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To some decision makers, “social” media has the somewhat dubious connotation of people telling the world what they had for breakfast or spending a couple of hours each day keeping up with family and friends when they should be working. To others, it carries with it the connotation of excessive corporate risk because employees will use Twitter or Facebook to say something in violation of corporate policy. As an example of just how scared some corporate decision makers can be of social media is the NFL policy that forbids players to tweet 90 minutes before a game commences and through final postgame media obligations. Chad Ochocinco, for example, was fined $25,000 for two tweets and possession of an electronic device during the 2010 pre-season when he played for the Bengals.
My recommendation to those who are fearful of or resistant to the benefits of social media is to spend a day or two at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. I was there on Tuesday and – while I am already sold on the many benefits of social media – came away with a renewed appreciation of how important this technology will be in improving business processes, reducing costs, speeding decision making and improving overall corporate performance. More on what was most impressive in another post.
However, for social media to work there are three important questions that decision makers in any organization need to consider:
- First, do you have a corporate culture that will enable social media to add value? A culture that rewards information-hoarding or that encourages employees to build their own little fiefdoms within your corporate walls will simply waste money deploying even the most promising social technologies. Because social media is about, well, being social, organizations in which employees trade information only to get brownie points or to establish their own reputation will simply be wasting their time and money.
- Second, will the social media technology that you deploy simply be another thing for employees to do, or will it integrate with existing business processes so that social media becomes a natural extension of these processes? If the former, fuhgeddaboudit – it will simply be a waste of your IT department’s and employees’ time.
- Third, do you have a plan for social media? If not, don’t bother – as one keynote speaker put it, “Social without a goal is a whole lot of noise.”
In short, make sure that your corporate culture, integration plan and goals for social media are set before you deploy the technology. If you don’t, you’re probably better off not deploying social media in the first place.
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