Cross-discipline social media initiatives

Thanks to Marc for alerting me to this Mashable’s article by Aaron Uhrmacher, which is too good not to be shared. To begin with, it reinforces my shout about cross-discipline adoption of social media application. I wasn’t alone on this, or even being overly idealistic. The second thing is, Mashable hit the sore spot to start the article by first identifying the core obstacle, businesses still do not know how to integrate it into useful and productive modes of communication apart from just trend-followers.

To keep this short, I am going to run you through some note-worthy points which Aaron seeks to lead readers to think about. Overall, the ideas were very precise and the social media we are realistically look at now seemed too primitive. Along with it, I will append a local example to matchmake to those ideas.

Introducing New Employees. Many companies ask new hires to send an email introduction to their department or to the entire company (depending on its size). Instead, start an internal blog or social network where new employees can post their introductions…

Singapore: When Yebber recruited bloggers under her wing, it was also publicized through the personal blogs of the new employee/collaborator. We typically inform associates via emails of any changes in employment and contact and this delivers the spread of news further than a mere newsletter, which is only circulated to you if you sign up.

Public Relations. With an external facing corporate blog, the communications team can engage its publics (customers, media, analysts or other audiences) in brand conversations. Blogs can extend the conversation beyond the press release…

Singapore: National Heritage Board has effectively maintained Yesterday.sg and involved bloggers in the contributions towards the cause. While this blog does not sell products literally, it enables conversations between the board, contributors and readers. Something not quite possible via traditional media. It also becomes an added option for publicity of heritage events.

Customer Support. A staple of many technology companies, support forums are searchable threads of conversations where engineers or product designers can answer questions and help troubleshoot issues. The best part is that once a question is answered…

Singapore: When blog advertising network Advertlet’s domain “accidentally” expired, an emergency blog served as the temporary customer support to bloggers and publishers. Instead of replying to enquiries individually (which can be time consuming), a page of answers is available to all.

The benefits of how social media tools like blogs and wikis are endless. However, to rip the best out of social media isn’t about the IT tools solely. Technological knowledge is only a small part of it, the start. What comes next, is the application of these tools through various departments. Of which, some are easily accessed by consumers and associate partners.

For social media to come to this stage, I foresee an uphill climb. The arena is still being tested, the ethics are still being penetrated, the rules are set to be changed, participation is about to increase even more and finally, we can then tell who is realistically doing social media, and who’s not.

Read Mashable’s article HERE.

By Ed | July 22, 2008

Filed Under Social Media, Social Networking

 


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