Have you ever had an experience where someone says something that makes you immediately cringe, but you also know that they’re at least partly right? I had that reaction a week ago listening in on Social Mediasphere TV, Jim Turner’s weekly show on Ustream. His panelists included several social media rockstars, among them Amber Naslund. Amber was asked if she had to replace herself in her role as Director of Community at Radian6, what would she look for in a candidate? The first thing Amber said she wouldn’t want is someone with a communications background. Ouch! Here’s her transcribed response:
I actually probably don’t want somebody with a communications background..sorry communications people…but the truth is there’s a lot of preconceived notions in corporate communications that are very, very difficult to undo and part of the reason that social media is struggling for adoption inside of established companies is that they’re having trouble jettisoning the old ideas they have about how and what to communicate to their customers.
So, if I were replacing myself I would actually want someone who is closer to a rookie and somebody who has the passion for connecting with people. I came up through a nonprofit fundraising background and to be perfectly frank when we were fundraisers we weren’t taught a lot about proper corporate communication practices. We were taught that connecting with the donors about the story behind the organization was what was going to connect with them at a level that compelled them to want to support it. I go back to those tenets a lot in my community work.
So if I was going to replace me I would probably look for a grassroots nonprofit type person who is really plugged into the people and not so much plugged in to their MBA textbook that’s collecting dust on the shelf. And I’d look for somebody that has a bunch of unrefined skills that is eager to get out there and do really good, hard work . This is not a 9-5 job, so I need somebody with the work ethic that can dedicate themselves to it but I want somebody with kind of a fresh slate because I don’t want somebody whose ideas I have to undo.
My initial reaction to Amber’s answer was to cringe, wince and recoil. I’ve got six years of corporate communications under my belt (and a shelf full of dusty MBA textbooks too, for that matter) and now the rockstar of social media rockstars is telling me that I’m not likely to be a good fit for a social media job? Yikes.
But then I stopped to really think about what Amber said (and it’s why I waited a week to write this post). Her basic tenet is that a lot of corporate communicators still want to control how, when and what is communicated to customers. They’re trying to fit a square social media peg into a round corporate communications hole, and it’s not working. They rely on models, rules, diagrams, pie charts or PowerPoint slides to define effective communication. And by they, I also mean me– at least a part of the time. I admit that I sometimes tend to fit communications strategies into my company’s current operating framework rather than challenging that framework and looking for more effective ways of reaching customers. Sometimes I get caught up in the process and mechanics of communication and forget to focus on telling a compelling story.
However, I don’t think that means professionals with a communications background couldn’t be effective in a community-focused social media role. Amber talks about not being able to “undo” a corporate communicator’s old ideas. It is hard to jettison those ideas when you’re still at a company that reinforces them. But I do think many corporate communicators are aware of the strictures that are often placed on us and in some cases are frustrated by them. Once they step away, some of those preconceived notions can be undone pretty quickly, primarily because they don’t have HR, legal, marketing or operations underscoring them right and left. Sometimes all it takes is a change in scenery.
I’m sure Amber’s right in that a young, scrappy, go-getter fundraising type would make a great community manager. But I wouldn’t entirely count out folks with communications backgrounds. Some of us may just be looking for the opportunity to undo some of our ideas. What do you think? Is it a matter of the corporate culture driving communicators’ approaches, or communicators in corporations clinging to their “old ideas?” How can corporate communications pros make a transition into a role like Amber’s?
Image via Flickr user danstorey14
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Amy,
Fabulous stuff here. And you’re absolutely right.
It’s not the communications background that’s the trouble. And in fact, I know some AMAZING communications people that are the perfect type for social media – Beth Harte, Geoff Livingston, Gennefer Snowfield to name a few. They’ve got traditional backgrounds in spades.
What’s at issue is the mindset. The idea that old ideas CAN and SHOULD be challenged, and sometimes changed. Not blindly holding on to the ideas behind traditional communications simply because they’re established.
So it’s perfectly fair for me to say that I should amend my statement. It’s not the background, but the mindset that I’m looking for. You captured it beautifully, and I’m so grateful that you took the time to write all this down.
Thanks for making me think, and for being a great contributor to the dialogue, always.
Amber
Love this post. I respect Amber’s perspective and totally agree that communicators are “hard-wired” and think they know how to communicate with audiences no matter what the medium, like social media. It’s hard to undo that.
However, I also agree with you Amy, that us marketers aren’t totally hopeless for a position like that. Yes, MarCom people in a lot of ways have been “forced” internally to abide by upper management beliefs (which I have to say a lot of the times they are way off)about how to communicate with customers. You sometimes can’t avoid that. But then there is that percentage of us who believe that you have to constantly reinvent marketing so that it makes sense for your audience/customers. This open-mindedness and “never taking your hand off the marketing ball” are challenges I think businesses are facing out there.
