Journal

Internal Communications: A Social Media Freshman Among Upperclassmen

This is a guest post from Jason Anthoine of workplace communications firm The Cohesion Group. It’s the result of an email Jason sent me asking whether I’d covered social media usage within organizations and a nice follow-on to an earlier post of mine looking at internal communication systems. I was intrigued by Jason’s email and asked him if he’d be interested in writing about it here. Enjoy.

Remember in high school how, as a freshman, you were relegated to the uncool tables where all the kids with braces, bad haircuts and square clothes sat? Freshmen weren’t allowed to mingle with the upperclassmen, even the sophomores, since they were still just kids.

In my job as an internal communications consultant, sometimes I feel as though I’m dealing with a whole bunch of freshmen all the time. Let me tell you why.

About four times a year I conduct a workshop through the Advanced Learning Institute about the impact social media is having on internal communications for companies and government agencies. I’ll be the first to admit I’m no expert when it comes to social media. But I know more than your average bear, I guess, especially as it pertains to internal communications, which is something I do know a good bit about.

One thing I do before the workshop is conduct a short survey of the participants to find out where they are on a social media scale. They rank themselves as being either a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, teacher or principal. This gives them a chance to plant a flag in the ground about their own capabilities, and it gives me the opportunity to fine-tune the workshop based on their responses.

The vast majority of them rank themselves as freshmen. True, they probably wouldn’t be at the workshop if they were more advanced in their usage of social media at work. But this number has remained rather steady over the past couple of years I’ve been conducting this informal poll.

Mind you, these are, for the most part, mid-level to senior internal communicators at corporate and government positions, meaning they have roughly 15 years experience in communications. Most have direct line reporting structures to senior human resources, corporate communications or executive leadership positions. And most of them freely admit that they’re scared to death to go on Facebook and haven’t the slightest clue what Twitter is or does.

We spend the bulk of the morning’s time going over the basics of blogs, RSS, Facebook, podcasts, Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn and wikis, as well as measurement of these tools. We also spend some time on the many open source tools that allow you to quickly create communities like Kick Apps and Ning.

Despite a slow and plodding pace, I feel as if I’m asking them to drink from a fire hose as we go down this list of social and new media basics. By the end, we’re all a bit exhausted and there are dozens of questions in addition to all the ones we’ve discussed along the way. We usually run out of time before we run out of need for time.

I’m afraid that these folks are the norm within most organizations. There are a few organizations that are doing social media internally very well, namely IBM, Nortel, Microsoft and British Telecom, among others. But most are still stuck with one-way, decidedly unsocial ways of communicating with their employees, i.e. newsletters, bulletin boards, email and static intranet sites. Of course, none of these tools are irrelevant. They may just be outdated as they are being used.

As I’ve said before, it’s a shame that we have so many of these new, wonderful communication tools we can use internally yet they are so underused. People leave their jobs and join and participate in social communities while at home, where they learn and grow and share and better themselves and others. Then they return to the office and it’s 1993 all over again. Or 1973, depending on the location!

The good news? We didn’t have to sit at the freshman lunch table throughout high school. Eventually we moved up to being sophomores, juniors and seniors, and earned entrance into the cool section of the lunchroom.

Internal communications is slowly growing up and will eventually join its cooler siblings in advertising, marketing and public relations when it comes to social and new media usage. It may take a while, but the wheel is turning.

It could be worse: we could be stuck at the same table with human resources.

Jason Anthoine is head honcho with The Cohesion Group, the workplace communications firm. You can find and connect with him on Twitter and at his blog plaintalk. He runs slower than your average bear.

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Clouding The Issue

: Image by william.n via Flickr

How well do you keep your personal and business life separate? Are you able to separate the two relatively easy, or do they crossover too much to have significantly different views? Or to put it another way, if you had a personal issue with someone could you still work with them professionally?

I ask this as a situation arose today where I had to question whether I was in the wrong, someone else was, or was there even any wrong to start with. Okay, that sounded confusing – let me try again.

For anyone’s that’s been reading this blog or following me on Twitter for the last month or so, you’ll know that I founded a charity project for 2009, the 12for12k Challenge. While ambitious in its fund-raising aim, it’s also (to me) achievable, thanks to the way that myself and the partners that have joined me in the challenge are leveraging social media to raise funds.

Everyone involved in the project is giving their time for free – there’s no admin cost and any man (or woman) hours put in is on top of normal work and personal time. I don’t say this to make us sound like saints, although personally I’ll never be able to thank these people enough for the help they’re giving.

Rather, I say it to show that when it’s a good cause, people generally come out in force to help in whatever way they can. It’s called selflessness and it also goes to you kind people that are donating to each month’s chosen charity.

