Leading Aged Services Australia (LASA) recently came to us with a request to redesign their Aged Care news magazine, Fusion. They had a template done that wasn’t fitting the bill, and with our previous collaboration on brand identity, it was clear we’d have a strong understanding of the audience and purpose.

My first stop was to run though the old image archives and assemble pictures that showcased older people in positive moods and environments. I discarded any reference to what had been done, went back to basics and began with the styles laid down in their basic brand style guide.

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How to implement your policy.

Once your social media policy has been vetted by legal counsel and signed off by your organisation’s leaders, it’s time to plan how you will educate your workforce. This goes for all sized businesses and could be as simple as a workshop with your team, or if you are a much larger organisation with multiple sites or locations, an internal campaign to drive awareness.

Warning: set your staff up for success (not failure)… you’ve gone to the trouble of developing a social media policy to protect your organisation’s reputation, make sure your people get the message.

Through educating your workforce about the policy and expected behaviours, you are providing them with the tools for a lifetime of success with social media.

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In July, the Harvard Business Review article published this article.  Findings of a recent study revealed that, while CEOs today are faced with the implications of a monumental rise in use of social media platforms by customers, staff, suppliers and competitors, they are not online.  The study shows that CEO take-up of social media tools is 40% lower than the rest of the population.

Given the risks and opportunities posed by social media, that is a worrying statistic and it is important to consider the implications – for individual CEOs and the companies they lead.

Ellis Jones is fortunate to work with one of the worlds most sought after social media experts, Euan Semple. The United Kingdom’s leading commentator on the social web, he led the introduction of social media to the BBC over ten years ago and, since then, has worked with leaders of organisations as diverse as Nokia, BUPA, Nato, Ernst & Young, BP and the World Bank. He is the author of Organisations Don’t Tweet, People Do.

We have organised two sessions – one for CEOs and another for senior managers – to enable leaders with low or evolving knowledge of social media use to gain insight from Euan’s experience in a comfortable and intimate briefing. Participant numbers are limited to 20 for each session to ensure dialogue and useful exchange of ideas or concerns.

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While there is the odd day when my colleagues would be surprised by this decree – I love my job. My role gives me the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people and do work that I consider meaningful, challenging and exciting. I am a people person and it is the interactions I have (and connections that our work enables) that fuel this ‘job satisfaction’.

Many of these connections happen online. Through a breadcrumb trail of ideas and thoughts that resonate, a shared idea or someone’s online activity that sparks interest; a new relationship begins. It starts online, but doesn’t need to finish there. Joh, is a case in point. Here is the story of our online meeting in her words.

“The way we connected is a great example of the power of social media. One of my friends (Cath) shared a link to Latrobe Story on Facebook. I liked the Facebook page and checked out the webpage, which led me to the agency that was running the campaign. I followed them on twitter because I liked the way they had engaged people. I hope as many people as possible share their stories on the page. I have enjoyed reading positive stories about my community and the people who love living here. Kate works for the agency and is working on an education project so she connected with me through LinkedIn.”
http://www.johblogs.com/2012/09/social-media-in-schools.html 

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In late July this year, a young lass named Cathryn Sloane from the University of Iowa sparked a lot of conversation online after writing this piece on social media community managers for NextGen Journal.

In her article, Cathryn confidently voiced her opinion that social media community managers should be under the age of 25. Her reasoning? Facebook and Twitter were launched in 2004 and 2006 respectively and adolescents at the time grew up with social media. She claims they therefore had an understanding of “how life worked without [social media] but had [social media] thrown upon [them] at an age where the ways to make the best/correct use of it came most naturally to [them]“. She went on to say “No one else will ever be able to have as clear an understanding of these services, no matter how much they may think they do”.

As a 32 year old social media community manager, I’m not personally insulted by her piece. Not really.

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How to write one.

We recently completed some in-field surveys on behalf of Latrobe City Council. We are working on a brand perception study of the Latrobe Valley. Our study involves trying to understand how people who live in Latrobe feel about the place they call home, and how the rest of Victoria feels about the region.

The term ‘field’ is used in survey research and refers to the geographical setting where data collection takes place. Typically this refers to in-person interviewing and thus the name, in-field survey. In-field interviewing is one of three traditional ways to collect survey data (telephone and mail are the other two).

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You heard it from us.

Ellis Jones has long been an avid supporter of older people using social media. We believe the common perception of older people not using the internet, unable to use technology and being too afraid of fraudulent activity to shop or interact with others online is a stereotype that has been challenged and is now coming unstuck with the release of the Sensis annual eBusiness report this month. Findings in our Older Victorians Online survey, released in March pre-empted this notion for Victorians at least.

Findings included:

Politely asking the Prime Minister to pose for a series of photos is not an easy task. Yet this was my reality when Julia Gillard presented a 40-year Australian Labor Party life membership medallion to Jan Moore at residential aged care home, Doutta Galla Lynch’s Bridge.

This was no ordinary visit and symbolised the resident’s connection to the Prime Minister and the Labor party. In fact, Ms Moore has enjoyed a 30 year friendship with the Prime Minister and is fondly known as ‘sweetheart’ by former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. Over the decades, the 76 year old has tirelessly dedicated her time to fundraising and campaigning. 

Golden shots.

As soon as the Prime Minister entered the facility, staff scrambled to grab their cameras in an effort to capture the rare and special moment with the Prime Minister.

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For many of us, public speaking may be a daunting experience. Perhaps it conjures awkward memories of high-school assemblies, or even that nightmare where you forget to get dressed before leaving the house in the morning.

But this need not be the case.

Public speaking is an opportunity. It’s a chance to engage directly with an audience, a chance to be honest and share real experiences, to define what you stand for. It’s a chance to be creative, to connect with people.

We are very fortunate at the agency to write speeches and produce presentations for remarkable people. Peter McVeigh is one of them. At 20 years old, he is the youngest person in the world to complete the Great Himalaya Trail, the longest and highest alpine walking track in the world which winds its way between the tallest mountains and most remote communities on the planet. It covers more than 4,500km from Namche Barwa in Tibet to Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.

Peter’s story is inspirational, and we enjoyed telling it. Here’s an excerpt from his speech.

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