The economy is up and so is job-hopping. How can you attract superior talent to grow and improve your business while holding onto your top performers to refine your business?
85% of employees leave their job because of their manager (SHRM). Over 66% of CEO's say that talent-related issues are their top concern (HBR).
In previous articles, we've discussed how crucial talent retention is to the overall growth and health of a business. As the economy grows and skills become more specialized, the competition for talent is on the rise. This has driven culture, engagement, and leadership to the top of the human capital agenda (Deloitte University Press).
The dynamic nature of the current business environment has become so fast-paced that many workers are unable to find jobs even as companies report that they can't find the people they need. Meanwhile, over 70% of employees are disengaged (Gallup).
The results are stunted growth and stagnant wages. Turnover is high and morale is low. No wonder job-hopping is on the rise...
One of my clients said, "I need to hire better people who will work well within our culture." We mapped out a plan to improve the quality of new hires, retain top talent, look deeper into employee potential, manage poor performers, and create better soil where the best-fits can take root and flourish.
In today's modern workforce, it's time to look beyond the resume and add some dimension and sophistication around hiring and developing talent. There is a science to understanding what motivates people (beyond money).
People have drives. Drives create needs. People behave in ways that meet their needs. When needs are met at work, performance, productivity, and engagement improve. Scientifically valid data and analytics ensure more accurate and informed decisions to improve team dynamics and identify potential.
I've placed over 500 CEOs in my career. I hired based on three factors: head, heart, and briefcase. Most recruiters only check the briefcase (experience, skills, and education) - all of which can be found on the resume. Some will dive deeper into the heart (values, interests, and passions) during the interview.
But how many really measure the head (behavior and cognitive ability)? Skills and values can change, where behavior and cognitive ability are stable over time. Here's the good news, if you can measure it, you can manage it.
The best way to measure the behavior and cognitive ability of your workforce and use that data to create a customized solution is The Predictive Index (PI). PI is one of the most scientifically valid solutions on the market. Nearly 20 million people have used it in the last 60+ years (over 2.5 million in the last 12 months).
Make what you've got work, and then make it better.
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About the Author:
David B. Nast owns Nast Partners based in the Greater Philadelphia area. David is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach with over 25 years of experience in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Training, Change Management, Career Coaching, Talent Acquisition, Executive Search, and Human Resources. He has coached thousands of CEOs, Business Owners and Executives.
For additional insights from David, visit his LinkedIn Pulse Author Page and follow him on Twitter @DavidBNast. You can also email David at dave@nastpartners.com.
Starting next year, workers at yogurt maker Chobani will be eligible for six weeks of paid parental leave when they have a child ― and it won’t matter whether they are mothers or fathers, or whether they work in corporate headquarters or a blue-collar plant.
Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya wrote in a blog post on LinkedIn Wednesday that the new policy grew out of personal experience. He recently became a new father, and wanted to find a way to help his employees when they have a baby or adopt or foster a child. Workers will collect 100 percent of their pay during the leave period.
“It was important to me that everyone at the company have this time ― especially the people in our plants,” Ulukaya wrote. “From the top down, we’ll encourage our folks to use this time knowing their careers at this company won’t be affected by it.”
Fortunately, it’s becoming more fashionable for U.S. companies to announce they’re instituting a more progressive parental leave policy for employees (and, of course, to invite a round of praise for their decision). The U.S., unlike just about all other advanced economies, does not legally guarantee paid time off for workers after having a child. Here, it’s up to companies whether they’ll provide it.
Not many do. Only around 12 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S. report that they get paid family leave through their jobs, according to Labor Department data. And not surprisingly, those who do tend to be wealthier than those who do not. As a result, lower-wage workers are often forced back onto the job after having a child much faster than white-collar professionals.
That’s why Chobani’s move is more notable than another Silicon Valley tech company deciding to ramp up its leave benefits. Chobani has two factories and 2,000 employees, many of them employed in food-processing positions. About a third of the company’s workforce is refugees, according to NPR.
The new policy, Ulukaya said, will not discriminate between job roles, and will include hourly as well as salaried employees, so long as they are employed full time.
