What do you call social media inside your organisation? Do you use the word ‘social’ or something else instead? What are you aiming to achieve from social tools and technologies, do you have a policy in place and what’s the benefit for corporate communication?
The answer to these questions will be the building blocks of some internal communication research I am conducting from the end of this month.
From conversations with my clients and people in my network, I realised there is a gap in terms of information among IC pros into who is doing what, what works and particularly what name is given to ‘internal social media.’
So I have partnered with the lovely people at simply-communicate including Marc Wright, Silvia Cambie and Gloria Lombardi, and we will be conducting the research from 26 August – 13 September.
I will then be presenting the results at Social Media Inside the Large Enterprise (SMILE) as part of Social Media Week, London @smwldn, on 23 September.
I’m thrilled that an internal communication event has been chosen to help launch Social Media Week. I spoke at Facebook last year during the September week (it happens in Feb and Sep each year), about how social media is changing internal communication and think we will increasingly see more IC events in years to come.
What’s the point of the research?
The key aim of our research is to equip internal communication professionals with information to be able to benchmark against each other. It will enable you to understand what social media adoption inside organisations looks like and get a glimpse into the experiences of other comms pros.
Do look out for the questions over the next few weeks, simply-communicate and I will be sharing them via their website, mine and via my social channels. There are 15 questions and it will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. I’d love to gather as many responses as possible, so do please have your say and share them with your network when they are published.
The end result will be analysis and an infographic of the data, so you’re able to benchmark and read about what other IC pros are doing, and I will share all of this at SMILE.
For people who have asked if I am going to repeat my ‘how internal comms pros use social media’ survey, the answer is yes. Look out for it in October, which will be 12 months since the last one. I’m interested to see if there has been any shift, and hat-tip to Sequel Group, who will be producing the infographic of my results so they can be shared in the same way we did in 2012.
Simply SMILE
SMILE is taking place on Monday 23 September by simply-communicate @simplycomm, at Prospero House in London. It will see hundreds of comms pros come together to discuss all things internal communication and social media related.
See the SMILE website that went live today for full information and follow the discussions via Twitter with the hashtag #smwSMILE.
Talks and discussions will focus on informal leadership communication, having middle managers empower teams, and the concerns and benefits of a workforce that relies on internal social communication.
There will be speakers from Unilever, the European Commission, UNICEF, Wells Fargo, Sanofi Pasteur, PwC and many more.
I’m honoured to have been asked to moderate a table discussion alongside the following people: (thanks to @Wedge for collating this list via his website and a Twitter list of us all).
- Neville Hobson: @jangles
- Benjamin Ellis: @benjaminellis
- Rachel Miller: @AllThingsIC
- Luke Mepham: @lukemepham
- Ezri Carlebach: @ezriel
- Tony Stewart: @VMADigital
- Wedge Black: @Wedge
- Kevin Ruck: @AcademyKev
- Chris Elmitt: @celmitt
- Sobia Aslam: @SAslam13
- Dana Leeson: @danaleeson
- Matt O’Neill: @mattoneill
Tickets are free if you are a SMILE Gold or Silver subscriber or £345+VAT. To find out much more, see the SMILE website and I will keep you posted with news in the run up to the event, including links to the survey that forms the research project.
Post author: Rachel Miller
