My learning experience at Impact99 HR Summit 2012
By: Lydia Liao, MBA Candidate
Social Media takeaways at the Impact99 HR Summit 2012
In October, the Beedie School of Business hosted the Impact99 HR Summit 2012, a gathering of 99 leaders from the Human Resources sector. Each attendee was seeking to learn how to utilize social media in their organizations to engage and create deeper relationships with their employees and customers, and to enhance the firm’s own personal brand through their redefined relationship with their employees.
The itinerary was packed full of presentations: two keynote speakers; a CEO-HR Think Tank session with three CEOS critiquing five thought leaders’ presentations; a HR Panel; and a dozen learning pods. For me, the best parts of the summit were the keynote presentations by Michael Brito, Senior Vice President of social media and public relations firm Edleman, which focused on social business for complex organizations, and Cheryl Cran, President of Synthesis at Work Inc., who spoke about leading change in a technological workplace.
The summit reiterated what I have learned about social media in my BUS 709 Managing Information Systems (MIS) class in my MBA program. Today, a good portion of the population is using at least one form of social media platform, which presents businesses with a tremendous opportunity to engage with this online community and to promote their organizational brands.
In MIS, we have learned that social media is being used in various business functions, including marketing, customer service, internal communications and talent recruitment. To fully engage those in the online community with your brand and organization, you need to listen, adapt, and structure your content to be relevant and respectful to your audience.
One of the Summit’s pod sessions emphasized this point, with the presenter explaining that in order to know what content is relevant to your audience, you must ask yourself whether it is worth your stakeholder’s time to read the message and whether or not it is satisfying the needs of your audience. At the Beedie School of Business, for example, many of the stakeholders are students, so posting up networking events or career panels the school is hosting would satisfy their need to find opportunities to engage with the business community.
Part 1: Social Media takeaways at the Impact99 HR Summit 2012
Part 2: Utilizing social media to instil a sense of trust in your business
Part 3: Engagement through social media