive application of your talents, your hard and soft skills, your knowledge and experience in the right combination that is applicable to a specific project situation. To find that kind of balance is a project management best practice in itself.

Does project management best practices work?

My work experienced has exposed me to working in organizations with too few specialist resources, lack of sufficient time for projects and inadequate project budget planning or allocation. I have also worked in highly controlled, standardized approach organizations with expert resources where everything in a project is set up to succeed. This means that planning is based on previous similar projects and expert judgement estimates, resources are dedicated to the project for periods when needed, adequate budget is allocated, proper scope and quality management is applied. Of course, all of this was based on project management best practice.

Even though normal risks and issues were experienced in both type of organization’s projects, the organisations where project management best practices were applied consistently, have shown more successful projects and satisfied customers, meaning that these projects always had a better chance of being on time, to budget and with the desired quality.

If you liked this article, please subscribe to my blog (to the right) and receive more project management tips and articles.

Please click HERE to listen to a recording of this article. If you wish to download a free copy of this audio file, please right click on the link and select “save link as” to save to your desired location.

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She is currently at Microsoft Consulting Services, South Africa.

She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She is most experienced in corporate infrastructure projects (upgrades, migration, deployment etc) and process optimisation. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

December 31, 2009September 27, 2013 Linky

Reflections On Project Management Success In 2009

Project Management Success in 2009?

Being in the middle of summer, I took my kids to a lovely beach, called Clifton(see picture on the right), in Cape Town. While spending the day overlooking the beautiful ocean, I had time to reflect on the past year and specifically what project success I have accomplished in 2009.

There is no denying that it was a most difficult year. Yet, we all aim to be successful in what we do. Looking back at 2009, you can evaluate if you were successful, personally, professionally and with business projects delivered. There are a few simple questions you can answer:

What were your achievements on a personal level?
What did you accomplish in your business?
Did you have specific triumphs or project successes in 2009?
What highlights did you experience and why were they highlights?
What is it that you are doing well?
What can you improve and do differently in 2010?
Is your business profitable?What did you enjoy most/least in your business?

Write Your Own Report Card for 2009

By doing this you can write your own Report Card to assess your accomplishments. It will help you stay focused on the positive things that you have achieved in 2009 and that you can be grateful for.

To give you a glimpse of my Report Card for Virtual Project Consulting, I wrote down my reflections on the past year.

I established my own company, Virtual Project Consulting – providing project management consulting and social media solution services– for doing business online and locally.
I created and customized my own website that is also a blog in March 2009.
I did 40 blog postings on several topics and I am positioned to publish frequently and more consistently in 2010.
I created a Project Management Toolkit, Solid-as-a-Rock to empower business owners and service professionals with little or no project management experience to manage their own business projects and services to customers.
I created a Social Media Starter Project Kit to enable business owners and service professionals to become active in using social media tools to grow their business.
I became social media active by implementing a social media strategy with many free tactics for traffic generation, lead generation, business networking and growing my brand online. I also use Virtualpm as my social networking persona as it compliments the virtual project management services that I offer.
I learned constantly about Internet Marketing, running your own business and how to focus despite all the distractions you are bombarded with while being online.
I connected with numerous other project management experts, with social media teachers and many business and marketing gurus from whom I keep learning.
I am a guest writer on two websites/blogs, one about project management and one about Web 2 and social networking.
I started to make money, but most importantly, I created and established a business brand that I am passionate about, where I truly want to make a difference and hope to contribute authentically and add value to my client’s lives to help them grow their business in 2010.

Looking back on 2009, I realized how much I have to be grateful for. I did more research in the past year on internet marketing, social media and other topics that interest me than in the 5 years before that. Being an optimistic, but impatient person, I learned the virtue of patience and of having faith to keep doing what you believe in with diligence and skill. It really takes perseverance to become successful, but it takes a positive attitude to be happy in any circumstances.

Strategy for 2010

Do you have your business strategy for 2010 in place?

Do you have a Social Media strategy that gives you a plan, a strategic approach for social networking and many tactics to use to grow your business online, establish your brand and make more money?

Look at the Social Media Starter Project Kit!

