Business Still Not Getting Social Media, Multiplicatively

Social Media Week 2011, London

Business still isn't getting social media, internally or externally. 

Externally: using social media to interact with customers, there's still too much talk that's uni-directional. Even when using social media for transmedia narrative I still feel like there's very little co-production and co-design going on.

We're still talking about using twitter and facebook for sales and promotions, for fixes and customer response. Whilst yes, there is back and forth in the latter there seemed to be very little talk at social media week about using it in a holistic process.

Internally: social media can aid communication and indeed intra-organisational functioning. The media140 event, "a guide to how social media can maximise your workforce," organisations expressed an unwillingness to trust employees with social media, especially social media used in a business capacity externally.

Competitive culture is so engrained in business culture that most businesses sound like their biggest barrier across the board is trust.  Even after the first several presenters had spoken there were still questions like, but people say irresponsible things on social media, how can you make certain they won't. Andy Piper from IBM put it like this, business should have a "light touch" social media policy but the only way that it works is that employees must be trusted to (act like grown-ups) and make good decisions. From the sounds of things, IBM has been able to use social media internally to knock at heirarchical structures and involve employees more in the production process.

There seemed to be widespread acceptance that social media used internally can help workers who are geographically dispersed to still feel part of the larger organisation, that social media aids collaboration such that time can be saved on meetings and can be used for 'push the button' reassurance.

Where I found the discussion confounding is when it came to talking about using social media externally: business knows that networking is important. The media140 presenter from EventExtra said that the conference isn't the thing, at conferences most people remember the networking, whether there was a band and things like that. Networking is important. Social media is another form of networking.  

Omair Haque writes about why competitive economic behaviour will continue to drag down the global economy. His contention is that cooperative action between businesses is the key to future 'growth' (though not growth as such, better growth). 

Indeed, former Virgin Media exec Abi Signorelli urged business to "go beyond the firewall" when it comes to employees and social media. A woman in the audience said that 'employees are the best representation of your brand.' Indeed, it appears Asda's employee social media connection is public.

Another thread of the discussion on social media was between using internal social media solely for work purposes, as a comms tool AND using it for employees to connect about common interests like the World Cup (Brit-Am Tabacco had serendipitous success with this, which helped the overall uptake of their platform). Cofacio's MD Simeon Stewart (interestingly enough because he had some insightful things to say and his platform looks great) seemed to imply that intra-organisation social media should be used only for business purposes. 

Cofacio's approach is interesting because their approach is one of learning, specifically observational, informal learning. Stewart cited a white paper from the UK government, where 70% of learning is informal, happening on the job.

When I started my career as a freelancer I understood that using social media would help my career prospects not only because it would make me visible but because potential employers would want to know me as a person. I think one of the ideas behind flexible working practice adoption (if we understand that it's generally gone mainstream, whether or not the uptake is all in) is that there is no reason that employees aren't people too-- that is, they have lives and life must be made an allowance for. When I first started tweeting someone said that I was a little too much business and that he really enjoyed the little glimmers of humanity every now and then.

Social media internally should be both business and pleasure. As I'm researching my PhD I'm finding (and Stewart should know this because it sounded like we've read similar things) that what attracts us to social media is storytelling, because we are storytellers innately. Moreover, it's not unreasonable to speculate that small spatial stories, the everyday ones that make up our lives and are universal that draw us into social media; re: most of twitter is chatter. By removing the personal from business social media you remove the human from the employee. This isn't right if we consider this: people remember the networking, business deals are made on the golf course and over dinner.

What do you think? Seen any great internal social media platforms you'd like to tell me about? (I'm preparing a piece on them for TriplePundit)