There is no question; this is the age of social media and social networking. We know that by creating a secure, private, branded employee social network where your former employees can stay connected to your company and each other sends a powerful message about the value you place on your company’s people. We know that consumers actually do like to engage with companies via social media outlets, making all of those channels worthwhile. Still, many have yet to embrace the real opportunities that involvement in social media and corporate social networking can deliver.

A recent study conducted by White Horse helped revealed the following:

“Forty percent of B2B companies devote one or more full-time marketers to social media marketing, as compared to 54% of B2C companies, according to the results of “B2B Marketing Goes Social.” However, say that given the relatively smaller size of marketing departments in B2B organizations, this level of representation is significant and underscores the maturing role of social media as a core component of B2B marketers’ arsenal.”

The report continues:

“Only 10% of B2B companies have engaged an agency for help with social media, as compared to 28% for B2C companies. White Horse analysts indicate this is consistent with B2B companies’ overall lower rates of agency engagement across all marketing activity, but say it demonstrates that agencies offering social media services need to work harder to define their value to B2B organizations.”

Conenza’s Alumni Community Software is unique and stands alone from other social media efforts, by efficiently retaining previous users and keeping them available for future needs. Corporate social networking is a long term investment, requiring expert account management, vision and strategy in order to be profitably executed. Conenza provides that account governance from start to finish.

We’ve seen the value a well planned and well executed program can deliver. Have you?

“Amid a string of privacy snarls this spring by Facebook, Google, AT&T and others, and the phenomenal adoption of online social networks not just by the most computer-savvy but by the rest of society, privacy advocates say it is time to set out a basic set of common principles that consumers could expect social websites to honor.”

The Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy has taken up a “bill of rights” for social-network users. The Bill includes the following items and the full article can be read here.

Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.
Clarity: Ensure that policies and terms of service are easy to understand.
Empowerment: Support privacy-enhancing and assistive technologies.
Security: Treat my data as securely as your own, and notify me if it is compromised.
Control: Let me control my data, and don’t share it with others unless I agree first.

These are the cornerstones of our corporate social networking solution. Creating a secure, private, branded employee social network where your former employees can stay connected to your company and each other sends a powerful message about the value you place on your company’s people. This delivers real value back to your business.

We are passionate about these values and they permeate everything we do from product planning to UI design to how we engage in supporting clients and community members. Conenza’s corporate social networking solution enables employees to securely share knowledge, develop closer connections, and drive significant business impact.

Ever since Facebook revealed Facebook Open Graph, a platform for personalizing the web browsing experience on third-party websites, the world’s largest social network has been at the center of the privacy debate. Even getting scrutiny from the senate, Senator Charles Schumer of New York wrote a letter to the FTC, urging them to create privacy guidelines for Facebook and other social networking sites. Compromised user privacy is a serious concern in today’s internet world. The web itself is designed to share information and the core issue, identity authentication, is one that we have done a tremendous amount of work around at Conenza.

Identity authentication is critical to creating trusted online communities. Over the last decade, as Conenza has built and managed online communities for Global 2000 enterprises who need to carefully manage their brands, we have seen how identity-authentication is essential to vibrant, value-creating communities.

Secure member authentication is a baseline requirement for a private corporate talent community. The level of trust influences freedom of information sharing. In most online communities or corporate social networks, when there is a mixture of people, such as personal and business acquaintances, the level of trust will vary across the community.

Privacy settings and permissions controls can help create an environment of trust in an online community. Understanding how people connect and share in different environments helps us determine the granularity of privacy settings and the depth of permissions-controls we offer to our clients and community members in our corporate social networking platform. The safer community members feel about sharing information, the higher the level of trust and ultimately engagement will be.

Building that foundation of trust is the cornerstone of our communities and our corporate social networking solution.

Workforce reductions are one of the hardest decisions a leader has to make. Unfortunately, in the current economic climate, it is a decision from which few of us are immune.  Leaders want to ease the transition and communicate that they still value their people, including those who are leaving. Creating a secure, private, branded employee social network where your former employees can stay connected to your company and each other sends a powerful message about the value you place on your company’s people. This delivers real value back to your business and ensures you don’t lose touch as they are walking out the door

In a recent article published by Forbes, “Keeping Ex-Employees Brand Loyal,”  the author suggests taking a second look at your company’s exit process and your alumni program.

