Who from your team is participating in the other conversations that are being held away from your sites? Or other blogs, forums and communities and actually identifying and or representing themselves as position in your company?
It’s unfair for business to expect people to value our conversations when they don’t value theirs.
Through this there are some really solid ways to build value and develop things you can’t buy: loyalty and respect.
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I think that to have a gem of an employee in a company that’ll represent the company well, they need to feel like it is their business too, not just the CEO’s. I’ve read that some successful business people have created their own ‘business’ within the business..treating their work as if they owned the company. This is ideal but needs to be more common.
In my company, I’m that person. Daily monitoring of mentions across the web, responding where appropriate, running the blogs, writing magazine articles, generaly producing all external communications and social media conversations. It’s quite a rewarding role and allows us to present a far more open and consistent presence but it’s a far cry from my original hjob description. It has evolved organically over the year as I have demonstrated the power of blogging and social media, dispelled management myths and demonstrated how simple interaction promotes a strong, positive response.
God, I love my job!
Belinda: There’s a couple of heads in our company who definitely have been given that chance and that freedom — and it’s all about their superiors giving them power and respect. But it works incredibly well.
@Kimota: Wow! That’s really excellent — and the fact you’ve been given that freedom to evolve and adapt is a big step forward. Keep it up.
I’m actually really proud of many of the initiatives that our company takes… and i’d love to educate people on the job that we do. But it’s really hard because the executive class just aren’t ready to move into the “future”.
Last week i had to print images of this year’s marketing campaigns on to big cardboard picture boards… which were manually held up at a meeting in front of the MD.
I’m talking about an Australian company that earned over 4.9billion dollars in revenue last year.
I think we need to put our heads together more as an industry to discuss how we can demonstrate value and importance of the conversation.
Also, we need to be more encouraging of companies willing to dip their toe in the water.
Kristen: It’s the fear of the unknown gripping large companies like yours. But yes, maybe they should invest in a copy of power point :P
Kate: That’s it — as a collective with real case studies we’re much much stronger.