Chobani’s new policy is progressive in another way: It won’t differentiate between male or female employees, or gay or straight couples, when they have children. Paternity leave can be skimpy, even at companies that are generous with maternity leave, giving men little time before they have to return to work. And that can end up disadvantaging women both at home and in the workplace, by foisting more child-rearing duties onto them and keeping them out of the workforce longer. The same problem applies to gay workers who may not have borne a child, but are new parents nonetheless.
Chobani’s paid leave news Wednesday follows a run of positive press for the New York-based yogurt maker. In April, it announced that full-time employees would receive shares worth up to 10 percent of the company if and when it goes public. The New York Times estimated that the average employee’s haul could be $150,000, and longtime veterans could possibly top $1 million.
WASHINGTON, Reuters - U.S. employment growth unexpectedly slowed for the third straight month in September, which could make the Federal Reserve more cautious about raising interest rates.
Nonfarm payrolls rose 156,000, down from a revised gain of 167,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected employers to add 175,000 jobs last month.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the economy needs to create less than 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth.Average monthly job gains have been about 180,000 this year, which Yellen has described as “unsustainable.”
The unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a percentage point to 5.0 percent last month, though the increase was driven by Americans rejoining the labor force.
Friday’s employment report will be the last before the Fed’s Nov. 1-2 policy meeting. Investors see almost no chance of a rate increase at that meeting given how close it is to the Nov. 8 presidential election.
Yellen said last month that the Fed will likely raise rates once this year, but prices on fed funds futures suggest just above even odds the hike will come at the Fed’s last policy meeting for the year in December.
Hourly wages for private sector workers rose 2.6 percent in September from the same month a year earlier, in line with economists’ expectations. The annual growth rate has shown signs of accelerating over the last year although it remains slower than before the 2007-2009 recession.
Three Fed policymakers voted for a hike last month when the Fed kept rates steady. However, Friday’s data could boost the case of Fed policymakers who have vocally defended a go-slow approach to rate increases.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused the Fed of playing politics by holding rates low, a charge Yellen and other Fed policymakers have denied.
Trump has also made reversing job losses at U.S. factories a central campaign promise. Manufacturing employment fell by 13,000 jobs in September and the sector has shed jobs in three of the last five months.
At the same time, the job market on balance continues to firm, even if at a slower pace, which could be an asset for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who has argued that President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, has helped the economy.
The Fed lifted its benchmark overnight interest rate at the end of last year for the first time in nearly a decade, but has held it steady so far this year amid concerns over persistently low inflation.
We’ve lost sight of why we work: the goal of well-being and happiness. October is National Work and Family Month which focuses on the challenges working families face every day. One of those challenges is being happy. Americans rank 13th among the happiest nations, according to the 2016 World Happiness Report. Since the US has the world’s largest economy, it clearly shows money does not buy happiness. Why do other countries, including third-world developing countries, score higher on happiness than American citizens? We work for many reasons, and one of those is money. We work longer and longer hours to make more money. We do this because we have been indoctrinated into the pursuit of profit and return on investment – Wall Street’s only metric in deciding if a company, and those that work for a company, are good or bad.
According to a 2014 Gallup poll, full-time American employees work an average of 47-hours per week with 39% working greater than 50-hours. Is this too much or too little of time to meet the needs of other roles in our life such as family, friends, self-care, spiritual, and pleasure? Well, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, and Sweden average a much shorter work week than the USA does, and those countries are higher on the world index of happiest citizens and are living a more balance life.
Do We Balance Work-Life or Integrate the Two?
Work-life balance has been broadly defined in the academic arena as how well an individual assesses his or her performance in balancing the multiple roles in life. In the past, turning off your office light or punching a time clock used to be the “off” switch that separated work from personal time. However, technology has not only blurred the lines; technology has interwoven them. There is no true divide between work and personal life.
Devon Bandison, based in New York City, is a high performance coach and speaker who, among many leadership attributes, is committed to helping his clients in work-life satisfaction. In one of Devon Bandison Podcasts, he interviewed Stew Friedman, who is the founding director of Wharton's Work/Life Integration Project. Stew’s take on work-life balance is that it shouldn’t exist. Balance is about trade-offs such as I need to give up family time for work time. Stew teaches work-life integration where people will benefit more by focusing on how an improvement in one role in life can have a ripple effect in another role. In other words, what positive outcomes in your life might occur if you make a positive change in one of your other roles? Stew teaches how to integrate work and life versus focusing on balancing life by contemplating the trade-offs one needs to make in their various roles.
I believe the ideal state might lie between balance and integration. For example, many Americans trade-off sleep to recapture more family or work time. According to the 2014 Gallup Sleep Study, 40% of Americans sleep six hours or less per night. The American Medical Association continues to advocate we should get between seven and nine hours of sleep to rejuvenate our minds and bodies.
Richard Fagerlin, one of the top 100 trust leaders in the world, believes the pursuit of balance in his life is a constant tension. He seeks excellence in everything he does yet realizes he can’t do everything at the same time. He chooses when to say no and when to say yes. Managing his priorities is how he manages the tension in his life and ultimately his happiness.
3 Steps to Become Happier and Improve Your Work-Life Satisfaction
1. Enjoy your work and the organization you choose to spend a significant amount of time with each day. Find engagement and meaning in your work so you can achieve a sense of accomplishment. Gaining these happiness attributes at work often lead to spill-over effects that bring happiness to the home. Can’t find this at work? Perhaps it is time for a career change.
2. Reflect on your meaning of happiness. What are your priorities in life? Where do you want to see improvements? Reflect deeply on what is important and why it is important. Then take a step in that direction. Remember, each of us are capable of great accomplishments. We can all eat an elephant one bite at a time.
3. What brings happiness to those you care about the most? One of the best injections of happiness is in having healthy personal relationships. Do you need to change the amount of time or mental energy you are applying in one or more roles in life to bring greater energy to your personal relationships? Do something today for someone you love that will catch them by surprise. Feel the gratitude and love they express to you. Remember that feeling and build on it in the near future.
Most people would consider it pretty bad luck if they had three inches of rain dumped on their city in a 24-hour period. That is, unless they had just missed being hit by a hurricane. That analogy captures how we should feel about Obamacare.
There are still tens of millions of people without health care insurance. An even larger number of people have great difficulty covering the deductibles and co-pays required by their insurers. In many cases, even people with insurance go without necessary care because they can't afford these expenses. And we still have jokes like Martin Shkreli and the Mylan EpiPen crew jacking up prices on life-saving medicines. There are plenty of reasons to be angry about the current state of our health care system, but like the city that just missed being nailed by the hurricane, we have to realize that it could be much worse.
This isn't idle speculation. In 2009, President Obama's first year in office, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected that health care spending would take up 19.3 percent of GDP in 2016. The most recent projections show health care costing 18.1 percent of GDP this year.
That sounds really nerdy, but the difference between these two projections amounts to more than $220 billion in savings this year. That comes to $690 per person in savings or $2,750 for an average family of four. This is real money to most people.
One reason that the slowing in health care costs is not widely recognized is that most people are not studying the projections. While just about everyone living in a coastal city will know about the forecast of a hurricane strike, few people spend their time studying health care cost projections. This means that when spending slows sharply, as it has in the last seven years, most people don't recognize the slowdown. They just know that health care costs more than it used to. This is the case of people getting hit by three inches of rain and not recognizing that they just missed a hurricane.
The other reason most people may not see the slower cost growth is that they don't pay for most health care directly. The overwhelming majority of people in the country have most of their health care paid for by their insurer or the government. When the insurance companies and the government see savings, the typical family does not directly feel the benefit in their pocketbook.
However that doesn't mean they don't benefit from these savings. For most of the last four decades workers were seeing an ever larger share of their compensation going to cover the cost of their health care insurance. Money that might have otherwise gone to wage increases went instead to pay for their health care plan. The opposite has been the case over the last seven years with the cost of health care and other benefits declining from 13.8 percent of total labor compensation in 2009 to 13.1 percent in 2015.
If spending had continued on its prior path, health care and other benefits would now account for more than 15 percent of compensation. While not all employers passed on these savings, on average workers' paychecks are almost 3.0 percent higher because of the slowing of health care cost growth.
