The Corporate Jones’

This past weekend, I was invited to a colleague’s holiday party. I found myself rubbing elbows with the CIO of a multi-national imaging corporation.

Of course, he asked about my career and when I explained that I’m a social media strategist and consultant, he asked me flat out, “Should I be blogging?”

After I got clarity that he was considering an internal blog for corporate communication, I then gave the dreaded reply, “It depends. What are your goals? Why do you think you should be blogging?”

To which he delivered the social media strategist’s death knell, “Well, we figure since everyone else is doing it….”

That’s the thing…even really smart, accomplished people have no idea why they should be using social media. They’re just doing it to keep up with everyone else. Which is an OK supporting reason, but if keeping up with other companies is the sole reason your organization is blogging, you’re headed for a social media train wreck.

Here’s why:

• I don’t know about you but every time I’ve ever done anything because someone else was doing it, the task or project quickly lost it’s appeal and my “victory” was hollow at best.
• When I’m not in touch with the real reason for doing something, I grow to resent doing that task and when you resent having to blog, it comes through in every conceivable way — from infrequent posts to lame-o topics.
• You don’t get to really focus on taking the project in the direction it needs to go because the task you’ve undertaken is a part of another company’s strategy.

To add insult to injury, when companies fail to tap into the REAL reason they need/want to start using conversation-based technology, they hit one of the above roadblocks and then before they can dust themselves off, invariably, they proclaim to the world that, “social media doesn’t work.”

Social media yields stellar results under the framework of “Right Action.”

Right Action, in the non-Buddhist sense, is: the right people, doing the right things, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons.

Once your organization implements and develops a social media engagement plan under these terms, you’ll be good to go. Until then, who knows?

And, of course, that begs the question, “What is right?”

*chuckle*

Another post…another time…