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Audio:
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Slides: The Social Company Culture
Transcript:
Good Afternoon, everybody. My name is Andrew Gerrard. I’m a social developmental media and consultant. Much of what were hearing um, at the moment is all about outbound social media marketing. I’m also interested in exploring the internal company culture of um, social media. And companies that are creating cultures that get social media, and, and use their staff and employee base to um, actually help promote their businesses. Um, that’s me, um, some of you may not be able to read this at the back, but it’s really just to kind of illustrate that, that companies really are already social today. I mean, whether it be around the water cooler, whether it be around the social club or the work outings or even just getting together for a drink on a Friday afternoon after work.
Companies are already, quite social in their very nature. But the problem is, that companies just don’t realize it. And they have these people who are starting to use social networking. And um, this kind of also illustrates the point about how there are people out there using social networks that tell them, doing it without the company actually knowing. And as you can see few of you I’ll read that for you, “ I knew a kid like you once, arrogant cockshore, thought you didn’t need to join a social network, then one day he just stopped existing.” And it kind of says, the point really, that companies have people who are starting to use social networks.
Whether you allow it, or whether you would embrace it, or whether you won’t be actively doing it or not. And, and this comes as a little bit of a shock to ah, the company, the corporate environment. Um, this is just a bunch of old dudes, um, saying, “hey, you know, what is this, um, Facebook and this Twitter, are you sure this is really gonna happen?” and um, the future man saying, “sorry to burst your bubble dudes but you asked yes, that’s the future.” Um, and companies really have to try and start to understand that their employee bases and their cultures have to start embracing social media internally, in order for them to actually be able to start externalizing it.
Little bit of more of a complicated cartoon for you. Um, Dilbert, I love Dilbert, and um, “ Some of the Tweeter stuff that I’ve been doing is absolutely great.” Effectively what this is saying is that, um, you know, these two guys, um Dilbert saying to the boss, “hey look, why don’t you try Tweeter, so that we can follow you and we can be part of what you’re doing. Keep us updated with your very movement.” Of course, the payoff in the end is that um, they’re asking, “Where is your boy now? In the parking lot. No need to look busy yet.” So it kind of says, you know, that you have to be able to understand what your employees are doing, what your company culture is all about, in order for you to start getting the most of out it. And, and to start doing that, I started talking to clients and to people about finding the sweet spots. Finding the evangelists, the internal practitioners.
People who are using social media, not just for um, their personal life but perhaps they are starting to use it for business as well. Just a month wide organization rather than just going to marketing or the PR department and saying, “you’re responsible for doing social media, now go do it.” This is about trying to find the um, the hotspots within an organization where people are actually ready, willing and able to go out there and start doing um, some social media. Because eventually what happens of course is um, the organization as a whole would get it and the employee base and the cultures within will actually start to generate and feed your business. And you’ll start to feel part of the brand. Um, the culture that you generate for your company actually becomes a part of what you do. If you’re not just externalizing through social media, you’re actually embracing it internally. And your employee base would turn into a field of [inaudible.]
Um, some of you may have seen this um, particular graphic before, it’s the, it’s the blog, um, the post that the US Air Force used, in order to um, just check and find out whether or not you know, a blog is worth responding to, what kind of interaction people within the US Air Force should have with particular blog posts. I put this up as an example; really just to say actually they are some very surprising organizations out there that are starting to address this very issue. And it’s quite in sophisticated and material ways. And these by no means, are the only organizations. Um, I have actually got a list of social media policies and guidelines in a blog post.
It’s not mine, actually. I’ve got the um, I’ve got the URL, which I’ll be tweeting out for you on the hashtag of social governance, which lists out social media policies and guidelines. If you want to go and check those, um, and take a look at them and find out whether any of them are appropriate and modify them for your own purposes. Um, finally, um, a counterpoint to this is not to embrace it completely and to throw the doors open and just let’s start, start using Facebook and Twitter and Linkedn and whatever social media tools and channels they want to use. There’s got to be a balance between freedom and corporate governance.
I mean it’s quite easy to imagine that some types of organizations will probably more regularly embrace social media than others. Uh, you know, I’m not sure GCHQ would take too kindly to saying to their employee base, “Go use youtube and start uploading videos of what we do at work everyday.” I’m not sure that would work um, too well. And, and then the last point that I’m going to make before I finish is, that whatever the tools and the channels of social media are that were using for both external outbound marketing, internally this works as well.
So, I’m starting to encourage clients and organizations to start building internal social media platforms that they could then give to their users and say “hey look, here are the tools, here are the channels, here are the technologies, but it’s up to you to use it. It’s up to us as an organization within our culture to start using social media. And to start using it to promote our brand and our products and our services in a much more socially oriented way. Okay, that’s um my last slide, just um, to finish on. I have actually sent off a tweet string with the uh, the key points from that slide show. And the slide show is already up on Slideshare. If anyone wants to go and take a look at it, but I think um, it’ll be up from mash up, anyway.