Communicators still undecided on social media

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

I'm en route from Amsterdam following Melcrum's latest Social Media Forum held there this week. All in all, some good presentations from Michael Kiess of IBM, Pascal Roobrouck of Alcatel-Lucent, Kris Hoet from Microsoft, Sam Berrisford from Hill & Knowlton and others.

There was also time for interesting round-table discussions and lots of challenging questions put to speakers by the delegates.

What I was fascinated by is how divided communicators still seem to be about whether or not social media is something they should be involved in and what the value is for them and their organisations.

According to Melcrum's global study earlier this year into social media and internal communication, leaders who don't yet see the value of social media pose the biggest challenge to introducing these tools internally. But based on some of the comments and feedback from delegates over the last couple of day I think that a fair number of communicators remain unconvinced too.

It may be that in some organisations the biggest challenge communicators face when trying to introduce new social media tools is other communicators!

But ultimately this resulted in lots of healthy debate among delegates. And I think this tension between social media enthusiasts and sceptics mirrors exactly what's going on inside many organisations as people make sense of the new environment and how it impacts them.

There was also a number of comments about the fact that many of the social media tools – like blogs, forums and networks – seem to be used at present to facilitate conversations about social media. Which, Sam Berrisford pointed out, is a bit like using the phone to talk endlessly about the joys of using the phone!

Ironically, I guess that's exactly what I'm doing right now...

Comments

[Jean-Michel Biltresse]

Mandy,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

On my way back home from Asmterdam, I had some time to wrap up those two days spent with you all and thought I would share my conlusions.

I think it is all about defining what is social media. My personal definition of social media is based on three themes.

- Social media allows people to consume information when and how they want (RSS, Podcasts, Vodcasts, …)
- Social media facilitates collaboration and information sharing (wikis, social networking…)
- Social media encourages conversation online (blogs, forum, social networking…)

One common misconception is to reduce social media to just “encouraging conversation online”. If that’s the definition, then I do agree that most companies with a top-down communication approach will push back because it sounds too revolutionary.

If you look at the first two definitions, it is rather an evolution of existing communications tools than a revolution – may be that is where you should start introducing social media in your organization.

Also do not get caught by the hype, make sure there is a business purpose to be served.

Jean-Michel Biltresse

[Mandy Thatcher]

I agree with all those comments Jean-Michel. Especially regarding "evolution rather than revolution". And of course the dreaded hype. I'm sure each year we will see more and more examples of tools they have proved effective - and those that haven't.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[Alex Manchester]

A level of apathy is inevitable after all the hype social media has enjoyed in the last year or so, but I think it's too easy – and a big mistake – to subsequently dismiss it.

I'm hope we do start seeing more widespread, long-term programs where organizations are using the services and functions of social media tools (comments, ratings, collaborative spaces etc) as opposed to continued pigeonholing of starting a corporate "blog", "wiki" or whatever it might be.

I'd also agree on the "evolution not revolution" point.

[Richard Dennison]

I think some of our colleagues are moving from the 'denial' phase to the 'resistance' phase described so well in your Change Curve model (see: http://www.internalcommshub.com/open/change/toolkit/curve.shtml).

Let's hope they hit 'exploration soon ;-)