There are analogues for this all across the marketing communications media landscape. The great “oh crap” what happens to me question.
For certain brands, products and services, absolutely a really fresh non-compliant approach will be a best bet.
While we have seen scores of situations in which a company or brand has been hand slapped for being late or inefficient in the “social media compliance game”, what we have not seen yet is the company that has a big mistake happen because they were too lax in oversight.
I think you need people that are smart, open minded, persistent and knowledgeable, not just about the intent of the conversation but how to troubleshoot problems, including ones they may inadvertantly create.
After working 22 years in the legal world, I noticed this too from lawyers. They get so entrenched in the ideology of the law they forget about the human side of the equation. The same can be for others in social media if they have like you do corporate communications background, advertising or PR. They can get caught up in what they know and not the way things are evolving. Its good to look outside the box now and then to get a different perspective. From one square peg to another welcome to the Social Mediapshere!
I like the ideas presented here both in the article and the comments. I think what it comes down to, whether or not an individual has a communications background or not, is a commitment to life-long learning. Social media is still very new and that is important to remember because other new things are going to come along in communications. Whether you are just starting your career or you’re towards the middle or the end, learning how to use new tools will always be important!
Amy-Well said. Along those same lines, I’m seeing that this quandary is true of those comm’g internally, as well as externally. Social media is evolving slower in the communications to/with employees (B2E) than B2C. Among those firms that are embracing SocMedia in the B2C arena, many are not in B2E. That ‘do it the way we’ve always done it’ mindset Amber talks about (and in some cases lack of trust–or fear?–of their own employees) when combined with outdated perceptions of SocMedia as a ‘time-waster’ has many firms still blocking access to SocMedia sites. Employees are muzzled… leaving them unable to voice frustrations or share innovations.
HR is traditionally a late adopter of most trends/technologies, so I can’t say this is surprising. But there’s a fantastic opportunity here in SocMedia for those firms willing to embrace it.
Great post Amy. It does remind me of the book, Who Moved my Cheese. As pr professionals, we need to always be learning and connecting with others. It may take us out of our comfort zone but that’s certainly what’s happening now. If you don’t jump in, you’re just putting your head in the sand.
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Amy, I think Amber has some good points – and as a grassroots IT guy that had a hobby in social media, I was able to land a new role in my company as a social media manager because of my experience online and innovative ideas that I was able to share with co-workers.
As communications/PR folks try to embrace change, they need to accept the changes of conversation and try to get their feet wet. I’ve met a few old school people in the past 12 months that didn’t even want to talk social media; it was a joke to them. It took 12 months and Oprah jumping on Twitter to actually turn some heads. Since then, those comm/PR people have reached back out.
Social Media can’t be 100% controlled and be effective. Monitoring and teaching your employees how to effectively use social media is your key.
Jay makes a great point about needing “a commitment to life-long learning”, no matter what profession you’re in. That’s the mark of a smart person who’s truly engaged in their profession and not simply punching the clock; there’s no reason an experienced marketing person shouldn’t have the same enthusiasm for new technologies and methods as a rookie who grew up taking them for granted.
There’s a significant downside to a rookie’s lack of fundamental experience, though; enthusiasm can decrease the learning curve, but only by so much. It’s a problem that’s clearly on display in the digital realm these days with every Tom, Dick and Harry calling themselves a social media guru because they have a Twitter handle and Facebook page.
Thank you all for stopping in and sharing your opinions. Great points raised by all–this space is still so new and continuous learning is the key. Having the mindset of wanting to grow and adapt, like Amber said, is what really will separate the communicators who are successful with social media strategies with those who aren’t.
I really appreciate your comments – here’s to some constructive “undoing”!
i’m coming in a bit late to the party. as a former HR and corporate comms person, now an independent employee communications consultant, i want to suggest that broad brushstrokes unfairly paint all of us.
many years ago, HR made the transition from tactical to strategic (admittedly, some HR offices are still stuck in the tactical mode). the best of HR folk are helping orgs make great leaps through the power of connecting with and engaging their employees.
similarly today, many corp comm folk (both internal and external) are very keen to employ social media within and outside their orgs. i was at a 2-day communications conf last week and will be at a 3-day conf next week, and believe me–social media is very much on our mind. the colleagues at these conferences are all over the spectrum, with some using social media, some learning so they can do so, and yes, some scared out of their pants about what all of this means to them and how they work.
good corp comms folk may not have the social media skills of someone else, but they just may have great influencing and relationship-building skills that can help open leadership and legal to these new channels. because let’s face it, corp comms folk aren’t the only ones who are wedded to “old ideas.”
