7 Creative Ways to Introduce Social Media to Your Team

Yesterday I received a tweet about a great blog post.  I followed the link and found myself entranced by Mike VanDervort’s Confronting Social Media at Work.  It’s a great blog post that warns HR professionals about the need to get ready for the social media invasion.  Those who left comments about the post asked “how do you communicate the importance of social media to a leadership group that has no concept of its relevance in their personal or professional lives?”  I get this type of question all the time.  People want to know how to get their leadership, their co-workers, or even their employees to buy into this “crazy” thing called social media.  So let’s come up with an answer.   

7 Ways to Introduce Social Media to Your Team

1. Start an education campaign.

Provide your team with information.  There are many sources of information available that explain what social media tools are in quick and entertaining ways.  Articles from trade publications are incredibly helpful since they are coming from a source that your team may already know and respect.  When you find these articles flip the publication open to that page, attach a sticky note saying “thought you would find this interesting,” and leave it for them on their desk.  Remember to follow up personally to see if they liked the article or had any questions.  It is important to give the article that personal touch.  It shows that you think the content is important enough to go out of your way to highlight it.  For this to be effective you can’t just send them a link to an article online.

However if you want to leverage your online resources (and as some one interested in social media, I would assume you would) you can also direct your team’s attention to  some online videos.  Video hits a much different cord with people than an article.  Done correctly a video can provide a great deal of useful information much quicker than in an article.  Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• Social Media Revolution
• Vision of K-12 Students Today (Your employees of tomorrow)
• Social Media in Plain English
• The Twitter Experiment
• Social Networking in Plain English
• Learning to Change – Changing to Learn

2. Team up with internal and external social media users

 Find others like yourself that are interested in the opportunities that social media provides and engage in some thoughtful conversations about how utilizing these tools could impact your organization.  Once you have a chance to vocalize your thoughts with people that are supportive of the technology, it will be easier to have similar conversations with those that still haven’t seen the light. 

3. Suggest social media solutions

When you are discussion solutions to meet your training needs look for opportunities to add a social media component.  Here are a few examples:

• Instead of learners taking a test or writing papers to show their competence ask them to make a five minute video on the topic. 
• Create a forum so new employees can post questions and get feedback from their coworkers as they learn the ropes in their new company. 
• When starting a new product or service, create a blog to make sure each employee is kept up to date on any developments.  This kind of constant communication with reduce the amount of information they will need to learn through formal training sessions when the product or service is ready to launch.
• The next time a group of people attend a conference ask that they post any insights they gather on their Twitter accounts and assign them a hashtag for your company.  You’ll be able to get three main things out of this.  First, this will allow the attendees one more way to network with people at the conference,  give them the ability to share their knowledge with the colleagues back at the office in real time, and in the end you will be able to get a sense for the ROI on the conference.

4. Help stretch the budget by using a “free” option!

Most of the social media tools out there are free.  Alright, so not all social media solutions are free, but in these hard economic times spending a few hundred dollars is better than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

5. Take a look at what your competitors are doing.

In your searches through those articles from the first bullet point did you find one highlighting your competition?  This is a great opportunity to spotlight both the reach of social media and how it can be used in your industry.  For example an article was just published by ASTD entitled Twitter: Inside the Enterprise, Up the Next Hill by Marcia Conner.  It talks about how employees at Humana are using Twitter to enhance social learning.  I used to work in the health care industry, so I know how resistant some people can be, therefore I’m convinced that if Humana can use Twitter anyone can. 

6. Invite your coworkers to your social networks.

So they don’t know what Linked In is?  Then introduce them personally!  Send an invitation to you colleagues and ask them to join your online network.  The key to making this work is to follow up with them in person.  Make sure they got your invitation and take a minute to share some of your experiences with them.  If you want them to take advantage of social media remember that it is just like any social gathering, it is easier to walk into the room when you already know somebody there.

7. Give the gift of social media.

With the holidays at hand this is a perfect time to get in the giving mood (even if it does have a bit of a hidden agenda).  As I mentioned before there are many resources available on the evolution of social media.  Present your boss, co-workers, or employees with a copy of the latest book to get their wheels turning.  A few books come to mind as perfect introductions to the topic.  I have placed some of these books on my virtual bookshelf located on the right hand sidebar.  Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World HC  by Don Tapscott is a research based book looking at the effect of technology on Millennials (those born between 1977 – 1997).  The book discusses how their brains process information differently than previous generations, as well as ways to attract and educate this audience.  I also recommend Bernie Borges’ book Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing as it is a great social media resource even if you aren’t involved in marketing. 

These seven tips should provide your team with a pretty good introduction to social media. Hopefully they start to understand that social media isn’t so “crazy” after all.  Then again, when the Internet first hit the mainstream please considered that crazy (and we all know how that one worked out).

Best,

P.S.  Have you already had the “social media conversation” with your team.  Leave a comment and let us know how it went!

Related Posts

1. Top 10 Ways Social Media Will Impact Employee Development and Training in 2010
2. Social Media Tools in Social Learning
3. How to Inspire Informal Learning by Sharing Conference Insights
4. Answers to Their Arguments: Corporate Use of Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites
5. How to Use Twitter in Social Learning

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