Over the past year the cultural forces of social media has become so great that corporations will have no choice but to have some sort of compulsory involvement. Those that freely use it with sincerity will prosper; those that reluctantly use it because they “have to” will not.
Most corporations have a top-down approach that typically seeks to maintain tight control over it’s employees, although that’s increasingly difficult these days. This “top-down culture” is contradictory to the fundamental values of social media. Social media are “bottom up” largely — though there are “influencers” that may drive certain conversations. The simple use of social media to drive change can only imply a culture shift within organizations that pushes some degree of authority and control down to front-line employees. Since it also implies more transparency and “openness” we can only assume that it could change an organization’s culture.
Is it possible? Well it just might be. The company I work for has recognized the value of social media to engage employees and drive innovation. This summer we decided to look beyond our traditional marketing approaches and asked our employees to create a short video commercial about one of four non-traditional services. The results have been nothing short than staggering: 120 submissions from employees from every business area across Canada such as letter carriers, postmasters, clerks, supervisors and customer service representatives with over 80,000 video views from around the world. I have received numerous emails stating what a great idea this was and how they felt about creating their video. Employees also expressed their appreciate for the opportunity to have a say on how we market our services. However the one thing that made me believe that we may have taken the first step in changing our culture is how engaged our employees were throughout the submission period. It was exciting to see their enthusiasm, creativity and passion for the company they work for.
Time will tell if we were successful. My hope is that we will build on the momentum and continue to engage our employees through the use of social media.
Let me know your thoughts – please leave me a comment.
Filed under: Social Media
The contest was a smashing success. After about a week of trying some old-fashioned ways of marketing my video, I realized I would have to up my game, so doing some research I stumbled upon what was known as social media. Internet forums, social blogs such as facebook and Twitter, these seemed to be a big snowball of instantaneous ways to communicate with people all over the world. I also mixed this up with industrial media such as the newspaper, starting with the pennysaver…hey the distribution on that is huge and everyone loves to win something. From there I went on to even bigger papers. I even tried to get an editor of a small paper to do a piece on the contest, to no avail. I would never disclude industrial media, however social media is a far less exhausting and quicker way of getting the message across. For instance Brian’s webblog here is a great wealth of information. I am proud to have been part of this contest and will countinue to support social media within our great company.