Should internal comms steer clear of social media?

Last week I helped run an internal comms workshop for a client. We organised a closing debate on whether social media should be embraced by internal communicators.

I joined the team arguing that IC practitioners should steer clear of social media. It was a hoot!

These were some of our arguments:

• we already have too many channels
• we're just adding to the clutter
• if employees see the fingerprint of corporate comms the content loses its authenticity
• employment lawyers are ready to pounce on employee blogs
• employees don't even want these new media
• execs just wanting to be associated with latest tools are wasting our time
• if we go all the way down the social media route, we can't get our corporate messages out
• work isn't 'social'

They're just the ones I can remember. The experience confirmed for me what I already knew: that in the majority of internal comms situations social media is not the answer.

But the newsletter and intranet were never the answer either.

 

Published 04 December 2006 13:47 by Phil Turner

Filed under: Social media, Internal comms

Comments

• 

  Scott Scott said:

  I read your latest blog entry and was immediately moved to respond – I suspect this was your intention.
  
  So I decided to look up the definition of social media, just to be sure I understood what you and your IC colleagues think we, the communication proletariat, don’t need.   I hit my friendly neighbourhood social media tool, Wikipedia, and typed in my search term “social media” and the definition I received said “Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.”
  Seems pretty reasonable to me – tools to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.
  
  So I put this definition together with the arguments against from your recent blog entry, much of which bothered me, but in particular, the comment that “work isn’t social” and I have to say I disagree with your conclusion that social media is not the answer.
  
  What is work to most people (and I am most people) if not a social experience?  Set aside the organisational goals, be they financial or otherwise, and the essence your are left with is the relationships that people have, relationships based on sharing of opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives.
  
  Ok, so relationships are best built face to face, and depend on more than just bits and bytes in a computer, but social media helps the building of these relationships, especially in the organisational context.   How much better would starting a new job be if you could spend a couple of days looking around on the company wiki - who people are; projects / campaigns they have worked on; departmental structure and processes; organisational terminology; suppliers and their services; social aspects of the organisation.  This is information owned and maintained by every individual in the organisation- should they choose to participate – and Wikipedia is a great example of how useful this medium can be.
  
  The Wikipedia article I read was created on 6th July 2006 and had been edited by 27 different people, all 27 of whom I’m sure wrote it based on sound experience and with their audience in mind.   No clutter, one channel, no corporate comms, non-litigious (hopefully), owned by 27 experts, and no execs in sight (excluding me).   How sociable – do you get my drift?
  
  IC professional, heal thyself.
  
  December 4, 2006 22:06
• 

  Tina Lang-Stuart said:

  Thanks Scott for coming to the defense of social media in internal comms.! And thanks Phil for this post (I can't get rid of the feeling that you're playing devil's advocate here!) as it shows that there's still a lot of resistance within corporations to embrace social media.
  
  However showing some examples might help. If you can demonstrate how a wiki can successfully support a global company with various locations, then you might get a better response. It most often boils down to showing the benefits of social media and what can truly be accomplished. That's, however, where new media still falls short as there are no standard metrics yet on how to measure the ROI of social media - externally or internally.
  December 5, 2006 13:52
• 

  Phil Turner said:

  I should say that when we had the debate, the jury decided that my team (against using social media for IC) lost the argument.
  
  So Tina and Scott please take heart in our defeat!
  
  I am indeed playing devil's advocate. But I still question whether there's a genuine desire for social media within most organisations. Despite the numbers that get trotted out - 60 million bloggers, billions of podcasts - I still don't see many people actually taking part in them. And I still question whether just because I spend every waking hour outside of work on You Tube and MySpace that I want to replicate that environment in the office too.
  
  We've a long way to go before I can spend half my day on my company's social media outlets without someone telling me to stop surfing the net and do some work.
  
  I'm not saying that social media is never the answer for internal communicators. I'm just saying that for most organisations (at the moment) and for most situations it's not the answer.
  December 5, 2006 18:28