This era of controlled external communication is largely gone. Today any employee representing any organization can publish, with often positive but also potentially devastating consequences...the recent Domino’s Pizza debacle comes to mind, and there are plenty of other examples. Granted, not everyone is following these stories online, but they increasingly tend to spill over into the mainstream media. And let’s face it, today a trendsetter with a captivating message in a specific industry category can have many more followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook than a leading trade publication has in subscribers.

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in communications, but are senior management teams in corporate America getting the message? I have my doubts about that. Yes, a few CEOs understand the impact social media will increasingly have on their organizations’ reputation and are taking a pro-active stance, but the majority continues to sit on the fence, holding off until ROI will become clearer. A few have jumped in and started to misuse these communication platforms, with devastating consequences. Ironically, companies such as Dell and Comcast which initially got burned badly by this shift in communication practices, now have platforms and procedures in place that adequately address the need, and some are even case study examples on how to best deal with this challenge.

From my perspective corporate management needs to recognize the seismic shift which is taking place in the way in which an increasingly large segment of their constituencies and stakeholders communicate and obtain information. Any organization ignoring this trend is doing so at its own peril. Yes, of course it’s important to monitor results, but it’s risky to wait until these systems have fully matured. It’s like global warming; we can wait until there is no longer any doubt, but by that time it might be too late...

Here follow some suggestions on how to pro-actively deal with the challenge. How to engage appropriately depends on a variety of factors, including the industry one operates in, the organization’s culture, and the personalities of the senior management team...

1. The time for action is now - CEOs and other members of senior management teams need to get engaged, or encourage others in the organization to take the appropriate steps to deal with this challenge. In some environments it is appropriate for the CEO to start to contribute to a corporate blog or to tweet, but involvement doesn’t necessarily have to take these forms. The CEO might simply empower others in the organization to step up to the plate.

2. Communication is no longer just the realm of PR - the communication paradigm shift is increasingly blurring the lines of responsibility for external communications. In the recent past, this clearly used to be the realm of the public relations department, but these days other departments such as client services, product development and marketing take a more prominent role in representing their organization on social media platforms and outlets. As an example, Twitter can and should see a lot of contributions from members of an organization’s client service department, addressing questions, concerns and complaints issued via tweets. I would not be surprised if in the near future most client service-related issues will be handled via platforms such as Twitter, instead of via the phone... On the other hand, over time it might become the responsibility of PR professionals in an organization to train everyone in an organization on how to appropriately represent the organization they work for, but this is a potentially very sensitive issue. Enough has been said about the need for transparency and authenticity in the context of social media...

3. Monitoring of social media is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. Increasingly companies need to put procedures in place that allow for near real-time monitoring of online media, including platforms such as Twitter, for any references to the company and/or its products and services. And keep in mind that in this new media environment a response to a comment about your organization is expected within hours, not days. Doing so as a matter of principle has over time a very positive effect on your company’s reputation. For example, consider one of your clients tweeting about a complaint they have about your company’s product or service – an immediate response by someone from your client services team will generally solicit a very positive impression for your organization, and clients might tweet about that too, broadcasting that favorable impression to potentially thousands of their followers!

3. Corporate blogs are increasingly an essential part of an organization’s online presence and communication strategy, together with the corporate website and, possibly, an online newsletter. In my personal experience it is amazing how much knowledge and experience is often locked up among employees of an organization. A blog is a very effective outlet which has the potential to empower these knowledge workers; this is really a win-win situation... Keep in mind too that a from an SEO perspective, content building is the name of the game in establishing an organization’s organic rankings in the search engines, and the content of corporate blogs can be a great help in improving those rankings...

The shift in the corporate communications paradigms is multi-faceted and far reaching, and this article only touches on a few aspects of this shift. Look forward to a discussion on this subject...

[This Article was published on June 4th, 2009 in Think Communications: http://thinkcomllc.com/?cat=26]