The other big saver is the government. The federal budget deficit would be almost $200 billion higher in 2016, if health care costs had followed the path projected before the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
This is the good news from Obamacare. Of course the even better news is that the number of uninsured has fallen to a record low. And, we now have clear evidence that this is leading to improvements in health outcomes. States that expanded their Medicaid program, as provided for in the ACA, have seen improvements in health outcomes for low and moderate income people compared to states that did not.
All of this is important background, because the public has to recognize the enormous progress that has been made with the ACA so that the huge problems that remain in our health care system can be fixed. At the moment, most Democrats are scared to talk about the ACA because their focus groups tell them it is unpopular. That means the only people talking about the ACA are Republicans talking about it are death panels and comparing it to slavery.
We have to reduce the amount that people pay out of pocket, end charges for many types of preventative screening and introduce a Medicare-style public option in the health care exchanges. But these and other steps can only take place if politicians who support the ACA feel comfortable talking about it. That will only be the case when people recognize the benefits it has brought.
No one should be satisfied with the health care system as "reformed" by the ACA. But it is important that they recognize the progress it has brought and that we can make much more progress by building on its success.
This story was originally published by InsideSources.com
Wells Fargo, the banking giant that defrauded its own customers by opening checking accounts they didn’t want, got a pointed lecture from the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee last Thursday.
It was about the business that the San Francisco-based bank, led by CEO John Stumpf, dominates.
“I have a mortgage with your bank,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, told Stumpf at a hearing Thursday. “I wish I didn’t. I wish I was in the position to pay it off because you have broken my trust as you have broken the trust of millions and it’s going to take a long time to earn it back.”
Regulators and law enforcement around the country are plugging away on the Wells case to determine exactly how long the fraudulent practices went on, and whether the bank violated labor laws by firing whistleblowers and people who failed to meet unrealistic targets without committing fraud. Last week, lawmakers also began to focus on whether there could be misconduct related to Wells Fargo’s mortgage business, or whether previous settlements over mortgages were a leading indicator of trouble elsewhere.
At a political level, the Wells Fargo case is undermining the case bigger banks are making in Washington as they seek to influence the course of the next administration. “The headlines surrounding the news will hang around for a long time,” said Brian Gardner, an analyst with investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
Stumpf Survival at Stake
Perhaps most ominously for the CEO who is in the eye of the storm, bank lobbyists are privately speculating whether Stumpf becomes the first big casualty of public outrage at big banks ― Wall Street, broadly speaking ― since the 2008 financial crisis.
Mike Mayo, a prominent banking analyst with CLSA, a unit of the French bank Credit Agricole, wrote a scathing note to investors of Stumpf’s performance so far, calling it “reactionary versus leading.” He hinted that the CEO’s exit may come as a consequence of the scandal.
“We believe Wells Fargo is bigger than the CEO, notwithstanding a good financial track record during his tenure, and there should be no more excuses for the lack of answers to key questions,” Mayo wrote.
Earlier this month, Wells agreed to pay $185 million in fines and restitution to federal regulators after employees opened about 1.5 million accounts customers didn’t want, and perhaps 500,000 undesired credit cards. Wells fired over 5,000 people over the practices.
For Wells, the consequences are only beginning to unfold.
Damaged Credit Reports
The bank may have created black marks on its customers’ credit reports by saddling them with card or checking accounts of which they were unaware, creating a fertile ground for class-action lawsuits. It may have driven up customers’ interest rates on mortgages, or other loans, said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.
“Theoretically all those fake accounts could and should be deleted from people’s credit reports and that would solve the problem moving forward,” Rheingold said. “Of course, it may not be simple, and more likely will only be done on an individual basis when a consumer discovers” what Wells did.
Mike Blake / ReutersWells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million in fines and restitution to federal regulators earlier this month.
From a policy standpoint, the Wells Fargo case is playing directly into the hands of Wall Street critics, notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who accused Stumpf of “gutless leadership” at a recent Senate hearing last week, and called for his resignation.
If Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, captures the White House in November, the Wells Fargo scandal will have put wind in Warren’s sails at precisely the moment when a new president will be making decisions about her top economic policy personnel.
