[1] BTN: Are minimum quotas for staff social media posts effective?
Eliason: That's the quest for ROI and for page views. But social media is mostly about the psychology of things. If someone's being forced to put something out there, there's no passion, it's just, "here's a link." If I'm passionate, I get interaction. But if I'm just Tweeting because someone told me to, I don't. Now a lot of what's on Twitter is noise. Companies are saying it's all about content, they're putting the emphasis on content creation. But there's content everywhere.
[2] So maybe you have to let other people steer the ship.
That's correct and it's going to be your customers and your employees. The other key component is knowing who you really are, what you are about. It can't be a message here or there. It has to be who we are about everything.
[3] That must be hard at a company like Citi, which is not known for being fun loving and people friendly.
I'll disagree to some extent. The greatest part to Citi is the diverse nature of the organization. It's in 140 countries, it's got a lot of different people. That's something that in a social world, I'd love to see celebrated.
That to me is huge value. When you plot social strategy, in my view, a lot of times it starts with teaching your employees how to use social media, not just for the company's benefit but also for themselves.
[4] Is there a way to make social media more enjoyable for employees?
You have to look at, what is the practice? In many companies, we block social media, why? Companies tend to worry about a lot of different things, for instance viruses.
But people are connected now in more ways than ever - through laptops, tablets, smartphones, tethered PCs. How do you embrace social media in a way that makes their lives easier?
[5] Every time there's a crisis, people say the banks should be communicating more over social media. But banks don't want to broadcast every problem and don't always have answers.
Whenever any crisis happens, the first question is, can I add value to this by providing information to my customers without causing detriment to others? If the answer is yes, then chances are they need to say something. At the same time, too many people say you have to say something on everything. The second question is, can an answer come from within the community?