“The manner in which companies part ways with their employees has a potent and lasting effect on the former employee, employees who remain, and the brand.  A strong alumni program becomes an important part of the exit process. Former employees join a community that can help them as they continue with their careers–no matter where they go. Be sure to introduce exiting employees to, and enroll them in, the alumni program before they leave.

A powerful exit strategy and alumni program is a gift that keeps on giving. Promoting good relationships with your employees, before, during, and after their time on the payroll encourages a healthy brand. In return for helping alumni with professional relationships, the pursuit of higher education or specialized training, or even finding a new job at your company or elsewhere, you’ll gain brand ambassadors whose worth is immeasurable.”

Attracting and retaining top talent amid shifting workforce dynamics is an increasingly difficult endeavor for human capital and talent management leadership. An engaged and active alumni community, leveraging Conenza’s corporate social networking software solution and services, can help you meet recruiting and retention challenges head on.

Omowale Casselle examined the pros and cons of using social networking and social media tools for recruiting in her blog post "Social Recruiting Is Only Cheap Right Now ." Here at Conenza we are focused on building lifelong relationships with  employees to increase business development opportunities and recruiting efficiency.

Employee Time/Energy Is A Real Cost

"Social Recruiting is not cheap from the perspective of resources expended. Unless your recruiting team is filled with volunteers, Social Recruiting is not free or cheap. The main reason being the amount of time it takes to properly define, get buy-in, execute, measure, and repeat a campaign. Much of the time it takes to conduct these initiatives is because of the existing fragmentation of social media tools. From maintaining a Facebook fan page, tweeting on Twitter, writing blog posts, searching for candidates on LinkedIn, and monitoring Google Analytics; the recruiting team can spend a significant amount of time  and energy on these free tools. Individual company recruiting teams that are taking a leadership role in this new space are developing solutions that don’t necessarily scale well. In fact, one could argue that it is in their best interest not to share strategic elements which are most beneficial to recruiting top talent via social media."

Discover why the world’s leading Global 2000 enterprises rely on Conenza’s corporate social networking software and expert community-building services to build and manage their employee and alumni communities .  It hurts when you lose employees, especially star performers, but this does not have to be the end of the relationship or the value that they create for your organization. Smart organizations are actually reframing how they look at the departure of an employee, maintaining connections and continuing to tap into their knowledge, connections, and commitment to do great work.

Early adopters, such as McKinsey and The Boston Consulting Group, developed world-class alumni programs focused on building lifelong relationships with their employees to increase business development opportunities and recruiting efficiency. Microsoft was one of the first and only organizations outside of the consulting arena to create a formal corporate alumni program. That is not the case anymore.

Enterprises are beginning to discover the significant impact an extended talent community—that includes both alumni and employees—can have on their business.  Corporate social networking platforms are now expanding well outside of the professional services realm enabling Global 2000 enterprises to build and manage a private, trusted, branded online community.

Dr. John Sullivan wrote a great article, “Corporate Alumni and Boomerang Recruiting Programs Are Hot Due to Layoffs” asking What Differentiates Great Programs from Average? He feels, and we agree that it is important to incorporate some key differentiators.

“A strong business case. The most important differentiator is the perception of the program as a business initiative, not just another HR fad.

They use technology. The best firms and vendors use either customer-relationship management software or emerging social networking tools to keep track of alumni and effectively maintain the relationship.

They use metrics to continually improve. The shift to “fact-based decisions” means that program emphasis and resources are continually shifted toward areas with a higher impact.”

For more information on corporate alumni communities visit our site at http://conenza.com

Conenza’s passion is Enterprise Employee and Alumni Communities. We love this article by Dr. John Sullivan.

Economic downturns, mergers, and acquisitions all place pressure on organizations to curb labor costs. No time in the last decade has that tenet been more apparent than right now. Layoffs, large or small, force organizations to cut loose the talent in which they have invested salary and training dollars. While talent released during a layoff today may seem like little more than an expense, tomorrow it could be the difference between success and failure.

