When it comes to social media, trust is everything

I was presenting Melcrum’s social media research to a group of internal communicators this week. It was one of those meetings where the range of experience went from “extremely knowledgeable” to “non-existent” with a band of dissenters in between. The first question I asked was “Do you think you’re culturally ready to adopt social media tools internally?” When you see eyes rolling at this question, you know you’re in for a rough ride!

The reality for this company is that employees are already using social media tools – 6,500 had already established a group on LinkedIn, despite their firewalls blocking access to the site in work time. Getting over IT hurdles is one thing, shifting attitudes among managers is quite another. For organizations like this one, still practising command and control, top-down management, it’s going to be difficult coming to terms with a more democratic style of communication. As Philippe Borremans of IBM fame says: "The first step in building a social media strategy is to recognize that it’s not for every company or every employee.”

Comments

[Alex Manchester]

Sounds like a tough crowd! However, 6,500 on Linked-In from one company is a lot, and I'd hazard a guess that this forms a good 10% of the workforce if not more. Those people must be getting some value out of such a network. Should that really be ignored by the company?

Also, there's a great debate going on over at the Black Belt Dojo regarding the level of participation, hype and time wasting aspects of social media. Lots of good points made.

[Annie Waite]

Chatting with Roger D'Aprix of ROI Communication at the IABC conference in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, he also voiced his concerns about social media hype. He mentioned that at the moment he's observing from afar and taking a back seat in the whole debate.