6 posts tagged “social”

Two very interesting conversations in the past two days with two parts of central government have made me realise that there are (at least) two camps of thought in the UK public sector.

CAMP 1: The first is the hesitant camp - not unexpected becasue the private sector is only now slowly gettting its corporate head around social media. What was surprising, however, was that that was not principally why there's hesitation. It seems that certain parts of central governemtn are - understandably - not comfortable with sharing any form of personal information online inside or outside of work. They are encouraged not to have any form of online presence, not only because the information might be used against them by sinister forces - it could also be taken into consideration when career progression is on the agenda.

CAMP 2: The second camp is much more gung-ho. That initself is the surprise. No sitting on the fence here - more a case of rational exuberence taking hold. Pass blogging (for they have Message Boards!) and go straight to our own version of Channel 9 anyone? Why not!

I completely get that Camp 1 is a function of the nature of the job, yet I can't help but think that there will be a significant group of intelligent, opinionated indiviuals not necessarily as comfortable with the developing ways of commuicating as they could/should be. Rally cries for Camp 2: Just do it. You have to be in it to win it. Gotta shoot if you want to score. You get the general idea. This is not without its own caveats but (and not to trivialise the important reasons behind there being a Camp 1) it really seems much more fun (oh, and relevant!).

This line is something that encapsulates the essence of social media in a corporate context for me. It's a derivative of the introduction to the Social Media Club video: Ideals to Ideas - be everywhere your customer expects you to be. And even if you think that your employees don;t expect you to be on a blog, vblog, wiki etc, surprise them!

Social Media Club: Ideals to Ideas

I did see another clip from elsewhere that was a seminar called something like: From Social Media to Corporate Media. Now, there's not getting it, and there's not getting it!

So Bliin have developed a concotion of GPS, Google Maps and social networking to produce something that allows you to see where you/your friends/your stalkers (according to Radio 1) are. It's billed, rather unimaginatively, as the next step in social networking. So I signed up this morning, read up a little, downloaded stuff and got ready to see where I was. But got stopped dead in my tracks as neither my computer, BlackBerry or modile phone had GPS!! So close. So far.

I read the following from the ever-rapier Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times the other day (A quick message for the e-mail killjoys, 24/04/07 - subscription needed), and it struck me that in terms of what to consider when a company starts to draft blogging/social media guidelines (bare in mind, as far as i know, Microsoft have none) is the follow nugget relating to e-mail etiquette laid out in the US business bestseller Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe.

"There are only two rules in Send that I wholeheartedly agree with: polite is better than rude, and legal is better than illegal. However, if you need to have these pointed out then I’d like to suggest a rule of my own: your poor mastery of e-mail technique is the least of your problems."

Not only e-mail or blogging common sense, just plain old common sense!

I guess they're making enough money down at Melcrum becasue these very nice guys are giving away the first chapter of their rather good How to use social media to engage employees report. Not sure how long the offer will last, so be quick.

So, still playing catch up here. Put up the videos that I could remeber relating to what i am calling Really Simple Social Media. You have RSS, Wikis, Blogging, as well as the case for and (sort of) against Web2.0. Hope they help - i know i keep refering back to them at the moment!