Lawmakers Ask About Mortgages
“Warren is succeeding in establishing herself as the chief financial policymaker in a potential Clinton White House,” said Jaret Seiberg, managing director with the Cowen Group, a research firm. “She is using the bully pulpit to shape the debate over the Wells Fargo cross-selling controversy. To us, this spells trouble on the policy front for big banks next year.”
At the House hearing, some lawmakers honed in on prior legal settlements Wells had over mortgage fraud. In 2011, around the time regulators believe the bulk of the checking-account fraud began, Wells paid $85 million to settle claims by the Federal Reserve that its employees falsified loan documents and steered customers into more expensive loans.
Wells is the 800-pound gorilla of the U.S. mortgage market. It controlled 12.7 percent of the market in 2015, about twice its nearest rival, JPMorgan Chase, according to the industry publication mortgage daily.
At the hearing last week, Hensarling said the problems back in 2011 seemed “eerily like the retail banking division” where the checking account problems occurred. “If you saw the problem in one area of the business why didn’t you investigate in another area?” Hensarling said.
“You got caught doing it five years ago,” he added. “You got caught doing it again.”
Rep. John Carney, a Delaware Democrat, asked how Wells ensures that fraudulent practices don’t occur in the mortgage business.
“We have a terrific team on the mortgage side,” Stumpf responded. “We are trying every day to get better.”
Wells also paid $335 million in 2013 to settle allegations of misleading disclosures on mortgage bonds it sold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Senate Democrats, having grilled Stumpf in a hearing recently recently, put new questions to him in writing that ask, among other things, how confident he is that misconduct isn’t taking place in the mortgage business.
Future of Fannie and Freddie
One area of concern for Wells will have to be the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage-guarantee giants that the federal government seized in 2008. Congress has deadlocked over the details of reforming Fannie and Freddie even as a very vague consensus has formed around creating a system that keeps private capital in the mortgage market while having the federal government provide a backstop in case of catastrophic losses.
Smaller banks have stayed alert to the possibility that a system might privilege bigger banks ― notably Wells ― that aggregate huge numbers of mortgages, said Ron Haynie, senior vice president for mortgage finance policy at the Independent Community Bankers of America. “If you’re a big guy, you don’t need aggregators,” Haynie said.
Housing finance policy has been a particular focus of Wells Fargo’s lobbying efforts in Washington. According to disclosure forms, it has lobbied on approximately a dozen bills related to housing finance since 2013, to include efforts that would give large banks a bigger role in the mortgage market. From 2008 to 2011, Wells more than doubled its outlays for lobbying to $7.8 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and since then it has spent about $6 million each year.
Gary Cameron / ReutersU.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) shows company documents to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during his testimony before a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the firm's sales practices on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 20, 2016.
With this case, Wells has handed its opponents in Washington some valuable ammunition, said Rob Zimmer, principal at TVDC, a public affairs firm that has small lenders as clients. He said that if big banks try, in the next administration, to claim the role of Fannie and Freddie for themselves, anything small lenders don’t like will get called “the Wells Fargo provision.”
“Are they in the penalty box? Yes,” Zimmer said. “Is that the end of the world for their lobbying? Certainly not.”
Arbitration Clauses
In this Congress, lawmakers in the Senate have considered some minor changes to Fannie and Freddie, issues on which Wells has lobbied. But so far, the provisions have been part of a broader regulatory relief bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican who chairs the Senate Banking Committee.
The case may undermine the banking lobby’s effort to fight plans by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of Wells Fargo’s auditors, to restrict the use of arbitration clauses in financial contracts. These clauses require consumers to submit disputes to arbitration, and forestall class-action lawsuits.
The Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, a part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has promised to fight the plan to ban arbitration clauses.
However, information is now trickling out that Wells used the clauses to force customers who sought redress from the fake accounts out of court and into arbitration, which is also confidential. In the recent hearing, Senators pressed Stumpf to stop enforcing arbitration rules, a request that he brushed off.
Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee and Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat with the Judiciary Committee, subsequently called on Wells to formally abandon the practice.
“The ability to force customers into secret arbitration proceedings allowed Wells Fargo to continue its outrageous practices with impunity for far too long,” they wrote Stumpf.
