Most organizations have great trepidation about adopting social media. Beyond the trial projects in the communications (or marketing or PR) department, going beyond the silo and allowing widespread access to stakeholders can be an intimidating endeavor (bicycle image by laffy4k). Some of the more common objections are:
- How does one allow people to talk while “maintaining business continuity?”
- When are we going to find the time?
- How are we going to fund this?
- Where do we begin?
- What is it going to do to the bottom line?
- Why should I let people build their personal reputations on my dollar?
Here are some easy tasks to encourage social media adoption across the organization, while at the same time not requiring the enterprise to incur major responsibility or shift policies. Old school social media wonks will smile when they see some familiar tasks on the list.
1) Communicate using social networks. In reality, social media represents a new form of communication. For example email became an easier way to send a letter or fax. Encourage employees to communicate with the external world (such as members of the media or sales prospects), not via email, but through social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. This forces them online, and at the same time, simply replaces a task that’s already being done with another tool, and one that’s free…
2) Set up an internal blog or wiki to share links. You know that guy, the one who emails links to everyone? Well, it’s likely that you have some sort of enterprise software or can set up a free account on WetPaint or Ning that will allow employees to log into a closed network and share links. So set it up, and ask employees to share resources on the internal social wiki, blog or network instead of email everyone. It will actually increase productivity for those not clicking through, and provide a means of discussion for those who do, and a historical record/bookmark for the link.
3) Use an internal blog for project management. If you have a far flung team across several offices use a private/internal blog to provide updates on progress and solicit feedback. Again, this is another activity that’s usually done via email and Word, so you are not requiring new work, just changing the way it is delivered. You can also use a tool like Basecamp for filesharing.
4) Think people are tweeting or Facebooking during work? Some enterprises get in a real tizzy about this. But maybe instead of policing this, the right approach is to encourage microblogging across the organization with Yammer! Some companies let teams use IM or email to electronically chatter, too. Again, this is another way to harness that activity and build an enterprise wide conversation.
5) Recruit through social media. Yes, it’s a time when layoffs are predominant. At the same time, companies still have to replace critical positions. LinkedIn has always been a primary recruiting tool. Other networks like Facebook can work, too. And if social media is a skill set a company needs to embrace, what better way to do that then hire people already using the tools?
What would you add to the list?
Recruiting through social media is an absolute necessity. Especially in PR/Marketing. The best and the brightest can be found on there and likely will be actively participating.
Further Thoughts on Ways to Integrate SM? I’d say establish at least a toehold presence on a wide variety of social networks as well as do preliminary scouting/investigation of them. Saves time and money if you can classify where to best spend your time.
I think creating some small, low risk learning projects or a “deeper dive” group that uses the social media for a short-term project – something very easy, a win-win.
Also, brown bag lunches .. for those just getting started — but for the examples use what the “deeper dive” group has learned about social media. This, of course, assumes, there is already a learning culture in place.
In most organizations the opposition “fear” comes from the top, I think I have heard all five reasons stated in this blog as to why the company shouldn’t use social media. If organizations can get buy in from the top by setting up a group of senior execs using a small/private blog to share ideas or manage a project or even interact with boards or committees, then the “stigma” of social media and blogs will be removed. Acceptance trickles down slowly from the top.
Beth: Funny that you mention that. We have an internal PR 2.0 committee at CRT of five that’s responsible for driving the change across the organization.
All good ideas in the post above. I have also found one concrete way to convince company execs, or at least to get their attention about social media, is to create a couple of searches on various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Technorati or Google blogs) for the company name and another that would target the conversation that is occurring around their business niche. Right now, the conversation is going on without them, and their competitors might be out there already.
For example, a client of another PR colleague was dithering about using Social Media to reach individuals in the Pharmaceutical industry. I suggested searching for the phrase “Pharma.” There happened to be a national Pharma event going on that week, and there was loads of conversation going on using Twitter. Boom – the potential for a direct connection to their market opened their eyes.
Another example, we were asked to pitch a national membership-based association on integrating a social media marketing plan into their overall marketing plan, but some board members were not quite convinced. We provided links to searches of Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook, and blog posts and were able to show them that at almost 100 hundred of the local chapters were already using one or more of these sites to communicate about their chapter, plus a good number of non-members who were seeking organizational info via these channels.
It is a shift though, to finding your constituents where they like to hang out. Selecting the right site to start with, learning that sites ‘culture,’ then approaching them in the right way, with the right message. It can be done.
I love these ideas. Virtual brown bags — great idea. I just wrote about 5 ideas for using twitter-like tools at work yesterday (http://ow.ly/2Wwd).
Much of the fear of social media is driven by a lack of understanding about it from the top. Getting leadership to use social media themselves is a major hurdle, yes, but once accomplished will drive org-wide adoption like almost nothing else. I’ve seen clients use invitation only blogs, wikis and the hash(#) technology associated with twitter-like tools with great success.