Social media at work
Posted on December 7, 2009
Filed Under Social Media | Leave a Comment
It’s become such an everyday term that it’s hard to imagine that ’social media’ only dates back to around July 2006. But here we are a little less than 4 years later and Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many others have become an everyday activity for millions of people. And where you find millions of people, business will surely follow, as it has, with varying success. The transition to the stage where these on-line communities have become a significant part of many firms’ marketing mix has been so rapid, it’s no surprise that it has caught some firms on the back foot.
For small businesses, their size and subsequent ability to react quickly has allowed them to embrace these new technologies quicker and often better than many larger organisations. Small businesses have found creative opportunities to use these new technologies But this must surely be a temporary situation, and big businesses are already ploughing money into social media. But these same companies also have different issues to contend with. Whereas SMBs are often owner led and therefore owner responsible, big businesses have a number of issues to contend with:
- ensure that a consistent company message is communicated by all staff
- avoid employee inactivity – or how to ensure your staff aren’t skiving on Facebook all day
- ensure everything published is legal
- basically don’t do anything that will bring the company into disrepute
Big businesses weren’t all slow off the mark however, back in 2005 IBM wanted to issue a set of guidelines for staff (IBMers) that wanted to blog. Instead of senior management supplying a strict list of rules to be obeyed, they developed a wiki to allow IBMers to create there own social computing guidelines. Even though it was originally created to cover blogging, because they were implemented as a wiki it gave them, and still gives them, the flexibility to amend it as new technologies and social media emerge.
I’d be willing to bet that many businesses big and small are struggling to keep up with the pace of emerging technologies. But it’s at the stage where it’s almost becoming impossible to ignore. Even if you don’t make social media part of your marketing mix (and if you’re not, why not?) it’s almost a certainty that your employees will participating in one form or another, and is it not better to try and control your on-line signature than have it scrawled for you?
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