IABC chair takes the plunge

By Alex Manchester, Editor, The Internal Comms Hub (Australia), Melcrum

Shel Holtz has just published a great post about the new 2008-09 IABC chair, Barbara Gibson, and her dive into social media.

It's big news, says Holtz, as previous chairs have not fully engaged in this way, but Gibson is starting with a splash:

As if a steady stream of posts (16 in July) isn’t enough, the blog also features Barbara’s most recent tweets and a link to her Flickr photostream (with only one photo so far, but it is a photo that tips the cute scale). A recent blog post shares Barbara’s first experiment on Utterz; another shows her in the Lively room she created after hearing about the Google virtual world from Neville. Her “about” page features a TripAdvisor map pintpointing where she’s been. And her profile page links to her LinkedIn profile.

What's most interesting to me is Shel's last couple of points:

Barbara’s willingness to engage the membership—and communicators at large—is refreshing. After all, you can only travel to so many chapter events every year, and even then you’re only connecting with members who turn out for the event.

Given skyrocketing travel costs and the demands on the chair’s time, reaching out through the virtual channels of her blog, Twitter, and other social media tools could provide valuable lessons for IABC and leadership by example for leaders and members alike.

These points resonate with me at the moment because I'm pretty bored of hearing about the "face-to-face is best" argument (or revelation, as it seems to be for many). It's something I wrote about in the last social media newsletter.

Getting out and seeing people is great. Connecting face-to-face with distant colleagues or contacts is great. But a lot of the time, particularly with travel, time constraints etc. mentioned above, face-to-face meetings aren't always feasible. You can't be everywhere at once.

Providing insight, updates, thoughts - regardless of whether it's a short burst like Twitter, a geo-tag on TripAdvisor or whatever - these small-form communications can add up. As a leader - be it head of a team, CEO - why not use some or all of these tools at your disposal as Barbara has opted to do? As Shel has written, this looks to be a great example. It will be interesting to see its long term impact on the IABC, and for communicators in general.

Alex

Comments

[Barbara Gibson]

Hi Alex,

I've only just come across this post, but wanted to thank you for the shout-out. Now that I've been in the IABC chair role for a few months, and have a bit more track record on the social media front, I can tell you that it's working well for me. I'm doing face-to-face meetings as well, but even that is richer because of the social media interaction, since many of the people I'm meeting have already become virtual friends. I'm also seeing a big surge in IABC members embracing social media. In many ways I still feel like a newbie, but thanks to the generosity of people like Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson in sharing knowledge, I'm catching up. And the more I play with this stuff, the more I love it.

Cheers,
Barb

[kare Anderson]

Alex
As a frequent speaker at IABC I hope that the IABC blogs open up more to involve non-members (such as exhibitors, speakers and other vendors)

And I hope to meet you here in S.F. at the 2009 conference

[Alex Manchester]

Hi Kare,

I'd love to go next year to San Francisco nest year (or any year, to be honest), but having left Melcrum and now focusing more on intranets, and within that social media, I think the chances of making it are slim at best!

Lee Hopkins is due to represent Australia at IABC San Franciso though, see his blog post about here.

@Barbara, that's great to hear too. Did you have much to do with social media being put into the Gold Quill awards?