Social Media for Sustainability

“Great risk management is simply the movement of information from the informed to the empowered.  While employees are often fearful to share observations about compliance risks due to concerns about retaliation, some companies are markedly better at enabling and encouraging employees to do so.”

An engaging lead-in to the recent Corporate Compliance Insights post, The Importance of Integrity Capital in Corporate Culture, the article spotlights one of the major areas of business development our sustainability consulting foresees throughout 2012.  Corporate culture change, rather than process analysis, will be a key focal point in 2012.  

Leveraging Corporate Compliance Insight, our sustainability consulting practice explores the many steps in implementing a value-driven management program.  As the article explains, this process begins with corporate self-assessment:

• Know the marketplace in which you are operating
• Know which regulatory agencies apply to your business
• Set clear expectations for ethical behavior
• Hold employees at all levels consistently accountable
• Assess your suppliers and customers.
• Reexamine your existing policies that govern organizational behavior

Over the past several years, our sustainability consulting practice has found that the top performing companies are taking a more strategic approach to business integrity by aligning core values with business sustainability activities.  Yet, it is not uncommon for executives to falsely believe their business is exempt from sustainability risk.  Consider how asking the following questions from a business sustainability perspective differ from the traditional approach and how the remainder of your 2012 could be different.  

•    What business are we in?

•    What are the industry risks?

•    What's our unique positioning within the industry, and what gives us competitive advantage?

•    What are the strategic imperatives that are tied to our overall strategy? 

•    What are the processes that are tied to the strategic imperatives, and then the risks that are tied to those?

Early adopters of a pro-environment policy are answering these questions differently.  Business sustainability reshapes the business conversation.  By evaluating business risks through the lens of sustainability, small businesses are benefiting from the tangible and intangible rewards of going green.  

Are you looking for ways to green your business?  Our small business resource offerings include:

1. 15 Small Business Tips to Going Green
2. Sustainability: A Small Business Differentiator
3. How Cloud Computing Helps Small Business to Reduce Emissions and Improve Productivity
4. IdeaScale: Small Business Tool for Stakeholder Engagement
5. Social Media Advancing the Business Sustainability Conversation
6. Telecommuting: help your Business, help the Environment
7. The Growing Role of Virtual Conferencing and Webinars in the Sustainability Meeting Landscape
8. 5 Ways to a Greener Website
9. A Guide for SME's: How and Why to go Paperless
10. Intuit's GreenSnapshot: Do You Have it in Your Green Biz Toolkit?
11. CRM: Golden Nugget for Sustainability in Business 
12. Top 10 Benefits of Bicycle Commuting Programs for Businesses

“Perhaps it is fortunate that varying opinions abound within corporations concerning ‘doing what is right and sustainable’. But regrettably, in relation to sustainable strategies, company leaders rarely encourage and seldom enable enterprise-wide airing of all those diverse points of view. Perhaps leaders avoid the discussions because they fear that the conflicting opinions might impede the company’s ability to execute.”

This lead-in quote was taken from the Environmental Leader post, Seeking Sustainability? Encourage Discussion of Conflicting Viewpoints, which speaks to one of the primary focuses of our sustainability consulting.  How do companies overcome problems stemming from competing corporate priorities, varying levels of commitment and differing perspectives on what sustainable strategies needs to be taken?  The answer is engagement.

Our sustainability consulting believes that there is an emerging role of social media for stakeholder engagement and for businesses to communicate their broader corporate responsibility agenda.  With preferences shifting as to how we communicate and exchange information, social media is becoming the transparent, engaging, competitive advantage that business sustainability delivers.   However, to effectively harness the power of social media to create business sustainability value, there are definable keys to success.

• Defining a clear vision of what social media is expected to do for your organization.  What are your social media goals?  Increase website/ blog traffic? Enhance brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics? 

• Identify stakeholders and online communities.  Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify, but online communities can be centered theme based and centered on sustainability concepts such as recycling, CSR, water, energy, social investing.  Or, they may be geographically based.

• Actively engage.  Social media is an always on platform.  This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into products, services, and ongoing dialog.

Social media provides individuals, communities, businesses, and non-government organizations the ability to connect with business in meaningful discussion from anywhere in the world in real time.  To focus the corporate ear, business sustainability minded organizations are engaging with stakeholders, who have a vested interest in the success of the business and profoundly advance the sustainability conversation.  

