Sharing Social Media with the Non-Believers

Posted on 25. October 2009 by HumanRaceHorses

Talk amongst yourselves

I write and speak quite often about my belief that human resources professionals need to work to increase their use of social media, or at the very least, develop a knowledge base and understanding of the various basic tools and concepts that are part of the social media arena. It isn’t enough to just have a LinkedIn account. You need to know what Twitter does, and how it works. You need to know how to log into Facebook and find information about your company.

The problem is most of the people who read what I write, and to a lesser extent, listen to me when I speak on this topic very likely already have some interest in social media, or they probably wouldn’t be paying that much attention to me in the first place. After my last post on Confronting Social Media, the main question I received was: “How do you take this message to the average HR person who won’t read your blogs or tweets?”

Escaping the Echo Chamber

From Drop Box

The good news is, even inside the social media echo chamber, more than one person thinks about the same topic. This leads to indirect collaboration and discussion, which leads to the stimulation of new ideas. My post spawned some discussion, and led to a very useful response from Renee L. Robbins who writes the Learning Putty blog.

In her post, Renee suggests seven creative ways to introduce social media to your work team.

Renee has come up with some great suggestions which she included in the following list. You can see the complete list by clicking here.

1. Start an education campaign.

Provide your team with information.
- Articles from trade publications are incredibly helpful
- You can’t just send them a links to an article online.
- Leverage your online resources through video, such as:

2. Team up with internal and external social media users

3. Suggest adding social media solutions to training

Here are a few examples:

Instead of learners taking a test or writing papers to show their competence ask them to make a five minute video on the topic.
Create a forum so new employees can post questions and get feedback from their coworkers as they learn the ropes in their new company.
When starting a new product or service, create a blog to make sure each employee is kept up to date on any developments. This kind of constant communication with reduce the amount of information they will need to learn through formal training sessions when the product or service is ready to launch.
The next time a group of people attend a conference ask that they post any insights they gather on their Twitter accounts and assign them a hashtag for your company. You’ll be able to get three main things out of this. First, this will allow the attendees one more way to network with people at the conference, give them the ability to share their knowledge with the colleagues back at the office in real time, and in the end you will be able to get a sense for the ROI on the conference.

4. Help stretch the budget by using a “free” option!

5. Take a look at what your competitors are doing.

6. Invite your coworkers to your social networks.

7. Give the gift of social media.

Evangelizing Social Media

I already do many of these things personally, but Renee has pointed some variations that I plan on incorporating into my own social media crusade. Let’s continue to build the knowledge base and suggestions. Leave one personal suggestions or option in the comments and I will build them into a comprehensive list that I will publish.

What is your best tip for spreading social media among the non-believers? How do you evangelize?

Lastly, enjoy this retro look back at SNL and Mike Meyers, as you continue to Talk Amongst Yourselves!

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