So today stunned me a little.

One of the hardest things with the 12for12k project (and, I’m sure, other non-profit causes) is raising awareness. Hitting people at the right time, driving traffic to the website for details, getting the word out – it’s not easy. Also, because of the economy and time of year, donations are a little slow at the minute. Which we always knew might happen – January is a tough month for countless charities.

To try and raise awareness, my partners and I are reaching out to our social media connections to ask if they’d help promote to their followers on Twitter. Or write a short blog post. Or record a video message for us, much like Jason Falls did. So far, everyone we spoke to has been brilliant – if they can’t do it right away, it’s definitely on the immediate future agenda.

Everyone apart from one.

Open and Shut Case.

One of the creative partners on the 12for12k team emailed a particular social media “power player” and asked if they’d be open to any of the above promotional suggestions. The response was, “No – I have an issue with someone on the team.”

Uh – run that by me again?

Now, unfortunately, I don’t know what the issue is or who it’s with since no further information was forthcoming, but I’m a little surprised and maybe just a tad disappointed.

This person prides themself on how open and helpful they are to other people, and helping others to attain the goals they set out to reach. Their blog has an excellent and loyal readership and their Twitter account is close to 20,000 followers.

So this is why I’m left scratching my head. I can’t see any issue this person would have with one of our team that they would put it above trying to change the lives of millions of people. I put the question out to Twitter, about personal issues clouding professional ones, and with few exceptions the answer was pretty unanimous – be professional, work around the issue and get the best results.

Of course, if it’s an ethical problem that this person has with either me or one of my partners, then I can understand their point of view. Ethics play a very large part in my personal and professional make-up, so I do understand.

Yet knowing the partners like I do, I just don’t see where an ethical issue could come into play. Which means it must be me, for some reason. Hopefully the person involved will respond to my email asking what the issue is and can it be resolved.

I know there will always be reasons for not liking someone, personally or professionally. I know there are times when you don’t want to work with someone. Yet for all these times, surely the greater good of a project should see you able to overcome personal feelings and get a professional job done.

Or is that asking too much? How about you – can issues be overcome or are the clouds too dense?

Why Scott Monty of Ford Motors Has My Respect

Being the lone line of defence when pretty much everyone’s after your blood is a thankless task that no-one should have to face, but Scott Monty of auto manufacturer Ford proves it can be done. As the lone social media face of the US car giant, Scott probably has one of the toughest jobs around at the minute:

– He has to face negativity surrounding his employers and their part in the auto-bailout

– He has to show social media’s worth in an industry not always associated with open minds

– He has to deal with some pretty vociferous opinions thrown his way as the face of a frequently unpopular company

I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been one of the people that have thrown some of these tough question’s Scott’s way. I’m not a big fan of under-achieving companies being “rewarded” for their failures with a Get Out Of Jail card. Maybe it’s my Scottish upbringing, or my grandad’s socialist side showing a little. But to me, you live or die by your own sword and the auto and bank industries didn’t do that.

Yet that’s an argument for another time.

Anyone inside the social media bubble knows how difficult it can be to not only make your voice heard at times, but to make it respected. So many variants and opinions of what’s right and wrong – although is there actually a right and wrong in social media to begin with? So to use the medium and make it work for you is a skill.

What Scott Monty does goes beyond that.

While his parent company Ford were being publicly flogged for the company’s CEO flying into Washington in a private jet to state his case, news broke of Ford going after an enthusiast site for trademark infringement. With the climate already hostile toward Ford, word soon spread throughout social media sites and networks about Ford bullying “one of their own”.

Instead of ignoring the situation and letting the legal team resolve it, Scott engaged the hostility head on and promised to keep everyone up-to-date with proceedings. This he did from his Twitter account – from latest news from Ford, to conversations with the site in question, to bringing the full story into public view.

The fact that he did this and kept the owners of the website on his side (not to mention gained new fans into the bargain) says a lot about Scott’s value in the social media world. The guy epitomizes all that’s good about this field we play in – transparency, honesty, openness, interaction and trust. And he does this every day of the week.

Of course, people might say that this is what he’s being paid to do, so he should be responding to the public – and that’s true. But how many people can honestly say they’d keep putting themselves in the firing line of such an eager execution squad and remain positive about it? That’s the difference.

Being genuine isn’t always a visible trait in the PR industry – being genuine in an industry where you’re only as good as your last sale is particularly less obvious. Like anyone, I can be a pretty tough taskmaster when it comes to the everyman versus the corporate giant.

People like Scott Monty mean I have one less giant to worry about.

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The Social Media Goes Gonzo Blog Carnival

Welcome to a first for me (and many others, it would seem). The Social Media Goes Gonzo blog carnival was suggested to me by fellow blogger and provider of invaluable information Kilroy_60.

Host of numerous carnivals himself, this is the first social media one and he asked yours truly if I’d be interested in hosting it. So, here we are.

The idea behind the carnival is to take you on a journey through the social media blogosphere, and introduce you to people that you may never have read otherwise.

Since I’m making this up on the fly (oh the fun!) I can only hope it comes out okay – don’t be too harsh on me! So, without further ado, we’re off!

Let Me Take You On A Journey.

Much has been made of how impersonal social media can be, due to its inherently online bias. Yet where else can you celebrate 500 Twitter followers with a cake? Of course, making sure you read the Fine Print can help avoid cries of “You left me, you really left me!” when you lose Twitter followers. Although you could always try out another 9 social media sites for local networkers if Twitter causes too much pain.

And that’s the great thing about social media – the whole web is your home page so you’re never truly alone. This opens up a whole new way of virtual socializing as well as networking. From talking to journalists on Twitter to taking on things like the dollar challenge to help kids in Colombia enjoy a better education, our voices are being heard like never before and making anything possible.

Of course, not everyone is convinced. There are still questions like, “Okay, social media rocks – but is it good for business?“. It’s a fair question but one that can be answered fairly easily – yes, it is. If you’re willing to listen. This will help you avoid 6 common mistakes companies make in social media.

A slightly more difficult question to answer is why cheating is okay in social media. Let’s face it, no-one likes cheaters – but are there lesser cheats than others? Perhaps – you decide. After all, the life we live comes from the choices we make.

Interactivity is another area that both individuals and businesses can benefit from with social media. Did you know, for instance, that it’s helped product ambassadors help solve customer issues immediately? Of course, offers of help are just one facet of social media – many are simply happy bragging about their Gettysburg trip to their online buddies. Personal and professional – it’s all there. The connecting factor is the sociability of it all.

Yet with all this socialness, are we in danger of opening up just a little too much? Or is that the point? What is too much information in social media anyway? I guess it boils down to if you are worried about numbers or people. If it’s numbers, information isn’t really important – but if it’s people, it opens up yourself that little bit more and helps build that all-important relationship.

After all, at the end of the day, relationships are what social media is all about. It’s why you have people so passionate about stopping the automated messages on Twitter, as it feels so impersonal. It’s why we all help in growing bolder Twitters so they can enjoy the experience more. We want to be social; we want to build relationships.

A great way to do this is via a blog, and it can be fun as well. From just starting out and raising a baby blog to the other end of the age scale and discovering what Johnny Cash can teach us about blogging, bloggers are fostering relationships every day with their readers. Bloggers can share milestones, like a blog’s first year in the blogosphere; they can share advice on finding your identity, like offering 5 tips to stand out online if you are John Smith.

Discussing the state of the blog with your readers is another great way to foster your relationship with them. Asking what they like, what they’d change – it’s letting them be a part of it. And being a part of something helps you solidify your place in the social media universe and that of your blog – and if you’ve already invited your readers to jump on board, it’ll be a place already filled with friends.

Business blogs are becoming more popular too for their ability to build company/customer relationships, and not just in traditionally office-based occupations either. For instance, the combination of heavy equipment and social networking may seem strange at first, but should it be? There are all types of businesses, so shouldn’t there be all types of business blogs?

And that’s the beauty of social media – there are no boundaries because of “tradition”. Instead, it’s adaptable to what you’re already doing. You don’t need to say, “Goodbye SEO, hello social marketing” if you’re a search engine specialist; instead, use both together to strengthen results. Scholastically, social media can connect professors and professionals to further mindsets between the two. Flexibility is its strength.

It’s true that, to some, social media is a language of its own – like anything, it’s not for everyone. But if you’re even just the slightest bit curious to learn more about that thing called social media, you can be sure there will be plenty of hands to guide you along the way. After all, just like this blog carnival has been, it’s a journey we can take together.

My sincere thanks to everyone who made this maiden voyage of the social media goes Gonzo blog carnival possible: Michael Litman, John Carson, Allen Taylor, Jonathan Crossfield, Rachel Marek, Matt Churchill, David Miller, Julie Schwietert Collazo & Francisco Collazo, Teresa Hall, Shannon Cherry, Justin Goldsborough, Kari Rippetoe, Drew Gneiser, Tim Jahn, Vision Runner, Jared O’Toole, Marc Middleton, ASM Development, Andy Klebacka, Kilroy_60, Hjortur Smarason, Zoe Westhof, Anthony McCune, Jacki Brown, and Sam Bradley.