The New Censorship: Social Media & the Corporate Employee
Saturday, October 15, 2011 at 10:25AM 
It’s happening right now in the hallways, breakrooms and bathrooms of corporate America. Employees are shelled away, swiping at their smart phones and tablets in silent social soliloquies, each of them a tinder box, their mobile devices flint sparks in the tyrannical dry air of bureaucratic executive censorship which hangs above their heads like a sword of Damocles, just waiting to catch them saying the wrong thing online.
At Dreamforce 2011 this year, Marc Benioff announced a new regime in the movement of data and communication for the purpose of business. He calls it The Social Enterprise and I could almost hear the teeth knocking of CEOs throughout the audience when Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry stated in her Dreamforce commercial, “If you don’t [build a social enterprise] now, I don’t know what your business model is going to be in five years.”
But the problem is that CEOs and corporate PR and Legal at many of these companies are still under the delusion that they can control the message and focus of the conversations happening online about their companies, their employees and their products. They are trying to catch and contain a tsunami in a Starbucks venti cup.
I worked at NetJets when the great Richard Santulli still lead the company and I remember he always made a point of telling the employees at every all hands meeting that they were the brand. He meant that every single interaction an employee has with a customer or speaking about the company or wearing the corporate logo in public, all of that accreted to become the sum of the brand. Ironically, Richard was completely against any employee speaking to the media about the company but if he were still leading NetJets today I would say the same thing to him. Give it up. Let your employees take the brand out into the world online. Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Foursquare. Chatter. Whatever comes next dot com.
There is no one more qualified to engage your prospects and customers in the world of social media than your employees. They are the ones with the knowledge. They are the ones with the heart. They are the ones who care. There are conversations happening right now in social media outlets across the internet about your company and your products and if you are not part of those conversations, listening to them, engaging in them, then you are blind, deaf and dumb to the opportunities of today and the possibilities of tomorrow.
And for the vocal negative ones who don’t care, the disgruntled—well, you’ll have to deal with them as well. This is the power of the 1st Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights—it established the marketplace of ideas for those courageous enough to express and defend them publicly. And who is any company to tell a free human being what they can or can’t say, or deny them access to the ability to say it and allow them to accept the consequences or benefits of their actions?
Break down your firewalls corporate America. Open up acces to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube. Let the information come pouring in and let your brands go flowing out.
The Social Enterprise is upon you so suck it up, put your back into it and we’ll all make it through this revolution to prepare for the next one. It is much smarter to ride the wave than be drowned by it.
Photo by alainalele
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Joshua Minton is a Certified Salesforce Sales & Service Cloud Consultant, Advanced Administrator and Developer for The Revolution Group in Columbus, Ohio.
Reader Comments (1)
It is much smarter to ride the wave than be drowned by it. -> I really like what you said, just go with the flow and you'll see whats next.