Podcast: The Power Of Social Media

When it comes to organizations leveraging social media, I guess its true power would be unlocked when it stops being solely the domain of the Marketing or Customer Service teams, and instead becomes a decentralized engagement platform for its employees. After all, organizations employ people that they consider to be experts in their field, and social media is where this expertise can be shared.

Common measures of social media success may be in terms of number of fans, tweets, etc. These are just measures of hygiene, but are essential in terms of creating efficient stages on which in-house experts (employees) can stand up and connect with the world at large. The poorly veiled advertisements that organizations currently pass off as tweets are of no help really.

Efficient platforms coupled with a "decentralized engagement strategy" can structure and channel the reservoir of expertise (that both traditional and gen-Y organizations nurture), into continuous streams of meaningful conversations that will add up to a sustainable brand building campaign at practically zero cost.