Dr. Valerie Purchase

School of Communication @ValeriePurchase

‘Social Readiness’: Preparing your organisation for a more SOCIAL life

Many organisations create Facebook pages, Twitter or Pinterest accounts but fail to consider preparing their organisation for increased social attention and involvement

Why into the unknown? What’s different?

§  Fragmented and messy §  Culture is different §  Organisations are the ‘uninvited

guests’ §  Huge potential for positive involvement

How can an organisation be prepared?

§  Be strategic – know why you are embarking on a social journey

§  Be ready offline – resources; guidelines and procedures for responding

§  Be ready to change both incrementally and perhaps fundamentally

Be strategic §  Some organisations just tack a

Facebook page onto their existing business’

Rules For the Social Era by Nilofer Merchant

•  You need a clear situational analysis, measurable objectives, a strategy to achieve your objectives and more detailed and regular campaigns and actions

•  Share your strategy

How can an organisation be prepared?

§  Have a strategy §  Be ready offline – resources; guidelines and

procedures for responding §  Be ready to change

both incrementally and perhaps fundamentally

Being ‘social’ requires resources

§  95% of Facebook Wall Posts Not Answered By Brands

§  How many people are there in your social media team?

‘Social media crises are on rise, yet many can be avoided through preparation’ - Need a social media policy and response plan

Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally

Do you really need a policy?

‘We don’t have a clothing policy but no-one comes to work naked’ ‘it’s just common sense’

Creating a Safe Space - Social Media Policies Directory

§  Employees and managers need some basic guidelines on

what is and isn’t allowed.

Why social technologies are important, and go on to provide

detail on what employees should and should not do when

engaging in digital media communication

* ASCE American Society of Civil Engineers

How can an organisation be prepared?

§  Be strategic §  Be ready offline to be online §  Be ready to change

both incrementally and perhaps fundamentally

Incremental change

Perhaps even fundamentally change? Emanuele Quintarelli

Isolated Value co-creation Permeable Inside -out

Fundamental change -Threadless T-shirts

Michael Parent, Kirk Plangger, Anjali Bal (2011)The new WTP: Willingness to participate. Business Horizons (2011) 54, 219—229

Building social readiness - American Red Cross – (Li, 2010)

§  Hurricane Katrina - Why wasn’t the country better prepared? Why were citizens of the richest country in the world abandoned for days?

§  Red Cross were facing criticism, reputation threatened by blogs, discussion boards, social networking sites

§  2006 Hired Wendy Harman – ‘make it stop’

§  January 2010 Haiti Earthquake

§  Rapid volunteer response and raised

$10m in just 3 days

§ But be ready … Are we strategic in our adoption of social media? How ready are our organisations in terms of resources; guidelines; skills? Are we really ready to change?