Social Media: The Elephant in the Office

Jenny Sweeney — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:00:52 +0000

If you think Twitter, and social media in general, is a fad, think again. Not only has the number of unique visitors to Twitter increased exponentially in the past year, the percentage of people who use it only at work is double that of those who use it only at home.

According to a recent study by Nielsen Research, Twitter saw a 1,382 percent growth from February 2008 to February 2009*. What’s more, 62 percent of respondents said they access Twitter from work only; 35 percent access it from home only.

This is what we do know: Twitter (and LinkedIn, and Facebook, and MySpace…) is wildly popular, and is used mostly at work. What’s unclear, however, is how to manage it in the enterprise.

Your options include ignoring it and blocking its use, or devising a plan that teaches employees how to use it without sullying your brand or exposing the company to security breaches.

If you are like half of the companies out there**, you have opted to ban it, which is akin to believing that if you cannot see something, it isn’t there. That worked — sort of — when you were a kid hiding under the covers from monsters, but it doesn’t now.

That worked — sort of — when you were a kid hiding under the covers from monsters, but it doesn’t now.

Social media is here, indeed, and if you aren’t managing it, your employees are. And most likely they are fumbling around with the new technology, asking their colleagues for help, or spending unnecessary hours trying to understand hashtags and TweetDeck. It’s not the technology that’s draining your workers’ productivity; it’s the lack of understanding it that is.

(We won’t even examine the damage that untamed tweeting can do to your brand and data security. That’s another post.)

More and more companies are recognizing social media’s value — so much so that it’s quickly becoming a vital component of any business. Will you fear it or embrace it? (Jen Darr)

If you choose the latter, here are some how-to mini-videos to get you started:

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*According to a Nielsen report published in February 2009.
**In a survey conducted by security firm Sophos, 50 percent of respondents said their company blocked or restricted use of sites like Facebook.

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Social Media: The Elephant in the Office