World-class organizations need to develop a process that will allow the organization to quickly and easily “re-recruit” alumni with proven track records of success when economic conditions warrant hiring.

The solution that makes re-recruiting possible is a corporate alumni program. Alumni programs allow you to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with former employees who may someday provide significant value again, providing you with an excuse to remain in contact and a mechanism to recruit them back quickly when needed.

Corporate Alumni Programs Can Also Increase Revenues
While the primary reason organizations develop alumni programs is recruiting-related, lots of research demonstrates that investing in corporate alumni programs increases the sales lead generation and deal closing capability of the organization.

Program Goals and Benefits
Well-designed corporate alumni programs can benefit the organization in many ways. Some of the possible goals of corporate alumni programs include:

HR-related goals:
* To improve the quality of hires by rehiring top performers and innovators (boomerang rehires are low-cost, typically have higher retention rates and reach minimum productivity much more quickly than most external hires).
* To increase the number and quality of employee referrals by expanding the program to include alumni.
* To strengthen the employer brand image throughout the industry.
* To increase retention rates among current employees by developing a stronger positive image.
* To increase the number of mentors available to current employees.

Business-related goals:
* To generate direct sales by making alumni customers.
* To increase the number of leads generated (customer referrals).
* To capture ideas and innovations from alumni.
* To get product assessment help.
* To get benchmarking help and to learn about industry best practices.
* To gather competitive intelligence.
* To get help from alumni in building strategic partnerships.

Get in touch with Conenza to discuss corporate social networking and the benefits of a Corporate Alumni Program.

PR firm Burson-Marsteller studied the 100 largest companies in the Fortune 500 list and found that 79% of then use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs to communicate with customers and other stakeholders. The firm broke its findings down by region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America) and network.

Twitter is the most popular platform that the companies use; two-thirds of the Fortune 100 have at least one Twitter account. Actually, they have an average of 4.2 Twitter accounts. Fifty-four percent have at least one Facebook fan page, 50% have at least one YouTube channel, and 33% have at least one corporate blog. Twenty percent of the companies use all four social media platforms.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are mostly West-oriented; Asia-Pacific companies don’t use them as much, instead preferring corporate blogs. When they do use Twitter or Facebook, it’s usually to engage consumers in Europe and North America.

There are a bunch of other interesting stats in the study — including proof that consumers actually do like to engage with companies via social media, making all those channels worthwhile. We’ve embedded Burson-Marsteller’s presentation below. Read the full article here.

Global Social Media Checkup

Discover why the world’s leading Global 2000 enterprises rely on Conenza’s corporate social networking software and expert community-building services to build and manage their employee and alumni communities.

For more information please visit our site at http://www.conenza.com

Event Archive: The Application of Enterprise Social Networking to Talent Acquisition and Management
Speaker: Katherine James Schuitemaker , Chief Marketing Officer , Conenza, Inc.

Every day global organizations are adopting social networking technologies to increase collaboration and improve organizational efficiencies. These collective workforce communities can enable large companies to tap into the knowledge and connections of current and former employees to drive significant business impact. Successful implementations report enhanced collaboration and communication, increased recruiting and talent management efficiency, and retained access of valuable intellectual capital.

How can talent acquisition leaders leverage this and apply to talent management and recruitment efforts? We will walk through the different types of communities that are being adopted within the enterprise, and the impact they can have on talent management programs.

To view this webinar or for more information on Conenza’s corporate social networking solution or getting started with the Conenza Community Core, please visit http://conenza.com.

New Statesman Article
Published 08 February 2010

In four years, social networking services will replace e-mail for about 20 per cent of business users, according to Gartner, the information technology research and advisory firm. By 2012, over 50 per cent of businesses will be using microblogging to share quick updates with consumers and colleagues and to get quick answers to questions.

“However, it will be difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice-president for Gartner.

In five years, 70 per cent of communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after smartphone collaboration applications. Cell phones will replace desk phones, and most collaboration tools will be integrated with them, according to Gartner.

Through 2015, about 25 per cent of businesses will use social network analysis to improve performance and productivity. Such analysis allows companies to study communication patterns and information flow that occurs between staff and customers.

Get in touch with Conenza to discuss their business social network solution and discover the benefits of corporate social networking.