My friend Tracy follows your blog and forwarded it to me – really struck me after hearing Clay Shirky this morning. So I credited YOU and talked about my reactions to his comments… on my blog. I too am in catch-up mode, just a teence more years on board. PS I like your blog design better than mine! http://philanthrophile.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/corporate-communicators-transform-or-die/
Amy:
I agree that the key to real engagement is rooted in your experience “connecting with the donors about the story behind the organization was what was going to connect with them at a level that compelled them to want to support it.”
Maybe it is because I come from an education and non-profit background prior to my life in corporate communications – one of my most profound life and professional experiences was leading the communications response in my state and in the field for the American Red Cross in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I was horrified to discover that several months after the storm little to no effort had been made to reach out to huge non-English speaking communities along the gulf coast. I immediately set up meetings with community leaders – volunteer though I was in New Orleans and outside Houston – in the Vietnamese and Latino communities and went on radio in my then still less than confident Spanish to let people know that help was available regardless of immigration status.
I have often wondered how differently that national humanitarian crisis would have been handled had it happened even one or two years later when Facebook – not to mention Twitter – was available. I know I would have been utilizing those tools for everything they were worth to marshal volunteers and resources, and I wonder how traditional communications folks at government and non-profit organizations tasked with leading the response would have responded to the inevitable explosion on social media channels.
The really interesting thing is that there is this simultaneous isolation and nascent awakening within corporate communications departments to the power of community. Most of it is rooted in fear – fear of losing control, fear of losing relevance, and fear of losing jobs. My peers on the corporate side in organizations like PRSA attend events aimed at educating them in social media tools, but the questions they raise are often rooted in traditional approaches to communications.
Agencies like ours are caught in the middle, certain of the need to lead our clients in this direction yet sympathetic to the organizational challenges that complicate matters. While we revel in the luxury of discussing the Twitter over coffee with our colleagues, many on the client side are still trying to justify the need for a B2B company to send out press releases.
We believe in hiring bootstrappers – I guess that’s why I’m on the team – and get excited at the opportunities that brave (often internal or non-profit) clients present us to experiment or empower them to do so.
Angie Moncada
amoncada@addventures.com
thevirtualwatercooler.wordpress.com
@angiemoncada
@addventuresmia
Thanks for continuing to weigh in on this topic! This post was picked up at Social Media Today and there are some great comments piling up over there, too. (http://bit.ly/Um7Lz)
Fran – You make a stellar point about corporate communications folks being able to influence and guide management and leadership and get them to open up to new ideas, like social media strategies. Even if the communicators themselves don’t have the necessary skills (yet), getting a team on board is really the first step, and communicators are often very good at gaining consensus.
Angie – Thanks for the example about Hurricane Katrina. I, too wonder what the response strategy would have been like in the age of Twitter and Facebook. You’re right in that many organizations can reconcile their fear of losing control of their message with the open and two-way approach that social media requires. Sometimes communicators are among the fearful, and others who are successful with social media often have a more open mindset, as Amber said in her comment.
Betsy- thanks for the link! Glad the post resonated with you.
Amy,
What a rockstar post! My first reaction was to cringe as well, but I think Amber also made a great point. The reason that social media isn’t really taking off too quickly in corporate (unless they have a scandal) is that it’s completely off track to what they are used to. Corporations have a hard time changing because of the mentality “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” They don’t realize that in SM, you really have to have a clear-cut strategy and engage people, rather than just posting updates.
I really liked all of your points of how corporate communicators can influence leadership. Hopefully many will read this and step up to the plate.
Great writing, as always.
Lauren
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Hey Amy –
Brilliant post. Now that I’ve been corporate for a while (with my agency experience to fall back on), I can say that I see these dynamics at play all the time.
It’s not necessarily that corporate PR/communications pros are clueless/hopeless in the SM space. Instead, two key factors are in play:
1 – Corporate marketing managers stick with tried and true tactics/strategies, because they know what will and won’t work. This is even more the case in today’s economy, when companies want to explore projects with less perceived risk.
2 – Corporate marketing managers are focused on one thing: driving revenue for the company. Let’s face it: even top social media experts have a tough time measuring social media results, and because there’s no easy way to show how time/$ spent in SM impacts the bottom line, managers are hesitant to green-light related efforts. Again, in a tough, risk-averse economy like we’re in today, this is even more true.
I think all we can do as PR/communications pros is continue to educate our colleagues on new/strong tools we can use to do our jobs. Of course, a sure-fire SM measurement tool wouldn’t hurt either.
Thanks!
Jason Sprenger
@JasonSprenger