I’m giving away the Social Media Strategy template for a limited time until 15 January 2010. Use the opportunity to create a social media strategy for your business as part of your overall marketing plan for 2010.

Thanks for the opportunity to share. Please feel free to share one or two of your own accomplishments and even 2010 resolutions…..

December 24, 2009December 1, 2015 Linky

Leadership – 8 Best Practices For Communication

Listening is the key to understanding in communication

By Phoenix R. Cavalier

Being very good at speaking to a person requires the ability to listen for understanding, to ensure what you said, is what someone else has heard. The number one reason for poor communication may be time management. Due to the fact many leaders are highly scheduled, it becomes easier to deliver a message and keep moving than to stop and take the time to communicate in a useful and clear manner. By applying some or all the best practices shared here, the communication skills you have may be sharpened, and the results you see will likely improve.

Leadership and Communication

Consider how you would apply these simple ideas adapted from You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone, Anytime Can Make a Positive Difference.

1. Start with a question

Be clear on what you want. If there was ever a time to “begin with the end in mind,” it is when you communicate.

2. Focus on quality, not quantity

Good communication is about quality, not quantity.

3. Speak with truth and compassion

In leadership communication don’t tell people what they want to hear. Tell them what they need to hear. Just make sure you tell them in such a way that they’ll listen. There is your view and their view, and often the best point of view lies somewhere in-between.

4. Focus on the listener, not yourself

There are three modes of communicating. They are being:

Self-centered,
Message-centered,
Listener-centered.

Leadership communication requires you to be listener-centered and that you put personal needs aside and become so familiar with the message you are trying to communicate that you can focus on and respond emphatically to the listener.

5. Simplify the message

The only thing people have less of today than disposable income or time is attention. With excessive demands on limited attention, effective leadership communicators harness the power of the sound bite. They make concepts easy to understand and repeat.

6. Entertain to engage

For a leader to be heard and understood, he or she must break preoccupation and grab attention, in other words, entertain. That means a leader captures and holds the attention of those being addressed. You can’t bore people into positive action.

7. Feedback and feed forward

The best way to make sure another person has heard and understood what you said is to ask them to repeat it back to you in their own words. You could say, “I want to make sure I explained that clearly. Would you please tell me how you understand what I’ve said?”

8. Tell a better story

Telling a story is good, but being the story is better. The congruency between who you are and the stories you tell as a leader create credibility. The purpose, however, isn’t to be speaker-focused, but to use personal experience and story as a bridge to build connection.

Take the Next Step: Put This List in Your Pocket!

Make this list part of your day – an easy and simple way to power-up your communication competence in leadership. Get started now!

Write the eight best practices on a piece of paper small enough to carry with you for one week.

Glance at your leadership communication best practices list before a meeting, gathering, or brief conversation to keep them top-of-mind.

After one week, reflect on how your interaction with others has changed; you may be pleasantly surprised! You will see how does effective communication play a part in leadership.

As a leader it is your responsibility to create opportunities for understanding, and to invite creative dialogue. Lead people together and the whole team will succeed, including you.

Source: www.lqsolutionsvault.com with ideas adapted from “You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone, Anytime Can Make a Positive Difference.”

If you are a leader and you have a story to share, please leave a comment.

Another leadership article: Vision Requires Logic And Emotion

December 20, 2009September 27, 2013 Linky

Make projects work for your business!

Where the business owner and service professional learn more about project management skills, project management tools and templates and project management methodologies for managing business projects.

An effective way to speed up results with business projects is to apply a simple Project Management framework to deliver your projects on time, to budget and with desired quality.

For solutions to:

WHAT project management is,
WHY your business needs projects,
HOW to do project management,
WHEN to start a project and
WHO must do the work

Discover a basic tool to successful project management, download the Project Management Toolkit for all your business project management needs.

Take Action today and start making a positive difference to your business.

December 11, 2009September 27, 2013 Linky

What Is Project Success?

Why excellence in project management is not enough

By Robert Buttrick

The only reason for undertaking a project is to add value to an organisation in pursuit of strategic objectives. A project, which does not do this is useless or a sink for scarce resources.

Projects, however, do not directly create value. Projects deliver new capability to an organisation, but it is the organisation itself, which creates value by using those capabilities. Value creation (benefits realisation) usually happens after a project has been completed.

