Loosen Up on Employee Use of Social Media at Work

via news.cnet.com

I have worked with several corporations whose fear of losing control of all communications, let alone security, has prompted them to shut down access of all social media from within the company. I can understand that. If I don’t understand something, my first inclination is to stop ‘it’ until I can make some sort of sense out of it. The question is whether or not leadership teams are just stopping it or trying to make sense of it.

While Gartner came out this fall and flat out told IT authorities that “banning access to social media is futile”, the real value is understanding how foundational social networking is to our success at work, and how social media is a critical extension of that.

“While a job may be regarded as an economic transaction, the human brain thinks of the workplace as a social system,” said Carol Rozwell (shown), a VP at Gartner. That’s because organizations ARE SOCIAL SYSTEMS. Not only will employees find a way around social media barriers at work, the reactions to such barriers could lead to an opposite and equal reaction.

The fact is that we want our people communicating. We want them active within both personal and work circles, and frankly, we hope there is sufficient overlap in both of those circles to give our people balanced living while at the same time continuing to build a positive brand for the organization (building positive perception, contributing to corporate and product success, increasing talent pipelines, etc.).

Instead of banning social media in the workplace, find someone on the leadership team with social media vision and make them the champion. If you don’t have one of those, then install one, because society is not going to do a social media u-turn and abandon it. Teach employee groups how to use it, when and where to use it, and how to integrate it into work processes. Give them encouragement and parameters to help them grow your brand, champion a winning culture and harness social media to grow the enterprise. Be transparent about your fears and passionate with your vision.

We could easily see in the next few years that there are dramatic financial and people results between organizations that leverage social media among employees and those that do not. Or we may not. Either way, social media is not going away, and performance will be far better for those leadership teams that figure out how to harness its power and enable their organization.

Marketing in Social Networks is not Network Marketing

My wife is part of a group of ladies that gather monthly to play a game of Bunco. There is nothing to the game – no skill or feats of strategery can win it.  And they

Marketing in social networks is about the network, not the marketers.

really don’t get together to play the game – they get together to simply get together.  Its their time to pursue a little something outside of the mainstream mom-hood.  And they enjoy it.  That is, until someone starts using the gathering to pitch them their latest networking marketing scheme.

Yes, there is a member of the group who isn’t necessarily a regular participant any more, and when they do show up, they end up talking all about their new business and how much money you can make and by the end of the evening have gone from covert to overt and uncomfortable.  Every time that happens, I hear all about how it ruined the evening and everybody was so turned off by it.  I can’t help but think of our current drive to market using social media.

In a great op ed piece written recently by Gareth Kay, he brought up the perspective (albeit semantic) that we ought not to be talking about social media, but about social ideas.  The media has been around and is really nothing new.  People getting together, collaborating, building networks, etc. – that’s nothing new either.  But to focus on the social media aspect is dangerously close to focusing on the means, and not the ends – the technology and not the results.  Marketing within the increasing waves of online social circles means that marketers will have to actually learn to 1. communicate and 2. listen, neither of which modern point-and-click directors have excelled at.

Marketing within the ‘social’ context includes active contribution, focusing on something other than one’s self and, instead of soliciting sales, soliciting collaboration towards a bigger purpose that fuels the social network itself.  When you show up to Bunco night and start pitching your wares, you’re not only way out of line, you’re way out in left field – nobody is there to get sold on your products or services.  They are there for the bigger purpose, THEIR PURPOSE, and you need to tie into that quick or you’re going to be the one not getting invited back to Bunco.