{"id":523,"date":"2008-12-30T14:30:09","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/windchimesindia.wordpress.com\/?p=523"},"modified":"2009-07-25T00:39:35","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T19:09:35","slug":"afraidsocialmediapart2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/2008\/12\/afraidsocialmediapart2\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is afraid of Social Media? &#8211; Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">In the second part of the series on &#8211; <strong><a title=\"Who is afraid of Social Media? - Part 1\" href=\"http:\/\/windchimesindia.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/29\/who-is-afraid-of-social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018Who is afraid of social media?\u2019<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 we continue to focus on the concerns that stop social media from playing a key role in <a title=\"Social Media for HR\" href=\"http:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/hr.html\" target=\"_blank\">internal communication<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align:justify;\">\n<li><strong>\u2018Our culture is very different\u2019<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Yes it\u2019s true that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.windchimes.co.in\/socialmedia.html\" target=\"_blank\">social media<\/a> works better if the organisation has a young, tech-savvy workforce with a flat structure and a democratic and open culture. But there are enough examples across the world where conservative companies with an older workforce have met with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.windchimes.co.in\/kaya%20-%20casestudy.html\" target=\"_blank\">social media success<\/a>. All it needs is time, patience and consistent efforts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">It is important to recognise the company culture and customise your social media plans accordingly. You might have to tweak your plans and phase out in a manner that makes it more acceptable and easier to adopt. One needs to pay heed to the fact that even if the organisation has been traditionally conservative about communication, in the future the Digitally Advanced will form the ranks and their communication needs will be better met using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.windchimes.co.in\/importancesmm.html\" target=\"_blank\">social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u2018What if the employees misbehave or worse leak information\u2019<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Read behind the words. Is it just another way of saying, \u2018we are not ready to lose control\u2019? The idea that employees can say what they want is often scary to most organisations. This is the biggest obstacle in the way of social media entering an organisation. Management is often scared that employees will not have the maturity to handle social media. It is often feared that employees will say the \u2018wrong\u2019 things, use bad language, insult top bosses, complain&#8230; the list is endless. There is a bigger, and maybe real, fear of information leaks taking place.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Wake up Mr Boss! Grapevine, gossip, rumour mills&#8230; call it what you like&#8230; have been around much before Web 2.0 came on the scene. Social media, at least, allows for the so called \u2018unpleasant\u2019 things to come to management\u2019s notice than remain something that is discussed and allowed to fester around water coolers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">You have a chance to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.windchimes.co.in\/hr.html\" target=\"_blank\">identify issues<\/a> and soothe disgruntled employees, which is better than living in a Fool\u2019s Paradise. Just because you don\u2019t hear negative feedback from the employees, does not mean it does not exist. If not given a platform to be aired, in the long run it will be detrimental for the company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Instead define communication guidelines that will help employees use social media better and offset the worries regarding information leaks. IBM came up with an innovative solution in this regard and created a <a title=\"Wiki Definition\" href=\"http:\/\/windchimesindia.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/25\/social-media-terms\/\" target=\"_blank\">wiki<\/a> to get its employees to create social media policies themselves.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Organisations also need to keep in mind that they have employed professionals and just because communication has moved online, professionalism and basic respect will be forgotten. Most of us are already aware that inappropriate use of email in the workplace is not acceptable and the same behavioural standards will transfer to use of other Web 2.0 tools.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u2018Will the organisation\u2019s productivity come down\u2019<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Another common concern is that social media will eat into the employees\u2019 productive time. Time needs to be invested by an employee in participating in blogs, discussion forums and wikis. Is it going to keep him away from his regular job?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">No it is not. Social media tools allow information and knowledge to be shared more freely in the organisation, allows for virtual meetings to take place and saves time and costs, boosts overall productivity and is a useful way to cut down on time consuming internal mail traffic. Employees are only going to read or take part in what is their area of interest.<\/p>\n<p>Click <a href=\"http:\/\/windchimesindia.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/31\/who-is-afraid-of-social-media-part-3\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> to read about the rest of the concerns that plague internal communicators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn more about what makes social media taboo for internal communicators and how you as a communicator can help your organisation address these concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[782,784,84,85,164,789,122,793,127],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporate-communications","category-employee-relations","tag-corporate-communications","tag-employee-relations","tag-internal-communication","tag-internal-communication-and-social-media","tag-pr","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-and-employees","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-social-media-tools"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":2000,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windchimes.co.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}