Business & Online Communities

Six ways to say Thank You with Social Media

Posted Thu, 18/03/2010 - 20:19 by Liz

Who should you have thanked today?

A heart-felt “Thank You” means a great deal to the receiver. Even more so when you can make that Thank You a public mini-testimonial for the person you're appreciating. So here's six ways to say those two special words:

  1. Send an unsolicited testimonial on LinkedIn. This will be a permanent thank you that your colleague can display with pride on their profile. Remember to make it meaningful. Be specific in what they did for you, and the effect it had. Consider using the STAR format: Describe the Situation or Task, then the Action they took, then the Results this action delivered.

  2. Send a “Thank You” tweet through Twitter, and again, be specific about what they did, as this will help their followers understand how they can add value to their work. It will introduce them to your followers, too.

Staff Development Day

Posted Sat, 13/02/2010 - 22:17 by RFTeam

We had a really successful staff development day not long ago, so I thought I might share the format - as it might be useful to other small companies or project teams. If you have a lot of associates and flexible workers as we do, it's important to get together now and then to catch up.

  1. Vision - the vision behind the company or project, the inspiration behind it all. Does the mission statement need renewing?
  2. Celebrate ourselves - review recent successes. It's easy to find in routine operational meetings that you're discussing mostly challenges and problems, and success is not lauded. You might find, as we did, that we had many successes to celebrate.  We made time to thank one another for the support we got within the team.
  3. Review of projects, feedback from clients and learning points! We realised we had some strengths and skills we hadn't previously identified.
  4. Magic Wand - if you could wave a magic wand and change something for the company what would it it be? (We decided moving en masse to the Seychelles wasn't really on, but as we actively promote remote and flexible working, an employee moving to  sunnier climes would not have to resign!) /more

Have you got a corporate blog policy?

Posted Fri, 15/01/2010 - 13:36 by Helen

At Reach Further we’re often asked by clients for whom we’re setting up blogs what they should have as their blog policy.  Where a company or organisation has a very clear handle on its image and brand and the way it wants to appear to its customers, potential customers and the world in general, then there may be a place for a full blog or social media policy that is integrated with procedures for print and other marketing. 

Microsoft, have a very simple policy: “Blog smart”. Microsoft employees are encouraged to blog honestly about the company.  Common sense and knowledge of the company ethos can be good enough for an intelligent blogger.  For those who need a bit more guidance than “blog smart”, there are a few major principles of corporate blogging that can serve as a starting point for a blogging policy:

Five main principles:

  1. be honest, open and responsive,
  2. stay on topic,
  3. abide by existing rules, eg corporate branding guidelines, copyright,
  4. be aware of and respect the company’s confidentiality and proprietary information,
  5. be polite.

A full blogging policy can contain several more points, but they develop from the above principles. For example, a policy on encouraging and responding to comments develops from point 1, being responsive. These five principles are an positive start in creating a company blogging policy.

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