Launch the largest crowd sourcing campaign ever.  

Gen7Development: Revolutionizing Human Habitats is the largest crowd source ever attempted as one woman rallies to save her family's land and revolutionize green building and livable communities.  

We all have dreams, but this is one BIG, green dream.  "I’ve got a dream. I want to revolutionize human habitats. I want to build houses that generate their own electricity. I want to create walking trails, community gardens, local restaurants that serve local foods, washed down with local beer. I want kids to be safe playing in the street, and neighbors to know each in a deep community. I want to start a worker owned green building construction co-op."

In as much as business sustainability can be a bold audacious approach to greeting unprecedented results in business, so too is this woman's passion and vision for creating a sustainable community in Spokane, Washington.  Among many sustainable benefits, here's the sustainability impact:

People: Greater Spokane Incorporated estimates that this project will create around 175,000,000 dollars in economic impact. It will create at least 50 living wage family jobs.  (A conservative estimate.)  Beyond that, it will set a new bar for how land should be used and developed. Contributions will set a new precedence for funding for green developments.

Planet: The first phase is already what’s called a Low Impact Development. In addition, a LEED ND (Neighborhood) certification will be obtained.  As eco inspiration, the neighborhood will showcase how green building can be affordable to everyone in a way that takes care of the planet.

Profit: For all its good intentions, this project will make money. How much is dependent on what the rate of other financing is. Why? Because people want smart houses and livable communities.  It’s an idea whose time has come.

Sustainability is all about inclusion. It takes all of us to revolutionize, change, and create positive, lasting change.  How can we embrace and support courageous change agents?  By doing our part - all of our eco actions add up.  

5 Ways to take eco action:

1. Donate to the Gen7 Development project at IndieGoGo.  There are 24 days left to go and every dollar helps.  
2. Spread the word!  Follow on  Twitter or Facebook.  Social buzz helps her IndieGoGo campaign gain more visibility. 
3. Have any media contacts?  Have a blog?  Help her to share her story. Message her here.
4. Read the full story. 
5. Watch the video  or listen to the podcast.

At Taiga Company, we're not only proud to support Gen 7 Development but also delighted to have them as a client.

“When it comes to energy and the environment, most people want to do the right thing. But how many people actually contribute to improving energy use and environmental impact is another story.”

This quote from the GreenBiz post, How Businesses Can Use Games to Spur Greener Behavior, speaks to the heart of most business sustainability concept implementations: transforming thought into action.  Focusing on employee action, the article offers a light-hearted approach to stakeholder engagement.  By applying principals of gaming in a traditional business setting, many companies have already witnessed great success in increased eco awareness.  

Research reveals that leading business sustainability companies place an emphasis on sustainability as an integrated business process change consistent with economic recovery business improvement.  As we have discussed frequently, the key is to create alignment.  The GreenBiz article poses several questions:

• How do we obtain enough information to compare to our peers?
• How do we define the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to spur action?
• Is your organization driven by social pressures or internal drivers?

Our sustainability consulting finds the gap between awareness and action is often the biggest challenge in the implementation of any change.  In terms of business sustainability progress, the action step represents the single largest opportunity.  We spend a considerable amount of time exploring avenues to accelerate global eco awareness into true impactful business action.  

The concept of gaming presented in the above article may offer one method.  Combined with other social media engagement strategies, your company could not only raise the eco awareness of its business sustainability stakeholders but motivate action.  Visit us at Taiga Company to learn more.

Oftentimes we associate our business sustainability consulting practice to that of a garden.  We plant the seeds of sustainability concepts as we counsel business leaders and employees on the how's and why's of business sustainability.  A combination of factors makes it such that taking eco action is not always a first priority or it may not be "the right time."  As a result, we frequently find our social media engagement and sustainability consulting to be much like a gardener planting and nourishing seeds with intentions of sprouting eco awareness in others.

We believe by giving others the freedom to explore and discover the value of sustainability concepts, it fertilizes the foundation for sustainability concepts to germinate and fosters eco actions to come.  We share with clients that thoughts and actions are like stones thrown into still waters:  they create ripples that spread and expand as they move outwards.  The stones we toss at Taiga Company via our social media outreach  include: knowledge sharing, tips, stories, reports, engagement,  and white papers of sustainability success.  We intend to inspire eco action through our social media engagement.  

