Social Media Policy, laying the groundwork for the global market.

It is great to see some big players making concerted efforts for cultivating a collaborative culture that supports their strategy through establishing effective social media policy. Here are a few examples that stand out. Here is Adam Brown, Head Of Social Media at Coca-Cola as interviewed by Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing.

IBM-s policy can be seen here: IBM Social Computing Guidelines or heard here: IBM Social Computing Guidelines video
Social Media Governance has created an online database of Social Media policies
Interestingly enough many organizations still have no fixed guidelines or policies on a global scale. These are simple and necessary to improve effectiveness and to avoid major mistakes. The details can come at a market to market level. Kudos to those who recognize this as a top priority. Please feel free to add to the list. I am sure there are many more, although some do not share links to the greater Internet community.

Clarity

There is something beautiful in the concept of "clarity." What I have semantically mistaken for "simple" has been corrected to "clear." In the process I have found clarity. When we draw our stories for use in strategy sessions, the ultimate goal is to find the clarity in our voice and our vision. It is not about making things less complex, but rather about making complex concepts easier to understand. Coming from the perspective of keeping things positive, I really like this approach and better way of expressing it. (Thanks for fixing my semantics, GK Van Patter, Humantific)

Applying my new semantics, my presentation on Social Business Strategy had greater resonance. For after all what we are trying to achieve in workshops is create a greater understanding of complex concepts in a short period of time. I like to refer to it as teaching us what we already know with a new approach to applying them. It is not as if we don't already know that if we express ourselves more clearly people will understand our message or our intention. "Get to the point.","K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid)", "Elevator pitch", "vision statement", they all have something critical in common - clarity. For communications professionals, Clarity, is where they excel and where their skills are overwhelmingly needed. The channels and audiences can vary as long as you have a clarity in your story and vision for your strategy.

Social Optimization as part of Social Business Strategy

Social Optimization

View more presentations from Heidi Forbes Öste.

This presentation is a summary of slides from a three part class on social media strategy. It was designed for the particular audience, which was business school students and entrepreneurs. The last slide provides a basic exercise for getting started on building a stronger foundation for your social strategy. I am revising the second two parts (Social Media & Implementation) for a more general audience to upload shortly. The class name has since been updated to "Social Business Strategy." Please feel free to contact me should you be interested in learning more about this class and supporting materials.

Google Wave, starting up

I just started two waves on Google Wave about "Social Business Strategy" and "Collaborative Culture". As the invites to the Google Wave beta only went out today, we will see if this wave grows. So far, no response and only four of my contacts are on there, but they are 10 time zones away. So, I invite you to join the wave if you are there and let me know who else is out there. I like the concept, but sure is hard to test when limited the invited test group.

Here's the waves...

SOCIAL BUSINESS STRATEGY: Let's define it together.

Applying social technologies to add value to your organisation requires cultural shifts for implementation to succeed. Leadership needs to be 100% committed and engaged in the process for it to succeed. Trust is critical. Monitoring and Measuring is important to get commited engagement and verify results for ROI both in time and money. The technologies are the tools, the people are what make social business strategy effective.

COLLABORATIVE CULTURE Currently working with the challenges in adapting hierarchical corporate cultures to one that is more collaborative to prepare for implementing social business strategy. Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic.