Social Media Goes to Work
For most businesses today, social media is an enigma. It’s something they would like to figure out, but they’re not sure they can. For them, it’s in the category of puzzlements such as “how the Bowl Championship Series really works” or “who thought it was a good idea for toys to come wrapped in plastic packaging that is impossible to open without at least minor injuries.”
I had a nice chat with Jeff Pulver the other day in connection with my guest blog on his site, Pulver.com. Anybody who knows Jeff knows that he is a social media guru and is especially into Twitter, and it was interesting hearing his thoughts on how businesses will have to evolve as a result of social media.
Jeff and I agree that because the speed of business is increasing exponentially, the only way a corporation can keep up is to change the way it interacts with its customers and its employees. For example, those companies that are using Twitter successfully are able to react with lightning speed to unanticipated problems that become known in the Twittersphere before anywhere else. Such reaction time is no doubt saving many of these companies millions of dollars in lost sales or post-sales service and support – not to mention how it helps protect their brand image.
On the other hand, many companies are afraid of letting front line employees use Twitter – and there is a reason for this. I have been around long enough to see many different attempts by executives to empower the front lines of companies. Most such initiatives eventually get reined back in as mistakes by a few inexperienced or poorly trained people reinforce the need for tight central controls.
However, with social media, the benefits will outweigh the costs – especially since even the mistakes of employees will be quickly noticed and corrected and any damage mitigated in minutes or seconds. Compare this to the “old days” when strict rules dictated how information must privately flow up or down the hierarchy before problems on the front lines could be corrected. This created long delays and unsatisfied customers.
With social media, there is no way companies will be able to avoid empowerment. Once the “social revolution” is complete, the surviving companies will have dramatically empowered their front lines in ways that would make the executives of yesteryear roll over in their graves. The trick for companies will be in striking the right balance between empowerment and information anarchy. As long as each employee’s rank and file, job role and committee assignments are part of what defines the social context through which they contribute to the company’s stream of information, then most of the concerns previously preventing empowerment should be moot.
As a telecom provider, Sprint’s role is to enable converged networks, networks that provide mobile integration for voice, data and applications – so everyone can be part of this information flow at all times, regardless of location. These networks must also assure reliable transport for cloud computing and other such applications. It’s all part of the Now Network approach that lets users seize every moment and keep up with the Twitter-driven pace of business. The Now Network leaps past bandwidth constraints and reliability issues, delivering the foundation for transforming the ways people interact.
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SubscribeTags: Jeff Pulver, Now Media, Now Network, Twitter
