1. Topic Idea

2. Key Points

Whoever gets there first with the message controls the message.  Whoever has the most members has the most authority.  If you have legitimacy from an organizational perspective, you should use social media tools to be present in the discussion.

That said, participating in the dialogue isn't the only way to use social media, and the case for each may be different. We discussed these four:

• Public Outreach
• Learn new skills when you need to know them
• Solve business problems
• Crisis Management/Risk Management/Crisis Prevention

Public Outreach

Possibly the most risky and hotly debated way of using social media is as a creator - writing a blog, starting a twitter account, commenting on other people's blogs - anything that suggests an 'official' response.  Done well, participating in social media in an official capacity can help reduce costs, for example, by responding in a public forum that removes the need for others to ask the same question, or to place a call.  It can also increase the public perception of the brand and help position your organization as service-oriented and progressive.  

Crisis Management/Risk Management/Crisis Prevention

But participating as a creator is not the only way organizations can use social media.  Monitoring what others are saying about you on the 'net can avoid the need to do crisis communication by addressing problems early, before they become a problem.  In order to do this effectively, you need to have a plan in place to deal with negative feedback.  Some people called this "Reputation Management", and asked the questions:

• How do you manage the public expectation with limited resources and policy regulations?
• What's expected turnaround time from government on new media? 

Learn new skills when you need to know them

Social media isn't just participating in online discussions and debates about your organzation. There are a lot of tools that can be used internally with little or no investment and .  Training is a perfect example - with training budgets being cut and the technology changing at such a rapid pace, following blogs, people, topics or conferences on twitter and other live/streaming services is a great way to keep up with demands of a changing landscape. 

Solve business problems

Reinventing the wheel or starting something from scratch is almost never the most cost-effective way of doing business. New media allows you to sort and search and find very niche groups of people and specialized topics.  The return on investment of quickly resolving a problem or coming up with an innovative approach to something that hasn't typically worked well in your organization may be one of the best benefits to using social media.

3. Takeaways

Enable people to realize their own benefits.

If you’re a person who understand benefits of social media already, set-up tools for other people to be able to do their job better.  For example, set up a friendfeed/tweet deck to allow officers to monitor the online buzz about their area of responsibility. Being involved in social media doesn’t mean responding to twitter or commenting on blogs; monitoring can be just as important.  Close the gap between what people are saying and the person who can make the change.

 

Create a sandbox and let people play for themselves risk-free. When people start playing, they realize / create the benefits for themselves.  Playgrounds often turn into success stories that can be used to demonstrate the value within your own organization in a language that makes sense to your colleagues and peers. We (jokingly) called this "Guerrilla change management".

4. Next Steps/Action Items

 What’s needed? Possibly a "Strategy for Social Media" template that describes:

• how are we going to use social media?
• when do we use it? When is it appropriate?When is it not appropriate?