I have spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out the silver bullet for implementing a Social Media infrastructure within a corporate (non-tech) environment. I think I am beginning to see wherein the difficulity lies...
Up to now my focus has been on getting the technical infrastructure in place. And also up to now I have always said that the cultural issues would be a bigger hurdle than the technical ones, but I wasn't really sure what that meant. I think that part of the cultural puzzle deals with understanding your existing culture. If I were able to magically snap my fingers and have a world-class social media platform in place, I don't believe that it would go anywhere, at least not immediately, in a fundamentally authoritarian culture. The culture shock would be too great. The norms for operating in an open transparent environment would not be in place.
I believe the answer is organic grassroots growth. Bite off small chunks, start with small groups where trust and openness are already working assumptions. Let those groups be the ones to tell the story. "Be the ball." Use word-of-mouth as the engine to make the case for using social media.
You're right on the mark - and do you want to know how to get people in organizations to think about how social media can work for them? Get to know them, get to know their business and form a relationship based on trust. Then, when they need someone to explain what it all means - they'll listen to you.
Same as it ever was.
Posted by: Maggie Fox | January 11, 2007 at 11:35 AM