One of the largest challenges any company faces in being successful with a Social Marketing or Networking Strategy is becoming a “Social Company”. For many, this is a huge change to the corporate culture. It takes a virtual axe to the tried and true chain of command and corporate communications channels. What most companies fail to fully accept is these types of connections and communications already exist. The smart company is now choosing to embrace and explore how they can be beneficial to them from a profit stand point.
Many of the enterprises today candidly admit to having a very silo’d approach to communication and knowledge sharing. There are invisible force fields around valuable information being shared among employees that do similar jobs but are separated by product line or geography. The forward thinking institution is thinking about ways to better connect and incentivize employees to collaborate and peer educate. What can be gained by dropping the force fields?
· Product Innovation
· Subject Matter Expert training
· Leveraging a Successful team to help a new or underperforming department
· Better understanding of customers by connecting the customer facing staff with support individuals
· Employee Engagement equates a higher retention
· Employees armed with knowledge and access to wisdom
· Decisions made in public increasing adoption support and uncovering potential pitfalls prior to implementation
· Better sense of corporate pride
· Employer of choice
What else can be added here? Whether it is creating a crowdsourcing site for innovative ways to increase sales, new products or cost saving measures or a community to discuss topics and collaborate on projects a socially connected company breaks down the silos and operates at a higher level of transparency and productivity. There are many out there that think opening up a community will actually decrease productivity as employees’ waste time. These are the same arguments posed by companies in the late 1990’s regarding email. Social communication is an evolution of email. 79% of Global Fortune 100 companies are using some sort of social channel to communicate with stakeholders. Why not what so many say is their most valuable asset, the employee. So, two questions I will leave you with today. Are you a leader in your industry or a follower? Are you ready to be a Social Company?
