Social Media 104: Intro to Social Networking

Note:  Social Media 104 is part of the Core Curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

Visiting Professor and honorary SMUG doctoral candidate Lee LeFever, whose material also has been indispensable in Social Media 102: Intro to RSS and Social Media 103: Intro to Wikis, again has a “Plain English” video to introduce new users to the benefits of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Watch it:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc]

If you want to use social networking sites for business purposes, here are a few introductory tips about each of the top three sites:

  • “MySpace is for middle schoolers.” That’s the assessment of my youngest daughter, the wise-beyond-her-years high school junior. It’s an overstatement, but it does match the demographic reality that the MySpace demographic skews young. Which is why it’s a bit disturbing to me that on MySpace I get far more porn spam “friend” requests than anything else. MySpace claims a much larger user base than Facebook, but somehow I doubt that Alla, Alyson, Anna, Clarice, Esperanza, Estella, Evelyn, Gertrude, Ivy, Jaymie, Judy, Judith, Jennifer, Karan, Keeley, Mertie, Michaela, Maritza, Norine, Nisha, Patricia, Ramona, Traci, Thelma, Vanessa, Valeria and Zada are real people. But if you are an aspiring musician or otherwise want to reach a young fan base, you may want to have MySpace in your mix. For example, my friend Scott Meis with the Donate Life Illinois initiative to increase organ donation has found MySpace a great way to reach young people with his message.
  • LinkedIn is the most popular strictly professional networking site. I call it “Social Networking without the social.” I know others swear by it, and I’m happy to be a member, but I don’t see it involving its users as much as either Facebook or MySpace do. If you work for a professional services firm and are looking to do hardcore networking, LinkedIn could be great. It gives you ability to provide and ask for references and recommendations.
  • Facebook, with its Ivy League college roots, strikes a nice balance between the two. It’s far less susceptible to spam than MySpace is. I’ve devoted a whole section of this blog to Facebook business uses, so for Social Media 104 students who want to read ahead for extra credit, go to the Facebook Business page.

Homework Assignments:

  1. Visit my MySpace page. If you want to send me a friend invite, that would be great to actually have some non-spam requests. I don’t spend much time in MySpace, though, so if we want to have a SMUG class about MySpace, we probably should have a guest instructor. Any volunteers? If you think I haven’t been fair to the biggest social networking site, I’d be glad to accept a guest post about the advantages of MySpace. If you want to create a MySpace page to get more hands-on experience, that gets you extra credit, too, but it’s optional.
  2. Create a LinkedIn profile. Find at least five current or former work colleagues and add them to your network.
  3. Join Facebook. This is a remedial assignment, as it was part of Social Media 101, but if you haven’t completed this step yet, now is a great time to do it. Then you can enroll in SMUG and Friend me.

Class Discussion

Answer the following in the comments below: 

  1. Which social networking sites have you joined?
  2. Do you find one of them more useful than the others for your business purposes?
  3. If so, which one, and why?
  4. Do you belong to a social networking site not mentioned above? Which one(s)? Why do you find it helpful?

Comprehensive List of Communications Channels

Kay Sessions Golan from the CDC asked whether there is a comprehensive list of Communications Solutions or Tactics that communicators can use in their planning, to have a wide spectrum of old-to-new media as a reference that could be incorporated into an integrated plan.

So I said, “Let’s put it on a wiki!”

Sorry about jumping right to a solution, but this is a good way for people to get a feel for how to use some of the social media tools while also pooling our knowledge. So please go here to the SMUG wiki, where I have created a section called Comprehensive Communication Channel List. Add things wherever you think they make sense, or reorganize as you see fit. Let’s create the mother-of-all-tactical lists!

The Change Curve

Vivien and Marady started by discussion organizational change management, and understanding the stages people go through in moving from a current state to future state. It can be like jumping a chasm:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Blame
  • Fear
  • Acceptance
  • Shifts
  • Excitement
  • Creativity
  • New Forms

It can be represented graphically like this:

maradychangecurve.jpg

(That’s  Marady as spokesmodel. Click the thumbnail to enlarge.)

A better model, they suggest, is Peter Senge’s creative tension method of a learning organization, as visualized below:

creativetension.jpg

We’ll get into that after the break.

