“In the last few years, more banking executives have started joining personal social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. For example, there are over 14,000 Goldman Sachs’ employees who have created an account on LinkedIn. Not all of them are active, but for some it has been a useful way to dust off their Rolodexes and move them online. These sites have worked well for staying in touch with friends and colleagues and keeping them posted on personal and career activities and updates. These online networks, however, are used and accessed by individuals. The bank has no access to the networks of its employees”

Finally, A social networking platform that ensures security, privacy, and reliability.

The Conenza Community Platform is a hosted Software-as-a-Service solution designed to ensure ease of use and peace of mind by combining enterprise-class levels of security, privacy, and reliability. Our best practices approach to technology, privacy, hosting, service and support gives you the confidence to dispense with infrastructure worries and focus instead on optimizing the real benefits of your alumni community.

Your company can provide different constituency groups with access to the information and functionality that they need to create value in the community with the Conenza’s Community Platforms complex permissions capabilities

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?

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.

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.

“The debate over measuring social media investment inspired many brands to cannonball into popular social networks and join the proverbial conversation without a plan or strategic objectives defined. At the same time, the lack of ROI standards unnerved many executives, preventing any form of experimentation until their questions and concerns were addressed. In 2010, we’re entering a new era of social media marketing — one based on information, rationalization, and resolve.

For many businesses, the case for new metrics can’t be made until we have an intrinsic understanding of how social media engagement affects us at every level. It’s not as simple as counting subscribers, followers, fans, conversation volume, reach, or traffic. While the size of the corporate social graph is a reflection of our participation behavior, it is not symbolic of brand stature, resonance, loyalty, advocacy, nor is it an indicator of business performance.’”

As a social networking expert, Conenza will establish a formal marketing strategy to plan and grow your corporate alumni community. We are passionate about providing companies with strategic guidance and support through every phase of the community life-cycle. Are you launching an alumni community or corporate social network? Get in touch with Conenza to set up a free 30 minute strategy session.

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.

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.

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

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.

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