Why Every Company Needs to Embrace Social Media

Social media is changing everything. Business Week recently published an article about the power of social media and how companies are beginning to embrace it, because they really don't have a choice. Not everyone has a blog, or wants to blog, but you would be hard pressed to find many people who aren't on some type of social network. Now it's time for corporate America to follow suit and meet their potential customers on their own turf, or risk falling behind the times.

Image Credit: qtmcknight

The article says, "It's as if the walls around our companies are vanishing and old org charts are lying on their sides."

There is truth to that statement. Social media is changing how business works, so businesses better figure out how social media works. Here's why every company needs to embrace social media, now.

Brand Awareness and Traffic

Brand awareness is crucial, it always was. But today you have to go beyond old media to market your message to the masses.

On Friday, my post about Gen Y changing the work place was picked up on Stumble Upon and Digg. On Sunday, 60 Minutes re-aired a segment featuring my blog. Guess what? Our site received 4 times more traffic and 10 times more comments on Friday then it did on Sunday. When prime time national media attention can't compete with a couple of niche websites on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, you know that things just aren't what they used to be. These days, if you want to create real brand awareness, you better start with the niche communities.

Passive Job Seekers

Job boards are dying, fast. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Lou Adler, a chief executive of the Adler Group, a company that trains corporate recruiters on hiring practices, says, "I certainly see many, many companies posting their jobs on job boards….and not getting any results and wondering why."

The reason why is because people aren't actively looking for jobs. They are, however, actively browsing social media sites and spending time on social networks, and even if they don't know it, they're passively looking for jobs. The smartest companies are taking advantage of this and creating a social media presence.

Someone may not be looking for a job, but if they stumble across an interesting blog post, Facebook page, or Twitter profile that mentions a great company, they will take the time to investigate further. So everyone is a passive job seeker. It's up to every company to create a large enough online presence so the right people will stumble on them.

Credibility

Online credibility comes from the way you handle your brand and the links and references your blog or website receives. When people link to you, it's like an unofficial endorsement from that person. Think of it like politics. When John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama, it made a big splash. A company can gain serious online street-cred when one of the big guns endorses them.

But again, like politics, the common folks matter too. You must first establish credibility with the masses, and then the big fish can provide you that final push. Even if it takes a while, online credibility will eventually lead to mainstream coolness.

The Coolness factor

The majority of social networks and social media sites are not "mainstream cool." Outside of Silicon Valley and the 900,000 tech crunch readers, the majority of people don't know what Friend Feed, Digg, or even Twitter is. But your company should, if you want to be cool. Why be cool?

If your company can adopt a bunch of these new technologies and figure out how to properly use them to leverage your brand, at some point it will pay off. Not only will your company immediately be considered cool in the tech world, but when one of these sites becomes a legitimate hit, like Twitter is about to become, your company will be mainstream-cool as well.

And when you're mainstream cool, everything changes. You'll have people knocking down your doors trying to get an interview with your company. Just ask Google.

Controlling the conversation

Social media is a constant conversation and because of this, business is now a constant conversation. It's a comment string on Brazen Careerist, its someone's Facebook wall, and it's a Linked In recommendation. Someone, somewhere is out there talking about your company, and they can say whatever they want. All you can do is control the conversation.

Controlling the conversation does not mean telling people how to talk about your company or spamming a couple bloggers with job postings or company descriptions. It means creating a presence where you can initiate and continue a conversation.

What social media requires is authenticity, because even a newbie social media user can sniff out a phony quickly. But authentic conversation isn't what most companies do naturally. So when corporations want to initiate a conversation, they have to find the right people, and they better empower those people to tell the truth, which isn't always great news to deliver.

Starbucks is a great example. When things started going south, they publicly admitted to being at fault. They started a social networking site to ask for help from the customers. And we all remember when they shut down the stores across the country for an afternoon to address some fundamental problems. Smart decisions like that come when you take the time to start a conversation and then remember to listen, too.

It's not easy. It takes a ton of time and it may even consist of a couple full time hires, but establishing a social media presence is worth it. Sooner or later every company will be actively using social media, but the trendsetters are the one's who will get the most out of it. Don't be left behind.

If you enjoyed this article, please vote for it on Digg, share it on StumbleUpon or bookmark it on del.icio.us. I appreciate your support.