Whether you are full on with sustainable business strategies and green living, or find yourself to be eco curious, it's easy to be a gardner of eco inspiration by connecting with us.  You'll find resources, information, tools at the tip of your fingertips in our tweets, blog posts, and facebook updates:  glowing examples of businesses leading and benefiting from sustainability initiatives as well as the ease of living a green, sustainable lifestyle.  We invite you to join us! 

1. Subscribe to the Taiga Newsletter 
2. Follow on Twitter 
3. Fan us on Facebook 
4. Watch on YouTube 
5. Join us on Google + 
6. Subscribe to Taiga Company's Blog 
7. Connect on LinkedIn 
8. Enjoy green cycling! Ride your bike with us in Golden, Colorado 

The ability to capitalize on opportunity or mitigate business risk depends on the availability and access to quality information.  Being able to sift through what is important and what is not can be a determining factor in transforming a good decision into business turning point.  Today’s market intelligence has expanded to include business sustainability expectations, trends and requirements.  Because your supply chain can be an invaluable source of information, our sustainability consulting asks: Are you listening? 

With the speed of business sustainability information rapidly increasing and global eco awareness constantly expanding, it has become increasingly important for companies to leverage available technology to capture and access information.  The questions we often pose in our sustainability consulting: where is this information coming from and is the feedback specific enough for your business to take action.

“Communicating is a key element of Procurement. Category managers that work with unfamiliar business partners often fail to understand informal feedback because they are not familiar with their stakeholders or stakeholder communication patterns. To help category managers understand business partner requirements without relying on a long-term relationship, provide them with tools to identify and accurately address their internal partners’ comments.”  -Procurement Strategy Council

Done effectively, stakeholder engagement creates alignment and can positively impact the outcome of business sustainability decision making.  Our professional consulting helps clients to leverage technology  and social media strategies to enhance their sustainable supply chains.

A major component of any corporate sustainability plan isn’t so much how a company carries out those strategies but also how it communicates it to its many stakeholders.  There is an emerging role of social media for stakeholder engagement and for businesses to communicate their broader corporate responsibility agenda.  Within our sustainability consulting, we've discovered that social media executed successfully, can be a powerful vehicle to build sustainable business communications by engaging with stakeholders. 

When businesses create an account on Twitter, they must consider the right “Brand Voice.”   The same holds true for sustainability professionals, consultancies, and personal branding.  Shaping transparency and authenticity through a series of 140 characters can be a challenge much less the effort of connecting and sharing relevant content with key stakeholders.  What are social media success best practices for defining your voice on twitter?  Consider how leveraging one of the following suggestions can aid in your social media marketing strategy.   

1. Subject Matter Expert:  Are you an expert on renewable energy? Water? Energy Effcieincy?  Sustainable supply chain? While these topics all fall under the umbrella of sustainability, each are sustainability concepts that garner unique insights, information, and expertise.  Tweeting your knowledge and insights on the topics garners credibility for your brand as well as powerfully contributes to the sustainability conversation.  Good examples include: @packagingdiva for sustainable packaging, @elainecohen for HR for CSR and @DRMeyer1 for sustainable supply chain. 
2. Community Builder: Are you passionate about generating momentum on sustainability concepts?  Perhaps spreading information on sustainable lifestyles or green business is your twitter calling.  Build the green twitterers by promoting relevant content and key green influencers by rewtweeting, commenting, recommending others to follow. Host and participate in twitter chats.  
3. Green Nay Sayer: Do you have a critical eye or a provactive perspective?  By asking questions and probing conversations, you have the opportunity to invoke further explanation.  Questioning invites innovation. A good reference point is @JenniferWoofter as she offers a provocative and different perspective on business sustainability topics. 
4. Reporter:  Spring season brings May flowers and also sustainability reporting and conferences.  If you have a pulse on what's new, be the go to tweep for sustainability reporting and upcoming conferences.  Post upcoming conferences, engage with attendees, recap conference findings and promote conference engagement.  @RealizedWorth on twitter offers several excellent blog post on employee volunteering and CSR conferences.
5. Idea Generator: Sharing content is great but eco action is better.  Providing inspiring, easy ways to go green throughout the day is like a green public service announcement encouraging others to take action.  Connecting the dots between eco info and eco actions is a big gap to fill.  Tweeps doing it well on twitter include: @greendreamin and @SCJGreenChoices.  

The propagation of sustainable information to effectively communicate business sustainability successes is becoming a more active dialog.  Find your voice! Connect and engage in the green twitterverse! 

With new tools and strategies changing the way the business world communicates and exchanges information, social media is becoming the transparent, engaging, competitive advantage that business sustainability delivers.   However, to effectively harness the power of social media to create business sustainability value, our sustainability consulting explores the key components for success.

The GreenBiz post, Building a Global Brain to Solve Sustainability Puzzles, summarizes an evolved concept of ‘corporate communications’ discussed at a recent business sustainability conference in Washington DC.  Expanding social media engagement beyond the simple spread of information, today’s social business leaders ask: how do we take collective intelligence a step further.

"We're facing some pretty big problems in the world today.  And the way we've been tackling them has struggled to keep up.  The idea of pooling minds and resources holds great promise for sustainability.”  -Tim O'Reilly 

Our sustainability consulting practice believes that social media engagement tools offer an evolved approach to stakeholder participation.  By expanding the scope of contributors and encouraging increased feedback, a decision maker opens the ‘suggestion box’ to a variety of untapped view points. In building an active social media engagement strategy, there are several things to consider:

• Begin with a Clear Vision:  What are your social media goals?  Is it to increase website/ blog traffic? Promote brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics?  Clearly identify your traditional sales objectives combined with your sustainability metrics and design a social media marketing strategy that delivers results to both. 

• Identify Stakeholders and Online Communities:  Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify, but online communities can be centered theme based and centered on sustainability concepts such as recycling, CSR, water, energy, social investing.  Or, they may be geographically based.  Consider shareholders, partners, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and NGO's. 

• Social Media is an ‘Always-On’ Platform: This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into products, services, and ongoing dialog.

Social media success is no longer a defined by how well your company communicates its message to the external world.  It is rapidly becoming a critical business sustainability skill and a business sustainability catalyst that is affecting the bottom line.  Our sustainability consulting offers social media for sustainability tools to assess the market, your competition, and your own efforts in the social space around your business.  Visit with us at Taiga Company to learn more.

The Forbes Magazine article, How to Be a Top 50 Innovator, discusses the characteristics of sustainable business leaders and compares the companies at the top of the list.  While new product development is often a mark of innovation, this Top 50 list represents a much broader perspective.  Which path is your business currently pursuing? 

“Too many companies see innovation as merely coming up with new products or services. Certainly, that’s part of it. But at its core, innovation is all about thinking differently than you have in the past. It’s about finding new ways to improve internal systems and processes.”

As sustainability consultants, we wonder: What circumstances, frameworks or parameters need to be in place to spark creativity and innovation in a business?   The conversation of business sustainability may be the answer to that question.  A commitment to sustainability uncovers opportunities to explore, develop, collaborate, and innovate both within the organization and with the larger business community. 

Our professional consulting recognizes the need for companies to step out the confines of traditional business and leverage the creativity of their employees, suppliers, and end consumers.  In doing so, we find that sustainability concepts naturally find their way into the fabric of the organization.  Interested?  Well, you better get started because these transformative actions are already finding their way into practice today.

“Leading innovators create a safe learning environment where experimentation and fast failure are encouraged, and establish forums conducive to breakthrough ideation”. –CEB Views

At Taiga Company, our business sustainability offerings are geared toward encouraging business sustainability, driving innovation, and expanding eco awareness as an asset of the organization - particularly through stakeholder engagement. We work directly with clients to capitalize on social media for sustainability as key component of a dynamic business model.

“As many of us are wrapping up our 2012 budgeting and planning process, one thing continues to worry even the most seasoned senior executives: Market Volatility. Twenty-eleven has been a year in which volatility reached historic levels, and one in which even the most experienced of global investors increasingly worried about risk as the year progressed. In this kind of market even the best spiked egg nog may have difficulty calming the fears of the investment community.  Innovation executives can’t help but worry about how the broader investment climate will affect their 2012 innovation plans.”

This excerpt was taken from the recent post, Innovation Planning in Turbulent Times, which captures the impacts of the recession on business through the actions of several global leaders.  Highlighting the links between innovation and business success, the article describes how these “super giants” viewed turbulence as opportunity.  Our sustainability takes note of this success and the post-recessionary insight:

• Improve satisfaction with your innovation investments
• Identify the breakthrough trends impacting your industry
• Optimize your portfolio to better balance breakthrough and incremental innovation
• Reduce the risk of your innovation investments

Through our direct involvement with companies and business leaders seeking to define creative and sustainable solutions within their organization, we find that aligned and motivated stakeholders  are a ripe source for new ideas. Thus, our sustainability consulting works with clients to step outside of the confines of the business to leverage employees, suppliers, and end consumer thinking.   

