Read a great white paper by Colin McKay (@canuckflack on Twitter) this weekend. By complete coincidence, it manages to also bridge the gap between the revolutionaries and the incrementalists by being totally revolution-themed while advocating small surreptitious steps.
Check it out here (pdf). The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations answers the question, “How do you bring a spirit of innovation and experimentation to the communications shop of a large organization?”
In other words,
- “How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
- Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
- Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?”
This 23-page paper can be read in about as many minutes, and contains lots of great tips for getting started with social media under the radar – at least at first. It’s also really funny.
Examples:
“Operate as a cell” – build personal awareness and expertise by operating alone at first.
“Train with another brigade” – find friends through blogs on topics you find of interest.
“Pull a Kissinger” – work the backchannels – find other employees who are also experimenting – they are already on LinkedIn and Facebook.
“Leapfrog the dead weeds” – develop an elevator pitch in case you run into senior execs who get it.
“Call in the big guns” – hire an outside consultant to validate your ideas
“Isolate and neutralize” – find the techies in the IT department who might be into social media to get them in your corner.
Etc, all the way through to “Victory!”
Hehehe.
It also contains at the end a great list of blogs specifically focused on getting started within the confines of a large organization – and the author should know, having worked for the government for ten years.
“The key? Don’t let your imagination and enthusiasm be dampened by organizational politics or institutional caution.”
Amen, brother.
Tagged: associations, social media
{ 1 comment }
Thanks!
Colin
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