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.
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.
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?
Volume 2, Issue 4 is dedicated to female brands and their impact on business and our culture. Women have had massive opportunities through the internet to come together and share ideas. In this issue, we’ve interviewed some of the brightest and most talented female brands on the planet, including Sarah Austin, Laura Ries and Natalie Gulbis, to explore what women are doing to make this world a better place. There are many tips and strategies for women who want to control their careers and command their futures, as well as for men who are looking to learn from these talented women.
Features:
28 articles total covering female branding
General personal branding related topics
Interviews with: Sarah Austin, Natalie Gulbis, Laura Ries, Toby Bloomberg, Valeria Maltoni, and Anita Campbell
How to define yourself
The importance of personal brand consistency in social networking
There’s a perspective that we take in social media that has many qualities and discussions around it and I’ve been starting to use a name or label for it: the unsell.
The idea behind the unsell is that you really aren’t selling at all, but rather letting the product or service speak for itself. Past the initial “hey, I’ve got this product/service, what do you think of it†pitch, the idea that quality sells itself is key.
Through organic word of mouth, the quality or potential of what you have is what sells it. This is the classic unsell.
What we need to strive for today and in the future is that whatever we’re doing for our customers or employers speaks for itself. If it needs a bunch of fancy charts and graphs to describe why it’ll save money, trim expenses or save the planet, then it really doesn’t cut it.
So I’d like to learn from you, because you’re the smartest folks I know, what are you ‘unselling’? How have you applied ‘the unsell’ in your work? What kinds of things are companies doing right in social media that they aren’t talking about?
It’s an interesting time we live in. Economic turmoil, changing social norms, 100 year old publishing businesses crumbling, and new media powerhouses being established. You’d be hard pressed to give our present era a pass and claim it to be not as important as <fill in your favorite era here>.
Along with these incredible times are some challenges for every business, and everyone that works in them. The reality is that the past decade has brought incredible change in our communications and social structures because of digital communication. Included in this is the first generation raised entirely within the Internet, and mobile communication revolution of advanced technology.
This generation has experienced the freedom of wireless connections from an early age, and rediscovered the power of text communications. The “kids†in this generation have expanded their mental and reflex capacities through vigorous sessions of online, multiplayer, interactive & collaborative games. These folks have no stigma about being online, and this generation comes prewired for online social interaction. They have the ability to actively team-build without preamble and pep talks, can do business virtually without the need to meet in person and can work with folks on the other side of the globe as easily as they work with people in the next cube.
This is the youth movement of today, and they’re entering your business right now. These young folks are part of the largest workforce to enter the American business landscape since the boomers. They are your new entry level employees and they know what’s up. They’re smart, fast to learn new things, and anxious to prove themselves. With the Baby Boomers retiring and GenX/Y moving up, these folks coming out of college are bringing a revolution in relationship management with them.
“We are not enemies but friends.” Live your life. Completely. Without fear. Live it with Love, compassion, empathy, tolerance and joy. Treat every person with the kindness, respect and dignity they deserve by the very virtue of being a human being.