Taiga Company  subscribes to the belief that a focused social media engagement strategy can ensure that business sustainability concepts and innovative solutions naturally find their way into new product developments within your company.  Our sustainability consulting offers information and resources to business and individuals at every level of this stakeholder engagement evolution.

Did you know that there are about 10,000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover?  Apparently, the number 4 has special meaning. It has come to be considered the number of labor and stability. Why?  In the maxim that art is "25% inspiration and 75% perspiration", four is the effort required to put the idea down on paper, to learn the piece and perfect it.  Four also represents the 4 elements: fire, air, water and Earth.  And, according to Plato, wisdom, courage, self control and justice are the four virtues. Legend says that each leaf of a four leaf clover means something: the first is for hope, the second for faith, the third for love and the fourth for luck. 

What does this have to do with personal sustainability or living a green lifestyle?  Well, the number 4 is also the number that represents where you can have the biggest impact in reducing your carbon footprint.  As we approach St. Patrick's Day, why not celebrate the holiday by putting some green into it and get in the eco spirit? Hence, the eco clover: 

Hope:  Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life.   With the over saturation of negative media today, it's easy to loose sight of good things to come.  We can use hope to identify areas in our lives or businesses that have an environmental impact and that we are also willing to change and improve.  Hope can guide us to look at going paperless at home or in your office, perhaps improving air quality or maybe start recycling.  These changes don't have to be hard or cumbersome.  Eco actions we can take include: alternative fuel transportation, fuel efficiency and personal reduction (commuting, ride share, alternative transportation).  These actions create hope and an expectation for good things to come in our personal lives, work, and for the environment.  

Faith:  Faith is the confident belief in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.   Having faith can aid our focus with anticipation of positive outcomes.  How so? Stretch your imagination and take action.   If you started a paperless program or energy efficiency program as part of your green living plan, then start looking for the savings on a monthly and quarterly basis. By switching to wind or renewable sources, the average family could save the equivalent to thousands of miles driven in a car.  Sustainable actions include: source control (wind, renewable, offsets), home efficiency (energy star appliances), and personal energy management. Intangible benefits that aren't as easily measured may be the first evidence of taking action based on faith: improved employee morale at work, impressions changing for the better or family members and neighbors feeling good about taking environmental action.

Love: Find appreciation in what is working in your life and your business.  Have you noticed that what you focus on expands?  Clear fresh water is rapidly becoming an endangered resource in even the most developed countries.  Sustainable actions directly aligned with personal savings include: water management (personal use and outdoor watering) and waste water management (controlling what goes down the drain and into the storm drains).   Water is a source for life.  Love your life, your business, and love our planet.  

Luck:  Create your own pot of gold.  The actions we take today create our tomorrow.  Invest in sustainability concepts in your business and your life for a better tomorrow.  A large portion of what goes into the average garbage is recyclable.  By separating your plastics, glass, and paper, the weekly volume sent to the landfill could be cut by more than half.  Sustainable actions include  waste reduction, energy efficiency, recycling programs, water conservation, community involvement, sustainable businesses practices, living a green lifestyle and investing in socially responsible investing.    

This St. Patrick's Day, create a little magic!  Ignite a little spark!  When you consider that over 80% of our personal impact can be bucketed into four major categories, the opportunities for personal action becomes empowering.  We can create magical four leaf clovers by putting the green in our lives and expecting extraordinary results.   

“Most businesspeople are so busy working for their business or in their business that they never find time to work on their business. Thus they fail to anticipate what might happen or what they might be able to make happen”. –It's Not the Big That Eat the Small ... It's the Fast That Eat the Slow

It is in this light that our sustainability consulting reminds clients that business models and strategies can become stagnate over time.  If a company fails to take action to engage proactive change, a once thriving business can become out of touch with the consumers and its other key business sustainability stakeholders.  

As a professional consultant, I have learned that one of the keys to business sustainability is a conscious and continuous effort for improvement.  This includes regularly scheduling time to work on the business and answer critical questions affecting the organization and its stakeholders.  Here are a few questions you can use to determine the engagement level of your current business model.

• How are consumers responding to sustainable offerings in the new market economy?

• What new market sectors are driving consumer behaviors for sustainable brands?

• What is most likely on the horizon and how can the business proactively respond?

• How ‘in-touch’ are business sustainability strategies with changes in the market?

By anticipating and taking proactive steps to address change and create effective stakeholder engagement, your business will not only capture immediate value but can define itself as a business sustainability leader in its industry.  Our sustainability consulting encourages clients to capitalize on media for sustainability as key component of a dynamic business.

In previous posts, our sustainability consulting has posed the broad question: can social media save the world?  Today, we narrow that question and pose it directly to your business.  We find that the traditional drivers in this discussion are being replaced by tangible value that can no longer be ignored.

In the post, How Social Purpose Creates Value, Environmental Leader captures a clip from a recent Green Monday event.  With the meeting focusing on the major big trends in sustainability for the next 24 months, social media strategies are poised to be a significant area of interest.  The video discusses how organizations with social purpose are aligning with business sustainability today.  

Beyond the more familiar and tradition business value drivers of out-bound CSR communication or internal stakeholder engagement, the presenter focuses on some lesser known but equally viable social avenues to value.

• Engaging consumers in growth markets
• Focusing interactions around ethical finance
• Accessing concerns and opportunities to address shareholder value

Social media success is no longer a defined by how well your company communicates its message to the external world.  It is rapidly becoming a critical business sustainability skill and a business sustainability catalyst that is affecting the bottom line.  Our sustainability consulting offers information and tools to assess the market, your competition, and your own efforts in the social space around your business.  Visit with us at Taiga Company to learn more.

As consumers, employees, businesses, communities, and non government organizations increasingly question business actions on climate change, they want to see transparent, more credible information on the responsible actions companies are taking to address their social and environmental impacts. Social media is a medium that offers transparent, always on engagement facilitating the probation of sustainability communications.

Our newest product, Social Media for Sustainability Professionals  is an online, self-guided course that will deliver practical information you need to:

• Develop and promote your brand
• Establish credibility and improve online visibility
• Promote thought leadership
• Engage with interested stakeholder groups
• Drive targeted traffic to your website or blog
• Develop direct relationships with prospects, clients, influencers in the sustainability / CSR space

Need help in deciding if the course is for you?   Perhaps these additional post can offer guidance or give us a call, ask questions on twitter or catch up with us on Facebook.   

• Sustainability Professionals: How to Express Yourself with Social Media  
• Green Websites that Inspire Eco Action form the Inside Out 
• Who are the Tweeps Tweeting for A Better Green Brand?  
• Twitter, Facebook, and Blogging: The Three Pillars of Sustainability Communications? 
• LinkedIn: Powering Sustainability Professionals and Revolutionizing Volunteerism 
• Conversion: Using Calls to Action to Promote Sustainability 
• 8 Ways to Use Sustainability News and Distribution Networks to Promote Sustainability 
• Beyond the Social Media Basics: Sustainability Communications on YouTube, Google +, and Foursquare 

Nearly every business is on Facebook and Twitter, but other social media platforms are often overlooked as a means to communicate business sustainability initiatives, reporting, and successes.  

Exploring the benefits of using YouTube for sustainability related content, the post, CSR on YouTube – Why Web Video Needs to Be Part of Your Social Strategy, shares, "there are many ways that sustainability enthusiasts use online video, and if you’re not on YouTube already, you’re missing a big part of the conversation. Industry professionals highlight corporate sustainability programs.  Consumers upload product reviews and search for eco-friendly how-tos and DIYs.  And while there is one hour of video uploaded to YouTube every second, there’s still much less competition for strategic keywords. On Google, for example, the term “Sustainability Consultant” returns 1.86 million web pages, but only 9,000 video hits. Similarly, “Corporate Social Responsibility” returns 130 million web pages, but only 230 thousand videos. The bottom line is, online video is the easiest way to be competitive in search." 

Additionally, ever since its launch, Google+ has received a tremendous amount of attention in the social media world. While there is confusion as to its place among Facebook and Twitter, it is a new, unique platform in its own right. Regardless of what you think of Google+, it's best not to be ignored; the integration with Google search alone makes it an important channel to consider in your social media engagement for sustainability and CSR.  

Finally, if you haven't heard of Foursquare, then you might want to familiarize yourself with it and GreenSquare.  Both are like a combination of micro-blogging (like Twitter), and GPS geocaching (finding places) and you can use the programs to highlight eco awareness to your friends, colleagues, and community.   Basically, by using your smartphone, you 'check in' with the Foursquare website, publish your physical location, and write a quick review about the restaurant or pub or coffee shop you are visiting. Foursquare and Greensquare can be components of a social media marketing strategy assisting to spread the good word of local green businesses, non profits, and green events.  By checking in at sustainable businesses offering green products and services, you are putting those businesses on the map (including your own), introducing those businesses to other like minded sustainability professionals, as well as supporting for these businesses with your financial dollar.

If this blog entry whetted your appetite for more information about how sustainability professionals can use social media to grow their business, you may be interested in our 8-week, self-guided, online course called Social Media for Sustainability Professionals. It includes an entire section devoted to blogging, websites, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and more!  

Can social media change the world?  Can it make our world a better world?  How is it advancing the sustainability conversation?  What role does it play in business sustainability today?

GreenBiz recently provided a business perspective on the social landscape with its post, The Social Intrapreneur's Push from Innovation to Company-wide Integrity.  Referencing Michigan's Ross School of Business work on the subject, GreenBiz discusses the climb of “Mt. Sustainability” from an insider’s perspective.  Consistent with our own sustainability consulting perspective, the business sustainability journey begins and ends with the level of engagement of a company’s resources.

“Training and education does not end with new workers. Integrating sustainability throughout the enterprise requires ongoing education of employees at all levels.”

Our sustainability consulting advocates that to be effective with its business sustainability communications an organization must have a defined strategy.  This strategy should communicated and align with the organization’s business objectives and resources, specifically the interests of its key stakeholders.  We find the leading “socially-geared” companies are responding and creating sustainability advocates by:

• Cascading business sustainability strategies down through organizational and individual performance goals.

• Informing, motivating, and actively engaging employees in the company’s business sustainability programs.

• Integrating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) into the business processes, corporate performance, and employee recognition.

• Actively engaged with key stakeholders on sustainability issues, including employees to understand how sustainability issues are affecting the business.

• Performing transparent reporting on sustainability concepts and sensitive issues, with both positive and negative results.

Sustainability and social media together offer a refreshing and innovative approach to business.  The question is: do you want social media be a catalyst for your sustainable organization?  Visit us at Taiga Company  for more information and access to resources that can help you discover the value of social media for sustainability.

The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) describes knowledge management as a mindset that extends beyond the flow of traditional business process.  It focuses on the dissemination of information, engagement of key resources, and ultimately the adoption rate of best practices across the entire value chain.  As a sustainability consultants, we believe knowledge management and sustainability concepts to be intricately aligned.  In fact, we find knowledge management to be a critical aspect of business sustainability.  

The ability to define, implement and manage future business opportunities depends largely on the availability and quality of information.  Explored in the article, Knowledge Management—Emerging Perspectives, KM provides a defined vehicle to access and assess critical business information:  

• Mission: What are we trying to accomplish? 
• Competition: How do we gain a competitive edge? 
• Performance: How do we deliver the results? 
• Change: How do we cope with change? 

Social media has an emerging role in knowledge management.  Creating bridges between the corporate world and its stakeholders, social media closes the gap on knowledge management and business intelligence. Speciically so if sustainable communications and performance is valued by your stakeholders.  Social media for sustainability communications has become a risk or an opportunity. Monitoring, listening, and dialoguing with key stakeholder in the social space not only offers a competitive advantage but also provides other key ingredients for successful social media engagement:

• Information or Data Collection
• Crowdsourcing
• Brand and Reputation Management
• Public Relations
• Media Management
• Crisis Management

Because social media intelligence  incorporates a thorough 360-degree assessment of stakeholder engagement, there are a number of ways you can use information to your advantage. The right kind of information can be used for a whole range of processes in the business that can ultimately lead to your business' success. 

Our sustainability consulting has discussed the topic of team/group dynamics  at length over the years.  However, we have come to realize that organizational development, like business sustainability, is not an end game but a continuous pursuit.  From this awareness, we seek out key learnings from new information and applied business examples.  In this post, we navigate the waters of what has been coined the “Tribal Mindset”.

