Corporates befriend the Facebook crowd

A lot has been written about the impact of social media and utilities — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs etc — on business.

There’s no doubt that social collaboration platforms mobilise the “power of the crowd” in many different ways.

They let communities create and share knowledge in a highly collaborative way. Indeed, the interaction is at least as important as the actual content that is being created.

According to Gartner Predicts for 2010, the number of active Facebook users —already the largest social networking community — is expected to rocket to more than a billion by end of 2010.

The impacts of this technology on corporate and individual brands have been enormous. Today, corporate and personal brands are accentuated or destroyed overnight by the lightning-fast way that information zips through the clouds.

Just look at what’s been happening to Tiger Woods recently; there was nothing even remotely gradual about the descent of this previously unassailable icon.

You also hear the example of the employee who expressed disdain for her boss on a social networking site only to receive a letter of dismissal through the same medium.

Take the advertising executive who travelled to a client’s town and Tweeted his disdain to colleagues: “I’d rather die than live here.” The client saw the Tweet and cancelled the contract!. And so on.

Basically two broad categories of corporate responses to social media have emerged: Users (whom I will call early adopters) and Non-Users. Let’s begin with the latter.

Research carried out by a reputable marketing firm showed that 51 per cent of company executives feared the potential negative impact of social media on employee productivity, and 49 per cent worried that they would damage the company’s reputation.

Besides this, security was also cited as a main concern.

Such corporates have employed strategies that included blocking employees from accessing social media while at work, creating resentment, mischief or worse.

On the other side is the other breed of corporate users who have overcome the fears associated with social media and who believe that they can be valuable.

They have gone ahead to implement social media connect application programming interfaces (APIs) and protocols to interface on their devices, applications and websites an interoperability that is becoming critical to the success and survival of social networks, communication channels and media sites.

Having gone through the discovery and experimentation phases of its life cycle, social media has simply become too big for firms not to factor it into their B2C strategies.

Its potential for advertising, public relations, communication, marketing, client support and service is huge.

So how can social media-averse organisations systematically overcome their inhibitions and begin to tap into their huge potential?

Pundits have recommended the establishment of proper governance structures for usage of social media within organisations.

They say most companies, in both early adopters and sceptics, did not have a proper social media governance structure in place.

Besides articulating how to or not to use social media as well as ownership and responsibility, a proper governance structure gives a clear picture of where organisations are, where they want to be and how to get there.

A proper governance structure should provide guidelines on how to safely and effectively interact across any social utility or channel, which is a great start.

Guidelines

Where an organisation finds enough of their customers and employees using a particular social utility, it might also help to provide guidelines that differentiate the organisation and also protect those employees in those social utilities.

Having done that, organisations can venture beyond the risks to the opportunities.

Instead of ignoring social media, organisations of all sizes should begin to define their strategy regarding social media, and most importantly, the rules for employee engagement.

These rules for creating and implementing a social media policy are, however, not universal.

They must take the form, substance, philosophy, and culture of the organisation to which they apply.

The bottom line remains: The policy must state the desired goals and objectives for use of social media while advocating responsible and secure use.

It is well to remember that even anonymous content can be traced back to the original IP address, what is published will be around for a long time and that Google has a long memory!

Caleb Musau is a consultant in IT assurance and advisory with PKF Consulting Ltd. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the firm. He can be reached on cmusau@ke.pkfea.com for comments.