With so many distractions in the advertising business––trying to win awards, new business, and creative street cred––it’s sometimes easy to forget what’s at the heart of this endeavor: bringing people together. Try watching the latest Apple spot without feeling the urge to call Facetime your family. You can’t, because that commercial wasn’t just a commercial––it was advertising elevated to a poignant emotional connection.
That feeling is why we marketers do what we do. But so much can get in the way and keep us from that purity of purpose. Technical complexity distracts us. Rapid, unpredictable shifts in media consumption stymies us. Internal and client politics can take us down the wrong path. We fight an agency arms race to chase down every hot micro-trend and in doing so, squash it.
And in doing so, we turn moments ripe for real, human connection into a dirty word: an ad.
Is it any surprise, then, that when people discover that they have the ability to stop seeing ads, they do so immediately? But even as they dodge, duck, dip, dive, and every ad they can, they expect brands to cater to them--even entertain them!-- in the exact way they want, on the platform of their choice, when they want it.
In a post-website centric marketing landscape, it’s unlikely for fans to find you unless you’re hanging out where they live everyday--on social platforms.
I will posit to you that creative campaigns led by traditional, mass media strategy are too cumbersome to meet the multi-platform demands of today’s audience.
I fully believe that now, with all the tools and strategy we have available in 2016, you can re-engineer your advertising strategy to put social first, instead of being an afterthought. Instead of just “slapping the TV spot on the Facebook,” you can test and learn and listen on social platforms first to better inform your traditional tactics. Social first.
Lean into this new mode of multi-platform, video-centric community building, supported with an intelligent paid media strategy, to achieve an advertising trifecta: precision, feedback and connection.
Precision
It wasn’t too long ago that the term “social media marketing” was a proxy for simply being on Facebook––the only social destination that mattered. Now, there are several platforms for audiences to spend their time, which means more places your brand needs to create an engaging presence that speak to the “why” behind audience behavior. With a cross-platform approach, it’s possible to reach the same person on multiple channels with completely different messaging and visuals. This is doable because every platform allows audiences the opportunity to express themselves differently depending on why they’re using the digital space, whether it be creation, collection, sharing or listening.
Understanding why and how your audience is using a social platform is critical to creating content that makes real connections and builds relationships. And, when you pair those deep audience insights and honest human psychology with the razor sharp targeting tools available across major social networks, you can create a very effective and precise paid media approach.
Feedback
In order to keep your approach nimble, it’s important to consider two types of feedback from your social media consumers. The first is aggregate, which includes data science, mass listening, and reporting. When employed properly, it can build your case to building a master strategy based on real learnings. But it only tells half the story; the rest of which address the second type of feedback: human conversation. While less scalable, being able to act, sound, and feel like another human actually receives the best response. It adds “delight” into the otherwise cold, analytical conversation.
Brands that utilize both types of feedback have the best chance at fully understanding fans enough to inform an entire campaign, from KPIs to creative to budget. This is especially pertinent with social media because it’s the only marketing platform that encompasses both the dissemination of content and the ability to immediately share it. For that reason, it’s the best channel to receive a steady feedback loop, where creative generates a response and that response informs creative.
Considering the power this type of data provides, brands have an opportunity that really didn’t exist before this year––to use social media as a vehicle to drive larger investments in more traditional channels. Brands and marketers are now able to use social campaign insights and creative to inform out of home, print, and TV--all more efficiently than before.
Connection
The result of this precision targeting and feedback leads to real connection with individuals; a relationship with fans that lasts longer than 30 seconds. Social media is inherently designed to accommodate thousands of touch points, instead of just a few. And, with social, brands have the chance to humanize engagement with fans in a way that just isn’t feasible on other less malleable channels.
At the end of the day, the precision, feedback, and connection aren’t nearly as dynamic without great content. What is great content? It’s finding that sweet spot between what the brand desires and an audience loves. Once you discover what that is, you can go love (and measure) it together.
For more discussion around creative, data-driven content strategy, social platforms, engagement, video optimization, monetization and the ever-changing digital landscape, join me and a panel of guests (Freeform, Mattel, Mary Kay) for a conversation around successful brand transformations at AdWeek, Thursday, September 29 at 10:30am.
