Being Social is the Key

In Chapter 22, Part 7 of "Share This," Rachel Miller focuses on employee engagement and how social media is changing internal communications of businesses. Within this chapter, I found there to be a central theme that is reoccurring, the theme is "it's all about being social." Rachel offers a quote within the chapter, which highlights this central theme flawlessly; the quote reads, "Do you know the difference between social communication and social media? The key word in those terms -- social -- is the path to success."

I love that quote because in all of the communication aspects, being social is the underlying core of them all. She goes into further detail about how different social medias and be effective in being social with the desired audience. Once that relationship is formed, it then allows the employees to be engaged. I completely agree with her tip that a company should not "view social media as something that are done 'to' employees, but 'for' and 'with' them." If you can get an employee passionate about communicating with the companies audience, whether it be though social media or not, the result is infinity more beneficial to the company assuming the employee is communicating in the correct ways.

Rachel later goes into the bottom line about how to effectively gain employee engagement. She looks into a study done by Kotter, which lists the fundamental steps into the implementation. I too agree on the following six steps to be successful "stepping stones" in the implementation process:

1. Establishing a sense of urgency.

2. Forming a powerful group to lead the change.

3. Creating a vision about the change and communicating it widely.

4. Empowering others to act on the vision.

5. Planning for and creating short-term wins.

6. Consolidating improvements.

I believe that Kotter and Rachel are correct on saying that these steps are vital in being social. The ability to become social is now starting to rotate towards the employee’s involvement, and these steps could be the key difference to making or breaking it in this 21st Century

Until Next Time,

Matt