My Company is Social, But...

Way back in my first post about Joel Postman's book, SocialCorp:  Social Media Goes Corporate, I wrote out what I hoped to learn from reading it.  (Obviously, I've also picked up some tips in our weekly class lectures, by working on a group project for Gilda's Club, and from guest speaker Amy Mengel.)

So, how'd I do?

1. A stronger understanding of the best (and worst) ways organizations can use social media effectively.
   Over the past six weeks I've learned that you can put it out there, but it's got to be measured, especially if you want it to be an accepted practice in your organization.  (I think I already knew this because a component of my "real" job is metrics, metrics, metrics.)  Measurement shouldn't only be based on the number of Twitter followers; it also depends on how your intended message is being received. 
   If you're on Twitter for customer service, you need to be professional and have a standard plan.  In fact, you need to have a solid social media identity for your corporation.  You may have to stake a claim on accounts across the various sites so that others don't "brandjack" them (Postman 21).
   
   
2. Ideas for implementing social media and other online tools in my employer's online forum and blogging site.
   This goal was intended to help me work on my master's capstone.  I certainly took away quite a few things in the past six weeks that will help me on my capstone journey.  For example, most sites moderate comments in some way.  (Next step - figuring out how to get the users to accept that!) 
   Perhaps in the future we could use Twitter to help respond to user issues in real time.  (Right now I hope we don't have enough user support problems to make this necessary.)  I also dipped my toes into the legal pool - a place I'm going to have to continue my research in order to create a thorough plan.

After all this, what have I learned about the "social quality" of my company?  Overall, I think the organization has some learning, experimenting, and growing to do.  The subset I work with (the forum and blogging community) is doing pretty well.  Hopefully my capstone project's proposal to the organization will help clean up some of the communication issues between our users and administration!

I'm satisfied with my progress so far.  But social media is always changing and growing.  The quote "never stop learning" truly applies to this topic!


Resources:

Postman, Joel. SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2009. Print.