If a project is truly a vehicle of change which will add value, it must have:

Alignment: It is aligned to the company strategy
Priority: It has high priority relative to other change initiatives which may use the same resources
Positive impact: It impacts somebody’s budget, somewhere in the organisation either by decreased costs or increased revenues.

Define project success in project managment

When talking about successful projects we must understand what the word “successful” means. Success is too often interpreted through the differing eyes of stakeholders.

Successful project management ensures the delivery of a specified scope, on time and to budget. It is related to how efficiently a project is managed. This should be assessed during the project closure review, documented in a project closure report and measured by timeliness of delivery milestones, adherence to budgets and quality. This is associated with the role of the project manager.

A successful project realises the business objectives it was set up to achieve as stated in a business case^a. It is related to the effectiveness of the project in meeting the objectives set. The post implementation review (post-project review) assesses this. Measures of success here must be indicative of the business objectives being achieved. This review therefore has to happen some time after the output of the project has been put into use. It is associated with the role of the project sponsor^b.

A successful company drives towards its strategic objectives whilst fulfilling expectations of shareholders, managers, employees and other stakeholders^c. Measures for this are at a corporate level and should be financial and non-financial (e.g. balanced score card). This is associated with the role of the Chief Executive.

What actually counts is whether the organisation, as a whole, is successful or not. The likelihood of business success is increased if the projects undertaken align with the organisation’s strategy. Success can be enhanced if best practice project management is undertaken. The aim is to ensure the linkage from successful project management to successful projects to a successful company remains effective.

How to measure and realise benefits

For benefits realisation and measurement to be effective therefore, an organisation must have:

A business strategy and goals communicated in sufficient detail to be useful to decision makers: this will facilitate strategic alignment
A business plan, which explicitly demonstrates how the company’s resources are to be used in operating the organisation in its current state and investing in future capabilities in order to achieve future benefits;
Measures by which the whole organisation can monitor its progress towards strategic objectives and may be used to aid prioritisation decisions.

Without these three fundamentals, business-led, or benefits-driven project management has little to tie into, regardless of how well each individual project is managed or directed.

GLOSSARY EXPLAINING TERMS USED:

BUSINESS CASE: A document outlining the justification for the initiation of a project. It includes a description of the business problem (or opportunity), a list of the available solution options, their associated costs and benefits and a preferred option for approval
PROJECT SPONSOR: Individual or group within organization that provides the financial resources for the project.
STAKEHOLDERS: Individual and organizations that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may b positively or negatively affected as a result of project execution or completion; also some-one who exert influence over the project and its results.

References

This article is adapted from Part 2 of The Project Workout, 4th edition, Robert Buttrick, Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2009.

Do you think your business projects are creating value? Please share your thoughts……

December 9, 2009March 25, 2018 Linky

5 Steps To Leadership Success

What is your Leadership Style?

By Deanne Earle

Have you ever been asked to take on a poorly performing team, department, or project in chaos? Do you leap in like the caped crusader to save the world or are you overly consultative in an attempt to make friends and influence people? We know how challenging these situations are and we also know they can be exceptionally rewarding.

Follow our 5 steps to set the scene, quickly establish credibility, build trust and maximise the chances of success with your leadership skills.

1. Get Clear

If you’re not clear on what it is you’re being asked to do how will you be able to do it? Forget about the rumours and put aside your own thoughts and opinions for the moment because Step 1 is to have absolute clarity of your role by asking the following:

What is it exactly that you’re being asked to do? Do not presume to understand from the first explanation.

What role are you being asked to play? Tough guy, motivator, sort-out, clean-up, deliver, or all of these and more.

Why are they asking you? What is it you do that makes you the choice for this role?

What’s the timeframe? Constraints? Dependencies?

What is the line of accountability, level of authority, and scope of responsibilities?

Important Note – if the person asking you to take this role cannot answer these questions find someone who can. Get clear on your reporting path and purpose. Without this success will be severely limited from the start.

2. Agenda(s)

Find out who has what agenda and why. What are the motivations behind this need and how do they relate to the scope of the challenge at hand? Having this information will help you identify and fill any gaps in the brief and round-off Step 1.

