When enterprise companies decides that they want to
invest in social media, a lot of these companies do not look into their
own business structure to see if they are ready for going social and they
forget to do the proper investigation of the company maturity is in before
start using Social Media.
It is a fact that Social Media is a hit among consumers
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn is social platforms where consumers
do everything from telling what they are doing right now to discussing brands
and product performance. There is no doubt of the Social Media power, the
collaboration among consumers can change the behavior of big enterprises and
make them do things consumers demands. This is why the company has to do a
proper homework before starting the collaboration within social media.
What is Social Media not about and what can it lead to!
Social media is not about starting a weekly or monthly blog
from the CEO where there is no room for response or collaborative work, this is
not social this is just changing media from one communicating platform to
another. The proper way to embed social media into the enterprise company is
about empowering the influencers and drive adoption of social networks and
hereby secure the collaboration.
Social media is not just plug and play, social media can
be disruptive to the established communication structure and even to the
entire hierarchies of thinking in the enterprise company if the company haven´t
taken the proper precautions before just implementing the social media. Social
Media can even start challenge company policies, strategies and governance. An
example of preventing disruptions to company policies and strategies is how IBM
Denmark implemented social media in the general communication. As IBM have a
set of policies called business conduct guidelines the social media
implementation and strategy had to incorporate these policies and not disrupt
this structure. A dialog was established with the employees where the critical
subjects where discussed to secure a properly collaboration.
What is Social Media about!
How do an enterprise company get success with social
media?
- Task no.1 is to get employees to use the social media in a proper constructive collaborative way. This is not done by force or by telling employees that the company will save cost by using it. The success of social media adoption often requires senior management to lead by example.
- Task no.2 is making social media fun and useful to every day activities of employees.
- Task no.3 is to secure employees time to be social, and emphasizing employees by giving them credit for sharing on the social networks.
- Task no.4 is certainly not to get rid of other communication forms it is to secure the way that every employee should work together.
Will Social Media lead to no physical workplaces?
There has been a lot of guessing about getting rid of the
physical office and let people be distance workers as the digitization and the
social media platforms will allow this - but as predictions of the paperless
office has been proclaimed several times and not yet happened. Enterprises know
for sure that they can not attract young and visionary people if these people
do not have a community where they can test their visions. Social media will be
an important part of getting the visionary delivered to numerous employees by
collaborating.
The conclusion is that it is not just plug and play to
implement social media, however the enterprise companies that doesn´t provide
the social media tools to its employees will force the employees to use
external services and hereby exposing the enterprises to even greater risk. It
is not an option to modern enterprise companies whether to use social media or
not. The issue is how the enterprises create the proper environment to
appropriate the benefits and minimize the risk of using the new social media.
