If cyberspace was a planet... Social Media, LIKE IT

Embracing Social Media

Social Media is great is it not? Why are so many companies drawing up policies as long as the River Thames prohibiting their employees from engaging on their behalf?

Organisations today, or at least those worth talking about have become so concerned with their publicity on social media that they tend to scare their employees off from using it whilst bringing up the organisation's name. Those organisations are obviously oblivious to the fact that they are indeed very much on social media, but prohibiting stakeholders from protecting the organisation's interests.

Lets consider cyberspace a planet, where messages in envelopes need to be sent to earth by shooting them from some type of machine that hopes to break through the atmosphere of cyberspace and then earth after which the messages get pulled to earth by gravity.

Do we have a better chance trying to shoot a million envelopes from the same island on planet cyberspace (all while the planet is rotating) or  are we more likely to succeed trying a million envelopes from various locations on planet cyberspace? 

Employees of multinationals shoot messages out all the time whether inside the premises of the organisation, out in a bar (what do you do? I work at....) and we trust them to safeguard proprietary information and reflect a positive image of the organisation, so why are we falling behind from allowing them to do just that on planet cyberspace?

Sure, there has to be guidelines to ensure that consumers are not misled for examples employees should declare they work for a company whilst talking about it, but should these guidelines, policies and procedures be too long, too boring and too complicated? No.

We should stop shooting only from the marketing department and start shooting from the organisation as a whole.

We trust employees to behave on planet earth, we should trust them to do just that on planet cyberspace! 

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