The Enterprise Takes on Social Media – It’s about behavior not Tools

I’ve been fortunate/excited to be involved in several social media conversations with various departments inside the “enterprise” lately. This isn’t the first time I’ve talked to people about my ideas on social media or how to better collaborate, but this is the first time director-level executives have been at the table. Before that an interesting phenomenon had been taking place—individual contributors from all areas of the company were having informal, impromptu phone conferences, coffees and lunches to discuss how to sell social media to their management chain.

In all these conversations there is a growing trend I’ve noticed. People don’t know exactly where their place is in social media inside the enterprise. Now, I realize there are plenty of other large companies doing social media inside and out of the firewall successfully. This trend is what I’m seeing inside a company who has dipped its toes in the social media hot tub and is still deciding if it’s warm enough.

So, on to the title of this post. During these conversations I’m learning that most people have personal blogs, Twitter and Friendfeed accounts. So, it’s not that people don’t know about social media or haven’t engaged in it. However, when it comes to communicating work-related topics and ideas there is a definite pause.

The pause comes from the understanding that these tools are great for communicating, but who’s listening. Blogs, wikis and message boards have existed inside the firewall for some time, however participation is usually high in the beginning and then tailors off after the new blog smell wears off.

Here’s my point. For social media to work inside the firewall and out, it will have to take into account the behavioral change. I’ve noted before on this blog that my twitter adoption was almost forced at the beginning and now I can’t live without it. Keeping up with this blog has been a behavior change for me, because with two little ones at home and a busy work schedule, it’s been hard finding the time to write.

I’ve put together some ideas on how to force behavioral change within an organization below:

1. Place important documents on your wiki to ensure participation. Nothing drives people to an online community like having important schedules, memos, documents, etc. If it’s the only place to find them, they will have to come.
2. Provide communications on the organization blog. The idea here is if you want to be informed on executives thoughts, ideas, etc., force people to make this a destination.
3. Be old school about it. Emails, in-person reminders and quick “Top 3 Things Your Missing List” would be great reminders for low-tech people struggling to adopt the new communication tools
4. Have advocates. There’s a reason why the number of community managers and social media evangelists job positions are opening up. The human aspect of behavior change cannot be forgotten. These people act like consultants and provide support others. These positions should be proactive in nature and look to promote the tools and objectives of a social media organization.

For many, these ideas are a no brainer. If you were to generalize the enterprise social media standouts you’ll see that many of the companies doing a great job in this space are technology-based. I believe there is a reason for that—the employees of those companies have a technology behavior mindset. Hopefully, for those of you who don’t this post some what helpful.

As always look forward to hearing your feedback. If you have any tips for making a social media behavioral change in your organization, I’d love to hear them.