One of the best parts of my job is getting out to visit our members in person. What’s especially fun about live events is the chance to see members’ eyes light up when they discover a new way to look at a particular challenge that makes it easier for them to address it.
I traveled recently to a cool and rainy Amsterdam to talk about social media with a number of our European members. (CEC members can check out the meeting materials here.) The 20ish participants, graciously hosted by Delta Lloyd, shared their experiences with the social media tools—such as blogs, Yammer, Facebook, and Twitter—used by many large corporations today. The best discussion, though, was focused on the social media questions that lack easy answers. Here are a few that we talked about:
- How can we convince internal skeptics (especially Legal) to permit more social media use?
- When should we respond to what is being said about the company on social media platforms?
- Who should be allowed to speak for the company on social media platforms, and within what guidelines?
But perhaps the most strongly felt question was: “What can (and can’t) be accomplished through social media?” This is a natural question, especially for professionals whose expertise is grounded in an ability to answer analogous questions (e.g., What can a good speech accomplish? What will get a press release picked up by newswires?). And I believe than within three years, we’ll be able to answer this question. But the truth about any new medium is that you can’t know what it’s good for without a little experimentation.
So the better question for communicators is, “How can I minimize risk and maximize learning from social media experiments?” Relieved of the burden of defining the “right” social media plan, CEC members can take a couple of concrete next steps: (1) define their company’s social media policy and (2) convene a social media working group or task force.
A great way we can help each other is to continue sharing our experiments with social media—successful and otherwise—to accelerate the collective learning process. What have your experiences yielded so far?
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