Classical organizational thinking is so embedded in everything we do -- myself included.
As I've started to figure out different answers to "how do we get good at social media?" there are ever-more requirements for people to help.
The classical answer is "hire people to do this". The new answer is "use your communities".
Simply put, I've been amazed at the ability for social media communities to help solve social media strategy problems.
Ingrained Thinking Is My Personal Enemy
I have been in the workplace for something like 30 years or so. There's a fair amount of muscle memory built up on how to identify a problem, and hopefully how to solve it.
Early on in this process, I found that the 30 years of experience didn't always help me. Yes, I was pretty good at spotting problems, but my initial cut at answers came straight out of a 1990's-era textbook.
I am now learning to look at the problems (and proposed solutions) very differently than I would have looked at things just a few months ago.
It's a radical transformation in perspective that I have found unnerving, but essential to anyone (especially old farts like me) making this journey, or helping a company to make the journey.
Example 1 -- Social Media @ EMC
Early on in this journey, I realized that there were lots of people scattered across the company who wanted to participate. They had thoughts, perspectives and expertise on this problem.
I knew I had to engage them -- to do otherwise would be stupid -- but how best to do this?
We had an email distro ("blogs") that was ostensibly around people who blogged for EMC. It had somehow morphed into a community discussion around EMC's social media strategy and all that it entailed.
I'd come back from a meeting, and find 20 new messages on the subject. Not ideal.
I could have gone down the "we're going to have a meeting /conference call" path, but I can't imagine anything more unpleasant. Great way to shut things down, it is.
To make matters worse, we had some very strong and intelligent voices from around the globe. Cork, Ireland. And Australia.
So I came up with a simple idea -- let's build a social media site behind the firewall to -- well -- discuss social media strategy!
Now, remember, we have no official IT participation at this point. So a cohort of mind allowed me to put up DNN (DotNetNuke) on a shared staging server and give it a try.
I think it was important that I described the exercise as a "disposable site" -- no backup, no admin, it'd be around for a while, and then we'd scrap it. I just needed a place where people could hang out and discuss things.
Now, if you've ever used raw DNN off-the-web, it is not the most engaging tool in the world. Matter of fact, our site was butt-ugly, if you catch my drift.
But that didn't matter. Within a matter of 72 hours, we had a vibrant discussion going around-the-world from people who were passionate about the topic, and had something to say.
To the team's credit, my thinking about EMC's overall strategy evolved about six months' worth in about six days. It was an insanely great experience in the power of social media to get things done in a way that traditional processes just can't match.
Now, several weeks later, the site has gone idle -- people have moved on to other things -- but even if it never gets used again, it served its purpose and did so admirably.
Example 2 -- Blogging Coaches
We want more people to blog for EMC. But people need some help up front.
For some, it's an entirely unnatural behavior that goes against their every instinct. For a while, I went around to people I respected and encouraged them to blog for EMC, and it was almost like I asked them to get naked and run around outside.
Well, we could have hired a PR-type to find these people and get them comfortable with the whole blogging thing. And we may yet do that ...
But what we've done instead is create a community of EMC bloggers. We know each other, comment on each other's content, and generally try to be aware of what each other is doing.
We also are all on the lookout for new potential voices that can join the chorus of the EMC Blogging Corps. And when we find them, we use "community encouragement" to get them to join our ranks.
And when someone at EMC wants to be a blogger, we can invite them to the community: here's how you get started, here's how you avoid the pitfalls, here's some feedback, etc.
The blogging community at EMC is probably more effective (and cheaper!) than any centralized function could be.
And There Are More Examples Out There ...
I think we're going to need lots and lots of community developers and community managers. I can see a community springing up around this.
There's going to be a need to help people get comfortable with the user-level interactions of the tools. OK, an opportunity for another community, yes?
The Bottom Line
I have learned (recently) that sometimes the best answer to a social media problem is a social media solution -- use the power of the community to get things done, and get them done faster/better/cheaper than traditional organizational approaches.
I'll be writing more as I find more examples of this going forward.
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