“Once you think about a company as a meshed network of small groups -- let's call them tribes -- you immediately see why restructurings don't improve outcomes. Big organizational changes are often financially costly. They are also traumatic, breaking up trusted relationships and creating insecurity even among the very creative people you are trying to encourage.”

An excerpt taken from the article, The Restructuring Challenge: How Manufacturers Can Break 'Tribal' Barriers to Foster Innovation, which discusses the challenges faced by even the world’s most respected companies in their own organizational development efforts.   Building on the concept of communication, the post examines group dynamics in terms of idea sharing and innovation.  Some of the common challenges include:

• Small groups can both nurture and block creativity
• It can be difficult to share knowledge or ideas outside of these groups
• Ideas don't flow easily around larger companies

Aligned with our own beliefs, the post encourages the facilitation of ideas from entrepreneurial individuals and small groups using non-traditional management practices.  Focusing on social media engagement as a stepping stone in both internal and external organizational development, our sustainability consulting promotes programs designed to motivate employees through inclusion and empowerment.  

The use of social media collaboration technologies can help organizations break down silos and facilitate knowledge sharing across business units, corporate functions and stakeholders. Social media provides individuals, communities, businesses, and non-government organizations the ability to connect with business in meaningful discussion from anywhere in the world in real time.   As a result, many businesses have already realized value by incorporating social media into traditional business processes including marketing, sales, PR, customer support, and product development. What are the key ingredients for social media success?

Our sustainability consulting practice believes that social media engagement tools offer an evolved approach to stakeholder participation.  By expanding the scope of contributors and encouraging increased feedback, a decision maker opens the ‘suggestion box’ to a variety of untapped view points. In building an active social media engagement strategy, there are several things to consider:

Begin with a Clear Vision:  What are your social media goals?  Is it to increase website/ blog traffic? Promote brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics?  Clearly identify your traditional sales objectives combined with your sustainability metrics and design a social media marketing strategy that delivers results to both. 

Identify Stakeholders and Online Communities:  Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify, but online communities can be centered theme based and centered on sustainability concepts such as recycling, CSR, water, energy, social investing.  Or, they may be geographically based.  Consider shareholders, partners, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and NGO's. 

Social Media is an ‘Always-On’ Platform: This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into products, services, and ongoing dialog.

The propagation of sustainable information to effectively communicate business sustainability successes is becoming a more active dialog.  Stakeholder feedback is being used to solve problems and drive innovation.  Our sustainability consulting believes that in order to be effective with social media for sustainability, an organization must have a defined engagement strategy.  At Taiga Company , we encourage clients to build sustainability programs that leverage social media engagement tools to implement direct and measurable impacts on social, environmental, and economic goals.  

The days of the controlled and scripted press release may be coming to an end.  The propagation of sustainable information to effectively communicate business sustainability successes is becoming a more active dialog.  However, there are challenges to effectively and clearly communicating the business sustainability message internal and external to the organization.  

Because sustainability concepts and definitions are still subject to interpretation and debate, the ‘active’ engagement and dialog with stakeholders cannot be overlooked when building effective business sustainability programs and a social media marketing strategy. However, there are leading organizations Mastering the Zen of Sustainability Communications.  

What can we learn from them?  More importantly, with the vast amount of information available on the internet, how do we find the best sources of business sustainability information? 

There are two leading distribution services in the CSR and sustainability space:  3BLMedia/ JustMeans and CSRWire.  At Taiga Company, we're big fans of 3BL Media and JustMeans.  We encourage others to subscribe to both feeds: JustMeans and 3BL Media to promote sustainability:

• Learn which companies are posting what types of material on each platform.
• Think about the content being delivered and is there a way that you can leverage the content to build relationships in your business. 
• Explore the innovative ways organizations are sharing their sustainability stories.
• Be informed of upcoming conferences, webinars, recently released whitepapers and reports.
• Consider using this content as a source of information for your own blog post and tweets.
• Excellent way of keeping up with what others are doing in the industry.
• Inspiration to keep sustainability fresh in your own sustainability practice.
• Credibility: you can use these resources as references, examples, case studies to share with prospects, clients, in presentations to help articulate what sustainability is and how it is expressed in varied forms in corporate culture and corporate strategies. 

If you found this information helpful, you'll love our Social Media for Sustainability Professionals, an 8-week, online and self-guided program that provides everything you need to make the most of social media in 2012.