1. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
The Role of Social Media
in
Corporate Social Responsibility
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 1

2. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility
1. Fundamentals of Social Media
- Target Audience. Your target audience may not necessarily be your
customers though it may lead to some conversion. They may be the
people who influence your customers of their buying decision. These
stake holders may be the family members of your customers, which will
lead to group buying. Whoever they are, understand where you can
find them on social media, how do they network and share their
opinion.
- Authenticity. It’s time to be personable as a company and open
yourselves up to transparency. Be seen in the same places as your
customers would. Study where the crowd and signals are. Explore and
experiment new platforms not only to reach out to Gen Y but Baby
boomers who are beginning to go onto the social media. Form a team
or task force within your company to pick each other’s brains on the
best engagement practices. Develop your own standard operating
procedure and usage guidelines so that entire company is aligned.
- Honesty. No one is perfect, and not everyone will like what we do. You
amy get as many negative comments as good or neutral comments.
Turning a negative comment into a persuasive pitch is the real art of
communication on social media. You’ll get a good chance to explain
yourself further with every misguided remark. Customers or key stake
holders may not be looking for an answer but feel satisfied as long as
there is a channel of feedback.
- Your Story. Tell your own story. Do not duplicate what others have
already started doing. Look around you and embrace what your
organisation is most concern about.
o Marketplace
 The impact on society of your core products and services
 Ethical trading
 Ethical advertising
 Treatment of, and vetting of, suppliers
o Environment
 Contribution to greenhouse gas emissions through energy
use and other parts of your process
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 2

3. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
Use of raw materials, both nonrenewable resouces which
by definition are not sustainable in the long term, and as
importantly renewable resources which are produced in a
fashion which is not currently sustainable.
 Potential for environmental accidents - releases of
pollutants into air, water or land.
o Workplace
 Work-life balance of your employees
 Managing diversity in the workforce
 Training, development and life-long learning
 Eradicating abusive or bullying behaviour
o Community
 Social problems
 Increasing income gap
- Share, Not Sell. It is a myth to say that by sharing all your knowledge on
social media, you are giving your expertise away for free. You share
knowledge and insights, you sell your solutions offline. Understand that
every business is eventually a service business. There must always be a
value added. It can comes in a form of thought leadership, market
update, situational analysis. Just build your follower and fan page
proactively. Start early even if you do not exactly know where you are
going. Your network will be much needed when you need them
especially in a crisis situation.
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 3

4. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
2. How can companies leverage on Social Media for CSR?
- Commit and Lead. Social Media is like teenagers trying to understand
love, everyone wants to try, but not many know it requires
commitment. Decide on your key message and roll out a posting
schedule, assign the right people with the right emotional quotient to
manage the social media platforms in your company. Such staffs are
always the internal brand ambassadors for your corporate social
responsibility journey. Devote resources and re-write job description to
lead the company into the social media culture in order to
communicate your CSR mission effectively on social spaces.
- Share and Listen. Sharing isn’t a culture in Asia, we like to sell rather
than share. We must learn to share our knowledge and sell only our
expertise. Listening is an active engagement exercise. It means
knowing what is the language and lingo used by the people we serve.
What are they talking about us? What do they know and how much do
they really understand? Is someone speaking on our behalf? Do we
have brand ambassadors out there who constantly creating
awareness which we are not aware of? Ultimately, listen to the real
and current social issues to be addressed and re-align your strategy if
you have to
- Innovate. Most companies are already being creative in their CSR,
now it’s time to be innovative. It’s isn’t enough to give time off for staff
to be volunteerism, create a friendly competition among your staff and
make the results known in your intranet.
- Communicate. In this modern day and age, it is not a matter of how
good you are doing what you are doing, but rather how many people
out there know you are good at what you are doing. Make it a culture
to encourage your staff and key volunteers to share about their
experience through twitter, blog and even facebook. Use platform like
Foursquare to check in and promote the venue where you are
performing your CSR. Get more words out there, do mini quizzes on
special platforms like proprofs.com to test how much your target
audience understand what you do and how you are doing it.
- Invest. It’s great to spend time and resources on social issues you are
passionate about. It’s even greater if you set up a fund and motivate
other stake holders to do the same. Get the public involved by
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 4

5. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
encouraging pooling of funds to serve a certain cause. Get social
through your investment and you will reap mindshare and brand
recognition.
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 5

6. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
3. Ten Reasons why companies are not embracing social media?
S - Strategy. Companies do not have a clear game plan, not sure of
their target audience and objectives of being on social media. It is a
decision which requires the top management buy-in. The road map
must be set with the appropriate response strategy and risk assessment.
O - Organisation. Organising themselves internally and integrate other
marketing, communications and publicity efforts require more than a
change of standard operating procedure, it requires a change of
mindset and culture. Staff will require social media training to be on the
same page when task forces are formed.
C - Channels. Most corporate are clueless as to which platforms are
suitable for their business especially when it is a B2B scenario. Knowing
how to prioritize their resources and effort on the most suitable
platforms requirement some experiment. If you need to reach out to
the masses, Facebook is ideal. If you are reaching out to the
marketplace, Linkedin will be your choice. If you are engaging thought
leaders, Quora is a great place.
I - Investment. Let's face it. Social Media platforms may be free but not
consultation, content preparation, measurement, etc. Staff job
description which leads to new hire must be allocated in the budget.
Along with investment will come commitment to meaningful
engagement with stakeholders in the social media.
A - Authenticity. Many corporate are too used to using "We", "us"
instead of "I". People like to connect with people not organisation.
Being personable is the key to building relationship on social media. No
one will like to connect with a company on social media. Individuals
within the organisation will have to be identified and learn to speak on
behalf of the company. This may not be entirely the job of corporate
communication department in future.
L - Listening. Most corporate do not really listen to their customers in the
first place. Listening when corporate first embark on social media is
more important than contribution. When you have active listening, you
will get a feel of brand sentiment in the social circles. Listening also
means gaining competitive insights besides customer engagement.
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 6

7. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
M - Moderation. On social media, there is really no moderator. Unless
you create a social networking within your web 2.0 environment, you
will need to accept the good with the bad. The art of managing
negative comments will decide if you can enlarge the social mind
share. Do not delete or censor negative comments or feedback. Learn
to respond accordingly to show professionalism as well as personal
touch.
E - Engagement. Engagement is a BIG word. Everyone talks about it but
few understand the commitment behind active engagement.
Corporate will need to listen, be proactive, contribute meaningfully,
create environment for more user-generated content. All these require
corporate to be among the social circle. Learn to listen twice as much
as we contribute.
D - Direction. As a corporate entity, many other functions will need to
be re-aligned if social media strategy is deployed. Human Resources
will need to create usage policy, Customer Service will need to use
social media to engage customers very promptly. Sales teams will have
to understand the CSR directions when they do a pitch. Marketing may
use CSR as a unique preposition in their approach. There must be a
good direction from top down in communicating your brand through
CSR via social media.
I - Infrastructure - Monitoring benchmark and systems must be set to
measure Key Performance Index. Best practices for sales, marketing,
branding and other department must be continuously built upon in the
Knowledge Base. It can be technical growth like number of fans or
followers over a period of one year. It can be soft approach like
sensing the sentiment on the ground based on number of positive,
neutral and negative comments.
A - Analytics - Do corporate know what are they measuring? How do
you utilise certain data to improve on product and service? How does
trend and research affect decision making and resource allocation?
Google analytics is a great tool for free evaluation of web KPIs after
social media is implemented and integrated within the corporate web
2.0 technologies.
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 7

8. The Role of Social Media in Corporate Social Responsibility 2011
4. Conclusion.
a. Social Media will not be a fad, it will be as important in business
like Corporate Social Responsibility to your company
b. You need great content – your CSR story
c. You need great context – Speak and create conversation of
relevance and linkage between what you do and what you are
passionate about.
d. Your need great community – You need social brand
ambassadors to be raised to spread the message and become
influencers in society. Your message needs more than just your
own voice to gain a mindshare.
e. CSR and Social Media Corporate Strategy are made for each
other. Just as Charity has benefitted a lot from the awareness
through social media, CSR will be communicated alongside with
your brand communication to create the desired market
perception about your company.
f. Social Media is a new way of corporate life, a new world of
communication which is live and spontaneous. It requires
commitment just like Corporate Social Responsibility.
g. Utilising social media for CSR is marrying 2 social segments
together to enhance branding and public perception of your
company.
Presentation Script by Andrew Chow (www.andrewchow.sg) Page 8