Social Media: It's just a bunch of tools right?

Firstly, I would just like to announce that we have a new addition to the family Dylan James Christopher which is also the reason for the long break between my posts on my blog (he's only a few weeks old and I am blaming him already).

However, I am refreshed and back!

Ok, so over the weekend I realised that I have been having the same conversations over and over again with colleagues that Social Media is so much more than the technology. So I decided that I need to take a different approach to communicating this message.

So I have put together the following slideshare presentation to get the message across in a fun but clear way. Please let me know if I succeeded.....

Social Media in Business: It's just a bunch of tools right?

View more presentations from David Christopher.

The right way to approach change

I had an interesting discussion today with one of my social media change agents who is struggling to convince their team that a social business community is a much better solution for 100 people to communicate and collaborate than an email distribution list.

The response from the team is not an unusual response. So why were they struggling?

Two reasons:

1. Empowerment
To be an effective social media change agent you MUST to be empowered by the Sponsor to make the necessary changes to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the team. In this case they were not, and they need to go back to the Sponsor to gain that empowerment and to have that communicated to the rest of the team.

2. Approach
The approach was wrong. The focus was on the removal of the email distribution list and to replace it with a social business community. It was a tool focused approach.

One of the earliest blog entries I read that really opened my eyes on how to approach a social media strategy was The POST Method from groundswell.

People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology.

Repeatedly I have seen people start a blog, or create a social business community because it is "the cool thing to do". A couple of months later they seem surprised when nobody is commenting on the blog or sharing / collaborating in the social business community.

What the social media change agent should have done is:

1) gain an understanding of the social capabilities of the group
2) be clear on what it is they wanted to achieve (i.e. what are their information flows - content, audience, sensitivity, frequency etc...) and identified any issues / challenges they wanted to overcome
3) plan how the group is to adopt any change in their information flows, including a clear communication strategy on how to transition from the old way of working to the new, and over what time period
4) identify the right technology based on the business needs

The end result is still the same - they need to implement a social business community, however the approach and reasoning is something even a hardened sceptic can follow and appreciate.

The tools are the enabler of the strategy, they do not define it!