Cisco Systems on Web 2.0 for Employee Communication

nmaureencisco.jpg

Maureen Kasper, Director of Corporate Communications for Cisco Systems, agrees that if communications professionals don’t become experts in social media, we will be obsolete.

As I’ve said previously, professional communicators failing to keep up with social media at least borders on malpractice.

She lives in the central coast of California, having moved south from Cisco’s San Jose office without telling anyone. This remote working has been made possible by social media and the real-life connections she made before the move. She says CEO John Chambers has been a communications champion.
Cisco Social Media Objectives: Encourage use of social media by giving access to the best tools, but protect both the corporation and individuals. They have done a major initiative on employee training.

Cisco has 20 officially sanctioned corporate blogs. Each is related to a corporate priority. Each unit/each employee looks to connect with the priorities relevant to their jobs.

She says the rules for social networking are the same as in the offline world, but just using the tools.

When commenting in a blog, be Transparent: State you are with Cisco, Use Cisco in your user name, use Cisco email, link to a Cisco website for reference (either your dept. page on cisco.com or blogs.cisco.com). Tone should be conversational, thoughtful, thank for perspective, “perhaps you might consider” other fact that have not been as well represented. No corporate speak.

Maureen says: “If you want people to behave differently, take away the tools that let people interact the old way.”

They are developing an internal alternative to MySpace as a souped-up corporate directory called the Cisco Employee Connection directory. It will list personal skills and interests, expertise and other user-editable fields.

For example, she says Cisco IT doesn’t support Macintosh, but 1,000 of their employees use Macs. So they’ve formed an online user group to solve each others’ problems since they can’t count on official IT support. That’s the value of the Social Graph within Cisco.

Cisco also has Ciscopedia as a collaborative reference document and an internal portal they call Communications Center of Excellence (CCoE) that is available to anyone in the company. This is about “scaling the message” to 65,000 employees, because the communications leaders can’t be everywhere.

CCoE Content

  • Communications challenges, solutions, success stories
    • TEchnologies, process, behavior
  • Discussions throughout
  • News blog, Project Update blog
  • Roundtable Discussion show
  • One-Minute video overviews
  • Technology details
    • Education to Vision to Provisioning

Cisco did their first Virtual Company Meeting on Aug. 23, 2007 using Telepresence. You feel like you are in the same room with counterparts around the world. Here’s a cool example:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfNC_x0VvE]

For Cisco, bandwidth is no object, so they use video mail and lots of leadership video on their intranet.

They also have discussion forums, the use of which depends on how much people care. The corporate strategy things don’t get much discussion, but the question of whether the green initiative meant taking away people’s water bottles had tens of thousands of discussants.

This was a very interesting presentation. I think one of her key points, as she mentioned above, is that you may need to “burn the ships” on some of the old communications technologies in order to drive adoption of the new. Otherwise, people will just settle back into familiar ruts.

Lessons Learned from Toyota’s Internal Blog

Dan Miller from Toyota presented on “The Clandestine Birth, Untimely Death and Hopeful Resurrection of Toyota’s Internal Blog.”

Dan started its blog, called “Sound Off” without review/approval by HR or Legal.

His Ground Rules:

  • Consistent Host/Author
  • Post one entry per week
  • Clear feedback guidelines
  • Low-key promotion

They didn’t use real blogging software, but copied and pasted feedback e-mails into the comments.

“Sound Off” was done in by a sexual harassment suit. Dan did a post about this and didn’t express an opinion, but asked for readers to share their opinions. Then he went on vacation to Scotland, and there were lots of opinions that had been shared by the time he got back. HR and Legal called IS and got the plug pulled. The concern about “discoverability” in pending litigation trumped everything else.

On the external side, Media Relations got support from Legal, giving Legal right to approve all posts before they go up. In return, Legal promised quick turnaround on review.

Dan says there is some light on the horizon, in that Town Hall meetings have capacity crowds. On the negative side, internal opinion surveys reveal that many associates are afraid to speak up.

Now he’s trying to get the internal blog going again.

They have engaged with Legal, and while they haven’t gotten a “yes” it hasn’t been “no” either. They are working through all sorts of “what if” scenarios. HR has become an ally. IS also wants to align with them as a way to get support for Sharepoint, which they likely will use for blogging.

Michael Rudnick says his company has focused on training and awareness. As to the discoverability issue, that’s really a red herring.  Blogging may generate more content that’s discoverable, but e-mail already is discoverable.