3. Initial Thoughts

Based on Steps 1 and 2 you can now start adding the gossip, grapevine hearsay and corridor conversations you’ve picked up to begin forming your own initial opinions, ideas and thoughts. Many of these will be questions, which you’ll work to answer in Steps 4 and 5. It’s important to reserve judgement and for any opinions to remain fluid until you’ve got all the input because at this stage you’ve only been spoken to by a higher authority and you haven’t yet spoken with your new team.

4. Active Listening

Critical to a successful outcome is consulting with those you’ll be working with. The best way to do this is with 1-on-1’s. Preparation is imperative for effective leadership:

Clear your diary and make 1-on-1 times with everyone. Set expectations via communication:

Why you are the chosen one.
Set the scene about your role. Stick to the facts
Purpose of the 1-on-1
Input you expect from each person. Make it clear this is a collaborative session and their opportunity to contribute. You need their input on:
- what works well now
- what doesn’t
- what they see as issues and risks
- which things they believe can be improved, why and how
- what level of involvement or contribution they’re prepared to have / give
- what expectations they have of you

Conduct each session from a base of integrity. Approach each on as a blank canvas and with an open mind. Be firm yet fair. Create a collaborative atmosphere. One where trust can be built through honesty and transparency. Let each person know this is a level playing field and that they have as much, or more, to contribute as you do.
Let them talk getting their frustrations out while making sure to bring the session back on track if necessary. It’s their opportunity to be constructive and proactively contribute, not just a moaning session.
Make lots of notes. Paraphrase back what they say to ensure you have understood their meaning correctly. Where you know something is not possible or never going to happen, tell them. There are things you can and cannot influence so don’t lead them up the garden path.
Keep asking ‘what else?’ until you can see in their body language and hear in their words that all is out and on the table.
Wrap up the session with a definitive statement about what will happen next.

5. Plan for Action

Now it’s time to consolidate what is actually going to happen, who will do what, the milestones that need to be achieved and their timeline, and what approach you’re going to take to deliver it all. It’s important to invest time and effort here as:

you don’t want to destroy the momentum and trust created in Step 4 by paying lip-service to your new team
everything you plan needs to remain aligned with the original brief you’ve been given.

Taking all the gathered inputs you can now add your own ideas and opinions to develop a truly collaborative plan. Your delivery style is also critical. Always start how you mean to continue while also being prepared to adapt as situations change. Don’t forget to share the plan! Maintain the momentum you’ve created and maximise the opportunity for success by communicating what is to be done and the part everyone has to play in it. This clarity of purpose ensures buy-in because everyone in your team needs you to specify their Step 1.

These 5 Steps are repeatable and work every time. Use them with each new leadership role or situation and we know you’ll maximise both your and others success.

If you have questions or need further assistance to create this type of change in your business, contact info@unlikebefore.com

For more Leadership articles…

December 6, 2009September 11, 2016 Linky

Make Projects Work For Your Business!

8 Project Management Methodologies and Standards

You will find a more current article on PM Methodologies and Standards here: 7 Facts on Project Management Methodologies and Standards

I have decided to do a series of postings about Project Management methodologies and Project Management best practices. The purpose for this is not to replicate information that is already out there, but to inform, equip and empower business owners and service professionals about the project management profession and how to put it to use to sustain and grow their business.

As an introduction to this I have 8 questions to help define what a methodology and a standard is based on a summary of the best information I could find and that I know from experience. I would then like to encourage the reader of this post to contribute in the form of comments towards more methodologies and standards that can be covered here (and I encourage you to link to sites that you recommend as worthwhile reading on these topics.)

1. What is a methodology?

A methodology is a set of methods, processes and practices that are repeatedly carried out to deliver projects. It tells you what you have to do, to manage your projects from start to finish. It describes every step in the project life cycle in depth, so you know exactly which tasks to complete, when and how.

The key concept is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that, you will gain efficiencies in your approach.

2. What is a standard?

A standard is “a collection of knowledge areas that are generally accepted as best practice in the industry”.

3. What is the difference between a methodology and a standard?

Standards give you industry guidance, whereas methodologies give you practical processes for managing projects. Standards are not methodologies, and vice versa. The two most popular standards are PMBOK and Prince2.

