Extending A Social Mindset Throughout Your Organization -- OR -- Does This Count as Social Media?

The short answer is; YES!  

And your BIG PR AGENCY and high-priced in-house counsel probably missed the opportunity.

Don’t be overly harsh with them, they’re trained to think in traditional and linear media models and modalities. But, make no mistake they are generally VERY good at performing within these traditional modalities.

Of course the problem is, we live in a very different and new business reality which even the largest PR agencies struggle to comprehend.  We're living and communicating in a true social biosphere now. Real people, real conversations in real time; that’s a social biosphere, and believe me it scares the crap out of your PR agency and in-house PR managers.

Not to worry, no one abandoned the mailed press release overnight either, or the press release itself for that matter. There’s help out there, consultants like Outlaw Communications but more importantly look within your own organization as the following story illustrates.

In the social biosphere that is business today everything your organization does and says or is thought to have done or said or is perceived to have done or said along with anything anyone remotely connected to your organization has ever done or said, will count with someone somewhere.

I’m exaggerating but only slightly to illustrate how important the seemingly most insignificant encounters can be to your organization’s social wellbeing.

I recently met with some folks from AFLAC in a mismanaged recruiting SNAFU gone horribly wrong, perpetrated by an outside consultant.  Ah, those horrible consultants, we’re always mucking up someone’s business. In this case it turns out to be true, well almost were it not for a socially tuned-in AFLAC recruiter who found and capitalized upon a social opportunity despite it being WAVED (Yes WAVED) in front of senior PR staffers.

At any rate after what rapidly descended into an experience worthy of Twitter Tattling, this single dedicated AFLAC representative took it upon herself to not only fix a situation but turn it into a social media opportunity for her company.

The traditional PR machine failed here and did not realize the potential social impact as an influencer began showing negative signs within AFLAC’s social biosphere.

Another company representative, responsible mostly for recruiting, (how social is the recruiting function nowadays?), managed to recognize the potential damage already begun within AFLAC’s social biosphere and took immediate and successful steps to change the interaction.

A socially healthy organization is much like any other healthy animal, the social mindset must be pervasive and inclusive, not because this is the future I see, it is but, because it is and will be and also happens to be the future I see and BIG PR continues to miss and ignore.

And if the fact that your traditional PR Agencies and in-house counsel, for which you spend tens of thousands of dollars monthly, is in complete denial about the social biosphere, doesn’t keep management up at night… you need to find other work for the sake of your shareholders and stakeholders.