SmartBrief is partnering with Big Think to create a weekly video spotlight in SmartBrief on Leadership called “VIP Corner: Video Insights Powered by Big Think.” This week, we’re featuring Maddie Grant, Social Fish’s chief social media strategist.
While many organizations get their feet wet with social media campaigns, once they try to do more with social media integration they encounter challenges that come with social media touching all the different parts of a company, says Maddie Grant, Social Fish’s chief social media strategist. She says that what often happens is different departments of a company do different things with social media that all falls under that company, revealing a need for enhanced communication.
“So this is one example where you may start off with individual departments, doing individual activities, but at the end of the day, there has to be some changes in your internal communication and internal collaboration in order to really optimize and maximize what you’re doing with social media,” Grant says.
She notes that social media is a good way to help a company with “deeper organizational changes,” and setting up social media guidelines is a good place to start. Grant says that social media guidelines should be the same for all of a company’s employees and they should define what an employee can do with social media and how he or she can represent the company. That way, more people can use social media within the company.
Grant says that setting up a team with members of different departments to oversee a company’s online presence is also a good tactic. She explains that the representatives of the different departments can communicate with each other about how they can work together to promote the company and enhance its online presence.
“A lot of companies that we’ve talked to have never had a multidepartmental internal team of any kind. So social media is actually a great way to start this kind of internal collaboration that maybe has never happened before,” Grant says.
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