PR 101

I was in a meeting yesterday when I was asked how one changes a corporate culture so social media will be accepted. Frankly, my answer wasn’t the best because I didn’t discuss what it takes to get executives and employees to accept social media. It’s is something I know how to do. It’s not easy, it requires intelligent selling, but it can and has to be done.

I have previously written about selling social media to a company, but that’s only the first step. There is more to be done after completing the initial sale than there was before the sale.

We who do social media full-time forget what a culture change it is for most organizations. Not just for those people in the C-Suite, but for everyone down to, and including, the receptionist. Remember, up until to about six years ago, most employees didn’t have to worry about social media or marketing their company in any way.

“Too often, people from company “A” will recognize great success that company “B” is having by doing XYZ with social media,” Blogger Adam Christensen wrote. “So, logically, they decide to do the same at company A. But the results are dramatically different. Why? Because they didn’t account for the corporate culture variable which is inevitably different between the two companies.”

Christensen is currently the director of social and digital communications and marketing at Juniper Networks in San Francisco. Until April, he worked for IBM in communications and marketing where he led IBM’s social business strategy and execution globally. He worked on projects including IBM’s Watson and Smarter Planet.

So first, what is corporate culture and how’s it formed?

Well, corporate culture is essentially an internal brand. It doesn’t exist until the majority of people at the company buy into it. The company’s leadership and employees who have the same values and assumptions about their place of work create it. Although it can awhile for a company to form a culture, once formed it can be difficult to change.

Why? Because it provides a sense of belonging and safety to the people who work there. Remember, in every company there are the written and the unwritten rules. The unwritten rules are that which forms the culture. By following both sets, especially the unwritten one, an employee can generally minimize surprises and things out of the ordinary.

The problem is that same culture can keep a company from taking the calculated risks they need to stay viable. Consider the bookseller Borders or the video rental company Blockbuster. While I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened to each, I know from being a customer of each that their cultures were wedded to a way of doing business that was clearly no longer viable.

Those examples are not going to stop other companies from making the same mistakes. Staying in one place is usually the normal human state.

So along comes someone like myself telling the leaders and employees they need to adopt social media if they want to remain in business. Yes, they know about Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the other social media sites. They might even say they want to do it. But it still means a huge culture change.

So what do you do? Well, first it takes an intensive education program. You need to show everyone how social media works and what it can do for the company. You need to show each employee how they fit into the plan.

You also need to get their input. You need to find out what they are comfortable with and what they are willing to start with. As I always say, you have to crawl before you can walk.

Once you and the leadership feels that employees are ready to dip into social media, start out internally. Set up internal blogs, an employee Wiki and other applications. Let as many employees as possible play, learn, grow, build relationships, and develop the needed collective awareness. Once the employees are comfortable with it, take it public. It will work then.

Okay, social media scares many C-suite people. That’s no surprise. Because if you are honest when you present, you should make them realize that using social media means acknowledging they don’t have complete control of their brand. Of course, they never really did. A brand’s identity is determined in the marketplace. It’s what consumers think – be they business-to-business or business-to-consumer – that defines a brand

It is hard for most senior executive to admit they really never had control of their brand. Facing that means acknowledging that all the money spent on marketing and advertising did not provide a failsafe way to ensure happy consumers and ever increasing sales.

Social Media will allow them to listen to what consumers are saying

Social media won’t do that either. However, unlike advertising, it doesn’t make that promise. What it does promise is a way to listen into and influence the conversation that is already taking place about a company or a brand. The odds are far better that there will be a positive outcome if a company knows what is being said.

Some executives will respond that they already know what their customers are thinking. After all, people will send emails when they have a complaint. That’s true. But remember, a person who is so upset that they are motivated to send an email is usually not representative of the customer base. Blog and Twitter comments will provide a far more accurate picture of what people are thinking.

Also unlike traditional marketing, those using social media want to hear the negative comments. How else does one get better unless one knows what the problems are? The good thing about this method it is much more inclusive. Rather than relying a focus group or a marketing study, a company has opened up its comments to entire customer base. That is much more representative of what’s actually happening.

How does one listen to these conversations? By creating a Twitter brand, by blogging, by having a Facebook page and a LinkedIn group. In addition, videos posted on YouTube are good. In each of these cases, and in other social media applications, you are looking for people to comment. It is from those comments that you will find what people are thinking.

Eventually what you to do is convert those commenter’s into fans and eventually evangelists for your brand. I will talk about how to do that in another post. But, I have just told you the first step.

Social Media takes time

After you describe all of this, the next objection is going to arise – social media takes time. Writing a blog, maintaining a fan page on Facebook, Tweeting and responding to Tweets, answering questions on LinkedIn, posting videos and monitoring and responding to comments are not something that can be done in an hour once a week.

These are many executives who used to their agency doing all the work. All they have to do is approve the campaign and make sure the agency has access to whomever it needs to work with at the company. It is a kind of “fire and forget” strategy. Now, you are asking them to become an active part of their own marketing effort.

Remember, social media is not a tactic or a strategy. It is an entirely new way of marketing. It requires a commitment to stick with it. Nothing turns off a potential customer more than sporadic, unscheduled use of social media. Blogs especially have to be posted on a specific schedule. Nothing kills a blog following faster than making it hard to find. The same thing applies to a Facebook fan page or a YouTube video channel.

This is, of course, your opportunity. You are there to teach them about social media and maintain their accounts. You are the solution to their problems of time management. It why they will hire you.

One note though – do not, ever, write your client’s blog yourself. You can edit it; you can proofread it, but don’t write it. That’s dishonest. PR firms have gotten into trouble for doing things like that. Tweeting for them is fine, as is maintaining the Facebook page. Just don’t be a ghostwriter. You want those thoughts about the company or product to come from someone who really knows it. Plus, consumers react badly when they perceive something isn’t what it purports to be.

There is more to do on social media. I will discuss the most important element next week. Stay tuned.