Leave your thoughts here. (12 responses)

This article´s comments All Employee Evolution comments

Chris Clarke

May 29th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

A lot of great points, Ryan. However, you may have generalized a bit too much in your title. In my experience, social media isn't for every company. Social media is about transparency, honesty, and authenticity, among other things. Some companies just aren't suited for social media, and I wouldn't encourage them to pretend otherwise just for the sake of being involved in the social media space.

Danielle

May 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

We're working on a Web 2.0 iniative at my co-op right now. And by we, I mean the co-ops, interns, and a few tech savvy marketing people – the small but smart group as my boss calls it. I'll be sure to share this post with them.

Hope you guys are doing well! I was looking around the new Brazen Careerist site for awhile earlier and it was pretty engaging. Congrats! Hope Madison is treating you well.

Jeff McCord

May 30th, 2008 at 7:09 pm

What a great post! I've been given a great opportunity in the ad agency where I presently work to help lead their social media initiatives. It's been a great learning experience for me.

Yes, more companies need to get on the band wagon for sure!

I'm also a recruiter (by profession) and our team is using social networks and social media to attract top talent, which a lot of companies SHOULD be doing.

Check out: http://www.jeffmccord.org/?p=127

jeremy

May 31st, 2008 at 1:40 pm

My problem is how do you convince these executives to make the transition? Its like saying "Hey, send email instead of a telegram." Even still they cant hear you.

Jan Cees

May 31st, 2008 at 2:35 pm

And what about education? Where are they? The students are gen Y; but the teachers don't understand web 2.0.
How do you solve this problem?

Ryan Healy

May 31st, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Jan,

Great question. Everyone is a student, and everyone can be a teacher. Company's can set up cross mentor programs that allow the older executives to mentor the entry level employees on the industry, the company, office politics etc. Then the Gen Yers can mentor the executives on how to use these social media tools both personally and professionally.

Ryan

Daniel Hoang

Jun 1st, 2008 at 6:04 pm

Companies won't embrace social media in the near-term. Social media is a radical change to business as usual. Take the transition from snail mail, fax, and internal paper memos to e-mail. An entire working communications infrastructure had to be thrown out the door and an electronic infrastructure put in. Typists, transcribers, and clerks were likely shown the door out in the process. While social media is being leveraged by many top companies as a way to recruit Gen Y employees, it has yet to take over as a communications tool for external and internal use.

Until there's a way to demonstrate ROI on social media efforts, companies won't make the plunge. I'd rather see companies use social media for internal use as a replacement to Intranet sites and as a forum for employees to communicate and bounce ideas off one another than to build a presence on Facebook just to check off a box on a list of things to do.

That said, I'd like to see your thoughts on a migration strategy from:

- Paper/Mail/Fax/Telegram
- E-mail
- Social Media

How do we build that infrastructure, develop training and manage change within organizations?

Robbin Block

Jun 2nd, 2008 at 11:19 am

Where are the educators? We're here! In fact, there's a big event called BizJam coming up in Seattle in July. The two-day event includes a full-day track on Social Media and is hosted by a leading business social network for independent business people called Biznik. Shameless plug: I've been teaching about social media for a couple of years now and will be offering the workshop, "Going Virtual: What Social Networking Can Do for Your Business."

Nicole

Jun 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 am

In response to Chris Clarke's comment – "Social media is about transparency, honesty, and authenticity, among other things."
I totally agree. Social media is a tool that can fit or not fit into a company culture. As an HR professional for a large company, these are definitely cultural characteristics that some companies have and have not yet succeeded in infusing into their organizations. Tech tools are like donated organs – the culture will either adapt and "take" the organ, or reject it!

Chris Clarke

Jun 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am

Glad you and I are on the same page, Nicole!

Kevin Cannella - OfficeArrow

Jun 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

I like the advice you are giving to corporate companies.

I am excited to see something force these companies to be truthful, accountable, and (at least a little) personable.

Love the writing..

frankie lopez

Apr 29th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

well it's been a year since this was posted i stumble on it while researching well i think since to you posted this thinks have definitely have change in a short amount of time. There are some many people that are using social media sites that i think if your not jumping on the band wagon you are going to be left behind, if we are spending more time this sites than tv well knock knock is there anybody there?

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

• Name (required)
• Mail (will not be published) (required)
• Website
• Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail