Katharine Kelly — Friday, September 2, 2011 at 3:06PM Social Business Starts with Internal Alignment
The Altimeter Group recently released a study called “Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally,” which found that companies who are successfully making the transition to social business have several things in common:
- Guidelines: They set appropriate policies and then trust their employees to participate in social media in a professional manner.
- Process: They have effective processes in place to respond to customer questions or issues in a timely manner.
- Support: They are fostering cultures of learning, where social media education is an ongoing effort and best practices are continually updated and shared.
- Centralization: They’ve created a “Center of Excellence” that is responsible for coordinating social media strategies, governance and support across the organization.
That last one is what got my attention because it signifies an important shift: Social media is no longer being treated by major companies as an experiment or an “extra” in a marketing plan – it’s being recognized as a strategic function within the organization.
This is a big win for Internal Communications teams, because even if most of the focus is on connecting with people outside the organization, the internal alignment that must take place in order to centralize social media strategies lends itself to greater transparency and more consistent messaging inside the organization as well.
In fact, I’d surmise that an IC leader would be the best one to lead these centralization efforts in most organizations, because he/she would know that any effort to align stakeholder engagement should start with the most important stakeholders of all: employees.
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