In 2013, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence started asking questions related to an organization’s use of social media. An emphasis was placed on effective use of social media. In the early days of this criteria change, many users of the Criteria had limited engagement with social media. More recently, every organization is using and must use social media, but they don’t always use it effectively.

So you might ask, what is ineffective use of social media? We probably all have personal experiences that could fit in this category. This post was conceived after I received a recent marketing email, the kind that has your name in the salutation. This one read as follows:

“Good afternoon [first name],

Hope this note finds you well. Based on your interest in....”

How do you know my interests, if you address me as [first name] and don’t even know who I am? This was further exacerbated by the email dealing with a subject of absolutely no interest to me.

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