May 21, 2009 | blog
Funny how many questions have answer that start with those two words. This tends to be exceptionally true of the coporatization of social media.
- What if I call my boss a jerk on Twitter? It depends…
- What if we find bloggers defacing our product images? It depends…
- What if my company finds me posting on Facebook when I’m home sick? It depends…
- How do we monitor the blogosphere for our multiple brands? It depends…
The complexities of the requirements for big business and their employees is not as clear cut as it is for small, aggressive start-ups. In the end, the reality is that discretion is required on both sides; by the people who post or create media, and the people who read or consume media.
May 21, 2009 | happiness
There is a role that I fulfill. As soon as I create it, I’ll tell you more about it.
May 11, 2009 | blog
A challenging part of employing social media concepts within an organization or large company is getting everyone to agree. With so many parties with differing interests, one wonders how things ever get done.
I’d like to posit the idea that consensus is not required to explore the opportunities that social media present. Sure, you may (or should) gain approval from the group you’re working with, getting the every executive, or department, or business unit’s buy in just won’t happen. At least not in the timeframe you’ll need to reap some of the rewards of joining your community.
Consensus is one of the problems that social media may be able to solve as well. As large companies continue to consolidate resources internally, they also create more silos for information, and push the decision making to a select few at the top.
Sure, these fine folks have years (decades in many cases) of business experience that allows them to plot the course for large companies. However, these same folks are now spreading themselves quite thin and it requires more time to make decisions for each business. This translates into slow moving companies that can’t adapt fast enough to changing market conditions.
In this, social media allows faster interaction across the organization. By leveraging both the business experience of executive staff along with the day-to-day mid-level management that is tracking the trends of each business, large companies have the potential to move almost as fast as a much smaller organization.
The need for an open, transparent culture still exists though. Without it, the company won’t have the ability to try new things and learn from them quickly.
Social media is more about cultural and conceptual changes than technological. And you don’t need consensus to understand that either. Good luck.
May 4, 2009 | blog
Sometimes you don’t know what you have in front of you. The opportunity to change.
That’s what lies before today’s C-Suite executives if they choose to explore it. What I’m talking about here, of course, is really about relationships. With the advent of social computing in the second half of this decade, the power has shifted from producers and marketers to people.
The challenge, of course, is for today’s executives to leap into the deep end of the pool and embrace these new relationships. To build new loyalty into their customer base, by demonstrating the ability to listen, learn, share and improve.
This is a great opportunity that current executives and VPs have that their predecessors didn’t have. The ability to change the relationship and make it one built on the trust and respect of quality products and honest interactivity. This goes equally for internal communications. The opportunity to use these same open and trust building methods within an organization is huge. Especially with organizations that are struggling with employee engagement and moral in these trouble economic times.
It goes beyond displaying good will, however. Any effort in using social computing for building new relationships requires a commitment to open dialog, acceptance of public feedback (both good and bad), and the willingness to discuss this in a public venue.
The point here, is that our current executives have this powerful new option that their ancestors did not. The question is, how many are of strong enough to take that bold step?
Image credit: Envios
May 4, 2009 | happiness
Communication is a key to unlock the door to opportunity.
