“The Power of Leadership”

Continuing with “Social Media” for Business Leaders, today I show you an amazing example to demonstrate why you should at least be listening to the mass conversation on “Social Media” with an sample of what you might want to listen for:  One of the common topics for on-line discussion is failures of leadership and obviously then “bad” bosses (who clearly do not read the ‘Thought of the Day’!).

Entrepreneur, Asher Adelman, has created a website and on-line business called eBossWatch because “nobody should have to work with a jerk.” http://www.ebosswatch.com eBossWatch provides platforms for employees to “Rate Your Boss,” do “Boss Background Checks” for job seekers, read about “Bosses in the News,” and a Registry for Sexual Harassment and Workplace Bullying offenders.  eBossWatch even produces an “America’s Worst Bosses Report”!  eBossWatch is popular both within “Social Media” and now serves as a resource for more traditional business media outlets like BusinessWeek and Forbes.

I want to make Listening to Social Media easy for you because I think it’s very important and I don’t want to see any ‘Thought of the Day’ readers end up on the “Worst Bosses” Report!

Sign onto Google (you’ll need a Google Account, its one step beyond the general Google Search, but easy and free).  Then search for “Google Alerts” and click onto www.google.com/alert.  There you will find a simple screen to set up Google “Alerts,” which will search the on-line world for you and send you a summary report of all the new on-line activity on a given Keyword of your choosing.  Set up at least two Google Alerts, probably with once-per-week e-mail summary to you.  Set up one on your own Name.  Set up another with your Company name.

You’ll probably need to play with your Alerts for a few weeks until you get a report that is exactly how you want to see it, but you’ll soon be clearly aware of any and all on-line communication or media that is talking about you and your organization.  With time you’ll probably want to add more Alerts on your top competitor’s names, relevant associations, specific keywords for your business, perhaps your community.  Soon, you’ll have your own daily or weekly “News Feed” summary as if you were Whitehouse Chief of Staff!   But whether you develop this tool greatly or not, in the very least you must know when anyone is talking to or about you and your company anywhere on-line and Google Alerts will do that for you!

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” – Robert McCloskey

Have a great day, listening!

Shawn
Performance Institute – A Global Leader in Human Capital and Business Development

Russ M. Miller, LLIF – Chairman and CEO

Sunny Hong Zhang – Managing Partner – China

Shawn M. Miller – Managing Partner – USA

P.S.  Your thoughts on our Thoughts are valuable to us and other readers; please post your comments in the Reply box…