4. Why use a methodology?

A Project Methodology should help you by giving you a clear process for managing projects. After you have customised it to perfectly fit your environment, your methodology should tell your team what has to be completed to deliver your project, how it should be done, in which order and by when.

5. What should be included in a project management methodology?

When you buy a project methodology, it should give you:

A core set of processes to follow for delivering projects
A set of templates to help you build deliverables quickly
A suite of case studies to help you learn from past projects
An option for customizing the methodology provided
The ability to import your existing processes into it

6. What a project management methodology will not do?

A Methodology is not a silver bullet. It will not fix projects by itself or guarantee success and an efficient, effective experienced project manager is still required to deliver projects successfully. Remember that the finest carpenter’s tool-box will only be as good as the carpenter. No methodology will be 100% applicable to every type of project. So you will need to customise any methodology you purchase to ensure that it perfectly fits your project management environment.

7. What are the benefits of using a methodology?

By using a methodology you can:

Create a project roadmap
Monitor time, cost and quality (project triple constraint)
Control change and scope
Minimise risks and issues
Manage staff and suppliers

Of course, you will need to use the methodology that is most suitable to each project you undertake. For smaller projects, you will only want to apply lightweight processes and when managing large projects, you should apply the heavyweight processes to monitor and control every element of your project in depth.

But if you can manage every project you undertake in the same way, then you will gain efficiencies with your approach, work smarter and reduce your stress. You will also give your team a clear understanding of what you expect from them and boost your chances of success.

Flick - Cappellmeister — Flickr – Cappellmeister

8. A few project management methodologies examples with short descriptions:

PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE) is a project management method. It covers the management, control and organisation of a project.
Method 123 Project Management methodology, also called MPMM (Project Management Methodology Manager) is based on the worldwide project management standards PMBOK and Prince2 and contains all of the project management templates, forms and checklists needed.
Ten Step Project Management Process is a methodology for managing work as a project and it’s designed to be as flexible as you need to manage your project.
UPMM Unified Project Management methodology based on suite of knowledge management tools.
AdPM – a best practices project methodology.
MBP- Managing by Project from X-Pert Group. Programme and Project Management methodology and services.
MITP – Managing Information Technology Projects. IBM’s established project management delivery method.
Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) is a set of principles, models, disciplines, concepts, and guidelines for delivering information technology solutions.

Please add more project management methodologies that you have used and tell us more about them.

For related Project Management articles, click here.

November 30, 2009 Linky

Social Networking Communities

Building Smart Communities Through Social Networking

Let’s first look at what is social networking? Social networking is where people develop networks of friends and associates. It forges and creates links between different people. A social network can form a key element of collaborating and networking.

In sequal to the previous posting on how to measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts and what ROI categories to use, we will now look at what type of social networking communities to create to gain advantages from free social networking.

The common types of communities created are:

Customer Community
Employee Community
Partner Community

The goals for creating these types of communities are:

Customer Community goals:

Better understand customer preferences and profile
Increase awareness of your brand
Facilitate sharing of best practices
Increase adoption of your products and services
Improve customer loyalty and retention
Receive real time feedback from customers regarding wants and needs
Increase persistent traffic to the website
Solicit customer-driven innovation
Empower power users and experts to find and fill job positions

Employee Community Goals:

Create a company culture of sharing and teamwork
Increase intra-company communication and collaboration
Improve employee retention and the bond between company and employee
Discover new ideas and accelerate innovation
Encourage cross-functional inputs to drive better decision making
Bolster minority and special interest group programs

Partner Community Goals:

Enable general communication with partners
Facilitate sharing of best practices & creation of a knowledge base
Encourage co-innovation to better serve joint customers and markets
Increase sales through real-time market intelligence
Provide a central repository for partner communication
Enable opinion sharing and recommendations

This is an extract from my Social Media Marketing Report.

If you’re interested in related social media articles, read here and please feel free to leave any comments.

November 29, 2009 Linky

Measure Your Effectiveness With Social Media

How Do You Measure Effectiveness Of Social Media?

In order to get faster results from an investment in Social Media Marketing you need to measure your Social Networking efforts in terms of Return On Investment (ROI).

Five proven ways to increase your ROI are:

Have a Business Strategy to increase exposure in support of your products and services and to create new business.
Establish presence in your marketplace and reinforce your credibility.
Expand your reach and create buzz for events you’re hosting.
Nurture relationships and create strategic partnerships.
Properly maintain your presence and be an industry leader.

What ROI categories do you use?

Once you have a Social Media Marketing strategy in place in support of your Business Strategy, the following ROI categories can be used to measure return on investment to create branded online community:

Customer Communities:

Increase in customer acquisition
Increase in customer retention
Reduction in customer service costs
Increase in page rank and general site traffic due to additional content on a community
Improved product and service allocation based on real time customer feedback and customer driven innovation

Internal Communities (Employees):

Increase in productivity due to
- General knowledge sharing
- Identification of subject matter experts to shorten ramp up
- Virtual team environments for distributed teams
- Increase in employee retention. People like meeting other employees, face to face and virtually. This produces a more enriching work environment.
- Decreased hiring costs. It’s easier to hire from within. Finding good candidates through internal social networks can provide even more information (both profile based and content creation based) about internal candidates.

This is an extract from my free Social Media Marketing Report.

If you’re interested in related social media articles, read here and please feel free to leave any comments.

November 7, 2009January 5, 2017 Linky

11 Key Social Media Tools To Consider For Marketing

What Are The Key Social Media Tools?

Social Media Marketing takes place through various Social Media platforms when they are used as a marketing tool to market a company’s products and services. Social Media tools can be divided into different categories, each category serving its own purpose.

The above diagram depicts some of the key Social Platforms in use today. Many of the platforms can be targeted as marketing tools to increase exposure to your business and grow your business through more sales and strategic partnerships. Let’s look at each key platform in more detail. For the purposes of this article only one example of each type will be discussed.

1) Blogs

From term “weblog” is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. At beginning of 2008 blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs and this number is growing at a rapid pace.

Currently there are 12,9 million active blogs with more than 5 billion readers.

2) Micro-blogging: Twitter

Micro-Blogging is a Social Media tool that answers to 1 question:

“What Are You Doing?”

Answers question in short sentences of 140 characters or less.
Most users on Twitter are already on Facebook .
Twitter is one of the fastest growing Social Media platforms.
It is referred to as ‘Instant messaging on steroids’.
Demographics shows that it is used by politicians, celebrities, news anchors and individuals.
Total visits in May 2009 were 134 million ; with 32 million unique visitors in April 2009.
The Twitter platform is used by 94% of marketers.

3) Really Simple Syndication: RSS

RSS “feeds” allow people to subscribe to the various websites, blogs or sections of websites that are of interest to them.

4) Social Networking: Facebook

Facebook is a well-known Social Media platform to create, participate in groups, share photos, videos, audios online.

It has an Alexa ranking of 5 (fifth most trafficked website in the world).
Currently 300 million active members, growing with 250 000 new members per day and predicted to be 500 million by 2011.
Demographics: fastest growing age group is 30-35. Women aged 55 is also a big growth area

Facebook presents huge opportunities to set up a group discussing areas of interest relating to your business.

5) Niche Networks: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a Professional Networking Social Media platform and the largest network of its kind. Currently, it is used by more than 50 million professionals to exchange information, ideas, opportunities and business networking.

6) Chatrooms

Build your own network of contacts who share your interests.

7) Message Boards: Forums

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site were any topic of interest is posted and discussed.

8) Podcasts

A podcast is a series of digital computer files, usually either digital audio or video, that is released periodically and made available for download by means of web syndication.

9) Video sharing: You Tube

YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. You Tube is a video sharing Social Media platform that currently has 75 million videos and 150 000 more videos are added per day. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email. In 2006 YouTube was purchased by Google Inc. Video marketing is used significantly more by men than women.

10) Photo sharing: Flicr

An online photo management and sharing application to show off your favourite photos and videos to the world.

11) Social Bookmarking: Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages.

If you enjoyed this summary of social media marketing tools for business, go read my free Social Media Marketing Report which contains more useful information about your most pressing questions about social media as a marketing tool.